DV Journal

Time may be TikToking away for TikTok and the Americans who use it.

On Friday, six more U.S. Senators signed on as sponsors of the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, bipartisan legislation giving President Joe Biden new powers to ban the Chinese-owned app. Now 18 senators are on board, and the Biden administration has endorsed the effort.

Not on the list of sponsors: Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman. They are, however, on a recently-compiled list of a handful of members of Congress with TikTok accounts.

Both accounts were still active as of Sunday night. Neither senator responded to repeated requests for comment about their decision to remain on the controversial — and Communist-owned — video app.

The issue of TikTok giving China’s government access to data on U.S. citizens isn’t new. President Donald Trump tried to ban the app in 2020 but was blocked by the courts. Late last year, Biden signed an order banning the app from nearly all federal government devices.

The social media platform that is very popular with teenagers is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. ByteDance had admitted that some employees had filched Americans’ information, The New York Times reported. But the parent company claimed those workers were fired.

Biden is demanding ByteDance sell TikTok. And the Biden Justice Department is investigating whether the Chinese-made app is spying on some of the journalists who cover the tech industry.

More and more Pennsylvania government entities are banning the app, including Chester County and Bucks County, which just filed a lawsuit against it for harming children’s mental health. In state government, Treasurer Stacy Garrity banned it on state devices her department controls. However, Gov. Josh Shapiro has a campaign account. At the same time, however, Shapiro was investigating TikTok as attorney general for its impact on youth.

A January 2023 review by States News Service confirmed 32 of the 535 members of Congress had TikTok accounts, including Casey, Fetterman, and local Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Chester/Berks)

Contacted by DVJournal, a Houlahan spokesperson confirmed, “Her account still exists, but it is not active, and it is not on any House-issued devices.”

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to testify before Congress on Thursday. According to reports, he plans to argue that the app, which has about 150 million regular users in the U.S. — or about 45 percent of the population — is too deeply enmeshed in the nation’s social media to be banned.

A TikTok spokesperson recently sent DVJournal this statement: “The ban of TikTok on federal devices was passed in December without any deliberation, and unfortunately, that approach has served as a blueprint for other world governments. These bans are little more than political theater. We hope that when it comes to addressing national security concerns about TikTok beyond government devices, Congress will explore solutions that won’t have the effect of censoring the voices of millions of Americans.

“The swiftest and most thorough way to address any national security concerns about TikTok is for CFIUS to adopt the proposed agreement that we worked with them on for nearly two years. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies, and we are well underway in implementing them to further secure our platform in the United States.”

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Several hundred people gathered at the Ukrainian Educational & Cultural Center in Abington Friday evening for a solemn candlelight vigil marking the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At the emotional gathering, people prayed, sang, chanted “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine), and listened to speeches, many holding small blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and tiny electric candles.

“Almost a year ago, the world’s leaders gave Ukraine only three days to survive, said Iryna Mazur, honorary consul for Ukraine in Philadelphia. “But today, we stay alive, stay strong and stay together. Ukraine’s response to Russia’s brutal invasion has received widespread international acclaim and recognition and has united millions of hearts in support of Ukraine.”

Iryna Mazur

“Like never before in my life, I see the similarities between the core values of our two nations and the American and Ukrainian people, Mazur, a Huntingdon Valley resident, said. “The ongoing nine-year war against Ukraine has lasted twice as long as World War II,” she said, counting the beginning from the Russian annexation of Crimea. “The last 300 years of Russia’s imperialism inflicted the systemic genocide of the Ukrainian nation when over 10 million Ukrainians were starved to death during artificially created famines when millions were killed in concentration camps and prisons of Siberia when for centuries Ukrainians have had to survive forceful and brutal ‘Russification’ because their language, art, and history were targeted.”

She thanked Americans and the Biden administration for their support. The U.S. had approved about $50 billion in military and other aid for Ukraine last year, with President Joe Biden announcing $500 million more in military aid on his recent trip to Kyiv. Sec. of State Anthony Blinken also announced additional sanctions against Russia as the anniversary loomed.

