Inflation and the government’s role in creating it

 John Cochrane explains why we are experiencing inflation.

If it weren't so serious it would be funny - politicians have created the inflation and propose to fix it by doing things that will exacerbate it.

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Black Friday begins tonight, and Americans, after emerging from our collective turkey coma, will dive into our sacred, national ritual: shopping.

Those who haven’t shopped lately are in for a rude awakening: Many items will be out of stock, delayed or cost a lot more than they used to. Welcome to inflation, back from the 1970s!

As you look for a deal on a Peloton to work off your pandemic paunch, here is a brief explanation about what’s going on with our economy, why so many things are becoming more expensive, why this hurts all of us, and why the government can’t spend its way out of this mess.

Why are prices rising?

The news is full of “supply chain” problems. Shipping containers can’t get through our ports. Car-makers can’t get chips to make cars. Railroads look like the 405 at rush hour.

What’s underlying many of these problems is the fact that businesses can’t find enough workers. There aren’t enough truck drivers, airline pilots, construction workers and warehouse workers in the “supply chain.” Restaurants can’t find waiters and cooks. There are 10 million job openings and only seven million people looking for work. About three million people who were working in March 2020 are no longer working or looking for work.

But supply chains wouldn’t be clogged if people weren’t trying to buy a lot. The fundamental issue is that demand is outstripping supply.

Strawberry prices go up in the fall because the supply is lower; apples are cheap, because they are abundant. Prices of one good relative to another change, and induce us to shop effectively.

That’s normal.

Inflation is different. Inflation describes all prices and wages going up at the same time, straining supply throughout the economy. That’s the situation right now. Even the Dollar Tree stores just became the buck and a quarter stores, raising all prices 25%.

What’s driving current inflation?

Widespread inflation always comes from people wanting to buy more of everything than the economy can supply. Where did all that demand come from? In its response to the pandemic, the U.S. government created about 2.5 trillion new dollars, and sent checks to people and businesses. It borrowed another $2.5 trillion, and sent more checks to people and businesses. Relative to a $22 trillion economy, and $17 trillion of existing (2020) federal debt, that’s a lot of money.

People are now spending this money, the economy can’t keep up, and prices are rising. Milton Friedman once joked that the government could easily create inflation by dropping money from helicopters. That’s pretty much what our government did.

(I do not here argue the wisdom of this policy. The government helped a lot of people and businesses to get through the lockdowns. One can quibble that money could have been distributed more thoughtfully, but we’re here to think about inflation, not Covid policy.)

What’s wrong with inflation?

Prices and wages all rising at the same rate doesn’t sound so bad. But it’s never that simple. Inflation is chaotic! Some prices go up faster than others. You can’t get things you need. Neither can businesses. And wages tend to lag behind prices, so workers lose in real terms, as do those on fixed incomes.

What was the Fed’s role in all of this?

The Federal Reserve failed at its most basic job: to figure out how much the economy can produce, and to bring demand up to, but not beyond, that supply. To that end, the Fed controls interest rates. If people get a higher interest rate on money in the bank, they will leave it there rather than spend it. But the Fed failed to see inflation coming, and kept interest rates at zero, where they remain. The Fed says it is keeping interest rates low to improve “labor market conditions,” despite the widespread worker shortages and the eruption of inflation.

Will inflation continue?

It’s hard to say. If the Federal Reserve’s immense staff of economists can be caught off guard, so can you and I.

That said, there is some momentum to inflation, so further price increases are likely. Higher property prices will feed into higher rents; rising input costs and wages will lead to higher prices; trillions of those extra savings are still waiting to be spent.

Where inflation goes after that depends on how much more our government continues to print or borrow to send people checks and expand social programs. This doesn’t seem likely to end soon. And if people believe that monetary policy will never return to controlling inflation, and taxes and spending will never come into line so the government can start to repay mounting debts, inflation spirals out of control.

The good news is that long-term interest rates—the kind you pay to borrow for a mortgage or car—have not yet risen, as they tend to do when bond markets expect inflation. Bond markets think inflation will quickly subside. It’s still very cheap to borrow, a bright light for consumers. And low rates make it easier for the government to slow inflation.

Okay, so what can Washington do about it?

Simple: It has to stop printing and borrowing money. And it has to reassure people who hold our debt that there really is a plan for paying it off. And the Fed has to return to the unglamorous job of curbing inflation, rather than endless “stimulus” and “accommodation.”

To ease supply constraints, our government has to remove the sand in the gears. The ports are clogged because of countless regulations—like zoning laws that forbid stacking empty containers. Multiply anecdotes like this by tens of thousands throughout the economy and you’ll begin to get a picture of where we are. We need a long-overdue Marie-Kondoing of public affairs.

If inflation is as simple as you say it is, why are politicians singing another tune?

Politicians hate inflation because it means they can’t keep spreading money around. Supply constraints reverse political rhetoric. When a politician says a new program will “create millions of jobs,” those jobs are now a cost, not a benefit, because there aren’t any available workers.

So they offer a string of excuses, just as they did in the 1970s—including lots of talk about “supply shocks” and “bottlenecks” and “transitory” inflation —while hoping it all goes away.

The Biden administration, having just cancelled the Keystone pipeline, is now begging the Saudis and Russians to turn on the pumps, just as Richard Nixon pleaded with OPEC. The White House is accusing oil companies of colluding to raise prices. They will likely pressure other companies to limit price increases, as presidents from Kennedy to Ford did. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Every past inflation has sparked a witch hunt for “speculators,” “hoarders,” “middlemen,” “price-gougers,” and other phantasms. Let’s hope the government doesn’t try price controls, as Nixon did, precipitating gas lines and shortages of everything.

Meanwhile, the administration is re-messaging its spending plans as inflation-fighters. It won’t work. Consider the childcare plan, to take just one example, which they say will lower costs. The government will subsidize childcare while mandating higher wages for staff, more licensing requirements and inspections. Childcare costs will inevitably rise for the country as a whole. One can believe that it’s a good policy, and that it’s worth the cost, but it will make costs higher, not lower.

Politicians don’t want to face the hard reality that inflation brings, but inflation has a way of forcing change, as it did in 1980.

So, should I try to buy things on Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Only if you really need them. Prices are the neurons that transmit information in the economy. High prices tell you to wait and to let someone who values that Peloton more than you do have it. Most Americans should take this golden opportunity to build up some savings, look for a job or a better job, and enjoy those leftovers.

Losing confidence in the pillars of our civilization

 Victor Davis Hanson at the Jewish World Review

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Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America.

Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation's traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies – especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks.

Not so much anymore.

For the first time in memory, conservatives now connect the FBI hierarchy with bureaucratic bloat, political bias, and even illegality.

In the last five years, the FBI was mostly in the news for the checkered careers of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok. Add in the criminality of convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.

The colossal FBI-driven "Russian collusion" hoax was marked by the leaking of confidential FBI memos, forged documents, improper surveillance, and serial disinformation.

Prior heads of the CIA and FBI, as well as the director of national intelligence, have at times either not told the truth under oath or claimed amnesia, without legal repercussions.

Mention the military to conservative Americans these days, and they unfortunately associate its leadership with the disastrous flight from Afghanistan. Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco of the last half-century.

Instead, President Joe Biden and the top generals traded charges that the other was responsible for the calamity. Or both insisted the abject flight was a logistical masterpiece.

Never in U.S. history have so many retired four-star admirals and generals disparaged their president with charges of being either a traitor, a liar, a fascist, or a virtual Nazi, as occurred during the last administration.

Never has the proper advisory role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff been so brazenly usurped and contorted.

Never has the secretary of defense promised he would ferret out alleged "white supremacists," without providing any evidence whatsoever of their supposedly ubiquitous presence and dangerous conspiracies.

Conservatives have always been amused by the liberal biases of the old network news and big-city print media. But they grudgingly admitted that many liberal journalists of the last century were mostly professionals. News divisions mostly reported the news rather than simply made it up.

Not so now with Big Tech and 21stt-century "woke" journalism. Few reporters have yet offered apologies for helping hatch and spread the Russian collusion hoax that paralyzed the country for three years.

Few have admitted culpability for reporting as fact the various fantasies surrounding the Duke Lacrosse team's prosecution or the Covington Catholic kids deception.

Many in the media ran uncritically with the Jussie Smollett concoction and the "hands-up-don't shoot" Ferguson distortions. Journalists promulgated misinformation about the "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin encounter, and doctored photos and edited tapes.

They invented the myth of the supposedly brilliant – but now utterly disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo – as well as the "Russian disinformation" yarn that allegedly accounted for the missing Hunter Biden laptop.

Most recently, reporters spread serial untruths surrounding the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

For much of 2020 to even suggest that the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have played a role in the birth and spread of the COVID-19 earned media derision.

