Mitch McConnell's Replacement

By Rich Kozlovich

Assuming all the voter fraud the Democrats are attempting to inject into this election can be thwarted, the dust is settling, and it's looking like Trump will take the White House, the Republicans will take the Senate, and keep the House.   Not that the Republicans have done such a good job, but the Democrat party, as it's now configured, is in it's death throes being destroyed by the farthest left most radical people to have ever been seated in the Congress, and they've scared the nation.  But whether all that happens or not, we're going to see changes in the Congress, and especially the Senate.  

I'm channeling Oliver Cromwell here.  For those who don't know Oliver Cromwell was, he was one of the leaders in the English Civil Wars that defeated, and eventually executed King Charles I, and then ruled England as Lord Protector from December 1653 until his death in September 1658.  In 1653 Oliver Cromwell addressed a stunningly corrupt Parliament dismissing them saying:

¨"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately … In the name of God go.

That same line of thought was repeated In 1940 regarding Neville Chamberlain, and again in 2022 telling telling Boris Johnson to quit. "In the name of God, go"  Well, if the Brits have the stones to do it, and if the Republicans take the Senate, then as soon as possible after January 3, 2025 some Republican leader, preferably a new Senator, needs to stand up and say to Mitch McConnell:  

"It is not fit that you should lead our party any longer. You have been there too long for any good you have been doing lately … In the name of God go.” 

Ole Mitch has decided he's not running again, however, that doesn't solve the McConnell problem because Mitch McConnell is a perfect reflection of the Republican party leadership, and the majority of  Senate Republicans, at least until January 3, 2025, we'll see then.  There won't just be an explosion the day the Republicans meet to decide who their leader will be.  I'm expecting to see an political atomic bomb going off!  Here's

Kari Lake or Ted Cruz in their US Senate races when both are locked in tight races.

• announced he's going to run for the leadership of the U.S. Senate, a Senate RINO Mitch McConnell light.  Amil Imani points out why he's unfit to lead the Senate Republicans, "he did not back Attorney General Ken Paxton during his impeachment by the Texas state House, he's anti-gun, supports illegal migration,  as A.G. Paxton has already pointed out.
• Sen. John Thune of South Dakota has been joined at the hip with Ole Mitch and it's been assumed he'd be Mitch's successor, a major set back for conservatives, and for Trump. He's all in with the special interests who support open immigration, he's a war hawk pushing for American interference in all these forever wars.  He's not a conservative.   

Trump Supporting Contenders

• Sen. John Barrasso is in the Republican leadership, and has migrated into becoming much more conservative and has consistently defended Trump.   (R-WY) is the third highest-ranking Senate Republican and one of former President Trump’s more staunch defenders. While he began his political career as a moderate Republican, the Wyoming Senator has recently become increasingly conservative, but is weak on immigration. 
• Senator Rick Scott has not been one of Old Mitch's favorites as he's been a staunch critic of McConnell.  The trouble is his record doesn't match is rhetoric, as he was aligned with former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's policies versus Donald Trump's, which is why I find it difficult to understand why he's given an upper 90% approval rating from one of the conservative think tanks. However, here's his view of earmarks:“It’s just like the swamp to take YOUR money, borrow more, and push it all into reckless political pet projects. That’s earmarks in a nutshell.”
• Then we have what's been touted as Trump's choice, Sen. Steve Daines, who I never heard of before this, and who has been a strong Trump supporter, but he's weak on immigration. 

There are others being discussed such as Marco Rubio, who says he's not interested, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Sen. Jone Ernst.  Why Senators Mike Lee and John Kennedy aren't included in this mix is a surprise to me, unless they've made it clear they don't want the job.

Here are two things that must be at the top of the list for whomever gets the job. First, unlike McConnell who easily gave in to Democrat demands, and in love with sending untracked billions of dollars to a stunningly corrupt Ukraine government, the next Republican Senate leader must decide his job is to fight for the Republican's priorities, and not the Democrat's, and stop this massively destructive plague of spending and borrowing that's sending the national debt into outer space.  

Second, if the Republican take the Senate they need to end the corrupt tyranny imposed on the Senate by Harry Reid that allowed majority leader prevent senators from offering amendments to bills forcing a take it or leave it position on massive all inclusive bills instead of allowing the Senate to run as it was originally intended by building consensuses crafting bills point by point, battling it out in committee and on the Senate floor.

While it's clear the Republican Senate will be more conservative, will it be conservative enough to give Trump the support he will need, or be sabotaged by feckless invertebrates in the Congress?  

Here's my view in my updated analysis of the 2024 senate race.   If the Republicans take the five seats I'm calling for them, and the three that are tossups go to the Democrats, along with the Independent taking a Republican seat, that will make the Senate a 50/50 tie, meaning the Vice President would be the tie breaking vote in the Senate, and I've come to the conclusion some of these seats will have to be taken on Trump's coattails.   

Since the Democrat/Independent contingent will vote in lock step, and there are so many RINO's who will typically vote with the Democrats, the Democrats will still control the Senate.  The realistic numbers?  50 Democrat/Independents, anywhere from 6 to 10 RINO's at any give time,  leaving 40 to 44 Republicans.  That gives the Senate a potential 60/40 edge over the Republicans, even if the Senate leader is a Republican.  But at least it won't be Mitch McConnell.  

