Jailed Proud Boy Leader: Feds Tried To ‘Coerce Me’ Into Implicating Trump
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said in a jailhouse interview that federal prosecutors tried to “coerce” him into implicatingformer President Donald Trump in the Capitol riot.
“They weren’t trying to get the truth,” Tarrio told the Washginton Post. “They were trying to coerce me into signing something that’s not true.“
Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison last week by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, despite the fact that he wasn’t at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“I was looking and seeking what the plea offer would look like, right?” Tarrio said. “They didn’t want to give me a number. I need a number. To me, the most important thing is when I get home to my family.”
…prosecutors asked him what role then-President Donald Trump played in getting the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. He said the prosecutors, accompanied by FBI agents in the Miami jail where Tarrio was being held at the time, showed him messages that he exchanged with a second person, who in turn was connected to a third person who was connected to Trump. Tarrio said he told the investigators that he didn’t know the third person. He refused to name the people who prosecutors said allegedly connected him to Trump. -WaPo
He also told the Post that “there was never an open-ended question after” the feds tried to get him to implicate Trump.
Tarrio said prosecutors in Miami last fall did not ask him about Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant who was an acquaintance of Tarrio’s, or Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” rally. He said the federal visitors did not ask him questions about his knowledge of Jan. 6 beyond the theorized connection to Trump. “There was never an open-ended question after that,” Tarrio said.
Prosecutors did later offer Tarrio a deal: nine to 11 years in prison if he pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, according to court records. Tarrio declined.
During his sentencing hearing, Judge Kelley said Tarrio was the “ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal.”
There have been 370 individuals sentenced to prison in connection with the Capitol riot out of 1,100 people charged in the incident.
UAW Boss Says ‘Targeted Strikes’ On Standby As Talks With Automakers ‘Far Apart’
Update (1938ET):
“For the first time in our history, we may strike all of the Big Three at once,” United Auto Workers boss Shawn Fain told members in a Wednesday evening Facebook Live event.
Fain said General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis increased their wage offers but rejected some of the union’s other demands.
“We do not yet have offers on the table that reflect the sacrifices and contributions our members have made to these companies.
“To win we’re likely going to have to take action. We are preparing to strike these companies in a way they’ve never seen before.”
He said if no deal is reached by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, then “standup strikes” will be unleashed at different auto plants to keep the automakers guessing. “We will not strike all of our facilities at once” on Thursday,” he added.
Targeted strikes will help the union sidestep ‘strike pay,’ which amounts to $500 a week per member.
Fain said the goal of the targeted strikes is to reach a fair labor deal for members, “but if the companies continue to bargain in bad faith or continue to stall or continue to give us insulting offers, then our strike is going to continue to grow.”
With 24 hours left in labor talks, UAW and the automakers are still far apart.
* * *
Talks between United Auto Workers and Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, appear stalled on Wednesday morning as the deadline for a new four-year labor deal with automakers quickly approaches.
UAW boss Shawn Fain is set to speak to the 146,000 members during a Facebook Live event at 1700 ET regarding the ongoing labor negotiations with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. According to Bloomberg, Fain is expected to discuss a potential strike strategy.
AP News reports the Facebook Live event could have the union boss shed more light on “targeted strikes at a small number of factories run by each of Detroit’s three automakers if they can’t reach contract agreements by a Thursday night deadline.”
Strikes at parts plants could spark production halts at multiple assembly factories. We detailed Tuesday a large enough strike could plunge Michigan’s economy into a recession.
Last week, automakers submitted contract offers to UAW. Fain quickly threw those in the trash, calling General Motors “insulting.”
Bank of America Securities warned clients a “strike is almost guaranteed” because UAW demands and automaker offers are so wide apart.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, told AP if UAW strikes later this week — it would be the largest in decades.
Labor actions will likely occur at part factories for pickup trucks and big SUVs, according to Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“They’re trying to impose some hardship on the companies and apply an accelerating level of pressure to encourage them to make an offer which will be acceptable to the rank and file and goes further toward meeting the demands that they have on the table,” Masters said.
He said it would make sense for UAW to target the weakest point of the supply chains:
“You would go after the components that would shut down as many of those product facilities as possible.
“The tactic would force the companies to lay off workers at assembly plants, and they would get unemployment benefits rather than money from the union strike fund.”
Meanwhile, pro-union President Biden and his administration appear unconcerned about imminent strike threats across America’s manufacturing automobile hub.
