American doctors go to great lengths to maintain the highest ethical standards as they work to save thousands of desperately ill patients waiting for an organ match, as underscored in recent reporting of innovative transplant experiments using genetically modified pig hearts. China’s transplant sector, unconstrained by rigorous ethical rules, found a more expedient solution. China created a thriving transplant industry, the world’s <a href="https://english.www.gov.cn/news/top_news/2018/07/05/content_281476209784504.htm">second largest</a>, based on a supply of organs forcibly harvested from executed prisoners – most likely prisoners of conscience.
Though China announced that it banned this hideous practice in 2015, transparency is lacking and mounting evidence indicates that it continues. Nevertheless, the American transplant sector, while adhering to medical ethics at home, openly supports China’s transplant doctors and industry.
In 2006, shocking reports first surfaced of China forcibly harvesting organs from detained Falun Gong adherents. According to these reports, after Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual meditation group, was targeted for “elimination” by China’s president in 1999, thousands of practitioners were thrown into labor camps and jails and subjected to organ screening, unexplained deaths, and disappearances. Many, the group says, were killed for their organs, which were sold to China’s transplant sector, just as it surged and became a billion-dollar industry. Credible <a href="https://bitterwinter.org/organ-harvesting-in-china-is-real-smoking-guns/">testimony</a> from former detainees, relatives, patients, and surgeons supports this. It was during this period that scores of Chinese transplant surgeons published articles, openly describing procedures on prisoners who “were alive and breathing as the <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/china-killer-doctors">surgeons</a> cut their hearts out,” as documented in a 2022 article in the respected <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.16969">American Journal of Transplantation</a>, written by Victims of Communism Foundation fellow Matthew Robertson and Israeli Dr. Jacob Lavee.
Last year 12 independent <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-un-human-rights-experts-alarmed-organ-harvesting-allegations?LangID=E&amp;NewsID=27167">UN experts</a> stated they were “extremely alarmed” by “credible information” that forced organ harvesting was continuing and, moreover, targeting China’s various religious minorities. Several sources report evidence that the atrocity has spread to Xinjiang’s massive network of closed detention camps, which, significantly, were built after 2015, and which both Republican and Democratic administrations recognized as the site of ongoing genocide against China’s Uyghur Muslims.
Nury Turkel, who chairs the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, documented forced blood sampling and organ screening of Uyghur detainees, including a Christian, Ovalbek Turdakun, whom one of us interviewed. As noted in a May 2022 European Parliament resolution, a Beijing hospital brazenly advertised its use of “‘halal organs’ from Uyghurs and Muslim minorities.” At the International Religious Freedom <a href="https://irfsummit.org/">Summit</a>, held in Washington, D.C. in June, <a href="https://www.hudson.org/research/17967-forced-organ-harvesting-american-organ-transplant-collaboration-with-china-despite-damning-evidence">Ethan Gutmann</a>, the leading field researcher on China’s forced organ harvesting, estimated that 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs have been killed annually for their organs. Gutmann’s research implicates a former SARS hospital in Aksu, Xinjiang, which is served by an airport with a designated “fast lane” for expressing organs to hospitals throughout China.
No satisfactory explanation exists for how – despite only a million registered volunteer donors in China, compared with America’s 145 million in 2019 – China’s patients can schedule appointments for transplant surgeries within days or weeks, as patients and investigators reported, instead of waiting months or years, as in the U.S. In addition, Robertson, Lavee, and Australian statistician Raymond Hinde have <a href="https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-019-0406-6">determined</a> that the growth curves of China’s voluntary donation lists for three organ types formed implausible, nearly perfect quadratic equations. In a peer-reviewed <a href="https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-019-0406-6">medical ethics journal</a> article in 2019, they conclude that China’s donor database was “falsified” as a result of being “manufactured and manipulated from the central levels of the Chinese medical bureaucracy.” Also, China’s reported number of annual transplants, <a href="https://english.www.gov.cn/news/top_news/2018/07/05/content_281476209784504.htm">5,000-6,000</a>, appears understated. Documenting Chinese transplant hospitals, beds and surgeons, Gutmann and Canadian human rights experts David Mattas and David Kilgour <a href="https://endtransplantabuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Bloody_Harvest-The_Slaughter-June-23-V2.pdf">estimated</a> that 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants are occurring annually in China, with 8,000 a year at just one hospital.
