Gas prices have driven many a voter to the polls in our nation’s history, but Americans are feeling pain at the pump now more than ever as the average national gas price <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/11/1104364665/gas-prices-5-high-inflation">breached $5 for the first time in history</a>.
President Biden is busying himself with non-solutions like a temporary gas tax break — something <a href="https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Frumble.com%2Fv19b73j-real-america-dan-ball-w-jason-isaac-biden-regime-making-way-for-the-green-n.html&amp;data=05%7C01%7Cjisaac%40texaspolicy.com%7C30684a4262ab4db5b6c408da54b10e3f%7Ca09e2cb6dde84dd8ae3df1e84f57dd50%7C0%7C0%7C637915416677719031%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=ZGqd6D4Esc1IpC8gdeFPoQeqpJLHZ4lse5fQNLWmQiQ%3D&amp;reserved=0">even former President Obama called a &#8220;gimmick&#8221;</a> — in an attempt to show some concern for the lower- and middle-class families he claimed to fight for on the campaign trail. But a bevy of mandates handed down from his administrative state indicate his real priorities lie elsewhere. President Biden’s <a href="https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fbriefing-room%2Fstatements-releases%2F2022%2F06%2F06%2Ffact-sheet-president-biden-takes-bold-executive-action-to-spur-domestic-clean-energy-manufacturing%2F&amp;data=05%7C01%7Cjisaac%40texaspolicy.com%7C30684a4262ab4db5b6c408da54b10e3f%7Ca09e2cb6dde84dd8ae3df1e84f57dd50%7C0%7C0%7C637915416677719031%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=O7fh3YPqFgATUY1nxSpqNe15W8En3vFepbcG87H6NIM%3D&amp;reserved=0">bizarre abuse of the Defense Production Act</a> for inexpensive and unreliable renewable energy — and his continued injection of climate politics into financial regulations — suggest the president’s leftist agenda takes precedent over our well-being.
If only President Biden knew how simple it would be to solve $5 gas and restore economic prosperity to the nation.
Biden’s exploitation of the Defense Production Act to prop up the renewable energy industry may be his most out-of-touch move yet. With <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/11/two-thirds-of-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-as-inflation-climbs.html">two-thirds of the nation living paycheck-to-paycheck</a> — not to mention serious crises like the baby formula shortage still ongoing — Biden is giving special treatment to energy sources that have never yet proven to be worth the taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. <a href="https://lifepowered.org/new-research-examines-last-decade-of-federal-energy-subsidies/">Decades of subsidies measuring in the hundreds of billions</a> haven’t made renewable energy more reliable or affordable, despite its advocates’ bold claims. The Defense Production Act won’t either; it will just drive energy prices even higher.
The Trump administration’s pro-energy policies created real savings for families — and continued <a href="https://lifepowered.org/for-a-cleaner-earth-invest-in-dont-divest-from-fossil-fuels/">our track record of global environmental leadership</a> — but President Biden’s war on fossil fuels has already erased that progress. The average family is now paying nearly $3,000 more on gasoline per year than under the previous administration, on top of sky-high inflation causing higher prices for other essential goods.
And it’s not just that President Biden favors wind and solar over fossil fuels. His legion of bureaucrats are actively working to destroy the American energy industry by imposing draconian financial regulations. A new proposal from the SEC will <a href="https://www.thecentersquare.com/alabama/governors-pan-sec-climate-disclosure-proposal-as-unprecedented-federal-overreach/article_7bb8624c-e11b-11ec-8503-7be3b284c3da.html">impose massive compliance costs on energy producers</a> and force them to spend time and money on “greenwashing” instead of on harvesting and delivering the energy we need.
We need only look across the pond to the European Union to see how such a deliberate anti-energy agenda will work out for America. The EU is <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/focus-reducing-eus-dependence-imported-fossil-fuels-2022-kwi-20_en">now dependent</a> on Russia for 40% of its natural gas, 27% of its oil, and 46% of its coal — and electricity prices are skyrocketing. America can and should be a world superpower in energy, but President Biden’s policies have already made us energy dependent once again.
President Biden will continue to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin and oil companies, but he needs to man up and accept responsibility. He told us he was going to do this: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slszva6kk90">I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuel</a>,” he said. The president knew there would be pain inflicted by forcing the American people to give up the prosperity provided by oil, gas, and coal. In the last 150 years that humanity has had access to fossil fuels, <a href="https://lifepowered.org/daily-wire-the-debilitating-pessimism-of-climate-change-alarmists/">every measurement of quality of life has improved</a> as poverty has declined, health has improved, and our environment has gotten cleaner.
It’s an injustice that President Biden is forcing poverty onto the American people to appease ruling-class elites who prioritize climate catastrophism over improving human lives. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy need to be embraced to improve the global environment, lift billions out of poverty, and promote economic prosperity in America and abroad.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Jason Isaac is Director of Life:Powered, a national initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ. Jason has appeared live on Fox Business Network and other national news shows, and his commentaries have been published in Fox Business, The Hill, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, and other publications.

