Month: March 2022

Ukraine Crisis Works Against Woke Politics

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Grady Means writes at The Hill Ukraine crisis: Unexpected weapon against woke politics. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted his way into Ukraine, he thought he was simply reassembling the great Russian Empire. What he actually did was reverse the global tide toward authoritarianism under the banner of woke politics.

For years, the would-be New Illuminati of global elites have trekked to the World Economic Forum (WEF) to be fed a diet of woke politics under the banner of “stakeholder rights” and “The Great Reset,” a rebranded version of Marxism designed to defeat neo-liberalism, i.e., capitalism, and its spiritual partner, individual freedom. For the most part, these pretentious “leaders” are what Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin would have called “dupes” and “useful idiots,” selling their own hangman the rope to hang them.

Four major fronts in this global war to destroy liberal democracies and free-market systems have been decarbonization, COVID response, baseless accusations of racism, and corrosion of the rule of law — all efforts to undermine key foundations of civil society.

As outlined by the leaders of the WEF, the COVID pandemic provided the opportunity to increase the authoritarian role of government, albeit unconstitutionally, and replace individual liberty with state mandate — the “great reset,” leading to the increased power of the state (and the elite) to control citizens. The WEF simulated this strategy well in advance of COVID, including the role of “authoritative spokesmen” and traditional and social media to promote the state view and suppress dissent and free speech as “disinformation.”

Also central to the strategy is rapid decarbonization — federal, state and local laws and mandates to shut down the use of fossil fuels and transition to solar and wind power — promoted as answers to the climate crisis. Most serious analyses suggest they will fail. Solar and wind are unreliable. They require a doubling of the grid, which itself has proven to be unreliable across the country with blackouts. They require battery backups to store and supply energy when solar and wind are down. Current battery backup capacity in America is less than 10 quads. To support American industrial and consumer usage at 2022 levels, it would require between 60 to 90 quads to sustain our economy and standard of living.

Expanding and strengthening the grid and installing the battery capacity will take decades. It will require bridge energy — i.e., natural gas and nuclear — to be used as the transition takes place. But government policies are shutting down fossil fuels and nuclear power as quickly as possible.

It will be a disaster. And, it is intentional. The point is to have skyrocketing energy prices and shortages. It enshrines government power. It is cynical to an Olympian degree.

Of course, it will have no effect on the climate at all. China will continue to build coal-fired generators (at least 1,000 are planned) and use the full range of fossil fuels. Russia, of course, is wedded to fossil fuels. The only result of decarbonization in the West is the destruction of our economies and democracies.

“Defunding the police” and not enforcing urban or border laws undercut civil society and weaken social cohesion. It creeps toward anarchy. Calling out these obvious attacks on social foundations is deemed to be “racism,” a strategy that has silenced many and intimidated our political and corporate “leadership.”

The speed and success that woke politics has had in redefining the political debate in America and Western democracies has been remarkable. The rapid shift toward authoritarianism has been alarming. The corrosion of the rule of law is depressing. The cowardice and opportunism among the political and corporate elite is expected, but sickening.

Putin should have just pulled up a comfortable chair, eaten popcorn, and watched the West self-destruct. But, he’s an impatient guy — a would-be “man of history.” Impulsively, he has, in a single stroke, managed to reverse the Western woke political tidal wave and set the stage for destroying his own energy-based economy.

Almost instantly, everyone in the West has become aware of the central importance of energy to national security and the overall economy.

It is obvious that America cannot be held hostage to foreign sources of oil and gas and must return to energy independence. It is obvious that Germany made a colossal error in precipitously shutting down its nuclear power generation and becoming dependent on Russian gas — not unlike California, which has done the same, only to be forced to import energy from other states. It is obvious that European energy prices are skyrocketing because of policy mistakes. It is obvious that America can best support NATO by producing and exporting oil and gas to Europe. But American energy prices — and the prices of everything else — are skyrocketing because of poor economic decisions, especially in regard to energy production.

And this brings us to Joe Biden. Will the president continue to allow the price of energy to soar to squeeze the American people into accepting his flawed, woke vision of rapid decarbonization? Or, will he understand that he has undercut our national security, NATO, and our economy and quickly move America back to energy independence?

If not, the midterm elections will present a stark choice between the woke and destructive authoritarian vision of the Democrats, or a strong economy, true freedom and strong democracy.

Thank you, Vlad, for the great reset — let’s hope you woke us all up.

 

Time to Get Real About Ukraine

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kurt Schlichter writes at Town Hall Can We Have Some Real Talk About Ukraine? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Time to get real. Ukraine is an equal opportunity crisis because it provides politicians of both parties a chance to be wrong, although it allows the Democrats the opportunity to do what they do best and be much, much more wrong. For the Republicans, it lets them indulge the desire of some to return to a time when America could focus its moral firepower – if not its firepower firepower – upon a readily-identifiable baddie like it did during the Cold War or the War on Terror. For the left, it allows them to create a moral panic to replace COVID, which, naturally, requires that we Americans “sacrifice” even more of our freedom and money.

From the perspective of someone who actually trained Ukrainian troops in Ukraine, commanded US forces, and attended the US Army War College – though it’s kind of the Chico State of war colleges – the whole way our elite is approaching the crisis is an epic clusterfark. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you – and certainly, sanity check whatever I’m telling you, too – most of these insta-experts on intra-Slavic conflict know absolutely squat-ski. Moreover, their remarkably dumb observations and credulous acceptance of conventional wisdom, which has proven long on conventional and short on wisdom, are being presented without any kind of strategic context. They don’t know where this crisis came from and certainly have no clear notion of where they want it to go beyond the vague and unhelpful idea that they want Putin (which they use interchangeably with Russia) to “lose” without knowing what that even means.

Biases are important, and here are mine. I sympathize with the Ukrainian people, partly because I worked with them and partly because I was an end-stage Cold Warrior who came up training to fight Russians. I understand that this mess is not merely the result of Putin being bad or Trump being insufficiently anti-Putin, like LTC Sausage and the rest of the failed foreign policy elite and regime media insist. Putin’s badness plays a part, but he’s merely exploiting thousands of years of bloody history, of ethnic hatred, and of Orthodox mysticism, as well as totally misguided and poorly-considered Western interference. The idea that we could just make Ukraine part of NATO and the Russians would just lump it is remarkable for its dumbness, but it is fully in keeping with our foreign policy elite’s unbroken track record of failure since the old-school military’s victory in the Gulf War – something I discuss in-depth in my upcoming Regnery book “We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.”

My bottom line is that the Ukrainians are imperfect, and regardless of whether the Russians have some quasi-legit beefs in some cosmic sense, you don’t solve them by sending in a couple hundred thousand mechanized soldiers.

