I would add to what Rand says that we need to protect our own border. The situation at our Southern border reeks Uniparty corruption just as much as funding the corruptocracy called Ukraine. The GOP wants an open-border because the donor-class wants cheap labor. The Democrats want an open-border because they want votes (Democrats are as happy to have … indeed probably prefer … illegal votes to legal votes) and to “transform” America. As a result, a population the size of Kentucky has crossed illegally into the United States. They’re not coming here because they want to be Americans. They’re radically different from legal immigrants (generally).

They’re coming here not to assimilate but to continue being Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Cameroonians, Ethiopians, etc., etc. etc.. … while taking advantage of all the “free stuff” the Biden-Regime is providing to juice illegal immigration. The Woke-Left sees everything through the prism of woke. They practice the latest iteration of Socialism … Socialism based on woke, as opposed to class (Marx) or race (Hitler). To the race-obsessed Woke-Left, an America that is less White is a better America.

Convince a majority that they are part of some “marginalized,” “discriminated against,” etc., etc. etc. group and that their only hope of ending the discrimination, hate, marginalization, etc., etc., etc., is to give Democrats political power … eventually permanent political power. It’s evil and un-American. And yet the GOP is willing to look the other way because their donor-class can profit off of America’s “transformation.”

Do not be deceived by Zelensky, Rand Paul (@RandPaul) says, Ukraine is corrupt: "They’ve canceled the elections ..They banned the political parties, they’ve invaded churches, they’ve arrested priests, so no, it isn’t a democracy, it’s a corrupt regime."pic.twitter.com/EWUDsa4TKt

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) September 21, 2023

 

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When a Democrat promises unity, they mean division. When they say transparent, they mean opaque, obscured, hidden. So, when the Biden Administration suggested it would be the most transparent, they meant what they said by their own understanding.

Short of a court order, and even with one, getting details is a tough row to hoe, especially regarding informed consent for the much-beloved covid “family” of vaccines*. The idea that you’ve been provided – as required by law – any risk factors associated with The Jab is absurd. But why should the Bidenistas try to meet any standard but their own? Millions accepted the injections based on the tagline “safe and effective.” Any question or deviation from the approved narrative was met with institutional resistance.

COVID ushered in a political public health police state, and the skeeving bastards couldn’t get enough. Dr. Roberty Malone, speaking to the problem in Canada, reminds us that,

 

What few are aware of is that this thoughtcrime punishment is being visited on many other Ontario physicians who had the temerity to provide early treatment for COVID disease, particularly those administering the forbidden treatments of Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Zinc and other inexpensive, off patent repurposed drugs or over-the-counter supplements.

Additional speech- thought- and medical practice crimes include failure to properly employ worthless cloth or paper dust masks to prevent coronaviral transmission, as well as granting medical and religious exemptions from receipt of toxic COVID “vaccines” which an abundance of data indicate are neither safe nor effective at preventing infection, replication, spread, hospitalization or death from disease associated with SARS-CoV-2 positive PCR tests.

 

Canada has proven everything wrong anyone had to say about the pre-socialization onramp of American medicine under Obamacare: the death panels are real and growing in number from local public health boards to their root at the FDA and CDC, which admits to having but is refusing to release, new details on vaccine-induced myocarditis.

 

Asked for more current data, the spokesman acknowledged the agency has it but is not making it public. “When appropriate, the updated safety data will be published,” the spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email. He did not answer when asked why the meeting was not an appropriate time.

“The CDC has acknowledged that heart inflammation is a complication of mRNA COVID-19 shots and, yet, the only published data released by CDC officials about that complication is a seven week study that ended on Oct. 23, 2022. Where is more specific myocarditis/pericarditis data related to bivalent COVID shots for the past 10 months?” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times via email.

 

Right out of the gate, that data can’t be good. If it were, it would have leaked to the media PR departments at CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, and Washington Post. We’d never hear the end of it. So, it’s bad and needs massaging, like everything else about this public health emergency.

And the bivalents? That was more voodoo and sleight of hand, like Comirnaty – a rebranding sold as an approved reformulation, but it was the same old whore in a new dress. And the side effects continue, regardless of the packaging; many are dangerous and life-altering, unreported or under-reported by design. Reporting is discouraged. An intentional dearth of information that is then used as evidence that the data is too incomplete to base policy.

Deliberate data deficiency to prevent transparency and accountability.

The covid vaccine Death Hockeystick was about as blatant a safety signal as you could find but not obvious enough to stop the chemical slaughter, suggesting the purpose was not to save lives but to end them. Hiding vaccine-induced heart damage is just part of the program.

And now we’ve got The Jab 3.0 (or is it 4.0?). Original, Comirnaty (same thing, new name), Bivalent, and now this: reformulated, we are told, to address the rapidly evolving mutations of new variant-offspring of Omicron, effective the way an untended net stops goals from being scored or perhaps the goalie gets credit for the assist.

A new variant offspring of the pharmaceuticals whose introduction spiked vaccine deaths and resulted in a swelling of cases of myocarditis whose numbers the CDC and FDA have but are unwilling to share with the people they insist line up for the next round of treatment.

If you express concern for your patients in Canada, you could be sent to a medical re-education camp and forced to sign a loyalty letter promising to do what you are told, whether or not you think it is in your patient’s best interest.

Doctors must be bureaucrats first and caregivers last, by order of the all-powerful state – and in an assisted suicide-crazy place like Canada, that can’t be good for Canadians.

Who needs death camps when public health care becomes an enforcement arm of a political regime that need not answer to anyone about anything?

 

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In prior installments of this series, state and national standardized test scores in New Hampshire and Vermont contradict the current narrative that the COVID pandemic shutdown caused children to suffer “learning loss.” Instead, the data reveals that the test scores have been deplorable for more than two decades and that they were in decline well in advance of the pandemic shutdown.

As elementary schools are tasked with teaching children how to read, we’ve looked at several in our region to assess both their scores and how they teach reading. Our reports on the Croydon Village School and Killington Elementary School reveal that there’s little, if any, evidence of “pandemic learning loss.” The Washington Elementary School seems to have been negatively affected by the pandemic shutdown. We were unable to determine whether or not the Albert Bridge School in Windsor was affected as Vermont won’t report its school-specific scores due to the school’s small size.

We now look at the Grantham Village School (GVS) in Grantham, NH.

Sydney Leggett has been the superintendent of the Grantham School District for six years. GVS houses Pre-K through grade 6. With 275 students, it has one class for Pre-K and two classes per grade beyond that, with an average of 18 students per class. The school has 14 classroom teachers, 4 specialists (music, art, library media specialist, physical education/health), two education case managers, one reading specialist and one reading and math interventionist.

