Elizabeth Warren makes money from petroleum mineral rights, transfers them to children, then attacks fossil fuels – Life on Hypocrisy Trail isn’t pretty

Calling out politicians for dubious behaviour isn’t really fair; it’s too easy. It’s like hunting lions at the zoo. The very arena in which politicians seek to play and succeed seems to attract a certain type of personality that, to paraphrase the late great Lemmy from Motorhead, if they moved in next door to you, your lawn would up and die. There is no sport in cataloguing routine ethical or moral shortcomings.

But then there’s the world-class performances, the breathtaking audacity of the very best of the hypocrites. For those, we have to stand in awe. So far in the campaign, Elizabeth Warren is at the very top of the game.

First, we have to listen to her irrational but sly side-stepping of the role consumers have in energy consumption. In last year’s CNN climate forum, Warren goes on the attack against the fossil fuel industry in typically disingenuous fashion: “Oh, come on, give me a break…This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to talk about. … They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers, when 70 percent of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.”

Taking Warren literally here, we would conclude that consumption of anything is irrelevant and a red herring the fossil fuel industry throws up to cloud the issue, and her final comment indicates that these industries simply throw carbon into the air for no reason whatsoever. As dumb as that sounds, that is what she is saying – consumption is irrelevant, and three industries create pollution on purpose to…create dividends? We are left hanging in this void of logic by the earth’s champion.

Putting that aside, it gets worse, because Warren herself, and earlier generations of her family, owned mineral rights, and earned income from the sale of petroleum products, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Yup, she’s in the oil patch, and an owner to boot.

But wait, it gets worse. Warren realized the fundamental problem here, that to go charging off into the political world on the climate change horse looks quite bad if she is a certified cheque-cashing member of the fossil fuel industry. So she did what politicians do best; she threw the whole thing under the rug.

Wait, it gets even worse. Warren disposed of her revenue generating petroleum rights, but she wasn’t dumb enough to just give them away – she transferred the to her children. She did this immediately before launching her blistering attacks on the fossil fuel industry that continue to this day. A gold medal in hypocrisy.

But good lord, it gets even worse. Warren could have disposed of the mineral rights any which way. She could have given them to a local hospital. She could have given them to a seniors’ residence, or a school, or set up a foundation. She could have walked away from them by forfeiting them back to the producing company.  But nope, she took the lowest possible route she could. She may have been too clever to give the rights away, but was too blindingly greedy to avoid betraying everything she claims to stand for.

On the long campaign trail ahead, you will be hard pressed to find another example of human behaviour as despicable as this one. Yes, Trump is Trump, but his Trump-ness was on clear display for decades before election. There have been no inconsistencies. With the likes of Warren though, the hypocrisy is so stark and sharp it’s like the bluest of blue cheese. Watch in horror to see if this champ can get dethroned; it’s hard to imagine but the campaign is young, and the climate change movement is desperate. Don’t be surprised by anything anymore.

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