The expectation was that the Russian forces would smash through, surround the Ukrainian forces pinned down facing the Russians in the occupied regions to the east, and isolate the main cities. I did not expect them to go into the cities immediately since Russians 1) generally bypass hard defenses; 2) they have bad experiences with city fighting (Stalingrad, Grozny); and 3) that would not necessarily be necessary. It would not be necessary if the idea was to neutralize the main Ukrainian combat formations and force the government in the cities to capitulate, then have the West pressure the Ukrainians to accept a ceasefire and “peace” that recognized Russian gains and ended the idea of Ukrainian allying with the West. In fact, that is pretty much what the Russian “peace plan” consists of.

But that did not work for a couple of reasons.

First, the Russians did not fight as well as expected. You should always treat the enemy as if it is the best possible enemy. We did in the Gulf. We prepared to fight elite Republican Guard divisions of highly trained and motivated soldiers using top-shelf Soviet equipment and tactics. None of that was so; we crushed an entire national army in 100 hours.

The Russians are poorly-led, with very weak synchronization among maneuver forces and fires. Their plan is okay – in fact, you look at a map, and it’s obvious what they would do. But their gear is badly-maintained, and their troops are unsuited to the task of supporting a rapid advance. Look at all the evidently intact gear simply abandoned by the side of the road. Lots of it looks like it broke down (note all the flat tires). Much of it seems to have run out of gas. And, of course, lots of stuff had been blasted apart.

That’s the second part of the equation – the Ukrainians fought back hard. If you are a Lord of the Rings nerd, think of the Ukrainians as the dwarves. Not super-sophisticated but tough and ready to fight, and also often drunk.

If you want to see the future of this war, look at videos of Ukrainian infantry patrolling near the front. Every second guy has an anti-tank weapon, like a Javelin or some other system, and the rest are carrying spare missiles. Mechanized forces unprotected by infantry are vulnerable to ambush by anti-tank teams. The Russian armor outstripped its ground pounders and is getting pounded itself. Further, Ukrainians seem to have success with drones firing anti-tank weapons.

The war is not going to be won by conventional battalions of Ukrainians operating with conventional aircraft. It will win with light infantry and drones armed with missiles.

This is why the whole Polish MiG thing is so silly and why Republicans are so wrong to get behind it. So, the Poles will (in return for F-16s and F-15s) give up their 30-year-old MiG-29s to the US, which will then give them to Ukraine, which will then fly them to victory. No. Let’s leave the escalation part aside – and that’s a pretty big consideration. Putin has nukes, and escalation is not in our interest. If America is using a base in Germany to assemble a bunch of fighters that will be attacking Russians, are they a target and thereby a trigger for WW3? Yeah, I know the argument that it’s not an escalation, but guess what? We don’t get a vote. Putin – who we have been told is an amalgam of crazy, stupid, and evil (the third is undeniable; the first two wishful thinking) gets to decide. He’s the guy with the finger over a button, and it doesn’t say “Reset.”

Let’s look at the practical part. Fighters are part of a conventional war, which Ukraine should not fight since Russian conventional forces are so much larger. A couple of dozen hand-me-downski fighters are going to turn the tide? If the Ukrainians’ own jets flown by their top pilots got shot down already by Russia’s formidable air defenses, which is probably true (don’t buy the “Ghost of Kyiv” stuff), what’s going to happen to a bunch of planes that – assuming they are even flyable – are being flown by the Ukrainian equivalent of Randy Quaid in “Independence Day”? It’s the Bad News Bears squadron; they might as well plaster “Sponsored by Chico’s Bail Bonds” on the tails.

This war gets won by cheap drones and little groups of armed Ukrainians packing AKs and plinking tanks and IFVs with portable missiles.

But what does “won” mean? Has anyone in the US government articulated what conditions we are seeking to achieve? Is it to “beat the Russians?” What’s that mean? Our establishment is gung-ho to help, and I don’t mind, but what are we helping to do? Ukraine’s interests involve pushing Russia out of its territory. But time for some hard truth – continuing this economically disastrous war until every boot is off Ukrainian soil is not necessarily in America’s interest, and America’s interests need to come first. We could live with resolutions that the Ukrainians might not want to live with.

And if our elite can’t articulate a short-term end-state, it sure can’t articulate one for five years from now. It is in America’s interest to wean Russia from China over the long term, but are we aiming at that? Do we want to do such damage to Russia that we can never hope to recover it from China’s orbit? After all, China is the big enemy. Russia is just a Shell station guarded by Paul Blart, except instead of a whistle, he’s got H-bombs.

“Putin bad” is true, but it’s insufficient. It’s time for some real talk about America’s interests, which may not be Ukraine’s interests, and how we are pursuing them. Except no one wants to talk about that because that’s not fun. Moral panics are, and stopping for a second to think strategically spoils the party for many in both parties.

Wake Up and Smell the Fossil Fuel Insanity

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Terry Etam writes a BOE Report Column: The world faces both a hydrocarbon shortage and a divest fossil fuels movement. What next, oil patch? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Today’s question is one only the hydrocarbon crowd can answer:  What’s your game plan from here forward?

 There are a thousand occupations and situations, each with its own decision tree.  Despite the potential variance, it’s still a valid question, because we globally we are at a crossroads of some major significance. The well-being of much of the world’s population depends on what the hydrocarbon industry does over the next few years. At the same time, the pressure is building for the hydrocarbon industry to shrink and wither (as in the wildly successful divest fossil fuels campaign, or banks cutting back on oil/gas loans to curry favour with Those That Matter).

The question is not an easy one given the dramatic reframing of the hydrocarbon industry over the past few years. We used to be the good guys, the world’s fuel providers, a dynamic and entrepreneurial and fast-moving assembly of doers.

Then the narrative changed, and the industry went from relative obscurity to Public Enemy Number One. By 2019, public animosity towards it reached a peak, with orchestrated mass protests around the globe. 2020 brought a near-death experience as Russia and OPEC decided to decimate prices in a battle for market control, and all the anti-hydrocarbon protesters switched from protesting to cheering, famously claiming that “oil was dead”, that oil prices would never recover because EVs were causing rapid demand destruction, and that the humane thing to do now was to justly transition all hydrocarbon workers to other industries.

Even typing that stuff now sounds like an alien experience, like walking around in a crowd without a mask.

The reason those conversations feel so outdated is because, today, it is clear that oil is about as dead as the internet. Some will of course say that high oil prices will hasten a transition to renewables, and that is true that it will make renewables more cost competitive (though still no match on the reliability front).

But consider that a rapid transition to renewables is impossible from a mining perspective alone.