Superintendent Leggett said they have not noticed a change in student achievement since the pandemic. The New Hampshire Student Assessment System (NHSAS) data supports her statement. The NHSAS is administered yearly to students attending traditional public and charter schools in grades 3-8.

The Grantham NHSAS Reading chart (below) shows that 84% of GVS students scored proficient or above in reading in 2017. That percentage fell to 76% in 2019. In 2021 it rose to 77%, declining very slightly to 76% in 2022. Clearly, GVS’ scores weren’t affected by the pandemic shutdown. Still, though GVS students are significantly outperforming NH’s statewide reading scores, one out of 4 students aren’t reading at grade level.

Leggett said this performance is the result of the community working strongly together to focus on student needs. The school held an expanded summer program for two years in a row, for those who didn’t normally attend summer school, so they could keep building skills. Paraprofessionals had individual contact with students for a year and a half during the pandemic period.

Leggett commended the many parents who created an environment in their homes to help students learn.

One parent, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, said that many parents in this wealthy community were hiring tutors or paying for online supplements to help their children learn to read before the pandemic; something common in affluent communities across the country. This is also supported by the podcast series “Sold A Story” (cited below) as being a regular occurrence.  The pandemic shutdown caused more parents to engage outside services.

It is well known that when parents are involved in their children’s learning, they perform better in school, although hiring tutors isn’t what people usually think of when they say “involved.” This may account for the above average performance of GVS students on the NHSAS.

For reading instruction, GVS started using the Fountas & Pinnell (F&P) “cueing” curriculum about 7 years ago. The idea behind “Cueing Theory” is that it’s easier for children to learn to read if they start with whole stories and whole sentences and do not try to read individual words. Teachers cover up words in a story and tell students to look at the picture, look at the first letter, and think of a word that makes sense. The theory says that by practicing this approach, children can figure out how to read on their own.

The science of reading research indicates that this isn’t how good readers learn to read, but rather how poor readers try to compensate for not being able to read. The science of reading research is summarized in an engaging podcast series called “Sold a Story,” produced by Emily Hanford, an investigative education journalist at American Public Media.

Leggett said they realized, after a few years, that the F&P program was not providing students with foundational early reading skills. They now supplement it with other programming that focuses on decoding and phonological awareness. The science of reading supports teaching early readers how to decode and learn the sounds that letters make. It also found that, if cueing is the main approach, students still may not learn to read fluently.

Grantham Village School is still trying to improve student literacy. The majority of the staff took the NH Department of Education intensive LETRS training last year — Language Essentials for Teaching Reading and Spelling. LETRS helps teachers understand the science of reading in order to help them teach better.

While the science of reading has shown that the cueing approach is misguided and might harm children, even if used with other methods, Leggett said that GVS continues to use Fountas & Pinnell for the parts they think are worthwhile.

The school now also uses FUNdations, which follows the science of reading. Leggett said that FUNdations has been working well for them. It uses the MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Support) program to measure reading, math and social-emotion learning. Instructional teams meet with their interventionist regularly to group students by their needs, according to the data.

Superintendent Leggett said it’s not always about the program, it’s about the instruction.

— This story is part of a series in which we show how the pandemic shutdowns in Vermont and New Hampshire affected student performance on state and national standardized tests. We’re also taking a look at how some elementary schools in our area teach reading. Next, we’ll present the final installment in this series, which will include conclusions based on the data. Prior installments in this series were published in the Eagle Times on September 9, 12, 14, 16, 19 and 21.

This article was originally published by the Eagle Times. It has been edited slightly.

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Lt Gov. Mark Robinson is back. We featured his inspired remarks a few days ago (if you missed them). He’s been getting about, standing on his principles, and making waves. But he is not splitting hairs or mincing words, and in this clip, he says there are only two genders.

He says it, and then he explains it in a way in which the Left will lose their collective mind. So, yes, it’s a great way to start your Monday morning!

 



 

..

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The GOP lost another special election. It wasn’t just the candidate, it wasn’t Trump. It was the GOP establishment that lost the election. The Committee to Elect House Republicans (GOP in NH) created the candidate’s web page. The Issues section is so bland it could have been written about a Democrat.

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“Serving our community priorities and Interests, Protecting our Constitutional Rights, Restoring the NH Way of Life, Supporting our Emergency Responders and Veterans, Lowering the cost of living.”

If I am a voter, this tells me nothing. It has no specifics, no reason to choose this candidate vs. the other guy.

The Republican State Leadership Committee (GOP in DC) ran a Facebook ad that screamed, “Don’t let Democrats take the State House!” but again gave voters no reason to support our guy. To anyone who took the effort to look closely, it complains about Illegal Immigration. Really? Is that what the DC GOP thinks is the biggest issue in NH?

The Committee to Elect House Republicans ran a Facebook ad urging voters to “Elect proven leader our guy” and “the other guy is a Radical.” It closed by saying that our guy is “committed to putting communities first, defending constitutional rights, and supporting emergency responders and veterans.”

Again, nothing but Motherhood and Apple Pie. Just another politician of the UniParty saying nothing.

By contrast, the Democrat’s Facebook page had specifics: He is for “lower property taxes, supporting public schools and teachers, trusting women to make decisions for their own reproductive health, protecting our environment and natural resources.” He does NOT want “to take away your guns, gas stoves, gas engine cars and trucks, or your rights” or “defunding the police or emergency services.”

And as icing on the cake, the Democrat and his wife have homeschooled their kids.

The GOP had no message. The Democrat had a message. We can’t fight something with nothing.

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Anti-marriage propaganda is all over TikTok right now. The formula of the videos is almost always the same. A woman contemplating marriage and a family has a vision of the future in which she realizes that her husband will be simultaneously controlling and checked out. She sees the “burdens” this life could bring as children come into the mix and, ultimately, chooses to run away.

It’s meant to make marriage-aged women hate men and condition them to think their lives will still be lonely and loveless, even with a husband.

 

Another anti marriage propaganda Tiktok pic.twitter.com/1HbmbBy67D

— Nugs (@Nugjokes) September 19, 2023

 

But that, of course, isn’t real life. A husband is everything. He is the base on which a woman gets to build her life. Yes, a lousy husband creates a terrible home and a hurting wife. But a good husband is a blessing. Together, they create a home filled with passion and love. Not every marriage is a barren wasteland. Most are loving and filled with laughter.

If women want joyful marriages, they should look for men who understand that their purpose is to love and protect the family — first his wife and later his children too. He should want to keep his wife safe and treasured, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. Any attack on her is an attack on him. Marriages built like this last until that poetic last breath.

