Some countries are taking the ongoing global crisis seriously. Others are looking for scapegoats...
Forbes (6/1/22) reports: "With the US economy teetering and inflation reaching levels unseen in 40 years, the Biden Administration uses scapegoats to blame for the downturn. It seems like there is a new scapegoat each month, whether oil companies or meat packers. The scapegoat provides a convenient excuse for the nation’s problems and distracts from poor poll numbers. This past month’s scapegoat was freight rail. Indeed Biden’s list of scapegoats was foreshadowed a year ago with an Executive Order calling for 72 interventions on a suspicious list of products and industries: hospitals, hearing aids, prescription drugs alcoholic beverages, broadband, airlines, banks, seeds, fertilizer, cell phone makers and so on. The Biden EO, which largely predated the current inflation spike, would have been less suspect had its suggested interventions not matched perfectly to the wish list of party donors. Notably Big Tech pushes price controls on broadband at the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that their use of others’ networks is free and unencumbered by social obligations...Once the White House signaled it was open season on freight rail, federal agencies like the STB and the Agriculture Department joined the blame bandwagon, as well as public utilities. To explain curtailing its operations at its Big Bend power station in Florida, Tampa Electric blamed the railroad for insufficient coal rather than the coal mine. Truth be told, the coal was prioritized for another customer willing to pay more: China. As the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports, US coal exports to China skyrocketed from roughly 1.8 million tons in 2020 to nearly 13 million tons in 2021. The coal shortage facing Tampa Electric and many other electric utilities across the country has nothing to do with the railroads."
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