With Biden Driving, Gaslight Is On…
Biden’s opposition to American pipelines makes no sense.
President Biden must have his pipelines tangled. On day one, he unilaterally canceled the Keystone XL pipeline’s permit. Last week, he did nothing after a Russian cyberattack crippled the pipeline serving a swath from Louisiana to Washington, D.C. But on Wednesday his administration waived sanctions against the Russian company in charge of building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The de facto policy of the Biden administration has become: Russian pipelines good, American pipelines bad.
The Biden administration has admitted that Nord Stream 2 is “a Russian geopolitical project that threatens European energy security,” particularly Ukraine and eastern NATO allies, who rely on Russian fuel to keep the lights on. But they waived the sanctions all the same. Historically, Putin’s Russia has interfered in its neighbors’ domestic affairs by shutting off the pipeline in midwinter. Russia has long sought to increase its leverage with an alternate pipeline that bypasses these countries altogether (like Nord Stream 2). “If the Putin regime is allowed to finish this pipeline, it will be because the Biden Administration chose to let it happen,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has deliberately turned American energy policy away from fossil fuels altogether. On Tuesday, he drove an electric truck for a photo-op. “The future of the auto industry is electric,” he said. “There’s no turning back.” Unfortunately, Biden didn’t mean that we’ll eventually transition away from fossil fuels when other forms of energy production become cheaper and more efficient. He meant that everyone should drop what they’re doing and get on the electric car bandwagon immediately. That approach simply lacks common sense. Montana Senator Steve Daines (R) compared the effects of Biden’s policies to the oil embargo of the 1970s on “Washington Watch.” “We saw gas lines. We saw the 55 mile-an-hour speed limit. … We saw… inflation caused by rising energy prices. We don’t want to go back to those days.”
President Biden also insisted that his (slightly) diet version of the Green New Deal will create jobs. “I think jobs when I think climate change,” he said wistfully. “I think about job loss.” Now, basic economics tells us that higher fuel costs reduce economic productivity. The mental gymnastics the president had to perform to convince himself otherwise should score him the gold in the senior Olympics. The fact is, on Biden’s watch, Americans have exchanged pipelines for unemployment lines, energy exports overseas for sold out gas stations.
But the president isn’t finished quite yet. Biden has an “infrastructure package” with a $2.3 trillion price tag that he is trying to pilot through Congress. Despite the branding, Daines said, “it’s primarily another liberal wish list: free community college, daycare, spending more money on electric vehicles than on bridges, roads, waterways, ports, airports.” Guess what’s not a big-ticket item in the so-called “infrastructure” bill? America’s 2.5 million miles of pipelines.
One reason is that pipelines are “a private sector-driven infrastructure project,” as Daines said. A pipeline “creates jobs and generates tax revenues” without government intervention. Perhaps that’s why big government proponents hate them so much. Another reason is Biden’s stance against pipelines.
But Biden’s opposition to American pipelines makes no sense. Pipelines, as opposed to trains and trucks, are the environmentally safe and fiscally responsible way to transport fuel because they use much less energy and are less prone to accidents. Biden is tackling the issue the wrong way around. “The answer to higher energy prices and the gas shortage is not more electric cars,” said Daines. “It’s more American energy.” We might have to wait until 2024 to elect a president who understands that.
Originally published here.
Pennsylvania Power Outage: Voters Rein in Gov.
If you abuse power long enough, you’ll lose it. That was the message from Pennsylvanians to Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, the first chief executive in the country to be stripped of some of his executive authority. The blowback — which has brewing for months — was a result of the governor’s COVID policies, which voters have obviously decided were too oppressive and overreaching. To put an end to Governor Wolf’s “dictatorship,” as some called it, they’ve completely rewritten the state’s emergency powers.
It was the first state in the nation to accomplish it — but 44 others could follow. After mask mandates, lockdowns, capacity limits, and church closures, the American people are saying, “Enough!.” The next time there’s a pandemic or other disaster, voters are doing everything they can to make sure more than one person is calling the shots. By a seven-point spread (53 to 46 percent), Pennsylvanians passed constitutional amendments that a) limit emergency declarations to three weeks (not three months) and b) require legislative approval to extend them.
This was a case the state legislature had been making for months. They passed six bills to overturn Wolf’s suffocating COVID decisions, but he vetoed every one. Fine, leaders decided. If he won’t let us rein in his authority, we’ll ask the people to. National Republicans — who’ve been watching similar moves in red and blue states — cheered when voters didn’t hesitate in curbing Wolf’s influence. “Last night, Pennsylvanians voted to reject Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s overreach of executive powers after his failed COVID response — a clear sign of accountability coming in 2022,” said RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel.
Top leaders call the vote a victory for “individual rights and freedoms,” a push to “reestablish checks and balances” so that there’s a “functioning, collaborate government.” Wolf, ironically, called the amendments a “power grab,” and wasted no time expressing his displeasure. “There’s no question that I opposed this. I said that many times in many different ways. But the voters have spoken, and Pennsylvania wants to change the rules. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to the best we possibly can to make those rules work.”
