Biden's War on Energy

Biden's War on Energy

As Biden doubles down on his War on Energy, prices keep shooting up...

Post Editorial Board, NYPost 

Think energy costs are high now? Just wait: President Joe Biden is doubling down on his War on Energy, and that’s sure to keep prices zooming up, up and . . . up.

Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency is writing new rules that will raise costs for fossil-fuel-based power plants. And, as Kenneth R. Timmerman noted in The Post last week, Team Biden has also moved to kill the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Pipeline, which would’ve brought Israeli and Cypriot natural gas to gas-starved Europe, helping ease shortages there.

The prez is also reviving Obama-era loan guarantees for “clean energy” producers, starting with $1 billion in backing for a Nebraska company that will make “clean” hydrogen.

That guarantee could cost taxpayers; think Solyndra, the solar-panel company Team Obama aided to the tune of $500 million before it went belly-up — only with the stakes now twice as high. Favoring such companies also puts traditional energy producers at a competitive disadvantage.

Meanwhile, a Russian invasion of Ukraine would worsen European energy shortages; Russia provides 30% to 40% of Europe’s oil, gas and coal. Team Biden is working on a plan to get global producers to increase output and divert gas shipments just in case, but many are already near maximum. Brace for worldwide prices to skyrocket even more.

Americans are already paying about $3.33 a gallon for gas at the pump, nearly 40% percent more than a year ago. US benchmark crude oil just hit a seven-year high, $87 a barrel. Home heating fuel costs are up more than 40%.

High gas-pump prices are particularly painful for lower-income workers who can’t work from home and must commute. But rising energy costs also fuel higher price tags for other goods and services — food, clothing, other manufactured products, transportation. Last month’s Consumer Price Index pegged overall inflation at 7%, the highest in 40 years. That, too, hits the poor hardest.

Biden’s green agenda clearly deserves blame for pushing up energy prices: He killed the Keystone XL pipeline, threatened to shutter another critical conduit between Canada and Michigan, halted oil and gas leases on federal lands and is discouraging production and investment by vowing an ever-greater crackdown on fossil fuels.

Think about it: Though oil prices were much higher in 2021 than in 2018, US shale producers’ capital investments were down by about a third last year; production fell from 2020, which was already down from 2019. And fewer supplies mean, yep . . . higher prices.

Indeed, the extremists driving Biden policy want higher energy prices — to make renewables seem more competitive.

The green agenda is all about pain and sacrifice in the name of fighting climate change. Yet with countries like China and India pumping out massive and growing amounts of CO2 each year, Biden’s measures can barely dent the rise in global emissions — but they’re doing a great job of inflicting pain. 

The Coming Dethronement of Joe Biden

The Coming Dethronement of Joe Biden

Biden’s situation presents the unnamed committee who actually runs the presidency with a huge and delicate problem. It can’t last.

Roger Kimball, American Greatness

It’s not often that I agree with Joe Biden, but he said something in his nasty, brutish, and long press conference last week with which, if properly understood, I agree. 

Don’t get me wrong. The press conference as a whole was a “total disaster.” Notwithstanding the sycophantic performance of the court eunuchs in the regime media, everybody understands this. (But speaking of “court eunuchs,” what’s the female equivalent? It was Jennifer Rubin, who actually gave Biden an “A-” for the presser, that prompts this vital question and I hope some enterprising savant will contribute the answer.) 

At one point, a reporter, noting a few of the multifarious failures of Biden’s first year in office—runaway inflation; his failure to “shut down the virus”; the smoldering ruin of his legislative agenda; the sharp, persistent partisan divisions that he came to office promising to heal—given all that, the scribe suggested, perhaps Biden had “overpromised.” 

No, no, Biden replied, “I didn’t overpromise, but I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.” 

Delicious, isn’t it? Peel off and discard the first bit. Biden clearly overpromised. Just utter the word “normalcy” anywhere near the name “Biden” and watch the reaction. But many people jumped all over the second bit. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), for example, quoted the word “outperformed” and tweeted: “I’m not sure what planet he’s inhabiting but on planet earth his record is a record of failure.” 

