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Home | Wire | Abolish Seditious Conspiracy Laws

Abolish Seditious Conspiracy Laws

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4 COMMENTS

TAGS U.S. History

12/02/2022Ryan McMaken

On Tuesday, a District of Columbia jury convicted Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs of seditious conspiracy in relation to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol building. Three other defendants were acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of other felonies. Convictions of seditious conspiracy represent a political victory—not just a legal one—for those who have long insisted that the January 6 riot was no mere riot, but an organized armed rebellion of some sort. This claim has been key in the administration’s ongoing vague claim that “democracy”—however defined—is somehow “at risk.”

Yet, few of the legal proceedings arising out of the Justice Department’s prosecutions of rioters have done much to forward this narrative. Out of the approximately 850 people charged with crimes of various sorts, only a small number have been charged with anything close to treason or violent insurrection. Specifically, the closest the Justice Department has come is the charge of “seditious conspiracy” applied to 11 defendants total. So far, only 2 have been convicted of the charge. 

Seditious conspiracy must not be confused with the act of treason legally defined in the US Constitution, however. Generally speaking, while treason requires an overt act of some kind, seditious conspiracy is a charge that a person has said things designed to undermine government authority. In other words, it is a “crime” of intent as interpreted by state authorities. This is fundamentally different from picking up a weapon and using it against agents of a government. 

Of course, as we’ve noted here at mises.org before, the very idea of treason is itself problematic since it assumes that violence against a government agent is somehow worse than a crime against a private citizen. Governments love this double standard because it reinforces the idea that the regime is more important than the voluntary private sector. Ultimately, however, violence against a person or property should be prosecuted as exactly that, and not as some separate category of crime against the “special” human beings who work for a regime. 

Seditious conspiracy suffers from this same problem but is even more problematic because it relies primarily on circumstantial evidence to “prove” that a person was saying things in favor of obstructing or overthrowing a government. Indeed, the supposed necessity of such a “crime” is belied by the fact that so such crime even existed in federal law between the repeal of the hated Alien and Sedition Acts, and the advent of the Civil War. Nor did seditious conspiracy laws play an important role in the US regime’s military success against the secessionists in the Southern Confederacy. 

Instead, what we find is that seditious conspiracy is a crime that is both prone to abuse by state authorities and is unnecessary in terms of preventing violence to life and property. In cases such as the January 6 riot, crimes against persons and property ought to simply be considered violent crimes and property crimes of the usual sort. Contrary to absurd romantic notions that the January 6 rioters struck some sort of blow against “democracy” the fact is that any disruptions against Congressional proceedings can be addressed as assault, trespassing, and other related crimes. Seditious conspiracy, in contrast is merely a type of “thoughtcrime.”

The Origins of Seditious Conspiracy 

When the framers of the United States constitution wrote the document’s text, they defined treason in very specific and limiting terms: 

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Note the use of the word “only” to specify that the definition of treason shall not be construed as something more broad than what is in the text. As with much of what we now find in the Bill of Rights, this text stems from fears that the US federal government would indulge in some of the same abuses that had occurred under the English crown, especially in the days of the Stuart monarchs. Kings had often construed “treason” to mean acts, thoughts, and “conspiracies” far beyond the act of actually taking up arms against the state. Instead, in the US constitution, the only flexibility given to congress is in determining the punishment for treason. 

Naturally, those who favored greater federal power chafed at these limitations and sought more federal laws that would punish alleged crimes against the state. It only took the Federalists ten years to come up with the Alien and Sedition Acts which stated:

That if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty, and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor

Note the references to “intent,” “counsel,” and “advise” as criminal acts so long as these types of speech are employed in a presumed effort to obstruct government officials. This part of the Act however, was never used by the regime. Those prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts were charged under the section on seditious libel which were heartily opposed for being obviously and blatantly against basic rights of free expression. Nonetheless, the Sedition Act was allowed to expire thanks to the election of Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans (later known as Democrats). 

For sixty years, the United States government had no laws addressing sedition on the books. But the heart of the 1798 Sedition Act would be revived. As passed on July 1861, the new Seditious Conspiracy statute stated

That if two or more persons within any State or Territory of the United States shall conspire together to overthrow, or to put down, or to destroy by force, the Government of the United States, or to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States; or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States; or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States against the will or contrary to the authority of the United States; or by force, or intimidation, or threat to prevent any person from accepting or holding any office, or trust, or place of confidence, under the United States . . . shall be guilty of a high crime

Given the timing of the legislation—i.e., in 1861 following the secession of several southern states—it is assumed the origins of the legislation at the time was in addressing alleged Confederate treason. This is not quite the case. Indeed, the legislation enjoyed considerable support from those who were especially militant in their opposition to the confederacy. For example, Rep. Clement Vallandigham of Ohio—who would later be exiled to the Confederacy for opposing the war—supported the bill precisely because he thought it would help in punishing those engaged in “conspiracies to resist the fugitive slave law.” Indeed, the Congress had initially become serious about punishing “conspiracies” not in response to southern secession, but in response to John Brown’s 1859 raid in Harper’s Ferry.1

Southern secession and fears of rebellion helped enlarge the coalition in favor of a new sedition law. The new sedition law represented a significant expansion of the idea of “crimes against the state” in that the sedition law did not require overt acts against the government, but merely “conspiring” vaguely defined. Douglas understood this perfectly well, explaining the benefits of his bill as such:

You must punish the conspiracy, the combination with intent to do the act, and then you will suppress it in advance. There is no principle more familiar to the legal profession than that whenever it is proper to declare an act to be a crime, it is proper to punish a conspiracy or combination with intent to perpetrate the act. . . . If it be unlawful and illegal to invade a State, and run off fugitive slaves [for example] why not make it unlawful to form conspiracies and combinations several States with intent to do the act?

Others were more suspicious of expanding federal power in this way, however. Sen. Lazarus Powell and eight other Democrats presented a statement opposing the passage of the bill.2 Specifically, Powell and his allies believed the new seditious conspiracy law would be a de facto move in the direction of allowing the federal government to effectively expand the definition of treason offered by the federal constitution. The statement read: 

the creation of an offense, resting in intention alone, without overt act, would render nugatory the provision last quoted, [i.e. the treason definition in the Constitution] and the door would be opened for those similar oppressions and cruelties which, under the excitement of political struggles, have so often disgraced the past history of the world.

Even worse, the new legislation would provide to the federal government “the utmost latitude to prosecutions founded on personal enmity and political animosity and the suspicions as to intention which they inevitably engender.” 

Seditious conspiracy legislation gives the federal government far greater leeway to punish political opponents. Certainly, such legislation could have indeed been used against opponents of the fugitive slave acts, as well as against opponents of federal conscription. After all, opponents of both the Civil War draft and the Vietnam War draft—as with the heroic draft-card burnings of the Catonsville Nine, for example—”conspired” to destroy government property. It would be far harder to prove in court that such acts constituted treason. Unfortunately, the new legislation was ultimately approved in 1861, and the United States government had its first permanent laws against seditious conspiracy. 

We now have the same reasons to fear seditious conspiracy laws as Powell did in 1861. Such measures allow the federal government to construct laws addressing intent, thoughts, and words, rather than overt acts. This greatly expands federal power and allows for prosecution of mere inflammatory rhetoric against the federal government. Indeed, prior to his conviction this week, Rhodes’s attorneys reminded jurors that Rhodes never even entered the capital on January 6. They also noted that Rhodes had expressed verbal opposition to entering the capital. Yet, he was apparently convicted because “conspiracy” can encompass so many acts, especially in the minds of jurors. 

A common-sense foundation for addressing violence in the Capitol building, however, would be to simply prosecute those who engage in actual violence and trespass. It is clear, however, that gaining convictions for seditious conspiracy has been an important goal for the administration because it assists in the narrative that Donald Trump’s supporters attempted some sort of coup. Unfortunately, These sorts of political prosecutions are just the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the Justice Deptrtment. While the FBI can’t be bothered with investigating sex criminals such as Larry Nassar, they’ll pull out all the stops to prosecute hundreds of those who entered the Capitol on January 6, many of whom simply stood around gawking at the scenery. But when Congress gives the FBI a near carte blanche as it has done with seditious conspiracy laws, we should expect as much.

• 1.Catherine M. Tarrant, “To ‘Insure Domestic Tranquility’: Congress and the Law of Seditious Conspiracy, 1859-1861,” The American Journal of Legal History 15, no. 2 (April 1971): 112, 119. 
• 2.Ibid., p. 119.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Instit

No. n-‘bto
Supreme Court, U.S
FILED In The
OCT 2 a 2022
Supreme Court ofthe United States OFFICE OF THE Cl Fax-
♦
RALAND J BRUNSON,
Petitioner,
v.
ALMA S. ADAMS, et, al.,
Respondents.
♦
On Petition for Writ of Certiorari
To The United States Court Of Appeals
For The Tenth Circuit
♦
PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
Raland J Brunson

Petitioner in pro se
RECEIVED
OCT 2 k 2022
OFFICE OF THE CLERK
SUPREME COURT. U.S.
1
QUESTIONS PRESENTED
A serious conflict exists between decisions rendered from
this Court and lower appeal courts, along with
constitutional provisions and statutes, in deciding whether
or not the trial court has jurisdiction to try the merits of
this case.
This case uncovers a serious national security breach that
is unique and is of first impression, and due to the serious
nature of this case it involves the possible removal of a
sitting President and Vice President of the United States
along with members of the United States Congress, while
deeming them unfit from ever holding office under Federal,
State, County or local Governments found within the
United States of America, and at the same time the trial
court also has the authority, to be validated by this Court,
to authorize the swearing in of the legal and rightful heirs
for President and Vice President of the United States.
In addition there are two doctrines that conflict with each
other found in this case affecting every court in this
country. These doctrines are known as the doctrine of
equitable maxim and the doctrine of the object principle of
justice. Equitable maxim created by this court, which the
lower court used to dismiss this case, sets in direct violation
of the object principle of justice also partially created by
this Court and supported by other appeal courts and
constitutional provisions.
These conflicts call for the supervisory power of this Court
to resolve these conflicts, which has not, but should be,
settled by this Court without delay.
11
PARTIES TO THE PROCEEDING
Petitioner Raland J Brunson is an individual representing
himself and is a Plaintiff in the trial court.
The following 388 Respondents are a party to this action as
defendants in the trial court:
Named persons in their capacities as United States House
Representatives: ALMA S. ADAMS; PETE AGUILAR;
COLIN Z. ALLRED; MARK E. AMODEI; KELLY
ARMSTRONG; JAKE AUCHINCLOSS; CYNTHIA AXNE;
DON BACON; TROY BALDERSON; ANDY BARR;
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN; KAREN BASS; JOYCE
BEATTY; AMI BERA; DONALD S. BEYER JR.; GUS M.
ILIRAKIS; SANFORD D. BISHOP JR.; EARL
BLUMENAUER; LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER; SUZANNE
BONAMICI; CAROLYN BOURDEAUX; JAMAAL
BOWMAN; BRENDAN F. BOYLE; KEVIN BRADY;
ANTHONY G. BROWN; JULIA BROWNLEY; VERN
BUCHANAN; KEN BUCK; LARRY BUCSHON; CORI
BUSH; CHERI BUSTOS; G. K. BUTTERFIELD; SALUD