It appears the president likes spending time more time at his liberal white-elitest Rehoboth Beach house than actually working.
Grassroots resistance to the Biden administration’s ambitious push for a “zero-carbon” economy is coalescing in varied new state laws and local ordinances that threaten to bog down solar and wind development in a multi-front legal and regulatory war on a scale not seen before.
Until recently and with few exceptions, squabbles pitted loosely organized local residents against renewable developers, with an average of two major projects a month facing protests and legal action in mostly rural areas, according to a database of renewable rejections compiled by Robert Bryce, a former fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.
But the escalation of local protests has gradually drawn more elected officials into the fray, with new laws and regulations auguring ever-varying multi-dimensional contests at the federal, state, and local levels to gain approvals, often involving international players:
Laws passed in Ohio and Kansas in 2021 and 2022, respectively, give stronger input to towns and villages that are often the target of well-heeled power companies seeking to use rural land to construct large-scale renewable energy projects.
In Michigan, a group called Michigan Citizens for the Protection of Farmland plans a ballot proposal that would ban large-scale solar farms on agriculturally zoned land across the state, combating a strong renewable lobby in the Democrat-controlled state.
In Maine, lawmakers heeded the formidable fishing lobby and passed a law in 2021 banning wind farms in state waters off the coast.
In the crucial early primary state of Iowa, where farming interests are powerful, opponents are pursuing legislation halting solar plants on land suitable for agriculture within 150 feet of a neighboring property. The bill was introduced earlier this year but did not move past subcommittee approval.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in 12 states, including Republican strongholds Florida and Iowa, have passed measures that limit or remove local control of renewable projects, handing more authority to the state.
“States get to set their own energy policy,” James Coleman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told RealClearInvestigations. “For example, New York has left a lot of money on the table with natural gas because it doesn’t like fracking, and the federal government has allowed that.”
“We need to replace all fossil fuels plants with renewables … so my suggestion is that we need some kind of federal intervention for that,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “I think it is possible given the magnitude of the need.”
There’s little question that states and towns are chafing at the rush to development and full deployment of wind and solar.
“Our county is under assault,” Bill Hicks, a resident of Franklin County, population 10,000, in east Texas, said at a March hearing in Austin for a proposed legislative measure that would give more power to Texas landowners who resist renewable energy developers.
Hicks noted six pending solar plants, adding: “Folks, one of them is 5,000 acres and stretches for nine miles along a highway.”
Opponents of the Texas bill represented interests from as far away as Norway and Spain, with billions of dollars in revenue and investments from multi-national corporations.
“This is an anti-renewable energy bill,” one opponent, Jeff Clark, president of the Advanced Power Alliance, an advocacy group for an international consortium of renewable producers, said in written testimony. “Senate Bill 624 is designed to stop renewable energy development … everywhere in Texas.”
Conflicts over renewable source placement from Vermont to Nevada have put locals at odds with the Biden administration’s dream of a carbon-free electric sector by 2035 to combat a “climate crisis” that it claims is driven by fossil fuels.
Regulations on renewable plant siting vary widely by state, ranging from a hybrid of local and state authority to outright local or state control. State approval is required of most any energy project, be it oil, gas, wind, or solar. Some states require additional scrutiny of projects over a specified size, while others apply uniform standards regardless of scope.
While 31 states have adopted requirements that a percentage of electricity come from renewable sources in the future, where the plants for this electric generation are situated largely rests with private developers, noted Gerrard of Columbia University.
“They will decide where to buy and rent the land and where it will work the best,” Gerrard said. “Private developers are very good at that, and it is subject to government approval.”
Opposition has a strong element of so-called NIMBY-ism, an acronym for “not in my backyard,” and both sides have turned to the courts on some occasions, with mixed results.
Local opponents cite some of the same arguments used against the oil industry for decades: Development means the potential loss of farmland, the impact of developing roads and infrastructure on the environment, and water runoff that endangers the water supply.
“A big part of this tears communities apart,” said Jack Van Kley, a Columbus, Ohio-based attorney who has represented groups of residents opposing solar and wind developments. “It becomes a green energy civil war in some places.”
With the heft of state law giving these citizens broader say in locating projects on large tracts of wilderness or farmland, energy companies will have to be more diligent when selecting locations.
The corporations say large tracts are ideal for siting solar and wind farms close to transmission conveyances, and therefore more profitable.
