1) An American Energy Policy That Makes No Economic Sense
CTUP co-founder Arthur Laffer has put out this updated chart on the massive increase in oil imports both in dollars and barrels over the past seven years.
Under Trump oil imports fell to a fifty year low. Under Biden American oil and gas production has fallen, therefore imports have done a U-Turn and are way up again.
This doesn’t benefit the environment of the planet because American (and global) consumption of oil and gas remains at a record high. The only change is that now we get more of our fuels from Saudi Arabi and OPEC nations and less of it from Texas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.
Speaking of Texas, here’s a headline that brought a smile to our faces:
We always prefer cutting income tax rates over property taxes, but Texas is already a no-income-tax state. The Texas economy is so strong that a surge in revenues has created the biggest budget surplus ever in Austin.
So congrats to Governor Greg Abbot and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (who runs the Senate) for a major victory for taxpayers.
The bill does the following:
Saves Texans $12 billion by slashing property tax rate for all homeowners and business properties.
Every homeowner who homesteads their home (approximately 5.7 million homeowners) will get a $100,000 homestead exemption.
Cuts the franchise tax on small businesses.
Next up: this Fall Abbott and Patrick need to adopt their sweeping education choice bill for FIVE MILLION Texas school kids. If that happens, this will be one of the most productive state legislative sessions in any state in American history.
3) Congress Should Slash – Not Increase the FTC Budget
Lina Khan’s reign of terror and error at the Federal Trade Commission knows no bounds. This regulatory tyrant has tried to put a freeze on the corporate mergers and acquisitions that are fundamental to economic growth and competitiveness. And she’s colluded with foreign regulators as part of her crusade against American businesses.
The courts have repeatedly ruled against Khan’s interventions. She has become the poster child for regulatory abuse. GOP Commissioner Christine Wilson, resigned earlier this year, citing Khan’s “disregard for the rule of law and due process.”
What can House Republicans - supposedly the party of reining in the regulatory octopus - do to bring Ms. Kahn to heel?
The FTC’s brazen budget request is for $590 million in fiscal 2024 – a $160 million increase. %#$& no to that. Instead the House should cut the FTC budget in half, restrict its authority to block mergers, and require Khan to immediately disclose any traitorous cooperation with foreign enforcement authorities trying to block the expansion and profitability of American companies.
5) Nobel Prize Winner Dares to Question the Pseudoscience of Climate Change
Last month at a science conference in Korea, Dr. John F. Clauser, joint recipient of last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, told his fellow scientists:
“I don’t think there is a real climate crisis. I think the key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by a factor of about 200.”
And he is willing to name names. He recently even criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for their work on “the physical modelling of Earth’s climate…reliably predicting global warming.” Clauser says the most common climate models are unreliable and don’t account for the dramatic temperature-stabilizing feedback of clouds, which he says is more than fifty times as powerful as the warming effect of CO2.
In May, Dr. Clauser joined the CO2 Coalition, a watchdog on climate science, and issued a statement saying: “Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience.“ He added that climate change alarmism “has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists."
In other words, he’s warning about the multi-trillion dollar climate change industrial complex that we’ve been railing against for years.
How this brilliant truth-teller ever received a Nobel Prize is beyond us. Don’t be surprised if the academy doesn’t ask him to give it back.
