By Rick Manning
At what point did you stop ascribing good intentions to the left?
Perhaps it was when you learned that the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign was financed by a $26 million gift from Chesapeake Energy, a natural gas company that benefitted from regulations shifting utilities from burning coal to natural gas.
Or perhaps it is when you learned that the same Sierra Club that was strangely silent on hydraulic fracturing while going “Beyond Coal” suddenly became inflamed against “fracking” when the Chesapeake Energy “gift” was reported?
It might have been when you discovered that the big scene in the anti-fracking documentary Gasland, where the storyteller lights water directly from the tap on fire was nothing unusual as the water in the area has a high methane content and has been ignitable well before fracking ever came to town.
Or did you lose your innocence when it was revealed that the big Matt Damon anti-fracking movie bomb, “Promised Land”, was financed by oil exporter United Arab Emirates?
You might have been shocked when the liberal alternative energy advocates in Hyannisport, Massachusetts became the ultimate NIMBYs in opposing an off-shore wind energy farm of their coastline. Leading the hypocritical parade was RFK, Jr., a man who flies around the globe in his private jet attacking projects for their negative carbon footprint. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Junior opposed the wind farm off the shores of his family compound arguing that the energy could be replaced by a Canadian hydroelectric plant that he publicly opposed.
Some lost their faith when an Obama-assembled group of millionaires came to D.C. to urge passage of a so-called “millionaires tax,” but when asked if they would voluntarily give more money to the government on camera, not one stepped forward and was willing to write a check.
Others were stunned to learn that investment icon, Warren Buffett, who led the charge for higher taxes has been battling the IRS for years over whether his investment company should pay more than a million dollars more in taxes that the government claims they owe. It would seem if the second wealthiest man in the world really thought he should pay more in taxes, he could have written the check himself shielding his shareholders from the liability.
It could have been when you learned that Mr. Inconvenient Truth Al Gore sold his CurrentTV for a cool $70 million profit to middle eastern oil interests who have turned it into Al Jazeera America.
Obama supporters may have given up when they learned that after criticizing the concept of intercepting calls between suspected terrorists and their overseas operatives when Bush was president, Nancy Pelosi voted to allow Obama to effectively record every electronic communication from everyone without regard to that pesky little Fourth Amendment probable cause requirement.
If these crazy contradictions didn’t get you, you just may hit the tipping point in your trust when you learn that President Obama reacted to a request from Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (not Congress, but the leading Democrat in the Senate) and found a way to exempt Congress and its employees from the devastating impacts of the massive increase in costs associated with Obamacare’s implementation.
As hard as they try, the left can’t blame John Boehner for this one. The very people who both voted for and have voted to keep Obamacare the law of the land, have now at the last minute found a way not only to give their labor buddies waivers from the system, but have given themselves a waiver as well.
The left’s assumed moral high ground has been so eroded that it now has the appearance of Death Valley when viewed from the 14,496 heights of Mt. Whitney.
The only problem is that when you stop giving the left the benefit of the doubt that they are misguided or perhaps just plain dumb, you come to the inevitable conclusion that their corruption is something much, much worse.
Are they nothing more than greedy opportunists who have discovered that government is the way to riches, or is it something even more insidious? That is for the newly disillusioned to determine, but next time you hear a liberal declare the equivalent of I’m from the government and I’m here to help, run for the hills, you have just met Colonel Sanders heading into the coop, and you are the chicken.
Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is the Vice President of Communications and Public Policy for Americans for Limited Government.
