Via Remix News,

Germany’s right-wing AfD party openly expresses what many ordinary Germans believe today, something that traditional political parties, imprisoned in the circle of political correctness, do not want to admit…

German politicians have become accustomed to the convenient role of judges deciding which political parties and their programs in various countries are sufficiently European and deserving of acceptance in accordance with the prevailing canons of liberal Western democracy, and which should be condemned and separated by a “firewall.”

This severity and principality always clearly increase among German political and media commentators, especially when it comes to forming opinions about politics in Central and Eastern European countries.

There are exceptions, such as Wolfgang Schauble, a veteran of German politics, who tirelessly reminds us that Germany should not teach anyone in Europe how democracy should work. However, his voice has been relegated to the sidelines.

There are many indications that in the near future, German media and politicians will have to pay more attention to the situation on their own political scene.

This is all due to the increasingly popular right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD). This party, founded in 2013, was initially quite an exotic undertaking of a group of economists and university professors opposed to Angela Merkel’s then policy towards the crisis in the eurozone.

After a decade of isolation on the political scene, due to the effects of the migration crisis, Berlin’s restrictive policy in combating the pandemic, inflation, and the social and economic costs of stringent climate policy, currently one in five voters declares readiness to support AfD. In the eastern lands of Germany, it can even count on 30 percent of the votes.

During the party congress in Magdeburg, alongside slogans calling for freedom and sovereignty, the demand for peace was equally strong.

The AfD particularly attracts those who traditionally harbor resentment towards America, still see Russia as Germany’s strategic partner, and blame the West’s policies for the war in Ukraine.

The attractiveness of this party and its growing support can generally be explained by the fact that it openly and loudly expresses what many ordinary Germans believe today, something that traditional political parties, imprisoned in the circle of political correctness, do not want to admit.

The current climate in Germany has triggered a self-propelling mechanism in which the simple rejection of alternative citizens’ views pushes politics toward greater polarization and a growing loss of stability.

Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

The Saturday Night Massacre That Wasn’t And The Threat Of Incumbent Party Rule

Talk about a coup d’ etat… even an existential threat to American Democracy. We’ve got it now. In spades.

We are referring to Jack Smith’s latest bogus indictment of Donald Trump, of course. Handing it down just as the Hunter Biden/Biden Crime Family saga is reaching its denouement, the Special Counsel has now proven himself to be a veritable anti-Thomas Jefferson, brandishing what amounts to a malefic Declaration of Incumbent Party Rule.

That’s truly the gravamen of this 45 page abomination. It has nothing to do with justice or the rule of law or the protection of Democracy, and everything to do with triggering a trial clock in the DC District Court that will result in a guaranteed guilty verdict before November 5, 2024.

And should that succeed, no incumbent party will ever again go into a presidential election without mobilizing the machinery of the DOJ to its partisan advantage. After all, this is the ultimate weaponization of the judicial branch of American government by the Incumbent Party—an attempt to cancel an election via “preventive detention” of the leading candidate of the Opposition.

Is this not the very thing that Banana Republics do? Is this political screed in the guise of an “indictment” not a fatal blow to the very essence of free elections-based democracy—the absolute insulation of the machinery of government from partisan influence and elections interference?

As it happens, this matter was settled long ago—way back in the Congressional elections of 1938, which swept the New Dealers from the US House and Senate. During the prior presidential election, FDR had wiped GOP candidate Alf Landon off the map—with no small help from millions of WPA employees who had been required to vote for Roosevelt in order to get on the Federal dole. But in those fair times the electorate was having none of the Incumbent Party using their tax dollars to re-elect itself, thereby putting the New Deal Democrats out to pasture for decades to come.

But now comes something far more nefarious. Not a mere bribe of the voters via tax dollars shuffled into their pockets, but use of the government’s badge, guns and detention facilities to insure that even a candidate as decrepit and unfit for purpose as Joe Biden enjoys a Rooseveltian sweep in 2024 for want of the leading opposition candidate’s name on the ballot.

To be sure, we do not quarrel with the end game here. To wit, the Donald is utterly unfit for the nation’s highest office. He never should have stumbled into the job by a hairline 100,000 votes in three battleground states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) in 2016, and must not be allowed within a country-mile of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ever again.

But safeguarding the republic from Donald Trump’s egomaniacal incompetence, bilious rants, uninformed laziness, flagrant delusions and principle-free quest for power and glory is the job of the voters.

If they do not understand by now that they made one mistake, it is not the job of a rogue prosecutor to nail shut the GOP-side of the ballot box in order to save them from another.

And we do mean rogue prosecutor. Jack Smith has penned a potent Opposition Research paper, but it is utterly bogus as a criminal indictment. That’s because it embodies exactly the age-old ploy used by all zealous prosecutors when the don’t have hard evidence of a specific crime. To wit, they cobble together a spurious “conspiracy” narrative from a string of wholly legal and/or prosaic actions and events involving the defendant, and then backdate them with mens rea (guilty intent) and the assertion that that everything contained in the resulting made-for-TV narrative was done “knowingly”.

Well, when it comes to the very inner sanctum of American democracy—the conduct of free and honest national elections—that threadbare ploy is definitely not OK. Even when applied to crime bosses and alleged white collar miscreants, conspiracy charges are a prosecutors’ racket that more often than not results in an unfair miscarriage of justice.

But when applied to the leading Opposition Candidate for acts and behaviors that were par for the Trumpian course, done in the wide open public and which were essentially an exercise, albeit a reckless one, in protected speech, a conspiracy indictment is just plain beyond the pale.

For crying out loud. The criminal prosecution of an ex-president and current election front-runner entails a super-duper heavy burden of proof, not just enough plausibility to get a Mafia don into court. To the contrary, it needs be predicated upon a damn serious “high crime” and provable criminal actions by the target that actively threatened America’s national security or core democratic processes.

By contrast, Jack Smith’s latest indictment is the very opposite. It’s self-evidently another exercise in prosecutorial “I gotcha”, and is even more tortured than the classified documents case. For instance, Trump retweeted a post labeling the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature as “cowards”  on December 4, 2020. By the lights of Jack Smith that exercise in social media dissing was evidence of Trump’s complicity in a felonious conspiracy.

The same thing happened when several weeks later VP Pence called Trump to wish him Merry Christmas and Trump turned the conversation to the vice president’s role in the upcoming electoral vote count. So by merely raising the topic about an event to occur two weeks later, and a potential action by Pence that was still legally in play at least in the minds of a minority of Trump’s advisors, the sitting president of the United States thereby participated in said felonious conspiracy!

