Failed Nation-Building In Mexico thumbnail

Failed Nation-Building In Mexico

By Phillip Linderman

The Merida Initiative is another failed project of America’s foreign-policy establishment.

As the media and White House draw the national attention to Ukraine and other faraway regions, conservatives are right to insist that our lawless and vulnerable southern border be Washington’s first order of business. Until the Trump administration put a real spotlight on the border, security policies both in Washington and Mexico City had been aimed at the Mexican interior.

The “Merida Initiative,” launched in 2007-08, aimed to help Mexico rebuild weak institutions like its police and courts, and to assist Mexican security forces in fighting drug cartels. However, this long-running initiative failed to secure either country: Mexico continues to suffer from failing institutions and appalling levels of violence, while narcotics and illegal migrants stream into the United States through the unsecured border.

Last fall, Biden administration officials and their Mexican counterparts quietly ended the Merida Initiative, announcing instead a new “Bicentennial Framework” for security cooperation. The announcement was a diplomatic concession to Mexican President Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who had signaled since taking office in 2018 that robust cooperation against the cartels was over. Both sides are back at the drawing board with no new ideas.

Now is the time for American policymakers to once again learn a crucial foreign-policy lesson: ambitious multi-year institution-building plans, particularly in complicated countries like Mexico, and struggling with a formidable combat foe in the field do not provide a positive return on investment—either for the United States or the partner. We need to understand why Merida failed.

With Merida, there was too little skepticism about what country-wide government engagement could actually achieve. U.S. officials, armed with multi-year funding and a “can-do” attitude, tend not to forecast mission failure but a path to success—the same syndrome that kept us engaged for 20 years nation-building in Afghanistan. Merida once again teaches Washington the bitter lesson that rebuilding institutions is not a task for foreign nations. Successful reform, when it happens, is led and owned by national authorities.

President Trump’s instinct to focus on our southern frontier was more fruitful for the security of both countries than a dozen years of Merida cooperation. If the U.S. makes the border a national priority, the border will become a national priority for Mexico. Trump demonstrated that a White House committed to border issues could in fact push skeptical Mexican leaders to focus on a region they tend to ignore.

It was just a start, but Trump’s success in convincing even AMLO—despite the Mexican president’s deep suspicion of the U.S.—to accede to the Migration Protection Protocols (or “Remain in Mexico” policy) shows what can be done if Washington pursues attainable goals. Securing effective U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the lawless frontier region is difficult (and beyond the scope of this analysis), but such efforts should be the centerpiece of any future bilateral security strategy.

When launched, the Merida Initiative (sometimes called Plan Mexico) promised U.S. support for large-scale Mexican operations against the drug cartels (“transnational criminal organizations,” or TCOs). During the Obama administration, Washington provided the typical foreign-assistance mix of law-enforcement activities and development projects.

The Merida Initiative was possible because Mexican President Felipe Calderon sought unprecedented U.S. assistance and cooperation, opening a door U.S. diplomats and aid planners could not resist entering. Not only did Merida include law-enforcement assistance against powerful TCOs, but U.S. officials also took on intractable issues like human-rights violations and corruption, as the gringos attempted to help Mexico rebuild its entire criminal-justice system. On paper, Merida also addressed border security, but this “pillar” of the plan was largely ignored as the mammoth undertakings of breaking the drug cartels and rebuilding the criminal-justice system consumed valuable political will and operational trust on both sides.

Advocates argued that the Merida Initiative would provide results for Mexico similar to those of Plan Colombia (the success of which can also be debated). Yet Latin American nations are not interchangeable. The harsh truth is that U.S. efforts to rebuild key Mexican institutions, despite more than a dozen years of valiant efforts from hardworking officials, yielded results that looked less like the experience of Colombia in the 1990s than that of South Vietnam in the 1960s.

Although it was a noble aim to help Mexico tackle its corrupt institutions, to vet and train its police, and fight human-rights violations, Washington simply did not have the firepower to make the difference. Moreover, expending valuable political will on grappling with Mexican institutions distracted us from bringing more security to the southern border, which should have been Washington’s primary objective.

The United States spent around $3.3 billion on Merida over a dozen years, while the Mexicans dedicated $10-$15 billion annually to security activities under the plan. After all that engagement, however, Mexican TCOs are just as entrenched, if not more so, while Mexican law-enforcement authorities—particularly prosecutors, judges and the criminal courts—remain dysfunctional and mired in corruption. Mexico’s national homicide numbers continue to be alarmingly high—approaching 30,000 a year. Incredibly, over 200,000 Mexicans have been killed or disappeared since 2007. And today, under AMLO, no one talks about the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel as the carnage drags on and increasingly moves north toward the United States.

Early on, after launching their war on the drug cartels, Mexican officials themselves realized they had badly underestimated the challenges they faced. The United States assisted with professional training, high-tech weapons (like helicopter gunships) and intelligence. American advisors advocated “decapitating” TCO leadership (either by killing or arresting and extraditing them) as an effective strategy with whose success can be measured.

Yet though this “kingpin” strategy did eliminate many drug lords, it failed to cripple the criminal enterprises. TCOs splintered but proved adaptable and survivable in defiance of the experts, as new would-be “El Chapo” types could and did emerge, often after bloody turf wars. The lure of fast wealth from this criminal lifestyle drew in seemingly innumerable new recruits. When the Mexican military sometimes made successful strikes in TCO-dominated territory, local police and prosecutors could not follow up and hold these gains. Ruthless cartel tactics—“plata o plomo”—had broken local officials, who take bribes and look the other way to protect themselves and family members from certain murder.

Criminal-justice reform, perhaps our most ambitious Merida-related undertaking, was equally ineffective. In 2008, encouraged by the State Department, Mexico enacted a constitutional reform aimed at transforming the legal system from its inquisitorial approach modeled on Roman law to one based on Anglo-American adversarial procedures. U.S. and international experts fundamentally rewrote Mexican federal and state legal procedures, while fanning out across the country to retrain judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and law-school professors. The reformed system was to be a close hybrid of its American cousin, but the rebuilding enterprise was every bit as daunting as it sounds.

The new system empowered prosecutors, assisted by police investigators, to present a criminal case at an oral trial using witnesses, cross-examination, and evidence. The plan built in several modern security features, including the videotaping of courtroom activities and the safeguarding of judicial records. All good in theory, but the central shortcoming of this vast institutional remake was its underappreciation of the vulnerability of human actors: namely, that if the practitioners (judges, attorneys, police, and legal staff) of any legal system can be intimidated or bought off, that system will be corrupted. However superior the Anglo-American adversarial system, if indeed it is, its superiority was not enough to overcome cartel intimidation and corrupt practices—the reality that pervades criminal justice most everywhere in Mexico.

Unlike in Afghanistan, the end of Merida featured no dramatic airport-evacuation scenes, but U.S. efforts in both countries are examples of Washington’s overextended security commitments, which have done little if anything to make Americans safer at home. Both are examples of America’s foreign-policy hubris, its unrealistic attempts to effect change beyond our capacity in difficult environments. Unlike Afghanistan, however, Mexico is our neighbor and directly linked to vital U.S. national interests. It is the conduit through which hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants enter our country, along with enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans in overdoses annually.

We wish our friends in Mexico Godspeed in dealing with their serious national challenges, but Merida has illustrated convincingly that we have no magic bullets for them. The lesson from Trump’s efforts is that a border-security strategy with Mexico—not one that unrealistically seeks to remake Mexican national institutions—is the policy road we should have taken in 2007-08, and the one we should take today.

*****

This article was published in The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.

White Fragility: Unpacking the Kafka Traps of Robin DiAngelo’s NYT Bestseller thumbnail

White Fragility: Unpacking the Kafka Traps of Robin DiAngelo’s NYT Bestseller

By Julian Adorney

Robin DiAngelo’s popular book ‘White Fragility’ breaks from the established rules of scholarship in several way

The biggest issue with Robin DiAngelo’s New York Times bestseller White Fragility is that it throws the rules of good scholarship out the window. That’s a bold claim, but multiple quotes from DiAngelo’s book readily back this up.

If You’re White You’re Racist

DiAngelo’s biggest claim is that, if you’re white, you’re automatically and unavoidably racist. Now to be clear, DiAngelo doesn’t mean that all white people have a conscious anti-minority bias. Rather, she claims that all white people employ racist assumptions and patterns that harm people of color and display an underlying bias.

To quote DiAngelo: “racism is unavoidable and…it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic and racial assumptions and behaviors.” Speaking of herself (DiAngelo is white), she says, “I also understand that there is no way for me to avoid enacting problematic (racial) patterns.”

If DiAngelo, an affiliate professor of education at the University of Washington, were simply outing her own biased patterns, that would be one thing. Where her argument breaks the rules of good scholarship is that she makes it in a way that’s unfalsifiable.

DiAngelo considers multiple objections to her claim that all white people are racist. What if you’re married to a black person, have black children, do mission work in Africa, or marched during the Civil Rights Movement? She rejects all of these objections. That is, if you’re white, even if you have a black spouse and adopt black children and risk life and limb helping poor people in Africa (many of my friends are missionaries, and missionary life as a rule is neither safe nor well-paying), you’re still racist.

For DiAngelo, you are racist even if you actively try to promote racial equality—for instance, by marching with Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s. If you’re white, there is no way for you to not be racist.

A good scholar will present a hypothesis and test it. This is the scientific method, and it applies as much to the social sciences (DiAngelo is a sociologist) as to the physical sciences. The reason scholars do this is that we’re all human, and none of us has all the answers. Therefore, we must discuss and debate ideas, and marshal evidence for and against them, in order to reach the truth. At the root of good scholarship is the humility to accept that you might not have the world completely figured out.

DiAngelo takes a different tack. She presents her hypothesis as axiomatic and therefore as beyond question. If you’re white, you’re racist; full stop.

DiAngelo further breaks from the established rules of scholarship by explicitly adopting a mentality of: believe all accusers.

DiAngelo says that if you’re accused of racism, the only acceptable response is to thank the person for pointing out your racism and to promise to do better. For DiAngelo, acceptable responses include, “I appreciate this feedback,” “It is inevitable that I have this pattern. I want to change it,” “This is very helpful,” “Thank you,” and “I have some work to do (so as to stop enacting this racist behavior in the future).”

