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Ruth King

It Pays To Be ‘Green’ – If You’re A Wall Street Fat Cat, That Is Craig Rucker

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/16/it-pays-to-be-green-if-youre-a-wall-street-fat-cat-that-is/

America’s business community has always liked the color “green.” Traditionally, it was about earning U.S. dollars.  Today, it’s about brandishing a woke environmental image.

Perhaps nothing showcases this better than the trend toward “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) investments by those on Wall Street.  Particularly attractive to millennials, the pitch for investing in ESG’s is to not just “make money,” but “make the world a better place” while doing it.

A noble-sounding idea?  Perhaps.  But as Rupert Darwall points out in a newly released study “Capitalism, Socialism and ESG,” there’s more to this racket than meets the eye.

That notion of a “better” world from ESG investments applies only if you agree with progressive climate and social agendas. For those who identify as anything other than “liberal,” backing investment strategies to kill fracking jobs, attack red meat, and help promote a Green New Deal economy may prove a bit hard to swallow.

What about all that money to be made? Turns out it is less for your portfolio and more for the bottom line of Wall Street companies.

For example, BlackRock charges 46 cents annually for every $100 invested in its iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, while it charges just 4 cents for iShares linked to the S&P 500 in comparison.

It pays to be woke – if you’re a Wall Street fat cat, that is.

As for average Joe investors buying into these ESG stocks, their bottom lines aren’t as lucky.

Does Biden Know He Just Labeled Antifa And BLM As Domestic Terrorists?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/16/does-biden-know-he-just-labeled-antifa-and-blm-as-domestic-terrorists/

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden released his plan to tackle domestic terrorism, which he calls a “serious and growing threat.” His clear intent is to target right-wing groups, but his definition of domestic terrorists perfectly describes Antifa and the Black Lives Matter radicals.

The “fact sheet” accompanying Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” lists only two types of domestic terrorists: violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race, and anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists.

But it also describes domestic terrorism as:

‘Activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.’

Now, who do you think fits into these categories? Which groups have acted in ways that are “dangerous to human life,” want to “intimidate or coerce” as a means to “influence the policy of a government,” and use “mass destruction” to get their ways?

Would it be QAnon and other right-wing groups, about whom the best team Biden can seem to come up with is that “they may be on the verge of carrying out more violence in real life on Democrats and others that they perceive, however falsely, to be threats”?

Swiss Nix Carbon Tax Just Before Biden Arrival Just like everywhere else, voters are open to anti-carbon policy until they see the price tag. By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/swiss-nix-carbon-tax-just-before-biden-arrival-11623786757?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Talk about awkward. Right after President Joe Biden and other leaders of advanced economies celebrated their expensive climate promises in Brussels, Mr. Biden had to fly to Switzerland—where voters have just rejected expensive climate promises made by the country’s politicians.

Judging by the photograph accompanying this column, Swiss Federal President Guy Parmelin and President Biden kept things cheerful and may have done their best to avoid the topic as they discussed Wednesday’s planned meeting in Geneva between Mr. Biden and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

But to the extent that Mr. Biden is aware of where he is and what’s just happened at the polls, he must be disappointed. John Revill of Reuters reports from Zurich:

Swiss voters rejected a trio of environmental proposals on Sunday, including a new law intended to help the country meet its goal for cutting carbon emissions under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change…
The result was a defeat for the Swiss government which supported the new law that included measures such as increasing a surcharge on car fuel and imposing a levy on flight tickets.
The rejection meant it would now be “very difficult” for Switzerland to reach its 2030 goal of cutting carbon emissions to half of their 1990 levels and to be become net neutral on emissions by 2050, Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said.

Threats Rise, U.S. Defense Falls Biden talks tough to adversaries even as he shrinks the Pentagon.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/threats-rise-u-s-defense-falls-11623798082?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden is telling the world in Europe this week that “America is back” as the leader of global democracies. Sounds good. But China, Iran and Vladimir Putin would be more impressed if Mr. Biden wasn’t cutting America’s defense even as he rightly stresses the challenge from the world’s authoritarians.

