DL Open Thread: Friday, January 24, 2025

Merely Another Random Photo From The Trump Inaugural…

W-wait.  That can’t be, it must be an optical illusion.  You know, like, what’s it called, photo-shopping? a dope-lganger, perhaps?  Perhaps this is the Meyer Inaugural?  No, the Lady In Red was nowhere in sight there.  Somebody’s gonna have to help me here, but isn’t that Bethany Hall Long at the Trump Inauguration?  How/why did she go there?  Most importantly, has she changed her Party registration yet?  Congratulations to all the Party hacks who went out on a limb for her!   Facts, pipples, I want facts.

The Energy Emergency That Doesn’t Exist:

President Trump has put unleashing American energy production at the center of his economic agenda, saying that ramping up fossil fuel production will lower inflation and end a cost of living crisis that has seen prices rise for staples like apples, bacon and eggs.

He declared a “national energy emergency” on Monday and said that high energy costs “devastate American consumers” by driving up the cost of transportation, heating, farming and manufacturing. Speaking to business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, the president renewed his pledge to unlock the “liquid gold” that the United States possesses.

One of the challenges is that Mr. Trump is creating an energy emergency that does not exist. The United States is already the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. The price of oil, about $76 per barrel, is in line with its average cost over the last two decades. Despite fears that war in Ukraine and the Middle East would cause gas prices to surge indefinitely, they have declined by about 3 percent, to about $3.13 per gallon, over the last year.

While Mr. Trump can create incentives for oil and gas companies to expand energy production, he cannot force them to produce. The oil and gas industry donated millions of dollars to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in hopes that he would roll back costly environmental regulations if elected. However, an expansion of production that drives down prices could also eat into the profits of big oil and gas companies.

The International Energy Agency, a multilateral organization based in Paris, is forecasting that global production will outpace demand by more than one million barrels a day this year.

Oh. Not as simple as the Simpleton-In-Chief ‘thinks’.  Raising the question, what good is a ‘pro-fossil fuel’ agenda. if the oil companies are already overflowing with excess supply?

‘First, We Round Up All The Farmworkers’:

Fear of increased ICE raids have already negatively affected the nation’s agricultural sector, causing alarm that food prices could skyrocket in the near future as a result of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.

Bakersfield, California, saw a massive drop off in the number of field workers showing up for work last week after Border Patrol agents in unmarked Chevy Suburbans rounded up and detained immigrants in the area, profiling individuals they believed to be field workers, reported CalMatters.* The end result: acres of unpicked oranges roasting in the California sun at the height of the season.

Bakersfield makes up a small portion of California’s Central Valley, which produces approximately a quarter of the nation’s food. Kern County, where Bakersfield is located, has ranked within the top three agricultural counties in the nation for the last several years, largely off the backs of undocumented laborers, who are estimated to comprise more than half of the county’s workforce, according to CalMatters.

During a three-day operation in Kern County, undocumented workers were targeted walking in and out of gas stations, getting breakfast, at Home Depot, or while driving along the 99 Highway, leaving many with no other option than to simply stay at home.

“We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting,” Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, told CalMatters. “This sent shockwaves through the entire community. People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25 percent of the workforce, today 75 percent didn’t show up.”