The indictment is packed with pages on end of such legal humbug. But before you get lost in the utter trivia, it needs be remembered that we are actually in the midst of a fraught exercise in democracy, not a law school Moot Court proceeding on the proposition, taken in splendid abstraction, that no one is above the law.

The plain fact is that Smith’s 45 pages of purported nefarious doings do not embody a criminal conspiracy at all. What the indictment actually describes is TrumpWorld at work in all of its pandemonium, bickering, incompetence and shoot-from-the hip recklessness. The self-evident reason that Trump pursued the election fraud canard right up until the wee hours of January 7th, when the electors finally certified Biden’s victory, is that the man is a megalomaniacal brute who just won’t take “no” for an answer.

After all, by then nearly everyone who knew anything had told him that the election was over, that he had lost and that while the election reeked from the odor of an unprecedented 60 million mail-in votes and massive but dubious Democrat “ballot harvesting”, the level of provable fraud did not rise to anything remotely determinative of a different outcome. In fact, his Attorney General, Bill Barr, had bailed weeks earlier, the White House counsels office had given up the ghost and three days earlier Trump himself had chickened out of the required Saturday Night Massacre redux.

That is, when he threatened to put the last remaining election fraud believer, Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark (co-conspirator #4), in the top DOJ spot on January 3rd, the acting AG and acting deputy AG threatened to resign. And they warned that much of the top DOJ escheleon would go with them.

But as Senator Lloyd Bentsen of 1992 vice-presidential debate fame might of said in behalf of the Washington ruling class, “We knew Dick Nixon, and you are no Tricky Dick.”

That is to say, Trump is a bully and blowhard, but ultimately a big chicken. To actually have committed the crime of election interference he would have had to fire the entire top tier of the DOJ on January 3rd, get a dubious opinion from their replacements that the Vice President had the constitutional authority to reject the Biden electors from the six battleground states (see below) and then intimidate Pence until he complied with Trump’s wishes.

Alas, the Donald didn’t have the cojones. And when push-came-to-shove his own government resisted his petulant defiance of the facts and law at every turn.

So there was no conspiracy and no threat to Democracy.

There was just the bitter end obstinance and bombast of a defeated old bully and his drunken companion, Rudy Giuliani, who had once capriciously welded the badge and gun that is soon to come down on his own head, too.

Still, expressing disagreement with and contradicting the advice of 95% of your advisors in a public venue like social media is not a crime, and not proof of a lie.

Likewise, endlessly pestering your Vice-President to read the constitution—to the effect that he could send the Biden electors home—in a manner that virtually all the lawyers in the vicinity of the nation’s Capitol disagreed with is not a crime, either.

At the end of the day the bomb that got dropped on American democracy last night by the beltway puppeteers who stage-manage Joe Biden is just a lengthy catalogue of all the advice that Trump rejected—advice that said he was wrong about whether there was sufficient fraud to alter the outcome of the election.

Indeed, even by the time the state electors first meet on December 16th the “rampant fraud” horse being paraded by nincompoops like Rudy Giuliani and the other alleged co-conspirators was pretty much out the barn-door. The fact that Trump persisted in grasping for its disappearing rear-end right until the end on January 6th is powerful reason why he is not qualified to serve again.

For want of doubt, recall that the popular vote was not even close with Biden’s 81.2 million ballots exceeding Trump’s 74.2 million by more than 7 million or 9%. Far more importantly, Trump’s electoral college deficit in the six swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania was 79 votes compared to Biden’ winning margin of 74 votes (306 to 232). Accordingly, there had to be sufficient fraud—–311,000 votes worth—- in these states to swing every one of them in the Donald’s favor and thereby alter the national outcome.

Well, here are the vote margins in these six state’s that had to be overcome by expurgation of any and all votes fraudulently cast or counted. Yet by mid-December every one of the big claims regarding dead voters in Georgia or a midnight ballot dump in Michigan or 2o3,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania had been pretty much debunked.

For instance, upon investigation the Republican governor of Georgia has admitted to only 2 dead voters, not the 10,000 that Trump had claimed. Similarly, the 203,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania turned out to be less than 8,000, as far as we can tell from official election results. And the mid-night dump of ballots in Detroit has apparently been par for the course in that godforsaken jurisdiction for a good while and thereby an indication of incompetence, not fraud.

In that regard, the Republican Speaker of the Michigan House said all there was to be said about the Donald’s errant campaign to extract victory from the jaws of defeat—not only in Michigan but in the six contested states generally:

We’ve diligently examined these reports of fraud to the best of our ability. … … I fought hard for President Trump. Nobody wanted him to win more than me.  I think he’s done an incredible job. But I love our republic, too. I can’t fathom risking our norms, traditions and institutions to pass a resolution retroactively changing the electors for Trump, simply because some think there may have been enough widespread fraud to give him the win. That’s unprecedented for good reason. And that’s why there is not enough support in the House to cast a new slate of electors. I fear we’d lose our country forever. This truly would bring mutually assured destruction for every future election in regards to the Electoral College. And I can’t stand for that. I won’t.

Number of Electoral Votes and Popular Vote Difference By Swing State:

• Arizona (11 electoral votes; 10,457 votes)

• Georgia (16 electoral votes; 11,779 votes)

• Michigan (16 electoral votes; 154,188 votes)

• Nevada (6 electoral votes; 33,596 votes)

• Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes; 80,555 votes)

• Wisconsin (10 electoral votes; 20,682 votes)

In any event, it is evident from the above summary that the numbers just weren’t remotely there. Yet Trump persisted until there was almost no one left even in his inner circle except crackpots who thought he won. He thus tweeted this bit of bombast at 6:01 PM on January 6th when it was all over except the shouting:

 “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long……

That’s smoking gun enough. Donald J. Trump disqualified himself for another term then and there by issuing this preposterous bit of bombast.

And yet, and yet. That outcome was a matter for the voters to decide, not a rogue prosecutor leading a partisan witch-hunt.

In truth, this action by the weaponized Biden Justice Department amounts to a present day variation of the aphorism immortalized by Stalin’s security chief, Levrenti Beria:

“Show me Donald Trump and I’ll show you the crime”.

Prosecutor Smith has done exactly that now for the second time in as many months. And American democracy will pay a terrible price for such insouciance for a long time to come.

Of all the new fast food drive-thru concepts we have written about over the years, Chick-Fil-A may be on the verge of the coolest.

The popular chicken chain is testing a new concept where to-order orders will arrive at their destination vehicles down a chute. It plans on testing the concept at a new store in Atlanta, with a focus on trying to cut down its wait times, CBS wrote this week.