And to be clear, these are all great responses if the accusation is valid. If you make a racist joke (for instance, you walk into a primarily black movie theater and claim it’s like walking into Planet of the Apes, like Joe Rogan did), and people point it out, you should sincerely apologize and try to do better (as Rogan did).

The problem is that accusations aren’t always true. Sometimes the person making the accusation has misunderstood the situation. They might mishear, lack context, or simply have an underlying assumption that’s incorrect. We are all human, both those making accusations and those on the receiving end. Accusations need to be weighed on their merits, not just assumed to be true.

DiAngelo’s approach is a refutation of the idea of, “innocent until proven guilty.” But it’s bigger than that, too. It’s a rejection of the scientific method, wherein claims (even claims such as, “John’s a racist”) are weighed according to things like evidence and can be disagreed with.

If you’re accused of racism, under DiAngelo’s approach, even asking a third party to weigh in is considered unacceptable. DiAngelo says that sometimes, if someone calls her a racist, she’s tempted to ask another person of color for their perspective. But she dismisses this urge as “inappropriate” and something that “upholds racism.”

Even weirder, for DiAngelo, denial of the accusation of racism is proof of your racism. In a telling passage, DiAngelo talks about, “white people who think they are not racist, or are less racist, or are in the ‘choir’ or already ‘get it’.” Those people, she asserts, “cause the most daily damage to people of color.”

That is: if you deny that you are racist, you are part of the group that (according to DiAngelo) does more actual damage to people of color than the KKK.

This is a logical fallacy known as a Kafka trap. A Kafka trap is when someone is accused of something, and if they defend themselves then it’s considered proof of their guilt.

Crucially and disturbingly, DiAngelo doesn’t play by her own rules on this one. John McWhorter, a black conservative and Columbia University professor, wrote a review of White Fragility in The Atlantic that accuses the book of racism. The review is titled, “The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility” and includes lines like this: “Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome.”

When an interviewer brought up McWhorter’s criticism, DiAngelo dismissed it. Her response: “I think that that is a disingenuous reading on the part of John McWhorter.”

And to be clear, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with saying that a critic is being disingenuous. But notice how sharply her response differs from the range of acceptable responses that she offers her white readers. Kafka trap rules for thee, but not for me.

Besides the idea that all white people are racist and that any accusation of racism must be accepted (unless it’s a black conservative calling DiAngelo racist), there’s a third core of the book that’s in some ways equally troubling: another Kafka trap.

DiAngelo argues that, if you’re white, you are automatically fragile when it comes to any discussion of race. She uses the term “white fragility” to describe how difficult she finds it in her workshops to get white people to talk about race, racial identities, and racial hierarchies in the United States.

And to be clear, having real conversations about race can be difficult. It’s something that many Americans don’t want to talk about, and probably a majority of those Americans have white skin. But just like the rest of her book, DiAngelo takes what could be a nuanced point and approaches it without any respect for the ideals of good scholarship.

How does she claim this fragility manifests? Via behaviors and emotions such as “argumentation” “silence” “leaving the stress-inducing situation (that is, the room where the person is being informed of how fragile they are),” “guilt” “tears” and “anger.”

That is: if you’re white, you are fragile. If you disagree that you’re fragile, it’s proof of your fragility. If you agree, of course that’s proof of your fragility too. If you remain silent, it’s also proof of your fragility.

DiAngelo doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that someone might disagree with her argument, not because they’re fragile, but because her argument is simply flawed. Are some white people fragile? Of course. Do all 204 million white Americans share such similar psychology that you can accuse them all of the same character flaw, and do so with such confidence that disagreement is seen as just more proof of your rightness? That’s a little more difficult.

Weirdly, even wanting to promote racial equality is a sign of white fragility. For DiAngelo, the guilt is the point; if you’re white, the work is to embrace this guilt. And, “wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ‘solutions’” is one of the patterns at the, “foundation of white fragility.”

The idea that white people are innately fragile would be a bold hypothesis even if she tried to back it up. But in practice, it’s just one more unfalsifiable claim.

The other big issue with DiAngelo’s book is that I got a consistent sense, from the stories she told, that her empathy for her fellow human was tied to skin color. In Chapter 8, she tells a story of how she co-facilitated a workshop and one participant described herself as being, “falsely accused” of racism. Apparently being accused of racism by the workshop leaders was not a trivial thing for this participant. As DiAngelo reports:

“Her friends wanted to alert us to the fact that she was in poor health and ‘might be having a heart attack.’ Upon questioning from us, they clarified that they meant this literally. These coworkers were sincere in their fear that the young woman might actually die as a result of the feedback.”

How did DiAngelo respond to the fact that a white woman might have died during one of her workshops? I don’t know how she responded in the moment, but in the book she described it as a, “cogent example of white fragility.” She bemoaned how it took attention away from the people of color in the room: “Of course when news of the women’s (sic) potentially fatal condition reached the rest of the participant group, all attention was immediately focused onto her and away from engagement with the impact she had had on the people of color.”

If someone almost dies in your workshop and your response is to complain how it distracts from the real issues in the room, you may want to check your priorities. More perniciously, if your empathy for a potentially dying human being is tied to their skin color (I’m hopeful that DiAngelo would respond less breezily to a black woman almost dying because of her actions), then that’s a huge problem–and that’s true whatever the skin color in question is.

To be clear, there are genuine racial barriers in the United States, and in a lot of ways black Americans and white Americans receive unequal seats at the table. In her book The New Jim Crow, for instance, former United States Supreme Court clerk Michelle Alexander documents the existence of phenomena like white privilege and systemic racism in the criminal justice system. And those barriers are things we should all be trying to fix. But DiAngelo’s book, full of calls to self-flagellate and light on actual ideas, is unlikely to get us there.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

Mainstream Media Finally Recognizes There Might Be Something Wrong With Child Sex Changes thumbnail

Mainstream Media Finally Recognizes There Might Be Something Wrong With Child Sex Changes

By Laurel Duggan

  • Legacy media outlets published several articles this week criticizing sex change treatments for transgender children.
  • One transgender individual told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the media is opening up to critical perspectives because reporters are discovering that transgender medicine is experimental.
  • A New York Times columnist predicted that in the near future, both liberals and conservatives would view child sex change procedures as a politically-motivated medical scandal. 

Mainstream media outlets are publishing articles challenging the “gender-affirming” method of medical treatment for transgender children, which emphasizes speedy biomedical intervention over psychotherapy.

“As more reporters investigate the motives of legislators, I’m sure they’re discovering that pediatric transition is experimental medicine and that some regulatory framework is needed when children are involved,” Corinna Cohn, who identifies as a transgender woman and wrote a Washington Post op-ed expressing regret over receiving a sex change surgery at 19, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times each published articles Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday respectively on the sudden, sharp uptick in transgenderism in young people and the speed with which medical practitioners give them irreversible treatments such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries.

Cohn pointed to increased exposure to the issue of childhood transitions and conservative efforts to regulate the procedures to account for the media opening up to more critical perspectives on sex change procedures.

“Professionals who set the standards of care for pediatric transition are becoming more cautious due to a lack of evidence in the efficacy of the treatments,” Cohn told the DCNF. “For example, the Swedish Karolinska Hospital which pioneered pediatric gender transition has decided to discontinue prescribing hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones as a standard practic

What Is Motivating the Shanghai Lockdown? thumbnail

What Is Motivating the Shanghai Lockdown?

By Jordan Schachtel

The most frequent question I get about the ongoing lockdown in Shanghai involves the potential motives of the Chinese Communist Party.

As someone who has covered COVID Mania for over two years, and has taken an unconventional approach to the motives and outcomes behind the continuation of the pandemic narrative, I remain undecided on the dominant motive for the situation in Shanghai. However, there are lots of clues available for us to survey the possibilities.

One thing is for sure: the Wuhan lockdown of early 2020 was a lot different. It was certainly a barometer for lockdown extremism, but it occurred on a much smaller scale. And it appeared, in my view, that the government was putting on more of a Hollywood production than a real attempt to quash a virus. I wrote about that extensively in The Dossier.

This time, however, the Shanghai situation appears to be a different animal.

There are several possibilities that I think are worth exploring.

Germ Freaks

First and foremost, consider the possibility that Chinese authorities have become maniacal hypochondriacs, and, like most top-down authoritarian regimes, have engaged in irrational and destructive policymaking.

In the Chinese governmental system, there are very few guardrails to authoritarian behavior, so virtually nothing would be too extreme if the ends justify the means. China’s continuing ideology contends that individual rights are not of a concern. In fact, according to the CCP, this ideal of human freedom should be actively suppressed for the “greater good” of the state.

Yes, the Chinese government is engaged in complete pseudoscientific behavior, but that is the norm for world governments, not the aberration.

This virus may genuinely terrify the ruling class atop the CCP. Similar to the True Believers of COVID Mania in the West, they could be freaked out by the prospect of catching a cold, and are ready to use any and all instruments of power with the hopes that the virus can somehow be stopped in its tracks.

It’s a psyop

The data on lockdowns are quite clear: they don’t work, and they only cause problems in addition to the virus problem. Everywhere lockdowns were tried, they failed in catastrophic fashion. But that wasn’t the story of Wuhan, the location of the first COVID lockdown, where there was no benefit of hindsight.

The short term hard lockdowns in Wuhan in early 2020 were falsely advertised as an astonishing scientific success, but were most effective as an information operation to shut down the world, while seeding the idea that lockdowns would help to crush the virus.

This left some coming to conclude that China locked down Wuhan as part of an information operation to cripple the societies and economies of its adversaries, using the virus as a kernel of truth to advance their campaign. China, notably, remained almost completely open for years following the Wuhan lockdown, while the West went through an endless series of restrictions and rolling lockdowns.

Is China readying another targeted campaign against the West by locking down Shanghai?

National Hubris/Believing their own press

It’s possible that at some point down the line, Chinese authorities became convinced that their Wuhan lockdown actually worked, and that an aggressive level of nationalistic superiority was the reason that China justifies its position as the only country in the world to “eliminate” the virus through lockdowns.

China’s lockdown was routinely praised in the corporate press and through academic circles. Every country modeled their lockdowns, a novel concept that did not exist prior to 2020, after the Wuhan lockdown. This level of admiration may have acted to affirm China’s well-known, baked in superiority complex, and convince the Communist Party that it alone has the technocratic authoritarian capacity to wage a successful war on a virus.

Don’t disregard nationailstic hubris as the chief motivating factor behind the madness in Shanghai.

