Ron Arnold: Tracking Green

Earth Island Institute
300 Broadway, Suite 28
San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: (415) 788-3666 Fax: (415) 788-7324
 E-mail: ellenm@earthisland.org
Web Site: www.earthisland.org
EIN: 94-2889684 Founded: 1982
 Exempt since: 1984

Self-Description: EII grows environmental leadership by providing support to more than 40 citizen-led projects around the world dedicated to protecting the Earth's health; work includes marine mammal protection, inner-city environmental leadership, and habitat protection. Earth Island Institute (EII) was founded in 1982 by veteran environmentalist David R. Brower (1912 - 2000) to encourage the efforts of creative individuals on critical ecological issues. EII supports diverse new initiatives and provides a stable base for on-going projects. This network of projects shares central resources and benefits from the synergetic exchange of experience, ideas, and energy. EII has been widely recognized for its unique organizational model that "reduces, reuses, and recycles" resources, freeing individual projects to communicate with their constituencies and to respond quickly to evolving environmental and social justice challenges. Earth Island continues its pursuit of David Brower's ideal of Global CPR -- conservation, preservation, and restoration for planet Earth.

Actual: Incubator for dozens of anti-free enterprise projects worldwide.

Background: EII is the fiscal sponsor of more than forty environmental campaigns and projects. It publishes a high-profile quarterly journal of activist propaganda, and operates other programs to recruit environmental activists, particularly children.

Earth Island operates on a business model they call Network Services (EINS), which provides fiscal sponsorship, resources, training, technical assistance, and peer relationships to environmental activists looking for an organizational home and institutional leverage for their work. EINS is responsible for Earth Island's basic administration and financial management. EINS also provides direct support to EII projects through assistance with planning, public outreach, information and communication technology, legal guidance and fundraising. This strengthens the capacity of each project to build attack campaigns, create synergy between activists working on similar topics, and allow project directors to focus their energy on their campaigns and programs.

In turn, those projects help support Earth Island with a standard nine percent administrative fee on project revenue, reflecting their share of the overall cost of providing these programs and services.

Federal funding is subject to a 15 percent fee. Large projects (those with budgets more than $500,000/year) are sometimes eligible for a reduction in administrative fees.

In addition, all projects are asked to sign a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to follow EII policies and procedures and which defines the terms of project sponsorship.

How Earth Island Incubator Sponsorship Works

 

......To Read More....

Eight Republican Senators Propose to Expand Obamacare

By Jeffrey H. Anderson
                                                                                    

While waiting for a chance to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a conservative alternative, there are right ways and wrong ways to address its 2,400 pages of shortcomings. The right way was recently demonstrated by a group of five Republican senators, who proposed a bill to offer millions of Americans an escape from Obamacare's unprecedented and unconstitutional (despite the opinions of five justices) individual mandate. The wrong way was recently demonstrated by a group of eight Republican senators, who proposed a bill to expand the reach of Obamacare's direct outlays to insurance companies........Read more

My Take - As  you read this you will find there's five here with one plan, another ten there with a different take, and eight who are lost in the fever swamps.  And people wonder why they call Republicans the dumb party,.....and Portman has joined the ranks of the Galactically Stupid.

Through the Gateway: Germanium – Semiconductor of the Future?

Sandra Wirtz at American Resources Policy Network

Our first Zinc co-product, Germanium, is a silvery metalloid. According to USGS, “in nature, it never exists as the native metal in nature” and “is rarely found in commercial quantities in the few minerals in which it is an essential component.” That said, the “most commercially important germanium-bearing ore deposits are zinc or lead-zinc deposits formed at low temperature.” Discovered [...] The post Through the Gateway: Germanium – Semiconductor of the Future? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network......To Read More..... 

 

 

With solar storm in progress, regional impact forecasts set to begin

Anthony Watts

According to NASA’s Spaceweather.com, a G1-class geomagnetic storm is ringing Earth’s poles on Sept. 29th as a high-speed (600+ km/s) stream of solar wind continues to buffet our planet’s magnetic field. While this particular storm isn’t expected to do more than produce spectacular Auroras and perhaps cause some minor power grid fluctuations, knowing what impacts a stronger solar storm could have is very beneficial to society. A new solar impact model that NOAA will implement on Saturday should help determine what areas of Earth would be most affected.....To Read More....

‘State of Fear’ by Michael Crichton Could Be the ‘1984’ of Climate Alarmism

Guest Blogger / 7 hours ago
September 29, 2016

Revived today the best novel on “global warming” could be explosive.

Guest essay by Walter Donway

I guess that if I discovered “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton eleven years after its publication in 2004–reading it last summer with indsecribable surprise and joy–you can tolerate a a year-old review.
This book could be the 1984 of “Big Climate Alarmism.” After George Orwell took on “doublespeak,” people never listened to political rhetoric in the same way. Whatever you think of the controversial “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand, do you think arguments for the “greed” of businessmen and the moral loftiness of statism will ever be heard the same way? .....To Read More....

Another Orwellian Moment: Liberals rejoice over legalization of child prostitution in California

Basically a victimless crime, right?

By Ed Straker

Social justice warriors everywhere rejoiced at the news that California has decriminalized, or effectively legalized, child prostitution.   After all, prostitution is basically a victimless crime, right? And progressives have spoken loudly about emptying jails of "non-violent" offenders.  What could be more non-violent than the lifestyle of an underage sex worker? .........Legalization will also help young people get jobs.  Pimps are reasonable economic actors just like everyone else.  When they see that underage sex workers are not being prosecuted while adult ones are, they will be more likely to hire children as prostitutes, radically reducing the teen unemployment rate (and maybe even the pre-teen unemployment rate as well!).  Couple that with California's great minimum wage laws, and children will finally earn an honest hourly wage for an honest hour's labor.

Perhaps in time they can even unionize and get group benefits, like a good dental plan......

Speaking seriously...liberals claim that by decriminalizing child prostitution, they are trying not to "penalize" the "victims"; but if you tell the "victims" that there are no consequences for their actions, guess what: you're going to have a lot more victims.  This is more about creeping legalization of prostitution – all sorts of prostitution, for everyone – than it is about "helping the children."..... More

Notwithstanding the New Left-Wing Rhetorical Strategy, Higher Taxes and Bigger Government Is Not a Recipe for Growth and Development

September 29, 2016 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I must be perversely masochistic because I have the strange habit of reading reports issued by international bureaucracies such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But one tiny silver lining to this dark cloud is that it’s given me an opportunity to notice how these groups have settled on a common strategy of urging higher taxes for the ostensible purpose of promoting growth and development.

Seriously, this is their argument, though they always rely on euphemisms when asserting that politicians should get more money to spend.