The chain will also be debuting a new walk-in concept store in New York City. 

In a statement the store put out this week, Khalilah Cooper, executive director, restaurant design, said: “Digital orders make up more than half of total sales in some markets – and growing – so we know our customers have an appetite for convenience.”

Cooper continued: “Understanding this desire for convenience, the locations for these tests were intentionally selected with the customers in mind, giving them more control over their desired experience and cutting down wait-time, while continuing to provide genuine hospitality and care to every guest.”

The new Atlanta store is going to have 4 drive-thru lanes, with two of them dedicated to mobile order pickups. The lanes will run under the restaurant, instead of around it, like current stores. This will allow the kitchen in the new concept store to be twice as large. 

“Orders will travel through an overhead conveyor belt connected with chutes that run down the sides,” CBS wrote. 

“By building the kitchen above the drive-thru lanes, meals are expedited to the Team Member who delivers the order directly to the customer in a space protected by the upper level, so hospitality won’t be sacrificed for speed of service. Regardless of how you choose to order your meal, the restaurant design is made to elevate and accelerate the experience but keep the human interaction at its core,” the company said in its statement. 

“We want to leverage technology to elevate the human touchpoints in our restaurants,” said Cooper. “These new digital formats make the customer and Team Member experience more seamless, and therefore more memorable, and give back precious time to connect with each other.”

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

People with jobs, children, and actual responsibilities might not have noticed, but Hollywood is nearly shut down right now thanks to both a writers’ strike and an actors’ strike. Or more accurately: only the writers and actors who are members of unions are on strike. Members of SAG-AFTRA (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are refusing to work until TV and movie studios agree to a variety of demands.

These actors and writers may be in for some unpleasant surprises, however. Studio revenues and advertising income isn’t what it used to be. Cable subscriptions are down. Theater attendance has not recovered from covid. When revenues are stagnant or falling, it’s harder to get the studios to raise compensation.

Another big problem writers and actors face is that we now live in an age when mid-budget content creators who can reach millions of viewers through platforms like Youtube and Tiktok and Twitter. These people are usually not union members, and that means a lot of non-union competition for Hollywood content creators.

This all highlights a central problem that unions have always faced: labor unions do not—and never have—raised wages for all workers in any particular industry. They can only raise wages for union members. But, if non-union workers can still write, film, edit, and act outside union control, they will always offer an alternative to union workers. Moreover, rising wages can only be supported in the long run by rising levels of productivity. That is, writers and actors can only expect sustainably larger pay if they’re also bringing in more net revenue. But it’s not clear rising revenue is something that Hollywood actors and writers should expect.

In this new age of decentralized and democratized content creation, union members’ demands may simply be based on wishful thinking for a bygone era.

The Decline of Hollywood Dominance

The last substantial actors’ strike was in 1980. The last time both actors and writers went in strike together was in 1960. That was a very long time ago. In those days—whether we’re talking 1960 or 1980—the big-three television stations, the large movie studios, and the artists behind them utterly dominated the world of visual entertainment. There were few viewing choices outside of what was only a handful of television stations or what was playing in movie theaters. Actors were in a fairly good position to demand higher pay for their work which in many cases enjoyed a near-captive audience. After all, summer blockbusters were a rising trend. Movie stars were household names. Prime time television commanded enormous nationwide audiences.

In 2023, the situation is very different. Yes, videos and podcasts from online content creators is not the same product as shows produced by big studios. Yet, it is nonetheless a “substitute good,” as the economists say, and it does offer competition in the form of pulling viewers away from traditional media. Ten-minute comedy videos on Youtube may be very rough around the edges compared to a slick 30-minute program on cable, but the non-studio content nonetheless competes with the studios for the viewers’ time. An hour spent watching Youtube content is an hour not spent watching something on NBC.

As a result, ad revenues are down and studios are losing revenue in many areas. A report on TV advertising by Enders Analysis concludes “TV advertising is expected to decline over 10% in Q1 2023 and by approximately 5% overall in 2023.” David Bloom reports at Forbes that “Disney has reported its linear networks revenue (which includes its cable operations) dropped 7% percent while operating income dropped a painful 35%.” Overall net revenues continue to grow for many studios, but positive revenues have come largely through cost-cutting measures. Studios have been cutting back new film and television projects which means lower overall wages for many writers and actors.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros Discovery endured an 11-percent drop in revenue in late 2022 as advertising revenues softened. Hollywood studios have endured a variety of box office disappointments this year from The Flash to Pixar’s Elemental to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Variety also reports on how movie stars are no longer reliable money makers. Since the collapse of the DVD business in 2008, few new actors have reached the heights of an Arnold or a Stallone. This makes it harder to predict which films will be a success. There are few “sure things” in movie production in 2023, which leads studios to become far more cautious about what they’ll pay out ahead of time to writers and actors.

What do the Actors and Writers Want?

Indeed, what appears to be keeping the studios afloat at all are the streaming services such as Peacock, HBO MAX, and Disney+. Yet, actors and writers are compensated differently for streaming content than theatrical releases and TV broadcasting. Thus, the demands by both unions center largely on changes like the shift to streaming. For example, pay for actors and writers is currently constructed in such a way that big pay increases can be had through box office revenues and syndicated television. Thanks to the rise of streaming services, however, these older means of getting at the big bucks are no longer nearly as rewarding for actors and writers.

Other concerns center around artificial intelligence and computer-generated images. There are rising concerns among writers that AI programs could be used to complete or write screenplays and teleplays. Actor are concerned that CGI will allow studios to use an actor’s likeness without actually paying the actors in question.

The reluctance by studios to expand compensation to these platforms is not necessarily a function of nefarious intent as union activists often imply. (Note, for example, actor Ron Perlman’s threat to burn down the houses of studio executives.) Rather, studios continue to face large threats to advertising revenues, cable-TV income, and box office gains. Simply as a matter of responsibility to stockholders, the studios have to find ways to cut costs, and are naturally reluctant to cut into their most reliable cash cows right now: streaming.

Eventually, however, a deal will be struck, and Moody’s predicts this will cost media companies from $450 million to $600 million per year.

This may prove to be a late rearguard action, however, as neither studios nor writers nor actors can escape competition from outside Hollywood. Consider the sheer volume of content from highly popular Youtube creators like Mr. Beast or popular podcasters like Joe Rogan. People can spend hours per week consuming their content, without any dollars going to traditional content from studios. This content is far more decentralized than Hollywood and enjoys much less overhead. 