Few reporters suggested that federal health agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases might be disseminating contradictory or even inaccurate information about the pandemic. To believe this was happening instead earned condemnation in the media as if one were some conspiracy theorist or nut.

Rarely have communication industries – veritable utilities in the public domain – so asymmetrically censored speech and applied such one-sided standards of suppressing free expression.

Conservatives used to oppose regulating larger corporations. Now, ironically, most are calling for regulating and breaking up multibillion-dollar social media monopolies and conglomerates that suppress as much as transmit private communications.

The American criminal justice system also used to earn the respect of conservatives. Prosecuting attorneys, police chiefs, and big-city mayors were seen as custodians of the public order. They were entrusted to keep the peace, to prevent and investigate crime, and to arrest and prosecute criminals.

Again, not so much now.

After 120 days of mostly unchecked riot, arson, looting, and violent protests during the summer of 2020, the public lost confidence in their public safety agencies.

District attorneys in several major cities – Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis – have often predicated prosecuting crimes on the basis of ideology, race, and careerism.

In the current crime wave, brazen lawbreakers enjoy de facto immunity. Mass looting goes unpunished. Indictments are often aimed as much against those who defend themselves as against criminals who attack the innocent.

Conservatives now have lost their former traditional confidence in the administration of justice, in the intelligence and investigatory agencies, in the nation's military leadership, in the media, and the criminal justice system.

No one yet knows what the effect will be of half the country losing faith in the very pillars of American civilization.

A comment on racism

 Someone sent this to me.  I'll vote for this guy whatever he runs for.

Here is the video.

Freedom of speech? – surely you jest

 Jonathan Turley describes another case of Government de facto denying free speech.

Respect for the Constitution has been declining for many years.  Now, it is in shreds and a substantial proportion of the population does not appreciate the consequences for them.

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Now That Rittenhouse is Acquitted, Can Officer Kelly Have His Job Back?

The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse produced a number of immediate changes beyond the custodial status of the 18-year-old himself. GoFundMe lifted its ban on people contributing to his defense . . . after his defense was over and the verdict was in. Some media outlets finally reported on evidence that supported his self-defense claims and one critic called for “revisiting” the clearly biased reporting in the case. However, there is one person whose status has not changed: Norfolk Police Officer William Kelly who was fired for simply donating to the Rittenhouse defense fund and writing a supportive note as a private citizen. He made the comment and donation anonymously. The only thing more shocking than Kelly’s loss of his job is that Norfolk City Manager Chip Filer and Police Chief Larry Boone have retained theirs.

I criticized the firing of Kelly last April as a blatant attack on free speech. The termination occurred after Kelly made a $25 donation to the defense of Kyle Rittenhouse. He made the donation anonymously and added the comment “God Bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong. Every rank-and-file police officer supports you.”

Early in the Rittenhouse case, activists sought to cut off Rittenhouse’s ability to raise money for his defense by harassing donors and (successfully) pressuring companies like GoFundMe to block contributions. A criminal defense in any case (let alone a high-profile case with ramped up prosecution teams) is hugely expensive. That financial threat can prompt some to plead guilty. That is why people want to help fund such defenses to guarantee true access to a fair trial. Activists and GoFundMe did everything they could to block such efforts and increase the pressure on this teenager to just plead guilty.

Back to Kelly. This is an officer who had served for almost 20 years when he decided to contribute to the defense. As a police officer, Kelly likely saw the defense grounds more clearly than most people. The jury ultimately agreed with his view that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. Nevertheless, activists learned his identity and demanded his termination. Filer rushed to satisfy the mob. He fired Kelly with the support of Boone and declared “his egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve.”

The “egregious comments” were to say anonymously that there are officers who support Rittenhouse and believe in his defense. Kelly has pointed out that Boone was allowed in uniform to march with Black Lives Matter protesters. Yet, he was fired for anonymously making the supportive donation and statement to a legal defense fund.

Various public officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have contributed to the The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which “pays criminal bail and immigration bonds for those who cannot otherwise afford to as we seek to end discriminatory, coercive, and oppressive jailing.” They have the right to support such legal defense funds, which serve to assure that litigants have the means to defend themselves. So does Kelly.

When Kelly was fired, many on the left celebrated despite the fact that he was being denied his right to free speech and free association. It is a pattern that I have written about in the past as public employees are fired for statements on social media or associations in their private lives. This includes a New Jersey police officer fired for calling BLM protesters “terrorists” on her personal Facebook account. Most recently, a court reinstated Loudon teacher Byron “Tanner” Cross, who was fired for speaking publicly against gender identification policies.

As it stands, Kelly was fired for supporting (again anonymously) a teenager who was ultimately acquitted of all charges by a jury. He was fired for contributing to a legal fund that would guarantee that the accused would be allowed to put on a full defense. That is in the interest of justice.

Yet, Filer and Boone remain employed despite using their official positions to retaliate for the use of free speech. Kelly and his family continue to appeal his firing as they struggle to survive on the teacher’s salary of his wife. The dictator Idi Amin once proclaimed “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” That seems the standard applied in Norfolk where even anonymous support for a legal defense is grounds for termination.

Another Biden scandal most of the media is ignoring

 Jonathan Turley gets it right on the Bidens.

Fair elections are not possible if important relevant news is buried and denied by the major media and Big Tech.

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What Elephant? The Media Again Buries A Hunter Biden Scandal on Foreign Deals During the Biden Vice Presidency.

I previously wrote a column on the one year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story that marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before that 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. The Biden trick however occurred live before an audience of millions. Now, in an encore, a new major story on Biden’s Chinese dealings has surfaced. Once again, poof!

The media has made the story disappear except for a couple of the usual outlets. Even with the New York Times reporting on the story, the disclosure of Biden’s role in securing one of the world’s largest cobalt mines for China (a key component to electric battery production) has been ignored by the major networks and many other print outlets. Once again, ABC. NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and other media just cannot see the elephant.

What is most amazing about this continuing trick is that the story has all of the elements that the media longed to confirm during the Trump Administration on the financial dealings of the Trump children. The son of the President was involved in a successful effort to handover a strategically vital natural resource to the Chinese that would guarantee their dominance in one of the most important new industries of the “Green economy.” This occurred during a period when Hunter Biden and his uncle were accused of running a global influence peddling operation with foreign powers that cashed in on the Vice Presidency of Joe Biden. Then there is the fact that the story appears to contradict denials of continuing ownership in such foreign interests by the Bidens.

Finally, there is the fact that this windfall from the Chinese occurred in a field that Hunter Biden knew nothing about (much like his work on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma) and he was, by his own description, a hopeless addict. In his recent book, Hunter admits that he was a crack addict and alcoholic all the way up to the start of his father’s presidential campaign — in his words, “Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating,” as well as “smoking crack around the clock.”

This elephant is truly difficult to unsee.

Hunter Biden established the firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company with a few American and Chinese partners in 2013. He and his American associates controlled 30 percent of the Shanghai-based operation and served on the board. They then put together the purchase of the Congo cobalt and copper mine transfer from American company Freeport-McMoRan to China Molybdenum for the sum of $2.65 billion.

The Tenke Fungurume mine was considered a human rights nightmare. The Congolese military reportedly reduced workers to virtual slaves, torched homes, and killed dissenters. Amnesty International spokeswoman Sarah Jackson denounced “the long history of excessive use of force … unlawful killings.”

However, there was money to be made and Hunter Biden was there to lend the Biden name to the enterprise. BHR served as a minority stakeholder to buy out around $1.14 billion of shares from Lundin Mining of Canada, a partial owner of the mine. China Molybdenum then bought BHR’s shares two years later to give it 80% of ownership of the mine and control of the vital natural resources.

Biden controlled 10 percent of BHR through Skaneateles LLC but his lawyer reportedly insisted that, as of April 2020, he no longer had such interests in this foreign company. That may be untrue, according to the media reports. Chinese business records reviewed by Fox News in April 2021 allegedly show that Hunter Biden continued to hold a 10% stake.

If true, it means that through the election, Hunter Biden was still receiving money from a variety of companies with close ties to the Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian governments. In this case, his alleged influence peddling was used to deliver a huge strategic advantage to the Chinese in the very area of electric cars that his father was making an American investment priority.

Of course, this is simply not the type of scoop that has drawn most of the media coverage.

None of these facts, however, can force the media to see the elephant. The key to the trick was involving the media in the original trick is that it invests reporters in the illusion. It is like calling audience members to the stage to assist in the performance. Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception. The media cannot see the elephant without the public seeing something about the media in its past efforts to conceal it.

When is 50 million a drop in the bucket?

Biden and his associates are making a big deal about releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices.  This is less than 1% of the nation's annual consumption, according to eia.gov - so it will not lower them materially.

A reasonable conclusion is that the Administration is stupid or lying or thinks you are stupid.

Is Yale Law School going down the drain, too?

