CFACT’s three “model bills” cleared a big hurdle at a recent
American Legislative Exchange Council meeting in Denver. The three bills
— designed to strengthen grid reliability, protect ratepayers, and
discourage land grabs by big companies and foreign governments – each
cleared the Environment, Energy, and Agriculture Task Force committee
with strong support and now move to final (and likely) approval. Model
bills are important as they are sent, after approval by ALEC, to
conservative and libertarian-leaning legislators in all 50 states to be
considered for submission in their legislative bodies.
Former Wisconsin legislator Frank Lasee, who crafted the three model
bills along with CFACT President Craig Rucker, was well pleased with the
outcome. “We expected there to be a little pushback on one or two of
them, and there was. But in the end, all of our bills received strong
support, and we were definitely pleased with the outcome,” said Lasee.
The first CFACT model bill was introduced by South Dakota
representative Julie Auch and titled the “Natural Asset Company
Prohibition Act”. It was designed to stop companies (some foreign,
including China) from profiting through the purchase and locking up U.S.
lands for no meaningful purpose other than to stop farming, ranching,
or resource extraction. The Securities and Exchange Commission toyed
with the idea of listing NACs on the New York Stock Exchange last fall.
However, their action created a firestorm led by the CFACT’s ally, the
American Stewards for Liberty, which forced the SEC to withdraw its
proposal. CFACT’s “Natural Asset Company Prohibition Act”, if ultimately
adopted by numerous states, will serve as a disincentive to create and
operate such NACs in important regions of the USA.
The second CFACT model bill champions the creation of a “consumer
advocate” to represent ratepayer interests at Public Service (Utility)
meetings in various states. Dubbed the Ratepayer Affordability and
Reliability Advocacy Act, this bill was introduced by Representatives
Jeanine Notter and Michael Vos of New Hampshire and received unanimous
support from ALEC attendees. Many states already have such a consumer
advocacy board, often called a CUB (Citizens Utility Board), but the
bill has become necessary because many of these CUBs have become
co-opted by climate activists who seek to promote political rather than
ratepayer interests. CFACT’s model bill focuses a consumer advocate’s
responsibility down to one purpose: To secure for utility customers the
most reliable source of electricity at the cheapest price.
The third model bill, entitled Truth in Electricity Generation
Labeling Act and introduced by Jack Colin of Utah, seeks to provide
“Truth in Labeling” to power generation facilities. This has become
important because, in many instances, renewable power facilities “sell”
themselves as being able to provide 100 MW or so of electricity but, in
actuality, only deliver about a quarter to a third of that amount in the
real world. This bill would require them — as well as nuclear, coal,
natural gas, and hydro units — to showcase not just their peak
performance capabilities but also how much of the time purchasers can
expect they will produce no output whatsoever.
In 2008, the Bologna family was murdered by an illegal alien MS-13 gang member.
San
Francisco DA Kamala Harris refused to ask for the death penalty despite
pleas from the widow because of, in her words, a “complicated analysis
that involved many issues”. But the real issue was that Kamala protected
criminals instead of victims.
Four years earlier, DA Kamala
Harris had refused to impose the death penalty on the violent thug who
gunned down Officer Isaac Espinoza with an AK-47. His widow blasted Kamala
for not even talking to her before denying her husband justice “I felt
like she had just taken something from us. She had just taken justice
from us. From Isaac. She was only thinking of herself.”
“She
never called,” her sister-in-law said. “There was no consideration for
Renata, my niece, my parents, me, or the officers. It was as if she
didn’t care.”
David
Hill, Officer Espinoza’s murderer, however thanked Kamala. “It took a
lot of courage,” he told CNN. “I’m forever grateful.”
Because there were people Kamala did care about. Criminals.
A
year before the Bologna murders, Alexander Izaguirre was enrolled in
‘Back on Track’: a Kamala program to expunge felony convictions for
criminals in exchange for attending some classes. Izaguirre, who had
already mugged another woman, was picked for the program by Kamala. Even
while he was enrolled in the program, the illegal alien thug mugged
another woman, and then rammed her with a car, fracturing her skull. That woman, once a liberal, has become a Trump supporter after her experience.
But
Kamala’s most enduring legacy was writing misleading descriptions for
pro-crime ballot initiatives, including Proposition 47, which legalized
shoplifting and set off a crime wave.
Kamala’s history as a
pro-crime prosecutor explains why she spent the last four years raising
money for a pro-crime group whose actions led to the murders of Demitri
Ellis-Strong, a black man and Luis Ortiz: a Latino man.
During
the BLM race riots, Kamala Harris endorsed police defunding, arguing
that “defund the police, the issue behind it is that we need to
reimagine how we are creating safety” and claimed that it “is actually
wrong and backward to think that more police officers will create more
safety.”
But Kamala Harris went even further than that in aiding the rioters and criminals.
As the BLM race riots burned, Kamala Harris posted
a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and urged supporters to donate
bail money to keep the rioters back on the streets. By the time the
rioting was done, over 1,500 businesses were damaged across the state.
Some would never reopen. But the harm caused by Kamala’s pro-crime tweet
would prove even deadlier than that.
While the Minnesota Freedom
Fund was bailing out the race rioters Kamala had endorsed, the primary
purpose of the pro-crime group, like other bail funds, was to bail out
all the criminals.
And even after the election, Kamala’s fundraising page and social media promotion for the pro-crime group remained up, helping MFF get the money it needed to free rapists and killers.
Next
year, MFF bailed out George Howard after he was arrested for domestic
abuse. Howard then went out and killed a Latino man driving on I–94.
Then it bailed out Shawn Tillman who had three felony convictions
including assaults, possession of a firearm and indecent exposure in
front of a minor. The bail fund promoted by Kamala bailed Tillman out
after he had exposed himself to a woman on the light rail in St. Paul.
Tillman returned to the light rail and killed a man.
Some
dismissed the two killings linked to Kamala’s bail fund as an unintended
consequence of her efforts to bail out rioting supporters during an
election year, but it’s consistent with her pro-crime views. Kamala ran
for president in 2020 on a pro-crime platform
of freeing criminals by, among other things, eliminating bail, a policy
that led to major crime waves in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York
and other troubled urban areas run by pro-crime ‘Soros’ DAs.