Unremarked in the White House spending deluge is that its trillions for “infrastructure” include little new for defense. Mr. Biden’s $715 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal 2022 is a 1.6% increase over last year. Adjusted for inflation, this is a cut. The bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission and other experts say the Pentagon needs steady 3% to 5% real increases annually to address threats from “near peers” such as China and Russia.

President Trump increased defense spending modestly, but that fillip has passed and spending is still at its modern norm of about 3% of GDP. America is rapidly piling up debt past 100% of GDP while shrinking its defenses.

***

The brightest budget spots are places where the Administration declined to make matters worse: The Administration didn’t slash the Army; active-duty end strength holds at about 485,000. But the service requested about $3.5 billion less than last year’s enacted budget, in part due to a drawdown in Afghanistan.

Charles Lipson: Ilhan Omar and Contempt for America

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/15/ilhan_omar_and_contempt_f

“We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted last week to her 1.2 million followers. They responded with warm support. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was cooler. Although the speaker lives in San Francisco’s progressive echo chamber, she heads a national party and understands that most voters do not think our country is similar to the Taliban or Hamas. They have noticed a few small differences. Nor do they see a moral equivalence between Israel, which tries to avoid civilian casualties, and terrorist organizations, which use human shields and bomb pizza parlors. They wonder if a representative who thinks America is so evil should sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as Omar does.

Pelosi pressed Rep. Omar for a “clarification” and received a half-hearted one. That was good enough for the speaker, who stressed that she was not rebuking Omar, whom she called a “valued member of our caucus.”

Pelosi walked gingerly because she has only a tiny House majority and relies on several hard-left members and dozens of very progressive ones. She doesn’t want to lose them, but she doesn’t want to endanger her more centrist members, either. Omar’s tweet put her between the dog and the hydrant. Jewish members issued an outraged statement denouncing the tweet, while Omar’s left-wing colleagues, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, criticized Pelosi’s tepid request for clarification.

Another member of the Squad, Rashida Tlaib, chose to portray Pelosi’s request as an attack on all Muslims — on all women of color in Congress: “Freedom of speech doesn’t exist for Muslim women in Congress. The benefit of the doubt doesn’t exist for Muslim women in Congress. House Democratic leadership should be ashamed of its relentless, exclusive tone policing of Congresswomen of color.” Tlaib’s claim that she and Omar are being silenced was sent to 1.4 million Twitter followers.  Apparently, Tlaib has been fully inoculated against irony. Pelosi responded by saying that she had never meant anything as a rebuke. Not in the slightest.

The problem here goes well beyond Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who was welcomed to American and now sits in Congress, seething with contempt for her adopted country, its tolerant values, and those of its allies. The Democrats are stuck with a whole Squad of like-minded representatives and thousands, perhaps millions, of young supporters eager to promote these socialist attacks on America. That’s not just a problem for the Democrats. That’s a problem for the country.

CHILLING: Biden’s Domestic Terror Agenda Confirms Conservatives’ Worst Fears By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/15/chilling-bidens-domestic-terror-agenda-confirms-conservatives-worst-fears-n1454729

The Biden administration is using the awesome might of the U.S. government to demonize conservative critics as abettors of extremist ideology, if not enemies of the state.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden released a blueprint for his New War on Terror. In the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” the Biden White House pledges that the administration will combat domestic terrorism “while vigilantly safeguarding peaceful expression of a wide range of views and freedom of political association.” Yet the administration’s biases give conservatives good reason to doubt this pledge.

The White House claims that the “two most lethal elements” of domestic terrorism are “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race” and “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”

The document lays out four elements of a strategy to fight domestic terrorism: sharing domestic terrorism analyses at all levels of government and occasionally with the private sector; preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and confronting “long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.”

