Germany's politically powerful Green Party gives influence to those who harm nature and biodiversity contrary to which they are joined to protect.

Two recent exposes, one by the New York Times over Europe’s ancient forests being reduced to wood pellets for fuel and the other by the BBC over old forests in British Columbia being harvested to fuel a former coal burning power plant in Britain, put a lie to their government’s goal of reducing carbon emissions and does actual harm to the biodiverse habitat Green Parties are joined to protect. Even more dismaying is how powerless, or worse disinterested, all are to stop obviously perverse outcomes against the entrenched interests developed in their name.  What the green movement lacks is a true north, a vision which understands what protects and nurtures the environment while also pursuing the betterment of the human condition. Without such a guiding light they are condemned to be forever conned by the political class.

A satellite view of the Earth at night shows areas of light and others of complete darkness. One could argue that the brighter the light or the higher the energy consumption the better the human condition. Contrary to the green intuition that high energy consumption is a bad thing, areas of low or no light are where the impoverished live. It’s where for the lack of fuel people resort to burning dung in confined quarters to cook and heat themselves and breathe in carbon laden smoke. It’s the opposite of cities consuming intense energy.

The green movement suffers from a willingness to be conned and stay conned by solutions that sound like they address their concern for the environment but which actually do it harm because of a preference for intuition over rigorous mathematical calculation. They appear to have no understanding of how the growing intensity of energy benefits the human condition. They look backward to wood for example over the newer source, petroleum while not appreciating how it replaces the need to clear cut forests of biodiversity for energy. Years ago Matt Ridley criticized Britain for defining wood pellets as a renewable form of energy with a satellite shot of the Island of Hispaniola with Haiti on one side and the Dominican Republic on the other.  One country was brown and the other green delineated by a clear crisp border. One country burned every piece of wood that could be found and the other subsidized the use of propane gas to save its forests. His point being that modern fuels have a place in saving swathes of geography of unfettered biodiversity. Haiti’s wasteland caused by poverty showcases why people who describe themselves as green must understand energy and its intensity and the inverse relation they both have to poverty and geography.

Germany’s Green Party objection to Nuclear Power is clearly one of intuitive fear over rigorous mathematical calculation in the war against carbon emissions. That it  lacks the vision of bettering the human condition clearly shows as Chancellor Olaf Scholz passes a gauntlet of anti nuke protests on his way to a meeting where he was only able to save two of three nuclear power plants from shutting down as planned this year despite Germany’s incipient economic depression and prospect of its citizens freezing. The lights will go dim this winter in Northern Europe as people are forced to burn wood to keep warm, read by its light and breathe in its carbon laden smoke.

Germany’s submission to the fear of nuclear power while also trying to reduce carbon emissions was disastrous for reaching climate goals and left the economy defenseless against  Putin’s energy blackmail.  Yet the green dummkopfs protest the raising of the village of Lützerath to expand a coal strip mine without realizing this open scar against nature comes from their fear of recommissioning a few idyllically placed  nuclear power plants. Without a vision that protects nature and promotes the betterment of the human condition the green movement can be duped into offering policies that have perverse outcomes. Worse yet the politically powerful Green Party, lacking the will to test assumptions and educate its members, gives influence to an ignorant mob that harms what they are joined to protect.

Europe's version of the burning of the Amazon rainforests

“Europe Sacrificing Ancient Forests for Energy'' is a damning expose of the unintended consequences of a subsidy developed and promoted by the Green movement that does actual harm to nature.  By some means of convoluted logic the European Union considers wood to be a renewable energy source  because  the carbon it puts into the air is recycled back into the wood of growing trees. Subsidies for wood have made its energy participation greater than wind and solar combined and is proudly noted by the EU as progress in reaching environmentally sound climate goals.  Apparently the New York Times article caused a rethink over the lunacy of subsidising the raping of beautiful habitats of tremendous biodiversity to make wood pellets to fuel home furnaces. “Cutting down forests for energy use is neither sustainable, nor does it help with our energy independence,” said Tiemo Woelken, a German member of the European Parliament who supported ending the subsidies. But there is an energy crisis and so Europe’s version of the burning of the Amazon rainforests will continue.

Years ago Matt Ridley criticized Britain for defining wood pellets as a renewable form of energy, just one not so friendly to a Woodpecker’s habitat pinched from a California forest he argued. The clinching example he used for the idiocy of clear cutting wood for energy was a satellite shot of the Island of Hispaniola with Haiti on one side and the Dominican Republic on the other.  One country was brown and the other green delineated by a clear crisp border. One country burned every piece of wood that could be found and the other subsidized the use of propane gas to save its forests. His point being that modern fuels have a place in saving the ecosystems of large swathes of geography for biodiversity.

