Defund UCLA

“No one wants to openly admit [we all] hope Clarence Thomas dies.”


Earlier this month, Joseph H. Manson, a respected anthropologist and the former winner of a Leakey Foundation Research Grant, announced that he was walking away from his tenured position at the university after what he described as the “woke capture” of the institution.

After writing about the ruthless political persecution of P. Jeffrey Brantingham, a fellow anthropology department academic who was canceled for studying crime patterns, he also listed other purged UCLA faculty.

“Emeritus Professor Val Rust (Graduate School of Education) was banned from campus after incurring the wrath of graduate student adherents of Critical Race Theory. Researcher James Enstrom (Environmental Health Sciences) and lecturer Keith Fink (Communication Studies) were fired from dissenting from the woke orthodoxy. Gordon Klein, after being suspended by UCLA’s business school in Spring 2020 for refusing to use race-based grading criteria, mobilized mass support and legal assistance, was reinstated, and is now suing the university.”

Klein came under such sustained attack that he had to be placed under armed guard.

The academic documented campus antisemitism including a talk by bigoted antisemite Rabab Abdulhadi, who had falsely accused a Jewish student of “white supremacy” for supporting Israel resulting in a complaint filed with the Department of Education. UCLA has been the subject of complaints over antisemitism by StandWithUs, the Zachor Legal Institute and others.

UCLA anti-Israel activists, as documented by the civil rights group Canary Mission, have boasted that they’re members of terrorist groups, supported terrorism and called for the murder of Jews without any action being taken by the university.

Leftist hate and violence at UCLA has not only been directed at Jews and pro-Israel students.

Manson’s principled resignation comes after Johnathan Perkins, the director for Race and Equity at the University of California-Los Angeles, recently tweeted, “No one wants to openly admit [we all] hope Clarence Thomas dies.”

Unlike the academics targeted by leftist campus lynch mobs, Perkins faced no consequences.

Despite UCLA’s growing extremism, its core budget in past years was funded at as much as a third by California taxpayers. In 2015, UCLA received $440 million from the state. And the nation’s taxpayers, through the federal government, provide a majority of its research grants  amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars more in money flowing through the system.

As a public university, UCLA is a non-profit under 501(c)(3) even though it has long ceased to function as a non-partisan institution and has become an aggressive leftist political machine.

UCLA spends over $1 million on political lobbyists.

Its personnel rank as 47 out of 25,950 in political funding and have provided almost $1 million to the DNC, $400,947 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, $181,468 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $151,650 to the House Majority PAC in the 2022 cycle alone. Even though Senator Raphael Warnock, a racist Georgia politician, is on the other side of the country, UCLA’s leftists still poured $124,881 into his campaign.

In 2020, UCLA personnel funded Biden to the tune of almost $4 million and nearly another million to Bernie Sanders, along with millions more to various leftist election PACs.

UCLA is no longer a serious academic institution. Its “woke” faculty are purging credible academic figures like Joseph H. Manson and others, while cultivating an atmosphere of hatred on campus and using a taxpayer-funded institution for political and anti-American activity.

It’s time for the IRS to pull UCLA’s non-profit status.

With a $5.1 billion endowment, there’s no reason for taxpayers to fund UCLA either directly or indirectly. If UCLA wants to drive out serious academics while promoting radical discourse, it should do this with its own money and if it wants to function as an arm of the Democrats, it should not enjoy non-profit status while interfering in and subverting our political system.

While the IRS has targeted conservative non-profits, it has continued to allow leftist non-profits, including UCLA to operate without oversight or accountability. Department of Education investigations have failed to clean up UCLA, lifting its non-profit status is the nuclear option.

California and this country deserve great public universities. UCLA and its institutions can no longer claim to be serving any such function. By lifting UCLA’s non-profit status, donors may be redirected to contribute to emerging institutions like the University of Austin that are dedicated to serious academic inquiry and honor free speech: values that UCLA no longer believes in.

AUTHOR

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Barry Goldwater Correctly Predicted The Problems Afflicting America in 1980

The need for ‘economic growth that we hear about so much about these days will be achieved, not by the government harnessing the nation’s economic forces, but by emancipating them.” — Senator Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative.


We have been a fan of former Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona. His views on government and the roll of politicians can be summed up in the following passage from his book “The Conscience of a Conservative“:

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

WATCH: Senator and Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater’s 1980 speech at the Republican National Convention.

Here is Senator Goldwater making his famous statement, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

We wish we had more politicians like Barry Goldwater in today’s Republican Party. If we did our nation and its people would be more free and secure.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: ANALYSIS: How Did ‘The Least Racially Diverse,’ And Most Radical Faction Of The Left Hijack The Democrat Party?

Election Integrity Professional Demolishes Guardian Hit Piece

Democrat-friendly media outlets are working overtime to discredit all efforts to achieve free and fair elections and to smear anyone involved in election integrity efforts.  One of many such pathetic articles appeared in The Guardian, the left-wing British publication with a U.S. presence. The article drives the phony narrative that poll-watching and training for election integrity activists amounts to voter intimidation and is to be condemned.

The article specifically names Tim Meisburger, a member of my activist network devoted to achieving free and fair elections. Tim has spent 30 years observing overseas elections, culminating in his appointment as Director of the Center for Democracy Rights and Governance for the federal agency USAID. Tim is currently Director of the America Project’s election integrity program.   The Guardian never asked him for his side of the story, so he wrote a letter to the editor demolishing the article, a letter which the Guardian has yet to publish.  In the letter, Tim wrote:

This article is littered with “scare quotes”; a rhetorical device and cliché whose overuse reflects poorly on the professionalism of the author, and competence of his editor. Although this article is listed under “US news”, it is immediately clear that it is an opinion piece….

Early in the article Peter Stone … plays the “Hitler” card, suggesting our leadership is pushing a “big lie”; a pejorative the left uses to refer to the opinion shared by many (according to recent polls, more than half of all Americans, including 30% of Democrats) that the 2020 election may have been affected by fraud….

As election and democracy professionals know, you cannot judge the legitimacy of an election by looking solely at what happens on election day, as many events can occur well before election day that affect the integrity of the election process….

[U]ndisputed examples of incidents or programs that might give one cause to doubt the democratic legitimacy of the election include:

  • Coordinated suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election
  • Introduction of many new election procedures as a response to COVID 19 that universally weakened the security of the election process
  • Widespread use of insecure mail-in ballots and drop boxes, paid for in many cases by donations from a partisan billionaire.
  • The use of state officials and resources to turn out voters in predominately Democratic areas, again paid for by a partisan billionaire.
  • Ballot mules geo-tracked and videoed collecting ballots from partisan organizations and then stuffing said ballots in drop boxes
  • Observers being prevented (on video) from observing counting processes
  • Poll workers (on video) sending observers home and stuffing ballot boxes in the middle of the night
  • The suspiciously coordinated suspension of counting in battleground states, followed by markedly different results when counting is resumed

These and other incidents may not be enough to sway Peter, but they are certainly enough to create reasonable doubt for many people. For me, as an election professional, the prevention of effective observation alone is enough to declare that the integrity of the election cannot be verified; and if we were overseas monitoring an election in a developing country and saw that, we would condemn the process and call for new elections….

The letter goes on from there and includes the inconvenient fact Meisburger left USAID at the end of President Trump’s term, not under a “cloud” as the article baselessly claimed.

That’s the rebuttal.  Let’s see if the Guardian prints it.  Don’t hold your breath.  Open and honest debate, any more than free and fair elections, is not how the Democrats roll.

