Sanctuary cities: are they sanctuaries, or are they not?

September 20, 2022

The Democrats have long been supportive of illegal immigration into the United States. This is purportedly done to help those in other countries who are fleeing poverty, violence and oppression. To help that process, some cities and other communities became “sanctuary” communities

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service describes this phenomenon: “The phrase sanctuary city is not a legal term, but one developed over time and more recently reflecting a response to ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) policies and actions. In general, a sanctuary city is a community with a policy, written or unwritten, that discourages local law enforcement from reporting the immigration status of individuals unless it involves investigation of a serious crime. These sanctuary communities go beyond cities, though. One can find entire counties and states declaring sanctuary status.”

Today, more than 10 states and 180 cities have become sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.

Of course, the U.S. has an immigration system to deal with people who want to become U.S. citizens. There is a process that focuses on admitting individuals into the country who are coming here for the right reasons, and that attempts to prevent criminals and other undesirable types from being admitted to the process of gaining U.S. citizenship.

In general, the system prefers family members of U.S. citizens or Legal Permanent Residents. Hopefuls must pass English and U.S. history and civics exams, with certain exceptions, and pay an application fee, among other requirements.

Why, then, does the country need sanctuary communities that admit anyone who is in the country, whether they are legal immigrants, or illegal aliens?

The Biden administration has all but posted signs at the southern border saying, “C’mon in! It’s wonderful here! You can check in with the Border Patrol, or not, as you choose.”

Our sanctuary cities and states, by their very definition, are ready and willing to accept and care for immigrants, legal and illegal. Among those are New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Denver, and Alexandria, Virginia.

However, when people come in illegally, they don’t enter a sanctuary city or state, they enter Texas, Arizona, New Mexico or California. Only the latter is a sanctuary state. Most of the illegals, by far, come into Texas, which has the longest and southern-most border of the four border states.

“A new report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reveals that 4.9 million migrants — including 900,000-plus ‘got-aways’ who eluded apprehension from border officials — have unlawfully crossed the United States-Mexico border since President Biden entered the White House (January 2021),” as reported by Newsmax.

However, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is supposed to be in charge of border issues, still insists that “the border is secure.”

On September 15, internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents showed that roughly 8,000 encounters with illegal immigrants

are taking place each day. That is the highest daily number in U.S. history. And it does not count the “got-aways” who evade Border Patrol agents.

Even the ones who report to Border Patrol are usually released into the country. And the Biden administration flew many plane-loads of illegals to places around the country in the dark of night, and released them.

After several months of being overwhelmed with thousands of illegals each day coming into his state, Texas Governor Greg Abbott began busing them to sanctuary cities of New York and Chicago, which voluntarily became sanctuary cities, and more recently to Washington, D.C.

Given the extraordinary number of people illegally entering the border states, especially Texas, and the failure of the Biden administration to do its job to prevent this invasion, who can blame the governor for sending these illegals to the sanctuary cities that have advertised how important it is to accept them, and therefore should be prepared for them? 

And when you consider that after tens of thousands of illegals cross the border each month, and only hundreds are sent to sanctuary cities, why are Mayor Eric Adams of New York and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot whining and crying their eyes out over the relatively few that have arrived in their sanctuary? Can you say “hypocrisy?” 

While the raw number of illegal aliens entering the country is important, and the primary focus of many, exactly who these people are, and what they are doing is far more of a problem.

While many of these people are good people only wanting a better life, others are involved in child smuggling, sex trafficking, and drug smuggling, including the deadly influx of fentanyl that is killing Americans almost daily.

Shouldn’t those in the government who have contributed to these deaths by their malfeasance in ignoring laws and common sense be held accountable?

Last Saturday, the mothers of children and others killed by these drugs protested on the National Mall. They displayed large banners that featured the faces of nearly 3,500 people killed by fentanyl. “Many were young, even teenagers. Some wore their high school jerseys or graduation caps,” said a story in The Washington Post.

Trying to make Democrats confront the impact of their failed, dangerous, and inhumane border policies is critical. If shipping illegals to sanctuaries causes the administration to finally do something about the illegal entry, then hurrah!

Free speech: “Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”

September 13, 2022

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The rights guaranteed in the Amendment were selected first among the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights because of their importance to the well-being of the new nation. And free speech was the second of those freedoms to be listed.

John Milton, English poet and intellectual of the 1600s, understood the importance of the concept of free speech to individual and national freedom. He wrote, “Let truth and falsehood grapple … in a free and open encounter.” 

Under Milton’s sensible vision the American people must get information from a variety of sources to help them understand issues and craft informed opinions. This includes both speech that is liked and accepted by some individuals and groups, and speech which is not liked or accepted by some individuals and groups.

This idea is one of the most important in the founding of the United States of America, and one which has played a critical role in its success among the nations of the world throughout its history.

The rub comes when some people dislike certain points of view, and will not tolerate their existence in free discussion. Milton’s point, however, is that all points of view must be available for those interested in knowing them. 

In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis provided this advice: "The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

In 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Brandenburg v. Ohio that “inflammatory speech -- and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan -- is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech ‘is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.’"

Only the most severe and dangerous ideas should be overruled, which means not merely ideas that are disagreed with or that anger some people, but those which actually try to incite violence or endanger people. 

Yet many Americans work hard to thwart free speech. Worst of all is if and when the government tries to stifle dissent or controversial language, or participates with non-governmental entities to oppose some speech. 

On social media platforms, claiming posts and comments are “misinformation” or “disinformation,” these targeted offerings are deleted, and the writer often blocked from further participation. 

Author Salman Rushdie offered this opinion: “The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.” Rushdie was recently the victim of a vicious attack by an armed man, who may have been prompted by Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses,” and wanted vengeance for a message with which he disagreed.

In the campaign for the 2020 election, some posts and comments were labeled as false by these platforms, and removed. After the election, however, some turned out to be correct. But because ideas that should have been freely available were censored, participants were denied knowing this pertinent information.

Imagine a world where only some information is allowed. Who gets to decide what is and is not allowed for anyone to see? Who has that power? Who has that right?

