Jonathan A. Lesser: The Crippling Economic Costs of Green Energy Subsidies

https://manhattan.institute/article/the-crippling-economic-costs-of-green-energy-subsidies

The green energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have been justified by the Biden Administration as a booster of U.S. economic growth and jobs.  But when the subsidies are tallied and the overall impacts evaluated, the IRA is a job and economic growth killer. 

Under the IRA, the lion’s share of subsidies will be paid to wind and solar developers.  The subsidies will not expire until electric industry carbon emissions fall by at least 75% below 2005 levels, after which they will gradually decrease.  Even the most optimistic forecasts prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that this will not occur until at least 2046.  Thus, the subsidies for wind and solar will continue unabated for decades.  In total, the subsidies will far exceed what the U.S. government spent in today’s dollars to combat the Great Depression.

The single largest subsidy is the federal investment tax credit (ITC).  Most wind and solar projects will be able to claim a minimum 30% ITC, plus be eligible for an additional 10% credit if the projects rely on domestic manufacturing for components.  

The EIA’s optimistic forecast projects about 900,000 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics, 350,000 MW of onshore wind turbines, and 24,000 MW of offshore wind by 2046.  If all of this generation is built, it will result in direct ITC subsidies totaling between $500 billion and $1 trillion, depending on construction costs.  The greater the costs, the larger the subsidies.  Although wind and solar proponents still claim costs are falling, the reality is the opposite.   Offshore wind developers, especially, are clamoring to renegotiate contracts they signed previously, including guaranteed price adjustments for increasing costs, and relaxing the domestic content requirement so they can claim the additional 10% ITC.

The Doomsday Cult Needs To Recalculate Its Many Failed Predictions

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/08/the-doomsday-cult-needs-to-recalculate-its-many-failed-predictions/

Five years ago, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown said, with great certainty, that “in less than five years, even the worst skeptics will be believers.” While we’re not sure why some skeptics are in his mind worse than others, it’s clear that he was wrong.

Wrong as the prediction of the end of snow was wrong. Just as wrong as Prince Charles, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Gore, celebrated activist James Hansen and the tiresome, we’ll-have-no-coal John Kerry declaring we have fewer than 100 months or 12 years or 10 years or four years or 500 days to save Earth from the menace of man-made global warming.

We’ve had a half-century of various failed climate and ecological predictions, 18 of them “spectacularly wrong,” yet the carbon-obsessed doomsayers continue to insist that a planetary tragedy is imminent. The difference between them and the end-of-the-world cults that have to recalculate the day of the apocalypse when their prophecies come and go without incident is that much of the Western world has bought into the climate zealots’ hysteria.

In addition to the many botched timeline predictions, there is also the temperature dashboard warning light message. Once we reach a global temperature that is 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than that of the preindustrial era (whatever that was), we will have arrived at a disastrous threshold. Never mind that there is no such thing as a measurable global temperature, or that the temperature record is unreliable, or that the 1.5 degrees was not established by science but a number agreed upon in order to forge a climate agreement.

And never mind that somehow we have essentially hit that 1.5 degrees Celsius tipping point (the climate holocaust should materialize any day now, right? – the lunatics at the Guardian of course say we’re on the verge of catastrophe) and at the same time, the Associated Press reports “the world is heading for considerably less warming than projected a decade ago.” 

What Is Really Behind Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American People’? by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20202/bin-laden-letter-to-the-american-people

“Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.” — Osama bin Laden, “Al-Qaeda’s Declaration in Response to the Saudi Ulema.”

“There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, thereby physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.” — Osama bin Laden, “Al-Qaeda’s Declaration in Response to the Saudi Ulema.”

In his “Letter to the American People,” however, bin Laden portrays Islam as “the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted.”

When clarifying to the Saudis what Islam really has in store for infidels, bin Laden quoted many of the most militant verses, such as Koran 9:29: “Fight those among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] who do not believe in Allah, nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

Hamas on Campus: Students for Justice in Palestine by Robert Williams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20195/hamas-students-for-justice-in-palestine

Many pro-Hamas demonstrations that have been taking place on US campuses since Hamas launched its war on Israel on October 7, when more than 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded and raped, pillaged, murdered and kidnapped their way through the small communities of southern Israel, have reportedly been led by a radical organization known as National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).

According to a 2018 monograph… NSJP was founded in 2010 by leaders of American Muslims for Palestine and the US Palestinian Community Network, two organizations linked to US-designated terror organizations.

