Americans Polled on Energy

The poll was conducted by Senate Opportunity Fund, a not-for-profit 501(c)(4) organization, to test public opinion regarding congressional bill H.R.1, called The Lower Energy Costs Act.  A national sample of 800 likely voters were contacted by phone during March 21 to 23, 2023, with questions regarding a number of public policy issues.  Responses are shown by self-identified political leanings, and by participants located in battleground states. Note that the final question showed about 80% approval by all cohorts.

 

Stanford Blocking Wind of Freedom

Honor Code at my alma mater.

Thomas Adamo and Josiah Joner report at Stanford Review Stanford’s Dark Hand in Twitter Censorship.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Matt Taibbi’s two latest “Twitter Files” drops revealed that Stanford played a direct role in this gross violation of online free speech. Emails revealed that the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) actively collaborated with Twitter to suppress information they knew was factually true. Taibbi’s investigation revealed that Stanford’s Virality Project “recommends that multiple platforms take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”

The project succeeded in getting big tech companies to take down about 35% of the content they flagged. They reviewed content en masse from almost every major social media company: Twitter, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, TikTok, and Pinterest were all monitored by SIO. The questionable censorship decisions by the group all seemed to go in one direction—shutting down the now-vindicated Dr. Scott Atlas and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, while taking direct guidance from Anthony Fauci about the supposed falsehood of the lab leak theory.

In short, the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Virality Project had countless people—mostly Stanford students—reporting millions of Twitter posts that didn’t comply with their standards. Even posts that were factually true faced censorship if they didn’t conform to the subjective whims of SIO officials.

The evidence points to a para-governmental fusion of universities,
social media companies,and the federal government,
all working to censor free speech.

We at the Review take Stanford’s actions to suppress speech very seriously. Stanford cannot be allowed to sweep this gross violation of fundamental freedoms under the rug. The University must answer for their actions.

It appears Stanford’s Virality Project took issues with anyone who was an enemy of the state’s, and more explicitly Fauci’s, narrative about the coronavirus and subsequent vaccines. Any posts that brought up the “lab leak” theory (now the primary COVID origin thesis), were dubbed by SIO as “keen to foment distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance and in American public health officials and institutions.” People who dared question the Fauci-manufactured ‘status quo’ narrative were censored. SIO even branded “reports of vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway” and “natural immunity,” as troublesome violations of ‘disinformation’ policies.

If this is truly what the term ‘disinformation’ means, perhaps we should no longer define it in terms of what is and isn’t true. Instead when we hear the word we should think of it as anything that isn’t in the federal government’s formal narrative: thought crime. The Virality Project stated that because the post-vaccine death of a Virginia woman named Drene Keyes inspired “anti-vaccine” comments, it became a “disinformation” event. They warned against people “asking questions,” alleging it was a tactic “commonly used by spreaders of misinformation.” Doubting, or even just examining, the prevailing narratives on COVID got citizens repressed by a para-governmental entity.

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Project Virality wanted to cover that up—not because it wasn’t true… it was and they knew it. They covered up the truth because they wanted to preserve their narrative. The truth would “exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci,” too much for SIO. When given the choice between truth and Fauci, Stanford chose Fauci.

Projects like SIO’s project Virality are deeply insidious and set
a dangerous precedent for the future of online discourse.

Stanford’s hand in them and the extent to which they censored important, relevant and true information is deeply disappointing and troubling. When an extra-governmental institution acts with impunity against the First Amendment rights of Americans and suppresses information that resulted in the deaths of American citizens, one might expect a dark and shady underground alliance of evil to be behind it. In 2023, it seems all roads lead to Palo Alto.

With free speech on campus recently under attack at the law school, the university censoring faculty that wouldn’t go along with the lockdown narrative, and now their role in censorship on social media, it is fair to question if the winds of freedom still blow at Stanford. It is up to the University to take concrete steps to reassert that freedom of speech is a bedrock principle.

Dark Money Grabbing Your Nat Gas

Robert Bryce reports on the wealthy and shadowy push against domestic use of natural gas in his substack article The Dark Money Behind The Gas Bans.  Excerpts in italics wtih my bolds and added images

The big-money donors behind the gas bans are hiding their identities, and their funding,
behind an extensive dark money network.

 

Last Tuesday, Rewiring America announced that it has hired Georgia politician Stacey Abrams to help the group “launch and scale a national awareness campaign and a network of large and small communities working to help Americans go electric.”

In a press release, Abrams, who will hold the title of “senior counsel” said she is “excited to join Rewiring America to share the benefits of electrification and ensure families get their fair share. I look forward to working together as we build the tools that will transform everyday Americans from energy consumers to energy moguls.”

Stacey Abrams and Saul Griffith. Photo credits: Gage Skidmore (L) and Jeff Kubica.

Abrams, a Democrat who served in the Georgia House of Representatives for 11 years, ran for governor of Georgia two times but failed in both attempts against Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams famously refused to concede in the 2018 race and claimed the election was “stolen.”

Rewiring America is part of the NGO-industrial-corporate-climate complex that, as I reported here last month, is now spending some $4.5 billion per year to promote anti-industry policies. While their agendas vary, the anti-industry NGOs are generally trying to:

♦  mandate increased use of weather-dependent renewables,
♦  hinder (or stop) hydrocarbon production,
♦  prevent the construction of new hydrocarbon infrastructure,
♦  mandate building electrification, and of course,
♦  ban the use of natural gas in homes and businesses.

As I explained in January, Rewiring America’s mission to electrify everything, ban the use of natural gas in homes and businesses, (and gas stoves), is part of a years-long, lavishly funded campaign that is being bankrolled by some of the world’s richest people. But here’s the pernicious part: the big-money donors backing Rewiring America, and other groups pushing the gas bans, are hiding their identities behind a dark money network of NGOs that are purposely obscuring their funding and the groups they are bankrolling.