Some prefer to advance their narrow ideas without the troublesome problem of having to prove those ideas are the best through open and free debate. After all, who does not understand that with only one idea being offered, it will be accepted by many people who might not have accepted it had contrary ideas been available to consider.

In addition to social media platforms, other places where different ideas should be open to discussion, such as opinion sections of the news media and schools, must be bastions of the free exchange of ideas.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) recently released the results from its 2022-2023 College Free Speech Rankings survey. This survey questioned 44,847 college students currently enrolled in four-year degree programs at 208 colleges and universities in the United States about their institution’s degree of speech freedom.

The highest score on a 100-point scale was 77.92, ranking it in the “Good” level of speech freedom. Depending upon which grading scale you apply to 77.92, it is only a C-plus, at best.

Five other institutions also were rated “Good.” Sixteen institutions were rated “Poor,” two were rated “Very Poor,” and one was rated “Abysmal,” with a numerical score of 9.91. Only 76 of the 208 institutions in this survey scored above 50.0, only 27 scored above 60.0, and just 6 scored above 70.00.

This is far below the level of free speech and open debate of ideas that should be occurring in institutions of higher education in the United States. 

An objective view of the free speech environment will clearly show many efforts to discourage and even ban ideas that some people or some groups do not like.

This is not healthy for our country, and it clearly violates the intent of the First Amendment.

We desperately need leaders that can think beyond stage one

September 6, 2022

Nearly 20 years ago the brilliant Thomas Sowell — author, economist, political commentator, and social theorist — released a book titled, “Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.” This applies to the immediate reaction to some idea to improve a situation, leading to action being taken without first asking, “and then, what will happen?” And then asking that question after each proposed next step.

Sowell gives an example: A state government decides it will help the state to raise taxes on businesses. The immediate result is more revenue for the state. And that is good, the government says. However, over the course of time, those affected businesses might move bits and pieces of their companies to another state, or new businesses may choose another state to place a new factory or operation. 

Over the course of time, the state will lose revenue because businesses will go to other states to avoid the higher taxes.

Had the state government indulged in thinking about what might happen after it raised taxes on business, they might have been able to foresee these very negative consequences. Higher taxes discourage business, therefore while in the short-term revenues will be larger, in the longer term, companies will see that doing business in the state will be more difficult, and some, maybe many, will leave. The state then suffers a loss of tax income, and lost jobs.

Finding examples of how this has worked is not difficult. Such examples are often the result of decisions made on emotion, because they seem to be great ideas to achieve desirable ends, and they feel good. The reality is usually very different.

Here is one example. The question being asked is, “How can we stop the mistreatment of civilians by police?” Well, if police departments have less money to operate on, they will have to do things differently, and the changes will benefit the public, as fewer officers will make fewer horrible mistakes against the public.

We can use social workers to respond to some calls, instead of armed officers. We can tell officers not to arrest people for minor crimes, lessening the number of police/public interactions, and lowering the number of people in jails and those having court proceedings.

Today, we see quite plainly how these efforts have failed. This solution has resulted in police officers quitting and retiring in large numbers. Finding new recruits is difficult, as potential recruits see what has happened, and want no part of a situation that makes them targets. 

Prosecutors do not prosecute all crimes anymore, and many persons charged with a crime are released without even paying a bond. These people are not discouraged or prevented from committing more crimes. Meanwhile, crime is doing well, rising to historic highs in some states and cities.

Another example is that the climate activists tell us that we have got to stop burning fossil fuels and reduce CO2 emissions. One thing we can do, they say, is to stop or substantially slow the production of coal, oil and natural gas in the United States. President Joe Biden, not the sharpest tool in the shed, did this on his first days in office. 

The result was that America’s recently regained position as energy independent and a net exporter of energy came to an end. And now we have to purchase some energy that had been coming from domestic sources from foreign countries, raising the cost of gasoline and other fuels, and helping a foreign country’s economy. The oil we buy from some of them is dirtier than our oil. 

Also, other countries that could be purchasing energy from us, and helping our economy, are instead buying Russian energy, which helps Russia’s economy, and that helps it fight its unprovoked war against Ukraine.

These results could fairly easily have been predicted with a bit of intelligent thought. And, in fact, these results were predicted by those who went beyond stage one and saw where these rash decisions would take us. Too bad Biden and his advisors did not consider the possible results of their plan. Or maybe they just don’t care.

So much of what the political left does or wants to do to “make America better” sounds good, or looks good on paper. But in reality, they often want to undo elements of our country that have worked well for more than 200 years, and the proposed solutions themselves cause problems that are often as bad or worse than the situation they sought to improve.

They don’t seem to understand that making changes to systems that have been in effect for a long time, and are deeply integrated in our way of life, need to be done thoughtfully, and that most of them must gradually evolve to replace existing systems, and not be implemented too quickly, causing chaos.

This is particularly true with climate matters. Clean energy sources like wind and solar power have not evolved nearly enough to take the place of fossil fuels. That will take many years. In fact, the reality is that we may never be able to not rely to some degree on fossil fuels.

Education is a critical function, but America’s is in deep trouble

August 30, 2022

When talking with folks who have lived in America for many years, one thing is a common topic: the many crises we see today.

We are very divided, politically. Our news media is infected with many organizations that have abandoned neutrality in reporting. While our military may still be highly effective, recent new ideas within its leadership are weakening it. And education in grades K-12 and at the college level is seriously troubled.

On the topic of education, that observation does not mean that there are no good schools or no great teachers, only that the system is damaged and getting worse. Some evidence of that follows.

The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-old students around the world every three years, and is administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2018, the U.S. placed 25th out of nearly 80 nations for average scores in mathematics, science and reading.

Number one China averaged 578, while the U.S. averaged 495, only a few points above the overall average score of 489. The top five average scores belong to China, Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, and Estonia.

The U.S. scored 478 in math, below the OECD average. In science, the United States scored at 502, above the average score. In reading, the U.S. scored 497, slightly higher than the average.

If there is any good news in these ominous figures, it is only that the scores have not fallen further from where the country ought to be in recent years. Scores have remained fairly stable in math since 2003, and science since 2006.