Joe Biden

Biden’s Abuse Of Defense Production Act Will Drive Gas Prices Even Higher

Biden Administration

Energy

Gas Prices

Oil and Gas

When you think about national security, you probably don’t immediately think about semiconductors. These tiny chips are the “brains” enabling all the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-chip-changed-everything/">computational capabilities</a> and data storage that we take for granted today. Chips power virtually every sector of the economy – including data centers, <a href="https://semiengineering.com/semiconductors-in-automotive/">automotive</a>, <a href="https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=17321">healthcare</a>, <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/financial-services/articles/the-derivative-effect-how-financial-services-can-make-iot-technology-pay-off.html">banking</a>, and <a href="https://hoosieragtoday.com/lack-of-semiconductor-chips-expected-to-impact-agriculture-into-2022/">agriculture</a>. As a consequence of their widespread use, semiconductors have grown to become a <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/global-semiconductor-sales-units-shipped-reach-all-time-highs-in-2021-as-industry-ramps-up-production-amid-shortage/">$555 billion</a> global industry, and are the world’s <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-global-semiconductor-supply-chain/">fourth most traded product</a>. Semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging have been cited frequently as one of the main critical supply chain priorities for the nation.
A steady source of uninterrupted, trusted chips is necessary for the <a href="https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/6/3/microelectronics---a-critical-national-resource">security of the nation</a> – supporting the readiness of the U.S. <a href="https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/pentagon-warns-deindustrialization-and-supply-chain-gaps-put-u-s-at-risk/">military</a> and protecting critical infrastructure like the <a href="https://www.govtech.com/security/modern-electric-grid-fighting-cyber-vulnerabilities.html">electric grid</a>. The problem is that <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/16/2-charts-show-how-much-the-world-depends-on-taiwan-for-semiconductors.html">most chips</a> are fabricated outside of the U.S., in the vulnerable region of Southeast Asia – hence the security issues. Around <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2b0c172b-2de9-4011-bf40-f4242f4673cc">three quarters</a> of global chip production capacity comes from Southeast Asia. The U.S., on the other hand, represents only 12% of global manufacturing supply, while accounting for around <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/strengthening-the-global-semiconductor-supply-chain-in-an-uncertain-era/">25% of global demand</a>. This supply-demand imbalance leaves the U.S. in a precarious position, dependent upon foreign sources of supply such as South Korea and Taiwan. Amidst geopolitical <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-invasion-taiwan-could-undermine-global-semiconductor-market-opinion-1697785">tensions</a> in that region, there are compelling reasons to consider strengthening the supply of semiconductor production at home.
The first consideration is cybersecurity. The security of the chips, embedded within everything from your smart phone to your laptop, plays a <a href="https://semiengineering.com/hardware-security-a-critical-piece-of-the-cybersecurity-puzzle/">critical role in cybersecurity</a>. In fact, databases such as the <a href="https://cwe.mitre.org/scoring/lists/2021_CWE_MIHW.html">Common Weakness Enumeration</a> list a number of known hardware weaknesses. Furthermore, given the complex global supply chain, there are ample opportunities for foreign adversaries to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies">maliciously</a> <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro/">tamper</a> with chips and other electronic assemblies.
Beyond the security implications, semiconductors play an important role within the economy. The U.S. semiconductor industry <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SIA-Impact_May2021-FINAL-May-19-2021_2.pdf">employs roughly 277,000 people</a> and <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SIA-Impact_May2021-FINAL-May-19-2021_2.pdf">generates $55.8 billion in national GDP</a>. The jobs in this industry pay higher than average wages. For every one worker in the semiconductor industry, <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SIA-Impact_May2021-FINAL-May-19-2021_2.pdf">an additional 5.7 jobs are supported</a> indirectly through the supply chain or related economic activity. However, the current global chip shortage has <a href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2022/04/analysis-chips-act-and-bia-briefing">reduced U.S. GDP by around $240 billion</a>. Because of the chip shortage, semiconductor inventories for auto makers have <a href="https://epsnews.com/2022/05/12/q2-supply-forecast-just-like-q1-but-pricier/">dropped 43%</a>, and 70% of auto manufacturers have announced production stoppages. The result is that the global auto industry produced <a href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2022/04/analysis-chips-act-and-bia-briefing">7.7 million fewer cars in 2021</a>. Without chips, many industries simply cannot support demand.
Of course, building domestic capacity, especially leading-edge capacity, will require commitment, effort, and buy-in by multiple parties. According to a <a href="https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/incentives-and-competitiveness-in-semiconductor-manufacturing">BCG report</a>, building a semiconductor fabrication facility can cost $5-20 billion in upfront capital expenditures, with a ten-year total cost of ownership ranging from $11-40 billion. The report finds that U.S. costs are 25%-50% higher than in other locations such as South Korea and Taiwan, with 40%-70% of this gap accounted for by government incentives. Despite this, <a href="https://www.techradar.com/features/why-semiconductors-are-about-to-be-a-trillion-dollar-industry">trends</a> such as remote work, the increased use of artificial intelligence, and growing demand for electric vehicles will result in continued increases in semiconductor demand.
This is why legislation is an important first step to ensure domestic production. The <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/chips/">CHIPS for America Act</a>, which was passed as part of the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, authorizes provisions such as grants for strengthening domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research capabilities. The Senate passed the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act which includes $52 billion in investments supporting the CHIPS Act, while the House passed its own version of competitiveness legislation called the America COMPETES Act that also includes $52 billion in CHIPS Act funding. The Senate and the House are now negotiating the details of the two separate bills to be combined into the Bipartisan Innovation Act. A complementary bill called the <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/sia-endorses-fabs-act-introduced-in-house/">FABS Act</a> provides an investment tax credit for construction of domestic semiconductor manufacturing facilities. <a href="https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Commerce-CHIPS-Act-RFI_SIA-Response_Final-1.pdf">According to the Semiconductor Industry Association</a>, the CHIPS Act incentives will produce 66,000 research and development jobs, as well as thousands of additional jobs in construction and manufacturing. Together, the grants in the CHIPS Act and the tax incentives of the FABS Act are intended to kick-start the construction and expansion of domestic semiconductor manufacturing facilities and allow for investment in the technology and operations for sustained growth over time.
As we have learned through the pandemic, the global supply chain is <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/04/we-need-a-stress-test-for-critical-supply-chains">surprisingly brittle</a>, and dependence on foreign sources for critical components like semiconductors leaves the nation vulnerable. Cultivating a domestic manufacturing ecosystem can be done by onshoring semiconductor fabrication capabilities and providing market incentives – strengthening national security and promoting economic prosperity.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Zachary A. Collier, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of management at Radford University. He is a visiting scholar at the Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST).

Onshoring Semiconductor Capacity Is Crucial To National Security

Communist China

Computer

National Security

Taiwan

Technology

In the first week of May there were six homicides in Jackson, Mississippi. How many more will there be before the end of the month?
Last year Jackson had the highest homicide rate of any city in America, with 155 homicides. To put that grisly statistic in perspective, that was about the same number of homicides as happened in Atlanta, a city with almost four times the population.
As a recent arrival in the city, what shocks me is not the murder rate, but the attitude of those who make endless excuses for it.
Some officials invoke that catch-all excuse for every failure, Covid. Homicide rates did increase at the same time that there was a pandemic, but correlation is not causation. I am unconvinced that the virus somehow made people more violent.
Some of the Mississippi media seem desperate to avoid being seen to blame Jackson’s city leadership. Rather like the failure to provide the city with running water, everything but the city leadership is held responsible. Why? It does a disservice to Jackson residents.
Honest reporting should hold to account those making bad public policy choices today, and not insist on looking at everything that happens in Mississippi in 2022 through the prism of a distant past.
There is far too much wishful thinking when it comes to crime. If only, some imply, we had one more rehabilitation program or enacted another bill that purported to help ex-offenders all would be okay. Sadly, good intentions don’t cut crime. Being honest about the causes of crime might.
Responsibility for crime lies with criminals. Responsibility for failing to deal with criminals rests with those public officials mandated to run the criminal justice system.
Next time there is another killing, Jackson’s leaders will do what they always do. They will emote about it. What we need to hear instead is what they will actually do.
Here are five specific actions they could take that would cut crime in Jackson:
<ol>
<li>More police: Despite the often heroic efforts of individual law enforcement officers, there are simply not enough of them.</li>
<li>Prosecute: No matter how effective the police are at chasing suspects through the streets, there are serious failings when it comes to pursuing them through the courts. Who in Jackson has not heard stories of suspects being allowed to walk free?</li>
<li>Detention: The failure to have enough detention capacity in Hinds County is outrageous. Build it.</li>
<li>Clear the courts: The bureaucratic backlog in the courts is perhaps the single biggest impediment to effective justice. Clear the backlog of cases. If those that administer the court system can’t cope, bring in administrators that can.</li>
<li>Work with the state: Every city likes to manage its own affairs. I get that. But the state capital ought to be able to team up with state-wide officials, police forces and prosecutors to tackle a problem that impacts us all.</li>
</ol>
I live and work in Jackson – and I love to call this city home. Jackson might seem caught in downward spiral, but every city has the power to regenerate itself.
New York in the early 80s seemed caught in a spiral of decline. But the city revived once it got a grip on crime. The key to Jackson’s future is to follow this example.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Douglas Carswell is the President &amp; CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Crime

