This commentary is by Ericka Redic, of Burlington. She is a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.

What does the Vermont Progressive-Democrat candidate for Congress, State Sen. Becca Balint and her primary challengers of Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, have in common with former president Barack Obama, current President Joe Biden, and the Ukraine invasion by Putin’s Russia?

Ericka Redic

In response to Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of the Progressive-Democrat led gun control bill known as S.30, Sen. Balint said this in a released Feb. 22 campaign statement: “Fundamentally, this bill is about keeping guns out of the hands of people with histories of domestic abuse or other dangerous behavior.”

In a similar sentiment, prompted by Russia’s February 2014 invasion of Crimea (foretelling today’s invasion of Ukraine), the Daily Mail’s March 5, 2014 headline read as follows: “Flashback: Senator Obama pushed bill [in 2005] that helped destroy more than 15,000 tons of ammunition, 400,000 small arms and 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine.” And in a later press release, then Senator Obama proclaimed that “eliminating Ukraine’s stocks of conventional weapons would ensure ‘the safety of Ukrainian people and people around the world, by keeping them out of conflicts around the world.’”

In essence, Sen. Becca Balint’s theory of “keeping guns out of the hands of people with … dangerous behavior” has been tested. And how did that work out for Ukrainian people of today? How is this working out for all of Western Europe today?

Fast forwarding from Sen. Obama to President Obama, he and Vice President Joe Biden refused to provide meaningful arms and missile defense to Ukraine during the years 2009 – 2016. Nonetheless, then presidential candidate Joe Biden, while on the campaign trail said “Putin knows that when I am president of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over.”

The United States, in its role as the world police, left the “bread basket” of Europe defenseless: A strategic, resource rich country, left without the means to protect its own borders; with Russia on their border; an authoritarian dictatorship that has no qualms about killing its own people.

The Progressive-Democrat’s assault on the right to bear arms, whether that of withholding arms to a foreign nation, such as Ukraine, or restraining individual Vermonter’s rights to bear arms through evermore gun control proposals such as S30, neither secures borders nor restrains “dangerous behavior.”

Previous to the Biden administration the United States had become an energy exporter.  As much as my opponents for Congress — Balint, Gray, and Ram — want the world to be powered by “renewables,” they are not yet able to produce enough power to run the world (we’re not allowed to talk about new nuclear). While the Keystone XL Pipeline was not yet moving fuel, it was part of a plan to be energy independent from countries that hate the West. The United States and Europe are once again in need of the “generosity” of countries known for human rights atrocities. How is that the better option?

Today, Europe imports some 40 percent of its natural gas and 25 percent of its crude oil from Russia. Today, Russia is in talks with China to build a natural gas pipeline from Siberia to China. What do you think is going to happen to Europe’s pricing power if or when this new market is open to Russia? What do you think is going to happen to the United States’ energy supply and price as we continue to shut down nuclear power plants and pipelines and continue to restrict energy exploration and production?

The threats of sanctions are working, against the West that is. Europe is hamstrung, lest Russia cut off their energy supply. The Progressive-Democrat Biden administration is hamstrung, lest gasoline prices exceed $5 per gallon before the November mid-term elections. Fully excluding Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) would impose meaningful sanctions but at the cost of energy shortages and price spikes in both Europe and the United States.

What is to be done? (1) Roll back the regulations and restrictions on the production of U.S. oil and gas; (2) prohibit the U.S. importation of Russian oil and gas; (3) Do what is necessary to build 4th generation (SMRs) nuclear power plants; (4) Where it can safely be done, slow the decommissioning of current nuclear power plants (5) Do what is necessary to increase U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and distribution for the exportation to Europe as a means to offset Europe’s dependence on Russian energy. Germany just committed to build up their LNG infrastructure as well as their military.

Whether it’s the security of sovereign borders, the security of the 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms, or the security of energy, it is the “ideology” of these Progressive-Democrat birds that doesn’t fly. It flails. It fails.

Birds of a feather flock together.

It’s time for an ideological reset.