North Star Writers Group

An extraordinary October 27 letter from Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, and to the company’s executive board, was published today. The contents should send a shiver down every freedom-loving American's spine. In it, the two senators demand that the oil company start spewing their propagandist line on global warming, and threaten a tobacco-like shakedown of the company if they refuse. This is nothing short of an abuse of power by Snowe and Rockefeller, and in the case of the latter, truly staggering hypocrisy from the oil heir who effectively bought his Senate seat with his trust fund.

And just what are the two senators afraid of? An honest debate? Exxon Mobil simply had a little-known public policy think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute do a study to see if warming was really happening, and what the consequences of heavy-handed government regulation in response would be. The senators have the Sierra Club, GreenPeace, Hollywood, Al Gore, the United Nations, the European Union and the entire mainstream media on their side. One would think that if all the above entities were right, they would simply state their case clearly and in so doing squish the CEI like a bug on a windshield, rather than cowering from them like Dracula does sunlight, and then intimidating them into silence with extortionist threats.

That the senators reacted in such over-the-top fashion suggests they know that their case is extremely weak, even in spite of the propaganda organ they have working for them. But as global warming has almost become a religious faith amongst the free-market- and capitalism-hating liberal left, no amount of factual reasoning is enough to reach them. In fact, as the letter shows, the more you try, the more fearsome their response becomes. And would that it stay in the realm of simple debate,, we could even laugh at the list of wrong and phony apocalyptic claims the radical environmentalists have made: famine, overpopulation, fossil fuel exhaustion, pesticides, the new Ice Age, etc.

But the senators' employing of bullying tactics, which are nothing short of abusing the power of their offices, shows why the radical environmentalists and their global warming crusade should rightly be feared, and are nothing to laugh at. They are perfectly fine with using government as a club to beat their opponents into line, which back where I come from is an impeachable offense.

It suggests that they have grown irrevocably arrogant with power, and see nothing wrong with using the law and their offices to extort either money or policy ends or both from a company who's only "crime" is being successful. (Ironically, Exxon owes much of its success to the very same senators and environmentalists restricting energy supplies - thus driving up prices - by blocking any new exploration or refining.)

And finally, there's the galling hypocrisy of a Rockefeller demogoguing an oil company. The only reason Jay had his comfortable liberal trust-fund baby upbringing which, in turn, would let him buy a Senate seat was because Grandpa J.D. founded Standard Oil and held a monopoly about 100 years ago. For him, of all people, to be pulling this garbage is beyond disgusting. The least he could do is fork over his vast family fortune to the global warming cause, if he really believed in it. Of course, I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen any time soon.

About the only thing I can say in support of Senators Snowe and Rockefeller is that at least they've made it easy for me to see what they really are – a couple of communist thugs who use the biggest con game going today to justify the unlimited expansion of government power, which tramples liberty rather than secures it. And even if you harbor no sympathy for Exxon Mobil, keep this in mind: Today an oil company, tomorrow your car. Once you let the genie of tyranny out of the bottle, there's no putting it back in. And if you think you're going to be spared, you're in for a rude awakening – and very possibly a long bicycle ride to work.

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