Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Dr. Tom Borelli’s commentary originally published at Newsmax.com
When you boil it down, presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president Joe Biden is, at times, less than candid. Twisting the truth is a common denominator spanning the decades of his political career.
Episodes of plagiarism forced him out of his first run for president.
Biden distorted his college and law school achievements. Despite his claims, he didn’t get “three degrees” from the University of Delaware and he did not finish in the “top half” of his law school class.
Recently, Biden called President Trump a racist; but the former vice president backed racist Senate colleagues to keep schools segregated and he called former Klansman, the late Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, a “friend” and “mentor.”
Biden displays an apparent elusive nature when it comes to his energy policy especially when it comes to natural gas extraction through fracking. Being stuck between the radical environmental extremists including socialist leaning policy advisers like Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. — an ardent enemy of fossil fuels — and union labor in the energy industry, Biden once again moves to his default position of being less than forthcoming.
Talking with a potential voter in January, Biden said he would end fracking and the pipeline infrastructure that transports natural gas.
Yet, during the Democratic debates, Biden was an all out warrior against fracking. At the CNN debate in December of 2019, Biden admitted he would be willing sacrifice perhaps ” . . . hundreds of thousands of blue collar” energy jobs in his quest for a so called green economy and on March 15, Biden insisted there would be “no more, no new fracking in his administration.”
Without a doubt, Biden is against fracking until he conveniently reversed his strident stance while in the fracking state of Pennsylvania. When asked about job losses from fracking being ” . . . on the chopping block,” Biden promptly denied the loss of fracking by saying, “Well, it’s not on the chopping block.”
Putting aside Biden’s denial in the Keystone State, he will take an axe to fracking and other fossil fuels if he gets elected president; but again, isn’t deception part of the Democratic Party playbook?
The trick for Biden is to push significant elements of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal without sending alarm bells to blue-collar workers and that’s exactly what he did with the release of his “Build a Modern, Sustainable Infrastructure and an Equitable Clean Energy Future.”
In a blatant effort not to alienate blue-collar workers Biden cloaked his radical energy policy by mixing it in with an infrastructure plan and union worker incentives such as the right to organize, and other benefits.
“Infrastructure” is synonymous with construction jobs, thus by combining “infrastructure and clean energy,” Biden is being misleadingly slick as well as not outrightly saying fracking is going away.
To no surprise, Biden’s plan got a boost from AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka who hailed the plan as a “quality jobs and labor rights” effort that “are key to rebuilding infrastructure — and America’s middle class.”
Note that Trumka skipped over the clean energy focus of the Biden plan including the pledge to deliver “American-made electricity to achieve a carbon pollution free power sector by 2035.”
Say goodbye to coal and natural gas fracking on a meaningful scale for power production and the jobs that go with them.
Additionally, a host of other oil production jobs will also disappear beyond electricity production.
Union workers must not be misled by a Democratic activist hiding in union leadership sheep’s clothing like Trumka. This is not the first time union leaders backed the Democratic agenda over its union members.
In 2008, the United Coal Miners Union backed then candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden despite the duo’s promise to bankrupt the coal mining industry.
The union endorsement of the Obama-Biden anti-coal team resulted in bankruptcies of a number of coal mining companies and the loss of thousands of coal-mining jobs.
Trumka is doing the same to the blue-collar workers in the energy industry.
This time it might be different. While Trumpka is willing to sacrifice known jobs for Biden’s clean energy whims, not all unions are on board with following the AFL-CIO head over the cliff.
As reported by The Washington Post, the North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) expressed skepticism about Biden’s plan.
The union’s president questioned how the Biden effort would actually deliver middle-class jobs and he also worried about the wage-cuts from moving workers from good paying traditional energy jobs to renewable energy jobs.
Biden’s decades of fudges are on full display in his energy policy.
Voters, including energy workers, need to know about his questionable nature before voting in November.
Tom Borelli, Ph.D., is a contributor to America’s Voice News and a TV and radio political commentator.
