Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Economy

Returning Trump To The White House Would Reverse Biden’s ‘Energy Ideocracy

Published

6 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

With a second term for former President Donald Trump suddenly seeming far more likely in the wake of President Joe Biden’s shocking debate performance, the decision by a Louisiana federal judge Monday to place a hold on the Biden Energy Department’s bizarre “pause” on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) permitting highlights a clear example of how energy policy would shift with a Trump win in November.

In rendering his decision, Federal District Judge James Cain, Jr. called the justifications for the paus offered by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and DOE staff “completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy.”

Oof. Of course, that is pretty much what I wrote here about it back in February after the policy was put in place, though I did leave out the part about “ideocracy.”

Simply put, a second Trump presidency would put a quick end to interventionist efforts by the federal government to pick winners and losers in the energy space. Such ideocratic efforts have throughout history most often created unintended consequences that do great damage to impacted industries and the overall economy.

Indeed, Biden’s ideocratic efforts to force adoption of electric vehicles on an increasingly reluctant American public are already doing great damage to the domestic auto industry.

Last month, Fisker became the latest in a succession of pure-play EV makers to go into bankruptcy. Peer company Rivian was teetering on the brink of having to make a similar move before it was bailed out by angel investor Volkswagen’s pledge to pour $5 billion of new capital into its operations in the coming years.

Ford Motor Company has struggled in its own efforts to mount a successful line of EVs, reporting billions of dollars in losses in the process. Investor pressures became so intense after the company lost $132,000 on every unit sold in Q1 2024 that management announced a move to delay and cancel billions in planned additional EV investments in favor of shifting focus to hybrid cars instead.

Biden’s and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s similarly ideocratic efforts to subsidize massive wind developments off the North Atlantic shores of New England have predictably produced similarly damaging results. A parade of planned projects by major wind developers like Equinor, Orsted, and BP have been cancelled as Biden-induced inflation caused their costs to mushroom. A few have been renewed, but with renegotiated power supply rates that will cause utility customers’ bills to explode. Add to that the fact that at least 98 marine mammals — some listed as endangered species — have washed up dead on the beaches of New Jersey alone as wind development has ramped up. You can also add ecological disaster to the economic damage related to this ideocratic pursuit.

Economic and other displacements related to Biden’s ideocratic subsidies for wind and solar industrial installations onshore have become so noticeable and impactful that they are now being opposed in local communities all over the country, with many being rejected outright. Energy Analyst Robert Bryce keeps an excellent comprehensive database of these rejections at his own website.

Even with the local pushback, though, many more proposed wind and solar sites have been approved and developed while benefitting from an array of federal and state subsidies and tax incentives. Unfortunately, the flooding of power grids in Texas and across the rest of the country with unpredictable intermittent generation has had the ideocratic impact of dramatically reducing the stability and reliability of electricity service across the country.

The simple truth is that, in describing the Biden/Granholm LNG permitting pause as “perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy,” Judge Cain could have just as well have been describing the entirety of the administration’s energy policies.

I am asked every day by friends, family and readers alike what changes a second Trump administration would bring to energy policy. It is a question I have always struggled to answer in 50 words or less.

But now, thanks to Judge Cain, I will have a ready answer: “Trump would reverse Biden’s energy ideocracy.”

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Featured Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney is trying to market globalism as a ‘Canadian value.’ Will it work?

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

A campaign to appeal to national sentiment is a strange gambit for Liberals – committed as they are to the replacement of the nation with globalist policies.

The storm over Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs over the Canadian border crisis has been baked into a vote-winning meme by Canada’s Liberal Party. Yet with an election only weeks away on April 28, can a sentimental appeal to a vanished Canada secure a win for Mark Carney?  

Trump’s tariffs were expected to hit Canada on Wednesday’s “Liberation Day,” refueling a furor over Canadian sovereignty which has led some to say this is “shaping up to be the trade war election.”

Responding to the tariffs, which ultimately never came to fruition in the way the Liberals were warning, a meme war broke out with Carney responding to harsh reality with a feelgood slogan.  

“Elbows up!” is the new Current Thing in Canada, a media craze designed to stir nationalist indignation in elderly voters who may even remember the 1950s origin of the phrase.  

The elbows refer to those of Gordie Howe – a 1950s hockey legend from Saskatchewan – a conservative province – and from a time when Canada was populated by Canadians.  

It bears all the hallmarks of an “astroturf” campaign – intended to look authentic, but in reality a manufactured mass belief for marketing purposes. 

“Elbows up” seeks to inspire a fighting mood against the threat – or promise – of tariffs on Canadian trade with the U.S.  

Carney will ‘cave’

It is a classic example of the manipulation of popular feeling into political allegiance. How will the feelings of aging voters affect the imposition of tariffs? Not at all. Nor will the Canadian Prime Minister be able to stop them.  

Silence over ‘devastating’ Chinese tariffs caused by Trudeau

Why? Carney has no alternative. He has already “caved” – to China – over the same issue. “Devastating” Chinese tariffs took effect over a week ago in Canada, as Global News reported:  

Canadian agricultural producers are warning of devastating impacts from new Chinese tariffs that began Thursday (March 20th), which they say will compound the economic strain from the U.S. trade war.

