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July 2022

The Global Warming Golden Goose By Norman Rogers

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/the_global_warming_golden_goose_.html

Climate science was an obscure and unimportant corner of academia until the professors lucked out with global warming.  The global warming idea apparently struck a spark with the government and media establishments and caught fire.  Money and influence flooded from Washington to academia. 

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the scientific-technological elite being dependent upon government grants. Eisenhower feared that the elite would use their influence and expertise to warp public policy for their own benefit. That is exactly what is happening. Global warming is only one of many current scientific frauds that enhance the welfare of the scientists and bureaucrats promoting the frauds.

Since World War II, the increasing flow of big money from Washington has contributed to a gradual change in the character of research universities. Money became more important than science. Administrators who were focused on money and power grew in number and became dominant. This change in character was documented in an important essay by the MIT scientist Richard Lindzen.

Global warming provided the professors and academic administrators with a junk science golden goose. They were determined to stop anyone from killing the goose. 

The global warming fraud revealed in one graph By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/the_global_warming_fraud_revealed_in_one_graph.html

““Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry picking or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence marshalled in support of the theory of imminent catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2.”

Two highly distinguished emeritus professors – William Happer, Professor of Physics, Emeritus of Princeton and Richard Lindzen, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus of MIT – have called out the corruption of science in the global warming/climate change fraud.

Their emeritus status is vital in giving them the freedom to speak frankly, because they are not dependent on a continuing flow of research grants to fund their work. Ever since the alarm was raised that global warming was an existential threat, billions of dollars a year has flowed to scientists willing to support the alarmist position, and thereby keep the money flowing. Were the threat to be acknowledged to be illusory, that money flow would stop and there would be a lot of unemployed climate scientists.

They recently filed a 28-page statement with the SEC, which is contemplating a proposed rule “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors,” laying out the reasons why the warmist alarm is unjustified.

Dissent In WI Ballot Drop Box Victory Highlights Much Bigger Issue: Our Top Jurists Don’t Care About Election Integrity By: Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/11/dissent-in-wi-ballot-drop-box-victory-highlights-much-bigger-issue-our-top-jurists-dont-care-about-election-integrity/

Many of the top jurists in our country care no more about election integrity than the Democrat politicians trying to sell the myth that the 2020 election was spectacularly safe and error-free.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday held that state election officials’ use of some 500-plus drop boxes during the 2020 general election violated Wisconsin law.

While the court’s decision represents a (partial, as we will soon see) victory for election integrity, the split 4-3 decision and the substance of the dissent reveal that having a fair electoral process no longer “transcends any individual partisan interest” — something less than two decades ago Jimmy Carter touted as a universal truth in the bipartisan Commission on Election Reform report “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections.”

In Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the court declared that the Wisconsin Elections Commission, or “WEC,” had illegally authorized election officials to use ballot drop boxes. The high court further held the WEC exceeded its statutory authority when it declared that voters could hand off their ballots to third parties rather than personally deliver their own ballots to election officials. The WEC had authorized ballot drop boxes and third-party ballot delivery in two documents issued in 2020, one in the spring before the primary election and the second before the November 2020 general election. 

New York Times says Biden’s age is an ‘uncomfortable issue’ for White House, Democrats in stunning report NYT alleges staff ‘quietly watch out’ for Biden and closely monitor him during his trips to Delaware By Joseph A. Wulfsohn

https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-biden-age-uncomfortable-issue-white-house-democrats-stunning-report?intcmp=tw_fnc

The New York Times published a stunning report about President Biden’s age and how it’s becoming an “uncomfortable issue” for the White House and the Democratic Party. 

The headline of the report on Saturday declared that 79-year-old Biden is “testing the boundaries of age and the presidency,” first highlighting how his upcoming trip to the Middle East was initially tacked onto his recent trip to Europe with one anonymous official calling it “crazy” if the president had done a 10-day trip overseas, those aides tell the Times there were “political and diplomatic” reasons behind separating the trip into two. 

“But the reality is that managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents distinct challenges,” Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote. “And as Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party.”

Baker recapped from Biden’s European trip how he needed guidance from another world leader to look at the cameras for a photo-op and how now-outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson answered a question on behalf of the president, who didn’t hear a reporter shouting a question about Ukraine. 

There’s No Despot So Tyrannical As A Green Politician

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/12/theres-no-despot-so-tyrannical-as-a-green-politician/

“Of course petty tyrannies can quickly and easily grow into totalitarianism. The step from “public servant” to green tyrant is shorter than most of us would think.”