That is true. It’s a dismal record of failure, and we’ve only made it through one year. Biden’s even outdone his master, Barack Obama, who before Biden held the world record for worst president in the history of the United States. Biden is far worse, in part, granted, because he continues to follow the blueprint set forth by his clean, elegantly clad predecessor.

But I have to cavil with the idea that Biden has not “outperformed” expectations. He certainly outperformed mine. I didn’t think he would make it through his first year in the White House. But here it is, January 20-something, and the old guy is still in office. Amazing. 

True, there is something of Dr. Johnson’s dog about the whole thing. Presented with the spectacle of female preachers, Samuel Johnson marveled: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

My feelings about Biden are somewhat similar. I have accordingly revised my prediction. I was wrong that Joe Biden wouldn’t make it through his first year. I continue to cling to the conviction he will not remain the occupant of the White House through to the morning of January 20, 2025. The prospect of a second Biden term is, I am convinced, not worth speaking about. In tragedy, Aristotle said, we should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities, but a second Biden term is so improbable as to be well-nigh impossible, and I am not forgetting about what a tragedy such an eventuality would entail for the country and the world. Even CNN seems to be coming around to this realization.

If I am even remotely correct about this, Biden’s situation presents the unnamed committee who actually runs the presidency with a huge and delicate problem. Biden’s behavior long ago passed from embarrassing to dangerous. We can see that all around us. 

By October of 79 A.D., Romans living in the vicinity of Mt. Vesuvius had become accustomed to tremors and eructations. A largish earthquake in 62 A.D. had caused widespread damage. Plumes of poisonous gas killed some 600 sheep. But the populace got used to the interruptions. Until around mid-October of 79, that is, when the volcano erupted and buried the surrounding area in yards and yards of molten lava and volcanic ash. 

I’d say we have had plenty of admonitory tremors. And who knows how many sheep have been gassed along the way? We’re still waiting for the big one, however, and as of this writing, it’s not clear how it will unfold. Will Biden do something stupid—(stop tittering with your suggestion that I should insert a full stop after the word “stupid”). What I was going to say was, will he do something stupid in Ukraine, precipitating a crisis with Vladimir Putin? Will he continue to coddle President Xi Jinping or the mullahs in Iran? Do not, Barack Obama once warned, “underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up.” What if we get double-digit inflation, plus rising interest rates, plus a recession? We’re well down that road, and though I try to arrange things so that there is no math, I do note that the interest payments on our $30 trillion federal debt are much bigger at 5 percent than they are at roughly 1 percent. 

Some people talk about invoking the 25th Amendment and removing Biden for incapacity. But waiting in the wings to take the reins of power is Kamala Harris (and after her is Nancy Pelosi: Think about that!). So I don’t think that expedient will be resorted to. 

Somehow, the cabal that put Biden in power will scheme to winkle him out of power. It is unlikely to be as straightforward as it was with Richard Nixon. Biden is not hated so much as he is held in contempt. And with Nixon, the Democrats were fortunate that his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt in a good, old-fashioned, straightforward political way. It turns out that he liked simple brown bags, especially ones filled with cash. Agnew would have been as unacceptable as Kamala Harris, but the blatant corruption made it easy to get rid of him before proceeding to tackle the big fish of Richard Nixon.

As I say, I doubt removing Joe Biden will be so easy. It will be interesting to see what the deep-state committee comes up with. They put him in power, instructing Bernie Sanders and the other Democrats to drop out in 2020, and they will figure out a way to remove him from the 2024 presidential equation. 

Perhaps it will be something like those corrupt quiz shows in the 1950s—shows like “Twenty-One.” Radio quiz shows had been wildly popular, so early television producers had high hopes. When “Twenty-One” debuted, however, it was a dismal failure. The contestants could answer hardly any questions. It is a nice detail that the initial sponsor was Geritol, a detail that might well play a role in American politics today. 

Well, the television producers weren’t going to gamble on a repeat of the initial performance, so they began coaching one or more of the contestants. They let one player rack up considerable winnings and then, when the public’s interest began to wane, instructed him to throw the contest to another player. Unfortunately, one of the players, Herb Stemple, did not take his dethronement lying down. He told his story and exposed Charles Van Doren, son of the poet Mark Van Doren, who had taken Stemple’s place. It took a while for the story to achieve general credibility, but it eventually did and caused a huge scandal. Maybe we have something similar to look forward to with Joe Biden and whoever the committee selects as his successor.