“They also want an area with flat ground, which often means farm ground,” said Van Kley, the Ohio lawyer, whose clients are mostly farmers.
Connie Ehrlich has staved off solar development in Pulaski County, Indiana, for three years with a tenacious fight that has included lawsuits, social media blitzes, and overtures to state leaders for help.
But Indiana’s political leadership has not cooperated. “They’re all in on solar,” she said, including the state’s Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, who joined executives from Israeli-owned Doral Renewables at a solar plant groundbreaking last year in Pulaski County. Even the Indiana Farm Bureau, which is supposed to represent farmers in such situations, “has been a real disappointment,” Ehrlich said. “They have been more involved with solar developers than us, hosting events with them. It will cost them membership.”
In the state legislature, Indiana Republicans proposed taxpayer-funded payouts to municipalities that allow solar and wind farms. But residents are outspoken against them: “This bill would take our own Indiana taxpayer dollars and offer them back to us as a bribe,” Judith Noll, a resident of rural Whitley County, told legislators during a hearing on the measure.
Indiana Farm Bureau President Randy Kron and Vice President Kendell Culp – also a state representative whose political donors include out-of-state solar industry entities – did not respond to interview requests.
Utility siting, be it for fossil fuels or renewable energy, is a political art with huge stakes that has yet to be perfected.
The issue has been studied for decades, starting with the designation of land for oil and gas exploration, and is decried for the alleged potential of groundwater pollution. Nuclear facilities are disparaged for the possibility of meltdowns and leaks.
Today, objectors look at renewables as a danger to the environment from consuming valuable agricultural or recreational land. Solar developers have flocked to the hinterlands of Nevada, with flat tracts of sunny land viewed as the perfect landscape for vast panel arrays.
The area is even more attractive because most of it is federal property, controlled now by an administration foisting billion-dollar breaks on the renewables industry. In July, Warren Buffet’s NV Energy bought 7,200 desert acres from the feds for $82 million in an auction. The land, set to be covered with solar panels, is close to the town of Beatty, Nevada, which leverages its proximity to Death Valley National Park as a recreation and tourism draw.
The town’s leaders fear that even though Beatty has so far managed to stave off largescale solar development, the new land deal 11 miles south is a dark portent.
“When NextEra Energy came to the town and wanted to put a facility in, they asked us, ‘What do you want?’” said Erika Gerling, who chairs the Beatty Town Advisory Board. “They offered to build some big fancy visitor center thing, but we don’t want any of that. We want to have our own economy.” NextEra wanted to build a 3,000-acre solar plant that would go right up to the entrance to Death Valley, on a scenic desert-scape that defines the region’s stark natural beauty.
To fight large corporate interests, “people have to stand up and be strong and be outraged,” said Gerling, who has been pleased by the support of two Democratic state senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto. “It’s one thing if I write a letter for the advisory board but another when 100 citizens from the town come out to talk about it.”
Several of the major renewable corporations, including NextEra and Invenergy, did not respond to requests to speak about their siting policies.
Several communities in Michigan have passed moratoriums on solar development, some under a 1974 law that allowed farmland to be protected by the state for a specified period ranging up to 90 years. But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered the statute amended in 2019, allowing solar panels to be placed on the protected land. A spokeswoman for the state of Michigan did not respond to emailed questions on the Democratic governor’s action.
Her order rankles some members of the state’s farming community, who are working on a ballot proposal to protect farmland.
“Making sure these renewable projects are done right is about protecting the country, and at the end of the day we have to protect our farmland,” said Erin Hamilton, who is leading an effort to enforce Michigan’s protection of agricultural land. “Look at history, and any civilization that has gone under … One of the things that broke it is that they lost control of their food supply.”
UN Agency Crowns Biden’s Southern Border As ‘Deadliest Migration Route Worldwide’
President Biden and the Democrats’ radical open border policies have sparked the worst US-Mexico border crisis on record. Readers have already known this, but a new report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) revealed the southern border is the most dangerous route in the world on record.
IMO documented 686 migrant deaths and disappearances across the southern border in 2022, accounting for about half of all incidents in the Americas that year. With 1,457 total migrant deaths and disappearances in the region, 2022 stands as the deadliest year since the organization started compiling data in 2014.
Since President Biden took office, more than 5.8 million illegals have flooded the southern border, a number comparable to the population of Denmark. The surge in migrants can be directly linked to Democrats’ far-left open border policies.
