BLACK REPUBLICAN BLOG

 By Larry O'Connor  |Townhall.com 

Photo Source: AP Photo/File

The Democratic Party should pay reparations to black Republicans who have suffered at the hands of the KKK.

Hear me out.

Make no mistake, the Democrats and their allies in the Marxist Black Lives Matter organization are moving this country toward a "national conversation" about reparations.

Side note: Have you noticed that whenever we have a race-related "national conversation," it always ends up being sanctimonious, Marxist tenured professors lecturing the rest of us about how evil and racist and privileged we are, and if you deny it, it proves you're racist? And the solution to the evil racism that you exhibit is to take more of your money and give it to Democrats in government where they pay for big programs that enrich those tenured professors, make inner-cities even worse, and then ten years later we are poised for another "national conversation"?

Yeah, well, they're getting us ready for another one of those "national conversations" and this time it will be about reparations for slavery.

Before that conversation gets driven down our throats by the Harris-Biden presidential ticket, how about Republicans get in front of this issue?

How about instead of moving toward reparations for slavery (which has challenges logistically and judicially), we move for something a little more tangible?

I mean, let's face it, it's nearly impossible to identify who, specifically, would be responsible for paying these reparations, right? Descendants of the slave owners? OK, try to trace that out, I suppose. But, logically, their reparation payment should only go to the descendants of those African-Americans their ancestors owned.

Also, isn't it unjust to punish a person for the sins of their fathers? I mean, this is a fundamental understanding the Western world has always embraced. But the Left would have us punish, through taxation, the great, great, great-grandchildren for slavery.

So what do we do?

Having the US government pay the reparations would be even more unjust. It would also tax black Americans and the descendants of immigrants who arrived on these shores years after the Civil War. Why should their descendants' money pay for an evil act that occurred when they were living in another country? Also, technically speaking, the United States government did not own slaves, so why should the government pay for the sins of some (a very small percentage) of her citizens?

Meanwhile, there are very real victims still alive who suffered from systemic and violent racism at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Many are still alive to tell their stories. Or, their children are alive and have suffered greatly due to the terror inflicted upon them by the Klan.

The KKK's terror was specifically directed at black Americans who dared to vote. And, how did they vote? They voted Republican. Furthermore, the Klan was populated by Democrats. Southern, racist, segregationist Democrats. And their reign of terror began because they had to terrify newly freed African-Americans from voting. Because these Klansmen knew they would vote Republican.

How powerful did the Klan's political clout grow? In 1924, organized Klansmen marched through the streets of New York and attended the Democratic National Convention that nominated Woodrow Wilson for the presidency. After winning office, Woodrow screened the racist ode to the Klan "Birth of a Nation," a film produced by racist Hollywood producers. It was the first film ever screened at the White House.

Spoiler alert: the film rationalizes and glorifies the rise of the Klan.

From the Wilson presidency, the intertwined narratives of the Klan and Democratic Party were inseparable. It's no mistake that Exalted Cyclops of the West Virginia Klan Robert Byrd chose the Dems when he went into politics.

Byrd rose to the level of Majority Leader of the Senate because his fellow Democrats saw him as a leader and an inspiration. Joe Biden had nothing but praise for the Klansman after his death.

FLASHBACK: 10 years ago today Joe Biden delivered a eulogy for Senate segregationist and former KKK "Exalted Cyclops" leader Robert Byrd. He called him a "mentor," a "guide," and a "friend." Byrd once led a KKK chapter with 150 members.

Video at:  https://twitter.com/i/status/1278732729174106114

In short: Democrats not only benefited from the rise of the KKK by silencing Republican votes in the South, but they also welcomed their members into their ranks and celebrated them.

Do you want some reparations? This is a pretty easy argument to make. The violence of the KKK against black Republicans was real, historic, well-documented, and recent. And the one entity that benefited most (if not encouraged it and/or participated in it) was the Democratic Party, which still exists.

Why not go after those deep pockets?