Each element should raise alarms for conservatives and Republicans, given the Biden administration’s hyperbolic rhetoric on racism and the Capitol riot. Biden has condemned commonsense election reform as “Jim Crow on steroids” and said the Capitol riot was worse than the Lincoln assassination, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and multiple violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

Exposing Biden’s record on race The president plays both sides of the race card for political gainBy Deneen Borelli

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jun/14/exposing-bidens-exploitive-record-on-race/

For decades, President Joe Biden exploited race to advance his political career. 

Mr. Biden’s long history in public life provides ample evidence in both words and deeds of the now president playing both sides of the race card for political gain.

So in Mr. Biden’s own words, “Look at my record, man.”

Here we go.

Early in his political career, Mr. Biden befriended Democratic segregationists to capitalize on their power to advance in the Senate chamber and his political goals. For example, Mississippi Sen. James Eastland, who offered his assistance to help Mr. Biden with his re-election in 1978, said Blacks were “an inferior race.” 

Mr. Eastland also called the Brown vs. Board of Education decision a “monstrous crime,” and together, Mr. Eastland and Mr. Biden worked on an anti-busing bill to prevent desegregation in schools. 

Mr. Eastland mentored Mr. Biden during his early Senate career and Mr. Biden maintained a fondness for him. 

When commenting about his past relationships with segregationists, Mr. Biden often recalled favorable memories of his emotional connection to racist Democrats. 

While running for president for the third time, Mr. Biden said before his donors referring to Mr. Eastland, “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”

Mr. Biden siding with segregationists in his early career is such an obvious political liability that then-Senator Kamala Harris drove an 18 wheeler truck through it during a Democratic debate. 

There is also Mr. Biden’s relationship with the late former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Mr. Byrd was a former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan and even with this backdrop, Mr. Byrd was elevated to the highest role in the Senate.

Mr. Byrd, by the way, filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for over 14 hours. Let that sink in for a moment.

But none of this mattered to Mr. Biden. During the eulogy at Mr. Byrd’s funeral in 2010, then-Vice President Biden said, “He was a friend, he was a mentor and he was a guide.”

Comic relief from a serious Israeli drama By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/comic-relief-from-a-serious-israeli-drama/ 

 The sight on Sunday night of the trendy Tel Aviv set celebrating the new Israeli government with great fanfare—flags and all—was nothing short of hilarious. After all, one would have been hard-pressed to locate a single person in the throng of thousands dancing in and around the fountain at Rabin Square who had voted for Yamina, the party whose chairman had just been sworn in as the country’s next leader.

Indeed, ahead of the March 23 Knesset elections—the fourth round in two years—the munchkins chanting the equivalent of “Ding dong! The witch is dead” at the ousting of Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu would have shuddered with horror and disgust at having Naftali Bennett become prime minister.

Yes, in the eyes of the state’s chattering classes, the kipah-wearing Jew who made a fortune in high-tech exits was and still is a capitalist “fascist” bent on annexing Judea and Samaria at all costs. And Yamina (“Rightward”), in their view, was merely an iteration of Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) and the Religious Zionist Party headed by Bezalel Smotrich, with far-right pariah Itamar Ben-Gvir  of Otzma Yehudit in its ranks.

A similar opinion was frequently expressed by the radical leaders of Labor (Merav Michaeli), Meretz (Nitzan Horowitz) and certainly by Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra’am Party. Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid and Blue and White’s Benny Gantz have less of an ideological stake in any of it, which is why they are referred to euphemistically as “centrists.”

Their euphoria at Bennett’s taking the reins, then, is both comical (or would be if Israel’s domestic and foreign challenges weren’t so monumental) and illustrative of just how deep the pathological loathing for Netanyahu runs in certain circles.

How will Bennett deal with Bedouin illegal Negev land grabs? David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/with-bennett-at-the-helm-how-will-he-steer-the-bedouin-negev

Israelis think of the desert area as its “Wild West,” a place where sovereignty is more honored in the breach, and where concerns center on crime and national security. For the government, the biggest challenge is bringing to heel unregulated Bedouin building on state land.

