1) Incredible: Every Senate Democrat Chose the IRS Over Israel
Senate Democrats voted in lockstep yesterday against the House-passed bill to cut $14 billion from Biden's 87,000-new-IRS-agents fund, and use it for emergency aid to Israel.
Democrats claim to support the aid package. And they already agreed to a larger cut to the IRS fund back in May, when a side-deal to the debt ceiling bill was supposed to cut $20 billion (we're still waiting to see that enacted!) to pay for domestic spending.
So, what is their problem? They want to leverage Israel's aid for another huge tranche of Ukraine and yet another orgy of domestic spending.
It looks increasingly likely the best we can hope for on spending is a full-year CR that will allow Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie's automatic 1 percent cut to take effect. But those savings would be more than wiped out if anything like Biden's mega unpaid-for "emergency" spending bill passes.
This is supposed to be the year of the great global green energy transition. So where is it?
Reuters reports that loans for "sustainable development" fell by about 30% through October. This is at a time when oil and gas giants are announcing blockbuster deals of more than $100 billion.
Just a month after voting to bring back Obama's mangled form of net neutrality regulation in the face of all available evidence, the Federal Communications Commission this week is poised to pass an even more sweeping power grab in the name of — what else? — "equity."
Nathan Leamer, who was a policy adviser to Trump FCC chairman Ajit Pai (miss him yet?) explains:
The Federal Communications Commission is poised to assert itself as the Ministry of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This week, the unelected bureaucrats at the agency will vote on rules to shoehorn the latest woke ideology about race and identity into the internet ecosystem...
Central to the agency’s rules is the “disparate impact” standard...
The regime applies to every company in the broadband internet space. It even applies to the small business contractors who build and maintain the infrastructure. These operators and technicians simply build where governments have permitted them to construct cell towers or lay fiber. But if the FCC deems that their work promotes discrimination, then bureaucrats will investigate and punish the workers on the frontlines.
We have a much better idea. Let’s abolish the FCC. The internet and phone service would be much better and more “equitable” without it.
The Biden administration announced this week that the U.S. is now back up to the level of domestic oil production (13 million barrels a day) that we achieved under Donald Trump. Never mind that in the next breath, he assures his green energy friends that we are weaning America off of fossil fuels and will pursue Net Zero oil and gas policies.
Well, which is it?
Our latest analysis of domestic oil production by CTUP and University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows that production under Biden is running far below the Trump baseline – i.e. the amount of oil that would have been produced if we had stuck with Trump's pro-drilling policies.
Depending on the assumptions made about the sensitivity of production to the rise in the price of oil and also the continued technological advances in shale oil production – which lower drilling costs – we would be producing at least one million more barrels a day and probably closer to four million.
If we take the midpoint estimate then Biden’s war on American energy is costing the U.S. economy at least $200 million each and every day from reduced domestic oil production. Somewhere an Arab oil Sheik is smiling.
This fear of lost jobs has been prevalent since the beginning of time with the invention of the wheel, and then electricity, and then the typewriter, and then farm equipment, and then the telephone, the microchip, and then the internet.
In reality with invention and technology, we just keep getting richer, the jobs keep coming but are less menial, and they pay a lot more. Which is how we got rich. This video from our friends at Kite and Key tells the story in a compelling way.