 Jonathan Turley describes some events at Yale Law School.

This kind of behavior is not limited to just a few schools.  It does not bode well for our society.

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We have often discussed how dissenting faculty and students are increasingly subjected to retaliation for the exercise of free speech or free association on campuses. In many cases, such treatment involves shunning or blackballing by school administrators to prevent professors or students from participating in programs. That is the complaint by two law students (identified only John Doe and Jane Doe) who allege that they were blackballed for supporting Professor Amy Chua, who was previously discussed as embroiled in a controversy at the school after she defended Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The students make some shocking allegations against the Yale Dean and other administration officials.

In addition to Yale Law School, the students are suing Yale Law School’s Dean Heather Gerken and its Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove, and the Director of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik.

The use of the anonymous filing is interesting since the students claim that they were retaliated against by the law school, including being identified in a mysterious “dossier” circulated around the school. The anonymity would appear to protect them from the retaliation of lawyers and firms for bringing allegations against the school. John Doe is described as African American and Jane Doe is described as Asian American. They are seeking damages of not less than $150,000.

The complaint states that, because Yale does not use traditional grading (in favor of Honors, Pass, and Low Pass marks), there is intense competition for students to find other ways to distinguish themselves in the absence of a GPA: “While this system protects what would otherwise be the bottom half of a law school class, it makes competition tight for its more traditionally ambitious students, who often seek competitive federal clerkships or other government jobs, whose limited availability and competitive nature are considered highly prestigious and desirable.” One of the most sought after positions are “Coker Fellows” who work as teaching assistants.

The students say that Gerken was publicly critical of Chua for her defense of Kavanaugh and claim that she led an effort to gather derogatory information on Chua from students, faculty, and staff. Students were allegedly instructed to send such information to Cosgrove.

The two students met with Chua to discuss what they viewed as intolerance or unequal treatment for students of color. John Doe had resigned recently from Yale Law Journal over such complaints. The students met with Chua at her house and then allegedly got rather bizarre:

“Unbeknownst to Jane or John at the time, these two meetings somehow
became subject of pernicious law school gossip. One of their classmates went so far as to compile a bizarre 20-page document, the Dossier (Ex. A), that purported to document the “secret dinner parties” that Chua was supposedly hosting with John, Jane, and unidentified federal judges.”

What follows are extremely serious and shocking allegations:

49. Jane and John became aware of the Dossier in late April 2021, when it had begun to circulate among the Yale Law School student body.

50. Shortly thereafter, beginning on April 23, 2021, Cosgrove and Eldik contacted Jane and John concerning the Dossier. However, they were not investigating the fact that a Yale Law School student was circulating such a document for an apparent harassing purpose, or even investigating the allegations made in the Dossier.

51. Instead, Cosgrove and Eldik pressured Jane and John to make a formal statement confirming the allegations against, and lodge their own formal complaint, against Chua.

52. Despite Jane and John repeatedly denying the Dossier’s assertions, Cosgrove and Eldik pressured Jane and John to make such a statement, even calling them on a daily basis over the course of a week in April 2021, insisting that Jane and John had a “moral obligation” to “future generations of students” to make the false statements against Chua.

53. Cosgrove and Eldik also made references to Jane of the “effort against Professor Chua” and insisted that if Jane would “just give them” a statement, they would have “enough” against Chua.

54. During the course of this week, Jane and John consistently refused to make false statements, and instead repeatedly asked Cosgrove and Eldik for assistance against the troubling invasion of privacy and resulting harassment that they suffered.

55. Cosgrove and Eldik ignored these requests to help and discouraged Jane and John from filing a formal complaint concerning the harm the Dossier and its creator had caused Jane and John.

56. Instead, Cosgrove and Eldik ratcheted up the pressure. On a joint call including Cosgrove, Eldik, and Jane, Eldik told Jane that the Dossier would likely end up in “every judges’ chambers,” “following [her] even after [she] graduates,” effectively sabotaging any hopes of her securing a clerkship whether she applied now or in the future.

57. In a joint call including Cosgrove, Eldik, and John, Eldik and Cosgrove strongly suggested that John should not apply for a clerkship in the summer of 2021 because of the Dossier’s wide publicity.

58. It was suggested that, for these reasons, Jane and John should cooperate by making a statement against Professor Chua.

59. Cosgrove also directly threatened Jane, claiming that Yale Law School was receiving complaints about her potentially serving as a Coker Fellow due to the Dossier, and further suggested that such complaints would be moot if Jane made a statement against Chua.

60. That threat having no effect, Cosgrove became more direct, telling Jane that if Jane accepted a Coker Fellowship with the professor—despite Jane’s repeated denials that she had received an illicit offer from the professor—Cosgrove or another member of the Yale Law School administration would approach the professor with the allegations.

What follows is much of the same as the students detail allegedly direct action to block them from opportunities like the Coker Fellowships. What is most notable is that some of these allegations involve third parties, including a professor who was allegedly encouraged to reject the two Does for the fellowships. That means that this professor is likely to be called as a witness in depositions and any trial if the case survives a motion to dismiss. However, in ruling on such a motion, the court must assume all facts in favor of the students.

They allege a mix of contractual and tort claims: Cause of Action 1 (Breach of Contract), Cause of Action 2 (Promissory Estoppel), Cause of Action 3 (Intentional Interference With Prospective Business Relationships), Cause of Action 4 (Defamation), Cause of Action 5 (Unreasonable Publicity), Cause of Action 6 (False Light), and Cause of Action 7 (Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress).

How Media Misinformation Can Fuel Social Unrest

 Jonathan Turley gets it right again.

A simple test of someone's credibility is whether they still believes Rittenhouse should have been convicted.  Why?  Because the videos and testimony made the truth of lawful self-defense clear.

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Below is my column in USA Today on the Rittenhouse trial and the role of media coverage in fueling anger in such cases by misrepresenting or ignoring key evidence. After the verdict, a riot was declared in Portland and protests erupted around the country. Fortunately, there was not the type of arson and destruction seen in Kenosha last year. While the media often denounces “misinformation” or “disinformation” (and even supports censorship in some cases), it rarely acknowledges its own distortions from the Russian collusion scandal to the Hunter Biden laptop controversy to the Lafayette Park incident. Indeed, after the verdict, many of these same figures doubled down in denouncing the decision without acknowledging the evidence supporting the reasonable doubt of these jurors.

Here is the column:

The full acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse is now in. The result was hardly a surprise to many of us who watched the trial rather than the media coverage. The jury spent days carefully considering the evidence and could not find a single count that was supported beyond a reasonable doubt.

In rendering its verdict, the jury fulfilled its core function in our legal system. The jury was designed to protect an individual from becoming the grist of a criminal justice system. As the Supreme Court noted in Duncan v. Louisiana (1968):

“Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.”

The American jury is designed to stand between the mob and a defendant; between the government and the accused. The thin line of a dozen citizens can prove the most unassailable wall for justice in our system.

The media’s guilty verdict

There was, however, a second verdict in that courtroom for those who have been maintaining a distorted or incomplete account to this trial. From the outset, politicians and media figures insisted that this was a case of murders committed by a white supremacist. Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden labeled Rittenhouse a “white supremacist” in a tweet showing his photo and demanded to know why then-President Donald Trump did not “disavow white supremacists.” Much of the media followed suit with an echo chamber of coverage that led some people to believe that these were essentially executions on the streets of Kenosha. Columnist Elie Mystal called the trial a sham.

The pressure clearly had an impact on the prosecution, which overcharged Rittenhouse (including with a count that was invalid). The case began to fall apart as the prosecution called its witnesses, who contradicted the core elements of these charges.

What happened next was even more chilling. Faced with a collapsing case in court, many of the same media outlets struck out at the judge, the jury, and the legal system. MSNBC host Tiffany Cross advocated for the judge’s removal. Rittenhouse was mocked for his “male, white tears” on national television. Georgetown law professor Paul Butler called the trial “white privilege on steroids.”

The danger of such reckless legal analysis is now evident. Judging from the coverage, one could have easily concluded that a conviction in this case was inescapable. Many reports prioritized still pictures of Rittenhouse walking menacingly with his rifle and omitted many of the countervailing facts that occupied much of the trial. Many viewers may not have learned that Rittenhouse spent his time cleaning graffiti off the high school.

The prosecutors argued that Rittenhouse provoked his first victim, 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum. Videotapes show the opposite, that Rosenbaum clearly pursued Rittenhouse. Casual trial observers would be unaware that Rosenbaum was a convicted sex offender who witnesses described as threatening to kill Rittenhouse.

A racist trial in a racist justice system?

Most people seem to disagree with the decision of Rittenhouse and others to show up at the protests armed. However, many also perceived the alleged victims as rioters who were engaged in violent acts, including attacks on Rittenhouse.

In our siloed society, people rely on news sources that tend to confirm their bias and presuppositions in such trials.

