(This article, published on July 18 and reporting on Manchin's action July 14, celebrated his action. Alas, the celebration was premature. Abandoning his commitment to oppose any such bill until inflation declined, Manchin embraced a new bill July 27---two weeks before the new monthly inflation rate is to be published and despite the fact that most analysts agreed that the rate would either rise or remain unchanged. We are intensely disappointed in the Senator.---ECB, July 28, 2022)Recently one … [Read more...]
Lying with Statistics About American Electric Energy Sources
Back in 1954 journalist Darrell Huff published How to Lie with Statistics. The book exposed many different ways in which people use statistics, even true ones, to foist off falsehoods.Today while looking for data on trends in the numbers of operating coal- and natural gas-fired power plants in the United States I came across an interesting example of lying with statistics, this one promulgated by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA). The discussion that follows is rough; I don't claim … [Read more...]
Inflation and “Inflation”
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that year-on-year “inflation” through June was 9.1 percent, meaning the basket of goods constituting the “consumer price index” (CPI) that cost $100 a year ago cost $109.10 last month.That’s bad news, for several reasons.First, of course, it’s bad news because it means life gets tougher for everybody whose income isn’t enhanced by precisely those things that drive such “inflation”—meaning the vast majority of people.Second, it’s bad news … [Read more...]
Sri Lanka: Canary in the Environmentalist Coal Mine
Last year the Cornwall Alliance reported on our blog that Sri Lanka was headed for serious trouble. Now, sadly, our prediction is coming true.The Associated Press (AP) calls Sri Lanka “a country hurtling towards bankruptcy, with hardly any money to import gasoline, milk, cooking gas and toilet paper.” In late June its prime minister said its economy had “collapsed.” Both he and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to resign in the face of mass protests that included crowds occupying their … [Read more...]
Scientific Code of Values: Do Climate Alarmists Measure Up?
A few days ago I began reading Harold J. Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (1983). It's a scholarly tour de force covering an amazing range of subjects in law, history, theology, ecclesiology, and even the rise of science (particularly how Christian thought generated that).These paragraphs, from pages 155--6 and 157--8, particularly caught my attention:Although science, in the modern Western sense, has usually been defined only in methodological terms, … [Read more...]
Denying the binary: Why socialism and sexual perversion go hand in hand
Back in 1987, World magazine published an article by veteran journalist Garry John Moes that asked, “Is there a connection between Socialist doctrine and the homosexual rights movement?”That striking lead disturbed me. While the article presented clear evidence that there is, in fact, such a connection, it didn’t answer a corollary question: Why is there a connection between homosexuality and socialism?Why, for instance, did Plato endorse both socialism and … [Read more...]
Biden’s Gas Tax Suspension: Meager Help and Deficit Spending
Today President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass legislation suspending the federal tax on gasoline for July through September, “to give Americans a little extra breathing room as they deal with the effects of Putin’s war in Ukraine.”Not Much SavingsPut the emphasis on “little.”The average driver drives 1,125 miles per month, and the average car gets about 25 miles per gallon, so the average driver uses about 45 gallons per month. The federal gas tax is 18 cents per gallon. Multiply that by … [Read more...]
Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences
If you haven’t noticed rising prices here in America for the past twelve months, you’re either Rumpelstiltskin or dead. And if you didn’t expect rising prices, either you’ve not been paying attention to American monetary, fiscal, welfare, and pandemic policies or you’ve not understood basic economics.So, May’s year-on-year “inflation” rate was 8.6%, following April’s 8.3%, continuing a rapid rise that started in October. (Why the scare quotes around inflation? Because properly speaking … [Read more...]
Taxing Sheep and Cow, Uh, Burps
Get ready, farmers. The climate catastrophists are after you!New Zealand's Ministry for Environment on June 8 released a draft plan to tax farmers for the methane their sheep and cattle produce---because, of course, that methane causes climate change, aka global warming, and we all know that's an existential threat to humanity.Except that the moderate warming actually to be expected from rising greenhouse gas levels will bring benefits as well as costs, and it's entirely possible that the … [Read more...]
Will SCOTUS Rein in the EPA?
Back in 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act (CAA), and for the next two decades or more actions taken under it significantly improved the quality of America’s air. In 1990 it passed significant amendments to it, and some of these also had salutary effects.But, combined with an increasing tendency to allow administrative agencies, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to impose regulations without a clear statutory basis, and a tendency of courts to defer to agencies’ “expert … [Read more...]
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