Townhall Review | Commentaries

Cars embody American freedom—individual liberty and mobility combined. In many ways, the automobile is a symbol of American freedom.

But elites in thrall to the “green agenda” are meddling with Americans and their cars. In nine mostly “blue states,” they’re pushing to “create” a market for electric vehicles. In Connecticut, in twelve years you will only be able to buy electric cars.

How arrogant for politicians to try to substitute their own judgment for the free market. Look at the terrible track record of “planned economies.”

As always, those who will be hurt most are those who can least afford it. They’ll be forced to drive increasingly older cars ever-farther to find increasingly expensive gas, as gas stations become fewer and farther between.

It will empower China, which controls 85 percent of the critical mineral supply needed to produce electric car motors. And what about the trafficked children enslaved in the Congo, mining cobalt for the batteries?

What a complete travesty.

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America, meet Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware. They’re your President—or, more accurately, the email pseudonyms the president used when he was vice president.

The pseudonyms seem to have been used to hide some of the president’s communications during the Obama era. They include emails involving Ukraine and Hunter Biden.

The emails flatly contradict the president’s assertions he was never involved in his son’s business affairs. Here’s Biden in 2019:

"I did my job. I never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We've always kept everything separate. Even when my son was the Attorney General of the state of Delaware, we've never discussed anything, so there'd be no potential conflict."

By using the pseudonyms, the president clearly was trying to evade the transparency laws designed to make his communications accessible to Congress and the public. 

It reeks of arrogance, coupled with manifest contempt for the American people—who are the ones in whose name all official business is supposed to be conducted, and to whom all politicians are ultimately accountable.

Shame on Joe Biden.

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The depth of corruption in the investigation of Hunter Biden got exposed this week by an unlikely media source—The New York Times. A damning report corroborated by Politico confirms Republican suspicions that David Weiss attempted to run out the clock on tax evasion charges and let Hunter Biden off scot-free. 

In fact, the plea deal announced in June fell apart in part because IRS whistleblowers forced Weiss to change position and require Hunter to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges. Until the IRS agents went public with Weiss’ obstruction, the US Attorney had already arranged to cover all the issues in a “diversion” agreement, not just the firearms charge, and to give Hunter immunity for all other charges as well.  

This makes clear that Attorney General Merrick Garland presides over a corrupt and politicized Department of Justice. Appointing Weiss as special counsel after his failed attempt to bury the scandal in a diversion agreement confirms it. And it’s so obvious that even the New York Times has to cover it.

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I attended the annual shareholder meeting of the video streaming company, Vimeo, and had the opportunity to question the CEO, Anjali Sud, about the company’s statements in favor of abortion. 

She answered the question, but she didn’t really answer the question. She claimed that the statements about abortion were only in the context of health care policy for employees. But that’s simply is not true. 

I dug up her original social media post in which she called abortion “a fundamental human right, but also a vital part of building an inclusive and high-functioning society.” That’s way beyond HR policy. Which means she misled shareholders who listened to her answer at the annual meeting. 

It’s time for CEOs to separate their personal politics from the companies that are owned by other people. It’s time to be straight with us about political entanglement, and to get serious about disentanglement. 

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called ESG—“Environmental, Social and Governance”—investing “communism rebranded” and predicted that this ideology which imports social and political goals into financial markets, will lead to the biggest lawsuit in history. 

In an interview on X/Twitter with Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s blunt comment was noteworthy.

“Basically there’s some sort of like bizarre communism rebranded thing, which is a lot of what ESG is, to be inflicted upon corporate America without the knowledge of the actual shareholders.”

Please note: Musk is one of the richest and most visible executives in the world and a former ESG darling, up until he started breaking from the left. 

Whether his claim is correct or not, he just destroyed ESGs favorite sales pitch, that kow-towing to nanny corporate governance was the way to protect corporate reputation. ESG is not reputation protection, its reputation destruction, bringing instant controversy to those who associate with it. 

It’s time to drop social investing and get back to … well … just investing.

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There’s tainted, there’s dirty, and then there’s rotten to the core. The latter describes Merrick Garland’s appointment of David Weiss as special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden.

