Society in General

Dangerous Illusion: 2 Weeks to Flatten the Curve

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Bruce Pardy explains in his Epoch Times article Back to the Future: ‘Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve’ Was a Dangerous Mistake From the Beginning.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Editor’s note: COVID lockdowns and restrictions for “two weeks to flatten the curve” began two years ago in late March 2020. At the time, many pundits called it a dangerous mistake, one of whom was law professor Bruce Pardy. Two years later, as restrictions finally begin to ease, the federal government and many workplaces still maintain vaccination mandates. Below are prognostications (edited) from Pardy from April and May 2020.

Lenin once said that there are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. In this new era of the past few weeks, Canada has become less free. Lockdowns will eventually ease, but we have crossed a threshold. Canadians now want government to keep them safe—not just from foreign threats and violence, but from viruses and the vicissitudes of life. Authorities have enthusiastically seized the moment. Politicians have assumed unprecedented powers not subject to legislative oversight and have suspended civil liberties. For the first time ever, officials have confined citizens—with their approval—to their homes. Municipalities issue citations for walking through the park, police enforce rules that do not exist, and health authorities surveil the sick.

The situation that we are now in may be a shock, but it should not be a surprise. We have long been headed down this road. COVID restrictions may seem like an extreme change to daily life, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind. We were not a free country on March 22 that suddenly became unfree on March 23. We have an expansive administrative welfare state, which for a long time has driven the bus. It regulates everything. It subsidizes, taxes, supervises, and directs. The degree of infringement on civil liberties is more extreme now than it has even been for the general population in this country, but COVID rules are not differently intrusive, just more so. The lockdowns will ease, but the mandate that the government now has will remain. It will be difficult to put this genie back in the bottle.

It has worked like this: In Stage One, which we passed through a long time ago, the populace becomes convinced that it is the state’s role to keep them safe. In Stage 2, which began with the onset of the virus, they become fearful. Stage Three is necessity: if the virus is to be feared and the job of government is to keep us safe, then government must do whatever is necessary to protect us from the virus. Necessity provides the excuse for control, and control exacerbates dependence. What we have now is a dependent population, economically and psychologically.

There will not be rational debate about these policies. Governments do not adopt policies for logical and rational reasons. It is a mistake to believe that it is possible to engage in a civil conversation with the public and with government officials to figure out what works best. What has worked for governments in this circumstance is the promotion of fear. Concentrating on making rational policy recommendations based upon the premise that we are engaging in a good faith dialogue would be to miss the plot.

There will be court challenges, but the courts will not say that these policies are unconstitutional. The government can do what it is doing because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not provide the lines in the sand that we think that it does. Courts like to pretend that they are immune from public opinion, but they follow the culture as much as anybody else.

The charter will not protect us from the culture, and the culture now is one that demands safety, provided by the state.

Governments will be allowed to do indirectly what they could not do directly. Take the vaccine for example. If a vaccine is developed, they will not make the vaccine mandatory. Instead, they will say, make your own choice but if you do not have a vaccine you cannot come inside the building. You cannot come and renew your driver’s licence unless you can show us you have been vaccinated. Technically that is not mandatory, but practically it is. Contact tracing means that they are imposing upon you a requirement without admitting that what they are doing is locking you down if you decide not to do it. Governments will use means by which to achieve their objective without being so authoritarian that you cannot move.

The most disturbing thing about the COVID regime is not that governments are putting it in place, but that citizens support it, and indeed demand it.

COVID madness will not stop until a critical mass of people say that they have had enough. The way to turn this around is to get the population to reject the authority of experts, health officials, and governments to tell them what to do. Until we get to that, efforts to reverse these policies may prove to be a waste of time. Until people perceive that the purpose of government is to protect liberty instead of safety, everything else is fiddling around the margins.

Crises are an ideal time for the state to advance into territory from which it will not wish to retreat. In time, controls will loosen but old expectations have been swept away. In this new era, we will discover that leaders of all political stripes have more than a little Lenin in them.