 And if elected, Trump cannot allow his appointees to backstab him at every turn, Trump’s appointees must be fiercely loyal, "That loyalty must be to the Constitution, to We the People, to the administration’s mission, and to President Trump, and that means being willing to shrink their agencies. "

Nation Has the Best Social Security/Pension System?

October 19, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

What nation has the world’s best tax policy?

There are relatively straightforward ways of answering that question, such as looking at the places (Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Monaco, etc) with no income tax.

If you focus on bigger nations, you can look at measures such as the Tax Foundation’s International Tax Competitiveness Index (in which case Estonia is in first place).

But what about picking the nation with the best pension system?

Nobody has ever tried to answer that question from a libertarian perspective. So when the Fraser Institute asked me to write a chapter for this year’s Economic Freedom of the World, I jumped at the opportunity to develop a methodology and then grade a sample of 20 nations.

For readers who have faith in my analytical skills, I’ll lead with the headline results. As you can see, Hong Kong has the best system, followed by Australia and Chile.

None of those results are surprising, but how many people know that the Netherlands has a very good system? Or that Mexico has a decent approach?

Sadly, the United States is toward the bottom, though fortunately not in last place (interestingly, European nations generally score better than America).

So how did I put together this ranking? I open the chapter by explaining the problem and also what I wanted to accomplish.

Because of aging populations and falling birth rates, public pensions are an increasingly important policy issue. Most governments have some type of tax-and-transfer system, with payments to the elderly being financed by levies on workers. Such systems are mathematically feasible when there are lots of young people and relatively few retirees. But increasing lifespans and falling birthrates have changed that equation. As a result, many nations will soon face significant fiscal imbalances. Simply stated, current rates will not generate nearly enough revenue in the future to finance promised benefits.

Countries that figure out the best way of navigating this challenge will enjoy better economic outcomes compared to nations that either make bad policy choices or “kick the can down the road” and allow problems to fester. This chapter will analyze Social Security/pension-related systems, consider the costs and benefits of various policy options, and conclude by investigating the challenges of incorporating pension systems into the index published in the Economic Freedom of the World.

If you want a shortcut explanation of my methodology, here’s the pension spectrum I developed.

It shows different types of social Security systems, with the most statist approach on the left and the best approach is on the right, with various intermediate steps in the middle.

Here’s some of what I wrote about that methodology.

…a pure laissez-faire approach is the policy that maximizes economic freedom and thus would merit a perfect score. However, it seems that no nation is in this category. From a practical perspective, this means constructing a scoring system is an exercise in ranking options that range from second best to terrible. On this basis, the default option for the best score would then go to nations with retirement systems based on mandatory private savings. But there are many secondary questions that have to be answered. …A better score for nations that allow private management of investment rather than government control. …A better score for nations that choose defined contribution accounts rather than defined benefit accounts.

By the way, the chapter begins with an explanation of why we should care about pensions and Social Security. Since I’ve written on those issues many times, no need to belabor that point.

So I’ll simply share this chart showing the dramatic change in the age-dependency ratio between now and the end of the century.

The bottom line is that America’s Social Security – and systems in other nations that also are based on the pay-as-you-go approach – are doomed.

The nations that figure out how to navigate the shift to a better system will be in a much stronger position than the ones that try to prop up government-run systems.

Global Debt Poised to Set the World-Order Dominoes Tumbling

By Andrew Moran | Oct 17, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Business News, Opinion

Brick by brick, the world order, a decades-old coquettish mistress of economic stability and security, is falling like a game of dominos. The international community has become accustomed to the post–World War II climate, where everyone always comes out on top, no matter how bad a financial crisis is. But, the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the geopolitical chaos in Eastern Europe and the Middle East might have permanently damaged global peace and prosperity.

S&P Issues Warning for the World Order

According to S&P Global Ratings, countries could potentially default more frequently on their foreign currency debt over the next decade. This is due to the substantial increase in borrowing costs fueled by central banks’ fight to curb inflation. Even before the Covid-19 public health crisis, sovereign credit ratings had weakened worldwide. “These factors quickly create liquidity challenges as access to financing dries up and capital flight accelerates,” the report stated. “In many cases, this constitutes the tipping point where liquidity and solvency constraints become problematic for a government.”

During the fallout of the pandemic, many nations’ finances came under exceptional threat. A chorus of countries – such as Argentina, Belize, Ecuador, Lebanon, Zambia, and others – sang an aria of despair as they defaulted on their foreign currency debt. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several more countries defaulted in 2022 and 2023.

Developing countries now depend more on government borrowing, running the printing press, and raiding foreign exchange reserves to offset the flight of foreign capital. The challenge, however, is that turbulence and unpredictable domestic policies have led to issues repaying debts.

Ballooning net interest payments and sticky inflation are adding to the cavalcade of problems. The report identified that interest costs in soon-to-default states are approaching or surpassing 20% of government revenues, and inflation has climbed to double-digit territory.

But can’t these places pull a Greece and restructure their debt? Not quite. Unlike 40 years ago, S&P analysts note that government debt restructurings are not working, occurring at a snail’s pace, or compounding the problem. “We also found that the long-term macroeconomic consequences are more severe for sovereigns that remain in default for multiple years, increasing the probability of further defaults down the line,” they wrote.

Unfortunately, S&P’s warnings to the world order do not even tell half the story.

Global Debt Is Worse, Says IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published a detailed report examining the world’s astronomical public debt levels. The global institution concluded in its October 2024 Fiscal Monitor that the situation is “probably worse than it looks.” IMF economists forecast that global debt will exceed $100 trillion by the year’s end, representing approximately 93% of international gross domestic product. It will hit 100% of GDP by 2030.