While China — America’s number-one economic and military threat — teaches young people calculus and quantum physics, many American K-12 schools and colleges are more concerned with students’ chosen pronouns, gender issues, creating equity and diversity, and pushing the historically false Critical Race Theory.

Changes to the curriculum and classroom activities for our youngest and most vulnerable learners are often made without the public’s knowledge, or without the consent of parents. Parents are people who pay taxes that fund public education, and are responsible for properly raising their children. Yet, when they attend school board meetings to question or complain about the activities in their children’s schools, their frustration and anger is labeled as “domestic terrorism” by U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland.

Things at the post-secondary level are also gummed up. Diversity and equity issues, and the drive to raise enrollment push true education matters to the back. Many colleges and universities offer courses of study that may satisfy the desires of students, but do not provide learning in subjects with which one can make a living. This is likely a factor in the current situation where President Joe Biden wants to relieve some former students of $10,000-to-$20,000 of their college loan debt.

Recognizing the problems in colleges today, on the first day with university status, Bluefield State University President Robin Capehart outlined to faculty and staff some of the problems the school faces. Citing a book published by social scientists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa titled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” Capehart noted the following findings of a trend that is moving away from students’ focusing on learning, and instead toward getting a degree in the quickest and easiest way.

They say that many college students: were underprepared for college work; lacked academic commitment; were more focused on the nonacademic aspects of college life; and had become adept at the “art of college management,” which is the ability to navigate through their college work with the least time and effort, relegating learning to a matter of happenstance.

For their part, the institutions had become so dependent upon enrollment that they enable the students’ ambitions for an easy time by sacrificing academic rigor, by promoting social and other nonacademic aspects of college life, and investing in amenities that would further enable enrollment gains, Arum and Roska wrote.

Capehart told the audience that Bluefield State has two choices: “You can give them what they want — or you can help them see what they need.”

He then listed five attributes that focus on learning: the need for students who want to learn; a rigorous curriculum; engaging instruction; effective and efficient delivery of support services; and last, but not least, accountability from an external source. This transition will be difficult, he said.

How many of the nation’s institutions of higher learning need to re-structure their academic environment as Bluefield State is doing? How many of them will do it, or even understand that they need to?

America faces substantial challenges from other nations in military strength and other critical areas. How is the country going to regain its high position in the world, or even maintain the lesser position in holds today, if we don’t stop this foolishness, focus on the basics, and once again strive for excellence in education, the military, government, business, science, medicine and the other critical areas?

Changing how America works for partisan benefit is un-American

August 23, 2022

The American left believes that the Republicans are “radical,” and “dangerous.”

“In America, in the face of what the Supreme Court and the radical right wing are trying to do to the fundamental rights of every American, we, the coalition of the sane, owe something better to our children and our grandchildren. We need to win and we need to keep our promises to the people who elected us,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker at a Democratic brunch.

MSNBC host Joy Reid contributed her opinion, calling Republicans "dangerous," back on Election Night 2020. 

Responding to Rachel Maddow’s comment about Republicans “fear mongering” Loudoun County school board members over getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and “made-up stuff about racial indoctrination," Reid said, “For Democrats to really fight that, they would have to be willing to say what you have said on your show, I think we’ve all said a version of it, you have to be willing to vocalize that these Republicans are dangerous."

Another MSNBC face, Tiffany Cross, suggested that “civil war” was just around the corner. 

“You have millions of people tuning into a propaganda network every night,” Cross said. “As if that were not bad enough, that’s an extremist network itself, you have these fringe pop-up outlets from OANN to Newsmax. Then you have the social media component. The train has left the station. There is no dealing with the rhetoric. At this point, we need serious conversations around preparing for actual violence. People keep saying a Civil War is coming. I would say the Civil War is here.”

So, according to these three sources, one an elected Democrat and the other two TV journalists, Republicans are radicals who are trying to change the country into something it has never been, and should not become.

People who are doing such things are acting against the best interests of the country. Could they not be classified as “un-American?” 

Well, if un-American behavior and beliefs are the subject, there is much more of that than these few examples.

Citing Molotov cocktails at pregnancy centers, rampant crime in major cities, and an open border, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn suggested that we “Call out the left on their threatening hyperbole, then we will talk.”

There’s more. Democrats want to make major changes to aspects of Constitutional standards, such as junking the 233-year-old Electoral College; ending the 180-year-old Senate filibuster and the 150-year-old, nine-person Supreme Court. They also advocate bringing in two more states and ending 60 years of a 50-state nation.

The New York Times published an opinion piece essentially calling for the U.S. Constitution to be jettisoned. And Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. She also set up the January 6 Committee that strongly resembled a trial where the prosecution selected the judge and defense attorneys, and was the only side in the questioning of witnesses.

We saw illegal protests outside the homes of some Supreme Court Justices ignored by the Justice Department. Democrats favor defunding the police and “progressive” prosecutors give criminals more consideration than their victims.

And then there is the Time magazine piece in which author Molly Ball gloated over how Democrats had won the 2020 election by essentially rigging it. “That classic article by Molly Ball in February of 2021 where she gushed, she was giddy outlining what she called a conspiracy to change radically the voting laws, to inject four or 500 million dollars to alter the way we voted for centuries so that 70 percent of the votes would not be cast on Election Day, even as the rejection rate would decline by a magnitude of seven or eight,” Victor Davis Hanson explained.

Republicans did not call parents of school children “domestic terrorists” for expressing concerns about controversial on-goings in their classrooms, or fail to control the southern border.

Dangerous rhetoric from the left led to an assassination attempt on a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and a shooting at a Congressional baseball practice, 

The left is so fired up that it even criticizes a well-known liberal Democrat attorney. Alan Dershowitz is a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat who voted against Donald Trump. Yet many Democrats/liberals condemn him for his defense of Trump’s situations. They either don’t understand what is actually going on, or they don’t care. The radical left apparently believes that if it reflects positively on Trump, it must be a sin or a crime.