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee).

Snowball in Hell: Biden Press Conference

Snowball in Hell

Don Jaffa

The second press conference of President Biden toward the end of his first year in office was a ‘tour de force’ exceeded only by Peter Sellers in “Being There.” With Joe Biden it was a matter of life imitating Art. Like Cherries Jubilee being served flaming, Joe offhandedly remarked, “Oh Putin will probably invade Ukraine,” and in sequence, should have followed with, ‘and tonight we are screening ‘Chamberlin in Munich’ for fun.’ 

 

In my pile of reading was the autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer who was an MI6 agent for over a decade, who was exfiltrated from Moscow and returned to the UK for debriefing and safe haven. When MI6 revealed the source of the information he had provided, that he was being debriefed in a safe house in the UK, CIA Director Bill Casey immediately flew to a US Air base there and was escorted to personally debrief Oleg. After a bit of introduction, Casey got right to the point;  

 

“If we give the Soviets SDI will they agree to shut down the nuclear arms race?”  

 

Without hesitation Oleg replied,  

 

”Absolutely NOT! They are paranoid and won’t believe you are not withholding some secret part that makes their end not work. You only have the option of competing to make them compete, and they cannot compete with a Free Market economy. They will continue until the Soviet Union implodes.” 

 

Of course that is exactly what happened, and here we are, ‘déjà Vu’ all over again. And it is not merely Putin’s Russia; it is now also Red China. It follows a concise pattern of imitation. In 1970 on a Navy refueling and overnight stay in Taipei, we had an opportunity for some local shopping, and found ‘American’ LPs at five for a single Dollar. Then, on a business trip to Phrishtina, Kosovo, in 2004, with a runny nose and a fever, were able to buy over the counter, a brand name Antibiotic in 500 and 1000 mg tablet size, with the packaging noting ‘manufactured’ in Guangzhou.  

 

Putin imitates Mussolini, believing that NATO, like the League of Nations, to use the Chinese phrase [Zhilaohu], is a “paper tiger.” Putin has used forums like the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, to demand expulsion of former members of the Warsaw Pact, from NATO, and to guarantee that the Ukraine will be barred from NATO membership. Putin invading Ukraine is like Mussolini invading Ethiopia, and to what end? Like Hitler annexing the Sudetenland and getting Biden, like Chamberlin, to land at home waving a piece of paper and extolling, “Peace in our time!” [With aides frantically tugging his sleeve, ‘you idiot, that is toilet paper!”] 

 

Giving a hypothetical without asserting verity, that the Chinese unleashed the COVID virus to wreak havoc on western economies, especially here in the United States, and that it is to position their economic engine to obtain even greater influence, that such a position would also prove to be advantageous to Putin’s Russia. And that having the impotent and incompetent Joe Biden in the White House serves that impetus for Communist and Post Communist China and Russia. What pressure point would inflame the Chinese to take such covert action?  

 

Donald J. Trump 

 

President Trump put ‘pedal to the metal’ of the economic engine of the US GDP and made the US economy free from importing petroleum, and began encroaching on the oil market for export sales. A second term would have enabled the Trump administration the opportunity to start exporting mass amounts of LNG to NATO countries through Germany, and thereby cutting off Russia from the cash flow from its’ gas pipeline through the Ukraine to the EU. Russia wants the Ukraine because it is charging tariffs for the gas to flow through the pipeline, and keeps increasing the tariffs, diminishing the bottom line Russia needs to keep modernizing and expanding its’ military.   

 

A continuation of that policy would have enabled the export of cheap gasoline and diesel to the EU, which would have rumbled the EU economy into action as well. With price at the pump in the EU already far more than in the US, a lowering of fuel prices would have made more money available for economic development. But the real ‘Dragon’ in that forecast was the possibility that huge supplies of gasoline and diesel could be provided to commercial and ‘free enterprise’ assets within mainland China. The festering boils on the buttocks of the Chinese Communist leadership in Hong Kong, would burst into Gwangzhou Province, and the emerging Billionaires would become, as in the old days, War Lords who control their dominions. 