Ukraine Is Elites’ Latest Propaganda Ploy

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ukrainian ambassador and flag waving at Biden State of the Union speech.

Lee Smith writes at Compact Ukraine Is the Ruling Class’s Latest Propaganda Ploy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The war in Ukraine has been dominating headlines for more than a month, but it is still hard for most Americans to grasp what is going on. In part, that’s because most of what is coming out of Kyiv and Moscow is war propaganda. But it’s also because the US ruling class is once more waging information war—against domestic critics and internal enemies.

You can hardly blame the Ukrainians for inventing stories about fighter pilots who single-handedly downed scores of Russian aircraft. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is trying to keep up morale on the home front while soliciting support from Western leaders to fend off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught. For those in power, lying is part of the logic of war.

What isn’t normal is the all-out effort to promote Ukraine’s cause in America—an effort grafted on to a long series of ongoing propaganda campaigns deployed by US institutions and industries against the same target: the American public. These campaigns have used the same methods, personnel, platforms, and even catchwords to deceive, harass, and punish working- and middle-class Americans to the benefit of the country’s increasingly powerful ruling oligarchy.

To help their chosen candidate, Joe Biden, unseat President Donald Trump, Silicon Valley giants blocked an October 2020 New York Post exposé about influence-peddling by Biden’s son Hunter. Fifty former top US intelligence officials characterized the Post’s reporting as Russian disinformation, a claim echoed unanimously and uncritically by prestige outlets. The New York Times repeatedly called the Hunter Files “unsubstantiated,” while National Public Radio’s managing editor for news, Terence Samuels, huffed that “we don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”

Yet even as the Times acknowledged last week that the Hunter emails uncovered by the Post were indeed authentic, the same tech firms are banning videos and stories that contradict the US political establishment’s official Ukraine narrative for the same reason: American spies claim it’s Russian disinformation.

If you aren’t accused of serving Moscow, you are at least disloyal to the United States.

The media say that the Trump supporters who showed up to protest election irregularities at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, were there to wage an insurrection. This, despite mounting evidence, including the confessions of New York Times reporters, suggesting that law enforcement played a significant role in staging the day’s violence. Yet video of the events selectively edited by local police and the US Department of Justice and then released to the media has already solidified the official narrative: Anyone who didn’t vote for Biden is likely a domestic terrorist.

Or you are said to be endangering American lives with conspiracy theories.

That’s how the ruling class framed opposition journalists and researchers who questioned the origins of Covid-19, as well as doctors who noted the obvious fact that the vaccines didn’t work as promised—otherwise there would have been no need for boosters. The accused were banished from social media, hectored by their professional colleagues and institutions, and received scores of death threats. Americans who failed to comply with government efforts to rig the stock market by mandating Pfizer and Moderna shots were fired from work, expelled from school, and ostracized from their communities.

Fast-forward a few months: If you say out loud that you think there is something strange about a campaign involving Democrats and Republicans, the media, Big Tech, corporate giants, and US intelligence services to promote one side in a foreign war that doesn’t obviously touch on the daily concerns of most Americans, you’re pro-Putin.

That accusation has haunted the American public sphere going on six years.

For this is where the long campaign started, with Russiagate, the most destructive information operation ever waged against the nation. And unlike, say, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, its authors aren’t adversarial spy services, but fellow Americans, our own ruling class. Now the same journalists, foreign-policy experts, and retired US officials who lied in 2016 about Trump’s ties to Russia are front and center shaping public opinion about the war waged by Putin—the world leader our overclass put in the middle of an elite conspiracy theory designed to guarantee Hillary Clinton the presidency.

It would be useful to have insight into Putin’s thinking, especially now with a massive land war in the middle of Europe giving rise to a powerful anti-American bloc led by Russia and China. But don’t count on America’s national-security establishment to provide that insight. For they squandered their credibility with Russiagate. From former officials like ex-Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and retired spy chiefs like James Clapper and John Brennan to Biden deputies like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the Pentagon’s top strategist, Colin Kahl, and the entire Democratic Party and its media apparatus, the lies of America’s political class left the republic vulnerable to destructive forces.