• The OECD, for instance, has written that “Increased domestic resource mobilisation is widely accepted as crucial for countries to successfully meet the challenges of development and achieve higher living standards for their people.”
• The Paris-based bureaucrats of the OECD also asserted that “now is the time to consider reforms that generate long-term, stable resources for governments to finance development.”
• The IMF is banging on this drum as well, with news reports quoting the organization’s top bureaucrat stating that “…economies need to strengthen their fiscal frameworks…by boosting…sources of revenues.” while also reporting that “The IMF chief said taxation allows governments to mobilize their revenues.”
• And the UN, which has “…called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year” routinely categorizes such money grabs as “financing for development.”

As you can see, these bureaucracies are singing from the same hymnal, but it’s a new version.
In the past, the left agitated for higher taxes simply in hopes for having more redistribution.
And they’ve urged higher taxes because of spite and hostility against those with high incomes.
Some folks on the left also have supported higher taxes on the theory that the economy’s performance is boosted when deficits are smaller.

But now, they are advocating higher taxes (oops, excuse me, I mean they are urging “resource mobilization” to generate “stable resources” so there can be “financing for development” in order to “strengthen fiscal frameworks”) on the theory that bigger government is the way to get more growth.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn, however, that these reports from international bureaucracies never provide any evidence for this novel hypothesis. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The null set.

They simply assert that governments will be able to make presumably wonderful growth-generating “investments” if politicians can squeeze more money from the private sector.

And I strongly suspect that this absence of evidence is deliberate. Simply stated, international bureaucracies are willing to produce shoddy research (just look at what the IMF and OECD wrote about the relationship between growth and inequality), but there’s a limit to how far data can be tortured and manipulated.

Especially when there’s so much evidence from real scholars that economic performance is weakened when government gets bigger.

Not to mention that most sentient beings can look around the world and look at the moribund economies of nations with large governments (such as France, Italy, and Greece) and compare them with the better performance of places with smaller government (such as Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Singapore).

But if you read the aforementioned reports from the international bureaucracies, you’ll notice that some of them focus on getting more growth in poor nations.

Perhaps, some statists might argue, government is big enough in Europe, but not big enough in poorer regions such as sub-Saharan Africa.

So let’s look at the numbers. Is it true that governments in the developing world don’t have enough money to provide core public goods?

The answer is no.

But before sharing those numbers, let’s look at some historical data. A few years ago, I shared some research demonstrating that countries in North America and Western Europe became rich in the 1800s and early 1900s when the burden of government spending was very modest.

One would logically conclude from this data that today’s poor nations should copy that approach.
Yet here’s the data from the International Monetary Fund on government expenditures in various poor regions of the world. As you can see, the burden of government spending in these areas is two or three times larger than it was in America and other nations that when they made the move from agricultural poverty to middle class prosperity.

 

The bottom line is that small government and free markets is the recipe for growth and prosperity in all nations.

Just don’t expect international bureaucracies to share that recipe since one of the obvious conclusions is that we therefore don’t need parasitical bodies like the IMF, OECD, World Bank, and UN.

P.S. Unsurprisingly, Hillary Clinton also has adopted the mantra of higher-taxes → bigger government → more growth.

Soviet Parallels

By Jim Beers

 

It has been twelve days since Dahir Ahmed Adan stabbed and slashed 10 people in a St. Cloud mall; and our obsequious FBI Director says the mountain of evidence and credit from ISIS “isn’t dispositive for us” and thus you title your report “Extremism motivated man who stabbed 10 at mall”.  “Extremism”, do you really think we are so dumb?

 

Like reporting the race (something we must all report on government documents or to receive race-based government benefits) of crime perpetrators or even crimes the government feels we shouldn’t be aware of; newspapers and TV are complicit in propagandizing the public shamelessly for government favor.

 

Today’s media and the current rulers (in this case Comey, Lynch and the President) are reminiscent of Khrushchev and his aides in the old Soviet joke:
 

"Khrushchev, surrounded by his aides and bodyguards, surveys an art exhibition. "What the hell is this green circle with yellow spots all over?" he asked. His aide answered, "This painting, comrade Khrushchev, depicts our heroic peasants fighting for the fulfillment of the plan to produce two hundred million tons of grain.” "Ah-h… And what is this black triangle with red strips?" ”This painting shows our heroic industrial workers in a factory." "And what is this fat (‘donkey’) with ears?” "Comrade Khrushchev, this is not a painting, this is a mirror.”

You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to:   jimbeers7@comcast.net

Obama's Refugee Screening Default

By Rachel Ehrenfeld @ American Thinker and ACD

One hot-button issue in the first Presidential debate will be the Syrian and other refugees that are allowed into the country.

The vetting process of asylum seekers for resettlement in the United States usually takes between 18 to 24 months. But to meet President Obama's goal of bringing in "at least 10,000" more Syrian refugees by the end of 2016, the process was cut to 3 months. And on August 29, White House spokesman Josh Earnest announced, "this goal that was met a month ahead of schedule."

Following harsh criticism by the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that radical Muslims are allowed into the country, and statements by intelligence and law enforcement officials agencies that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to verify the information provided by the Syrian applicants, the White House defended Obama's decision, saying: the administration succeeded in mobilizing the necessary "resources both within the intelligence community, within the Department of Homeland Security, to do things, like deploy more officers to conduct interviews." Such vetting, according to Earnest, "involves collecting biometric info, doing in-person interviews, doing background checks, running their info through a variety of national security and international databases."

But according to the regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Gina Kassem, a refugee resettlement center, which opened last February in Amman, Jordan, interviews some 600 refugees each day. And to achieve the goal set by Obama, the Center does not exclude anyone or "look for families with certain education background, language skills or other socio-economic factors [or] cut family sizes."

The vetting process, which according to Earnest usually takes "quite a bit of time," has been shortened to meet Obama's demands. Considering the fact that background information on Syrian refugees is at best unreliable, how can a thorough screening be accomplished in just three months?

Nonetheless, Hillary declared that halting the admission of refugees from Syria and other countries afflicted by Islamist terrorism until a reliable vetting system is found, as Trump proposes, is a "cynical ploy." Moreover, to justify her position, she and her supporters are telling the American people that there is no proven link between immigration and terrorism. To the contrary, they argue, "migrants from terrorist-prone states moving to another country are an important vehicle through which terrorism does diffuse." On top of this, they claim, "immigrant inflows per se actually lead to a lower level of terrorist attacks."

One important caveat to these claims is that the much-cited report looked at migration trends between 1970 and 2000, before the al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. In addition to killing thousands of innocent civilians on U.S. soil, they showed the U.S. is vulnerable. This was used to propagate radical Islamic ideologies under the guise of "Political Islam" (an oxymoron) among Muslim communities everywhere. Imams and Muslim organizations, mostly affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, have launched propaganda to stop assimilation into Western societies and to assert their social/political and economic presence by demanding the imposition of Islamic law (sharia), as well as by adopting newly made-up symbolic traditions, such as the hijab (headscarf) for women.