Women want to feel safe, but a husband is not some security accessory to have in case of a scary situation. They have just as important a role as men in keeping the divine balance of marriage. The wrong woman can cause the same destruction in a relationship as an abusive man. Honorable men deserve to be loved and cherished by their wives. (RELATED: ROOKE: Women Aren’t That Complex)

 

 

When women ignore their nature, it causes discontent. Denying that women are emotional creatures is disrespectful. This emotion is the greatest gift we bring into this world. We have the ability to deeply care for our friends, children, and husbands. When looking for a husband, a woman should choose a man who sees the value her emotions could bring to his family.

 

this is trending on tik tok

pretty crazy how mass adopted the psy ops are pic.twitter.com/YTPZnkFkp8

— GC (j/acc) (@GRITCULT) August 10, 2023

 

The key is the willingness of the husband to protect and the wife to honor. Marriage isn’t 50/50. There is no such thing as meeting halfway or only giving it 50 percent of your effort. Selfish people who value their “independence” can’t fathom the bond that forms when both of you give every ounce of yourself to creating a strong marriage.

A good man doesn’t want to enslave his wife. He supports her in the home so that her role is fulfilling. Protecting the family has its own hardships. Still, motherhood is the most critical and taxing job women perform. A husband who appreciates her will work to aid her on the hard days, like when all the kids are sick and the house is burning down around her. He sees the cracks forming and immediately goes to work fortifying her, loving her amid the chaos.

No, it’s not easy. Nothing worthwhile comes without hard work. But, gosh, it is a beautiful way to live your life. When the other option is empty sex and soul-crushing corporate culture, a messy house with loud children sounds like heaven. These videos want women to return to their lonely apartments like it’s some triumph over men. But it really only serves to destroy the path for women to find true happiness through a husband who adores her and children to nurture.

 

Mary Rooke | Daily Caller News Service

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Democrats cheat. Just ask Bernie Sanders. They’ve robbed him at least twice, and what did he get for it? Bernie Bros didn’t feel the Bern. Not at all. They moved on, embracing similar tactics to help the guy who robbed Bernie win an election. Tactics used by Democrats against another Democrat in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

 

The current mayor, Joe Ganim, has been in office since 1991. A felon, Ganim went on a seven-year hiatus beginning in 2003 to serve time in a federal correctional institution after being convicted of a slew of corruption charges. But in December 2015, he was sworn back into the mayor’s office.

Ganim is currently running for reelection to his eighth term as Bridgeport mayor. One week ago, in the Democrat mayoral primary, he eked out a win over challenger John Gomes by 251 votes. A few days later, the Gomes campaign released a video showing a Ganim supporter making numerous pre-dawn trips to the ballot box outside the Bridgeport government center:

(source) The video, which was posted to the Gomes campaign Facebook page, shows a woman dropping stacks of papers into an absentee ballot box outside the government center in Bridgeport, where the city’s registrar of voters office is located.

 

I’m not sure there’s anything here to see. After all, numerous examples of thoroughly documented Democrat mules stuffing ballot drop boxes in Dinesh D’Souza ‘s documentary didn’t mean anything. If you look up 2000 mules, Wikipedia, the Democrat’s online encyclopedia, says,

 

The film falsely claims unnamed nonprofit organizations supposedly associated with the Democratic Party paid “mules” to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.

 

A Democrat mule stuffing a ballot box in Bridgeport, CT, can’t be true either, certainly not to progressives who are beholden to the approved narrative on such matters, even if they’ve captured it on film. But here’s the Gomes campaign stepping off the Democrat plantation to suggest that a woman “recommended for criminal charges following an investigation into complaints about absentee ballot handling in Ganim’s tight 2019 primary against Sen. Marilyn Moore,” has illegally stuffed another ballot drop box.

 

BREAKING: Democrat Mayoral candidate John Gomes of Bridgeport, Connecticut has filed a lawsuit challenging his party’s primary results after a bombshell video showed a Democrat clerk inserting illegal ballots into a drop box

“On primary night our campaign was victorious at the… pic.twitter.com/vF8Yi2vBTR

— George (@BehizyTweets) September 18, 2023

 

Good luck with that; just remember what Democrats do to people (including Democrats) who dare to disapprove of their tactics. They treat them like Republicans.

 

HT | PJ Media

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Do you remember Sun-King Sununu’s “Governor’s Economic Reopening Task Force”? A presumptuous and pretentious name for a bunch of political hacks who knew NOTHING about epidemiology, but issued all sort of “guidance” … a lovely euphemism for JUNK science … to “keep us safe from COVID.” For example, in May 2020 they recommended that Hampton Beach could “reopen” but parking lots could only operate at 50 percent capacity. There was and is no science behind that “guidance.” The 50 percent was a totally arbitrary number.

Another example is that walking on the beach was safe, but sunbathing was not. Restaurants could offer outdoor seating up to “50 percent” capacity … whatever the hell that means. I’m not kidding … check here if you think otherwise. Again … THERE WAS AND REMAINS NO SCIENCE behind any of the “Task Force” guidance … it was all an exercise in deception and control by Sun-King Sununu and his ilk.

Stated slightly differently, the “Task Force” intentionally deceived us … presenting their totally arbitrary and capricious recommendations as based in ‘the science.” All that the Sun-King’s COVID-scam accomplished was to hurt the local economy, drive real Republicans out of New Hampshire, attract Leftists to New Hampshire, AND … the ultimate purpose of it all … allow no-excuse absentee-voting in order to help Biden win the State’s electoral votes.

In a normal world, anyone who participated in this sham “Task Force” should be punished not rewarded. But New Hampshire is NOT a normal world. Instead, the Chair of the “Task Force,” D.J. Bettencourt, has been rewarded with a cushy government job. It pays … six-figures in fact … to have been one of the Sun-King’s COVID-hucksters.

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Extinction Rebellion is a well-funded left0Wing direct Action environmental movement. From street theater, to pondering public suicides, to gluing themselves to things, its advocates are some of the dumbest, sorry, I meant to say fringist Climate Cult activists out there. They also kill fish to make a point.

 

Activists from the Extinction Rebellion movement have been accused of killing fish in the river and fountains of a French town with a bright green dye that they poured in the water to protest against a toxic waste project.

Éric Straumann, the mayor of Colmar, an Alsatian town whose waterside district is known as Little Venice, said dozens of dead fish were found floating on the surface after the protesters dumped drums of fluorescein in the River Lauch at the weekend.

“I witnessed the impact on the aquatic wildlife of this dye, which was dispersed in bulk and remained visible for 24 hours,” Straumann said.

 

Hey, it’s not easy being green.

 

According to Straumann, several neighbors told him that after the dye was spilled, a good number of fish appeared floating dead in the Lauch River. The mayor himself shared a message on social media in disapproval of the event and showing one of the dead fish floating in green waters.