How To Cut Crime In The Murder Capital Of America

Mississippi

Murder

Police

The senseless murder of 19 children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas is leading to calls for more gun control. To some, “red flag” laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, seem like the obvious solution. These laws allow judges to seize a person’s guns without a trial, based solely on a written complaint that the person might be a danger to themselves or others. All a judge needs is “reasonable suspicion.”
“We know that we can show we can be united to protect our children,” <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/25/lawmakers-eye-bipartisan-national-red-flag-law-wak/?utm_source=Boomtrain&amp;utm_medium=manual&amp;utm_campaign=newsalert&amp;utm_content=newsalert&amp;utm_term=newsalert&amp;bt_ee=5bNMmbvcd0eUnXMd%2F1YbpguSamqxMP5%2BG9rqWqM2PP7qkfjWHrUxiKG7QFEHcbze&amp;bt_ts=1653518527140">said</a> Sen. Joe Manchin, a famously moderate West Virginia Democrat.
We also care about children, but much better laws are already in place. We are concerned that red flag laws will cause more harm than good.
Democratic politicians’ support for red flag is almost universal, but the Washington Times <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/25/lawmakers-eye-bipartisan-national-red-flag-law-wak/?utm_source=Boomtrain&amp;utm_medium=manual&amp;utm_campaign=newsalert&amp;utm_content=newsalert&amp;utm_term=newsalert&amp;bt_ee=5bNMmbvcd0eUnXMd%2F1YbpguSamqxMP5%2BG9rqWqM2PP7qkfjWHrUxiKG7QFEHcbze&amp;bt_ts=1653518527140">reports</a> that some Republican senators are now warming up to such legislation. “For people who threatened harm to themselves or somebody else, you could only go through law enforcement, and you had to go through the courts, and it wasn’t permanent,” explained Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who signed a red flag bill while governor of Florida.
It has always been possible to take a dangerous person’s guns away. All 50 states and the federal government have involuntary commitment laws that go by various names: the Baker Act in Florida, for example, or the 5150 code in California. They all require a mental health expert to testify before a judge, but hearings can occur quickly in urgent cases. If those facing a hearing can’t afford a lawyer, the judge provides them with one. Judges have a lot of flexibility when ruling. For instance, if the person on trial does not agree to voluntary psychiatric treatment, they may be committed involuntarily or have their guns confiscated.
But red flag laws remove all these due process protections. Based only on a written complaint, which could come from a relative, friend, neighbor, or police officer, a judge decides whether to take away a person’s guns. There is no ability to challenge claims or to offer testimony from a mental health care expert. Gun control advocates argue that the person should not even know that the judge may be deciding to take his or her guns. When a hearing finally takes place up to a month later, if the person in question cannot afford an attorney, they will not be provided with one.
When faced with the costs for a hearing, which may be up to $10,000, few people find that fighting red flag laws to keep their guns makes sense. Few defendants obtain legal representation, but the courts still overturn a third of the initial orders. The actual error rate is undoubtedly much higher, because many of those wrongly prosecuted don’t have a lawyer.
People who truly pose a clear danger to themselves or others should be confined to a mental health facility or be required to seek treatment. Laws used to confiscate guns are typically enforced when dealing with suicidal people. However, if someone is suicidal, there are many other ways they may choose to kill themselves. Simply taking away a gun isn’t the answer.
A person intent on violence may not even need a gun to inflict mass carnage. Are we going to also take away their cars? Gun control advocates find it much easier to conjure up new laws without protections than to fine-tune laws already on the books. They find that times of national grieving present an opportunity to push new measures through Congress.
We worry that red flag laws could actually increase instances of suicide. One of us, Nikki Goeser, <a href="https://crimeresearch.org/2021/04/nikki-goesers-testimony-on-gun-control-and-red-flag-laws-before-the-us-senate-judiciary-subcommittee-on-the-constitution/">watched as a stalker murdered her husband in front of her.</a> As anyone would understand, that loss left her devastated. Despite her grief, however, she was not suicidal. But a well-meaning friend or relative might have raised a complaint, worrying that she was depressed and had a gun. With a stalker having just murdered her husband, taking away her ability to protect herself from stalkers would have left her feeling even more vulnerable.
Under Baker Act statutes, she would have had a chance to explain her concerns to the mental health care experts. If that didn’t work, she would have still had a hearing with a lawyer and been given the opportunity to explain her situation to the judge.
Simply talking to other people about your depression can be important in overcoming it. But with red flag laws in place, people may have been reluctant to discuss their mental state with others. Police officers also often experience work-related depression. They may bottle up their feelings for fear of losing their guns, and thus their jobs.
We don’t want a world where police make unannounced predawn raids or people lose their fundamental right to self-defense without a judicial hearing. For some, it’s a matter of life and death.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Nikki Goeser is the executive director for the <a href="http://crimeresearch.org/">Crime Prevention Research Center.</a>
Thomas Massie is a Republican member of the House who has represented Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since 2012 and is co-chairman of the Second Amendment Caucus.

Guns

Red Flag Laws And Unintended Consequences

Gun Control

School Shooting

Last week, President Biden gave a speech listing everyone and everything allegedly responsible for record high inflation. His list included corporate greed and price gouging, Vladimir Putin, and “ultra-MAGA” Republicans. The president said that his policies, and the nearly $7 trillion in spending he authorized, have nothing to do with inflation.
None of this holds up under scrutiny. While President Biden claims that corporations are ripping off Americans, the costs of their supplies have been increasing at a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/producer-price-index-march-2022-.html">record</a> rate. In reality, many companies that Biden claims are stiffing consumers have actually lost money because they don’t want to alienate their customers by raising prices too quickly.
Biden’s blame of the war in Ukraine for inflation is similarly untethered from the facts. As one look at the chart of inflation in the United States shows, inflation was rapidly approaching its current level <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/10/january-2022-cpi-inflation-rises-7point5percent-over-the-past-year-even-more-than-expected.html#:~:text=The%20consumer%20price%20index%20for%20January%2C%20which%20measures%20the%20costs,highest%20reading%20since%20February%201982.">before</a> Putin’s invasion began. Gas prices have also been rising steadily for the past year, undercutting Biden’s claim that “Putin’s price hike” is the reason Americans are paying more at the pump.
But perhaps no claim is as tenuous as Biden blaming Republicans for inflation. Biden declared that the GOP has “no plan” to combat inflation and said that the Democratic party’s economic policies have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/10/politics/biden-inflation-speech/index.html">helped</a> the situation, rather than making it worse.
This cannot logically be true. Trillions of dollars in federal spending over the past two years, coupled with a manufactured shutdown of the economy and misguided monetary policy on the part of the Federal Reserve, created today’s inflation crisis. And although both parties in Washington can be rightly criticized for green-lighting this spending, President Biden and the Democrats deserve the lion’s share of the blame. After all, their proposed “fix” for inflation is to double down and spend even more money, one of the approaches that got us here in the first place.
In March of 2021, Biden and his allies in Congress authorized a $2 trillion spending spree. While the left called this the “American Rescue Plan,” it didn’t rescue anything. The bill flooded the economy with wasteful federal spending, even as it became clear that inflationary pressures were beginning to heat up.
Biden then signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law in November that many experts <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-inflation-stimulus-biden-automobile-regulations-american-rescue-plan-11628447581">warned</a> would fuel inflation. It wouldn’t have stopped there if President Biden and Democrats were able to pass their multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” plan.
It isn’t just Republicans acknowledging that these policies created inflation. Even economists from Democratic presidential administrations, including Jason Furman and Larry Summers, are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-obama-economist-biden-inflation-argument-corporate-greed-2022-1">calling out</a> Biden for his lies about inflation.
It’s also ironic that while Biden criticizes Republicans for “not having a plan” to bring down inflation, he and his party are championing an additional $40 billion in taxpayer money for Ukraine. Not long ago, Americans would have been shocked by that much spending. This is in addition to the recent White House <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-says-fiscal-responsibility-is-one-of-the-values-of-his-enormous-5-8-trillion-budget-proposal">proposal</a> of a $5.8 trillion federal budget for 2023, a number that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
If President Biden were serious about combating inflation, he would be calling for immediate cuts in federal spending and a scaling back of government intervention in the economy. Instead, he wants to increase both – massively. Biden would rather blame corporate greed, Putin, and “ultra-MAGA” Republicans than take any meaningful action to address inflation.
Until President Biden and the Democrats can swallow their pride, get out of the way, and stop spending money we don&#8217;t have, Americans will continue to suffer and feel the sting of inflation.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Adam Brandon is the president of FreedomWorks and the author of “A Republic, Not a Democracy: How to Restore Sanity in America.”