In addition, Muslims were called to advance their efforts in proselytizing Westerners to Islam (Dawah). The purpose of these efforts is to weaken host-countries' Western values from within, and abuse democratic political systems to gain power until one day, host country into "an Islamic democracy." Jihad/terrorism is encouraged to reinforce fear and quiescence among the infidels. Pres. Obama and his hopeful successor, Hillary Clinton, are bringing in and proposing a dramatic increase of thousands of poorly vetted refugees, for resettlement in the U.S.

Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent a letter to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, stating his state is "withdrawing from the Obama administration's refugee resettlement program" on Jan. 31, 2017. "While many refugees pose no danger, some pose grave danger, like the Iraqi refugee with ties to ISIS who was arrested earlier this year after he plotted to set off bombs at two malls in Houston," said the Gov. He went on to explain that because "the federal government lacks the capability or the will to distinguish the dangerous from the harmless, and Texas will not be an accomplice to such dereliction of duty to the American people. Therefore, Texas will withdraw from the refugee resettlement program." He concluded his letter, strongly urging "the federal government to completely overhaul a broken and flawed refugee program that increasingly risks American lives."

But how is it possible to distinguish who is dangerous and who is not? How can we recognize the presence of a hostile intent of even documented refugees, immigrants or tourists to this country - especially sympathizers of radical Islamic terrorist entities from Muslim countries, at the time they apply to or enter the country?

Looking for possible solutions, we looked at a variety of profiling and detection technologies. The one that stood out is the Israeli Suspect Detection Systems which seems to offer the much-needed screening to detect hostile intent. It is already used in some 15 countries, but not by the U.S. government.

In 2006, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security helped fund the development of the SDS. But when its prototype was ready in 2008, DHS declined to use it.

Why? According to Shabtai Shoval, the Co-Founder of Suspect Detection Systems Inc., DHS claimed that screening to detect hostile intention "would constitute an intrusion on the privacy of those screened by the system."

According to the company's website, the SDS, an automated interviewing and interrogation system that has both mobile and Kiosk applications. It allows the screening of a large number of people and "does not require operator training. One operator can handle simultaneously ten stations. It has a central management and database system that allows storing all tests results, analysis, and data mining, and is deployed and integrated with governmental agencies." The SDS uses an automated interviewing decision-making system with varying stimuli, which is "adaptable to a variety of different questioning contexts, different cultures, and languages. The examination lasts 5 minutes when there are no indications of harmful intent, and 7 minutes to ascertain it (with only 4% false positive, and 10% false negative).

With the growing pressure to resettle refugees, any system with proven capability to identify hostile intent - thus lowering the risk of admitting jihad-sympathizers to the country - should be used to best guarantee that those allowed in have no immediate intention to kill Americans in the name of Allah.

*The article was published in the American Thinker, on September 26, 2016.

 

 

Who is guarding the (dictatorial) guards?   “Hillary Clinton is incredibly lucky. Just imagine FBI Director James Comey’s dilemma if he couldn’t use the “no intent to violate the law” excuse.” – Paul Driessen Continue reading Who is guarding the (dictatorial) guards? →

• Kerry – Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS

 

Defeating The Threat of "Renewable" Energy

By John Droz Jr., Physicist and Citizen Advocate

I was asked to speak as a NY town board meeting this week. They were quite interested in how to best protect their community from the threat of a proposed wind project. This is a condensed version of what I said…

Since an industrial wind project is something you may have to live with for 20± years, it seems wise to carefully, objectively, and thoroughly investigate this matter, ahead of time…

After working with 100± communities throughout the US, my conclusion is that your absolute best and first line of defense, is a well-written, protective set of wind energy regulations.

The focus of these regulations should be to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community.

These regulations can be in a stand-alone law, or part of a more comprehensive zoning document. (Where they appear is significantly less important than their content.)

Note that writing these regulations is not about excluding wind energy development — but rather it’s about protecting the citizens, small businesses, the economy, the military, and the ecosystems of your community.

So, how do you go about creating proper wind energy regulations? Well, you have two very different choices…

1 - Option One is to figure out what needs to be done, on your own.

Since this is an extremely complex technical matter (with wide-spread ramifications), you’ll need to find the following local people: physicist, electrical engineer, civil engineer, acoustical engineer, physician, financial PhD, hydro-geologist, ecologist, bat expert, ornithologist, EMF expert, real estate appraiser, and last but not least, a technically competent lawyer. That would be your team.

In addition, each of those local people need:

a) to have an interest in this matter,
b) to be supportive of citizen rights, and
c) to have the time available to assist the community.

After you’ve collected these experts (that meet those three qualifications), make sure to also allow for at least a year to do research, to have multiple meetings, etc., etc.

The fundamental question is: do you have all those resources in your community, and the time?

If you are missing any of those experts (or don’t have the time), the wind regulations that result will likely leave you not properly protected, and very vulnerable to a wind project getting built…

2 - Option Two is to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before you.

Many are not be aware of it, but some 250 communities in the US have had to deal with industrial wind energy. Every case is different, but a few were fortunate enough to have the necessary cross-section of experts living nearby. Some were proactive, so they had the luxury and time to do more research. Etc.

In any case, in every one of the 250± other communities, there are lessons to be learned — both what to do, and what not to do. One of my beliefs is that it rarely makes sense to reinvent the wheel — and particularly not in a complex technical matter like industrial wind energy.

That’s the point of my free citizen advocacy service, and my website (WiseEnergy.org), and my monthly Newsletter (which now has some 10,000 readers). All of these are intended to sort out, and then pass on to you, the best ideas out there.

As we announced several months ago, to help those who want to go the Option Two route, we are advocating a model local wind law. (The explanation and supporting data behind it is found on the Key Documents page of our website.)

When all is said and done, it’s your community — so it’s your call how to deal with any proposed wind project.

We’ve simply tried to make it easier to be successful in dealing with this extraordinary challenge — by giving you the Science perspective, and by sharing with you some of the wind energy experiences of numerous other communities.

Let me know any questions you have, or suggestions to improve our services.