Visit The Daily Skirmish  and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Are We In A Recession?

Who Really Needs a Definition of Recession? Not business or households. It really only serves one interest.


Social media is ablaze with a dispute over whether the US economy is in a recession.

The debate was prompted by the White House’s statement on upcoming GDP data. The statement claims:

While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.

The debate on social media is about whether this is true, but I think a different question takes priority. Why do we care? I’m not asking why we should care about whether the economy is bad— that’s obviously important.

I’m asking a different question. Why do we care if we call it a recession, and why do we need a definition of recession at all?

Individuals trying to manage their households and businesses don’t need access to macroeconomic data like GDP to know things are going badly in the economy. When businesses are unable to secure customers, when costs are rising faster than revenue, and when individuals lose purchasing power, they know.

In business, the key data entrepreneurs need access to is profit and loss. A business making an economic profit should continue on, and a business making an economic loss needs to make a change. GDP numbers are unnecessary for these decisions.

“The individual consumer,” Murray Rothbard wrote, “in his daily rounds, has little need of statistics; through advertising, through the information of friends, and through his own experience, he finds out what is going on in the markets around him. The same is true of the business firm. The businessman must also size up his particular market, determine the prices he has to pay for what he buys and charge for what he sells, engage in cost accounting to estimate his costs, and so on. But none of this activity is really dependent upon the omnium gatherum of statistical facts about the economy ingested by the federal government. The businessman, like the consumer, knows and learns about his particular market through his daily experience.”

Not only do people know the relevant economic conditions without macroeconomic data, but they know before macroeconomic economic data has the chance to be released. If someone walks outside on a hot day, they don’t need a meteorological agency to tell them the temperature to know it’s hot. In fact, if you tried to tell a person on a hot day that your weather app says it’s only 10 degrees, they’d tell you your app is wrong.

So who exactly does access to GDP (or national income data) help? In brief: the government. Why? Because politicians and bureaucrats lack the direct, meaningful knowledge that market participants have. As Rothbard explained:

They are decidedly outside the market. Therefore, in order to get “into” the situation that they are trying to plan and reform, they must obtain knowledge that is not personal, day-to-day experience; the only form that such knowledge can take is statistics.

Statistics are the eyes and ears of the bureaucrat, the politician, the socialistic reformer. Only by statistics can they know, or at least have any idea about, what is going on in the economy.

For example, you can’t have recession policies if you can’t quantitatively identify a recession, so our planners make definitions and gather metrics.

But their definitions and metrics are meaningless from a market participant’s perspective. Their only function is political. As economist Ludwig von Mises argues, “[t]here is no nonpolitical reason whatever to proceed with such a summing up of all incomes within a ‘nation’ and not within a broader or a narrower collective.”

When GDP numbers fall below a certain level, politicians can use that data to try to push income back up. Or perhaps when the economy is “running too hot” politicians can use fiscal and monetary policy to slow down the economy.

All of these metaphors about economies running hot or stalling are based on a central planning view of the economy. In this view, the economy is like a machine which we can adjust to bring about the proper results.

Without macroeconomic statistics, central planners have fewer means by which to justify particular interventions. We can’t claim we need stimulus if we can’t point to some data indicating it’s necessary.

Why does this “two quarters of negative GDP growth” definition of recession exist so widely in the minds of economists? Well one reason, as Phil Magness has pointed out on Twitter, is there are United States laws actually triggered by having two quarters of negative GDP growth:

Notice the role GDP measurement plays here. It is presumably a metric for evoking legislation. Why else would the legislature have automatic responses to the metric?

Still not convinced that macroeconomic statistics exist to serve planners? Consider some simple questions from Mises:

Why national income of the United States and not rather “state income” of the State of New York or “county income” of Westchester County or “municipal income” of the municipality of White Plains? All the arguments that can be advanced in favor of preferring the concept of “national income” of the United States against the income of any of these smaller territorial units can also be advanced in favor of preferring the continental income of all the parts of the American continent or even the “world income” as against the national income of the United States. It is merely political tendencies that make plausible the choice of the United States as the unit.

Why is it we’re so focused on GDP of the United States rather than town GDP or world GDP? It’s because our most powerful political decision-makers are at the national level.

Ironically these tools developed in part to aid planners have become a thorn in the side of many politicians. While GDP numbers may aid in national economic planning, they may not be helpful at the polls.

This is likely why the Biden White House is trying to get ahead of the release of the most recent quarter of economic data. If you’re worried one definition of recession will make you look bad, just choose another definition.

Unfortunately for Biden, even if some arbitrary collection of economists declare we are not in a recession, you don’t need a thermometer to feel if it’s hot outside.

Economic issues, especially inflation, top the list of concerns for voters going into the 2022 midterms, and it isn’t particularly close.

So officially defined recession or not, it doesn’t really matter. When it’s hot outside people wear shorts. When the economy is bad for them, they respond accordingly regardless of what the bureaucratic weathermen say.

AUTHOR

Peter Jacobsen

Peter Jacobsen teaches economics at Ottawa University where he holds the positions of Assistant Professor and Gwartney Professor of Economic Education and Research at the Gwartney Institute. He received his graduate education George Mason University and received his undergraduate education Southeast Missouri State University. His research interest is at the intersection of political economy, development economics, and population economics. His website can be found here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s TSA Becomes the Transportation False Security Administration

Illegal aliens are welcomed aboard airliners – using arrest warrants for ID.


The Biden Administration continues to implement policies that are not in the best interests of America or Americans.  Nowhere is this more apparent than the multifaceted immigration system.

Immigration is not a single issue, but a singular issue because it profoundly impacts nearly every challenge and threat that confronts America in this especially perilous era.

Even with the ongoing “crisis on the southern border” getting some attention by some news organizations, the immigration crisis involves far more than the unending tsunami of illegal aliens flooding into the United States from Mexico.

The frequently maligned Border Wall was never designed to keep people from entering the United States, only to make it more difficult of those who seek to enter to evade the vetting process we conduct at ports of entry to screen out aliens who would pose a threat to public health, public safety, national security and the jobs and wages of Americans.

The border wall does not block ports of entry only serves to funnel all people and commerce to ports of entry where the vetting process is conducted, guided by 8 U.S. Code § 1182.

In discussing the importance of the border wall I have frequently compared the wall on the border to the “cattle runs” that are employed at airports to guide passengers to the next available TSA (Transportation Security Administration) agent.  In using that comparison I have often rhetorically asked, “Would you get on an airplane if you saw your fellow passengers evading thet TSA officials?”  As you might expect, without exception the response was immediate and vehement.  All stated that there was no way in hell they would board such an airliner.

It turns out that the vetting process conducted by the TSA is not much better than the lunacy we are experiencing with the immigration system under the Biden Administration.

The only thing worse than no security is false security.

The TSA needs an additional word in its title, the Transportation False Security Administration (TFSA)!

As I have written in many of my articles, the Biden Administration has all but terminated the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.  As I noted a long time ago during one of my first television appearances shortly after the terror attacks of 9/11, “No one would break into the amusement park if they could not get on the rides.”  The corollary is that “No one stays in the amusement park when they turn off the lights and shut down the rides.”

The Biden Administration has laid out the red carpet to the biggest “Amusement Park” in the world- the United States of America and has invited millions of illegal aliens to “come on down!”

This is actually the “Root Cause” for the unprecedented massive illegal immigration we are now witnessing.

While some of these illegal aliens are fleeing crime and poverty in their home countries- others may be fugitives from justice or are members of drug cartels, transnational gangs or terrorist organizations and therefore pose a threat.