Eugene Luciw, master of ceremony, also spoke emotionally about what “Moscovite hordes” are doing in the ongoing war.

“They are murdering innocent civilians, they are blowing up hospitals, they are killing children, they are doing unfathomable things with our women,” Luciw said. “They are stealing our children, 260,000 of them, and placing them with families throughout Russia to disperse them. They are placing our men, women, and children in filtration camps; that’s concentration camps. Their ethnic cleansing and genocide know no measure.”

“Grief, terror, concern, worry. We cry, we suffer with our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and yet, we take pride and joy in the accomplishments of our people,” he said. “So through this sadness, there is a resurrected feeling that we have finally turned the tide against this age-old enemy of Ukraine that’s tried to destroy us over centuries.”

“They tried to destroy the Ukrainian spirit, but they did not, and they will not,” he said. “They’re pushing them back, and if the assistance of the west continues, they’re going to drive them out.”

Protestant ministers and Catholic priests also spoke and led prayers in English and Ukrainian.

The Very Rev. Father Roman Pitula, the rector of the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Philadelphia, said Ukrainians are strong and united.

Philadelphia residents Olena and Shadvyi Vladyslav escaped the war in Ukraine six months ago.

“We stand on the side of the good and we fight against the evil,” he said. “Don’t cease to pray but pray to cease the war.”

Pastors Pavlo Nemesh of the First Ukrainian Evangelical Baptist Church of Philadelphia said, “One of the things we discovered in our church and our community was the Book of Psalms. We sang a lot of psalms, and we read a lot of them, and they offered comfort and hope for us. I want to urge all of you to attend your churches, your parishes and pray, sing, and continue to ask God to send peace.”

Before the event, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer spoke to the Delaware Valley Journal about his Ukrainian roots. His maternal grandparents were Ukrainians who were captured by the Germans during World War II and forced into slave labor camps. His grandmother worked on an assembly line making V-2 rockets. The Germans compelled his grandfather to clean tanks returning from the battlefields. They were liberated by American soldiers, whom his grandmother said were the first soldiers who were kind to her. After six years of living hand to mouth on the streets of Europe, they immigrated to the U.S.

“This is an important day for every one of us of Ukrainian descent, said Stollsteimer. “We are so proud of the Ukrainian people, who are fighting for freedom. The Ukrainian love of freedom is more powerful than the Russian repression.

The Soloveyky (nightingale) Children’s Choir sang the Ukrainian national anthem and “God Bless America.”

And the Prometheus Ukrainian Male Chorus of Philadelphia sang a rousing Ukrainian folk song. The group then chanted in support of Ukraine.

“Let’s get it done!” said Luciw. “Let’s beat back that snake in Moscow!”

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President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was his opportunity to promote his “successes” and lay out his roadmap. In touting the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) he wasted no breath, claiming it was a victory for patients due to the law’s new prescription drug price controls. That was one of many “misstatements” as it has been mislabeled and will soon hurt seniors with a raid on Medicare and Americans losing access to drugs that are currently in development.

After this election-year bill was passed, Democrats falsely declared victory over high drug prices. Sadly, too many Republicans were silent. The average American deserves to fully understand the IRA, who it really rewards, and how the law is nothing less than an ideological push aimed at furthering socialized medicine before delivering results.

In recent days culminating in the State of the Union address, the president claimed “historic progress” “on lowering health care costs under his watch, including steps to strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA)” and touting the new prescription drug provisions, which will mandate Medicare be able to negotiate drug prices.” His definition of progress is giving seniors fewer choices, innovators fewer incentives, redefining “negotiation” as “extortion,” expanding Obamacare and Medicaid and raiding Medicare for green new deal projects.