Though shocking, China’s lack of medical ethics is not entirely surprising considering that it perpetrates ethno-religious genocide. But, given the grave questions about organ sourcing raised in these reports and China’s lack of transparency, it is unconscionable that major American universities and hospitals support China’s transplant sector. As brandished on their websites, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pittsburgh, and many other others provide China with fellowships, academic exchanges, conferences, and joint research projects. American institutions are <a href="https://www.upholdjustice.org/node/547">documented</a> to have trained 344 of China’s transplant doctors.
Some in the American medical community apparently collaborate in the hope of persuading their Chinese partners to ensure organ donation is indeed voluntary. But when blocked from verifying claims of reform, these same U.S. institutions accept China’s word at face value and even <a href="https://chinamedicalboard.org/news/china_transplant_conference_focuses_%E2%80%9Cchina_model%E2%80%9D">praise</a> its progress. They are not alone in buying China’s lies. The medical ethics journal cited above observed: “The World Health Organization, the Transplantation Society, the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences have all provided endorsements of the reforms based on what appears to be contaminated data.”
The WHO’s organ transplant task force, for example, was <a href="http://en.nhc.gov.cn/2017-02/14/c_71188.htm">proposed</a> in 2017 by Dr. Huang Jiefu, who<a href="https://english.www.gov.cn/news/top_news/2018/07/05/content_281476209784504.htm"> directed</a> China’s transplant donor registry, long served on the <a href="https://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Huang_Jiefu">Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee</a> and, though far from independent, was appointed to the task force itself. Under the chairmanship of Harvard’s Dr. Francis Delmonico, who toured China’s hospitals as Huang’s guest and praised Huang as a “<a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114hhrg20533/pdf/CHRG-114hhrg20533.pdf">courageous leader</a>” in congressional testimony, the task force was mandated to flag crises in the transplant field. Yet, Gutmann, Robertson, and Mattas each say that it <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/examining-chinas-organ-transplantation-system-the-nexus-of-security-medicine-and-predation-part-3-chinas-united-front-tactics-in-managing-the-narrative-on-organ-trafficking/">dismissed</a> out of hand their devastating research.
To date, no U.S. administration has taken seriously the charges of China’s ongoing organ harvesting. In 2018, the State Department tried to close the book on the issue, <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china-includes-tibet-hong-kong-and-macau-china/">declaring</a> point blank that China’s government “officially ended the long-standing practice of involuntarily harvesting the organs of executed prisoners for use in transplants in January 2015.” It, too, failed to undertake independent verification. The Biden administration should reexamine all forced organ harvesting evidence and make its own determination. Congress should pass the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1592/related-bills">Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act </a>to ensure this happens.
Former Chinese military surgeon Dr. Enver Tohti, testifying before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, recently <a href="https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/forced-organ-harvesting-china-examining-evidence">commented</a> on Western indifference to this issue. Forced organ harvesting seemed just “too bad to be true,” he said. But the evidence is too compelling to persist in that naïve belief. Until compliance with international ethical norms is verified, the American transplant sector should halt all collaboration with China’s.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Nina Shea is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute where she directs its Center for Religious Freedom. She is a former vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, to which she was appointed by House Republicans.
Katrina Lantos Swett is president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights &amp; Justice. She is a human rights professor at Tufts University and the former chair of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, to which she was appointed by Senate Democrats.