Inexplicably the Biden Administration through its Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and through its TSA (Transportation Security Administration) administrator is acting in direct opposition to letter and spirit of our immigration laws and has promulgated policies that are in direct conflict with the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, to which I provided testimony.

I hate say, “I told you so,” but on December 7, 2020 my article, Biden’s DHS: Department of Homeland Surrender: Alejandro Mayorkas, architect of DACA, picked by Biden to head DHS, was published, accurately predicting the disaster that now undermines our national security and public safety.

Recently members of congress turned to yet another Biden policy decision that not only makes no sense but undermines national security and public safety.  There is absolutely no “upside” to the administration’s policy of permitting illegal aliens to board airliners with their only form of “identification” being an administrative Warrant of Removal issued by DHS.  This lunacy was reported by Fox News on January 21, 2022, TSA confirms it lets illegal immigrants use arrest warrants as ID in airports.  The subtitle noted that: TSA said the document would be checked against CBP databases.

Before we go further, the obvious question is why is the Biden Administration doing this?  Where is the benefit to America or Americans?

On July 21, 2021, Fox News reported:  TSA chief says ‘under 1,000’ illegal immigrants have been allowed to board planes with warrants as ID.

Here is an unbelievable excerpt from that report that focuses on an exchange at a senate hearing between Republican Senator Josh Hawley and TSA (Transportation and Security Administration) Administrator David Pekoske on July 21, 2022:

(Senator) Hawley pushed the TSA chief on why he would allow illegal immigrants with such a warrant onto a flight at all.

“We arent looking at whether a person is legal or illegal in the country,” he said. “Our role is to make sure that people who may pose a risk to transportation that is significant enough to require enhanced screening or to not allow them to fly.”

“So your position is someone who is known to have violated the laws of the United States does not thereby need enhanced screening?” Hawley said.

“Sir, there are people who violate the laws of the United States every day who fly,” Pekoske responded. “We look for things related to transportation security.”

While Pekoske again stressed that the warrant is “the beginning of an identity verification process that follows” Hawley was not convinced.

“I think youre going to have a hard time explaining to folks who wait for all of this time in these lines, who subject themselves voluntarily to the restrictions you impose…that youre allowing illegal aliens with warrants for arrest to get on airplanes.”

Speaking from my 30 years of experience with the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service, many illegal aliens have no reliable documentary proof of their identities or even of their actual nationality.  The “CBP database” is virtually worthless where illegal aliens are concerned.

Arrest Warrants can be forged and do not do not meet the standards for documents that other travelers must provide to positively identify the persons carrying that document.

Think about the hundreds of thousands of so-called “get aways” who evaded the overwhelmed  Border Patrol.

For all of the nonsense about the administration addressing “root cause” of illegal immigration, the true Root Cause is the fact that the Biden administration. Is facilitating the entry of millions of illegal alines and then dispersing them around the United States.

As an INS agent I frequently arrested illegal aliens who either had no identity documents or had multiple identity documents in multiple false identities.  We were frequently left with no alternative but to issue them warrants in whatever name they claimed was their names.

Law violators frequently use false aliases as a way of deceiving law enforcement officials.  This is why law enforcement agencies invariably fingerprint those who are arrested in an effort to determine their true identities and to determine if they are fugitives from justice.

In my personal experience, aliens may have outstanding arrest warrants in many countries around the world that do not show up when we run their fingerprints.  Frequently the fingerprinting systems are not compatible from one country to another and because of corruption, many criminals in other countries can pay a relatively small fee to have their criminal records expunged and even enable them to purchase “Good Conduct Certificate” from the law enforcement officials of this other countries, even after they completed lengthy prison sentences after they were found guilty of committing serious violent crimes.

Meanwhile, Biden Administration Plans To Protect Immigration Fraudsters.

The official report, 9/11 and  Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was authored by members of the 9/11 Commission staff- the federal agents and the attorneys, wrote about the findings of the Commission.

Here are a few excerpts that illustrate how dangerous the Biden administration’s policies are to America and Americans- once again raising the question  about the possible motivations of this administration.

Page 46 and 47 of this report noted:

By analyzing information available at the time, we identified numerous entry and embedding tactics associated with these earlier attacks in the United States.

The World Trade Center Bombing, February 1993. Three terrorists who were involved with the first World Trade Center bombing reportedly traveled on Saudi passports containing an indicator of possible terrorist affiliation. Three of the 9/11 hijackers also had passports containing this same possible indicator of terrorist affiliation.

In addition, Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the attack, and Ahmad Ajaj, who was able to direct aspects of the attack despite being in prison for using an altered passport, traveled under aliases using fraudulent documents. The two of them were found to possess five passports as well as numerous documents supporting their aliases: a Saudi passport showing signs of alteration, an Iraqi passport bought from a Pakistani official, a photo-substituted Swedish passport, a photo-substituted British passport, a Jordanian passport, identification cards, bank records, education records, and medical records.

Page 54 of that report- Under the title 3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot,” included this excerpt that makes the above issues crystal clear:

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the U.S. terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the U.S. government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.

Page 61 contained this passage:

Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists

In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.   Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.  With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel.

Benjamin Franklin sagely noted “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Under the Biden administration we have certainly compromised our freedoms- but as for our “security” we have officials whose titles include the word “security” but clearly, they could not care less about the security of our nation or our fellow citizens.

©Michael Cutler. All rights.

San Francisco Lost 6.3% of Its Population in Pandemic — Most Among U.S. Hellhole Cities

UPDATE: Short video with Pfizer crime boss, Albert Bourla


The left, who loves to change words and descriptions, should start calling these cities, shitholes to reflect the new reality they’ve wrought.

The exodus will be a stampede if the Democrats continue to rule them.

San Francisco Lost 6.3% of Its Population in Pandemic; Most Among U.S. Cities

By: Breitbart News, 537
The city of San Francisco, California, lost 6.3% of its population from July 2020 to July 2021, the most of any U.S. city.That’s according to U.S. Census data, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, amid a work-from-home trend in the tech sector:The city lost 54,813 people, or 6.3% of its population, from July 2020 to July 2021. One pandemic year erased a decade of tech-fueled population boom: San Francisco’s 815,201 residents as of July 2021 was the lowest since 2010, according to census data.

New York had the second-highest percentage drop, losing 3.5% of residents or over 305,000 people. The country’s most densely populated county, Manhattan, was the hardest-hit New York borough, losing 6.6% of its population.

[ … ]

The 15 fastest growing U.S. cities were concentrated in the west and south regions, including in Arizona, Texas, Florida and Idaho. Two suburbs north of Austin, Georgetown and Leander, Texas, added a combined 13,352 people, each growing more than 10% during the 12-month period. That was the nation’s highest two rates for cities with 50,000 or more people.

San Francisco’s rapid depopulation was also assisted by high housing costs, the Chronicle reported. San Francisco in particular has struggled to deal with homelessness, drug use, and petty crime, problems that have recently become worse.

Many cities also experienced a rise in crime and disorder following the Black Lives Matter riots of the summer of 2020.

Overall, the State of California lost 1% of its population in 2021, seeing more than 367,000 residents move to other states.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

If Consumers, Businesses Cared About ‘Climate’, The Last Cars They’d Buy Are Hot-Selling Electric Vehicles

Governments are forcing the public to buy EVs even if they don’t want the WOKE nonsense.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, “A zombie business or industry, in today’s parlance, is one sustained less by creative destruction than by a combination of government bailout, regulation and hidden subsidies. This is what the global auto sector is becoming.