 

Haut-Rhin : le maire de #Colmar accuse les militants écologistes d’Extinction Rebellion d’avoir tué des poissons avec du colorant vert fluo, déversé dans les eaux de la Lauch pour protester contre l’enfouissement de déchets toxiques. pic.twitter.com/U4OWxrAvu2

— Infos Françaises (@InfosFrancaises) September 18, 2023

 

The activist is reported to have dumped large quantities of fluorescein into the water to make it look green. Flourescein’s side effects in humans include (citations removed),

 

“.. nausea, vomiting, hives, acute hypotension, anaphylaxis, and related anaphylactoid reaction,  causing cardiac arrest and sudden death due to anaphylactic shock.

Intravenous use has the most reported adverse reactions, including sudden death, but this may reflect greater use rather than greater risk. Both oral and topical uses have been reported to cause anaphylaxis, including one case of anaphylaxis with cardiac arrest (resuscitated) following topical use in an eye drop.”

 

Sudden death in fish as well, it seems.

Anyone rebelling against extinction should consider reading the warnings on the label before engaging in this sort of direct action. Action over what? Ironically,

 

Extinction Rebellion shared the images on social media and explained that the act of vandalism was done to protest against the French government’s plan to store about 42,000 tons of toxic waste in the region. In an attempt to attract public attention, a man affiliated with the group poured several barrels of green dye into the Lauch River. He has since been arrested.

 

It was a mercy killing.

Rather than allow those poor fish to suffer a normal life with the looming possibility of slow poisoning from potentially leaky waste contamination, boom! Dead.

 

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Last year, punk rocker Johnny “Rotten” Lydon made waves when he was quoted saying, “I never thought I’d live to see the day when the right-wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left-wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone.”

Elon Musk tweeted Rotten’s observation about contemporary politics. Conservative Twitter personality Robby Starbuck quickly emphasized the point by declaring, “The right is the new counter-culture now,” with numerous editorials since elucidating the idea.

If the right is the new counterculture, conservatives must embrace policies that enhance their ability to combat the entrenched establishment.

Historically, conservatives were instinctive institutionalists, emphasizing a desire to protect culture, traditions, and institutions. This was best personified by William F. Buckley’s ubiquitous description of a conservative as “someone who stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop…’” Rebelling against this established order were the liberals raging against the machine.

In recent years, however, the right has been the most ardent critic of the established order. As conservatives increasingly find themselves at odds with the orthodoxies of the federal government, the media, public health bureaucracy, and academia, conservatives need robust privacy protections that ensure their ability to challenge the left’s dominance in society’s key institutions.

When challenging the regime’s narratives, the establishment will often leverage its vast resources to crush dissenters. A few examples illustrate the point.

During the American Revolutionary Era, Thomas Paine published “Common Sense,” a pamphlet articulating the case for American independence from Great Britain. Paine wrote under a pseudonym to protect his identity from royalists.

The revolutionary cause was still controversial as late as 1776, with many colonists still loyal to Great Britain. Divulging his identity in that polarizing climate would have threatened Paine’s revolutionary efforts and denied our Founding Fathers a powerful tool to shift public opinion towards independence.

Similarly, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the Jim Crow South, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously repudiated the state of Alabama’s attempt to forcibly disclose donors and members of the state’s NAACP chapter, an effort intended to target people who funded the movement’s disruptive campaigns.

 

 

More recently, the Federal Election Commission long exempted the Socialist Workers Party from campaign finance disclosure requirements, because of Cold War era threats faced by their members. Acknowledging the hostility the party faced, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote, “We are not unmindful that the damage done by disclosure to the associational interests of the minor parties and their members and to supporters of independents could be significant… In some instances, fears of reprisal may deter contributions to the point where the movement cannot survive.”

Today, entrenched interests continue to take punitive actions against those who challenge the status quo. Last year, JPMorgan Chase closed the bank accounts of the National Committee for Religious Freedom and refused to restore access unless NCRF divulged their donors to the bank.

Fidelity Charitable, a division of Fidelity that advises clients on their philanthropic giving, blacklisted Alliance Defending Freedom, the religious liberties law firm that has secured several victories at the U.S. Supreme Court, refusing to refer donors to the organizations unless their giving is publicly disclosed.

When a fundraiser was launched to help support the legal defense of Kyle Rittenhouse, the crowdfunding app GoFundMe shut down the fundraiser, alleging an unspecified violation of its terms of service. Furthermore, those who were able to contribute were doxxed and faced harassment, including one Virginia law enforcement officer who was fired from his job for the offense of donating to the left’s most recent villain.

This is why Republicans in Congress must tread carefully when shining a light on the left’s use of nonprofit organizations: any response that empowers the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to take a more active role in policing the political activity of nonprofits would inevitably be used against conservatives seeking to disgorge entrenched power.

This was demonstrated when the IRS targeted Tea Party groups for extrajudicial scrutiny during the Obama administration, limiting the right’s ability to organize at the height of the 2012 presidential election.

Despite the various rationales for censorship given by the defenders of the status quo, the message is clear: if you dissent, you will be punished. Conservatives need to embrace all of what it means to be a countercultural force fighting against the status quo, which includes securing privacy protections that fuel the battle of ideas in this country.

As conservatives learn to rage against the machine, they will need all of the robust speech and privacy protections guaranteed by our Constitution because their opponents have many institutional tools at their disposal to weaponize against them.

Fortunately, the First Amendment exists to shield the counterculture from the censorious desires of the establishment.

Brian Hawkins is Senior Director of External Affairs of People for United Privacy.

 

Brian Hawkins | Daily Caller News Service

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Given the direction of the culture, the next queen of England will probably be a man. Don’t scoff, it’s true. Until their foreign invaders take over, there is little to stop that trajectory; after all, the monarchy is just one more institution the communists need to undermine. Meanwhile, back in the colonies …

 

Oak Park High School students in Kansas City, Missouri just got sent a message loud and clear: boys are just better at things than girls are. Even at being a girl. Tristan Young, a male student who identifies as a female, was crowned the homecoming queen this week. He beat out four lovely female candidates because actually identifying as the gender that you are is like, sooo 2010.

It makes sense these days. A male dressed as a female (a transvestite) is colloquially referred to as a queen or drag queen. Who better to pick as your queen than a queen?

The students had four actual ladies (who never had a penis of their own) from which to choose, but they picked the guy because being the queen comes with a lot of responsibility so those big holders will help.

Actually, I suspect the majority was swayed by how it might feel if anyone found out they didn’t vote for the dude. What might the cultural Stasi do to you? There are plenty of examples of how non-conformists are treated. Wander off the plantation, and you get socially hobbled. Or was it a too many other choices thing? Had there been but one other girl to choose, she might have had a chance, the way the RGA pushed too many Republican governors into the ring to challenge Trump, and now they’ve bolloxed their scheme. Haley’s not winning South Carolina, Christie is not winning New Jersey, and even Ron DeSantis might not win Florida.