A plan put out by her campaign
promised to “transform the criminal justice system” and “re-envision
public safety” by ending “mass incarceration”, freeing potentially
hundreds of thousands of criminals, legalizing drugs, ending mandatory
minimum sentences, which would allow repeat offenders and violent
criminals to get off with light sentences, and promote “alternatives” to
prison which would put criminals right back on the street.
Kamala’s
pro-crime proposals included eliminating bail which creates a revolving
door for criminals and an endless crime wave. In New York, which
eliminated bail, a pickpocket was arrested 70 times, a shoplifter was arrested 100 times, and 1 in 4 freed burglars were
arrested again within 60 days. Violent criminals have also benefited
from the pro-crime policies embraced by Kamala. One thug kicked a
39-year-old woman in the stomach, was freed with no bail, arrested again for selling crack,
then arrested for threatening city workers with a knife, and arrested
again for arson. One sexual predator who groped women was arrested over 70 times.
This is what Kamala Harris, who is running as a ‘prosecutor’, proposed for the whole country.
Rather
than fighting crime, the former ‘prosecutor’ condemned the criminal
justice system as “unjust, unequal” while claiming that it
“disproportionately harms communities of color”.
Kamala favored
even the most vicious killers, calling for an end to the death penalty
and no life sentences for murderers under 18. Her plan admitted that
there was no way to end “mass incarceration” without giving a pass to
“individuals convicted of violent offenses”. Kamala argued that
“imposing excessively long sentences” on violence criminals doesn’t work
and proposed a commission that would embrace “alternatives” to safely
locking them up.
Such pro-crime alternatives were already tried
in California, New York and other jurisdictions with horrifying results
for victims. And Kamala Harris was serious about implementing them.
In
the Senate, Kamala had proposed the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act,
alongside libertarian Sen. Rand Paul, to encourage states to get rid of
bail. The bill falsely claimed that the “bail system has proven to be an
ineffective method of protecting public safety”. She also co-sponsored
the ‘Justice Safety Valve Act’ with Paul to get rid of mandatory
minimums.
Kamala’s pro-crime views have been consistent. Twenty
years ago she protected Officer Isaac Espinoza’s killer while giving his
family the cold shoulder. Her support for defunding the police,
releasing criminals and legalizing crime has changed California. What
will it do to America?
If the 46th president
had his way, he would end lifetime appointments to the High Court,
limiting justices to 18-year terms, refresh the highest court in the
land with new justices every two years, and institute a binding code of
conduct. He also called for amending the constitution with what he
amusingly calls the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment.” He left no
doubt about his motivation when he added, “It would make clear that
there is no (italics his) immunity for crimes a former
president committed while in office.” One would think that a career
politician like Biden would have masked his Trump derangement more
effectively than that.
While it is hardly worth the time to examine the specifics of Biden’s
plans any further since they will serve as little more than click-bait
and talking points, the emotions and strategy animating them are worthy
of discussion.
Root Causes: Hate, Fury, and Envy
First, let’s summarize the president’s agenda in plain language,
shall we? Biden wants to upend the American constitutional system
because he hates, fears, and envies Donald Trump.
We are already well aware of the president’s seething hatred for his
predecessor and potential successor. But this op-ed revealed his
passive-aggressive envy and fury. He is envious that Trump got three
Supreme Court Justices confirmed in the space of four years while he got
only one. He is furious that the Supreme Court has ruled on
presidential immunity in a way that benefits Trump. He is envious that a
single branch of government is delivering one victory after another for
the right. He is furious that every indictment of Trump is crumbling.
And he is both envious and furious that Trump is in a position to
recapture the presidency.
To
the matter of a law — or constitutional amendment — transparently aimed
at a single person, Article 1 of the Constitution is clear. It
specifically prohibits what’s called a bill of attainder — legislation
declaring an individual guilty of a crime and allowing the government to
punish the person for the perceived crime without due process. The
provision is designed to strengthen the separation of powers by
preventing Congress from assuming the functions of the judicial branch.
While this is not directly applicable to Biden’s proposals, it
captures the spirit of the framers and effectively defines the principle
in play. Put another way, it is designed to assure that no man is
either above or below the law.
In the wake of the recent High Court decision defining the parameters of executive privilege,
Biden claimed “there are virtually no limits on what a president can
do.” Of course, that is not true; a president’s protection is limited to
official duties, and Biden knows it every bit as much as he knows Trump
never actually called white supremacists very fine people. But,
undaunted, he goes on to describe a court “mired in a crisis of ethics” —
which apparently arose suddenly, as soon as Trump completed his
trifecta of Supreme Court appointments assuring a 6-3 conservative
majority. This is simply another broadside at the conservative justices,
particularly Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both subjects of recent
intense investigations by left-wing media.
Intent on putting the mayhem of Jan. 6 prominently before the
electorate once again, Biden tied the issue of presidential immunity
directly to the Capitol riot, essentially warning that it is an
invitation to insurrection. What is especially disturbing from this man
who has been holding down the job for more than three years is that he
ignored the grave consequences of any president being subjected
to prosecution for decisions of great consequence if his private
deliberations are subject to public disclosure and debate. This should
be obvious to anyone not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
There was also another inconvenient truth revealed in the president’s
plans: This is yet another sign of leftists’ utter dependence on the
courts to enable their unpopular progressive ideas to take root. And it
signals their futility in seeing the Court overturn its most valued
decisions, most prominently Roe v. Wade, knowing there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Unless, that is, the rules of the game are changed.
Rescuing the Supreme Court
Biden needs to answer a fundamental question about his “plans” for
the Supreme Court and a 28th constitutional amendment: If these reforms
are so vital to the future of the republic, why did you wait until the
11th hour when you were the lamest of lame ducks to advance these
radical proposals to alter one of the three branches of government and
amend the Constitution?
Biden knows full well that a lame-duck president no longer wields
power with Congress, especially in the heat of a presidential campaign.