What the IRA actually does is not as straightforward as Democrats and aligned groups like AARP and left-wing think tanks would have you believe. The nasty side-effects of price controls on Medicare Part D drugs are impossible to ignore, considering this policy stunts American efforts to cure illnesses, harms drug access, and reduces options for patients relying on carefully designed drug regimens. How badly will this hurt the creation of new and life-changing drugs? A University of Chicago issue brief showed the law would result in a whopping 135 fewer new drugs, impacting the lives of 2.47 million patients. Four innovator-sponsored clinical trials have already been canceled in the first four months. How many of those drugs would have been breakthrough cures? How many would have changed the lives of patients hoping for better treatments?

Biden’s IRA victory lap does little to alleviate the unnecessary burden on Americans who are struggling with their health. America ought to lead the way in creating new and innovative treatments. The IRA even cuts back on the Trump administration’s anti-kickback regulations that limited the power of PBMs and would have lowered drug list prices. And perhaps it was a coincidence that President Biden conveniently forgot to mention that the IRA doles out billions in Medicare savings to giant health insurance companies.

It is truly something. On one hand, the Democrats crafted the IRA as a step toward an EU-style healthcare system. On the other hand, the law also hands taxpayer funding intended for Medicare to their friends in the insurance-PBM industry. Over $270 billion gone from Medicare in the name of socialist price controls, gifted to giant insurance corporations and PBMs. Isn’t that a slap in the face of people relying on Medicare?

All this being said, Biden, his party, big insurers, and supposedly “non-partisan” organizations are hijacking America’s health system for both personal benefit and ideological reasons. In the case of outside parties, they may have supported the IRA to earn a windfall. For the Democrats, moving healthcare closer to what citizens have in London and Toronto is becoming more and more their guiding light. As the IRA will soon prove, socialized medicine, with its rationed care and fewer choices for Americans, will have serious consequences for all Americans.

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Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity announced Thursday that the social media app TikTok, which the head of the FBI recently called a national security concern, has been banned from all of her department-issued devices. TikTok is owned by ByteDance and is based in Beijing.

“Treasury’s computer network is targeted by scammers and criminals every day,” Garrity said. “TikTok presents a clear danger due to its collection of personal data and its close connection to the communist Chinese government. Banning TikTok from Treasury devices and systems is an important step in our never-ending work to ensure the safety of Pennsylvanians’ hard-earned tax dollars and other important, sensitive information entrusted to Treasury.”

This month, Treasury conducted an internal security review and determined that TikTok had not been used on any Treasury-issued devices. In addition to Garrity’s ban, which covers phones, laptops, and desktop computers, Treasury’s firewall has been updated to block access to both the TikTok app and its corresponding website from the Treasury network.

Also, Congress is poised to ban federal employees from using TikTok on government devices, and many states – including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia – have banned the app. It has been prohibited by Florida’s Department of Financial Services, Louisiana’s Department of State, and the West Virginia State Auditor’s Office. The Indiana Attorney General has filed two lawsuits against TikTok.

TikTok spokesman Jamal Brown said, “We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states and are based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok. TikTok is loved by millions of Americans, and it is unfortunate that the many state agencies, offices, universities, student groups, and sports teams in those states will no longer be able to use TikTok to build communities and share information.

“We are continuing to work with the federal government to finalize a solution that will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them,” Brown said.

Before joining TikTok in November, Brown formerly worked for President Joe Biden’s campaign and then the Pentagon.

Former President Donald Trump had similar concerns about TikTok security and banned the video app by executive order in 2020. However, Biden, who reversed most of Trump’s executive orders when he took office, revoked the TikTok ban, too.

Mike Caputo, who served as a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department in the Trump administration said, “Chinese TikTok is clearly a national security threat when it’s downloaded on government devices. Even more dangerous is the kind of federal bureaucrat who is stupid enough to download any Chinese app at all – imagine all the other foolish decisions they’re making.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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Joe Biden’s Democratic Party may have dodged a political bullet on Tuesday, but it didn’t escape ongoing high diesel prices.