AZ built a border wall out of shipping crates. TX built a floating wall in the Rio Grande.
The Biden administration sued both states and forced them to take it down
“Although the data shows that deaths and disappearances in the US-Mexico border decreased by 6 percent from the previous year, the 2022 figure is likely higher than the available information suggests, due to missing official data, including information from Texas border county coroner’s offices and the Mexican search and rescue agency,” IMO said.
The IOM Regional Director for South America, Marcelo Pisani, called the border crisis a “grim reality.” At the same time, she said, “The impacts on the families left behind to search endlessly for a lost loved one are profound.”
REPORT: The Biden administration is considering, not securing the southern border, but forcing Texas to keep migrants in the state as the crisis spirals out of control in so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Recall that in Biden’s first 100 days of office, his administration used 94 executive actions on immigration, including halting the border wall construction.
Fast forward to the present day, the border crisis has spread to New York City. New York Mayor Eric Adams warned last week the migrant crisis will ‘destroy New York City‘ and slammed the Biden administration for doing nothing about the problem they created.
And Democrats are turning on each other.
Even the liberal women on The View don’t want these migrants.
New York City mayor Eric Adams wants to secure the border to stop the inflow of migrants.
The liberal women of “The View” want to deport migrants from their city.
Adams now is announcing substantial budget cuts in New York City in response to the migrant crisis.
In most instances, a business bleeding red ink has a big problem and could ultimately go under. Not so for the Fed. In fact, losing money isn’t a problem for the central bank at all. But it is a big problem for the US government.
According to the Federal Reserve’s quarterly report for Q2, the central bank reported a loss of $57.3 billion through the first half of the year. The Fed is on pace to lose over $100 billion in 2023.
Rising interest rates are a big problem for the Fed, as they are for other banks. The central bank earns interest income on the bonds it holds on its balance sheet. But the Fed also pays out interest to other financial institutions that park money there. The bonds it bought during multiple rounds of quantitative easing (QE) and still holds on its balance sheet were relatively low-yielding. But with rates much higher today, it is paying out interest at a much higher rate.
According to the Fed report, as of June 30, the central bank held roughly $5.5 trillion in US Treasuries with an average yield of 1.96%. It also held $2.6 trillion of mortgage-backed securities with an average yield of 2.20%. Meanwhile, the average interest rate the Fed paid on money it held, along with repo agreements and other operations averaged around 5%.
It’s also important to note that the Federal Reserve has shed almost $1 trillion from its balance sheet in quantitative tightening.
The results were predictable. Through the first half of the year, the Federal Reserve reported $88.4 billion in interest income. But it paid out $141.8 billion in interest expense. That adds up to a lot of red ink.
It’s also interesting to note that like many commercial banks, the Fed has substantial unrealized losses. If you mark all of the bonds held by the Fed to market value, the loss on paper is over $1 trillion. That’s more around 23 times the value of the central bank’s stated capital.
Bond portfolio losses are exactly what kicked off the financial crisis last March.
But none of this matters to the central bankers at the Fed.
Big Losses! So What?
The last time the Fed reported net operating losses was in 1915.
To put this net loss in perspective, the largest yearly gain over the last 10 years was in 2021 when the Fed reported a $104 billion net income. In other words, the central bank is on pace for a loss as large as the biggest gain in at least a decade.
Who suffers when the Federal Reserve loses money?
In most cases, a business feels the pain when a business loses money. But when the Fed loses money, the US government feels the pain. And ultimately, you and I foot the bill.
Under the Fed’s charter, the Fed remits its profits to the US Treasury. This helps pay down the massive federal budget deficits. When the Fed loses money, the Treasury loses its payday. That means even bigger budget deficits.
Bigger deficits mean the government has to raise taxes or borrow even more money. Either way, we pay. You either get a bigger tax bill or you pay the inflation tax when the Fed prints money to monetize the debt.
But what about the Fed? Isn’t losing money a problem for the central bank?
As Mises Institute Senior editor Ryan McMaken put it, “The de facto reality of the Federal Reserve is that it is a government agency, run by government technocrats, that enjoys the benefits of being subject to very little oversight from Congress.”
If a normal business loses money, it must cut costs, sell assets, borrow money, or take other actions to stop the losses. If it loses enough money, it will eventually eat away at the company’s assets. If this goes on long enough, the company will become insolvent. Sustained losses ultimately mean bankruptcy.