 

GDP growth reaching 10% would destabilize Chinese Communist Party control throughout mainland China. Eventually, the evening news would have provided video of BLM and ANTIFA like riots in all the major cities of mainland China. Watch the videos, sit back with a cigar, and a bottle of rum, a bowl of ice cubes, and a few cherries for a ‘Cuba Libre!” Which is why a few scared shitless Chicoms paid off Joe Biden and his son, and sent Chinese women to have sex with Congressmen.

L.A.’s Billion-Dollar Failure

 

L.A.’s Billion-Dollar Failure

Misguided policy and poor financial management have marked the performance of the city’s well-funded Homelessness Services Authority.

Soledad Ursúa,  City Journal 

Who in their right mind would continue to spend $1 billion annually for a failing product? Two Los Angeles city councilmembers—Joe Buscaino and Paul Koretz—asked that question recently while introducing a motion for the city to withdraw from the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority. The city pays LAHSA nearly $300 million a year to administer homelessness services on its behalf, yet the agency is unwilling to provide taxpayers or city departments basic information about its activities, such as a line-item scope of services or verifiable data on program outcomes. The agency receives nearly $1 billion in annual funding from federal, state, county, and city sources.

LAHSA’s core function is to provide street-level outreach to the homeless population in the Greater L.A. area, ensuring that they receive resources, shelter, and eventually permanent supportive housing with comprehensive services. Yet even with its vast budget, the agency is falling short. According to a 2019 audit from city controller Ron Galperin, LAHSA has failed to meet five outreach targets and in some cases has reported a mere 4 percent success rate, reaching only dozens of people in need, as measured against the tens of thousands of homeless living in encampments scattered across city and county streets, freeway underpasses, parks, and community spaces.

LAHSA’s failures are not the result of understaffing or underfunding in light of the surge of the homeless population in recent years. According to its own annual count, from 2015 to 2020 the number of homeless in Los Angeles grew steadily from 41,174 to 63,706, an increase of 55 percent. Yet during that five-year period, the agency’s annual payroll rose even faster, from $7.2 million in 2015 to $36.8 million in 2020—a 411 percent increase. That this massive increase hasn’t raised more red flags about financial mismanagement is testament to the power of the “homeless-industrial complex” in L.A.

Recently, L.A. County supervisor Kathryn Barger nominated Reverend Andy Bales, president and chief executive of the Union Rescue Mission (URM) on Skid Row, as a commissioner to LAHSA. Many saw the appointment as an attempt to shake up homelessness policy, which still aligns with the federally mandated housing-first approach that identifies the primary problem as housing, rather than mental health or drug addiction. Bales has openly criticized this policy, particularly because it fails to mandate or provide services to meet abstinence and sobriety requirements. A significant percentage of those who receive housing services end up back on the streets.

Over the holidays, I joined Reverend Bales and volunteered at URM, located in downtown Los Angeles. Skid Row, as the neighborhood is known, has the highest concentration of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S.—an estimated 5,000– 8,000 people live on the streets in an area of almost three square miles, filled with drugs, drinking, human trafficking, violence, rape, murder, hourly overdoses, and despair. Upon my arrival at 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, many were already openly using and buying drugs from street-gang dealers.

Founded in 1891 to dispense food and clothing from gospel wagons, URM is a privately funded provider of homeless services that today occupies a five-story building in the heart of Skid Row. It practices a faith-based recovery model, offering immediate food and shelter, health care, and life-skills training for up to 1,000 daily clients. URM requires abstinence, order, and sobriety. These requirements make it ineligible for federal money, but it receives $18 million per year in private donations.

An eternal optimist and man of faith, Bales lost his lower right leg to flesh-eating infections he acquired while caring for the homeless on the streets of Skid Row. He thus personifies sacrificial self-giving, but his philosophy comes with rules and an expectation of lawful behavior from those he helps. Meals are scheduled by groups, based on level of need, gender, and family status. URM requires sobriety; it doesn’t even serve coffee at breakfast, as caffeine could have a negative effect on some of its residents.