Somebody screwed up. Is that place run by teenagers or something?

Actual teenagers have to deal with being blamed for slavery, labeled as systemically racist and colonialist, and now they have to come home to a guy in a dress as your queen, or else!

It’s the new #MeToo stereotype—where women get screwed by men against their will, but this time by majority vote.

 

HT | LibTikTokk Tok

The post High School Puts the ‘Queen’ Back In Homecoming appeared first on Granite Grok.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently said that while he doesn’t have a problem with differences of opinion, he feels that things have changed regarding the tone of conversations about education.  In the past, he says,

 

There was civility. We could disagree. We could have healthy conversations around what’s best for kids.

 

Call me old-fashioned, but as I understand it, civility implies an absence of violence or even the threat of violence.

What Cardona is saying is that as long as he gets to take your money — under the threat of violence if you don’t fork it over — and use it the way he and his friends think it should be used, it’s fine for you to disagree, but you should be polite about it.

That’s a ‘healthy conversation’.  That’s ‘civility.’

This suggests that maybe we ought to revisit our statutes regarding robbery. If you wear a nice suit, speak politely, and give the person you’re robbing a chance to disagree about what’s best for the two of you (so long as you end up with his money), it’s not really a robbery.

It’s just the kind of civil, healthy conversation that our Secretary of Education says we should be engaging in.

 

 

 

The post By Civility, I Mean… appeared first on Granite Grok.

Would you be surprised to discover that a commission in Massachusetts might have devolved into a vindictive, self-enriching trainwreck with no transparency? Of course not; this is Massachusetts.

 

“Since its creation in 2017, The Cannabis Control Commission has faced what sometimes feels like an endless stream of scandals. The public deserves some accountability on why these issues have proven so hard to stamp out, and what long-term changes the agency is making to get its work done with more transparency and efficiency,” State Sen. Michael Moore said in a statement Monday.

 

The committee commissioner was suspended – but not for having “a pair of marijuana license cultivation applications, despite her position.” No one knows why she was put on paid leave, but she is still collecting her $182,000+/year salary.

 

Licensees have testified to legislative committees over retaliation by commission investigators and complained about transparency.

 

This reminds me of that time on GraniteGrok when I said letting the government control/manage the marijuana business might be a bad idea. How scrabbling for any semblance of permission to use cannabis would empower oppressive forces with an infusion of additional revenue. That it might not be worth the long-term pain and suffering, though you could – if needed – smoke some weed to try and forget about that for a while.

 

• Legal Weed in California Leads to More Marijuana Enforcement (not less).
• Lawsuit – Medical Marijuana Users Want to Keep Second Amendment Rights
• How About a 26% Tax on Marijuana Sales To Keep Prices “High”
• Support for Latest Marijuana Legalization Bill Not Worth The “Price”
• Study – 12% of Drug-Related Fatal Car Crashes Involved Marijuana
• Weed is Still Illegal in New Hampshire, so Why is Bud Barn in Vermont Advertising on Keene Radio [Update]
• Legal Weed is in Trouble – Will it Demand a Cartel and Law Enforcement Support to Protect It?
• Is Maine Building a ‘Budding’ Weed Cartel?
• A Public Service Reminder, NH – As HB639 Advances: You Can’t “Legally” Have Guns AND Weed

 

And as with all organs of the government, the apparent solution to whatever ails it is to request a massive budget increase.

 

“Considering the 23% funding increase the CCC requested during FY24 budget negotiations, it is now more critical than ever that we make sure this agency has a plan to right the ship. Millions of our tax dollars are at stake – I am hopeful the Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy will schedule a hearing to get answers from the top brass at the CCC,” Moore said.

 

If it makes anyone feel better, several members of the Massachusetts Legislature sent a letter to the joint committee overseeing the regulators on the cannabis commission. They are concerned about the problems, abuse, and secrecy. Maybe they are all just becoming paranoid. Marijuana can do that to you, and while I do think private citizens should be free to grow a little or have a little for their use without the state harassing them, so far, state management has not gone well.

The solution in Massachusetts will likely be another commission stuffed with connected, overpaid, make-work zombies to oversee the commission that oversees cannabis, and that’s what they should call it.

The Commission to Control the Cannabis Control Commission. And they, of course, will need some oversight as well. The Commission to Control the COmmission Controlling the Cannabis Control Commission. And you have to pay them more than the commissioners whom they oversee and give them larger budgets, and It’ll be glorious, comrade!

If you want to afford the cannabis you worked so hard to deregulate or decriminalize, you’ll have to buy it on the black market, which the state will then need to police to protect its monopoly.

Legal Weed as a path to a police state. And let’s not pretend we didn’t see that coming.

 

HT | Boston Herald

The post The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission is … Out of Control appeared first on Granite Grok.

Let’s start with what DeSantis needs to do next. Abandon New Hampshire … IMMEDIATELY. And say why … BECAUSE NEW HAMPSHIRE REPUBLICANS ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF REPUBLICANS NATIONALLY; they are much more liberal than Republicans nationally, and I am NOT a good fit. Then focus on Iowa and South Carolina … reducing expectations for both, AND … fix his dysfunctional campaign.

OBVIOUSLY, DeSantis was NOT a good fit for New Hampshire … one of the most pro-abortion, pro-woke, pro-COVID-authoritarianism States in the country. The idea that the face of anti-COVID-authoritarianism would resonate with New Hampshire’s lock-us-down, mask-us-up, vax-us-up voters was and remains IDIOTIC. But it is even worse than that.

DeSantis has been trying to simultaneously appeal to the donor class and Republican voters … which CANNOT BE DONE. In order to please the donor class, his campaign has tried to recast him as some Koch-fueled JUST “cut taxes,’ “cut regulations,” blah, blah, blah, focus on the fiscal issues… which he obviously is NOT.

The beginning of DeSantis’ demise was, in my opinion, when he chose to walk back the correct answer he gave Tucker about the War-in-Ukraine and spewed the same Putin-is-Hitler pablum as the Establishment IN ORDER TO PLACATE THE DONOR-CLASS. He looked weak and NOT his own man.

And it has gone from bad to worse as the campaign turned his descent into a free-fall. He is NOT a retail campaigner. He is NOT a Koch-bot. To use a sports analogy, the DeSantis campaign’s approach is like a coach telling Kevin McHale, one of the greatest post-up players in NBA history, to just shoot jump shots from the top of the key.

Just let DeSantis be DeSantis. And that starts with recognizing he has NO CHANCE in Blue Hampshire and pulling the plug on the Granite State.

 

The post How DeSantis Lost The New Hampshire Primary … And What He Needs To Do Next appeared first on Granite Grok.

