RUTHFULLY YOURS

The global energy story of today is coal, which dwarfs the output of solar and wind.

Rasheed Wallace gained notoriety during his 16-season NBA career for being a hot-headed power forward. If called for a foul (or, as was often the case with him, a technical foul) that he thought was undeserved, and the opposing team missed the ensuing free-throw attempts, Wallace would often holler, “ball don’t lie,” as if the basketball itself was pronouncing judgment on the ref’s call.

The “ball don’t lie” expression has gained fame and is even the title of a popular basketball blog.

I’d be inclined to adopt a variation on Wallace’s catchphrase for whenever energy use or energy policy is being discussed: Numbers don’t lie.

Indeed, on Monday, BP released the latest edition of its BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and that document shows that once again, the global energy story of today isn’t wind, solar, or “clean energy,” it is coal. The numbers put the lie to the ongoing story being pushed by the Obama administration, the Sierra Club, and their many allies on the green Left.

Earlier this month, the EPA released its new Clean Power Plan, a 645-page set of regulations that aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the domestic electricity-generation sector by 30 percent by 2030 when compared with 2005 levels. The EPA claims that the new rules are needed because greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide threaten “the American public by leading to potentially rapid, damaging and long-lasting changes in our climate that can have a range of severe negative effects on human health and the environment.”

Let’s look at the numbers. As I wrote in these pages on June 3, the EPA’s proposal aims to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by about 720 million tons over the next 16 years. But that reduction will amount to a drop in the global carbon dioxide bucket. According to the new BP numbers, in 2013 alone, global CO2 emission rose by 630 million tons. In other words, in one year, global CO2 emissions rose by nearly 90 percent of the reductions being proposed by the EPA.

Even when you win, you lose. And someone nobody knows gets hurt.

That’s the rule when it comes to a regulator’s investigation. A good example is the apparent triumph over the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by a pair of twins in the energy business, Kevin and Richard Gates.

Way back in 2010, FERC began looking into whether funds led by the Pennsylvania-based brothers had defrauded the market by executing sham wash trades to collect millions in rebates to which they were not entitled. Last August, three years in, the FERC released an ominous preliminary-findings report that the brothers’ funds, Huntrise Energy and Powhatan Energy, had in all likelihood engaged in fraud. Nor of course were the Gates brothers alone: Other companies, such as JP Morgan, were agreeing to pay hundreds of millions in penalties to FERC, all redounding to the glory of the director of the FERC’s enforcement wing, an attorney named Norman Bay.

The feisty Gates twins, a sort of Winkelvoss brothers of energy, were different. They fought back by launching a counter-investigation of their own. The pair hired the lead experts in the field, including former SEC and energy regulators, to submit position papers on whether their case constituted fraud. The experts found little evidence of fraud. The former chief of enforcement at FERC, Susan Court, put it simply: “Everyone knew what was going on; there was no deceit.” William Hogan of the Kennedy School at Harvard, one of the architects of deregulation of electricity, pointed to an irony: The Gates companies made money off a feature in the market that had been vetted and created by the FERC itself. Though the Gates brothers had heard plenty from the FERC before their counter-investigation, suddenly there was radio silence from the agency. A laudatory profile of the Gateses in the Wall Street Journal seemed to assure the brothers’ conquest.

But such visions of victory obscure the injury sustained by figures in the shadows of such investigations. The philosopher Frédéric Bastiat wrote once of two groups of people: “the seen,” who benefit from a government project, and “the unseen,” those who are hurt by the same project. This story is about a specific group of “unseen” that is rarely recognized: immigrants.

Starting with a trader named Alan Chen — born in China’s Zhejiang Province, Chen earned a Ph.D. in power engineering before coming to the United States. Eventually, he began to trade energy. Chen lives with his wife outside Houston in the small city of Conroe. They have a daughter named Jessica, who is now eleven. Chen’s work with the Gates brothers began in 2008, around the time that this happy photo of his family was snapped.

The IRS’s claim that it lost the e-mails of multiple key employees, at precisely the moment that Congress began looking into the agency’s unethical and illegal political persecutions, challenges even the most credulous mind.

It is very difficult to permanently destroy an e-mail even if you are trying to do so. The proposition that a few hard-drive crashes, which conveniently afflicted the computers of those involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, would permanently wipe out those e-mails beyond recovery beggars belief. Half the strip malls in this country have electronics stores that will, for a fee, recover information from a damaged hard drive. Assuming that the drive in question was not, say, smashed to bits with a sledgehammer and then nuked in a microwave, the information on it should be recoverable.

