By Chris Powell
Maybe the best that could be said about Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy after his speech to the Senate last week is that he is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unwitting tool.
Murphy scorned assertions that producing more oil and natural gas in the United States is necessary for the country’s energy independence and defense.
“The oil industry doesn’t drill to be patriotic,” Murphy said. “They drill to make money, and there’s never a guarantee that that oil or that gas stays in the United States.” He added: “You know how you do make this country energy independent? Investing in renewables.”
But the big argument for more production is not that the oil and gas industry is patriotic but that the national interest requires more production, especially now that this country’s European allies are at the mercy of supplies from a totalitarian Russia waging aggressive war.
Indeed, just a few weeks ago the leader of Murphy’s own political party, President Biden, was urging the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries to produce more oil so the United States could keep striking politically correct, environmentally friendly poses as Murphy does.
Yes, the oil and gas industry strives to make money — but of course so does every industry, including the renewable energy industry. No industry is inherently virtuous. Maybe Murphy has forgotten, but when he was in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2011 a solar power startup company called Solyndra went bankrupt after receiving a federal government loan guarantee, costing the government more than a half-billion dollars. Solyndra is only one of many failed “green” power startups on which the federal government has lost hundreds of millions of dollars without making the country energy independent via renewables.
Yes, oil and gas are easily exported, unlike solar and wind power. But Congress and the president could always enact a law forbidding their export, just as a law could be passed to tax whatever might be called the oil and gas industry’s “excess profits” or to raise the government’s mineral rights royalties. Forbidding energy exports, as Murphy seemed to endorse, would support Putin’s control of the energy supply of this country’s allies.
Of course Europe’s energy problem is its own fault, since Europe crippled its conventional energy and nuclear power industries long before renewable energy could replace them substantially.
That seems to be the policy Murphy wants for the United States.
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Connecticut’s senior U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal, wasn’t much more impressive last week on a different issue — the acquisition of Bridgeport-based People’s United Bank by M&T Bank of Buffalo, New York, which received its final necessary approval, from the Federal Reserve Board in Washington.
M&T said the combination will reduce People’s United’s Connecticut employment by 28%, 747 people.
Blumenthal said he was “deeply disappointed” by the impending layoffs. He added: “M&T Bank is off to a bad start in Connecticut, putting profits ahead of people. I will continue to press the bank to reconsider these job cuts.”
This was the ineffectual cant that is usual from Blumenthal. After all, any business that doesn’t “put profits ahead of people” will soon be out of business, and anti-competitive combinations of big banks like these are subject to anti-trust law and banking regulations. That is, the government could restrict or prohibit them if it was so inclined.
Blumenthal, who this year is seeking election to a third six-year term, could scare the big banks more if he proposed such legislation. Additionally, any day now he may be voting on President Biden’s nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. While Blumenthal is not a member of the Senate Banking Committee, he still could ask those nominees where they stand on the constant consolidation of the banking industry, publicize their responses, and discuss their positions with his Senate colleagues before they vote.
Instead, as soon as he expressed his disappointment about the bank layoffs, Blumenthal flew off to Poland to be photographed with Ukrainian refugees, as if that would change anything more than was changed by his expression of disappointment in the bank merger.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut politics and government for many years.
Chris Powell column 