1) Massachusetts Violates Its Own Clean Air Rules

Here's our weekly laugh or cry item. In Massachusetts, none of the government agencies are following the state's own stringent pollution control rules implemented back in 2016. Don't believe us? This is the headline from the New England Public Media news outlet:

Massachusetts state agencies have missed filing reports showing they trimmed emissions coming from state owned vehicles. Regulators didn't enforce the rule, and now it's raising fresh questions about oversight as the state presses ahead on its climate goals.

The state owns some 7,500 vehicles, many of which are not in compliance.

This revelation of the state agencies violating their own rules ironically was uncovered during a lawsuit brought by the state EPA against ExxonMobil for alleged noncompliance and "deception."  

Our recommendation is that the Massachusetts Attorney General should drop the Exxon lawsuit and instead the state should sue itself.

2) Michael Dell's Heroic Effort To Democratize Savings And Investment

This may turn out to be the highest-impact donation in American history: tech billionaires Michael and Susan Dell have pledged a whopping $6.25 billion to boost investment accounts for young children that were created in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Two Great American Heroes

The Dell donation translates to $250 in starter money for about 25 million "Trump accounts" for children from low- and middle-income areas. This private money will be for kids under age 10 who don't qualify for the $1,000 that will be deposited by the federal government for every newborn baby with a Social Security number. The tax-free accounts can be supplemented by families and employers and will be invested in low-cost index funds. When a child turns 18, money could be withdrawn with incentives to use it for education or to buy a first home.

The goal is to create a culture of saving, by nudging parents and kids as they get older and start babysitting and mowing lawns to add resources to these accounts over time. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Cory Booker have signed a bipartisan letter urging corporate CEOs to follow Dell's example.

Even a single $250 contribution can build a nest egg through the power of compound interest.  If investments earn a conservative 7% annual return, the money could grow to some $26,000 by retirement. With parental and employer contributions of just $50 a month, the account could balloon to over $500,000.

Those returns could be turbocharged if young people could take all or a portion of their payroll taxes and put the money into 401k personal accounts. If we had done this 20 years ago,  the average worker would today have a nest egg of almost $200,000.

Over 40 years, these accounts would hold well over $1 million. Instead, we are scheduled to see Social Security become technically insolvent in 2033.  

3) New York Comptroller Wants Lower Returns on City Pension Funds

Yes, you read that headline correctly.

In a perverse twist of logic, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a close ally of the newly-elected mayor Zohran Mamdani, has commanded three of the city's pension funds to drop BlackRock Inc., Fidelity, and PanAngora Asset Management because of "inadequate" climate plans.

Seriously?  

What in the world does "climate" have to do with earning solid returns on workers' pension funds?

This threat from Lander is in direct response to our newly issued and widely-cited study which grades firms from A to F on which are honoring their fiduciary duty to get the highest returns for their clients.  

BlackRock and Fidelity's sin is that they got an A on our report card, meaning they didn't play politics with their clients' money the way Lander apparently wishes to.

Lander apparently thinks getting the highest possible returns on worker pensions will "put our investments at risk needlessly." He wants the pension trustees to terminate contracts with these three high-performing firms.  

Just who's the one here "putting pension investments at risk?"

4) Europe's Green Economic Suicide Pact

The HOTLINE has noted over and over that one major reason American companies have raced past those of Europe in size and profitability is that Germany and the rest of the EU embraced climate craziness and dramatically cut their fossil fuel usage. Most European nations are today poorer than Arkansas.  

Thanks to this moronic war on fossil fuels, European companies now pay two to three times more for electric power than do U.S. firms, as the WSJ highlighted last week.

It's as if the EU has put 15-pound ankle weights on their own businesses and then expects them to win the 100-yard dash.  

All of this deindustrialization is a result of Europe's green "Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D)." This "net zero" fossil fuels doctrine has put the EU on an economic destruction path.

The Europeans took a baby step away from this nonsense last month by agreeing to use more natural gas.  But they're still wedded to windmills and solar panels and opposed to using much more reliable oil and coal for power.

Meanwhile, the planet's two economic gazelles, the U.S. and China, continue to go all-in on all forms of cheap and abundant fossil fuels.  

Europe's "sustainability directive" looks so far to be an economic suicide pact.  

Lord, what fools these mortals be.  

Our new U.S. ambassador to the EU has a great piece warning of Europe's folly:

5) Trump Scores Big Win in UK Drug Deal

Six months ago, our 501 (c)(4) partner organization Unleash Prosperity Now, launched a project called Most Favored Patient that was designed to steer Trump away from dangerous drug price controls. Instead, we designed a plan that would force other free-loading nations of Europe and Asia to stop free-riding on American pharmaceutical innovation.  

The reflexive solution would be for the US to adopt similar price controls, which Trump was threatening, but this would’ve stunted the race for the cure for terrible diseases.

So we congratulate President Trump and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer for accomplishing what we proposed as the best solution to this thorny problem: negotiate into trade agreements with other rich countries provisions that require them to pay more for innovative prescription drugs.  They have done just that with the UK:

Pursuant to the terms of the pharmaceutical pricing agreement in principle announced today, the United Kingdom will reverse the decade-long trend of declining National Health Service (NHS) expenditures on innovative, life-saving medicines, and increase the net price it pays for new medicines by 25%. Furthermore, the United Kingdom will ensure that higher prices for new medicines are not materially eroded by a demand for portfolio-wide concessions under the Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG) or other rebate schemes. In fact, the United Kingdom has committed that the repayment rate owed by companies under the current VPAG scheme will decrease to 15% in 2026 and remain at or below that level for the duration of the scheme...

In exchange for these and other commitments, the United States has agreed to exempt U.K.-origin pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical ingredients, and medical technology from Section 232 tariffs and will refrain from targeting U.K. pharmaceutical pricing practices in any future Section 301 investigation for the duration of President Trump's term. Further, the United States will work to ensure that U.K. citizens have access to the latest pharmaceutical breakthroughs.

This agreement could serve as a template for a similar deal with the EU, which would effectively double the world market for innovative drugs and lead to an unprecedented boom in new cures and treatments, without free-riding at the expense of Americans.

6) Why Do We Always Get the Bill?

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