Gary Varvel for February 26, 2022

Did Varvel “learn” economics a Trump University?

You are correct Gary. Trump is out of order and always has been.

The 1.99 was what the gas prices were when Obama was President and before the Republicans policies started sending them up again. Then, of course, Covid threw everything out of wack, with no one driving prices came down until the oil companies agreed to cut production. Which allowed them to price gouge to make up for perceived lost profits when people started going back to work and some kind of normalcy came about after the vaccine rollout.

Anyway, the current fuel prices can actually be blamed on Putin invading a sovereign nation unprovoked. Wars have a tendency to effect fuel prices negatively. If you remember when Bush started the war in Iraq fuel prices shot up to over 4 dollars a gallon for quite some time. As it is, presidents aren’t really the ones that set the price of fuel. Then there are all the fools that own pickups and such that don’t need them, would have been wiser to get a more fuel efficient vehicle to drive too and from work, that have created much of the supply and demand issue. I have no pity for them for they vehicle choices. The oil cartels really suckered them with low oil prices long enough to make them take out 6, 7, even 8 year loans on those over priced pickup trucks. So, they will either have to sell them at a loss to get something they can afford to fill up, or suck it and live with their poor vehicle choices. Especially, since so many of them think they can intimidate my little car. It’s not my little economy car they have to intimidate, an good luck trying to intimidate me. If you need a big vehicle to make you feel brave, you probably aren’t too brave to begin with.

Can’t believe someone actually publishes this cartoon

1.99 is more than this toon is worth.

you just have to love how the clueless trumpers rush to blame biden for the economic forces that trump unleashed with his misbegotten policies…

The oil corporations would gouge us either way.

The truth hurts, right? The price of gas in America is 100% a self-inflicted wound. We were energy independent under Trump. Biden comes to office, stops the XL Pipeline and allowing exploration for oil in other parts. When the price of gas went up, Biden asked OPEC to produce more. They gave him the middle finger. We are now importing oil from Russia among other places, and therefore are supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. #2022midterms!!

Gas prices rise in spring when refiners switch to summer blend and demand rises. Definitely Biden’s fault.

A) Nowhere during the Trump Days was gas $1.95 a gallon. Nowhere you lying sack of sacks.

B) I paid $2.95 a gallon yesterday. More than I like, yeah. But Biden had nothing to do with how high or low the cost was.

via Gfycat

Willful ignorance?

Sad, but true!

It sucks when it’s true, doesn’t it?

Again Varvel shows that “Conservatives” do not grasp economics.

PROPAGANDA

“Nobody told me gas was going to be $4 a gallon.” – George W. Bush

I’m not bashing him (at least not in this post). I’m just pointing out that gasoline prices are not under the control of the occupant of the White House, regardless of party.

I tire of people going out of their way to pick fights and find fault. There is plenty of fault out there that’s legitimate. Why work so hard to make stuff up?

Reading the comments by the knee-jerk Biden bashers makes me wonder if they have any connection to reality. The POTUS has little control over oil and gas prices. Besides, have any of you heard that Biden is releasing some fuel from our reserves?

*Democrats, encourage inflation.

The truth hurts, doesn’t it?

Agreed … Varvel’s irresponsibility is tiresome….

Gary loves Trump. Trump loves Putin. Ergo Gary loves Putin.

Absolute B.S. Varvel, as so many have said.

In 2019 regular unleaded gas nationwide average prices ranged from $2.34/gal in January and up to about $2.90/gal in April. Then dropping over the next year, January 2020 to $2.58/gal, then dropping to the bottom out $1.80/gal level in April of 2020.

Do you remember what happened in February of 2020? tRump, failing to act against the virus, took us into his recession.

Prices rose back to the $2.30/gal level for the balance of 2020, and then shot up in February of 2021. Prices have since gone up to a high of $3.42/gal.

A year ago in February of 2021 is when the Saudis announced they were raising their prices to make up for the 40% loss in profit due to COVID-19 in 2020. Other industries followed their lead making today’s inflation. It is world wide, not just the U.S.

https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts

Seeking a way to blame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on President Biden, some prominent Republicans have been claiming that increasing U.S. production of fossil fuel energy would liberate Europe from its dependence on Russian gas and undermine Russia’s position in the conflict.