It’s unclear how much power Bales will have as a commissioner when it comes to revising the agency’s failed housing-first policy. The LAHSA Commission, which has authority to make financial, planning, and program policies, has ten members—five appointed by county supervisors, the other five by the mayor and city council. Several commissioners differ with Bales on strategy, though none have spoken out against him.

Brian Ulf, president and chairman of the board of SHARE! Collaborative Housing—a public-private partnership providing homeless services—believes that Bales will say things publicly that no other service provider or LASHA commissioner would. He describes Bales as “a true spiritual warrior on the streets of L.A., devoid of ego, who acts in a spiritual and humanitarian capacity.”

Barger’s appointment of Bales may be a sign that she recognizes the system is broken and in need of an outsider’s perspective. Many believe that Bales will represent the interests of homeless individuals, rather than those of the homeless-services system. However things play out, it will be people like Reverend Andy Bales and privately funded, faith-based organizations such as URM that will lead L.A. out of this humanitarian crisis, not the government.

Soledad Ursúa is a finance professional and elected board member of the Venice Neighborhood Council. She holds an M.S. from The New School for Management and Urban Policy. She can be found on Twitter at @SoledadUrsua.

'Hug-a-thug '- 'Dangerously stupid'

 

'Hug-a-thug '- 'Dangerously stupid'

Gowdy obliterates Manhattan District Attorney for 'hug-a-thug' crime approach: 'Dangerously stupid'

Yael Halon, Foxnews 

Gowdy said the new policies would seemingly eliminate the role of police, juries and judges

Former federal prosecutor Trey Gowdy tore into the new Manhattan District Attorney on Sunday, wondering whether the progressive soft-on-crime Democrat might be better suited for a job on "the editorial board at the New York Times."

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., is accused of abandoning the law and traditional law enforcement procedures in his third day on the job with a memo ordering prosecutors not to seek prison sentences for a slew of crimes and to downgrade charges – including for robberies and commercial burglaries.

Gowdy called the new directive "dangerously stupid."

"The problem is he doesn’t want to be a prosecutor," the "Sunday Night in America" host told viewers. "He has a hard time finding crimes he wants to prosecute…and even when he can be bothered to prosecute. He doesn’t believe in prison. So we have a prosecutor who doesn’t like prosecuting or punishing crime. I wonder if he might be happier as a defense attorney or maybe working for the editorial board at the New York Times."

Bragg's memo states robbery charge should be downgraded to a petit larceny if the brandishing of the weapon "does not create a genuine risk of physical harm." The DA also said he will stop prosecuting other crimes – including some trespass offenses, resisting arrest and fare evasion, but plans to aggressively seek "alternatives to incarceration" for cases that do warrant prosecution.

Gowdy said the new policies would seemingly eliminate the role of police, juries and judges.

"We hear the phrase ‘threat to democracy’ a lot," he said. "What would you call a prosecutor who decides to ignore laws passed by legislative bodies and eliminates the role for police, juries and judges. Is that anti-democratic when one person issues a memo obviating the criminal code? Why would the police arrest anyone who isn't going to be prosecuted? Why should the police risk their lives or risk being sued to investigate crimes the prosecutor will either reduce to probation or dismiss?"

Bragg follows a path of progressive prosecutors in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston, Philadelphia, among others, who are pushing for radical changes to the justice system on the local level. 

"Does that sound progressive or insane?" Gowdy asked, emphasizing that policies like these ultimately hurt the people most likely to be victimized, "which is often communities of color and those who don’t live behind gates or have a security detail."

"These hug-a thug, soft on crime policies have real world consequences. Not only are more people victimized and killed, but these prosecutors are trying to change the law with a memo. That is anti-democratic," he asserted.

In an interview with Fox News, Bragg defended his office’s agenda, sparking immediate backlash.

"We’ve laid out a path that is going to reduce incarceration, reduce violent crime, get people services, are neighborhoods safer, get New York City back up on his feet," he said. "It’s the road forward and the pathway to safety and justice."

Gowdy said the approach won't bode well for Democrats in November.

"I hate to ruin the ending but when you let violent people out on bond, you get more violence," he said. "When you have fewer police, less funding, less prosecutions and no prison time, you are going to get more violent crime. 