That renders these proposals nothing more than political theater. It’s
as true of Biden as any other president: Had he been really serious
about these reforms, he would have prosecuted the case during his
honeymoon, the first 6 to 12 months of his presidency, when his approval
was highest. Revealing these proposals after he was forced out of his
re-election campaign looks like little more than swinging wildly for the
fences in a race Democrats are losing.
e
Another sign that these plans are not legitimate is that they should
have been advanced by the person who would theoretically steward them
through to completion. That would be Kamala Harris, not Biden. But by
announcing these proposals himself, Biden lifts the burden from Harris
of making such an explosive announcement while at the same time handing
her a radical agenda consistent with her pronounced plans for a
prospective administration. Sure enough, the VP added her endorsement to
the plans shortly after Biden’s announcement.
When Republicans go big, they usually propose things like tax cuts or
changes in energy or economic policies. When Democrats get ambitious,
they attempt to pack the Supreme Court, remove justices they find
objectionable, turn left-wing territories into states, and abolish the
Electoral College – all designed to guarantee perpetual leftist control
of the federal government. Put simply, while the GOP works within the
constitutional framework built upon centuries of debate and
deliberation, modern-day Democrats seem intent on dramatically altering
the law of the land to reflect the current progressive age.
With one foot out the door, Biden is using the fading remnants of his
bully pulpit to lecture the American people on the injustice of a
system that he has upheld for more than half a century. In doing so, he
has come to personify the famously depressing lamentation in
Shakespeare’s Macbeth about life itself: “a walking shadow, a
poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is
heard no more. It is a tale … full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.”
In a recent meeting of Kamala Harris' election staff a lot of concern was expressed about her history. What she's done, and what she's said isn't what America is or likes, and the Republicans and conservative media isn't holding back about her history. How can we whitewash that history was the theme of the meeting they speculated.
Nothing was working since that darned conservative alternative media just won't play along with their all new Messianic Kamala theme. They just keep pointing out all of her flawed history, and character, and there's so much of it, it's a daunting task to eliminate it.
So, there was a lot of discussion on how to whitewash her history. Did I say discussion? Nah, there was a lot of glumness, mumbling, confusion, head scratching, and shoulder shrugging until one of the staffers excitedly jumped up and said....Wait, wait! I know, I know! Let's call the Men in Black department and borrow their "Neuralyzer". That way we can wipe out years of memory for everyone in the world. A cheer went up from the staff, followed by excited laughter with high fives and self congratulatory smiles all around.
Afterward Kamala came into the room they excitedly told her of their idea, and she was outraged! She demanded to know why they took so long to come up with this great idea?
Okay, yeah, that's a load of snarky satirical horsepucky, and it never happened, but the fact is, the "Neuralyzer" is the only thing that could to prevent Kamala's history from crushing her, and it doesn't exist.
She been described as nasty, foul mouthed, unwilling to accept the blame, always accuses her staff for her failure to be prepared, shallow, moronic, unintelligent, unserious, lazy, ambitious far beyond her abilities, with a resume that should have prevented her from ever holding any public office.
A vicious, conniving,
immoral, unpopular, third-rate politician with extreme radical views has
come to within an inch of the presidency. Kamala Harris could be
sitting in the Oval Office as soon as next week......It happened because the radical Left has been quietly but persistently
winning the culture war by acquiring control over key elements of
American society -- academia, journalism, the mainstream media, Big
Tech, and the Democratic Party.........The machine seeks to replace our republic with a dictatorship under
the control of the Deep State and the Democrats (one and the same)....... She is living proof
that meritocracy has given way to diversity.
Kamala
“is farther left than 97 percent of the Democrats, the most extreme
radical politician ever to run for high office in the United States of
America.”.......If
her record is so stellar, why the need to sanitize it? The answer is,
of course, because it isn't, and they know it..... Is Kamala smart enough to perceive her own shortcomings and how much
of a liar she is? My answer: She is too dumb to realize that she is a
stooge of the Left, and if she did realize it, she probably wouldn’t
care. It’s all about power, baby.
One of the challenges of defeating Kamala Harris is
figuring out just what to slam her on. There are so many powerful lines
of attack to use against this leftist hack that it takes some
consideration to figure out which is the most effective. But already,
some Republicans are trying to help leftists place some of the most
potent attacks are being put off limits. We’re being told there are
certain things we just can’t say about her. We’re not supposed to
mention that she’s a goofy weirdo with an evil laugh. We’re not supposed
to mention she’s an incompetent DEI hire. And, of course, we’re not
supposed to talk about her sordid history of sexual ladder climbing.
The rap on this line of attack is
that it will turn off squishy suburban women ........... Why should we ignore appealing to them to avoid offending
people who will never support us? ........... It’s all
about getting voters a complete picture of this nightmare woman. It’s
not about being nice ....... Nothing is off the table...... Kamala Harris is a clown but a dangerous one who can absolutely
win this election .......... If you don’t have the stones to play rough, maybe you should
go play a different game. This is all about winning.
The fact is no one wanted Kamala, but Joe being Joe, he wasn't going out quietly into the night. Since Obama forced him out of the election, he made sure he could exact revenge on all of them by endorsing her as the Democrat nominee, and now, very reluctantly, Schumer, Pelosi, and Obama, who knows she's incompetent, has endorsed her. The fact is he knew that about Biden in 2020, but their bench is so outrageously radical, Biden was their best shot, and they still needed massive levels of voter fraud to get him "elected", just like Maduro in Venezuela. All the rest had concluded there's nothing they could do about it and endorse her also.
A candidate who never received one nominating vote will now be their candidate by proclamation. It's called "The Rock and the Hard Place", and they brought it on themselves when they chose these two nitwits in 202o. Let's face it, none of these people are the brightest pebbles in the brook.
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Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me. If you wish to get the full edition,
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Whatever country they live in, most soldiers are proud to serve their nation. In 1961, this German soldier was caught on film jumping up and it went viral—for what could be considered “viral” in those days, there's even a statue of him where he made his jump in Germany.