Experts in the economics of energy, however, say that U.S. energy production hasn’t been scaled back by Biden and that Europe’s only path to energy independence is to transition away from fossil fuels.…First, U.S. fossil fuel production has not been “shut down.” According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas production increased in 2021 and is forecast to increase further in 2022 and 2023, while U.S. oil production roughly held steady between 2020 and 2021 and is forecast to increase this year and next.

Second, federal lands and waters account for only 22 percent of our oil production in the United States, and around 13 percent of our natural gas production. The rest is on private or state land, and Biden has not proposed, much less enacted, any restrictions on development there.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-us-gas-production-wont-affect-russia-ukraine-or-europe-experts-say-200717731.html

Does Putin write your checks Gary??

In Canada, the price of gas went from about 72/l to currently 151/l. Trudeau in both cases. It’s nothing to do with Crooked Donny’s (hahahaha) financial acumen or anything Biden’s done. It’s supply and demand.

Inflation is a green flag for corporate price gouging. Capitalism raises it’s greedy head.

From a column by Andy Serwer this morning:“… forgive me for being obvious, but aren’t we all sickened by the suffering Putin is bringing to Ukraine? Who knows how many will be uprooted or separated from their parents — never mind wounded or die? And for what? That one person can foist so much horror on the world is frankly depressing.”

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The answer is Gary Varvel, the other Trump Disciple cartoonists, the Trump Disciple commenters, and Fox “news”.

You’ll notice that none of them offer support for America, only criticism of Biden. NO condemnation of Putin whatsoever. NONE. And, of course NO clue as to what we should be doing instead of the sanctions. NONE.

And they all claim that Trump did NOT attempt to weaken NATO or Ukraine, as if they believe those to be bad things. They have also ‘forgotten’ that Trump pulled America out of the Open Skies treaty AND pardoned all the Russian collaborators.

Hey, Gary, shall we talk about gas prices under W around 2008??? And it wasn’t his fault then, nor is it Biden’s fault now.

Neither Biden nor Trump had anything to do with it, except that Trump enabled Putin and this is what we get as a result.

I am not seeing an increase in pumping in the numerous oil wells in Oklahoma. My wife has not seen an oil royalty check in about two years, they stopped sending checks until a certain amount was in the account. There is no (or little) talk, at the moment, for any new drilling with the oil prices at $100 a barrel.

I don’t get it – which selection is out of order? Because it looks to me like he’s choosing the left side. You know, the one that outright supports Putin.

So the obvious solution is to cap gas prices. $1.25/gallon would be perfect. Generally affordable and still grossly high profits to Big Oil.

I keep hearing about the perfection of capitalism (which though flawed I believe is better than pure socialism, authoritarianism or fascism) the joys of supply and demand as well as limited federal government. Yet as soo as inflation hits, suddenly it’s "it’s the federal governments fault because we have a Democrat president. The reality is that the issues that cause inflation (this time the pandemic, supply chain issues, lack of affordable housing in cities, the Ukraine invasion which will also increase costs, etc. are things the federal government did not create and there is no easy or painless solution. The things the government can do now are not going to have an immediate effect, and some (like if the right thing to do is raise interest rates) may make things worse in order to help them get better. I don’t know the what the solution is, but playing the blame game isn’t it.

Yeeesh…where does the buck stop? Boil it down to the basics. President Trump removed overbearing regulations on the oil industry and opened up American lands to petroleum exploration. As a result America became an energy independent oil exporting nation. When Biden took office he reversed President Trump’s policies and came down hard on the petroleum industry in order to appease the left wing environmental radicals. Gas was cheap under President Trump and his policies and now it is expensive under Biden’s policies. Simple as that. I welcome any refutation of this.

On an additional note we are importing 559,000 BPD of oil from Russia giving Putin roughly $55 million every day in support of Putin war machine. From a nonpartisan point, can we agree that Biden should stop this? Should we really keep importing Russian oil and funding Russia? I ask this from an impartial pov .

Simplistic, devoid of any factuality, still lower than Bush 2