Biden Needs To Take The Blame For Inflation

COVID-19

Inflation

In recent weeks, the power supply industry and grid operators have issued warnings that the American electric grid may be in for a difficult summer and customers across the country face the possibility of rolling blackouts or power rationing.
The situation is particularly worrisome in California, where CAISO, the regional market that coordinates power supply for the state, had blackouts during periods of high demand late in the summer of 2020. Leading utilities in the state say that they are likely to need to fall back on natural gas to meet generation needs this year.
Texas also faced blackouts last year as a result of Winter Storm Uri, which brought icy conditions and near-zero temperatures to the Lone Star State, knocking down powerlines and preventing the delivery of needed natural gas supplies.
But concerns about electric grid reliability are not limited to the West. According to the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/blackouts-generac-electric-grid-texas-california-biden-decarbonize-renewables-climate-11631043410">North American Electric Reliability Corporation</a>, as generation has shifted to intermittent resources that are dependent upon weather conditions, America’s power generation has become “sensitive to extreme, widespread, and long duration temperatures as well as wind and solar droughts.” Reserve margins, or the amount of power available in excess of demand, have been shrinking across the country as retirements of existing resources accelerate, investments in traditionally reliable resources decline, and renewable installations increase.
NYISO, the organization charged with maintaining power system reliability for the State of New York, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-power-grid-is-increasingly-unreliable-11645196772">has warned</a> that a sustained 98-degree heat wave could drive up energy demand enough to cause a shortfall for New York City as early as next year, likely forcing NYISO to call for rolling blackouts for the first time.
So, is America’s electric grid headed for imminent reliability challenges? The answer depends on how policymakers and regulators address these very real and urgent concerns.
For the past 20 years competitive power markets have proven that we are capable of supplying reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean power to millions of Americans. In fact, a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c60a6ff809d8e61723abdd4/t/619536b70740600220a236d0/1637168824983/ECC-Assessment+of+Emissions_11182021.pdf">recent study conducted by Drs. Josh Rhodes and Lynn Kiesling</a> found that regions where competitive power markets operate have enjoyed significant cost savings and reduced emissions across their footprint – greater than in traditional, vertically integrated portions of the country.
PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest competitive power market, boasts an annual savings for customers of up to $4 billion annually, and CO2 emissions dropped by more than a third from 2005 to 2020. How PJM is able to deliver reliable power at the least cost for consumers – while also driving down emissions – is no mystery. Competition among power providers has driven innovation and investment in highly efficient technologies.
While competition in these markets is key to reliable, affordable, and clean power, so too is the market-driven approach to the resources that fuel that power. As the Shale Revolution swept across the United States, lower natural gas prices drove many coal-fired generation facilities to retire. In this case, the market picked the winning fuel—investing in reliable, affordable, cleaner-burning natural gas, and the environment and economy benefited from those market signals.
As renewables and other zero emissions resources proliferate across the country with the installation of new wind farms, solar arrays, and battery storage, the price of renewable energy will continue to drop. And while renewables will help solve challenges associated with cost and emissions, their inherent intermittency leaves us vulnerable to reliability issues. In effect, the U.S. is moving toward two distinct systems: one that leverages zero emissions resources and is largely the result of state and federal policies, and another backup system that actually provides the reliability the grid needs through natural gas (and even coal). Policies that seek to advance intermittent zero emission resources are in effect requiring a duplicative set of systems to separately address emissions and reliability.
Until battery storage is available at sufficient scale to smooth over the natural ebbs and flows of intermittent generation, we will need natural gas to remain part of the vital fuel mix. The latest Energy Information Administration data show that not only is demand for natural gas not declining, it’s hitting new records. Thanks to extreme cold and the retirement of coal generation, natural gas consumption in the power sector averaged <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=52379">31.6 billion cubic feet per day</a> in January 2022. Natural gas generation is affordable to build and can be switched on quickly to cover increased demand (unlike firm baseload resources like coal or nuclear), then ramped down when renewable resources are once again able to handle demand. New builds could include carbon capture technology to further reduce emissions, and older facilities could be retrofitted.
But making that scenario possible tomorrow requires new investments today. On the production side, some gas producers are saying that without increased pipeline capacity, it may be difficult for them to increase natural gas supply, even as prices rise and they are incentivized to do so. Meanwhile, America’s electricity demand is only expected to increase. As appliances and cars increasingly switch to electricity, demand will continue its upward trajectory. Renewable power generation will increase, too, but likely not at the rate of demand and due to its intermittency, it takes numerous megawatts of renewable capacity to replace one megawatt of thermal capacity. Battery storage is one area of innovation that can address intermittency, but there again, storage levels are likely to fall short of what’s needed. And without the infrastructure to deliver natural gas from where it’s produced to where it’s needed, reliability could be in real jeopardy.
For energy consumers, reliability is key. In our day-to-day lives, it ensures the lights stay on and we remain connected to coworkers, friends, and family. In extreme weather events, it can mean the difference between life and death. So, as we look to a low-carbon future, it is important not to abandon investments in the resources that can deliver reliable power as the energy transition progresses. Regulators should look to policies that strengthen the grid and invest in reliability.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Todd Snitchler is the president and CEO of the <a href="https://epsa.org/">Electric Power Supply Association</a>, which represents competitive power suppliers.

