SEE THE VIDEO HERE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another Biden scam:
The Green New Deal, in
Disguise
Biden’s ‘infrastructure’ bill is really a plan
to remake the economy.
By The Editorial Board
Journal Editorial
Report: Believe it or not, $400 billion to unionize health-care workers.
Candidate Joe Biden emphatically denied that he
supported the Green New Deal. As with so much else, President Biden is now a
convert. His $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan contains enough spending and
industrial planning that it amounts to the Green New Deal in disguise.
Listen to Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who two weeks ago claimed maternity for the
President’s plan. “As much as I think some parts of the party try to avoid
saying ‘Green New Deal’ and really dance around and try to not use that term,
ultimately, the framework I think has been adopted,” the progressive heroine
from Queens boasted. The details prove her point.
***
Mr. Biden is pitching
his plan as having a big economic return on federal investment—and better
roads, bridges and ports could increase productivity. But more than half of his
plan is dedicated to reducing CO2, with a goal of eliminating fossil fuels with
a mix of federal spending, subsidies and regulation. This is a political
project with suspect returns.
• Start with $213
billion to build and retrofit two million energy-efficient homes and buildings.
These putative “upgrades” would be financed by federal grants, tax credits and
the economically inefficient Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP).
A 2018 study in the
Quarterly Journal of Economics of the WAP in Michigan found that its upfront
investment costs are about twice the actual energy savings. “Even when
accounting for the broader societal benefits derived from emissions reductions,
the costs still substantially outweigh the benefits; the average rate of return
is approximately −7.8% annually,” the study found.
• Or take the plan’s $40
billion in spending to “mitigate imminent hazards to residents, and undertake energy
efficiency measures” in public housing. The New York City Housing Authority
paid unionized electricians $135 an hour including benefits to install LED
lighting, which cost about $1,973 per apartment. Then it had no money to repair
moldy apartments.
• Mr. Biden’s biggest
climate-works project is to re-engineer the grid to banish fossil fuels.
Natural gas and coal currently make up more than half of U.S. electricity
generation and a larger share in the South and Midwest. Mr. Biden aims to
replace them with carbon-free energy by 2035.
He’d start with an
Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard, which would force states and
utilities to phase out fossil fuels. He’d then accelerate their abolition by
extending the renewable investment and production tax credits for 10 years.
Congress began these credits decades ago to boost the infant wind and solar
industries.
But renewable prices
have since fallen tremendously—as climateers like to point out—and now the
credits let producers turn profits even when wholesale prices go negative.
Baseload fossil fuel and nuclear plants struggle to compete, and many are
shutting down. This is making the grid less reliable.
Mr. Biden’s solution:
Tax credits for battery storage. But batteries can’t compensate 24/7 for renewables
that wax and wane. So Mr. Biden also proposes tax credits to build high-voltage
transmission lines that move power from windy and sunny states to those that
now rely on fossil fuels. Billionaire Phil Anschutz and others are already
trying to do this.
• And herein lies an
irony: The green energy tax credits would enrich large corporations and
billionaires. Hedge funds and tech companies are some of the biggest green
energy investors. These tax credits would become more attractive as tax rates
increase. Even big oil companies would benefit from credits for investing in
carbon capture and “sustainable” aviation fuels. This is one reason CEOs
like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are endorsing a corporate tax
increase. They’ll make it up in subsidies.
• Companies and private
investors that have bet heavily on EV and battery startups will also benefit
from Mr. Biden’s plan to spend $174 billion to increase their sales. Government
fuel regulations have forced auto makers to build EVs, but too few consumers
buy them. So Mr. Biden plans to pay states, cities, states and schools to buy
EVs.
His plan would also
increase consumer rebates and build 500,000 charging stations. But the federal
government didn’t need to build gas stations or subsidize purchases of Model Ts
to get Americans to ditch the horse and buggy. The reality is that
breakthroughs in technology will be necessary to achieve widespread EV adoption
and other climate goals.
