By Richard Manning

From his Inaugural Address to the State of the Union, President Biden has argued that he is a consensus builder. But looking at his key appointments shows the only consensus the president is building is between the Left and the far Left.

The Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are pressing hard to force a vote on two of the most extreme nominees ever to face Senate confirmation. Alvaro Bedoya nominated to sit on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Gigi Sohn nominated to sit on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), recently advanced through the committee process on a tied committee vote.

Both the FCC and FTC wield incredible power; each possessing the capacity to cripple the free enterprise system. And both nominees were tapped to lead these agencies precisely because they are well-known activists who seek to expand the power of unelected bureaucrats over the private sector.

Bedoya’s nomination is particularly concerning because the FTC determines whether businesses are free to innovate or get stuck in government red tape. Bedoya's track record shows that much like Lina Kahn, the FTC's chair, he will push for the government to involve itself in transactions and areas outside the government's constitutional purview.

A consistent thread of extremist activism runs through Bedoya’s career, including his fellowship in a George Soros-backed program and deeply controversial and hyper-partisan positions. Bedoya’s academic work has routinely opposed ICE deportation efforts. “It is time to call ICE what it is: An out-of-control domestic surveillance agency that peers into all our lives,” he tweeted in 2020. Criticized for denying the importance of border security, Bedoya attempted to explain away his tweets as "rhetoric."

Either the nominee is lying to grab a far-left Twitter following, or he doesn’t believe that the United States should even have a border. While this would not be his area of oversight, his vote on the FTC would be responsible for regulations and litigation impacting virtually every economic transaction in America.

Bedoya also routinely takes provocative stances on things outside his expertise. In one instance, he retweeted Joy Reid calling President Trump a white supremacist , he also compared the Republican convention to white supremacist rally and another tweet advocating for aspects of critical race theory. While he tried to backtrack and apologize for some of his heated rhetoric during the confirmation process, his rhetoric over the years shows a vocal activist unsuited for a role like the FTC. Sen. Ted Cruz called him “a provocateur, a bomb-thrower” while Sen. Roger Wicker expressed concern about the “the frequency with which he has publicly expressed divisive views on policy matters.”

For her part, Sohn's past remarks show a censorious hostility toward conservative viewpoints. "For all my concerns about #Facebook, I believe that Fox News has had the most negative impact on our democracy,” she tweeted in 2020, adding, “It's state-sponsored propaganda, with few if any opposing viewpoints." If confirmed, she could make good on her past calls to target Fox News with perpetual investigations or drag its senior leadership before a congressional Star Chamber.

Even more alarming is Sohn's demand that the FCC aggressively police broadcast companies and her backing of a petition that would allow the government to censor free speech. She even tweeted, "I say that @FCC should look at whether Sinclair [Broadcasting] is qualified to be a broadcast licensee at all." In her new role, Sohn would have a free hand at dismantling the First Amendment rights to which she has demonstrated such hostility.

Additionally, and incredibly even worse in many respects, Sohn previously sat on the board of Locast, a company that essentially pirates TV content and makes it available for free. Shockingly, she defended the company’s actions, saying, "I thought this was, from a public interest, pro-consumer perspective, I thought this was good."

Her assertion that stealing other people’s property and rebroadcasting was “good” is a window into her belief system that others’ work and property is hers to control. This stance is disqualifying by itself. But she went even further by misleading senators during her hearing about the company’s piracy settlement with TV providers.

The Senate should perform their Constitutional role by rejecting the nominations of these two extremists who are appointed to positions that significantly impact the future of the U.S. economy.  The president has a right to nominate anyone he wants, but the Senate’s job is to withhold its confirmation when a nominee is too extreme. Sohn and Bedoya fit this description – particularly as their jobs impact the American economy – and should be rejected.

The author is president of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2022/04/02/biden-dips-into-the-well-of-extremism-once-again-n2605392

Video: Trump was right. Energy security is needed in order to have national security.

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9942PInIM10

 

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured editorial from the New York Post, the board urges Western nations to take steps towards securing their energy security:

New York Post: The Ukraine war proves the West needs to end its reckless war on energy

Maybe now the West will wake up to the foolishness of its war on energy, which has left it badly dependent on the Kremlin Killer and other scum for oil and gas.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is creating ginormous energy-related headaches for Europe, with Germany moving to ration natural gas amid looming shortages, along with sky-high prices (particularly on oil and gas at the pump) there and here.

Yet energy prices were surging well before the war, largely thanks to the West’s attempts to do away with its own fossil-fuel industries, despite the lack of viable alternatives. That’s especially true in Europe, which has been madly racing away from gas and oil — closing natural-gas plants, for example, and discouraging investment. Germany has even moved away from nuclear energy.

Yet the West lacks anything like enough substitutes to handle its energy needs. Besides, renewables like solar or wind power are unreliable, as Europe learned the hard way over the past year or so when both sunshine and wind were in short supply. The Ukraine war has only driven home those points.

Germany, of course, has long known renewables won’t cut it, which is why it’s sought to buy ever-increasing amounts of natural gas from Vladimir Putin, with the help of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That’s left it foolishly reliant on him.

In 2018, President Donald Trump said in a UN speech, “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course,” and German ambassadors laughed.

Indeed, Russia’s been supplying 30% to 40% of Europe’s energy needs — which is why it’s been so hard for the European Union to cut off Russian oil and gas in wake of the war.

Meanwhile, as prices at US pumps spike, President Joe Biden’s been reduced to begging OPEC and thugs like Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro for more oil, as well as stunts like raiding the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as he did again Thursday. Lord knows what perilous concessions his team’s offering Tehran to restore the flawed 2015 nuclear deal, with the hope of new oil supplies from Iran.

To help Europe, Biden announced a deal to supply it with an extra 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas this year. Yet LNG plants in America are already at capacity, and anyway that amount won’t come close to replacing the 155 bcm Russia provides. And though America has plenty more gas, restrictions on drilling, fracking, gas pipelines, new LNG facilities and the like stand in the way of larger output.

Heck, the European Union could produce more oil itself — if its western members lifted their foolish, unscientific bans on fracking. (Same for high-energy-cost US states such as California and New York, an issue we’ll return to this week.)

It’s time for the West to acknowledge an inconvenient truth: We will all need carbon-based fuel (and nuclear energy) for the foreseeable future. Refusing to exploit our own resources simply leaves us buying from, and enabling, the world’s most vile regimes.

To view online: https://nypost.com/2022/04/02/the-ukraine-war-proves-it-the-west-needs-to-end-its-reckless-war-on-energy/

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