The Energy Information Administration reports supplies of heating oil and diesel are at their lowest in more than 70 years. The first week in October, the average price of home heating oil in Pennsylvania was $4.76 a gallon. By November 7 it was $5.86 a gallon. There are reports of delivery delays, price spikes, and even a shortage of trucks to deliver diesel. At least one supplier required a 72-hour notice for fuel delivery.

Delaware County resident Richard Pruett is concerned about food and other supplies.

“Without diesel, you do not have trucks,” said Pruett. “Without trucks, you do not have deliveries. Without deliveries, you do not have food. You do not have anything.”

Joe Ritter lives in Philadelphia where he drives both a truck and a bus. Ritter said his employers were having problems in the last year keeping trucks filled. One company had to find another supplier as a result.

“Tanks were not getting completely filled and the costs for diesel has also been an issue.”

How did we get here? Patrick De Haan of Gas Buddy said there are many reasons, beginning with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia produces a lot of heavy oil and products like diesel.

With Europe trying to wean itself from Russia’s energy production, the EU is having to rely on producers such as the United States. That has created a tremendous jump in demand for non-Russian oil.

“That, combined with a loss in refining capacity that the U.S. has experienced over the last few years, partially due to COVID, have made this a particularly challenging situation,” said De Haan. “Supply is very low amidst Europe trying to move away from Russia and because of a lack of refiners’ ability to produce as much diesel.”

Another factor is dropping temperatures in parts of the country causing an increase in heating oil consumption. Before Election Day had arrived, AccuWeather had already issued a blizzard warning extending from California to the Dakotas.

De Haan called the current situation a “perfect storm where prices are high, supply is low, and refineries don’t have much ability to produce more.”

Ritter said he believes the Biden administration could be doing more and accused the mainstream media of playing down the problem.

“If it were Trump, they’d be railing the [expletive] out of him,” Ritter said.

Pruett feels the same way, adding, “Leftist news channels are absolutely out of touch.” If you ask Pruett, they do not want to pay attention.

“It is very, very scary times that we’re headed into here,” he said.

If Biden is making oil production a priority, he is keeping it a secret. Over last weekend, Biden — who wants to fight man-made climate change by lowering emissions and greater use of alternative energy technologies — responded to a heckler by saying that there will be “no more drilling.”

The White House promptly tried to walk back the president’s statement, with Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre telling a reporter Biden was asked about new drilling in the Arctic and there is “no shortage of opportunity for companies to produce oil here in the United States.”

Republicans responded with videos of both candidate and President Biden saying, “We’re going to end fossil fuels.” There was even a clip of CNN personality Dana Bash asking Biden in a debate if there would be any place for fossil fuels in a Biden administration.

Biden’s answer? “No, we would work it out, we would make sure it’s eliminated.”

That can only mean one thing, said Dan Kish of the Institute for Energy Research. Oil companies continue to operate in a hostile environment under this administration.

“Diesel runs our nation, transporting all of our agricultural and manufactured goods, and forms of diesel include jet fuel and kerosene,” said Kish. “The United States is a huge country and diesel is the most efficient way of moving it, so when it gets short in supply or higher in price, the cost of everything goes up.”

More refineries would help, but Kish said it won’t happen as long as the president continues his attacks on oil production and fossil fuels.

“No one will invest $10 billion in a refinery that will never get paid off, and that can take decades.”

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President Joe Biden’s comments about energy policy the weekend before Election Day raised questions about his party’s leadership on a key issue as temperatures drop and heating bills rise. His latest missteps, critics say, reflect Biden’s overall energy policy failures.

On Saturday, Biden stunned coal-country allies like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) by announcing coal-fired power plants will be “shutting down.”

Biden followed up on Sunday by promising progressive students at Sarah Lawrence College, “no more drilling…there is no more drilling…I haven’t formed any new drilling.”

Republicans immediately linked Biden’s comments to vulnerable Democrats like U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman.