But what Dershowitz did is what any good, honest lawyer would and should have done: defend a person’s constitutional and legal rights, without political bias. That is also what the Supreme Court’s originalist justices did in the Roe v. Wade matter: they acted on the standards enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

It’s easy to toss around terms to denigrate others, and there is a tendency among like-thinkers to accept these things without question.

But when the subject is that one political group is un-American, the evidence is heavily against the liberals/Democrats.

They are the ones who want to change the country to make controlling the country easier. They are the ones who are acting against the country.

Democrat officials and policies moving us in the wrong direction

President Joe Biden told the world last week in a televised announcement that there was no inflation in July. “Zero!” he said. 

That, of course, is totally upside-down. Inflation still exceeded 9 percent in July. What Biden should have said is a very different story: Inflation did not increase in July. It also did not decrease in July. The status quo was due to some prices coming down a little while other prices increased a bit more.

Biden also celebrated a nominal decrease in gasoline and diesel fuel prices, ignoring that these prices are still $2- to $3-higher than when he took office.

The enigma that is New York’s new mayor — Eric Adams, who is a former police officer, state senator, and Brooklyn Borough president — is in the news, once again.  Adams’ election filled the hearts of many with excitement and hope, following the disastrous reign of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Under de Blasio, crime increased and was rampant, undoing the hard work and strong results of former Mayor Ruddy Giuliani, who followed former Mayor David Dinkins, and made the City a much safer one.

Adams’ reaction to illegal aliens being bused to New York City by Texas Governor Greg Abbott is hypocrisy at its best, and ignores the disastrous effects of the relaxed enforcement of immigration policy by the Biden administration. Instead, Adams blames the Texas governor.

Texas sees more illegals coming across its border each day than the total Adams has welcomed to New York on buses from Texas.

We have been told how proud New York City is to be a “sanctuary” city. And Adams didn’t complain when the Biden administration sent thousands of illegals by air to places around the country, including New York City, in the dark of night. But suddenly, when Gov. Abbott sends a few busloads to Adams’ city and Washington, DC, to help make the point of how badly Texas and other border states are suffering under this insane relaxed border policy, Adams thinks the world is coming to an end, and it’s all Abbott’s fault.

This is not Adams’ only failure. He has done little to fight the increasing crime wave, for example. But it is the topic he uses to try to cover up his thus-far failed tenure.

The Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act was recently passed by the U.S. Senate. Vice President Kamala Harris, in her position as the President of the Senate, broke the 50-50 tie and voted for the measure. It will add 87,000 new IRS agents over the next few years. The IRS employed more than 78,000 people during fiscal 2021, so this measure will more than double the size of the IRS.

Critics of the measure have produced some comparisons of the number of new employees: One photo showed an 86,000-seat football stadium filled with fans, which is less than the number of new agents; that number is about as large as a U.S. Army Corps; and it makes the IRS larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined.

It has been titled by some critics as “Biden’s Shadow Army.” Another critic pointed out that the new agents are aiming at billionaires, who are rich American individuals and companies. There are only about 1,000 of those, the critic said, but 87,000 agents are being hired to audit their tax returns.

The newly staffed IRS, it has been said, will to have to go after middle- and low-income families and small and mid-sized businesses, rather than only businesses making more than $1 billion, and families making $400,000 or more, as we have been told.

“The IRS will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back,” Joe Hinchman, executive vice president at National Taxpayers Union Foundation, told The New York Post.

“We’ve seen this play out before … the IRS says ‘We’re going after the rich’ but when you’re trying to raise that much money, the rich can only get you so far.”

“The approach here is to double the IRS workforce, take the leash off, and see how much they can collect,” Hinchman adds. “I think they’ll collect it but it will be quite painful.”

A requirement for the new agents is that they will be armed and will have agreed to use deadly force if needed. All of this is necessary to collect under-reported taxes, we are told. The party that is working hard on strict gun control is also arming federal employees.

This idea, considered crazy and reckless by many, is not needed. The “difficulties” the government sees with tax collections can easily be solved by simplifying the tax code to remove the “loopholes” that enable companies and individuals to avoid taxes. And then require them to pay a reasonable rate of taxes, like 10-15 percent. 

And hire 87,000 new Border Patrol agents to fix the disgraceful situation at the southern border and restore our immigration policies that allow in only those who follow the proper procedure, and find those that were allowed to enter illegally, and put them on the right course by waiting in Mexico until their hearing date.

Justice must not be allowed to be used as a partisan weapon

“Maybe it was the death threat delivered by a fellow law-enforcement officer while he stood shackled in belly chains.

“Perhaps it was being described as a ‘terrorist’ by a federal judge who will preside over his trial.

“It could have been being released on bail by a U.S. magistrate judge in Tennessee, only to be ordered held until trial by a U.S. district judge in Washington D.C.

“Former sheriff’s deputy Ronald McAbee, 28, of Tennessee, has faced a difficult road since being indicted for alleged criminal actions at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Arguably the most trying situation for McAbee was being denied bail for nearly a year based on video evidence that his attorney now says exonerates him.”

This is how a story in The Epoch Times begins about the strange situation Ronald McAbee found himself in. McAbee had served more than seven years as a sheriff’s deputy and correctional officer in Tennessee and Georgia, and was wearing a “Sheriff” garment that day

During the chaotic situation, McAbee assisted two people who were in trouble. One incident was that “Several times he tried to render lifesaving aid to a dying Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia,” The Times reported. The other incident was when McAbee saw Metropolitan Police officer Andrew Wyatt down, and tried to help him. That action caused others involved in the riot to call McAbee names. While helping Wyatt, the two exchanged friendly comments.

However, for some reason, Metropolitan Police saw fit to charge McAbee with several crimes, according to The Times. “Charges included assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer, two counts of civil disorder, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.”

From this point, the circus only gets worse. At a detention hearing last August, prosecutors played a video with audio turned off as evidence against McAbee. The magistrate judge ordered McAbee released until his trial.

Prosecutors, not pleased with the judge’s ruling, filed an emergency appeal. In a hearing the same day in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., the federal judge stayed the order and scheduled hearings on the government’s motion to keep McAbee behind bars until trial. That hearing occurred on Sept. 22, and the judge ordered McAbee to be held in jail without bond.