Internal politics

Although China is a one-party state, there remains tremendous infighting in the ranks of the Communist Party. Shanghai is perceived as one of the more “liberal” cities in China, and the lockdowns may have been motivated by competing political factions desperate to win over influence and power.

CFTV explains: “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often comes across as a homogenous group to those studying China. This united front, however, is a carefully cultivated image that the CCP portrays – both to the world and its domestic audience. Beneath the surface, however, there exist “factions”, which is a combination of informal politics, relationships, and networks that jostle to dominate politics in China.”

*****

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Are the Environmental Impacts and Human Atrocities Worth an EV Battery? thumbnail

Are the Environmental Impacts and Human Atrocities Worth an EV Battery?

By Ronald Stein

EV buyers should be aware that they may be contributing to the pursuit of “blood minerals” to achieve their efforts to go green.

The worldwide movement toward the electrification of everything, from more electric vehicles (EVs) to more intermittent electricity by wind turbines and solar panels, the political actions are supportive of jumping onto the green train, most likely not knowing there is a darker side to green technology, associated with environmental degradation, humanity atrocities, and other embedded costs for materials.

It should concern everyone that those toxic components come from mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture EV batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. This mining is occurring mostly in less-developed countries with yellow, brown, and black-skinned people with a lack of transparency about the human rights abuses and environmental degradation in those locations.

In an attempt to make the embedded costs of going “green” transparent to the world, the Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy   highlights how Asians and Africans, many of them children from the poorer and less healthy countries, are being enslaved and are dying in mines and factories to obtain the exotic minerals and metals required for the green energy technologies for the construction of EV batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and utility-scale storage batteries.

The Tesla EV has a one-thousand-pound battery that contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside the Tesla battery are 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells

The environmental impact of battery production is significant. The production of lithium is either carbon dioxide polluting or wasteful of water — up to 500,000 gallons per ton of the mineral. Cobalt mining produces radioactive contaminants, including uranium. About 80 percent of the weight of a Tesla battery –requires mined materials. In practice, that means mining about 50 tons of raw ore per vehicle. If 10 million U.S.-based electric cars are sold in 2030 (about half of sales), that would translate to 500 million tons of new mining with all the accompanying emissions from mining equipment and the accompanying pollution.

All those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just – one – Tesla EV battery.

There was already a huge challenge in just making enough EV batteries. As physicist Mark Mills pointed out in the Wall Street Journal: “The International Energy Agency (IEA) finds that with a global energy transition like the one President Biden envisions, demand for key minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals would explode, rising by 4,200 percent, 2,500 percent, 1,900 percent and 700 percent, respectively, by 2040”.

Amnesty International has documented children and adults mining cobalt in narrow man-made tunnels,  and the exposure to the dangerous gases emitted during the procurement of these rare minerals, not to mention the destruction of the local ecosystems when the wastewater and other unusable ores are let loose onto the environments they have no choice but to live in because their wages are so infinitesimally small, it should cause us to take a step back and examine our moral obligations to humanity.

Not only might the planet not have the capacity to meet this demand, but many of these materials come from places that are hostile or that we do not control – such as China/Mongolia, the Congo, and Bolivia – leading to an unpredictable supply.

Most electric vehicles in use today are yet to reach the end of their cycle. The first all-electric car to be powered by lithium-ion batteries, the Tesla Roadster, made its market debut in 2008. This means the first generation of electric vehicle batteries have yet to reach the recycling stage. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood our markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them.

The actions of society are currently supportive of jumping onto the EV train, knowing that EV’s have a very dark side of environmental atrocities, and the non-existing transparency of human rights abuses occurring in other countries, both of which are directly connected to the mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.

 America could promote sustainable mining in those developing countries by restoring the land to a healthy ecosystem after the mine closes and by leaving surrounding communities with more wealth, education, health care, and infrastructure than they had before the mine went into production. Like mining in America, mining in developing countries must be the objective of corporate social responsibilities and the outcome of the successful ecological restoration of landscapes.

America’s passion for EV vehicles to reduce emissions must be ethical and should not thrive off human rights and environmental abuses in the foreign countries providing the exotic minerals and metals to support America’s green passion.

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

The Feds Are So Desperate For Violent ‘White Supremacy,’ They’re Fabricating It thumbnail

The Feds Are So Desperate For Violent ‘White Supremacy,’ They’re Fabricating It

By Madeline Osburn

Last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared white supremacists and “domestic violent extremism” to be the “most prominent threat” currently facing our country. The timing could not have been more perfect. Just hours later, a jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan exposed the Justice Department’s largest alleged “domestic terrorism” case of the last 18 months as a failed FBI entrapment scheme to smear conservatives as white supremacists ahead of the 2020 election.

By refusing to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap and kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer before Election Day 2020, the Grand Rapids jury seemed to side with defense attorneys who argued their clients were not domestic terrorists but entrapped by undercover FBI agents and at least a dozen informants who planned and funded the kidnapping operation.

“The key to the government’s plan was to turn general discontent with Gov. Whitmer’s COVID-19 restrictions into a crime that could be prosecuted,” defense lawyers wrote in a joint motion. “The government picked what it knew would be a sensational charge: conspiracy to kidnap the governor. When the government was faced with evidence showing that the defendants had no interest in a kidnapping plot, it refused to accept failure and continued to push its plan.”

Needing Terrorists to Justify Counterterrorism

The FBI’s governor-kidnaping hoax demonstrates just how serious federal law enforcement agencies are about pursuing domestic extremists, even if it means the alleged threat originates in Washington, D.C. or FBI field offices.

Mayorkas’s doubling-down on the threat of white supremacists, even in light of DOJ’s failure in Michigan, is a result of the time and resources the Biden administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have dedicated to fighting this perceived threat instead of actual threats, such as the massive migrant surge expected to overwhelm U.S. borders next month.

In his first address to Congress, President Joe Biden cited “white supremacist terrorism” as the “most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today.”

In March 2021, DHS and the FBI issued a joint memo warning that “domestic extremists” were ramping up to “take control of the U.S. Capitol and remove democratic lawmakers on or about the 4th of March.” Nothing happened on March 4.

In June 2021, DHS issued a warning, without evidence, that the centennial commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre might be a target of extremism. Nothing happened that day either.

That same month, the Biden White House issued a “fact sheet“ entitled the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” It claimed that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race” are a top domestic terror threat facing America.

This “white supremacist” drumbeat was just the precursor to the creation of a new “domestic terrorism unit,” the Justice Department announced it was forming in January this year. Of course, we experienced a similar overaction in the Bush-era, when DHS was created to protect us all from another 9/11, which also led to the kinds of mass surveillance and accusations of FBI entrapment that we are witnessing now.

If the Whitmer case is any indication, this type of hyperfocus will incentivize federal law enforcement to go to whatever lengths necessary when investigating potential domestic extremists, no matter how overstated the risk.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Georgia Elections Chief Cracks Down on Non-Citizens Seeking to Vote, Refers 1,600 for Prosecution

By T.A. Defeo

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been focused on foreigners illegally seeking to register or vote.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he referred more than 1,600 cases of potential non-citizens attempting to register to vote in Georgia to local prosecutors and state investigators.

The secretary of state referred the cases to the State Election Board, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), and local prosecutors. The announcement comes weeks after Raffensperger said the state completed the first citizenship audit of the state’s voter rolls.

According to a news release, the audit identified 1,634 non-citizens as having attempted to register to vote. The state could not verify the non-citizens through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program.

“Attempting to register to vote by an individual who knows he or she is ineligible is a violation of Georgia law,” Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Chris Arnt said in a news release.

Officials said that no non-citizens were allowed to register to vote. Instead, the would-be voters were placed in pending status and asked to provide proof of citizenship before casting a ballot.

Raffensperger, the subject of former President Donald Trump’s criticisms, is undoubtedly trying to use the case to strengthen his position as tough on election malfeasance. He used the state-issued news release to lambast Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for governor four years ago and is running again this year.

Fair Fight Action, a group Abrams started, is challenging Georgia’s rules, saying it violates federal law.

The audit uncovered attempted registrations by non-citizens in 88 counties across The Peach State. While the attempts occurred between 1997 and February 24, 2022, most of the attempted registrations — 80.7% or 1,319 — have occurred since 2016.

DeKalb County had the highest number of attempted non-citizen registrants with 345, followed by Fulton County (275) and Gwinnett County (221). Five metro Atlanta counties — Clayton (141), Cobb (143), Gwinnett, Fulton, and DeKalb — represented 69% of the attempted non-citizen applicants, officials said.

*****

The Nation is the Heart of the Matter thumbnail

The Nation is the Heart of the Matter

By Christopher Demuth

Editor’s Note: This article is based on Mr. DeMuth’s opening address at the European National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on March 23, 2022.

February 2020 turned out to be the last month to date of normal life in most of the world. Early in the month, a few cases of what came to be known as Covid-19 were identified in Rome, in individuals recently arrived from Wuhan, China. Soon Italian hospitals were overwhelmed and the government locked down the entire nation. Cases began popping up in other well-traveled parts of Europe and the United States, and local, state, and national authorities—with little understanding of the spread or seriousness of the disease, but terrified by the news from Italy—began locking down their populations. The global pandemic was upon us.

Two years later, in February 2022, the worst of the pandemic was receding; its wounds and disruptions were being repaired and life was springing up again. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and commenced killing its people, destroying its cities, and threatening the world with nuclear war. A natural disaster was replaced by a man-made disaster of horrifying savagery and stupidity.

The free nations of the prosperous West that have been under sustained assault constitute a great and admirable civilization. Vladimir Putin and the dictators of China and Iran are right to fear not only the allure of freedom but also its power. One of the first lessons of the Ukraine onslaught is that authoritarians are as bad at military organization as they are at economic and political organization. Our far-flung interconnectedness made the novel coronavirus an instant global killer—but was also key to the rapid invention of equally novel, miraculous vaccines that have saved millions of lives.

The Free World has also, however, fallen prey to certain soft conceits, which Putin and his ilk are right to see as weaknesses. We had imagined that the world’s troubles were amenable to rational management and apolitical expertise. We could leave them to specialized agencies somewhere up there in the cloud, or maybe in Brussels, if only politicians would “follow the science” and accede to the arc of global progressivism. That would free modern man to cultivate his individuality—his personal pleasures and grievances, his likes and dislikes. The fantasy that hard problems can be wished out of our lives has been an important source of decay in our culture, political rhetoric, and institutions of government.