Officials prognosticate that “future debt levels could be even higher than projected, and much larger fiscal adjustments than currently projected are required to stabilize or reduce it with a high probability.” They purported in the report that sizable spending pressures, enormous unidentified debt, and optimism bias of debt projections suggest that “the fiscal outlook of many countries might be worse than expected.” The report added:

“Previous IMF research has shown that fiscal discourse across the political spectrum has increasingly tilted toward higher spending. And countries will need to increasingly spend more to cope with aging and healthcare; with the green transition and climate adaptation; and with defense and energy security, due to growing geopolitical tensions.

“On the other side, past experience suggests that debt projections tend to underestimate actual outcomes by a sizable margin. Realized debt-to-GDP ratios five-years ahead can be 10 percentage points of GDP higher than projected on average.”

Back home, the United States endured credit outlook downgrades in 2023 amid a mounting national debt swallowing the national economy. With $200 trillion in unfunded obligations, it is only a matter of time before these agencies cite the United States as a growing risk to the world order.

Surely, the private sector is outperforming the government, right? Right? Uh, no, Shirley.

Businesses Struggling

Corporate bankruptcies have been steadily increasing this year across the globe, led by the world’s largest economy.

In the first nine months of the year, 512 large US companies declared bankruptcy, and 59 entities filed for bankruptcy in September alone. The latest numbers from the new S&P Global Market Intelligence data show that 2024 has experienced the largest number of corporate bankruptcies (businesses with $1 billion or more in liabilities) in 14 years outside the pandemic. Of course, if you wish to insert the public health crisis, the United States is shy of just six.

Give Cable TV the Boot – Check This Out!

The rest of the business community is not faring well. In the second quarter of 2024, the number of US bankruptcies surged by close to 40% compared to a year ago, totaling nearly 6,300 cases. This is the highest level in seven years. Additionally, over the last three years, bankruptcy filings have doubled and risen at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis.

Other regions are witnessing comparable trends. Eurostat data highlight that bankruptcy declarations climbed in the eurozone by more than 3% in the second quarter from the previous three-month span.

This is bad news for governments starving for more revenues. While politicians refrain from making tough challenges and retreat into the comfort of political expediency, they need to inject more tax receipts into government coffers. Unfortunately, if companies are folding faster than Republicans on the House floor, Washington and the rest of the world leaders will have fewer dollars, euros, and pounds to waste.

What Happened to the $107 Trillion?

Fidelity Investments published a fascinating chart highlighting the global money supply. In October, international liquidity reached an all-time high of $107 trillion, up from about $79 trillion before the pandemic. If the planet is drowning in freshly printed money, where is it all going? The answer – if there is one – might be as confusing as any world salad response uttered by Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Read More From Andrew Moran

Supreme Court Win on Free Speech and Qualified Immunity

A muckraking menace to corrupt officials scores a big SCOTUS victory for free speech. 

By Scott D. Cosenza, Esq. | Oct 16, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News Articles, Tags: Law, Opinion, Politics 

Laredo’s “Lagordiloca” won a victory for freedom of speech and struck a blow against official oppression and police-qualified immunity. Much like Donald Trump, Priscilla Villarreal was prosecuted by authorities, who disliked her threat to their power, via a novel application of the law. It was used in a preposterous way to punish behavior that is not even objectionable, much less criminal. She was prosecuted for asking a government official to comment on a story. The shocking thing is, there’s not more to it than that. Her case was tossed around until Tuesday, Oct. 15^, when the Supreme Court, without dissent, came down with a pro-freedom ruling.

‘Lagordiloca’ is a Journalist

Ms. Villarreal does her reporting via social media posts. The New York Times called her “arguably the most influential journalist in Laredo, Texas” and a “swearing muckraker.” Her style is free-form, without editorial oversight, and ranges from profane gossip to hard-hitting exposés of local officials. That criticism – and officials’ willingness to weaponize their offices in opposition to it – led eventually to Tuesday’s Supreme Court order. Instead of cleaning up their own behavior and offices, the officials, including two prosecutors and the police chief, conspired to manufacture her arrest.

Laredo police regularly harassed the reporter at the encouragement of police chief Claudio Treviño. District Attorney Isidro Alaniz and an assistant DA, Marisela Jacaman, poured over the statute books with Trevino to find any possible way to use some law to punish Villarreal. They came across a 23-year-old statute that local officials had never enforced. It was designed to prevent government corruption by prohibiting people from soliciting non-public information for their gain.

Texas Penal Code § 39.06(c) creates a felony for those who, “with intent to obtain a benefit,” “solicits or receives from a public servant information that . . . has not been made public.” For instance, you can imagine that a senior government regulator in the oil and gas sector could reveal information to a market player they could trade on to great fortune. Here, though, it was used against a reporter asking for a comment. She asked a police source for information on stories she covered – information that wasn’t publicly published – as any journalist would.

Supreme Court Puts Police in Check

Laredo police snapped cellphone pictures of her in handcuffs while mocking and laughing at her as she turned herself in after learning she was wanted. Ms. Villarreal beat the criminal charges when a state court judge found the statute unconstitutionally vague. Then came the battle for civil damages. She sued her persecutors in Federal Court for violating her First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The district court granted the defendant qualified immunity, cratering her case.

