There is “new news” and there is the same-old-same-old. Today is mostly the latter but it seems more “out there” than in it used to be.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General convened a grand jury that slammed regulatory failures in Pennsylvania gas drilling and recommended setbacks that would effectively destroy the ability to develop shale resources.  I don’t know how they do it in Harrisburg but where I come from the prosecutor can get pretty much whatever result he wants by deciding what the grand jury hears and sees and what it doesn’t. Is there a discernable prosecutorial purpose?

The report is challenged as legally irrelevant and erroneous by the industry, regulators, and the state’s Democratic governor.

The 2020 Joe Biden signals his willingness to use what has been described by environmentalists as the president’s “unfettered discretion” to regulate new pipelines and LNG export facilities to death. To be fair, the substance of the article is more benign than the headline.  It’s been said that Mr. Biden has generally taken positions in the mainstream of Democratic politics. As the party moves leftward, you can expect him to follow.

Democrats in the U S House plan for the “climate crisis”. The 547-page legislative proposal calls for 100 percent clean energy by 2040 and mandates US automobile makers to sell only zero-emission cars by 2035. It will cost trillions.

Under the cover of COVID the government should just expropriate the industry. In a slow-pitch softball interview with Truthout, one Michael Pollin combines utopian fantasies with moral condemnation of an industry that has made the world a better place, to create:

  • “ … a clear path for giving [the oil and gas industry] more than what they actually deserve, …
  • a well-thought-out plan for relatively painless death over the next 20 years or so.”
  • nationalizing the US oil and gas industry for $350-$400 billion.
  • public/private ownership of the “energy  system”, including “community and cooperative private ownership” to develop smaller scale ownership with a …
  • transformation to a system that relies primarily on solar and wind power “with all economic sectors operating at high efficiency.” … maybe like the $1.4 Billion of CARES money flowing to dead people.
  • … “retraining and relocation support as needed for a ‘just’ transition” with …
  • “large-scale investments in heavily impacted communities.”

Is it bloated, all-powerful government or the lamentable Road to Serfdom?

Daniel Markind follows his recent Forbes report on rejection of pipeline permits by two northeastern states with a more recent report showing the folly of both “environmental extremists and fossil fuel apologists” because of the massive Russian fuel spill.

We still love the USA on this 4th of July, don’t we?