The devil is in the details. Just what are the details behind Summit Carbon Solutions and its plan to run a CO2 pipeline through Iowa? Landowners are concerned about the misuse of eminent domain and private property rights. But what exactly is the compelling interest of Summit that exceeds the interests of family farms and Iowa agriculture?
On the surface the Republicans’ CO2 pipeline seems to be an environmental issue. The irony is the Democrats’ Green New Deal to fight climate change is also an environmental issue. Makes me wonder who’s burning the ends from the middle. Who benefits from environmental issues of such gargantuan proportions? Two wings of the same bird?
The money involved with both the pipeline and the Green New Deal is astronomical. Summit Carbon Solutions is eligible for tax credits in the amount of $10 billion, including another billion from private equity investors.
According to an ExxonMobil website, “It’s capturing CO2 that otherwise would be released into the atmosphere and injecting it into geologic formations deep underground for safe, secure and permanent storage. It’s a readily available technology that can significantly reduce emissions from sectors like refining, chemicals, cement, steel and power generation.”
ExxonMobil is a global leader in the project.
The Green New Deal carries an estimated price tag of $51 to $93 trillion over ten years. Its goals are to create millions of high-paying jobs, redesign infrastructure and achieve zero carbon emissions. Among these is justice and equality for frontline communities. I can only imagine this will include racial preferences and the elevation of transgenderism as qualifiers of a future workforce. Can we expect anything less from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani?
When we look at the money involved, it draws our attention to Minnesota and the recent discovery of $9 billion in fraud going to Somalia. Tim Walz makes Bernie Madoff look qualified to serve as the next Federal Reserve chairman.
I wonder just how much of the federal government budget is a lie, fraud or scam against the American people? The Democrat Party most certainly has branded itself as the party of crime and fraud, but how much of the disease has infected the Republican Party? Is Summit Carbon Solutions a Democrat Trojan horse dressed in Republican garb to end private property rights? We know life is cheap and worth nothing to Democrats. We know liberty is only for illegals and globalists, according to Democrats. So, why not attack private property rights and price it out of existence so no one has anything to live on or live in but what the god of state redistribution provides?
Evil used to be contained and controlled. But at some point things began to shift. I keep going back to when a community organizer made his debut at the 2004 Democrat National Convention. He preached a rising star sermon along the lines of fundamentally transforming America, which meant dividing America between nationalists and globalists. He became president in 2008.
Our present environmental issues of the day can be traced back to 2008. Woke became the vehicle of globalism and liberalism, accelerated by its titular head, Barack Hussein Obama. Friedrich Hegel provided the Hegelian theory. Karl Marx provided the agenda. Saul Alinsky provided the SOP manual of how to implement. These are the national heroes of Democrats and who they venerate.
But a New York businessman saw the danger and paid $4 million to uncover the true identity of Obama. Through much resistance and legal maneuvering, Donald Trump discovered the identity of a fraud sitting as president as Barry Soetoro from Kenya. This is where the personal feud between Obama and Trump began to grow legs.
By 2016, a new group called MAGA formed to resist Woke. A decade later, many are waking up in an asymmetrical and ideological civil war that could potentially turn kinetic any day. Leftists know what they want. The question on the Right is, do we even know yet who or what the enemy is? Do we even know who all the players and operatives are that oppose us? What are we prepared to do about it? And while we are worried about our image and saying the right words, Democrats are taking advantage of our dilemma.
The Democrats are successfully using the CO2 pipeline as a diversionary tactic to divide and weaken Republicans. Forcing the narrative is the diversion. The target is the governor’s office. Rob Sand, presumptive Democrat nominee for governor, might be a nice guy. He might be their best face to put forward but he’s still a Democrat influenced by his party’s Marxist ideology. The Democrats have no vision for Iowa or America but to defeat Trump (MAGA), remove Trump (MAGA), weaken Trump (MAGA).
Has anyone heard Rob Sand publicly condemn Joe Biden’s open borders invasion? Has anyone heard Rob Sand publicly condemn his party’s defiance of federal law for removing illegals, criminals and terrorists? Has he condemned the Democrats’ megabillion-dollar fraud in Minnesota? Has he ever come out against biological boys playing in girls’ sports or denounce transgenderism? That should be a warning sign that he’s not for Iowa. Trump was impeached for a second time within a week of the January 6 insurrection based on no investigation whatsoever but with Tim Walz and a plethora of evidence to support fraud, its let’s not rush to judgment.
We cannot trust the Democrat Party or any of its candidates. We cannot even trust ourselves! While we investigate candidates across this state for the Republican primary, we cannot elect any Democrat in any election. That party no longer reflects Iowa values. If there is such a thing as a principled Democrat, they should feel utter shame and embarrassment for what their party has turned into and renounce it severing all associations.
But the GOP should grow a spine and realize when we are being played, and which deep pocket is whispering in our ear. We can solve the CO2 pipeline issue as long as we are fully aware of who, how, and why we are being played. We can protect children from the evils of communism and transgenderism without using them as leverage to get a pipeline through.
This might require Republicans to reconsider their leadership in the Senate. Pulling Sen. Doug Campbell from committee assignments was not a very good move. Blocking Sen. Sandy Salmon’s library bills to protect children might not be very smart either just because she stands with a few Democrat colleagues against the CO2 pipeline. Can we put principles over politics in the GOP or is that just blowing smoke up our skirts?
- Rick Phillips
Pella