The problem is that such coverage is self-fulfilling.

By misrepresenting and not reporting key facts, media increased the likelihood that the acquittal will be read as confirmation of a racist trial in a racist justice system. That fuels the type of rioting that we saw in Kenosha after the shooting of Jacob Blake in a scuffling with police. Ironically, that case was also widely misrepresented in much of the media.

The Blake case was the subject of both state and federal investigations that rejected charges against the officer. Yet, the inaccurate coverage of that case continued to enrage viewers who were not fully informed of the facts leading up to the use of force. The various investigations found that the officers were required to arrest Blake on charges of third-degree sexual assault, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. Two different officers used a taser on Blake, which failed. Investigations also found that Blake was armed and resisting arrest.

The growing disconnect between actual crimes and their coverage is unlikely to change in our age of rage. Rittenhouse had to be convicted to fulfill the narrative and any acquittal had to be evidence of a racist jury picked to carryout racist justice.

That is what occurred in the Rittenhouse trial. The jury stood between a mob and a defendant to see that objective justice was done. On that chaotic night on Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, few things were clear. What is clear however is that the shooting – and those killed and accused – became vehicles for broader narratives. Those popular portrayals crashed in Kenosha on a wall of 12 jurors who ruled by proof rather than passion.

Unsettled science – more on the fall of science in favor of agenda

 Here is Judith Curry on her blog.

JC is one of the climate scientists who you can trust.

More likely than not anyone who has a propensity to accuse those who disagree with them about anthropomorphic climate change of being a climate denier either is misinformed, doesn't appreciate what they don't know, or worse.

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“The field of Sun-climate relations . . . in recent years has been corrupted by unwelcome political and financial influence as climate change sceptics have seized upon putative solar effects as an excuse for inaction on anthropogenic warming” – Lockwood (2012)

“We argue that the Sun/climate debate is one of these issues where the IPCC’s “consensus” statements were prematurely achieved through the suppression of dissenting scientific opinions.” – Connolly et al. (2021)

The impact of solar variations on the climate is uncertain and subject to substantial debate. However, you would not infer from the IPCC assessment reports that there is debate or substantial uncertainty surrounding this issue.

The Sun goes through cycles of approximately 11 years (the Schwabe Cycle) in which solar activity goes up and down. Above the Earth’s atmosphere, the difference in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI, measured in Watts per square meter W/m2) between the 11-year maxima and minima is small, on the order of 0.1% of the total TSI, or about 1 W/m2. A multidecadal increase in TSI should cause global warming (all else being equal); similarly, a multidecadal decrease in TSI should cause global cooling. Researchers have speculated that multi-decadal and longer changes in solar activity could be a major driver of climate change.

Exactly how TSI has changed over time has been a challenging problem to resolve. Since 1978, we have had direct measurements of TSI from satellite. However, interpreting any multi-decadal trends in TSI requires comparisons of observations from overlapping satellites. Substantial uncertainty exists in the TSI composites during the period from 1978 to 1992. This is mostly due to the fact that the ACRIM2 solar satellite mission was delayed because of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 (ACRIM2 was eventually launched in late 1991). This delay prevented this record from overlapping with the ACRIM1 record that ended in July 1989. The ACRIM-gap prevents a direct cross-calibration between the two high-quality ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 TSI records. [link]

This rather arcane issue of cross-calibration of two satellite records has profound implications. There are a number of rival composite TSI datasets, disagreeing as to whether TSI increased or decreased during the period 1986-1996. Further, the satellite record of TSI is used for calibrating proxy models, so that past solar variations can be inferred from sunspots and cosmogenic isotope measurements. Velasco Herrera et al. 2015 As a result, some of the datasets for past values of TSI (since 1750) have low variability, implying very low impact of solar variations on global mean surface temperature, whereas datasets with high TSI variability can explain 50-98% of the temperature variability since preindustrial times.

The IPCC AR5 adopted the low variability solar reconstructions, without discussing this controversy. The AR5 concluded that the best estimate of radiative forcing due to TSI changes for the period 1750–2011 was 0.05 W/m2 (medium confidence). For reference, the forcing from atmospheric greenhouse gases over the same period was 2.29 W/m2. Thus, the IPCC AR5 message was that changes in solar activity are nearly negligible compared to anthropogenic ones for forcing climate change.

The IPCC AR6 acknowledges a much larger range of estimates of changes in TSI over the last several centuries, stating that the TSI between the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715) and second half of the 20th century increased by 0.7– 2.7 W/m2, a range that includes both low and high variability TSI data sets. However, the recommended forcing dataset for the CMIP6 climate model simulations used in the AR6 averages two low variability data sets (Matthes et al. 2017).

The uncertainties and debate surrounding solar variations and their impact on climate was the topic of a ClimateDialogue, a remarkable blogospheric experiment . ClimateDialogue was the result of a request by the Dutch parliament to facilitate the scientific discussions between climate experts representing the full range of views on the subject. The Dialogue on solar variations (2014) included five distinguished scientists with extensive publication records on the topic. One participant was in line with the IPCC AR5, thinking that solar variations are only a minor player in the Earth’s climate. Two participants argued for a larger and even dominant role for the Sun, and the other two emphasized uncertainties in our current understanding.

More recently, a review article was published in the journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics by Connolly et al. (2021). The article has 23 co-authors with a range of perspectives, but who were united by their agreement not to take the consensus approach of the IPCC. Rather, the paper emphasized where dissenting scientific opinions exist as well as identifying where there is scientific agreement. The authors found that the Sun/climate debate is an issue where the IPCC’s consensus statements were prematurely achieved through the suppression of dissenting scientific opinions.

Of direct relevance to projections of 21st century climate is whether we might expect a substantial change in solar activity. On multidecadal timescales, proxy reconstructions of solar activity reveal occasional phases of unusually high or low solar activity, which are respectively called Grand Solar Minima and Maxima (Usoskin et al., 2014). Grand solar maxima occur when several solar cycles exhibit greater than average activity for decades or centuries.

Solar activity reached unusually high levels in the second half of the twentieth century, although there is disagreement among reconstructions as to whether this maximum peaked in the 1950’s or continued into the 1990’s. It has been estimated that about 20 grand maxima have occurred over the last 11 millennia (Usoskin et al. 2007), averaging one per 500 years. During the last 11 millennia, there have been 11 grand solar minima, with intervals between them ranging from a hundred years to a few thousand years. The most recent grand minimum was the Maunder Minimum, during 1645-1715. [link]

There are several reasons to expect lower solar activity during the 21st century, relative to the 20th century. The recently completed solar cycle 24 was the smallest sunspot cycle in 100 years and the third in a trend of diminishing sunspot cycles. Solar physicists expect cycle 25 to be even smaller than Cycle 24. Further, a grand maximum is more likely to be followed by a grand minimum than by another grand maximum (Inceoglu et al., 2016). Empirically-based projections imply a new solar minimum starting in 2002–2004 and ending in 2063–2075 (Velasco Herrera et al. 2015) It has been estimated that there is an 8% chance of the Sun falling into a Grand Minimum during the next 40 years (Barnard et al. 2011). However, the depth and length of a phase of low solar activity in the 21st century is largely uncertain.

If the Sun did fall into a minimum during mid 21st century of the magnitude of the Maunder Minimum, how much cooling could we expect? Estimates from climate models and other analytical models expect the cooling to be small, ranging from 0.09 to 0.3oC (Fuelner 2010). These models assume that solar-climate interaction is limited to TSI forcing alone.

However, there is growing evidence that other aspects of solar variability amplify the TSI forcing or are independent of TSI forcing, which are referred to as solar indirect effects. Candidate processes include: solar ultraviolet changes; energetic particle precipitation; atmospheric-electric-field effect on cloud cover; cloud changes produced by solar-modulated galactic cosmic rays; large relative changes in the magnetic field; and the strength of the solar win. Solar indirect effects can be classified as ‘known unknowns.’ While these indirect effects are not included in the CMIP6 21st century projections, we can make some inferences based upon recent publications. Recent research suggest that solar indirect effects could amplify an anomaly in solar insolation by a factor of up to 3-7. Shaviv (2008), Scafetta (2013) Svensmark (2019). If such an amplification factor is included, then a surface temperature decrease of up to 1oC (or even more) from a Maunder Minimum could occur.

So, what are plausible scenarios for solar-driven global temperature changes in the 21st century? These three scenarios pretty much cover the plausible range:

• CMIP6 Reference scenario: approximately -0.1oC (Matthes et.al 2017)

• Intermediate: -0.3oC, corresponds to high Maunder minimum estimate without amplification effects (Fuelner 2010), or a weaker minimum with amplification effects

• High: -0.6oC, a low solar scenario (which is not a Maunder Minimum) with amplification by solar indirect effects Solheim

The next 20 to 30 years of observations should reveal a lot about the role of the Sun in climate.