But the last two years have been disenthralling. Experts claimed they could specify the path of global temperatures for a century hence within a few degrees—and it turned out they could miss the path of global disease for one month hence by an order of magnitude. Experts claimed that nation-states and borders were barbaric vestiges and that global bureaucracies could usher in peace and harmony—and it turned out we had barbarians at the gates in the here and now and that nations with borders were essential to peace and harmony. Experts claimed that global markets would bring prosperity and democracy—and it turned out they could also bring domestic division and imperial domination.

Into the breach came, willy nilly, the nation-state. It is unnecessary to argue that the United Nations and the World Health Organization proved useless in the crises at hand, for everyone could see that they mainly got in the way, or yakety-yacked while others took urgent action.

Managing a pandemic—a quintessential global emergency—fell inescapably to individual nations, with their diverse demographics, healthcare, and hospital systems, public attitudes, structures of government, and leaders accountable to actual electorates and fellow citizens. When the European Union asserted authority over vaccine procurement and distribution, it badly mishandled them—even the New York Times called it a “fiasco.” Nations that didn’t have EU insider privileges had to come up with workarounds. When the going gets tough, democracy loses patience with technocracy.

Russia’s latest war has been analyzed in terms of spheres of influence, the return of great-power competition, dictatorship versus democracy. But the heart of the matter is the integrity of the nation. An imperial power invaded a peaceful self-governing nation for conquest, aiming to seize its territory and farms and industry, to subjugate its people, and to extinguish its traditions and institutions. That is why Ukraine has become a popular cause around the world. The Ukrainians cry out, this is our land, our home, our country. President Zelensky compares his countrymen’s struggle and heroism to the historic struggles and heroes of other nations; he is even gauche enough to name names at a time when other nations are toppling their heroes. You don’t have to have taken a course in political science to understand this war. Nor to be overwhelmed by the bravery and determination of the Ukrainians and to reflect on your responsibilities for your own national home.

And the response has been a rallying of sovereign nations that few living people have seen before. In the order of nation-states, each nation defends the overall order as its own interests require or permit. Some nations have been constrained by their existential reliance on Russian energy; others have judged that they may play a useful role as diplomatic intermediaries; plus, we are going to need a delegation to inform Putin that he has lost. Close to the fray, fears that one’s own nation may be next on Putin’s hit-list, or that in desperation he may introduce nuclear or chemical weapons into the military theater, have produced a spectrum of reactions both among and within nations. But the total response has been the provision of stupendous defensive armaments and intelligence, logistical, and humanitarian support, and repudiation of Putin and isolation of the Russian economy. Most striking of all has been the many reversals of national defense, energy, and financial policies that would have been inconceivable the day before the invasion.

All of this has been spontaneous collaboration, each nation bringing its unique assets to the cause without the benefit of direction by any supernational body. The EU has been helpful as a convening body, but it has disgraced itself by imposing heavy financial penalties on Hungary and Poland, for patently partisan and ideological reasons, just as those nations were struggling to welcome and care for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees. No self-respecting nation would have behaved in this manner in a time of war. Let us hope that Ukraine’s victory and EU membership will bring Brussels to a new policy of liberality towards the nations of Central Europe.

It is surely a positive development that, from terrible events, we are directing our hopes and expectations at the performance of the nation-state constrained by a renewed sense of realism.

The newly engaged nation-states came to the crises of the past two years woefully unready, following a long period of desuetude, self-indulgent politics, and, for many, mediocre leadership. Sovereignty needs to be earned continuously—through prudent finance and low public debt, diversification in energy and other requisites of national independence, and ample provision to prepare for natural disasters and military defense. Lacking these fundamentals, we have faced many tragic choices that were more painful and costly than they needed to have been. Having witnessed a display of national self-determination that will ring through history, we may be inspired to greater political seriousness in our own nations.

In the pandemic response, the diversity of national approaches, and within the United States the diversity of state approaches, yielded continuous policy competition and learning-by-doing. Among the free Western nations, the sharing of real-time data on infections, hospitalizations, and morbidity and mortality, and the rigorous criticisms of independent physicians and immunologists, contributed powerfully to policy realism. The climate-change mantra of “the science is settled” never got traction in a genuine crisis.

We are now coming to understand, better late than never, that comprehensive lockdowns and school closures were largely ineffective in controlling Covid-19 but fabulously costly to our economies and social well-being. We have gained this understanding precisely because of the knowledge generated by nation-led responses, which would have been obscured by uniform responses directed by the WHO, EU, or the federal government in the United States. For now, government restrictions are being lifted much faster than skeptics were predicting just a month ago. We will come to the next pandemic less confused and perhaps better equipped.

In the Ukraine response, it is disheartening that the German government has stuck with its plans to decommission perfectly good nuclear power plants, and that the U.S. government is still zealous to obstruct the development and use of fossil fuels. Nor has the war inspired Americans to set aside our bad habits of performative politics, personal positioning, and incessant scoring of ideological debating points. But the most striking development in the United States is that Congress has seized the initiative from the foreign policy elites, repeatedly forcing the Biden administration to revise and strengthen its assistance to Ukraine. Congress’s more representative, populist response has displayed Americans’ instinctive support for the underdog, but also a keen appreciation of the constraints and complications that attend American action.

The situation is highly dynamic, with many national elections in-store and adjustments underway in party positions and electoral strategies. Among intellectuals, the new thinking and Left-Right-Radical alignments that began with Donald Trump and Brexit in 2016 are shifting dramatically. Where government is concerned, a good rule of thumb is to Expect the Worst and Hope for the Sufficient. But it is surely a positive development that, from terrible events, we are directing our hopes and expectations at the performance of the nation-state constrained by a renewed sense of realism.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

First Ever Republican County Executive Elected in Kenosha County thumbnail

First Ever Republican County Executive Elected in Kenosha County

By Benjamin Yount

Editors’ note: Here we go!! Carry on America-loving voters – get to the polls and bring everyone you know to begin the resurrection of our great nation and Republic.

It’s being seen as one of the biggest upsets in Wisconsin and possibly a bellwether for the rest of the state.

Voters in Kenosha County on Tuesday elected their first-ever Republican County chairman in the first local election since the 2020 riots that burned parts of the city of Kenosha to the ground.

Samantha Kerkman beat Clerk of Courts Rebecca Matoska-Mentink by nearly 800 votes.

“Liberals and Tony Evers let Kenosha burn,” Republican candidate for governor Rebecca Kleefisch said on Twitter Tuesday night. “Now voters are taking back control and putting the county in a capable set of hands.”

Wisconsin’s Republican Party said Republicans flipped the county board in Kenosha as well.

“Like all Wisconsinites, residents of Kenosha are fed up with the failed policies of Tony Evers, Leftists and the political class in general,” Republican candidate for governor Kevin Nicholson told The Center Square Wednesday. “I applaud every single parent and citizen who stepped up to run for local office. It’s time to get our society back on track – and last night showed that we will be successful in November as we charge forward to win the hearts and minds of Wisconsinites.”

Kenosha is a swing county in Wisconsin. It went for every Democratic presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter through Barack Obama, but the county broke for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Trump won Kenosha County by just 255 votes in 2016, and he won by nearly 3,000 votes in 2020.

Kenosha, of course, jumped onto the national radar in August of 2020 when crowds of rioters burned parts of the city down following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The violence in Kenosha only stopped after Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two men and wounded a third.

Prosecutors cleared the officer involved in Blake’s shooting. A jury last year found Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges for the shootings during the city’s last night of violence.

*****

The article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Has the American Culture Hit Bottom? thumbnail

Has the American Culture Hit Bottom?

By Craig J. Cantoni

It’s difficult to see it getting any lower than the Brazilian Butt Lift

This might not be news to many Americans, but being an oddball disconnected from the pop culture and trends du jour, it was news to me—and shocking and distressing news at that. I’m speaking of the Brazilian Butt Lift and other medical procedures that have been developed to make women’s butts the size and shape of two side-by-side beach balls.  

It might have something to do with the Kardashians. I don’t know their claim to fame but know they are trend-setters and have seen photos of them and their heavy makeup, greasy hair and beach balls.

Mariana van Zeller recently exposed the big business of big butts on her show “Trafficked.” My wife and I had our mouths agape while watching the episode.  

Given his natural interest in rear ends, our dog was also fascinated by the show. Thank goodness we don’t have a bull as a pet, for he would’ve eloped with the TV.

The Brazilian Butt Lift entails the surgical removal of fat from some parts of the body and reinserting it in the buttocks.  The center of this industry is in Miami, where the procedure is done in surgery storefronts in strip malls, for both American and foreign customers. It’s a bloody, dangerous procedure. Women have died during the operation.

Another procedure for blowing up butts like a beach ball is silicone injections, which are popular in many cities. Like the Brazilian Butt Lift, the injections can have medical complications. They also can lead to severe scarring that requires expensive corrective operations by skilled surgeons.

One scene was filmed inside a high-end strip club in Atlanta, where the dancers pay $1,000 per night to the club and can get ten times as much in tips. According to the dancers interviewed for the show, nine of ten of them have gotten the silicone injections. New dancers have to be inspected in the nude before being allowed to dance at the club, to make sure that they have butts of the proper size and shape. Meat inspectors at a meat-packing plant come to mind.

To use the silly-sounding lingo of the times, all of the women featured on the segment were “people of color.” 

One of the women was a former man, who was shown with her naked butt being injected with silicone. Using a popular word of the day, she said that like a lot of people in the transsexual “community,” she had always wanted a curvaceous body.

Maybe some of the featured women were naturally pretty, but with their heavy makeup, fake eyelashes the size of brooms, grotesque tattoos, corpulence, and inarticulateness, there was nothing attractive about them. They oozed shallowness and insecurity. No doubt, the men who find them attractive are even shallower.  

Of course, in keeping with journalistic protocols, van Zeller was careful to tell the women that she wasn’t passing judgement on them. After all, being judgmental is a taboo in America among the commentariat, literati, and intelligentsia. 

Fortunately, it’s not a taboo in my family. If I were to tell my wife that I wanted to get silicone injections in my Roman nose to make it even larger, she’d tell me that I should get psychiatric help. The same if I were to announce one day that I was Henry the Eighth and began parading around in sixteenth century outfits. For sure, she would have me institutionalized if I started to call her Anne Boleyn and practiced splitting open watermelons with a sword on a chopping block in the backyard.  

