Dennis Prager reads from an article regarding concerns over the increased weight of EV vehicles:
Here is the AXIOS article Dennis was reading from:
EVs Are Much Heavier Than Gas Vehicles, And That’s Posing Safety Problems
For example, the 2023 GMC Hummer EV, a full-size pickup, weighs more than 9,000 pounds, sporting a 2,900-pound battery. In comparison, the 2023 GMC Sierra, also a full-size pickup, weighs less than 6,000 pounds, according to Kelley Blue Book.
The average weight of U.S. vehicles has already increased from about 3,400 pounds to 4,300 pounds over the last 30 years as Americans have ditched passenger cars for pickups and SUVs, according to Evercore ISI analysts.
Threat level: Safety watchdogs are raising concerns after the recent deadly collapse of a parking garage in New York City called attention to the challenge of creaking infrastructure.
Traffic safety is particularly concerning. In crashes, the “baseline fatality probability” increases 47% for every 1,000 additional pounds in the vehicle — and the fatality risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan), according to a 2011 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“Since we’re seeing pedestrian and roadway fatalities at record levels, the introduction of more weight into crashes via EVs will complicate any attempts to reduce the ongoing fatality crisis that has showed no signs of abating,” Center for Auto Safety acting executive director Michael Brooks tells Axios in an email.
Flashback: In a speech in January, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy praised the effort to reduce carbon emissions by switching to EVs but warned of the “unintended consequences” being “more death on our roads,” the AP reported…..
Heavy EVs Pose Threat of Parking Structure Collapses
The safety concern is now front and center in the UK, where, as in the U.S., many older parking structures exist. “I don’t want to be too alarmist, but there definitely is the potential for some of the early car parks in poor condition to collapse,” structural engineer Chris Whapples told The Telegraph. “Operators need to be aware of electric vehicle weights, and get their car parks assessed from a strength point of view, and decide if they need to limit weight.”
If maintenance has not been kept up at these older parking structures, structural flaws are “baked in” according to building supply company Sika’s senior technical manager Steve Holmes. Many Ford F-150 Lightnings come close to 7,000 lbs, while gas-powered F-150s range between 4,000 and 5,700 lbs. So all EVs pose added stresses when combined into one stacked car park…..
Electric Vehicles May Be Too Heavy For Old Parking Garages: Report
The collapse of a parking garage in New York City on Tuesday that killed at least one person has put a new spotlight on aging structures used for vehicle storage.
The five-level building, which has several active violations listed with the city, dates back to 1925 and was first licensed as a garage in 1957 for five or more vehicles per floor, WNBC reported.
The exact cause of the structure’s failure has not been determined, but updates have been made to it in the years since and it is currently licensed to accommodate 276 vehicles.
[….]
The incident occurred after a recent study raised concerns that many older parking garages may need to be re-evaluated due to the increasing average weight of vehicles, particularly electric models.
The report from the British Parking Association noted that some electric cars weigh more than double what popular models in the same segments did in the 1960s, due in part to their heavy battery packs. This also often applies to contemporary cars.
For instance, a Tesla Model S weighs over a thousand pounds more than a gas-powered Mercedes E-Class, while a 9,000-pound GMC Hummer EV is 2,400 pounds heavier than the similarly-sized Hummer H2 that was last sold in 2009…..
EVs Are Too Heavy for Current Road Weight Limits, Car Haulers Say
The car hauling industry is lobbying various departments of the federal government to increase weight limits on U.S. highways in order to accommodate the transportation of electric vehicles.
According to Reuters, the industry says current weight limits on trucks roaming around U.S. roads are outdated and not equipped for the imminent pivot to battery-heavy EVs. Currently, federal highway safety standards restrict trailers to 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight. This standard was set back in 1975, back when a Honda Civic weighed 1,570 pounds, or roughly half what one weighs now.
Per EPA figures, the average car or truck on U.S. roads has swollen from 3,200 to 4,200 pounds over the last 40 years. EVs carrying very heavy batteries—the 9,000-pound GMC Hummer EV attributes almost one-third of its weight to just its cells—stand to raise that figure even higher. And while electric cars are a relative minority today, the government aims to have half of all new vehicle sales be of electric vehicles by 2030…..
I use some examples of these “climate activists” using Super Glue as part of their “statement.” Here are as few examples:
The Just Stop Oil campaign said 35 of its members blocked roads near Trafalgar Square on Thursday afternoon by sitting down with banners and gluing themselves to the road. (LONDON WORLD)
Activists Glue Themselves To Capitol Hill Sites To Urge Climate Action (AXIOS)
Climate Activists Defile Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery
Climate Change Cultists Latest Eco-Terrorist Act: Mashed Potatoes Tossed on $110 Million Monet
….Superglue used by the eco mob could even be HARMING the environment by pumping a huge amount of toxic greenhouse gasses into the air during production and rendering anything it touches un-recyclable.
The main ingredient in most of the super-strength adhesives is cyanoacrylates, a group of harsh, sticky chemicals.
Green-expert Rachel Watkyns, who has 14-years of experience crafting environmentally friendly packaging – including eco-friendly adhesive – branded superglue “just not eco-friendly”.
Rachel, who starred in a 2007 episode of Dragons’ Den, winning investment from Theo Paphetis and Peter Jones, said: “The main problem with superglue is the actual process when it’s made.
“In the first stage of reaction to making it, toxic chemicals are by-products – one of them is cyanide.”
[….]
Rachel, 50, added that depending on how the by-products are disposed of, the toxic chemicals could end up in Brits’ water supplies.
She said trying to get hold of information on how they are are disposed of is “probably nigh-on impossible”.
“But it’s not just the by-product, it’s the greenhouse gasses emitted in the production of it,” she said.
The businesswoman, owner of eco-packaging firm Tinybox, explained: “It’s like most things where you know it’s not environmentally friendly, the data is kept so private.”
She explained another of the chemicals released, formaldehyde, has been shown to make animals sick and reduce their life-span.
Rachel also said because the glue is an acrylic resin anything it touches can’t be recycled.