JC reflections

The IPCC acknowledges substantial uncertainty in changes of TSI over the last centuries, stating that the TSI between the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715) and second half of the 20th century increased by 0.7– 2.7 W/m2, a range that includes both low and high variability TSI data sets. However, the recommended forcing dataset for the CMIP6 climate model simulations used in the AR6 averages two low variability data sets (Matthes et al. 2017).

The implications of such large uncertainty in TSI on equilibrium climate sensitivity and attribution of 20th century warming are ignored by the IPCC. If the high variability data sets are correct, this has substantial implications for estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2, and attribution of 20th century warming. This issue can’t continue to be swept under the rug. Other authors are not ignoring this. Here are three recent publications for discussion:

Scafetta: Testing the CMIP6GCM simulations versus surface temperature records from 1980-1990 to 2010-2020 [link]

Connolly et al: How much has the sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate [link]

Girma Orssengo: Determination of the sun-climate relationship using empirical mathematical models for climate data sets. [link]

Cultural suicide in the US

 Habi Zhang gets it right in the Wall Street Journal (one of the few newspapers you can trust).

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As a Chinese doctoral student raising a young son in the U.S., I am mystified by how American elementary schools coddle students. In China, schools are run like boot camps. What do the therapeutic comforts America showers on its youth portend for a growing competition with China?

I recently registered my son in the third grade at a New Jersey public school. Hattie had recently finished two years of elementary school in Chengdu, China, where he trotted off to school each day with a backpack stuffed with thick textbooks and materials for practices and quizzes. Here he leaves for school with little in his backpack other than a required “healthy snack.”


The first day he came home with a sheet of math homework: 35 addition problems. He finished in about a minute. On the second day, he was asked to write 328 in different configurations. He first wrote down 300+20+8, following the prompt, and then 164x2, 82x4 and 656÷2.

My son is not a genius, but he started studying math at an early age. When he was 5, I taught him fractions. Two years later, I introduced him to algebra. It is a core belief in Chinese society that talent can be trained, so schools should be tough on children. Chinese students score at the top of international math and science tests.

This is not a philosophy shared by American schools. On Friday night my son came home announcing in bewilderment that he didn’t have any homework. In China students tend to receive twice as much homework on the weekend, given the two days to complete it. How will America compete with a China determined to train the best mathematicians, scientists and engineers?

Unfolding now are two Maoist cultural revolutions, one in the East and the other in the West. The former is a jingoistic nationalism enforced by party loyalties and ubiquitous secret police. The latter is an anti-Americanism enforced by progressive mobs seeking to defund the police. Both are about limiting expression, controlling thought and regulating behavior.

Xi Jinping has been cracking down on everything from finance to entertainment to whip his country through a “national rejuvenation.” China’s nationalism is explicitly anchored in Maoism, with Mr. Xi representing the new cult of personality. Meanwhile, woke America—which, consciously or not, deploys Maoist tactics—is destroying the core traditions of Western civilization with identity politics.

In both countries, control must extend to the very young to mold them in the image of the official ideology. In fall 2021 Chinese pupils returned to school with a new requirement to study “Xi Jinping Thought.” Schools must “plant the seeds of loving the party, the country, and socialism in young hearts,” a government announcement declares. Across the ocean, American pupils are taught that white America is inherently racist, regardless of individual intention or action.

Chinese education pushes the young in directions that serve the party and the state. Youth are trained to be skilled laborers ready to endure hard work and brutal competition. Such political indoctrination is taught side by side with math and science. American education is supposed to be about opening minds but appears not to fill them with much. Worse, young Americans are not prepared for the demands of being an adult.

This phenomenon started in higher education. For years attending American universities, I have been disturbed to watch colleges fabricate “anxiety” and “depression” in students who are not mentally ill. Administrators have used grossly exaggerated terms such as “trauma,” and melodramatic expressions such as “I cannot begin to imagine what you have suffered,” to turn into a catastrophe what is best described as disappointment. This creates a culture of victimization.

The absurdity peaked after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Students from elite universities claimed existential despair, finding comfort in cocoa, coloring books and therapy dogs. Classes were canceled and exams postponed, all in the name of soothing 20-somethings who need to be learning how to adapt to reality as adults.

Chinese citizens enjoy mocking the Western “snowflakes.” Less amusing is what this trend means for the U.S. as China no longer hides its enmity for America.

The Government proposes to use the FSOC to further its climate agenda - illegally

 John Cochrane illustrates the Administration's "the ends justify the means" approach to government by twisting words to purposely misinterpret the law.

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A Convenient Myth: Climate risk and the financial system. At National Review Online.

In an October 21 press release, Janet Yellen — Treasury secretary and head of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), the umbrella group that unites all U.S. financial regulators — eloquently summarized a vast program to implement climate policy via financial regulation:

"FSOC is recognizing that climate change is an emerging and increasing threat to U.S. financial stability. This report puts climate change squarely at the forefront of the agenda of its member agencies and is a critical first step forward in addressing the threat of climate change."

You do not have to disagree with one iota of climate science — and I will not do so in this essay — to find this program outrageous, an affront to effective financial regulation, to effective climate policy, and to our system of government.

Of all the threats posed by a slowly warming climate, why is Ms. Yellen talking about financial stability? The answer is simple: Financial regulators are not supposed to implement each administration’s policies on non-financial matters. Financial regulators may only act if they think financial stability is at risk.

Why? Imagine that Trump returns. He declares, “Illegal immigration is an existential crisis. I can’t get Congress to do anything about it. Financial regulators: Tell banks to freeze the bank accounts of any customers who can’t prove legal status. Scour people’s accounts for payments to illegal employees. Freeze out any business that hires an illegal.” You would be shocked. The nation would be shocked. Ms. Yellen would be shocked. There is no financial risk here, we would all say. This is a vast abuse of power.

Financial regulation can only touch climate policy if there is a risk to the financial system that only coincidentally involves climate. But how could climate possibly pose a risk to the financial system?

A “risk to the financial system” does not mean that someone, somewhere, someday, might lose money on an unwise investment. A risk to the financial system means an event like 2008: a shock so big, so pervasive, and so fueled by short-term debt that it sparks a widespread run, a wave of defaults, and threatens the ability of the whole system to function. “Financial regulation” means looking at the assets and liabilities of financial institutions to mitigate such a risk. It can at best look a few years in the future.

So, if we use plain English, a “climate risk to the financial system” that “financial regulators” can contain must mean the climate might change so drastically, so abruptly, and so unexpectedly, in the next five years, that the economy tanks so terribly that financial institutions blow through the cushions of equity and long-term debt, to spark a widespread systemic crisis like 2008 or worse.

The trouble is, there is absolutely nothing in even the most extreme scientific speculations to support that possibility. Climate is the probability distribution of weather: the chance of heat and cold waves, floods, fires, and so forth. We know with great precision what the climate will be for the next five years. Nobody writing insurance in Florida is unaware of the chance of hurricanes. The chances of extreme weather are not going to change unexpectedly in even ten years. The sea level is rising. It will continue to rise, about 4 millimeters per year – 2 cm in the next five years – slowly and predictably. Risk is the unknown. This is known.

Moreover, even weather extremes just don’t move the economy that much. We have had many financial crises in history. Not one was sparked by an extreme weather event. Our modern, national economy is remarkably immune to weather.

It is simply not true that the economic damage of extreme weather events is either large or substantially increasing. Weather-related damages were 0.18 percent of global GDP in 2020. That’s tiny, and it’s decreasing, down from 0.26 percent in 1990. The part of it that could be described as unexpected, threatening financial reserves, is tinier still. GDP fell 10 percent during the COVID recession. Unexpected climate risks would have to be 50 times larger in the next few years to approach that level of damage. Even the most extreme weather events are local, a blip on the national economy and the assets of diversified banks.

In 1900, half a million people died in storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme temperatures. By 2020, the number had declined to 14,000. So far, 5,500 people have died from climate-related disasters in 2021. There are about 35,000 car crash deaths each year in the U.S. alone, and COVID has killed 750,000 Americans.

Still, one could defend the effort. Our financial regulators completely missed the possibility that mortgage-backed securities might bring down the financial system in 2008. Despite the army of Dodd-Frank regulators and stress-testers, regulators missed the possibility that a pandemic threatened to do the same in 2020. Only another massive round of bailouts saved us from another 2008. The Fed went on to completely miss the chance that inflation might break out, while it orchestrated the printing of $3 trillion sent out to people as checks. A dispassionate, honest effort to look at out-of-the-box risks to the financial system, together with a humble attitude towards regulators’ ability to foresee them, is a good idea.