Qualified immunity gives government officials immunity from suit if the way they violate someone’s rights isn’t “clearly established.” It is also maddening to individual rights advocates who see it as a judge-made law granting a free pass for the government to trample the people’s rights.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed – denying the defendants qualified immunity, with an opinion stating, “If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned.” That wasn’t the end of it, however. A judge on the Fifth Circuit didn’t like that decision and got their colleagues to agree to re-hear the case en banc, where, instead of a three-judge panel randomly chosen from all the appeals court judges in the circuit, all the judges might participate. There were sixteen at re-hearing, where the vote was 9-7 to grant the defendants qualified immunity.

No Dissenters

Villarreal appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which sent down an order vacating the qualified immunity ruling. They did not have a trial; the Court simply issued an order doing away with the en banc ruling, allowing the lawsuit for the civil rights violations to proceed. Lagordiloca’s case was filed by the Foundation For Individual Rights and Expression, which has now replaced the ACLU as the nation’s preeminent civil rights law firm.

Dig Deeper into the Themes Discussed in this Article!

Liberty Vault: 303 Creative L.L.C. v. Elenis

Liberty Vault: United States v. Alvarez

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

 

Read More From Scott D. Cosenza, Esq.

Senate Races in the Spotlight as Republicans Look for a Renewal

By Graham J Noble | Oct 19, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

It has been four years since the GOP had a majority in the Senate, but this year, for Republicans, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. The majority of polls show all the most crucial Senate races as either toss-ups or slightly tilting unless they’re strongly Democratic – with a couple of possibly highly significant exceptions. How accurate are these polls? That’s the question. Accurate or not, though, Senate Democrats will almost certainly not add to their current total. Republicans, however, have reason to feel optimistic that they can flip one or maybe two seats in their direction.

Is Michigan really in play as far as Senate races go this year? Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, will be vacating her seat, providing an opening for the GOP’s Mike Rogers, a former Michigan representative. Then again, it has been 30 years since the Great Lakes State sent a Republican to the US Senate.

In Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, another Democrat, has seen her significant lead over Republican challenger Eric Hovde dwindle to a razor-thin advantage even though the Democratic Party has massively outspent the Republicans in this race so far.

Many Democrats continue to harbor what seem like fanciful dreams of defeating Texas Republican Ted Cruz and magically flipping the Lone Star State to blue. Meanwhile, in Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown – once a shining star of the Democratic Party – is fighting hard to keep hold of his seat against Republican Bernie Moreno. The smart money would probably be on Brown prevailing by an unimpressive margin, but, as things stand now, that race is practically a toss-up.

Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone State, and in the context of federal elections, that nickname has become very appropriate. Democrat Bob Casey, a three-term senator, is defending his seat against Republican David McCormick. As is the case with Sherrod Brown in Ohio, a Republican win would signal a shift in the political winds likely to take a lot of people by surprise. The fact that Brown does not already look like a comfortable winner in his race indicates that what were once Democratic strongholds are now neither strong nor holding. Most political analysts would likely predict Casey will hold on to his seat, but if he doesn’t, that would be a sign that the “blue wall,” already once punctured by Donald Trump, is looking a little shaky.

In terms of Senate races, however, the most obvious path of Republican victory winds from West Virginia to Montana. Sen. Joe Manchin, who became increasingly disaffected by the Democratic Party’s policies, is not seeking re-election. The GOP is heavily favored to pick up this seat. Republicans also seem well-positioned to take Jon Tester’s seat in Montana. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll had Republican challenger Tim Sheehy eight points ahead of the Democratic senator.

Since Joe Biden has decided not to run for a second term – or since he was pushed out by his party, depending on what one chooses to believe – January 2025 will see the installation of a new president, Republican or Democrat. Winning a Senate majority, then, would be enormously consequential to both main parties, regardless of who is handed the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. next year.

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Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Read More From Graham J Noble

The Tina Peters judge and his TDS

A disgraceful ruling 

By Joe Fried CPA Oct 20, 2024 @ Joe Fried CPA Election Central

Whistleblower Tina Peters uncovered huge errors in 2020 voting records — errors that a routine Dominion software update would have obscured. Her reward? Nine years in prison.

69-year-old Tina Peters is the former Mesa County (Colorado) Clerk and Recorder. To the surprise of some Mesa residents, a slate of three conservative candidates had been defeated in a local election, despite the county having nearly twice as many Republican as Democrat voters. Peters felt this was suspicious, and warranted investigation. However, there was a problem: The database would soon be erased.

Workers from Dominion would be arriving in May 2021 to perform a computer software upgrade, and Peters had been advised by a Dominion employee that the process would make it impossible to read digital 2020 election records. To avoid this problem, Peters asked her IT department to back up the database. The department declined her request, so she decided to have a copy made before the Dominion software technicians arrived.

The legal problem

In a clandestine operation, Tina Peters gained access to the Mesa election system, and she had the database copied. Ultimately, that copy was analyzed by two computer science experts, who issued an explosive 87-page report.

It is likely that the actions of Peters included technical violations of law. In the words of the Colorado Secretary of State, Peters was “alleged to have used someone else’s security badge to give access to the Mesa County election system to an expert affiliated with MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell.”

People who break the law often face legal consequences, even if they are whistleblowers with good intentions. However, reasonable prosecutors and judges consider the motivations of whistleblowers, and the public good they produce. Peters gained zero benefit from her efforts, and she provided a tremendous service to every county in the United States that uses the Dominion system. Those counties now understand that a backup copy of the election database must be made before Dominion upgrades its software, to ensure election integrity and to comply with federal election data retention requirements.