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2020/08/19/how-about-democrats-pay-kkk-reparations-to-black-republicans-n2574664?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=08/20/2020&bcid=1fc1e949433a1b38c9a8ce7ccadbc008&recip=26772260

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RELATED ARTICLE

How the Left Hijacked Civil Rights 

By Robert L. Woodson Sr. and Joshua Mitchell | The Wall Street Journal 

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr with James Forman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (left) and singer Harry Belafonte, April 30, 1965. - Photo: Bettmann Archive

For centuries black Americans debated how to overcome racism—but they always emphasized human agency and individual responsibility.

The civil-rights movement, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , helped deliver America from the historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow by forcing the nation to confront the full humanity of its black citizens. King’s words and actions glorified America by transfiguring its racial wound and revealing its redemptive promise. Yet today many black leaders have lost sight of King altogether and are aiding and abetting the crucifixion of their own people. Rather than hope, they see despair; rather than the Easter Sunday of true liberation, they offer the bleak Good Friday of never-ending misery.

The history of black American responses to slavery and Jim Crow generally followed three paths. They were hotly debated, but all emphasized human agency, sought liberation, and rejected despair.

First, there were the recolonization or “back to Africa” movements championed by the likes of Marcus Garvey. These movements sought an exit from America.

Second, there were the insurrectionists of the 19th century, who believed that black Americans should engage in armed rebellion or vocal opposition so that they might find a home in this country. Here lie Nat Turner and, later, W.E.B. Du Bois. They wanted to have their resistant voice heard in America.

Third, there were accommodationist movements of the sort undertaken by Booker T. Washington, who thought that loyalty to America was the best course.

Exit, voice, loyalty—however different these strategies were, each supposed that human agency mattered, that oppression wasn’t destiny. That is why, even amid great struggle, black Americans responded by building their own institutions and businesses. Great universities, medical schools, hotels, restaurants, movie companies and even a flight school sprung up. All of this was self-financed—and made possible by two-parent families, churches and other cultural institutions that provided shelter against the outside storm of racism.

In the 20th century, that same creative conflict between these three schools of thought reappeared. Debaters included the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Africa, which sought to establish a separate black state within our borders as an exit strategy.

King offered an inspiring combination of the strategies of loyalty and voice. In 1960, when students in Greensboro, N.C., became frustrated with the slow pace of legal action favored by Thurgood Marshall, King was sent to discourage them from engaging in civil disobedience. The students told King to lead, follow or get out of the way. They were determined to liberate themselves. They understood the difficulties and were undeterred by the obstacles. Like King, they were willing to persevere toward justice even when it was inconvenient, and to suffer the consequences of their actions. Hope, not hopelessness, animated all that they did.

King paid a heavy personal price for his hope that America was redeemable. Twice his home was bombed; once, his wife and daughter were nearly killed. Surrounded by hundreds of angry, armed black men after that bombing, he discouraged retaliatory violence. He was assaulted several times, and jailed as well, but he remained steadfast in his commitment to nonviolence. He united black Americans behind the proposition that racism is evil in itself, not simply because white people visited it upon blacks, and that all must unite to combat evil. He warned us about the self-destructive path of violence, not only for blacks but for the whole nation.

One of the original arguments to justify slavery was that blacks were morally inferior and thus incapable of self-government. John C. Calhoun famously asserted: “There is no instance of any civilized colored race of any shade being found equal to the establishment and maintenance of free government.” Black efforts at self-liberation in the 19th and 20th centuries were based on the opposite assumption.

Today many black leaders defer to angry white progressives who make the same arguments about blacks’ lack of moral agency, reject the country’s founding principles, and seek to undermine its institutions. For months, the radical left has been exploiting the country’s genuine concern for fairness to keep blacks in a constant state of agitation, anger and grievance, urging them toward behavior that lives down to the slanderous stereotypes of white supremacists. The leaders of these movements insist that every inequity suffered by blacks is caused by institutional and structural racism, that they have no power to liberate themselves, and that they will remain oppressed until white people change. Even to raise the issue of what role self-determination plays for blacks earns you the label of “racist.”