The IEA has said that a global Net Zero 2050 transition would require four times the number of critical mineral mines by 2040 (a virtual impossibility when governments are making mining harder everywhere).  And the Geological Society of Finland calculated that a full transition via renewables/EVs would require more critical metals and minerals than there are known global reserves.

If you are still on the fence as to whether hydrocarbons’ days are numbered, consider that Germany, the world’s most advanced energy-transition country, just days ago mused that drilling for new oil/gas deposits in the arctic sounds like a pretty good idea.

Consider also that this is the new-ish Green-led government saying this. Keep in mind also that any arctic development takes years at a minimum, so these developments have nothing to do with this immediate crisis. If Germany is plotting decade-length oil/gas developments, that tells you all you need to know about the demise of hydrocarbons. There isn’t one.

But that doesn’t answer the question at hand. What will people in the industry do? Will they bolt and get retrained in something else? There are a variety of situations of course, but one is far more ominous than the others. Here’s a bit of a dissection.

Process people will most likely keep processing; any occupations that are in perpetual flow states will likely not stop because of a lack of employees. If you are a gas marketer or pipeline scheduler or refinery manager, there isn’t a visible break point in the continuity of business.

But producers are different. Much different. Next year’s barrel of production won’t necessarily and automatically appear as part of a continuous flow. A lot of very capable brain power needs to be enacted, crews hired and managed, etc. Finding and developing new oil/gas flows is a choice.

If no one chooses to find and produce more petroleum, the flow slows, then stops. If geological talent dries up/retires/moves on, new production doesn’t just happen. Same with drilling crews or completions experts or – dare I say it – truckers.

Anti-hydrocarbon sentiment rums deep in academic institutions, yet it is those very institutions new employees will have to navigate if they are to land in the oil patch. It is no longer “just another option”. There is stigma attached to petroleum programs.

There is venom coming your way from complete strangers. It should then be no surprise that students are acting accordingly; they are going elsewhere. In one US study, from 2016-19, the US petroleum engineering student count fell by 60 percent, and no doubt has fallen further since. Even here in the heart of the Canadian oil patch, the University of Calgary has suspended the petroleum engineering program after the student count fell to an all time low of 10 – and that’s over a two year period.

What if no one chooses to look for oil anymore? Yes, ten thousand western elites will cheer wildly, but billions of trucker-grade people around the world that need that fuel for survival will say WTF, or some such local equivalent.

Those ten thousand western elites will tell all the global plebeians Hey, don’t worry! Solar panels are on the way. And the billions will say Yeah…but can I get a fridge that has power for more than six hours a day? And western elites will say Nope! But don’t worry batteries are on the way. And billions of those plebeians will say Great! When? And western elites will say Battery storage is cheaper than its ever been! And the plebes will say Great! When? And western elites will say Death to fossil fuels! And the plebes will ponder in awe the presumed mysticism and superiority of elite non-sequiturs, little conversational re-directs that the great unwashed masses simply aren’t worthy of comprehending, and then they will starve to death.

And the hydrocarbon producers will be sitting there wondering what to do next. They’ll answer the phone and second cousin Moonbeam from Toronto or San Francisco will be shrieking about how you’re killing the planet.  But you’ll turn on the news and hear that it is a moral imperative to produce more oil since all you oil guys are rolling in money which will be true.  But then the politicians will be saying ‘We’ll take that windfall money btw and then whatever is left better be going into green projects.  But yes you had better increase production right now and we mean right now but only for this year and then everyone should divest fossil fuels.  And we’ll see you in court for all the emissions you’ve unilaterally created over the past century, and maybe the fines will be deductible from the windfall tax and maybe not.  We’ll let you know when we’re good and ready.’.

If this sounds melodramatic it isn’t. In fact, the situation is far more critical than it sounds, in terms of global impact: there is a multi-trillion dollar behemoth of a fuel system that keeps humanity alive. It is 80 per cent hydrocarbon-based. There is at present no substitute. Most parts of that system function conditionally – they require a non-stop flow of hydrocarbons.

The various components of this huge system have “something to do” because, and only because, a relatively small group of people and entities at the origin of that system, the upstream, choose to keep it full. This small group looks at seismic, looks at well logs, drills wells, does production plans, builds small scale infrastructure to bring this energy life-blood on stream. Without those few people the system withers just as does a plant pulled from the ground.

A lack of expertise and/or interest in bringing new hydrocarbons to market will mean that the world’s supply dries up. Good, the ten thousand activists will say. Good, you might say, let’s see who needs who. But these other seven-plus billion won’t be too thrilled at all. No fuel, no fertilizer, no food. All because of choices we’ve made here in the west.

So? Will you continue to power the world or not? A lot of hungry mouths are desperate to hear a yes. Those in power here in the west, the ones that control your economic destiny, have a crazed and volatile look in their eyes as they try to figure it all out, but are publicly unable to support you because they’ve been kicking you in the ribs for a long time and it’s kind of hard at that point to stop and call all the other kickers bullies.

Don’t look at me, I have no idea what happens next. All I can say is that at the point it becomes optional, I will choose not to put my head in the vise any longer. I suspect I am not alone.

Postscript on Petroleum Companies \Outlook and Viability

Outlook 2022: Oil Industry from Proshare

Chart 22: Global oil demand (mb/d) 2019 -2022

Source: OPEC, Proshare Research * OPEC’s Predictions

In the OECD countries, there were larger-than-expected oil demands in H1 2021. However, oil demand struggled to recover to the pre-pandemic level due to lower demand for industrial and transportation fuels for the rest of the year. Oil demand within the OECD for 2021 mirrored the slow phase of economic growth due to supply chain disruptions and the uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, non-OECD’s oil demand in 2021 fluctuated for the better part of the year on demand swings from China and India. China’s crude imports started the year relatively high but fell to an average of 8.9 mb/d in October, the lowest since February, as refiners lacked import quotas and mobility remained limited on the back of the Zero-Covid-19 policy implemented in the country. India’s crude imports also fell to an average of 4.0 mb/d in October, following 2 months of successive gains. Thus, the Covid-19 and supply chain induced soft patches in H2 2021 across Asia impacted considerably on the global oil demand in 2021.

Illustration 30: Determinants of Crude Demand in 2021

Oil Supply

The global oil supply for the year 2021 was driven mainly by the decision of OPEC+, which strived to achieve balance in the oil market.

The share of OPEC in global oil production stood at about 27.7% in 2021, with an average production of about 26.32 mb/d (see chart 24 below).