"That does not sound very progressive to me," he concluded. "It sounds stupid but dangerously so. My guess is a political strategy of closing the schools but opening the prisons is not going to work come November."

Gowdy wondered how many people will become victims of crime between now and then. 

Who Are The Real Insurrectionists?

 

Who Are The Real Insurrectionists?

Victor Davis Hanson, Daily Caller  

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border and COVID-19 all have lost majority support.

As a result, the Left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when they expect to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when they fear losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup.

A cynic might suggest that they praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court and the more than 60-year-old 50-state union?

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of former president Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The Left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration potentially lifesaving new COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.”

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity – if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.

The Biden administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border – in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.

Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S. citizens, but not millions of U.S. citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 “sanctuary city” jurisdictions. These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.

At various times in our nation’s history – 1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63 – America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.

In the last five years, we have indeed seen many internal threats to democracy.

Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent. She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump. She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about “Russian collusion.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated rules governing the chain of command. Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander-in-chief. Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.

Some of the nation’s top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S. Congress, again, mostly with impunity.

All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.

The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.

We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle. But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish one-day rioters on January 6. Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property – all under the banner of revolutionary justice.

Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America’s institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

Defense Secretary’s Straw Man

 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin

Defense Secretary’s Straw Man

Constitutional Peril in Defense Secretary’s Straw Man on Extremism in Military

Brent Sadler, The Daily Signal 

After almost a year of work, the secretary of defense on Dec. 20 released a report on findings regarding extremist activities in the U.S. military and actions to be taken to counter them. 

After all that’s going on in the world, it must be heady stuff to warrant so much of the secretary’s time.

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.  

Despite the Chinese’s massed air formations near Taiwan or Russia’s 100,000 troops poised for war near the Ukraine border, there’s a bigger threat seemingly on the defense secretary’s mind; namely, extremism in the ranks. 

The numbers, however, don’t support his concern, and it’s likely there’s another agenda in play.

First, the numbers. You’d be forgiven for thinking there’s a pandemic of extremism among our military members after watching our military leaders testify on the issue or listening to the mainstream media. 

When all the smoke clears, an objective assessment doesn’t support that conclusion, and no report to date has delivered any data to indicate otherwise. 

Indeed, the secretary’s own spokesperson reported that prohibited extremist activity amounted to “fewer than 100 incidents” over the past year. That’s in a force of more than 2 million men and women. 

Moreover, responding to a request in 2018 from then-Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the Department of Defense reported only 27 incidents of extremist activity over the previous five years.

The Pentagon’s vigorous response to these underwhelming numbers includes actions to consider changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, better information sharing with law enforcement, screening of service members, and increased training and education.

Those seem reasonable, if applied with equal jurisprudence, but there’s reason for concern.

However, why did Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on only his 12th day in office issue directives to hunt for extremists in the ranks?  The only plausible explanation is political.

Only after the hunt for extremists had gotten underway did the secretary issue a directive to review the Pentagon’s China policies—inarguably a more pressing issue for national defense.

The galvanizing event for the concern over extremism was the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, which involved a number of ex-military members. The riot was a national embarrassment, demonstrating inexcusable incompetence in planning and policing—for which no one in government has been held to account. 

However, a substantial effort was launched to track down rioters and to lock them up in solitary confinement for months, including those without a prior record of violence. 

The same cannot be said for the months of riots and violence perpetrated in Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and elsewhere.

Those rioters were often released and never charged, and some benefited from bail provided for them by organizations such as the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which was supported by Vice President Kamala Harris. So-called social justice rioters aligned with an ascendant political narrative, while the Capitol rioters didn’t.       

Here’s the danger to our military and to our Constitution: The defense secretary’s anti-extremism efforts don’t appear to be occurring in a political vacuum, given the focus on the Jan. 6 riot and not on the wider domestic danger from al-Qaeda or from Antifa. Failure to guard against a lopsided application of the law undermines the rule of law and the bedrock of our free society, the Constitution. 

Hopefully, future reports from the secretary will include facts and numbers validating his actions, and instill confidence that he’s not just building a straw man.