She insisted: “The fact activists are using superglue, it’s just not an ideal scenario.”……
Volkswagen let this activist stew…. in his pants:
It “all went bad” after protesters glued themselves to the floor at Volkswagen in Germany, according to Sky News host Cory Bernardi. “All the rage in the green world today is actually getting one of those pesky fossil fuel-based glues and sticking yourself to something as a form of protest, but what happens when that goes wrong?” Mr Bernardi said.
These activists discover French Police don’t use solvent to un-stick hands from pavement:
Simpson’s Prediction
(12-years ago) “We are here to come up with the next phony-baloney crisis to put Americans back where they belong – in dark rooms, glued to their televisions, too terrified to skip the commercials”
Gov. Ron DeSantis announces his plan to fight back against ESGs:
“We want to stop these kind of masters of the universe from trying to do through economic power what they cannot achieve at the ballot box.”
GLENN
Stu explains what ESG is,
Glenn has warned about ESG scores — environment, social, and governance — for months now. They’re a key tenet to the Great Reset and could be used to control YOUR finances. If you have a low ESG score — due to certain purchases or investments the far-left deems ‘un-woke’ — then you could face major difficulties securing loans or other services from the world’s biggest banks. Now, Citi just announce its latest decision to move this plan one step further. Per Bloomberg, ‘Citigroup Inc. will eventually expect borrowers to have a credible plan for measuring and reducing their carbon footprint as part of the bank’s pledge to achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions.’ ESG IS HERE!
CNBC (MSM)
An ESG “strategist” sounds off…. it seems the host wants more of it in order to really “make a dent”
ESG has become a buzzword on Wall Street as companies face pressure from investors to be more transparent. Christian McCormick, Allianz Global Investors senior ESG strategist, and Hal Lambert, founder and CEO of Point Bridge Capital, join “Squawk Box” to discuss.
Censorship is the only way for the Democrats to try and win. President Joe Biden advisor Gina McCarthy said content critical of the green “transition” must be censored on social media, during a segment on Axios’ “The Infodemic Age” on 6/9/2022. Be sure to like, subscribe, and comment below to share your thoughts on the video.
Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron is a far-left activist who vowed to ‘seek justice for Ukraine’ and expressed hatred for conservatives opposed to war, according to his leaked manifesto. (bottom line!)
So here we are, after another shooting but one seemingly that truly targets minorities.
Three additional POINTS/UPDATES I believe are worthy via TWITCHY and the LIBERTY DAILY. And the first is made by CHICKS ON THE RIGHT, and is made often by common sense thinkers. Which is, if everything is racist, nothing is racist:
We have reached peak absurdity. The word means nothing anymore. The left has devalued the term to the point that it has no power — and those wielding it are worthy only of ridicule. (AMERICAN THINKER)
When everything is racist, nothing is. When every single thought, act, landmark, cultural touchstone, and tradition are defamed as “white supremacy,” regardless of origin or context and irrespective of fact, the term “racism” has lost all meaning. (RED AS HELL)
If you think everything you don’t like is racist, then of course the election of a president you don’t like has to be racist. (NEW YORK POST)
The word “racism” is no longer a description, and hasn’t been for some time. Now it’s simply a political tool with no meaning. The word doesn’t need context to be used, and you need not worry about dissecting nuance in order to toss it around. Just find something you don’t like and apply liberally. No pun intended. (RED STATE)
And so, even though this was a young man in his boredom influenced by white supremacism and socialism… meh. People like Chicago Mayor think they are changing the world with stunts like these, while, her fellow brothers and sisters die in droves. Sad.
And here is another wonderful observation made as well:
So here are the early discussions of his manifesto (CD MEDIA):
The Buffalo shooter published a manifesto which showed support for the same symbols used by the Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine. He also expressed hatred for those against US military involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
In other words, he supported the globalist agenda in Ukraine and showed sympathy for Nazi elements in-country.
He also expressed hatred for Fox News, which is opposite what mainstream reporting is putting out.
“On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category…”
In other words…. what CD MEDIA is pointing out flies in the face of comments like these:
Three things. One, Joe Lockhart (and others) either “a” doesn’t know tucker Carlson’s position on this issue… or “b” is saying because Tucker opposed the U.S. financial support of the war in Ukraine — THIS opposition drove the shooter to kill people? At any rate, the Left often does not know that which it speaks of. Or “c” people like this just see an opportunity to attack conservative’s and FOX NEWS that they use lies to do it.
Here for instance is some input on Tucker’s position from the LEFTIEsite, Crooks and Liars headline:
Tucker Wants Republicans Who Voted For Ukraine Aid Primaried: Continuing his support of Russia, the Fox News host denounced all Republicans that vote and will vote to approve aid to Ukraine.
Of course Crooks and Liars misapply Tucker’s position… but the point is that Tucker (and FOX NEWS) was hated by the shooter because of their position of skepticism about the monies spent there and not domestically in our country.
Many conservatives I follow disagree with the funding of the war in Ukraine. For instance, Daniel Horowitz notes the reason in one of his bullet points as follows:
Where are the money and arms going, and how are they not going toward the neo-Nazi Azov brigade that will, in the small chance they defeat the Russians, continue persecuting the ethnic Russians and fuel an intermittent conflict with Russia in perpetuity? (THE BLAZE)
Soo, as any National Socialist, he see Jews EVERYWHERE. And much like the Left, hates Mr. Murdoch.
And the shooter also said he was influennced, not by TV, but by the interwebs:
Before I begin I will say that I was not born racist nor grew up to be racist. I simply became racist after I learned the truth. started browsing 4chan in May 2020 after extreme boredom…. From there, I also found other sites, like worldtruthvideos […] dailyarchives […] dailystormer…
The “boredom” thing caught my attention. DENNIS PRAGER:
Just as physicists look for equations to explain the natural world, I have always thought it useful to look for equations to explain human nature. For example, in my book on happiness, I offer this equation: U = I – R. Unhappiness = Image – Reality. The difference between the images we have for our life and the reality of our life is one way of measuring how much unhappiness we experience.
Here, I offer another theorem, this time to help explain leftism.
A + S = B = L
Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism
The search for an equation to help explain leftism (as distinguished from traditional liberalism) emanates from these facts:
Most leftists come from the upper and upper-middle class. This was true for the two founders of leftism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx was supported by his family and by Engels, who was a wealthy businessman and the son of a very wealthy businessman. All the Western spies for the Soviet Union were economically secure. And the great funder of radical causes today is a billionaire — George Soros.
