Inflation is not currently a menace

The thing about energy independence claims is it largely ignores the reality of the fuels markets. Even at the point where we were briefly a total net exporter, we weren’t what you would call energy independent.

We have refineries and suppliers who move fuel around our country with specific contracts and specific transportation routes already setup. Some of those require imported crude to make refined petroleum products, which then are expected to flow out of that refinery to different locations across different modes of transport. On the flipside, we have some production that is basically not well tied into our domestic refining and supply distribution at all, but instead is literally tied into pipelines that flow to export terminals for shipment overseas. It isn’t meaningfully easy to transmogrify one into the other, there’s long-term contracts and what have you.

We don’t have a State oil and energy industry, we have a free market one where our producers, refiners, transporters and retail suppliers are all for profit concerns. Some of them have made their business in refining crude they import from overseas for the domestic market. Some of them have made their business in refining overseas crude for re-export. Some have made their business in producing crude that goes straight to export. Some have made their business in producing crude that is refined for domestic consumption.

The total of exports vs imports doesn’t really tell a picture of independence or lack thereof, it more tells the tale of a complex free market system that is incredibly interconnected with the global petroleum products business. We would have to fundamentally rework (and intrusively involve government in) the entire process to change it to fit the simple narrative people seem to want to believe.

If Ferguson’s argument is

Narrative-style explanations can mislead people in their understanding of complex systems, then he has a point.

If his argument is

Narratives are absolutely useless in understanding complex systems, then that is just balderdash. May even be poppycock.

The Reagan example given is a perfect illustration. Of course Reagan wasn’t responsible for 2008. But 2008 occurred in a world where, in 1982, Reagan pushed for, and got passed, the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act. The push began in 1981 and, just a year later, it was signed into law:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2002/09/26/02-24407/alternative-mortgage-transaction-parity-act-preemption

Does 2008 occur as it occurred in a world where this act isn’t passed? It’s doubtful.

These human systems are complex, but the complexity itself doesn’t prevent humans, even a single individual, from having agency in changing them.

Anyway, I don’t want to argue him second-hand, my friend, just offering an opinion. Thanks for the book recommendation, I will check it out.

I think his point is more that the choice to single in on a single narrative explanation is usually driven by a desire to make a political point, and is probably not incredibly useful for understanding why complex things occur in the economy.

It’s honestly no different than the super typical political narrative we’ve all seen our entire lives: gas prices go up = President bad. When in reality the President has a shockingly limited impact on the price of retail gasoline. That does not mean a President’s energy policies have no impact on anything, they do, but they don’t set and control a free market by diktat, and they also rarely correspond to the timeline that most casual observers want. For example, one reason we produce so much oil these days is because a law was passed near the end of Obama’s Presidency that allowed for the exporting of oil. This caused fields to go online that otherwise would not have, as the producers were selling oil specifically for the overseas market. That wasn’t reflected in actual production until 2019. So hilariously the narrative about oil production under Trump credits him with production numbers in 2019 that are actually tied to a law Obama signed–and of course that law was a compromise bill and the oil export clause was pushed by Republicans, so certainly GOP legislators could claim some credit. It does not easily match the narrative that King Trump waved a magic wand and made oil production jump.

I have to notice that in reality many Republicans in congress are making that point about trump with the intention to put the lipstick on him, they need to prop up that pig (It’s the corruption, stupid) when he is likely to run again for the presidency. Attributing the current energy problems to Biden is just plain projection.

If the above is true…

…then this is false. A doctor pays much, much more income tax than a working class family.

It’s really wild to watch conservatives’ mental yoga while they argue one day about the unfairness of transferring money from the rich to the poor, and the next day the unfairness of transferring money from the poor to the rich. There’s no apparent operating principle except “do nothing”, because that’s what benefits the wealthiest.

One of the few ways in which they are actually true to traditional conservative principles.

From what I can tell the majority of proposals for student loan forgiveness would have income limits and would be limited to undergraduate loans. Both of which would exclude most practicing physicians.

