Wherever you happen to be sitting as you read this, energy prices probably matter. In the United States or out, yes – we have readers in nearly every country on the planet, how much it costs to heat, cool, cook, and live in the 21st century turns on the cost of the energy necessary to do it.
In New England, New Hampshire specifically, we are at the mercy of left-wing idiots. Surrounded by states committed to unreliable, expensive sources. Burdened by an electorate that prefers republicans in the legislature and Democrats in Congress. Proglodytes who like to blame high energy prices on anyone but themselves, despite their being entirely responsible.
Not-so-renewables are a burden in practical terms, from the amount of subsidies needed to build and maintain them to the cost of the illusion that they are green, affordable, or reliable. No modern civilization can prosper, let alone survive. They make energy cost more, and everything else costs more as well.
But the proglodytes persist. It’ snot our fault. But it is, especially here in New Hampshire. One of the biggest drivers of energy costs is our inability to get the abundant natural gas available across the United States into New Hampshire when we need it most. Massachusetts and New York prevent pipelines that could bring it to us from nearby Pennsylvania, and the Jones Act prevents it from getting shipped he by freighter.
When winters get cold, we have to pay spot prices on the open market, from foreign suppliers, when demand is highest. That restriction places a significant cost demand on ratepayers all year long.
If energy prices are a concern at any time other than an election year, why hasn’t our Democrat Delegation, who have had a stranglehold on every seat in Congress for more than a decade, done anything to end the Jones Act?
To be fair, they have, but not really. In 2022, Chris Papps supported a temporary waiver. Temporary? Why? Election year? Energy prices sucked before any likely peak demand problems. Because he’s not against the Jones Act.
“The Jones Act seems to be working. I’m a big supporter.” During the Senate hearing, Chairman Roger F. Wicker (R-Mississippi) noted there are 41,000 Jones Act-qualified vessels operating in the domestic trades, adding that “properly enforcing the Jones Act is important for economic and national security.”
A waiver doesn’t solve the problem; it pretends to care.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen has been in the US Senate since January 2009, and the only obvious effort she’s made to make energy more affordable for New Hampshire was also in 2022, post-COVID, in response to Biden Admin economic policies that were crushing Granite Staters. Her gesture was to give to whoever was running the Biden Administration limited legislative cover to issue limited waivers on the Jones Act. Hers, however, was strictly related to National defense. No one in Canada-adjacent parts of northern New Hampshire would benefit from her brief, passing interest.
Neither Ann Kuster nor Maggie Hassan ever tried to lift a finger to make energy more affordable by allowing us to buy LNG from US suppliers via tanker.
Maggie Goodlander? I’m not sure she knows or cares, which rounds out our Four Horsemen of the New Hampshire energy price apocalypse.
Despite how much better it would be for the environment to have freighters from the Gulf of Mexico deliver gas instead of one from halfway around the world.
Their argument against the repeal of the Jones Act is national security. Yes, the same people who hate America embrace open borders, the cartels, drugs, human trafficking, and importation of military-aged men from countries that hate us is national Security. The same Democrats who are committed to kneecapping our energy needs today with green new deals and wind and solar and the greening of the military (not to mention the genderizing and work BS that undermines it) claim national defense.
Feel free to call bullshit on all of them.
They care about politics and little else. And they certainly don’t care about the cost of energy. Their plan makes that cost necessarily skyrocket, which won’t be a burden to any of them. They are millionaires.
