“We should have named it what it was.”
—President Joe Biden, speaking Thursday at an event in Westby, Wisconsin this week, crowing about the “progress we’ve made together by our ‘Investing in America’ agenda.” Biden then said, “I’m proud to announce that my, uh, my investments, that through my investments, the most significant climate change law ever. And by the way, it is a $369 billion bill. It’s called the — uh, we, we should have named it what it was.”
Did you know Donald Trump lies all the time? Ah, but you can trust President Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats to tell the truth—you know, like deceptively naming a bill that had literally nothing to do with inflation (except to potentially make it worse) “The Inflation Reduction Act” because the regime was under fire for exploding inflation since it took over from the Trump Administration. “See?” the bill’s title was supposed to convey to members of the public with IQs below 90, “We’re fixing the problem!” Admitting that what was stated to the public as fact was really false after the goal of the lies has already been achieved is an example of how telling the truth can be almost as unethical as the lie itself. It is rubbing salt into the wound, like shouting “Sucker!” at the victim of a scam.
These are the substantive lies, the harmful lies, the lies carefully designed to deceive the public, like “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” and “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky!” That deceptive bill title was created to try to minimize the effect at the polls of the inflation rate in time for the 2022 mid-terms, and, as Harry Reid reminds us from the Lake of Fire, if a lie works, then it’s all good. Now, two years later, the President says he regrets the lie. Aww, that’s nice. Trust Joe to tell it like it is! (The bill did nothing to slow climate change either, and the Congressional Budget Office projects the final cost of the bill to top $800 billion. But I digress…)
Biden’s cynically tardy admission reminded me immediately of John McCain’s sudden change of heart about South Carolina still using the Confederate flag as its state banner after he had lost the Presidential primary in that state.
The unethical quote by Biden regarding his party’s lie is much worse. And scholars wonder why public trust in government, our institutions and our elected officials keep sinking…as they support and make excuses for the worst of the liars.
Ethics Alarms 
“We should have named it what it was.”
WTF does that even mean?
Anywho, Biden in Westby (pop. 2348) Thursday and Trump in Mosinee (pop. 4491) yesterday, both off’n the beaten path in America’s Dairyland?
WESconsin’s in play!
PWS
Second. Upon reading the quote, I initially assumed it was unethical because it was gibberish.
And anyway, shouldn’t it have been called “The Give a Bunch of Taxpayer Dollars to Various Rent Seekers and Manipulable Voters So, You Know, We’ll Stay in Power Act?”
Bingo OB
It is my belief that that the Green New Deal has less to do with climate change than it does with supplanting the old money from extraction industries with a new group who will monetize solar and other methods of energy. The first lie is that these are all renewable resources.
The only difference between solar power and fossil fuels in terms of renewability is how long each will last. Even the sun will burn out at some point. It is estimated that the US alone has enough reserves of gas and oil to supply the world for two hundred years. Long enough to develop alternatives without destroying industrialized economies while real developing nations simply founder. Both solar and battery power require resources that are not renewable or even recyclable. Wind turbines will wind up in landfills because fiberglass and resin blades are not recyclable nor are photovoltaic cells. Off shore generation negatively impact ocean life specifically mammals and cetaceans yet no attempt to measure the cost of these externalities is made as it would harm the argument for off shore wind farms. It also appears that the lifecycle of components needed to convert photons to electricity is far shorter than those needed to refine oil into a usable source of potential energy.
It just seems to me that we are having to deal with a new group of monopolists who seek to use the government to help create a market for a product that is demonstrably inefficient relative to its alternative by using questionable data to impute substantial third party costs for fossil fuels while ignoring any externalities for the so called renewables that are being promoted.
So what’s Corn Ethanol…chopped livah…?
PWS
Another special interest group, in this case farmers and Big Agriculture.
It takes productive farmland out of the mix for feeding people and, as I understand it, requires major subsidies for refiners to be able to make ethanol cheaply enough to be economical.
As well, there are quotas that refiners are required to make X tons of ethanol every year. They cannot sell what they’re required to make and yet the quotas keep going up.
Wasn’t it milk in some states that farmers were required to produce but had to dump because they couldn’t sell it?
The Department of Agriculture doubtless does some fine things, but price supports are not one of them.
Paul
There is a place for corn or sugar beet ethanol production but every acre of corn or beets used to produce ethanol takes it out of production of something else. Giving a subsidy to farmers to promote ethanol through corn distorts the market for corn and other commodity crops. Subsidies are simply the opposite of price controls that set a maximum price for a good leading to shortages. Subsidies change farmer behavior leading to over production and surpluses. We cannot argue that subsidies for me but not for thee is ok when we condemn subsidies for other inefficient energy processes.
I’ve never understood using diesel powered tractors and chemical fertilizers to grow corn to distill into alcohol to burn in cars.
Scale. You get a lot more ethanol than you use in diesel. Your argument is like saying that we shouldn’t transport oil on diesel trucks or trains and we shouldn’t use oil to distill our petroleum products because that doesn’t make sense.
But compared to extracting oil or gas from the ground? And isn’t industrial/monocultural farming one of the left’s bogeymen?
Francis Menton is always on point on “the energy transition.” In Germany, The Energy Transition Situation Only Gets Worse — Manhattan Contrarian
And biomass is renewable? Burning wood chips? Wood chips don’t emit CO2 when they are burned? How are wood chips an advance from everyone burning wood in their home hearth for heat and cooking? It’s 1850 again?
I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night, Michael, but there is this:
Ethanol production: energy, economic, and environmental losses – PubMed (nih.gov)
And Michael, I may have led us into a cul de sac. I don’t think ethanol has ever been considered anything other than a cleaner burning fuel that can be blended with gasoline and sold in Southern California to allegedly reduce smog. Then of course, as a result of political pressure from the corn growing states, 10% methanol as a seasonal gasoline additive was imposed all over the U.S. A boondoggle in my opinion.