The Upside-Down Logic of Electric SUVs

The auto industry gambles its finances on big electric vehicles for the rich, like Ford’s Mustang Mach-E and GM’s Hummer EV, and second-rate cars for everybody else.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2022:

If consumers and businesses cared about the CO2 they emit, the last cars they might buy are hot-selling EVs like Ford’s Mustang Mach-E or GM’s Hummer EV.

These large-battery, long-range vehicles would have to be driven many tens of thousands of miles before they rack up enough mileage and save enough gasoline to compensate for the emissions created to produce their batteries. And that’s according to their fans, whose calculations often smell of friendly assumptions about the source of the electricity consumed, whether gasoline driving is really being displaced mile for mile, and a presumed lack of progress in the meantime in reducing the carbon intensity of conventional motor fuels. Most problematic of all is the assumption that EV use causes oil to stay in the ground.

If a real incentive to reduce CO2 were in place, namely a carbon tax, buyers would gravitate to the smallest-battery vehicles and hybrids, suitable for running about town but not highway trips. These cars stand a better chance of offsetting their lifecycle emissions.

OK. Buyers aren’t drawn to the electric Mustang or Ford’s new F-150 Lightning pickup to solve climate change. These are exciting, high-tech gadgets in their own right. And that’s fine. Even so, customers’ appetite might slacken if they were told the truth. Ford leaked this week for the benefit of the investment community plans to lay off thousands of workers to fatten the profits of its conventional vehicles. This extra cash is needed to support electric vehicles that lose money despite taxpayer rebates plus hidden subsidies via our convoluted fuel-economy and trade regulations.

This trade-off could actually lead to worse emissions than otherwise (though still a rounding error in total global emissions) considering that most nonrich consumers will likely opt for gasoline-powered cars for decades to come. It also represents a gamble with the industry’s finances, which depend on large, government-protected profits from standard SUVs and pickups. If these vehicles start looking shabby and out of date due to lack of investment, the industry is in deep straits. As Ford CEO Jim Farley said in March, “we need them to be more profitable to fund” Ford’s $50 billion in spending on mostly high-end EVs, which have the least chance of being net reducers of CO2.

These outcomes make no sense in climate terms, naturally. Nissan is giving up its pioneering electric Leaf in favor of a big electric SUV aimed at affluent shoppers. One manufacturer that speaks confidently of profits in the near term from electric vehicles is Porsche—whose cars don’t rack up Camry-like mileages, don’t displace gasoline-powered trips to the Shop-Rite, and don’t stand a snowball’s chance of offsetting the emissions involved in producing their powerful batteries.

Keep reading……

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: Charging an All Electric Car Uses 4 Times the Electricity of a Home Air Conditioner

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Gore: Eliminate Democracy to Save Planet

A guy who lost a presidential election but made a fortune has some thoughts on the political system.

Gore, in an interview with Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd that will air Sunday, said that public sentiment is changing in regards to climate change but that “democracy is broken,”

The only people who think “democracy is broken” want to eliminate it.

Much like “the Supreme Court is broken” or “the Constitution is broken.”

The former vice president also called for the filibuster to be eliminated, saying that “we have a minority government….we have big money playing much too large a role in our politics.”

Gore, who went from an estimated $1.7 million to over $200 million knows all about “big money” and where to get it.

The environmentalist scam has been adopted by green investors who want to hijack our entire economy, as they have already hijacked the economies of entire states, like California, and countries, like those of much of Europe, and they insist on destroying anyone who stands in their way.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Border is Secure and I’m the Tooth Fairy

There he goes again.  DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said again last week the border “is secure”.   Sure, and I’m the tooth fairy.  This is gas-lighting of the highest order.  How do I know?  Let me count the ways.

Border agents called Mayorkas a liar for saying it.  Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have poured across the border in recent months and the number of border stops is at an all-time high.   A new DHS report shows about a third of those released failed to check in with ICE within 60 days as required.  The government failed to collect many of their U.S. addresses and has no idea where many of them are.   More illegal aliens are headed our way.  One day last week, 3,000 migrants stormed the Mexican border with Guatemala, pushing their way past the Mexican National Guard on their way to the U.S.  Watch the video if you want to see pure chaos.

Things are so bad the Biden administration has stopped releasing the numbers of people who die illegally crossing into the U.S.  Things are so bad, even Democrat big city mayors are complaining.  New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said too many migrants are finding their way to these cities and are straining public resources.  But they have only themselves to blame.  The New York City website proclaims for all to see, “Many services and benefits are available to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status.”  If you’re an illegal alien, not to worry. The website promises, “The City of New York has confidentiality protections in place for all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, who are accessing important City services.”  Washington, D.C. has been a sanctuary city for years, with Bowser trumpeting in 2016, “We celebrate our diversity and respect all DC residents no matter their immigration status.”  But now that the problem is in their face, she and Adams want the federal government to bail them out and let them escape the consequences of their own bad policies.

The feds are busy enacting bad policies of their own.  In previous commentaries, I’ve listed numerous policy changes the Biden administration has made to deliberately open the border.  Here are half a dozen more to add to the list:

The administration wanted to reduce the number of deportations where there was no immediate public safety risk, but the Supreme Court has blocked this for now, pending litigation.  The number of prosecutions for illegal border crossings is down 80 percent, and that’s by design.  The federal government just gave a contract worth at least $171 million to a left-wing group to help unaccompanied alien children avoid deportation.  The administration reinterpreted federal law to allow people with Temporary Protected Status to leave the country and return even if they had come here unlawfully at the outset.  Deported illegal aliens used to have to wait years before being allowed to reenter the U.S. legally but now they can come back in the next day without prejudicing their eventual application for legal status.  Finally, the administration is instituting a new system to allow aliens to apply for asylum online from anywhere in the world.

Alejandro Mayorkas and Joe Biden hate America and they’re trying to destroy it by replacing who lives here.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they should be impeached for refusing to faithfully execute the laws.

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©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Under Pressure Florida School Board Rejects Sex-Ed Textbook

Interesting – As you will recall many of us attended PCSD SB meetings and spoke out against the current Reproductive Health Curriculum which is supposed to be under review by a committee this summer.

If Superintendent Heid and his Staff do like they did in choosing a left leaning committee to review the 16 pornographic/age inappropriate books it would not portend well to remove the age inappropriate and/or Florida statute violating material we objected to from this curriculum or perhaps they will take the opt-in/opt-out approach which really still violates the law in my view.

We’ll see.

Florida school board rejects sex ed textbook under pressure

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI – The school board of Florida’s largest school district reversed its decision to adopt a new sex education book, with some in the majority saying the material is not age appropriate for students in middle and high school.

The 5-4 vote followed an emotionally charged Miami-Dade School Board meeting Wednesday, with some members of the public being escorted from the room, the Miami Herald reported.

It’s not clear how the nation’s fourth-largest public school system, with 334,000 students, will comply with state law requiring students to receive sexual education. Choosing, ordering and distributing a new textbook could take months.

‘Comprehensive Health Skills,’ published by Goodheart-Willcox in Illinois, comes in different versions for middle and high schools, with topics including nutrition, physical activity and sexually transmitted diseases, as required under the district’s units of study for Human Reproduction and Disease Education.

Neither the publisher nor the school district immediately responded to inquiries from The Associated Press regarding content deemed objectionable by the board’s majority.

The board adopted the textbook in April on a 5-3 vote, but then its material was challenged by some parents who cited the parental rights law Gov. Ron DeSantis in March.

Critics call it the ‘don’t say gay’ law because it prohibits instruction related to gender identity or sexual orientation in grades K through 3, ‘or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.’