The letter [to nearly 200 university presidents] cites the NSJP toolkit document: “The toolkit refers to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel as ‘the resistance.’ This was followed by statements at campus events where students proudly declared ‘We are Hamas,’ and ‘We echo Hamas.'”

Material support for a terrorist organization is a serious matter, too dangerous to leave for university presidents to solve. They frequently appear more concerned about placating the radical elements on their campuses.

Many of these academic institutions receive federal funding. However, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” Title IV also covers “violations based on religion.”

If a university allows material support for a terrorist organization, or discrimination against Jews, its federal financial assistance should be cancelled at once.

The IDF is still the most moral army on earth Hamas terrorists have shown their brutality time and time again. When will Western observers wake up to that reality? Charles Lipson

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/12/06/idf-israeli-defense-force-hamas-hostages-hospital-gaza/

Now that fierce fighting has resumed in Gaza, international pressure is building on Israel to curb its military campaign and abandon its objective of crushing Hamas. The humanitarian goal of these demands is to protect innocent Palestinians. The political goal is to appease some Muslim states and appeal to anti-Israel “progressives” and Muslims in Europe and North America.

What these demands seldom mention is the cost of leaving in place a terrorist organisation bent on killing civilians, taking hostages, using civilians to shield its own fighters, and doing its best to wipe Israel off the map. The intense pressure on the Jewish state is not matched by that on Hamas.

This sharp asymmetry in political pressure is particularly evident in the fighting around Gazan hospitals. Intense battles have been waged at close quarters in and around the Indonesian Hospital, Al-Shifa (Gaza’s largest), and Al-Rantisi, among others.

News of that fighting is heartbreaking. Medical centers should be places of sanctuary. They have become sites of battle because they are useful for Hamas, which has turned patients and hospital workers into human shields and medical buildings into hiding places for terrorists, weapons, and tunnels.

Hamas uses hospitals like this for three reasons. The terrorist organisation knows that Israel has serious moral reservations about attacking civilian facilities and risking harm to innocents, a reservation not shared by Hamas militants willing to use their own people as human shields. Hospital traffic is also the perfect place to conceal the movement of terrorists and their supplies, a fact often excluded from debates over Israeli strategy. Resultantly, when the IDF launches strategic strikes, they pay a huge price in public opinion. 

How Were the Universities Lost? The Ivy league and their kindred so-called elite campuses may soon go the way of Disney and Bud Light By Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/07/how-were-the-universities-lost/

After October 7, the public was shocked at what they saw and heard on America’s campuses.

Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic.

But immediately after October 7—and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces—the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.

Indeed, not a day goes by when a university professor or student group has not spouted anti-Semitic hatred. Often, they threaten and attack Jewish students, or engage in mass demonstrations calling for the extinction of Israel.

Why and how did purportedly enlightened universities become incubators of such primordial hatred?

After the George Floyd riots, reparatory admissions—the effort to admit diverse students beyond their numbers in the general population—increased.

Elite universities like Stanford and Yale boasted that their so-called “white” incoming student numbers had plunged to between 20 and 40 precent, despite whites making up 68-70 percent of the general population.

The abolition of the SAT requirement, and often the comparative ranking of high school grade point averages, have ended the ancient and time-proven idea of meritocracy. Brilliant high school transcripts and test scores no longer warrant admissions to so-called elite schools.

One result was that the number of Jews has nosedived from 20-30 percent of Ivy League student bodies during the 1970s and 1980s to 10-15 percent.

Jewish students are also currently stereotyped as “white” and “privileged”—and thus considered as fair game on campus.

At the same time, the number of foreign students, especially from the oil-rich Middle East, has soared on campuses. Most are subsidized by their homeland governments. They pay the full, non-discounted tuition rates to cash-hungry universities.

TODAY DECEMBER 7 IS PEARL HARBOR DAY

Americans  remember and honor the 2,403 Americans who were killed in the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, which led to the United States declaring war on Japan the next day and thus entering World War II.

Report: U.S. Sets Record For Most Single-Day Border Apprehensions By: Shawn Fleetwood

https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/06/report-u-s-sets-record-for-most-single-day-border-apprehensions/

The United States reportedly set a new record for the most single-day migrant encounters at its southern border, marking another historic casualty brought about by President Biden’s open border policies.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources who spoke with Fox News’ Bill Melugin, “there were more than 12,000 migrant encounters” at the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, including “10,200+ Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants, amongst the highest daily totals for BP ever recorded.”

These figures do not include “gotaways,” or illegal immigrants who managed to evade capture by CBP.