So, any new demands from writers and actors will have to come in light of the fact there is a large entertainment world beyond the reach of the Hollywood unions and studios. This naturally presents a challenge to unions which thrive on the idea that they control at least a sizable portion of the available labor within a certain field. Moreover, there is a nearly constant stream of new writers and actors willing to offer their services to the big studios in the hopes of making it big.

Henry Hazlitt explains how this is a problem for the unions:

It is important to keep in mind that the unions cannot create a “monopoly” of all labor, but at best a monopoly of labor in certain specific crafts, firms, or industries. A monopolist of a product can get a higher monopoly price for that product, and perhaps a higher total income from it, by deliberately restricting the supply … But while the unions can and do restrict their membership, and exclude other workers from it, they cannot reduce the total number of workers seeking jobs. 

These unions are in less of a position than ever to control the work of actors and writers. There are just too many platforms offering too many opportunities to outsiders. 

Hazlitt notes unions “claim the ‘right’ to prevent anybody else from taking the jobs that they have abandoned [during the strike]. That is the purpose of their mass picket lines, and of the vandalism and violence that they either resort to or threaten. This constantly undermines the facade of a union monopoly on labor.”

This facade is more obvious than ever as non-Hollywood entertainment continues to grow in both quality and availability. The actors and writers will likely get their raises this year. But their old-fashioned studio-labor model may not survive much longer. 

The most commonly abused drug in the US is alcohol. Since alcohol is socially acceptable, more people are addicted to alcohol than any other drug. A new study by the finance website Insider Monkey has revealed the top ten US cities with the highest alcohol consumption per capita. 

Insider Monkey said Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ranked number on the list because of its “lowest alcohol tax rates in the country, resulting in lower retail and wholesale prices.” Milwaukee is a Democratic stronghold with an excessive drinking rate of 24.6%. 

Analysts with Insider Monkey used County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, the US Census Bureau, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to find metro areas with the highest excessive drinking rates. Only cities with populations of 200,000 or more were analyzed. The rate measures the percentage of a city’s adult population that reports binge or heavy drinking in the last month. 

Number two is Minneapolis, Minnesota, yet another Democratic stronghold. It has an excessive drinking rate of 23.5%. Third is Boston, Massachusetts, another Democratic stronghold with an excessive drinking rate of 23.1%. Fourth is Buffalo, New York — you might have already guessed it — another Democratic stronghold — has an excessive drinking rate of 22.8%. 

Fifth on the list is crime-ridden Chicago, with an excessive drinking rate of 22.7%. And sixth is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with an excessive drinking rate of 22.5%. Seventh is New Orleans, with an excessive drinking rate of 21.9%. Eight is Sacramento, California, with a 21.6% excessive drinking rate. Nine is Portland, Oregon, and last but not least is Austin, Texas. 

So what’s the commonality between all of these cities? Well, they’re all Democratic strongholds. And excessive drinking cost the US economy $250 billion in 2010 (Latest figures available by the CDC).

Virtue-signaling Democrats who say they’re for the people but are letting their cities implode with rampant drug use, an explosion in homelessness, and a surge in violent crime. Do they even care about law and order?

Authored by Lee Fang via RealClear Wire,

Throughout the United States, it takes three times as many hours of training to become a nail technician, a barber, or a plumber as it does to become a police officer. 

Finland, Australia, Denmark, and Germany – countries with far less crime and a fraction of American gun violence – spend dramatically more to prepare officers before sending them off into the streets. Finland, for instance, provides police cadets with 5,500 hours of training, nearly 14 times the minimum 408 training hours required by the state police board in Georgia. 

Highly trained law enforcement officers, studies consistently show, are better at handling mental health emergencies and defusing violent confrontations, are less likely to engage in racial bias, and are more equipped to build community bonds necessary for good police work.

Poorly trained officers, in contrast, are more likely to use force and rely on their firearms, a tendency that has led to lost lives and scandals. Georgia’s police officers are among the least trained in the country. 

The evidence suggests a focus on police training can also mend deep wounds from years of officer misconduct. Newark, N.J., under a court order because of rampant police abuses, has decided to adopt yearly seminars for police officers, including training that emphasizes mental health programs for traumatized police officers. Although the reforms cost over $7.5 million, they began paying dividends almost immediately. In 2020, Newark had zero police shootings. Crime rates that year went down. 

Municipalities have recently turned to the Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics standard of police training. The ICAT approach, focused on communication tools to calm volatile situations, is credited with lowering use-of-force incidents by nearly one-third, reducing injuries to officers and civilians. As part of a reform agenda, city leaders in Atlanta announced a police academy focused on adopting the most modern de-escalation tactics, including the ICAT method. 

Despite the clear need for more and better police training, opposition to the planned Atlanta Public Safety Training Center – derisively dubbed “Cop City” – is now among the most popular protest causes of self-styled radicals. Viral social media posts have claimed that the academy is focused on advancing “white supremacy” and that it is designed for “militarization” tactics. Some claim, ominously, that Israeli special forces will be brought to the training center to teach the Atlanta Police Department to terrorize minority groups. 

The conspiratorial allegations have frustrated local officials, who say that planning meetings, which have been open to the public, made it clear that the academy is doing nothing of the sort. Instead, it will feature modern facilities to train police, firefighters, and other emergency responders in professional best practices.

Protest organizers carefully ignore any of the publicly debated training curriculum and have instead made the center into a target for an abstract smorgasbord of left-wing causes. In one recent podcast from a local organizer and several national left-wing influencers, activists called the “Cop City” protest an attempt to “link intensive policing, undemocratic land use processes with the issue of climate change,” and “a global struggle against fascism” to “disrupt the machinery of capitalism.” 

Such rhetoric has made meaningful discussion nearly impossible. In June, as the Atlanta city council debated the future of the training center, demonstrators from as far as Los Angeles mobbed the hearing. Outside the government chamber, protesters chanted, “If you build it, we will burn it.” 

The slogans were far from an idle threat. Demonstrators have thrown fireworks and incendiary devices at law enforcement and set fires at the proposed police academy site in the forest. 

“Atlanta has an opportunity to create the prototype of what real training should look like, a model for the rest of the country,” said Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. But he added that the role of anarchists has prevented substantive debate about the proposed center.

“Antifa, they don’t want any kind of training, they don’t want any police. No policing is no answer. We got to have police and you got to have trained police,” said McDonald. 

McDonald runs a community center designed to reduce gun violence and serves as a board member of People for the American Way. He’s one of many local progressives frustrated by the escalating violence and opposition to the training center. 

“Training is everything. You don’t go to the doctor unless the doctor is trained,” said McDonald, who has advised police reform efforts around the country. 

But such arguments are lost on radicals singularly dedicated to destroying anything with “police” in the name. 