Why did they lie? Policymakers, spy chiefs, and military officials rightly deceive foreign powers to protect and advance the US national interest. But these men and women lied to the American people about the president they elected. Then they lied about everything. Public US institutions and private industries have spent the last six years mustering their formidable powers to break the US working and middle classes. Why?

Because lying is part of the logic of war,
and America’s oligarchy is at war with the American people.

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

Green Energy Puts US Electric Grid in Peril

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Matthew Kandrach writes at Real Clear Energy America’s Emerging Energy Crisis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The warning signs are everywhere. We are stumbling toward an energy crisis that is likely to be far more severe and long-lasting than the upheavals of the 1970s. And no, this isn’t about Russia or Ukraine. This is about the perilous state of the U.S. electricity grid.

If action isn’t taken soon to address the unraveling reliability of the grid, the United States will face the specter of rolling blackouts, factory shutdowns, loss of jobs and soaring electricity bills. Our organization CASE recently released a policy brief highlighting just how dire the situation is.

Events In recent years show how serious the situation is. According To the Wall Street Journal, outages have gone from fewer than two dozen major disruptions in 2000 to more than 180 in 2020. The catastrophic blackouts that gripped Texas for a week in February of last year should have been eye-opening. Now, warnings from regulators, grid operators and utilities suggest far worse is coming.

There’s no getting around it. The nation’s electricity transmission system is growing increasingly undependable. Aging infrastructure, severe weather, and the rapid pivot away from baseload power to intermittent solar and wind are all contributing. Supply chain problems and local opposition to building new power lines and siting renewable projects are also turning into increasingly tall hurdles. Expectations of increased demand driven by electric vehicles are only compounding the challenge.

The energy transition is happening but the question we must ask is how do we responsibly manage it? It’s becoming apparent that the transition to renewables is vastly more difficult and complicated than some believed. Those who want to shut down every coal and natural gas plant ignore that fossil fuels supply 60% of America’s electricity. There’s growing alarm the America’s haphazard approach to the energy transition is taking apart the existing grid and the reliable generating capacity that long underpinned it far faster than we’re adding reliable alternatives.

Coal plants, in particular, are being pushed aside when it’s becoming painfully clear the optionality, fuel security and reliability they offer the grid is still very much needed. If we continue as we are – ditching the well-operating power plants that hold the grid together during severe heat and biting winter cold –we’re only going to exacerbate this crisis of our own making.

The affordability of our power supply also hangs in the balance. Last year, a 17% surge in coal-fired electricity helped shield consumers from rising natural gas prices. As we continue to disassemble the coal fleet, with another 100 gigawatts of coal capacity expected to close by 2030, we’re robbing the grid of an important price shock absorber for when natural gas prices rise. With global demand for gas rising, U.S. exports soaring and the Russian invasion of Ukraine throwing volatility into global energy markets, dismantling fuel optionality is short-sighted and reckless.

Europe’s decision to race away from coal and close much of its nuclear power capacity before having reliable alternatives in place, has left it at the mercy of Russian natural gas imports and soaring global gas prices. Energy security – now more so than since the energy crises of the 1970s – requires careful attention.

The singular, haphazard focus of climate-driven energy policy requires an abrupt rethink.

There remains an opportunity for an energy policy reset – both at the state and federal levels – to tackle this reliability and affordability crisis head on. First, we must recognize the need for dispatchable fuel diversity and fuel security. That must also include a commitment to increasing capacity reserve margins in electricity markets instead of letting them continue to shrink. As we grapple with the complexities of the energy transition and the challenges posed by integrating renewable power and building transmission infrastructure, we need a reliability and affordability insurance policy. The insurance we can provide is recognizing the value of the generating capacity we already have and the importance of dispatchable fuel diversity.

Responsibly navigating the road ahead means building on the shoulders of our existing baseload capacity, not taking it apart.