1) How Is It That Locking Down Businesses Is Wise, But Shutting Down Non-Essential Government Activities Is A Disaster?
The White House and media drama queens are near cardiac arrest over a partial and temporary government shutdown in the days or weeks ahead.
They may need smelling salts.
The White House’s hysteria-filled statement yesterday warned that planes will collide in the air because of air traffic controller shortages; waiting lines at airports will be two hours long because TSA officers will be laid off; 10,000 children will be wandering the streets because they won't have head start programs; we will all risk dying from Salmonella because food safety inspections will be delayed; seniors won't get meal on wheels lunches, and windmill construction will be delayed. Oh my!
We’re confused.
In 2020 these same whining politicians shut down private businesses, stores, schools, restaurants, and factories. Tens of millions of Americans were thrown out of work for months on end. Millions of businesses small and large were forced to close their doors – many went bankrupt. The economy took a multi-trillion-dollar hit.
The media was cheering on these Stalinist lockdowns even though they had a minimal effect on stopping the spread.
Apparently, Inside the Beltway logic goes like this: we can live without businesses, stores, and almost all private sector activity, but the country will go to hell if trivial programs like the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Trade Commission shut down for even a single day.
Our quote of the day comes from Biden himself:
“A government shutdown would undermine our economy and national security, create needless uncertainty for families and businesses, and have damaging consequences across the country.”
Gee, they never said that when they locked down the entire $24 trillion U.S. economy in 2020 and into 2021.
Lions and tigers and bears … and government Shutdowns, oh my!
We’ve said it over and over that the climate change crazies should be embracing natural gas, not abolishing it.
The bounty from the shale natural gas revolution is BY FAR the biggest reason that the U.S. has reduced our carbon emissions more than virtually any other nation.
But the environment responds: natural gas causes more methane in the atmosphere. Oh really!
These two charts from the Institute for Energy Research show that natural gas production in the U.S. has doubled over the last 30 years, but methane emissions have FALLEN by 20%.
Natural gas is reliable, cheap, made in America, AND clean burning. So naturally, the green movement is against it.
Well, at least the Brits are starting to get it right. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ended the European “consensus” on climate folly yesterday. In short order, he rolled back the phasing out of gas boilers, announced a five-year delay in the 2030 ban on gas and diesel cars, and denounced “costs that no one was ever really told about and which may not actually be necessary.”
Sunak gutsily challenged the assumption that purveyors of climate extremism hold the moral high ground. When a BBC reporter asked him if his decisions put him on the “wrong side of history,” the Prime Minister said it was his critics who must “justify to all of those families up and down the country why it’s right for them to find £5,000, £10,000, £15,000.”
Climate activists were horrified.
The BBC’s stream of Sunak’s speech came with a health warning that it “contains language which may offend.” Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson – one of the worst UK leaders since Neville Chamberlin – fumed that Sunak is giving up the fight against global warming.
Rishi faces an election in just over the year and is betting that exhausted voters are unwilling to pay a massive climate “tax” to achieve arbitrary green targets. The free market is the way to do that (see above). Britain’s emissions have fallen by 49 percent since 1990, despite the economy growing by 75 percent during the same period.
We have been critical of Sunak in the past, but he is turning out to be the voice of sanity on climate change among world leaders. How sad that the least sane voice on climate change is sitting in the White House.
4) Outrage of the Week: Biden Wastes Another $600 Million on "Free" COVID Tests
COVID has become so mild that we're starting to see headlines like this one:
A logical conclusion might be that mass testing is now pointless. But logic-free as usual, yesterday Biden announced another round of taxpayer-funded home COVID tests to be delivered through the US Postal Service.
He did this after Congress rejected his funding request by diverting funding from "vital health needs":
When this stunt was originally rolled out in winter 2022 during the first Omicron wave, massive federal purchase orders emptied normal distribution channels and caused drug store shelves to be empty — meaning no tests when people wanted them — and they arrived in the mail weeks later when the wave was mostly over.
Biden must think that the Federal government is running a $2 trillion surplus, rather than a deficit.
The service at major airlines keeps getting worse all the time, so some competition from more consumer-friendly airlines should be very good news for frequent fliers.
Dallas-based JSX Airline was founded in 2018 to meet the needs of frustrated passengers by using smaller jets to connect several dozen underserved markets and leave from private terminals that have their own security. It's also a non-union air service.
So the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and big carriers that JSX competes with — like American Airlines — are trying to shut JSX down.
Outrageously, last month, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a rulemaking that would likely do just that.
JSX allows passengers to arrive just 20 minutes before departure, allows only 30 spacious seats on its Embraer jets, and offers free drinks, snacks, and Wi-Fi. As an “on-demand” charter operator, the FAA currently lets it hire pilots who are over 65 years of age (the retirement age at other carriers), as well as co-pilots who have fewer than 1,500 hours of experience.
Air travel blogger Gary Leff writes that the unions and the rival airlines are simply making “a protectionist argument against innovation.”
The Biden Administration – think FTC chair Lina Kahn — boasts that it supports “competition," lower prices, and consumer choice in its regulations. But as our economist Casey Mulligan has reported, when forced to choose between consumers and its union allies it invariably sides with union bosses.