0. CARBAJAL; TONY CARDENAS; ANDRE CARSON;
   MATT CARTWRIGHT; ED CASE; SEAN CASTEN;
   KATHY CASTOR; JOAQUIN CASTRO; LIZ CHENEY;
   JUDY CHU; DAVID N. CICILLINE; KATHERINE M.
   CLARK; YVETTE D. CLARKE; EMANUEL CLEAVER;
   JAMES E. CLYBURN; STEVE COHEN; JAMES COMER;
   GERALD E. CONNOLLY; JIM COOPER; J. LUIS
   CORREA; JIM COSTA; JOE COURTNEY; ANGIE CRAIG;
   DAN CRENSHAW; CHARLIE CRIST; JASON CROW;
   HENRY CUELLAR; JOHN R. CURTIS; SHARICE
   DAVIDS; DANNY K. DAVIS; RODNEY DAVIS;
   MADELEINE DEAN; PETER A. DEFAZIO; DIANA
   DEGETTE; ROSAL DELAURO; SUZAN K. DELBENE;
   Ill
   ANTONIO DELGADO; VAL BUTLER DEMINGS; MARK
   DESAULNIER; THEODORE E. DEUTCH; DEBBIE
   DINGELL; LLOYD DOGGETT; MICHAEL F. DOYLE;
   TOM EMMER; VERONICA ESCOBAR; ANNA G. ESHOO;
   ADRIANO ESPAILLAT; DWIGHT EVANS; RANDY
   FEENSTRA; A. DREW FERGUSON IV; BRIAN K.
   FITZPATRICK; LIZZIE LETCHER; JEFF
   FORTENBERRY; BILL FOSTER; LOIS FRANKEL;
   MARCIA L. FUDGE; MIKE GALLAGHER; RUBEN
   GALLEGO; JOHN GARAMENDI; ANDREW R.
   GARBARINO; SYLVIA R. GARCIA; JESUS G. GARCIA;
   JARED F. GOLDEN; JIMMY GOMEZ; TONY GONZALES;
   ANTHONY GONZALEZ; VICENTE GONZALEZ; JOSH
   GOTTHEIMER; KAY GRANGER; AL GREEN; RAUL M.
   GRIJALVA; GLENN GROTHMAN; BRETT GUTHRIE;
   DEBRA A. HAALAND; JOSH HARDER; ALCEE L.
   HASTINGS; JAHANA HAYES; JAIME HERRERA
   BEUTLER; BRIAN HIGGINS; J. FRENCH HILL; JAMES
   A. HIMES; ASHLEY HINSON; TREY HOLLINGSWORTH;
   STEVEN HORSFORD; CHRISSY HOULAHAN; STENY H.
   HOYER; JARED HUFFMAN; BILL HUIZENGA; SHEILA
   JACKSON LEE; SARA JACOBS; PRAMILA JAYAPAL;
   HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES; DUSTY JOHNSON; EDDIE
   BERNICE JOHNSON; HENRY C. JOHNSON JR.;
   MONDAIRE JONES; DAVID P. JOYCE; KAIALPI
   KAHELE; MARCY KAPTUR; JOHN KATKO; WILLIAM R.
   KEATING; RO KHANNA; DANIEL T. KILDEE; DEREK
   KILMER; ANDY KIM; YOUNG KIM; RON KIND; ADAM
   KINZINGER; ANN KIRKPATRICK; RAJA
   KRISHNAMOORTHI; ANN M. KUSTER; DARIN
   LAHOOD; CONOR LAMB; JAMES R. LANGEVIN; RICK
   LARSEN; JOHN B. LARSON; ROBERT E. LATTA; JAKE
   LATURNER; BRENDA L. LAWRENCE; AL LAWSON JR.;
   BARBARA LEE; SUSIE LEE; TERESA LEGER
   FERNANDEZ; ANDY LEVIN; MIKE LEVIN; TED LIEU;
   IV
   ZOE LOFGREN; ALAN S.LOWENTHAL; ELAINE G.
   LURIA; STEPHEN F. LYNCH; NANCY MACE; TOM
   MALINOWSKI; CAROLYN B. MALONEY; SEAN
   PATRICK MALONEY; KATHY E. MANNING; THOMAS
   MASSIE; DORIS 0. MATSUI; LUCY MCBATH; MICHAEL
   T. MCCAUL; TOM MCCLINTOCK; BETTY MCCOLLUM;
   A. ADONALD MCEACHIN; JAMES P. MCGOVERN;
   PATRICK T. MCHENRY; DAVID B. MCKINLEY; JERRY
   MCNERNEY; GREGORY W. MEEKS; PETER MEIJER;
   GRACE MENG; KWEISI MFUME; MARIANNETTE
   MILLER-MEEKS; JOHN R. MOOLENAAR; BLAKE D.
   MOORE; GWEN MOORE; JOSEPH D. MORELLE;
   SETH MOULTON; FRANK J. MRVAN; STEPHANIE N.
   MURPHY; JERROLD NADLER; GRACE F.
   NAPOLITANO; RICHARD E. NEAL; JOE NEGUSE; DAN
   NEWHOUSE; MARIE NEWMAN; DONALD NORCROSS;
   ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ; TOM O’HALLERAN;
   ILHAN OMAR; FRANK PALLONE JR.; JIMMY
   PANETTA; CHRIS PAPPAS; BILL PASCRELL JR.;
   DONALD M. PAYNE JR.; NANCY PELOSI; ED
   PERLMUTTER; SCOTT H. PETERS; DEAN PHILLIPS;
   CHELLIE PINGREE; MARK POCAN; KATIE PORTER;
   AYANNA PRESSLEY; DAVID E. PRICE; MIKE
   QUIGLEY; JAMIE RASKIN; TOM REED; KATHLEEN M.
   RICE; CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS; DEBORAH K.
   ROSS; CHIP ROY; LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD; RAUL
   RUIZ; C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER; BOBBY L.
   RUSH; TIM RYAN; LINDA T. SANCHEZ; JOHN P.
   SARBANES; MARY GAY SCANLON; JANICE D.
   SCHAKOWSKY; ADAM B. SCHIFF; BRADLEY SCOTT
   SCHNEIDER; KURT SCHRADER; KIM SCHRIER;
   AUSTIN SCOTT; DAVID SCOTT; ROBERT C. SCOTT;
   TERRI A. SEWELL; BRAD SHERMAN; MIKIE
   SHERRILL; MICHAEL K. SIMPSON; ALBIO SIRES;
   ELISSA SLOTKIN; ADAM SMITH; CHRISTOPHER H.
   V
   SMITH; DARREN SOTO; ABIGAIL DAVIS
   SPANBERGER; VICTORIA SPARTZ; JACKIE SPEIER;
   GREG STANTON; PETE STAUBER; MICHELLE STEEL;
   BRYAN STEIL; HALEY M. STEVENS; STEVE STIVERS;
   MARILYN STRICKLAND; THOMAS R. SUOZZI; ERIC
   SWALWELL; MARK TAKANO; VAN TAYLOR; BENNIE
   G. THOMPSON; MIKE THOMPSON; DINA TITUS;
   RASHIDA TLAIB; PAUL TONKO; NORMA J. TORRES;
   RITCHIE TORRES; LORI TRAHAN; DAVID J. TRONE;
   MICHAEL R. TURNER; LAUREN UNDERWOOD; FRED
   UPTON; JUAN VARGAS; MARC A. VEASEY; FILEMON
   VELA; NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ; ANN WAGNER;
   MICHAEL WALTZ; DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ;
   MAXINE WATERS; BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN;
   PETER WELCH; BRAD R. WENSTRUP; BRUCE
   WESTERMAN; JENNIFER WEXTON; SUSAN WILD;
   NIKEMA WILLIAMS; FREDERICA S. WILSON; STEVE
   WOMACK; JOHN A. YARMUTH; DON YOUNG; the
   following persons named are for their capacities as U.S.
   Senators; TAMMY BALDWIN; JOHN BARRASSO;
   MICHAEL F. BENNET; MARSHA BLACKBURN;
   RICHARD BLUMENTHAL; ROY BLUNT; CORY A.
   BOOKER; JOHN BOOZMAN; MIKE BRAUN; SHERROD
   BROWN; RICHARD BURR; MARIA CANTWELL;
   SHELLEY CAPITO; BENJAMIN L. CARDIN; THOMAS R.
   CARPER; ROBERT P. CASEY JR.; BILL CASSIDY;
   SUSAN M. COLLINS; CHRISTOPHER A. COONS; JOHN
   CORNYN; CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO; TOM
   COTTON; KEVIN CRAMER; MIKE CRAPO; STEVE
   DAINES; TAMMY DUCKWORTH; RICHARD J. DURBIN;
   JONI ERNST; DIANNE FEINSTEIN; DEB FISCHER;
   KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND; LINDSEY GRAHAM; CHUCK
   GRASSLEY; BILL HAGERTY; MAGGIE HASSAN;
   MARTIN HEINRICH; JOHN HICKENLOOPER; MAZIE
   HIRONO; JOHN HOEVEN; JAMES INHOFE; RON
   VI
   JOHNSON; TIM KAINE; MARK KELLY; ANGUS S.
   KING, JR.; AMY KLOBUCHAR; JAMES LANKFORD;
   PATRICK LEAHY; MIKE LEE; BEN LUJAN; CYNTHIA
   M. LUMMIS; JOE MANCHIN III; EDWARD J. MARKEY;
   MITCH MCCONNELL; ROBERT MENENDEZ; JEFF
   MERKLEY; JERRY MORAN; LISA MURKOWSKI;
   CHRISTOPHER MURPHY; PATTY MURRAY; JON
   OSSOFF; ALEX PADILLA; RAND PAUL; GARY C.
   PETERS; ROB PORTMAN; JACK REED; JAMES E.
   RISCH; MITT ROMNEY; JACKY ROSEN; MIKE
   ROUNDS; MARCO RUBIO; BERNARD SANDERS; BEN
   SASSE; BRIAN SCHATZ; CHARLES E. SCHUMER; RICK
   SCOTT; TIM SCOTT; JEANNE SHAHEEN; RICHARD C.
   SHELBY; KYRSTEN SINEMA; TINA SMITH;
   DEBBIE STABENOW; DAN SULLIVAN; JON TESTER;
   JOHN THUNE; THOM TILLIS; PATRICK J. TOOMEY;
   HOLLEN VAN; MARK R. WARNER; RAPHAEL G.
   WARNOCK; ELIZABETH WARREN; SHELDON
   WHITEHOUSE; ROGER F. WICKER; RON WYDEN;
   TODD YOUNG; JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR in his
   capacity of President of the United States; MICHAEL
   RICHARD PENCE in his capacity as former Vice President
   of the United States, and KAMALA HARRIS in her
   capacity as Vice President of the United States and JOHN
   and JANE DOES 1-100.
   Vll
   TABLE OF CONTENTS
   Page
   QUESTIONS PRESENTED…………
   PARTIES TO THE PROCEEDING
   1
   11
   TABLE OF CONTENTS Vll
   TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Vlll
   LIST OF PROCEEDINGS 1
   JURISDICTION 1
   SUPREME COURT RULE 14(F) PROVISIONS
   STATEMENT OF THE CASE………………………. …
   REASONS FOR GRANTING THIS PETITION .
   1
   3
   8
   CONCLUSION 9
   APPENDIX
   10th CIRCIUT ORDER AND JUDGMENT ,..App. 1
   App. 11
   App. 29
   App. 30
   APPELLANT’S OPENING BRIEF
   TRIAL COURT JUDGMENT
   TRIAL COURT ADOPTING REPORT
   TRIAL COURT REPORT
   App. 35
   App. 55
   AND RECOMMENDATION
   OPPOSITION TO DISMISS
   Vlll
   TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
   Page
   U.S. CONSTITUTION
   1, 5, App. 17
   … 2, App. 15
   Amendment I……………………………………………
   Amendment IX………………………………………….
   Amendment V…………………………………………..
   Amendment XII………………………………………..
   Amendment XIV………………………………………
   Article 1 Section 11……………………………………
   Article III…………………………………………………
   Declaration of Independence – Clause 1 & II
   2
   3, App. 25
   2, App. 25
   2
   App. 14, 17, 21
   14
   UTAH CONSTITUTION
   Article I Section 3 3
   STATUTES
   18 U.S. Code § 2381.
   28 U. S. C. § 2101(e)
   28 U.S.C.A. §1257(a)
   6, App. 9
   4
   1
   CASES
   American Bush u. City Of South S, 2006 UT 40…. 5, App. 16
   Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247……………….. App. 21
   Determination OfRights To Use Of Water,
   2008 UT 25 182 P.3d 362…………………… .. App. 13
   5, App. 9
   Radioshack Corp. v. ComSmart, Inc., 222 SW 3d.. 5,App. 19
   Rector v. City and County ofDenver, 348 F. 3d 935.. App. 22
   State v. Ruiz, 2012 UT 29, 282 P.3d 998
   Morris v. House, 32 Tex. 492 (1870)
   App. 13
   RULES
   Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1)..
   Rule 11 Supreme Court
   App. 2
   1,4
   1
   LIST OF PROCEEDINGS

• Raland JBrunson v. Alma S. Adams, et al., No. 1:21-
  cv-00111-CMR, U.S. District Court for the District of
  Utah. Judgment entered February 2, 2022.
• Raland JBrunson v. Alma S. Adams, No. 22-4007,
  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
  Judgment entered October 6, 2022.
  JURISDICTION
  Jurisdiction is found under 28 U.S.C.A. §1257(a)
  “Final judgments…rendered by the highest court of
  a State…may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by
  writ of certiorari…where any…right [or] privilege…is
  specially set up or claimed under the…statutes
  of…the United States.”
  SUPREME COURT RULE 14(F) PROVISIONS
  Amendment I of the Constitution of the United States:
  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
  of religion, or prohibiting . . . the right of the people
  peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
  a redress of grievances.”
  Article VI of the Constitution. “This Constitution, and the
  Laws of the United States which shall be made Pursuance
  thereof; . . .shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the
  Judges in every State shall be bound thereby.”
  2
  Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United
  States; . . nor shall any state deprive any person of life,
  liberty, or property, without due process of law. . . nor deny
  to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
  the laws.” Section 3: “No person shall be a Senator or
  Representative in Congress, or elector of President and
  Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under
  the United States, or under any state, who, having
  previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as
  an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state
  legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any
  state, to support the Constitution of the United States,
  shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the
  same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But
  Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove
  such disability.”
  Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution: “No
  person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
  without due process of law . . .”
  Ninth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States;
  “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
  shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
  by the people.”
  Article I Section 7 of the Constitution of Utah; “No person
  shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due
  process of law.”
  Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution of Utah; “All courts
  shall be open . . .which shall be administered without
  denial or unnecessary delay; and no person shall be barred
  from prosecuting or defending before any tribunal in this
  State, by himself or counsel, any civil cause to which he is a
  party.”
  ♦
  3
  STATEMENT OF THE CASE
  This action is against 388 federal officers in their official
  capacities which include President Joseph Robinette Biden
  Jr, Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House
  Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Michael Richard
  Pence (“Respondents”). All the Respondents have taken the
  required Oath to support and defend the Constitution of the
  United States of America against all enemies, foreign and
  domestic, and as such they are liable for consequences
  when they violate the Oath of Office.
  Respondents were properly warned and were requested to
  make an investigation into a highly covert swift and
  powerful enemy, as stated below, seeking to destroy the
  Constitution and the United States,
  purposely thwarted all efforts to investigate this,
  whereupon this enemy was not checked or investigated,
  therefore the Respondents adhered to this enemy. Because
  of Respondents intentional refusal to investigate this
  enemy, Petitioner Raland J Brunson (“Brunson”) brought
  this action against Respondents because he was seriously
  personally damaged and violated by this action of
  Respondents, and consequently this action unilaterally
  violated the rights of every citizen of the U.S.A. and
  perhaps the rights of every person living, and all courts of
  law.
  Respondents
  On January 6, 2021, the 117th Congress held a proceeding
  and debate in Washington DC (“Proceeding”).
  Proceeding was for the purpose of counting votes under the
  2020 Presidential election for the President and Vice
  President of the United States under Amendment XII.
  During this Proceeding over 100 members of U.S. Congress
  claimed factual evidence that the said election was rigged.
  The refusal of the Respondents to investigate this
  congressional claim (the enemy) is an act of treason and
  This
  4
  fraud by Respondents. A successfully rigged election has
  the same end result as an act of war; to place into power
  whom the victor wants, which in this case is Biden, who, if
  not stopped immediately, will continue to destroy the
  fundamental freedoms of Brunson and all U.S. Citizens and
  courts of law.
  Due to the fact that this case represents a national security
  breach on a unprecedented level like never before seen
  seriously damaging and violating Brunson and coincidently
  effects every citizen of the U.S.A. and courts of law.
  Therefore, Brunson moves this court to grant this petition,
  or in the alternative without continuing further, order the
  trial court to grant Brunson’s complaint in its fullest.
  Brunson’s complaint is the mechanism that can
  immediately remove the Respondents from office without
  leaving this country vulnerable without a President and
  Vice President.
  Despite the grave importance of this case, the trial court
  granted Respondents motion to dismiss (“Motion”) by
  stating “IT IS ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that plaintiff
  Raland Brunson’s action is dismissed without prejudice”.
  (“Order”) This Order followed the trial court’s order to
  adopt its report and recommendation that Brunson did not
  get until close to the beginning of Oct. 2022 thus
  prejudicing Brunson from timely filing any objections, and
  the Order did not properly address Brunson’s opposition to
  the Motion. Brunson’s opposition clearly shows that
  Brunson has standing.
  Per Brunson’s opening brief and as outlined in Brunson’s
  said opposition (both not properly addressed by the lower
  courts) Brunson’s has standing and the trial court has full
  proper jurisdiction to rule on the merits of this case based
  upon the following factors:
  5
  a) The case of American Bush v. City Of South Salt Lake,
  2006 UT 40 140 P.3d. 1235 clearly states that the
  Constitution of the United States along with State
  Constitutions do not grant rights to the people. These
  instruments measure the power of the rulers but they do
  not measure the rights of the governed, and they are not
  the fountain of law nor the origin of the people’s rights, but
  they have been put in place to protect their rights.
  Therefore the statutes and case law cited by Respondents
  claiming immunity from Brunson’s claims in this instance
  are unconstitutional and this Court needs to rule in that
  manner.
  b) “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
  shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
  by the people.” Therefore, the purpose of the Constitution
  was written to protect our self evident rights.
  Constitution cannot be construed by any means, by any
  legislative, judicial and executive bodies, by any court of
  law to deny or disparage our rights. This is the supreme
  law of the land. “This Constitution, and the Laws of the
  United States which shall be made Pursuance thereof; . .
  shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in
  every State shall be bound thereby.” Article VI of the
  Constitution.
  The
  c) The First Amendment of the Constitution states that
  Congress shall make no law prohibiting the right of the
  people to petition the Government for a redress of
  grievances.
  d) “Our courts have consistently held that fraud vitiates
  whatever it touches, Morris v. House, 32 Tex. 492 (1870)”.
  Estate of Stonecipher v. Estate of Butts, 591 SW 2d 806.
  And “”It is a stern but just maxim of law that fraud vitiates
  everything into which it enters.” Veterans Service Club v.
  Sweeney. 252 S.W.2d 25. 27 (Kv.1952).” Radioshack Cory,
  v. ComSmart, Inc., 222 SW 3d 256.
  6
  Vitiate; “To impair or make void; to destroy or annul, either
  completely or partially, the force and effect of an act or
  instrument.”
  edition 2.
  West’s Encyclopedia of American Law,
  e) Due to the uniqueness of this case, the trial court does
  have proper authority to remove the Respondents from
  their offices under 18 U.S. Code § 2381 which states
  “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war
  against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid
  and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty
  of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not
  less than five years and fined under this title but not less
  than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office
  under the United States.” A court adjudicating that the
  Respondents, who have taken the Oath of Office, to be
  incapable of holding their offices or who have adhered to a
  domestic enemy, means nothing without such removal of
  office.
  Under the stated factors Brunson has an unfettered right
  to sue the Respondents under the serious nature of his
  claim, no legislation can measure Brunson’s right to sue the
  Respondents. Furthermore, Brunson’s allegations against
  Respondents’ adhering to a domestic enemy, and
  committing acts of fraud are not protected by any kind of
  legislation of jurisdictional immunity. Essentially, acts of
  Congress cannot protect fraud, nor protect the violation of
  the Oath or that give aid and comfort to enemies of the
  United States Constitution or America as alleged in
  Brunson’s complaint against the Respondents. These are
  facts that cannot be overcome, therefore, Brunson found no
  need to include in this petition a copy of Respondents’
  opposition to Brunson’s opening brief or any of their
  arguments. Nevertheless, Brunson’s opening brief does
  touch upon Respondents’ immunity arguments and shows
  7
  how Respondents do not, nor can they, overcome Brunson’s
  arguments as stated herein.
  It is an uncontestable fact that the Respondents committed
  fraud and treason breaching our national security (as
  factually alleged in Brunson’s complaint), thus adhering to
  an domestic enemy that continues to breach our national
  security at an alarming rate on a daily basis. This national
  security breach is having the same end result as an act of
  war; to place into power whom the Respondents want,
  which is Biden.
  powers, to order the trial court of this case to immediately
  grant to Brunson the damages he seeks in his complaint.
  This is necessary to immediately secure our national
  security without any further delay.
  Brunson moves this Court, with its
  Turning now to the doctrine of equitable maxim created by
  this Court, this doctrine stands in direct conflict of the
  doctrine of the object principle ofjustice.
  The doctrine of the object principle of justice is couched by
  the supreme law of the land, and sets in motion to provide
  our court system to be the most just, limited, highly
  effective and easy to understand, and infuses our court
  system to be the most highly respected and dearly admired
  court system greater than the world has ever seen. The
  doctrine of equitable maxim kills this and had the trial
  court been guided by the object principle of justice this
  appeal would not be necessary.
  In addition, the doctrine of the object principle of justice
  stops the precarious nature of our courts, their jobs would
  be much easier with less stress, and parties in court would
  have a strong sense on how the court is going to rule thus
  promoting settlements to high degree and as such, lawsuits
  and appeals would be greatly reduced. This is an absolute
  fact.
  8
  Jurisprudence requires this Court to revoke the doctrine of
  equitable maxim that it created and to instill the doctrine
  of the object principle of justice more thoroughly
  throughout the entire court system in America.
  The doctrines of equitable maxim and the object principle of
  justice are fully explained in a petition before this court
  under docket No. 18-1147. To avoid being repetitious,
  Brunson herein incorporates the argument found therein
  as though fully stated herein and moves this court to
  address the question either under this petition or docket
  No. 18-1147.
  REASONS FOR GRANTING THIS PETITION
  Brunson’s complaint alleges fraud, violations of the Oath of
  Office and touches on acts of treason committed by the
  Respondents. These serious offenses need to be addressed
  immediately with the least amount of technical nuances of
  the law and legal procedures because these offenses are
  flowing continually against Brunson’s liberties and life and
  consequently is a continual national security breach.
  Voting is the greatest power an individual can exercise in a
  Republic; it is Brunson’s personal voice and the way he can
  protect his personal constitutional protected rights and the
  U.S. Constitution. See ^ 71 of the Complaint. When the
  allegations of a rigged election came forward the
  Respondents had a duty under law to investigate it or be
  removed from office.
  An honest and fair election can only be supported by legal
  votes, this is sacred. It is the basis of our U.S. Republican
  Form of Government protected by the U.S. Constitution.
  The efforts made, as stated in the complaint, that avoided
  an investigation of how Biden won the election, is an act of
  9
  treason and an act of levying war against the U. S.
  Constitution which violated Brunson’s unfettered right to
  vote in an honest and fair election and as such it wrongfully
  invalidated his vote.
  As a national security interest, Brunson moves this court to
  be swift by going beyond granting this petition, it should
  order the lower court to grant Brunson’s complaint to avoid
  any further delay.
  CONCLUSION
  This petition is set forth in the interest of justice in
  protecting Brunson’s right to petition for a redress of
  grievances against the Respondents, and ensuring his right
  of due process against the encroachment of the doctrine of
  equitable maxim, and charging the Respondents who failed
  to investigate the allegations of a rigged election by having
  them removed from office without further delay.
  Dated: October 13, 2022
  Respectfully submitted,
  Is/ Raland JBrunson
  Raland J Brunson
  4287 South Harrison Blvd., Apt 132
  Ogden, Utah 84403
  Phone: 385-492-4898
  Petitioner in pro se

HEALTH CARE

Canada Ranks Poorly Among Countries With Universal Health Care for Number of Doctors, Hospital Beds, Wait Times: Study

MARNIE CATHCART

THE EPOCH TIMES

In a global ranking of 30 countries with universal health-care programs, Canada ranks near the bottom for its numbers of doctors, hospital beds, and MRIs and for long wait times, despite being one of the highest-spending countries on health care, according to a new study

by the Fraser Institute.