Blackouts Down Under: South Australia Pays The Price For Heavy Reliance On Renewable Energy

Blackouts Down Under: South Australia Pays The Price For

Heavy Reliance On Renewable Energy

(Source: Getty)
 

In an unprecedented development, the state of South Australia was cut-off from the national electricity network. Wednesday’s event will trigger renewed debate over the state’s heavy reliance on renewable energy which has forced the closure of uncompetitive power stations, putting the electricity network in South Australia under stress. Earlier this week, the Grattan Institute warned that South Australia’s high reliance on renewable energy sources left it exposed to disruptions. It pointed to the fact that while the renewable energy target had encouraged the development of wind and solar generation, it had the potential to undermine supply security at a reasonable price, because it forced the closure of inefficient power stations without encouraging the construction of the necessary new generation supply sources. --Brian Robins, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 2016

Malcolm Turnbull has blasted state Labor governments for setting aggressive and unrealistic renewable energy targets. A statewide blackout in South Australia, triggered by ferocious storms on Wednesday that damaged one of its power stations and 20 transmission towers, has set off a debate about renewable energy. The prime minister said energy security must be a key priority for governments. "If you are stuck in an elevator, if the lights won't go on, if your fridge is thawing out, everything in the kitchen is thawing out because the power is gone, you are not going to be concerned about the particular source of that power," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Launceston. "You want to know that the energy is secure." --Australian Associated Press, 30 September 2016

In an unprecedented development, the state of South Australia was cut-off from the national electricity network. Wednesday’s event will trigger renewed debate over the state’s heavy reliance on renewable energy which has forced the closure of uncompetitive power stations, putting the electricity network in South Australia under stress. Earlier this week, the Grattan Institute warned that South Australia’s high reliance on renewable energy sources left it exposed to disruptions. It pointed to the fact that while the renewable energy target had encouraged the development of wind and solar generation, it had the potential to undermine supply security at a reasonable price, because it forced the closure of inefficient power stations without encouraging the construction of the necessary new generation supply sources. --Brian Robins, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 2016 

Malcolm Turnbull has blasted state Labor governments for setting aggressive and unrealistic renewable energy targets. A statewide blackout in South Australia, triggered by ferocious storms on Wednesday that damaged one of its power stations and 20 transmission towers, has set off a debate about renewable energy. The prime minister said energy security must be a key priority for governments. "If you are stuck in an elevator, if the lights won't go on, if your fridge is thawing out, everything in the kitchen is thawing out because the power is gone, you are not going to be concerned about the particular source of that power," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Launceston. "You want to know that the energy is secure." --Australian Associated Press, 30 September 2016

In light of the statewide blackout in South Australia, the GWPF is warning that intermittent wind and solar energy pose a serious and growing energy security risk and threaten to undermine the reliability of electricity generation. A paper published by the GWPF two years ago (UK Energy Security: Myth and Reality) warned that the ability of the electrical grid to absorb intermittent renewable energy becomes increasingly more hazardous with scale. In fact, wind and solar power, because of the intermittent nature of the electricity generated, are the real risk to security of supply. --Global Warming Policy Forum, 30 September 2016 

The Government is facing fresh calls to overhaul its energy policy to cut costs for consumers, as new analysis claims renewables policies alone will equate to £466 a year for every UK household by 2020. The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the right-wing think tank behind the analysis, and petrochemicals giant Ineos are both also calling for the Government to scrap its unilateral UK carbon tax, which pushes up energy bills. In a paper released today, the CPS is highly critical of energy policy in general, arguing the electricity system is now “precarious” and suggesting Britain could be heading for blackouts as old coal plants close. --Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph 29 September 2016 

China has ordered major coal mines to raise thermal coal output by another 500,000 tonnes per day, the latest concerted effort by the government to boost supplies to its electric utilities ahead of the winter, sources said on Tuesday. Experts say the rapid-fire calls for output increases reflect growing panic about the unintended consequences of Beijing’s efforts to cut excess coal mining and shift the country towards using renewable energy sources. --Reuters, 28 September 2016 

Reminder: The Obama Administration today finalized groundbreaking standards that will increase fuel economy to the equivalent of 54.5 mpg for cars and light-duty trucks by Model Year 2025. In total, the Administration’s national program to improve fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions will save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the gas pump and reduce U.S. oil consumption by 12 billion barrels. “These fuel standards represent the single most important step we’ve ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said President Obama. “This historic agreement builds on the progress we’ve already made to save families money at the pump and cut our oil consumption." –-The White House, 28 August 2012 

August was the biggest month ever for U.S. gasoline consumption. Americans used a staggering 9.7 million barrels per day. The new peak comes as a surprise to many. In 2012, energy expert Daniel Yergin said, “The U.S. has already reached what we can call ‘peak demand.” Many others agreed. The U.S. Department of Energy forecast in 2012 that U.S. gasoline consumption would steadily decline for the foreseeable future. This seemed to make sense at the time. U.S. gasoline consumption had declined for five years in a row and, in 2012, was a million barrels per day below its July 2007 peak. Also in August 2012, President Obama had just announced aggressive new fuel economy standards that would push average vehicle fuel economy to 54 miles per gallon. Fast forward to 2016, and U.S. gasoline consumption has increased steadily four years in a row. We now have a new peak. --Lucas Davis, The Energy Collective, 28 September 2016 

Brought to you by Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Forum

September 28, 2016, Australia: Entire state of of South Australia Blacked out – “Unprecedented”

Editor's Note:  I've posted this in it's entirely because if there ever was a situation that shows just how insane the green movement's efforts to force the world to adopt so-called "renewable" energy this is it. RK

Robert W. Felix, 24 Comments @ Ice Age Now

Premier blames mass blackout on the fact that wind power turbines cannot run during extreme weather.

Here are a salient details:

• Storms black out the entire State.

• Catastrophic outage!” Unprecedented in Australian history!

• Royal Adelaide hospital down without backups working.

• Other hospitals and emergency services using back-up generators.  Most will be able to maintain services for at least 72 hours.

• 130,000 lightning strikes in a day

• It’s chaos everywhere.

• Some properties without water and unable to clear sewage.

• One of the most extreme weather systems in decades.

 

The premier warned that the extreme weather event is not over.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/breaking-entire-state-of-south-australia-blacked-out-catastrophic-outage-due-to-perfect-storm/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/84769346/Power-outage-grips-entire-state-of-South-Australia
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/28/05/40/south-australia-braces-for-one-of-the-most-extreme-weather-systems-in-decades

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3810852/South-Australia-hit-cyclone-according-Bureau-Meteorology.html

Thanks to Stephen Bird, Oz Steamer and Laurel for these links

• “The govt morons who SHUT DOWN and sold off the TWO massive power plants IN SA have now been really exposed as having NO backup and not enough means to supply even part of the state,” says Laurel. “The disgusting windmills are useless all over as the winds are damn near cyclonic apparently.”  “I’m worried about aged and ill friends living there ”
• Laurel continues. “One at least has a wood stove for heat and cooking. The other has nothing." 
• “What the story does not make plain is that South Australia has decided to go “all renewable” electrical power supply,” says Oz. “The Greenies got the State Government to shut down the only coal fired power station at Port Augusta, and go with Wind Turbines and (some) solar.
• “The whole problem is that in very high winds, the wind turbines have to shut down (or they fall apart),” Oz continues. “And the other source of electrical power is the inter-state link, which had some of the power lines blown down by the wind. In the Old Days, this would not have mattered too much, because the coal-fired Port Augusta Power Station could take over. Now, they have gone and shut it down, to “reduce Global Warming.”.
• “In the last few minutes, the Australian media have reported the entire South Australian mobile phone network is about to run out of emergency power supply and shut down.”

