Biden’s Catastrophic Global Warming Policies If you thought last year was bad, wait until these proposed policies tear through the economy. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/bidens-catastrophic-global-warming-policies-bruce-thornton/

At the “virtual world summit” President Biden announced that he’s committing this country to cut CO2 emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030. Just trying to reach this ambitious goal will require severely damaging the economy in order to achieve something that won’t stop the alleged catastrophic effects of a rise in temperature that may or may not happen.

If you thought last year’s debacle wrought by self-proclaimed “experts” was bad, just wait until these proposed policies tear through the economy. Once more, the party that “follows the science” will wreak havoc by mistaking a dubious hypothesis for a scientific fact.

As the Wall Street Journal writes, previous such policies have done little to stop what are in fact relatively slight increases in global temperatures. For one obvious thing, whatever suicidal Western nations do, China and India, the world’s first and third biggest emitters, will undo. Even “climate czar” John Kerry admitted that whatever reductions in emissions we accomplish, it will have little impact on warming unless China and India reduce theirs­­––something both countries refuse to do, having made it clear that they will not follow the West into economic suicide.

But didn’t China sign the Paris Accord? Yet under that “parchment barrier,” China is not obligated even to start reducing its emissions until 2030, the same year our emissions are supposed to be drastically reduced. Can nobody in the current administration calculate the huge economic advantage that will accrue to China in ten years? Meanwhile, the communist regime continues to build dirty coal-fired energy plants. And, does anybody believe China’s empty promises, given their record of violating the terms of every agreement it signs with the West, such as WTO and WHO?

Furthermore, that’s just one roadblock. The policies necessary to reduce emissions by the Paris Accord’s 26-28% that Biden and the green lobby want, will be devastating to the economy. As the Journal reports, replacing carbon-based energy with so-called “renewables” would alone ruin the economy, while only lowering global temperatures by a scant 0.17% Celsius, nowhere near the 1.5 degrees that will supposedly stop the predicted global catastrophe. In any case, most of the reduction that occurred during the Obama years was due to natural gas replacing coal––a dividend of the fracking revolution, not Obama’s onerous regulations. So, of course, Biden has banned fracking on public lands, stopped the Keystone pipeline, and continued the animus against nuclear power.

More parents are speaking up about toxic Critical Race Theory in schools By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/more_parents_are_speaking_

Just two weeks ago, Bari Weiss published two open letters, one from a teacher at a fancy New York private school and one from a parent whose daughter attended a different fancy New York private school.  Both letters castigated the schools over their deep dives into Critical Race Theory (CRT), which was overtaking education entirely in those institutions.  Since then, events are snowballing in a way that might lead to CRT’s overthrow.  It turns out that lots of parents in New York find offensive the anti-white racism of the misnamed “anti-racism” programs in New York City schools, and they’re beginning to act.

On April 13, Bari Weiss published a statement from Paul Rossi, a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan.  He explained how CRT had become the central pillar of the school’s educational philosophy and was damaging the students.  Three days later, Weiss published a similar letter that Andrew Gutmann, whose daughter attended Brearley School, another expensive private school, had written to other parents.

In subsequent days, we learned that Rossi lost his job and that the head of the school had admitted that he was harming his white students by calling them racists — only to deny that charge later.  Thankfully, Rossi had him on tape.  We also got to see the head of Brearley completely ignore the substantive charges against her school and, instead, claim that Gutmann was victimizing students by insisting that CRT is a problem.

It turns out that Rossi and Gutmann aren’t the only ones upset by the prevailing leftist wisdom in their communities.  The New York Post reports that other parents are beginning to speak up and speak out:

Until last summer, Harvey Goldman had no idea that his 9-year-old daughter was learning about George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter as well as her own “white privilege” at the $43,000-per-year Heschel School in Manhattan.

Jerome Powell and the Coming Inflation By Howard Richman and Jesse Richman

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/jerome_powell_and_the_coming_inflation.html

Usually, the Federal Reserve acts as a counterweight when Congress and U.S. presidents follow inflationary policies. We haven’t had an incompetent Federal Reserve chairman since Arthur Burns and G. William Miller produced simultaneous inflation and recession, an economic malady known as “stagflation.” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell may not be as bad as Burns and Miller, but he does seem to be making one economic mistake after another.

Like Miller, Powell is that rare exception: a Fed chair without a background in economics. Being an American today is a bit like riding on a bus driven by someone who lacks a CDL.  It might work out okay, but some white knuckles on the curves are well justified.