A glaring societal contradiction can’t be explained. On the one hand, the demeaning of women is tolerated—not only by means of the Brazilian Butt Lift but also in popular entertainment. Take a song by a female “artist” that won a Grammy last year. The lyrics are so disgusting that they won’t be quoted here, but suffice it to say that the song is about a wet and large female body part.  

On the other hand, there has been the equal rights movement, the #MeToo movement, the push to get women into positions of power, and the canceling and firing of powerful and influential men who couldn’t keep their hands off women. Having been at the vanguard of the equal rights movement, I know that the goal wasn’t to bring women down to the locker-room standards of adolescent males.

Perhaps the trend of butt injections will run its course and eventually lose air, like a punctured beach ball. But if other trends are a guide, it will first metastasize into something worse. Tattoos are an example.  They began as a small personal expression on an arm or leg but spread into sleeve tattoos, neck tattoos, and face tattoos. What was seen as a sign of individuality and rebelliousness has become a sign of groupthink and conformity.  Even more inexplicable, people who are compulsive about not consuming chemicals with their food are okay with having chemicals injected in their skin to draw permanent tattoos.

Now women are having chemicals injected in their butts, similar to Thanksgiving turkeys being injected with chemicals by turkey companies to make them plumper.

Has the American culture hit bottom with butt injections? Don’t count on it.   

Equity in Tucson through Marijuana Licenses thumbnail

Equity in Tucson through Marijuana Licenses

By Craig J. Cantoni

Maybe someone has to be on drugs to understand the connection.

Some sort of mental impairment must be keeping me from understanding a news story about social equity and marijuana dispensary licenses in Tucson and the rest of Arizona. I don’t consume drugs and have about one drink a week, so it’s probably due to a low IQ.

The story is pasted at the end of this commentary.

It’s not the fault of the reporter that the story is difficult to understand. He did a good job of covering the convoluted subject. It’s the fault of voters who approved Proposition 207 in 2020.

The proposition legalized the adult use of recreational marijuana. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it also mandated that social equity licenses be issued to “people from communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of previous marijuana laws.”

As a sidebar, many inequities have been committed under the guise of “equity.” Likewise, a lot of unfairness and injustice has been committed in the name of “fairness” and “justice.”

In any event, think of the convoluted logic behind the equity provision. Using the same logic, licenses for liquor stores should be based on where there are the highest DUI arrests or the highest incidence of spousal abuse stemming from drunkenness. Similarly, fees for food licenses should be waived for restaurateurs opening up fried chicken and pizza restaurants in communities with a high incidence of obesity and heart disease.

Imagine the political mischief caused by licenses being handed out based on the squishy criterion of “people from communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of previous marijuana laws.” I don’t have to imagine.

It reminds me of a job I took as a 19-year-old in my hometown of St. Louis in order to earn money for college. I worked for a former shady mayor who had a business helping liquor stores and taverns obtain a liquor license or have their license renewed. My job was to get the majority of property owners within a couple hundred feet of the establishment to sign a form indicating that they had no problem with the granting or the renewing of the license.  In poor neighborhoods, most of the property owners were absentee landlords who lived in the leafy suburbs. This necessitated that I drive to their nice homes to obtain the signatures. The process was so corrupt that I quit after a few weeks and took a job as a laborer in an aluminum plant.

I learned more about how the world works in those two jobs, as well as my two summers as a sewer inspector for the city, then I did in four years of college. I didn’t learn enough, however, to understand the thinking behind the equity provision of Prop. 207.

 *****

The following article is referenced in the second paragraph above.

Arizona Daily Star

Despite new dispensary licenses, ‘social equity’ winners could face tough road ahead

Edward Celaya 18 hrs ago

The state’s new “social equity” licenses to operate recreational marijuana dispensaries were awarded Friday to 26 applicants.

The room inside the Arizona Department of Health Services Offices in Phoenix was filled Friday with department dignitaries, media and representatives of applicants seeking one of 26 “social equity” licenses needed to operate a recreational marijuana dispensary in the state.

There was no bingo wheel, no cage spinning full of of ping pong balls or applications. Instead, a computer processed nearly 1,300 application numbers and selected the 26 winners within a few moments. Online, hundreds of candidates for Arizona’s Social Equity Dispensary Program waited anxiously to see who was lucky enough to win one of lucrative 26 issued licenses.

Though the name and number on the application of the winners is now known, who the individuals or companies are behind the applications was not immediately known.

Most of the applicants that were selected were listed as Limited Liability Companies registered in the Phoenix area. Three winning applicants had Pima County addresses on their LLC filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission: Higher Than High I, Joint Junkies I, and Juicy Joint I. (See box for names of those selected)

Social equity licenses were passed as part of Prop. 207 in 2020 which legalized adult-use recreational marijuana usage. According to the statute, they are to be issued to “people from communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of previous marijuana laws.”

However, due to the exclusively recreational nature of the licenses and special zoning exceptions that could run the clock out on licensees’ time to open retail locations, new licensees might be entering the toughest portion yet in what has been an onerous and expensive process.

That could mean some winners are forced to forfeit their licenses (even though they could also transfer, or essentially sell, the license for a potential profit of $10 to $20 million). And some cities, like Tucson, could become unattractive to potential operators.

The first issue for social equity licensees is that the new licenses are only for recreational adult-use and don’t include an accompanying medical dispensary license.

That becomes important to cities, like Tucson and Flagstaff, who decided to proactively put a moratorium on exclusively recreational dispensaries after the passage of Prop. 207.

While Prop. 207 allowed for already established medical dispensaries to apply for dual-licenses and, after a 60-day process, begin selling to recreational customers and medical patients alike, it made no such provision to allow social equity licensees to apply for an accompanying medical license.

Sam Richard, executive director of the Arizona Dispensary Association — one of the main entities responsible for crafting Prop. 207 along with the state health department — explained the reason for the new licenses being exclusively recreational.

“Prop. 207 didn’t amend the Arizona Medical Marijuana act at all, so the reason why the currently established medical licenses can be kind of co-located is because they already existed,” he said. “The only new licenses Prop. 207 created were adult-use, recreational licenses.”

Both Richard and Jon Udell, the director of politics for the Arizona branch of the marijuana advocacy group NORML, noted that there are potential legislative fixes for this seeming discrepancy.

But Udell pointed out that a bill that included language to help fix the problem had been dead for some time.

“Right now there just isn’t really a realistic path forward,” for any comprehensive fix, he said.

An even more recent move last week Tucson’s City Council to subject potential social equity licensees to a special exception zoning process could be a game changer for both the city and state, according to Berekk Blackwell, COO of Zoned Properties, a real estate services company that specializes in the cannabis industry.

“The news out of Tucson, or I guess the rhetoric that was used, was very surprising,” Blackwell said. “I think it was a really, really strong statement and it’s going to be really interesting to see if any of the other localities in the state of Arizona follow suit.”

Blackwell was referring to a unanimous decision during the last Tucson City Council meeting, where the council moved to create a special exception zoning process for social equity licensees. The zoning process will take six months to complete and will go before mayor and council for approval.

That move is not good in Blackwell’s eyes, or the eyes of some potential social equity dispensary operators. First, as stipulated by Prop. 207, social equity licensees must have the retail portion of their operation up and running within 18 months. That clock started April 8.

“If you aren’t able to start that process for another six months, you might be in a situation where you actually can’t look at Tucson as an option anymore,” he said.

That 18-month window was written into the law to ensure new retail dispensary locations opened and to prevent licensees from sitting on the license, something that happened when medical licenses were first issues nearly a decade ago, according to Richard.

One social equity applicant, Ariana Munoz — who between herself and her mother had four applications in the pool of nearly 1,300 — solidified Blackwell’s point about Tucson’s new zoning rule.

“Due to the zoning specifically in the city of Tucson, unless they do an emergency hearing to rush the process, I probably will not look into that city because I wouldn’t get anything really going for six months,” Munoz said.

Although Munoz did not win one of the coveted 26 licenses, she said she believes others like her will look at Tucson the same way due to the special exception process.

This six-month special exception process can’t be rushed, according to Tucson Councilman Steve Kozachik, not necessarily because of any state law or statute, but because of precedence.

“If we ease it up for one, then we’re pretty much on the hook to ease it up for everybody who participates in that process,” he said. “I don’t think we can cherry pick the equity licenses and say, ‘You get a streamlined path through the special exception process. If we do that for them, then TEP is going to ask for the same thing.”

Kozachik insisted the special exception process wouldn’t restrict potential dispensary operators and will in fact open up more appropriate and “better” spaces for dispensaries to locate. He also said he believed that even with a six-month wait, the potential market share in Tucson would be too great a pull for operators to resist.

“I don’t think it’s as onerous as people are making it out to be,” he said, adding that he believes large dispensary conglomerates, or MSOs (short for multi-state operators) are the driving force behind many social equity licensees.

“So tacking on another, you know, pick your period of time — three months or whatever — it’s not going to break their bank.”

According to Demitri Downing, CEO and founder of the Marijuana Industry Trade Association, Kozachik’s understanding of who applied for social equity licenses is incomplete.

Downing called the idea of social equity programs “nebulous,” and countered Kozachik’s argument that only those with money applied.

“Half of the applicants are normal people who scratched together $4,000 and are hoping to win the lottery,” he said. “The other half are normal people who own 51% of enterprises that were paid for by existing dispensary, MSOs, intelligent people, investors, but they’re still half owned by them.”

While a significant number of applicants were either backed financially or in some other way by already established dispensary operators or other big cannabis corporations, Downing believes that now that the state has issued the licenses, it’s up to cities and other jurisdictions to decide on time, place and manner of where a social equity dispensary can go.

He sees Tucson’s special exception zoning as not just a bad idea, but one that could be disastrous for future potential dispensary operators and consumers. And he doesn’t think the city should be in the game of deciding just who is truly benefiting off social equity licenses.

“It’s just wrong,” he said. “First of all, it’s none of the city of Tucson’s business, it’s the state’s business to decide eligibility. Tucson’s there to regulate time, place and manner. But they’re confused.”

For his part, Kozachik said he sees the special exception zoning process as a way to open up more areas of eligible real estate within the city for dispensaries to operate.

He also disagreed with Downing, asserting the mayor and council do play a role when it comes to social equity licenses.