Whether or not Peters technically broke the law, the 9-year prison term is outrageous and disgraceful.

Here is what the computer experts learned

The database copy made by Peters was analyzed in great detail by two computer science experts: Jeffrey O’Donnell and Walter Daugherity. They examined Mesa County’s election database prior to and after Dominion’s “Trusted Build” update in May 2021. Subsequently, they issued a report with several alarming findings.

O’Donnell and Daugherity discovered that critical log files had been destroyed during the Dominion update process, and this destruction may have violated federal record retention requirements. Even more disturbing were changes that took place before the Dominion update:

“There was an unauthorized creation of new election databases during early voting in the 2020 General Election on October 21, 2020, followed by the digital reloading of 20,346 ballot records into the new election databases, making the original voter intent recorded from the ballots unknown. In addition, 5,567 ballots in 58 batches did not have their digital records copied to the new database, although the votes from the ballots in those batches were recorded in the Main election database” (report, p. 3).

In other words, after people had been voting for a few days, someone (or something) deleted the election database and installed a “new” database, minus 5,567 ballots. As a result of this activity, none of the original voter intent is known. In total, “over 25% of the County’s ... entire election, cannot be verified and should not have been counted.”

According to the report of these experts, the changes had to occur in one of three ways:

1. Direct action by Mesa County personnel
2. By some sort of remote trigger from, perhaps, a local network or the internet
3. By means of “a software algorithm running inside the DVS [Dominion] computer systems in Mesa County”

Incredibly, this happened again in a small local election held in April 2021. See O’Donnell video @11:50. This is vitally important information, and we know about it for only one reason: Tina Peters made a backup file and had it analyzed.

The disgraceful judge

In the state of Colorado, which seems to downplay the truly violent crimes of “Tren de Aragua,” Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced this 68-year widow and gold star mother to nine (9) years in prison. He explained that nothing less would be appropriate because what she has done is “just as bad, if not worse, than the physical violence that this court sees on an all too regular basis.” Really? I don’t think the Aurora man who was beaten to a pulp last week by a Tren de Aragua gang would agree.

Barrett is just one more judge who can’t see straight because he is blinded by TDS. The signs of that illness are everywhere in his ruling.

Throughout the trial the judge hampered the defense by blocking any discussion of election irregularities. The judge complained that Peters was “getting rides in private jets all over the country,” and was represented by “four attorneys.” What serious judge considers that to be relevant information?

Barrett acknowledged that Tina Peters had no criminal records, and was a gold star mother whose husband had recently died. However, in sentencing Peters those extenuating circumstances were ignored. Instead His Honor fretted that the elderly defendant, who had already lost her job as county clerk and recorder, was a “danger to our community.” Exactly how?

This judge, like so many others afflicted with TDS, is putting an elderly woman in jail to keep her from expressing her view that there were irregularities in the election. It is an attack on her first amendment right to free speech, and he said as much.

As he sentenced Tina Peters, Barrett complained that she was still “peddl[ing] a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.” Obviously, “snake oil” is the judge’s pejorative for claims of 2020 election fraud. However, it was completely inappropriate for the judge to express that opinion, since he prevented Peters from introducing evidence to support her beliefs regarding the matter.

Tina Peters was and is sincerely convinced (correctly, in my view) that there were serious irregularities in the election database of Mesa County. She couldn’t get her IT department to protect the system by copying the election database, so she took action on her own.

What’s more, Peters proved her suspicions. She obtained the essential 87-page report, written and issued by computer experts O’Donnell and Daugherity. That analysis has never been seriously challenged, except with an error-filled, non-technical report from the District Attorney. A detailed critique of the District Attorney’s report was made by O’Donnell and Daugherity, and is found here.

While issuing the 9-year sentence, Judge Barrett called Tina Peters a “charlatan,” but Judge Matthew Barrett is the real charlatan — and a disgrace to the judiciary.

The DEFR Follies -- Cost Of Hydrogen Storage

October 18, 2024Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Here in New York we have our own unique and special acronym for how we think we are going to make our future emissions-free electrical grid work with predominantly wind and solar generation. The acronym is DEFR — the “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource.” When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing in the dead of winter, we will crank up the DEFR to keep us all warm and cozy. There will of course be zero carbon emissions, because by definition the DEFR is “emissions-free.”

Unfortunately nobody is quite sure what this DEFR might be. There are only a few options. Nuclear could work, but in New York it is completely blocked by regulatory obstruction and the certainty of decades of litigation. Batteries are wildly too expensive and physically not up to the job. That leaves many green energy advocates grasping at hydrogen as the last remaining option. Granted, we don’t yet have any meaningful production of hydrogen from carbon-free sources. But it seems so simple: just use wind and solar generators to run electrolyzers to make hydrogen from water; then store the hydrogen in some big caverns, and burn it when you need it. No carbon is involved. Problem solved!

I’ve had a few posts over the past couple of years commenting on some of the many issues that make this “green” hydrogen fantasy infeasible. This post from June 2022 noted that the cost of making hydrogen from water is unlikely ever to fall below, or even close to, the cost of getting new natural gas out of the ground; this post from August 2024 discussed numerous other problems with hydrogen, like its lower energy density compared to natural gas, and the prospective need for a whole new infrastructure of pipelines, power plants, delivery trucks and consumer appliances.