Brought about by the “Let’s let everyone in!” policies put forward by the Biden administration, Tuesday’s numbers come weeks after CBP reported that nearly a quarter of a million illegal aliens were apprehended at the southern border in October. In fiscal year 2023, the agency encountered “more than 2.47 million” illegals, marking an increase from the roughly 2.38 million recorded in 2022 and 1.73 million in 2021. A report published by House Republicans estimates there have been more than 1.7 million “gotaways” since Biden took office.

Despite the ongoing invasion, House Republicans have refused to impeach either Biden or Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for their intentional facilitation of the ongoing invasion. Last month, for instance, eight GOP representatives voted with Democrats to block a resolution introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to impeach Mayorkas for his allowance of the disaster to continue unaddressed.

Among the Republicans to vote down the measure were Republican Reps. Darrell Issa, Tom McClintock, and John Duarte of California, Ken Buck of Colorado, Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Cliff Bentz of Oregon, and Mike Turner of Ohio.

Another Election Overturned Due to Shenanigans Athena Thorne

https://pjmedia.com/athena-thorne/2023/12/06/another-election-overturned-due-to-voter-fraud-n4924522

A Louisiana Supreme Court justice has overturned the results of a Nov. 18, 2023, runoff election that was decided by a single vote. And while this case may seem like small potatoes, it could indicate that a sorely needed trend is beginning to emerge in the United States. Namely, unfairly defeated candidates are refusing to accept flawed elections, and more importantly, courageous judges are doing the right thing when faced with clear proof that shenanigans affected the outcome of an election.

The Louisiana election for the position of Caddo Parish Sheriff pitted Democrat candidate Henry Whitehorn against Republican opponent John Nickelson. Whitehorn prevailed by a single vote.

“The unofficial results of the sheriff race between me and my opponent indicated a one-vote margin out of more than 43,000 votes,” observed Nickelson at the time. “That’s something that hasn’t happened as far as we can tell in more than a century in this country, it’s truly unprecedented.”

Furthermore, “Many, dozens at a minimum, in the small sample of ballots we were able to inspect in the short time we had of these certificates had no signatures at all,” claimed Nickelson. “In other words, ballots had been submitted without a voter signing it,”

A recount was performed, which added three new votes to each candidate’s tally, leaving Whitehorn the victor again by a single vote. Mickelson then filed suit, contesting the results and calling for a new election.

On Tuesday, Louisiana Supreme Court justice Joseph Bleich ruled that the election results were null and void. “It was proven beyond any doubt that there were at least 11 illegal votes cast and counted,” explained Bleich, and therefore, it “is legally impossible to know what the true vote should have been.”

In an interesting side note, Bleich had to come out of retirement to serve as judge “ad hoc” after four justices recused themselves, citing personal friendships with Democrat candidate Whitehorn. This story could have ended like a classic “good ol’ boys” corrupt setup where it’s impossible to achieve justice because everyone is a crony. But instead, everyone did the right thing, and now a new election will be held. 

This is the second noteworthy voided election this year. These cases are blazing a trail forward that other plaintiffs and judges can follow when close elections have been provably affected by voter fraud, ballot harvesting, faulty machines, or other shenanigans or irregularities.

Hamas’ Child Hostages The ancient horrors have returned. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-child-hostages/

For at least two generations, Israelis have felt secure in the knowledge that the horrors of the Holocaust were behind them. Safe behind border walls and protected by a powerful military, Jews in Israel would never again have to watch as children were murdered in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children.

October 7 changed all that – dramatically.

The Hamas-led killing spree of that day brought Hitler’s willing executions through the gates of Israel. Suddenly, nowhere was safe anymore.

I have spent the past week in Israel, researching a film on Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers with filmmaker Ricky Schroder and his producer, Julie Trammel.

From the very moment I arrived, the presence of the missing – Israelis ripped from their homes by Hamas terrorists – was everywhere. The broad stairs leading down to immigration at Ben Gurion airport were marked with the faces of the missing – on both sides of the hall. On some of the hundred-plus steps, the poster had been taken down to indicate hostages who had been released after more than fifty days of captivity.

By the time I left five days later, the gaps were bigger, as more returnees came home. But more than 136 remained by the time Hamas broke the temporary truce on December 1.

On Ditzengoff Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Tel Aviv, human-sized white teddy bears were strapped to every park bench, their bodies spattered with dirt and blood. Attached to each was a poster of one of the missing.

In Jerusalem, office buildings were lit up with the Israeli flag and holographic projections of the missing, rotating every few seconds.

During that week, we began to learn more about the horrors the hostages had undergone during their Hamas captivity.