When the president cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline by executive order on his first day in office, he put 11,000 union workers on the unemployment rolls. It pandered to the extreme greens in his party and ignored the traditional support from labor. Then his climate advisor, John Kerry, chimed in that they will find good jobs in green industry. Really.
The latest example of disregard and ignorance came from Rep. Ro Khanna who represents the South Bay. When he was shopping around for a seat to run for after serving in the Obama Administration, Khanna checked out running against Eric Swalwell. He decided instead to take on Mike Honda. In a CNN interview last Sunday he supported the $15 minimum wage that the House included in its entirely unnecessary, pork-filled COVID-19 bill.
He told the interviewer, “We don’t want low-wage businesses. I think most successful small businesses can pay a fair wage.”
Wow.
You could correctly ask when Khanna actually ran a business. This is a classic case of a Bay Area rep who also has lived in the Washington D.C. bubble, being totally out-of-touch with reality. There’s a reason that people in the Northeast, Illinois and California have been decamping for lower cost states.
I remember the sticker shock that a former colleague, who had relocated back home to Illinois for his senior years, felt when we’d have breakfast together in downtown Pleasanton. The price point was probably 50% higher here. And Khanna and his fellow Dems would impose those labor costs on all small businesses across the country.
Perhaps even more shocking was the letter that Reps. Jerry McNerney and Anna Eshoo sent to major communication companies such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Apple, Amazon and others. You may remember that McNerney, a Pleasanton resident at the time, upset Richard Pombo to win his House seat. He left the valley for Stockton when his district was folded into Pete Stark’s. It’s hard to believe that McNerney is in touch with his district on this one.
He and Eshoo slammed conservative media outlets such as Fox and Newsmax and argued they contributed to the assault upon the Capitol on January 6.
“"Some purported news outlets have long been misinformation rumor mills and conspiracy theory hotbeds that produce content that leads to real harm," the letters said. "Misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices, among other issues in our public discourse."
They demanded that the outlets provide, “what moral or ethical principles (including those related to journalistic integrity, violence, medical information, and public health) do you apply in deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel?"
The letter also wanted the cable outlets to detail what they’ve done to "monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation" on the networks.
Notably, the representatives did not demand similar information from the left-wing outlets such as MSNBC and CNN or the traditional mainstream media. Perhaps, they had no role in the summer of insurrection in cities such Portland and Seattle.
The letter preceded a congressional hearing held Wednesday and demonstrates just how crazy progressive Democrats are being as they have taken power in Washington D.C.