Although it is impossible to know exactly how much dark money is being shuffled among groups like the Windward Fund, Rewiring America, and others, my tally shows that just four of the dark money NGOs behind the gas bans have combined budgets of about $820 million. Thus, as you can see in the graphic below, by themselves, those four anti-industry groups are spending about 83% of the amount that is being spent by the top 25 NGOs that support traditional energy sources.

Indeed, despite claims from legacy media outlets about the influence of the hydrocarbon sector, the truth is undeniable: the overwhelming majority of the money, media coverage, and momentum in the debate over energy policy and climate change is on the side of the anti-hydrocarbon and anti-nuclear energy NGOs.

And one of their top priorities is banning the use of
natural gas in homes and businesses.

On its website, Rewiring America cites Griffith’s 2020 book, which is also called Rewiring America, in which he claims “we can still address the threat of climate change, but only if we respond with a massive war-time mobilization effort to transform the fossil fuel economy into a fully electrified one, run on wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources.”

Note the lack of any mention of nuclear energy. Also unmentioned: attempting to run the economy on weather-dependent renewables would require paving vast tracts of rural America with obscene numbers of noisy, 600-foot-high, bird- and bat-killing wind turbines and endless oceans of landscape-ravaging solar panels. Also unmentioned: attempting to electrify everything would require doubling or tripling the amount of electricity produced in the country, an effort that would require mining, smelting, and fabrication of staggering amounts of copper, steel, aluminum, and other metals. Also unmentioned: nearly all of the alt-energy supply chains depend on China.

Has Griffith or Rewiring America been lobbying federal officials? If it has, the group has not registered to do so. A search of federal lobby records for the U.S. House of Representatives shows no record for Griffith or Rewiring America. A similar search of lobby registration for the U.S. Senate turned up no records.

Windward’s flood of cash is not coming from foundations. Instead, most of it is coming from super-rich individuals. The first listing on Schedule B of its 990 shows a donation of $59 million from an unnamed person. Other individuals kicked in sums of $24 million, $20 million, $16 million, $14 million, $13 million, $10.5 million, $10 million, $10 million, $9 million, $6 million, and $6 million respectively.  Thus, more than two-thirds of the Windward’s 2021 revenue came from about a dozen unnamed plutocrats. Windward’s 990 also shows that it is giving grants to dozens of small climate-focused NGOs around the country.

Energy Foundation lists more than 100 staff on its website. Its board members include Gina McCarthy, who was a climate advisor to President Biden. Before that job, McCarthy headed the Natural Resources Defense Council, the giant anti-nuclear NGO that shamelessly cheered about its role in the premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York.

In an ironic statement, given the amount of dark money that is being deployed by the anti-industry industry, McCarthy claimed, “Now it has moved from denial, but the dark money is still there. The fossil fuel companies are still basically trying their best to make sure that people don’t understand the challenge of climate.”

There is much more to be written about the dark money that is driving the anti-industry industry, the unaccountable parasitic force that employs thousands of lawyers, strategists, pollsters, and fundraisers, who are pushing policies like natural gas bans. I will close this piece by recounting a claim Abrams made in the press release put out by Rewiring America last Tuesday. She said that families across the country are living “too close to the economic edge,” and that “few understand how much money they can save with a little help to upgrade their homes and vehicles.”

Hogwash.

Banning natural gas and forcing consumers to buy EVs will impose regressive energy taxes on consumers. In addition to the high cost of replacing existing appliances with electric ones, the cost of operating an all-electric home is higher than that for a home that uses natural gas. As for EVs, good luck finding a Tesla in the barrio. An average EV now sells for about $66,000. That’s Benz and Beemer territory.

Last March, in the Federal Register, the Department of Energy published its annual estimate for residential energy costs. As you can see in the graphic above, on a per-Btu basis, electricity costs about 3.5 times more than natural gas. The fuel is, by far, the cheapest form of in-home energy, costing less than half as much as fuels like kerosene, propane, and heating oil. That point was bolstered again last October when the Department of Energy published its Winter Fuels Outlook, which predicted that heating with electricity this winter would cost about 46% more than heating with natural gas.

The DOE’s numbers make it clear that Rewiring America’s agenda of forced electrification will result in higher energy bills for consumers. And low- and middle-income Americans will pay the biggest price because they will be forced to spend a larger percentage of their disposable income on energy than wealthy consumers.

Abrams may have found a new job at Rewiring America. Good for her. But does she really understand the economics of what she will be promoting? The facts are clear: attempting to electrify everything will impose new regressive taxes on the poor. And no amount of spin, or dark money, can change that fact.

Genderized Canadian Politics

A weird phenomenon is starting to show itself in Canadian public opinion polls.

When you ask a man who’s their favorite prime minister, they answer by a wide margin:.this guy (Conservative Pierre Poilievre).  When you ask women, the answer also by quite a large margin is: this guy (Liberal Justin Trudeau).

There’s always been a gender gap in Canadian political opinions. Generally, ladies lean progressives and dudes lean conservative. That’s why, after women got the vote in 1918, you suddenly got a whole bunch of progressive policy, like prohibition. But the gender gap is starting to get ridiculous.

This chart from an Angus Reid Institute poll shows the voting intentions of men under age 35.  That’s an huge showing for the conservatives, more than enough to give them a majority government, if only young men were voting.  When you look at the under 35 women, they want a majority NDP governement with the Tories in third place.

It’s not entirely clear how things got this way.  But if these trends continue, pretty soon we”ll just have elections contested by the men party against the women party.

A Deeper Dive Into the Gender Gap

FIRST READING: The vast gender gap between how Canadians think Trudeau is doing

If only men voted, the next election would be a Tory landslide.
If only women, Trudeau might get another term

As the Conservatives claw their way to a steady lead in public opinion polls, a stubborn trend is beginning to show itself in the survey data: Canadian women and men are increasingly at odds over who they think should run the government.