Leftists from around the world have come to Atlanta to protest the training center. During violent confrontations with law enforcement earlier this year, only two of the 23 arrested at the site were from Georgia. The rest were from as far as Canada and France. Last year, at another protest over the proposed Atlanta police academy, every single arrested demonstrator was from outside the state. Construction crews have been attacked and local legislators followed to their homes in a bid to intimidate them. 

In January, the dangerous protest tactics led to deadly violence. During an attempt to clear an encampment of protesters at the proposed training center site, an armed protester and Georgia state troopers exchanged gunfire. The activist, 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, graduated in 2021 from Florida State University with a degree in environmental science. Known as “Tortuguita” (Little Turtle), he had moved from Tallahassee to join the protesters. Georgia investigators say that on Jan. 18, Teran refused to clear the area and fired a shot that injured a state trooper. In response, law enforcement returned fire and killed him. 

The death of Teran at the “Cop City” site, one local Atlanta columnist worried, would likely only fuel even more of an “activist Lollapalooza” environment, attracting a festival-like atmosphere of roving leftists seeking the latest, most fashionable outrage, further polarizing the issue. Online leftists have incorporated the slogan, “Trees give life, police take it. Viva, viva, Tortuguita!” 

And indeed, the protest has gone global. “Stop Cop City” signs can be spotted in Paris, Brooklyn and San Francisco, while the movement has spread. The official activist coalition includes three groups from Santa Cruz, Calif. Anarchists are now targeting a new program proposed this year by liberal New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy that trains police to work alongside mental health professionals. That program, one local anarchist group claims, shows that the “white power establishment wants to build cop city everywhere.” 

The anti-police training movement is well-funded and receives glowing, uncritical coverage in many prestige media outlets. James “Fergie” Chambers, the anarchist heir to a billionaire media fortune, recently promised $600,000 for the anti-training center campaign. Another liberal foundation called Solidaire, funded by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg among other wealthy California donors, is offering tips to activists on how to derail the police training center. 

Why is better police training now the focus of progressive left ire? Not long ago, President Barack Obama convened a commission on police reform, addressing the inadequate training of officers as the top priority. 

The episode highlights the divergent views around policing that formed in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many saw the moment as an opportunity for substantive reform, such as requirements for body cameras, enhanced training, and legal accountability. Others, especially upper-class activists, have used the movement as fuel for theatric protest violence with no tangible goals and no serious concern for public safety. 

The “Stop Cop City” momentum has shifted the norms of the criminal justice movement. In 2015, the NAACP, for instance, strongly backed Obama’s calls for greater investments in police training and de-escalation tactics, calling such reforms “absolutely critical” in testimony before Congress. Those days appear to be long gone. In June, Gary Spencer of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund described the proposed Atlanta training center as a project for “perpetuating militarized policing that will endanger the lives of our residents, our visitors, and put the Black people and Brown people in Atlanta at a heightened risk of police violence.” 

Atlanta in particular began the process of creating this academy as part of a series of reforms to reduce police brutality while addressing crime. In the aftermath of 2020, following violent protests after the police killing of Rayshard Brooks – a young man who grabbed an officer’s taser, leading to a violent confrontation and the police officer killing him – then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms faced a crisis. 

Bottoms promised better training of officers and greater police oversight, but she also faced a crime wave and low morale among officers. Homicide in her city was up by 58% while over 200 police officers had either resigned or retired in the wake of the Brooks riots. Bottoms needed to navigate calls for criminal justice reform from the protest movement the year prior while responding to rising crime. 

In April 2021, the mayor announced the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a new complex to be built on an 85-acre plot of land owned by the city. The idea married the problems into one solution. Bottoms said the facility would help overhaul the force to recruit new officers and train them with modern policing techniques, focused on tactics to avoid officer-involved shootings. 

The new academy would train officers, emergency medical staff, and firefighters with input from community leaders and civil rights experts. Both Atlanta firefighters and police currently train at decrepit old buildings, and the unions representing both workforces have long called for new facilities. 

“People say we need to abolish police or defund the police, well I don’t know how you do that, unless somebody is going to abolish crime,” said Bottoms at a press conference defending the center. “What I’ve said repeatedly over the last year is that holding the men and women who serve us in a public safety capacity accountable is not mutually exclusive from supporting them.” 
 
The mayoral proposal for reform made clear that every Atlanta police officer will receive ICAT de-escalation training.

The notion that the training center is a stalking horse for white supremacy strains credulity. Bottoms and her successor, Andre Dickens, are black, as are the majority of city council members backing the project.  

If anything, the “Stop Cop City” movement has rippled with identity-based rage. Atlanta City Councilman Michael Julian Bond, the son of the civil rights icon Julian Bond and an outspoken proponent of the training center, has said that his office has been deluged with death threats and racist messages from protesters. “There’s been gratuitous use of the ‘N-word’ against me,” Bond told reporters earlier this summer. “They wish I was dead like my father.” 

But the proposal instantly faced opposition from leftist groups who saw the investment in a new training center as a bitter rebuke of the “defund the police” movement. 

Before the first city council hearing, demonstrators swarmed the home of Atlanta Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd, gathering on her lawn and porch to bang pans and chant. There was no interest in discussing the proposal. “No cop city,” the protesters yelled. 

Not long after, environmentalists joined the protests, claiming the forest for the proposed site is a habitat worthy of special protection. Encampments sprouted on the proposed site, and activists began funneling Molotov cocktails and weapons, preparing for clashes with law enforcement and construction workers. 

The city has in turn promised plans to build one of the largest public city parks on the 300-acre site, and will plant 100 hardwood trees for every tree removed to build the 85-acre training center. The academy shooting range will be indoors, muffled from noise. Atlanta has passed special additions to the training center plan, forbidding the use of helicopters and explosives, and requiring special training for police on protecting speech rights. 

But no attempted engagement has pacified the movement. The opposition has only intensified, with activists viewing the center as an existential threat. 

“This project is based upon genocide,” implored one activist at the most recent city council meeting. A man covered in tattoos claimed that he had dedicated his life to “fighting fascism,” and was anguished that the U.S. had gone from “putting bullets in Nazi’s heads” to now “reward[ing] them with pay raises and playgrounds,” a reference to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. “If this facility is built, queer trans people, black people, indigenous people are going to be killed,” claimed another activist at the hearing. 

Despite such talk, ordinary Atlanta residents remain supportive of the project. A poll conducted earlier this year at the direction of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, found 61% of residents in favor of moving forward with the center. The council hearing in June on the project ended with a 10-4 vote in favor. 