Chart 24: Global Oil Supply (mb/d) 2019 – 2022

Source: OPEC, Proshare Research * OPEC’s Predictions

Oil Prices

The tightness in the market kept oil prices elevated in 2021. Despite the lingering Covid-19 pandemic, demand had more robust fundamentals while supply was constrained by underinvestment, low spare capacity, and outages. The global oil market began the new year 2021 with a price rally above the 2020 average, and both benchmark contracts reached their 2021 highest in October, with Brent at US$86.70 and WTI at US$85.41 per barrel. Brent price averaged US$71.2 per barrel in 2021, up by 63.3% Y-o-Y above the US$43.6 per barrel average in 2020. Brent increased from about US$51 per barrel in January 2021 to about US$79 per barrel in December 2021, representing a gain of about +55% YTD (see chart 25 below).

Chart 25: Brent Crude Price in 2021 (US$/barrel)

Source: Oilprice, Proshare Research

 

 

 

 

 

How Wokeness Divides and Destroys

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A.J. Rice explains in his American Greatness article BrokeBatch Mountain.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Sam Elliott is not a conformist. The Hollywood legend still thinks for himself and isn’t afraid to say so. How very American.

What exactly is “toxic masculinity?” Is there a corresponding “toxic femininity?” Or is it just another shape-shifting cudgel used against men in the tedious culture wars?

Sam Elliott certainly isn’t toxic. For years, the actor has been a meme representing manliness. Dry humor, courtesy, and gallantry, slow to wrath but by God get out of his way if you stir him to seek justice or vengeance. Everybody loves Sam Elliott.

Most movie fans also love Benedict Cumberbatch from his days as Sherlock Holmes through his turns as Dr. Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cumberbatch can portray thoughtful weirdness better than anyone else. These are two great and very different actors. They don’t have to agree on everything, or even anything, just because they’re two men at the top of their craft.

Elliott recently appeared on Marc Maron’s podcast and slammed Cumberbatch’s latest film for Netflix, “The Power of the Dog,” for what he calls homosexual themes deconstructing the archetype of the American cowboy. Cumberbatch does play a repressed gay rancher in the 1920s, in a film about the American West that was actually filmed in totalitarian New Zealand. “They’re running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie,” Elliott said of the film.

“The Power of the Dog” was nominated for an astounding 12 Oscars this year. But that doesn’t mean a thing about artistic merit anymore. Recall that during the great moral panic of 2020, the Academy announced that films will not even be considered for awards unless they meet certain racial and gender quotas. With that news, Oscars are no longer signs of quality. They are signs of conformity. They are a super expensive United Colors of Benetton ad.

Elliott is a Democrat but he’s not a conformist. Prior to the Twitter-mob-years, nonconformity was a sign of individuality and strength in a man or woman. His recent comments reveal that the Hollywood legend still thinks for himself and isn’t afraid to say so. How very American.

Cumberbatch, who is a British man playing an American gay cowboy on a movie filmed in New Zealand written and directed by New Zealand’s kooky Jane Campion, has lashed out at Elliott for criticizing the film.

“These people still exist in our world,” Cumberbatch told the British Academy of Film and Television Arts about his “Power of the Dog” character.

“Whether it’s on our doorstep or whether it’s down the road or whether it’s someone we meet in a bar or pub or on the sports field, there is aggression and anger and frustration and an inability to control or know who you are in that moment that causes damage to that person and, as we know, damage to those around them. . . . [There is] no harm in looking at a character to get to the root causes of that.”

“This is a very specific case of repression, but also due to an intolerance for that true identity that Phil is that he can’t fully be,” Cumberbatch added. “The more we look under the hood of toxic masculinity and try to discover the root causes of it, the bigger chances we have of dealing with it when it arises with our children.”

Thank God we didn’t try to win World War II with this mindset.

There is also no harm in criticizing a film for its story choices, its costume choices, its themes, or its lead actor’s failed attempt to come up with a convincing Western American accent. It’s all fair game.

Then there’s the question of authorship and direction. Of late, the Twitter mob has suggested Gal Gadot can’t portray Cleopatra because she isn’t Egyptian. Neither was Cleopatra—she was Macedonian Greek—but why is no one questioning whether Campion can be allowed to write about American cowboys? She certainly isn’t American by any stretch. The mob says non-trans actors are not permitted play trans roles, but here we have a straight man playing a gay American cowboy in a country that’s thousands of miles from America. Hello, double standards.

Is any of what Cumberbatch describes above confined to repressed gay men, or men, at all? Can women not lash out in rage? Can they not stir up trouble and be toxic, too? Ever heard of “Mean Girls” or watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez snark at the capitalism that makes her free and rich? And again, just what is “toxic masculinity,” especially if a fictitious gay rancher can exhibit it and end up winning a trophy for the actor who got richer portraying him while taking swipes at his critics?

Cumberbatch is entitled to promote and defend his film, though the dozen Oscar nominations will do the heavy lifting for him. Elliott is entitled to criticize the film and question why Hollywood keeps deconstructing and destroying icons in the name of pushing its toxic politics on everyone else, under the pen and direction of someone who clearly hates the archetype. No one should be forced to like a movie if it doesn’t suit them, for whatever reason.

As for the film itself, Kirsten Dunst is underused and stares a lot. The color grading is muddy, wasting the power of your 4K HDR television. The pacing is slow. The spare score is reminiscent of a 1960s “Twilight Zone” episode. Cumberbatch’s cowboy speech is uneven. But go ahead and hand it a bunch of trophies for sticking to Hollywood’s political script.

 

 

Federal Climatists Target US Personal Pension Funds

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The green tentacles of global warming/climate change activism are closing in on personal retirement funds. Rupert Darwall writes at Tennessee Star The Biden Administration’s ERISA Work-Around. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Rising inflation threatens the value of Americans’ retirement savings. Now the Biden administration is finalizing a rule to loosen safeguards under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) that protect private retirement savings. The new rule, “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,” stems from President Biden’s May 20, 2021, Executive Order on Climate-Related Financial Risk, which directed senior White House advisers to develop a strategy for financing the administration’s net-zero climate goals, including the use of private savings.

Predictably, Wall Street is cheering the prospect of undoing ERISA safeguards. According to one analysis, 97% of comment letters support the proposal. But as I show in my RealClear Foundation report The Biden Administration’s ERISA Work-Around, it’s the remaining three percent that should give the Department of Labor (DOL) cause to rethink its deeply flawed approach.

Under ERISA, retirement savings must be invested for the exclusive purpose of providing retirement benefits.

The May 2021 executive order illustrates the very danger that ERISA’s exclusive-purpose rule is designed to guard against. To achieve the goals set out in the order, DOL is instructed to “suspend, revise or rescind” two Trump-era rules designed to uphold ERISA’s exclusive-purpose rule.