“Is it the city’s role by statute? No. But but nothing prevents us from seeing holes in the statute, the state statute, and pointing to them and indicating to the state government that you’re not achieving the goals that the voters voted for,” he said.

Edward Celaya is a breaking news and marijuana reporter. He has been on both beats since May 2021.

WHOOSH, Dollar’s Purchasing Power Goes to Heck as Services Inflation Takes Off, Food Spikes, Energy Explodes, But Used Cars Finally Stall thumbnail

WHOOSH, Dollar’s Purchasing Power Goes to Heck as Services Inflation Takes Off, Food Spikes, Energy Explodes, But Used Cars Finally Stall

By Wolf Richter

The Fed is still pumping fuel on the fire.

The Consumer Price Index today – a measure of how fast the dollar and everything denominated in dollars, including labor, lost its purchasing power – is a horror show, the likes of which the majority of Americans have never experienced in their lives. The reality on the ground is even worse for many people because CPI is slow to pick up the red-hot housing inflation as we’ll see in a moment, and because CPI structurally is skewed to represent the inflation felt by higher-income households, while lower-income households, as Fed governor Lael Brainard pointed out last week, face higher inflation and feel it much more.

The overall Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) spiked by 1.2% in March from February, and by 8.5% from a year ago, the worst since 1981, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.

But in 1981, the Fed was effectively cracking down on inflation with double-digit policy interest rates, and inflation was on the way down.

Now inflation is spiking, and the Fed is still repressing short-term interest rates to near 0%, and it still holds $8.9 trillion in assets on its balance sheet as a result of years of money printing, including $4.8 trillion that it printed over the past two years to repress long-term interest rates and to produce the biggest wealth disparity ever. And now we’re surprised by this spike in inflation?

There is no period in history that compares to this period, not even the 1970s because the Fed wasn’t printing money in the 1970s.

WHOOSH goes the Dollar’s Purchasing Power.

Consumer price inflation is not a sign of anything positive, but a sign of the loss of the purchasing power of the consumer’s dollar, including the purchasing power of labor. And it’s cumulative, month after month, year after year. In March, the purchasing power of $100 in January 2000 dropped to a new record low of $58.80, which explains why the mood of Americans has curdled:

Inflation in services is now spiking.

The CPI for services – which includes housing costs – jumped by 0.7% in March from February, the third jump in a row of this magnitude, and by 5.1% compared to March last year, the worst services inflation since 1991. Given how slow the CPI is in picking up the surging housing costs, this portion of the CPI will continue to get worse, even as prices of gasoline and used cars might come down some.

Inflation in housing costs.

The largest component in CPI is “shelter,” a basket of services that is designed to represent housing costs and accounts for 32.7% of total CPI. The largest components in this basket are “Rent of primary residence,” accounting for 7.3% of total CPI, and “Owner’s equivalent rent of residence,” accounting for 24.0% of total CPI.

“Rent of primary residence” jumped by 4.4% in March (red in the chart below). This tracks what tenants reported as their actual rent payments, including in rent-controlled apartments.

“Owner’s equivalent rent of residences” rose 4.5% (green line). This tracks the costs of homeownership as a service, based on what homeowners reported that their home would rent for.

Because both of these rent measures are lagging, they will continue to spike as they catch up, even if over the next 12 months housing inflation actually were to cool down a little. So these housing components that weigh much more heavily than used cars or gasoline are guaranteed to provide upward pressure on CPI well into 2023 (my discussion of this phenomenon).

Note that both measures are still well below the overall CPI and therefore are still holding down CPI, but less than before, and as they rise, they will hold down CPI even less.

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

The Dread 1.5 Degree Target Is Dead thumbnail

The Dread 1.5 Degree Target Is Dead

By David Wojick

A foolish end to a foolish target – limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C. That is the warming from 150 years ago, just 0.5 degrees or less from today forward. Of course, this is all according to the worthless computer models, but let’s go with the flow.

The massive new IPCC report makes it clear. You can’t get there from here (not that we wanted to). Not by any even reasonably possible means, so the target will be missed (according to the models). What will the alarmists do without their beloved target?

It is all about something called the “carbon budget”. Unlike the climate and the climate models for that matter, the carbon budget is very simple. It is how much CO2 the human race is allowed to emit in order to stay below the target warming.

Not how much this year, or this decade, or even this century. This is the limit forever. So enjoy it while you can because time is very short, or so says the IPCC report. In fact, time is up, over and past.

First, here is the budget: The IPCC says “…the current central estimate of the remaining carbon budget from 2020 onwards for limiting warming to 1.5°C with a probability of 50% has been assessed as 500 Gt CO2…”

500 Gigatons is a suspiciously round number but never mind. Just how big is it? The IPCC explains it nicely: “….cumulative net CO2 emissions between 2010-2019 compare to about four-fifths of the size of the remaining carbon budget from 2020 onwards for a 50% probability of limiting global warming to 1.5°C…”

So our forever budget, starting in 2020, is just a bit bigger than our emissions in the last decade! That is it, for all eternity. Note that even then we are just buying a 50% chance of staying under the dread 1.5 degree target. Not a good way to bet on the global economy.

But our emissions are not going down, in fact, they are still going up. Nor can they possibly come down enough to make any difference. We do not have time to open all the mines and build all the factories (after getting all the permits!) then make, install and operate all the stuff we would need to meet that budget (after getting all the permits). In fact building, all this stuff might well double our emissions for the next ten years. Oh wait, we have less than 8 years.

The conclusion is obvious. We are going to burn the carbon budget and keep on emitting many hundreds of gigatons of CO2 after that. There is no feasible way not to.

So how are the alarmists going to handle this failure? They have foolishly hyped their way into a corner.

The standard way the 1.5-degree target is explained in the green media is “to avoid the worst effects of climate change” but that has always been nonsense. The worst effects would occur at 6 degrees or more, not as we pass 1.5 degrees.

There is nothing in the science about a 1.5-degree threshold. No tipping point, no catastrophe, no emergency. Nothing at all, so it is a made-up number. The models get a little bit worse with every temperature increase, but just a tiny bit, and passing 1.5 degrees is no different than passing any other level. When it comes to being the threshold to catastrophe, there is no there there.

In this very real sense, the reported 1.5-degree threshold to catastrophe is a hoax. Except the people pushing it do not know that, so it is more of a colossal blunder. Except the IPCC does know it and has never corrected the activists and governments that are calling the meeting of this harmless target an emergency. This makes it a hoax by omission.

I have no idea what the alarmists will do as they finally admit that the 1.5-degree target cannot be met. But it should be fun to watch.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.

NYT Columnist Admits Schools Are Grooming Children Into LGBT Identities thumbnail

NYT Columnist Admits Schools Are Grooming Children Into LGBT Identities

By NATHANAEL BLAKE

A New York Times columnist has again confirmed that social conservatives were right: educators are pushing LGBT ideology on students.

Is Michelle Goldberg a conservative plant at The New York Times? Although she claims to be a liberal feminist, some of her recent columns are essentially admissions that social conservatives have been right all along. In another entry in this genre, she purports to critique the “freakout over sex and gender identity in schools” — only to tacitly admit that schools are indoctrinating children into LGBT ideology and grooming them into LGBT identities.

Goldberg accuses conservatives of stoking a “moral panic” akin to the “‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s, a frenzy of accusations of ritual child abuse that resulted in the conviction of dozens of innocent people.” Yet she then demonstrates the current fears are reality-based.

Her evidence that this is a panic consists of highlighting some unfounded rumors about educators indulging students with a furry fetish. She then admits that “there’s been a great evolution in how students think about gender and sexuality” with “an even bigger generational shift with trans issues. Many middle-aged liberal parents I know have different ideas about gender than their more radical adolescent kids, and I assume the gulf must be even larger in many conservative families.” In short, the sexual orientation and gender identity revolution is real, even if a few internet rumors about it are not.

Similarly, in response to the huge increase in LGBT identities among the young, Goldberg writes that “It’s obvious that more kids are going to come out in high schools where they’ll be accepted and celebrated than in those where they’ll be bullied and abused.”

True, and it is also obvious that this does not explain the mass conversions of adolescents, especially girls, to rainbow identities. Goldberg herself relays, without dispute, the example of a summer camp from which “a third of the girls came back saying that they were nonbinary or queer or gender nonconforming.”

This self-refutation continues to Goldberg’s conclusion. She does reiterate her ugly victim-blaming regarding the infamous Loudoun County rape case — why is a supposed feminist shaming a teenage girl for being raped in circumstances inconvenient to the agenda of men in dresses?

Yet she ends with a quote the victim’s mother had given to the Daily Wire, noting how her daughter was still drifting along with the gender revolution: “’Where does she get these ideas? From school, obviously,’ the mother said. ‘It’s not from our home.’”

The Left’s Contradictions

Once again, Goldberg has confirmed that social conservatives were right: educators really are leading students in a sexual and gender identity revolution, which is then furthered by social media and peer pressure. Nonetheless, Goldberg is probably not a closet conservative writing esoterically to get past her editors.

Rather, she seems to be ensnared by the contradictions of the left’s current orthodoxy on sex and gender. This sort of confusion, along with her apparently unwitting confirmations that conservatives were right, is inevitable because the LGBT movement’s justifying mantra of “born this way” is false, as demonstrated by what is happening in schools.

The born this way creed posits that sexual orientation and gender identity are innate and immutable, and that an authentic and flourishing life requires accepting these inborn identities. Thus, teaching young children about sexual orientation and gender identity is necessary to help them discover and live as their true selves, otherwise they will be repressed, miserable, and perhaps even suicidal. This is the logic behind the constant references to “LGBT youth” and “trans kids,” as well as President Joe Biden’s support for chemically and surgically transitioning children.

The True Source of Gender

But this view has been discredited. There is no gay gene. Nor is there an established biological basis for transgender identification. The case for transition rests on shoddy social science; some researchers even lie about their results. This is why transgender advocates rely on the abusive emotional blackmail of suicide threats.

The truth is that sexual inclinations and one’s sense of gender arise from a mix of biological, environmental, and cultural factors, of which genes are only a minor part. The interactions of these elements are complex and are not the same for everyone. We may have predispositions, but no one is predestined to identify as LGBT.

We can see this complexity and fluidity playing out in our culture, especially among the young. It is not just that youth are much more likely to identify as LGBT, but that they are deconstructing and recombining sexual and gender identities, often encouraged by their educators and under the influence of social media.