Natural gas

Reliable Power During The Energy Transition Requires Natural Gas

Gasoline

In mainland China and Hong Kong, Easter was a private affair again this year for the tens of millions of Christians who would normally attend church services. All churches, temples, and mosques in mainland China have been locked down since COVID began more than two years ago, meaning that Christians and other believers haven’t been able to gather to celebrate religious holidays since 2019.
Hong Kong authorities also re-imposed pandemic lockdowns from early January until this week amid China’s worst COVID outbreak in two years. Many of Hong Kong’s Christian churches offered online Easter services that parishioners and other believers could watch virtually. Still, the future of those alternatives is now in doubt as Beijing continues to tighten its grip over the once semi-autonomous city.
Under President Xi Jinping, all religions have faced persecution. So far, international condemnation has mainly focused on the more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims forced into labor camps, which Beijing cynically calls “vocational training centers” in the country’s western region.
But Chinese Christians also have faced varied forms of suppression during Xi’s time in power. Catholic churches refusing to comply with state mandates <a href="https://bitterwinter.org/xi-jinping-portraits-replace-catholic-symbols/">have been torn down or had their crosses removed</a>, while images of Christ have been replaced with posters of Xi.
The Chinese government controls religious organizations by forcing them to register and submit to the leadership of approved “patriotic religious entities” that follow national guidelines, including teaching that loyalty to the country and communism are integral to their faiths. Those who refuse must operate underground, subject to government punishment.
For several years, the Christian church in Hong Kong was largely spared. But recent actions taken against Hong Kong’s Christian churches are chipping away at the religious freedom the city has enjoyed since the British established it as a colony in the early 1840s.
Reverend L., a visitor to the U.S. from Hong Kong who requested anonymity to speak to RealClearPolitics, said the Chinese government for more than 20 years has been trying to infiltrate and curtail the independence of Hong Kong churches because of their integral place in the city’s society and influence over young minds.
Roughly 60% of schools in Hong Kong are run by Christians – Catholics and Protestants – even though the government fully funds them, a vestige of the British colonial era.
“It was great because Hong Kong citizens could avoid the high tuition fees [for high-quality education], but now it’s actually bad for the church because the CCP is taking advantage of that and tries to control the church by controlling Christian schools,” Rev. L. told RCP. “Once they control Christian schools, they could basically control the church pretty easily.”
The CCP has already successfully compromised some of the principals and administrators of these schools by “wining and dining” them, the pastor said, and persuading church members to join the CCP. Meanwhile, the party is indoctrinating young priests in the Philippines and sending them to Hong Kong to replace aging clergy.
The Hong Kong government is also starting to take steps to curtail Internet freedom. On the mainland, a new law, imposed March 1, makes it illegal to share religious content online without government permission. While Hong Kong authorities haven’t gone that far, its leaders did shut down a handful of websites across the territory devoted to the 2019 citizen uprising against new laws ceding more of their autonomy to Beijing.
Tom Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, based in Washington, D.C., said Xi’s ultimate goal is “Sinicization,” which is the absorption of any autonomous Chinese entities – in this case, religious organizations – into the communist apparatus.
“The reasons are not difficult to discern,” Farr tells RCP. “Despots throughout history, and certainly the totalitarians of the 20th and 21st centuries, have understood then, and understand today, that they will not retain power if substantial numbers of their citizens are faithful to an authority greater than the party and the state.”
Great Britain handed control of Hong Kong back to China nearly 25 years ago, triggering a massive emigration as residents feared an erosion of civil rights. China agreed to accept some conditions, including allowing Hong Kong to continue its “one-country, two systems” form of government for 50 years. Hong Kong, along with Taiwan, maintains its own financial, legal, and legislative operations independent from the mainland. But Xi has vowed to reunify both Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Xi and the CCP view Christians&#8217; strong institutional presence in Hong Kong as a significant hurdle to their goal of reunification. China’s Christians number more than 100 million (out of a population of 1.4 billion), making them the country’s largest religious minority. In Hong Kong, Rev. L. estimates there are approximately 650,000 Christians out of a population of 7.4 million. Despite their minority status, Christians have played an outsized role in resisting the CCP’s reunification efforts.
Christians were instrumental in helping organize the 2019 uprising, when millions of Hong Kong residents took to the streets to protest a proposed extradition law allowing Chinese leaders to arrest dissidents and hand them over to mainland government officials for prosecution. Moreover, many of the protesters attended Christian schools. Pastors and priests also held prayer vigils outside the legislature’s offices and often stood between protesters and police to prevent violent clashes. The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Christian Council, along with leaders from the leading Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist organizations, openly called for the government to respect the rights of citizens to march and assemble legally.
As Hong Kong police escalated the use of force against protesters, Roy Chan, a local preacher, began a hunger strike to call for withdrawal of the extradition bill, among other pro-democracy goals. When police didn’t tamp down the violence, Chan organized a team of pastors, social workers, and other volunteers to stand between advancing riot police and protesters in an attempt to mediate.
In the wake of the protests, China passed a wide-ranging “national security law” for Hong Kong that makes it easier to punish protesters and reduces the city’s autonomy. The law criminalizes any act of subversion, secession, collusion with foreign or external forces, and terrorism, defined as the use of violence or intimidation against people.
Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong billionaire who owns an opposition newspaper, was prosecuted under the new law and is currently serving a 14-month jail sentence for unauthorized assembly for his role in the 2019 protests.
Christian clergy faced less straightforward but still severe punishments for their involvement in the protests. In October, Chan testified to Congress that HSBC, the largest bank in Hong Kong, in 2020 had frozen his accounts and his wife’s, on order from the Hong Kong government. The couple and their children fled to the United Kingdom to escape prosecution.
The day after their departure, Hong Kong police accused the couple of money laundering and fraud and arrested the church’s accounting staff.
“It’s a pity that the Hong Kong government has acted similarly to the Chinese Communist party, using economic crimes to suppress dissidents,” Chan told the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bipartisan caucus within the House of Representatives created to promote and defend human rights around the globe.
“As of today, the religious freedom in Hong Kong is being suppressed severely,” Chan added. “Quite a number of pastors who support human rights and freedoms are moving to the UK from Hong Kong due to intimidations that they faced and different political concerns.”
Religious freedom advocates in the U.S. have also recently sounded the alarm over a meeting, held at Beijing’s insistence, between Hong Kong’s Bishop-elect Stephen Chow and 15 senior Catholic priests with the mainland’s state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, in a <a href="https://www.hudson.org/research/17673-china-now-threatens-religious-freedom-in-hong-kong">recent essay</a> called the session “unprecedented,” recounting that while Chinese government officials watched on Zoom, the Hong Kong bishop and priests “were lectured on the fine points of President Xi’s religious policy of ‘Sinicization.’”
“While no directives were issued, priests knowledgeable about the unprecedented conclave reported that Xi was the elephant in the room” and viewed it as “just the first step in what the CCP calls their ‘reeducation,’” Shea wrote. “The clear takeaway was that Hong Kong’s churches, historically independent of the CCP, are having their wings clipped.”
In January, Tak Kung Pao, the Chinese government’s newspaper in Hong Kong, published several articles “angrily blaming the Christian schools for nurturing the movement against the party’s oppressive measures,” Shea noted, adding that all Hong Kong schools are legally required to provide the CCP’s “national security education” with more drastic educational changes “sure to follow.”
Some religious freedom advocates are placing partial blame for Beijing’s encroachment on the Vatican for not resisting China more vigorously. Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, hails from Argentina, which has a strong socialist government and has struck deals with Beijing that legitimize the “patriotic church.”
In 2020, Francis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/world/europe/vatican-china-bishops.html">agreed with Beijing</a> that in exchange for China formally recognizing the pope’s authority within the church, the Vatican, in turn, would acquiesce to the legitimacy of bishops Beijing had previously appointed. To the dismay of critics, details of the agreement remain largely confidential. (Francis has also refused to meet with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, a move that would anger Beijing.)
Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to the Vatican in an attempt to sink the deal over human rights and religious liberty concerns but was unsuccessful. The pope lifted an ex-communication of Chinese Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu just two years earlier as a precondition for a prior agreement. After his appointment to head the Mindong diocese, he led 33 diocesan priests to a “formation course” at the Central Institute of Socialism with the CCP’s local United Front, which mainly focuses on suppressing ethnic and religious groups.
Francis’ negotiations with the CCP stand in stark contrast with Pope John Paul II, a former bishop from Poland whose steadfastness helped do away with the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s. Through a series of speeches, John Paul II expressed moral umbrage at the Soviet Union’s efforts to wipe out religion and replace it with state atheism.
When Pope Francis is working with the CCP, it becomes “very, very difficult for priests in Hong Kong to voice any opposition against registration with the government because it sounds like Pope Francis has given implicit approval,” Rev. L. said.
Dissent from Cardinal Joseph Zen, Hong Kong’s widely revered bishop emeritus, prompted CCP threats earlier this year. <a href="http://www.takungpao.com/news/232109/2022/0127/681155.html">Ta Kung Pao accused him</a> of abusing his position to “disrupt Hong Kong” and threatened him with prosecution under the national security law.
With Beijing appearing increasingly emboldened, religious freedom advocates in the U.S. are urging the Biden administration and other international leaders to pressure Xi to stop threatening the church’s independence in Hong Kong.
Instead, Farr said, China is seeing weakness in the U.S. and complicity on the part of the Vatican.
“While the Vatican is not a ‘great power’ like the U.S., it has traditionally been the most effective and powerful moral voice in the international community,” he said. “Unfortunately, its facilitation of the savage designs of Xi Jinping, in the form of its disgraceful accord with his regime and its failure to stand with courageous Catholics like Jimmy Lai and Cardinal Zen, has dramatically reduced the Vatican’s moral influence in the world.”
And, Farr warns, Xi’s ambitions could easily spill over to Taiwan if China decides to emulate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is a dangerous moment for democracy, religious freedom, and peace in China and the region,” he said. “American weakness is a serious problem.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics&#8217; White House/national political correspondent.