The stratagem adopted by DOL to carry this out is breathtaking in its audacity. The effect of the rule—if finalized as proposed—is to embed ESG investing in retirement plans and nullify the clear, unambiguous intent of ERISA’s exclusive-purpose rule. It’s audacious—and it’s high risk. In December, GOP senators Pat Toomey, Mike Crapo, Richard Burr, and Tim Scott warned the Secretary of Labor, Martin Walsh, against the proposed rule’s use of “inchoate” ESG terminology and reminded him that in 2020, DOL had been convinced by its review of public comments that the term is “not a clear or helpful lexicon for a regulatory standard.”

ESG—environmental, social, and governance—investing embodies two incompatible propositions.

The first is that investing should be about more than financial returns and have regard to wider societal concerns. In a January 2022 interview with Barron’s, Amy Domini, who cofounded KLD Research & Analytics in 1984, objected to rules that require investing based solely on economic value. “We have got to get rid of this concept of economic value,” Domini told Barron’s. “I don’t care if I’ve got an extra 50 bucks in my pocket if it’s dangerous to walk down the sidewalk, or if my grandson has leukemia because the water system is so polluted.”

The second ESG proposition contradicts the first. Far from sacrificing financial returns, ESG investing boosts them. “Our investment conviction,” BlackRock states in its comment letter to DOL, “is that incorporating sustainability-related factors—which are often characterized and grouped into ESG categories—can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors over the long-term” (emphasis added).

BlackRock’s corporate strategy is to market ESG-style investment products to millennials, who, BlackRock believes, are less interested in financial returns than boomers. In his 2019 letter to CEOs, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink cited a survey of millennials. When asked what the primary purpose of businesses should be, 63% more said “improving society” than said “generating profit.” Three years later, in his 2022 letter to CEOs, Fink was pivoting away from ESG and undercutting BlackRock’s special pleading to DOL. “Make no mistake,” Fink wrote, “the fair pursuit of profit is still what animates markets; and long-term profitability is the measure by which markets will ultimately determine your company’s success.”

According to Jonathan Berry, DOL’s former Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy under the previous administration, career staff at DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) initiated secretive private meetings after the November 2020 election to build support and find cause to overturn the 2020 rules. Who were these parties? In its comment letter on the proposed rule, BlackRock lets the cat out of the bag in praising DOL for its “thoughtful analysis of the challenges presented by the 2020 rules” and for incorporating feedback from a “wide range of stakeholders.”

The outcome was a DOL press release on March 10, 2021, announcing the nonenforcement of the two 2020 rules. “These rules have created a perception that fiduciaries are at risk if they include any environmental, social and governance factors in the financial evaluation of plan investments,” said Ali Khawar, EBSA Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary. In fact, references to ESG had been removed from the text of the 2020 Financial Factors rule. Far from ruling out consideration of any ESG factor, its preamble accepted that “ESG considerations may present issues of material business risk or opportunities.” Why hasn’t DOL issued a FAQ and held a public meeting to dispel misperceptions about the 2020 rule?

Because the White House has instructed DOL to nix the rule.

The proposal also seeks to rewrite the December 2020 DOL rule on proxy voting in order to push fiduciaries to outsource their voting to the proxy-advisory duopoly of Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass, Lewis and their bias in support of ESG-type goals in proxy votes. Furthermore, the proposed replacement rule doesn’t tackle the vexed issue of “empty voting,” when, for example, the likes of three big index-tracker providers vote proxies in respect of shares that they don’t have an economic interest in. Shouldn’t DOL be clarifying that ERISA fiduciaries have a duty to investigate the voting policies of firms to which they delegate voting authority?, asks RealClear Foundation senior fellow Bernard Sharfman and Manhattan Institute’s James Copland.

Failure to do so, they suggest, could constitute grounds for a legal challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act.

In their letter to Secretary Walsh, the four GOP senators also invoke the specter of the rule having its fate decided by the courts. “The use of such [ESG] terminology in the proposal is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act,” the senators warn. As drafted, the proposed rule would invert the primacy of statute law over executive-agency rulemaking.

It would also fundamentally alter the nature of American capitalism, corralling capital for political ends, enabled by multitrillion-dollar investment advisers eyeing the prospect of higher fees.

Will the rule of law prevail?

 

Truckers Better Representatives Than Congress People

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Sarabeth Matilsky writes at the The Brownstone Institute What the Truckers Want: An Explanation for the Confused.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

There are many legitimate reasons to be cynical in this world, but I’ve decided to assume that my fellow Americans are generally really smart people. And for those of you who are very intelligent yet still “confused” about “What the truckers want,” I offer you this simple essay. My seven-year-old now understands the nuances, so please trust me, you can understand too! Lots of our politicians are in the dark, so this essay is also for them.

The People’s Convoy (not to be confused with various other rallies and truckers’ protests both related and unrelated) left Adelanto, CA, over two weeks ago. They are men and women, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, religious and non-religious, gay and straight, black and white, of many ethnicities. They represent working-class persons in the transportation sector and many others who have been maligned and in many cases lost their jobs due to Covid policies and vaccine mandates.

They represent all Americans, who deserve the rights that our Constitution and Bill of Rights confer.

These truckers and others drove from California to Hagerstown, MD, over a week and a half – and all across the country, from overpasses, at evening rallies, and all along the highways, Americans turned out to cheer them on. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans turned out to show their support for the truckers, and hundreds of thousands if not millions more cheered them on from their homes, unable to be there in person.

All across the country, the truckers drove courteously, cleaned up all their litter and messes, and have requested the attention of our elected officials to correct some simple issues. (There are MANY other problems worthy of our attention, of course, but those presented by the Convoy are basic and simple ones, and must be considered high priority).

Since arriving in the DC area, the People’s Convoy has been working respectfully with law enforcement, circling the DC Beltway at particular times in peaceful protest, and all the time they have been requesting the attention of our elected officials. So far, two small press conferences have yielded mainstream media reporters as confused as our elected officials seem to be.

Here is what the truckers want:

— All Covid Mandates Should Be Rescinded.

— Federal Emergency Powers Should Be Revoked.

Lots of pundits wonder: “Vaccine Mandates are falling everywhere – so why the protests?”

Not to get too technical, but you need to know that the USA “State of Emergency” that authorizes Emergency Powers at various levels of government was signed into place by Trump, and has been renewed by Biden twice now – most recently a few days ago, for another entire year.

The truckers demand that this emergency order be revoked, because while it is in place, some of our Constitutional rights are suspended, and there is no guarantee that the government will stay within bounds; lockdowns in theory could happen at any time again, for similar or different reasons.

And of course, these orders should be rescinded for the obvious reason that there is no emergency.

Additionally, as long as the emergency orders are in effect, there are tens of thousands of American men and women whose jobs have been lost due to unconstitutional vaccine mandates, and they have no legal standing to get them back until we exit this “State of Emergency.” Many of the people who have lost their jobs are skilled professionals in the healthcare, transportation, education and many other sectors.