In adopting the book in April, the board voted to ask the publisher to remove a chapter called ‘Understanding Sexuality,’ which covers gender and sexual orientation among other topics.

Still, critics filed 278 objections. Opponents of vaccines challenged the book’s references to how vaccinations can prevent viral infections. Others objected to content about contraception and abortion.

Miami-Dade Superintendent José Dotres asked a third-party reviewer to conduct a public hearing to review their concerns. That hearing officer ultimately recommended adopting the book, leading to Wednesday’s meeting.

Board member Luisa Santos, who voted in favor of the book, noted that the district enables parents to opt out of material they don’t want their children to learn about sexual health and pregnancy and disease prevention.

‘We will be opting out everyone in the following school year. Including all the people who have come here and told us that they want this,’ Santos said, according to WLRN-TV.
Thirty-eight of the 40 speakers Wednesday asked to keep the textbook, Vice Chair Steve Gallon III said.

©Royal A. Brown, III. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: CHILD ABUSE: Families flee Pennsylvania School After Boys ‘Encouraged To Wear Dresses’

What is ‘Soul Prosperity’?

“The elder unto the well-beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.  Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health even as thy soul prospereth” — 3 John:1-2 KJV


A very short English 101 lesson here: the word “as” in this passage does not appear in the original Greek text, rather the word in the Greek is kathos (Strong’s 2531, pronounced cath-oce’) and the most commonly accepted meanings are, ‘according to’, ‘in the same manner as’, ‘in the same way as’. The writer is both separating the physical part of man from the soulish part, but is also tying them together so that the prospering of both parts must be accomplished by, and coming from, the same source.  That source is faith and no one receives anything from God aside from faith, whether spiritual salvation, physical prosperity or soul prosperity.

Man is a triune being, meaning he IS a spirit, he HAS a soul and he lives IN a body. The soul of a man is made up of his mind, his will and his emotions. When God created man, He made Him in his Own image, after His Own likeness (Genesis 1:26 KJV), but what does this mean? We see many humans who are of varying shapes, sizes and colors, with varying hair and eye colors, so does this mean that God has multicolored skin, eyes and hair? Of course not. It means that we are created in the form of God, Who, if we could see Him, he would remind us of….us.  It would not be like seeing a being with an ‘other than human’ shape. He is not some monstrous alien-like being who instills fear and dread. Those who believe such nonsense are ignorant of Who and What God is and need serious study time in God’s word to exchange their ignorance for knowledge.

If you believe that the Bible is God’s word, inspired by the Holy Spirit and given by that inspiration to the many authors who were chosen to record His word, then you must consider just what John was telling Gaius and then determine what that knowledge means to you.

John’s words distinctly separate the prosperity of the body of Gaius from the prosperity of his soul, so the primary words that should be considered in the above passage should be “as thy soul prospereth”, because until we understand just what that means we have no idea how the rest of the verse, the “…..I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health…” can affect us and our wellbeing. Accordingly, we must try to understand what ‘soul prosperity’ really is and how we go about attaining it.

Man = Spirit, Soul, Body

As I stated earlier, man is a triune entity, being a spirit, having a soul and living in a body of flesh and blood. In the passage, John is stating the will of God for man’s physical body: health and prosperity, and saying that He wants the physical part of a man to be as healthy and prosperous as his soul. Unfortunately way too many Christians, and nearly all non-believers, focus only on the needs of the physical and therefore only seek after the health/prosperity of the body. In reference to the passage in Matthew 6:33, Jesus said that we are to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” and all these things (man’s physical needs) will be added to us.

The kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, at least for now, and it cannot be found by looking only at the physical things we see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Paul stated, “For the kingdom of God is not meat (food) and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17 KJV).

Properly seeking His kingdom is a function of the part of the soul that we call ‘the mind’.  But in order for that function to produce good results, we must follow the steps outlined in God’s word.

The Apostle Paul said, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:1-2 KJV). Now we’re getting somewhere.

Submitting our bodies must first occur before we can renew our minds, enabling us to ‘discern’ (prove) what God’s perfect will is for our lives. Now we know from 3 John 1 that God’s will is for the health and prosperity of our entire being, spirit, soul and body, and John specifically separated the body component from the soul (mind, will and emotions), showing that the prosperity of one is dependent on the prosperity of the other.

The Prosperity Gospel

Unfortunately, the ‘prosperity gospel’, as many have called it, which is the biblically questionable movement being promoted by many large ministries, has caused many in the Church to become disillusioned with, if not completely ignorant of, the entire gospel, or the REAL gospel.

That prosperity message leads most proponents to see it as a means of ensuring that all their physical needs are met, in perpetuity. There is nothing wrong with having those needs met, in fact God even stated such through the Apostle Paul: “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19 KJV), and that is a wonderful promise from a loving Father.

However, in Matthew 6:33, Jesus said: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”. Notice that before “all things shall be added unto you”, we are told to SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.

True Prosperity vs Phony Prosperity

Many people have fallen for the ‘name it and claim it’ belief that will supposedly bring any of your heart’s desires to you from a loving, and very ‘convenient’ God. For a Christian to believe that God has changed His mind regarding the words He spoke to Adam and Eve as they were fumbling around and trying to explain their disobedience to God is a serious error. The curse on this earth is still in effect and His pronouncement of the curse has not been lifted on ANY human being:

“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Genesis 3:17-19 KJV)

We all live ON a cursed earth, IN and AMONG a cursed world, and should NOT attempt to bypass God’s word on what that curse means for us. As the legitimate offspring of Adam and Eve, we still have the original responsibilities given to them: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed”. (Genesis 2:8 KJV). “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (Genesis 2:15 KJV).

Here we see the wonderful goodness and grace of God in that He had planned the perfect environment for His man and they only needed to make sure it was properly tended. Had they done so, they would never have lacked anything and they would have truly lived eternally in a perfect utopia. That is the quintessential prosperity. But they failed to follow God’s word and now we are all in the same leaky, failing boat, trying to ‘become prosperous’.

I have read John’s words many times in his third epistle, trying to understand whether John was presenting some cryptic meaning in those simple words. But it appears that the meaning, as simple as it sounds, is truly… as simple as it sounds. John obviously loved Gaius and had wonderful words of praise for him because his life showed that he walked in love always. Could it be that one of the ‘hidden means’ to receiving the words of John lie in the way in which we receive all things from God? We are told many times that we must receive from God by faith, and that faith works by love. Love is first and foremost a spiritual action, and NOT necessarily an emotion.  For example, the God-type of love, agape, is a love that says: “I love you not because of what you are, or even who you are, but because of Who and What I am”. That kind of love says, I love you because you are valuable and precious to me.

Obviously, Gaius was a person who lived by this kind of love and was praised by John for his charity. What else did John say in this passage that might be closely related to the prosperity of the soul? In verse three of that letter, John says to Gaius, Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers; which have borne witness of thy charity before the church:”. So we see that Gaius faithfully carries out the commandments of God by walking in love and being ‘charitable’.

Conclusion

John understood Gaius so well, knowing that he was a man who had fully accepted the truth of God’s word and determined to live faithfully by that word. As a result, he had reached a place in his life where he had found ‘soul prosperity’. If so, he had submitted himself to God and was constantly renewing his mind (primary part of the soul) and refusing to allow himself to be transformed to any worldly image. If he walked in the kind of constant love for which he received praise from John, then his will (secondary part of the soul) was in line with God’s will. Since he practiced the God-kind of love, agapao, toward all others, his emotions (tertiary part of the soul) were not only under control, but were prosperous and would obviously serve Gaius well. In short, the way he conducted his life made him worthy of receiving John’s praise.