Multiculturalism: Is America Another South Africa in the Making?

By Rich Kozlovich

On September 38, 2016 Ilana Mercer posted this article, When America Becomes South Africa saying:

"Like never before, the 2016 election has been characterized by “a muscular mobilization of a race-based community, coercive control of territory and appeals by powerful charismatic leaders. What do I mean by “coercive control of territory”? Consider what would transpire if Donald Trump were to campaign “big-league” in Birmingham (Alabama), Charlotte (North Carolina), or South Los Angeles. Riots would erupt. (Incidentally, the thing where private property is invaded and looted is not called a protest.)".....The last, twice-repeated reference is out of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South-Africa.” In 2011, the book used the tragic example of post-apartheid South Africa to forewarn Americans of the effects of a shift in their country’s founding political dispensation, a shift being achieved stateside through immigration central-planning....

This trend is ominous, and it behooves us to start thinking farther, deeper and wider. 

On August 18 or 2012 Alex Newman published an article entitled, Genocide looms for white farmers, saying:

South Africa's black president sings killing songs as thousands massacred - The eyes of the world were on South Africa two decades ago as the apartheid era came to an end and Western governments helped bring the communist-backed African National Congress to power. Last month, however, when Genocide Watch chief Gregory Stanton declare that white South African farmers were facing a genocidal onslaught and that communist forces were taking over the nation, virtually nobody noticed. Few outside of South Africa paid attention either when, earlier this year, the president of South Africa began publicly singing songs advocating the murder of whites.

He goes on to note:

The silence is so deafening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t even publicly mention the problems when she was there last week. Instead, she was busy dancing, pledging billions of dollars and praising the ruling government…… Tens of thousands of whites have been murdered throughout South Africa, too, according to estimates……

Furthering this narrative he states:

Disemboweled, drowned in boiling water - Many more victims have been savagely tortured, raped, disemboweled, drowned in boiling water or worse. The horrifying evidence is available for the world to see on countless sites throughout the Internet: pictures of brutalized dead women and children – even babies.

This is the result of the "End Apartheid Now!" crusade pushed by leftists.  Where are they now?  Where is their outrage? 

Wasn't that the sign that Bill Cosby demanded the show’s producers put up on the set of The Cosby Show - End Apartheid Now! - insisting on the importance to black Americans, and that every black home would have one….or something of that nature..... and the media blasted anyone who disagreed!

Who knows, he might have been right, although as an exterminator I serviced a lot of apartments occupied by black folks in those days and I don’t remember seeing one. There may have been some, but the numbers would have been so small as to not make it a noticeable situation.

 

The problem with so many Americans is we only see our world through binoculars in reverse, and in irrational ways. We think because we live the way we do it's the way everyone should live, and everyone should have the same privileges we have, and the results will be ‘little Americas' all over the world.  Why....well it's seems obvious the reason is because we will all think alike and see the world in the same ways, and we'll act the same way. 

And this goes to both sides of the philosophical spectrum. Bush’s drive to bring democracy to the Muslim world worked so well the minute they had the right to vote they promptly voted in radical Islamist groups who promptly work to take away their right to vote. Voting and individual rights is antithetical to the Muslim faith. What does the word Islam mean?

In Arabic usage Islam implies “absolute submission, surrender and obedience that is obeying the injunctions of the ruler without objection.”

No matter what anyone says to the contrary - we need to observe reality - and what goes on in reality.

 

As for South Africa; they have the same problem that all of Africa has - corruption of leadership on a massive scale that is foundational to the African experience.

In days before the European colonization of Africa, they were ruled by tyrannical kings. That is their social foundation. They have merely returned to that which is the foundational social paradigm of their societies.

 

America is unique in the world today and for that matter in all of world history. We really believe we won’t be told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what we are taught or what we will believe. Why? Because for the first time in human history we were a society created from the bottom up.

Demanding black Africa be just like black America was irrational, because South Africa, much like the rest of the world, is a very complex society, without any national standard as to language, religion or societal structural philosophy.

 

In 1948, “National Party leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, coloured, and Indian. These groups were split further into thirteen nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.”

 

If there was ever a good reason to abandon this insanity called ‘’ South Africa is a perfect example.

 

The French Revolution was such a failure for the very reason the American Revolution as such a success. Minimal government with every man making his own decisions about life versus the French concept of central planning run by an elite, which promptly started murdering untold numbers that had done nothing to deserve having their heads cut off. There is a reason the current French government is the Fifth Republic and may be on the way to a Sixth. Central planning!

 

As for Africa….as bad as some things were under the colonial powers, it can be argued that it couldn’t have been as bad as it is now. No one in America…at least among normal people….likes the idea of anyone being declared officially inferior. It's antithetical to our very concept of existence. However, that is what goes on in much of the rest of the world all the time, especially in Africa. They do not view members of other tribes as equals. They view them as inferiors to be exploited.

As for the Muslim world - the public is finally becoming aware these leaders, and their governments, are nothing more than tribal societies with one tribe in charge, and many times made up of one of the sects of Islam who consider the other sects, who may be members of other tribes, as infidels, and can subsequently exploited.

 

Where is the media and Hollywood now?

Where are the protestors now?
Where is the Federal government now?
Where are the embargos now?
Most importantly…..Where was Bishop Desmond Tutu and his crowd?

Perhaps dancing with Hillary Clinton, who while in South Africa found time to dance but had no time to notice the atrocities against whites in South Africa.

 

Remembering this was a country that abolished slavery in 1833 I would like to ask: Did the white government of South Africa perform the atrocities that the black South African government is either perpetrating, promoting or allowing to happen now? If so….I don’t remember seeing that on the news of them main stream media at the time.  So I think we can assume it wasn’t normal or ongoing. 

 

We can argue unendingly the correctness of this, but the issue we are dealing with is this. Were the founding Fathers believers and did they subscribe to the idea that the only way this Republic could work was if America continued to be a nation of believers based on the Judaic/Christian principles that with extraordinary rights went an understood requirement for accepting extraordinary responsibilities.

Multiculturalism is antithetical to Americanism. We really need to start seeing the world as it is and the consequences of adopting insane leftist schemes and policies. Multiculturalism is based on the mistaken idea that all cultures are equal.  Only the PC crowd wants us to think all cultures are equal except the American culture, which they find inferior....at least that's what they say....... but what do they do in their lives?