What might that effort find? What if (when?) China invades Taiwan, and the U.S. and allies blockade China? A huge global recession. What if the U.S. chooses to fight and loses? Greater catastrophe. What if the Middle East blows up, or a nuclear weapon goes off? What if we have a real pandemic, one that kills 10 percent of the people it infects as plague, cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis did? What if that pandemic comes out of a lab, this time deliberately? What about a massive financial cyberattack? What if bond investors give up on U.S. Treasury debt and force a sovereign-debt crisis? These are all unlikely. But the chance of any of these is thousands of times greater than the danger of climate change to the financial system.

And what should one do about such risks? Does it make sense for bank regulators and stress testers to demand that each bank rank the sensitivity of each loan it makes for its exposure to Chinese-invasion risk, and calibrate its portfolio accordingly? Or, as is increasingly popular, to interact these risks and model general-equilibrium effects? No. The response to out-of-the box unquantifiable risks is simply to demand that banks finance themselves with much more equity capital, which can absorb unforeseen losses without imperiling the bank and financial system.

It is patently obvious that regulators did not evenhandedly open this Pandora’s box, or consider why, of all the risks to the financial system, climate change is the only one worth talking about. Regulators want to tell banks to stop lending to fossil-fuel companies while, coincidentally, the political parts of the administration decided on the same climate policy. And given their method, to regulate bank investments against “climate risks” that they cannot even define, rather than protect the system with equity (financial adaptation!), they are clearly not interested in actually protecting the financial system against unknowable catastrophes.

Pressed, advocates will quickly admit that’s not what they mean. Instead, they say, they worry about the risk of “stranded assets,” “transition risks,” losses in fossil fuel and other legacy industries.

Will environmental regulators, legislators, presidents, prime ministers, really fly back from Glasgow and pass laws and regulations so onerous that they tank the economy and financial system? Well, they just might. But then at least one might be honest and call it “climate-policy risk!”

But even this story does not pass muster. Climate-policy advocates are turning to financial regulation precisely because presidents and legislatures, accountable to voters, are refusing to impose draconian carbon-killing policies. It has some chutzpah, too: Carbon regulations might kill the fossil-fuel industry. So we have to. . . kill the fossil-fuel industry first.

This view has resonated through financial-policy circles for the last few years, though a tiny dose of econ-101 common sense told us that if you restrict fossil-fuel supply, prices and profits go up, not down. Today’s spike in coal, natural-gas and oil prices illustrates just how competent this effort is.

We are in an energy transition. But old, dying technologies never cause crises. New ones do. The 1929 stock-market crash did not come from the horse and buggy industries; radio, movies, and cars crashed. The 1999 stock market crash did not come from the typewriter, slide rule, carbon paper, and landline-telephone industries. Tech, slightly ahead of its time, failed. Tesla, valued at $1 trillion, upwards of ten times more than GM — now there is a teetering domino! Since the tulips themselves, so-called bubbles have always come from exciting new technologies, often fueled by subsidies and cheered on by central banks and regulators, not from slowly decaying legacy industries.

And stock-price declines, whether in Tesla or Exxon, are not a financial crisis. Heaven help us if regulators expand their view that their job is to keep prices from going down. Crises come from debt. Legacy industries have very little debt. Exxon has a $200 billion total capitalization. Of that, $157 billion is common stock, $51 billion is long-term debt, and a paltry $19 billion is short-term debt. Financial regulators should give Exxon and its investors a financial-stability gold star, not hound it for a net-zero plan on stability grounds. If the Biden administration nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, gets her wish to starve and “bankrupt” fossil-fuel companies via financial regulation, stockholders might indeed lose money. But with no appreciable debt there is no threat whatsoever to “financial stability.”

An honest, unbiased appraisal of political risk might also be interesting. Bring it on. The FTC might break you up. Labor, Justice, EEOC, EPA, might descend and close down your business and make your loans worthless. A wave of questionable product-liability-litigation losses might bankrupt you. Financial regulators might decide to starve you — now that would make a fun disclosure. Again, this is obviously not the question.

Climate risk to the financial system is a Big Lie. I don’t know how to put this politely. A little lie is a knowing untruth spouted by a devious individual. A Big Lie is a whopper, self-evidently false when parsed in standard English, passed around and around the bubbles of Davos, Glasgow, alphabet-soup financial agencies, philanthropies, and the narrative-endorsing media, until earnest do-gooders come to believe in its nonsense. Spouting it gains one the approval of the elite, and denying it quick expulsion and exclusion. A Big Lie justifies extraordinary grasps of political power.

Why repeat this Big Lie? Well, it’s obvious. Many people in our government and surrounding policy elites want to expand a particular kind of climate policy. That policy centers on stopping fossil-fuel development and use, before alternatives are available at scale, and subsidizing a particular kind of “green” projects. Windmills, solar panels, electric cars, rail, yes. Nuclear, carbon capture and storage — which would permit fossil-fuel burning — natural gas, hydrogen, geothermal, hydropower, innovation, zoning and land-use reform, adaptation, no. It focuses on domestic policies, hoping our “leadership” will inspire the elephants in the room (China, India, Africa) to fall in line and deny their populations the benefits of fossil-fuel led growth, and Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia deny theirs the profits of supplying that demand.

The trouble: This policy is falling apart quickly. Well-informed critics such as Steve Koonin and Bjorn Lomborg have completely undermined its distortion of the science, even that found in official IPCC and U.S. government reports. Democratically elected legislatures and accountable administrations refuse to quickly implement this policy. Even the Biden administration, which on day one canceled the Keystone pipeline, quickly turned around to ask OPEC and the Russians to turn on the spigots when voters noticed gas prices rising. The climate parts of the grand infrastructure and reconciliation bills are falling apart, leaving only a few hundred billion ineffective dollars to be thrown down corporate-welfare ratholes. The November elections made it pretty clear that 2022 will be the end of legislating this policy. Glasgow is ending with a whimper, with many countries refusing even to end fossil-fuel subsidies. Corporations will make bland “net-zero” (whatever “net” means) promises which they can quickly reverse in 2024. Europeans are facing spiking energy prices, restive gilets jaunes, and a skeptical eastern bloc.

What to do? Well, turn to financial regulation. What they can’t accomplish by accountable, democratic methods, they can accomplish by unleashing the awesome power of financial regulators to impose these policies, by denying funding to fossil-fuel companies and their customers, and freezing them out of the financial or payments system as we do to pot farmers, by demanding “disclosures.” The European Central Bank (ECB) is already printing money to buy “green” bonds, declaring them to be “undervalued.”

It is a particularly effective idea, because once thousands of pages of regulations are written, once the right people are appointed with all the protections of office, once the Twitter mob has silenced dissenters in the financial-regulatory community, once private businesses have gotten the message how to please regulators and hired hundreds of thousands of climate-disclosure compliance officers, the effort will be immune to the whims of pesky voters.

What’s wrong with this? The climate is in crisis, you say, the voters are morons, legislatures and politicians won’t move: Use whatever tools we have.

The minor issue: Financial regulators have a competence deficit. Environmental regulators are not doing a great job of scientific, technocratic, cost-benefit-metered climate policy. Climate policy is not a great certainty, waiting only for more activism. That central bankers will figure out what to deny, what to subsidize, and how to rate banks on their climate investments is a fantasy. The same crew that missed mortgages, pandemic, and inflation is going to figure out what businesses to subsidize, what to freeze, all to change global temperatures 100 years from now?

Most of all, it is blatantly illegal. In a democracy, independent agencies have broad but limited powers. Financial regulators are limited to financial risks. Securities regulators are supposed to enforce the “fiduciary rule” that asset managers must invest only on financial basis, not to please either the managers’ or politicians’ preferences. And there are great reasons for this limitation. If the Fed starts buying “green bonds,” the next Trump can force it to start buying “build the wall” bonds.

So what to do? Invent a fantasy: “Climate risk.” Dress it up in big technical sounding words like the rest of finance, to give it the aura of technocratic competence.

What they mean is not climate risk to the financial system, but the financial system’s risk to the climate, by financing the “wrong” investments. But they’re not allowed to regulate that. Hence the Big Lie: We looked for risks, and guess what, climate came out on top!

They are so brazen, so unafraid of legal or political pushback, that they no longer even hide it. Read the second half of Ms. Yellen’s eloquent summary quote: “This report puts climate change squarely at the forefront of the agenda of its member agencies and is a critical first step forward in addressing the threat of climate change.”

Guilty as charged! Climate change is not supposed to be at the forefront of all U.S. financial regulators’ agenda. It’s not supposed to be on their agenda anywhere!

When the Biden administration says that climate would be a “whole of government” approach, I answer equally: Guilty as charged! “Whole of government” is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. Will the judiciary be next? Our government is limited, with checks and balances.

Mark Carney, a former governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada likewise pronounced,

“These seemingly arcane but essential changes to the plumbing of finance can move and are moving climate changes from the fringes to the forefront and transforming the financial system in the process.”

Guilty as charged.