Nearly all leftists are irreligious people. And the breeding place of leftism, the university, is the most secular institution in modern society.
These two facts produce a problem: Many people lack meaning in their lives. And lack of meaning is another way of stating “boredom” — a boredom of the soul.
People need meaning. After food, that is the greatest human need. As important as sex is, there are happy people who go without sex (loss of a partner, never having found a partner, vows of chastity), but there are no happy people who go without meaning (no matter how much sex they have).
This need for meaning has traditionally been met by four things: religion, family, providing for oneself and one’s family, and patriotism. And all are fading…..
Even Michael Cernovich (also hated by the Left) was noted by the killer to be a “Jew troll”
But as with our other shooters the Left claims to be right=-wing… they hold very far Left positions and politics. CHRISTINA PUSHAW notes after Cernovich’s Tweet:
“Authoritarian left wing” = National Socialist = Nazi.
(Click on graphic for an excellent, excellent article)
Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance; Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980…
Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America; Career Highlights: Sued in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center for inciting the brutal beating of a Latino teenager; building the IKA into one of the nation’s largest Klan groups by allowing non-Christians to join.
Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, “The Aryan Barbarian.”
Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party; Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: “If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.”
….Later in the manifest, the shooter insists, “I would prefer to call myself a populist. But you can call me an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist if you want, I wouldn’t disagree with you.” He also repeatedly attacks capitalists, and rejected the conservative label because, he wrote, “conservativism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”
But let’s not pretend that, assuming the manifesto is legitimate, the rhetoric espoused in its pages means the shooter cannot be legitimately aligned with either major political party or political movement. While I would argue that the views expressed in the manifesto echo rhetoric of radical leftism, the manifesto is full of nonsense and garbage that is at times inconsistent. The people who were quick to exploit the situation to attack Fox News and conservatives were wrong and should be ashamed of themselves.
And RED STATE’S end to their post on this is good as well:
…Further in the manifesto, the person who wrote that manifesto claims that he considered himself a communist but has since moved further right to be a “mild-moderate authoritarian left category.”
But hey, why wait for facts? The left never cared about facts in the past, why would they begin caring now? They don’t care about the tragedy and the people who died–except how they can use it to attack their political enemies, and that is despicable.
….That didn’t stop them from blaming Fox News, of course. Leftist narratives never get tripped up by pesky things like facts.
As we all know, Tucker Carlson has replaced Sean Hannity as Public Enemy Number One at Fox News for the left, so he was getting a lot of the blame too. In their telling, this kid’s warped brain was fully formed by Carlson.
More bad news on that from the manifesto:
A search of the entire manifesto also yields no mentions of Tucker Carlson and specifically mentions “the internet” as where he got his beliefs.
Putting the final nail in the “right-wing extremist” narrative coffin, Cray-Cray says he got into communism young, uses a variety of leftist labels to describe himself, and rejects conservatism.
The Black Sun has been symbolized and used by various alchemists and occultists for well over 500 years. As I explained in my article, Black Sun Rising, this symbol is also known as the “Invisible Sun” and called by its Latin name, Sol Niger, and the German Schwarze Sonne, and the Sonnenrad German for Sun Wheel.
High-ranking Nazi officials eventually chose the symbol of the Black Sun to symbolize the force or energy they would channel to spread their ideologies around the globe and conquer their enemies.
However, the Nazis would use a modified version of the symbol of the Black Sun (German: Schwarze Sonne), adding twelve radial sig runes rather than the Traditional symbology, which did not contain the sig runes up until that time.
It has been theorized that the development of the Nazi Black Sun symbology was due to several SS leaders who were very much deep into the occult and esoteric studies. People like Rudolph Hess, Wilhelm Landig, and Karl Maria Miligut whose research influenced Hitler’s #1 man, Heinrich Himmler, and the German National Socialist ideologies who used this unseen force to fuel their war campaigns.
The NAZI Black Sun first appeared in Nazi Germany during World War II in 1933 when Heinrich Himmler created the central meeting place and spiritual home for the Schutzstaffel (SS) at the Wewelsburg Castle…..
I haven’t posted these in a while, but I think in regard to the shooter’s manifesto where he calls himself an “authoritarian left winger and green nationalist” — I think Melanie Phillips (see her SUBSTACK for the latest in really good writing) seems appropriate right about now:
‘Unfiltered’ host Dan Bongino slams President Biden for campaigning on ‘destroying’ the domestic oil industry, and his administration is following through on it.
“It was the West’s focus on healing the planet with ‘soft energy’ renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply.” — Michael Shellenberger
Why were federal tax subsidies extended for wind and solar by Congress? Again. For the umpteenth time! We are against subsidies because they distort markets. Those politicians who support these market-distorting policies should at least be forced to answer the question: “How much is enough?” Taxpayers have been subsidizing wind and solar corporations for more than 40 years! These companies have gotten fat and happy on your money, and Congress keeps giving them more of it. This video is based on a Texas Public Policy Foundation report that explains why it’s long past time to stop wind and solar from stuffing their bank accounts with your tax dollars.
To give you a sense of scale, to replace the energy from one average natural gas well, which sits on about four acres of land, would require 2,500 acres of wind turbines. That is a massive amount of land. You would have to cover this entire nation with wind turbines in an attempt to replace the electricity that we generate from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power, and even that would not get the job done. (CFACT)
At his international climate summit in April, President Joe Biden vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The goal will require sweeping changes in the power generation, transportation and manufacturing sectors. It will also require a lot of land.
Wind farms, solar installations and other forms of clean power tend to take up more space on a per-watt basis than their fossil-fuel-burning brethren. A 200-megawatt wind farm, for instance, might require spreading turbines over 13 square miles (36 square kilometres). A natural-gas power plant with that same generating capacity could fit onto a single city block.
Achieving Biden’s goal will require aggressively building more wind and solar farms, in many cases combined with giant batteries. To fulfill his vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Princeton University estimates and an analysis by Bloomberg News. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.