During that hearing, the judge seemed to give a clue to his eventual decision to hold McAbee without bond. “When being shown a video with McAbee wearing body armor with a patch that read ‘Sheriff,’ the judge said, ‘That’s pretty outrageous,’ according to the official hearing transcript. Later, he said, “These videos are very disturbing,” and he agreed with the prosecutor’s assessment of the evidence.

“So, it appears clearly to this court that the defendant is pulling the officer back into the crowd of other terrorists,” the transcript quotes the judge as saying.

After another hearing on Oct. 13, 2021, the federal judge reversed the magistrate judge’s order, ruling that McAbee should be held pending trial. This despite the original judge’s statement that prosecutors did not show evidence that McAbee had been a danger in the eight months since his arrest, the federal judge still ruled that to protect the community, McAbee must remain in jail.

However, once the audio track of the video prosecutors used to create the image of McAbee as a “terrorist” was played, the story created by the prosecutors, and unquestioned by the federal judge, changed dramatically.

 “A break in McAbee’s case came when video investigator Gary McBride of Decatur, Texas, studied the bodycam footage shown in court, except with the audio track turned on. It painted a vastly different picture of what took place, McBride told The Epoch Times.

“The prosecutors did not play the audio of AW [Andrew Wyatt] and McAbee talking during this point,” McBride stated in his evaluation of the video. “McAbee is trying to save AW. Prosecutors didn’t play that in court.” McAbee is heard telling someone in the crowd who tried to grab at Wyatt, “No!” and “Quit!” He also told the Metropolitan Police that they had a man down, and was telling Wyatt, “I’m one of you, I’m one of you.”

So, we have prosecutors — who almost certainly knew that the audio portion of the video they used as evidence against McAbee would destroy, or at least weaken, their case — presented it to two judges without the audio being played. And the federal judge, who apparently did not ask about their being an audio track, believed the faulty evidence, and reached, and announced the conclusion that the man whose trial he would preside over was a “terrorist.”

This example of “justice” was performed by people who are paid to do their important jobs with honesty and integrity, and to render equal justice under the law. That is what we, as American citizens, expect and deserve. Ronald McAbee did not get justice.

Today’s political left is hard at work changing many things

August 2, 2022

One thing Joe Biden has done consistently is to support changing things. He immediately changed the U.S. energy status as an energy independent nation and a net exporter of energy achieved under Donald Trump, by restricting the nation’s ability to maintain that status.

And, during the Biden rule, definitions of well-known things have changed. A woman is a female of the species, with certain distinct qualities different from a male/man. Biden’s pick for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Ketanji Jackson Brown — a woman, by traditional standards — admitted in a Senate hearing that she was unable to define what a woman is. Today, many argue that the terms “woman” and “mother” are bad, and want to replace them with “birthing person.”

The recent porousness of the southern border allows tens of thousands of illegal aliens to enter the country each month. But the Biden administration has changed the definition of a “secure border” to include this travesty. The Border “Czar” — Vice President Kamala Harris — has done nothing to secure the border, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, even said recently that the southern border is “not open” and is “secure.”

And just recently, when the second successive quarter of negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was announced, qualifying the U.S. as being in a recession — according to the long-standing measure used to determine what constitutes a “recession” — the Biden administration changed the definition of what constitutes a recession.

Yes, there are some positive economic factors, like a decent unemployment rate, and the recent negative GDP rate was not as low as the first one. But the high inflation rate and other factors show the overall economic picture as obviously negative.

Along with changing definitions, Biden is working to change the country. The standards and processes that have served us so well for more than two hundred years are no longer good enough. Packing the Supreme Court, doing away with the Senate filibuster, getting rid of the Electoral College are some of the things on the list.

It’s not that these features don’t work anymore, it’s that they are obstacles to the radical left agenda.

Biden rattled off a few positive economic figures recently, ending by saying, “That doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” just before making a hasty exit from the press. But let’s look at the numbers.

The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR), according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is “the number of people in the labor force as a percentage of the civilian non-institutional population […] the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.”

The LFPR in January of 2017 was 62.8% (160,320,000 Americans) when Donald Trump took office. It rose to 63.4% (162,007,000 people) by Feb. 2018, meaning there were a good many more people working or looking for a job than at the beginning of Trump’s term. And then the pandemic hit.

The LFPR dropped to a low of 60.2% (160,074,000 people) in April of 2020, but rose to 61.4% (161,200,000 people) in Jan. 2021, a gain of 1.2% in 8 months, reflecting the re-entering of hundreds of thousands to the labor force.

It now stands at 62.2% as of June 2022. In the 17 months that Joe Biden has been President, the LFPR has risen 0.8%, representing a fraction of those who lost jobs or stopped working during the pandemic re-entering the labor force.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the Unemployment Rate like this: “Perhaps the most widely known labor market indicator, this statistic reflects the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the labor force.”

The unemployment rate was 4.7% in January of 2017 when Donald Trump took office. In Feb 2020, when the effects of the pandemic hit, the unemployment rate was 3.5%.

It is now. 3.6% as of June 2022. While this is a good unemployment rate, it is not as good as it was before the pandemic.

After the 17 months Biden has been in office, as of the end of June, there are fewer people in the labor force today than there were when Trump took office, and when the pandemic began.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce tells us that right now, the latest data shows that we have over 11 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6 million unemployed workers looking for work. 

The most serious aspects of the pandemic are virtually over, and there are nearly twice as many unfilled jobs as there are people looking for work. The labor force is 3.2 million people smaller than before the pandemic. The difference is those who were working and have either retired, or no longer need to work due to government subsidy payments in the name of helping people get through the pandemic.

These numbers support the idea that the country is in a recession. There’s not enough lipstick to put on the recession pig to hide reality.

Heat wave warms political rhetoric and motivation

 

It’s been a bit warm lately in most of the U.S., and very hot in some places. Another climate crisis is upon us, and we are told to act soon.

Why is it that virtually each and every time an “out-of-the-ordinary” weather event occurs, the climate mania folks cry “It’s the end of humanity if we don’t do radical things immediately?” Too many hurricanes in a year: the end is nearing. Above normal heat and dry conditions: we must stop using fossil fuels.