Powell’s First Mistake – Raising Interest Rates under Trump

Powell’s first mistake occurred when he raised interest rates during President Trump’s successful economic boom that occurred without inflation. President Trump’s economic advisor Peter Navarro indicated that this might have cost Trump the election (at about the 10-minute mark):

Everybody knows me and Mnuchin weren’t exactly bosom buddies. Whenever I wanted to put a little dig in Steve all I had to do was remind the boss [President Trump] that it was Mnuchin that appointed Jay Powell who the boss thought was the worst Fed Chair in modern history who cost us the election because that SOB raised interest rates well before he should have.

Powell’s increase in interest rates was not needed because President Trump’s supply-side economics was simultaneously increasing Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply, and thereby producing economic growth with little change in price level.

Time to End Outdoor Mask Edicts The CDC is moving too slowly in updating its advice to comport with the scientific evidence. By Scott Gottlieb

https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-to-end-outdoor-mask-edicts-11619383852?mod=opinion_major_pos6

When fighting a crisis like Covid-19, health officials can never take for granted the public’s willingness to comply. The measures imposed—social distancing, wearing masks—require sacrifice. As conditions improve, policy makers must show they’re willing to ease restrictions as swiftly as they imposed them, and a critical early test will be on wearing masks outside.

Wearing masks and restricting large gatherings were essential to controlling the pandemic’s worst peaks. But infection levels are dropping and vaccination rates rising. This is the time to revisit rules on masking and distancing in low-risk outdoor settings like parks and sports venues. Easing these rules would move more activity outdoors, which reduces viral transmission.

In states such as Texas and New Hampshire, governors have lifted restraints on the size of outdoor gatherings and the need for masks. Connecticut, Rhode Island and others have announced plans to relax outdoor requirements in May. But the policy process in Washington is moving too slowly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance still prescribes social limits while outside. Many governors are reluctant to step out ahead of the agency. About half of states still require people to wear face coverings in all public settings.

The virus won’t be eliminated. Some 40,000 Americans are hospitalized and some 55,000 cases are diagnosed each day. But more than 80% of Americans over 65 are protected by a vaccine, and infection rates are declining rapidly in most states—including Michigan, this month’s worst-hit. Vaccines are available to anyone over 16 in every state. Soon the problem will be a surplus of doses.

‘Woke’ Corporations Use the Chinese Model They make a profit and suppress dissent at the same time.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woke-corporations-use-the-chinese-model-11619476547?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The opposition of market capitalism to state-oriented socialism and communism was the basic conflict in 20th-century political economy. But like many an economic and political theory, this durable model for delineating the possibilities—free markets vs. a “command economy”—cannot survive today’s Chinese state.

Capitalism and communism, opposed in ideology, turn out to be compatible in the real world. And perhaps the conceptual opposition is also collapsing in the West, as capitalism goes woke and sneaker commercials become indistinguishable from AOC campaign materials except by their production values.

“Leftism” as we know it crystallized in the 19th century largely under the aegis of Marxism, which described capitalism as an exploitative and murderous ideology that lionized greed. Leftists’ solution, as expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s “The Communist Manifesto,” was government control of the economy under the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

But the dictators turned out to be people rather than an abstract historical force, so it wasn’t a solution to human greed after all. Turning over all manufacturing and agriculture and trade to the party simply meant concentrating all the wealth and power in a few hands. It made the Soviet government, for example, a new oligarchy.

Anyone Remember Biden’s ‘Unity’ Pledge? He Sure Doesn’t

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/27/anyone-remember-bidens-unity-pledge-he-sure-doesnt/

Those foolish enough to believe that President Joe Biden would usher in a new era of peace and harmony in America must be sorely disappointed by how his administration has performed so far. If anything, people are more polarized than ever, and by constantly appeasing the far left of his party, Biden is only making matters worse.

This week, the polling firm TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence launched a new “TIPP Unity Index” to track just how divided the nation is.

The finding is that a mere 33% say the country is united, while 61% think it’s divided. In other words, the only thing Americans agree on right now is that they don’t agree on much. At the extremes, 35% say the country is “very divided,” while only 15% believe it’s “very united.”

That translates into an initial TIPP Unity Index rating of 37.8, the report says. Anything below 50 signals disunity.

“The United States requires greater unity now more than ever,” writes Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica, “and our current leaders’ actions must transcend mere words and genuinely reflect the spirit.” (The TIPP poll has been the most accurate on presidential races for the past five elections.)

This new unity index will be a perfect way to measure whether Biden does anything to bring us together on his watch.

So far, he’s failed completely.

