When Donald Trump promised his supporters in the
Presidential campaign that he was going to “drain the swamp”’ not even his most
ardent ones thought at the time that meant filling an important cabinet
position with a man who has the intelligence of a single cell amoeba, but this
is the bizarro world of Donald Trump, and nothing should surprise any of us
anymore.
So when Trump appointed former Texas Governor and former
Republican candidate for president, Rick Perry, to be his Secretary of Energy,
on one level it was shocking, but on another, well…
During a visit to a coal plant in West Virginia on Thursday,
Perry attempted to respond to a reporter’s question on the low cost of coal’s
competition, shale gas, and offered up an economics lesson to the reporter in
the process.
“Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand,” Perry said at the Longview Power Plant. “You put the supply out there, and demand will follow.”
What? What was that?
I don't think I heard you correctly.
According to Perry’s understanding of basic economics, there
will always be a demand for coal as long as the industry produces it, no matter
what the competition is, be it low cost shale gas, or renewable energy sources,
and no matter what the demand is.
Ah, no Rick, I hate to burst your bubble, but that’s not how the free world thinks about supply and demand. Let's provide a simple example. If your local grocery store servicing 1000 families purchases 800,000 packages of toilet paper, which is used at the rate of one package per family per week, this means the store will be holding an 800 week supply of toilet paper. And just because the supply is “out there” as you put it, doesn't mean these families are going to produce any excess levels of excrement.
Can you follow that Rick?
His incorrect interpretation is particularly disturbing on
several levels: (i) this is the man responsible for setting energy policy for
our country, including (God help us) our nuclear energy. (ii) not only was his
response totally off base, but he attempted to arrogantly dress down and
lecture the reporter in the process (iii) we have told that President Donald
Trump doesn't manage the details, but delegates to subordinates, so where does
that leave us, when his subordinates can't comprehend the big pictures, much
less the details?
If this were Perry’s only flub, we might just skip past it,
but he has done a horrible job defending Trump’s position of pulling out of the
Paris Accord and is challenged to discuss the science around climate change,
but his most prominent faux pas, occurred in the Republican Debates leading up
to the 2012 Presidential election. You
all remember it. Perry, trying to
establish his conservative chops with the Republican base, stated he would just
outright eliminate three agencies from the federal government — except he could
only name two of the three agencies
At the time, Perry said “And I will tell you, it’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone — Commerce, Education, and, the, uh, what’s the third one there? Let’s see….ooops.”
At the time, Perry said “And I will tell you, it’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone — Commerce, Education, and, the, uh, what’s the third one there? Let’s see….ooops.”
The third agency to shutter which Perry was desperately searching for in that debate, was the Department of Energy… that’s right, the agency he now runs.
I know what you’re thinking, and you are right. On my most creative day, I couldn't make
this stuff up.
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