 

I have some  questions.

If the American culture is so bad why are so many trying to get here - even illegally - and with the support of those who decry our culture - many of them remarkably successful in their fields!

If the American culture is so bad why is it Americans aren't flocking to get passports to live in every other country in the world, legally or otherwise? 

If American culture is so disgusting why aren't these wealthy leftist thinkers moving to Cuba or Venezuela? 

And finally.

Why is it so many prominent celebrities keep threatening to leave the country if a person they don't approve of is elected to the presidency, but after the fact still live here. 

Ever wonder what happened to all those celebrities who promised to leave the country if George W. Bush was elected president? 

• Eddie Vedder - "I'm moving to a different country if little Damien II gets elected." 
• Alec Baldwin - was never quoted directly, but reportedly made a statement to his wife Kim Basinger, who was later quoted in Focus magazine saying that Alec "might leave the country if Bush is elected president ... and then I'd probably have to go too." 
• Barbara Streisand - "I don't think you'll see me around here for at least four years." 
• Robert Altman - "If George Bush is elected president, I'm leaving for France." 
• Pierre Salinger - "If Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France." 

The outcome: 

• Eddie Vedder was "extremely disappointed", but not enough to leave the US. He did go to Hawaii, however. 
• Alec Baldwin claims that he never made the statement, but even if he did it wouldn't matter since Bush wasn't really elected, he was "selected by five judges up in Washington who voted along party lines". (He originally claimed his wife never spoke with Focus magazine, a claim which he later recanted.) 
• Barbara Streisand, who was at a White House dinner when she made the statement, claims that when she said she would not be seen "around here" that she was only referring to not being seen around the White House. 
• Robert Altman, despite being caught on film, later insisted that he was misquoted, saying "Here's what I really said. I said that if Bush gets elected, I'll move to Paris, Texas, because the state will be better off if he's out of it." 

As for Pierre Salinger - "he moved to France".  Although he passed away in 2004, I think we can still gracefully extend a thank you to Pierre.   

However, not a one of them made one bit of effort to move to Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China or anywhere else socialists are in total control of the economy or the social fabric of the nations they rule.  And make no mistake about this.  There's no waiting list for these people or the leftist black leadership to move to South Africa either.

Imagine that!

Breaking News! FBI Director Admits Cover Up of Clinton Evidence Tampering!

By Onan Coca

Earlier this week FBI Director James Comey was called to once again testify before Congress in connection to the Hillary Clinton email imbroglio. This round of questioning would focus mainly on the odd decision that the FBI made to grant immunity to five persons of interest in the email scandal. The immunity deals were odd because the FBI ended up declining to prosecute anyone for anything… even though the case was serious enough that five individuals (who all pled the 5^th Amendment under oath before Congress) were granted immunity for whatever actions they took as the email controversy unfolded......To Read More and See Video and Listen to Rep. Jordan....

Breaking News! FBI Director Admits Cover Up of Clinton Evidence Tampering!

Breaking News! FBI Director Admits Cover Up of Clinton Evidence Tampering! 

By Onan Coca

Earlier this week FBI Director James Comey was called to once again testify before Congress in connection to the Hillary Clinton email imbroglio. This round of questioning would focus mainly on the odd decision that the FBI made to grant immunity to five persons of interest in the email scandal. The immunity deals were odd because the FBI ended up declining to prosecute anyone for anything… even though the case was serious enough that five individuals (who all pled the 5^th Amendment under oath before Congress) were granted immunity for whatever actions they took as the email controversy unfolded......To Read More and See Video and Listen to Rep. Jordan....

Breaking News! FBI Director Admits Cover Up of Clinton Evidence Tampering!

By Onan Coca

Earlier this week FBI Director James Comey was called to once again testify before Congress in connection to the Hillary Clinton email imbroglio. This round of questioning would focus mainly on the odd decision that the FBI made to grant immunity to five persons of interest in the email scandal. The immunity deals were odd because the FBI ended up declining to prosecute anyone for anything… even though the case was serious enough that five individuals (who all pled the 5^th Amendment under oath before Congress) were granted immunity for whatever actions they took as the email controversy unfolded......To Read More and See Video and Listen to Rep. Jordan....

Utopia's Classes

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 15 Comments @ Sultan Knish Blog

The sort of people who set off class wars as a hobby have very particular classless societies in mind. The average left-wing revolutionary is not poor. He is a homicidal dilettante from the upper classes with a burning conviction of his own importance that he is unwilling to realize through disciplined labor. His revolution climaxes with a classless society in which he is at the very top.

Not near the top, not adjacent to the top, as he usually was before, but at the very top.

Utopia has a class system. At the top are the thinkers, the philosopher kings who develop plans based on how things ought to be and then turn them over to lesser men to actually implement. They are the priestly class of an ideological movement whose deity is politics and whose priests are politicians.

In a planned economy, they are the titans of industry and finance, they are the heads of banks and the men who move millions and billions around the board, and they are utterly unfit for the job. But they also make decisions in matters of war and science. And in all things. They measure political heresy in all things and all the activities of man are measured against their dogma and rewarded or punished.

This is the way it was in the Soviet Union or Communist China. But take a closer glance at the White House and see if you don't spot the occasional similarity.

In the middle of Utopia's class system is the middle class. This is not the middle class you are familiar with. There are no small business owners here. No one striving to make it up the ladder. Utopia's middle class is the bureaucracy, the interlinked hive mind of government and non-profits.

At the top of Utopia's class system are the philosopher-planners who issue the regulations. Or rather they offer objectives. The bureaucracy filters them through successive layers, transforming grandiose ideas into stultifying regulations and each successive layers expands them into further microcosms of unnecessary detail. This expansion of regulations also expands the bureaucracy. One feeds off the other.

Utopia has no lower class. That would be dystopian. Instead it has a client class. The client class is what used to be known as the working class. Utopia however transforms it into the welfare class.

Clienture transforms the working class into the welfare class. The destruction of the conditions under which the working class can exist forces its members either upward into the bureaucracy, a feat that is only possible for the younger generation willing to undergo the educational process, or downward into the welfare class.

The client class justifies the existence of Utopia's upper and middle class which are, in theory, dedicated to public service, to remedying the ills of an unfair society, which has been made fair by eliminating all free will and individual choice. But the client class exists to be subsidized. And its subsidies justify the subsidizing of the upper and middle classes of the planners and the bureaucrats.

This is Utopia's crisis.

Its upper class of philosopher kings expect to live like kings. They want to vacation in Aspen and New England. They want Bernie's summer home and Hillary's flat broke houses. And that does not come cheap. Utopia's middle class expects to live the way that our middle class does. And yet none of them actually produce anything. They will, in Obama and Elizabeth Warren's "You didn't build that" formula, claim that their public service makes the condition of productivity possible.