Beyond that, e-mail is a network function; copies of communications are generally available from multiple locations. It is not an IRS e-mail server that is alleged to have crashed, but the individual computer used by Lois Lerner, who ran the IRS unit responsible for tax-exempt organizations and is at the center of the agency’s campaign of harassment and intimidation of conservative groups. The IRS claims that it wipes its servers clean every six months and that its backup method is — and we are not making this up — having employees print out their e-mails for filing. The missing e-mails from Lerner run to about 50,000, and the IRS has nearly 90,000 employees — is the agency really filing away 4.5 billion printouts every other year? Perhaps in a federal warehouse like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?

And beyond that, the IRS has a legal obligation to retain e-mails and other documents, and it is difficult to take seriously the proposition that fulfilling that legal obligation would be left to chance. In earlier congressional testimony, former IRS commissioner John Koskinen confirmed that agency e-mails are stored on backup servers.

And beyond even that, this administration is infamous for its attempts to evade examination of its e-mail records: EPA administrator Lisa Jackson went so far as to cook up a phony e-mail account – under the comical name “Richard Windsor” — to cover her tracks.

The IRS’s version of events heaps implausibility upon implausibility upon implausibility. And given the agency’s well-established history of dishonesty regarding its political persecutions — Lerner’s staged press-conference questions, misleading of congressional investigators — the possibility that the agency’s executives are flat-out lying to Congress and to the public cannot be discounted.

I highly recommend the new Dinesh D’Souza salvo at truth, optimism and the melioration of the endless lies proffered by the leftatariat who preach in the nation’s wholly-owned radicalized college campii (my version of the plural form — don’t bother with Webster’s or Wiktionary).

He goes into the 5 basic lies of America’s birth promoted and promulgated by Saul Alinsky, author of Reveille for Radicals (as well as its more famous successor, Rules for Radicals), the socialist sleaze who was a mentor to Hillary, as well as the guiding muck/light for the current occupant of the Oval Office. Alinsky does not emerge as a nice person, nor a person a patriot could ever follow.



D’Souza frames the film in the Revolutionary War, and instead of Gen. Washington leading his men into victory against the Redcoats, Washington is shot by a sniper, falls to the ground, and his men surrender. America is not to be.

The Mumbai-born D’Souza, who came here when he was 17, carefully interviews the likes of acidulous America-hater, anti-Zionist cynic Noam Chomsky, captures some of the ugly in another Obama mentor, rapist and muni-bomber William Ayers, one of the ghost-writers of Obama’s better “autobiography” (the less-well-written autobio was penned by someone lesser than Ayers, perhaps Obama himself; perhaps not).



It is hard to sit through the first 20 minutes of this merciful film, since it is all chunked up with these reprehensible haters of the US for the nonce. But D’Souza is fair, giving these sordid types leeway to put forth their insidious and untrue misappropriations of non-history.

Relief comes after these professorial historical histrionics are presented. The film carefully goes point for point, shredding the lies and distortions massaged by the adipose-friendly, hirsute Michael Moore and “historians” on major leftard campuses. 


The country’s strangulating over-regulation is limned, as is the difficulty even the entrepreneurial spirit has triumphing over the endless asphyxiation of Obama’s notion of redistributing the wealth from those who have worked for it to those he thinks should take it, one way or the other. D’Souza goes lightly into the administration’s three scandals a week, and tells us about the spying that renders all our emails, telephone calls and everything else we send Open Sesame to the illegal actions of the government. He replays the beloved clips of Obama promising we can keep our doctors and keep our policies — massive Pinocchios that won the President top liar award for last year.



A couple weeks ago, Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press published an astonishingly bad piece of climate science journalism on The Big Story board entitled “US hottest spots of warming: Northeast, Southwest.”

I debunked this AP story here soon after it was released. In short, the AP had claimed to use “the least squares regression method” to analyze National Climatic Data Center temperature trends in the lower 48 states, 192 cities, and 344 smaller regions within the states between 1984 and 2013. The AP then reported that “all but one of the lower 48 states have warmed since 1984” and that “92 percent of the more than 500 cities and smaller regions within states have warmed” since 1984.

As I noted in my previous article:

Here is what happened. The AP used ‘the least squares regression method’ to calculate the annual temperature trend for all these regions, but then proceeded to ignore entirely whether the regression method indicated if the trend was statistically significant (the typical criteria would be a p-value<0.05). This is first-year statistics level stuff. Quite simply, if your statistical test ('least squares regression method') tells you the trend isn't significant, you cannot claim there is a trend, since the null hypothesis (i.e., no trend) cannot be rejected with any reasonable degree of confidence. When I reanalyzed the data using the same approach the AP did – except I didn't ignore the statistical significance of the results, or lack thereof – I found that the AP should have reported that only 18 of the lower 48 states have statistically significant warming trends since 1984, and that only 31 percent of the cities and smaller regions within states have significant warming trends over this period, not the absurdly high 92 percent that the AP claimed.