If activists cannot stop the training center with violence or extreme rhetoric, they’re also proposing a ballot measure to cancel the training center. Last week, a judge approved a petition extending the time for activists to collect signatures to move the process forward. 

During the July Fourth weekend, protesters said they torched construction equipment again, and reportedly set fire to Atlanta Police Department motorcycles as a threat against city plans to continue moving forward with the safety training center. 

The ongoing dispute has left many in Atlanta baffled by the conspiratorial rhetoric and violent activism, which now threatens the future of the academy. 

“I know crowds can get excited when emotions are high, but there hasn’t been the right kind of dialogue,” said Rev. Gerald Durley, an Atlanta activist and longtime community leader. 

Durley, who has participated in the planning for the training center, noted that he’s been on the front lines challenging police tactics and fighting for more effective oversight. 

“Police, certainly in America, need more training, not just on police investigations but on de-escalation and crowd control,” said Durley. “When you come down to the actual facts and figures, this training center would be something good.” 

The demonstrators, he said, had lost sight of how to fix ongoing problems with policing. 

“It’s hard for me to condemn a pitbull,” added Durley, “if I haven’t trained that pitbull on what to do.” 

Lee Fang is an independent journalist based in San Francisco. He writes an investigative newsletter on Substack via www.leefang.com.

After dropping to the lowest level since Dec 2020 (when it was negative 268K), in July the rate of payroll growth is expected to slow further, with measures of wage growth also seen cooling further. Consensus expects payrolls to slow to 200K from 209K, while hourly earnings rise 4.2% vs a year ago, down from 4.4% last month.

That said, analyst whisper numbers and gauges of the US labor market strength are supportive of a stronger reading: as Newsquawk notes, ADP’s gauge of payrolls surprised to the upside once again, though many analysts dismiss the data series as an unreliable forecaster for the NFP data; weekly claims data has trended lower relative to the June survey week; PMI surveys allude to healthy labor market conditions, and consumers have confidence in the outlook for the labor market. And tracking estimates are also above what the consensus predicts. Looking forward, payroll additions are expected to ease further, but Fedwatchers still suggest that a print in July that is in line with the consensus would still likely keep the prospect of another FOMC rate rise in play.

EXPECTATIONS:

• NFPs: Analysts expect 200k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US economy in July, slightly below the 209k added in June.
• Unemployment rate: The jobless rate is expected to remain unchanged at 3.6% (note: the FOMC’s latest projections anticipate the jobless rate will rise to 4.1% by the end of this year, before ticking up to 4.5% next year).
• Average Hourly Earnings: Consensus expects a cooling to 4.2% Y/Y from 4.4%, with the monthly print expected at +0.3% M/M (down from +0.4%);
• Average Weekly Hours: expected to remain at 34.4hrs. According to whispers, the bias could be to the upside; traders cite a Bloomberg report which was tracking payrolls growth at 364k this month, and sees the jobless rate falling to 3.5%. That would certainly be viewed as a very hawkish development and would send yields sharply higher still.

ADP DATA: ADP’s data surprised to the upside, once again, reporting 324k private payrolls were added in July, blitzing
through the consensus view of 189k (the range of forecasts 140-300k); the prior data for June was revised lower to 455k
from an initially stated 497k (which in turn was more than double the NFP print of 209K so it’s rather safe to ignore ADP). The wages metrics also cooled sharply again, taking the annual rate for Job Stayers to 6.2% Y/Y (from 6.4%), and for Job Changers to 10.2% from 11.2%. For obvious reasons, analysts continue to be critical of the ADP’s ability to forecast the BLS payrolls data. Pantheon Macroeconomics, a very vocal critic, said that “since its relaunch with new methodology last August, ADP has been both unforecastable and deeply unreliable as an indicator of the official first estimate of private payrolls each month,” adding that the data “has no implications for our July forecast.” Of course, it very well could be that ADP is right and it is the BLS “data” that is massaged for political purposes.

WEEKLY CLAIMS: Weekly initial and continuing jobless claims data has eased in the July survey week relative to the June survey window; initial jobless claims were at 228k vs 265k (with the moving average at 238k vs 265k), while continuing claims was 1.69mln vs 1.73mln (with the average moving lower to 1.72mln from 1.76mln).

BUSINESS SURVEYS: S&P Global’s PMI Data is mixed in its outlook for the labor market; its flash release for July said firms expanded workforce numbers, though the rate of job creation was only marginal, however, and the weakest since January. “Some manufacturing companies noted that the solid rise in payrolls was due to greater ease of hiring, with some also mentioning an improvement in employee retention and improved confidence in the outlook,” it said, “in contrast, services firms reported the slowest rise in employment for six months in July, continuing to highlight challenges retaining and attracting staff due to rising wage costs.”

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE: The Conference Board reported that Consumer Confidence improved in July, with assessments of the present situation rising on brighter views of employment conditions, where the spread between consumers saying jobs are ‘plentiful’ versus ‘hard to get’ widened further. “This likely reflects upbeat feelings about a labor market that continues to outperform,” CB said. Additionally, consumers’ assessment about the short-term labor market outlook was also more favourable, with slightly more consumers expecting more jobs to be available, while slightly fewer anticipate less jobs.

JOLTs: It is also worth noting that the JOLTs data for June (which is one month delayed vs the July jobs data from the BLS due tomorrow) reported job openings of 9.582mln, beneath the expected 9.61mln, and 9.824mln prior. Wells Fargo said that “since the Fed began tightening policy in March 2022, job openings have fallen 20% while the unemployment rate has trended sideways,” adding that “this marks an encouraging step towards inflation subsiding without a recession, but with price growth still elevated and a pullback in demand for workers ongoing, a “soft landing” remains far from assured.” The number of new hires and quit both also slumped, signaling a sharp slowdown in the labor market.

ARGUING FOR A STRONGER-THAN-EXPECTED REPORT

• Big Data. Alternative measures of employment growth indicate strong job gains in nJuly, with a median pace of +360k across the four indicators tracked.

• Arrival of summer student workforce. When the labor market is tight, payroll ngrowth tends to remain strong in July, with average payroll gains 15k above the full-year average (see Exhibit 2). We believe this reflects the interaction between labor availability and the spring hiring season: seasonal labor market slack peaks at the start of the year, troughs in early May, then rebounds in June and July with the arrival of the student summer workforce.

• Job availability. JOLTS job openings were roughly unchanged month-over-month (at 9.6mn) and in line with consensus expectations in June, and online measures have similarly flattened out over the past few months (Exhibit 3). While labor demand has fallen meaningfully from last year’s peak, it remains elevated by 1.0-2.5mn relative to 2019 and represents a positive factor for job growth. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get—increased by 4.4pt to 37.2 in July.