For example: 1,200 teachers in NYC alone have lost their jobs, and thousands of doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals are similarly out of work, as are tens of thousands of firefighters, pilots, sanitation workers, military members, police officers, and others, all across the country.

Politicians are beginning to admit that the vaccine mandates are and were not at all evidence-based, and this is a step in the right direction toward admitting the wrongdoing perpetuated by our elected and unelected leaders upon the American people. However, it is necessary – in order for us to get back to even a baseline of representative government – to end the State of Emergency.

Ted Cruz rode shotgun in the lead truck for a circuit of the DC beltway yesterday. Just prior to that, he became the first politician to actually show up to meet with the truckers – he joined them in Hagerstown, MD, and spoke to an enormous crowd. I have to say, that although it is important to start somewhere (a politician finally showed up!), the moment that man began his stump speech, he spoke in platitudes, and displayed an understanding of the situation that was entirely focused on his own political aims.

The adults can see through your posturing too! We DO want to be heard, but the very first thing you just tried to do, after two weeks of truckers explaining patiently that this is about freedom for ALL and not partisan politics, is to draw your own partisan lines in the sand and divide us! THEN what did you do? You conveniently forgot that it’s not only mandates we want rescinded, but the State of Emergency that remains in effect, which gives you and all other politicrats unprecedented power.

It made me feel a bit hopeless, that out of all the politicians who are supposed to represent the people of this country, only this one would even show up, and NONE have so far shown any potential for leading us out of this mess even remotely like the leadership displayed by the truckers themselves over the past couple of weeks.

Truckers for Congress! And Senate! And President! Plus, no corporate money of any kind is ever allowed to seep into any politicians’ pockets ever again? I think that would be a start.

I called all of my federal elected officials today, to urge them: be the first Democrat to stand up! Go talk to the truckers! They are right in Hagerstown, less than an hour outside of DC. Do what we elected you to do: go listen to the people. And then you all need to give us our rights back, the ones that should never have been taken from us in the first place, back two years ago this week. Give my kids some reason to hope that by the time they are voting, they will have somebody to vote FOR.

 

 

Biden’s Inflation: He Runs But Can’t Hide

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Let’s review the story about US inflation fed to PC media by Biden and the Dems:

The graph above shows that consumer prices were descending from a peak in 2018 during the last two years of Trump administration.  Prices start rising upon Biden’s taking office and the spike continues prior to Putin’s Ukraine invasion (the period in pale blue titled: “Not Putin.”

Biden also blamed oil companies and their executives because they “don’t want to pump more oil, although they have every capacity to do so. Nothing is slowing them up,” he said in response to criticism that his administration’s canceling of the KeystoneXL pipeline and Executive Order stopping new oilfield leases is to blame. The administration has repeatedly said that the industry has 9,000 approved leases they can tap into at any time.

And to throw more money on the inflationary bonfire, Dems have just passed a 1.5 trillion dollar budget full of outrageous pork.

Jonathon Turley writes at zerohedge When Pigs Fly: Congress Inserts Over 4,000 Pork Earmarks In Spending Bill.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  H/T Tyler Durden

For years, Congress has dispensed with the pretense of informed legislative process when it comes to major bills and appropriations.

The new $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill, however, took the notion of blind legislating to a disgraceful degree. Democratic leadership dumped the almost 3,000 page bill on the members (and the public) on Wednesday with only a couple days to review the massive spending.

That includes over 4,000 pork projects in earmarks.

While Congress disavowed earmarks, the pork-ridden bill shows that both parties have abandoned the pledge. Spending trillions in the last couple years appears to have removed any sense of fiscal responsibility or accountability. We are now over $30 trillion in debt so what are a few pork items — or in Schumer’s case 142 such items. (Some argue that debt is really only $22 trillion and that debt does not matter).

It was a clever move at a perfect time. With Ukraine raging and people traumatized over the war, leadership like Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Cal.) kept bringing questions back to $14 billion in aid for Ukraine. Members stressed that there was no time to waste — or in this case to read — before voting.

It is a familiar tactic on pork spending. You can hide an entire drove of pigs behind a single redeeming budget item.

What is most alarming is the level of duplicity. The bill was withheld by leadership to guarantee little time for the members, let alone the public, from seriously considering the specific expenditures. It shows utter contempt for the concept of public deliberation and debate in the legislation. One must accept the word of the leadership and vote in the blind.

In the meantime, even before this package, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget predicted that the debt-to-GDP ratio is at 101% and the total federal debt, including intragovernmental debt, may exceed 120%. Even if debt does not matter (as some have claimed) most citizens oppose pork barrel spending.

All of that is worth discussing but it is hard to have that debate when congressional leaders are dumping massive bills and calling for quick votes on little more than the cover page.

Comment: 

It appears that they know their days in power are numbered, and they are determined to bankrupt the country before the electorate can give them the boot.  Once again Biden is bluffing with Other Peoples’ Money.

 

 

Still No Global Warming, Cool February Land and Sea

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean.  But as an overview consider how recent rapid cooling has now completely overcome the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November, 2021 and now in January and February 2022. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020).

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~55 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

gmt-warming-events

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event.  The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4.  This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C.  Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C.  Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate.  On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. 

Update August 3, 2021

Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT

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See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

February Update Cool Ocean and Land Air Temps Continue

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With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  While you will hear a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast is the cooling setting in.  The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino is now fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions.  Last month both land and ocean continued cool.

UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for February 2022.  Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HadSST3 (still not updated from October). So I have separately posted on SSTs using HadSST4 2021 Ends with Cooler Ocean Temps  This month also has a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years. Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes, and last month showed air over land dropping slightly while ocean air rose.

Note:  UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021.  In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values change with the baseline reference shift.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  Thus the cooling oceans now portend cooling land air temperatures to follow.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

After a change in priorities, updates to HadSST4 now appear more promptly.  For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are now posted for February.  The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the new and current dataset.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015.

Note 2020 was warmed mainly by a spike in February in all regions, and secondarily by an October spike in NH alone. In 2021, SH and the Tropics both pulled the Global anomaly down to a new low in April. Then SH and Tropics upward spikes, along with NH warming brought Global temps to a peak in October.  That warmth was gone as November 2021 ocean temps plummeted everywhere. Note the sharp drop in the Tropics the last 3 months, and NH erasing its upward bump in December. 01/2022 closely resembles 01/2015 and 02/2022 is the same.

Land Air Temperatures Tracking Downward in Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for February is below.