The study, “Comparing Performance of Universal Health Care Countries, 2022,” released on Nov. 10, compared Canada to 29 other developed countries. Using a “value for money approach,” it assessed cost against four broad categories: availability of medical resources, use of resources, access to resources, and quality and clinical performance.

According to the executive summary, “although Canada’s is the most expensive universal-access health-care system in the OECD, its performance is modest to poor.”

After adjusting for age-profile

differences among the countries— to account for the higher health-care needs of seniors over 65—in 2020 Canada ranked highest in health-care spending as a percentage of the economy, at 13.3 percent, and eighth highest for health-care spending per capita.

“There is a clear imbalance between the high cost of Canada’s health-care system and the value Canadians receive in terms of availability of resources and timely access to care,” said Bacchus Barua, director of Health Policy Studies at the Fraser Institute, and co-author of the study, in a news release.

THE CANADIAN PRESS /JONATHAN HAYWARD

Last on Wait Times

Canada ranked worst out of 10 comparable countries that record wait times for medical care. It had the lowest percentage of patients (38 percent) waiting four weeks or less to see a specialist, and the lowest percentage of patients (62 percent) who waited under four months for elective surgery.

Out of the 30 developed countries, Canada ranked near the bottom (28th) for doctor availability, with only 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people. In terms of care beds, Canada ranked 23rd out of 28 for regular physical care beds, with 2.2 beds per 1,000 people—and 22nd out of 29 for psychiatric beds available, with 0.38 beds per 1,000 people.

Canada also ranked near the bottom of the list (26th out of 29) for the availability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, with 10.3 MRIs per million people, and 27th out of 30 for CT scanners, with 15 scanners per million people.

Canada performed better than average in terms

of breast cancer, colon cancer, and rectal cancer survival rates after treatment, but ranked as the worst country (20th out of 20) on the indicator measuring obstetric trauma during vaginal childbirth.

“Canada ranked last (or close to last) on all four indicators of timeliness of care; and ranked seventh (out of ten) on the indicator measuring the percentage of patients who reported that cost was a barrier to access,” said the study.

Canada ranks as average (15th out of 30) for its availability of nurses, and 9th out of 30 for the availability of long-term care beds for seniors over 65. Canada performed better than the average country in providing coronary artery bypass grafts and knee replacement surgery.

The study said the availability of medical resources is a basic requirement for a properly functioning health-care system. “Data suggests that Canada has substantially fewer human and capital medical resources” compared to countries that “spend comparable amounts of money on health care,” it said.

There is a clear imbalance between the high cost of Canada’s health-care system and the value Canadians

THE CANADIAN PRESS/CHAD HIPOLITO

LEGISLATION

‘Entirely Inappropriate’: BC Government’s Proposed Changes to Oversight of Regulated Health Professions Draws Criticism

JEFF SANDES

THE EPOCH TIMES

SURREY, B.C.—With the fall sitting of the Legislative Assembly in British Columbia ending Nov. 24, the ruling NDP government is trying to pass legislation that would recreate how the oversight bodies in the province regulate health care and alternative medicine.

But the opposition BC United party (formerly the BC Liberals) is trying to stall a vote so that

the bill can receive more scrutiny and public attention during a future legislative session in the new year.

“We are still going through this bill line by line. MLA Shirley Bond is committed to thoroughly analyzing the bill with as much time that is left in this final week after the NDP cancelled the previous week of session,” BC United’s caucus press secretary and communications manager Andrew Reeve told The Epoch Times in an email.

Bill 36, or the Health Professions and Occupations Act, would replace the current Health Professions Act.

Calling the legislation “groundbreaking,” BC Health Minister Adrian Dix said the new measures would improve patient safety and strengthen jurisdiction

over the different regulatory colleges.

“Our government is making the most significant changes to oversight of regulated health professions in British Columbia’s history,” Dix said in a press release on Oct. 19 announcing the changes.

B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix speaks at a press conference in Victoria on Dec. 21, 2021.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/CHAD HIPOLITO

“These changes will streamline the process to regulate new health professions, provide stronger oversight, provide more consistent discipline across the professions, act in the public interest and protect patient care in the province, while also laying the groundwork to further reduce the total number of regulatory colleges.”

The health ministry has already reduced the number of colleges without Bill 36. It combined three different nursing bodies and the College of Midwives into one college, merged the province’s four oral health colleges into one, and amalgamated the College of Podiatrists with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Now at 15 colleges, Dix said his ministry plans to reduce that number to six.

The bill also seeks to have the B.C. government take over the governance of all health-care licensing and regulation, removing the selfgovernance of regulatory colleges.

Severe Penalties

The sweeping changes contained in Bill 36 have generated concern. Among them are severe penalties for health providers who give what the government deems “false and misleading information” to patients, undefined “good character” standards in order to maintain a licence to practise, and mandatory vaccinations against transmissible diseases—already a controversial issue after some 2,500 health-care workers in the province were fired for refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

Penalties for individuals who commit an offence under the legislation include fines ranging between $25,000 and $200,000 and jail for up to two years.

The bill also stated that boards of regulatory colleges must make bylaws on practice standards concerning a number of issues including “informed consent” and “maintaining patient confidentiality.”

Rob Johnson is a dentist in Salmon Arm, B.C., who came to be known for speaking out publicly about COVID-19 restrictions during the fall of 2021. In an interview with The Epoch Times, Johnson expressed his concerns with several provisions in Bill 36, particularly how the government defines

This should be of grave concern to those professional bodies, and they need to wake up and assert their autonomy before

it’s too late.

David Leis, Frontier Centre for Public Policy

its role in appointing members to the colleges.

“Part of what it means to be a professional is that you are supposed to be self-regulated, and the reason you’re supposed to be self-regulated is because you supposedly have a specialized body of knowledge,” Johnson said.

“Even under that theoretical framework, we’re not run by the government. But this whole topdown model of bureaucracy of people making decisions about things they don’t have a clue about—they’re so far removed from the people that are doing the actual jobs. So we should actually be moving in the opposite direction, decentralizing everything, and creating a networking model instead.”

David Leis, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s vice-president of engagement and development, is of the same view.

“Bill 36 is a full-frontal assault on the professional integrity and freedom of the health-care professions. This is entirely inappropriate. It undermines the primary accountability of these professions to science and to the needs of the patient,” Leis told The Epoch Times.

“I think this should be of grave concern to those professional bodies, and they need to wake up and assert their autonomy before it’s too late. That’s for the sake of patient health care. That’s who they serve, not the state.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the BC Ministry of Health and several of the regulatory colleges in the province seeking comment, but none provided comments by press time.

The BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC) has publicly supported the legislation, saying it will “streamline the process for regulating new professions, including clinical counsellors.”

“Bill 36: Health Professions and Occupations Act puts an enhanced focus on public protection, a priority area that BCACC has taken strategic steps to prepare for,” BCACC said in a press release on Oct. 21. ‘People Are Very Concerned’

Former Newfoundland premier and B.C. resident Brian Peckford is also raising the alarm about the proposed legislation. He conveyed his concerns in a blog post on Nov. 21—and noted that he’s not the only one.

“Social media is exploding with comments about Bill C-36 tabled by the BC Health Minister,” he wrote. “People are very concerned.”

While Peckford touched on several areas that worried him, he saved his harshest criticism for the undefined legislation and the potential consequences for people if they choose to challenge the government’s position.

“Bill 36 will give the BC Minister of Health the ability to appoint College Boards who are then required to pass bylaws mandating vaccines for any illness the government chooses as a condition of licence, and creating an environment of censorship where if you challenge the government’s position on anything you will face discipline and potentially lose your licence,” he wrote.

“It also allows the College to determine who has good character and who doesn’t and to define informed consent. This is legislation you would typically see in a communist or a police state, not in a democracy.”

Peckford suggested that the parts of the bill without definition are the most troublesome and should be included in the legislation before it gets passed into law.

“This practice of leaving the details to future regulations yet to be disclosed, and allowing the government to pass the main piece of legislation without it, has to stop. It allows the government the ability to keep secret and free from any oversight or debate, the most important aspects of the legislation.”

B.C. legislature in Victoria on M

• OPINION
• REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Democracy Dies in Illinois

A case study in how progressives entrench themselves in power.

By The Editorial BoardFollow

Nov. 16, 2022 6:47 pm ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

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Michael MadiganPHOTO: ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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President Biden says last Tuesday was “a good day” for democracy, but he must not be paying attention to what happened in Illinois. Behold a case study in how Democrats change the rules to limit political competition and entrench one-party, public-union rule.

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Democrats held supermajorities in both legislative chambers and a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court before the election. But their ex-boss Michael Madigan’s corruption scandal gave Republicans a chance to make gains in the statehouse, compete for Governor, and take control of the state Supreme Court for the first time in more than 50 years.

After deposing Mr. Madigan, Democrats last year did him proud by jamming through new state legislative maps that forced 12 Republican incumbents into six House districts. Democrats held 73 of 118 House seats under Mr. Madigan’s gerrymander. Their new, more extreme gerrymander helped them pick up four to five more seats.

Democrats also redrew state Supreme Court districts for the first time in 60 years. Three Justices are elected exclusively from Cook County, which includes Chicago. This guarantees Democrats three seats. But their majority looked in danger after a Democratic Justice representing central Illinois lost a retention election in November 2020 for the first time in state history.

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Unions and Democrats have counted on the Democratic Supreme Court to block pension reforms and a ballot initiative backed by former GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner that would have established an independent redistricting commission. Democratic Justices have prevented citizens from using the ballot process to bypass the Legislature and enact government reforms.

To retain their 4-3 High Court majority, Democrats this year needed to win one of two judicial elections. Both districts were trending Republican so Democrats simply redrew the map to give themselves an edge.

They also passed legislation limiting the influence of Republican donors like Citadel CEO Ken Griffin by capping individual contributions to judicial candidates and independent expenditure committees both at $500,000. A federal court struck down the independent expenditure limits, but the candidate caps hurt Republicans.

Even as Democrats claimed to deplore the influence of money in judicial elections, billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker circumvented the individual caps by using his personal trust fund to contribute to the Democratic judicial candidates in the two competitive races. Both won, giving Democrats a 5-2 majority. Not only did Democrats choose their voters, they essentially picked the judges who would hear any challenge to their overreach.

Democrats also spent some $30 million in the GOP gubernatorial primary to boost the Trump-endorsed candidate Darren Bailey and knock down Republican Richard Irvin, a black mayor from a Chicago suburb who stood the best chance of beating Mr. Pritzker. The Governor won re-election by 11.6 points against his hand-picked opponent.

Abortion politics and Donald Trump helped Democrats in Illinois as in other states. But Democrats in the Prairie State have also used every lever available to entrench their power. That includes a constitutional amendment they placed on the ballot enshrining the right to collective-bargaining that will augment government union power.

The sound you don’t hear is the national press deploring any of this, or even reporting it. Democrats in Washington have tried in the last two years to entrench their power nationally as they have done in Illinois. Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin in this Congress blocked Democrats from blowing up the filibuster to do so. But Democrats haven’t given up. Democratic warnings about the death of democracy would be more credible if they didn’t try to strangle it themselves.

• HEALTH

Marijuana May Hurt Smokers More Than Cigarettes Alone

Emphysema, other ailments more common among people who smoke marijuana

Nearly half of the marijuana smokers whose chest scans were reviewed for a study had mucus plugging their airways.PHOTO: LEV RADIN/ZUMA PRESS

By Julie WernauFollow

Nov. 15, 2022 10:00 am ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

648

Marijuana might do more damage to smokers than cigarettes alone.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Radiology demonstrated higher rates of conditions including emphysema and airway inflammation among people who smoked marijuana than among nonsmokers and people who smoked only tobacco. Nearly half of the 56 marijuana smokers whose chest scans were reviewed for the study had mucus plugging their airways, a condition that was less common among the other 90 participants who didn’t smoke marijuana.

“There is a public perception that marijuana is safe and people think that it’s safer than cigarettes,” said Giselle Revah, a radiologist who helped conduct the study at the Ottawa Hospital in Ontario. “This study raises concerns that might not be true.”

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Should the results of this study change public policy around marijuana? Join the conversation below.

One-fifth of Canadians over 15 years old reported using marijuana in the past three months, according to a 2020 survey of some 16,000 people conducted by Canada’s national statistical office. About 18% of Americans reported using marijuana at least once in 2020 in the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey of Drug Use and Health, including about one in three young adults age 18 to 25. The surveys didn’t ask how marijuana was consumed. About one-fourth of people over 12 years old believed there was great harm from smoking marijuana once or twice a week, according to the survey.

Previous studies have found that marijuana is more likely than tobacco to be smoked unfiltered and that smokers tend to inhale more smoke and hold it in their lungs longer. Bong smoke contains tiny pollutants that can linger indoors for up to 12 hours, a study published in March in JAMA Network Open showed.

Among the 56 marijuana smokers in the Ottawa study, 50 also smoked tobacco. The tobacco-only smokers were patients whose chest scans were performed as part of a high-risk lung-cancer screening program that included people age 50 and above who had smoked for several years.

Marijuana’s illicit status long discouraged substantial research into the long-term effects of its use, said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, who wasn’t involved in the study. Inhaling any heated substance can irritate airways, among other health dangers, he said.

“There could be an additive effect if you smoke cigarettes as well as marijuana,” Dr. Rizzo said.

The study authors found bronchial thickening in 64% of marijuana smokers versus 42% of tobacco-only smokers and a condition that leads to excess mucus buildup in 23% of marijuana smokers versus 6% of tobacco-only smokers.

Age-matched marijuana smokers had higher rates of emphysema (93%) than tobacco-only smokers (67%), and the emphysema, which appears in imaging as small holes in lung tissue, was more prevalent in the marijuana smokers, the study found.

Like the old saying goes — if it walks like a duck and drinks like a duck… It must be a “Devil duck.” On Nov. 20, 1943, 18,000 Marines stormed the beaches of Betio, the largest and southernmost island in the Tarawa atoll. They endured withering fire, poured out by elite troops of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Special Naval Landing Force. And amid that lethal hailstorm of mortars and machine gun and rifle fire that pinned the troops to the Tarawa beachheads was a hard-charging, winged and feathered “Marine.” Won in a raffle at a New Zealand pub by Sgt. Francis “Pappy” Fagan, the duck was given the rank of sergeant and named Siwash (a derogatory term for Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest) after Sgt. Jack “Siwash” Cornelius of Skagit County, Washington. Becoming the 2nd Marine Division’s unofficial mascot, the duck followed Fagan everywhere he went, developing a penchant for guzzling beer — just like her owner. “Siwash just can’t pass up a free drink” Fagan told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1944. “A long one and a short one is her limit, but she doesn’t know it. She won’t touch draft beer though. And it’s got to be warm beer. The way it was in New Zealand.” The Devil duck was beloved by her troops, but it was her actions on Tarawa on the second day of the invasion that cemented her place in Marine Corps lore. By the end of the first day, the Marines had a tenuous hold on all three landing zones, designated Red 1, Red 2 and Red 3. From this precarious position, General Julian Smith radioed General Holland Smith that afternoon: “Successful landings on Beaches Red 2 and 3. Toehold on Red 1. The situation is in doubt.” Corralled onto the narrow beaches, no units had penetrated more than 70 yards inshore, and by nightfall, they feared being driven back into the sea. For the Devil duck, however, the situation was never in doubt. She reportedly locked eyes with a Japanese rooster and took the enemy encounter under her own wing. “The rooster didn’t have a chance,” Fagan later related to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Siwash whipped him and chased him 30 feet up the beach.” While there was initial talk among Marines of rewarding the duck with a Purple Heart, she was eventually cited for her bravery on that day, becoming the first, and perhaps the only duck in military history to be awarded thusly.

ALEX KOYFMAN / NOV 15, 2022

Lithium Hysteria Spreads Across the U.S.

Google searches for “lithium fire” have increased by a factor of 12 over the course of the last two weeks.

The reason, which I covered in more depth in last week’s Wealth Daily, is a NYC high-rise fire that left 46 residents and firefighters injured on the morning of November 5.

The culprit was a malfunctioning electric scooter battery.

It was the 189th such fire in the city for the year and was severe enough to prompt the New York City Council to convene an emergency meeting for the proposal of new laws regulating the sale and recycling of lithium batteries.

The hysteria, however, didn’t end at NYC limits.

Before the week was over, the Pittsburgh Fire Bureau issued a statement to the public in hopes of quelling growing concerns over the safety of lithium batteries.

“There’s no industry-wide mechanism for tracking the cause of lithium-ion or battery-related fires. That’s something the U.S. Fire Administrator is working diligently for the nation to track this and other hazards,” said Assistant Fire Chief Brian Kokkila in an interview with CBS News last Thursday.