 Israel’s newly sworn-in Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has many landmines to avoid. One concerns land issues in Israel’s Negev Desert, specifically whether he will rein in unregulated Bedouin settlements that some say threaten to overwhelm Israel’s land reserves in the south.

“Bennett is selling the Negev!” was one of the first broadsides hurled against the new premier by Benjamin Netanyahu, who attempted to use the issue as a last-ditch effort to peel away right-wing members from the Knesset’s vote of confidence in the government on Sunday. He claimed that Bennett would hand control over parts of the south to the Ra’am Party—the first Arab party to agree to join an Israeli government. The Bedouin make up an important part of Ra’am’s base, and one of their key voting issues centers on illegal housing.

The Negev—and the Bedouin who make up 25 percent of its population—has long been a political football in Israeli politics, although it’s often pushed to the backburner. Israelis think of the desert area as its “Wild West,” a place where Israeli sovereignty is more honored in the breach, and where there are concerns over crime and national security. For the government, the biggest challenge is bringing to heel unregulated Bedouin building on state lands. The Bedouin are spreading rapidly because they are growing rapidly; they have one of the highest birthrates in the world, in part due to polygamy. Designated a crime in Israel, it is largely unheeded by the Bedouin. A 2012 Tel Aviv University study found that one-in-three Bedouin men have at least two wives.

“They have families with sometimes 30, 40, even 50 children. … When they’re grown, they have to build somewhere, and this is the recipe for the illegal houses that we have in the thousands in the Negev,” said Kobi Michael, senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies and editor of the institute’s periodical “Strategic Assessment.”

The President of Platitudes Freddy Gray,

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/president-joe-biden-platitudes-nato-summit/

President Joe Biden turned up almost three hours late to his NATO press conference tonight. He offered no apology, because, well, why should he? He then gave a short speech. It was adequate enough, albeit predictable and rigid — read as it was almost entirely from a teleprompter. It wouldn’t be Biden if he didn’t open with a gaffe, though. He managed to stumble early by saying ‘we’re still averaging in the last seven days the loss of 300 deaths per day.’

In answer to a press question about Putin, he said ‘I’ll be happy to discuss with you when it’s over, not before, about what the discussion will entail’. That didn’t make much sense. He successfully quoted Benjamin Disraeli and said ‘the proof will be in the pudding’ without jumbling the words. But it was another flat and deeply uninspiring performance from a president who looks bored and sounds listless on the world stage. ‘America is back,’ he keeps saying. ‘Diplomacy is back.’ But it isn’t very impressive. The G7 summit last weekend came and went, as it always does, with lots of big talk and no great breakthroughs.

It cost the British government more than $5 million to expand the runway tarmac at Newquay airport in Cornwall so that Biden could land at last week’s G7 summit. Who are we to criticize such largesse — diplomacy is infrastructure, too. In these spending days of magic-money make-believe, what’s another few million here or there? Still, cynical people might wonder what — beyond local economy stimulation — people gained from Biden and the other world leaders’ hellaciously expensive trip to the Cornish seaside. The total bill for the 2013 G8 meeting in Northern Ireland came to around $127 million, but at least the then Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama, was able to give one or two of those pretty speeches he did so well.

There’s nothing pretty about a Joe Biden address. We all know that he has a speech-impediment. It is to his great credit that, as a young man, through hard work and grit, he turned himself into a half-decent speaker. At times in his career he has given powerful and moving addresses. But he’s not young any more — and his public performances are less and less convincing. Nastier right-wingers like to call his speeches ‘CAR CRASH’ as they share clips of the most cringe-inducing moments. But the most disheartening thing about Biden’s speeches is not that they are ‘disastrous’ — just that they are mediocre, sad and flat. He mumbles and fumbles and rambles; he umms and errs, he seems lost in his own mind. He is the president of platitudes, delivered badly and without conviction. He sounds bored and he makes awkward errors.