John Muir the founder of the Sierra Club must be turning over in his grave with the thought of his beloved Muir Woods being whittled down to pellets for fuel. The Sierra Club is seriously out of tune to the danger to its mission “to practice and promote the responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources” by ignoring the policy of subsidizing the burning of wood.  Though the club is exclusively U.S. based it has a large international following.  It should  “educate and enlist humanity,” at least our European brethren, “to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.”

Years ago when unlimited nuclear energy was thought to be a new and wonderful possibility the Sierra Club promoted a vision  of a nation of large natural parks with islands of densely populated city states powered by nuclear fuel.  It was a vision that France and Japan took up in the early 1970’s reaching 80% of their electric power needs and leaving great swaths of natural habitat between cities connected by high speed electric powered rail. Despite Japan’s Fukushima disaster, nuclear power is arguably environmentally sustainable and better than geography hungry solar farms pinching food from the world on the precipice of a massive global famine. Which brings up the  other biofuel lunacy, Iowa farms raising corn to feed automobiles!  

Libertarian Party Member but after the anti intellectual anarchistic takeover of the party at the 2022 convention now identifies as #ClassicalLiberal

F. A. Hayek explains in the foreword of the 1956 American edition of The Road to Serfdom that he uses the term “liberal” in the classical nineteenth century sense and is perplexed how the American left appropriated it for the advocacy of government control.  He finds it regrettable that true liberals must describe themselves as conservative because “Conservatism is not a social program; in its paternalistic,nationalistic, and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism with traditionalist, anti intellectual, and mystical propensities.”

The Libertarian Party was formed in 1972 and took its name as means of expressing the Classical Liberal laissez faire nineteenth century philosophy it stood for.  I am a registered Libertarian Party Member since 1992 but as of the anti intellectual anarchistic takeover of the party at the 2022 convention I can no longer call myself as one and now identify on Twitter as a #ClassicalLiberal.

Its innumerates (people who can't count) like Gavin Newsom that are the problem.

Its innumerates (people who can't count) like Gavin Newsom that are the problem. Now take his hero Angela Merkel, Germany's Climate Chancellor as an example of how bad an innumerate leader can be. She decided on an energy policy favoring Wind where there is little coastline for windmills and Solar where everyone goes to Spain to get sunlight.  By implementing that policy forcefully she diminished much wealth in utility assets and after Fukishima she panics and orders the decommissioning of nuclear power plants wiping out tremendously more wealth but which took many steps backwards on reaching the zero carbon emissions goal.  She further exacerbated the climate by extending the mining and burning of bituminous coal, the world’s dirtiest to compensate for diminished nuclear power and for the intermittency of when the wind don't blow. To add insult to injury she declares success by declaring zero emissions for active wind energy even though dirty coal was burning on standby. Finally she embraced Putin's drug dealer tactic of dependence on Russian energy which today puts Germany at the precipice of an economic depression and very cold winters for its citizens.

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Senator Joe Manchin is keeping Democrats from a disastrous result for our climate, economy and security

Angela Merkel, Germany’s Climate Chancellor, had the power to implement pretty much every initiative in Build Back America and accomplished a substantially worse outcome for the climate.  Her disastrous decision to kill off nuclear power generation and source domestically mined bituminous coal, the dirtiest least efficient, and Russian oil and gas to smooth out wind and solar intermittency not only has put Germany way behind in reaching its carbon reducing goals but also because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has caused an economic crisis so severe that this winter German industry will be severely rationed and available energy used to heat peoples’ homes.

Senator Joe Manchin is doing Democrats a favor from implementing an innumerates’, people who can’t count, wish list that could lead to the same disastrous result for our climate, economy and security.

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Jurists should presume Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness over the Constitution formed to provide it

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito declared in his opinion annulling Roe v Wade that it did not pull at the thread that unravels decisions based on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, but Justice Clarence Thomas opined that, yes, it did. As the court’s ultimate strict construction originalist he didn’t see the right to an abortion in the Constitution nor for the use of contraceptives, Griswold v Connecticut, nor to a gay marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges.  Not to be cute but he didn’t mention the Loving v Virginia decision which makes his interracial marriage to Ginni legal. Maybe he has difficulty arguing that a document that defines him as three fifths human is sacred and to be followed to its letter.  Maybe he should consider a redirect to the spirit of our founding fathers’ motive which was to form a more perfect union that protected our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Georgetown Law Professor and Political Philosopher Randy Barnett argues for redirecting legal opinion to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence  for which the  Constitution was devised.  His simple suggestion is that jurists presume in liberty and not in constitutionality as they presently do.