Educators Pushing LGBT Ideology

Nonetheless, the legacy of the (very politically successful) creed of “born this way” persists. It encourages teaching children about rainbow identities at young ages, justified by the presumption that some of them are already among the LGBT elect, even if they don’t know it yet. But rather than drawing out and nurturing intrinsic identities, instructing young children in LGBT ideology shapes their identities. Activist educators claim to protect trans children, but they are actually helping create trans children.

Horrifying examples are emerging of educators pushing young children into trans identities, even against the wishes of parents (some schools even hide these changes from parents). The Libs of TikTok Twitter account exposes a steady stream of such abuses — and these are just the activists dumb enough to boast online about what they are doing. In New Jersey, new state teaching standards have school districts distributing sample lesson plans instructing first and second graders in gender ideology and sexual orientation.

The LGBT educational agenda has more red flags than the Soviet army, from teachers talking to young children about sex to school counselors helping them to keep sexual and gender secrets from their parents. Groomer is as good a term as any for pedagogues who are eager to inform five-year-olds about sexual orientation, or who respond to the gender confusion of a troubled adolescent girl by encouraging her to inject testosterone, grow a beard, and have her breasts amputated.

The youth LGBT revolution is not a natural development among children expressing innate identities. Rather, it is an artificial social contagion encouraged by adult ideologues indoctrinating students — a six-year-old does not conclude on his own that a boy can have a vagina and a girl can have a penis. This is why parents are in revolt against the education establishment and why a liberal feminist writer can’t help admitting that the grooming is real.

*****

This article was published in The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Do Greedy Countries Have Higher Inflation? thumbnail

Do Greedy Countries Have Higher Inflation?

By Nicolas Cachanosky

Blaming high inflation on corporate greed has become a favorite pastime of some prominent politicians. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has accused large corporations of driving inflation, a view that is out of sync with the data. More recently, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) joined the chorus. “Corporate greed is Tyson Foods raising the price of beef by 35 percent while its owner became $1.6 billion richer during the pandemic, its profits skyrocketed by 140 percent last quarter to $1.12 billion and its CEO got a 22 percent raise last year to $14 million,” Sanders tweeted, “It’s not inflation. It’s greed.”

If inflation is the result of greed, as Sanders claims, one should expect to see more inflation in more greedy countries and less inflation in less greedy countries. But that’s not the case.

The 2021 CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) World Giving Index ranks countries based on (1) the amount of help given to strangers, (2) money donated to charities, and (3) time volunteered to an organization. The higher the score, the higher the giving. To the extent that giving is (negatively) correlated with greed, one can use the CAF World Giving Index as a measure of how greedy a country is. The higher the score, the lower the greediness of the country.

The following figure plots the CAF World Giving Index score and inflation rate for 66 countries. There is no relationship between greed and inflation. And, to the extent that there is any relationship, it goes in the opposite direction than suggested by Senators Warren and Sanders: Greedy countries have slightly lower inflation rates.

Figure 1. Inflation and greed across countries, 2021

If the Warren-Sanders greed hypothesis were correct, one would observe a negative trend between inflation and the CAF World Giving Index with countries relatively close to the trend line. Instead, there is a slightly positive trend line, with countries located all over the place. Japan and Italy are greedier than the US, but they have significantly lower inflation rates. India and Thailand do not differ much from the US in terms of greediness, but both countries have lower rates of inflation than the US. Estonia and Pakistan, on the other hand, are greedier than the US and have higher rates of inflation. Needless to say, the correlation between inflation and the CAF World Giving Index offers no support for the Warren-Sanders greed hypothesis.

The lack of correlation between greed and inflation is not the only empirical problem for the Warren-Sanders view. The data also show that, at least relative to other countries, the US is not very greedy. Indeed, it is one of the most charitable countries in the world. In terms of greed, the US ranks 54th out of 66 countries. It has the 10th highest inflation rate.

Blaming big corporations for inflation no doubt serves the political interests of Sens. Warren and Sanders. But it is inconsistent with the available data. That is not surprising: It is inconsistent with standard monetary economics as well.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

Video Shows Police Allowed January 6 Defendants Into Capitol Building thumbnail

Video Shows Police Allowed January 6 Defendants Into Capitol Building

By C. Mitchell Shaw

For the past 15 months, liberal politicians and their accomplices in the mainstream media have pointed to January 6, 2021, as an “insurrection” that “threatened democracy” and nearly overthrew the federal government. But newly released video confirms the claims of many who were there — even those who have been charged with breaching the Capitol Building — that police allowed them to enter the building through open doors.

The video — which Gateway Pundit reports was compiled to be presented in court as part of the defense of Brady Knowlton and Patrick Montgomery — shows police officers allowing protesters into the Upper West Terrace Doors of the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The video is edited to mark certain time stamps and includes a voice-over narration of the events.

Gateway Pundit reports that Alan Dershowitz is representing both Brady Knowlton and Patrick Montgomery. Both men have been charged with “Obstruction of an Official Proceeding” for entering the Capitol Building on January 6. But Dershowitz says the video shows “that a reasonable person could believe that he or she was not being stopped or prevented from going in.” He goes on to say that one could even gather from the video that someone who entered the building that day could have believed “that the police were welcoming him in.”

Gateway Pundit says the video was provided to them by “a trusted source” and that it was “originally obtained from the United States Department of Justice after media organizations joined a motion to have it released.” But since the video lacked context, “it has gone largely under the radar until it was put into context by our source, who carefully edited the video so the average viewer can understand what is going on.”

Assuming the video is presented as evidence for the defense, it is hard to imagine an impartial jury made up of reasoning adults finding Knowlton or Montgomery guilty. The video does clearly show that the police officer held the Upper West Terrace Doors open for people to enter the building. The video also shows police officers walking back and forth through the crowd — sometimes turning away from the crowd and showing no signs of believing themselves to be in danger from the people they had just allowed into the building.

In the video, we see the same scene from two different side-by-side vantage points of the interior house cameras of the US Capitol. Both cameras were facing the same door on the Upper West Terrace from opposite directions. The identical time codes in the videos can be seen in the upper left corners.

The video shows police behaving like museum staff security guards as they stand or walk idly by as unknowing men and women walk through a small set of Capitol doors carrying American flags and Trump signs. Many are innocently occupied by taking selfie videos of themselves and the crowd, apparently excited to be inside the People’s House and wanting to commemorate the occasion. They are clearly oblivious to the fact they were doing anything illegal, or they surely would have turned their cameras off and hid from video recording. They had no idea of the political persecution, shame and the witch hunters that will come for them later.

Dershowitz says he hopes “all Americans” see the video, adding, “I think it is going to help in the court of public opinion as well.” The liberal mainstream media have consistently portrayed anyone who entered the building on January 6 as “insurrectionists” trying to “overthrow the government.” Dershowitz’s wish for people to see for themselves that — at least at the Upper West Terrace — police allowed (or even welcomed) people into the building could go a long way to showing that narrative as false.

Gateway Pundit quotes Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan, Jr. as saying, “The Capitol is the People’s House — it is normally open.” Sullivan added, “Unless you are an insider you would have no way of knowing which doors are public access and which doors are not. Hundred of thousands of people, if not millions, every year go in and out of The Capitol so there is nothing on its face odd about that.”

Besides planning to enter this video into evidence, Dershowitz is also fighting to get the audio from bodycams worn by police officers that day, saying, “We have to get the audio recordings from the Capitol police.” He went on to say, “The Brady decision trumps local law.”

As Gateway Pundit explains:

Dershowitz is referring to a Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). The primary holding was that the government’s withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process.

Incredibly, the Capitol Police and DOJ continue to withhold exculpatory video and audio evidence that could exonerate January 6th prisoners.

Dershowitz is reported to have said:

So if a government unit has any relevant evidence it must be turned over. There is no justification for not turning over. They have not turned all of it over yet and they are absolutely required to turn it over by law. Those rules (Capitol police exemption of Freedom of Information Requests) are subordinate to the Constitution. Brady v. Maryland is a constitutional decision and every government unit has an obligation to comply with Brady. I think they will have to comply and we will get the chest camera video and the audio as well. We think the audio is very important. We are fighting for it and will not rest until we get it.

While the anti-Trump rhetoric of a violent “insurrection” has saturated most media reports of January 6 — and has certainly poisoned the well of any chance of a fair trial for most of the defendants — this video may help Knowlton and Montgomery. On April 6, Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted January 6 defendant Matthew Martin on all charges in a bench trial after viewing similar video presented at trial. That video clearly showed Capitol Police waved Martin through a door, which is what he had claimed all along.

As Gateway Pundit reported on that acquittal:

The judge said video shows two police officers standing near the Rotunda doors and allowing people to enter as Martin approached (this video has not been released to the public). One of the officers appeared to lean back before Martin placed a hand on the officer’s shoulder as a possible sign of gratitude, the judge said.

McFadden acknowledged that Martin entered the Capitol, but said in his ruling that “intent was key”. The Judge ruled that Martin’s belief that he had police officer’s permission be inside the building was reasonable and “plausible” because police officers didn’t try to stop him.

“You are a free man,” he told Martin after he found him not guilty.

Martin’s acquittal was perfectly reasonable. It would also be reasonable for Knowlton and Montgomery to be acquitted of all charges. After all, what impartial jury or judge would find someone guilty of entering a building that is usually open to the public — especially when police allow and even appear to welcome them in?

*****

This article was published by The New American and is reproduced with permission.

Zero COVID Horror Show in Shanghai thumbnail

Zero COVID Horror Show in Shanghai

By David Waugh

Shanghai, the financial capital of China with a population of 25 million people, currently faces its third week of steep increases in cases of COVID-19.

In response, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented harsh COVID-19 restrictions in Shanghai, sending an army of healthcare workers to enforce them. Citizens cannot leave their homes. They can only receive medical care upon presenting a negative COVID test. Healthcare workers are forcing COVID-positive individuals into quarantine camps and stripping children from their parents. Government officials are even executing pets in the street when the pet owners test positive for COVID. People are running out of food, screaming from their windows, and jumping out of buildings in protest.

These measures follow the CCP’s “zero COVID” pandemic policies. These policies use extensive government intervention to “control” the coronavirus, disregarding all costs. During the past two years, the strategy gained admirers throughout the Western world, including Australia and New Zealand, each implementing similar zero COVID policies.

