Facebook appeared to censor a meme on Wednesday that placed blame for high gas prices on President Joe Biden, citing a USA Today fact-check to justify the censorship.
“Fact check: Rising gas prices due to high demand and low supply, not Biden’s policies,” a pop-up explained, with a link to the supposed fact-check from USA Today.
Propaganda. pic.twitter.com/czUN8xqCLM
— Hi, it's Annie (@AptlyAnnie) October 27, 2021
In the paper’s nearly 1,500-word attempt to exonerate Biden’s aggressive climate agenda as the culprit for seven-year-high gas prices, USA Today explained that surging costs as the gas pump were a product of post-pandemic demand outpacing supply met with an already upward trend as shown below.
“We rate FALSE the claim President Joe Biden is to blame for the current higher gas prices. The upward trend in gas costs we see now began months before Biden took office,” the paper wrote, with a note at the end that Facebook funded the fact-check it now uses to censor posts contrary to its preferred political narrative.
“Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook,” the paper wrote.
Despite the mild rise immediately before Biden took office, gas prices were still far below what they were during much of 2019. The spike after Biden entered office would have been avoidable had the president not launched an assault on the oil industry on day one.
The sharp rise in gas prices was a direct consequence of Biden’s immediate offensive, stifling capital investment with pressure on Wall Street in a capital-intensive industry, plus repeated pledges for a cascade of taxes and regulation to phase out fossil fuels.
“You don’t have to ban something if you regulate it to death,” former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained to The Federalist in October last year as Biden ran on a platform to do just that.
On his first day in the Oval Office, Biden began to make good on his promises with an executive order implementing a moratorium on leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sixty miles west of the coastal plain, home to between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, millions of dollars of equipment stand ready for deployment in Prudhoe Bay to the 1.6 million out of the nearly 20 million-acre refuge once opened for drilling.
The Biden energy crisis is entirely self-inflicted.
Producers could drill more to meet rising demand had the industry not been sacked with restrictions on new capital while regulations stifle incentive to develop.
Yet Biden is shopping overseas:https://t.co/nvkYo8uYFu
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) October 27, 2021
Biden continued to suspend new oil and gas leases on federal lands pending a review of the federal leasing program from the Interior Department. The review, promised for release by late summer, is still pending.
The suspension on leasing remained in place until a federal judge overturned the ban to set up auctions next spring, but headwinds from a hostile administration hamper incentives for risking millions in new investment.
Biden has successfully suppressed a ramp-up in production through a combination of Wall Street pressure, new regulation, and outright bans where possible on new drilling.
“We would be happy to increase our production, but this administration is doing everything in its power to run us out of business,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, told The Federalist. “I think if they stop manipulation markets the problem would be solved.”
Meanwhile, the administration is begging the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to fill gaps in supply created by the White House to the detriment of American workers.
