Late last week, before Trump’s long-time advisor Roger Stone was arrested by the FBI, the administration told PoliticoPro that it is looking at using executive actions to further aid the fossil fuel industry.
The goal of the administration’s plan to appease Trump’s fossil fuel backers while serving as an example that there’s at least one single way in which the Trump administration isn’t serving Russian interests. The increased oil and gas production in the US following more executive actions would compete with Russia, theoretically reducing Putin’s influence in Europe.
But Columbia University’s Tim Boersma is skeptical that American companies would be able to capture much of the European market, particularly since the industry is more focused on Asia. “This is not up to the White House to decide,” he told Politico. “At the end of the day, this is about private enterprise competing with one another.”
So weird to see this administration, with all its pro-free market boosters, use executive authority to try and force the invisible hand of the market…
And if that’s not enough hypocrisy for you, just wait, there’s more! (There’s always more.)
In his cribbing Politico’s reporting for his own piece, Jason Hopkins at the Daily Caller accidently let another mask slip. You know how conservatives are always big on “states rights,” and complain about the oppressive federal government forcing its will on states?
Well, turns out one of the executive orders under consideration would, per the free-market, states-rights-loving, small-government propaganda machine, “usurp state authority” to “stop energy projects, making it easier to approve and construct pipelines across the country.”
As Rebecca Leber explained last year, Trump’s love of fossil fuels and climate science denial “is great news for Putin” because the US’s poor performance on climate gives Russia cover for its similarly pro-oil and gas agenda. On top of that, it's hard to forget that countries in the far north, namely Russia, are the only ones that will benefit from warming.
If the US really wanted to limit Russia’s ability to use fossil fuels to wield geopolitical influence, the administration would be doing everything in its power to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. Wouldn’t it be better to offer more of a better product rather than compete directly with another nation with the same product? You know, a product that doesn’t warm the world?
No. Apparently not.
Gotta love it when the president gets elected thanks to xenophobia, and state-rights loving free-market fundamentalists, only to then turn around and attempt to use the federal government to usurp state authority. Adding insult to injury, or rather, injury to insult? That president is usurping the states for the sake of helping an industry to sell more of a product that’s killing American citizens.
Oh, and then of course there’s the reason for why the president is doing this: to use as a propaganda point to push back against the rising number of indictments linking the campaign of said president to the well-documented effort of a hostile foreign petro-state to get that president elected.
But hey, at least that president isn’t needlessly penalizing hundreds of thousands of federal workers any more by holding their paychecks hostage for a monument to racism.
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