Civil-rights organizations and their leadership, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus, need to wake up before it’s too late. A faction of black leaders has been silent about, or complicit in, the takeover of the civil-rights movement by the radical left. The effect of this is not to glorify black achievement but to crucify low-income blacks, who are represented in national media outlets by their worst-behaved members, and bear the brunt of the attacks by the woke radical left on the cities where they live.

“Justice” for black America cannot be achieved by framing it solely through the distorted lens of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others in fatal police encounters. For every unarmed black American killed by the police, hundreds are killed in neighborhood homicides.

Those who call for the defunding of police departments, such as leaders of the official Black Lives Matter organization, are silent about this inconvenient truth. They have a narrative and cannot let the facts get in the way. Their story is that the whole of American history is stained and the whole of America must be overthrown. When citizens declare that they support Black Lives Matter, do they share its opposition to the nuclear family, its objective of abolishing the police, and its view that the Christian cross is a symbol of white supremacy? These positions of the organization—language that has largely been scrubbed from its website—in no way improve the lives of black Americans. They give up on black America and encourage its needless suffering.

Like all Americans, blacks have triumphed over their circumstances only when they have adopted bourgeois virtues such as hard work, respect for learning, self-discipline, faith and personal responsibility. In the 19th century, Frederick Douglass found reading to be the key to his own personal liberation amid slavery, and he understood that whites deliberately withheld literacy from blacks precisely because it was so valuable. Bourgeois values drove blacks to build the powerful religious, fraternal, and other voluntary associations that helped them thrive in the worst days of Jim Crow and cultivated the essential virtues in the next generation.

There would have been no civil-rights movement without this. But radical progressives now insist that such virtues are the legacy of white supremacy, colonialist values that reflect the continuing bondage of blacks to oppressive Western culture. The only “authentic” expression of blackness in America, they claim, is the opposite of bourgeois self-restraint and discipline—indulging in the passions of the moment, whether anarchic rioting, insulting teachers or other unsalutary forms of expression. The radical left—disdaining exhortations toward work, family and faith as “respectability politics”—argues that blacks should feel free to indulge their “true” nature, echoing the age-old white-supremacist notion that said nature is violent, lascivious and incapable of self-restraint.

The slave masters’ trick of old was to dissuade blacks from adopting bourgeois values precisely so they could be kept in servitude. Marriage was forbidden and families were split apart. Douglass observed that slaves were encouraged to indulge in drink and debauchery during the holidays so they would be “led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field—feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.”

But there were always those who saw through the trick and used the holidays to hunt, make items for sale, visit distant family members, and hire out their own labor. Some of these were even able—eventually—to purchase their freedom.

Tellingly, leftist elites teach their own children the values of working and studying hard even as they encourage behavior among blacks that will make sure they remain uncompetitive but “authentic.” By the time young blacks today discover, as did the slaves of Douglass’s time, that freedom understood as “do whatever you feel like” is no way to build a worthwhile life, it will be too late. The fruits of the civil-rights movement’s hard labor—teaching the young to be so self-disciplined that they were able to resist responding in kind to hatred and abuse from whites—will have been lost.

We must turn away from the present course, which preaches despair rather than hope. Black achievement must be glorified. The crucifixion of black America by the radical left must halt. There is a grander, more fruitful future for us all.

Mr. Woodson, a veteran of the civil-rights movement, is founder and president of the Woodson Center and author, most recently, of “Lessons From the Least of These: The Woodson Principles.” Mr. Mitchell is a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Center for the American Way of Life and author of “American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-left-hijacked-civil-rights-11610748711?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For additional information about civil rights history, see the posting on this blog ”Republicans and Democrats Did Not Switch Sides On Racism” at: http://blackrepublican.blogspot.com/p/the-party-of-civil-rights-by-kevin-d.html

 

“My days on earth are numbered; But before I fade away, there is something important I need to say. It may not be important to anyone else; but it's important to me. Win, lose or fraud. President Trump, I just want to say thank you for the last four years.

