by Suzanne Downing
The Biden Administration has been flying cabinet and subcabinet members to and from Alaska all summer. From Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg to Interior Sec. Deb Haaland, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, and Health Assistant Sec. Rachel Levine, it’s been an impressive parade of diversity, equity, and inclusion sock puppets who regurgitate the party line.
The Big Guy himself arrives in state on Monday to – oddly enough – commemorate the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Biden’s trip through Alaska is merely an afterthought that is also a travel convenience for him, as he fits in a short wreath-laying ceremony on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) because Air Force One needs to top off on its way back from communist Vietnam.
JBER has little-to-no actual connection to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, other than the fact that our military members were put on high alert, as were all military personnel across the nation. His plans are being criticized for being tone deaf.
While Biden is making nice with the new president of Vietnam, who is a Communist Party apparatchik, it’s worth remembering for a moment that the first firefighter to enter the burning Pentagon was a Vietnam War veteran, Alan Wallace, who had served as a medic during the Tet Offensive, working 24-hour shifts saving lives of the wounded as rockets fell around him on top of the hospital. Biden could not be bothered to return on time to honor the heroism of those like Wallace who rushed into the fire at the Pentagon to save lives, and to mourn the losses of the sons and daughters of America that day.
Biden’s visit to Alaska is also awkward for another reason. After this week’s latest economic attack by Biden on Alaska, he will not be warmly welcomed by most leaders of the 49th state. As far as elected and civic leaders are concerned, Biden should ride a dog-faced pony back to D.C. and leave the jet fuel to those who appreciate how it gets made in this world.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration drove a knife into the state’s fragile economy and its future hopes by yanking back already-signed leases for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s 1002 area. He’s bound and determined to shore up his environmentalist, one-issue-voter base, which has been threatening to leave him over an earlier decision this year to approve the ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project.
He also ordered no more oil and gas in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The Biden cancellation of these required leases brings the total to 55 executive orders and actions that have targeted Alaska’s economy since Biden took office.
Then, to make the slap sting even harder, the Interior Department announced it will hold a new ANWR lease sale … Insert your own laugh track here.
The Biden Administration is pretending to hold another lease sale in order to pretend to be meeting the letter of laws that require the federal government to hold lease sales. Joe Biden doesn’t intend to honor those lease sales any more than he did the last one. It’s Kabuki theater.
As Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has asked: What investor in their right mind would invest in such a playacting lease, with the federal government jerking leaseholders around, like it does?
Rep. Mary Peltola, who won the right to represent Alaska after the death of Congressman Don Young, says she is “deeply frustrated” by the reversal of the lease agreements. This has been her modus operandi whenever the Biden Administration goes against Alaska’s best interests: She’s frustrated. Or sad. Or disappointed. But she backs Biden nonetheless in his bid for reelection.
What did Peltola do on the very day that Biden canceled Alaska’s economy? She held a Juneau fundraiser for her reelection campaign that featured special guests California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell and Michigan Democrat Rep. Dan Kildee, who co-sponsored a bill in 2021 to permanently ban energy development in the portion of Alaska’s Arctic set aside for oil and gas.
Biden and Peltola are two peas in a pod. While Biden is pleading with OPEC to produce more oil, and a few months ago gave Chevron permission to restart Venezuela oil sales, he’s destroying American energy independence with each passing day.
This is how you would bring America to its knees if you were bent on destroying free markets and prosperity, says Rick Whitbeck, Alaska director for Power the Future.
“You damage the ability for the country to respond to international changes in supply,” says Whitbeck. “Sudden geopolitical power plays create emergencies that will bite us hard if we don’t have a solid domestic energy solution.”
Biden, Peltola and the Democrats are playing games with Alaska and America’s future. They are advancing policies that run up the national debt, run down the private sector economy, weaken the military, and destroy our energy independence.
They are playing right into the hands of despots abroad in China, Russia and across the Middle East who cheer on these sock puppets who are eroding America from within.
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Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska.
Photo “Joe Biden Deplane Air Force One” by The White House.