Earth Day 2021 is April 22nd. Therefore, eco-activist groups will be preaching the gospel of wind & solar power and the importance of biodiversity. What those trying to “save the planet” fail to understand (or more likely ignore) is that these two priorities are in direct conflict. Wind & solar require far more land than nuclear, natural gas and coal power. They are also far more destructive to regions of high biodiversity as well as large birds, bats and endangered species. As we celebrate Earth Day, let’s consider the significant environmental consequences of attempting to provide electricity through low density, unreliable sunshine and breezes.
Vice President Joe Biden aims to be the most progressive president on the issue of climate change. The man who spent most of 2020 hiding in the basement believes the future of energy is renewable energy like wind and solar. Biden should go back to the basement, watch Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans,” and rethink his advocacy for renewable energy. Wind and solar are not the answer, and the idea of converting our fossil fuel-based economy into renewables could be a devastating take-down to society.
Are we heading toward an all-renewable energy future, spearheaded by wind and solar? Or are those energy sources wholly inadequate for the task? Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Cloud Revolution, compares the energy dream to the energy reality.
Remember when Google joined the common sense era?
FLASHBACK
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[…..]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies ~ Finally! (RPT)
What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will? (SPETRUM)
Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’ (WATTS UP WITH THAT)
Polluting the Beauty and Cleanliness Of Our World With Renewable Energy (RPT)
Wind and Solar More Harmful To Environment Than Helpful (RPT)
The California Version of The Green New Deal and an October 16, 2020, EPA Settlement With Transportation is What’s Creating The Container Shipping Backlog – Working CA Ports 24/7 Will Not Help, Here’s Why
The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards. As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports. This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port. Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up. THIS is the central issue.
On October 16, 2020, the EPA reached a settlement agreement [DATA HERE] with California Air Resource Board (CARB) to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards:
[….]
In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.
In an effort to offset the problem, transportation companies started using compliant trucks (low emission) to take the products to the California state line, where they could be transferred to non-compliant trucks who cannot enter California. However, the scale of the problem creates an immediate bottleneck that builds over time. It doesn’t matter if the ports start working 24/7, they are only going to end up with even more containers waiting on a limited amount of available trucks…….
I have always said that the Left are “totalitarians,” and that is because they want “total thought” — in other words, homogenized thinking through the filter of Leftism (race, class, sex: the “unholy trinitarian” goal of the Left). Here is the latest on this fight for societal freedom.
This is the excuse the totalitarians are looking for, PJ-MEDIA has a must read:
….While conservatives rightly denounced the violence this week, this response bodes ill for conservative speech not just on social media, but in the public square and even in private organizations.
In the aftermath of the Capitol riots, Twitter suspended President Donald Trump’s account for the first time and Facebook permanently banned the president. After Trump deleted the tweets Twitter had flagged and had his account restored, Twitter proceeded to ban him entirely on Friday, and then it banned the official President of the United States (POTUS) account.
Facebook throttled the great Rush Limbaugh, notifying him that his “Page has reduced distribution and other restrictions because of repeated sharing of false news.” Limbaugh left Twitter in protest after the platform banned Trump. Apple and Google attacked Parler, claiming that the new haven for conservatives had allowed people to plan the violence of the Capitol riots on its platform.
House Democrats filed articles of impeachment that explicitly blame President Trump for the Capitol riots, even though he never told his supporters to invade the Capitol. While the president’s exaggerated rhetoric inflamed the rioters, Democrats repeatedly did the same thing this summer. Before and after Black Lives Matter protests devolved into destructive and deadly riots, Democratic officials repeatedly claimed America suffers from “systemic racism” and institutionalized “white supremacy.”
Big Tech did not remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accounts when she called for “uprisings” against the Trump administration. Facebook and Twitter did not target Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she claimed that allegedly marginalized groups have “no choice but to riot.” These platforms did not act against Kamala Harris when she said the riots “should not” stop.
This week, Joe Biden condemned the Capitol rioters, saying, “What we witnessed yesterday was not dissent, it was not disorder, it was not protest. It was chaos. They weren’t protesters, don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It’s that basic, it’s that simple.”
Yet he refused to speak in those terms when Black Lives Matter and antifa militants were throwing Molotov cocktails at federal buildings, setting up “autonomous zones,” and burning down cities. Instead, he condemned Trump for holding up a Bible at a church — without mentioning the fact that that very church had been set on fire the night before.
Despite this hypocrisy, Biden’s speech on Thursday proved instructive. Biden used the Capitol riots to condemn Trump’s entire presidency, accusing Trump of having “unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of our democracy from the outset.” Biden twisted Trump’s actions into an attack on “democracy.” He claimed Trump’s originalist judges were a ploy to undermine impartial justice — when they were truly the exact opposite. Biden claimed Trump’s complaints about the Obama administration spying on his campaign were merely an “attack” on America’s “intelligence services.” Biden said Trump’s complaints about media bias constituted an attack on the “free press,” when the Obama administration actually attacked the free press.….
UPDATED post via PJ-MEDIA… who points out that these social media tech giants think they are the arbiter of speech as well as the type of information you consume. What is the free market solution? To start your own “companies,” or outlets of free speech. However, as PARLER is succeeding against Twitter and Facebook as a place to speak freely, Big Tech is going after those, too. More via PJ in a minute.
Many #NeverTrumpers love David French’s views — as he is the intellectual leader of the rational side of the movement. This article by THE FEDERALIST needs to be gone through, here is the portion I think is most relevant, but the entire thing should be read (I linked to it in a conversation I just had with a #NeverTrumper):
….National Review writer David French has criticized the bill for attempting to regulate free speech. He argues that this invites a dangerous level of government involvement in public discourse. Subjecting social media companies to government scrutiny may sound appealing with a Republican president in power and a predominantly Republican Senate, but this could backfire if Democrats take control: “Will a Kamala Harris administration decide that disproportionate conservative success violates political neutrality?”
Bad Examples Abound
Besides taking a rather Pollyannaish view on conservative success on social media—never bothering to mention the blatant partisan censorship of conservative voices like Steven Crowder, Prager University, or Live Action—this argument from French and those of other like-minded critics rests on two counterexamples where government cannot regulate speech without violating the First Amendment: a controlled forum like a college classroom, and a public utility like a telephone service.