The tariffs are severe, and will have a dramatic impact – as China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner behind the United States. 

“China has imposed a 100 per cent levy on Canadian canola oil and meal, as well as peas, plus a 25 per cent duty on seafood and pork,” the outlet reported.  

These tariffs cannot be corrected by hockey memes, and are a response to tariffs placed on Chinese goods by Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Liberal Party – seeking election over outrage on tariffs – has created a tariff crisis, whose costs will be borne by the people who vote for them.  

There are no “elbows up” against China. In fact, their tariffs have been greeted with silence from Carney, who has said U.S.-Canada relations are at an end. 

Corruption, drug cartels in Canada

Anger at Donald Trump obscures the serious problems which prompted his suggestion that Canada could be absorbed into the United States. “Elbows Up” is a cool way of making Canadians look past the fact that the crisis they inhabit has been created by the Liberals and their globalist agenda. 

On February 1, Trump issued an executive order “Imposing duties to address the flow of illicit drugs across our northern border.”

Terry Glavin, writing in January for Canada’s National Post, dismissed Trump’s earlier claims of a crisis over Canadian “border security and drug trafficking” as a “pretext” for his “…declared objective of exerting ‘economic force’ to annex Canada as the 51st American state.” 

Yet this too appears to be a fantasy inspired by national sentiment – which simply ignores reality. 

As LifeSiteNews reported, Canada’s second bank has laundered over 18 trillion dollars in the U.S. and Canada for Mexican and Chinese drug cartels. The world’s largest fentanyl factory was discovered in Vancouver in February.    

Canada a ‘failed state’?

The serious issue of corruption by Chinese Triads combines with a picture of impotent Canadian law and border enforcement to suggest that Canada may be, as Glavin warned, “approaching failed-state status.” When the memes wear off, this is the reality faced by Canadian voters.  

Canadians have complained since 2017 that life is too expensive to have a family. 

Now “a generation” cannot afford a home, and many struggle to pay for groceries. Help is at hand, however.  

Their Liberal government supports Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) – killing the elderly, poor and ill as healthcare – whilst promoting radical “gender” ideology to help sterilize children. 

Will Carney come to the rescue?  

Carney is a committed “Net Zero” fanatic, and is the kind of “Catholic” who fervently supports abortion.  

His moral integrity is demonstrated further by the fact that his $25 billion “green” investment fund was located in Bermuda to dodge Canadian taxes. 

As the Canadian Catholic Register cautions, “[Carney] is a well-connected globalist with deep ties to institutions such as the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Bank for International Settlements, and the Financial Stability Board.” 

Globalist ‘Canadian’ values

National identity is a strange appeal to make on behalf of a party which appears to be working hard to replace Canadians with immigrants, and which is now lead by a globalist technocrat.  

It is the values of globalism, of course, which are presented to voters as “Canadian values”: open borders, LGBTQ “rights,” “gender” surgery and hormones for children, and the Net Zero deindustrialization program strongly supported by the Liberal leader Mark Carney.  

How long can this appeal to save the nation of Canada from foreign influence convince Canadians to vote for more of the same? The Liberal Party has led Canada into crisis, presiding over corruption so severe that its police, judicial and border authorities are deemed incapable of being trusted by the USA.   

This is not a charge made solely by the Trump administration, but also under Biden – with Antony Blinken pressing the matter of the insecurity of the Canadian border as far back as 2022. In the coming weeks, the real issues which have consigned Canada to a fond memory may well shrink the Liberal lead reported by the polls. 

What do the polls say?

With some headlines trumpeting an “eight point lead” for the Liberals, others show a narrower advantage for the globalist Carney – and one leading firm has them tied with the Conservatives. 

Abacus Data’s March 30 poll had both parties neck and neck at 39%. Abacus, who describe themselves as “Canada’s most sought-after, influential, and impactful polling firm,” “…were one of the most accurate pollsters conducting research during the 2021 Canadian election.”

A second poll shows a narrower lead, and a clear bonus for Carney for simply not being Justin Trudeau.  

338 Canada showed a four point lead for the Liberals on March 31, and its graph clearly illustrates that their lead relies on disaffected NDP voters – and the collapse of the Bloc Quebecois vote. 

Reality enters the chat 

With the issues at home now overtaking Trump and his tariffs, the cost of living and those allied to mass migration such as housing are returning to the forefront of voters’ minds. The issue of reality – and who is the real Mark Carney – may well overtake the fake nationalism of “Elbows up.”

A campaign to appeal to national sentiment is a strange gambit for Liberals – committed as they are to the replacement of the nation with globalist policies – and of its people through mass immigration. Carney has been powerless to halt Chinese tariffs. He is powerless to halt those of Donald Trump.  

If Canadians can see beyond cringe hockey memes these two issues are clearly a reaction to the actions and inaction of a Liberal-led Canada. This is the reason that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is campaigning on the harm done to Canadians by the “lost Liberal decade.” If Canadians can be persuaded by the argument presented by reality, it seems unlikely they will vote for another – whatever the polls may say.

Continue Reading

Business

‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

Published on

JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.

“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”

“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.

Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.

“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.

WATCH:

With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.

“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.

“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.

The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.

“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”

Continue Reading

Trending

X