• Hence Mr. Biden also
proposes to spend $52 billion on domestic manufacturing, $50 billion for the
National Science Foundation and $35 billion for research in “utility-scale
energy storage, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, advanced nuclear, rare
earth element separations, floating offshore wind, biofuel/bioproducts, quantum
computing, and electric vehicles,” among other things.
Government investment in
basic research is important, but most of this spending is largesse for
“demonstration projects” such as “ten pioneer facilities” of “carbon capture
retrofits for large steel, cement, and chemical production facilities.” Think
Solyndra and other failures from the 2009 green-energy boondoggle.
***
Mr. Biden says his plan
will “create millions of good jobs,” but his anti-carbon policies will destroy
many more in fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries. That’s why he’s
proposing a $40 billion Dislocated Workers Program and $10 billion Civilian
Climate Corps. No wonder Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is elated. Her climate dreams are
coming true, and all under the false front of “infrastructure.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I was never aware. Sent by close friend and fellow memo reader:
The Other Day of Infamy in 1941
The Soviet-Japanese pact
signed 80 years ago today was part of Stalin’s plot that led to Pearl Harbor.
By Sean McMeekinApril 12, 2021 6:14 pm
ET
Joseph Stalin stands
behind Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka as he signs the Pact of Neutrality,
April 13, 1941.
PHOTO: UNIVERSAL
HISTORY ARCHIVE/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES
On April 13, 1941,
Japan’s foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, and the Soviet commissar of foreign
affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a neutrality pact, valid for five years.
Although less notorious than the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviets
and the Nazis, which plunged Europe into war, the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality
Pact had similar consequences in Asia.
As the London News
Chronicle observed in reporting on the agreement: “What better guarantee [for
Stalin] against Japanese hostility than that Japan turn south and cross swords
with the United States? Moscow will feel secure in the Far East only when the
Japanese and American navies engage.” Matsuoka and Stalin vowed Japan and the
U.S.S.R. would “annihilate Anglo-Saxon ideology” and build a “new world order.”
Matsuoka, a nationalist surprised to have signed a treaty with Japan’s
Communist archenemy, later called Stalin’s neutrality pact an “act of
diplomatic blitzkrieg.”
For years, there had
been a tug-of-war in Tokyo between army and navy over strategy. The army’s
“strike north” scheme envisioned a rapid conquest of Siberia to eliminate the
Communist threat. Japan’s admirals, by contrast, war-gamed seizing
resource-rich U.S. and European territories in Southeast Asia, in case Japan
was ever cut off from American resources—especially oil—in retaliation for its
1937 invasion of China.
While many historians
view the attack on Pearl Harbor as the inevitable outgrowth of U.S.-Japanese
tensions, until April 1941 Japan’s factions remained in delicate balance, as
did its relations with the Soviet Union, Britain and the U.S. Matsuoka’s brief
on his European trip was to ascertain Hitler’s intentions: Would he invade
Britain across the English Channel, or turn east and attack Soviet Russia?
Had Hitler told Matsuoka
the truth and asked for help, it is likely that Japan would have attacked
Siberia in coordination with Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, sparing Pearl
Harbor. By refusing to trust Matsuoka but letting Ribbentrop drop hints about
his plans, Hitler gave Matsuoka motivation to betray him by agreeing to a deal
with Stalin, almost out of spite. Matsuoka was drinking heavily with Stalin
when he signed the neutrality pact and was still sozzled when Stalin saw him
off at the Moscow train station: Witnesses noted that Matsuoka “laughed with
glee.”
There was nothing
inevitable about the world-altering neutrality pact. Matsuoka, who had long
opposed Soviet expansionism and favored the Axis, began to doubt what he had
done once he sobered up. Stalin had charmed him into violating his own
principles. After Hitler attacked Russia on June 22, 1941, Matsuoka advocated
tearing up the neutrality pact and declaring war on the Soviets. After failing
to convince the cabinet, in July 1941 he was forced to resign in disgrace.
By then the revolution
in Japanese foreign policy was a fait accompli. To capitalize, Stalin activated
his top asset in Washington, Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White.
White was enlisted in Operation Snow, a Soviet plot to get America to impose
draconian export controls that would provoke Japan into attacking the U.S.
