The Plot Against King Donald Children's Book - - Seriously!

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Just when you thought Trump and his cult couldn't get even more ridiculously insane:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-wants- ... 31128.html

Doesn't sound any worse than Uncle Joe Biden's Scratch-N-Sniff Pop-up book.

Save some of that for when he gets voted in as president again to lower inflation and especially gas prices.

^ What edicts? Because US domestic oil production is rising.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 022-05-31/
High prices are worldwide, for completely different reasons.

Some things worth reading,

Three Theories for Why Gas Prices Are So High
The White House can’t fix one of its biggest political liabilities until it figures out the problem.
By Robinson Meyer
February 23, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ve/622887/
"
Democrats haven’t really known how to deal with this situation. In the long term, they agree that investing in zero-carbon energy is the only way to permanently lower costs. But in the short term, they are deeply confused over whether fossil fuels should be expensive, so as to encourage the energy transition; or cheap, so as to support the inflation-strained economy. At the United Nations climate conference in November, the United States and 195 other countries pledged to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies. Now the White House and top Democratic lawmakers, including self-described climate champions like Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, are considering suspending the federal tax on gasoline.

Part of the confusion here is that policy makers cannot agree on why oil and gas prices are rising in the first place, and each answer means something different for climate policy. In interviews, experts gave me three hypotheses about the recent surge:

...

But first it has to solve for the current inflation, which means deciding which theory to believe. Because if the Biden administration doesn’t have a good understanding of why oil prices are rising, it won’t know how to stop it.
"



Why isn't Big Oil drilling more as gas prices surge? The answer is more Wall Street than White House
Published Thu, Dec 23 2021 9:06 AM EST
Updated Thu, Dec 23 2021 9:39 AM EST
Tim Mullaney
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/why-hig ... house.html
"
A popular trick at gas stations this fall is to slap a sticker featuring President Joe Biden pointing to the price per gallon and saying, "I did that." But the real answer has more to with Wall Street than Pennsylvania Avenue.

The root cause of today's high gas prices isn't politics: It's financial pressure on oil companies from a decade of cash-flow losses that have made them change financial tactics. Investment in new wells has dropped more than 60%, causing U.S. crude oil production to plummet by more than 3 million barrels a day, or nearly 25%, just as the Covid virus hit, and then fail to recover with the economy. For an oil-drilling sector that lost 90% of its stock value from 2012 through early last year, it hasn't been the toughest call in the world.

Oil company chief executives and finance chiefs have faced years of rising demand from markets for more disciplined capital spending after a spree of development centered in West Texas and North Dakota produced an estimated $10.9 billion in negative free cash flow in 2014 alone — roughly speaking, operating profit minus capital spending. That persistent cash drain made blue-chip oil exploration stocks drop 90% from their peak and spurred demands that companies eschew fast growth in favor of steadier profits and stock-boosting finance moves like higher dividends, more share buybacks and reduced debt.
"



Why can't the US stop soaring oil and gas prices?

By Natalie Sherman
Business reporter, New York
Published 29 May
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61446317
"
Texas oilman Jason Herrick is scrambling to pump more oil, chasing the promise of profit as oil prices soar.

But despite his best efforts, he suspects output from his family-owned company will fall this year, for the third year in a row.

It's been years since his Pantera Energy has invested in new production, after money dried up when energy prices plunged - famously dropping below zero at one point - early in the pandemic.

Now, like many other firms across the US and global economy, he's facing major delays as he hunts for supplies and staff to make the projects happen.
"
...
"
The muted response reflects companies constrained by rising costs and shortages of key materials, equipment and staff - as well as by longer term questions from investors about how much oil and gas will be needed as the world tries to move away from polluting fossil fuels in response to climate change.

Mike Wendt, an engineer at oil exploration firm Lone Star Productions, says his firm has several new projects in the works, but hasn't been able to find the steel pipes it needs, leading to delays and rising costs.

"We're going to be drilling as quickly as we can, but we have all these supply and demand issues, and that's kind of throttling the market," he says.
Climate change headwind

Trey Cowan, oil and gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, says the challenges facing companies in North America are unprecedented.

And while many small private companies, like Mr Wendt's, are still pushing to boost output, the biggest firms have so far stuck with investment plans forged before prices really soared, choosing to put the windfalls primarily toward shareholder payouts, rather than extra production.
"

Can I risk a hypothesis - from my European point of view it seems to make sense - that oil prices in the US were artificially lowered by economy of scale and companies making more money from stocks than from the product - and after Covid it all collapsed?
Now you have oil prices just like the rest of the world... but cities not adapted to it, unlike the rest of the world.