Candle

Red Flags For Faith-Based Liberty In Hong Kong

China

Chinese Communist Party

Christianity

Freedom of Religion

Hong Kong

Xi Jinping

Last year, Philadelphia’s city council passed an ordinance called “<a href="https://phila.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5007830&amp;GUID=065348E0-F4F6-4B6A-A088-DFF5358E73CD&amp;Options=ID%7CText%7C&amp;Search=210636">Achieving Driving Equality</a>.” The bill, signed into law in October and going into effect earlier this month, prohibits the Philadelphia Police Department from stopping drivers who are violating certain aspects of the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code. Unfortunately, the ordinance ignores common sense, stops the police department from enforcing the duly enacted laws of Pennsylvania, and disregards established precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court. In short, the city has joined Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in fostering disorder and lawlessness in the City of Brotherly Love.
To understand the ordinance, it’s important to review why vehicle codes exist. In Pennsylvania, drivers must register their cars and get them <a href="https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/75/00.047.003.000..HTM">inspected regularly</a>. Drivers must display their license plates on their cars so they can be identified, maintain working lights, and operate vehicles with bumpers. Nobody wants a defective car with no lights and no identification crashing through the streets of Philadelphia. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/806/">unanimously held that if police observe an actual vehicle code violation</a>, they can stop the driver, even if the police are using the stop to check for other criminal conduct as well. Of course, the police are not allowed to pull someone over based solely on their race, age, or other protected status.
Under the newly enacted ordinance, however, the city forbids the police from stopping a vehicle for an expired registration; for a light being out on a vehicle; for a license plate not being secured in the regular position on the back of a car; for operating without valid inspection; for a bumper violation; for having material that obstructs views out of the car from the front, side, or rear windows; and for other violations. Philadelphia’s Democratic-majority city council, Mayor Jim Kenney, and the public defender’s office, which helped craft the legislation, stated that <a href="https://billypenn.com/2022/03/03/philly-becomes-the-first-big-u-s-city-with-a-law-banning-minor-traffic-stops/">the bill’s purpose</a> was to stop an allegedly disproportionate number of minority drivers from being pulled over for such infractions. Now, Philadelphia is <a href="https://billypenn.com/2022/03/03/philly-becomes-the-first-big-u-s-city-with-a-law-banning-minor-traffic-stops/">the first major city</a> in the United States to adopt a blanket ban on such traffic stops.
It’s apparent that none of Philadelphia’s officials have bothered to take a statistics course. They fail to acknowledge that there may in fact be more minority drivers who are violating these vehicle laws in Philadelphia than non-minority drivers. If that is the case, then the police are simply pulling over the people who are violating the law, regardless of race. In a famous and controversial study of driving habits on a major highway in New Jersey, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/nyregion/study-suggests-racial-gap-in-speeding-in-new-jersey.html">the Justice Department found</a> that minority drivers were speeding much more often than white drivers, possibly explaining why the police were issuing more speeding tickets to those minority drivers.
Besides this major theoretical flaw, the novel Philadelphia bill may have disastrous and long-lasting practical consequences for safety in an ever-more-violent city. Consider just a few scenarios.
A Philadelphia police officer sees a battered old SUV driving without an inspection sticker. In San Diego, a police officer would stop the car and check it for safety. But in Philadelphia, under the Achieving Driving Equality bill, the police officer has to let the SUV keep going. It turns out that the SUV didn’t have an inspection sticker because it was riding on bald tires and had defective brakes – it had failed inspection. Two days later, the driver of the SUV tries to slam on his brakes when three little kids run across an intersection on Cobbs Creek Parkway. The brakes fail, the SUV hurtles through the intersection, and three children are dead.
Another scenario: a Philadelphia cop sees a dark-colored Ford Fusion operating without a license plate on the rear bumper because the bumper is missing. Instead, the car has a temporary tag tucked into the back window. In Dallas, the police would pull the car over. Under Philadelphia’s new law, the police are not allowed to conduct a traffic stop, identify and cite the driver, and fix the violation. Two days later, police are reviewing video from a drive-by shooting in North Philadelphia with what looks like the same car carrying the shooters. But there is no visible license plate in the video to check and see to whom the car is registered, and the traffic stop to identify who was driving the car never happened. Another Philadelphia homicide goes unsolved.
More unnerving scenarios: a Philadelphia detective is staking out a notorious drug house, known for sending kilos of fentanyl-laced heroin to the infamous streets of Philly’s Kensington neighborhood. The detective sees a male with three prior convictions for drug trafficking jump into a car in front of the house, carrying two duffle bags of what is likely to be drugs. The car isn’t displaying any registration. In New York City, a detective would pull the car over for the registration violation and try to develop probable cause to search the bags. In Philadelphia, the detective has to watch the drug dealer and the drugs disappear.
Meanwhile, in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia, a man with an open arrest warrant for a homicide gets into his girlfriend’s car late one night. He’s carrying a stolen gun, the one used in the homicide. Unknown to him, the car he is driving has a broken taillight. He passes four police cars as he drives from West Philly through Center City and then up to North Philadelphia, where he ditches the gun with a friend. In Miami, he would have been stopped for the taillight violation, then arrested for the homicide, and the gun from the homicide would have been recovered. In Philadelphia, the murderer gets to drive blissfully by the Philadelphia police cruisers. The cycle of violence continues for another night.
Philadelphia’s politicians may have had good intentions when they passed the Achieving Driving Equality bill, but the new measure rests on flawed statistical assumptions. More important, the ordinance is stripping the police of a vital law enforcement tool, one that has passed muster at the Supreme Court. Aided and abetted by the public defender’s office, the city council has decided to hobble police just as Philadelphia is experiencing <a href="https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2022/03/11/philadelphia-100-homicides-on-pace-record-gun-violence/">a record-breaking number of homicides, with dead bodies continuing to stack up every day</a>. The new law is intended to shield minorities from receiving traffic citations, but these same minority citizens are overwhelmingly the victims of the deadly lawlessness currently menacing the city – a lawlessness that this wrongheaded legislation will only worsen.
Sometimes, the best way to get out of a hole is to put down the shovel. City council and Mayor Kenney, are you listening?
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/thomas-hogan_1811">Tom Hogan</a> has served as a federal prosecutor, local prosecutor, and elected district attorney. He currently is in private practice.

City Of Philadelphia Hobbles Police With Dangerous New Ordinance

Philadelphia

Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk made headlines when he packed up Tesla and brought the electric carmaker to Austin. Single mom Bianca King got less attention when she completed her own move from California to Texas after losing her project manager position in the aerospace industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Musk announced his Texas arrival with a Tesla Gigafactory. King, who grew up in El Paso, took a quieter approach. She bought a house in Lakeway near Austin and opened a home-based <a href="https://ij.org/case/texas-home-daycare/">babysitting service</a>. Both entrepreneurs were following their dreams, but the parallels ended in summer 2021 when King received a violation notice from the local Zoning and Planning Commission.
Although she had state approval for her business and zero complaints about the quality of care, she lacked a city permit to operate at home. She also lacked Tesla resources to defend herself. King watches only two to four children at a time — in addition to her own son and daughter — so her profit margins are thin.
Despite her best efforts to meet regulatory demands, Lakeway voted to kill her enterprise in November and rejected her appeal in February. The case is not an isolated incident. Texas regulators routinely stifle small businesses.
Auto mechanic Azael Sepulveda learned the hard way in summer 2021, when he bought a shop in his hometown of Pasadena near Houston. Before he could repair his first car at the new location, zoning officials ordered him to close.
The city <a href="https://ij.org/case/texas-mechanic/">told</a> Sepulveda that his garage needed 28 parking spaces — much more than the existing five — even though he runs a one-man operation and never would have 28 cars on his lot. Making the change would cost Sepulveda tens of thousands of dollars, which he does not have.
Regulatory demands were just as outrageous for brothers Adonai and Anubis Avalos when they tried to expand their food truck operation to South Padre Island. The city has empowered local restaurant owners to veto any food truck competition, so the brothers were <a href="https://ij.org/case/south-padre-island-food-trucks/">out of luck</a>.
The persecution of small-business owners is not new. Undercover officers entered a Dallas salon in 1997 and <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0109/Can-Texas-force-hair-braiders-to-jump-through-hoops-Nope-says-judge">arrested</a> Isis Brantley for doing African-style hair braiding without a cosmetology license. More recently, regulators went after eyebrow threaders like Austin salon owner Ash Patel. Big industry players often get the red carpet treatment in Texas, but small-business owners get red tape instead.
Rather than accept the abuse, King and Sepulveda fought back with recent lawsuits — and Sepulveda won the right to repair cars at his shop while his case proceeds. The Avalos brothers have an older <a href="https://ij.org/case/south-padre-island-food-trucks/">case</a> pending, while the braiders and threaders scored legal victories years ago. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, has represented all of these entrepreneurs.
As the Texas Supreme Court ruled in the threading case, <a href="https://ij.org/press-release/texas-supreme-court-strikes-down-useless-eyebrow-threading-license/">Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation</a>, public agencies violate the Constitution when they stop people from earning a living without good reasons. Yet regulators continue to try.
“<a href="https://ij.org/report/barriers-to-business/">Barriers to Business</a>,” a new report from the Institute for Justice, provides a glimpse at how bad things have gotten. The study looks at the startup process for five common business types in 20 U.S. cities, including San Antonio.
The process to start a San Antonio restaurant involves 59 steps. Applicants must fill out 14 forms, complete eight in-person activities, interact with seven agencies and pay 12 fees totaling $2,477. Opening a San Antonio barbershop is not much easier. The 58-step process involves 17 forms, nine in-person activities, six different agencies and 14 fees totaling $1,813.
Regardless of the business type, the rules are confusing and difficult to navigate. Entrepreneurs want to comply, but they don’t always know how. King learned about the need for a “home occupation permit” in Lakeway only after the zoning police threatened her with fines.
Texas can do better. Musk received a warm welcome, but the real VIPs in the Lone Star State are the small-business owners who hold the economy together. They don’t need special treatment, just freedom to work.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Erica Smith Ewing is a senior attorney and Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia.
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Lego