Zero COVID is a failed strategy. Data does not support it. Lockdowns, mass quarantines, strict border closures, and other policies do not stop COVID. New Zealand and China are experiencing increases in COVID cases. The societal and economic carnage severely outweighs any potential benefits of Zero-COVID policies.

Horrific Hubris

Unfortunately, the CCP refuses to recognize that zero COVID is ineffective, and the starving, trapped, exasperated people are using social media to share their stories.

Individuals across the city are audibly screaming from their windows in protest.

On Weibo, the highly censored social media platform, the following comment went viral: “We are not killed by Covid, but by the Covid control measures.” A tweet from a lawyer trapped in his home also went viral:

Further, NPR reports that citizens created makeshift indoor grass mats for their dogs to defecate on.

I’ve talked with friends who have created these – they call them DIY nature toilets inside their homes. So they, like, bought a patch of grass. They collected some old leaves as a place for their dogs to…Do their business.

The CCP’s response uses militarism and media gaslighting. The CCP-controlled media claims citizens should “be confident, trust the policy, not to panic or be overly anxious, and not to make up and believe rumors.”

Drones fly throughout Shanghai, telling citizens, “Please comply with covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”

The zero-COVID measures in Shanghai ought to be recognized for what they are: human rights abuses. The policy ends (zero COVID) are not possible, so they cannot justify the means (locking down a city of 25 million). Similar to its abuse of the Uyghurs in China, the CCP’s national socialist policies are causing significant harm to the Chinese people. Like all national socialist policies, they result in human suffering rather than human flourishing.

State Capacity Hurts

China’s zero COVID approach is yet another example of the devastating risk introduced when totalitarian regimes implement centrally planned policy via brute force. Under the classical liberal ideal, governments are formed to protect individual rights. Nothing could be further from this in Shanghai. A city of over 25 million people is being dehumanized because of a spike in largely asymptomatic COVID-19 cases.

We were dangerously close in the United States to implementing zero COVID adjacent policies, particularly in our larger cities. Admirers of this approach are still with us in the Western world, even if they are in apparent retreat. 

The experience in Shanghai permanently discredits their opinions with respect to COVID-19 policy. The rest of the world should take note and ensure “zero COVID” ideas are placed squarely in the past.

*****

This article was published by AIER, The American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

New Emails Provide Smoking Gun Evidence that Joe Biden Was Directly Involved in Hunter’s Corrupt Business Dealings thumbnail

New Emails Provide Smoking Gun Evidence that Joe Biden Was Directly Involved in Hunter’s Corrupt Business Dealings

By Debra Heine

Smoking gun evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s shady business ventures has emerged in the form of a college recommendation letter for the son of a Chinese executive. According to emails obtained by Fox News, the elder Biden wrote the letter to please BHR CEO Jonathan Li, who did business with Hunter Biden’s firm Rosemont Seneca.

Hunter held a 10% stake in BHR as recently as last year, the White House previously acknowledged. Hunter’s attorney told the New York Times in November that he had since divested.

In an email dated Jan. 3, 2017, and sent to Hunter Biden and his business associates Devon Archer and Jim Bulger, Li wrote: “Gentlmen[sic], please find the attached resume of my son, Chris Li. He is applying the following colleges for this year.” Li listed Brown University, Cornell University, and New York University, as the schools his son was considering. Li attached an “updated version” of his son’s “CV” in a subsequent email.

In a response that cc’d Hunter and Archer, Bulger said they have “received the updated version of the CV.”

“Lets [sic] see how we can be helpful here to Chris,” Bulger wrote.

Joe Biden has repeatedly denied discussing Hunter’s business ventures with his son.

A month and a half later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, who served as president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li: “Jonathan, Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University.”

“The original is being FedExed to Dr. Paxson directly at Brown,” Schwerin wrote. “It should be there by Tuesday at the latest (given Monday is a holiday here in the U.S.). Let us know if you have any questions. Best, Eric.”

Dr. Christina Paxson is the president of Brown University.

Li replied: “Hi Eric, Just see the email. It is just great! Thank you very much!”

“And Hunter, thank you very much too,” Li continued. “All the best to you all.”

The string of emails directly ties Joe Biden to his son’s corrupt influence operation.

The man who initially released the incriminating and explicit contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop to the media, told

the Daily Mail earlier this week that he has an additional 450 gigabytes of deleted material he plans to make public.

Jack Maxey says this includes 80,000 images and videos and more than 120,000 archives emails from the computer. Maxey came into possession of the hard drive after he was asked by former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and New York City police chief Bernie Kerik, to access the contents.

He told the Daily Mail he fled from the United States to Switzerland out of fear that the Biden administration would retaliate against him.

*****

Continue reading this article at American Greatness.

Meet Biden’s Second Nominee to Head ATF thumbnail

Meet Biden’s Second Nominee to Head ATF

By Harold Hutchison

President Joe Biden on Monday nominated Steve Dettelbach, a former U.S. attorney in Ohio with a record of supporting gun control measures, to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Dettelbach has a history of backing gun control measures, promoting several firearms restrictions during an unsuccessful 2018 campaign to become Ohio’s attorney general, and making multiple posts on social media calling on America to take action in the wake of high-profile shootings. He told WOSU that he supported universal background checks and bans on so-called assault weapons during his campaign.

During the campaign, Dettelbach received endorsements from prominent gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, as well as former President Barack Obama and Biden.

Dettelbach also opposed a plan to arm teachers in the aftermath of the February 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, telling WOSU “it doesn’t protect people in any meaningful way, it’s more than a day late and much more than a dollar short.”

“Who allows madmen such easy access to firearms?” Dettelbach asked in a 2019 Twitter post shortly after a shooting in El Paso, Texas. “Who armed a madmen with enough hate that he would kill people just because they were Hispanic? Those people must also be held accountable.”

Dettelbach retweeted a 2020 post from the Sandy Hook Promise, a group that advocates for certain gun control measures, asking people to sign a “petition demanding action to prevent school shootings.”

The White House called Dettelbach “a highly respected former U.S. Attorney and career prosecutor who spent over two decades as a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice” in a release Monday.

The nomination of Dettelbach comes in conjunction with a crackdown on so-called ghost guns, according to the release. The Justice Department announced new rules to target ghost guns, including requiring those who make or sell them to get federal firearms licenses and to run background checks.

Biden withdrew the nomination of David Chipman to the ATF in September 2021 after allegations of racist comments and bipartisan pushback over his attitude toward gun owners. Chipman called for banning the AR-15, a popular semi-automatic rifle, and pushed a definition of “assault weapons” that many viewed as more extreme than that of the European Union.

“President Biden’s new pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is a rinse and repeat from his last unsuitable nominee, David Chipman,” Amy Hunter, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, adding:

The new nominee, Steven Dettelbach, is a dedicated gun controller who has supported gun bans, restrictions on lawful firearm transfers, and expansion of prohibitions on who can possess firearms. Dettelbach’s history proves he cannot be trusted to work objectively and fairly with law-abiding gun owners, the firearms industry, or law enforcement—he will serve only to further restrict Americans’ rights.

In a statement Monday, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, one of the gun industry’s largest trade organizations, said it had “significant concerns regarding Dettelbach’s previous public statements supporting bans on Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), or AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, universal background checks, which are unworkable without a national firearm registry that is already forbidden by federal law, and extreme-risk protection orders, or so-called ‘red flag’ laws, without protections for Due Process considerations.”

Dettelbach did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

Judicial Watch Victory: Historic Court Ruling against Race, Ethnic, LGBT Quotas thumbnail

Judicial Watch Victory: Historic Court Ruling against Race, Ethnic, LGBT Quotas

By Tom Fitton

We won a significant victory last week in the California Superior Court when it declared that the state’s racial, ethnic, and LGBT quota for corporate boards of California-based corporations violates the California Constitution.

This week the court released its full opinion. It found that only in “very particular cases should discrimination be remedied by more discrimination.”

The ruling and opinion come in the case (Robin Crest, et al. v. Alex Padilla, in his official capacity as Secretary of State of the State of California (No.20STCV37513)) granting our motion for summary judgment in our lawsuit. We sued on behalf of taxpayers who are asking the court to declare the quota scheme unconstitutional and seeking to enjoin its enforcement.

This historic California court decision declared unconstitutional one of the most blatant and significant attacks in the modern era on constitutional prohibitions against discrimination. In its ruling today, the court upheld the core American value of equal protection under the law. Judicial Watch’s taxpayer clients are heroes for standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts to undo anti-discrimination protections.

We filed this lawsuit on October 2, 2020, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, on behalf of three California taxpayers (Robin Crest, Earl De Vries and Judy DeVries) to prevent California from enforcing Assembly Bill 979 (AB 979). The law requires that boards of directors of California-based, publicly held domestic or foreign corporations satisfy a racial, ethnic, and LGBT quota by the end of the 2021 calendar year.

In his opinion striking down the gender-quota law, Judge Terry A. Green found the law “violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution on its face.” The judge elaborated on why the California Legislature exceeded its authority in mandating the composition of boards:

The difficulty is that the Legislature is thinking in group terms. But the California Constitution protects the right of individuals to equal treatment. Before the Legislature may require that members of one group be given certain board seats, it must first try to create neutral conditions under which qualified individuals from any group may succeed. That attempt was not made in this case. [Emphasis in original]

The court concluded:

The statute treats similarly situated individuals – qualified potential corporate board members – differently based on their membership (or lack thereof) in certain listed racial, sexual orientation, and gender identity groups. It requires that a certain specific number of board seats be reserved for members of the groups on the list – and necessarily excludes members of other groups from those seats.

The Secretary has not identified a compelling interest to justify this classification. The broader public benefits produced by well-run businesses do not fit that bill.

California must treat its citizens equally as individuals under the law, and not give discriminatory, preferential treatment to some based on race, ethnicity or LGBT status. This court ruling marks a watershed in the core American value of equal protection under the law for all Americans. And it warns against the pernicious racialism of the radical Left.

This is not our only action in this area.

We completed a trial in a separate lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of California taxpayers to prevent the state from implementing a 2018 law (SB 826) requiring publicly-held corporations headquartered in California to have at least one director “who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth” on their boards by December 31, 2019 (Robin Crest et al. v. Alex Padilla (No.19ST-CV-27561)).

*****

This article was published by Judicial Watch and is reproduced with permission.

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