If only men voted in the next election, the Conservatives would skip to an easy majority. If only women voted, Canada could potentially be swearing in history’s first NDP minority.

In a March 16 Angus Reid Institute poll, the Conservatives were the clear favourite across every single category of Canadian men. Even among under-34 males — a group that has reliably leaned NDP since the 1990s — an incredible 40 per cent expressed an intention to vote Tory.

Among under-35 women, the gender gap couldn’t be more pronounced: 44 per cent intended to vote for the NDP, 21 per cent wanted to stick with the Liberals and 20 per cent wanted the Conservatives.

In fact, of all the demographics tracked by Angus Reid, just one still had the Liberals as their favourite party: Women over 54.   While every other category of Canadian has long broken for either the Tories or the NDP, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau still enjoyed a commanding 42 per cent support among women born before 1970.

A March 13 Leger poll also uncovered evidence of men and women stampeding to different sides of the political spectrum. The NDP, in particular, had 23 per cent of women in their court against just 14 per cent of men.

But after eight years of the Trudeau government, women and men have reached a political divide virtually unknown in modern times.   It’s most apparent when it comes to the approval ratings for Prime Minister Trudeau.

“Women prefer Trudeau to Poilievre by almost 20 percentage points. That’s half the electorate, folks,” Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, wrote in a recent op-ed.

According to just-released numbers from Abacus Data, 36 per cent of Canadian men harboured “very negative” views of the prime minister. Women aren’t huge fans of Trudeau, but the dislike wasn’t nearly as intense; just 26 per cent of female respondents checked the “very negative” box.

“It is worth noting that a sizeable portion of men didn’t always hate Trudeau,” wrote Abacus Data CEO David Coletto in a blog post. “When he was first elected, only 10 per cent had a very negative view. Today, it has more than tripled.”

The Trudeau government has worked hard to brand itself as the most climate
conscious government in Canadian history. At the same time,
Canada is famous for having the world’s largest “gender gap”
in terms of concerns about climate change.

In a massive international poll conducted by the United Nations in 2021, Canada ranked number one in terms of female citizens who believed in a “climate emergency” more than their male counterparts.

The Liberals’ tenure has also been defined by a series of pushes for increased gun control. Most recently a sweeping ban on long guns that was eventually withdrawn after widespread opposition from hunters, Indigenous groups and rural MPs.

A mere four per cent of Canadian gun owners are women. And according to Gallup data from the United States, differentials in gun ownership are a primary reason that women are often far more supportive of gun control than men.

And one more poll result to close out the newsletter. According to Nanos, Canadian institutions are absolutely hemorrhaging public goodwill almost everywhere. In just the last two years, surveyors found that everything from the health-care system to the Supreme Court of Canada had lost public approval by double digits. A few examples …

    • The Supreme Court of Canada. In 2021, 69 per cent thought it was “making Canada better.” Now, it’s 54 per cent.
    • The Canadian health-care system. In 2021, 81 per cent though it was making Canada better. Now, it’s 65 per cent.
    • The House of Commons. In 2021, 52 per cent thought it was making Canada better. Now, it’s 38 per cent.
    • The Prime Minister’s Office. In 2021, 50 per cent thought it was making Canada better. Now, it’s 41 per cent.

 

 

Overthrowing Canada Federation For Climate’s Sake

Don Braid reports at Calgary Herald Liberals are striving to change Canada’s very nature. The future rests with Supreme Court.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Liberals want more than just climate action — they want to change the nature of Canada

It’s nonsense, plain and simple, to paint opponents of the Liberal Impact Assessment Act as climate-change laggards and deniers.  But the epic Supreme Court case that started March 21 is the ultimate clash of climate-change virtue signals, with Ottawa on one side and the provinces — especially Alberta — on the other.

The federal Impact Assessment Act, formerly Bill C-69, has been in force for several years. The federal Liberals will fight to overturn an Alberta Appeal Court ruling that the Act is unconstitutional.

The feds will probably succeed, given the leanings and precedents of the justices, but they’ll do it against the wishes of Alberta and seven other provinces.

Quebecers may be Canada’s most ardent advocates of climate action. In Vancouver and much of coastal B.C., people would argue they’re just as zealous. The need for action is fiercely pressed in the politically powerful Greater Toronto Area.

So how is it that the governments of the three biggest provinces are lined up behind Alberta, essentially agreeing the federal law is unconstitutional?

They’re genuinely fearful that the federal bill goes much too far toward federal control of virtually every kind of resource or agricultural project, effectively imposing a national veto over key areas of the economy.

If the court agrees with the Liberals, the judges will go a long way toward permanently changing the nature of this country, one of the most successful federations on earth.  Constitutionally, provincial rights are unassailable in project approval and economic development, with one exception.

The Supreme Court has started to use “national interest” — interpreted as a threat to environment and climate — to supersede provincial jurisdiction.
A federal victory in this case would solidly entrench that position.

The Supreme Court’s Hearing 40195 will be held over Tuesday and Wednesday. The lineup is fascinating.  First up is the federal government, supported by 12 “interveners”, all of them environmental or Indigenous groups, including Alberta’s Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

They have every right to make their case. But it’s noteworthy that not a single provincial or civic government will argue on Ottawa’s side.

On Day 2, Alberta will have 17 supporters, including the governments of Ontario, Quebec, B.C., Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan.  As you’d expect, business groups, including oil and gas, also back Alberta. So does government-owned Hydro-Quebec. The Woodland Cree First Nation is in support.

The federal bill is a slippery thing. It claims to operate in federal lands but then refers to projects “in Canada.” It also assumes power over projects with environment effects “outside Canada.” It promises co-ordination with provinces, but no province is reassured.

The world has just had a new warning of looming climate catastrophe. Every Canadian province is deeply worried about this and has plans to act.   A serious federal government would encourage them all to develop their own plans, in co-ordination with commonly agreed national goals. That’s the way the government of a federation behaves. Canada isn’t a unitary state — yet.