Regulators Who Shut Down Texas Day Care Need A Timeout

Business

Texas

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine marks the end of the West’s Era of Illusions. It was an era in which Western elites obsessed about solving climate change because the climate crisis was far more dangerous than issues of war and peace and the stability of the international system. They even convinced themselves that climate change causes war, so climate change policy could double as national security policy; and, for many years, the annual round of kumbaya UN climate talks was the apogee of international relations.
In a BBC World Service <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/watch-john-kerry-complains-ukraine-is-diverting-attention-from-climate-change?utm_source=Daily%20on%20Energy%20022422_02/24/2022&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=WEX_Daily%20on%20Energy&amp;rid=6549&amp;env=8c6b6a305204846567f5e54846671d85291169feb4a568e94747989508a039c0">interview</a>, presidential climate envoy John Kerry expressed concern about the amount of greenhouse gas being emitted from the war in Ukraine. Kerry was just getting warmed up with a string of platitudes that show him as a deluded climate relic, unable to come to terms with the reality that Putin has imposed on the world. “Equally importantly,” Kerry complained, “you’re going to lose people’s focus,” as if the first invasion of a sovereign European country since the Second World War is an annoying distraction. Hopefully, Kerry continued, Putin would realize that Russia’s land is thawing, and the people of Russia are at risk.
Kerry concluded with an expression of pure self-deception, saying he hopes Putin “will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.” Stay on track? Russia has never hidden its intention to avoid cutting its emissions. Russia’s second <a href="https://twitter.com/DByers21/status/1496256916871389189?s=20&amp;t=48GFjf1LTwlq-zsDRH7v1w">Nationally Determined Contribution</a>, submitted in November 2020 under the Paris climate agreement, is to limit its 2030 emissions to “no more than 70% of 1990 levels.” The document is careful to avoid pledging to cut or reduce emissions. The 1990 baseline year was the last one before the collapse of the highly inefficient and heavily polluting centrally planned Soviet economy. Thus, the 70% limit actually enables Russia to increase its emissions by 34% – and that’s before taking account of any changes in forestry and land use that would allow Russia to claim credit for negative emissions.
Despite Kerry’s claim about the thawing of their frozen north, Russians’ indifference to climate change predates Putin’s rise to power. During preparation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) first assessment report in 1990, Soviet scientists argued that warming might be beneficial at northern latitudes. Yuri Izrael, the Soviet academician and chair of the IPCC’s working group examining potential impacts of global warming, emphasized the doubt and uncertainty of climate change and disputed claims that it would be harmful.
At a 2005 conference on avoiding dangerous climate change organized by Britain during its G-8 presidency, Putin’s former economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, challenged the premise of the conference. “Anyone who is frightened about the prospect of global warming is welcome to come and live in Siberia,” Illarionov told a journalist.
Indeed, a strong case can be made that Russian climate scientists have a better understanding of climate science and the likely impact of rising levels of carbon dioxide on global temperatures than their colleagues in the West. In <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20160202/104399/HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-ChristyJ-20160202.pdf">testimony</a> to Congress in 2016, John Christy, the Alabama state climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, compared 102 climate-model simulations against observed global temperature of the mid-troposphere from satellites and balloons (the troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere, up to a height of around 33,000 feet). On average, the models warmed the atmosphere at a rate two-and-a-half times faster than what happened in the real world. The only model that produced simulations close to observations was the Russian INM-CM4 climate model. Small wonder Russians are disinclined to believe there’s a climate crisis.
When it comes to the science of climate change, there can be few people quite as gullible and simpleminded as John Kerry. “I can remember from when I was in high school and college, some aspects of science or physics can be tough – chemistry. But this is not tough,” Kerry <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/02/221704.htm">told</a> an audience of school children in Indonesia in 2014, when he was secretary of state. “This is simple. Kids at the earliest age can understand this.” The science was “absolutely certain,” Kerry claimed. “Let me give you an example. When an apple separates from a tree, it falls to the ground.” Contrast Kerry’s simplistic analogy with this statement in the IPCC’s third assessment report: “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible,” the IPCC <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf">said</a> in 2001, before it became deeply politicized as it is now.
There is, however, one area where Kerry and Putin are likely to find themselves in full agreement. Two years ago, at a business conference in Moscow, the Russian president <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/russias-putin-says-shale-oil-technologies-are-barbaric.html">denounced</a> fracking as “barbaric,” claiming that fracking technologies “destroy the environment.” A January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian activities in U.S. elections <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf">noted</a> that RT, the Russian state-owned news channel, ran anti-fracking programming that highlighted the alleged environmental and public health harms of the practice. “This is likely reflective of the Russian Government’s concern about the impact of fracking and US natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazprom’s [the Russian state-owned energy company] profitability,” the assessment concluded.
In June 2014, Kerry’s predecessor as secretary of state complained about the impact of Russian money on financing “astroturf” environmental campaigns. “We were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media. We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia,” Hillary Clinton <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/10/clinton-blames-russians-anti-fracking-groups/">said</a>.
Putin understands the importance of energy as an essential component of American strategic power. John Kerry does not. That is why, to borrow from Lenin, Kerry acts as Putin’s useful climate idiot. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine plunges the world into its gravest emergency since the Cuban missile crisis sixty years ago. It puts into perspective the folly of those, like Kerry, who confuse imaginary crises with real ones.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Rupert Darwall is the author of <a href="https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/green-tyranny-2/">Green Tyranny</a>.
Rupert Darwall is a senior fellow at RealClearFoundation, researching issues from international climate agreements to the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals in corporate governance. He has also written extensively for publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Spectator, Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Daily Telegraph.

