Tag Archives: blame and politics

Blame It On the Rain

That was the name of a song by a late 80’s R&B duo called Milli Vanilli. It turned out that they were just lip-synching – including their appearance at the Grammy Awards. In the worlds of one of the group “we were in constant fear of being discovered.”

The group didn’t last, but the blame-game and flagrant misleading (OK, lying) is alive and well. It happened within a month of the Covid pandemic in March of 2020 with a lot of businesses blaming Covid for anything and everything.

Within 10 days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US President Biden was blaming rising gas prices on Russia calling it the “Putin price increase.” It’s total b.s. and a poll done last week showed that less than six percent of respondents blame Russia, but the line keeps getting used. Oil was already around $90 a barrel before the war, then went to around $100. Nice try, President Biden. But someone has to be blamed when people get mad.

Politicians have no control over oil prices or supply chain issues. They also don’t have control over the weather tomorrow – honestly! Sure, in the US, voters can blame President Biden for not even getting his calls answered or messages returned by the Saudi government for weeks at a time. Oil is a world-wide commodity. The only way the price drops is when the supply exceeds the demand as every person would have seen in the past two years. Cut the demand of any product and the price drops. Increase the demand without more product and the price jumps until equilibrium is reached again. Economics 101.

But whichever party is not in power blames the current administration and claims they would deal with this. You know it’s b.s. when they don’t actually tell you anything about how they would do that. Yet it works. The current party blames someone – anyone while the opposition blames the government.

Milli Vanilli may have been in constant fear of being discovered, but sadly, businesses and politicians don’t have those same morals when it comes to blame, excuses, evading responsibility or the likes. Stuck in between are the voters who don’t really care who is to blame, but care a lot that it’s addressed. Or at least that someone understands.