‘When they don’t want to deliver, put them in jail. I’m not joking about this…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The blarney from Democratic front-runner Joe Biden has been in full force with only a month to go till the first of the presidential primaries.
Biden spent his the past couple days crowing about his moderate, bipartisan values—claiming he would cooperate with a GOP Senate subpoena in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, and even that he would consider choosing a Republican running mate.
Meanwhile, he outlandishly—and hypocritically—hyped the notion that fossil-fuels should be eliminated and non-compliant industry executives should be jailed, according to the Daily Mail.
“We have to set sort of guide rails down now, so between the years 2021 and 2030, it’s irreversible—the path we set ourselves on,” Biden said during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Sunday. “And one of which is doing away with any substance for fossil fuels, No. 1.”
We’re All Gonna Die!
The rhetoric was reminiscent of the net-zero emissions demands set forth by the radical Green New Deal.
“If we don’t stop using fossil fuels…” one audience began in a question to Biden on Sunday.
“… We’re all dead,” the former vice president interrupted, echoing the torqued-up hype of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, and others.
Environmental activists have, at times, openly acknowledged that their apocalyptic visions are exaggerated, which they justify as being the necessary means to an end in order to manipulate people to action.
Their solutions are no less hyperbolic.
The Green New Deal proposal, spearheaded by socialist-inspired Ocasio–Cortez, was widely derided for its cost (estimated to be around $93 trillion) and for the unreasonable impact it would have on typical lifestyles.
Among the ways, critics observed, that the plan would insinuate itself into the everyday lives of Americans would be the apparent grounding of all airplanes and the elimination of beef as a food source.
The legislation’s roll-out proved such and embarrassment to Democrats that none—including the bill’s Senate sponsor, Ed Markey, D-Mass.—would vote for it when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allowed a floor vote in March.
The bill was defeated 57-0, with a handful of Democratic defectors joining the opposition. The remaining 43 Democrats voted “present.”
By comparison, a policy outline on green initiatives that Biden released in June seemed only slightly less overblown, while still promising to link the entire country via high-speed rail by repealing the Trump tax cuts that have led to unprecedented economic growth and stability.
Lock ‘Em Up!
But with the campaign trail possibly exerting a toll on his mental health, Biden went far above and beyond his extreme spending proposals at Sunday’s town hall.
He also suggested that the law-abiding heads of the nation’s energy companies needed to be locked up.
“No. 2, holding them liable for what they have done, particularly in those cases where your under-served neighborhoods and—you know the deal, OK,” he said, without clarifying.
“And by the way, when they don’t want to deliver, put them in jail,” he added. “I’m not joking about this.”
However, Biden’s 10-minute response—which included promises to reinstate the controversial Paris Climate Accord and impose further financial penalties on those who fail to meet its steep emissions demands—neglected to mention his own ties to the fossil-fuels industry, observed the Daily Mail.
Those ties have been well documented since the Trump administration in March began highlighting the work of conservative investigative journalists to expose the corrupt foreign business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter.
Chief among those is the five years he spent as a board member at the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma, for which Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca, was paid millions in “consulting” fees.
Hunter has denied any wrongdoing but admitted he used poor judgment in accepting the position, which involved lobbying the U.S. State Department to pressure the Ukrainian government to call off a series of long-running corruption investigations.
His father—who, as vice president, was overseeing anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine at the time—stepped in to force the removal of the prosecutor-general who was investigating Burisma, likely helping his son and business associates dodge potential prosecution.
Trump’s request to newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that he re-open the investigations provided Democrats in the U.S. House the fodder for their long-sough impeachment of the president, claiming “abuse of power” for actions that, at worst, closely mirrored Biden’s.
But if Biden were to follow through on his recent campaign threats, it might be out of the frying pan and into the fire for Burisma, dodging accountability for its shady practices only to be undone by its legitimate ones.
More likely, U.S.-based companies would bear the brunt of the burden—allowing unscrupulous foreign companies to thrive in countries that disregard the emissions requirements, while returning the U.S. to a costly model dependent on foreign energy to meet its consumption needs.
Under Trump, American energy exports exceeded its intake, allowing the country to enjoy energy independence for the first time in the modern era.