Thank you for making it cool to be an American again. Thank you for showing us that we don’t need to be under China’s thumb anymore economically, or any other way. Thank you for one of the strongest economies we’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. Thank you for all you have done for the minority communities, and the outstanding decrease in the unemployment rate you had. Thank you for making it feel good to love our country and to be a proud patriot again.

Thank you for supporting our Nation's flag and the men and women who fought for the freedom that stands behind that flag. Thank you for supporting our nation's law enforcement organizations, and understanding how difficult their job really is. Thank you for quelling the flood of illegal immigration, and bringing to justice the thousands of criminals that flood brought us. Thank you for giving corporations a reason to come back to America to make our own products and put Americans back to work.

Thank you for bringing our troops home from endless deployments that presented us with little more than body bags; and for your commitment to strengthen our military. Thank you for operation warp speed and keeping your promise to bringing the Covid 19 vaccine to us in less than a year. Thank you for your never-ending attempts at bringing peace to the Middle East and your support for Israel. Thank you for your Tax relief, and thank you for our energy independence.

Most of all though...THANK YOU for taking a damn rotten job that you never had to take!!

Thank you for caring enough for this country to want to try and make a difference. Thank you for showing America how little Career Politicians actually work for their constituents; and for showing us how much those politicians despise you for showing America how easy it is to build a great nation, rather than rape her to line their own pockets and stock portfolios.

Thank you for allowing us to experience a President that wasn’t a lifelong politician, but a lifelong American.

THANK YOU MR PRESIDENT... YOU DID YOUR BEST…"

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RELATED STORY 

President Donald Trump Makes A Statement Following the Death of Rush Limbaugh

President Donald Trump issued statement on Wednesday, saying, "The great Rush Limbaugh has passed away to a better place, free from physical pain and hostility."

"His honor, courage, strength, and loyalty will never be replaced a patriot, a defender of liberty and someone who believed in all of the greatness our country stands for.

"Rush was a friend to myself and millions of Americans — a guiding light with the ability to see the truth and paint vivid pictures over the airwaves," Trump continued. "Melania and I express our deepest condolences to his wonderful wife, Kathryn, his family, and all of his dedicated fans. He will be missed greatly."

Calling into Fox News on Wednesday, Trump said he last spoke with Limbaugh three or four days ago. "He was very, very sick … He was fighting until the very end. He was a fighter," Trump said.

 By Tyler Olson | Fox News

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh gestures as he makes remarks at the National Association of Broadcasters October 2, 2003 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images) - Limbaugh was known as the conservative talk radio pioneer.

Kathryn Limbaugh says Rush will 'forever be the greatest of all time' in a message to listeners.

Kathryn Limbaugh, the wife of conservative talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh, announced his death Wednesday on his radio show to his millions of listeners. 

Limbaugh died Wednesday at 70 years old from complications of lung cancer. He first learned of his cancer diagnosis in Jan. 2020. Former President Donald Trump awarded the radio host the Presidential Medal of Freedom shortly thereafter during his State of the Union Address. 

"I, like you, very much wish Rush was behind this golden microphone right now welcoming you to another exceptional three hours of broadcasting," Limbaugh's wife, Kathryn, said on his show Wednesday. "For over 32 years, Rush has cherished you, his loyal audience, and always looked forward to every single show. It is with profound sadness I must share with you directly that our beloved Rush, my wonderful husband, passed away this morning due to complications from lung cancer." 

"As so many of you know, losing a loved one is terribly difficult. Even more so when that loved one is larger than life. Rush will forever be the greatest of all time," she continued. "Rush was an extraordinary man. A gentle giant. Brilliant, quick-witted, genuinely kind, extremely generous, passionate, courageous, and the hardest-working person I know."

In December, Limbaugh opened up his final broadcast of 2020 by thanking his listeners and supporters for supporting him throughout his career and his health struggle. 