The 13th Amendment may have banished slavery but not it’s hegemony in law and opinion over a black man’s status. At the start of reconstruction the Republican victors of the civil war felt something more was required to counter slavery’s mean spirited legacy. The reaction was the 14th Amendment which defined citizenship and attempted to counter the denial of the right to happiness accorded to a citizen in a general manner which in later years through its equal protection clause opened the way to define identity and happiness in ways alien to our forefathers when devising the original Constitution.

The 14th Amendment failed in it’s first test made famous by Justice Harlan’s sole and blistering dissent in Plessy v Ferguson where he decried how slavery’s legacy had prevailed in the “separate but equal” decision and weakened the spirit of the new law trying to keep out hard hearted sentiments. The suggestion that a Jurist should first presume liberty would do much to reassert the 14th Amendment’s spirit and question poor interpretations made from it since its enactment. Professor Barnett argues presuming liberty will leave many legal threads untethered but for the sake of a more perfect union, they should be.

For Justice Thomas presuming liberty would liberate him from the quagmire of what he called uncommonly silly law such as in his dissent of Lawrence v Texas (2003) where he could find no right to privacy in the Constitution. It would liberate him to concentrate on his career long and noble fight for economic freedom or as enshrined in Lochner v New York (1905), another 14th Amendment decision, as “freedom of contract.”  A decision reviled by today’s Jurists of the Administrative State who don’t want to understand that the Lochner decision frees all men from doing their master’s bidding. 

Lochner v New York is cited eight times in the recent opinions of Dobbs v Jackson as an example of the kind of decision that should be reversed or ignored because it substituted the court’s judgment for that of a duly elected legislature, a clear usurpation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. From the perspective of believers in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, denying it, as in an abortion, requires more than the threads drawn from a legal decision reviled by the Warren Burger court yet convenient to formulate an expert’s solution it had no power to do.

Dobbs - Jackson decision reversed what was thought to be settled law. It showed that “settled” isn’t so just because it is stated to be so,  after all Dredd Scott settled the law amid a period of growing belief that slavery was immoral despite millenia of stated approval as written in the Bible and so a horrific civil war was fought over it.  Today we are accepting many behaviors once considered immoral and there are those who want to divide us by enforcing their unchanged values with law.  With the anti-abortion victory the court must now gird itself for a series of uncommonly silly laws as the moral majority exercises its power to stop changes in the perception of what is moral.  The court needs the presumption of liberty to quickly and repeatedly swat away these laws and disabuse the public of the idea that the court is there to restrict rather than enhance our natural rights.

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Presuming Liberty would do much to redirect decisions back to 14th Amendment's original intent.

The constitutional interpretation known as originalism seeks to identify the original meaning of its provisions but if the Constitution was devised to form a means of delivering the Declaration of Independence’s ideal that all men are created equal with the inalienable right to  Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as argued by Law Professor and Political Philosopher Randy Barnett, then the original had much to be remedied. He suggests Jurist presume Liberty and not Constitutionality as they presently do.

The 13th Amendment may have banished slavery but not its hegemony in law and opinion over a black man’s status. At the start of reconstruction Republicans felt something more was required to counter slavery’s mean spirited legacy. The 14th Amendment which came as a reaction defined citizenship and attempted to counter the denial of the privilege of happiness accorded to a citizen but from the start with Plessy V Ferguson decision establishing "separate but equal" the hard hearted bastardized its intent. Presuming Liberty would do much to redirect decision back to its original intent.

 

War Game scenario to deter China from invading Taiwan

With first strikes on U.S military bases in Japan NBC’s China invading Taiwan war game reveals a fundamental flaw which is that China knows that without a pretext for engagement, such as military strike on its territory, the U.S. has no authority to defend a province of a country from its central government and our mighty Navy’s presence is only a bluff because U.S. public opinion would not allow an engagement that starts superpowers down the path of nuclear conflagration.  No, Team Red would start the invasion with a months long blockade encircling the island and keeping all material from entering or exiting by sea and air. It would spend time before the invasion with an air war that softens the target and causes the rapid expense of irreplaceable resources.  How should Team Blue assert American power without crossing the nuclear threshold?

