This Is No Time to Go Wobbly on Capitalism

As Democrats embrace outright socialism, some CEOs and Republicans call for unwise compromises.

Socialism Strikes Back

Before many Sanders voters were born, I saw his ideology in action in the Soviet Union and Britain.

Socialist Bernie Sanders’s emergence as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination is puzzling to many of us who have experienced socialism. We thought it dead—good riddance—when the Soviet empire collapsed 30 years ago. Our mistake.

Manhattan Contrarian Quiz — Climate Tipping Points Edition

October 11, 2018/ Francis Menton

On Monday the UN IPCC came out with its latest Special Report, this one supposedly addressed specifically to the allegedly dire consequences of allowing world temperatures to increase by more than an arbitrarily-selected threshold. Here is a copy of the “Summary for Policymakers,” and here is a copy of the accompanying press release. But I urge you not to peek at those until you have taken today’s very important Manhattan Contrarian Climate Tipping Points Quiz.

Many have noted that this latest Report seems to step up the level of hysteria and shrieking about the threat of climate change to a whole new level. The gist is, we are doomed, doomed, doomed unless mankind takes immediate drastic action to reduce and then eliminate carbon emissions, because otherwise we will shortly cross the dreaded climate “tipping point.” Crossing the tipping point means that climate change will thereafter accelerate out of control, there will be no further chance of saving the planet, and all hope must be abandoned. You can see that this is very serious, at least if you give any credence to this stuff. And yet, despite the hyperbole, this report seems to be getting much less attention than prior similar predictions of the impending climate apocalypse, even if no one in the mainstream press will apply the slightest amount of critical thinking as to whether any of this makes any sense at all. As an example, the big New York Times article on the Report did not appear until Tuesday, and in the print edition ran on page A8. I guess there were plenty of things more important than the approaching end of the world to fill up the front page.

So it’s time to take the Manhattan Contrarian Climate Tipping Points Quiz. The quiz consists of nine predictions of the impending climate “tipping point,” made at various points over the past few decades. For each prediction, I have deleted the name of the predictor, the year made and the year or years that were identified as the dreaded tipping point, but have included in brackets the number of years in the future that the tipping point was said to be at the time of the prediction in question. Your task is to identify which of the predictions is the one found in the current UN materials. For extra credit, see if you can identify any of the other predictions as to the person or organization uttering the prediction, the year made, and the year said to be the date of the tipping point.

Answers below the fold.

Prediction Number 1:

[Predictor] said that without “coherent financial incentives and disincentives” we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.” . . . He confided last night: “We face the dual challenges of a world view and an economic system that seem to have enormous shortcomings, together with an environmental crisis – including that of climate change – which threatens to engulf us all.”

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Is Donald Trump ‘profoundly unconservative’?

No. It doesn’t match his shrinking regulations and limiting government

by Allan H. Ryskind   Allan H. Ryskind, a former editor and owner of Human Events, is the author of “Hollywood Traitors” (Regnery, 2015)

December 31, 2019

Prominent liberal Fareed Zakaria insists that Donald Trump “has been profoundly unconservative” because he’s abandoned what “Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government.” But it’s hard to take the charge seriously, even though some conservatives have sent his piece around for comment to see if he’s onto something. Yet no politician in recent memory has restricted the reach of government at both the federal and state level more than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump’s drastic shrinking of federal economic regulations, opening vast expanses of federal lands for energy exploration, drawing overseas businesses home with tax breaks and passing major tax cuts for corporations and individuals have generated an explosion of well-paying jobs, personal wealth and soaring wages, as well as the lowest level of unemployment for minorities on record. Some 7 million new jobs have been created during Mr. Trump’s presidency and more than 100 million American shareholders have watched the market jump 55 percent since his election.

You’d think Mr. Zakaria would be celebrating Mr. Trump’s low-tax, pro-growth economic agenda as not only core Republicanism but virtually Reaganesque. Increasing prosperity by stimulating market forces without enacting high taxes and big government programs is, of course, how conservatives try to keep government limited.

Mr. Zakaria concedes that Mr. Trump has delivered what conservatives have wanted in the realm of “social and cultural policy,” such as “appointing judges, tightening rules related to abortion and asylum, etc.” but suggests they have little to do with taming the Leviathan.

Really? Stacking the courts with judges steeped in the philosophy of federalism is, of course, precisely the way to limit government on both the economic and cultural fronts. Mr. Zakaria may ignore the threat, but Democratic Party presidential candidates, along with their media support groups, are panicked over the president’s court selections.

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What better way to slow the growth of a dynamic country such as ours, than to impose restrictive and time consuming environmental regulations.  Was  that  possibly  the plan of the Green/Globalist/Marxist Movement?   Ya think???   Nancy

Getting Closer to ‘Shovel Ready’

Environmental impact statements shouldn’t take 13 years and more than 16,000 pages.

Traffic backs up on Interstate 70 near Silverthorne, Colo., Jan. 7, 2018. PHOTO: THOMAS PEIPERT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  On Thursday the Trump Administration released a proposed rule to streamline NEPA reviews. One highlight is that the process would have presumptive limits: two years and 300 pages for a full environmental impact statement; or a year and 75 pages for a smaller environmental assessment. Thorny cases could go longer with written approval by “a senior agency official of the lead agency.”

If you visit an aging American megaproject—say, the Hoover Dam—you’ll probably see a startling statistic about how quickly it was built. Congress authorized the damming of the Colorado River in 1928, construction started in 1931, and the 726-foot concrete wonder opened in 1936. That’s a “shovel ready” job.

Today even modest public works, including roads, bridges and airport runways, can spend years in limbo, no thanks to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. That 1970 law requires an environmental study of any major project that involves federal funding or permitting. NEPA hasn’t been overhauled in 40 years, which is why the Trump Administration deserves applause for moving last week to modernize it.

Everybody wants to protect the environment. But NEPA isn’t doing the job sensibly. No single agency has responsibility for its enforcement, unlike the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act. There’s no obligation for the feds to keep a specific timeline. Environmental assessments and impact statements are often monstrously detailed, since agencies and sponsors are trying to make them litigation proof.

The result is a regulatory morass. From 2013 to 2017, the average final impact statement took more than four years and ran 669 pages, the Council on Environmental Quality said last summer. The longest file was for a contentious 12-mile expansion of Interstate 70 in Denver. The final report ran 8,951 pages, plus another 7,307 pages of appendices. The whole rigmarole took 13 years.

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“American citizenship is eroding”

November 2019  • • Victor Davis Hanson

The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.

Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.

The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.

American citizenship is eroding in three ways.

First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.

But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.

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Got Trade? Dairy Farmers Stand to Gain From the USMCA

The newly signed deal is sweet relief to farmers in rural districts like mine in North Carolina.

Obama’s Incredible Movie Makeover

The former president has produced a film about a factory closing—without mentioning his own role in the drama