“Like almost every issue, John Fetterman and Tim Ryan are frauds when it comes to energy policy,” said Chris Hartline with the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Despite their lies on the campaign trail, they’re all in with Joe Biden to reduce domestic energy production, eliminate fossil fuels, end fracking and shut down coal plants.

“At least Joe Manchin has the balls to occasionally stand up to Joe Biden on energy,” Hartline added. “Can’t say the same about John Fetterman and Tim Ryan.”

The White House quickly walked back Biden’s comments, but members of the energy sector say it is part of the administration’s long-standing anti-fossil-fuel energy policy that began when he first took office.

For example, last week Biden took another shot at oil companies, saying they have been making record profits from things such as the Russia-Ukraine war and can afford to bring down prices.

“In the last six months, six of the largest oil companies have made more than $100 billion,” said Biden, standing with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “I think it’s outrageous what their – the – size of the profit.”

If oil companies passed that on to consumers, Biden claimed the price of gas would decrease by around 50 cents. Consumers might appreciate that, especially with the national average for a gallon of regular at $3.75. At this time last year, the national average was $3.40.

“They have a responsibility to act in the interest of their consumers, their community, and their country, to invest in America by increasing production and refining capacity,” said Biden about oil and gas companies. “If they don’t, they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits and face other restrictions.”

American Petroleum Institute (API) president Mike Sommers was not holding back his thoughts on Biden’s remarks. Speaking Tuesday at a press call, Sommers told reporters Biden “repeated the same debunked assertions he’s made in the past” and again arrived at a policy proposal that Sommers said would do the exact opposite of what would help U.S. families and businesses.

“Increasing taxes on American energy discourages investment in new production, which is the exact opposite of what we need to do,” said Sommers. “Oil companies do not set prices. Global commodity markets do, (and) canceling pipelines, increasing duplicative regulations, asking foreign producers to increase oil production, or more baseless accusations of price gouging all send the wrong signal to the markets, and to the American energy producers working every day to provide the fuels we all need.”

Progressives praised Biden’s comments. In a tweet, Occupy Democrats said Biden brought down the “hammer on oil companies for gouging Americans,” and that they should stop war profiteering.

“The American people are going to judge who’s standing with them and who is only looking out for their own bottom line,” said Biden.

Some Republicans said Biden’s release of oil preserves was designed to win votes, not solve policy problems. API has released a “10 in 2022: Ten Policies to Unleash American Energy and Fuel Recovery” plan. API’s Frank Macchiarola said it could spur nearly $200 billion in direct investment, generate over 225,000 jobs by 2035, and support production growth in things such as natural gas and oil.

“America can continue to be the world’s energy leader, but it’s going to take solutions,” said Macchiarola. “To date, the Biden administration has made unfounded claims of price gouging, emptied one-third of the supplies in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, unsuccessfully asked OPEC to increase supplies two years in a row and now it’s proposing to tax U.S. companies competing globally, (but) that’s not a plan.”

The 10-point plan calls for things such as lifting development restrictions on federal lands and waters, fixing the permitting process to speed things up, accelerating liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, and advancing the energy workforce of the future by pushing and supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs to “nurture the skills necessary to construct and operate oil, natural gas, and other energy infrastructure.”

For an energy-rich state such as Pennsylvania, the 10-point plan could do a lot.

“Pennsylvania sits atop a portion of the Marcellus shale, the largest estimated proved reserves of any U.S. natural gas field. But limited pipeline takeaway capacity has constrained production in recent years and driven prices higher in consuming regions that lack sufficient access to these resources,” said API Pennsylvania Executive Director Stephanie Catarino Wissman. “Enabling the construction of previously canceled and currently stalled pipeline projects could support additional supply from the Appalachia region to key U.S. Northeast and Southeast markets.”

David N. Taylor, President and CEO of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association is interested, and not just for his industry but all industries.

“Energy independence is critical for American national security,” said Taylor. “At every opportunity, the Biden administration has sought to suppress domestic energy production, whether by killing the Keystone XL pipeline, yanking leases in Alaska, banning the harvesting of energy on federal lands, stacking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), or villainizing domestic energy and the Americans who produce it.”