ARGUING FOR A WEAKER-THAN-EXPECTED REPORT

• Employer surveys. The employment components of business surveys improved on net but remained at weak levels in July. The employment component of Goldman’s manufacturing survey tracker edged up to 49.6 and the employment component of our services survey tracker increased to 51.4.

NEUTRAL FACTORS:

• Layoffs. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas declined sharply in July (-36.8% to 24k, SA by GS), compared to 45k on average in the second half of 2022. While initial jobless claims fell to an average of 238k in the July payroll month (vs. 251k in June), the recent string of declines likely benefited from favorable seasonal comparisons. The JOLTS layoff rate was unchanged at 1.0% in June.

VARIANT TAKE:  In its preview, Goldman – which has been chronically bullish ahead of payroll reports and mostly on the wrong side of consensus – estimates an above-consensus 250k payrolls in July as “job growth tends to remain strong in July when the labor market is tight—reflecting strong hiring of youth summer workers—and three of the alternative measures of employment growth we track indicate a strong pace of job growth.” The bank is also more optimistic than consensus, estimating that the unemployment rate edged down by 0.1% to 3.5% (vs. consensus of 3.6%) reflecting a rise in household employment and unchanged labor force participation at 62.6%. The bank is in line with consensus regarding wages and estimates a 0.3% increase in average hourly earnings that lowers the year-on-year rate to 4.2% “reflecting waning upward wage pressures and positive calendar effects (consensus also 0.3% / 4.2%).”

POLICY IMPLICATIONS: SGH Macro’s Fedwatcher Tim Duy suggests that if the data is in line with market expectations, and in the context of a GDP growth rate running above 2%, it keeps the prospect of a FOMC rate hike on the table at the October and/or November meetings, and adds that anything below 200k will give the Fed scope to continue to pause on rate changes. Duy says that July’s data could be elevated due to seasonal effects, but payroll growth of around 300k or more over the next two reports would probably be consistent with unemployment below 3.5% by the time of the September meeting. “That combined with a Q3 growth outlook of more than 2% would probably put a September rate hike into play,” SGH writes, “that’s arguably an extreme situation (or maybe not if the economy is rebounding from the “recession” of the 4Q21 and 1Q22 and the Fed’s series of rate hikes?), and the Fed would hate it.”

The bottom line is that if the whisper numbers based on the “big data” forecasts – or the monthly ADP report – are remotely accurate, and payrolls reverse the recent decline, odds of another rate hike will spike, which in a time of soaring deficits and $1 trillion in debt issuance this quarter will send the 10Y to fresh 2023 highs, fast approaching 4.50%.

Extended preview research available to pro subscribers

Authored by Masooma Haq via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An agriculture land acquisition company that is reported to have bought up land on three sides of a major U.S. Air Force base in California is now suing the farmers who sold them the land.

Flannery Associates LLC spent nearly $800 million to buy the land surrounding Travis Air Force Base, then filed a $510 million lawsuit in May against the farmers.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) told NewsNation the suit is likely a tactic to financially destroy the farmers.

Mr. Garamendi said some of the families he has spoken to did not want to sell to Flannery, but the company made them offers for huge amounts. Flannery’s lawsuit accuses the farmers of conspiring to inflate the price of the farms.

“It’s a suit designed to force the farmers to lawyer up, spend tens of thousands of dollars on lawyering, and maybe at the end of the day, bankrupt themselves,” Mr. Garamendi said. “In fact, that has happened to at least one family that I know of and I’ve heard rumors that another family simply said we can’t afford the lawyers.”

Intimidation Suspected

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Air Force’s Foreign Investment Risk Review Office has not been able to determine who is funding the purchases, even after an 18-month investigation into the purchase of the 140 properties around the Air Force base.

Based on property records, the land covers California’s Solano County from the Sacramento River to Fairfield, including land directly bordering three sides of the Air Force base, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Sarah Donnelly is a member of the city council for Rio Vista, California, which borders the land purchased by Flannery. She said she is highly suspicious of Flannery’s motives.

“The Flannery group is an unknown entity,” Ms. Donnelly told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “Based on the fact that they are suing our farmers, their intentions are suspect.“

“I can only assume they are suing as a form of intimidation,” she added.

ABC7 reported the company began purchasing the land in 2018, and accelerated purchases in 2022 and 2023.

Flannery, represented by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, claims lost profits from land it did not buy and from overcharges for properties it did purchase.

“If the conspirators had acted independently, they could have each individually negotiated a sale with Flannery and made tens of millions of dollars in profits,” Flannery’s attorneys said in the complaint. “But the conspirators wanted to make hundreds of millions.”

National Security Concerns

The suit against the California farmers comes at a time when U.S. lawmakers have been growing increasingly alarmed about farmland purchases by U.S. adversaries, such as China and Iran.

Congress is imposing more guards against foreign adversary purchases of land near sensitive sites.

U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson (R-Calif.) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) introduced legislation on July 12 to strengthen and expand protections around national security sites, critical infrastructure, and farmland.

“Protecting national security and food security go hand in hand in our region—which is why it is vital to know who owns land around national security sites,” Mr. Thompson said in a statement.

Public records of Solano County, where Travis Air Force Base is located, can trace Flannery Associates LLC back to Feb. 9, 2018. Roughly 52,000 acres with 314 land purchases are directly connected with this mysterious company.

“The land purchases go up to the fence of Travis Air Force Base, the home of the largest wing of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command,” Thompson’s office said in the statement.

When asked if he had spying concerns, Mr. Garamendi, who represents the area where Travis Air Force Base sits, told ABC7 he had “every reason in the world” to suspect there is spying going on.

“This land is adjacent to a critical national security platform, Travis Air Force Base; therefore [it’s] an area where spy operations or any other nefarious activity could take place,” he said. “That could detrimentally impact the ability of Travis Air Force Base to operate in a moment of national emergency.”

In addition, U.S. senators recently approved a measure in the National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia from purchasing U.S. farmland and would screen American investment in high-tech ventures on foreign adversary soil.

The provision passed in a vote of 91–7.

Lear Zhou and Reuters contributed to this report.

On Wednesday, Beijing lifted flood warnings following the heaviest rainfall the Chinese capital has experienced in over 140 years, resulting from the remnants of Typhoon Doksuri. The torrential rain was a relief after the region endured months of extreme weather conditions, including record-breaking heatwaves and severe droughts. 

The torrential rain was a relief after the region endured months of extreme weather conditions, including record-breaking heatwaves and severe droughts. 