Following Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II, Germany was divided into East and West. The West was controlled by the United States, France and Great Britain. East was controlled by the Soviet Union. By August 1961, 2,000 East Germans were easily walking over to the West side daily. Some just to visit family, others making a permanent move. To stop the hemorrhaging, on August 13, East Germany put up barbed wire barriers along the border, the precursor to the infamous Berlin Wall.
Two days later, 18-year-old East German police officer Konrad Schumann was guarding a section of the barrier at the corner of Bernauer Strasse and Ruppiner Strasse. Peter Leibing, a 19-year-old photographer was on the West German side. He noticed Schumann’s nervous pacing and chain smoking.
He also picked up on how when there was a commotion that attracted the attention of other guards’, Schumann switched his loaded submachine gun for an unloaded (and lighter) gun. There was just something about Schumann that made Leibing keep watching him. About an hour later, Schumann made a jump for freedom and Leibing caught the exact moment!
Schumann was the first East German soldier to desert. He regularly wrote to his family in East Germany (letters were read by the infamous Stasi police). When the Wall came down on November 9, 1998, Schumann reunited with his family. However, he was greatly disappointed that his East German relatives rejected him for jumping. They viewed him as a traitor who had abandoned his family.
Depressed throughout his life, he never fully came to terms with his historic story. Sadly, in 1998, Schumann committed suicide at age 56, leaving no note for his wife or son.
Of all the epithets of the left that don’t make any sense, the term “settler colonialist” is one of my favorites. We live in a world where the ability of people to relocate, even to places thousands of miles distant, has increased greatly over time. These days, many millions of people per year pick up and relocate, or try to relocate, from one country to another. By far the biggest mass migrations going on currently are into the U.S. and into Europe from various poorer countries. This November 2023 piece from NPR puts the number of “migrants” crossing the U.S. Southern border illegally in 2023 at about 2.4 million. That would be in addition to about 1 million legal immigrants to the U.S. each year. The European Commission at this site from April 2024 gives a figure of 42.4 million people living in the EU who were not born there, about 9% of the population. That would suggest something like 1 million or so new arrivals per year.
So are all these people “settler colonialists”? Try to find that term applied to any of these millions of annual migrants, and I will bet that you cannot. The legal entry of millions into the United States, and the illegal invasion of millions more, is cheered on by all on the left. Meanwhile the derogatory term “settler colonialist” is reserved for much smaller numbers of migrants who have been designated as disfavored based on criteria that I have never seen rationally articulated.
And yet, find yourself in a disfavored group making a relocation, and get ready for an unrelenting stream of invective. Of course, Jews are the ultimate such disfavored group.
It appears that some numbers of Jews, in the tens of thousands per year, continue to relocate into areas referred to as the West Bank, otherwise known as areas that Israel took control of after a war back in the 1960s. Is there any reason why Jews should not be allowed to move into these areas? None that I can think of. People of all ethnicities and all religions move into my country and city on a daily basis. We allow them all, even when their presence in the country is contrary to federal immigration law. We loudly proclaim ourselves to be a “sanctuary city.” Down on the Mexican border, many towns now have populations with a majority who were born in Mexico. People came across the border and moved in.
Of course, Muslim countries are universally extremely unwelcoming of non-Muslims. Almost all of the Muslim Middle East and North Africa is near 100% Jew-free after decades of appalling treatment of Jews since World War II. (The treatment of Christians in these countries has been only slightly less appalling.). The treatment of such minorities by Muslims should be considered unacceptable in a civilized world where everybody needs to get along. Somehow I see almost no criticism of this behavior, aside from a few specialized websites like the Gatestone Institute.
On July 27 the Guardian had a long piece with the headline “The Biden-Harris administration needs to stop illegal Israeli settlements.” The premise of the article is that there is something uniquely evil about Israeli Jews moving a few miles across the border into the West Bank and building homes for themselves. A few excerpts:
Under the Netanyahu government, there has been an open spigot for the settlements . . . . [A]t least 25 new outposts have been established and dozens of roads, estimated to stretch tens of kilometers, have been constructed. Additionally, 24,193 dunams (about 6,000 acres) were declared as “state land”, and plans for 8,721 housing units have been promoted. . . . The Netanyahu government has doubled the budget for the Ministry of Settlements and increased funds for the Settlement Division. This includes 7bn shekels ($1.9bn) for roads and 409m shekels ($111m) allocated for special projects in settlements despite a broad budget cut in other sectors.
The numbers are kind of trivial compared to the numbers of people flooding into the U.S., and to the cost of dealing with them.
Recently, at a meeting led by [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich, his bragging was recorded, unbeknownst to him, by a Peace Now staff member and was later released to the media. He talked about the money flow he was enabling to build new roads in the West Bank, a necessity for new settlements. When I drove through there this July, I saw evidence of his handiwork – not only new roads already built, but also new roads being dug, gravel being bulldozed.
Nefarious!
Muslims move into Dearborn, Michigan and become a majority and run the city. And then hold regular demonstrations where protesters shout “Death to America!” No problem. I’m not understanding why different rules apply to the different groups of settlers.
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Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me. If you wish to get the full edition,
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In the past, America’s enemies were external. Now they are internal. Last week we witnessed a “coup” that disenfranchised 15+ MILLION Democrats who voted in their party’s primary. Where is the Republican leadership strongly denouncing what is happening? Why don’t more Democrats care?
Our questions with answers excerpted from articles/tweets:
Did Joe Biden write the letter withdrawing from the 2024 presidential campaign?
“Does Biden Even Know He’s Not Running for President Anymore?”by Elle Purnell, Federalist, July 22 - Who hit send on Sunday (July 21) afternoon’s announcement? No one believes it was actually Joe. Sure, the letter included a signature, but coming from the office that probably owns more signature stamps than any other executive in the country, you can decide what that’s worth. Does Joe Biden even know he’s not running for president anymore?
Why wasn’t the letter written on White House Letterhead?