There will always be debate over how we react and what the plans are. But there is no cause to alter the basic nature of the country.

That’s a goal driven solely by Liberal hubris and overreach.

Two sides of the same coin.

How Fake Addresses Get Blank Ballots and Covid Payments

Another report by Jay Valentine on the abuse of government databases in his American Thinker article A Gigantic Egg All Over Brad Raffensperger’s Face.  The title refers to a statement by the Georgia Sec. of State saying anyone questioning the ERIC voter databases is “extremist.”  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Last week, when Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger publicly supported ERIC after it was tossed out of Florida, West Virginia, and Missouri, we issued the Raffensperger Challenge.

The Raffensperger Challenge is the application of Fractal analysis
to any entity that currently uses ERIC. 

Brad Raffensperger says anyone outing ERIC is “extremist.”  Today, two more extremists joined in: the secretaries of state of Iowa and Ohio.  Looks like lots of extremists showing up for work.

Much in our complex lives is a matter of opinion. Still, there are a few things that are a matter of data, and we are so looking forward to helping Brad Raffensperger, and the diminishing remaining Republican secretaries of state, see how useless ERIC truly is.

This week, we finished the first Raffensperger Challenge — in ERIC “cleaned” Washoe County, Nevada.  Let’s go there.  This is a county with about 600,000 people on the voter rolls.  Many are C = cancelled, others I = inactive.  Our friends there want to include all voters in the analysis, since we have such a deep history of secretaries of state converting inactive voters to “active,” voting them, and turning them back to inactive.

Every person on every Nevada voter roll we examined was “cleaned” by ERIC. Not a couple of them, not the left-handed ones, but every single voter was ERIC-certified as being a real person, protected by our laws and needs to vote.

We chose to use two data sources — both official — as our original data for comparison: the official Nevada voter roll, published by its secretary of state. We added the Washoe County property tax roll, published by the Washoe County tax authority.

We compared the address on the tax roll with the names and addresses on the voter roll:

    • People registered in vacant lots: over 4,200
    • Registered in hotels: over 2,000
    • Registered in parking lots: over 2,500
    • Registered in R.V. parks: 1,600

Amazing how voter rolls — cleaned by ERIC — grow voters like barnacles in hotels and vacant lots up to an even-year election date — then they disappear afterward. This is in the data!  We have the official tax records saying a “residence” is a field and the voter roll saying the same address is a residence — leaving off that it is a field.

Some states who use ERIC, like Arizona, allow people to register in hotels, and we are told some states, again Arizona, allow voters to register in vacant lots. Perhaps. We are further informed that some states, like Arizona and Nevada, allow the registration of “no known address.”

Voters are certainly registered there — at places that are no known address. If it is legal or not, we leave to others.   We have a much bigger story to share with you, dear reader: how do people in hotels, R.V. parks, vacant lots, and “no known address” get a mail-in ballot?  You cannot mail a ballot to a vacant lot — it doesn’t get mail. You can mail a ballot to the R.V. park, but the guy registered in 1991 — do you think he is still there in his camper?

In 2021, we worked with former sheriff Clarke and the Wisconsin team to find phantoms. Phantoms were found by the trainload; they were unfortunately not able to be taken off voter rolls.  In 2023, we are focusing on addresses — conveniently and precisely provided by widely available property tax records. We can now profile every address of every building in every city, town, or hamlet in America — down to square feet, number of baths and bedrooms, description, and category — updated monthly.

For every address in America, every single one, we can know with precision:

    • This address cannot receive mail (vacant lot, field).
    • This address can receive mail but not a ballot (bank, insurance company).
    • This address can receive mail, and a ballot, but it cannot receive a ballot for Jim Smith because Jim does not have his apartment number on his voter registration record.

Welcome to the Undeliverable Ballot Database.
Like it or not, the world of mail-in ballots is upon us.

State after state is registering 16-year-olds, and the registration becomes active when they turn 18. Every vagrant in every homeless shelter has at least one registration. We found, in Michigan, some people with 17 registrations.

The issue in 2024 is “who can receive a mail-in ballot?”  The presidency of the most powerful country in history rests on a single question: who can get a mail-in ballot?  Well, now we know. ERIC doesn’t.

We know with precision, or can know, for every physical entity in America, which is listed on a tax roll — even if it is not taxed, like a church — whether it can get a ballot or not. We now can determine in every multi-unit apartment building in every city in every state for every voter — can that person legally be mailed a ballot or not?

Having better technology than the government is a very entertaining experience — as we are learning in Washoe County, and as Brad Raffensperger is about to learn when we publish Brad’s Georgia tax comparison data. It’s really ugly — for Brad.

The Fractal team at Project Omega is working, again, with 14 states, many using ERIC, to deliver demonstration projects like Washoe County, Nevada. We have enough experience in most of these states from 2022 to know the end of the movie. Their voter rolls do not match their tax rolls — to a degree embarrassing to any secretary of state.

There’s more:   $$$$

Three county sheriff’s departments contacted our team because they were interested in this kind of voter fraud — registered voters in vacant lots. They each, separately, performed other analyses and found that vacant lots had accumulated fraud.

Many of those addresses harbored clearly fake voters — or real voters who were not there. When they ran those addresses against the PPP (Payroll Protection Program), where Biden gave out free dough — guess what! You got it! Those address might not be able to get mail, but somehow, they got the dough!

An intrepid team in Florida, working with law enforcement, found some of those scammy addresses harbored “contribution mules.” The contribution mule is the guy who has no discernible wealth but makes 4,000 donations a year, to candidates all over the country, in $50 increments. So where does that guy get his dough?

ERIC protected voter rolls from scrutiny for years. The Gateway Pundit guys busted the gig with their reporting. The Fractal team started showing voter teams how inaccurate ERIC really is.