Narrowly, this approach throws what remains of central-bank and financial-regulatory independence under the bus. Central banks and financial regulators become just another agency implementing the decisions of the party in power. “That’s where the money is,” said the bank robber Willie Sutton, and we have long put this particular piggy bank off limits. And this is only the beginning of politicized central banks and financial regulations. The social and governance part of ESG investing and disclosures comes next. The regional Feds seem to think their main mandates are to cure racism and inequality, worthy aspirations but also completely beyond their competence or mandate, for the same reasons. The same regulatory tools are waiting.

Most of all, it is profoundly un-democratic. Reflect: The whole point is to bend financial regulators to this climate policy precisely because elected officials will not do it, and in advance of elections that will surely put a larger brake on the movement. In this way, it is a soft version of the “eco-authoritarian” movement. These are people who, like Greta Thunberg, take apocalyptic climate rhetoric seriously and pursue it to its logical conclusion. If indeed the climate is in a “crisis,” “emergency,” “catastrophe” — I can’t keep up with the word of the day — if indeed we are at a “tipping point;” if the planet will soon be “uninhabitable,” then we surely cannot wait for slow politicians and thick-headed voters to come to their senses. Seize power, keep it, and shove it down their uncomprehending throats.

Now the financial climate movement doesn’t take its own rhetoric that seriously. It aims for a benevolent climate aristocracy, not yet authoritarian, and it knows most of the hysteria is hogwash. But the whole point is to enshrine this brand of climate policy where voters cannot get at it.

Except they will. We still do live in democracies, and when the power starts going off, the pesky voters will return. The peasants can still rise up and throw out today’s self-proclaimed elites. Brexit ought to be a warning to the ECB.

Why should we care?

I care about independent central banks and financial regulators. I care about effective financial regulation. If firms are asked to “disclose” nonsense, and regulators demand fictitious net-zero disclosures, firms will do as asked. But then the whole regulatory system will be full of nonsense. Politicized central banks playing climate czar will not foresee it, forestall it, and will deal with it chaotically.

Central banks and regulators have already become far too politicized and their activities have expanded past their mandates. Under Dodd-Frank regulations, there are over 100 Fed employees in each big bank signing off on all major deals. Why not add, “Hey, make those a bit greener?” The Fed bought $2.5 trillion of mortgages to funnel money to housing. How can they say no to green bonds? The ECB is already buying sovereign and “green” bonds. We looked for “underpriced” bonds and guess what, we just happened to find windmills. It will be hard to say no to more.

I care about climate. [And the environment more broadly, which is getting forgotten in climate hysteria. You will not save the elephants by putting solar panels on your roof.] I want robust, effective, cost-benefit-tested, long-lasting climate policy, based on actual science. Today’s enthusiasms will fade like corn ethanol and switchgrass. Even this policy will not last. Around 2022, the congressional inquiries into just what is happening here will start, undermining the whole project even if it was good climate policy. To address a hundred-year problem, you need policy with a solid, bipartisan electoral constituency, not one shoved down voters’ throats while they aren’t paying attention, based on a Big Lie.

I care about democracy, rule of law, political stability, limited-purpose, technically competent, and effective institutions. Climate is not the kind of problem that requires us to abandon our form of government, and accept the chaos that will occur as new politicians use the expanded tools to implement their unpopular agendas.

To the central banker who responded to me, “But the climate is a crisis, we must do something,” I say, first of all, “who appointed you Queen?” Then I say, when they come calling, say no. That’s what independent central banks are supposed to do: say no. It does not matter if you agree or not with the policy, say no. Follow rules, laws, norms and traditions, so you can say no when Trump’s immigration policy comes along, or whatever else will surely follow.

Of course, nobody became the toast of Davos by saying no. Nobody moved on to be prime minister or other political success by getting right the mark-to-market rules of derivative contracts, or forcing banks to issue a faintly reasonable amount of equity. If you feel the need for greater meaning in your life, quit your job, join EPA, the agencies implementing the EU green deal, or the Sierra Club. Advocate on your time off. But central banks and financial regulators must not be bent to this cause — and thus not to the next cause that comes along.

To voters, commentators, politicians in the U.S.: Don’t be blindsided by technical gobbledygook. Financial regulators barely know what they’re doing about actually regulating finance, and have absolutely no idea when they’re making up buzzwords like “climate-risk disclosure.” Stand up to this infamy.

In practical terms, many of the heads of these organizations are being appointed now. There will soon be four open seats on the Federal Reserve Board. Forget about money, interest rates and inflation. One question matters about the Fed: Whether the awesome power of financial regulation will be unleashed to enforce this administration’s climate policy, with social, governance, and racial agenda all rejected by voters soon to follow, and then whatever else politicians demand after that.

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Apology: Regular readers will notice some recycling of ideas. I do mull things over in different ways in different venues. I hope clearer expression makes it worth while.

Update: Christina Parajon Skinner has a Law Review article explaining financial regulators' very limited legal authority to take on climate change, a short oped (the Hill) and a Duke Law Journal article on central bank activism. A lot is going on in this area. I highlight her work because I know very little about the legal issues, and she does.

Rupert Darwall at Real Clear Energy has a superb detailed essay on climate risk nonsense.

Climate Change and the risk to Financial Stability by Tailrisk Economics, Ian Harrison principal is also superb. Harrison and his team have read underlying documents, in their eye-glazing detail. And they write in clear, crisp, technobabble-free English.

The latter two are frankly better than my essay. Clear, well written, and well informed.

The FBI’s sad decline to untrustworthy

 Here is Victor Hanson's perspective on the FBI at Townhall.com.

VH is on target.

A Special Counsel is needed to clean up the FBI by prosecuting anyone, inside or outside the FBI, that broke the law.

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The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids' schools.

In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news - and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.

The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton's email leaks.

In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey had allowed Hillary Clinton's own private computer contractor - CrowdStrike - to run the investigation of the hack. The private firm was allowed to keep possession of pertinent hard drives central to the investigation. How odd that CrowdStrike's point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.

During the Robert Mueller special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cell phones had mysteriously disappeared.

It was also under Comey's directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony.

The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy - the Clinton-bought dossier - to Obama government officials and the media.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker was reportedly the subject of a federal investigation. He allegedly conducted prominent meetings both with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with the now-indicted Perkins Coe attorney Michael Sussman.

Comey himself, through third-party intermediaries, leaked to the media his own confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Trump. His assurances both to Congress and to Trump that the president was not the current subject of FBI investigations were either misleading or outright lies.

In sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey on some 245 occasions claimed he could not remember or had no knowledge of key elements of his own "Russian Collusion" investigation.

Comey's replacement, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, was fired for leaking sensitive information to the media. He then lied on at least three occasions about his role to federal attorneys and his own FBI investigators.

McCabe is now a paid CNN consultant who often has offered misleading information on the Russian collusion hoax that he helped promulgate.

Former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller conducted a 22-month, $40 million wild goose chase after some mythical "Russian Collusion" plot. When called before Congress, Mueller claimed he had little or no knowledge about Fusion GPS or the Steele Dossier - the twin sources that birthed the entire collusion hoax.

FBI lawyer Lisa Page was removed from Mueller's investigation, along with her paramour FBI investigator Peter Strzok. Both misused FBI communications, revealing their pro-Clinton biases during their investigations of "Russian collusion," while hiding their own unprofessional relationship.

Mueller himself staggered their firings and delayed explanations about why they were let go from his investigation team.

When the FBI arrested pro-Trump activist Roger Stone, it did so with a huge quasi-swat team - to the tipped-off and lurking CNN reporters.

The FBI repeated such politicized performance art recently when they stormed the home of Project Veritas director James O'Keefe. The agency confiscated his electronic devices on the grounds that he had knowledge of the contents of the allegedly lurid missing diary of Joe Biden's daughter. The FBI - an apparent retrieval service of lost Biden family embarrassments - also did not disclose that it had possession of Hunter Biden's laptop at a time when the media was erroneously declaring the computer inauthentic.

O'Keefe was accosted in the pre-morning hours by a crowd of FBI agents, wielding a battering ram, who pushed him out of his home in his underwear.

The time and location of the FBI raid, as in the Stone case, were leaked to the media that cheered the raid shortly after it was conducted. A federal judge recently stopped the FBI's ongoing monitoring of O'Keefe's communications.

Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins recently detailed other FBI lapses such as downplaying evidence that former Olympic gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was a known and chronic molester of teenage gymnasts.

The agency also extended its witch hunt against the innocent researcher wrongly accused of involvement in the anthrax attacks of 2001.

One could add to such misadventures the mysterious leadership roles of at least 12 FBI informants in the harebrained kidnapping scheme of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

We can also cite the agency's inability to follow up on clear information about the dangers posed by criminals as diverse as the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

For its own moral and practical survival, the FBI should be given one last chance at redemption by moving to the nation's heartland - perhaps Kansas - far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it.