Hillary Clinton — the woman assumed to be the next Democratic Party presidential nominee and quite possibly the next president — is evidently a big snooze. According to Mediate [1], her interviews to promote her book on CNN and Fox had underwhelming numbers. In the case of Greta Van Susteren’s show, she sent people fleeing midway. More importantly, her book itself is a sales disappointment and, I would wager, even more disappointing if you could ascertain how many who did buy it read actually past page 15. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in single digits.

No, I haven’t read it and don’t intend to. Almost all books by contemporary politicians are intellectually vacuous, ghostwritten exercises in self-promotion or, as in the case of Barack Obama, a straight out pack of lies. Who would spend their valuable reading time on that with the thousands of great books, past and present, available? I haven’t even made my way through half of Dorothy Sayers [2].

Which leads me to the deeper reason the country is sleeping through Hillary’s book and it’s not just because it’s hugely over long and therefore a totally un-green waste of paper and trees (although that’s true). Most people know she’s basically dishonest, a prevaricator. Even liberals, though they won’t readily admit it, know this. Who can forget her blaming her husband’s compulsive philandering on the “great, right-wing conspiracy”? If they only had such power. Or the dim-witted claims of being under fire when she hadn’t been (at least Geraldo makes a show of ducking) and, more recently, the banshee-cry of “What difference does it make?” concerning the deaths of our people in Benghazi? The Benghazi lies are actually exponential. (I’m not even going to go back to Whitewater, the miracle quick killing on the stock market, the mysterious Rose Law Firm bill and all the rest.)

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new book has been in the spotlight over what she says about Benghazi. That chapter, which starts on page 382, is not the only fascinating passage in Hard Choices. Consider, for example, what Hillary says about Islamists.

“The term Islamist generally refers to people and parties who support a guiding role for Islam in politics and government. It covers a wide spectrum, from those who think Islamic values should inform public policy decisions to those who think that all laws should be judged or even formulated by Islamic authorities to conform to Islamic law. Not all Islamists are alike. In some cases, Islamist leaders and organizations have been hostile to democracy, including some who have supported radical, extremist, and terrorist ideology and actions. But around the world, there are political parties with religious affiliations – Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim – that respect the rules of democratic politics, and it is in America’s interest to encourage all religiously based political parties and leaders to embrace inclusive democracy and reject violence. Any suggestion that faithful Muslims or people of any faith cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous and wrong.”

Here readers see the straw man at his finest. Nobody is contending that people of any faith “cannot thrive in a democracy.” The issue is whether Islam itself has a problem with democracy, multi-party elections, free speech, women’s rights, gay rights, diversity, co-education and so forth. The evidence suggests that it does.

Islamists want more than a “guiding role” for Islamic law. They want an exclusive, dominating role. In Islamist regimes non-Islamic groups are second- or third-class citizens. In more than 600 pages Hillary includes nothing on the Islamist group Boko Haram, fond of kidnapping hundreds of girls and burning boys alive.

Some readers will be familiar with Huma Abedin, Hillary’s deputy chief of staff and her ties to Islamic supremacism. Consider how Hard Choices handles the matter.

In one meeting in Cairo, an agitated participant brought up an “especially outrageous canard. He accused my trusted aide Huma Abedin, who is Muslim, of being a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. This claim circulated by some unusually irresponsible and demagogic right-wing political and media personalities in the United States, including members of Congress. . .” Hillary includes no background information on Abedin and her main argument is that Sen. John McCain has publicly defended her.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll reveals that President Obama’s overall approval rating has cratered to 41 percent, tying the low-water mark of his presidency. Moreover, only half of those polled consider the president to be competent, a lower percentage than that accrued by George W. Bush following the pounding he and his administration took for its response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One year later, Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Whether the 2014 election will produce similar results remains to be seen.

Chuck Todd, Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News, minced no words assessing the results. “This poll is a disaster for the president,” Todd said. “You look at the presidency here: Lowest job rating, tied for the lowest; lowest on foreign policy. His administration is seen as less competent than the Bush administration, post-Katrina.” Todd then addressed the leadership issue. “And then the issue of do you believe he can still lead? A majority believe no. Essentially the public is saying your presidency is over,” he added.

Todd is referring to the 54 percent of respondents who said Obama is no longer able “to lead the country and get the job done” compared to only 42 percent who thought he could. That pessimism is buttressed by the 41 percent who believe his performance has gotten worse over the past year, compared to only 15 percent who thought it had improved.