This “alarming trend,” is becoming a major concern for both citizens and agencies as our dependence on lithium batteries expands… but it’s hardly the only issue when it comes to rechargeable batteries.

Slow to charge, quick to degrade, and very costly, environmentally taxing, and politically troublesome to source, the lithium revolution has caused almost as many problems as it solves.

Yet our addiction to the convenience of rechargeable energy storage gets stronger every year.

11/02/2022 Just Curious: I have no idea exactly how many cars and trucks that there are on the road as of today, but it must be over one billion. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are promising to keep the promise of no IC (Internal Combustion) vehicles produced by 2050. California and their followers are pushing for no IC vehicles allowed on roads in the U.S. shortly, thereafter, as are the E.U. members. Hmmm.

Given the scarcity and inherent instability of lithium-ion batters and the material to manufacture them, and no functional, dependable, or, as proven in NYC, safe mass transportation system:

1. Does this mean that the total number of independent vehicles globally will be reduced to those needed to move goods?
2. Does this mean that only the extraordinarily rich and political hacks will have personal vehicles, including aircraft and boats?
3. Does this mean that to own a personal vehicle one must have a government issued, taxable personal property license, hopefully inheritable or transferable, to own a personal vehicle?
4. Does this mean that there will be a forced “buy-back” program, in direct violation to Due Process, at some arbitrary government price, with complete disregard for the cost and availability of a safe, inexpensive, and reliable alternative of all personal vehicles?
5. Does this mean that government use of eminent domain will be, once again, arbitrarily used to steal land in order to grant it to preferred railroads so that rail lines may be extended to all municipalities regardless of size, so that ‘equity’ in supplying goods and transportation services to all may be attained, again, regardless of cost, much as was done with tax paid ‘local’ airports?
6. Does this mean that, since it is the underlying purpose of the Greens, that the global population will be reduced, as Mao did to his own population via famine, to their ideal of 500,000 people on a “sustainable” agr0-system, they themselves being the 500,000, yet none of them being the farmers or ‘working’ in the transportation and production process, these producers being serfs or machines?

I am sure that there are more questions that can be added, but y’all get the idea.

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The U.S. Military’s Growing Weakness

A new Heritage Foundation report warns about declining U.S. naval and air power.

By The Editorial BoardFollow

Updated Oct. 17, 2022 5:51 pm ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

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U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan participates with other U.S. and South Korean navy ships during the joint naval exercises between the United States and South Korea in waters off South Korea’s eastern coast on Sept. 29, 2022.PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Americans like to think their military is unbeatable if politicians wouldn’t get in the way. The truth is that U.S. hard power isn’t what it used to be. That’s the message of the Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength, which is reported here for the first time and describes a worrisome trend.

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Heritage rates the U.S. military as “weak” and “at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.” The weak rating, down from “marginal” a year earlier, is the first in the index’s nine-year history.

***

The index measures the military’s ability to prevail in two major regional conflicts at once—say, a conflict in the Middle East and a fight on the Korean peninsula. Americans might wish “that the world be a simpler, less threatening place,” as the report notes. But these commitments are part of U.S. national-security strategy.

Heritage says the U.S. military risks being unable to handle even “a single major regional conflict” as it also tries to deter rogues elsewhere. The Trump Administration’s one-time cash infusion has dried up. Pentagon budgets aren’t keeping up with inflation, and the branches are having to make trade-offs about whether to be modern, large, or ready to fight tonight. The decline is especially acute in the Navy and Air Force.

The Navy has been saying for years it needs to grow to at least 350 ships, plus more unmanned platforms. Yet the Navy has shown a “persistent inability to arrest and reverse the continued diminution of its fleet,” the report says. By one analysis it has under-delivered on shipbuilding plans by 10 ships a year on average over the past five years.

From 2005 to 2020, the U.S. fleet grew to 296 warships from 291, while China’s navy grew to 360 from 216. War isn’t won on numbers alone, but China is also narrowing the U.S. technological advantage in every area from aircraft carrier catapults to long-range missiles.

The Navy wants to build three Virginia-class submarines a year, and the U.S. still has an edge over Beijing in these fast-attack boats. But the shipbuilding industry has shrunk amid waning demand, and the Navy’s maintenance yards are overwhelmed. Maintenance delays and backlogs are the result of running the fleet too hard: On a typical day in June, roughly one-third of the 298-ship fleet was deployed, double the average of the Cold War.

It’s worse in the Air Force, which gets a “very weak” rating. Aging “aircraft and very poor pilot training and retention” have produced an Air Force that “would struggle greatly against a peer competitor,” Heritage says.

The fighter and bomber forces are contracting to about 40% of what America had in the 1980s. The service has been slowing its F-35 buys even as it needs modern planes to compensate for the smaller fleet. Aircraft have low mission-capable rates, roughly 50% for the F-22. Heritage says the Air Force has “abandoned even the illusion” that it is working toward an 80% aircraft readiness goal. Munitions inventories “probably would not support a peer-level fight that lasted more than a few weeks,” and replacements can take 24 to 36 months to arrive.

A pilot shortage “continues to plague the service,” and the “current generation of fighter pilots, those who have been actively flying for the past seven years, has never experienced a healthy rate of operational flying.” Fighter pilots flew a meager 10 hours a month on average in 2021, up from 8.7 in 2020 but still far below the 200 hours a year minimum needed to be proficient against a formidable opponent.

The story isn’t much better for the Army, which has lost $59 billion in buying power since 2018 due to flat budgets and inflation. The Army is shrinking not as a choice about priorities but because it can’t recruit enough soldiers—nearly 20,000 short in fiscal 2022.

The Marines scored better in the index as the only branch articulating and executing a plan to change, reorganizing for a war in the Pacific in a concept known as Force Design 2030. But the Marines are slimming down to a bare-bones 21 infantry battalions, from 27 as recently as 2011. Mission success for the Marines depends on a new amphibious ship that the Navy may not be able to deliver.

***

Some will call all this alarmist and ask why the Pentagon can’t do better on an $800 billion budget. The latter is a fair question and the answer requires procurement and other changes. But the U.S. will also have to spend more on defense if it wants to protect its interests and the homeland. The U.S. is spending about 3% of GDP now compared to 5%-6% in the 1980s. The Heritage report is a warning that you can’t deter war, much less win one, on the cheap.

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Appeared in the October 18, 2022, print edition as ‘The U.S. Military’s Growing Weakness’.

[Caveat: what if the GPS satellites are destroyed???]

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Himars Transform the Battle for Ukraine—and Modern Warfare

The mobile, high-precision U.S. rocket system is thwarting Russia’s invasion as it revolutionizes military strategy

A Himars fires somewhere on Ukraine’s southern front.

By Stephen Kalin and Daniel Michaels | Photographs by Adrienne Surprenant /MYOP for The Wall Street Journal

Oct. 8, 2022 12:00 am ETSAVESHARETEXT

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MYKOLAIV REGION, Ukraine—A global revolution in warfare is dramatically tipping the scales of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, putting in the hands of front-line troops the kind of lethality that until recently required aircraft, ships or lumbering tracked vehicles. It also has the capacity to change battlefields far from Eastern Europe.

The centerpiece of the new battle order is the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars. Provided by the U.S. and operated by Ukrainian soldiers since June, they are augmenting lightweight and precise weaponry that includes drones, Javelin antitank rockets and Stinger antiaircraft missiles, enabled by GPS guidance and advanced microelectronics.

Able to pick off Russian military bases, ammunition depots and infrastructure far behind front lines, Ukraine’s 16 Himars helped its troops this summer halt a bloody Russian advance. Since last month, Ukrainians have seized back swaths of territory in their country’s east and ground down Russian troops in the south. Washington recently pledged to deliver another 18 Himars.

Within Kyiv’s arsenal, Himars offer a unique combination of range, precision and mobility that allows them to do the job traditionally handled by dozens of launchers firing thousands of shells.

By shrinking launchers and nearly guaranteeing hits on targets, Himars and the other equipment are upending century-old assumptions about how wars must be fought—and particularly about military supplies. Himars’s vastly improved accuracy also collapses the massive logistical trail that modern infantry has demanded.

“Himars is one part of a precision revolution that turns heavily equipped armies into something light and mobile,” said Robert Scales, a retired U.S. Army major general who was among the first to envision Himars in the 1970s.

Last month The Wall Street Journal gained rare access to a front-line Himars unit.

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Lt. Valentyn Koval said the four Himars vehicles in his unit have destroyed about 20 Russian antiaircraft batteries.

Before a rocket hits its target the men can be on their way back to camp.

One evening at dusk the men in this unit were making dinner when orders for their fifth mission of the day arrived: to target Russian barracks and a river barge ferrying munitions and tanks 40 miles away.

Six men piled into their two Himars: a driver, targeter and commander in each, accompanied by the battery commander and a security detail in an armored personnel carrier. The commander plugged coordinate data into a tablet computer to determine the safest location for firing.

Within minutes, the two Himars rumbled out from cover under an apricot grove toward the launch spot in a nearby sunflower field. Thirty seconds after arriving, they fired seven missiles in quick succession. Before the projectiles hit their targets, the trucks were returning to base camp.

Ten minutes later came another pair of targets: Soviet-era rocket launchers some 44 miles away. Off rolled the Himars again and fired another barrage of missiles.

Soon after, the soldiers were back at camp and finishing their dinner. Some pulled up videos on Telegram showing the fruit of their labor: burning Russian barracks.

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Ukraine’s Himars rockets, which can fly 50 miles, have hit hundreds of Russian targets, including command centers, ammunition depots, refueling stations and bridges, choking off supplies to front-line units. Since stopping Russia’s spring advance across Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, they are now targeting retreating Russian forces.

Ukrainian commanders estimate that Himars are responsible for 70% of military advances on the Kherson front, the unit’s commander, Lt. Valentyn Koval, said. The four vehicles in his unit have killed hundreds of Russians and destroyed about 20 antiaircraft batteries, he said.

Lt. Koval poses next to a Himars.

Russian artillery—like most such systems since World War I—lacks precision. To destroy a target, troops generally level everything around it. Gunners following maps rain shells in a grid pattern that aims to leave no terrain in a quadrant untouched. Russian forces in Ukraine are lobbing dozens of shells per acre to hit one objective, analysts say.

Himars can do the job with one rocket carrying a 200-pound explosive warhead. Each Ukrainian Himars carries one six-rocket pod that can effectively land the punch of more than 100,000 lbs. of traditional artillery.

Artillery is cumbersome. During Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991, it accounted for more than 60% of a U.S. division’s weight. Moving it demands soldiers, trucks, fuel and time, plus additional soldiers and vehicles to protect those supply operations.

All that support sucks resources and makes a juicy target, as the world saw in the opening days of the Ukraine war, when a Russian supply convoy halted by Ukrainian attacks outside Kyiv became a 40-mile-long sitting duck.

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“It’s not just the precision of Himars that’s revolutionary,” said Gen. Scales. “It’s the ability to reduce the tonnage requirements by an order of magnitude or better.”

A sergeant dismounts from the Himars vehicle he commands.

Ukrainian soldiers prepare to load Himars munitions.

The supply chain for Himars units consists of factory-packaged rocket pods stashed at pickup points in the nearby countryside and usually hidden by foliage. A cargo truck deposits the camouflage-green pods—each a little bigger than a single bed—at a string of designated locations, not unlike a commercial delivery route.

Himars teams drive to the ammo drop spots, where a waiting three-man loading team removes spent pods and swaps in full ones within five minutes, using a crane integrated into the vehicle.

“Himars is one of, if not the most, efficient type of weapons on the battlefield,” said Lt. Koval, a jocular 22-year-old with a Pokémon ringtone on his cellphone. “This gives us an opportunity to react quickly, hit in one place, move to another, and destroy effectively.”

Russia’s best truck-based rocket launchers, by contrast, can require around 20 minutes to set up in the launch spot and 40 minutes to reload—critical time when the enemy tries to return fire. The Himars can drive faster and has an armored crew cabin.

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Ukrainian Himars teams stay lean by spending weeks in the field without returning to a larger base. Lt. Koval’s unit, which received the first Himars in June, has spent the past three months sleeping in tents beside the launchers or inside nearby support vehicles.

Soldiers prepare food and coffee while waiting for the call to file more rockets.

The men, trained by U.S. instructors outside Ukraine, remain on standby for new targets, switching into action and just as casually returning to mundane activities like making coffee or playing cards.

On the front armor of one Himars, the soldiers painted a white grin below the Ukrainian word for “workhorse.” On the other, whose odometer shows it has traveled over 13,000 miles, they stenciled 69 black skulls, commemorating significant confirmed hits.

Mission details arrive as geographic coordinates, with a target description and instructions on whether to use explosive missiles for armored targets or fragment charges for hitting personnel. Targeting tips come from sources including U.S. intelligence and partisans in occupied territories.

The Himars commanders then pick a suitable launch location and guide the vehicles into place. Inside the cab, the vehicle commander sits between the driver and the targeter, who feeds the mission data into a computer. When the vehicle reaches the launch site, the targeter presses one button to angle the missiles skyward and another button to fire.

The missiles roar into the night sky with a burst of flame, leaving a cloud of smoke over the field. The launcher is lowered and the vehicle speeds back to its tree cover.

“We are the juiciest target in the region,” said Lt. Koval. “So we need to maneuver to survive.”

A Himars on the road to an operating position in a field.

Smoke lingers in a sunflower field after a Himars fired a rocket.

Maneuverability is exactly why Himars was created as a downsized version of a tank-like weapon, the Multiple Launch Rocket System, which has also been provided to Ukraine by the U.K. and Germany. First used in Desert Storm, before the advent of precision artillery, massed batteries of the 12-rocket vehicles unleashed so much explosive force and shrapnel that Iraqi troops dubbed it “steel rain.”

MLRS’s heft means that only the largest military cargo jets can airlift it and they land far from the fighting. To move distances on land requires a flatbed truck. Himars was envisioned as a lighter, more agile version.

The push for nimble units equipped with lightweight gear became part of a broader effort to streamline the U.S. military after the Cold War that reached its peak under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld starting in 2001, but was sidetracked by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

HIMARS

Max speed:

Firing range:

Weight:

In service:

Origin:

52.8 mph

19.9 to 186.4 miles

10.88 tons

2005

U.S.

6 MLRS series rockets

or 1 ATACMS missile

Crew number

10.5 ft.

7.9 ft.

23 ft.

Source: Army Recognition
Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Himars, on wheels and with only six rockets, was a project that stayed on track. One initial shortcoming, the Pentagon discovered, was that six cluster bombs didn’t pack enough punch to destroy many targets. GPS-guided artillery, rolled out in the mid-1990s, gave Himars new life. Precision meant the rockets didn’t need to explode together for a giant blast. They could each pick off a different geolocated target.

“The precision revolution changes everything,” said Gen. Scales, who considers the transformation to be the kind of epoch-making military shift that redefines warfare and will now tip battlefield advantage from massed armies to small infantry units.

Such shifts were rare in the past, including the eclipse of infantry by horse-mounted warriors around the fourth century and the introduction of gunpowder to Europe a millennium later, said Gen. Scales, a military historian who served as commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Others came around the U.S. Civil War with the introduction of precise rifles and artillery and machine guns, which proved so deadly in World War I, and at the start of World War II, when the German blitzkrieg merged motorized transportation with radio coordination of troops.

Now, inexpensive microprocessors are putting what Gen. Scales dubs “cheap precision” in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers.

“If I enter the coordinates of this hole,” said Lt. Koval, standing by a molehill the size of a shoebox, “it will hit this hole.”

One Himars has 69 skulls stenciled on it, one for every verified hit.

On one particularly busy day in late August, the two Himars under Lt. Koval’s command worked in tandem with two others. When his pair ran out of ammunition, they dropped back to reload while the other duo advanced to fire. Lt. Koval said they tag-teamed for 37 hours without stopping to sleep and hit roughly 120 targets, enabling Ukrainian infantry to break Russian lines around the southern city of Kherson.

Washington was initially reluctant to provide Ukraine with Himars, fearing such a move could cause Moscow to retaliate against the U.S. or its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It has declined to supply more powerful rockets which can be fired up to 185 miles and would enable Ukraine to destroy sturdier targets, like concrete bridges that they have so far only been able to blow holes through.

In a sign that Ukraine’s additional firepower is taking a toll on Moscow’s forces, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has told Russian troops to make Ukraine’s long-range weaponry a priority target.

Himars operators say the biggest threat comes from Russia’s kamikaze drones, buttressed recently by more effective Iranian systems, but they feel well protected by Ukrainian anti-air systems and special forces. Lt. Koval’s crew abandoned two firing missions this summer out of caution when a drone was spotted nearby, but he said no Himars have been hit.

“We’re always on the move,” said Lt. Koval.

So far no Himars have been hit by enemy fire, Lt. Koval said.

Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

News and insights on Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the West’s response, selected by the editors

Biden Warns of Growing Nuclear Risk as Ukraine Slams Russia for Drone UseUkraine Offensive Is Fueled by Captured Russian WeaponsEntrenched Positions on Ukraine Dim Hopes of a ResolutionRussia Touts Rapid Mobilization but Faces DilemmaUkrainian Villagers Forcibly Taken to Russia Still Haven’t Made It HomeCrimean Tatar Minority Is in Crosshairs of Putin’s DraftThe Ragtag Army That Won the Battle of Kyiv and Saved UkrainePutin Raises Ukraine Ante as His War Fortunes Sink

Appeared in the October 8, 2022, print edition as ‘The Himars Revolution In Warfare A Weapon Transforming The Battlefield’.SHOW CONVERSATION

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September 23, 2022 FACTS MATTERViews  36.4K

97 Percent of Scientists Don’t Agree About Humans’ Role in ‘Climate Change’: Truth Behind the Stats | Facts Matter

FACTS MATTER

ROMAN BALMAKOV

This video is brought to you by Sekur: https://ept.ms/3yW0Wul

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Marcel Crok is a Dutch science journalist who spent years researching and writing on the topic of global climate change science. In this interview, Crok breaks down several blatant inconsistencies propped up by supporters of climate change initiatives despite the scientific evidence suggesting otherwise.