I don’t necessarily agree with student loan forgiveness, but I think most of the arguments against it are not being made in good faith. I think the people who don’t like it basically don’t want it because Democrats want it. Democrats want it because activist progressives want it. I am not convinced it is a great policy for the country either way, but it’s relatively small compared to the massive give aways Trump gave to corporations and the wealthy, or that both Trump and Biden gave to basically the whole country (but with much of it going to wealthy small business owners) during Covid. If there is a principled reason not to do it, it isn’t a principle either party appears to have held as recently as 2020/21.

His point, you say.

Do you think it’s his, uh, narrative?

that’s exactly what you would call it. And Trump insisted Germany build sea ports for LNG because Russia couldn’t be trusted. And here we and the world are with less US oil available and Russia attacking Ukraine AGAIN. Germany is going to face a natural gas shortage until those ports are built.

And the Democrats who approved sanctions against the Nord stream 2 pipeline jumped ship at the beginning of the year and aligned with Biden who wanted to lift the sanctions.

Politico

  • Democrats have consistently supported sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, arguing that the project will jeopardize Europe’s energy security and allow Putin to blackmail his enemies. But as the Senate prepares to vote next week on legislation from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would force Biden to impose those sanctions, Democrats on Wednesday signaled a significant shift in their posture.

Bottom line is Trump had it right the whole time. He supported US production of Oil and Biden didn’t. Trump was against Nord Stream 2 and Biden was for it.

Well, one would think that the past attempt being underwhelming would be a clue not to press on, but again, Trump and henchmen are not quite there on this too:

Except–no, it isn’t. You aren’t energy independent if your economy can’t function without energy imports, that is the very definition of being dependent.

This is manifestly dishonest. Angela Merkel’s coalition agreement (which she came to with other parties in her coalition), which was written in 2018 as per German domestic political concerns committed to the build out of LNG terminals. It is certainly true that Trump was in favor of these plans being accelerated and may even be true that it had some influence on German thinking–but the primary driver of the currently under construction LNG terminals in Germany was German domestic politics. Specifically, a desire to move away from coal, which was going to require German getting more and more diversified supplies of natural gas. Nordstream-2 was part of that, but additional concerns that Germany had dealt with pipelines from the Netherlands and Norway, that were projected to not have sufficient supply in future years as some of their sources of gas are running at the end of their productive lifetime.

The idea that Trump “insisted” and made Merkel do anything here is simply fabricated. This is the second time I have called out a very clear lie you told, and I suspect like the first time I did so–you will not meaningfully respond to the evidence presented or present any counter-evidence to try and support your original lie. This shows that you are apparently interested in dishonestly communicating.

Merkel Looks to LNG to Cut Germany’s Dependence on Russian Gas - Bloomberg

It’s weird because it is almost like that article says that the reason Biden and Democrats decided to hold up sanctioning Nordstream-2 in January of 2022 is because they considered the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine to be serious, and didn’t want the sanctions to be seen as a provocation to Putin. That may or may not have been wise policy (frankly I doubt anything was going to dissuade Putin from invading other than a threat of U.S. military intervention), but it would seem to be pretty on par with Trump’s decisions to reduce sanctions on Russia which were for diplomatic purposes:

Sanctions on Russia relaxed by Trump administration - CBS News

I am guessing you were upset when Trump rolled back Obama’s sanctions on Russia, yes?

Biden was not for Nordstream-2, your own link doesn’t claim that it simply states that Biden did not want to apply new sanctions to Russia while it was trying to perform diplomacy with Russia to head off the Ukraine war. Additionally, the Nordstream-2 sanctions were problematic in the form they took and potentially undermined U.S. interests by opening the door to complex political sanctions being used against us (particularly by China.) It is well explained here (an article you will not read.)

As for supporting the oil industry–I find it incredibly shortsighted to just say Trump was right to support the oil industry. I think it’s pretty admirable that Biden has been against Big Oil back to his earliest days in the Senate (back to his first Senate campaign, in fact.) While I’ve long been in favor of common sense, realism and moderation on managing our transition away from fossil fuels, the reality is by the 2010s the climate crisis was undeniable, and anything other than heavy investment into alternatives (which I will take time to point out, should have included significant nuclearization, something most frequently opposed by Democrats) was not something I will categorize as “getting it right.”