The economy is another sore spot for the president, with 54 percent of the respondents disapproving his handling of it, compared to only 41 percent who think he’s doing a good job. This suggests Americans are very much aware that the current 6.3 percent unemployment rate cannot obscure the reality that more than 92 million Americans have given up looking for work, dropping the labor force participation rate to its lowest level in 36 years. That economic discontent was reinforced in an April poll conducted by the WSJ revealing that 55 percent of registered voters believe “the economic and political systems in the country are stacked against people like me,” versus only 39 percent who disagreed with that statement.

By a massive 57-37 percent margin, Americans disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy and national security decisions. Despite such a dismal spread, Obama may have actually caught a break with regard to polling on this subject. Because the nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 adults was conducted between June 11-15, it occurred largely before the consequences of his decision to prematurely withdraw from Iraq in 2011 was thrust front and center by the media.

The number of unaccompanied children from Central America into the U.S. has reached 47,000 since October, and may hit 90,000 by the end of this year. The official story is that they are fleeing drug-gang mayhem and political violence in their home countries, and so are refugees and asylum-seekers. But the Guatemalan ambassador has said they are seeking economic opportunity and the “American dream.” It’s hard, however, not to see a connection with Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Arrivals Program, which defers deportation for illegal aliens who are minors. Obama enacted by executive fiat––and just recently extended for 2 years––this open invitation to illegal minors when Congress proved unwilling to pass the Dream Act legislation.

This sudden surge of illegal immigrants couldn’t help but remind me of Jean Raspail’s 1973 dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints. In the story millions of impoverished Third World people, starting in India, highjack ships and begin sailing to the south of France. Once they land they swarm the rich Côte d’Azur while the French flee in panic to the north. Most interesting are Raspail’s descriptions of why this mass invasion happened––as the inevitable suicidal response of a people who no longer believe in their own civilization’s ideals or principles. The French consul in India, for example, chastising the Catholic bishop who approves of the mass immigration and says he is proud to be “bearing witness,” retorts, “Bearing witness to what? To your faith? Your religion? To your Christian civilization? Oh no, none of that! Bearing witness against yourselves, like the anti-Western cynics you’ve become. Do you think the poor devils that flock to your side aren’t any the wiser? Nonsense! They see right through you. For them, white skin means weak convictions. They know how weak yours are, they know you’ve given in.”

For nearly 3 decades we have undergone a slow-motion version of Raspail’s parable. In 1969 there were an estimated half a million illegal immigrants in the U.S.; today the low-end estimate is 11,500,000. There are many explanations for this increase. Perverse incentives such as the 1986 amnesty and Obama’s Deferred Action for Arrivals Program, the need for cheap workers for jobs Americans don’t want to do, and the Democrats’ hunger for political clients all explain this increase. But as always, bad policies are created by bad ideas. The problems of immigration, whether legal or illegal, are in part created, and definitely worsened, by the erosion of national and civilizational identity and pride that Raspail dramatizes in his novel.

A participant in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll provides this amusing quote, which appears in today’s Journal story about the results: “Anita Windley, 30, who voted for [Barack] Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, doesn’t think he’s doing enough to help people in her New York City neighborhood. She complains that jobs are still hard to find and the local schools are subpar. ‘It’s time for somebody new,’ she said, ‘like Hillary.’ ”

That would be Hillary Clinton, who if she wins the presidential nomination in 2016 will be the oldest Democrat ever to do so. Lewis Cass, 66 when he lost the presidency to Whig Zachary Taylor, has held the record since 1848, 99 years before Mrs. Clinton’s birth.

Although she hasn’t even declared whether she’s a candidate, there’s a common view that Mrs. Clinton’s nomination and election are inevitable. If you’re convinced that is true, you can put money on it: According to OddsChecker.com, London bookmakers are offering slightly better than even odds on her victory in November 2016. Before risking your life savings, consider that you’re betting on three contingencies. For the bet to pay off, she has to run and win the nomination and win the election.

Mrs. Clinton is by far the favorite. No bookie is offering less than 7-to-1 odds on any other prospective candidate. That’s because, with no one else having declared a candidacy either, the Republican field is wide open, as is the field of prospective Democratic challengers to Mrs. Clinton or alternatives should she decide not to run.

The WSJ/NBC poll found Mrs. Clinton “remains the undisputed favorite for the Democratic nomination, drawing positive reviews from four out of five Democrats,” writes the Journal’s Patrick O’Connor. “But her prospects in a general election look a little less secure.” In a WSJ.com blog post, Reid Epstein elaborates:

Americans think Hillary Clinton is capable of being president, but they’re still not sure whether to trust her.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found 55% of all voters think Mrs. Clinton is “knowledgeable and experienced enough to handle the presidency,” but more voters disagree than agree with the statement that she is “honest and straightforward.” . . .