"My point in all of this today is gratitude," he said at the time. "My point in all of this is to say thanks and tell everybody involved how much I love you from the bottom of a sizable and growing and still-beating heart."

Limbaugh was known for his bellicose and blustering on-air persona, but he's been widely praised for his kindness to others when not behind a microphone, including by his wife Wednesday

"Despite being one of the most recognized, powerful people in the world, Rush never let the success change his core or beliefs," Kathryn Limbaugh said. "He was polite and respectful to everyone he met. Even most recently when he was not feeling well in the hospital, he was so appreciative to every single doctor and nurse and custodian."

Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/wife-statement-rush-limbaugh-dead

 By The Editorial Board | The Wall Street Journal

Electric Utility trucks are parked in front of the Oncor facility in preparation of power outages due to weather, Fort Worth, Texas, Feb. 16. - PHOTO: RALPH LAUER/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

How bad energy policy led to rolling blackouts in the freezing Lone Star State.

Why are millions of Americans in the nation’s most energy-rich state without power and heat for days amid extreme winter weather? “The people who have fallen short with regard to the power are the private power generation companies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott explained. Ah, yes, blame private power companies . . . that are regulated by government.

The Republican sounds like California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who lambasted private utilities for rolling blackouts during a heat wave last summer. Power grids should be able to withstand extreme weather. But in both these bellwether states, state and federal energy policies have created market distortions and reduced grid reliability.

Mr. Abbott blamed his state’s extensive power outages on generators freezing early Monday morning, noting “this includes the natural gas & coal generators.” But frigid temperatures and icy conditions have descended on most of the country. Why couldn’t Texas handle them while other states did?

The problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%. Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday warned of rolling blackouts. Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity—which half of households rely on for heating—even as many families powered up their gas furnaces. Then some gas wells and pipelines froze.

In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid. Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply. When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up.

But politicians don’t care about grid reliability until the power goes out. And for three decades politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables that have made the grid less stable.

Start with the 1992 Energy Policy Act signed by George H.W. Bush, which created a production tax credit to boost the infant wind industry. Generators collect up to $25 per megawatt hour of power they produce regardless of market demand. The credit was supposed to expire in 1999, but nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program, as Ronald Reagan once quipped.

The renewables lobby found GOP allies in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa. Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, who had made a big bet on wind, begged then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1998 to lobby Congress to extend the credit for five years. Congress has since extended it more than a dozen times, most recently in December.

Wind producers persuaded former Gov. Rick Perry to back a $5 billion network of transmission lines to connect turbines in western Texas to cities. This enabled them to build more turbines—and collect more tax credits. Because the Texas grid is often oversupplied, wind producers sometimes pay to off-load their power, though they still turn a profit with the tax credits.

Coal and nuclear are more strictly regulated and can’t compete, and many coal plants have shut down in Texas and elsewhere. Over the last decade about 100 gigawatts of coal power nationwide has been retired—enough to power 60 million homes. Many nuclear plants are scheduled to shut down, including large reactors in New York and Illinois this year.

Renewables and natural gas are expected to substitute, but Texas is showing their limitations. In the Lone Star State, bad weather has constrained the supply of gas, but government policies do the same in other states. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy have blocked pipelines to deliver shale gas from Pennsylvania to the Northeast.

Their pipeline blockade has driven up the cost of electricity. The average retail price of power is about 50% higher in New Jersey and New York than in Pennsylvania. They and other governors have also poured subsidies into wind and solar, though neither can provide reliable power in frosty weather.