However, these two examples do not have any bearing on what is meant by free speech. In the case of regulating a public utility, this does not involve actual speech. Speech, in the First Amendment sense, consists of arguments made to a public audience. A telephone service is a means of communication, not a platform for facilitating speech. Therefore, the federal government cannot demand a company like AT&T refuse service to pathological liars or criminals because they perpetuate harmful speech.
Furthermore, if AT&T executives did start to do this, on the grounds that they work for a private company and can do what they want, customers could rightly charge them with discrimination (violating the 14th Amendment). They must provide phone service to all who agree to pay them, not just those who meet their speech guidelines—again, because their service does not pertain to speech, but basic communication, a utility.
In the case of a college lecture hall, the speech in question is not actually free. The professor can make his arguments and say whatever the school permits him to say. He also sets the rules for what students can say. If Dr. Kevin Sorbo tells his students that God doesn’t exist, as he does in the Pure Flix movie “God’s Not Dead,” his students are not free to debate him unless he allows it—which he foolishly does, much to his demise. Nevertheless, they do have the right to free speech outside his class (unless they attend Harvard University) and can complain about their atheist professor all they like.
This is different from students who request government action when they feel their free speech rights are somehow violated because a professor has an opinion that they dislike. Hawley’s bill would not require the fictional Dr. Kevin Sorbo or the real Dr. Fang Zhou to change their views or speech policies to uphold political neutrality in their classroom. It only applies to large social media companies and is meant to prevent silencing any particular view, conservative or progressive.
It’s Naive to Think Big Tech Companies Will Die Out
Given that these social media platforms have billions of users altogether, and will simply buy up any worthy competitor if it stumbles on a new idea (which is the ongoing plotline of the television series “Silicon Valley”), it is misguided to assume that they will pass away like the social media companies of yesteryear (Myspace, Friendster, etc.). The Big Tech platforms are less like a few popular channels on television and more like the whole cable and basic television package. The truth is that they won’t need to change; conservatives who try to create content on their sites will.
Without any laws to check them, Big Tech companies are removing conservative voices and clearing the way for the Democratic narrative that Trump is terrible and more government can save America. Heard often enough, this narrative will convince Americans who have no way of knowing better to vote for Democrats. And it is not a stretch to assume that the first order of business for any Democratic president will be to impose speech laws that suppress conservative ideas or grant greater authority to the Big Tech thought police.
In this, French is right to ask what a Harris administration would do to free speech if given the chance, but wrong to conclude that she would exploit Hawley’s law to do it. She doesn’t need to. Speaking for most Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes taking away social media’s legal protection (Section 230), considering it a “gift.” She recognizes that Democrat politicians will continue to benefit from the bias dominating all media and only stand to lose if conservatives compete on a level playing field.
It is nonetheless worth noting that even with numerous obstacles put in place, conservatives still dominate the internet because most Americans recognize that they have the better argument and discuss more relevant issues. By contrast, leftist publications depend on skewed narratives and bad arguments and tend to focus on tired topics like the Mueller report, Trump’s tax returns, and Joe Biden.
When given the chance, viewers will watch the watch Crowder over Vox’s Carlos Maza because Crowder is funnier, smarter, and doesn’t rely on people’s sympathy for his success. Of course, if Crowder stops producing his show because YouTube demonetizes his videos, viewers will not have a choice anymore.
In light of this fact, it is probably more accurate to frame the issue of regulating social media as more a matter of a free market than one of free speech, although one depends on the other. Many people on the left want to eliminate competition online and stop losing to conservative content creators. Allegations of hate and radicalization are merely a pretext to this.…
….After the social media platforms nixed Trump, people appeared to leave platforms in droves.
Nancy Pelosi, Ayanna Presley, and other Democrats have egged on rioters in the streets. Their social media accounts are still intact.
Conservative Americans have left the platforms in the understandable belief that if they could cut off the most powerful man in what used to be known as the free world, then they stood no chance.
They’re right.
To avoid the speech police, Americans have been leaving those platforms for Rumble and Parler, social media sites that promise to have few filters on speech. Parler does not allow illegal activity on its site under its terms of service.
But even as conservatives fled Facebook and Twitter for Parler, Big Tech decided to censor the site.
As I reported at PJ Media, Google Play cut off the Parler app from its app store and Apple followed suit in short order.
On Friday, a group called the “Amazon Employees for Climate Justice” wrote a screed to management demanding the tech behemoth boot the Parler app from its servers.
[….]
On Saturday, Amazon capitulated to the leftist rage mob and informed Parler it was getting rid of the social site from its servers.
Parler CEO John Matze announced that at midnight Sunday, Amazon would expunge the app content from its servers. Furthermore, he alleged that the tech giants conspired to orchestrate their moves to make it harder for Parler to stay afloat.
Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet. There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons [sic] proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.
We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies.
This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place. We were too successful too fast. You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.
#speakfreely
This is tyranny. This is groupthink.
To sum up:
Big Tech censored you and the president on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter
You left to go to other social media sites such as Parler, MeWe, Minds
Big Tech didn’t want you to leave for more freedom
Big Tech refused to let another social media platform, Parler, use their app stores
Big Tech then booted the social media site Parler from their servers
Double standards abound. No one on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram was tossed off those platforms for protesting, rioting, looting, and vandalizing on behalf of Black Lives Matter and antifa. Lobbing Molotov cocktails wouldn’t get a group booted off a platform.
Ayatollahs and the Chinese death camp operators are held in higher regard than the president of the United States of America – and his supporters – because of Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
The line is drawn.
UPDATE!
RED STATE and WEASEL ZIPPERS notes the latest attack on free-markets and free speech by the Tech Giants:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Mocks Parler after Coordinated Big Tech to Take Down His Competition
…So with this coordination to take down the right and any other alternative to Twitter, you would think that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey would be standing up for free speech, right? Just kidding.
Not only are they cool with booting off folks on the right from their site and removing the followers from virtually every right leaning account on Twitter, they’re also cool with their competition being stomped on. Indeed, if we were looking into antitrust questions in the coordination of all this, what Jack just posted would be Exhibit #1 in that action.
Here’s Jack celebrating that instead of Parler being the number 1 App on the App Store, his Signal App private messenger is instead. With a little help from his friends.