Yesterday’s preschool apprentice was a riot, and we’ve got more funny for you today –  this time tinged with a bit of irony. A parody on mandatory masking, which – as we get closer to 2024  – could be coming soon to a fearmongering community near you (conspiracy theory!).

It is not, of course, a conspiracy to think masks are coming back becasue they already have. The chatter alone has some in the public, putting them back on in public. How long before we again see people, alone in their EVs, masked?

Whether this uptick is the first drop of rain in a storm meant to promote stuffable ballot drop boxes and tampered with vote-by-mail remains to be seen, but Democrats cheat each other in elections to win races, so there’s that.

While we wait, this young lady has chosen to amuse us about people who wear them and why.

 

 

I love this woman. She’s the best. pic.twitter.com/Mpdgx1QlMM

— UltraMJTruth (@MJTruthUltra) September 20, 2023

 

The post Let’s Poke Fun at People Wearing Masks … appeared first on Granite Grok.

The strength of your character is far less important than the color of your skin. That is the belief of the Democrat Party, and for a group of people who love to apply labels, you are a flaming bunch of racists. The Democrats, specifically the Progressives, know this election is slipping away. The Biden policies are failing the American people, and the polls continue to point toward a disastrous 2024.

If people are neutral about his policies, most voters know that Biden is unfit for office today, and the numbers grow when looking at a Biden reelection bid. As bad as Biden’s numbers are, Kamala’s are even worse. What do you do when facing a situation stacked against you and there is no chance of turning it in your favor? You pull out the race card, and in this case, you threaten the DNC that you will forfeit the Black vote if you remove Kamala Harris from the 2024 ballot.

The irony of this threat is the Democrats may have already lost the Brown and Black votes. Black and Hispanic votes have always been considered automatic for the Democrats. That is no longer the case, as people of color have opened their eyes and seen how Democrat policies are hurting them and their children.

This new thinking may have been triggered by COVID and the Summer of “Love.” The isolation, exposure to the damage caused by the Education System, the rioting, and the destruction of inner cities hurt people of color the most. The disaster at the Border is also having the most significant impact on inner cities.

Thousands of illegals moving into major cities across the country are impacting housing, wages, social services, drugs, crime, and overcrowded schools. So many people are spreading throughout the country that the impact is flowing into the suburbs. No city or town is exempt. And all caused by the intentional destruction of our Border by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We have been watching this destruction of our country for three years, and it is not the result of bad policies but policies designed to take down this great land intentionally.

We have been alarmed to watch the impacts at home and abroad by this bumbling President. Still, with each passing day, we can see with our own eyes the irreparable damage inflicted on America and Americans. It has taken three years, but the Progressive mainstream media has finally awakened and is calling out Joe Biden for his inept handling of his job.

CNN and MSNBC are now covering events detrimental to the Administration, such as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance this week before Congress. The questioning was divided, with Republicans attacking the AG and the President for using the Justice Department to shelter Hunter and Joe Biden’s illegal money laundering scheme. The Democrats defended the AG and praised the President’s work, but to the objective observer, the facts spoke for themselves. Jim Jordan and those on the Right are mounting an unquestionable case that our President is corrupt and using his office and all its trappings to collect millions from our foes worldwide,

We cannot wait for the election to remove Biden and Harris. The damage will be too significant and irreversible. Biden is not only fulfilling the promise of Barack Obama to transform our country but to destroy it, and he is acting without the consent of Congress and in defiance of the Supreme Court. There are not three equal branches of government today, but someone must step up and stop this President and his actions.

This mess created by Biden is not about Race or even Climate Change, and to call it so is a distraction. The Progressives are trying to use the Race card, but they have drawn the Joker, and the dealer is not smiling. Congress has to grow a spine and say enough, and we must push them to do so.

 

The post Kamala Stays Or Lose The Black Vote appeared first on Granite Grok.

As with all things environmental, climate alarmists conclude that current wildfires are more evidence of greenhouse gas warming. This must be clarified, as human activities other than driving cars or rearing cows impact these terrible disasters. Appropriate preventive policies are dependent on an accurate diagnosis of cause. The knee-jerk “the sky is falling” pathos furthers the monetary interests of purveyors of polluting.

America’s deadliest wildfires occurred over a century ago, when climate change cultism had not eclipsed common sense. Massive fires across the Midwest frontier were the product of vast forests, sloppy logging practices that accumulated debris, and wooden homes that made quick tinder. Some 800 people died in an October 1871 wildfire in Peshtigo, WI, and more than 400 people were killed in fires in Minnesota in 1894 and again in 1918. These were attributed to logging practices.

Anthropomorphic Wildfires? Such catastrophes were not wild at all but anthropomorphic. The sensible response was to improve logging practices using the knowledge gained, build homes with brick or stone, enact building codes, and implement firefighting practices that extinguish flames promptly in extensive forests. For a time, this was effective, augmented by the timber industry’s decline. Yet this human strategy also carried flaws – extinguishing blazes immediately reduced wildfires in the short term but caused an accumulation of undergrowth as well as a false sense of safety, leading to more homebuilding in fire-prone regions.

It may be that weather changes – human-caused or not – are impacting the frequency or degree of wildfires, but how is that correctly determined if other potential causes are excluded a priori from consideration? Climate alarmists employ a one-issue ideological lens that looks increasingly silly when viewing the kaleidoscope of other potential causes. Do Americans wish to heed Smokey the Bear and prevent forest fires, or increase them recklessly to serve a climate alarmist power grab?

Climate “warriors” do not want to prevent wildfires, as scary fires are the George Floyd counterpart to climate alarmist histrionics. Just as blaming heavy rains and localized heat waves on climate change avoids consideration of the profound impacts of an unprecedented 2022 undersea volcano that more likely explains these disruptions, blaming human-generated greenhouse gases for massive wildfires ducks analysis of other, more likely, anthropomorphic sources. There will be no change in logging and forest management practices or humans risking their lives by building tinderboxes in Hades if the culprit is misidentified as carbon dioxide. In Greece, where some 80 arsonists have been arrested for lighting massive, deadly infernos, arson deniers still seek to label climate change as the primary cause. No firestorm could be more anthropomorphic than one sparked by pyromania. Yet, that cause is an inconvenient truth to those employing even natural fires as a convenient lie about climate change.

Impacts of Rewilding

Indeed, ill-conceived climate alarmist policies like rewilding (allowing large areas of cleared land to regrow) are doubly foolhardy. Rewilding will increase forest areas to resemble the Midwest a century ago. Human incursions into the wilderness will continue as forests and human habitations expand. Farmland sacrificed to forest growth will require food to be shipped further distances, increasing fossil fuel use and supposed greenhouse effects. Most ludicrous of all, well-managed grasslands sequester far more carbon dioxide than forests – rewilding thus increases greenhouse gas emissions while amplifying the likelihood of more massive blazes. This will then be presented as proof of why more rewilding, not improved forestry practices, is warranted.

