OBVIOUSLY, A PUTIN PUPPET: Bob McManus: Andrew Cuomo stands with America’s energy enemies.
News came over the long holiday weekend that, for the first time in 70 years, the United States in September had been a net oil exporter for an entire month. This was a signal achievement, almost entirely attributable to hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) — and a will in Washington to break US dependence on foreign energy.
The war is far from won, but for now, America has degraded the ability of a few Iranian gunboats’ to body-slam the US economy by throttling off the Strait of Hormuz.
But no thanks to Cuomo. Or, more precisely, no thanks to those members of the Democratic Party so dedicated to green extremism that they effectively are sailing with the gunboats — consequences be damned.
In this respect, Cuomo is a type. He almost single-handedly forced the approaching shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant — it produces 35 percent on New York’s electricity — with no clear plan for replacing its power.
And his theatrical opposition both to fracking and the transmission of natural gas across the state holds him in high esteem with greens, but has had substantial and growing negative effects on New York, especially upstate.
The governor engineered an outright ban on fracking — the technology responsible for a 55 percent increase in hydrocarbon extraction in America over the past decade, with no significant ill effects.
In so doing, Cuomo cut the natural-gas-rich Southern Tier out of the relative prosperity currently enjoyed by nearby fracking states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.
His positions help Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, at the expense of working-class Americans.