Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why Have a Democracy?
(Photo: Eliot Cohen by Eric Gibson/ New America via Wikipedia)
Eliot Cohen is a Never-Trump, former Bush Administration State Department official who was interviewed on the “Limited Liability” podcast released April 13 by Jewish Insider. Assessing the situation in Ukraine, Cohen heavily criticized all three of the post-Bush 43 Administrations. But this quote is what stood out for me:
The Trump administration was very peculiar in that it was a little bit like 18th century France, you know, where the king had one foreign policy and the, you know, foreign policy establishment of the time had a different foreign policy, sometimes diametrically opposed. And, you know, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of the, you know, sort of the H.R. McMasters and John Boltons in this world were actually resolutely anti-Russian. Trump was not. Trump was pro-Putin. (27:42 to 28:08)
Neither of the hosts, former Trump official Rich Goldberg or former Obama official Jerrod Bernstein, pushed back in any way. And that’s appalling in and of itself. A statement such as this shows that, according to the foreign policy “experts,” the President of the United States should have no say in the policy of the country he was elected to lead. As long as there is a “consensus” among the elites, the opinions of the President and the people are irrelevant. (And that’s not even touching on the veracity of the “pro-Putin” remark.)
So, as the Never-Trumpers drone on about “saving our democracy,” I ask “What democracy?” I certainly do not support giving any president of any party a blank check. But shouldn’t all the checks on the Executive come from the co-equal branches of the government and not from within the Executive Branch itself? If the President of the United States has no authority over his own constitutional branch of government, why have elections in the first place? We can just as easily autopilot ourselves into WWIII, no?
People like Cohen expect the President to be both their empty vessel and their fall guy when everything goes south. This is not the sign of a healthy “democracy.”
Published in Foreign Policy
If Presidents can’t affect fuel prices, explain this:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/15/white-house-restarting-federal-oil-gas-lease-sales-next-week/
A reminder, this is what Joe Biden did less than a week after taking office:
https://nypost.com/2021/01/27/biden-to-announce-moratorium-on-federal-land-oil-gas-leases/
Those who call it a “Putin Price Hike” are stupid or lying.
Likely both.
How long does it take to get gasoline to a station after an exploration company signs a lease?
Prices are affected by expectations and future considerations, to some degree.
To a slight degree.
There are others with qualifications to do so who might quantify the degree, and put error bounds on it.
EDIT: Never mind. There’s no point in engaging.
Are you kidding again? All pricing starts out all speculatively with anticipated future availability.
Joe Biden pledged to shut doen carbon based energy production and he has been acting accordingly so the above statement is essentially false or a lie.
This is in @klaatu profile, with which I am in total agreement:
The Declaration of Independence is the greatest political document in history.
I am a conservative because I wish to conserve the principles contained in it.
Being against the left does not mean you are conservative.
But I can’t find anything here that matches this.
My goodness, he did it in his first week.
And energy prices immediately started going up. (Along with the cost of everything else, because these things are interconnected.) And his administration just says “Well, that’s the price of transitioning away from fossil fuels.” They’re doing it deliberately. They don’t care how much pain is inflicted on the American citizen. They’ve made that perfectly clear. They hate us. They want us to suffer. They’d rather throw open the borders, give Iran nukes, send billions to Ukraine, and send jobs to China and India. They hate us.
No, I’m not kidding. Thousands of inputs to price occur between the time an area is leased for exploration and availability at the pump. Price shocks such as that occurring now are not mitigated to any significant degree by availability decades from now.
Joe Biden says a lot of things but it is not in his power to shut down carbon based energy production if he wanted to. US oil production is increasing to pre-pandemic levels.
You are not looking too hard.