Referring to Biden’s international requests for oil-producing countries to increase their production and help combat rising prices, Taylor said Biden would rather reward enemies of democracy like Venezuela than permit increased energy production here at home.

“Joe Biden has no idea what he’s talking about.”

If anyone doubted Pennsylvania is Ground Zero for the 2022 election, the events on the final Saturday before the midterm elections left no doubt. The current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and two previous tenants came to the state to campaign for their favored candidates for governor and senator.

Former President Trump was in Latrobe to rally with Republican senatorial candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama came to the Liacouras Center at Temple University to rally for Democrats John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro before a largely young crowd.

President Joe Biden

Like a clean-up hitter, Obama spoke last.

He urged the crowd to vote, lashed out at the Republicans, and bemoaned the 2014 midterms when Democrats lost the Senate.

“Midterms are always hard for which every party is in the White House, and typically midterms are tougher on Democrats. A lot of folks don’t pay attention to politics the way they do in a presidential year. In fact, maybe they don’t know Congress matters…Young people, especially, are less likely to vote in midterms, and that hurts Democrats. Young people tend to be more progressive. I can tell you from experience that midterms matter a lot. Some of you are too young (to know).

“When I was president, I was elected in the midst of a financial crisis. We did the right thing to get the economy back on track, but it was hard, and people were frustrated just like they are now. Sometimes it takes a while for things to settle down, so in 2010 we lost the House. And then, in 2014, even though now the economy was improving, we saw the lowest voting rate in modern history, and because of it, we lost the Senate.”

So, his agenda on guns, climate change, and immigration reform stalled, he said.

Former President Barack Obama

“Sometimes I like to imagine what it would have been like if enough people had turned out to vote in those elections,” said Obama. “If we had maintained control of the House and maintained control of the Senate.”

It was clear from the loud and sustained applause he garnered Obama is still a Democratic Party rock star.

Biden mentioned his childhood in Scranton and that First Lady Jill Biden is from Philadelphia.

He told the audience of several thousand they have the power to make “John Fetterman your next United States Senator and Josh Shapiro your next governor in three days.”

“Your right to choose is on the ballot, your right to vote is on the ballot, Social Security and Medicare are on the ballot. And something else is on the ballot. Character. Character is on the ballot. When I think of character, I think of John Fetterman…John Fetterman is Pennsylvania.”

“I lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz has lived in Pennsylvania, and I moved away when I was 10 years old,” said Biden.

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman

“Courage is also on the ballot,” he said. “When I think of courage, I think of Josh Shapiro…He stood up for the people of this state, and he’s going to be a fantastic governor.”

Fetterman mentioned that he is recovering from a stroke and gave his standard stump speech, taking shots at Oz, eliciting boos from the crowd.

Oz “likes to pander,” said Fetterman.  “I want to get this off my chest. Wawa is so much better than Sheetz.”

He said Oz would be on a stage with Trump and Mastriano, but “we are 100 percent sedition free,” an allusion to the Jan. 6 riots. Earlier in the day, when Fetterman made that same statement in Pittsburgh, the wind blew down the American flags behind him.

Fetterman said that he would vote to “codify Roe v. Wade” and to be the 51st vote to end the filibuster and “fundamentally change America.”

He also promised to ban “assault weapons.”

Shapiro said if elected, he would increase spending on public school education and teachers’ pay, start an apprentice program for high school students and remove the requirement of a college degree for thousands of state government jobs.

He said he “dedicated himself to public service” for his four children. He worries about their climate, their safety, and that they have “fewer opportunities than the world I was blessed to be born into.”

He also cited his Jewish faith where no one is required to complete the task of improving the world but “neither are we free to refrain from it.”

Shapiro promised to make sure that every child “has a safe community to live in.”