Now the game is up. ERIC is bleeding clients. It’s just a matter of time until they are running lefty states with zero credibility.

So next time you get depressed because the good guys never seem to win, check in on ERIC and smile as you see it bleed into obscurity.

 

 

Fed Reserve Hijacks US Democracy

For those who missed it, Simon Black explains in his blog article The Federal Reserve just hijacked American democracy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It was only Tuesday of last week that the Fed Chairman testified before a committee of concerned senators who thought the Fed may be tightening monetary policy (i.e. raising interest rates) too quickly.  This was a valid concern; rapid interest rate hikes DO create a LOT of risks. And one of those risks is that asset prices– especially bond prices– plummet in value.

And yet last week the Fed Chairman completely rejected this risk, telling worried senators flat out that “nothing about the data suggests to me that we’ve tightened too much. . .”  In other words, he believed the Fed’s rapid interest rate hikes posed ZERO risk.

Talk about a terrible prediction; just THREE DAYS LATER, one of the largest banks in the US imploded, multiple bank runs unfolded across the country, the bond market fell into turmoil, and the Fed had to essentially guarantee the entire US banking system in order to restore confidence. (More on that in a moment.)

The mental image of bank runs in America, just days after the Chairman dismissed
any risk, is the Fed’s equivalent of the Afghanistan debacle. It’s shameful.

But what’s REALLY concerning is the Fed’s response to this panic– their de facto guarantee of the entire US banking system. Because ultimately they just put YOU on the hook for the potential bond losses of every bank in America. I’ll explain–

So when the FDIC decided to guarantee every depositor at Silicon Valley Bank, including those with balances exceeding $250,000, it means they’re bailing out SVB’s wealthy customers at the expense of big Wall Street banks.

But most people seem to have missed the real story…
because the ACTUAL bailout is coming from the Fed, not the FDIC.

Despite the Chairman’s terrible prediction in front of the Senate Banking Committee last week, the Fed now seems keenly aware of the risks in the US banking system. They realize that there are LOTS of other banks that are sitting on massive unrealized losses, just like SVB.  So in order to prevent these banks from going under, the Fed invented a new facility they’re calling the “Bank Term Funding Program”, or BTFP.

But the BTFP is really just an extraordinary lie designed to make you think that the banking system is safe. They might as well have called it, “Believe This Fiction, People”, and I’ll show you why.

How Bank Credit System Works

Whenever people borrow money from banks, we normally have to provide some sort of collateral. Banks make home equity loans using real estate as collateral. They make car loans where the car is collateral. Manufacturing businesses borrow money using factory equipment as collateral.

Well, banks do the same thing when they borrow money. And sometimes banks will even borrow money from the Federal Reserve. This is actually one of the reasons why the central bank exists– to act as a “lender of last resort” if banks need an emergency loan.  And when banks borrow money from the Fed, they have to post collateral too.

Instead of automobiles and houses, though, banks use their financial assets as collateral– specifically their bonds.  This is actually codified by law (12 CFR 201.108) whereby Congress lists specific assets that the Fed can accept as collateral when making loans to banks. The list is basically different types of bonds.  But this is the root of the problem. Banks are in financial trouble because their bond portfolios have lost so much value. Some banks (like SVB) are even insolvent because of this.

So now, through the BTFP, the Fed will now accept banks’ sagging bond portfolios
as collateral, but loan the bank MORE money than the bond portfolios are worth.

Let’s say you’re an insolvent bank that invested, say, $100 billion in bonds. Those bonds are now worth $85 billion, and your bank is about to go under. “NO PROBLEMO!” says the Fed.  The bank simply posts their bond portfolio (which is only worth $85 billion) as collateral, and the Fed will loan the bank the full $100 billion… as if those losses never occurred.  It’s a complete lie. Everyone is pretending that the banks haven’t lost any money to give you a false sense of confidence in the financial system. “Believe the Fiction, People.”

Remember that banks in the US have more than $600 billion
in unrealized bond losses right now.

And that number will keep increasing if interest rates continue to rise.  So this means that the Fed has essentially guaranteed that entire $600+ billion. Commercial banks won’t lose a penny— they can now pass their financial risks down to the Federal Reserve.

This isn’t a bailout… it’s a time bomb.

We can keep our fingers crossed and hope that this time bomb never explodes. But if it does, the Federal Reserve is going to be looking at hundreds of billions in losses… which would trigger devastating consequences for the US dollar.

This means that everyone who uses US dollars… including every man, woman, and child in America, is ultimately on the hook for the potential consequences of the BTFP.  And that’s what is so remarkable about this: the Fed just made this decision all on its own.  Congress didn’t pass a law. There were no hearings, no judicial oversight, no votes.

Instead, several unelected bureaucrats who have been consistently wrong
got together in a room and decided to guarantee $600+ billion in bank losses…
and stick the American people with the consequences.

      • This is the same organization that said in February 2021 that there was no inflation.
      • The same organization that said in July 2021 that inflation was transitory and would pass in a few months.
      • The same organization that said in June 2022 that they finally understand “how little we understand about inflation.”
      • The same organization that said THREE DAYS before SVB’s collapse that “nothing about the data” suggested any risks with their policy actions.

The Fed has been wrong at every critical point over the past few years. And they’ve now unilaterally signed up every single person in America to a $600+ billion bank bailout without so much as a courtesy phone call to Congress.

This is apparently what Democracy means in America today.  We’ve all been subjected to endless vitriol over the past few years with people on all sides howling that “Democracy is under attack.”

Well, we just watched an unelected committee of central bankers hijack democracy
and stick the American people with a potential $600+ billion bank bailout.