The Fed doesn’t have to do any of these things. In fact, it can lose money year after year and go right on doing business as if there were no losses.
How?
Because we live in a world where the Federal Reserve gets to make its own accounting rules. And according to its own accounting rules, any net loss magically turns into a “deferred asset.”
[I]n the unlikely scenario in which realized losses were sufficiently large enough to result in an overall net income loss for the Reserve Banks, the Federal Reserve would still meet its financial obligations to cover operating expenses. In that case, remittances to the Treasury would be suspended and a deferred asset would be recorded on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.”
Under this scheme, an operating loss does not reduce the Fed’s reported capital or surplus. The bank simply creates an “asset” on its balance sheet out of thin air equal to the loss and business continues as usual. (This is kind of like money printing.) As losses mount, the size of this “asset” will grow.
There is no limit to the size of this “deferred asset” and no time limit on its existence.
Once the Fed returns to profitability, it will retain profits in order to reduce the amount of this imaginary asset. In other words, the US government won’t get any money from the Fed until this “asset” is zeroed out. At that point, the Fed will resume sending money to the federal government.
This has no real impact on the Fed, but it does mean the US government will see a long-term reduction in revenue resulting in a budget deficit higher than it otherwise would have been as long as the Fed is losing money.
The CQFR reports a total capital of about $42 billion ($35.6 billion of paid-in capital from the member commercial banks and $6.8 billion of retained earnings, called “surplus”). But note: This total capital is much less than the $57 billion reported loss for the six months of 2023, to which must be added the loss for the later months of 2022 of $17 billion. This total $74 billion of accumulated losses by June 30 must be subtracted from the retained earnings and thus from total capital. But the Fed does not do this—it misleadingly books its losses as an asset (!), which it calls a “deferred asset”– a practice highly surprising to anyone who passed Accounting 101. Why does the Fed do this? Presumably it does not wish to show itself with negative capital. However, negative capital is the reality.
Here are the combined Fed’s correct capital accounts as of June 30, based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. They result in a capital of negative $32 billion:
Paid-in capital $36 billion
Retained earnings ($68 billion)
Total capital ($32 billion)
I sure do wish I could use my own accounting system when doing my taxes. But alas, I’m not special.
Conclusion
This isn’t good news for a government already buried in debt and running massive budget deficits month after month. It means the US government will have to borrow even more money that the Fed will ultimately have to monetize.
This is yet another reason the Fed’s inflation fight is doomed to fail. Raising rates and shrinking its balance sheet to tame the inflation dragon means more federal government debt. That puts more pressure on the central bank to prop up the government’s borrow-and-spend policies. At some point, the Fed will be forced to cut rates and return to QE in order to manipulate the bond market so the government can keep borrowing. In other words, it will have to create more inflation.
UAW Boss May Unleash ‘Targeted Strikes’ On Automakers
Talks between United Auto Workers and Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, appear stalled on Wednesday morning as the deadline for a new four-year labor deal with automakers quickly approaches.
UAW boss Shawn Fain is set to speak to the 146,000 members during a Facebook Live event at 1700 ET regarding the ongoing labor negotiations with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. According to Bloomberg, Fain is expected to discuss a potential strike strategy.
AP News reports the Facebook Live event could have the union boss shed more light on “targeted strikes at a small number of factories run by each of Detroit’s three automakers if they can’t reach contract agreements by a Thursday night deadline.”
Strikes at parts plants could spark production halts at multiple assembly factories. We detailed Tuesday a large enough strike could plunge Michigan’s economy into a recession.
Last week, automakers submitted contract offers to UAW. Fain quickly threw those in the trash, calling General Motors “insulting.”
Bank of America Securities warned clients a “strike is almost guaranteed” because UAW demands and automaker offers are so wide apart.
Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, told AP if UAW strikes later this week — it would be the largest in decades.
Labor actions will likely occur at part factories for pickup trucks and big SUVs, according to Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“They’re trying to impose some hardship on the companies and apply an accelerating level of pressure to encourage them to make an offer which will be acceptable to the rank and file and goes further toward meeting the demands that they have on the table,” Masters said.
He said it would make sense for UAW to target the weakest point of the supply chains:
“You would go after the components that would shut down as many of those product facilities as possible.
“The tactic would force the companies to lay off workers at assembly plants, and they would get unemployment benefits rather than money from the union strike fund.”
Meanwhile, pro-union President Biden and his administration appear unconcerned about imminent strike threats across America’s manufacturing automobile hub.