Soul prosperity is a state of living whereby the mind, will and emotions are so transformed to God’s will that the body, fully submitted to God, functions as a servant to the spirit and soul, refusing to conform to the world. It is a trait of a life so submitted to God that the unnecessary and burdensome demands of the world cannot cause a person to deviate from His will.

Such a state is NOT an easy one to attain, especially in today’s evil and demanding world.  Can it be attained? I believe so, but it is not a ‘once and done’ act, but rather an all-consuming lifestyle.  Remember, the first step is submission to God, from that point, He will direct the believer into all the steps needed to have true soul prosperity.

Blessings!

budaroo@twc.com

©Bud Hancock. All rights reserved.

Documentary: The Real Story of January 6th

I am reliably informed by some dedicated people I work with daily that this is a superb document on the events of January 6th. I myself have not watched past the first few minutes yet. But I do plan to over the next day or so. Recording events and editing them, takes up a lot of time. But this is supposed to be really good. After watching, some commentary may be added from the particular viewpoint of this site and its authors. But then again, it may not be needed.

Either way, here it is:

Please share this.

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EDITORS NOTE: This video posted by on the Vlad Tepes Blog is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Fossil Fuels: Essential to Human Flourishing

Despite the prevailing narrative, there are compelling arguments for the continued use of fossil fuels.


Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas — Not Less By Alex Epstein | Portfolio, USA | 2022, 480 pages

Alex Epstein first shot to fame in 2014 with his counter-cultural bestseller, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

In it, he provided an assertive defence of fuels which enable so many aspects of modern life, but which many suggest threaten our survival in the long-term.

His new work, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas — Not Less, continues in the same vein.

In the decade since Epstein’s emergence on the fringes of the climate debate, concerns about rising temperatures have grown with the effect that governments have committed themselves to ever-more radical decarbonisation policies, in particular the increased use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

Epstein accepts the scientific evidence that the increases in greenhouse gas emissions in recent centuries due to human activity have increased the Earth’s temperatures. At the same time, he rejects the central premise of the modern environmental movement by maintaining that this does not threaten the survival of our species.

Instead, he convincingly argues that the widespread availability of fossil fuels has been crucial in leading to an unprecedented improvement in living standards in the developed world.

Counterintuitive

Not only do fossil fuels allow us to do more things and enjoy a more comfortable existence, Epstein also writes that they help humanity to guard against natural disasters and the negative impact of a gradually changing climate. For this reason, we need more fossil fuel use, not less. He writes:

“[M]ore fossil fuel use will actually make the world a far better place, a place where billions more people will have the opportunity to flourish, including: to pull themselves out of poverty, to have a chance to pursue their dreams, and — this will likely seem craziest of all — to experience higher environmental quality and less danger from climate.”

Epstein maintains that it is especially vital that the billions of people in what he calls the “unempowered world”, who currently use almost no energy, can enjoy the benefits which so many of us take for granted.

One example of the suffering which energy poverty imposes is the fact that almost 800 million people have no access to electricity, while around 2.4 billion people still rely on wood and animal dung to cook and heat their homes.

Without easy access to oil, gas and coal, people living in these environments will never escape an existence which involves so much daily hardship.

Energy use is clearly correlated with various measurements of human progress (such as increased life expectancy), and the author cites the examples of China and India whose economic rise has largely been fuelled by coal and other fossil fuels.

Their rise forms part of an often unheralded advance in living standards which has occurred in recent decades, in which the extreme poverty rate worldwide has decreased from 35% in 1990 to less than 10% today.

Epstein insists that this transformation could not have happened without fossil fuels, and he maintains that they enjoy a range of advantages including greater affordability, reliability, versatility and scalability.

Valid arguments

When it comes to the statistics he cites, again it is difficult to argue with Epstein’s stance.

Fossil fuels provide 80% of the world’s energy, whereas solar and wind power provide just 3%. Crucially, unlike wind and solar, fossil fuels are not an intermittent source of energy. They can be more easily stored and transported, and far more energy is concentrated within them.

Contrary to the claims of some commentators, they are also not running out: proven oil and gas reserves have increased in recent decades, thanks in part due to new technologies being used to extract them like fracking, which the green movement continues to fight against tenaciously.

In the area of mobile energy, oil is especially important, and is responsible for meeting virtually all humanity’s needs in the areas of shipping, aviation and heavy-duty trucking, without which the global economy would come to a shuddering halt.

Throughout the book, Epstein describes the multitude of other ways in which fossil fuels make life possible, including the powering of agricultural and industrial equipment and the use of fossil fuel materials in a wide variety of synthetic materials.

Perception

There is something more at the core of Epstein’s argument other than the evidence attesting to the importance of high-quality energy sources.

He is a philosopher by training, and he believes that the refusal of many to acknowledge the aforementioned facts stems from the popularity of an anti-impact worldview. Those who hold this viewpoint tend to seek to minimise if not eliminate the impact which humans have on a world they consider naturally safe and untainted. This also helps to explain why green activists have long opposed the use of nuclear or even hydroelectric power, neither of which contribute to emissions significantly.

Rejecting this view outright, Epstein proposes an alternative framework based around “human flourishing”, one which considers the negative impacts of carbon dioxide emissions in the context of the “climate mastery” benefits which come from having abundant supplies of energy available and being more prosperous.

This ability to cope with the vagaries of the world around us has resulted in climate-related deaths falling by 98% over the last century, even while carbon dioxide levels increased. In a similar way, technological improvements in the area of flood protection — many of which are made possible by the availability of fossil fuels — means that over 100 million now live below the level of high tide in their home area.

Epstein does not deny that the increased use of fossil fuels which he seeks will likely accelerate the pace of global warming. Instead, he simply maintains that the benefits of expanding access to energy greatly outweigh the drawbacks, while also elaborating upon the reasons why he believes many people exaggerate the risks which climate change poses.

There are many things to admire about Epstein’s central argument — in particular the insistence on recognising the importance of affordable energy to continued human prosperity and progress.

At a time when increasingly alarmist rhetoric is accelerating unwise policies, his calm and reasoned take (along with that of others like the author of False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg) is more needed now than ever.

Quibbles

That being said, Fossil Future does not represent a major advance on Epstein’s earlier book. It covers much of the same ground and at times his analysis is too simplistic.

There are significant differences between different fossil fuels, for example, with natural gas producing only half the emissions produced by coal. Indeed, the shift from coal to gas in electricity generation in the United States has been the cause of major emissions reductions there.

Yet though he compares different energy sources, Epstein does not devote enough attention to the question of whether some fossil fuels should be favoured over others.

Even those inclined to agree with his arguments may also be perturbed by the lack of concern which Epstein has about the risks posed by climate change, compared to the attitude of Lomborg — who likens the process to having “a long-term chronic condition like diabetes — a problem that needs attention and focus, but one that we can live with.”

Epstein’s lack of scientific qualifications is another drawback, and even though he presents a cogent explanation for why the media may be overestimating the problem of climate change, many people will not take this argument seriously until it is made more firmly by specialists in the area of climate science.

In spite of this, Epstein has once again succeeded in focusing attention on facts which cannot be avoided.

“The fossil fuel elimination movement is powerful only because it has a moral monopoly, meaning that it is widely considered the only moral position,” he tells us. This is true, and by presenting readers with an alternative moral and philosophical framework with which we can examine these issues, Alex Epstein has again made a valuable contribution.