Crok then reveals the absurd methodology used by the climate science community to reach their “97 percent consensus” figure that is the linchpin to the entire climate change argument.

The conversation shifts to the rising sea levels debate, where Crok suggests that if CO2 were truly the cause of rising sea levels, we would have expected to see a dramatic increase in water levels after 1950 when global CO2 emissions spiked. The science simply doesn’t support this.

Crok concludes the conversation by discussing how faulty climate science is directly impacting his country, as recent evidence suggests as many as 1.2 million households in Holland will not be able to pay their energy bills this winter due to high energy prices that are a direct result of misguided climate policies.

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Debunking Fossil Fuel Hysteria: An Interview with Alex Epstein

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TAGS The EnvironmentInterviewsStrategy09/28/2022Alex EpsteinJeff Deist

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Jeff Deist: Alex Epstein is our special guest this week. He runs the Center for Industrial Progress, was formerly at the Ayn Rand Institute, and has a background in philosophy. He wrote a famous book called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and followed that up with a new book called Fossil Future. Alex, let me say this book is incredible. Thank you for writing it! I know from the acknowledgements it was quite a difficult task.

Alex Epstein: I did the book on fossil fuels. That did very well, and then I decided to replace it with something I thought would be better. And it was much harder to do. The first book took me about six months. This one took over three years. Given the moment we’re in right now, there’s a real opportunity to educate people, and there’s a real threat from this anti–fossil fuel movement. What I had done in 2014 was great for then, but I thought something better was possible and was needed.

JD: This is an empirical book. It’s also a philosophical book. I know you did not intend to write an economics book, but Fossil Future involves scarcity, it involves tradeoffs and choices within the context of scarcity, and it talks a lot about externalities—including positive externalities. These are concepts from economics.

AE: Well, as you mentioned, I used to work at the Ayn Rand Institute, so I have a philosophy background and an Objectivist philosophy background. From that perspective, morality is the fundamental science of human action, and I think of economics as related closely to morality. If you have a human-life-based morality, I don’t think you can have a discussion about the morality of fossil fuels that doesn’t think about economics. You could argue that it’s mostly an economics book in the sense of what is the content, because the content focuses on what’s involved in producing and trading energy and then what are the implications for that in terms of human life. And most of those implications you can measure in money, although as you mentioned with externalities, sometimes people abuse money and measurements to ignore the benefits of fossil fuels.

JD: The book is controversial, so we should mention your publisher. Did they take a risk publishing it?

AE: My publisher is Penguin Random House, and the specific imprint is Portfolio, which is their business imprint, but the same guy who runs it also runs their conservative imprint, which is called Sentinel. They’re used to controversial books. They published, or at least they proposed, Jordan Peterson’s latest book, and you know they got some controversy in Canada around that. They’re pretty good at this kind of thing, but it’s unusual. As my first book sold a lot of copies and the publishing industry doesn’t have that many bestselling authors, they cannot afford to turn one down. Fossil Future has done even better than The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels in terms of sales and its lifespan. One byproduct of this for me and for others is that more and more publishers will be open to these kinds of ideas.

Robert Murphy: Alex, I’ve spent a bit of time in the climate change debate. The people who resist the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusions are skeptical of government intervention. People assume that in twenty or thirty years we’ll all have electric cars and far less CO₂ emissions. You argue against phasing out fossil fuels. You argue they are an important part of our future.

AE: Yes, there’s two aspects to it. The main one is that it’s proper that we have a fossil future, and that is why the subtitle to my book is “Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas— Not Less.” But a big part is the economic analysis that concludes that one way or another, fossil fuels are going to be used more in the future, even if some of the bad policies get passed. And part of what I’m arguing is that we shouldn’t pass those bad policies, because even if we are using the same amount of fossil fuel in the future, there’s an enormous opportunity cost of premature deaths and opportunity loss.

By our standards, the world is extremely poor, including energy poor, and one point I make in the book is that there are six billion people in the world who by our standards use a totally inadequate amount of energy, less electricity than one of our refrigerators uses. We live in a world that is energy deprived, and then you learn that fossil fuels provide 80 percent of that energy and their use is still growing, particularly in the parts of the world that care most about low-cost reliable energy. It is insane to talk about phasing them out rapidly. The other side has an enormous burden of proof when claiming that we should be phasing out fossil fuels when the value they provide is so needed and they’re clearly uniquely good at providing it.

JD: Alex, my favorite part of the book is part 4, when you talk about framing the debate. This could apply to so many political issues in our country. You discuss the “anti-impact framework,” which assumes the absurd goal of zero human impact on the environment. You also address “arguing to 100,” which entails not simply moving halfway toward your opponent’s goals. Talk about the importance of reframing the climate change debate in the political sense.

AE: I use a controversial example for clarity, although you’re not supposed to use controversial examples to make new points. I use the example of Trump’s election—and it’s not to endorse or condemn it. It’s just to show the dynamics. I think of every debate as involving a moral good and a moral evil. You can think of it as the good “+100” and the evil “–100.” Think of the American political discussion that occurred before Trump’s election as 100 was “more equality” and –100 was “increasing inequality.” It was all about equality, we want more equality, and it was framed that way. Now, imagine if Trump had tried to argue for his policies within that framework. He couldn’t do it effectively because the policies he wanted to enact would not increase equality and might actually increase inequality. What he did was to reject that framework instead and bring on the immortal hat. “Make America Great Again.” What that really represents is a reframing. He reframed the discussion in terms of American greatness. So, +100 was American greatness and –100 was American decline. And then what he was able to do was to argue that all his specific policies were moving us toward 100! And this is what I call arguing to 100. You set what the moral good is and then you argue that you are getting us there.

Look at the energy debate and how it has been framed. Particularly prior to my work and some others, it has been framed as eliminating fossil fuels, or at least eliminating their CO₂ emissions. Look at most institutions in the world—corporations, countries, investment firms. They all have these net zero goals. That’s saying the goal is to eliminate emissions, which really means eliminating fossil fuels. Then the evil is fossil fuels.

Now what’s happened is that many defenders of fossil fuels are stuck in the status quo. Instead of challenging the framework, they accept it and do what I call arguing to 0. Somebody puts forward the Green New Deal, and the Green New Deal is an argument to 100: if we’re going to get to the elimination of CO₂, we need to move in this direction quickly, so we need to switch to renewables, and we need these “investments” and taxes to do so. Then the other side says, No, that will be impractical, or it will cost too much, or they’ll make fun of it. I call this arguing to 0 because if the other side proposes positive things and you shoot them down, your best-case scenario is zero. You don’t move at all.

I reject this framing of “our goal is to eliminate CO₂ emissions and fossil fuels,” and as I talk about it in the book, the deeper goal underlying that is to eliminate human impact on the earth. I frame it broadly, but our goal should be to advance human flourishing, and when we’re thinking about global issues, that should be the goal. The –100 is increasing human suffering on earth—and once you frame it that way, then people are very open to the possibility that more fossil fuels are beneficial and we need more of them.

So, because I know you’re interested in how other proliberty people can argue the case, the lesson is that you need a positive moral goal, or you can think of it as a vision, and then you need a positive policy to get there. In part 4 of the book, I talk about the policy of energy freedom. I work with elected officials, and one thing I’m constantly telling them is that you need to propose your own profreedom policies—it can’t just be reacting to the bad ones! And just to anticipate one objection, people sometimes think that if you’re proliberty, you can’t be in favor of positive policies because you’re against these things. If there’s a bad policy in place, changing it is a kind of positive policy. I can say we should pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. That is an action that you can say leads to this inspiring vision. And then I would argue—and this gets into government—that people need to think carefully about what the right profreedom policy is; it’s not the most obvious thing. Don’t just do anything. You need a positive vision and a positive policy, and that leads to a totally different level of effectiveness in persuading people.

RM: Alex, your book resonated with me where you explained how it can be that all these ostensible experts on climate change issues are wrong. I like how you framed it: it’s not so much the experts are wrong in the narrow area of their expertise, but the chain through which knowledge is communicated to the public has lots of links in it. It gets distorted. Just one example: William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the economics of climate change, is arguably the top economist in this area. His own model shows the 1.5°C cap on global warming would be so economically destructive it would be better if governments did nothing. And yet right after he won the Nobel Prize, the same weekend, the UN came out with its special report on 1.5°C of warming. A New York Times reporter asked Professor Nordhaus, “Do we still have time to halt warming at 1.5°C?” And he said, “No, I think at this point it is too late.” He didn’t add “and thank goodness, because that would be catastrophic.” He just left it at that. So, it is important to show people the dichotomy between what the actual peer-reviewed literature says and how the media communicates it to people.

AE: Interestingly, you guys have picked up on two of what I would say are innovations in the book. In clarifying the issue of fossil fuels, there is how to think about it and then how to explain it to others. There’s arguing to 100 and then the idea Bob is referring to. I use the term “knowledge system” throughout the book, and this is to capture the fact that when we are told what expert conclusions are, we need to recognize that we don’t just get those conclusions directly from the expert researchers in the field. There’s a process by which what those researchers find is synthesized, disseminated, and then evaluated in terms of what actions they might lead to, and I show that at every stage of this process, there are big distortions just in terms of evaluation.

I point out in chapter 1 that many of the expert conclusions that we’re taught, particularly the notion that we should rapidly eliminate fossil fuels, ignore the huge benefits of fossil fuels. I talk about Michael Mann, one of what I call “designated experts” on this issue, because he has a whole book about fossil fuels and talks about fossil fuels in agriculture—but he only talks about negatives or alleged negatives. He doesn’t talk about the fact that the whole world would starve without fossil fuels or their equivalent, and that there’s no reason to believe that their agricultural functions, including as a fertilizer, can be replaced in any reasonable timeframe. This kind of thinking—or nonthinking—is what leads us to an energy crisis or a fertilizer crisis, as we are experiencing today, because people like Michael Mann told us we should make decisions about this while ignoring the benefits.

The IPPC (International Plant Protection Convention) has a report called Summaries for Policymakers, and these summaries are distributed to news outlets, where they get distorted. I call this “dissemination distortion.” I think the IPCC itself is fundamentally a terrible synthesizer of knowledge, mainly because they too ignore the benefits of fossil fuels, including the fact that thanks in large part to fossil fuels, we’re safer than ever before from the climate. This is the result of what I call “climate mastery,” and you cannot talk intelligently about climate and the threat of climate change if you don’t recognize that we’re far safer from climate. There has been a 98 percent decline in climate-related disaster deaths over the last one hundred years, and the UN doesn’t mention this in any of its reports. That’s like a polio report that doesn’t mention that we have a polio vaccine, a preventative to the disease, and that we’re far better off.

I also mention that the researchers themselves face problematic incentives, including the degree to which the government funds the climate research. The government people behind the funding are very interested in catastrophe scenarios that justify increases in their power. And so, what you find is that even if all the researchers are well intentioned and doing their best, the action conclusions that we’re given can be totally wrong. I’m trying to break this common idea that if we’re told that the experts say we should do X, then that must be right. The point is it can be 180 degrees wrong, and in fact, I show the track record is often that wrong—that is, they’ve recommended policies that would have ended billions of lives prematurely.

RM: Jeff mentioned you approach these issues from philosophical background. Wasn’t it Senator Barbara Boxer who attempted to dismiss you?

AE: Yes.

RM: You write about an anecdote from a congressional hearing. It was about somebody who’s an expert on how much CO₂ the atmosphere can retain and what increases in CO₂ concentration will mean in terms of how much warmer the planet will be in the year 2100. That’s a very dubious thing we don’t know much about. It is a very complex process. But even if someone is an expert, it does not mean that they know, therefore, that the optimal carbon tax is $87 per ton! There is so much going into that conclusion that you can’t be an expert in one little area and then pontificate on what humanity should do, because it involves many different people’s expertise.

AE: Definitely! Part of my point in chapter 1, and this also comes up when I discuss the issue of externalities, is that there is a systemic benefit denial when it comes to fossil fuels. It’s not particularly well known that climate-related disaster deaths are way down—but if you think about it logically, would I rather be alive today, with today’s weather and our ability to deal with it, versus the weather of one hundred or two hundred years ago and our ability to deal with it back then? Of course you would choose living today! What you grasp is that our ability to deal with the climate, or what I would call our climate mastery ability, is so much more important than the exact current state of the global climate system.

What you want to look out for is are there any potential changes that are so dramatic that they are likely to overwhelm us. Whether it’s that the warming is so rapid that it leads to rapid sea level rises or that the storms become two or three times more powerful. If it’s that, yes, then you get worried. But if it’s that it’ll become two degrees warmer or three degrees warmer in a given timeframe or the storms will become 20 percent more intense or it’ll become a little drier or wetter in certain places, that’s just so inconsequential, even climate-wise, compared to your ability to master it. One point about mastery people don’t get is that they can neutralize negatives. What is negative climate-wise depends on your degree of mastery. I love snowboarding and snowmobiling, so I like to go to Snowbird, in Utah. The snow there used to be a negative. It was a threat. But thanks to mastery, the area has been transformed into a positive! You can say the same for the almost tropical conditions where I live, in Laguna Beach. It is considered a positive to live there with the heat, but with less mastery, it would not be nearly as positive, let alone to live in Florida. So many people are moving to Florida and Texas because some of the negatives there have become positives, thanks to air-conditioning that allows you to handle the worst periods indoors.

JD: Alex, your description of our faulty knowledge system is alarming to me because it would affect a lot of other political and economic issues. As you point out, we need “synthesizers” to put knowledge in context. We saw this during covid. What do epidemiologists say? What do virologists say? Well, they might have the kind of specific technical expertise Bob mentioned, but that doesn’t mean they are equipped to determine the value of tradeoffs for society at large over shutting down businesses in response to covid. I think you are very much the synthesizer here. The idea that we don’t need philosophers to make sense of the questions and answers is really dangerous.

AE: I think covid is a great example, and I bring it up in chapter 1. With covid, you have this very clear situation where the experts say we have to lock down, and if you dispute that, you’re against the experts and you’re claiming that you know better. I think one thing that happens is sometimes the profreedom people will too easily jump on a certain contrarian position in terms of the content of the issues because that seems to protect freedom. Some people would underestimate the severity of covid because they feel we can’t have freedom, whereas my view was that the government’s policy fundamentally should be “innocent until proven guilty,” which is the most underrated political principle today. But essentially, if there’s a demonstrable danger from somebody, then you can validly say “you should quarantine.” But you cannot say to everybody “you’re guilty because you could potentially infect somebody in the next two years, so you all have to stay in your homes.” Even if it is quite severe and if you’re more concerned about the severity, then get better at testing so you can validate whether somebody’s infectious.

There’s a tendency of people with status to take different kinds of threats and argue that this threat justifies a vast expansion of my power. Part of what they do is they ignore all the downsides of them getting that power. And in the case of covid, you don’t think about all the negative consequences of locking people down.

One thing that led to the lockdown frenzy also applies to fossil fuels, and that is the question of what is the goal that your policy is pursuing. Because that’s going to determine the standard by which you evaluate whether this policy’s good or this policy’s bad. And with covid, the goal that wasn’t stated explicitly but was operating nonetheless was essentially to eliminate this virus at all costs. That was really the goal of covid policy, and that is a totally unjustifiable goal! Nobody could argue that this one virus should be eliminated at all costs, but it functions that way until you identify explicitly that this is the goal we’re pursuing and it makes no sense.

And it’s a similar thing with energy, where the goal right now is to eliminate CO₂ emissions at all costs. That is not a justifiable goal, and when you make it explicit, it becomes clear that doesn’t make any sense as a goal. Maybe it’s an aspect of advancing human flourishing, but it can’t be that we’re going to get rid of whatever it is at all costs. Otherwise, we would literally kill ourselves right now.

JD: In part 3 of the book you lay out the case for why CO₂ emissions are not all they’re claimed to be—and might actually be beneficial in many ways.

AE: Part 3 is the most controversial. Just to give the structure of it, part 1 is called “Framework,” and it’s about how what I call our knowledge system is evaluating the issue of what to do about fossil fuels based on an ultimately antihuman framework which I call “the anti-impact framework,” which says that human impact on nature is intrinsically immoral. Our goal should be to eliminate it; it’s inevitably self-destructive. It’s based on this idea that the planet is this delicate nurturer and if we impact it, it’s going to punish us! My point is people who we’re being told are experts are evaluating fossil fuels using the totally wrong framework, and this leads them to ignore the benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing. And it leads them to “catastrophize” the side effects, because they think every impact we have is going to lead nature to punish us like a vengeful god. That’s their perspective. OK, but then let’s look at it from within a human-flourishing framework, where our goal is to advance human flourishing on earth. Then our premise becomes the earth is not this delicate nurturer. It’s wild potential that we need to impact intelligently.