It appears the president likes spending time more time at his liberal white-elitest Rehoboth Beach house than actually working.
The Biden administration is misleading the country about the amount of land that will be required to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, RealClearInvestigations has found.
The Department of Energy’s official line – echoed by many environmental activists and academics – is that the vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” This topline number translates into 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles.
However, the government report that furnished those estimates also notes that the wind farm footprint alone could require an expanse nine times as large: 134,000 square miles.
Even that figure is misleading because it does not include land for the new transmission systems that would connect the energy, created by the solar panels carpeting the ground and skyscraper-tall wind turbines filling the horizons, to American businesses and homes.
“It’s hundreds of thousands of acres if not millions for transmissions alone,” said David Blackmon, an energy consultant and writer based in Texas. “The wind and solar farms will take enormous swaths of land all over the country and no one is talking about that.”
And these vast plots, along with the chains of transmission towers, do not include other aspects that would take up even more land: nationwide vehicle charging stations, mines for rare-earth minerals, maintenance space for huge propeller blades and panels, and so forth.
In addition, all projections increase substantially if the U.S. were to meet Biden’s larger goal of aligning the nation with a global plan, set by the International Energy Association and pushed by the World Economic Forum of Davos, dubbed “NetZero 2050.”
Professor Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University, whose work is often cited by renewable energy advocates, did not respond to RCI’s questions, but he detailed the scope of the challenge in the May/June issue of progressive Mother Jones magazine. He urged the U.S. to embark on a moon-shot level transformation of its energy sector, using hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars that Biden provided for the renewable sector in the spending bill that Democrats named the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We’ll have to build as much new clean generation by 2035 as the total electricity produced by all sources today, then build the same amount again by 2050,” Jenkins wrote. “This could ultimately require utility-scale solar projects that cover the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and wind farms that span an area equal to that of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.”
Given the ambitious goals and tight time frames Biden has committed the nation to, it seems natural to assume there would be a master plan detailing where and when this renewable infrastructure will be built and come online. Yet despite strong resistance by many communities across the country to serve as hosts for these massive projects, there has been no robust public debate about how all the necessary land will be acquired – and whether, for example, it will include the taking of private property through eminent domain or use of national park lands, an idea the government officially dismisses.
In fact, no such master plan exists. The closest thing to it, according to a spokesperson for the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is a “long-term strategy” put out by Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry. The optimistic, 65-page document does not, however, address the question of land use. The White House did not respond to questions from RCI.
Experts skeptical about Biden’s goals say the land requirements are so immense and problematic that such detail would likely reveal how unworkable the entire program is.
“Of course it will never happen,” said William Smith, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the CO2 Coalition, a group of scientists who do not believe global warming is an apocalyptic development.
The “less than one-half of one percent” figure is fantasy, according to Smith.
“A lot more area is required.”
Instead of being the focus of vigorous debate regarding a crucial issue, the land requirements are routinely finessed or, most commonly, ignored by policymakers and environmentalists who promise that the radical transformation during the coming decades to the world of supposedly clean electricity will have minimal impact on people’s lives and the landscape. In reviewing government documents and speaking with experts, RCI found widespread disagreement and murkiness in part because the questions surrounding renewables are filled with so many dynamic variables and unknown factors.
The U.S. currently uses an estimated 126,562 square miles for energy production, a bit more than the combined land mass of Missouri and Florida, with by far the biggest chunk devoted to growing corn for heavily subsidized ethanol fuel. In 2021, the last year for which figures are available, the U.S. got 2.8% of its energy from solar sources and 9.2% from some 72,000 wind turbines, according to government figures.
In theory, one should be able to easily determine the nation’s future energy needs by working backward – estimating the nation’s total need for electricity in 2030 or 2050 and then determining how many wind turbines and solar panels would be required to meet that demand.
From Federal Agencies, the Rosiest Picture
There is little agreement, however, on how much electricity the U.S. will need in 2035 or 2050 – and, hence, the number of solar installations and wind turbines – because that depends on a variety of lifestyle decisions, such as the type of cars people will drive and the size of the homes they will live in. In addition, the power generation of those turbines and solar panels depends on where they are situated – which is also unknown – and their age.
These and other variables, in turn, can politicize an ostensibly scientific problem as the factors and assumptions one uses to ask key questions necessarily influence the answer.
The rosiest picture is presented by federal agencies, which rely on estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and environmental activists.