WEASEL ZIPPERS continues:
Amazon Kills Parler Server
You are not allowed an alternative either. They’re pulling them down tonight at 11:59 p.m. so Parler is looking for a new server.
Calling it a “coordinated attack,” Parler CEO John Matze informed the social media platform’s users Saturday that Amazon kicked Parler off their web hosting service, which will wipe them off the internet until they find a new host.
This devastating blow coming after Parler was removed from Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
The narrative employed to justify the Big Tech attack on Twitter’s biggest competitor is to link Parler, a free speech site being billed by the corrupt media as a “pro-Trump” site, to last week’s U.S. Capitol protest, claiming they allowed “calls for violence.”
A friend and I had a quick soiree that was based off of my OP (original post) that read thus:
BIG TECH PURGE: Facebook permanently bans Conservative #WalkAway group because it supported Trump
Just as we said they would, Facebook is using the Capitol riot as an excuse to begin purging conservatives from their platform, especially the ones who supported President Trump:
All conservatives are being treated as pariah… this is only the beginning. Already a majority of Democrats believe Trump and Republicans are “racist/bigoted/sexist,” which is why social platforms feel like they can shut down businesses and ban conservative ideas from their platforms. While this maligning is historical:
From Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, the Tea Party, the NRA and Republicans everywhere, Democrats have played the race card to tattered, unrecognizable bits. They have all but destroyed the ability to even have a constructive conversation about race. (REVOLUTIONARY ACT)
Like telling Jews they cannot do business in society. The storefront is literal as well as digital in today’s world. Conservatives are the current bogeyman:
49% of Democrats think Trump voters are racist — July 2019
83% of Democrats think Trump is racist — June 2020
Here is the conversation with some visual editing for increased access. I post a Rick Wilson Tweet to remind Jim of the people he admires and how far from being a “Reaganite” [whom Jim invoked] he and his peeps are, as, he is a fan of the Lincoln Project. So, this is where we left off, and really the response after it is for everyone to get a feel for what is coming.
So, my response is simple, Biden and Harris (Harris is the MOST LEFTIST senator available — showing Joe Biden is not moderate. See below as well). And Trump lies, but crowd size and ego building lies is a sign of a politician… and? But Trump’s lies are not equal to the administration Biden was in previously:
LIES
IRAN DEAL & Ben Rhodes:
Remember that time the White House deceived those gullible Americans about the Iran deal? Haha, good times!
That was the undeniable tone of a recent New York Times profile of President Barack Obama‘s national security advisor Ben Rhodes. In the profile, Rhodes goes on at length about his failed attempt to become a novelist, and how he sees his work at the White House as essentially the same kind of storytelling and narrative-weaving. And when crafting his non-fictional storylines involved selling the American people fiction, well, Rhodes was more than up to the task.
Apologies for the long block quote, but it really does need to be read to be believed:
Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency…
In the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in 2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to pursue a policy of “openness,” which included a newfound willingness to negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: “Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not.” While the president’s statement was technically accurate — there had in fact been two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the J.C.P.O.A. — it was also actively misleading, because the most meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012, many months before Rouhani and the “moderate” camp were chosen in an election among candidates handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran was politically useful to the Obama administration.
By obtaining broad public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy choices that his administration was making. By eliminating the fuss about Iran’s nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a source of structural tension between the two countries, which would create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East.
It’d be one thing if the New York Times dug through archives, spoke with anonymous government officials in hushed tones, and independently came to the conclusion that the White House was lying to Americans about the purpose and history behind the Iran deal. That factoid alone ought to be the front page headline in papers across the country rather than consigned to page 44 of the Sunday magazine.
To say nothing of that last paragraph, where we learn that the long-term policy goal of the administration is to “disengage” from Israel and our Arab allies and wash our hands of the Middle East. In line with that policy, the purpose of the Iran deal is not to protect our allies, but to abandon them…..
This old story reminds me of talking to millennial’s who listed to comedy shows as their source of political moral guidance on what is the case in our body politic. Here is the WASHINGTON TIMESnoting the gullibility of these younger persons who really haven’t read much or watched much outside of what they had to for their bachelors in literature of psychology or business administration:
…Ben Rhodes, the man who majored in creative writing and then ended up the Deputy National Security Adviser for President Obama, told The New York Times about the “echo chamber” he was able to create and feed:
In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. ‘We created an echo chamber,’ [Rhodes] admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.’
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. … They literally know nothing,” Rhodes bragged.
And the know-nothing millennials loved him for it. And, apparently, they still do….
KEEP YOUR DR. & HEALTH CARE PLAN
I don’t know how crowd size compares to that, but let’s continue. Can you name a lie that Trump made that is as big as a lie made to take over a large portion of the economy (one-sixth, some say one-fifth) comparable to Obama/Biden? “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” “If you like your doctor, you can keep him/her.” That was a lie that captured MORE government control of the economy.
POWERLINE has a good link fest to various “Obamacare Lies.”
…For the past two and a half years this nation has been roiled by the incessant drumbeat of accusations that its newly elected President, Donald Trump, was a clandestine agent of Russia and colluded with them to alter the outcome of the 2016 election. On their face, these accusations were so preposterous that anyone with a modicum of common sense would have thought them totally unbelievable.
Nonetheless, within 7 months after Trump’s inauguration 54% of all Americans believed he had acted illegally or unethically in his dealings with Russia (80% of Democrats). Within 14 months after the inauguration 66% of Democrats believed Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Trump elected and 59% accepted the premise that there were improper relations between the Trump campaign and Russia before the 2016 election.
In what was a staged and unnecessary inquiry, and despite turning over every marginally relevant leaf and conducting a dogged 22-month investigation using partisan prosecutors, Robert Mueller was unable to link Donald Trump or his campaign to even the minutest degree of collusion with the Russian Government. Nonetheless the drumbeat of lies and insinuations was a major factor in the Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives in 2018.
The American citizenry now definitively knows that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the presidential campaign of 2016. Further, based on the testimony of Rod Rosenstein and others involved in the Special Counsel probe, the Russians did not tamper with any vote tallies.
How were the Democrats, and their allies in the mainstream media able to suspend rationality and manipulate the emotions of so many Americans for so long?
[….]
From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (791 days), the major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage. During this period no other issue received more than 10% of this level of attention. Further, the spin of the overall network coverage of Donald Trump was 92% negative.