Attorney General Josh Shapiro

Shapiro also spoke about abortion, saying Mastriano would take that freedom from women, while he promised to veto any bill that would restrict it. Mastriano has said that while he opposes abortion, as governor he does not have the power to ban it. That would be up to the legislature.

Shapiro called his opponent extreme. However, during the primary Shapiro funded commercials that boosted Mastriano’s primary campaign, a move made by Democratic candidates across the country to pick the opponents they believed were easiest to beat.

Shapiro also mentioned Mastriano went to Washington D.C. on Jan. 6 and “he plans to decertify voting machines…Probably the ones here in Philadelphia. Are we going to let him get away with that? That is not how our democracy works.”

“It’s not freedom to tell women what to do with their bodies,” said Shapiro. “It’s not freedom to tell children what books they’re allowed to read.”

Delaware Valley parents have been objecting to obscene books in public school libraries, such as “Gender Queer.” Mastriano has sided with those parents.

Earlier in the rally, lieutenant governor candidate state Rep. Austin Davis (D-McKeesport) spoke about being the son of a bus driver and hairdresser, the first in his family to go to college.

“I’m going to be the first Black lieutenant governor,” Davis said.

Gov. Tom Wolf also spoke about abortion and touted the state surplus that he will leave the next governor.

And Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) accused Republicans of being about “fear, smear, and divide.”  He urged the crowd to vote for Democrats.

“Let’s win in 2022,” Casey said.

With the 1980 election approaching, a desperate President Jimmy Carter — underwater in the polls — signed into law the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act. It put a 70 percent tax on the “excess profits” from selling a barrel of oil for more than $12.81 (about $46 today). His goal was to bring down record gas and energy prices.

It didn’t work.

On Monday President Joe Biden — who was serving his second term in the U.S. Senate in 1980 — turned to the same strategy in similar circumstances. He urged Congress to pass a bill taxing oil and gas producers for what he calls “windfall profits.”

“Their profits are a windfall of war, the windfall from the brutal conflict that’s ravaging Ukraine and hurting tens of millions of people around the globe,” Biden said.

It is an idea many economists say is counterproductive to the goal of lowering consumer costs.

Economist Larry Summers served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

“I’m not sure (I) understand the argument for a windfall profits tax on energy companies,” he said via Twitter. “If you reduce profitability, you will discourage investment which is the opposite of our objective.”

Not surprisingly, the energy industry opposes the idea.

“Rather than taking credit for price declines and shifting blame for price increases, the Biden administration should get serious about addressing the supply and demand imbalance that has caused higher gas prices and created long-term energy challenges,” American Petroleum Institute president and CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement. “Oil companies do not set prices—global commodities markets do. Increasing taxes on American energy discourages investment in new production, which is the exact opposite of what is needed. American families and businesses are looking to lawmakers for solutions, not campaign rhetoric.”

And then there is the political question: How can you say you’re trying to lower the price of gas and heating oil when you are raising taxes on the companies who produce it?

Pennsylvania Democrats appear to have their doubts. None of the candidates contacted by Delaware Valley Journal about Biden’s proposal would respond to questions. That includes Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Chester/Berks), Mary Gay Scanlon (Delaware/Philadelphia), Madeleine Dean (D-Montgomery/Berks).

But Fetterman has called out oil companies in the past, accusing them of “gouging” consumers and suggesting legal restrictions on how they invest their profits.

“Big Oil just made another round of record profits by gouging Americans at the gas pump,” Fetterman said last week. “And instead of investing that money in American energy production and lowering costs for families, companies are paying themselves through stock buybacks and keeping prices high to line their own pockets. This practice should be severely restricted.”

“Gas still costs almost $4 a gallon in Pennsylvania. We need lower prices now, and we need to take action,” Fetterman said.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, Fetterman’s GOP opponent, did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican Guy Ciarrocchi, who is challenging Houlahan, said attempting to regulate and restrict your way to lower energy costs makes no sense.