Weiss is the man who’s been “investigating” Hunter Biden for the last five years. He approved the sweetheart plea bargain a federal judge rejected. He ignored Hunter’s tax felonies and a felony gun charge. And his investigation was so deficient that whistleblowers charged it was fixed, saying they had been stopped from asking about Joe Biden and that Biden’s team had been tipped off about a search.

Under the special counsel statute, the counsel is supposed to come from outside the government. Weiss doesn’t. He comes from Delaware—Joe Biden’s home state.

The goal here is clear. Obstruct the congressional investigation, let more statutes of limitation run and get past the presidential election.

The whole set-up is dirtier than a pigsty at an Antifa rally.

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The Biden administration just freed up six billion dollars for Iran in exchange for five American hostages they were holding.  Most of us who remember the 1980s remember what arms, or money, for hostages was … and that it’s a terrible idea.  Heck, under Barack Obama, we paid $400 million dollars for four hostages—and, thus assured hostage-taking paid off.  Even then, Secretary of State John Kerry said he could not guarantee some of that money wouldn’t end up in terrorists’ hands.

From domestic terrorism and abuse of human rights, to hostage taking, to the building of more and more nuclear technology, not only can we not ignore Iran, Congress should hold immediate hearings as to how we are enriching our enemies—from China to Afghanistan to Iran. It is one thing to oppose notions of “American Greatness,” a but it’s entirely another to strengthen and enrich those who have made it very clear: They want to see our nation’s destruction and, yes, our death. 

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Since when do law enforcement agencies run interference for the subject and target of a federal criminal probe? According to a new whistleblower, the FBI and the Secret Service did just that for Hunter Biden in December 2020, as investigators sought to interview Hunter in connection to tax probes.

And now-retired supervisory special agent told the House Oversight Committee that investigators planned to interview multiple witnesses at the same time to advance the probe into Hunter’s tax and firearms violations. To avoid a potentially dangerous situation, the agent alerted a high-ranking FBI official to coordinate the arrival with Secret Service agents protecting Hunter. Instead, the official alerted the Secret Service immediately – and the agents at the location refused access to Hunter. Tipped off, Hunter declined to contact investigators.

This may present the clearest example of a two-tiered system of justice applied to the Bidens. Who else has FBI executives and the Secret Service running interference for targets of federal tax, firearms and influence-peddling investigations? It all smells of obstruction—and corruption—to protect elites from the consequences of their own crimes. 

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Anheuser-Busch just laid off 400 employees. Those were folks working for the company proper. It doesn't count losses at affiliated but independent distributors. 

Bud Light has now lost its role as the top beer in America to a Mexican brand. 

Distributors are worried that the beer stuck in inventory will go stale. And some analysts think the brand will never recover, all because someone in marketing decided to shake up the beer's alleged Frat Boy image. Bud Light drinkers noticed and stopped buying it. I guess men dressed up as women are not the role models they were looking for. 

I have a simpler plan. Instead of 400-plus layoffs, try one layoff first, the CEO of the company. He’s in charge of reputational management and has repeatedly blown opportunities to simply apologize to customers and to investors. 

If that doesn’t work, then investors need to start voting members off the board. A mistake this big requires the king’s head to roll, not the sacrifice of some mid-level pawns. 
 

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This is Jerry Bowyer for Townhall.com.

They call Disney the “magic kingdom,” but currently its biggest trick is making $900 million dollars disappear as losses from a string of flops pile up as high as its Fairytale Castle. 

Speaking of fairytales, the live action reboot of Snow White looks like it's going to be yet another…yawn…edgy subservice reboot of a classic. 

Want to surprise us? Stay true to a classic story line, or create characters who are interesting, not just box-checkers for the identity factory. Stop pandering by eliminating phrases like “ladies and gentlemen” and for goodness sake, stay out of political fights with Disneyland's home state. 

How much brand destruction and stock market underperformance is it going to take to rouse the real Sleeping Beauty, Disney’s board of directors, from its slumber and out of the tower of wokeness that it's trapped itself in?

It doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon. 

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