Geopolitical Analyst Peter Ziehan postulates that since the end of World War the global reach of the U.S. Navy has kept the seas secure for international trade. China in particular has been the chief beneficiary of the trade made possible by our Navy. Being a resource poor nation, a trade benefit it counts on is the steady supply of oil coming from the Middle East in supertankers crossing the Indian Ocean.  What if Team Blue took a tactic from our history when an Island nation was being armed with nuclear weapons that threatened our security but had not yet made a first strike, of course it’s President John F Kennedy’s 1962 blockade around Cuba that is being referenced, and corrals those supertankers in the middle of Indian Ocean the moment that China blockades Taiwan. Naturally The Navy would provide humanitarian support to crew members as they float sequestered at idle for months.  Vessels passing through wishing to offload at ports other than Chinese could do so under flight supervision, not that a lumbering tanker would not make a spectacular but distressingly easy target should it decide to make a run for it.  China’s Navy on the other hand could not interfere with the corral because their vessels only have a thousand mile range leaving diplomatic outrage as their only counter. Mainland China on the other hand would run out of fuel for its economy and Navy before a well stocked Taiwan and force it to discontinue its assault.

The primary purpose of war games is to flesh out various tactics that promote a strategy toward our security.  War games that have a whiff of a nuclear exchange always seem to end in conflagration so that the players should think of alternatives. Alternatives that  showcase what a Navy ten times bigger than the rest of the World combined can do to assert American power in a nonthreatening way and so overwhelm any notion of defying it that it deters China from invading Taiwan in the first place.

 

Ukraine’s example makes clear to Taiwan an invasion can be defeated given the courage to resist

  President Biden’s reluctance to make Ukraine a no fly zone because it would provoke a confrontation that inevitably marches to a nuclear exchange exposes the defense of Taiwan if it were to be invaded by mainland China.  But the courage of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people choosing to defend their democracy provides an alternative to the super powers mutually assuring our destruction by showing the Taiwanese public and its President Tsai Ing-wen the importance of self-reliance. President Xi Jinping showed his cards by strangling Hong Kong’s democracy. Ukraine’s courage gives the island democracy the template for its defense.

The poor performance of the Russian Army might give the mainland's military pause.  Formosa is over a hundred miles away by sea and the probability of failure and humiliation is high.  President Tsai must show in every way she can that  an invasion would be costly and success at gaining full police power is unlikely. The United States should provide all the material help it can to prepare for an invasion and a protracted guerilla war without a superpower crossing a blockade.

Ukraine’s example should affirm Taiwan’s military reservists' sense of purpose and makes clear that an invasion can be defeated given the courage to resist and the command structure to continue a guerilla war.  Xi Jinping may make the decision to invade but like any autocrat he will have bad information about his military’s capability and so the defending forces should prepare to  take maximum advantage of incompetence, like Russia’s forty mile stretch of stalled tanks North of Kiev, during the beach landing. It's difficult to envision the invasion landing with sufficient military personnel and supplies to take much less to govern the island but every effort must be made to harden military installations and supply depots and examine contingency plans to make the invader’s success impossible.

The self-reliant approach is the only option for Taiwan to protect its democracy because a show of force by the U.S. Navy like President Clinton used in 1996 in the defense of the Straits of Taiwan incident  would be ignored this time by China as a bluff. As the West enters the Second Cold War against the despots of the East, Ukraine clarifies the need to commit military aid to those democracies willing to fight to defend themselves so as to keep conflict local and not lead to superpower escalation. President Zelenskyy’s courage is a shining example of calling the autocrat’s bluff by piercing his aura of invincibility to reveal incompetence. He has single handedly reversed this century’s rise of autocracies and their denigration of democracies to affirm Winston Churchill’s observation that “democracy may be the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

                         

 

An appreciation of our revolution and the power of insurgency that formed it.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s courage coalesced his countrymen and Europe in a fight against Putin’s megalomania that reverses this century’s rise of autocratic rule and elevates the power of democracy. The Russian Army did not storm Ukraine like Hitler’s blitzkrieg of Poland in September of 1939 which was anticipated. On the contrary the invasion is bogged down and appears to be incompetently lead. “We’re in shock at how dumb their behavior is” stated a Ukrainian special forces member to the Wall Street Journal. “Now we mostly focus on hitting their rear, their supply convoys because if they don’t get fuel, they can’t do anything.”  The delay in the takeover has given western democracies time to provide military and humanitarian assistance and make clear to Russia that the eventual outcome will be withdrawal and humiliation from too much blood and treasure spent on what appears to be just a whim. The consequence of eventual defeat must weigh heavily on China’s Xi Jinping, another autocrat who believes democracies are weak and now clarifies how the United States can defend democracy in SouthEast Asia.