Two cable networks, CNN and MSNBC, each devoted, on the average, nearly 2 to 3 hours per day on Trump and Russia collusion, or an estimated 1,978 hours (118,700 minutes) since the inauguration. Virtually all the coverage was negative with innumerable false and misleading reports, accusations of treason, supposed imminent arrests and the unabashed reporting of any salacious or unproven rumor or allegation.
The print media went down the same path as their counterparts in the electronic media. The NewYork Times and The Washington Post between them published nearly 1,000 front page articles on the subject and had to issue numerous retractions days later after the damage was done. That process was repeated by news services such as the Associated Press and Reuters, pumping out to its newspaper, radio and television station subscribers throughout the United States daily stories negative to Trump regarding collusion.
On a near daily basis, so-called celebrities in Hollywood and the entertainment establishment unabashedly regurgitated to their untold millions of followers on social media virtually all the false stories and innuendos promulgated by the media and the Democratic Party.
The illegal and unethical maneuvering of the upper echelon of the FBI and Department of Justice immediately after the inauguration to appoint a special counsel added gravitas to the accusations regarding Trump and the Russians, as well as a means of finding anything that would either implicate Donald Trump in any potential criminality, or misbehavior outside of the Russian matter that could lead to impeachment. Further, their willing accomplices in the media breathlessly reported, without hesitation or confirmation, any leak or innuendo from these same denizens of the deep state.
The Democrats in Congress, undeterred by ethics or the laws of slander and defamation, were free to fabricate or leak stories regarding Russian collusion that were accepted at face value by their allies in the media….
Hugh Hewitt and Generalissimo Duane read the phone call Trump had with the Ukrainian President. One debunked position people attribute to the call was that President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to get what he wanted from Ukraine. However, the far Left magazine, The Nation, notes this about the issue:
Democratic leaders and media pundits are convinced that Trump extorted Ukraine by delaying military aid to compel an investigation into Biden. Their theory may prove correct, but the available evidence does not, as of now, make for a strong case. Trump had held up military aid to Ukraine by the time of his call with Zelensky, but if the public transcript is accurate, it did not come up during their conversation. According to The New York Times, Zelensky’s government did not learn that the military aid was frozen until more than one month later. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who met with Zelensky in early September, said that the Ukrainian president “did not make any connection between the aid that had been cut off and the requests that he was getting from [Trump attorney Rudy] Giuliani.” It will be difficult to prove extortion if Trump’s purported target was unaware. (THE NATION)
Another big lie from the Left/Democrats is that Gender is assigned, and not inherent to our nature.
Another charge made over and over by the left — the mainstream media, academia and the Democratic Party — that the Trump election had unleashed an unprecedented amount of anti-Semitism was proved to be yet another left-wing hysteria based on a left-wing lie.
NEWSBUSTERS Notes CNN’s Fareed Zakaria admitting to what I have argued for a long time, that is — if Trump were in cahoots with Putin, whay was he tougher on him than Obama?
“I think in general, there isn’t going to be as much difference as people imagine. The Biden folks are pretty tough on Russia, Iran, North Korea. You know, the dirty little secret about the Trump administration was that while Donald Trump had clearly had a kind of soft spot for Putin, the Trump Administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine, they armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama Administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions.So I don’t think it will be that different.”
Wait a second! It was a “dirty little secret” that Trump was tough on Russia? WHY?? Who kept it a secret and for what purpose??
And the obvious answer is that the liberal media/Democrats were intent on pushing Russia Russia Russia. Admitting that President Trump was in fact tough on Russia would undermine that line of attack. And so they buried it: kept it a “dirty little secret.”
Besides Trump cutting Federal programs, getting rid of regulations that held back small business, factories, and agriculture — he also added t he fewest laws to the Federal Registry:
The Trump administration issued the fewest new regulations during 2019 than in any year since the government began keeping track more than four decades ago, as President Trump cuts away at Obama-era red tape.
The Federal Register for Dec. 31 has published 2,964 final rules in its pages, the lowest number since records began in 1975, said Clyde Wayne Crews, policy vice president of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank.
Mr. Trump’s previous low for new rule-making was 3,281 in 2017.
“It is a notable achievement that all three of the lowest-ever annual rule counts belong to Trump,” Mr. Crews wrote in his blog on Forbes’ website. “This an even more significant development given that some of Trump’s ‘rules’ are rules written to get rid of or replace other rules.”
Biden and Harris will outdo themselves to break spending and regulatory records.
FARMERS (WOTUS):
Biden will reimplement regulation that will retake (under fiat) 247 Million Acres of Farmland. Among other regulatory increases. What it is….
WOTUS gave the federal government effective authority over water use on 247 million acres of American farmland.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, together with Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Douglas Lamont, signed a proposed regulatory rescission of WOTUS. As soon as the proposed rule change can be published in the Federal Register, under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2017-0203, the public will have a 30-day comment period to “review and revise” the definition of “waters of the United States.”
The EPA took to Twitter at #WOTUS to call its action a significant step to return power to states and provide regulatory certainty to the nation’s farmers and businesses. The EPA added that its decision is consistent with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on February 28, aimed at “Restoring the Rule of Law, Federalism, and Economic Growth by Reviewing the ‘Waters of the United States’ Rule.”
The Obama administration’s WOTUS regulatory expansion cleverly redefined the term “navigable waters” to include “intermittent streams.” Environmental activists hailed the WOTUS’s expansion of federal jurisdiction over land and water use as an essential common-sense-rule to protect water for wildlife and drinking water supplies for 117 million Americans….
The Biden Administration has all but promised a rescinding of this huge shrinking of government intrusion into the lives of the individual. Here is a small excerpt of a wonderful resource via RED STATE:
….Who is looming EPA Chief Michael Regan? All you have to know is – Leftists LOVE him:
“Several environmental advocacy groups lauded the selection….Regan…is known for prioritizing environmental justice, which…’helped win him the post.’”
“Climate change is the most significant challenge humanity faces. We’ll make meaningful progress together by listening to every voice—from our youth & frontline communities to scientists & our workforce. I will be honored to be part of that work as EPA Administrator.”
I’m quite sure Regan won’t actually be listening to any farmers’ voices at all.