Alex Hobson, a senior vice president at the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a nonprofit that “represents all facets of the renewable energy marketplace,” echoed the Department of Energy when she told RCI that the U.S. would need “less than 1% of the land in the contiguous United States to fully transition to a clean energy economy.” All told, the U.S. could hit the Biden administration’s target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 by adding 19,000 square miles of renewables, a parcel roughly equal to Maryland and Vermont, Hobson said.
Although the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s own work includes such projections, Hobson characterized estimates putting the square mile requirements for largely carbon emissions-free energy in the hundreds of thousands as “a narrative often espoused by critics of renewable energy.”
Nevertheless, estimates by other outfits favorably disposed to Biden’s climate agenda offer larger projections. An analysis by Bloomberg News, controlled by billionaire environmental activist Michael Bloomberg, concluded that “expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota.” South Dakota is roughly 77,000 square miles, or five times the “one-half of one percent” figure that federal officials like to tout.
Pushing the goal to a “NetZero” future in 2050, Bloomberg reported, would “need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean energy to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.”
The different dates – a reduction by 2030 and “NetZero” by 2050 – are yet another set of many variables that contribute to the fuzzy math.
Spinning Turbines
Probably the greatest area of confusion surrounds the amount of land required by wind turbines. In support of its claim that the U.S. will need only 15,000 square miles of land to meet Biden’s renewable goals by 2035, a Department of Energy spokesperson told RCI that the country will need an estimated 5,800 to 11,200 square miles for solar installations and between 1,930 and 3,100 square miles for wind turbines by 2035. But those numbers account for just the physical space required by each turbine – the stake in the ground, which is small – and not the broader area required by turbines, which must be spaced far apart from one other and require huge bases made from 2,500 pounds of concrete.
Those who support renewables claim that almost all of the surrounding land can still be used for farming, ranching, or other purposes. Even here, however, the numbers do not align. The Energy Department told RCI that “95% of the land” in wind farms remains untouched by the renewable energy apparatus, meaning the turbines would occupy but 5% of the land. But the National Renewable Energy Laboratory lowers that figure further, claiming only 2% of the land is removed from circulation and, in parentheses in his Mother Jones piece, Jenkins marks it down to 1%.
Those who believe the emissions goals set for 2035 and beyond are unrealistic and unnecessary say those numbers are absurdly low, and characterize as false the notion that towering turbines – plus the construction needed to store and transmit energy that relies on fickle sources like sunshine and wind – will not eat up many thousands of additional square miles.
When factors beyond sticks on the horizon are factored in – that is, the total parameters of wind farms – the plots needed get much bigger, as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (134,000 square miles) and Jenkins (213,000 square miles) acknowledge in their studies.
Then, given that power weakens the further it must travel to the end user, a gigantic new transmission system will be needed.
Here again, RCI found widely disparate estimates. In March, a DOE study said that 47,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission wires would have to be constructed, but a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study looking at 2035 noted that the U.S. could need up to 100,000 miles of new lines during the next decade. The low end of that estimate is the distance of 10 round trips from New York to Moscow, while the high end is four times the earth’s circumference at the equator.
Again, the jumping numbers underscore how policymakers consistently highlight the lowest possible figures, which are derived using what could prove fanciful assumptions.
The renewable energy lab’s suggestion that turbines will take up only 2% of land is false, according to Smith.
“No matter how you slice it, the NREL estimate is utter rubbish, but is 100% accepted since it toes the narrative line,” he said. “It is comforting until it is proven to fall drastically short by sad experience. Ten percent of that land, at least, is useless for other purposes. No one wants to live under, near, or in the line throw from a wind turbine in northern latitudes.”
In addition, there is something disingenuous about pretending enormous windmills and high voltage transmission towers and wires are mere blips in the landscape, said Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the free-market Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“Like all scenarios, it depends on boundary condition assumptions,” Mills said. “NREL, for example, uses the specific footprint of the concrete pad on which the wind turbine physically sits, rather than the acres of land occupied by the array of turbines. That yields a very small number of course, despite the visual scale of the array.”
Mills acknowledged wind farms do not completely rule out farming or other land uses nearby, gaps that are not available with solar panels in which “literally square miles of land are rendered useless for other purposes.”
These factors tend to be elided when enthusiasts predict smaller and smaller allotments of land being required for the transformation envisioned.