White was also the main author of the insulting “Hull note” handed to Japan’s
ambassador on Nov. 26, 1941, which furnished Tokyo’s pretext for the Pearl
Harbor attack.
Precisely as Stalin
intended, the neutrality pact with Japan secured his Far Eastern frontier, just
in time to save Moscow from the German onslaught in December 1941.
Well-informed about deteriorating Japanese-American relations by his spy in the
German Embassy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, Stalin had begun transferring armor and
troops from Siberia to his European fronts months earlier, in September 1941.
Sorge, we now know, had advance knowledge of Japanese plans to attack U.S. and
British positions in the Pacific once negotiations broke down—knowledge Stalin
could have shared with Churchill and Roosevelt but didn’t.
Stalin withheld the
intelligence from his accidental allies against Hitler because he wanted Japan
to attack them. As he had told Matsuoka, “As for the Anglo-Saxons, Russians
have never been friendly to them, and do not want now to befriend them.” Though
in July 1941 Stalin had demanded from Roosevelt a pledge that Japanese
“encroachments in Siberia not be tolerated,” when Roosevelt’s envoy asked
Stalin that September whether the U.S. could count on Soviet help if
hostilities developed with Japan, Stalin smiled and responded that “Russia
might be neutral.”
Stalin was good to his
word. Despite bellyaching about their Allies’ failure to open a “second front”
against Hitler, the Soviets refused for four years to help them in any way
against Japan. Stalin even interned as prisoners of war hundreds of American
pilots who bailed out on Russian soil after bombing raids on Japan.
Japan took an
indulgent attitude toward U.S. Lend-Lease vessels that ferried 8.24 million
tons of war materiel through Japanese territorial waters to Vladivostok,
Russia, between December 1941 and August 1945. Japanese admirals didn’t mind
their American enemy wasting precious resources on the neutral U.S.S.R.
Unfortunately for
Japan, Stalin was loyal only as long as he needed to be. After the U.S. dropped
the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, Stalin ripped up the
pact—nine months early—and invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and Korea. The
invasion was supplied and fueled almost entirely by U.S. Lend-Lease aid.
Softened up by four years of war waged by “Allies” whom Stalin refused to help,
Japan had already transferred one million troops home from the Asian mainland,
enabling the Red Army to conquer in a few weeks an area larger than France and
Germany combined.
By encouraging Japan
to attack the “Anglo-Saxon” powers instead of the U.S.S.R. in 1941, Stalin did
pull off a diplomatic blitzkrieg. By supplying Stalin’s armies unconditionally
despite Stalin’s refusal to join the war against Japan, Roosevelt helped Stalin
plant the red flag in northern Asia, paving the way for Mao’s triumph in China
and the enduring standoff in Korea. While hardly an anniversary to celebrate,
April 13, 1941, was a day of infamy as consequential in Asia as Pearl Harbor.
Mr. McMeekin is a
professor of history at Bard College and author of “Stalin’s War: A New History
of World War II,” forthcoming April 20.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This also sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader:
BLINKEN’S HOLOCAUST GAFFE
by Rafael Medoff
(Dr.
Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust
Studies and author of more than twenty books on the Holocaust, Zionism, and
American Jewish history.)
Was
Breckinridge Long our 32nd president, rather than Franklin Roosevelt?
From
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent remarks, one could erroneously
conclude that it was actually Assistant Secretary of State Long, not President
Roosevelt, who decided American immigration policy in the 1930s and 1940s, and
Long, not Roosevelt, who decided that the U.S. should refrain from intervening
to aid European Jewry.
Long,
a campaign contributor and personal friend of the president, was FDR’s first
ambassador to Italy. One of the first to praise Mussolini for making the trains
run on time, Long was promoted by FDR to assistant secretary of state, putting
him in charge of 23 of the State Department’s 42 divisions, including the
crucial Visa Division.
Speaking
at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on April 8, Holocaust
Remembrance Day, Secretary Blinken described how Long “had immense power to help those being
persecuted,” yet “made it harder and harder for Jews to be granted refuge in
the United States.”