Now comes along a new study focusing on a different piece of the costs of using hydrogen as a main energy source for the economy. The issue is the cost of storing the hydrogen from the time of its production until it is needed for use. The new study appeared in the scientific journal Joule on October 8 with the title “Carbon abatement costs of green hydrogen across end-use sectors.” (The link goes just to a lengthy introduction and abstract. You’ll need to pay $35 to get the whole article, but the introduction at the link tells you what you need to know.)

Perhaps most significant about this new study is the authors. They are Roxana Shafiee and Daniel Schrag, both of whom work at Harvard and have impeccable climate cult credentials, including multiple appointments at various Harvard sub-schools and institutes (Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs — you get the idea). These are not people who can be dismissed as “climate deniers.”

Shafiee and Schrag correctly recognize that the cost of producing hydrogen from water is just a piece, and possibly a small piece, of the cost of getting useful hydrogen to a consumer at point of use. They criticize green hydrogen enthusiasts for paying insufficient attention to other costs, and particularly to the costs of “storage and distribution”:

Hydrogen generated via electrolysis using renewable energy (green hydrogen) has gained prominence as a potential strategy in decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors of the economy, in which electrification is technically challenging or prohibitively expensive. Many governments have set policy targets and, in some cases, financial incentives for green hydrogen production, with the expectation that production costs will fall rapidly in the coming decades, providing low-cost carbon abatement opportunities across many sectors. Yet, many recent analyses do not consider the storage and distribution costs of delivering green hydrogen to different sectors or how these costs may vary across end uses.

So Shafiee and Schrag set out to correct those deficiencies. To their credit, S&S have figured out that the costs of distribution and storage infrastructure are highly dependent on how intensely that infrastructure is used. (As far as I can determine, not one of the thousands of people in the vast New York energy regulatory bureaucracies has yet figured out this simple principle.) The more often the storage gets cycled, the lower the charge for each unit of energy stored and then used. S&S note that some sectors, particularly industries like petrochemicals and steel, can cycle hydrogen storage many times per month, thus driving down costs. Unfortunately, the same does not apply to the power sector:

Although low costs of hydrogen storage and distribution (<$1/kgH2) are possible through economies of scale, this requires high utilization of storage and distribution infrastructure, which is not applicable to all end-use sectors. If storage and distribution infrastructure is used at a low rate, costs increase significantly. Salt cavern storage costs increase from less than $0.50/kgH2 to $6/kgH2, on average, if stores are cycled fewer than 10 times per year, for example, in the context of seasonal changes in demand (e.g., heating or electricity generation).

That’s right: hydrogen produced and stored for purposes of home heating only gets cycled once per year at most. To understand the significance of the costs cited, recall that the energy-equivalence conversion factor from $/kgH2 to $/MMBTU (the units in which natural gas prices are customarily quoted) is 8. $6/kgH2 converts to $48/MMBTU. And that’s just for the intra-year storage. Meanwhile, the current price for Henry Hub natural gas is $3.06/MMBTU, and most of it does not need to be stored for any significant period because it gets produced roughly as needed to meet demand.

So kudos to S&S for figuring out that cost of storage for hydrogen is a big and unrecognized issue. But unfortunately, they only go as far as considering intra-year storage. There is also a huge issue of multi-year storage if green hydrogen is to become the backup for a grid powered mostly by wind and sun. In a post on September 28, 2023, I covered a Report then just out from Britain’s Royal Society dealing with issues of long-term energy storage to back up wind and solar generators. The Royal Society had collected weather data for Britain for some 37 years, which had revealed that there are worst-case wind and sun “droughts,” comparable to rain droughts, that may occur only once every 20 years or more. A storage solution to back up wind and solar electricity generation without fossil fuel back-up needs to cover these worst-case droughts.

The Royal Society Report includes the following graph of potentially needed withdrawals from storage to cover these worst case droughts: 

Editor's Note: There's a chart here I can't properly reproduce, please follow the link to the original article. RK

 The graph shows that of the storage needed for full back-up over the 37 year period of data, fully half would only have been called on twice, and about a quarter would only have been called on once. Perhaps S&S should go back to their laptops to figure out how much salt cavern storage costs per unit of energy stored when it only gets called on once in 37 years. If storage that gets cycled once per year costs $6/kgH2, does storage that gets cycled once per 37 years cost $222/kgH2? The blended cost — between the storage that gets cycled once per year and the rarely-used part that gets cycled only once every 10 or 20 or even 37 years — would look to be around $100/kgH2, equivalent to $800/MMBTU of natural gas. That’s more than 250 times the current price of natural gas, and of course is only the cost of storage. The cost of actually producing the hydrogen would be additional.

I understand that there are people moving forward on setting up some of this hydrogen infrastructure, funded with government subsidies. It’s almost impossible to imagine how much subsidies it would take to make such a system fully functional. It will never happen.

FEMA Foolishness and Moral Hazard

October 20, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

With hurricane season (hopefully) coming to a close, this is a good opportunity to share this video from John Stossel about the absurdity of government-subsidized insurance in flood-prone areas.

Kudos to Rand Paul for addressing this issue. It’s a textbook case of “moral hazard” when government rewards people for making imprudent choices.

 

Heck, even Crazy Bernie understands that these subsidies are misguided (though I wonder whether he would be on the right side if Vermont had lots of flood plains, just as I wonder whether Sen. Kennedy would be bad on the issue if he was from Vermont).