Part 2 is looking at the benefits. It argues that the benefits of cost-effective energy are incomparably greater than what we’re taught, and that fossil fuels are uniquely capable of providing energy for the billions of people who have energy and the billions of people who need energy. In essence, it’s saying that the livability of the earth depends on our use of fossil fuels. And I don’t think it’s refutable. Somebody could say they’ve discovered a new technology and it can replace fossil fuels. I don’t think it’s plausible, but interestingly, a lot of the climate catastrophists are taking that tack. They’re not actually attacking me on climate and climate mastery; they’re attacking me on how amazing renewable energies are. For an example, take Andrew Dessler who was a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast. He has now apparently become the world’s energy expert. His attack on me is almost all based on the notion that renewables are so wonderful, which is quite a thing to say, given that we’ve tried to replace fossil fuels with renewables, and even restricted fossil fuels, and now we have shortages. And Biden is not going to China for solar panels. He’s going to Saudi Arabia for oil!

Part 3 is saying that fossil fuels are not causing climate catastrophe, but they’re actually driving a climate renaissance in which we’re far safer from climate. There is nothing in the evidence about the future of climate impacts of fossil fuels that is catastrophic, let alone apocalyptic, if you factor in our mastery ability. Once you factor in the mastery ability, it’s hard to be scared about different kinds of climate impacts. My claim about the establishment is that they’re not only ignoring the broad benefits of fossil fuels. They are in particular ignoring the climate mastery benefits. Because their implicit goal is to eliminate human impact because it’s evil. They think our impact on the climate is intrinsically immoral and we shouldn’t do it, and they expect us to be punished for it. It has a religious quality to it, where the commandment is “thou shalt not impact the climate” and the climate is going to punish us vengefully if we do. So much of the climate discussion is this belief that it’s wrong for us to impact the climate and we’re sinners and we shouldn’t do it—versus let’s look clinically at what these impacts are, positive and negative and neutral, and then what are the benefits that come from it. When you do that in a clinical, prohuman, kind of nondogmatic way, you have a totally different view of the whole situation.

RM: Alex, this is a point you make in a few places in the book. You are skeptical of alarmists, whether they really are concerned about human welfare, because if we need to get CO₂ emissions down to net zero by 2050, if not sooner, alarmists would be the biggest boosters of nuclear and hydro energy! I think James Hansen is possibly the only major advocate who is pronuclear at this point. It makes you wonder about the sincerity and actual motivation. Clearly, nuclear and hydro should be embraced with open arms if the goal is to dramatically reduce CO₂. But there is political resistance. People don’t like expensive energy. And yet they’re against those as well.

AE: You said sincerity and motivation, and I think both of those are very much in question. And this is part of what I point out in chapter 1: part of the reason we should be very suspicious of our knowledge system is that, again, it’s hostile to fossil fuels, but it’s also hostile to nuclear, it’s hostile to hydro, and it’s hostile to all the activities involved in solar and wind power, including mining. Solar and wind involve unprecedented amounts of mining and unprecedented amounts of industrial development, and that’s part of why there is resistance to them. And so what you see is that our knowledge system and our designated experts are hostile to all forms of energy, whereas to your point, if you valued energy at all, you’d be really scared about the negative effects: you would be overwhelmingly pronuclear, prohydro, pro–anything we can do. You would be as worked up about the threat of reduced energy use as you are about climate catastrophe.

Now, in reality, you should be infinitely more worked up about the threat of less energy! But even if you take the AOC-type position that these climate impacts are going to be so terrible, you have to recognize the catastrophic impacts of using less energy. And fortunately—I mean, fortunately intellectually, not existentially—we have an energy crisis right now that’s illustrating that. I’ve been saying for years, including in that exchange where Barbara Boxer said “I don’t appreciate being lectured by a philosopher,” you need to look at the benefits of fossil fuels. I told her and the rest of that group that energy is the industry that powers every other industry. The price of energy determines the price of everything, and we’re seeing that right now, with price inflation being substantially driven by energy prices! Everything I say in Fossil Future is coming true: if you ignore the benefits of fossil fuels, and more broadly the importance of cost-effective energy, you are going to hurt so many people, including their ability to feed themselves.

JD: Alex, if we consider nuclear the cleaner alternative to coal for electricity, I worry about the political and regulatory environment after Fukushima. In the US, only one new reactor has been built, in Georgia, and it’s not online yet. Germany shut down nuclear plants. I fear the future of nuclear power may be somewhat dead in the water.

AE: It’s important to recognize that absent substantial changes in the approach to nuclear energy, it is dead in the water. I think of myself as one of the leaders of what I call the energy humanist movement, consisting of people who are looking at energy issues in humanistic terms. Looking at fossil fuels, energy humanists consider the benefits and the side effects carefully. One kind of error that some pronuclear people in this movement make is that they act like nuclear is more of a near-term replacement than it is. What you’re talking about is very important. Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was created in 1974, we have not had a single reactor that has gone from conception to completion under their regulatory regime. In Georgia, we have unbelievable cost overruns. Construction is becoming uneconomical. This is not something that is poised to be a rapid replacement! We need to recognize that the nuclear status quo policy is a disaster and it needs to be changed.

In my work with elected officials, I’m working on an energy freedom platform which has a good shot at having some influence, particularly if the Republicans win. And part 2 of that platform is to decriminalize nuclear energy. I have a list of eight policies that are necessary so that nuclear can compete on a free market. But we need to recognize that it is dead in the water as any kind of scalable substitute, and we need to change that. In 1970, you could build new reactors cheaply, but that political environment is gone for the moment.

RM: You warn that people often overrate the ability of nuclear to replace fossil fuels. In the book, you discuss how energy needs are broader than just electricity production. People say, “That country gets 25 percent of its energy from renewables” when they mean 25 percent of electricity. When you count industrial heating and transportation, which all require energy, the actual percentage is much lower. Would you talk about that?

AE: My favorite example is Bill McKibben, who is one of the designated experts on this issue. When his book The End of Nature was published in 1989, its marketing said that it was warning us accurately about global warming. But his claims in that book have not come true in terms of their severity. And his policies would have been horrific had they been passed! In an interview, he said Germany was getting 50 percent of their energy from solar! Now, he was talking in December and his first error was he used a daily high from June as an average high of electricity coming from solar. But that was a daily high, not the average throughout the day—it’s like a peak during the day. And then, he’s only taking electricity, not energy, even though most of our energy use is not from electricity. It’s for things like transportation, for high-heat uses, and sometimes clean residential heat via natural gas. This is part of the reason Germany is superdependent on Russia, because they use natural gas for so many things, including compensating for the unreliability of solar and wind. He was taking the statistic from June and assumed that it was still true in December. Of course, one of the problems of solar and wind is they’re seasonal: solar is not anywhere near as good in December as it is in June!

McKibben is telling us what to do about energy, but he doesn’t know the difference between electricity and energy; takes daytime highs and equates them with averages; and equates solar in December with solar in June. It’s important to be precise. The fact that so many of our leading thinkers are imprecise should solidify the idea that our whole establishment doesn’t value energy—and there’s a lot of reasons to think it’s hostile to energy.

make this connection in chapter 3, where I analyze what’s going on with experts in our knowledge system: if you think human impact on nature is a bad thing that should be eliminated, you hate the benefits of energy. It’s not just you hate there’s pollution, or there’s CO₂ and you think that’s problematic. The very purpose of energy is to do work on the rest of nature. That’s what it is. It’s the capacity to do work. The more energy we use, the more we are going to transform nature to suit our purposes. And “transform” here just means “have an impact on.” So, if you’re against impact, you’re against transformation and you’re against energy, and this is what you get with the most consistent of our designated experts. They’ll say we’re using too much energy, and that is like saying we have too many people. And it’s a deep opposition to humanity.

JD: Yes, that’s a philosophical problem. An opposition to what benefits humanity.

Let’s talk briefly about the developing world, which you suggest we call the “unempowered world.” Something like three billion people on earth basically don’t consume energy. Aren’t we being neocolonialists in the West if we try to thrust our anti–fossil fuel mentality on them? People in Africa or India or China might like to have a car or a condo or air-conditioning too!

AE: Yes, it’s unjust, and this is one of the arguments that I’ve made in Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and again in Fossil Future that has resonated the most and that the other side is most terrified of because it undercuts their claimed humanitarianism. Even when they talk about climate, they’ll say, “I’m so concerned about climate because there will be worse storms in Indonesia, and I really care about those people.” If you care about people, they need energy. They need productive ability that will enable them to deal with storms and to feed themselves and protect themselves from nature and have medical care and education. You need energy for all these things. But you can see they’re making that appeal. They’re claiming to care about the welfare of poor people because that’s an issue that resonates with people. It certainly is unjust to deprive people of opportunity who are already in a low-opportunity situation.

The Washington Post, about a month before my book came out, attempted a cancel campaign on me and tried to characterize me as a racist and said, “He doesn’t care about poor people. He’s just claiming to care and so you don’t need to listen to his arguments.” This “racist” argument was insane, and I was able to preempt the story and refute it, and they watered down the article and didn’t use the word racist. But clearly, they are threatened by this argument that their policies are most harmful to the lowest-opportunity people in the world, and that’s why they want to use this ad hominem, because they have no answer to that argument.

RM: Again, it seems they’re hiding their true motive. We shouldn’t paint with overly broad strokes— sometimes the loudest activists get the microphone in the political debate, rather than the sober and serious people. But the claimed motivations don’t always match. Sometimes they simply say we’re just using too much energy altogether. The issue is they just don’t like capitalism. They think humans’ standard of living is too high, so they implicitly agree more energy use means a higher standard of living. They’re against a higher standard of living; therefore, they want to restrict energy use. They are consistent if you know their true motivations! But they realize they have to sell it to the public using a different framework.

AE: Definitely. You mention painting with a broad brush, and it’s important not to do that. I explain in chapter 3 that most of us have adopted what I call the anti-impact framework. When we’re talking about the world, we’re often doing a contradictory thing, which is optimizing for eliminating human impact and at the same time optimizing for advancing human flourishing. And one place this happens is with climate. Most people’s goal with respect to climate is how do we minimize or eliminate our impact on the climate. They’ll talk about how to stop climate change, but what does that mean? That means stop human climate impact. But from a human-flourishing perspective, that’s a crazy goal. Your goal should be to advance climate livability. As I mentioned before, priority number one should be to increase your mastery of the climate because that allows you to neutralize negatives, and in fact turn negatives into positives.

And yet, if you push them on it, most people, who are prohuman, if their values are clarified explicitly, are thinking about the climate change in an antihuman way. So, I’m challenging readers to think about what their own operating framework on climate change is and are they thinking about this issue in a consistently prohuman way. One of my discoveries in writing this book was that I wasn’t fully doing this. For example, with the climate issue, I was assuming that man-made warming was bad instead of being clinical and saying “Where is it bad for humans and where is it good for humans?” There are a number of places where it is clearly good for humans, and I realized I was thinking that if we created it, it must be bad—versus not having any bias one way or another. Is the result good for us or is it not good for us?

JD: We could discuss this book for hours! You can find it on Amazon and at FossilFuture.com. You can follow Alex Epstein on his website, AlexEpstein.com. And most importantly, you can follow him on Twitter at the same handle, @AlexEpstein, and keep up with what he’s doing. Please defend him, promote him, get this book out there. It is incredibly important. This is civilizational. A lot of people are antiprosperity and don’t understand tradeoffs. They don’t understand the world we live in, and they simply don’t share our goals of greater prosperity for people, and they’re hostile to capitalism. We have to stop these people who want to curtail our future and that of our kids and grandkids. So, Alex, I want to thank you so much for writing the book and for joining us.

AE: So much of the world is changed by influential people, which is why I wanted you and Bob to read the book before we spoke, so we could have an informed discussion. I know that some percentage of the readers will agree and spread the ideas. If you know of influential shows or influential people who would like a copy of the book, I’m very eager to send signed copies to these people. If you know of prominent hosts, prominent people who might be interested, tell them, or you can reach out to me (Alex@AlexEpstein.com). You would not believe how effective that can be, as someone reached out to you and this podcast happened. It’s a superefficient way to get the word out, and it doesn’t cost any money. You just have to introduce us.

JD: Congratulations, Alex. Thanks.

AE: Thank you.

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Alex Epstein is an author and commentator who advocates for the use of fossil fuels. He is the founder and president of the Center for Industrial Progress, a think tank in San Diego, California. He holds a BA in philosophy and computer science from Duke University. He is a vocal opponent of the mainstream climate change agenda and has appeared in many forums to promote fossil fuels’ continued use and expansion. He is the author of three books: Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet (2013), The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (2014), and his latest, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less (2022). AlexEpstein.com and Twitter @AlexEsptein

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Authors:

Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein is a philosopher and energy expert who argues that “human flourishing” should be the guiding principle of energy and environmental progress. He is the author of the new book Fossil Future, the New York Times bestseller The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and the creator of EnergyTalkingPoints.com–a source of powerful, well-referenced talking points on energy, environmental, and climate issues.

Alex has made his moral case for fossil fuels at dozens of campuses, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Duke (his alma mater). He has also spoken to employees and leaders at dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

Contact Jeff Deist

Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients. Contact: email; Twitter.

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Deist, Jeff and Alex Epstein, “Debunking Fossil Fuel Hysteria,” The Austrian 8, no. 6 (2022): 4–15.

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Counterfeit Catholicism, Left and Right

The faithful need a framework that rejects secularism and sectarianism alike.

By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer

Sept. 22, 2022 6:37 pm ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

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Archbishop José Gómez attends the traditional blessing of animals at Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles, April 16.PHOTO: DAMIAN DOVARGANES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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How should American Catholics think about their faith and public life? Take abortion. Two of the nation’s most prominent Catholic politicians, President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have unequivocally abandoned the church’s teaching on the dignity of human life from conception onward. Meanwhile, despite the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, a group of Catholic hard-liners in the academy and media have written off American institutions as hopelessly compromised and demand that all public life be radically reoriented along strictly Catholic lines.

Neither offering is distinctly Catholic, yet both are given national airing. What are ordinary Catholics to do?

Though Catholicism has never been a political system, the faithful have always existed in the political sphere. The Catholic tradition thus includes a deep vein of thinking about political institutions and practices, from early thinkers such as St. Augustine (354-430) to medieval ones such as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), whose work incorporated Aristotelian political philosophy into Christian thought. This intellectual tradition continued to develop into early modernity and was rekindled by the Thomistic revival of Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) and the development of modern Catholic social teaching.

That tradition, however, is now rarely consulted. Instead, in a misguided attempt to reconcile Catholicism with modernity, many American Catholics have begun to embrace progressive ideologies that Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles calls “profoundly atheistic.” From critical race theory to gender ideology, these ideas “deny the soul the spiritual, transcendent dimension of human nature; or they think that it is irrelevant to human happiness,” Archbishop Gómez has said. Some Catholics—perhaps inspired by dissident Catholic politicians—even promote abortion.

But they aren’t the only ones departing from church teaching. A prominent group of Catholics on the political right who go by the name of “integralists,” “common-good constitutionalists” or “postliberals” is another. Their central contention is that contemporary American culture is actively corrosive to Catholic teaching, practice and virtue. Some even reject our nation’s founding principles. In practice, they take advantage of widespread economic anxiety to play up the valuable tradition of Catholic critiques of market-worship, while ignoring Catholic teaching on exchange, the danger of socialism and the importance of subsidiarity. Such thinkers want our laws to reflect their own controversial understanding of Catholic teaching, which apparently seeks to create a powerful state that superintends people’s lives.

These versions of Catholic thinking are clumsy counterfeits of a dazzling Catholic intellectual tradition. What’s more, they threaten the unity of the Catholic Church and the cohesion of our country. In the absence of an alternative, generations of Catholics could be led astray.

What’s needed is a framework for faith in public life that rejects both secularism and sectarianism. We must also refamiliarize ourselves with the works and voices that have helped form our nation. That includes such deep thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas. But it also includes profound Catholic witnesses who worked in healthcare (Sisters of Charity), social services (Knights of Columbus and Catholic Charities) and education (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Katharine Drexel). Each ought to serve as a model and guide, helping us to navigate through our difficult and contentious times.

That’s the mission of the Institute for Human Ecology—a new initiative at Catholic University, which will convene a group of scholars to share insights drawn from Catholic resources with our fellow citizens to advance the common goods of the church and our country.

While there is room for debate about what it means to apply Catholic principles in America today, there are certain things that are nonnegotiable. Civic engagement on the part of public servants, elected officials and voters is one such. Faithful to Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s mighty declaration on religious liberty, man is obliged “to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life” and defend the autonomy of the church, church-run institutions and the faithful’s ability to meet the needs of those in our midst consistent with church teaching. We must promote strengthening the family, care for the environment, concern for the immigrant and displaced, and the dignity of every person made in the image of God.

The antidote to problems fracturing our country won’t be found in counterfeit Catholic teaching that sows yet more division. It will be found in engagement with authentic, American witnesses of the faith, with whom we can do what Leo XIII advised on the occasion of the founding of Catholic University in 1887—“give the Republic her best citizens.”

Ms. Picciotti-Bayer is director of strategy for the Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology.

• OPINION
• COMMENTARY

Don’t Believe the Hype About Antarctica’s Melting Glaciers

Two studies carefully explore the factors at play, but the headlines are only meant to raise alarm.

By Steven Koonin

Sept. 19, 2022 6:27 pm ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

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The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, Sept. 5.PHOTO: COVER IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

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Alarming reports that the Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking misrepresent the science under way to understand a very complex situation. Antarctica has been ice-covered for at least 30 million years. The ice sheet holds about 26.5 million gigatons of water (a gigaton is a billion metric tons, or about 2.2 trillion pounds). If it were to melt completely, sea levels would rise 190 feet. Such a change is many millennia in the future, if it comes at all.