Many states also have renewable mandates that will force more fossil-fuel generators to shut down. New York has required that renewables account for 70% of state power by 2030. Then layer on Democratic policies at the federal level that limit fossil-fuel production and distribution.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is supposed to ensure grid reliability, but under Barack Obama it promoted renewables over reliability. Democrats opposed efforts by Trump appointees to mitigate market distortions caused by state renewable subsidies and mandates that jeopardized the grid. On present trend, this week’s Texas fiasco is coming soon to a cold winter or hot summer near you.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-making-of-a-texas-power-outage-11613518653?mod=itp_wsj&yptr=yahoo

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RELATED ARTICLE

A Deep Green Freeze

By The Editorial Board | The Wall Street Journal

Oil rigs are seen in a icy landscape near Interstate 20 in Odessa,Texas, Feb. 12. - PHOTO: JACOB FORD/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Power shortages show the folly of eliminating natural gas—and coal.

Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines. Herein is the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, the more we need them.

A mix of ice and snow swept across the country this weekend as temperatures plunged below zero in the upper Midwest and into the teens in Houston. Cold snaps happen—the U.S. also experienced a Polar Vortex in 2019—as do heat waves. Yet the power grid is becoming less reliable due to growing reliance on wind and solar, which can’t provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

While Texas is normally awash in gas and oil, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s wholesale power market, urged residents this weekend to conserve power to avoid power outages. Regulators rationed gas for commercial and industrial uses to ensure fuel for power plants and household heating.

Texas’s energy emergency could last all week as the weather is forecast to remain frigid. “My understanding is, the wind turbines are all frozen,” Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said Friday. “We are working already to try and ensure we have enough power but it’s taken a lot of coordination.”

Blame a perfect storm of bad government policies, timing and weather. Coal and nuclear are the most reliable sources of power. But competition from heavily subsidized wind power and inexpensive natural gas, combined with stricter emissions regulation, has caused coal’s share of Texas’s electricity to plunge by more than half in a decade to 18%.

Wind’s share has tripled to about 25% since 2010 and accounted for 42% of power last week before the freeze set in. About half of Texans rely on electric pumps for heating, which liberals want to mandate everywhere. But the pumps use a lot of power in frigid weather. So while wind turbines were freezing, demand for power was surging.

Gas-fired power plants ramped up, but the Arctic freeze increased demand for gas across the country. Producers couldn’t easily increase supply since a third of rigs across the country were taken out of production during the pandemic amid lower energy demand. Some gas wells and pipelines in Texas and Oklahoma also shut down in frosty conditions.

Enormous new demand coupled with constrained supply caused natural gas spot prices to spike to nearly $600 per million British thermal units in the central U.S. from about $3 a couple weeks ago. Future wholesale power prices in Texas for early this week soared to $9,000 per megawatt hour from a seasonal average of $25.

Prices jumped in the Midwest too, though less dramatically because there are more coal and nuclear plants. Illinois and Michigan have more gas storage than Texas, which exports much of its shale gas to other states and, increasingly, around the world in liquefied form.

Europe and Asia are also importing more fossil fuels for heat and power this winter. U.S. LNG exports increased 25% year-over-year in December while prices tripled in northern Asian spot markets and doubled in Europe. Germany’s public broadcasting recently reported that “Germany’s green energies strained by winter.” The report noted that power is “currently coming mainly from coal, and the power plants in Lausitz” are now “running at full capacity.”

Coal still accounts for 60% of China’s energy, and imports tripled in December. China has some 250 gigawatts of coal-fired plants under development, enough to power all of Germany. Unlike Democrats in the U.S., Chinese leaders understand that fossil fuels are needed to support intermittent renewables. “Power shortages and incredibly high spot gas prices this winter are reminding governments, businesses and consumers of the importance of coal,” a Wood Mackenzie consultant told Reuters recently.

California progressives long ago banished coal. But a heat wave last summer strained the state’s power grid as wind flagged and solar ebbed in the evenings. After imposing rolling blackouts, grid regulators resorted to importing coal power from Utah and running diesel emergency generators.

Liberals claim that prices of renewables and fossil fuels are now comparable, which may be true due to subsidies, but they are no free lunch, as this week’s energy emergency shows. The Biden Administration’s plan to banish fossil fuels is a greater existential threat to Americans than climate change.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deep-green-freeze-11613411002?mod=trending_now_opn_2