 

 

Canada: No Border, No Nation

When I emigrated decades ago from Boston and settled in Montreal, I learned many things. One surprise was discovering the underground railway that transported black slaves from southern US had some ending up in Montreal. It seems that some freemen got jobs as porters on the actual railroad linking New York with Montreal. They discovered that the prejudice was much less than in the US, and began to make their homes north of the border. Thus, a black community formed which became a base to welcome immigrants from Caribbean countries, as well as Africa itself and other places. So for more than a century, Montreal has had a vibrant black community with a wide mix of national origins, and of course additional generations born and bred here. Currently, our hero tennis player is Felix Auger-Aliassime, who does us proud every time he steps on the court.

Now, in 2023, we have a strange upside down transportation of illegal aliens (including not only latin americans, but chinese and drug mules, and God only knows who else. Because our fearless PM, Justin Trudeau, long ago decided that Canada is “post-national.” In other words, in true global socialist fashion, Canada is (in his mind) a place without borders, where anyone has the right to come in and take advantage of the social safety net and government largess.

An officer speaks to migrants as they arrive at the Roxham Road border crossing in Roxham, Quebec, Canada, on March 3, 2023.

The symbolic portal for this intrusion of aliens is Roxham Road, south of Montreal, where entry controls have been relaxed, similarly to the US border with Mexico. From CNN:

On a snowy March afternoon, a small convoy of taxis and hired cars rolled north along a New York country road that dead-ends at the Canadian border. Among those onboard: a Nigerian family of five, a Russian man traveling alone and a tearful South American woman named Giovanna.

“I also believe I’ll have a better quality of life in Canada, and I have some family there,” said Giovanna before walking up to the invisible line in the ice that’s guarded by Canadian authorities at a makeshift post. CNN is not using her last name because of threats she says were made against her in Colombia.

“Hello madam. How are you?” asked a Spanish-speaking Canadian officer on the other side. “You cannot enter Canada here,” he informed Giovanna. “If you do, we will arrest you. Understand? You decide.”

Giovanna responded by taking five steps into Canada where officers then informed her of her rights and processed her for unlawful entry, a process which usually ends with the defendant being released into Canada to petition for asylum.

The twist is, unwanted intruders in Texas are taken north to New York (among other places), and now New York buses them to Roxham Road. And so these arrivals begin their stay in Canada with the criminal act of crossing a border, even though the Feds refuse to enforce it. How likely is it that other criminal behavior will occur? How likely that Canadian traditions of lawful, tolerant and industrious behavior will be manifest in these newcomers? How long will proud Canadians accept to be a dumping ground for illegals by way of the US?

Additional context is provided by Brian Giesbrecht  in his article Most Canadians Don’t Think Canada Is a ‘Post-National State’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

When newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a bewildered Canada in 2015 that Canada was a “post-national state” not many of us knew what he was talking about.

Doesn’t “post-national” mean that Canada was once a nation, but no longer is one? Was he really saying that Canada was no longer a nation—that it had somehow graduated from nation status to some higher stage?

He didn’t explain, but perhaps what is happening now at Roxham Road can be at least partly explained by Trudeau’s unusual conception of what the country he is governing is all about.

At Roxham Road illegal immigrants simply walk into Canada with no permission to do so. Unlike the thousands of people waiting patiently in foreign refugee camps and poor villages who have filled out immigration forms, and complied with the many other requirements for formal admission to Canada, the Roxham Road crossers simply arrive on Canada’s doorstep with suitcases in hand—and walk in.

They are not refugees fleeing persecution. They are economic migrants residing in the United States. In many cases, their transportation to the border has been provided by American officials.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of the Roxham Road migrants are probably good folks, just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. But the fact is that they are taking the place of those who have done everything right, and have been carefully vetted by immigration officials.

The Roxham Road people haven’t been vetted at all. We have no idea
what their qualifications—or criminal records—look like.

Past governments, Liberal and Conservative, insisted that potential immigrants must follow the rules. They also believed in borders.

So, why does the Trudeau government completely depart from past practices and allow these people to simply walk into the country? The only possible answer I can see is Trudeau’s truly strange belief that Canada is a “post-national state,” and no longer a nation.

Because a state that is no longer a nation no longer needs borders. To Trudeau, borders seem to be simply an anachronism; a vestige of more primitive times. If the world is evolving from nation-states to one big—what, I’m not quite sure—we no longer need outdated concepts like borders and border controls.

We now know that “borders are bad” is just one of the World Economic Forum (WEF) talking points that Trudeau subscribes to. “Fossil fuels are bad” is another. Trudeau is one of the junior “philosopher kings” of that organization and appears to fervently believe in everything they preach.

But something I’m pretty sure of is that most Canadians do not believe that Canada
is a “post-national state” that no longer needs border controls.

Most Canadians believe that our previous immigration policy was basically sound. We need immigrants, but applicants should be carefully vetted, and only those with the necessary qualifications should be admitted. People who don’t even bother to apply—who simply show up on our doorstep—should be refused entry.

Trudeau is perfectly aware that a policy of allowing anyone entry to Canada, no questions asked, is unacceptable to voters. Yet, he does it anyway. Is this the new method of governance by which “post-national states” will be governed from now on? An organization of philosopher kings who are not accountable to voters will make the rules—rules voters would never stand for. And “Manchurian Candidates,” like Trudeau, will slip their policies into place?

Is this how obviously problematic policies, like “Just Transition”
and “Carbon Zero” will get past voters?

Recent revelations about election interference and infiltration of our systems at all levels by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) make Trudeau’s view that Canada is a “post-national state, with no core identity” even more ominous.

Canadians know who we are and what we are. We are a proud nation. A nation with borders.

 

 

 

Climate Realist for Canada PM, Please!

Published at CO2 Coalition A Plea To Pierre Poilievre, A Climate Realist for Prime Minister of Canada by Ron Barmby.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Dear Pierre,

There will probably be a federal election in Canada in the coming months as Justin Trudeau’s government is in a minority position with waning support.