Much more modest ice loss is normal in Antarctica. Each year, some 2,200 gigatons (or 0.01%) of the ice is discharged in the form of melt and icebergs, while snowfall adds almost the same amount. The difference between the discharge and addition each year is the ice sheet’s annual loss. That figure has been increasing in recent decades, from 40 gigatons a year in the 1980s to 250 gigatons a year in the 2010s.

But the increase is a small change in a complex and highly variable process. For example, Greenland’s annual loss has fluctuated significantly over the past century. And while the Antarctic losses seem stupendously large, the recent annual losses amount to 0.001% of the total ice and, if they continued at that rate, would raise sea level by only 3 inches over 100 years.

Many fear that a warming globe could cause glaciers to retreat rapidly, increasing discharge and causing more rapid sea-level rise. To get beyond that simplistic picture, it is important to understand how glaciers have flowed in the past to predict better whether they might flow faster in the future.

Two recent studies reported in the media focus on the terminus of glaciers—i.e., where the ice, the ocean and the ground come together. One study used an underwater drone to map the seabed at a depth of 2,000 feet, about 35 miles from the terminus of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. Detailed sonar scans showed a washboard pattern of ridges, most less than 8 inches high. The ridges are caused by daily tides and serve as a record of where ice touched the seabed in the past. Researchers could read that record to infer that at some time in the past the glacier retreated for half a year at more than twice the fastest rate observed between 2011 and 2019.

The cause of the specific event at the Thwaites Glacier remains unknown, in part because the time of the rapid retreat hasn’t yet been determined. It likely happened more than 70 years ago, if not several centuries ago. But the media goes with this angle: “A ‘doomsday glacier’ the size of Florida is disintegrating faster than thought.” A correct headline would read: “Thwaites Glacier retreating less than half as rapidly today as it did in the past.”

A second study tested the idea that freshwater from the melting of one glacier could be carried by currents along the shore to accelerate the discharge of nearby glaciers. Because global climate models are insufficiently detailed to describe the ocean near the coast, researchers constructed a special model to prove out their idea. If ocean currents can connect the discharges of distant glaciers, that would add to the complexity and variability of changes in the Antarctic ice sheet.

Under scenarios deemed likely by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a connection between ocean currents and discharge would increase the overall discharge rate in one region of the continent by some 10% by the end of the century. But to emphasize the idea being tested, the modelers used human influences almost three times larger. Even though that fact is stated in the paper, reporters rarely catch such nuance, and the media goes with headlines such as “Antarctic Ice Melting Could Be 40 Percent Faster Than Thought” with the absurd statement that “a massive tsunami would swamp New York City and beyond, killing millions. London, Venice and Mumbai would also become aquariums.” A more accurate headline would read: “Ocean currents connecting antarctic glaciers might accelerate their melting.”

These two studies illustrate the progress being made in understanding a dauntingly complex mix of ice, ocean, land and weather, with clever methods to infer past conditions and sophisticated computer modeling to show potential future scenarios. These papers describe the science with appropriate precision and caveats, but it is a shame that the media misrepresents the research to raise alarm. That denies the public the right to make informed decisions about “climate action,” as well as the opportunity to marvel at the science itself.

Mr. Koonin is a professor at New York University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”

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The Real Midterm Election Stakes

Will voters put a check on the unrequited ambitions of the Democratic left?

By The Editorial BoardFollow

Sept. 18, 2022 4:53 pm ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

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People vote at a polling location in Michigan.PHOTO: BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES

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If the election polls are right, Democrats have a good chance of adding to their majority in the Senate and even keeping it in the House. Toward that end they are trying to convince voters that abortion and Donald Trump are the main election issues. But the real issue, by far the most important for actual policy, is whether voters will put a legislative check on the political left.

OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH

Elena Kagan vs. John Roberts on Supreme Court Legitimacy

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Mr. Trump isn’t even on the ballot this year, and Joe Biden will be President at least through 2024. No national abortion law is likely to pass Congress as long as the 60-vote legislative filibuster rule remains in the Senate. Abortion law could change in many states depending on election results, but probably not in most.

In other words, the Democratic election strategy is a new version of their 2020 campaign bait-and-switch. Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress won by making the election a referendum on Mr. Trump and Covid-19. But once in office they pivoted to advance a far-left labor agenda and enact the biggest expansion of government in modern history. They succeeded on many fronts, and only the opposition of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema prevented them from killing the filibuster to do much more.

The Democratic left hasn’t given up on any of this, however, as they are admitting if you pay attention. The media are ignoring this as they echo the abortion and Trump narrative. So it’s worth laying out what Democrats really have in mind, based on what they tried to do this Congress and are promising for the next.

***

Start with targeting the filibuster, which is priority one because a 51-vote Senate majority opens the door to everything the current House has passed. Vice President Kamala Harris made that clear in a recent speech to the Democratic National Committee.

“With just two more seats in the Senate, we can codify Roe v. Wade, we can put the protections of Roe in law,” Ms. Harris said. “With two more seats in the United States Senate we can pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Two more seats.”

Democratic Senate candidates in Wisconsin (Mandela Barnes), Pennsylvania (John Fetterman) and Ohio (Tim Ryan) say they’d vote to kill the filibuster. They also favor adding Washington, D.C., as a new state. “50/50 is not enough. We must expand our Democratic Senate majority to abolish the filibuster once and for all. And our campaign is the best chance to do it,” Mr. Ryan tweeted in January. And he claims to be a moderate.

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan have supported a filibuster carve-out for voting legislation. The H.R.1 voting bill creates a federal right to mail ballots and overrides state laws banning ballot harvesting. It requires same-day voter registration and up to 15 days of early voting.

House Democrats also passed H.R.4 that would require the Justice Department or D.C. district court to approve election-law changes in states and localities with a putative history of voting-rights violations. The Attorney General would have broad discretion, and you can bet GOP states will be the main targets as they were under Eric Holder before the Supreme Court voided pre-clearance in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).

Once the legislative filibuster goes for one issue, the political pressure will be enormous to kill it for much more. The Pro Act will surely make a comeback. That bill would override state right-to-work laws that give workers the choice of joining a union; impose a backdoor card-check procedure that neuters secret-ballot election; impose the Obama-era joint-employer standard that put corporations and contractors on the hook for workers they don’t employ but “indirectly” control, and much more.

Democrats also want to pass a CO2 emissions “enforcement mechanism” that failed this year because it violated Senate budget reconciliation rules. Ditto a provision originally in the Inflation Reduction Act that gave the Environmental Protection Agency sweeping power to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Build Back Better entitlements including free universal pre-K, child-care subsidies, an expanded refundable child tax credit, paid family leave and Medicare dental and hearing benefits will re-emerge from the grave. Many Democrats are hankering to lower the Medicare age to 60 from 65, and Mr. Ryan co-sponsored legislation in the House.

Major tax increases will also be back in play. Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal recently told a Bloomberg reporter that Democrats will raise individual and corporate tax rates if they keep power. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a recent speech that the Administration’s goal is to return “tax rates for high earners and corporations to historical norms.”

How high is “historical”? Mr. Neal’s original proposal in 2021 raised the corporate rate to 26.5%, and the individual rate to 39.6% from 37% at $400,000 in income and 42.6% above $5 million, and imposed a tax on capital gains at death. With two more Senators, expect those rates to go much higher.

***

There’s much more we could include here, but you get the idea. If Democrats add seats in the Senate and hold the House, there won’t be much of a check on progressive ambitions. If they accomplish this with inflation at 8%, they will be even more emboldened. That is what’s really on the ballot in November.

• OPINION
• INSIDE VIEW

A Faraday Is Worth 1,000 Faucis

The inventor of the dynamo would have plenty to say about our scientific ‘experts.’

By Andy KesslerFollow

Sept. 18, 2022 12:46 pm ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

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Michael Faraday (1791-1867)PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

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The public’s trust in scientists is way down this year, according to the Pew Research Center. Ya think? “Fifteen days to slow the spread” and “flatten the curve” may have something to do with it. Some airlines still hand out disinfecting wipes as you board—to combat an airborne virus. Real scientists, like Michael Faraday (1791-1867), whose birthday is this week, would be rolling their eyes.

What did Faraday do? Well, if there was no Faraday, there would be no modern economy. A former bookbinder who studied magnetics, in 1820 he noted that electricity applied to a loop of wire could get a magnet to move through it, an insight that produced the electric motor found in every fan, vacuum cleaner, washing machine and electric car. Faraday then turned his own thinking inside out. In 1831 he invented the dynamo, an inverse motor. Moving a loop of wires around a fixed magnet can induce electricity. Place a dynamo next to running water, like Niagara Falls, and you can generate reliable electricity.

No Faraday, no communications. By running electricity down a long wire to an electromagnetic relay switch, you can ring a bell. This innovation became the telegraph, telephone and today’s wireless devices, which are all based on Faraday’s induction.

No Faraday, no computers. The 1945 Eniac computer used those same electromagnetic relays, open representing zero and closed representing one. While today’s semiconductors are based on the quantum effect—thank theoretical physicists Niels Bohr and Max Planck for that—they need gobs of electricity for power, which Faraday’s work helps generate.

Faraday took science seriously: “Conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.” Facts! Imagine that.

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Why is science so maligned these days? To me, the turning point came in 1984, with (fictional) Columbia professor and ghostbuster Dr. Peter Venkman, played by Bill Murray, who when questioned said, “Back off, man. I’m a scientist.”

Venkman’s false claim of authority surely influenced Al Gore to claim during his 2007 congressional testimony on climate change, “The science is settled.” Wait, wasn’t that perjury? Science is never settled. Faraday was ahead of this, saying, “A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong.”

Same for Anthony Fauci, who was wrong on masks, social distancing and school closings, and who claimed his detractors were “really criticizing science, because I represent science.” Back off, man.

Faraday’s many great quotes are reminders of how scientists should act. He was skeptical of theories lacking real-world proof: “I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion.” He also embodied science’s constant questioning: “He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt.”

Sadly, bad science has permeated society. My sons’ high-school biology classes spent more time designing a model recycling center than teaching mitosis and meiosis. Math classes in California for six million students are being “reimagined” to focus on equity and fairness. Even though the Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting 8% growth in STEM jobs by 2029, schools aren’t teaching what is needed. Science is becoming a squishy mess.

Maybe it’s because the label “science” has been so watered down. The author George Gilder once told me that anything with science after its name isn’t really science. Behavioral science? Nope. It often draws its conclusions from studies that can’t be replicated. Climate science? Ha, good one. It uses computer models that are too broad and can’t figure out what to do with clouds that reflect sunlight, as Steven Koonin’s 2021 book, “Unsettled,” shows. Yet gazillions of dollars are shoveled toward green goodies to placate the goblins of global gloom. Computer science isn’t really a science either; it’s more engineering.

Here’s the latest science hypocrisy. President Biden gave a speech last week in Boston on his “cancer moonshot” initiative, which will require lots of biology and chemistry. Yet his administration’s Federal Trade Commission tried to block DNA sequencer Illumina from buying and ramping up artificial-intelligence-enabled cancer-screening company Grail to find cancer early. Unscientific policy kills scientific advancement.

Can trust in science return? Sure, trust will trickle back so long as real scientists working in obscure labs continue to turn out things seemingly too good to be true: new mRNA drugs, battery technology or energy sources. Faraday knew this: “I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.” Faraday was an eternal optimist, rightly so given his two-century track record. He said, “Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.” Disagree with that? Back off, man.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.

VACCINES

Study Confirms Vaccine-Linked Myocarditis Deaths for 1st Time

Findings contradict CDC and FDA claims of condition being mild and not associated with death

By MARGARET MENGE

A study published in late August found that 345 people in England died of myocarditis in one year, all vaccinated with one of three COVID- 19 vaccines.

The study, conducted from December 2020 to December 2021, looked at deaths after a hospital stay for myocarditis or with myocarditis listed as a cause of death on a death certificate among 42.8 million vaccinated people in England aged 13 and older.

The publication of the study’s findings in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, marked the first time in medical literature that researchers have confirmed

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Study Confirms Vaccine-Linked Myocarditis Deaths for 1st Time

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that myocarditis associated with one of the COVID-19 vaccines can result in death. The article was published online on Aug. 22 and appears in the journal’s Sept. 5 issue.

“This is really big, to talk about deaths. CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] keeps saying, ‘generally mild, generally mild,’” cardiologist Sanjay Verma, who wasn’t involved in the research, told The Epoch Times. “There’s been a concerted campaign to emphasize that people have not died from myocarditis and that it’s generally mild.”

Myocarditis is defined as inflammation of the myocardium, the middle layer of the heart muscle. Although the CDC has acknowledged since the spring of 2021 that myocarditis is a possible side effect of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the agency hasn’t publicly spoken about death as a possible outcome of myocarditis.

The authors of the study reviewed patient data pulled from the national health database for all those in England aged 13 and older who received at least one dose of one of three vaccines available in the country: AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna.

About 20 million people got the AstraZeneca vaccine, 20 million got the Pfizer vaccine, and more than 1 million got the Moderna vaccine.

The study tracked hospital admissions and deaths from myocarditis by age and gender and in relation to how many doses of each vaccine a person had received. It compared how many cases of myocarditis were associated with a recent SARS-CoV2 infection and how many were associated with one of the vaccines.

Of the people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and were hospitalized for myocarditis or with myocarditis listed on their death certificates, 22 people (17 percent) died within 28 days of receiving the first dose, 14 people (12 percent) died after their second dose, and 13 people (15 percent) died after getting the Pfizer-BioNTech booster.

For the AstraZeneca vaccine, 40 people died of myocarditis after the first dose and 11 after the second dose, amounting to 28 percent and 12 percent respectively.

Among those who got the Moderna vaccine, there were no myocarditis deaths within 28 days of vaccination.

The study concluded that, in general, the risk of myocarditis from SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was greater than the risk of myocarditis from the vaccines.

The study found that 345 people in England died of myocarditis in one year; all had been vaccinated with one of three COVID-19 vaccines.

But there was no control group of unvaccinated people, the study was limited to the 28 days following vaccination, and the conclusion didn’t hold for all ages or all the vaccines.

For males younger than 40, the risk of myocarditis after a second dose of the Moderna vaccine was almost four times higher than the risk of myocarditis after a SARS-CoV2 infection, the data show.

The study is a follow-up to a prior study in which the authors reported an association between

the first and second doses of the vaccines and myocarditis.

Neither the CDC nor the Food and Drug Administration has ever acknowledged that any American has died from myocarditis caused by one of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The most recent version of the CDC advisory on adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination states that as of Aug. 31, there were 1,022 “preliminary reports” of myocarditis and pericarditis for people younger than 18 in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and that 672 of them had been verified and met the CDC’s working definition of myocarditis or pericarditis.

But there’s no mention of death as a possible outcome.

“Most patients with myocarditis or pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination responded well to medicine and rest and felt better quickly,” the advisory reads.

A CDC morbidity and mortality report from February referenced one reported death from myocarditis but offered no confirmation.

“One death was reported; investigation is ongoing, and other contributory factors for myocarditis are being evaluated,” the report reads.

A CDC advisory on the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines linked to a Jan. 25 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which found that the risk of myocarditis increased after both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and was highest after the second dose in adolescents and young men.

The JAMA study alluded to deaths without confirming any, saying that among people younger than 30, there were “no confirmed cases of myocarditis in those who died after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination without another identifiable cause” and that two other deaths “with potential myocarditis” are under investigation.

HOLLIE ADAMS/GETTY IMAGES

A teenager receives a vaccine in Stanmore, England, on June 6, 2021. LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES

Vials of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in S

DEFENDING AMERICA

Biden Administration Intentionally Weakening Military: Retired General

By Beth Brelje

September 15, 2022 Updated: September 15, 2022

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When the United States acts, the world is always watching, and one of the loudest messages since President Joe Biden took office came from how the United States handled its withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

What message did that send globally to other government leaders who may see America as an adversary? That was a question asked by Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, during a panel discussion Thursday about America’s role on the world stage at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Atlanta hosted by FRC Action, the legislative affiliate of Family Research Council.

“I think that will go down in history as the worst foreign policy failure in U.S. history. Every decision that was made was wrong,” said Lt. General (Ret.) William Boykin, executive vice president at Family Research Council. “What did that say to the rest of the world? It said that we have weak leadership. And you have to ask yourself, why did Vladimir Putin refrain from attacking Ukraine during the Trump administration? And then he went in with barrels blazing, under the Biden administration, and I will tell you, I think a lot of that goes back to the weakness that people—both our adversaries and our friends—recognized in the Biden administration.”

Other countries recognize that the Biden administration is weak and indecisive on many issues, he said, not just how the U.S. military left Afghanistan.

Boykin mentioned Biden’s approach to the Paris climate change treaty and his efforts to get the United States back into the Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“What’s the value to the United States? And what’s the value to our allies, to put Iran on a pathway to nuclear warheads,” Boykin said. “I think we’re going to continue to see the consequences of not only the pullout of Afghanistan, but stupid decisions that have been made by the administration, one of which is … our president shut down our pipeline, and then turned around and went to the Saudis.”

Boykin said there were several Saudi nationals flying the planes on 9/11 and that Saudi Arabia has been a major sponsor of terrorism. Despite this, Biden went to Saudi Arabia and to Russia to ask for oil after shutting down America’s oil production, Boykin said.

“Does that make sense to anybody? It’s the most foolish thing,” he said. “They see that kind of decision making, and they see us as being weak, and they see this as a time when they can take advantage of us.”

Weakening Military

Boykin believes weakness is more than an international perception, and he gave examples of how Biden is intentionally weakening the military, including kicking out servicemembers who refused to get the COVID-19 shot and teaching critical race theory and inclusion tolerance instead of teaching how to be in a constant state of readiness for war.

