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Tough luck, but about time.
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The Supreme Court's lonely left
By Sam Baker
Andrew D. Martin of Washington University in St. Louis and Kevin Quinn of the University of Michigan have estimated "Martin-Quinn scores" for the ideology of Supreme Court justice back to 1937.
Why it matters: After overturning Roe in June, the court is poised to continue pushing American law to the right this term on issues of race, voting and the environment.
Between the lines: Brett Kavanaugh remains the court's "median justice."
That doesn't mean he's a swing vote, or ideologically moderate. It means the court is so conservative that its center is pretty far to the right — and likely to stay that way for a long time.
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Pelosi failed to call the National Guard but must have chosen an FBI agent carrying a U.S Flag for incitement.
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There is a strong possibility Biden's release of oil in the $90 range will either be repurchased at a higher price or not at all so we will be more vulnerable in the event we need such oil. Trump wanted to add more to the reserve when the price of oil was in the low $30'2 but Schumer sopped that "unwise" purchase.+++
Biden’s Oil Price Machinations
The Editorial Board
The new releases are a sign of political desperation. Crude price climbed after OPEC+ this month announced a two million barrels a day cut in production. This is really closer to one million barrels a day since many countries aren’t meeting their quotas now. But as day follows night, U.S. gas prices have increased, and the political timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats.
The Administration says its planned drawdown will add about 500,000 barrels a day to global supply in December. That’s misleading. About one million barrels a day on average have been released since this spring. The drawdowns were scheduled to end next month, so the new releases will merely prevent supply from contracting more than it otherwise would.
The Administration first started tapping the SPR last fall to combat rising gas prices. Please, Mr. President, stop calling it “Putin’s price hike.” Russian exports have fallen a mere 560,000 barrels a day from pre-Ukraine war levels on a global supply of 101 million.
The main problem is that oil demand has outstripped supply amid the post-pandemic economic recovery owing to a lack of investment, especially in the U.S., which had been the world’s swing producer. U.S. production has been flat since May. Now the swing producers are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. OPEC countries and their allies, which account for 45% of global oil production, accounted for 85% of new supply in September.
The Biden SPR releases have probably helped reduce prices at the margin. But one risk was always that crude prices would rise when the releases tapered off. And here we are.
The Administration said Wednesday it may continue releases as long as “conditions”—i.e., political conditions—require, but this is unsustainable. The SPR has fallen by about 210 million barrels since last fall. (See the chart nearby.) The Administration says the 400 million or so barrels that remain are “more than ready to respond to energy security needs today.” That’s also far from clear.
One reason is that the Administration is fast depleting the medium-sour grade crude in the reserve that is most useful to U.S. refineries. Much of what remains is a light-sweet crude produced from shale, much of which gets exported. Future releases could compete with U.S. shale in the tight global refining market and even discourage investment in shale production.
A true national emergency could also fast deplete the reserve. That’s why previous Presidents performed only three emergency releases: Operation Desert Storm in 1991 (17.3 million barrels), Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (20.8 million), and the Libya oil disruptions in 2011 (30.6 million). Though prices exceeded $90 a barrel from 2011 to 2014, Barack Obama didn’t resort to emergency drawdowns to reduce gas prices.
What brought down oil prices and kept them low last decade was the shale fracking boom. U.S. production increased by seven million barrels a day between 2011 and 2019 but plunged early in the pandemic. The Trump Administration floated buying oil for the SPR to prevent producers from shutting in wells, which can do long-term damage to production.
But Democrats refused to appropriate the money to keep oil pumping from marginal wells, calling it a “bailout for Big Oil.” This is one reason oil production beyond the Permian basin has been flat or declining since summer 2020. U.S. production is still about 1.1 million barrels a day below the pre-pandemic peak. (See the nearby chart.)
The Administration now says it plans to encourage “near-term production” by announcing its “intent” to repurchase oil for the reserve when the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil falls to $67 to $72 a barrel. Who knows when this will happen since the Saudis have indicated their intent to keep prices around $90 to $100 a barrel.