Public Choice in action!

The left-leaning Washington Post also understands there’s a problem. Here are some excerpts from a new editorial.

Hurricane Helene likely caused more than $30 billion worth of damage. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton inflicted almost $50 billion more. …Who pays for all of this? …Because private home insurers generally find this sector of the business unprofitable, the federal National Flood Insurance Program shoulders the burden of providing homeowners inundation coverage — and it has problems. The NFIP is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency…

The program provides nearly $1.3 trillion in coverage to more than 5 million policyholders. It’s funded by the premiums collected from policyholders but borrows from the U.S. treasury when claims it’s obligated to pay outpace revenue, as is often the case. …

And yet Congress has made no fundamental reforms to the program since its inception nearly six decades ago. That cannot continue. …Moral hazard took hold…as developers and other real estate interests gamed the system to suppress premiums and permit building in low-lying areas and beachfronts exposed to storms. …

Heavily lobbied by the interested industries, Congress has taken little action to rectify these long-standing issues, which have been festering for decades. …The one attempt at genuine reform in recent history — the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 — would have ended subsidized rates for second homes and properties that repeatedly flooded. After Hurricane Sandy, however, coastal-state representatives reversed even these modest improvements. …

It’s simply unfair to ask the entire population to provide deep subsidies for properties that, by definition, only a portion of Americans can occupy and enjoy.

I’ve only said this a handful of times, but the Washington Post is correct.

Federal flood insurance is a way for some rich people to shift costs on to the rest of us. And it’s a way for insurance companies to shift their risks on to taxpayers.

The entire programs should be eliminated. Though, like Rand Paul, I’m willing to start by getting rid of the subsidies for rich people’s vacation homes.

P.S. The government also subsidizes insurance in areas susceptible to volcano damage.

Notice to My Readers

Good morning everyone.  Last week I posted my weekly, This is The Week That Was, with my commentary and a list of articles worth reading.  This is a Blogger site, and Blogger owns all blogs, and occasionally my personal censor at Blogger decides one of my posts fails to meet their "community standards", a catchall phrase that allows for censorship abuses, and deletes the post.  

They've done that with my that week's TWTW.

Every time they pull this censorship stunt I've protested that action, and when I do that I eventually win, but there have been times when it took weeks for them to restore a post....and I kept protesting.   I've republished it in Nuf Ced.   I'll keep you updated.

RK

P&D and The Week That Was

Truth is the Sublime Convergence of History and Reality

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De Omnibus Dubitandum, (Everything is to be questioned!)

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This Link will take you to My Commentaries.  This Link will take you to My Commentaries by topic.  This Link will take you to My Global Warming Commentaries 

By Rich Kozlovich

 

Well, this week has been profound.  The UN, the Biden nitwits, and Europe all demand Israel declare a cease fire, not Hamas, Hezhollah, or Iran, only Israel, and in effect declare an national suicide.  Netanyahu has in effect told them to shove it up their noses and has taken out another radical Muslim leader.   Quoting Andrea Widburg of American Thinker:

After Harris and Biden insisted that Israel stay out of Rafah in Gaza and that Israel enter into a ceasefire that would leave the hostages captured and allow Hamas to rearm, Israel did something different: It continued its war, and it killed Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the sadistic attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. It was an extraordinary success, and Kamala was forced to go on air and alienate her base by praising Israel’s actions and its right to exist.

There's a lot of talk none of that matters because others will take his place, but think about this.  This guy, who allegedly as a Muslim loves death, was escaping to avoid what he loved.  Imagine that.   I think it's interesting these guys who demand sacrifice are always trying to avoid it. Sinwar and Che, both monsters and cowards trying to escape in order to save their own miserable lives at the end.  Killing all these Hezbollah and Hamas leaders is having a massive effect on both those movements, and anyone who claims otherwise is delusional.

 

There's been a big turn around this week with the Pravda media, they're finally admitting Kamala's a really stinko candidate.  Who should the nation thank for that?  Joe Biden!  I'm calling this Biden's Revenge.  Revenge for the Obama/Pelosi/Schumer cartel pushing him out as the Democrat candidate, and when dropping out he endorsed Kamala, and that handed Kamala the spot, without winning one Democrat primary.  She was appointed by the elites, albeit very reluctantly, and not elected by the Democrat party.  Joe was the one elected by the Democrat party via the primaries, and then he stuck back at them with Kamala.

The alternative media has known this all along, and said so, and has published so many articles, not only about what a bad candidate she is, but what a terrible human being she is, and virtually everything she does confirms all that in people's minds.  So, now the media's polls, all of which are always rigged, showing Kamala doing well, have stalled, or reversed, and the media is "into meltdown mode". 

We’re now seeing thought pieces and columns about why Kamala Harris is failing, with the usual anti-Trump tropes sprinkled in as a coping mechanism. If they’re going to endure a second term of Donald Trump in the White House, they might as well hurl extreme hyperbole about the man. They seem to know that a) Kamala’s momentum has stalled, and b) they’re perplexed about why that’s the case. 

Yet, there’s also acceptance that Kamala did a poor job defining herself to the electorate, allowing Trump’s campaign to do that, which is usually an election-killing move. Her inability to do that and set herself apart from the Biden White House is killing her, along with her elite ineptitude and social awkwardness. These were the two top items; some were relatively easy, and she bungled them. It’s now too late to turn this around....