A more sensible policy would be to restore confined dairy and beef cows to rotationally graze pastures instead of rewilding them. The extra grass-fed (renewable solar energy) meat could be dispatched to the Amazon to supply farmers with meat so they will stop burning forests there. Of course, farmers clearing lands with anthropomorphic wildfires in Brazil are doing so to survive and to eat: America’s wildfires are surely aggravated by neglect and poor management, then used to further a globalist power-grab that seeks to control all food in the name of climate change.

Effectively Reducing Future Wildfires

Smokey the Bear would wisely say stop stoking wildfires by ignoring best forest management practices and building death-trap houses on the edge of risky areas. Smokey would point out the moral hazards of such human behaviors, akin to building one’s house in a flood zone and then screaming climate change when the seas break in. Rewilding would likely induce Smokey to roll his eyes and repeat the frustrated refrain: “Remember, only you can prevent forest fires!”

Wildfires will decline in frequency and intensity when their true anthropomorphic causes are addressed, not by banning cows for their flatulence, interrupting tennis matches, or gluing hands to famous artworks. Alarmists cultishly fiddle as Rome burns. Not even arsonists deter them from incinerating sensible science.

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And a regular contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

 

The post Wildfires and Climate Change: What the Alarmists Aren’t Doing – And What They Aren’t Telling Us. appeared first on Granite Grok.

Boston University (BU) has dropped the hammer on its (anti)racial darling, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (Ibram Henry Rogers). Staffing has been slashed as BU investigates his Center for Antiracist Research over accusations of retaliation, discrimination, and “an underwhelming output of research.”

 

Multiple former staff members allege that a mismanagement of funds, high turnover rate and general disorganization have plagued the Center since its inception.

The $43 million, according to 2021 budget records obtained by The Daily Free Press, includes general support, such as the $10 million from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as well as donations for specific projects. ..

A week after the layoffs, BU announced Wednesday that they received complaints “focused on the center’s culture and its grant management practices.” …

The complaint detailed multiple high-level employees leaving suddenly and allegations of a workplace culture that included fear of retaliation and discrimination.

 

According to the report, nothing was done about the complaints. It also notes that “Boston University and Dr. Kendi believe strongly in the Center’s mission, and … he takes strong exception to the allegations made in recent complaints and media reports.” What mission might that be?

 

“My hope is that it becomes a premier research center for researchers and for practitioners to really solve these intractable racial problems of our time,” Kendi said to BU Today. “Not only will the center seek to make that level of impact, but also work to transform how racial research is done.”

 

That was three years ago, and as noted above, the Center has mismanaged grant funding and produced little to nothing with it. Is that becasue the intractable problem of our time is Ibram Kendi, CRT, and the systemic division of the American People since the elevation of Barack Obama to the Presidency – The black man who destroyed decades of progress on race on purpose?

Nothing that happens at the Center for Antiracist Research is likely to produce unifying revelations becasue transforming racial research has happened, and the result is racism as the default setting. The conversation is no longer, as Dr. King would have it – about content and character. It is about the systemic inculcation of groupthink: that reverse racism is not racism unless you mean the people using the term who are most certainly fragile white racists.

It is a ridiculous argument that trips over its own shoelaces every time it targets people of color who refuse to accept the distinction. Black, brown, red, yellow, green, blue, it makes no difference. The transformation of racial research is in the same vein as the political concepts of diversity and equity. Diversity is a room full of people who appear different but think exactly the same things. Equity is an act of force that redistributes rights, wealth, or property from the people who think differently.

Dr. Kendi’s accomplishments to date are dividing people and working to ensure they stay divided, a path that leads not to liberation, be you black, white, or anything in between, but back to slavery, this time to the national government and its puppets perched in complicit state capitols across the increasingly fruitless plain.

Put another way, and I know we say this a lot: they are using you, and you will be discarded when that use ceases to have value or be necessary, and neither your gender nor your skin color will protect you.

 

The post Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research Accused of “Fear of Retaliation and Discrimination” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Oil prices are soaring, and, as always, we read in many articles that OPEC and Russia are to blame. However, if OPEC and its allies were almighty and the drivers of oil prices, why have Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude plummeted in 2022? OPEC only reacts to demand, but it is not a price-setter. It is a price-taker.

WTI is up 13% year-to-date, but it only started bouncing in May. WTI is only up 6% in the past year. At $90.7/barrel, it is still far away from the June 2022 high of $122/barrel and barely reaching the levels of November 2022.

What made oil prices plummet from their June ’22 highs? Rate hikes and monetary contraction sent the entire commodity complex down to pre-Ukraine invasion levels despite production cuts, geopolitical risk, and the Chinese re-opening. Commodity prices are driven by monetary factors, and the hawkish stance of global central banks accelerated the decline despite supply chain challenges and limits to production. Added to the decline in the money supply and rate hikes, the United States and non-OPEC production offset the negative impact of Russia and OPEC limits on some exports. Competition works. Finally, oil prices stumbled as Asian demand ended up being weaker than estimated, with global industrial production declining, particularly in developed economies.

The weakness in crude was a combination of monetary factors, increased United States supply, and weaker global demand. Those three factors have now reversed at the same time.

We cannot blame OPEC when prices rise and ignore them when prices fall.

The biggest challenge for the oil market in developed economies in the next five years is self-inflicted.

Governments and financial institutions all over the world declared war on investment in fossil fuels under the misguided view that supply and prices would not be affected. According to JP Morgan, there is a chronic underinvestment in the oil and gas complex that exceeds $600 billion per year. In 2022, with oil prices rising to the previously mentioned $122/barrel, companies all over the world continued to reduce investment in exploration and production. Development capital expenditure was kept to a bare minimum, and even some European oil and gas giants started selling their “net zero emissions” strategy, ignoring the global energy reality. Total oil and gas investment came below depreciation for the sixth year in a row, according to Goldman Sachs.

The energy transition cannot happen through ideological imposition. It requires technology and competition. Destroying the incentives to invest in oil and gas and imposing an ideological, not industrial, view of energy has made developed economies more dependent on fossil fuels.

When politicians decide, they willingly ignore economic calculations because they believe that the political world dictates prices, not supply and demand. Economic analysis has been abandoned, and the result is an exceedingly negative scenario.

Developed economies have destroyed all incentives to invest in diversification and security of supply of oil and gas driven by an ideological view of the world without having a feasible, abundant, and flexible alternative. Thus, when the United States administration imposes more restrictions on oil and gas investment, and the European Union decides to reduce nuclear capacity and ban the development of domestic resources, all they have done is make their economies more dependent on foreign suppliers.