We’ve been writing for months that Mr. Biden could deflate oil prices by giving a simple speech declaring an end to his political war on fossil fuels. Instead he resorts to gimmicks like the SPR releases and cozies up to dictators. Hours after OPEC announced its production cut, news leaked that the White House plans to ease sanctions on Venezuela to liberate its oil production.
Perhaps the Administration hoped the leak would reduce oil prices. It didn’t. Neither did Wednesday’s SPR announcement. Markets are smarter than Administration officials think, and so are voters.
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Patriotism vs Profits. More American Media Capitalists seem not to understand the distinction.
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Profits at the Expense of Patriotism Is a Dangerous Game
By Lawrence Kadish
Today's American mega-billionaires need to think long and hard about where their allegiances lie: perhaps reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before our nation's flag might be a good place to start.
If past history is any indication, their current corporate behavior will become their personal legacy illuminated under a harsh and revealing spotlight.
American industrial giants, General Motors and Ford, found that to be the case when lawyers dug through national archives in the 1990s and discovered documents that revealed how these two corporations had their German-based subsidies working hand-in-glove with the Nazi regime both before World War II and during the conflict.
Company spokesmen were quick to suggest that those firms were operating at a distance but researchers begged to differ. History records that there is reason to be skeptical of corporate "spin."
IBM also found itself being questioned about its business relationship with the Nazi regime. A 2002 report that found that its computing machines helped the Third Reich managing to commit mass murder on an industrial scale.
Today, social media founders such as Mark Zuckerberg need to think long and hard about their corporate relationships with countries such as China -- nations that seek to assume the role of a global superpower at the expense of the United States. Published reports reveal that Zuckerberg has long regarded China as a crucial market for his products, only to find that the Chinese may now be seeking to "out-Zuckerberg" him by developing their own online "virtual universe" – a massive undertaking that Zuckerberg has sought to introduce as his next very big (and presumably very profitable) venture.
What he and other corporate executives are learning is that profits at the expense of patriotism is a dangerous game to play. The dividends for such a strategy will eventually be revealed to all and history will ask, "At what price was your nation's future put at risk?"
Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
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Something you might want to listen to. I support the Organization with a modest contribution.
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The Middle East Forum cordially invites you to a webinar:
How Israel Stopped Syria’s Nukes.
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with Yuval Steinitz
Continuing the Middle East Forum’s intense focus on the Israeli strike on a Syrian nuclear plant in 2007 – see the MEQ articles by Ori Wertman and Ehud Barak - Yuval Steinitz will explain his fascinating and hitherto untold story of doing battle with the IDF establishment to push it to take steps against Syria’s acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. How did that battle play out? How are its implications relevant today?
Monday, October 24, 2022
2:00 - 2:30 p.m. ET
Online:
Click here to join just before 2:00pm ET
By Phone: US: +1 6465588656,,81295152296#,,425070#,,#
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Yuval Steinitz has been minister of finance, energy, and intelligence, as well as chair of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee. He co-established (with Senator Jon Kyl) the Joint Dialogue on Defense. Prior to entering politics, Mr. Steinitz was a philosophy professor. He holds a BA and MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD from Haifa University.
The Middle East Forum, an activist think tank, deals with the Middle East, Islamism, U.S. foreign policy, and related topics, urging bold measures to protect Americans and their allies. Pursuing its goals via intellectual, operational, and philanthropic means, the Forum recurrently has policy ideas adopted by the U.S. government.
(215) 546-5406 | www.MEForum.org | @MEForum
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Interesting articles:
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- Obama Holdovers Allowed the Chinese Communist Party’s Subversion of America:
- By Alex Newman -
- College leftists expand campaign to silence all talk of Zionism and Israel -
- By NY POST
- Who Denies Election Results? -
- By AM GREATNESS
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- It's Not Just Kanye: Antisemitism and the Black Community - AM THINKER
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