American Citizenship and its Decline

 Here is a link to a worthwhile free online course at Hillsdale College - taught by Victor Davis Hanson.

Great for you and your children.

Let's get this Country back.

Who says it’s a free country (2021-11-17)?

 John Stossel, at townhall.com, provides another example of your Government at work.

Certificates of Need are unnecessary.  A free market provides evidence of need or not - you either succeed or fail.

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"Why does Louisiana have the right to stop me from doing what I love to do?" asks Ursula Newell-Davis in my new video.

Newell-Davis has helped people. She's a social worker who's worked with kids with special needs for 20 years. She's really good at it.

"She helped teach me how to talk to people," says Kamal, who never had friends before.

His mother adds, "She explained to me things that I didn't understand about my kids."

Newell-Davis helped many families like hers. Her clients are ecstatic about her work.

Now she wants to help more kids by starting her own business focusing on "respite" work. "Respite" means acting as backup to a primary caregiver. They fill in for a few hours or days to give a parent a break.

"Someone that can go in and teach their child a different skill," Newell-Davis says.

She has a college degree, a master's degree and a social work license. But Louisiana bureaucrats won't let her do respite work unless she can prove "there is a need for an additional HCBS provider in the geographic location for which the application is submitted" and "the probability of serious, adverse consequences to recipients' ability to access health care if the provider is not allowed to be licensed."

What!? Why?

"Louisiana wants to limit how many agencies they have to regulate," says Newell-Davis. "That makes it easy for the state."

Easy for the state? Yes, that's the actual reason.

Anastasia Boden of the Pacific Legal Foundation is helping Newell-Davis sue Louisiana, trying to get the law declared unconstitutional.

"Louisiana gives you no clue about how to prove you're needed," says Boden. Even if they did, "That would be difficult for even the best entrepreneurs."

I thought about my career and said, "I couldn't prove that I'm needed."

"The only way to find out is to open up your doors and try!" replies Boden.

But Newell-Davis isn't allowed to try.

She gave regulators what they demanded. She paid their $200 fee, rented office space and explained why her work is needed. She wrote many pages about rising youth crime and how respite care could help these kids.

But Louisiana said that wasn't good enough."

In fact, Louisiana turns down most applicants.

This is crazy. Special needs kids need more help, not less.

The government's excuse: "Regulating is a resource-intensive process." Rejecting applicants helps "limit the burden on regulators."

Streamlining the application process would be a better solution.

About the Rittenhouse case

 Jonathan Turley gets it right on his blog.

The Rittenhouse prosecutors don't have a case.  They overcharged and their own witnesses and videos show that only legal self defense occurred.  Those of us who know something about these matters believe it is clear cut legal self defense

Unfortunately, most of the media has not told the truth about the facts and if Rittenhouse is acquitted their audience will believe there has been a miscarriage of justice, which the same media will reinforce.  This is is likely to lead to widespread rioting with great property destruction and, worse, deaths.

The fake media and various rabble rousers who exploit the situation will be partially to blame for what happens.  However, I do not equate being to blame with legally responsible - in the end it is those who commit the crimes who should be held responsible, legally.

Here is JT's blog entry.

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Rittenhouse Goes To Jury After Case Collapses in Court

Below is my column in USA Today on the collapse of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial due to a series of prosecutorial blunders. What is worrisome is the highly slanted coverage over the last year, particularly during the trial itself. Many in the media have not focused on the countervailing facts in the case.

Today the jury will get the case following closing arguments and jury instructions. One issue to watch is how Judge Bruce Schroeder handles the gun count, which is based on what I believe is a flawed legal interpretation by the prosecution.

Here is the column:

The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse increasingly seems like a legal version of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. By only touching discrete parts of the animal, the men describe vastly different animals. In coverage of this trial, one would think that there were parallel trials occurring in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

One consensus however is emerging: Things are not going well for the prosecution.

But the reason for this developing failure depends greatly on what media you are watching other than the trial itself. It is either the product of systemic errors or systemic racism.

Rittenhouse is facing six charges that range from first-degree homicide to a misdemeanor of being a minor in possession of a dangerous weapon. At this stage, the prosecution may celebrate even a misdemeanor conviction.
Prosecution’s bumpy start, and finish

The prosecution stumbled out of the gate in the trial. Gaige Grosskreutz was the third person to be shot by Rittenhouse. Grosskreutz admitted under cross-examination that Rittenhouse did not shoot him when he had his hands up after their confrontation. He admitted that it was only after he pointed his handgun at Rittenhouse and moved toward him that Rittenhouse fired.

Likewise, a prosecution witness, Ryan Balch, testified that one of the other people shot, Joseph Rosenbaum, said that he intended to kill Kyle Rittenhouse. Other witnesses described Rosenbaum as “belligerent” or “hyperaggressive.”

Later, the prosecution called Richard McGinniss, a journalist with The Daily Caller who was reporting from Kenosha that night. He was near Rittenhouse when Joseph Rosenbaum was shot. The prosecutor told McGinniss, “I mean you have no idea what Mr. Rosenbaum was ever thinking at any point of his life. You have never been inside his head, you never met him before.”

McGinnis said, “I never exchanged words with him, if that’s what your question is.”

The prosecutor then pressed McGinnis on how he had no idea what Rosenbaum was thinking because it “is complete guesswork, isn’t it?”

That is when McGinnis delivered a haymaker, noting, “Well he said (expletive) you, and then he reached for the weapon.”

The prosecution’s own medical expert, Dr. Doug Kelly, appeared to confirm that the forensic evidence of soot injuries on Rosenbaum’s hand could be consistent with Rosenbaum trying to grab the barrel of Rittenhouse’s rifle when the gun was fired.

It got worse from there, including a glaring constitutional violation by the prosecution when Binger began his cross examination of Rittenhouse by commenting on his decision to remain silent.

The judge correctly tore into the prosecutor. Any first-year law student knows that you cannot comment on the silence of a Mirandized defendant after an arrest under the Fifth Amendment – let alone ignore a court order.
Biased media viewers

Even without the unforced errors by the prosecution, this was always a difficult case. Wisconsin has a strong self-defense standard. After a defendant claims to have acted to repel a threat, the burden is on the prosecution to rebut that claim beyond a reasonable doubt.

Instead, the prosecution prompted its own witnesses to create layers of doubt in the case. In doing so, it seems to have reduced the range of possibilities to somewhere between a hung jury and outright acquittal on the major charges.

The problem is that many people may be unaware that the case is collapsing due to such evidentiary or tactical failures. Any hung jury or acquittal will come as a shock, and the level of outrage is likely to be greater. This case began with violent rioting in Kenosha, and the news coverage is fueling the danger of renewed violence.

It is even worse in that some coverage has dismissed the trial as an exhibition of raw racism. Some have criticized Judge Bruce Schroeder after he enforced long-standing constitutional principles and defended the core constitutional right of the defendant against self-incrimination.

MSNBC host Tiffany Cross advocated for Schroeder’s removal and called on columnist Elie Mystal to discuss the matter. Mystal, who stated earlier this month that white, non-college-educated voters supported Republicans in the 2021 races in part because they care about “using their guns on Black people and getting away with it,” not surprisingly, has written that this trial is a sham.
One man – not society – is on trial

MSNBC’s host Joy Reid also attacked the trial and suggested that Rittenhouse’s emotional breakdown on the stand was fraudulent. Her guest, MSNBC legal analyst and Georgetown law professor Paul Butler, concurred and called it “the greatest performance of (his) life.”

Butler declared Rittenhouse “was well-prepared by his defense attorneys to disrupt his image as a trigger-happy vigilante who went on a shooting rampage at a Black Lives Matter protest.”

Butler, who has written that Black jurors should use “jury nullification” to refuse to convict Black defendants in drug cases, insisted in a previous appearance that an acquittal would fuel future violence by white people.

Reid added Wednesday, “If you want to know why critical race theory exists, the actual law school theory that emphasizes that supposedly colorblind laws in America often still have racially discriminatory outcomes, then look no further than the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.”

However, Rittenhouse is not to be judged for society’s historical racism, and such history does not change the underlying facts.

Either Grosskreutz (who is white) was pointing the gun at Rittenhouse’s head or he was not. Either Rosenbaum (who was white) was grabbing the barrel of Rittenhouse’s gun or he was not. Such facts do not change through CRT translations.

Many in the media rightly criticized those who encouraged riots on Jan. 6 with unsupported claims of electoral fraud. However, some of the same media figures offer distorted accounts of this trial. The narrative can overwhelm the facts.

Moreover, if left uninformed of the real legal deficiencies in the case, that narrative is likely to control the response to any failure to convict.

These protests are part of a larger debate on racism in our country. However, this trial is about the actions of one individual – not society – in 2020. Those actions are increasingly favoring acquittal on the most serious charges.