AUTHOR

James Bradshaw works for an international consulting firm based in Dublin, and has a background in journalism and public policy. Outside of work, he writes for a number of publications, on topics including… 

RELATED ARTICLE: It’s ‘Farmercide:’ Green Policies Create Planned World Famine

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

After Covid: Unhappiness is Worse Among Single and Non-Religious Americans

Statistics from 2021 found the highest share of Americans who are “not too happy” ever measured.


The last two years have been hard on everyone, with numerous disruptions to life of many kinds leading many of us to feel, as the General Social Survey (GSS) might put it, “not too happy.” Pandemic disease, lockdowns, protests, riots, crime, divisive politics, shootings, deaths of despair, an epidemic of loneliness—the list of reasons for being “not-too-happy” seem to be legion.

Since 1972, the GSS has been asking Americans how happy they are, with three options: very happy, somewhat happy, and not too happy. That lowest option captures all those Americans who just don’t feel good about the world and their own place in it. Perhaps it is no surprise that the 2021 GSS round found the highest share of Americans who are “not too happy” ever measured.

Figure 1: Unhappiness Over Time by Age

From 1972 to 2018, no more than 18% of Americans ages 35 and over had ever claimed to be “not too happy,” and no more than 16% of Americans under 35 had done so. In every year ever measured, people over and under age 35 had similar levels of unhappiness.

But in 2021, unhappiness rocketed upwards for both groups, to 22% for those 35 and over, and a whopping 30% for those under age 35. These are both historic highs for each age demographic, but the unusually sharp increase for those under 35 points to a unique burden of unhappiness among young adults over the last few years. American young adults have begun to take an extraordinarily dim view of the world and their own lives. The path to understanding why unhappiness has risen so much more among young Americans begins by understanding the groups among whom it has risen the most.

Unhappiness by groups

Among young adults, different groups had different levels of unhappiness even before COVID. Thus, for example, only about 6% of married people said they were “not too happy,” versus 16% of unmarried young adults. However, the better question is how has happiness changed within various groups: did married people and unmarried people see the same spike in unhappiness in 2021? What about men and women, or liberals and conservatives? The GSS contains a wide variety of control variables, making it possible to compare the typical prevalence of unhappiness for a given group of young adults before COVID (in this case, 2012-2018) and after it (2021). Figure 2 below shows the share of each group who were “not too happy” before and after COVID, after controlling for each of the other variables listed.

Figure 2: Unhappiness by Social Group, Before and After Covid

Several things immediately stand out. First, unhappiness rose for almost every group: the red bars are higher than the light blue bars in almost every case. Thus, group-level traits mostly did not shield individuals from the unhappiness spike around COVID. Having kids or a college degree didn’t spare people from the difficulties of the last few years.

Secondly, the exact amount that unhappiness increased in 2021 varied. Social class didn’t protect people very much: unhappiness rose about 16% for people with highly prestigious jobs, and 15% for other people. People who attended college saw their unhappiness prevalence rise by about 16 percentage points, versus about 15 points for those who did not attend college. Being educated and having a prestigious career simply didn’t provide any buffer to peoples’ sense of well-being in the face of a huge social disruption.

Some demographic traits did matter more: men saw their unhappiness rise 18%, versus just 12% for women. Unhappiness rose about 17% for non-Hispanic whites, versus about 12% for racial and ethnic minorities. But these differences are not statistically significant; they could have arisen just from random noise.

For most people, family forms the core of their social support system. And this leads to one of the most important findings of this analysis: unhappiness rose just 8 percentage points for married young adults, versus 18 percentage points for the unmarried. In fact, given the sample sizes involved, the confidence intervals for married people before and after the pandemic actually overlap: it’s not certain that unhappiness actually rose for married people at all, after controlling for their other traits.

Marriage, then, served as a valuable buffer against unhappiness. Children, on the other hand, did not: childless young adults and parents saw similar increases in unhappiness (16 and 14 percentage points, respectively).

Finally, happiness changes varied in important ways across religiosity and politics. Among people who attended religious services at least two times per month, unhappiness rose only 4 percentage points, the smallest increase of any group. Among those who attended less often, unhappiness rose 15 percentage points. This difference was highly statistically significant, suggesting that participation in religious community may serve as a useful buffer against adverse events in life.

Relatedly, liberal Americans saw the largest increase in unhappiness of any group, at 19 percentage points. For moderates, it was just 15 percentage points, and for conservatives, 13 points. However, given the sample sizes involved, these differences are not statistically significant.

Conclusion

The COVID pandemic has made virtually everyone less happy. This effect is especially pronounced among younger Americans under 35. For young adults, the rise in unhappiness has been sharply felt, with pronounced rises across all socioeconomic and demographic groups, and throughout the ideological spectrum. The only factors that appear meaningfully protective against the post-COVID unhappiness spike are marriage and religious attendance. Married church-attenders are markedly happier than other young adults. Some of this may be selection bias, but some of it may also be causal effects of deeper social ties providing material and psychological resources for dealing with life’s challenges.

Unfortunately for the happiness of young Americans, whereas in 1972 about 24% of people under 35 were married churchgoers, in 2021 just 7% were, leaving more and more young adults exposed to life’s troubles with little help, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Americans Under 35 by Marital Status and Church Attendance

Meanwhile, more and more young Americans inhabit the unhappiest subgroup for their age: unmarried and not religious. Today, 60% of people under 35 fit this category. One possible result of this change, as we have seen these last few years, is that more young people lack the vital support of a spouse and a religious community, and thus new forms of adversity can rapidly lead to astonishingly severe levels of unhappiness.

This article has been republished with permission from the Institute of Family Studies blog.

AUTHOR

Lyman Stone is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, Chief Information Officer of the population research firm Demographic Intelligence, and an Adjunct Fellow at the American Enterprise… More by Lyman Stone

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

8 Ideas That Will Teach You to Think Like an Economist

Sound economic thinking is vital for a prosperous future.


Economics is the study of human action—the choices people make in a world of scarcity. Scarcity means that people have unlimited wants but we live in a world of limited resources. Because of this fact people have to make choices, and choices imply trade-offs. The choices people make are influenced by the incentives they face and those incentives are shaped by the institutions—rules of the game—under which people live and interact with others.

The Foundation for Economic Education has published some excellent essays on the economic way of thinking and basic concepts (“The Economic Way of Thinking” by Ronald Nash and “Economics for the Citizen” by Walter E. Williams).

In this essay, I will explain eight ideas and give examples of the economic way of thinking.

We often hear how wonderful certain countries are because they provide “free healthcare” or “free education.” Many will also say “I got it for free” because they didn’t pay with money.

The error lies in not understanding the difference between price and cost. For example, people usually say, “The Starbucks latte cost me five dollars” or, “The movie ticket cost me fifteen dollars.” Cost in economics means what you give up or sacrifice. In these examples, the prices were $5 and $15. But the cost of the latte was perhaps the sandwich one could have purchased instead with that same $5, and the cost of the movie was perhaps the three lattes one could have purchased instead with that same $15.

Labeling healthcare and education “free” is not just wrong—”there’s no such thing as a free lunch”—it’s also misleading. As my former professor Walter E. Williams would say, “Unless you believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, the money has to come from somewhere.” You might not get a medical bill in those countries but you have more taken out of your paycheck (i.e., taxes) and you might have to wait much longer to get that test or have that “minor” (from the bureaucrats’ perspective) surgery. You pay with either money or time, but either way, you pay! Taxes are also used to pay for public schools, which is yet another example of how people call something “free” when it is not.