If anything, Trump’s rhetoric around oil production is actively harmful to our country and our future. It further promoted the idea that no, we don’t have to change, we can just keep using oil as much as we want. That the main thing we should want is gas as cheap as possible so we can drive the most inefficient vehicles possible and be as tied into a global oil market that is significantly influenced by despots who have strong anti-American values.

In the immediate crisis we are now in due to the war in Ukraine, there is little option but to push domestic production higher, but the reality is if we had done more work to transition away from fossil fuels we would have more offsetting energy online so at least the net harm would be less.

Luckily perhaps, I won’t be alive to see it, but I cannot even imagine the level of disdain people 50 or 100 years from now will have when they know that people today had the audacity to say things like “Trump was right the whole time” about pushing ever higher oil production (including opening areas for oil production that had long been blocked.)

when you use less oil than you produce you’re independent. Whether we choose to move it around in the most efficient manner does not negate this fact.

Again, that is not accurate. Independent means you (literally) are not dependent on anyone else. The U.S. is, and has been for decades and decades, dependent on some foreign sources of energy. If those supplies disappeared it would take years to replace them because we would have to retool much of our economy.

It’s akin to a corn farmer saying he is “food independent” because he grows more raw calories than his family eats. That’s only true if the farmer only needs corn and doesn’t want calories from anywhere else. That is not typically going to be the case.

Reuters May 19th, 2021

U.S. waives sanctions on Nord Stream 2 as Biden seeks to mend Europe ties

  • WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - The Biden administration waived sanctions on the company behind Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany and its chief executive, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday, a move decried by critics of the project in Congress.

Yes, that’s what it means. Thanks for agreeing. there’s a simple test for this. If every country refused to send oil to the US we would still have more oil than we need and be independent.

And when you import raw crude that your refinery infrastructure requires, you are dependent on the countries you import from.

Unfortunately our area of disagreement isn’t on what the word independent means, but to what it applies, but you seem confused on that matter.

Which does not state whether Biden was for or against Nordstream-2. He was on record as being against it.

there is nothing in your cite that refuted what I’ve said. Trump sanctioned the pipeline and Democrats approved of it until Biden took office.

And Trump was spot on with his warning to Germany regarding energy dependence on Russia. You didn’t need to be a psychic to see this given how Poland was treated or the Crimean War.

Our ruling

McEnany said, “President Trump sanctioned Russia. President Biden gave them a pipeline.”

This sets up a dubious dichotomy between what Trump and Biden have done to oppose the pipeline. Both presidents maneuvered with difficulty to oppose a project in which they had no official role and could only use indirect leverage.

Trump did sanction Russia, although his friendliness to Putin sent contrary signals. Biden continued and extended sanctions, but he has also sought flexibility with sanctions as part of diplomatic negotiations.

Only a tiny percentage of the pipeline remained to be finished by the time Biden took office; most of it was built on Trump’s watch.

We rate the statement Mostly False.

Incidentally, as it was mentioned already, Trump did not want to sanction, congress did.

However, experts said the 2017 legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in part due to widespread concerns that Trump was too cozy with Russia and Vladimir Putin.

“Trump’s early fawning of Putin sent strong signals that the U.S. would not be pursuing a tough policy towards Russia,” said Susanne Wengle, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame.

Congress felt it had to get involved because both parties feared Trump could not be trusted with Russia, and they didn’t want to leave him the unilateral power to end sanctions via executive order, said Yoshiko M. Herrera, a University Wisconsin-Madison political scientist.

When it came time to sign the bill, Trump did so grudgingly and called it “seriously flawed.”

Again, stop putting lipstick on that Trump pig.

I never made the claim as stated in the article. What I posted was accurate and your rebuttal did not apply to what I said. Trump put the sanctions on the pipeline, Congressional Democrats agreed with him UNTIL Biden took the sanctions off. That is fact.

You’re just trying to rewrite history. You’re the one holding the lipstick.