Too many times we as a nation have ignored the example of our revolution and the personal courage to mount an insurrection that wears out and defeats the super power of its time. We rejected Ho Chi Minh’s appeal for help to unshackle colonial Vietnam from France because it didn’t fit with the geopolitical chessboard of the time only to be defeated decades later in a modern replay of our revolution. Ukraine President  Zelenskyy’s courage to defend a democracy changes our perspective over the feared invasion of Taiwan by mainland China.

Currently the Pentagon has been wringing its hands over not having the overwhelming naval power that President Clinton used effectively to get China to back down in the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. But China’s naval force has grown many times over since then and won’t back down just with just a show of force, no matter how many vessels we add to our fleet because the nuclear constraint just renders it a bluff.  But the courage of the Ukrainian people shows the path for Taiwan to defend their democracy.  The recent strangling of Hong Kong’s democracy by the mainland has hardened the Taiwanese public and its President Tsai Ing-wen's perception of China and Xi Jinping’s assertion of total power over all its regions. The invasion of Ukraine makes the threat clear and their valiant resistance gives the Taiwanese the steel backbone to organize and prepare.  On the other hand the poor performance of the Russian Army must give pause to the mainland.  Formosa is over a hundred miles away by sea. Like Hitler rejecting invading Britain, Xi Jinping may reject invading because of the high probability of losing and humiliating his regime. President Tsai must lead to re-enforce in every way she can that an invasion would be extremely costly and the Island’s occupation ungovernable. The United States should provide all the material help it can ahead of time to help the island to prepare and develop plans on how to resupply those fighting the invasion when it occurs, a much more daunting problem than Ukraine’s which has Poland next door as a resupply depot.

Zelenskyy’s courage must make the United States look back at its birth and appreciate the power of insurgency and make it a tool in our arsenal. Use it to keep conflicts local and the superpowers from mutually assuring our destruction. And our military budget should focus on what it takes to defend those with the courage to stand up to autocrats and deny it to those who impose their rule on others.

#Libertarian free market follower of Milton Friedman economics favors Child Care Support issued to parents in Build Back Better

    West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin did his party a favor by rejecting the Build Back Better wish list reminiscent of LBJ's Great Society because the government has no idea how to deliver satisfying promise keeping results. Yet Democrats still think they can make good enough approximations of unknowable health, education and welfare benefits that an individual considers. They can't accept that Washington’s programs gone wrong still reverberates within the American psyche, best expressed by Ronald Reagan’s quip about the seven scariest words; “I’m from the government. I’m here to help.” However, the $300 a month check for Child Care Support issued to parents in Build Back is one provision this Libertarian free market follower of Milton Friedman economics could support because it fits in the most efficient cell of his spending quadrant. It's the cell where spending does the most good at the least cost without the resentment caused by pointy headed experts from Washington telling people what's good for them.   

    Friedman's quadrant has two rows of two cells. The top row are purchases by one using their own money and the bottom row are purchases by one using other people's money.  So the upper left cell is a consumer buying a product for themself with their own money. It’s the optimal cell because the buyer has perfect knowledge to make the best decision of benefit over cost. The right cell is less optimal because the buyer of a gift for example can not completely know the benefit to the person they are buying it for. The second row is where it can get grossly inefficient.  The left cell can have a buyer selecting a Rolls Royce over a Chevrolet to maximize his benefit without regard for cost. It's suboptimal but at least the buyer is happy.  The right cell is the purchaser buying for another using other people's money. Unfortunately for the central government favoring Democrats this cell satisfies neither the buyer nor regard for cost. It's the least efficient because at a granular both benefits and costs are unknowable. This four cell spending quadrant is the genesis of Milton Friedman's national income scheme proposed fifty years ago and which Andrew Yang made popular during his 2020 primary run for the Democrat ticket. But the original proposal required replacing FDR's social safety net with a national income to push purchases of health education and welfare to the efficient cell and avoid the waste, misallocation of resources and the tyranny of experts coming from Washington bureaucracies.