China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Demands U.S. Response

Communist China

Doctors

Health

Medical

United States

Uyghur

With the Biden administration’s <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-announces-student-loan-handout-national-debt-soars">announcement</a> this week that it would continue the moratorium on student loan payments through the beginning of next year and will forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt per student, student loan forgiveness is at the top of the current political agenda. Meanwhile, there’s little talk about bringing the cost of college under control, or why the cost of college became so outrageous in the first place.
While proponents of student loan forgiveness argue American taxpayers <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2021/02/23/5-reasons-to-support-student-loan-cancellation/?sh=4ba2fde277ac">need</a> to pick up the student debt tab to level the racial and socio-economic playing field, the reality is debt forgiveness disproportionately benefits the well-off and educated, as the wealthiest 40% of Americans hold <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/10/09/who-owes-the-most-in-student-loans-new-data-from-the-fed/">58%</a> of student debt, and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/10/09/who-owes-the-most-in-student-loans-new-data-from-the-fed/">56%</a> of debt is held by those with prestige and income-boosting post-bachelors’ degrees. Instead of forcing the <a href="https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1562534480161959938">87%</a> of American adults who don&#8217;t have student loans to pay for the college experience of educated elites, American leaders must reform the universal federal student loan program that has driven the cost of college to grow <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/price-of-college-increasing-almost-8-times-faster-than-wages/">eight</a> times faster than wages.
Until 1965, the <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp">cost</a> of college at private and public institutions remained fairly in line with inflation — these were the good old days, when a minimum wage summer job could cover all of one’s annual tuition, and then some. So what happened in 1965? President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the <a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/history-of-federal-student-aid/chapter-one/">Higher Education Act</a>, which created guaranteed student loans by subsidizing capital for banks that would provide loans to low and middle income students.
This simultaneously expanded college access, especially for less privileged students seeking to attend private institutions, while keeping loan burdens manageable because private banks still controlled who could receive student loans and for how much. From <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp">1964-77</a>, the tuition at private universities grew 11.5% more than inflation as rising demand oustripped supply, while that at public institutions, it grew 1.6% less than inflation as the government massively expanded public college systems to accommodate an <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_191.asp">exploding</a> college-age population fueled by the Baby Boom.
<h3>Carter created unlimited, guaranteed college demand</h3>
This bank-dominated system remained in place until 1978, when an economy in shambles and the pressures of the Baby Boom’s succeeding Baby Bust on empty college classrooms prompted President Jimmy Carter to pass the<a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/history-of-federal-student-aid/chapter-one/"> Middle Income Student Assistance Act</a>, which eliminated income requirements for student loans. At a time when colleges otherwise would have had to cut tuition or cohort sizes to stay full, this new bill ensured that anybody could be a full time student.
With this bill creating unlimited, guaranteed college demand, college tuition hikes were off to the races; from <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp">1978-92</a>, tuition at private universities grew 50.7% more than inflation, while that at public universities, it grew 25.4% more than inflation. Pretty dismal, right? Well, things got worse.
In 1992, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/senate-bill/1150">Higher Education Reauthorization Act</a> introduced direct, guaranteed loans from the Department of Education itself, and, in response to higher tuition, removed borrowing limits, which removed any last incentive for schools to keep costs down. From <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp">1993-2006</a> (the endpoint of the common data set used in this analysis), tuition at private schools grew 39% more than inflation, whereas that at public schools rose 47% more than inflation. These massive increases were a result of large <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/state-higher-education-funding-cuts-have-pushed-costs-to-students#:~:text=Per%2Dstudent%20funding%20rose%20in,the%20cut%20exceeded%2030%20percent.">cuts</a> in state funding for public universities (who increased tuition to offset these losses) and <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/public-universities-work-hard-to-make-up-for-budget-cuts-but-in-state-students-may-be-paying-the-price/">growing room and board fees</a> (which were used to impose higher costs on students without having to increase headline tuition as much).
<h3>Debt forgiveness encourages rising tuitions</h3>
Without any changes to the federal student loan program, all debt forgiveness does is encourage a never-ending cycle of higher tuition, crushing debt, more bailouts, and more graduates lacking the positive equity to buy a house or even a wedding ring. A return to something more like the 1965 Higher Education Act but without federal loan guarantees — a mix of privately issued loans, low-interest capital, and strict requirements ensuring the loans would only serve lower and middle income students — would be a significant and realistic improvement. Banks would be more careful in issuing loans, taking care to make sure students aren’t overwhelmed with debt they’d never afford to repay.