“All of these things that have nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the agenda of the administration—you are doing them an injustice and ultimately you’re going to pay the price for that,” Boykin said.

“At the same time, they’re turning around and writing to old generals like me, saying, ‘We need help recruiting because we just can’t recruit enough people.’ Well let me explain to you how this thing of mathematics works. You get rid of all of them, and then those who are watching from the outside say, ‘I don’t want a part of that.’ And those on the inside, many of them leave on their own.”

Many in leadership at the Pentagon got their start under President Barack Obama, Boykin said.

“If they’re compromised—if they lack focus, the question we need to ask as a nation is, who’s mentoring the next generation of leaders? Who’s bringing up the warrior leaders for the future? The answer is nobody,” he said. “And that’s the hardest thing to fix in terms of restoring the Navy and the Army and Air Force and the Marine Corps.”

China Is Watching

Perkins directed the conversation to China and asked panelist Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” how China likely views the Biden administration’s moves.

“We don’t have to speculate. The Communist Party propaganda was very clear,” Chang said.

The day that Kabul fell to the Taliban in Afghanistan, Chang said, Chinese newspapers declared that China would invade Taiwan at some point, and that when this happens, the island will fall within hours and the United States will not come to help.

“What they saw in Afghanistan confirmed in their minds, their long narrative, that the United States was in terminal decline,” he said.

Chang doesn’t believe the United States is in terminal decline, but that is the message from a series of propaganda releases and the effect of the Afghanistan exit, he said.

“The one thing that I’m most concerned about is that there will be some sort of accident in the international airspace,” Chang said, adding that this could start a war. “We have seen incredibly dangerous aerial maneuvering on the part of the Chinese. They almost brought down an Australian reconnaissance aircraft on May 26 because the Chinese jet flew so close to it and released flares. That’s something that’s never been done before, and I’m afraid that that is going to be the trigger of war in East Asia.”

“Not only is China involved in the world’s fastest military buildup since the Second World War. It is preparing the Chinese citizens for war,” Chang said. “That mobilization of citizens is an ominous sign.”

If China decides to do anything with Taiwan, Boykin said, it will be while Biden is still in office.

“They know that Joe Biden is not going to respond militarily,” Boykin said. “He will send material. He’ll give them intelligence and diplomatic support, but he’s not going to send U.S. troops into harm’s way against China, and that gives [China] an assurance. This is going to be their best window of opportunity.”

 

Beth Brelje

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Beth Brelje is a national, investigative journalist covering politics, wrongdoing, and the stories of everyday people facing extraordinary circumstances. Send her your story ideas: Beth.brelje@epochtimes.us

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Home | Wire | Inflation, the Price Level, and Economic Growth: Everything the Elites Tell You about It Is Wrong

Inflation, the Price Level, and Economic Growth: Everything the Elites Tell You about It Is Wrong

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• LEE ESTO EN ESPAÑOL

09/08/2022J.R. MacLeod

Fundamentally, inflation is fraud. The central government or bank printing more money lessens the value of the money already in circulation. A truckload of sand isn’t particularly valuable in Saudi Arabia. An increased supply of money means ultimately that prices denominated in that money will go up. Unless you are the one to receive that new money at its point of entry, and thus keep pace with the inflation, the real value of your money holdings will go down.

So, in essence the government has taken wealth from you, and offered nothing in return, except the vague promise that the inflation will grow the economy, from which you will subsequently benefit. As we will show in this article, that is a false promise that has never once worked, and there is plentiful evidence against it ever working. Fortunately, there is another way.

If inflation is a fraud on the general populace in that its false promise of improved growth rings hollow time after time, it is more specifically a fraud on ordinary working people. When new money is created it enters the economy through the government, financial, and corporate sectors. The distributors and initial recipients of this new money obtain it before prices go up, in fact prices are then driven up by their spending of the new money. Those responsible for the inflation are thus ahead of it.

Ordinary people, however, are behind the inflation. The new money only works its way to them after prices have already increased. And if the inflation is continuous, then they are already behind the next wave of money printing and price increases.

Even if there is a limited burst of inflation which is then totally halted, the elite still benefit at ordinary people’s expense. The new money is printed, the first holders spend it when prices are still low, this spending drives up prices, the money then works its way through the economy in a more general distribution, and ordinary people are right back where they started: with higher nominal wages but having to pay higher nominal prices too. Meanwhile the elite gained increased real purchasing power at the beginning, without doing anything to earn it, instead just having the right connections to obtain the newly printed cash.

Thus, inflation can only ever benefit the elite at the expense of ordinary people. Which is hardly surprising given the revolving door between the federal reserve and the financial sector. The same people who control the power of inflation are the ones who can directly benefit from it.

However, inflation is completely unnecessary for a growing and prosperous economy. Under a strict gold standard, inflation, defined by Mises as the printing of money by a government entity, does not take place. Thus the only way price inflation, or more aptly, price increases, can take place are due to natural economic or environmental factors and government folly other than inflation.

Though there may be price increases in specific areas, under a strict gold standard the guaranteed general trend is for price decreases. How so? If the government isn’t printing money, then prices are dictated fully by the market. In a free-market competition and innovation drive prices down. To stay in business, firms must make a profit; to make a profit, they have to attract customers; to attract customers, they have to offer higher quality products at a lower price than their competitors.

This process has taken place consistently throughout economic history. Take, for example, the pocket calculator. Free inquiry and the ability to make a profit led to the innovation of the first commercially available calculators. Initially they are very expensive as a cutting-edge product. However, over time the price came down as near universal demand for the product combined with the effective resource marshaling of a free and competitive market made pocket calculators widely available at a low price.

And yet despite a lowering of prices, economic growth has occurred, as more people have a new and useful product in their hands. Furthermore, at the same time the price came down, competition led to the product becoming sleeker and more powerful.

Inflation is pursued as a fundamental misconception of the nature of wealth and economic growth. Money is not wealth, printing more money does not lead to a growth in the real economy. Were all those trillionaires in Zimbabwe in the mid-2000s wealthy, even though in real terms they could purchase fewer goods than in previous eras? Why was their economy declining if they were printing so much money?

Rather, wealth and growth are defined by the standard of living. While this has a subjective component, common sense can inform us of some objective ways to gauge an individual’s material well-being.

Inflation is not necessary for real wealth and real growth. These things are obtained by producing more goods and services available at the lowest cost. A declining general price level takes place as a consequence of true economic growth and wealth generation.

It is logically impossible that under a strict gold standard with no inflation, combined with a free market in goods and services, there could be any situation other than economic growth at the same time as a declining price level. But this is also backed up by the empirical record.

In the late nineteenth century both the UK and America had strict gold standards and declining price levels. This was also the period of greatest relative advancement in economic history, when both countries asserted themselves as truly industrialized economies, and the most powerful nations in the world.

See here, for example. Or, for a lengthier (yet still pleasantly concise) discussion of this subject, see George A. Selgin, “Less than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy”

Author:

J.R. MacLeod

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Home | Wire | The “Stunning Success” of the Green Revolution Is Yet Another Progressive Myth

The “Stunning Success” of the Green Revolution Is Yet Another Progressive Myth

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TAGS Economic PolicyProgressivismSocialismWorld History

3 HOURS AGOKristoffer Mousten Hansen

One of the key myths of the twentieth century is the benign role played by international, American-led institutions after the Second World War. American liberals/progressives, fresh from imposing the New Deal in the thirties and planning and directing a world war, turned their eyes to international affairs: the United States had a world historic mission of messianic proportions: lifting developing countries into modernity by remaking them (and all other countries, for that matter) in America’s own image.

The Cold War era was rife with projects and organizations to carry out this vision, from Bretton Woods and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the area of international finance to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in military affairs to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom used to spread progressive, US-friendly propaganda. These organizations all had mainly deleterious influences—I have previously indicated how Bretton Woods and the modern international financial system can best be described as financial imperialism—but in one area American interventionism is to this day universally acclaimed as benign: the Green Revolution.

The Official History of the Green Revolution

Population growth was considered a major problem in the sixties. Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University in his 1968 Population Bomb predicted widespread hunger as soon as the 1970s and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. The world simply could not feed a larger human population. Although mainly focused on environmental damage from pesticide use, Rachel Carson’s famous 1962 book, Silent Spring, made similar points. Human population was bound to continue to grow, and this would result in untold suffering and environmental damage.

A key and imminent danger in the 1960s was India: always on the verge on starvation, only massive imports of American wheat kept the specter of mass death away. Then, in 1965, catastrophe struck: drought across most of the subcontinent caused the Indian harvest to fail. As the drought continued into the two following years, it appeared that Ehrlich’s and the other Neo-Malthusians’ predictions had come true.

Then, a miracle happened: in stepped a man, a veritable demigod, to judge by the worship lavished on him by contemporary normies. Norman E. Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, had since the forties been researching and breeding new wheat varieties in Mexico, initially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and after 1964 as leader of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, CIMMYT, initially funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the Mexican government).

Borlaug bred high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties that were widely adapted to different ecological environments. Since the early sixties, he had been working with M.S. Swaminathan of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, and together they planted Borlaug’s new dwarf wheat varieties in northern India. Success was immediate: 1968 returned a bumper crop, as the new wheat yields were the highest ever recorded in India.

It appeared that the population doomers had been wrong. So said Borlaug himself when he in 1970 received the Nobel Peace Prize: in his acceptance speech, he proclaimed victory in the perpetual war between “two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction.” But the war was not over, he warned, and only continuous funding for technological research into food production and limits on reproduction could avert disaster.

Governments and philanthropists rose to the challenge, and capital poured into agricultural research of the Borlaugian variety as new international institutes were set up to continue the work Borlaug had begun in Mexico and in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines (founded in 1960). The Green Revolution eradicated the scourge of famine, and since agriculture with Borlaugian technology had much higher yields, masses of land were liberated from agricultural use and returned to nature. A 2021 study in the Journal of Political Economy estimates that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the developing world would have been up to 50 percent lower had it not been for Borlaug, Swaminathan and the other international Brahmins ready and willing to guide the unwashed masses of ignorant peasants.

There is a twofold problem with this account of agricultural history: it is based on bad economics, and its connection to the actual history of Indian agriculture is tangential at best.

The Green Revolutionaries’ Bad Economics

Celebrating the Green Revolution rests on two fundamental errors in economic reasoning: Malthusianism and misunderstanding agricultural economics.

Malthusianism is the mistaken belief that human population will grow faster than the food supply; in Thomas Malthus’s formulation, population growth follows a geometric progression (2, 4, 8, 16 …) and food supply an arithmetic progression (2, 3, 4, 5 …). As a result, mankind is destined, apart from brief periods, to live at the margin of subsistence: only disease, war, and famine will limit population growth.

The problem with Malthusianism is that it’s completely wrong, both as a matter of theory and of historical record. For one, food production and population growth are clearly not independent variables, since human labor is a key input in food production, a point made by Joseph A. Schumpeter. More fundamentally, as Ludwig von Mises explained, the Malthusian law of population is only a biological law—it is true for all animal species, but men are not simply animals. With the use of reason, they can refrain from mindless procreative activity, and they will do so if they themselves must support the result of said activity. Malthus himself clearly saw this and amended his theory in the second and later editions of his famous Essay on the Principle of Population (Frédéric Bastiat, as is his wont, has a much better and more optimistic explanation of the population principle).

Neither do the technophiliacs understand the economics of agriculture and food production. Ester Boserup, who is a key inspiration for the following brief explanation, developed the correct understanding of this issue in the 1960s, after studying Indian farming. The ignorance of Borlaug and company and their cheerleaders today and in the past is thus hardly excusable: the exact same historical conditions that they saw as “Malthusian,” after all, inspired Boserup to lay out the correct understanding of the matter.

As population grows, the labor supply expands, and more labor is applied to agricultural plots. The land’s yield therefore increases, although the returns on additional labor input diminish—as per the law of returns. Once the return on additional labor input is insufficient to justify it, new land is instead brought into cultivation, and once the land has been cleared, the physical productivity of labor increases. Since clearing new land requires some additional effort, farmers always have to weigh the potential returns from new lands versus the returns from more intensive cultivation of already cleared lands.

We can see this clearly in monetary terms: as more labor is applied to working the land, wages fall and land rents rise. As land rents and land values rise, the potential value of unsettled lands increases, and as wages fall, the expenditure needed to clear the land falls. Once the expected return on new lands outweighs the estimated cost of bringing it into cultivation, labor will be applied to clearing new lands. Then land rents will fall and wages rise until bringing more land into agricultural use is no longer deemed profitable.

Thus, population and food production expand in unison, sometimes due to more intensive cultivation, sometimes due to an increase in the area cultivated. The same analysis holds under more capitalistic conditions (i.e., when farmers have more tools and other capital inputs available): the return on applying more capital goods to present land is compared to potential returns from applying capital goods to expanding the cultivated land area. Even the most primitive form of agriculture is, of course, capitalistic, as agriculture is a roundabout production process, in which productive effort is widely separated in time from valuable output.

Indian agriculture in the 1960s functioned well, except when it was impeded by government meddling and institutional barriers. Such meddling can be extremely destructive, as Mao Zedong had shown in China just a few years previously during the Great Leap Forward. However, there was nothing Malthusian about that episode nor, as we shall see, about the alleged famine in India in the 1960s.

The 1960s Indian Famine: Bad History

The 1960s famine in India launched the Green Revolution and the international fame of its main protagonist, Norman Borlaug. From the outset, however, the narrative was skewed by political considerations.

American agriculture was heavily subsidized in the sixties, resulting in huge surplus production. This surplus could not be sold at the market price, at least not without bankrupting American farmers. Under typical interventionist logic, the American government intervened to subsidize the export of American farm products to maintain an artificially high price in the domestic market.

India was thereby inundated by cheap American wheat in the early sixties, but as G.D. Stone writes, this did not alleviate India’s food shortages—it caused them. In a simple case of farmers adjusting to their comparative advantage, Indians shifted their production to cash crops (such as sugarcane and jute) for export and thereby financed their imports of cheap American grain.

The drought of 1965 and the following years was real enough, but its impact was not simply a failure of food crops. The jute and sugarcane crops suffered, leading to real hardship for agricultural laborers. But this hardship never amounted to widespread famine. This did not matter for the narrative, however: in 1965, the American president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was trying to get Congress to approve a new farm bill with increased subsidies for agricultural exports and foreign aid in the shape of the Food for Peace plan. Reports of Indian drought were a godsend: faced with a recalcitrant Congress, Johnson played up the specter of drought and mass starvation. His legislation duly passed, and even more American grain was shipped to India, which doubtlessly did help alleviate some hardship in the short term.

Playing up the dire situation in India naturally also fed the agenda of Borlaug and company. The special wheat varieties bred in Mexico were widely introduced across northern India, and as the drought conveniently ended, the first harvest yielded a massive crop. Borlaug took credit, quite undisturbed by the coincidence that nearly all crop yields were at record levels in India and in neighboring China. The alleged success of American technocracy also played into the wider political narrative of American progressive leadership of the “free world”: in 1968, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), William Gaud, addressed the Society for International Development in Washington, DC, claiming that foreign aid and wise agricultural policies had fostered “a new revolution. Not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution.”

The Green Revolution, led by government and NGO technocrats and financed mainly by Western development agencies, was off to the races. The breeding of hybrid rice and wheat varieties by the International Rice Research Institute and CIMMYT, respectively, was the flagship of modernity in farming. But even on its own terms, this is misleading at best. What happened was that agriculture in the developed world as well as in the West shifted to a very intensive cultivation that required a lot of capital inputs. Borlaug’s wheat varieties are a case in point, as Stone points out: only when large amounts of fertilizer were applied did these varieties outyield native Indian tall wheats. Technologies, it turns out, are not exogenous forces that are simply imposed and reshape the environment. The local people had developed crops and techniques suited to their situation, and it’s unlikely that Borlaug’s wheat would have been widely used had the Indian government (and foreign aid agencies) not at the same time massively subsidized the use of fertilizer and the construction of new irrigation systems.

The Reality of the Green Revolution

A last line of defense for the proponents of the Green Revolution’s benefits is that it has resulted in efficient food production, liberated labor for nonagricultural work, and that we can now go on to use modern genetic technologies to increase the quality of food and avoid malnutrition. Thus, for example, otherwise sensible people like Bjørn Lomborg have long championed the introduction of “golden rice”—a rice variety genetically engineered to be high in vitamin A—as a solution to malnutrition in rice-growing countries.

But the technocrats and their cheerleaders forget to mention or ignore the fact that the Green Revolution has itself been a cause of malnutrition. As wheat yields increased in India according to Stone, for instance, the relative price of wheat declined, and wheat thereby outcompeted alternative food sources rich in protein and micronutrients. Malnutrition rates in India thereby rose as a direct result of the Green Revolution. A similar development occurred in developed countries, for different but analogous reasons.

When it comes to technology freeing up labor, what has really happened is that overinvestment of capital in agriculture has reduced the demand for agricultural labor, but this has not increased the demand for labor elsewhere. On the contrary, since less capital is available for investment in nonagricultural sectors, the demand for labor and wages elsewhere has not risen. Thus, the Green Revolution has been an important contributing factor in the growth of third-world slums where people subsist on low-paying jobs and government handouts.

All in all, as we should expect when dealing with technocrats driven by progressive hubris to intervene in the economy’s natural development, the Green Revolution was not a blessing, the victory of wise scientists over the propensity of stupid peasants to breed uncontrollably. Rather, it has been an ecological, nutritional, and social disaster.

Author:

Kristoffer Mousten Hansen

Kristoffer Mousten Hansen is a research assistant at the Institute for Economic Policy at Leipzig University. He received his PhD from the University of Angers and is a former Mises Institute research fellow.