Joe Manchin threatens reporter asking about conflicts of interest

[Adam Griffin]

The real threat here is "keep asking questions and no bought-and-paid-for congressional shill (i.e. anybody elected in DC) will take any questions from you". Most members of Congress wilt under even the slightest journalistic pressure and so the system is designed not to unearth deep truths, but to flatter their fannies and give them nice platitudes and quotes to put in press releases and campaign ads. Go after 1 of them too harshly and your DC journalism career is over.

[Adam Griffin]

Why don't Democrats realize that he is from West Virginia, West Virginia at the local level now is Republican, and has been federally Republican since 2000..............

Manchin is from a dying breed----2024 will be a Republican pickup and he is the only type of West Virginia Democrat that can win.....why don't you blame the voters for a 50-50 split, something people don't like anymore. It's not 2001 anymore where the two parties crossed lines to get something done--

Why people continue to assume that a state's Republican vote-share is proportionally correlated with it loving corrupt, out-of-touch politicians tied to DC special interests and insider deals is beyond me. If anything, the past 15 years of GOP constituent evolution has shown that such is the opposite of what a "Republican state" would want.

By acting the way Manchin does on many of these issues, it likely makes him look like more of a partisan Democrat in the eyes of his state's voters, not less. Being a corrupt piece of s[inks]t doesn't automatically have to equate someone with "centrism", just like centrism doesn't automatically mean "best candidate for a competitive state".

[Adam Griffin]

  The United States government is aimlessly propping up the failed fossil fuels industry. Renewable energy is already cheaper, will only get cheaper and can cover 100% of the energy America needs going forward we just have to make the investment.

If renewable energy was truly cheaper than fossil fuels, we wouldn't need the government to step-in with trillions of dollars of required investment.  You ever think about that?  lol

In 2020, 30% of all new energy construction/output globally came from renewables; 90% of new global electricity production in 2020 came from renewables. At current rates, renewables will surpass coal on a global scale in the next few years as the world's primary source of electricity.

It was also the first year in the US where renewables surpassed coal for electricity (21% of all US energy production versus 19% - though obviously natural gas has played a role in the decline of coal and therefore lowered this bar; if you count nuclear as "renewable" and NG as "non-renewable", then the current US spread is 59-41 in favor of non-renewables; it was 70-30 in 2010).

It's obviously feasible on its own. The question is whether we delay the inevitable by another 5-10 years while simultaneously subsidizing dirty, dying industries. Even just cutting all subsidies to non-renewables would be a good compromise to the GND at this point.