“Congresswoman Houlahan and her allies have allowed Biden to go down this dangerous path of angry rhetoric, higher taxes, and strangling American energy production,” said Republican Guy Ciarrocchi.   “Thankfully, the answer is energy right in our grasp—in Alaska, the Dakotas, Canada, the Gulf, and even here in Pennsylvania. We can increase supply, lower prices, create jobs, improve the environment and make us safe from tyrants and dictators.

“Biden and Houlahan won’t do it. But I’m going to be part of a Republican Congress that will force (Biden) into reality,” Ciarrocchi added.

Analysis of Carter’s 1980 windfall profits tax found that it decreased domestic energy production and increased reliance on imported oil. According to the Congressional Research Service, the tax reduced domestic production by as much as 8 percent from 1980 to 1988 when it was repealed in part because “it made the United States more dependent on foreign oil.”

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President Joe Biden came to Pennsylvania on Thursday to campaign for Democrats. But Republican Guy Ciarrocchi wants to talk about what’s coming to the Philly suburbs: Crime.

“It’s not about what’s happening in New York,” said Ciarrocchi, the GOP candidate in the Sixth Congressional District. “It’s very real in our district. Violent crime has come to the suburbs.”

While the president was in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to boost embattled U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, Ciarrocchi joined fellow Republican nominees Rep. Dan Meuser (PA-9) and Jeremy Shaffer (PA-17) at a press briefing to call out the Democrats’ record.

The Biden administration has “managed to harm every sector of the economy,” said Ciarrocchi. “From families who’ve managed to save for the future, whether was for a daughter’s wedding or their retirement, they’ve seen up to a third of that savings wiped away as the stock market has fallen. Young families who were saving for their first homes are now looking at mortgage rates…escalating.”

Ciarrocchi said his home is heated with natural gas, and the price is going up 81 percent. People using heating oil are seeing a 300 percent increase.

“These folks want answers,” said Ciarrocchi. “They want to know how they’re going to pay their bills this winter.”

Meuser said the GOP’s message in the final weeks of the campaign centers on high inflation, now at 11 percent in Pennsylvania. “We’ve got consumer demand way up and supply way down,” he said. “I promise we’re not going to raise taxes on American businesses.”

On energy, Meuser said Biden repeated the GOP complaint about his refusal to issue permits for drilling. According to The Wall Street Journal, Biden has slashed the number of acres leased for energy exploration at this point in a presidency by 97 percent.

“So, you have people hurting here in Pennsylvania, and you have President Biden eating an ice cream cone,” said Meuser, “telling us the economy is ‘strong as hell.’”

The Delaware Valley Journal asked Ciarrocchi what he would do to bring down inflation.

“It begins with American energy,” he said. “The president announced to the world we’re going to try and get out of the fossil fuel business and then canceled a series of projects, most notably the Keystone XL pipeline. And then, as we learned today, there are up to 4,000 permits being slow rolled by the federal government.

“So, what the president needs to do, what Congress under Republicans will force him to do, is to announce we’re back in the fossil fuel business. Americans will not be dependent on Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia,” Ciarrocchi said.

Shaffer, an entrepreneur and software engineer is a political newcomer, as is his Democratic opponent Chris Deluzio in their western Pennsylvania race. Shaffer hit high energy costs as well, and all three Republicans called out Democratic reluctance to develop the Keystone State’s energy resources.

“Right beneath our feet in western Pennsylvania and so much of Pennsylvania, we have the solution,” said Meuser. “We sit on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, one of the world’s largest energy reserves.”

But, he noted, Biden did not talk about that when he came to Pittsburgh. Instead, the president begged Saudi Arabia for more oil and is draining “our strategic petroleum reserves in a reckless way,” said Shaffer.

Asked about the Democrats’ emphasis on abortion rights, Ciarrocchi argued they are missing the mark.

“It’s not only the president, it’s a cookie-cutter campaign that most of them are using in open seats and races like mine with a challenger,” said Ciarrocchi. “I think the more they do it. They just appear to be out of touch. And it’s obvious that they’re using a political wedge issue.”