Laura Loomer, X/Twitter, July 21 (excerpt) - Did you notice the Biden drop out letter isn’t on official letterhead? I’m told by a source that Joe Biden didn’t even write this letter. Source tells me that Steve Ricchetti, the Counselor to Joe Biden, actually wrote the letter and Biden Senior Advisor and campaign chair Mike Donilon was present as a witness while Ricchetti wrote the letter because Biden is too cognitively damaged to write a letter or comprehend what is going on. This means the signature is likely forged on the letter as well. Notice it’s not on official campaign or presidential letterhead. That means it’s not legitimate.
Why didn’t Biden’s staff know ahead of time that he was withdrawing?
“Blindsided: Biden Team Was Whipping Delegates When He Dropped Out”by Jonathan Martin, Politico, July 22 - In another sign of how the president’s decision stunned even his own staff, his Delaware-based campaign leadership concluded a staff call with state aides just minutes before Biden released his letter withdrawing from the race.
Will it be a Harris coronation or open Democrat convention?
“Biden Gone, Democrats Rally Around the Worst Possible Candidate”-
By Byron York, Washington Times, July 22 -...Harris appears to have the inside track to the Democratic presidential nomination. The Trump campaign should take her seriously, not because she is a good candidate but because she will automatically have the vote of the millions of people who would vote for anyone other than Trump. That alone means she could win. So her GOP rivals should see the Harris campaign, rich with money raised by Biden, as a formidable opponent. But at the same time, it should be noted — and Harris herself will likely make it clear soon enough — that she is perhaps the worst candidate Democrats could choose to run for president.
Was it Obama’s plan to oust Biden and make Harris the nominee?
“Obama Doesn’t Believe Kamala Harris Can Beat Trump, Which is Why He Hasn’t Endorsed Her” - By Isabel Vincent and Jon Levine, New York Post, July 24 - According to the source, Obama’s hope was to get Biden out of the way and an article written by George Clooney in the New York Times asking him to step aside was a part of that plan. However, the higher ups in the Democratic Party didn’t count on Biden endorsing Harris right away and “Obama was shocked” when Joe endorsed her, according to the insider.
“Barack Obama FINALLY Endorses Kamala … But He Likely Didn’t Want To” - By Matt Margolis, PJ Media, July 26 - The source (to The New York Post) said that Barack Obama had a plan to maneuver Joe Biden out of the presidential race and intended for Arizona senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly to lead the ticket at the Democratic National Convention. However, this plan backfired when Joe Biden endorsed Kamala soon after he dropped out. The source said that Obama is "furious things haven’t gone his way."
Are Barack Obama and Kamala Harris close?
Monica Crowley, X/Twitter, July 26 - Obama was driving the Biden coup - until he wasn’t. He succeeded in enlisting Pelosi to force Biden out - but before he could spring his alternative plan in place, Kamala & Joe shivved him by announcing Biden’s withdrawal AND endorsement of her. Kamala then moved wicked fast, locking up support and money and before Barack could say “holy Politburo anti-coup!”, Kamala sealed the deal. She boxed out Obama, making her nomination a fait accompli and forcing Obama’s endorsement today. Do NOT underestimate her.
What about all the money Harris quickly raised?
“Is Everything Kosher About the $126 Million That Poured in for Kamala?”
- By Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, July 24 - ActBlue, the clearing house for all donations to Democrat parties and causes, has long had fundraising practices that, coincidentally or not, make money laundering easier. It allows donations from unverified credit cards, untethered to the cardholder’s name and address. This means that there’s no way at all to know who these donors are, paving the way for fraud. Thus, Joe Shmo in Abilene can knowingly donate using a card that actually belongs to Klaus Schwab! Or, Klaus Schwab could donate using the unwitting Joe Shmo’s name.
While it’s reasonable to believe that Democrats were relieved to see Joe Biden drop out of the race, it’s impossible to believe that Kamala Harris, the least-liked Vice President since polling began, managed within 36 hours to unleash almost a million small donors. ...When things sound too good to be true, they’re probably not true.
Will “Cacklin’ Harris” continue to cackle and make insane comments?
By Piers Morgan, X/Twitter, July 26 - (Commenting on the Obamas phone call to Harris endorsing her)
OMG, I’ve seen some cheesy political videos in my time, but this Obama endorsement of Kamala is full-on Gorgonzola cheese …
Did a Nikki Haley PAC endorse Kamala Harris?
“Harris Campaign Welcomes 'Haley Voters for Harris' After Haley Says Cease and Desist” - By Sarah McCammon, NPR, July 24 - Haley Voters for Harris news release: “There are many other like minded Haley voters who also do not plan to support former President Trump in November. Our rights to engage with voters and encourage them to vote for Vice President Harris – who in our view is the clear better choice for the country – will not be suppressed.”
Doesn’t America now sound like a communist country?
“Time to Stand Down … or Stand Up?”By Eric Utter, American Thinker, July 26 - To recap: a former (and possibly future) president got shot, Democrats literally executed a coup, and Kamala Harris—their current preferred replacement for the allegedly duly elected president—is apparently going to be bestowed all of Biden’s campaign money, donors’ desires rendered moot. And Trump has been informed that he should no longer engage in his most effective mode of campaigning unless he’s okay with getting shot dead. All this in America.
KAMALA HARRIS: Black Lives Matter says not so fast
Between her word salads and cackles, it’s easy to mock Kamala Harris. But with Joe Biden forced to step down in what looks like a coup, elites want to quickly crown Harris as the Democrat nominee. Those who believe in a Constitutional Republic should be very frightened that 15+ MILLION Democrats who voted in primaries are being disenfranchised.
On July 14, Black Lives Matters put out a statement denouncing making Harris the defecto nominee. Here are three excerpts:
“We call for the Rules Committee to create a process that allows for public participation in the nomination process, not just a nomination by party delegates. The current political landscape is unprecedented, with President Biden stepping aside in a manner never seen before. This moment calls for decisive action to protect the integrity of our democracy and the voices of black voters.
“Now, Democratic Party elites and billionaire donors are attempting to manipulate black voters by anointing Kamala Harris and an unknown vice president as the new Democratic ticket without a primary vote by the public.”