Reports of unrest over environmental policies from the Netherlands and Sri Lanka are much more than novelty news. What is happening in both spots is a lesson that has to be learned quickly. If not, there’s deep trouble ahead.

Dutch farmers, whose history of crop yields puts them among the most productive in the world, continue to protest rules that limit their use of nitrogen, a nutrient in commercial fertilizers that converts to nitrous oxide, which is feared as a greenhouse gas. Officials expected them to cut use 50% nationally, which means in some regions, the reductions will be as high as 95%.

The crippled farmers, their survival under attack, are, as they should be, revolting.

“Imagine if you’re a fifth-generation farmer, living on your land, making a living, being part of the local community” and suddenly there is “basically no future, no future for farming, but also no future for the economic, social, cultural fabric of the countryside,” ​​Wytse Sonnema of the Netherlands Agriculture and Horticulture Organization told the Australian media.

“There’s a broad sense of frustration, of anger, even despair amongst farmers at the moment.” 

But political officials don’t care about the effects of their tyranny. They’re too dedicated to demonstrating before the world their great green cred.

Wokeness Is Putin’s Weapon Russia and China capitalize on the West’s moral and political confusion.By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wokeness-is-putins-weapon-ukraine-western-values-abortion-climate-change-human-rights-protectionism-decadence-xi-jinping-revisionist-powers-11657569787?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Five months into the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s army continues to flounder. Kyiv’s defenders are making up for their smaller numbers and artillery shortages with better commanders, smarter tactics, higher morale and, increasingly, better weapons as Western high-tech arms reach the battlefield.

Mr. Putin has had the most success, paradoxically, in the domains of economics and politics, where the West thought its power was strongest. Fears that a Russian gas embargo could cripple European economies and leave comfortable German burghers freezing in the dark next winter have replaced hopes that Western sanctions would bring Moscow to its knees. Thoroughly intimidated by the consequences of an economic war with Russia, Germany is beginning to weasel out of its pledges to increase defense spending.

Similarly, the early Western optimism that values would unite the world against Russian aggression has fizzled. Led by China and joined by India and Brazil, countries around the world are choosing trade with Russia over solidarity with the Group of Seven.

To counter Mr. Putin and Xi Jinping, the West must recalibrate. Since the Russian leader attacked Georgia in 2008, Western leaders have consistently mischaracterized and underestimated the threat that the revisionist powers (China, Russia and Iran) pose. In Georgia, Crimea, the South China Sea and the Middle East, the result has been one unexpected setback after another. To prevent another major setback from this latest and most blatant attack, the West needs to rethink assumptions and conventional doctrines that have demonstrably failed.

Chinese Communist Cells in Western Firms? Xi Jinping has pressed for measures giving party apparatchiks more power over foreign companies. By Dennis Kwok and Sam Goodman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/communist-cells-in-western-firms-business-investment-returns-xi-jinping-11657552354?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The legal and regulatory risk of doing business in China may be about to get a lot higher. The China Securities Regulatory Commission is implementing changes to its rules governing publicly offered securities investment funds. These rules include requiring foreign-owned fund managers such as BlackRock and Fidelity to create Communist Party cells when operating in China.

Many foreign investors have assumed these rules would apply only to Chinese businesses and state-owned enterprises. China analysts, however, have been warning since 2018 that these laws could soon apply to foreign-owned companies operating through Chinese joint ventures. Since 2016, Xi Jinping has pushed for state-run companies and subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies to establish cells through the provisions of the Chinese Communist Party’s Articles of Association.

In September 2020, the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee issued the “Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era,” which called on the nation’s United Front Work Departments to strengthen their involvement in corporate governance. In response, the European Chamber of Commerce in China cautioned that the strengthening of the role of party cells would “have a considerable impact on business sentiment, and could lead foreign companies to reconsider future and even current investments in China.”

Western financial firms piled into China anyway, attracted by the prospect of high returns and advised by Chinese contacts that engagement with the Communist Party is the price of doing business. Since 2018, foreign businessmen have reported being approached by the party about the establishment of party cells. The secrecy of the United Front Work Department makes it impossible to establish how many such cells exist. In January 2021, HSBC executive Noel Quinn was unable to confirm to the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee that the bank had no party cells in its branches in Hong Kong and the mainland.