It’s just the latest proof that Americans — on everything from elections to COVID — don’t take kindly to Democratic governors acting like tyrants. Ignoring the democratic process and imposing the Left’s will on states isn’t what most voters are looking for in their top leaders. And to prove it, lawmakers in 45 states have put more than 300 measures on the table to reel in executive actions related to the pandemic or other emergencies. In blue states like New York and Massachusetts, even Democrats are getting involved in pushing back governors of their own party whose mandates have gone too far.
Elsewhere, in places like Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire, Idaho, North Carolina, Kansas, and Arkansas, similar debates are playing out. “Our system is set up not to give one person of any party too much power over the lives of Kansans,” House Speaker Pro Tem Blaine Finch argued.
Throughout 2020, Nick Murray warned in NRO, state legislatures were sidelined while governors “assumed total control of the coronavirus.” It’s past time, he argued, that those legislatures fight back. Emergency powers were always meant to be used “sparingly.” “It doesn’t exist to allow one person to control an entire state government for a year or more.” He cites a new report by the Maine Policy Institute that ranks states by their power balance in an emergency. Let’s hope, he writes, that one of the silver linings of COVID is that it forces Americans to “reckon with the danger of concentrating power in the hands of the few.”
Originally published here.
The Sin of Commission: Dems Push One-Sided Jan. 6 Probe
Joe Biden’s Democrats aren’t interested in bipartisanship. So why would their January 6 “commission” be any different? This week, as the far-Left tries to turn the Capitol riots into a synonym for jihadist terrorism, Republicans want to know: what’s the point? Pursuing a 9/11-type probe would only politicize the tragedy even more. Besides, there’s already a nationwide investigation into the events of that horrible day. It’s called law enforcement. To add another layer of expensive, partisan, government-sponsored fault-finding sounds like just another DNC fundraising gimmick. And the American people know it.
After some hemming and hawing and faux negotiating with the Right, Democrats introduced what they called “compromise” legislation last week. But based on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) comments, House leaders missed the part about “finding middle ground.” Like most Republicans, he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, saying he wanted to wait and read the fine print. Now that he has, it’s only confirmed what the majority of conservatives thought — this is a way for Democrats to weaponize what happened in January and take voters’ minds off of the White House’s dismal performance. “If it’s gonna go forward, it needs to be clearly balanced and not tilted one way or the other,” McConnell had warned. That’s not, he’s concluded, what this is.
Even moderate Republican Senators, the ones who voted to impeach Donald Trump over the siege, have their doubts. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), hardly a fan of Biden’s predecessor, was appalled that the commission would be dominated and appointed by Democrats. “I don’t think it’s right to have the chairman unilaterally appoint all of his staff… And I think there should have been more outreach between Speaker Pelosi to the Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate. It’s my understanding there’s been zero…” Her conservative colleague, Never Trumper Ben Sasse (R-Nebr.) called it a “thinly-veiled midterm strategy.”
But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) concern — and I share it — is: why wouldn’t Congress take this opportunity to look at all of the violence of the last year? Our streets looked like third-world war zones. Democratic cities were burned to the ground, businesses were destroyed, tens of millions of dollars in property and goods were looted. For months at a time. Right now, some areas of the country are even staring down a police recruitment crisis because of the events of 2020. So why not investigate those things? “I raised that to [Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.],” McCarthy said on “Washington Watch.” “Why wouldn’t we look at the events that took place leading up to that day — and what happened afterwards?” Portland’s violence and riots still aren’t under control — a full year later. “We’ve watched [attacks] on many of the federal buildings [and courthouses] across the country. I, personally, would like to know the answer to it and the solution…” But Speaker Pelosi, he said, isn’t interested in anything but holding one side accountable.
This is about political theater, plain and simple. It’s about creating a narrative, aided by the media, that all Republicans are dangerous extremists. At least GOP leaders are pushing back and insisting that they won’t be a part of the Democratic charade. They refuse to be props in the Left’s play to scare the American people and manipulate our country. Not only that, it’s a ridiculous waste of money and a duplication of efforts. As McCarthy pointed out, “There are already two committees in the Senate investigating this on a bipartisan basis… The Department of Justice has already arrested 445 people. That’s the correct place to go — law enforcement… And then you have the Architect of the Capitol [spending] $10 million dollars to examine how the Capitol could be more secure. So you’ve got four different entities already doing this.”
We want to get to the bottom of this, McCarthy insisted. But Republicans want to get to the bottom of all of the violence — not just some of it — and make sure it never happens again. Most conservatives, including myself, denounced what happened on January 6. They’re horrified by it. But what we object to is that this riot is being treated differently than the lawlessness that swept across the country for an entire year.
And yet, by a 252-175 margin, the House sent the bill to the Senate, where its future is much less certain. While radical liberals fundraise off of the idea, exposing just how opportunistic it is, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is going to have a tough time peeling the ten Republicans to his side that he needs to make the commission a reality.
It’s time for the Left to take a long hard look at the statute by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason. “She’s blinded because that’s the way the law should be. Laws should be fair and equal. Everyone should be held accountable.” Not just the ones that help the Democrats’ reelection campaigns.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