“We do not live in a dictatorship. Delegates are not oligarchs. Any attempt to evade or override the will of voters in our primary system-must be condemned. We demand an informal, virtual snap primary now that the incumbent president is no longer in the running.”
Admit it, couldn’t much of this statement have come from Republicans?
Near The Hague, Dutch farmers protest against government’s forced shrinking of livestock herds. 2019.
In February, a stream of tractors driven by Italian farmers arrived
at the outskirts of Rome, horns blaring. The scene, which was captured by
the Agence France-Presse, was just one of dozens of protests across
Europe against EU regulations that farmers said threatened to put them
out of work.
“They’re drowning us with all these regulations,” one farmer at a protest in Pamplona, Spain, toldThe Guardian. “They need to ease up on all the directives and bureaucracy.”
The protests were nothing new. They began in 2019 when Dutch farmers,
for the first time, drove some 2,000 tractors to The Hague to protest
radical legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions, which
disproportionately impacted farmers.
Dutch lawmakers responded in 2022 by passing legislation that
required farms near nature reserves to slash nitrogen emissions by 70
percent.
“About 30 percent of the country’s cows and pigs will have to go,” The Economistnoted.
The policy was part of the government’s plan to sharply reduce
livestock farming in Europe. The thinking was that since the livestock
sector contributes to about a third of all nitrogen emissions globally,
the government would have to target farmers to meet its goal to cut
nitrogen emissions in half by 2030.
So Dutch farmers were given a bleak choice: give a portion of their land to the government or have it taken away. By 2023, some 750 Dutch farmers had reportedly sold their land as part of the state’s buy-out scheme. Others were still trying to find a way to preserve their livelihoods.
When asked by a reporter in 2023 whether he thought he would be able
to pass his farm on to his children, one Dutch farmer struggled to
speak.
“No,” he said tearfully. “No.”
The ‘Great Green Retreat’?
Farmers are not the only ones unhappy with Brussels’s aggressive war on climate change.
The European Union’s effort to reach “net zero” CO2
emissions by 2050 has rankled voters across the continent, something
political leaders seem to have realized. Earlier this year, The Guardianlamented the EU’s “great green retreat,” which included a pullback on a bevy of “Green New Deal” regulations, including:
Bans on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), man-made chemicals that are used in countless everyday products.
Rules restricting new industrial emission, which were relaxed on industries and tweaked to exclude cattle farms altogether.
Calls to relax a pending anti-deforestation law, which, according to Reuters, officials believe could hurt European farmers.
Whether this retreat stemmed from concerns that these environmental
regulations would cause serious harm to the economy (and European
farmers), or from concern that the Green agenda would lead to a
bloodbath at the ballot box, is unclear.
Whatever the case, the reversal didn’t prevent a historic defeat for Green parties in June’s European Parliament elections, which saw them lose a third of their seats.
“There is no sugarcoating it,” the New York Timeslamented following the June elections, “the Greens tanked.”
“In Germany, the core country of the European green movement, support
for the Greens plunged from 20.5 percent in 2019 to 12 percent,”
Teixeira, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, noted.
He continued:
Shockingly, among voters under 25, the German Greens actually did
worse than the hard right Alternative for Germany (AfD). That contrasts
with the 2019 elections, when the Greens did seven times better than the
AfD among these young voters.
And in France, Green support crashed from 13.5 percent to 5.5
percent. The latter figure is barely above the required threshold for
party representation in the French delegation.
Bans Against Hot Showers and Swimming Pools?
Pundits across the world are still trying to figure out why Green parties crashed so hard, which leads one to wonder if they were paying attention.
It wasn’t just crackdowns on farming. Facing an energy crisis, governments across Europe began to roll out regulations forcing Europeans to adopt, shall we say, more spartan lifestyles.
“Cold swimming pools, chillier offices, and shorter showers are the new normal for Europeans,” Business Insiderreported, “as governments crack down on energy use ahead of winter to prevent shortages.”
In other words, instead of producing or purchasing more energy, governments began to crack down on energy consumption.
It didn’t stop there.
In May 2023, months after Germany shut down its last three remaining nuclear power plants, the Financial Timesreported
that many Germans were “outraged and furious” at a law that forced them
to install heating systems that run on renewable fuels, which are far
more expensive than gas-powered boilers.
The action was even more invasive than the European Union’s sprawling ban on gas-powered vehicles that was finalized just months before.
“[The EU] has taken an important step towards zero-emission mobility,” EU environment commissioner Frans Timmermans said on Twitter. “The direction is clear: in 2035 new cars and vans must have zero emissions.”
Wall Street’s $14 Trillion Exit
The Green policies emerging from Europe did little to alleviate
Americans’ concerns that the climate policies of central planners are
not driven by sound economics. Yet many similar policies have taken root
in the US.
As of March 2024, no fewer than nine US states
had passed laws to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. Meanwhile,
the Biden administration recently doubled down on an EPA policy to
begin a coerced phase-out of gas-powered vehicles — even though the federal effort to build out the charging stations to support EVs has flopped spectacularly (despite $7.5 billion in funding).
Fisker’s bankruptcy came just months after the New York Times reported on a massive exodus of capital from Climate Action 100+,
the world’s largest investor initiative on climate change. JPMorgan
Chase and State Street pulled all funds, while BlackRock, the world’s
largest asset manager, reduced its holdings and “scaled back its ties to
the group.”
“All told, the moves amount to a nearly $14 trillion exit from an
organization meant to marshal Wall Street’s clout to expand the climate
agenda,” the Timesreported.
Days after the Times report, PIMCO also announced it was leaving Climate Action 100+. Invesco, which manages $1.6 trillion in assets, made its exit just two weeks later.
‘You Cannot Avoid the Consequences of Avoiding Reality’
There’s no doubt that the Green economy is in retreat, but the question is, Why?
First, it’s becoming apparent — especially in Europe where energy is
more scarce and expensive — that people are souring on Green policies.
As Teixera noted, voters don’t actually like being told what
car they must drive and how to cook their food and heat their homes. If
you own a swimming pool, you probably want to be able to heat it.