John Kerry

John Kerry: Putin’s Useful Climate Idiot

Climate Change

Russia

The war in Ukraine has taught everyone a valuable lesson: any politician who argues against unleashing our country’s oil and natural gas industry does not grasp our geopolitical challenges.
Now, as a madman forces an invasion and shatters peace in Europe, American energy independence is an absolute must. Senator Josh Hawley’s “<a href="https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-introduce-bill-restoring-american-energy-production-ending-dependence-foreign-adversaries">American Energy Independence Act of 2022</a>” represents an important step in the right direction.
Even before Putin’s invasion, America’s working families were paying nearly <a href="https://gasprices.aaa.com/">30 percent more</a> at the pump than last year. A gallon of gas is more than 92 cents higher year over year, meaning a 20-gallon fill up now costs more than $18 dollars more. Adding insult to injury, part of that cost might just be making Vladimir Putin a little richer since the United States <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/02/21/russia-is-a-major-supplier-of-oil-to-the-us/?sh=827a418c35a8">imported nearly 7 percent</a> of all its oil from Russia in 2021. This terrible arrangement <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/6299114737001#sp=show-clips">prompted a Ukrainian lawmaker</a> to say Russian oil and natural gas “is full of Ukrainian blood.”
Here’s another inconvenient truth: the United States was energy independent before Joe Biden took office. Little more than a year later, we are not – and we are paying the price.
One his first day in office, the President cancelled the Keystone pipeline, putting 11,000 Americans out of work. In the weeks and months that followed, the Biden Administration shut down public lands to oil and gas exploration on public lands and is still going to court to stop more American energy. President Biden, and many who stand with him, have delivered what can only be described as an “America Last” energy policy, a major driver behind the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-inflation-consumer-price-index-january-2022-11644452274">highest inflation</a> in 40 years.
The loss of American energy independence has real consequences, and we need a U-turn now.
This used to be a bipartisan principle. For decades, Republican and Democratic presidents bemoaned our dependence on foreign powers for our energy. When our country finally achieved energy independence, gas was affordable, and we were able to withstand price shocks even as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-attacks-iran-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-probe-of-saudi-oil-attack-shows-it-came-from-north-report-idUSKBN1YN299">instability took place</a> across the globe.
It’s a sad situation that we need a bill to demand the energy independence that for decades nearly everyone agreed was critical. However, Senator Hawley’s bill is necessary because too many leaders in Washington believe a green agenda is more important.
How important? In an interview that aired the same day Putin sent his armies into the Ukraine, Biden’s <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/25/john-kerry-hopes-putin-will-focus-on-climate-change/">Climate Czar John Kerry</a> said, “And so I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.” So, as a madman was starting a war with its neighbor, John Kerry was more worried about the carbon footprint.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki next took the position that we could get rid of our foreign energy dependence by <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/psaki-pushes-renewable-energy-stop-dependence-foreign-oil-instead-of-increasing-us-production">doubling down on solar panel and windmills</a>. Sadly, this is the very same road Germany <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html">tried to walk</a> for the last decade before learning the hard way that relying on unreliable energy sources only forces more dependence on Russia. Germany was so reliant that they pushed for a new pipeline from Russia to their shores even as Putin massed soldiers at the Ukrainian border.
Fun fact: Who was it that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57180674">lifted sanctions</a> on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and then <a href="https://rollcall.com/2022/01/13/senate-democrats-back-biden-reject-cruzs-nord-stream-sanctions-bill/">lobbied Senators to vote against reimposing them</a> just over a month ago? The Biden Administration. Why President Biden cancelled a pipeline at home while fighting to get them approved for Russia is a very important question. Russian oil and natural gas are no “cleaner” than American, but the ensuing revenue flows into the Kremlin rather than support good-paying jobs here at home.
American energy independence not only delivers more affordable and reliable energy to our families, but it also strengthens our position in an increasingly unstable world. The time to reestablish our energy independence is now.
Kudos to Senator Hawley for not only recognizing that principle but taking meaningful action on it.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Larry Behrens is the Communications Director for Power The Future, a non-profit that advocates for America’s energy workers. You can email him at: <a href="mailto:larry@powerthefuture.com">larry@powerthefuture.com</a>

American ‘Energy Independence’ Should Be Really Simple

Ukraine

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been unable to advance a top-down, government takeover of our nation’s health care system, so like-minded California lawmakers attempted a state version that would have ended private health insurance, forced Medicare participants into a new experimental system, and put the government in charge of Californian’s health care. Fortunately for California health care consumers, the proposal—called CalCare—<a href="https://www.kron4.com/news/california/bill-to-create-universal-health-care-system-in-california-fails/">failed to secure enough votes</a>, sending single-payer advocates back to square one.
This should be a wake-up call for Californians who cherish health care freedom and choice. Had CalCare passed, Californians would have seen a dramatic rise in their cost-of-living, increased state deficits and critical healthcare wait times, and exacerbated doctor shortages.
The current California <a href="https://ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf">state budget</a> proposal for the fiscal year 2022 is $286 billion. A 2017 single-payer proposal similar to CalCare had an estimated $400 billion price tag, more than the entire state budget.
To pay for CalCare, supporters had proposed the <a href="https://twitter.com/CalTax/status/1479152853591543810?s=20">largest</a> tax increase in California history, roughly doubling taxes and taking another $12,250 from every state household, <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/california-health-care-tax-proposal/">according</a> to the Tax Foundation.
This tax hike plan included a new graduated payroll tax system with the top rate kicking in for employees with only $49,990 of income, a gross receipts tax on businesses, and additional surtaxes on income over $149,509.
While this would have been a massive tax increase on the middle class, it was only <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/california-health-care-tax-proposal/">expected</a> to bring in an additional $163 billion per year, billions short of the funds needed for the new program.
What would Californians get for paying these exorbitant taxes? Not better health care.
Assembly Republican Leader Marie Waldron <a href="https://www.sandiegonewsdesk.com/2022/01/assembly-leader-waldron-calls-out-california-government-takeover-of-healthcare/">said</a> she looked forward to the CalCare debate and “how much taxes will increase on the middle class, how many people will be kicked off their current health care plan, what Democrats will say to the seniors whose Medicare funds will be raided, how long wait times will be, the extent to which bureaucrats will ration care and how many hospitals will close.
“I look forward to hearing Democrats explain how they plan to successfully take over more than 10 percent of the state’s economy when in the last decade they’ve proven themselves incapable of simple things like <a href="https://assembly.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=98b5dbaba95f9c1b87e48a252&amp;id=ea9683105a&amp;e=7921ac7bbf">building a railroad</a>, <a href="https://assembly.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=98b5dbaba95f9c1b87e48a252&amp;id=3ddecf5e78&amp;e=7921ac7bbf">providing clean drinking water</a>, <a href="https://calmatters.org/environment/2020/08/california-2020-rolling-blackouts-explainer/">keeping the lights on</a> and <a href="https://assembly.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=98b5dbaba95f9c1b87e48a252&amp;id=e0d7d90b8a&amp;e=7921ac7bbf">filling potholes</a>.”
The editors of the <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2022/01/09/california-state-government-isnt-competent-enough-to-run-health-care/">Orange County Register</a> agreed. “It’d be one thing for the state of California to consider such a sweeping endeavor with a consistent track record of immense success, transparency, and efficiency,” they wrote in a recent editorial.
“It’s another when the state can’t figure out the basics of state government. Health care, obviously, is very important. It is often literally a matter of life and death. . . This isn’t a ban on plastic straws we’re talking about.”
Steep cost-of-living increase due to the rising taxes as well as pay cuts that medical practitioners could have expected under a single-payer system would have increased California’s <a href="https://calmatters.org/projects/californias-worsening-physician-shortage-doctors/">doctor shortage</a>. Even the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/upshot/medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders-cost-estimates.html?mtrref=undefined&amp;gwh=33FD0F06D75C934F0798ED667043E782&amp;gwt=pay&amp;assetType=PAYWALL">acknowledged</a> doctors would likely have to take pay cuts under a government-run system stating that “analysts across the board agree single-payer would cut revenue for doctors.” Just as other businesses are leaving California for more business-friendly states, tax increases and revenue cuts would have caused California doctors to take their expertise and experience elsewhere.
Instead of limiting choice under a single-payer system, states should expand the options available to individuals. Whether it’s expanding telehealth, allowing doctors and nurses to practice across state lines, and repealing needless restrictions like certificate-of-need laws that prevent hospitals from expanding to meet patient demand, people need more options not less. Instead of a one-size-fits-all public option, we need a strong personal option, so people have greater control over their healthcare.
The saying, “as California goes, so goes the nation,” refers to California’s role as a social and political trendsetter. If California goes forward with a government-run healthcare system, the citizens of other states would be well advised not to go along.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dr. Del Meyer is an NIH trained pulmonary physician in Sacramento who has spent 45-years managing pulmonary patients.

Gavin Newsom

Don’t Look To California For Healthcare Reform

California

Health Care

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