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The New Haven Independent tells us, “’Working
Americans are facing sticker shock’ while ‘companies like Shell doubled
their profits and [diverted] billions in stock buy backs’ while jacking up gas
prices, [U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut’s 3rd District]
stated.
“She accused oil companies of ‘padding the pockets of
their executives and shareholders’ while ‘artificially keeping prices
high.’ She noted that the top 25 oil and gas companies reaped a record
$237 billion in profits in 2021 and are in line for even more in 2022; the top five
have recorded 200 percent jumps in profits in the first quarter of 2022.
“The average price of a gallon of diesel stood at
$5.924 Wednesday compared to $3.688 a year ago, according to AAA.”
Two years ago, during the reign of the much demonized
yellow-haired-demon, ex-president Donald Trump, the price of gas was
considerably less, partly because the United States was teasing from the ground
a sufficient amount of the black gold to keep prices low and become an exporter
to the world of clean natural gas. According to CNN fact checkers, “The national average for regular
gas on [Trump’s] last day in office, January 20, was $2.393 per gallon.”
Because the price of gas at the pump was low under the Trump
regime, greedy oil Titians were making less profit on each gallon of gas than
they are at present. But gas was plentiful and inexpensive – good for middle
class consumers, not so good for tax thirsty postmodern progressive
politicians.
The rise in the price of oil has been a boon to both Big Oil
and Big Government. The higher the price of gas, the greater the tax revenue
realized by our state and federal governments. A good part of Connecticut’s
much touted bloated surplus may be attributed to temporary handouts furnished
by a Biden regime focused on buying votes in the upcoming 2022 off year
elections.
After 31 years serving the people in Connecticut’s 3rd
District, and herself – the congresswoman is a non-greedy millionaire several
times over – DeLauro has yet to learn that greedy oil companies are not
tax payers. All corporations in a free market economy are tax collectors.
Every tax levied against a corporate entity is collected by the company from
its customers and remitted to tax thirsty postmodern progressives like Rosa
DeLauro in Washington DC.
In autocratic political systems, the state, not workers,
dictate profit and loss. And of course, in an economy controlled by the state,
the state must determine prices. Totalitarian governments are very efficient at
this sort of thing. In a totalitarian single party regulatory regime, the price
of goods, commodities and labor are determined by “experts” and autocrats
rather than by free exchanges in free market systems.
In the Poland of Soviet Bloc days, belabored and pinched
laborers used to say, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” And, of
course, the shelves were empty, except in stores catering to blinkered visitors
to the Soviet paradise such as George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb, both
Fabian Socialists.
“I am a communist,” Shaw wrote in a Dublin Evening Herald
article on February 3rd 1948, “but not a member of the communist party. Stalin
is a first rate Fabian. I am one of the founders of Fabianism, and as such very
friendly to Russia.” These lines were printed 6 years after
the Ukrainian Holodomor, an artificial famine engineered by Stalin
in which upwards of 5-8 million Ukrainians perished from Stalin’s successful
effort to sweep the Baltic States into the Soviet Union. Russian President
Vladimir Putin is the latest protégé of Stalin attempting to fold Ukraine into
Russia by means of missile attacks on vital Ukrainian resources.
In what may be the understatement of the year, The
Independent story continues, “DeLauro is not considered at danger of losing her
seat in this year’s election. Like any incumbent looking to keep her job, she’s
running hard nonetheless, with more public events scheduled than her three
opponents combined. Wednesday’s press conference reflected one messaging
approach Democrats have suggested for addressing inflation: Focus blame on
corporate greed while highlighting pocketbook measures the Democrats have taken
in Washington.”
Indeed, Jupiter will tumble into Mars before DeLauro loses
an election in the 3rd District, home of Yale and Joelle
Fishman, the Chair of the Connecticut Communist Party USA. Unlike Shaw,
Fishman is both a communist and a member of the International
Communist Party.
Blumenthal permitted only one debate with Levy, a Jewish
child of communist Cuba refugee parents. Levy briefly mentioned that Blumenthal
had lent his prestige to Connecticut’s Communist Party by agreeing to
participate in Fishman’s Amistad award ceremony in New Haven.
In high dungeon, Blumenthal responded, “My understanding was that
this ceremony was strictly a labor event. If I had known the details, I
wouldn’t have gone... Let me just say very emphatically, I’m a Democrat and a
strong believer in American capitalism. I have been consistently a Democrat and
a strong supporter and believer in American capitalism.’’
Blumenthal’s confession of innocent ignorance would strain
the credulity of a postmodern progressive saint. We are asked to believe
that Connecticut’s senior senator, a muscular politician for three decades
adrift in a cloud of unknowing, has been for thirty years and more unfamiliar
with both New Haven’s Communist Party and Fishman, an active presence in
Connecticut politics for 50 years and a candidate for Congress from 1973 to
1982.
If Blumenthal was asked to square this circle in an after
debate setting, the squaring is nowhere apparent in follow-up reports on his one
and only U.S. Senatorial debate.
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