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land.  Land temps are dominated by NH with a 2020 spike in February, followed by cooling down to July and a second spike in November.  Note the mid-year spikes in SH winter months.  In December 2020 all of that was wiped out. Then 2021 followed a similar pattern with NH spiking in January, then dropping before rising in the summer to peak in October 2021. As with the ocean air temps, all that was erased in November with a sharp cooling everywhere. Land temps dropped sharply the last four months, even more than did the Oceans.  Note 02/2022 Global and NH land dropped further pulling down the Global land anomaly lower than 01/2015.

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

The chart shows monthly anomalies starting 01/1980 to present.  The average monthly anomaly is -0.07, for this period of more than four decades.  The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20.   A small upward bump in 2021 has been reversed with temps now returning again to the mean. Today we are at nearly the same temperature as 1980, with virtually no accumulation of global warming.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak.  Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

 

How Broken is US Election Process? Let us count the ways . . .

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John Solomon writes at Just The News Ballot Bombshells: 20 episodes exposing fraud, illegalities and irregularities in 2020 election.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Illegal rule changes, ballot harvesting, Iranian voter hack are among the many now-confirmed serious irregularities, putting the lie to the “perfect election” narrative.

For more than a year, Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have decried what they call the “Big Lie” that America’s 2020 election was flawed or stolen. But almost weekly now, revelations are emerging that the election was, in fact, marred by illegalities, irregularities and mismanagement like former President Donald Trump has argued, leaving a nation increasingly doubting the reliability of its election system.

A recent poll found that 40% of Americans no longer believe in the legitimacy of the winner of either of the last two presidential elections, a stunning number for a country globally held as the gold standard for constitutional republics built on democracy.

The 2020 election results almost certainly won’t be reversed, no matter how widespread the calls for decertification grow. But the opportunity to take the many failures of the last election seriously to improve Americans’ confidence in voting in the 2022 and 2024 elections looms large, experts told Just the News.

Here are 20 of the most important revelations uncovered by Just the News over the last 15 months of reporting, complete with substantiating evidence and links”

1.A Foreign Intrusion. Federal authorities have confirmed that two Iranian nationals successfully hacked into a state computer election system, stole 100,000 voter registrations and used the data to carry out a cyber-intimidation campaign that targeted GOP members of Congress, Trump campaign officials and Democratic voters in the November 2020 election in one of the largest foreign intrusions in U.S. election history. The defendants “were part of a coordinated conspiracy in which Iranian hackers sought to undermine faith and confidence in the U.S. presidential election,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams declared in an indictment.

2.  Alleged Bribery. The former state Supreme Court justice appointed by the Wisconsin Legislature to investigate the 2020 election concluded that millions of dollars in donations to election administrators in five Democrat-heavy municipalities from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life violated state anti-bribery laws and corrupted election practices by turning public election authorities into liberal get-out-the-vote activists. “The Zuckerberg-funded CTCL/ Zuckerberg 5 scheme would prove to be an effective way to accomplish the partisan effort to ‘turnout’ their desired voters and it was done with the active support of the very people and the governmental institution (WEC) that were supposed to be guarding the Wisconsin elections administrative process from the partisan activities they facilitated,” Justice Michael Gableman wrote.

3. Illegal ballot harvesting in Wisconsin. Gableman also exposed an extensive vote collection operation, known as ballot harvesting, in nursing homes in which third-party activists illegally collected the ballots of vulnerable residents, some of whom lacked the mental or physical capacity to vote or were forbidden from voting by guardianship agreements. State election regulators “unlawfully directed the municipal clerks not to send out the legally required special voting deputies to nursing homes, resulting in many nursing homes’ registered residents voting at 100% rates and many ineligible residents voting, despite a guardianship order or incapacity,” Gableman wrote in his explosive report.

4.  Ballot harvesting probe in the Peach State. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has announced he has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that liberal activists engaged in illegal ballot harvesting, collecting ballots from voters and delivering them in violation of state law. Raffensperger said he is planning to issue subpoenas to identify a whistleblower who admitted he engaged in the operation, and there could be prosecutions. The True the Vote election integrity group says in a formal state complaint that the man, identified as John Doe, admitted his role and identified nonprofits who funded it at $10 per ballot delivered. The watchdog group also claims it has assembled cell phone location records pinpointing the alleged harvesting by as many as 240 activists.

5.  Bad voter signatures? A review of Maricopa County’s mail-in ballots in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election estimated that more than 200,000 ballots with signatures that did not match voter files were counted without being reviewed, more than eight times the number the county acknowledged.

6.  50,000 Arizona ballots called into question. An extensive audit by Arizona’s Senate officially called into question more than 50,000 ballots cast in the 2020 election, including voters who cast ballots from residences they had left. The tally in question is nearly five times the margin of Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

7.  Illegal ballot drop boxes. A Wisconsin judge has ruled the widespread use of ballot drop boxes in 2020 was unlawful, and the state Supreme Court let that ruling stand. That means drop boxes can’t be used in future elections starting in April. It also means that tens of thousands of ballots in the 2020 election were cast unlawfully.

8.  Foreign voters found on Texas rolls. An audit of Texas voter rolls identified nearly 12,000 noncitizens suspected of illegally registering to vote and nearly 600 cases in which ballots may have been cast in the name of a dead resident or by a voter who may also have voted in another state. Officials are now in the process of removing the foreign voters and deciding whether prosecutions are warranted.

9.  Foreign voters found on Georgia rolls. An audit by Georgia’s Secretary of State has identified more than 2,000 suspected foreigners who tried to register to vote in the state, though none reached the point of casting ballots. Raffensperger says prosecutions may be forthcoming.

10.  Unconstitutional mail-in voting. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has concluded the state law that opened the door to no-excuse mail-in voting in 2020 was unconstitutional and that mail-in voting can only be enacted by a constitutional amendment. “A constitutional amendment must be presented to the people and adopted into our fundamental law before legislation authorizing no-excuse mail-in voting can be placed upon our statute books,” the court ruled. About 2.5 million voted by mail in Pennsylvania in 2020, votes now called into question by the ruling.

11. More noncitizen voters. The Gableman investigation in Wisconsin also found noncitizens had made it onto the state voters rolls in violation of state law. The Wisconsin Election Commission failed “to record non-citizens in the WisVote voter database, thereby permitting non-citizens to vote, even though Wisconsin law requires citizenship to vote — all in violation of the Help America Vote Act,” the investigator wrote.

12.  Ballot chain of custody issues. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has opened an investigation into the handling of drop box ballots last November in one of the state’s Democratic strongholds following a media report that there were problems with chain of custody documentation in DeKalb County.

13.  Fulton County irregularities. Georgia’s handpicked election monitor for Fulton County, the state’s largest voting district, documented two dozen pages of mismanagement and irregularities during vote counting in Atlanta in November 2020, including double-scanning of ballots, insecure transport of ballots and violations of voter privacy. The revelations prompted the state to take steps to possibly put Fulton County in receivership, empowering state officials to run the elections. Most of Fulton County’s election officials have left their jobs.