There is one problem with that. Their public service actually inhibits production. Whatever the rhetoric, they spend all their days killing the geese that lay the golden eggs. And then they are insulted when the goose doesn't recognize their contribution to her golden egg-laying.

Utopia has a series of interdependent classes that are subsidized by a productive class that is being starved out of existence. The inevitable outcome of such a system is one in which the lower classes are worked to death to subsidize its betters and the middle class is robbed by the upper class.

The left thus creates the predatory economic system it preaches against as a way of life. Its own abuses are inevitably worse than the system it replaces because it is not only exploitative, but its exploitation actively inhibits production.

Narrative-Building Has Become a Political Obsession

From terrorism to police violence, politicians and journalists feel compelled to make every fact serve a larger narrative.

 

by Jonah Goldberg

 

The most exhausting thing about our politics these days — other than the never-ending presidential election itself — is the obsession with “shaping the narrative.” By that I mean the effort to connect the dots between a selective number of facts and statistics to support one storyline about the state of the union.

 

Narrative-building is essential for almost every complicated argument because it’s the only way to get our pattern-seeking brains to discount contradictory facts and data. Trial lawyers understand this implicitly. Get the jury to buy the story, and they’ll do the heavy lifting of arranging the facts in just the right way............Read more

Liberals Want to Replace Humor with Mockery

It would be a shame if they got their way

 

by Paul Crookston

 

Despite Jimmy Fallon’s many fans and sterling reputation in show business, he faced an avalanche of criticism for treating Donald Trump as a human being in a recent interview. Though some fellow comedians came to Fallon’s defense, the backlash against him was still overwhelming. Critics accused Fallon of conducting “a softball interview” and called it “sickening,” as if his job was to grill Trump rather than entertain an audience. Apparently, they thought the bit where Fallon pulled out a clipboard and “interviewed” Trump for president was serious, and blamed the comedian for failing to properly vet him........... Read more

Where Does the Money Go?

About those government ‘investments’ . . .

 

by Kevin D. Williamson                                     

The water war in California touches everything: fish and farmers, the Endangered Species Act, political fights between the parties and within both the Democratic party and the state’s rump of a Republican party. But there is one aspect of the problem about which there is broad agreement by everyone from Senator Dianne Feinstein to conservative farmers in the San Joaquin Valley: The state needs more and better water infrastructure.

 

Question: Why doesn’t it have any?.............

 

California’s government, like the federal government and most other state and local governments, spends its money on salaries, benefits, pensions, and other forms of employee compensation. The numbers are contentious — for obvious political reasons — but it is estimated that something between half and 80 percent of California’s state and local spending ultimately goes to employee compensation. (Interesting analysis here.) That is where the money goes.............Read more

Hillary, Interrupted

She whines incessantly about something that everybody has to face. 

by Michelle Malkin

 

Whatever happened to “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar”? Whither “Girl Power”? When did Rosie the Riveter’s “We Can Do It!” give way to Hillary the Haranguer’s “We Can’t Handle It!”? It’s 2016, and the Democrats’ feminist heroine running for commander-in-chief is whinnying about being — wait for it — interrupted. Quick!

 

Prepare a complaint to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Poor, fragile, defenseless Hillary Clinton is a victim of the international human-rights crime of serial conversational obstruction.

Mainstream-media outlets (also known as the Coalition of Liberal Narrative-Benders for Hillary) howled about the unconscionable injustice after Monday’s first presidential debate. “Donald Trump Interrupted Hillary Clinton 51 Times at Debate,” moaned US Weekly, which is owned by Clinton supporter and long time Clinton donor Jann Wenner..... Read more

How Would Trump and Hillary Govern?

The president that each one would be is determined by what they believe the office means.
 

by Ben Shapiro

 

What kind of president would Donald Trump make? What kind of president would Hillary Clinton make? Those questions weren’t answered definitely during the first presidential debate, mainly because Hillary Clinton spent most of the debate trotting out old talking points while feeding Trump enough rope to hang himself from a gibbet of his own construction. But we have one basic indicator: what they think of the office itself............Read more
 

Judge blocks Election Day registration at Illinois polling places

Chicago Tribune

A federal judge Tuesday blocked Election Day voter registration at polling places in Illinois, declaring a state law allowing the practice unconstitutional because it created one set of rules for cities and another for rural areas.

Voters will still be able to register Nov. 8 and cast a ballot for president but only at a limited number of sites, including the county clerk’s office, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.
The ruling, handed down on National Voter Registration Day, is the latest front in a broader battle between Democrats led by House Speaker Michael Madigan and Republicans led by Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Democrats pushed through the same-day registration law in the lame-duck session that followed the November 2014 election, weeks before Rauner took over from then-Democratic-Gov. Pat Quinn. It was billed as a way to get more people involved in the democratic process after a trial program resulted in long lines, particularly in Chicago, where it was used at five sites by nearly 2,900 people, some who waited hours to vote.......To Read More....

El Cajon police shoot aggressive black man; protest follows

Associated Press

A black man reportedly acting erratically at a strip mall in suburban San Diego was shot and killed by police after pulling an object from his pocket, pointing it at officers and assuming a “shooting stance,” authorities said.

One of the officers tried and failed to subdue the unidentified man with a stun gun before the other officer fired several times, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis said at a late night news conference. Davis would not say what the object was, but acknowledged it was not a weapon.

Before police announced the death, dozens of protesters gathered at the shooting scene, with some claiming the man was shot with his hands raised. Police disputed that and produced a frame from cellphone video taken by a witness that appeared to show the man in the “shooting stance” as two officers approached with weapons drawn......To Read More...

Trapped: What it's like to be under siege on the highway

Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

Huddled in gridlocked cars as a roiling street protest bore upon them in the darkness, motorists pleaded with 911 operators for help in the week’s first wave of violence last Wednesday.

Scenes of chaos were described in recordings released Monday by the city of Charlotte. Starting around 1:30 a.m., calls poured in to the emergency communications center as demonstrators angered by the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott flooded onto W.T. Harris Boulevard and Interstate 85.
One of the first calls came from a woman in a Chrysler 300 stuck in traffic at Harris Boulevard and North Tryon Street when demonstrators began pounding on cars.

“I’m trapped,” she said. “They’re all in the street … Oh my God, they’re coming!”  A scream can be heard outside.......To Read More.....

National Review: Big-Government Presidential Candidates, Look at Venezuela

They could at least call for the release of political prisoners held by the Maduro regime.