🇨🇳 Floods test China’s disaster-response systems as emergency level raised

Full Story → https://t.co/fHdpxa6mdO

China’s capital Beijing experienced rain with an unusual intensity this past week, that breached many local meteorological records.

WATCH 👇 pic.twitter.com/9Rvq7pap86

— PiQ (@PriapusIQ) August 3, 2023

Clips of #Floods in #China and Why a Single Rainfall Can Be So Devastating?
(You must watch to the end! And turn on CC)#CCP #Chinanews #Beijing #Xijinping pic.twitter.com/p2e1ibXVBS

— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng 曾錚真言 (@jenniferzeng97) August 2, 2023

The #flood in western #Beijing seen on the high-speed train. There are many #mountainous areas in #Mentougou District in the west of Beijing, and heavy rains have brought huge floods. Beijing #Daxing #Airport is downstream of it.#CHINA #FLOOD #HEAVYRAINS #HEAVYFLOOD pic.twitter.com/On1aoJIGOQ

— Nitesh rathore (@niteshr813) August 2, 2023

Massive flood due to heavy rainfall cases cars drown in Zhuozhou of #Hebei, China.#flooding #flooding #BeijingFlood #storm #TyphoonDoksuri #typhoon #pagbaha #rain#China pic.twitter.com/SHixvbJ8m7

— Anil Kumar Verma (@AnilKumarVerma_) August 3, 2023

Across flood control zones in Hebei, the South China Morning Post reported more than 850,000 people have been evacuated. 

A senior Hebei water official told CCTV that floodwaters would subside in about a month. Damage assessments are currently underway.

The Guardian cites forecasters who expect more typhoon activity to hit China this year. 

Typhoon Khanun, the sixth typhoon of this year, is hitting Northern Taiwan on Thursday, shutting businesses and schools while airlines canceled flights. Taiwan’s stock and foreign exchange markets were also closed due to weather-related issues. 

For much of the Northern Hemisphere summer, China has been baking in record-breaking heatwaves. The rainfall is a welcoming sign. 

Authored by Devin Hartman via RealClear Wire,

Electric transmission can be rather complex, but done right it boils down to two simple benefits: lower costs and fewer blackouts. Currently, bad regulation results in expensive transmission that fails to address growing reliability threats. 

As debt limit negotiations revealed, conservatives are hesitant to welcome electric transmission expansion. It is hard to blame them. Media headlines frame transmission development as synonymous with progressives’ agenda. Ballooning transmission expenses have led to consumers demanding reform. Crucially, proper transmission reform strikes right at the core of the conservative energy message – lower costs and greater reliability – by efficiently expanding the grid. 

The problem surrounding transmission is deeply flawed regulation that rewards massive overspending on inefficient projects and deters efficient development. Of the $20-$25 billion spent annually on transmission, over 90% is subject to neither competitive bidding nor a cost-benefit test. Most projects are advanced by local monopoly utilities and rubber-stamped by regulators, and captive customers bear the costs. Republican Commissioner Mark Christie of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has taken the lead to work with states to fix this. 

Meanwhile, FERC has a pending rulemaking to fix regional transmission. Consumers and free market groups paint a clear reform path. FERC needs to strengthen regional planning for economic projects, which are determined by cost-benefit tests and put out for competitive bid, while eliminating exemptions for inefficient monopoly projects.  

Regional and local transmission problems can be fixed by regulatory leaders. But they are less equipped to handle the gaping hole in transmission policy: interregional transmission. Fortunately, conservatives like Neil Chatterjee, who served as President Trump’s FERC chairman, offer great insight. 

While FERC tries to fix the regional transmission framework, no such framework even exists for interregional transmission. The result is that hardly any interregional transmission has been developed, despite huge cost and reliability advantages compared to small projects. Since the majority of grid reliability events stem from severe weather events, the ability of one region in emergency conditions to import power from a neighbor’s surplus is vital to keep the lights on. Winter Storms Uri and Elliott made this clear. Reliability authorities expect threats to worsen amid “insufficient transmission for large power transfers.” 

Conservatives have expressed interest in two approaches to interregional transmission reform. The first is to build transmission like natural gas pipelines. The underappreciated catalyst of the gas revolution last decade was the institution of nationwide competitive reforms. In this model, competitive gas producers and consumers voluntarily contracted for pipeline service with competitive pipeline developers. This signals where, when and how much pipeline expansion is economical. The resulting infrastructure fueled the great energy story of the 2010s. 

About one-third of states instituted similar competitive reforms in the electric industry. The downstream segment – competitive retail energy providers – seek reforms to enable them to obtain the benefits of voluntarily contracting for interregional transmission. Competitive transmission developers want similar reforms, such as monetizing the reliability benefit of firm power imports in competitive electricity markets. Such reforms should be prioritized, but they will only work in the minority of the country that embraced electricity competition. 

Most of the country clings to vertically-integrated monopoly utilities. Their profits are determined by the amount of capital they spend, which creates a perverse incentive to manage costs. To think monopoly utilities would be willing to pursue low-cost transmission development is a fool’s errand. Instead, they have a pattern of torpedoing cost-efficient large-scale transmission to justify building more expensive local transmission and power plants. For example, Entergy recently undercut a $100 million transmission project to justify a new billion dollar power plant. Mandatory transmission planning requirements are the only option to foster least-cost transmission development in monopoly jurisdictions.

Transmission planning requirements come in different shapes and sizes. Some can be excessive and inefficient, others necessary and prudent. One concept has emerged to establish a floor for prudent transmission investment: minimum interregional transfer requirements. This entered debt limit negotiations in the form of the BIG WIRES Act, which is a thoughtful approach by Democrats seeking bipartisanship. However, it proposes a uniform requirement across all regions.

Conservative thought leaders have been resistant to the idea of Congress imposing an arbitrary requirement on interregional transfer. Their instincts serve them well. Grid economics and reliability conditions vary by region. Some conservatives skeptical of a uniform requirement find a tailored approach more appealing, where transfer levels are determined by region-specific reliability conditions and benefit-cost analysis.

Such an approach would deliver “no regrets” transmission development. Not only are such projects vital to bolster grid reliability, but they often reduce more costs than they create. For example, an interregional transmission line during Winter Storm Uri would have paid for itself in four days. 

The status quo is not cutting it. Costs are rising and reliability conditions are worsening. Enabling voluntary capital to flow is the best option, where it is feasible. For the rest, “no regrets” transmission solutions are now a matter of energy security, not political convenience.

Devin Hartman is the policy director for the R Street Institute’s energy and environmental program.