OPINION:
When President Joe Biden put pen to paper to unilaterally squash thousands of jobs tied to Keystone XL pipeline development, he didn’t just kill personal economies.
He advanced socialist principles.
Here’s why: The Keystone XL Pipeline, set to run from Alberta to Nebraska, was privately financed by the developer, TC Energy, by the Calgary energy company TransCanada and by various oil shippers, working in partnership with several banks. When Biden pulled its permit to build it across the U.S. border, he immediately sliced up to 11,000 jobs — 8,000 of which were likely union. Good paying, private sector jobs.
Good paying, private sector jobs that would have given thousands of individuals the ability to provide for their own families, absent government stimulus dollars, or dole-outs, or entitlements.
Why’d Biden do that?
Well, his executive action on Keystone XL was just one of several orders he signed on Day One of his White House administration that he claimed “do not serve the U.S. national interest.” He paid homage to his radical environmental supporters who’ve fought the pipeline development for years, and not only canceled the project’s permits but elevated climate change to a national security level. His next step is to realize legislation that — in his own campaign words — “puts us on an irreversible path to achieve economy-wide net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”
His plan is to punish “polluters.” And invest heavily in alternative clean energy development.
“The legislation must require polluters to bear the full cost of the carbon pollution they are emitting,” JoeBiden.com states, on its “9 Key Elements of Joe Biden’s Plan For a Clean Energy Revolution” web page. “[We must also] make a historic investment in clean energy and innovation. Biden will invest $400 billion over ten years, as one part of a broad mobilization of public investment in clean energy and innovation.”
In other words: Biden killed a privately financed free market project, along with thousands upon thousands of privately paid free market jobs, to usher in a massive $400 billion tax-paid monster of an alternative energy campaign. And in then meanwhile, he’s going to seek legislation — laws — that will fine and fee to death businesses and corporations and entities that rely on fossil fuels.
The real kick in the teeth is this: We all know the $400 billion will be wasted investment for the taxpayer. If wind mills worked, the private sector would’ve been all over them by now.
Goodbye private development project.
Hello government takeover of a sector.
Hello redistribution of tax dollars to government’s chosen winners and simultaneous financial punishment of government’s chosen losers — the deemed evil “polluters.”
That’s socialism.
All by the whoosh of a Biden pen.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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