That’s
correct, but misleading. It wasn’t as if Long conducted some kind of rogue
operation. Numerous documents, including Long’s posthumously published diaries,
recount how he regularly briefed President Roosevelt on his efforts to keep the
Jews out.
In one diary entry from 1940, Long wrote that in
a discussion at the White House on ways to curtail immigration, he “found that
[FDR] was 100% in accord with my ideas,” and “expressed himself as in entire
accord” and “wholeheartedly in support” of what Long was doing.
Blinken
recalled Long’s infamous advice to his State Department colleagues “to resort
to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and
postpone the granting of the visas.” True—but the president was fully aware
that these tactics were successfully suppressing immigration far below what the
law allowed. In a 1935 letter
concerning visa applicants from Germany, FDR wrote: “I am informed that nearly
all immigration quotas have been considerably under-issued during the past four
years.” He even cited the year-by-year statistics.
According to Secretary Blinken, Long
“established onerous security checks, claiming they were necessary to prevent
enemy spies from infiltrating the U.S., even though there was no evidence that
refugees posed that risk.” But it was President Roosevelt who falsely claimed
at a June 1940 press conference that some refugees, “especially Jewish
refugees,” had agreed to spy for the Nazis for fear that their relatives back in
Germany “would be taken out and shot.” That became a stock excuse for shutting
America’s doors even tighter.
“Assistant
Secretary Long did still worse,” Blinken continued. “He blocked cables with
reports of the mass killing, which would have increased pressure for America to
take in more Jews.” That’s correct. But the president, too, often ignored or
downplayed news of Nazi persecution. In 430 press conferences from
1933 until late 1938, FDR never once mentioned the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
This policy of minimizing the focus on the Jews continued into the 1940s, even
after the administration itself had verified, in late 1942, that mass murder
was underway.
At his August 21, 1942, press conference, for
example, FDR referred to “barbaric crimes against civilian populations,”
without mentioning Jews. On October 7, 1942, and again on July 30, 1943, the
president declared that war criminals would be punished, but failed to explain
what war crimes were being perpetrated, or against whom. In 1944, the White
House issued a statement commemorating the anniversary of the Jewish revolt
against the Nazis in Warsaw—without mentioning Jews.
Secretary
Blinken continued: “And [Long] lied to Congress. He told them the State Department
was doing everything in its power to rescue Jews from Europe…”
That’s
right. But the reason Long was testifying to Congress (in November 1943) was
that the Roosevelt administration was trying to block a resolution urging the
president to create a refugee rescue agency. FDR didn’t want to create the
agency—since he opposed using even minimal government resources to aid Europe’s
Jews—so Long was sent to Capitol Hill to shoot down the proposal.
Finally,
near the end of his remarks, Blinken mentioned President Roosevelt—in order to
portray him as a savior of the Jews. According to Blinken, the Treasury
Department brought the president documentation of Long’s obstructionism and
“six days later, Roosevelt announced the creation of the War Refugee Board.”
What
really happened was quite different. Long’s lies to Congress were exposed by
the news media and rescue advocates. The administration was subjected to
withering public criticism. The resolution that Roosevelt tried to block was
adopted unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was heading
to the full Senate for a vote.
With
Congressional pressure mounting, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and
two aides met with the president to discuss the rescue resolution, which
Morgenthau called “a boiling pot on Capitol Hill.” When they began to describe
Long’s obstructionist actions, FDR vigorously defended his old friend “Breck.”
He claimed Long “soured on the [refugee]
problem when Rabbi [Stephen] Wise got Long to approve a long list of people
being brought into this country many of whom turned out to be bad people.”
Still,
FDR could read the political writing on the wall. It was January 1944—an election
year had begun. Not a good time for FDR to be quarreling with Congress, the
Jewish community, and the many prominent liberal voices that were criticizing
him over his refugee policy, such as The New Republic and The
Nation. So the president reluctantly created the rescue agency that the
Congressional resolution was demanding, and which he had unsuccessfully tried
to block. In other words, Roosevelt was against the War Refugee Board before he
was for it.