“I don’t hear any of them talk about the land footprint at all,” said H. Sterling Burnett, director of Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, a conservative think-tank opposed to massive renewable energy projects. “The whole NIMBY mindset is not unique to fossil fuels. But if you’re talking about building turbines in Kansas and shipping power to New York City, or all the power lines that will be needed – nobody talks about that.”
“It’s Sad” – Jeff Gundlach Laments Former Bond King’s Bellicose Rant
We warned yesterday that Jeff Gundlach wouldn’t take Bill Gross’ bitching – about who the real ‘Bond King’ is – lying down.
But he played his cards well – reflecting of tone of sadness for the grumpy old man clinging to his past successes.
Gross criticized Gundlach yesterday on a Bloomberg podcast, saying he wasn’t anywhere near being crowned a “bond king.”
Gundlach responded calmly to questions about the remarks as part of a panel at the Future Proof conference for the wealth management industry in Huntington Beach, California:
“It’s sad for somebody that’s been out of the business for 10 years and is still trying to exorcise the demons,” adding, in a wonderfully patronizing manner:
“But I hope he’s doing fine.”
Gross had mocked Gundlach’s firm having ‘only $55 billion AUM’ – not enough to be a ‘king’. Gundlach remarked that: “I never wanted that title, I never embraced it, I really don’t know what it means.”
“We’re doing great, our five-year numbers are great, things are good. And we manage a lot more than $55 billion,” he added, noting that he doesn’t want to manage more money than he already does, citing roughly $100 billion assets under management for his firm.
He also pointed out that he stopped marketing his largest fund more than a decade ago.
“This idea that your AUM defines you, it’s just weird. I’ve capped many of my strategies that I could have raised twice, three times as much money but I didn’t think there’d be fun, I didn’t think I’d be happier doing that,” Gundlach said.
“I actually thought it would be more difficult. Because along with that is more clients, more hassles and probably incrementally less rewarding because you’re less successful in terms of results.”
The DoubleLine CEO took the high-road with his concluding remarks:
“I hope he retires and feels better about himself,” Gundlach said of Gross.
Tailing 30Y Auction Prices At Highest Yield In 12 Years As Foreign Buyers Flee
After one subpar 3Y auction, and one average 10Y auction, we closed out the week’s coupon issuance with a 30Y auction that, like this morning’s CPI, was mixed, with a solid bid to cover, offset by a modest tail, a big drop in indirect demand, and the highest yield in over 12 years.
The auction stopped at a high yield of 4.345%, up from 4.189% in August, and the highest yield since May 2011; it also tailed the When Issued 4.335% by 1 basis point, the third consecutive tail.
The bid to cover was 2.461, above last month’s 2.418 and the highest since June; it was also above the six auction average of 2.418%.
The internals were weaker, with foreign buyers awarded just 64.5%, the lowest since December 2021. And with Directs taking down 19.7%, or roughly in line with the recent average of 19.1%, Dealers were left holding 15.6%, the highest since February to cover the shortfall of foreign buyers who pulled back.
Overall, this was a mixed auction, which could have been better but was certainly good enough, and has helped pushed 10Y yields near session lows.
Luxury Cruise Ship Runs Aground In Remote Greenland
Ocean Explorer, a cruise ship with 206 people on board, ran aground Monday in a remote eastern region of Greenland, with the nearest help days away.
“A cruise ship in trouble in the national park is obviously a worry. The nearest help is far away, our units are far away, and the weather can be very unfavorable,” the Danish military’s Joint Arctic Command (JAC), Commander Brian Jensen, said in a statement to Reuters.
Bloomberg data shows Ocean Explorer is stuck in Alpefjord, about 870 miles northeast of Greenland’s capital, Nuuk. The vessel made several stops on Greenland’s coast before getting stuck. It departed from Sweden last Wednesday.
Jensen explained that the vessel is located in “the national park, northeastern Greenland, where there’s no population. Luckily, it’s calm, and we have time on our side as there’s no imminent threat of a storm.”
“A military flight over the Ocean Explorer confirmed that its hull appears intact and no oil has escaped. No injuries have been reported and the ship has plenty of supplies,” Bloomberg said.
Aurora Expeditions, the ship’s Sydney-based operator, said all 206 on board are “safe and well” and noted, “Importantly, there is no immediate danger to themselves, the vessel, or the surrounding environment.”
JAC’s nearest inspection vessel was 1,200 nautical miles away and would reach the luxury cruise ship on Friday morning.