Well, I disagree that Kamala allowed Trump to define her.   I think Kamala identified herself clearly, and America sees it, and didn't like what they see.   She's defined by "her elite ineptitude and social awkwardness", doubling down on illegal immigration, antisemitism, support of terrorists, race baiting, unbridled abortion, more power to the deep state, end of free speech, more spending, more borrowing, more taxes, more regulations, all of which would be imposed on the nation by a lazy, nasty, not all that bright woman who if elected would be by voter fraud so massive it would make Biden's victory look legitimate, surrounded by, and controlled by, the same corrupt leftist cabal already in place making all the decisions.   Please take a look at my two Cartoon Roundup pieces,Cartoon Roundup: Dear Kamala, and Cartoon Roundup: Kamala the Queen of Change.

Trump is merely utilizing that definition, and the Pravda media hates it, hates Trump, and are spewing out any and all invectives they can dream up.

CNN, the electronic media's equivalent of supermarket tabloids, and the Soviet Union's Pravda, the propaganda wing for the left is dying, slashing salaries, and even they're acknowledging:

Donald Trump has never polled better or been more popular heading into the final weeks of the 2024 election. The panic is real among Democrats because everything is coming out of the woodwork. From reports about phantom boos at the Al Smith Dinner to Kamala Harris trying to claim that Trump’s mental health is in decline—the desperation is setting in, and it's ugly. At the same time, Democrats must do something because the ‘black woman’ card isn’t working, another sign that voters aren’t that stupid. Black woman or not, if this person comes off as a cackling, unqualified, and mentally challenged clown, they’re either voting for Trump or staying home. 

Let's try and get this right, once, please, just once!  If the polls are showing Kamala down a point or two, you need to add between five and ten more points, because all these polls are rigged, and like old tennis shoes, they stink, and the Pravda media knows it.  That's why they're really in a snit. 

While Obama and his ilk managed to put on a mask of balance to fool the nation, and I include the Bush/McCain/Romney crowd in that mix, Kamala can't.  The left's base is so radical they're demanding their leaders openly disavow the United States, and all the traditional values that made America great, and in point of fact, Kamala is the Democrat party.  A party with old leaders who are now being disavowed, and young leaders who are so radically un-American and fundamentally stupid they have no bench. 

Lots of good stuff this week, and I can honestly say I will really be glad when this election is over, albeit, I have serious misgivings about whether or not the massive voter fraud I see developing will determine the outcome.  

This week I'm offering six pieces of my own, and twenty six by others, along with the four permanent links, and  here's John Droz, Jr's, Media Balance Newsletter (October 30, 2024) .

My Commentaries

1. The Kamala Quality
2. My Gazette: Media Collapse and Corruption Part IV
3. An Updated Analysis of the 2024 Senate Race
4. Death to America Isn't Just an Islamic Chant, It's The Democrat Party Agenda
5. Cartoon Roundup: Dear Kamala,
6. Cartoon Roundup: Kamala the Queen of Change

Commentaries

1. Election 2024: Kamala to Jews: “Over Your dead bodies!” Deep state to Trump & maga: “Yours too!”  By Thomas Budds
2. From the Back Forty: Harris in the Heartland By Sarah Cowgill
3. Merrick Garland’s Long History with Barack Obama By Susan Daniels
4. Family Feud: Media Zeroes In on White House Warfare By Leesa K. Donner
5. Kamala’s Existential Crisis: Minority Voters Edging Toward Trump By Tim Donner
6. Critically Thinking about Experience By John Droz, Jr.
7. FBI Fixed Massively Underreported Crime Stats – And Told Nobody By James Fite
8. The Issue is the Revolution By Daniel Greenfield
9. Kamala’s Racism  By Daniel Greenfield
10. Only Tyrants Fear Free Speech  By Daniel Greenfield
11. The 2024 Election Will Be Very Different From The Election In 2020 By Robin Itzler
12. Kalama's Joy Campaign Strategy? I Think We Can Say We're "Over" Joyed Now! By Robin Itzler
13. Campaign 2024: Here's the Way It Is! By Robin Itzler
14. Are We Now A Radical Socialist Nation? - or - Is the Tide Turning to Freedom? By Robin Itzler
15. Robin Itzler's Points to Ponder By Robin Itzler
16. The Most Unserious Presidential Candidate Of All Time? By Francis Menton
17. More DOJ And FBI Corruption By Francis Menton
18. More Evidence for the “Washington Consensus” By Dan Mitchell
19. EFW 2024: Continuing Deterioration in Global Economic Liberty By Dan Mitchell
20. America’s Best and Worst Governors By Dan Mitchell
21. Defending (One Version of) Class Warfare By Dan Mitchell
22. Obamacare: Still a Failure By Dan Mitchell
23. Trump Says ‘Enemy From Within’ Threatens National Security By Dave Patterson
24. The US Air Force Is Doing Some RearrangingBy Dave Patterson
25. No Happy Ending By Rob Pue
26. Mitt Romney Still Believes He Can Rebuild the Pre-2016 GOP By Joe Schaeffer

Permanent Links

1. 45 Communist Goals to Destroy America as Listed in the 1963 Congressional Record
2. My Seven Rules of Geopolitics
3. The John Boyd Legion of Honor
   
4. An Analysis: Senate Race 2024 and More

Constant as the North Star

You know that voice in your head that keeps you from saying the things you shouldn't say?  Yeah, well, I don't have that!    We need to question everything because everything we're told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality!  Much of what we're told does not!