Western governments now demand that OPEC produce more while, at the same time, saying that their nations will not use fossil fuels in ten years. This is the imaginary deal that we, in the West, offer to oil and gas-producing nations: “Dear oil and gas producers, you have to produce as much as we demand and sell it cheap, investing billions of dollars in development, but we will not use your product in ten years”. I imagine there is no rush to sign such a deal.

It is hard to believe that the global emerging market producers will be thrilled about the prospect of eliminating their energy exports only to import more “energy transition” engineering from developed nations.

According to OPEC sources, there could be a two-million barrel-per-day supply shock in the winter of 2023. Other analysts are more prudent but still see a market that is tight today and may be getting worse as the underinvestment toll becomes more apparent.

The entire bounce in oil prices since May is driven by the rushed decision of central banks to stop the monetary tightening before the inflation battle has ended and by the misguided decision to limit investments in domestic resources in the middle of a geopolitical battle without a clear alternative. Governments have created their own supply shock by placing ideological views in the energy industry. The alternatives are not evident yet; technology and availability have not been fully developed, but politicians have already decided when the transition must be completed.

Crude oil did not replace whale oil due to the decisions of environmentalists or politicians. Crude oil displaced other sources of energy because it was easier to store, produce, and transport. Crude oil and natural gas proved to be abundant, easy to manage, and economically efficient. This is the first time in human history that the energy transition has been decided by politicians without allowing technology, competition, or human ingenuity to come up with a better, more flexible, and more economical alternative. Renewables are great, but they are intermittent and volatile. We need to allow the world to produce alternatives when they can truly replace the current energy resources without destroying our lifestyle and economy.

We may blame OPEC for rising oil prices, but the fact is that they only react to weak demand and low prices. OPEC may increase production at its next meeting, but the reality is that the energy supply issues have been created by Western governments and may persist. Instead of allowing all sources of energy to compete and allocation of capital to generate the investments needed for security of supply and energy transition, what has happened is that we may have created an energy crisis by political design. The alternatives are not ready, and the domestic resources that could limit prices have been banned or severely limited.

The irony is that anyone who understands energy knows that there is no successful energy transition without natural gas and nuclear, and this requires incentives to invest in energy security. Governments will not back down, and they will prefer a decline in energy prices coming from a deep recession to an improvement coming from diversification and investment.

This may be yet another energy crisis created by political design. Unfortunately, instead of learning and changing, many developed nations’ policymakers will prefer to impose restrictions on consumers. Ultimately, the incorrect planning of this energy transition is not a question of energy sovereignty or climate change but a way to control citizens. That is why many governments prefer to see soaring energy prices because that will allow them to impose restrictions on consumers.

Daniel Lacalle, Ph.D., economist, and fund manager, is the author of the bestselling books Freedom or Equality (2020), Escape from the Central Bank Trap (2017), The Energy World Is Flat (2015), and Life in the Financial Markets (2014).

He is a professor of global economy at IE Business School in Madrid.

Daniel Lacalle | Mises Wire

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The post The Oil-Price Shock Is a Direct Consequence of Interventionism. appeared first on Granite Grok.

The first order of business on the agenda for the Renewable Energy Standard Working Group’s September 20 meeting was “Conflict of Interest – Discussion & Clarity.” This should be interesting, I thought to myself. What it turned out to be was ironic.

The discussion that took place was over the hired moderator for the committee, Jennifer Knauer. She is married to Tom Knauer, a policy director for the Vermont Public Utilities Commission (PUC), a fact that had apparently not been vetted during the hiring process. Furrowed brows and chin rubbing ensued.

Of course, the usual tropes about Vermont being a small state, and how everybody wears a lot of hats, and is married or related to someone with a real or perceived conflict of interest is inevitable came up. The furrowed brows quickly dissolved into chuckles, and none on the committee ultimately dismissed any idea that they would have any problems working with Knauer in her moderator role.

The only person to raise an issue with this was Chris Pearson, a former Chittenden County senator now working for the Sierra Club, who cautioned, “If we’re all saying we’re comfortable with this around the table, but there are many other observers who are now sort of going to be convinced rightly or wrongly that this is rigged, I think that’s a real problem here….”

“Rigged” is the right word, but not because of Knauer’s presence as moderator. The irony of this mini-inquest is not the subject but the inquisitors.

The Committee, charged with working to shape Vermont’s energy policy (specifically the renewable energy agenda to achieve 100% renewables by 2030) is made up of two senators, Chris Bray (D-Addison) and Anne Watson (D-Washington), two Representatives, Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury) and Laura Sibilia (I-Dover), so no Republicans.

The non-elected members consist of Jeffrey Cram of Global Foundries, William Driscoll of Associated Industries of Vermont, Michael Lazorchak of Stowe Electric, Shana Louiselle of Vermont Electric, Brian Evans-Mongeon of Village of Hyde Park, Candace Morgan of Green Mountain Power, Ken Nolan of Vermont Public Power Supply Authority, Louis Porter of Washington Electric, Darren Springer of Burlington Electric, and Rebecca Town of Vermont Electric Co-op.

While the expertise of these people is certainly critical to understanding the issue, there is absolutely no denying that they all have a very serious conflict of interest regarding how this public policy is shaped.

But it gets much worse.

Other members of the committee include Ben Edgerly Walsh of VPIRG, Peter Sterling of Renewable Energy Vermont, Chase Whiting of the Conservation Law Foundation, and Pearson himself with his Sierra Club connection. These are all just lobbyists for ideological special interest groups with ties to and in many cases funding from renewable energy producers.

These are the most egregious conflicts of interest on the committee, and you can count on them to shape policy in ways that funnel money to their doners through mandates and subsidies.

Just look at some of the folks pulling the strings at VPIRG on their board of directors. Marianne Barton, VPIRG’s treasurer is founder of Catalyst Clean Energy Finance, LLC, a company that provides “financial advisory and strategic planning services to the solar, energy efficiency and performance contracting industries.” Duane Peterson of SunCommon. Wind developer Matthew Rubin. Their employer/employee relationship with voting committee member Ben Walsh should be of far more concern as a conflict of interest that the spousal relationship of the committee’s moderator with a member of the PUC.

Or Renewable Energy Vermont, whose board includes Chad Farrell, founder of Encore Renewable Energy, and Paul Lesure president of Green Mountain Solar. Do you think these folks have a special conflict of interest when it comes to a 100% renewable energy policy for the state? How do you think these directors are directing their employee Peter Sterling to act on this committee? With the best interests of the public in mind? Pardon my laughter.

So, yes, Chris Pearson, as one of the many other observers paying attention to what you all are up to, I am convinced – and I’m confident rightly, not wrongly — that “this is rigged.” And yes, that’s a real problem here.

 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok!

The post Conflicts of Interest in the Renewable Energy Standard Working Group appeared first on Granite Grok.