However, if you look back at the history of catastrophic climate warnings over the last 50-plus years, they were embarrassingly wrong. In this space on June 28th, there were listed seven examples of incorrect predictions of climate doom dating from 1974 through 2018.

Yet, a couple of additional hurricanes, a dry spell, or today’s heat wave sends the eco-mania left into another round of catastrophic predictions of imminent doom

Last week, Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow featured theoretical physicist Dr. Steven E. Koonin on his 4:00 p.m. program. Koonin is the author of the bestselling book “Unsettled: What climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters.”  His credentials also include being former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, and he served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama.

Koonin gets slammed by the pro-climate-catastrophe crowd due to his view that the world is not nearing its end because of CO2 and other climate threats. 

Discussing an official government report from 2018 on the Kudlow program, Koonin said, “The graphs are there; they show warmest temperatures are not greater than they were in 1900, nor are the heatwaves more common than they were in 1900.”

“What we see with heat waves is weather. It happens on time scales or changes of a few days. Heat waves are not going to last more than a few days, either in the US or in Europe. Whereas climate is the many-decade average of weather: temperature, winds, humidity, extreme events, and so on,” he continued. 

“And so, people have a tendency — the news media certainly does — to focus on what happens today. That’s news. But it’s kind of boring to say things have changed by x, y or z over the last 30 years.” 

Kudlow asked, “so what’s the real story here on climate change?” Koonin’s response: “We’ve seen heat — warming — since the 1600s. We had what’s called ‘the Little Ice Age,’ and [Earth’s temperatures have] gone up in the last century, let’s say, by about 2-degrees Fahrenheit. That’s globally averaged. It’s gotten warmer more rapidly in some places, in the poles, for example, and it tends to get warmer in the evening, compared to getting warmer in the daytime. There are changes. Nevertheless, it’s gotten warmer.”

“Now the real question is, are humans going to be able to, or will humans influence the climate enough so that the warming accelerates?”

“I think we understand that greenhouse gases, mostly CO2, exert a warming influence on the climate. Some human activities … exert a cooling influence on the climate. But on balance, we expect human influences to warm the climate somewhat. And the real issue is, how much is it going to warm, and the best estimate now is that it might warm another 2- or 3-degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. And then, of course, what can we do about it?”

So, Koonin, Obama’s former Undersecretary for Science, agrees that warming has occurred, and that it likely will continue to occur, but does not believe that the end of life on Earth as we know it is in the foreseeable future. Therefore, radical alterations are not called for.

Given the catastrophic predictions over the last half-century that were catastrophically wrong, perhaps Koonin’s forecast of the future is more on target.

The U.S. should reduce its burning of fossil fuels as the development of sources that can equal the demand filled by fossil fuels occurs. The U.S. should not try to force ending fossil fuels that the country’s needs, but be sensible enough to recognize that such transitions take time, and rushing the change only hurts the people, with little or no benefit.

Currently, so-called green sources, such as wind and solar, are incapable of not only matching the level of electricity and vehicle fuel currently needed, but also to do that at a cost that is commensurate with the costs — not the current high level — to which American consumers are accustomed.

President Biden and the rest of his administration would be well advised to focus on the immediate serious problems his policies have brought upon the American people. He should undo the restrictions he placed on domestic energy production, address the sky-high inflation under which people are suffering, and stop the ridiculous levels of dangerous illegal entry into the country that his foolish policies have created, for starters.

It was not an accident that the country was in far better shape under the previous administration than now, even with the scourge of Covid. Biden’s focus must be to help the American people, not to help the political left.

Will the far-left stop at nothing to impose its will on the U.S.?

July 19, 2022

We all heard, read and saw news items on the left’s riots in major cities such as Portland; Seattle; New York City; Chicago; Atlanta; Minneapolis; Richmond; Miami; Kenosha; and the District of Columbia during the summer of 2020. 

Government buildings and private property were damaged and burned, businesses were looted and vandalized. Damages reported totaled in the billions of dollars.

The U.S. edition of The Guardian reported that “At least 11 Americans have been killed while participating in political demonstrations this year and another 14 have died in other incidents linked to political unrest, according to new data from a non-profit monitoring political unrest in the United States.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his wife were threatened by a mob in Washington, DC following a visit to the White House in August, 2020, and fortunately were protected from injury by DC police.

Yet, little was done to the organizers and participants of these riots, and much of the reporting here at home was, shall we say, carefully worded. To wit: With a fire raging in a building in the background, a TV reporter termed the event “mostly peaceful,” and that was the usual coverage by the highly liberal media outlets, and was also the attitude of other liberals. Indeed, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris even bailed out rioters who were arrested.

Then this year, a draft of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion dealing with the Roe v. Wade issue, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked to Politico by someone working in the Court, and published last May. 

Taking from the draft opinion indicating that the Court would overturn Roe, the left again rose up. Protests were organized at the homes of some of the constitutional conservatives on the Court. While these protests were noisy and otherwise unpleasant, unlike the “mostly peaceful riots,” they were mostly peaceful.

However, just like the criminal behavior in the cities in 2020, protesting at the home of Supreme Court Justices is against federal law. Section 1507 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code clearly states that it is unlawful to protest near a ‘residence occupied or used by [a] judge, juror, witness, or court officer’ with the intent of influencing ‘the discharge of his duty,’ adding that anyone who ‘uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’”

Yet, while the justices were being harassed and intimidated, federal law enforcement, the Department of Justice and the head of all of that, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, sat on their hands and did nothing. To selectively enforce federal law is not what Garland is supposed to do.

But, it gets worse. Much worse.

An armed California man was arrested in the early morning hours on June 8th outside the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He was carrying a gun, ammunition, a knife, pepper spray, a screwdriver, zip ties, and other gear when he was arrested, not by federal agents protecting Kavanaugh, but by Montgomery County Police Department officers.

Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, told police that he was going to kill Kavanaugh because he was upset about the justice’s positions on Roe v. Wade and the Second Amendment.