By combining this reform with a database of student debt-to-income ratios ranked by college and by major, students would be empowered to make more informed financial decisions, and schools with unsustainable programs would find themselves either short of students or named-and-shamed into improvement. Requiring colleges to present average pay per major at that school upon graduation would probably also do wonders for helping students choose majors that make financial sense for them.
<h3>Purdue&#8217;s model worth considering</h3>
While politically infeasible, one could also even imagine a future where the federal government isn’t involved in issuing student loans at all, a world in which banks and schools create new financing programs on their own — and at their own risk. One school that has embraced an alternative funding model is Purdue University, a public institution <a href="https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/purdue-university-west-lafayette-1825">ranked</a> as one of the top 50 universities in our nation. Purdue has not only frozen its tuition since <a href="https://www.purdue.edu/purduemoves/initiatives/affordability/freezing-tuition.php">2012</a>, but it has also created a viable alternative financing model that leaves students tuition-debt free while encouraging them to make effective financial decisions.
With Purdue’s <a href="https://www.purdue.edu/purduemoves/initiatives/affordability/income-share-agreements.php">Back a Boiler</a> program, one can choose to pay no tuition during school, but pay a percentage of one&#8217;s earnings based on the typical Purdue graduate pay for that major over a period of 10 years. Though the cost to the student over the program’s lifetime is slightly cheaper than private loans and slightly more expensive than federal loans, the real difference is the university, not the student or the federal government, is the one ultimately responsible for potential losses and benefits — it’s up to Purdue to invest in its students success or suffer the financial consequences.
This aligns risk and reward with the agent responsible for the quality and value of the product — Purdue is incentivized to produce high quality graduates to maximize their returns, while keeping administrative bloat and other bureaucratic waste down to keep costs in check. If colleges across this country were to offer this model, it’s highly likely we’d see drastic improvements in quality and reductions in the cost of higher education across the board.
<h3>Why a bailout isn&#8217;t fair</h3>
But at the same time that we lament the cost of college, we also must remember that, once accounting for socioeconomic differences, men with bachelor’s degrees earn <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html#:~:text=Men%20with%20bachelor's%20degrees%20earn,earnings%20than%20high%20school%20graduates.">$655,000</a> more in median lifetime earnings than those with only high school diplomas, while women with bachelor’s earn <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education-earnings.html#:~:text=Men%20with%20bachelor's%20degrees%20earn,earnings%20than%20high%20school%20graduates.">$450,000</a> more. With the average undergraduate student debt load at <a href="https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/#:~:text=The%20average%20debt%20at%20graduation,2019%20report%20%E2%80%94%20the%20latest%20available.">$28,400</a>, this means the rate of return on average debt at graduation is 1,585%. A widespread bailout is hardly fair given the vast improvement in lifetime earnings that exists despite the contrivances of the federal student loan program.
Indeed, the federal student loan program has suffered the same fate of nearly every well-meaning but short-on-foresight subsidy. Modest successes from a limited-scope program drive the creation of reliant and growing constituencies who expand the program to the point of bloat and failure, ultimately doing more harm than help to the beneficiaries the program was built to serve.
In this case, the federal student loan program has financially impacted generations of Americans, leaving millions with debt and created a situation where the same government that created the problem can come in on a shining horse to save the day over and over again — politically, federal student loans are the gift that doesn’t stop giving.
To put an end to this scheme of student suffering, bureaucratic bloat, and political ponies, we have little choice but to turn back the clock on the federal student loan program, either returning loan-origination for federally subsidized loans back to banks or replacing the federal loan system entirely. Otherwise, like clockwork every election cycle, politicians will dangle the carrot of debt relief before desperate students all too eager to vote for their own demise, over and over again until the whole system comes crashing down.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Kenneth Schrupp is a Young Voices contributor writing on the intersection of business, politics and media. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the California Review, an independent journal.

Graduation

Why College Prices Have Spiraled

College

Education

Leftism

Student Loan Cancellation

Student Loans

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

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.

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Red Flags For Faith-Based Liberty In Hong Kong

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Christianity

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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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Regulators Who Shut Down Texas Day Care Need A Timeout

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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.

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