On February 2, 2022, I took the photograph to the right at the mini-mart/gas station closest to our farm, about 2½ miles away, because the price of regular unleaded gasoline had just jumped to over #3.00 per gallon. It had been $2.99⁹ for a while previously.

Well, $3.13⁹ didn’t last long. 23 days later, it was up 24¢ per gallon.

Earlier on Friday, I saw the price up to $3.69⁹, and took a photo, at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky, and tweeted it out. But, in the interest of journalistic integrity — whatever that is! — I thought that I ought to check at the same station as I had for the other two photos, and yup, sure enough, it was $3.69⁹ there as well.

The math is simple: $3.69⁹, up from $3.19⁹, 56¢ per gallon, in just thirty days, is a 17.84% increase. That’s not the inflation rate, which is normally figured out by month, year-over-year, but a 17.84% increase in a month! Even if gasoline stayed absolutely flat until February of 2023, that would be a 17.84% increase in fuel year-over-year. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, does anyone here think that gasoline prices will remain flat?

Look what has happened to inflation since January of 2021, which is when President Donald Trump left office, and Joe Biden replaced him. Inflation had skyrocketed well before the Soviet Russian invasion of Ukraine, well before Vladimir Putin had even hinted that such might happen. The year-over-year inflation rate was 6.2% in October of 2021.

Don’t think that this isn’t intentional. While the Biden Administration doesn’t really control inflation, and doesn’t control oil prices, President Biden’s policies have been, since the very first day of his administration, when Mr Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Mr Biden wants all new automobiles and personal trucks sold in the United States to be zero-emission by 2035.

Of course, very few people actually want zero-emission vehicles, which means plug-in electric cars, at least they don’t want them enough to buy them. In 2020, the plug-in electric vehicle market was 1.8% of all new car sales. In 2021, the total electric vehicle market in the United States was 4%, but that includes hybrids as well as plug-in only.

But if the price of gasoline skyrockets, the left can hope that the increased gasoline costs will drive more people to buy plug-in electrics!

The February inflation numbers are scheduled to be released on Thursday, March 10^th; it’s difficult to imagine that they wouldn’t be worse than January’s. The Federal Reserve had been contemplating raising interest rates, to cool down the economy, to tamp down inflation, but if inflation continues the way it has been going, the Fed won’t be increasing interest rates, the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market will do that.