Fortunately, while the AG and federal law enforcement were sitting on their hands, the local authorities were doing their job. 

More recently, a group of protesters gathered outside an upscale DC restaurant, harassing diners, including Justice Kavanaugh, forcing him and his wife to leave via the back door.

In addition to the Attorney General, other federal officials have done nothing to stop this illegal behavior and protect the justices from intimidation and potential harm.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest.” She appeared unaware that the U.S. government has a law covering this.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, threatened Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, saying they will “pay the price” for their decisions.

After the Roe decision, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, in an email sent out to people, encouraged them to “RISE UP” against the “far-right extremists” of the Supreme Court.

And now there is this. Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, wrote the following on his website: “We recently discussed the Georgetown law professor who defended ‘more aggressive’ protests targeting the Supreme Court justices, but Harvard clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo wants to guarantee that ‘The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again.’ Accordingly, Caraballo is calling for people to accost them every time they are in public.’” Apparently, she does not understand how the Court works.

Those on the left, whether they be elected or appointed federal officials, federal employees, biased journalists, or people trained in the law, and responsible for properly teaching students about the law, do not care about the law, or right and wrong. All they care about is getting their way, whatever methods are required to accomplish their goal.

What has happened to the concept of integrity and honor in one’s work?

Why do so many young people think America is a bad place?

July 12, 2022

One of the things that bothers many of the seasoned citizens among us is the high degree of discontentment that many in the younger generations feel about their country. Many of us were born and raised in a time when we learned at home, in school, and in church about our country. We learned to appreciate America for the freedoms it provided us that were unmatched anywhere on the planet.

And while we see and know that America is not perfect, and that not all members of those younger generations view their country as a bad place, it is still disturbing to see how many of them think that America is a bad place, and what they imagine would make America better.

They are cheered on and led by older folks, who ought to know better but, sadly, do not.

And then, magically, to make us feel better about this situation, a video by a member of a younger generation appears in an email.

The video is the senior speech by Julie Hartman, delivered in Harvard’s Memorial Chapel on May 3, 2022. 

Her speech begins, “Last Spring Break I went on a trip with a hundred other Harvard graduates to Israel. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. And I will always be grateful to Harvard for that.

“I recall the trip with awe and joy. But a certain moment rattled me” at a dinner her group attended at a Tel Aviv synagogue. “The Rabbi proclaimed, ‘Welcome to Israel. You are all here from America, the best country in the world.’ He paused. But not a single person clapped. The Israelis stared in disbelief.”

Like those of us who really know and understand our country, the Israelis were surprised at the lack of appreciation these youngsters showed.

Harvard grad Hartman then listed some of the things that have occurred that criticized America, and should have received pushback, but didn’t.

* “The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the sole purpose of the American Revolution was to preserve slavery. And we remained silent.”

* “The Oregon Department of Education observed that showing your work and finding the right answer in math is white supremacist. And we remained silent.”

* “The American Medical Association has stated that the U.S. should remove gender from birth certificates. And we remained silent.”

* “Howard Zinn, author of the most widely read history text in American public schools, said that America has done “more bad than good.” And we remained silent.”

* “A huge percentage of the donations to the national Black Lives Matter organization have been spent on compensation and benefits, including several extravagant real estate purchases, and questionable consulting contracts. And we remained silent.”

* “On this campus we often hear how oppressive America is. Just outside of this church, there was a sign for Israeli Apartheid Week, of an upside-down faded America flag with painted bullet holes in it. And we remained silent.”

“We must not lie to ourselves, or to one another,” she said, “by denying that a large reason that we remain silent is that we see personal and professional advantages in doing so. We are ashamed to be American? The shame should be on us.”

“The people who excoriate religion live in a society where their freedoms are based on the Bible,” she said. “Many who say that the nuclear family is antiquated grew up in two-parent households. Those who condemn the police as oppressive still summon them when they are in danger. And too many use their right to free speech to advocate suspending it for all who disagree with them.” 

Reiterating that Americans are the freest, most privileged people on Earth, she said: “Yet many of us are ashamed to show any, even the tiniest trace of national pride. Why?”

 And then she explained: “Because we Americans of recent generations have been swaddled in prosperity and security, and in consequence have become ungrateful for the blessings we enjoy. It requires vigorous, athletic imagination for most of us to consider the basic brutal reality that much of the world experiences daily. Even worse, we have consumed a cultural diet that reduces America to its ugliest moments, and dismisses its noble ideals and accomplishments as jingoism.”

“What a litany of dishonesty. We are using our privilege to undermine the very system that has given us that privilege.”

In closing, she noted that despite its problems, America stands alone in its level of individual freedom, and it is therefore the last stronghold of individual freedom. 

“We must speak up against this now or our civilization will face a somber reckoning. As President Reagan said, ‘If not us, who? If not now, when?’” 

How refreshing to hear this message from one of those in the disturbed and oppositional generations. Especially one who attended and graduated from one of the most liberal and anti-American biased institutions in America.

Democrats are upset by recent decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court

“Conservative” justices are not political conservatives. They are Constitutional conservatives, originalists. The conservative view of the Constitution is that it means today and forever what it meant to the Framers when they wrote the Constitution.

Liberal/activist justices do not view the Constitution the same way as the originalists. They see the Constitution as a “living” document, the meaning of which changes with time and our culture.

This essentially means that we don’t really have a Constitution if its meaning can be determined differently at any time, depending upon the views of nine unelected justices.

The late and brilliant Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia had it right: “The Constitution is not a living organism. It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”

If the principles of the Constitution should ever turn out to be wrong, or hurtful, it can be changed through a process of amending it. But it should not — must not — be ignored or changed with the fickle winds of social “needs” or “wants.” The faithful allegiance of the conservatives/originalists is the great obstacle the left cannot conquer.

What so many do not understand, or prefer to ignore, is that what the Supreme Court did regarding Roe v. Wade was merely to undo a previous wrong action by the Court. It did not deny women a Constitutional right. There is no Constitutional right to abortion. Freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the right to due process are among those specifically mentioned in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. But the word “abortion” does not appear in the document, and stretching the meaning of privacy to include abortion was a gross error 49 years ago.