Liz Cheney Won’t Rule Out 2024 Presidential Run By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/liz-cheney-wont-rule-out-2024-presidential-run/

Representative Liz Cheney (R., Wy.) says she is “not going to rule anything in or out” when it comes to a potential 2024 presidential bid.

“Ever is a long time,” Cheney said in an interview with the New York Post that was published Monday.

Cheney, the third-ranking GOP lawmaker in the House and a vocal critic of former President Trump, also told the outlet that while she believes Republicans could take back the presidency in 2024, she thinks lawmakers who supported his effort to overturn the 2020 election results should be disqualified from running.

“I think we have a huge number of interesting candidates, but I think that we’re going to be a in good position to be able to take the White House,” she said. 

“I do think that some of our candidates who led the charge, particularly the senators who led the unconstitutional charge, not to certify the election, you know, in my view that’s disqualifying,” said Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney.

Critical Race Theory: The Enemy of Reason, Evidence, and Open Debate By Peter J. Wallison

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/critical-race-theory-the-enemy-of-reason-evidence-and-open-debate/

How this pernicious ideology rejects rational inquiry and objective truth.

O n September 22, 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13950, “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.” The order contained the kind of emotionally charged language about critical race theory that is seldom seen in these legalistic documents: “This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”

The order quoted from training materials being used by government agencies and from statements of the agencies themselves, such as this from the Treasury Department: “Virtually all White people, regardless of how ‘woke’ they are, contribute to racism.” The department, according to the order, “instructed small group leaders to encourage employees to avoid ‘narratives’ that Americans should ‘be more color-blind’ or ‘let people’s skills and personalities be what differentiates them.’” Trump’s order was revoked by President Biden on his first day in office.

By this time, however, the ideas that had prompted Trump’s concerns had already begun to disturb the lives of the American people who encountered them. In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada on December 20, 2020, Gabrielle Clark, the mother of William Clark, a twelfth-grader in a Nevada charter school, complained about the school’s refusal to accept her son’s objection to what was being taught in a recently revised civics course. Ms. Clark, a widow, is black. Her son’s father, however, was white, and her son was light-skinned enough to be considered white.

In her complaint, Clark stated that a new curriculum at William’s school “inserted consciousness raising and conditioning exercises under the banner of ‘Intersectionality’ and ‘Critical Race Theory.’” “The lesson categorized certain racial and religious identities as inherently ‘oppressive,’ . . . and instructed pupils including William Clark who fell into these categories to accept the label ‘oppressor.’”

Despite Clark’s and her son’s objections to what he was being required to admit about himself and his racial heritage, the school insisted that he take this course and gave him a failing grade — imperiling his chances for college admission — because of his refusal to admit that he harbored the views that were being pressed upon the class.

Biden’s plan to revolutionize America on a slim majority is downright delusion By Rich Lowry

https://nypost.com/2021/04/26/bidens-plan-to-revolutionize-america-on-a-slim-majority-is-downright-delusion/

There’s believing your own news releases. And then there’s believing your own delusions of grandeur. 

Joe Biden should look at the mirror every day and see a president elected on the basis of the unpopularity of his predecessor at a time when the country was slammed by a once-in-a-century pandemic. 

Instead, by every account, he sees a transformative leader with a mandate to change America as rapidly and irreversibly as possible. 

As the news site Axios noted, Biden wants his next 100 days to be “more audacious” than his first 100, as he seeks “to re-engineer the very fundamentals of America — inequality, voting rights and government’s role in directing economic growth.” 

Oh, is that all?

Biden’s drive to make himself the next FDR and erect a massive progressive edifice on the slightest of political foundations is monumentally arrogant and almost certainly bound to fail. 

New York Times ‘buried’ bombshell that John Kerry told Iran about Israeli covert operations in Syria

https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-buried-bombshell-kerry-iran-israeli-operations

‘At best, this shows that Kerry is enormously and irresponsibly indiscreet; at worst, he’s exposing American intelligence to an enemy in order to attack an ally’

The New York Times is taking criticism for “burying” a report that former Secretary of State John Kerry told Iran that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times.

The story focuses on leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaking candidly about Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful branch of Iran’s Armed Forces and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. However, 21 paragraphs into a 26-paragraph story, the Times dropped a major revelation.

“Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said,” Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote.

Kerry has denied the claims in the story, calling them “unequivocally false.”

Kerry, now President Biden’s special climate envoy, served as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017, where he was instrumental in brokering the Iran nuclear deal. The deal was heavily opposed by Israel, with whom Kerry has frequently sparred.