There’s a difference between zero price and zero cost. There could be a zero price ($0), but there’s never a zero cost. Therefore, don’t swear anymore by using the “F” word!

“Actions speak louder than words,” is a well-known idiom. Humans act, and the act of choice tells us something. Consider this example: A person walks into an Apple store and sees the price of the latest iPhone and angrily mumbles, “What a rip off” but still proceeds to purchase that phone.

When one does something voluntarily, it demonstrates their true preference at the time. Assuming that individuals are self-interested and will ex ante (looking forward in time) subjectively weigh the cost and benefit of an action, and, also assuming it’s not a right to have the private property of another (i.e., Apple’s iPhone), then when a person walks into an Apple store and buys the new iPhone, the individual obviously expects to be better off in some way at that moment. To say that Apple “took advantage” of the willing customer would be nonsense since Apple, or any private business, cannot force people to buy their product. It’s one thing to say something, but the proof is in the act of choice.

“Don’t cry over spilt milk” means what’s done is done. The only costs that should come into our decision-making are future opportunity costs. Past costs are “sunk.” The typical example to explain the sunk cost fallacy is the movie example. You spend $15 to see a movie and an hour into this three-hour movie you realize that it’s horrible and will only get worse. However, your feeling is that you should stay and get your money’s worth. That is bad economic thinking. The $15 is gone so don’t lose the next two hours of your valuable time—get up and leave.

Most of us know people who were (are) in a horrible relationship or dating the wrong type of person (perhaps this applies to you). But the feeling of “I’ve already spent two years of my life with this person” can lead to a bad decision. Many end up marrying the person in order to justify the investment of time.

No offense to Beyoncé, but if you like yourself, then perhaps don’t let that person “put a ring on it”! Don’t lose the next two years of precious time. It’s better to be single than in a bad relationship (but that’s for another essay).

The optimal or efficient level of pollution is not zero. The optimal number of traffic deaths or sports injuries also is probably not zero. The optimal number of people getting a virus is not zero. The optimal level of safety is not perfect safety. Does this sound strange or harsh? Well, if you want to do a cross country road trip and not walk or ride a bike, or if you want to enjoy playing or watching sports, and if you want to physically interact with others, then it is clear that the optimal level of pollution, deaths, injuries, and people getting a virus is actually greater than zero. The optimal level of safety is less than perfect safety. Nothing is free including more safety—trade-offs are always involved because there is always an opportunity cost when we do something, even things like travel, play sports, or interact with others.

Incremental decision-making is what economists call thinking at the margin. Marginal means the one additional or extra unit. Every time we make a decision it’s as if we are calculating the marginal benefit (the benefit of one more unit) and the marginal cost (what would be given up to acquire one more unit) of the action. The economic way of thinking says something should be done until the marginal benefit (MB) equals the marginal cost (MC). There’s also a concept known as the law of diminishing marginal utility—each additional unit gives less and less utility or benefit.

We want clean air so that our eyes aren’t irritated when we go outside and our lungs don’t burn when we take a breath. However, if the desire is perfectly clean air this would mean no more cars, no planes, no boats or ships, and no trains (some would actually desire this situation, at least theoretically). This would impose tremendous costs on society.

Let’s look at it another way. If I snapped my fingers and made the Pacific Ocean perfectly clean but then put one drop of oil somewhere in the ocean unbeknownst to everyone else, would it be worth it to spend money, time and other resources to hunt down that one drop of oil? The marginal benefit of finding and removing one drop of oil in the quintillions of gallons of water would be less than the marginal cost. In plain English, it’s not worth it. Again, the optimal level of pollution is some, not zero.

When it comes to studying, practicing a sport or musical instrument, or dating someone before marrying them, you might think, “The more time, the better.” I am a literal person so if I told my students, “The more you study the better,” this would mean they would never eat, drink, sleep, or spend time with family and friends. But common sense says that after studying for a certain amount of time most students will say, “I get it” or simply “time to move on.” Why waste more time studying?

Also, if you are in a place in your life where you are considering marriage, then the point of dating is to acquire information about the other person so that you can make a good decision. Ultimately, you come to a point where you have enough information to propose, accept a proposal, or break up with this person. When I proposed to my wife, I did not have perfect information about her, but my information was good enough. Sure, one more month of dating would have given me some marginal benefit in terms of additional information about her, but I came to a point where I had enough information—where MB=MC.

“Good enough is good enough” is what economists mean by doing something until the marginal benefit equals the marginal cost. The MB=MC rule implies that the “more is better” thinking is not optimal. One aspirin from the bottle can help your headache but it’s dangerous to think, “Well, if one is good, the whole bottle is better.” Yes, your headache will be gone but so will you.

In a standard economics class, students are taught absolute advantage and comparative advantage. The former means being able to produce more than another with the same amount of resources or using fewer resources to produce an output. The latter means being able to do something at a lower opportunity cost than another.

Because there’s always an opportunity cost when doing something, sometimes it is advantageous to pay someone else to do something even if we have the knowledge and skills to do it ourselves. This also has applications to trade policy. Just because the United States (actually individuals in the United States) can produce certain products does not mean we should. It’s ok if not everything we buy says “Made in USA” because if the government tries to “protect American jobs” and begins imposing tariffs and quotas, we are not actually saving American jobs. It’s more correct to say we are saving particular jobs at the expense of other American jobs. Of course, good politics and good economics often go in different directions.

The complaint that businesses can charge “whatever they want” is nonsense. For example, why is it that movie theaters only charge $8 for popcorn and not $8,000 or $8,000,000 if they can supposedly charge whatever they want? There are two sides to a market transaction, and it’s this interaction of sellers and buyers that determines the price. What’s interesting is that many times the same people complaining are the ones making noise eating that popcorn during the movie.

Entrepreneurs become wealthy if they create a product or service that provides value for a large number of people. Unless the entrepreneurs received special privileges from the government, they didn’t forcibly take money from their customers.

The anger directed at “the rich” is based on the fallacy of thinking the economy is a fixed-size pie. In other words, those who criticize the “filthy rich” believe that they took a piece that was too big, leaving less pie for the rest of us regular folks. The reality is that these entrepreneurs baked a bigger pie. They benefited, but so did we!

In a business transaction, exchanges are voluntary, and voluntary trade is a win-win situation. The entrepreneur wins (as well as the employees he or she hires) and the customers win.

Intentions and results are not always the same thing. The economic way of thinking teaches us to consider possible unintended consequences of our own actions or the actions of politicians. Just because something sounds good or feels right does not mean a certain goal will be achieved. In fact, the very problem that is being addressed can become worse.

Sound economic thinking also removes one’s blinders. The effects of a policy on all groups are considered, not just one group. This helps individuals to see through politicians’ claims that a policy will save American jobs when in reality only some special-interest group will benefit at the expense of other Americans. When politicians confiscate money (i.e., taxes) to build sports stadiums using the “it will create jobs” argument, the mistake is to focus on the jobs seen and neglecting the unseen—the opportunity cost of those tax dollars.

There is so much more to say about this subject called economics and there are many more examples of the economic way of thinking that I could have included. Some characterize economics as applied common sense; yet, economics also gives us counterintuitive insights.

This is the power and beauty of economics

AUTHOR

Ninos P. Malek

Ninos P. Malek is an Economics professor at De Anza College in Cupertino, California and a Lecturer at San Jose State University in San Jose, California. He teaches principles of macroeconomics, principles of microeconomics, economics of social issues, and intermediate microeconomics. His previous experience also includes teaching introductory economics at George Mason University.

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