Policymakers talk about “quitting” fossil fuels, but in recent years
Europeans got to experience an actual fossil-fuel shortage following
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted fossil fuel imports. The
result was energy rationing, something Europeans don’t seem to care for.
This brings me to my second point. Green parties and
environmentalists have had success largely by getting people to focus on
the desired effect of their policies (saving people from climate
change) and to ignore the costs of their policies.
Politicians seem to grasp that their policies come with trade-offs,
which is why their bans and climate targets tend to be 10, 15, or 30
years into the future. This allows them to bask in the glow of their
climate altruism without dealing with the economic consequences of their
policies.
This is one of the most salient differences between economics and
politics. Economics is all about understanding the reality of
trade-offs, but politics is primarily about ignoring or concealing these
realities.
Few understood this better than the economist Henry Hazlitt, the author of Economics in One Lesson,
who wrote time and again about the tendency of politicians to overlook
the secondary consequences of their policies, which were responsible for
“nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful
harm in the world today.”
For a time, politicians were able to ignore the secondary
consequences of their policies. But voters are finally getting a taste
of the costs of Green policies, and they don’t like it.
“You can avoid reality,” Ayn Rand once noted, “but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
An ‘Iron’ Law
Fear of climate change has helped progressives and Greens gain more
economic control in recent decades, but even fear has its limits.
Teixera points to Roger Pielke, Jr., a University of Colorado Boulder professor who in 2009 wrote about the “iron law of climate policy.”
“Climate policy, they say, requires sacrifice, as economic growth and
environmental progress are necessarily incompatible with one another,”
he wrote. “This perspective has even been built into the scenarios of
the IPCC.”
Whether one accepts this premise — that economic growth and
environmental progress are necessarily incompatible — doesn’t matter.
What matters is that when economic growth policies collide with emission
reduction targets, economics wins.
It’s one thing to say that gas prices should be $9 a gallon, as physicist Steven Chu once did,
because climate change is a dire threat. It’s another thing to say this
while trying to become Energy Secretary, as Chu was while testifying
before the Senate in 2012:
Sen. Mike Lee: “So are you saying you no longer share the view that
we need to figure out how to boost gasoline prices in America?”
Chu: “I no longer share that view… Of course we don’t want the price of gasoline to go up; we want it to go down.”
You can call this the “iron law of climate policy,” or you can call
it common sense. (Who wants gas to go to $9 a gallon?) Essentially,
it’s lofty environmental goals colliding with economic and political
reality.
This phenomenon is also conspicuous in Joe Biden’s presidency. On day
one, the president nixed the Keystone XL Pipeline (for inexplicable
reasons), and would go on to declare global warming a greater existential threat than a nuclear war.
This is the iron law of climate policy, and it explains why the Green economy is suddenly in retreat all over the world.
Not-So-‘Green’ Policies
The reality is that the Green agenda comes with steep trade-offs,
something Europeans, Americans, and Wall Street are finally beginning to
admit. But Europe’s energy policies haven’t just been unpopular; many of them haven’t even been “Green.”
For starters, electrical vehicles are hardly the environmental panacea
many claim them to be. In fact, EVs require much more energy to produce
on average than gas-powered vehicles, and also often run on electricity
generated by fossil fuels. This means that EVs come with their own
carbon footprints, and they tend to be much larger than most realize.
An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found that shifting all personal vehicles in the U.S to EVs would reduce global CO2 emissions by only 0.18 percent. This would do virtually nothing to change global CO2
emission trends, which data show are rising not because of European or
US personal vehicles, but from emerging economies like China.
And then there’s Germany’s bizarre decision to abandon nuclear power. Despite an eleventh-hour plea
from a group of scientists (including two Nobel laureates) who urged
lawmakers not to do so because it would exacerbate climate change,
Germany closed its last three nuclear power plants — Emsland in Lower
Saxony, Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg, and Isar 2 in Bavaria — in the middle of an energy crisis.
The move puzzled many around the world. After all, nuclear energy is
cleaner and safer than any other energy source with the exception of
solar, according to estimates from Our World in Data. Even more bizarre, Germany’s phaseout of nuclear power, which began in 2011, coincided with a return to coal.
Germany’s decision to ramp up coal production and shutter its last
nuclear plants is hardly consistent with the EU’s view that climate
change is a dire threat to human kind, many noted.
“No less a climate-change evangelist than Greta Thunberg has argued
publicly that, for the planet’s sake, Germany should prioritize the use
of its existing nuclear facilities over burning coal,” journalist
Markham Heid pointed out at Vox.
Meanwhile, in the US, where nuclear power has been steadily attacked
for decades by politicians and environmentalists, the Senate quietly passed (by a vote of 80–2!) a bill to support the deployment of nuclear facilities.
These anecdotes illustrate an important point: Green policies are not just unpopular and uneconomical; they are often senseless.
Few understand this better than Dutch farmers, who are being forced
to sell off their farms by politicians who have little understanding of
economics trade offs.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing
Editor of FEE.org and a Senior Writer at AIER. His writing/reporting has
been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal,
CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.
Get notified of new articles from Jon Miltimore and AIER.
Regulations can be theoretically justified. Proponents simply need to show that expected benefits will be greater than likely costs.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that very few examples of red tape pass this simple test. The net result is that we get lots of costly rules and regulations, but few if any benefits. Some sectors of the economy are especially disadvantaged by excessive red tape.
Today, we’re going to add housing to the list of sectors hurt by red
tape. But we’re not going to focus on the cumulative impact of
regulation. Instead, let’s look at how just one small slice of red tape
is having a big negative effect.
Here are some excerpts from a New York Timescolumn about elevator red tape by Stephen Jacob Smith.
Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into
why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is
often of such low quality and at high cost. …These challenges are at the
root of a mounting housing crisis that has spread to nearly every part
of the country and is damaging our economic productivity… Special
interests here have run wild with an outdated, inefficient,
overregulated system. …
New elevators outside the U.S. are typically
sized to accommodate a person in a large wheelchair plus somebody
standing behind it. American elevators have ballooned to about twice
that size, driven by a drip-drip-drip of regulations, each motivated by a
slightly different concern — first accessibility, then accommodation
for ambulance stretchers, then even bigger stretchers. …
Architects have
dreamed of modular construction for decades, in which entire rooms are
built in factories and then shipped on flatbed trucks to sites, for
lower costs and greater precision. But we can’t even put elevators
together in factories in America, because the elevator union’s contract
forbids even basic forms of preassembly and prefabrication that have
become standard in elevators in the rest of the world.
The most persuasive parts of his column involve comparisons with Europe.
Just like the U.S. pays far too much to build mass transit, we also pay far too much for elevators.
With around one million of them, the United States is
tied for total installed devices with Italy and Spain. …Switzerland and
New York City have roughly the same population, but the lower-rise
alpine country has…twice as many passenger elevators. …
Behind the dearth
of elevators in the country that birthed the skyscraper are
eye-watering costs. A basic four-stop elevator costs about $158,000 in
New York City, compared with about $36,000 in Switzerland. A six-stop
model will set you back more than three times as much in Pennsylvania as
in Belgium. Maintenance, repairs and inspections all cost more in
America, too. …
America’s reputation for unbridled capitalism and a
stereotype of Europe as a backwater of overregulation are often turned
on their head in the construction sector. …Adopting the European
elevator standard would open up the market to more competition and
parts.
By the way, the solution is not to mandate the European regulatory approach, but rather to utilize “mutual recognition” so that builders can opt for that approach.
Who is Kamala Harris? Well, let's start out with this quote:
Kamala
is young, dynamic, brilliant, incisive, gentle, tough, austere, earthy,
restrained and a rapper, incredibly successful as a key figure in the
greatest Presidency in Paul Krugman’s memory, yet humble. She’s blacker
than blaque, yet whiter than white. That little girl was her,
but she’s unencumbered by the past, while recognizing that all black
people are burdened by the invisible systemic racism of the present, and
consequently have the right to burn down whole city blocks, then get
their bail paid. Her sweeping intellect transcends mere
logic, rising to levels more remarkable than is markable. Whatever she
may have said may be said to be unsaid, depending on what voices from
our future remain unheard. - Alan Stevens
Yesterday she was as incomprehensible as Joe Biden, but without the
excuse of dementia, and today she’s the ultimate, highest-ranking
expression of DEI virtue ever. DEI is the most noble, virtuous height to which human beings can reach, yet anyone mentioning Kamala’s towering achievement is racist and sexist. Kamala
has innumerable accomplishments as Vice President, yet she doesn’t. On
the Afghanistan debacle, she was the “last person in the room,” Biden’s
indispensable adviser, yet suddenly, she had nothing to do with
Afghanistan.
So, it must be true! Right? After all, the media wouldn't lie! Would they? Hmmmmm, perhaps we might wish to explore that.
On July the Wall Street Journal, which
used to be a good newspaper before the Murdoch's bought it, claimed
Kamala was now leading Trump by two percentage points, while Trump was
leading Biden by six. It was noted:
Propagandists working on behalf of Kamala Harris are trying to
introduce her as Obama 2.0: As a “person of color,” she would not only
be the first woman president but the first African-American black woman.
Except that, like Obama, she is mixed race. And she’s not
African-American, either. Her father, Donald Harris, is described as
African-Jamaican. Her birth mother was from India. Am I permitted to report this? Not only is her father a “combative” retired “Marxist” professor of economics, his family owned slaves.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been
rewritten, every picture has been repainted… And that process is
continuing day by day and minute by minute.”
This is what the media did with Obama. It more casually tried to do
this with Biden, but never really committed to it because he wasn’t seen
as an ideological champion, but as the seat-warmer and placeholder he
proved to be. Kamala has however now been branded as an ideological
champion which means that history must be urgently rewritten and a cult
of personality manufactured
Kamala, whose been noted for giving speeches that were incomprehensible word salads, now give speeches that blow the media away. Wow! What a remarkable transformation! And now we're finding there's this ‘Orwellian’
trend to obfuscate the reality of Kamala, including her
failure as the "border czar", claiming she really wasn't the Border
Czar. In fact, according to the media, the "czar" title is a Republican invention, yet CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC called her the ‘Border Czar’. The media has a stunningly convenient memory.
It seems telling the truth about Kamala is extremely offensive and dehumanizing’. But it's okay for Joy Reid to say "people of color’ who do not vote for Harris are "real weird", and yet Black Lives Matter is up set at her "promotion", along with this Grammy winning rapper who says don't vote for Kamala. Which I don't entire get except they don't like that she prosecuted a lot of blacks in her past, and even then she had serious issues with prosecutorial misconduct.
You see, all those
extremists views and associations she's been a part of her whole career, weren't
really sincere. Oh no, none of that is what she believed. She was just trying to appease the left, and now she's different.
It's clear the media is totally corrupt,
historically ignorant, and logically challenged. Has it ever been different? No!
In days gone by the media, which consisted of newspapers only, lied,
postured, and supported the same kind of clowns who are in office now.
The only
real difference was they were open in their biases. The media managed to
convince people by getting a degree in journalism it made them impartial
distributors of "truth". That was a lie from the beginning!
It wasn't that long ago the media proclaimed loud and clear Biden was sharp as a tack, and totally engaged in the affairs of the nation, and Kamala was a nitwit. After the debate it became clear Biden was the demented loser conservatives said he was, and then.... Shazam... overnight Kamala was the new Democrat Messiah:
"The most gifted,
compelling, and beatific woman ever to grace the planet. She is nothing
less than a female messiah. To besmirch the Lightbringer 2.0 in any way,
shape, or form would be an assault on all things decent and beautiful.".........
Well, the fact is she's a mess not a Messiah.When I
see them continuously spewing out all the leftist claptrap they espouse, the lies, the misdirection, the misrepresentation of facts, the projection, and logical fallacies, all in
spite of all the historical evidence that shows these views are corrupt, irrational,
misanthropic and morally defective, I have to wonder if they aren't insane.
Well, if they're guilty of all of those things, and they are, how is it possible for them to be sane?
"