The Court’s action simply returned the decision about if there can be legal abortions and what the rules are regarding abortion to the states, where it belongs.

The concept of federalism, upon which the United States of America is based, holds that the states have certain authority over how they do things, and are not always at the mercy of the federal government. Laws on abortion, if there are such laws, belong in the states, not the federal government.

The radicals among the Democrats and liberals are ready to totally rebuild the United States so that their un-American ideas can become the norm.

They want to do crazy things to shove their ideas down the throats of every American. Such things as:

* Packing the Supreme Court with activist/liberal justices so that they can push their ideas through the legal system 

* Getting rid of the Senate filibuster that protects the rights of the minority so that their majority can easily have its way 

* Making the District of Columbia and/or Puerto Rico a state, so that they will have additional electoral power; 

* And even trashing the Electoral College, which protects the smaller and less populated states against the tyranny of a few states with large populations

These are some of their radical solutions to their inability to convince a majority of Americans to support those ideas.

Two recent decisions by the Court last Thursday provided fodder for more Court criticizing, one on the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and the other on the EPA’s actions.

The latter focuses on the fundamental structure of our government as established in the Constitution. That structure established three branches of government: the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Each one has its specific function, and the Constitution imposes a separation of powers, meaning that each branch must not stray into the given area of another branch.

The legislative branch makes the nation’s laws. The executive branch has the power to enforce or carry out those laws. The judicial branch has the power to apply and interpret the laws.

In recent decades the departments of the executive branch have taken on power, making rules with the power of law. But laws are to be made by the legislative branch, not the executive branch. The EPA ruling puts the brakes on the executive branch’s straying into the legislative branch’s area.

Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent from the majority opinion, paints a picture of environmental catastrophe if the EPA is not allowed to continue its growing control of things that produce pollution.

Accusing the conservative/originalist justices of making themselves the "decision maker on climate policy," she wrote, "Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change."

Well of course not. The justices are not supposed to know about climate change, or any other such topic. They are supposed to know about and rule on laws and the Constitution.

How wonderful and helpful it would be if people would understand that our government is never going to do only those things that everyone agrees on, because there is little or nothing that everyone agrees on. The government is charged to do things that benefit the people as a whole, not any specific segment.

How nice it would be if we all understood what a wonderful, if imperfect, place America is, and how fortunate we all are to be able to live here.

New book takes a broader, more realistic view of fossil fuel use

June 28, 2022

In his new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less, Alex Epstein agrees that fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions are impacting our climate, and wrote that “I totally acknowledge that they have contributed to the 1ºC warming we’ve experienced over the last one-hundred-plus years, and they will contribute to further warming going forward.”

However, he contends that “the negative climate impacts of fossil fuels will be far, far outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels,” that their impact “would not be catastrophic but rather continue to be ‘masterable’ by ingenious human beings empowered by fossil-fueled machines.”

The advantages of fossil fuels, he wrote, is that their abundance and relatively low cost make them useful so that eventually they will benefit the billions of people who have little or no access to energy. “Fossil Fuels,” he wrote, are “providing four times more energy than all alternatives combined.”

Because of their low cost and reliability they have transformed our environment into “one that is unnaturally clean and unnaturally safe from climate danger.” And while their use did increase the CO2 level, that would be offset by the fossil-fueled machines that provide benefits, like irrigation equipment that counter drought, air-conditioning machines that help us live in very warm climates, and heating units for cold climates.

While conceding that fossil fuels do contribute CO2 to the environment, he called our attention to the excessive and often flat-out incorrect predictions of gloom and doom that have influenced how we do things.

Grossly incorrect predictions of climate doom have been put forth over the years. Highlighting some of these mistakes in not-too-distant history, Epstein provided examples of trusted news institutions wrongly warning us back in the 1970s:

* The Guardian, in 1974: “Space satellites show new ice age coming fast.”

* Newsweek, in 1975: “The cooling world: Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.”

* The New York Times, in 1978: “International team of specialists finds no end in sight to 30-year cooling trend in northern hemisphere.”

More recent predictions that are not included in Fossil Future have been just as wrong, and in the opposite direction, promising death and destruction from a warming world.

* In 2004, the U.S. edition of The Guardian reported that the U.S. Defense Department had told President George W. Bush that European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a “Siberian” climate, triggering nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting across the world.

* In 2008, then-presidential candidate Al Gore predicted that within five years the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice.

* In 2009, Great Britain’s Charles, Prince of Wales, said that capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, and we have only 96 months to straighten things out.

* In 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, appearing with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, warned that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." 

Even if you are not a senior citizen that has lived through all these false warnings, you probably realize that none of them has come to pass.

In fact, some positive things have occurred. Even though there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. air emissions — including carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitrous oxides, Sulphur dioxide, and particulate matter — have been reduced from 300 million tons in 1970 to approximately 125 million tons in 2020, despite the increased use of fossil fuels.

This is because the currently used fossil fuels are cleaner than those used many years ago such as wood and animal dung, which were often burned indoors, and we have cleaner methods for using them.

Two other energy sources are not used very much: nuclear and hydroelectric, which Epstein says are discouraged because of the harm they do to the environment. But, he noted that the “radiation in the case of nuclear is trivial, and the waste has been safely managed for generations.” And for hydroelectric, arguing against those projects “in the name of free-flowing rivers … is clearly not focused on human flourishing” that it will provide.

Essentially, he suggests that these arguments greatly exaggerate the dangers of nuclear and hydroelectric, and essentially ignore the positive aspects they provide that will benefit humanity. 

What Epstein accomplishes is something not really complicated, but it is something rather rare; instead of taking one side or the other and pushing it, he accepts the strong points of both sides, and presents both of them. He makes the case that ought to be more broadly presented to us; that we must keep at the top of our thinking how we best serve the needs of the billions of people on Earth by making the most of fossil fuels, and in doing that we also manage the negatives of fossil fuels to prevent them from doing serious harm.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy terms this approach a “humanity-centric alternative to the anti-fossil fuel climate hysteria” so prevalent today.