On
the surface, it appeared to be a belated reversal of the administration’s
no-rescue policy. In practice, however, the president’s treatment of the War
Refugee Board was tepid or worse. He gave the new Board only token funding; 90%
of its funds were supplied by private Jewish organizations. He seldom adopted
its proposals; for example, the Board wanted Roosevelt to grant temporary haven
to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, but he admitted only 982 (not all
of them Jews), who were held in a detention facility in upstate New York.
Roosevelt’s
decisions throughout this period—from keeping quiet about the Nazis singling
out Jews to admitting only a handful of refugees—were made by Roosevelt.
Because government policy is decided by the president.
Secretary
Blinken should know that better than anyone. After all, Blinken doesn’t make up
his own policies. He implements the policies that are decided by the president.
Which is exactly what Long did. Undoubtedly, Blinken offers advice, like Long
did; but the president decides.
Likewise,
one may assume Blinken doesn’t keep the president in the dark about how the
policies are being implemented; surely he briefs the president on how he is
implementing them. So did Long.
When
a Secretary of State prepares to speak publicly on any subject, he trusts the
people around him to make sure his remarks are historically accurate. All the
more so when the speech is going to be delivered at an institution that focuses
on a sensitive historical subject. Whomever among Secretary Blinken’s aides or
the Holocaust Museum staff helped prepare these remarks did him a significant
disservice
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BIBI is a good politician, genrally cordial but also minces no words:
PM
Netanyahu: 'Iran is working towards Israel's annihilation'
Prime Minister Netanyahu
meets with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Prime Minister's Office
in Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu met Monday with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the
Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.
Secretary Austin is the
first senior official from the Biden administration to visit Israel.
The two discussed a number
of issues, including continuing military trade between the two countries,
maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge, and deepening intelligence
cooperation in the region.
Other issues discussed
include the US presence in the Middle East, the nuclear agreement with Iran and
the Iranian aggression in the Middle East, and strengthening regional
cooperation, such as relations with Jordan, Egypt and other Gulf states.
Earlier on Monday,
Austin met with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White) and toured the Nevatim Air Force base in
southern Israel.
After their meeting,
Netanyahu and Austin gave a joint press briefing.
Netanyahu warned that
Iran is continuing its efforts to achieve nuclear weapons - and to annihilate
Israel.
“You just said a moment
ago in our meeting that we’re not just allies, we’re family. We call that
‘mishpacha’," said Netanyahu. "There is so much truth in that
statement that our peoples instinctively understand.”
“As you know the
US-Israel defense partnership has continually expanded over successive
administrations. Our cooperation is crucial for dealing with the many threats
confronting the United States and Israel – threats that you are very familiar
with by your service in Iraq.”
“In the Middle East,
there is no threat that is more serious, more dangerous, more pressing than
that posed by the fanatical regime in Iran. Iran continues to support
terrorists around the world on five continents, threatening civilians
everywhere. Iran has never given up its quest for nuclear weapons and the
missiles to deliver them. And Iran consistently and outrageously calls for
Israel’s annihilation and works towards that goal.”
“We both know the
importance of preventing war, and we both know that Iran must never possess
nuclear weapons.”
“I will never allow Iran
to obtain the nuclear capability of carrying out its genocidal goal of
eliminating Israel. Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression
and terrorism.”
After Netanyahu's
comments, Secretary of Defense Austin "reaffirmed America's strong
commitment to Israel," saying he had pushed for an in-person meeting with
Netanyahu early in the Biden administration's term.
"I also want to underscore
my personal pledge to strengthening Israel's security and ensuring Israel's
qualitative military edge. The close and strong ties that we enjoy with Israel
are central to regional security in the Middle East."
"We discussed ways
to deepen and expand our long-standing defense relationship in the face of
regional threats and other security challenges."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
HOOVER Daily (edited.)
Inflation Levels | by John H. Cochrane via The Grumpy EconomistMarch inflation is up. The CEA delivered a historic tweetstorm. It starts with temporary factors: base effects, supply chain disruptions, and pent-up demand, especially for services |
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