Can you feel the EPA mojo coming back? Farmers certainly can – and they’ll hate it.
Who is looming Interior Chief Deb Haaland? All you have to know is – Leftists LOVE her:
“Even before her selection, Haaland was drawing broad support from environmental groups, indigenous peoples’ advocates and members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who released a statement on Wednesday saying ‘Haaland knows the territory, and if she is the President-elect’s choice for Interior Secretary, then he will have made an excellent choice.’”
“Haaland’s selection positions Biden’s Interior Department to build on the budding alliances between tribes and environmental groups that have been formed in recent years to battle fossil fuel projects like the Dakota Access pipeline, expand land conservation and keep water in overdrawn rivers.”
“(T)he Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule…could be a top priority should the former vice president win the White House in November — right after reinstating President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and reining in President Trump’s revisions to a rule for National Environmental Policy Act compliance.
“‘I think there’s going to be considerable pressure to deal with the Waters of the U.S. mess,’ said Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau, referring to the regulation that defines the scope of the Clean Water Act. ‘I think what he really has to do is what Trump did, in reverse, and flip the script.’”
Farmers yet again hardest hit…..
PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD
If power corrupts, as it is said, Americans are going to feel a jolt of degeneration when Joe Biden plugs back into the climate-change network. Rather than save the world from global warming, a President Biden would force Americans to spend more of their hard-earned dollars just to keep the wheels turning and the lights burning. One pledge the presumptive Democratic president-elect has chiseled in stone is that when he first sets foot in the Oval Office, he would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, from which President Trump’s 2019 withdrawal became final on Election Day 2020: “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement,” Mr. Biden tweeted. “And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.” (WASHINGTON TIMES)
Executive Orders
On January 20, 2021, Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. As soon as his first day in office, Biden plans to sign at least five executive orders that could reverse several of President Donald Trump’s policies. He’ll also focus on addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, improving the economy and providing financial stimulus. These executive orders may include:
1. Paris Climate Accord
Biden wants the U.S. to rejoin the Paris climate accord.
Biden said he would build upon President Barack Obama’s efforts to fight climate change.
As part of his plan, Biden proposed $2 trillion in clean energy and infrastructure spending. Biden also wants net zero emissions by 2050.
…Pulling us out of this bad deal is good news. As it was negotiated under the prior administration, this agreement imposed a goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions by nearly 30 percent over a decade. The so-called “Obama pledge” accompanied a host of related federal regulations that would have damaged the economy, killed jobs, and driven up energy prices for families across the country.
Sticking with the deal could have cost 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025, according to a National Economic Research Associates study. And the effects would be widespread, including a loss of 440,000 manufacturing jobs, according to NERA’s numbers. Meanwhile, according to proponents’ own data, the agreement would have no discernible effect on global temperatures.
And the longer the agreement ran, the worse it would get, according to NERA’s data. By 2040, production (and thus employment) would be decimated in a host of industries, including a 38 percent cut in iron and steel, 31 percent in natural gas, and 86 percent for coal. At that point, the total economic cost to the U.S. would approach $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product and 6.5 million industrial jobs.
Speaking last week, Trump correctly noted that the damage is not spread evenly across the globe, noting that China and India can proceed with adding coal-fired capacity well into the future. “The agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States and ships them to foreign countries,” he noted.
Other good news from last week is stopping future U.S. payments to the Green Climate Fund, part of what Trump rightly described as “a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries.” The federal government has already sent $1 billion of U.S. taxes to prop up energy projects in foreign countries.
Taxpayers and ratepayers have seen firsthand how green energy subsidies fail to deliver on promises of long-term job creation and energy affordability — it makes little sense to repeat these mistakes abroad. The Green Climate Fund is essentially an international version of Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that took $535 million in taxpayer money before going belly-up.
Exiting the agreement means the U.S. can lead with strength in promoting energy and environmental policies, protecting U.S. jobs and easing the costly regulatory burden across the country. Now the Trump administration can push ahead with a plan that conserves the environment while protecting economic competitiveness and promoting affordability and reliability. He should keep these priorities in mind as he engages in future negotiations with international stakeholders on energy and environment policies.
What is on the horizon for more tax-payer expenses
….It was the heavy burden on the American economy compared to the easy terms given to industrial powerhouses like China and India that convinced Mr. Trump to bail. U.S. participation in the pact would cost the average family of four $20,000 and the national GDP $2.5 trillion by 2035, according to The Heritage Foundation. The resulting reduction in global temperatures: a nearly unmeasurable 0.015 degrees Celsius in 2100.
It’s unsurprising, then, that environmental extremists argue a Biden return to Paris won’t cut it. “Paris is a good starting point, but we need to go well beyond Paris now to achieve the reductions that are necessary,” climate activist and climatologist Michael Mann tells NBC News. That means reaching even deeper into American pockets.
A Biden administration would queue up a modified version of the $93 trillion Green New Deal that environmental firebrands like Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez favor. The Biden plan would build the nationwide infrastructure for “clean, American-made electricity to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.” With it would come a transition to electric vehicles….
(2018) California’s leaders are promoting the idea that the state’s in a “new normal” of more extreme wildfire, but fire scientists say it doesn’t have to stay that way, even in the face of a climate that’s getting warmer.
I posted previously on related topics for the interested:
(This is mainly a government issue – federal and state) John and Ken interview Congressman Tom McClintock (4th District of California) discussing the issue of forest mismanagement, and how since the 1980’s 80% less logging has been allowed.
Some good articles are these:
How Misguided Environmentalism Is To Blame For California’s Wildfires (THE FEDERALIST, 2018)
California Has Always Had Fires, Environmental Alarmism Makes Them Worse Than Necessary (FORBES, 2020)
Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters (FORBES, 2019)
The Same Old, Same Old California Suicide (NATIONAL REVIEW, 2020)
Western Wildfires Are Due to Arson and Stupidity, Not Climate Change (AMERICAN THINKER, 2020)
PRAGER U
The following video is done by John Kobylt of the The John and Ken Show 640AM-KFI: “This is appalling. And not nearly enough people have been given this information.”
Corrupt politics overriding California wildfire prevention efforts, Republican John Cox says (SEE AT FOX NEWS)
