1) Democrats Overwhelmingly Vote For Biden’s Raid On Worker Pensions
Last week we learned of Biden’s Department of Labor rules that would allow environmental extremists to divert hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ pension savings into green energy programs to combat climate change. This is a clear violation of the fiduciary duty of pension managers not to put politics over the financial security of retirement savings.
The good news: HJ Res30 to end this pension raid passed the House and Senate – narrowly - earlier this week - and is now headed to Biden’s desk for signature. This would restore the Trump rule – which was: keep your paws off our pensions. (We have mentioned that the ESG funds severely underperformed in returns last year because of divesting in the hottest stocks of all – oil and gas companies like Chevron.)
Kudos to the only three Democrats in Congress who have any sense: Jared Golden of Maine in the House and Joe Manchin and Jon Tester in the Senate.
The bad news: Biden has said he will veto the bill. This would be Biden’s first veto.
In other words, he is putting the interests of his radical green agitators over the retirement security of blue-collar workers. Whatever happened to “Lunch Bucket Joe?”
2) The Most Expensive Public Policy Flop In American History
This headline from the A.P. calls into question whether the nearly $100 billion the U.S. government has spent on climate change has made one iota of difference in reducing greenhouse gases:
NEW YORK (AP) — Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.
Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)
Thursday’s report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists…”
“Disconcerting?” That’s putting it lightly. We are the furthest thing from being climate change alarmists, but when you spend $100 billion of taxpayer money and achieve ABSOLUTELY NOTHING – Biden and his green allies should be arrested for criminal fraud.
Where did all the money go? We can answer our own questions. Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of leftwing environmental and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but NO results. Is this the greatest rip-off of American taxpayers in history?
We’ve shouted from the rafters 100 times that the U.S. is NOT the problem – China is. All we are accomplishing is knee-capping our own domestic energy industry while the rest of the world consumes more fossil fuels than ever before – but not produced in Texas or North Dakota but by Russia, Iran, and OPEC.
Now Biden’s budget calls for $500 billion MORE for climate change over the next decade. Talk about throwing good money after bad.
If Republicans are smart – a big IF – they will not appropriate one penny more for this epic public policy flop.
3) Oh, So NOW Biden Says He Wants To Investigate Stolen COVID Dollars
And then there is the OTHER fraud of the century under Biden: the hundreds of billions scammed from Covid relief programs.
For two years, we’ve been screaming about this too. When Steve Moore testified in front of a House panel last year about the $150 billion price tag of stolen money, Democrats on the panel arrogantly justified the theft by saying: “When you spend a lot of money really quickly as we did during Covid, there’s going to be a lot of fraud.”
But now – more than TWO YEARS into his presidency, the raid on tax dollars has become such a public relations catastrophe for Biden and Congress that FINALLY, the President has decided to act. He is to fraud prevention what Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was to putting criminals in jail.
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration announced a series of measures Thursday to track down and punish fraudsters who scammed billions of taxpayer dollars that were supposed to provide relief to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden is pledging $1.6 billion to bolster law enforcement manpower and new programs that will be used to prosecute scammers, prevent fraud, and provide assistance to victims of identity theft.
“We want to not only capture them and get their funds, we want to send a signal to them that you can run, but you cannot hide,” said Gene Sperling, a Biden senior adviser who is overseeing the implementation of the COVID-relief plan.
What do you think? Should we laugh or cry? Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
Here’s our prediction: this program will have as much success as Biden has had reducing carbon emissions.
Our friend and co-founder Larry Kudlow’s nightly Fox Business show has again captured the crown for most-watched business show. He’s number one on all of cable TV!
Larry’s program has seen a 50% advantage in total viewers over CNBC, its closest competitor, for 17 straight months, drawing an average audience of 300,000 nightly.
5) Was Britain's Health Minister During COVID Another Andrew Cuomo?
In yesterday’s HOTLINE, we highlighted how Dr. Marty Makary, the Johns Hopkins professor who heads Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s medical advisory board, told a House committee that the U.S. government was the “greatest perpetrator of misinformation” during COVID.
Sadly, this was a global government cover-up of the truth.
Take Britain. The Daily Telegraph has leaked 100,000 WhatsApp messages from former Health Minister Matt Hancock’s mobile phone during the pandemic. They reveal that Sir Chris Whitty, Britain’s top science advisor, had recommended COVID testing for anyone going into nursing homes.
But Hancock didn't follow the guidance, claiming that it 'muddies the waters' and didn’t “add anything” to existing rules only testing patients entering homes from hospitals. His decision to allow hospital patients to be discharged at all into nursing homes became what the Telegraph called “the defining factor behind the huge death toll in the sector.” A court ruled last year that Hancock’s actions had been unlawful.
Professor Karol Sikora, an oncologist who opposed the British government’s lockdown policies, tweeted:
Hancock was forced to resign his position as Health Minister midway through the pandemic after he hypocritically breached lockdown distancing rules by having an affair with his married top aide. He has since written a lucrative memoir defending his actions during COVID.
But in reality, Hancock acted a lot like disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who wrote a book portraying himself as a COVID hero and selectively quoting government records that cast him in a good light.
New Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has spent $110 million so far on a COVID inquiry into what went wrong, but it hasn’t heard yet from a single government minister. There are fears that its final report may take years to see the light of day - when everyone involved is safely out of office.
This chart shows Hancock's policies appeared to drive not only high COVID deaths in nursing homes but also high non-COVID deaths in nursing homes – perhaps because the lockdown limited beneficial social contact from families and friends. As an alternative to lockdown, the recommended testing Hancock rejected could have reduced both.