 

Michael Tanner @MTannerCato
                     

Even as Americans lurch toward the conclusion of a monumentally unsatisfying election campaign, Yon Goicoechea is sitting in a Venezuelan prison for demanding the basic political rights that we take for granted. Goicoechea, who won the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2008, for organizing student opposition to the Chávez regime, was seized by Venezuelan secret police a month ago and is being held on trumped-up terrorism charges at an undisclosed location. (Most observers believe he is in a cell at the secret police headquarters in Caracas.)

 

Goicoechea joins other prominent opposition leaders, including Carlos Melo and , who are being illegally held by Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro. There is serious reason to worry about his health and safety.  .........It’s also worth keeping in mind Venezuela’s economic crisis brought on by the Chávez-Maduro regime’s relentless class warfare and government intervention in the economy.

This is a government that has managed to create shortages of everything from food to toilet paper. In the latest Index of Economic Freedom, Venezuela ranks dead last among 159 countries. If ever there was an object lesson about the follies of government economic control, it is Venezuela........Read more

Shocker: Paul Krugman Makes a Sensible and Accurate Observation about Tax Policy

September 28, 2016 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

 

I’m not the biggest fan of Paul Krugman in his role as a doctrinaire advocate of leftist policy (he used to be within the mainstream and occasionally point out the risks of government intervention in his former role as an academic economist).

It’s not just that he believes in big government. He also has an unfortunate habit of misinterpreting (the charitable explanation) data when advocating higher taxes and more spending.

• In 2015, he cherry-picked job numbers to make it seem as if Obama’s policies were producing good employment data.
• Earlier that year, Krugman asserted that America was outperforming Europe because our fiscal policy was more Keynesian, yet the data showed that the United States had bigger spending reductions and less red ink.
• In 2014, he asserted that a supposed “California comeback” in jobs somehow proved my analysis of a tax hike was wrong, yet only four states at the time had a higher unemployment rate than California.
• And here’s my favorite: In 2012, Krugman engaged in the policy version of time travel by blaming Estonia’s 2008 recession on spending cuts that took place in 2009.

As you can see, he’s not exactly a paragon of sound thinking and careful analysis.
But there must be a blue moon in the forecast because the New York Times columnist has an accurate criticism of Donald Trump’s tax plan.

Before sharing Krugman’s critique, here’s the position of the Trump campaign, which asserts that the World Trade Organization has rigged the rules against America by allowing nations to give rebates to exporters so that there is no value-added tax (VAT) on good and services sold to consumers in other nations.

…there is a more subtle tax problem pulling US corporations offshore. It relates to the unequal treatment of the US income tax system by the World Trade Organization (WTO). …While the US operates primarily on an income tax system, all of America’s major trading partners depend heavily on a “value-added tax” or VAT system. Under current rules, the WTO allows America’s trading partners to effectively create backdoor tariffs to block American exports and backdoor subsidies to penetrate US markets. Here’s how this exploitation works: VAT rates are typically between 15% and 25%. …Under WTO rules, any foreign company that manufactures domestically and exports goods to America (or elsewhere) receives a rebate on the VAT it has paid. This turns the VAT into an implicit export subsidy. At the same time, the VAT is imposed on all goods that are imported and consumed domestically so that a product exported by the US to a VAT country is subject to the VAT. This turns the VAT into an implicit tariff on US exporters over and above the US corporate income taxes they must pay. Thus, under the WTO system, American corporations suffer a “triple whammy”: foreign exports into the US market get VAT relief, US exports into foreign markets must pay the VAT, and US exporters get no relief on any US income taxes paid. The practical effect of the WTO’s unequal treatment of America’s income tax system is to give our major trading partners a 15% to 25% unfair tax advantage in international transactions.

In the wonky jargon of public finance, VATs are said to be “border adjustable.” And here’s Krugman’s caustic observation about the above argument.

I’ve been writing about Donald Trump’s claim that Mexico’s value-added tax is an unfair trade policy, which is just really bad economics. …a VAT has the same effects as a sales tax. Now, nobody thinks that sales taxes are an unfair trade practice. …Trump wasn’t saying ignorant things off the top of his head: he was saying ignorant things fed to him by his incompetent economic advisers. …Should we be reassured that Trump wasn’t actually winging it here, just taking really bad advice? Not at all.

I don’t know whether it’s fair to criticize Trump’s economic advisers (after all, are they the ones who developed this position, or were they simply told to justify what Trump was saying?), but I certainly agree with Krugman that other nations don’t gain a trade advantage simply because they have a VAT.
Here’s some of what I wrote about this issue earlier this year.

For mercantilists worried about trade deficits, “border adjustability” is seen as a positive feature. But not only are they wrong on trade, they do not understand how a VAT works. …Under current law, American goods sold in America do not pay a VAT, but neither do German-produced goods that are sold in America. Likewise, any American-produced goods sold in Germany are hit be a VAT, but so are German-produced goods. In other words, there is a level playing field. The only difference is that German politicians seize a greater share of people’s income. So what happens if America adopts a VAT? The German government continues to tax American-produced goods in Germany, just as it taxes German-produced goods sold in Germany. …In the United States, there is a similar story. There is now a tax on imports, including imports from Germany. But there is an identical tax on domestically-produced goods. And since the playing field remains level, protectionists will be disappointed. The only winners will be politicians since they have more money to spend.

If you want more information, I also discuss the trade impact of a VAT in this video.
So, yes, Krugman is right. At least on this particular issue.

Actually, he’s even right about another part of his column, when he pointed out that if a VAT is supposedly good for competitiveness, then this should give New York (with a high sales tax) an advantage over Delaware (with no sales tax). As Krugman points out, this is absurd.

…nobody thinks that sales taxes are an unfair trade practice. New York has fairly high sales taxes; Delaware has no such tax. Does anyone think that this gives New York an unfair advantage in interstate competition?

Indeed, the answer to Krugman’s rhetorical question is that lots of people recognize that Delaware has the advantage. This is why politicians in many states (especially those with punitive sales taxes) are pushing for the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act in hopes of forcing merchants in states like Delaware to become deputy tax collectors for states like New York (this would be an odious expansion of extraterritorial tax powers for state governments).

I don’t want to get all wonky, but this fight revolves around whether consumption taxes should be levied where goods and services are sold (the origin-based approach) or whether the taxes should be collected based on where the consumer lives (the destination-based approach). High-tax governments prefer the latter because they want to make it difficult for their residents to shop where the tax burden is lower.
By the way, politicians in Europe and elsewhere impose destination-based VATs for the same reason. They don’t like tax competition. So that’s yet another reason (above and beyond the fact that they are money machines for big government) to dislike the VAT.

I suspect, incidentally, that Krugman favors destination-based consumption taxes over origin-based systems, so even though he’s right about VATs and trade, he probably compensates by being wrong on an issue that really matters.