His past three successful elections have all included fighting climate change as a key and winning platform. His current legislative agenda indicates his next campaign will have the same focus.

As Leader of the Official Opposition [pictured above], and in the best position to form a new government, you are currently advocating eliminating Trudeau’s national carbon tax and “letting technology handle CO2 emissions.”

That is probably a strategy to avoid playing to Trudeau’s strength, which is instilling fear of climate change in the voting public. But you could take it further by highlighting Trudeau’s main climate weakness: he misrepresents or is willingly ignorant of, the science of climate change.

Election campaigns require talking points, but I can offer you the following thinking points on the science of climate change that I hope you will find useful.

1500+ Scientists agree and disclared No Climate Emergency

1500+ Scientists Agreed and Declared No Climate Emergency

The Climate Changes but There Is No Climate Emergency.

Trudeau’s declaration of a national climate emergency is based on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts of between 2.5°C and 3.5°C warming between now and the year 2100 (intermediate and high emissions scenarios).

If those forecasts—which are not compliant with the scientific method—were reasonable, surely the planet would be on that warming trend now. It’s not.

The most accurate and complete temperature survey of the planet comes from satellites, beginning in 1979. Over the past 44 years, satellite data reveals that the trend of global warming has been 0.13°C per decade, which if continued would add only 1°C by 2100.

Interestingly, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increased by 25% over those four decades. CO2 doesn’t seem to have caused much warming during that time.

The warmest year on the satellite record is 1998 (caused by an El Nino event) indicating no current warming trend for the last 24 years. And CO2 concentrations have since increased by 14%.

This satellite data is backed up by the world’s most sophisticated land-based temperature survey designed for scientific research. The United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN) was set up to provide continental U.S. temperature data using state-of-the-art triple redundant instruments in pristine locations unaffected by human activity.

There has been no warming trend in the continental United States since USCRN data collection began 18 years ago. Interestingly again, CO2 concentrations were up 10% during that period.

Mr. Poilievre, this lack of warming is well-known and documented in the public domain. The limitations of CO2 causing global warming are also well-known and documented in the scientific domain and even accepted by the IPCC.

That is why Trudeau, with only tepid backing from the IPCC, is now claiming increased extreme weather events as the new basis for fear of climate change.

Except it’s not true that we’re experiencing increased extreme weather events. A recent study using established and accepted international databases saw no statistically significant increasing trends in the intensity of heatwaves, hurricanes and/or tropical storms, tornadoes, global and extreme precipitation, droughts, or floods.

On a Canadian note, the 2021/22 extreme weather events in central British Columbia consisting of a succession of a polar vortex, heat dome, wildfires, and flooding were not a result of CO2-induced climate change. They are all linked to instability in the jet stream, solidly backed up by meteorological science.

The Natural Causes of Climate Change Are Very Large.

The sun provides the Earth with almost all of its surface heat. On the time scale of recent human history, changes in the output of the sun are the smoking gun for climate change.

A less active sun has a weakened magnetic field, which allows more galactic cosmic rays to hit our atmosphere and ionize molecules. These ionized molecules become cloud-building sites. Low, dense clouds block the sun’s heat from reaching the surface of the Earth, causing temperatures to drop.

The opposite is true; a more active sun has a stronger magnetic field that shields the Earth from cosmic rays. This means less ionization and cloud-building, so more of the sun’s warming energy reaches the surface.

When the sun’s activity is low for many decades it is called a Grand Solar Minimum. During the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1850, we experienced four consecutive Grand Solar Minimums; at that time the average global temperature was about 1°C lower than today.

Conversely, sustained high solar activity is called a Grand Solar Maximum and the most recent occurrence was during much of the 20th century when we experienced about 1°C of global warming.

The IPCC, with Trudeau‘s adherence, dismiss solar changes even though a 1% reduction in cloud cover could explain the global warming of the past century.

Eliminating The Carbon Tax is a Great Idea.

As Dr. Lars Schernikau, Ph.D. in Energy Economics and who grew up in the centrally planned economy of East Germany points out “…because pricing one externality but not others leads to economic and environmental distortions… causing human suffering.”

His example is particularly applicable to Canada where CO2 pricing is only on combustion, but green technology is exempt:

“How else could a ‘Net-Zero’ label be assigned to a solar panel produced from coal and minerals extracted in Africa with diesel-run equipment, transported to China on a vessel powered by fuel oil, and processed with energy from coal- or gas-fired power using partially with forced labor?”

Technology Cannot Handle CO2 Emissions.

In fact, technology is rather bad at handling CO2 emissions. Let’s look at wind power first. A 15% drop in wind speed equates to a 40% drop in electrical generation. Europe is a prime example of the failure of wind power.

That failure transferred European energy security to Russia which enabled it to invade Ukraine. American solar power failures became the highlight of Michael Moore’s documentary Planet of the Humans.

Hydrogen fuel cells were aptly described by Elon Musk as “mind-bogglingly stupid.” Burning hydrogen directly is not only an extreme safety risk (leaks from plastic local distribution pipelines), but it produces six times the smog-causing nitrous oxides that natural gas does.

Many hydroelectric dams produce more greenhouse gases than the burning of coal due to the cement-related CO2 and methane emissions from the artificial lakes.

Fully electric vehicles are a bad idea for Canada because (a) in very cold weather their driving range is halved while the charging time is doubled and (b) we don’t have the grid capacity to charge them anyway.

Adding ethanol to gasoline does not reduce CO2 emissions. That’s just an accounting trick, but not much of a trick because ethanol emissions are simply not counted. However, it does drive up food prices significantly, as food is converted to fuel. This is devastating to the world’s poor.

Carbon capture and storage in Canada’s oil sector would divert large sums of money away from being available for health care and reducing taxes while providing no impact on the steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration (which incidentally is also driving up global crop yields).

Capping CO2 emissions from Canada’s oil industry just means a dictator’s oil will fill the market gap we could have ethically and responsibly filled.