14.  Errant vote counting. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp referred the audited November 2020 election results in Fulton County to the State Election Board after multiple reviews found three dozen significant problems with absentee ballot counting, including duplicate tallies, math errors and transposed data. Kemp’s referral calls into question hundreds of ballots in the official count.

15. Dirty voter rolls. Michigan’s official state auditor has found that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson failed to adhere to state election law by properly updating and reconciling Michigan’s qualified voter roll. This oversight, according to the audit, increased the risk of ineligible voters casting ballots.

16. Illegal exemptions from voter ID. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled as many as 200,000 voters were allowed to illegally skip voter ID for absentee ballots by claiming they were indefinitely confined by COVID when there was no such legal authority to do so. Biden beat Trump by about 20,000 votes in the state.

17.  Uneven enforcement of election laws. The Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau identified more than 30 problems with the administration of elections in 2020, including unlawful orders and uneven enforcement of the law and urged lawmakers to make sweeping improvements.

18. More illegal harvesting. In Arizona, a half dozen people have already been indicted on charges of illegal harvesting in a probe by Attorney General Mark Brnovich that shows signs of expanding. It comes after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Democrats’ arguments and concluded Arizona’s ban on harvesting was constitutional.

19.  Voter fraud in Michigan. Michigan charged three women in connection with voter fraud schemes, including efforts to cast ballots on behalf of non-consenting nursing home residents.

20. Still more nursing home fraud. In Wisconsin, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling announced his investigators have secured evidence that eight out of 42 residents at a local nursing home had been recorded as casting absentee ballots that their families said was not possible because the residents didn’t possess the cognitive ability to vote.

By following the linked title to the article, you can read in depth reports on these issues.

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Blame for Inflation: What You Need to Know

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Michael Maharrey writes at Peter Schiff’s blog The Inflation Blame Game explaining how we got here and how the culprits are deflecting responsibility by accusing others. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  H/T Tyler Durden

Now inflation is Russia’s fault. Or is it greedy businesses pushing up prices? Maybe a combination of the two.

It seems that government officials and central bankers are looking everywhere for a place to pin the blame for inflation except the one place they need to look — in the mirror.

I’m already seeing headlines about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing inflation. CBS broadcast this storyline on the first day of the invasion. As Peter Schiff put it in a recent podcast, Russia is the latest “excuse variant” for inflation.

It is true that the Russian invasion and economic sanctions have caused some prices to spike. Oil was over $130 a barrel over the weekend. Copper hit record highs. The price of wheat surged. But this is not necessarily inflationary. Inflation causes a general rise in prices across the board. In this situation, some prices will rise while others fall. As consumers spend more on food and energy, they will cut spending on other goods and services. Ostensibly, those prices will drop.

Inflation — an increase in the money supply — causes prices to rise more generally. It’s the result of more dollars chasing the same number of (or fewer) goods and services. As Peter explained, the culprit is the central bank.

“”What makes the prices go up is when the central bank responds to rising energy prices or rising food prices by printing more money, which is what they are going to do. Because as consumers have to tighten their belts because food is so expensive, because home heating oil and gasoline are so expensive, and they cut back spending on everything else, that causes a recession. And that results in the Fed printing more money, and that’s what’s inflationary.”

So, while the Russian invasion is certainly causing prices to rise, government-created inflation is still churning under the surface. In effect, we’re experiencing a double-whammy of rising prices.

Russia is a handy scapegoat for inflation, but “greedy businesses” continue to be the favorite target of central bankers and politicians. As I’ve explained, the narrative continues to grow because the average American doesn’t understand inflation or basic corporate accounting. That includes a lot of the people writing about inflation in mainstream and left-leaning corporate media.

And for politicians, businesses serve as the perfect scapegoat. Americans are already primed to hate big businesses.

During Jerome Powell’s testimony on Capitol Hill last week, virtually all of the Democrats in both the House and Senate repeated the “businesses are causing inflation” narrative. They talked about “record profits” and claimed businesses didn’t need to pass on higher costs. They also talked about a lack of competition.

This behavior is typical of politicians. They cause a problem and then clamor for even more government intervention to “fix” the problem they caused. They want to use inflation as an excuse to increase government regulation and intervention into the economy. Peter pointed out the irony in these congressional hearings.

“You have the chairman of the Federal Reserve that’s printing all the money fielding questions from the congressmen who are spending all the money that the Federal Reserve is printing. So, these are the two partners in crime that are 100 percent responsible for inflation, and they spend the entire hearing talking about how bad inflation is, what a horrible problem it is, and trying to point fingers at who might be to blame, without anybody accepting responsibility that inflation is not here by accident and inflation is not here because some businesses got greedy. Inflation is here for one reason and one reason only. The government isn’t spending money that it collects in taxes. It’s spending money that the Federal Reserve prints.”

If Congress really wants to do something about inflation, it needs to cut government spending. It needs to quit borrowing money and issuing debt that the Fed has to monetize. But obviously, they don’t want to do that. It’s easier to blame Russia or some greedy business than to do what needs to be done.

President Biden also blames everybody but himself for inflation. During the State of the Union speech, the president took credit for helping the economy grow through various government spending programs. But he went on to say a lot of the progress is being undone by inflation — as if inflation has nothing to do with the spending policies.

Biden ignores a critical part of the equation.

When the government spends money on any economic stimulus program, there is a cost. It either has to be paid for by direct taxation or by running a deficit. When the government runs a deficit, either future taxpayers foot the bill, or more often, the Federal Reserve monetizes the debt, prints money and creates inflation. As Peter put it, the government will pay for this government program one way or another.

“Either directly, through an honest tax, or indirectly through a dishonest tax called inflation. So, if Biden wants to claim credit for all this government spending, then he has to claim responsibility for all the inflation that was required to finance it. He can’t pretend that he gave taxpayers all this great stuff but then inflation came and stole it away from them. The inflation came from government. Government stole it. What the government gives with one hand, it takes with the other. So, Biden through government spending programs with one hand reached out and gave taxpayers some money, and with the other hand, he picked their back pocket through inflation to pay for it. So, you can’t say, ‘I love all this government spending,’ but then pretend that the inflation that was a consequence of that government spending had absolutely nothing to do with that inflation.”

That’s why Biden needs a scapegoat. That’s why members of Congress need a scapegoat. That’s why Jerome Powell and his minions at the Fed need a scapegoat. All of these officials need a scapegoat because they need to shift blame for the inflation that they created.

Not greedy businesses.

Not coronavirus.

Not Russia.

Them.