Canada’s Next Election.

A global fear of climate change has led to panic, panic has led to bad decisions, and bad decisions have led to failure. The result is energy poverty, hunger, massive distortions of the free market, and a shooting war in Europe. That’s a far cry from the United Nations’ mandate of promoting peace.

Trudeau’s game plan for climate change is more fear, more panic, and more failure. Meanwhile, not a single signatory to the 2015 Paris Agreement is on track to meet their 1.5°C emissions reductions target. Additionally, Canada now holds the title of the world’s most useful climate idiot and we have become a house divided.

A rational game plan would include only facts established by the scientific method, and dispassionate deliberation from the larger scientific and engineering community (wherein Canadians still enjoy a respected reputation).

Canadians should not fear climate change; they should understand it and prepare as necessary. We need a new plan based on evident realities, not science “experienced differently” by Trudeau.

What we should truly fear is Trudeau’s fight against climate change.

Best regards,

CO2 Coalition Member Ron Barmby (www.ronaldbarmby.ca) is a Professional Engineer with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree, whose 40+ year career in the energy sector has taken him to over 40 countries on five continents. His book, Sunlight on Climate Change: A Heretic’s Guide to Global Climate Hysteria (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), explains in layman’s terms the science of how natural and human-caused global warming work.

2024 Election Rigging In Plain Sight

Jay Valentine explains how those in power are setting up to stay in power next year in his American Thinker article How to Lose in 2024.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Industrial-scale fraud, committed by organized actors,
accelerates over time like a drug-resistant bacterium.

If you want to know how America is going to get screwed in 2024, follow the dough. That is the Zuckerberg dough. Zuck and pals are spending tens of millions of dollars, not padding voter rolls, not fighting lawsuits, not getting voters out early… they are spending the dough infiltrating and controlling election commissions.

For those who think cleaning the voter rolls and voting early are enough protect 2024, our data proves you are delusional. The Left is all in controlling election commissions. Expect Kari Lake’s outcome to move from an outlier to a standard outcome in 2024. Election commission fraud, which we coined as sovereign fraud two years ago, has attractive characteristics for the Left.

It always works — because it is invisible.

Election fraud tools are stuck in the 1970s — useless “phantom” and “dead people databases” are out of date a month after being published. Lawsuits make great headlines but achieve little because nobody is going to change an election outcome, no matter how egregious the conduct and powerful the evidence. A slate of Arizona candidates is the most recent victim.

The Zuckerberg boys will march into leftist-dominated cities – again, writing checks and controlling election machinery. They know who voted, who did not vote, who never votes (and vote them), how many votes are needed. Each of these actions has a common characteristic — it happens within 2-3 weeks during early voting!

Republicans and their obsolete voter integrity groups will focus madly on getting their vote in early. They will focus on challenging dead voters. All good things that will fail again.

The Zuckerbucks team has a grander focus.  Zuck’s guys know if those pesky phantoms are not off the rolls now, they won’t get taken off for 2024 — too many obstacles, not enough time!

The Zuckerbucks money is going to that election commission where there will be zero Republicans, no voter integrity teams, and tons of phantoms with no controlling legal authority.

That’s what they did in 2020 and 2022 and have in store for 2024.
Why change?

Here’s how they are going to do it! This isn’t speculation, we see it in the data for a dozen states. When mail-in ballots go out, an election commission will change the zip codes (again) for 30,000 voters who will not get their ballots — someone else will. Voter integrity teams and the Republicans will be totally blind to this — how can they know when those zip codes get changed back 10 days later — after the ballots are in flight?

Republicans are going to vote early. Who cares? In this one county,
leftists just banked a 30,000-vote cushion.

During early voting, our leftists will add 22,000 new voters (again). Why during early voting? Because the Republicans, using 1970s technology, never know it is being done. They have a four-month-old snapshot from the “data driven RNC.” Okay, this county just added 22,000 votes (again) to their buffer — just in case.

Perhaps this is not enough!  The leftists, ever diligent, send out a phone app (again) tying directly to the state’s voter system, allowing new voters to be added. They do most of it during the 30 days preceding the election.

Why? Because the Republicans have zero real-time visibility to voter rolls in states they control — and of course none in states they do not control — so this goes unseen and unreported until it’s time to vote.

This is not news! This happened at scale in 2020 and 2022 and we have the data
to prove it! 
Every example above happened.
You may read about some of them a year after the election.

2024 is on the line and if Republicans do not wake up to leftists controlling election commissions — even in Republican states — 2024 will repeat 2020.

Republicans have ancient, well-funded voter integrity organizations with a proven process: raise tons of dough, do seminars, file some lawsuits, take some phantoms off voter rolls, lose elections to leftist fraud, litigate, lose again. They were snuffed in 2020 and 2022! They never saw it — election commission fraud perpetrated at industrial scale — because that isn’t what their donors want to hear. Stick to the early voting and chasing phantoms! This is the Republican process and perhaps we ought to take a step back and ask “WTF are we doing here?”

Why aren’t we waking up to the obvious right in front of our faces? Why are we accepting a presidential candidate and an RNC saying they will beat institutional voter commission criminal fraud by voting early and learning ballot harvesting?

Sometimes we watch a stupid thing happen in real time like a semi-tractor-trailer wreck on YouTube in slow motion and disbelieve how something so dangerous could happen! We read stories about a historical figure with destiny in hand — Napoleon in Russia — questioning how he missed the winter thing. Or Muslims taking flight lessons but skipping the landing part — and wondering why nobody said anything.

We are that guy now standing there knowing with 100% certainty that leftists in 2024 are going to steal the election by manipulating election commissions.  Zuckerberg publicly said where he is putting his dough!

We know it works because it is in the data from 2020 and 2022.  It is organized,
centralized criminal fraud perpetrated by election commissions of both parties!
It worked for the last two elections!