Authored by the Editors of Law & Liberty via RealClear Wire,

The following is an overview of Law & Liberty’s January forum on the question of demographic decline. 

Birth rates are falling across the developed world, and China recently joined the list of countries with a declining population.

These trends have many governments worrying about shrinking workforces and unsustainable elderly entitlements. In Law & Liberty’s January forum, Lyman Stone argues that those concerns are relatively trivial, compared to the loneliness, infertility, suicide, and addiction that are ravaging American society today.

Stone sees strong connections between these maladies and the failure of so many people to marry and have children.

Family life can be a source of tremendous joy and meaning, but more and more Americans are missing out on this, owing to liberalized divorce, high rates of incarceration, a badly designed tax and benefit structure, and other cultural factors. The best antidote to loneliness and despair, Stone argues, is to help people marry, and have the children they already say they want. To that end, he recommends higher alcohol taxes, the elimination of marriage penalties, school vouchers, and liberalized zoning policies, along with child allowances and family leave policies.

David Goldman, in his reply, points out that fertility has not declined precipitously among all developed people. Israel is an important outlier, with an average of about three children per woman, but within the Israeli population it is clear that the highly-religious are boosting the nation’s birth rates. That trend is not unique to Israel, or to Jews. In the United States as well, people who report that religion is important to them have more children. This trend holds even for highly educated women, although the decline in fertility has in general correlated strongly with the rise in female education.

Jesse Smith shares Stone’s interest in a more-robust family policy, but he is dissatisfied with Stone’s decision to focus his argument on the realization of individual fertility preferences. Families are good for so many reasons; why not put them all on the table? We do need more babies to have a thriving economy and hope for the future. Smith notes as well that Stone’s individualist framing may hinder him from understanding the phenomenon in question. Anxious to interpret falling birth rates as tragic evidence of unrealized life goals, he is reluctant to probe the attitudes of potential parents too deeply. A person might genuinely want more kids, without being willing to prioritize family goals over other life goals. If pronatal policies simply ignore those complexities, they may not work.

Susanna Spencer also worries that Stone may be misunderstanding the motives that lead people to build their lives around family and children. She illustrates this by telling the story of her own family, and the open-to-life ethic that she absorbed growing up in a Catholic community. It seems unlikely to Spencer that government benefits or a revised tax code will significantly alter the present fertility situation. Organic community, personal connections, and a prioritizing of human life and relationships are the real key, as John Paul II explained in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.

Answering the skepticism of multiple respondents, Stone’s final reply sketches many ways in which pronatal policy might in fact have some meaningful effect. Stone points out that it is really quite clear that government policy can influence birth rates, even quite dramatically, as seen in Romania under Nicolae CeauÈ™escu. No one wants that kind of autocracy in America, but gentler policies might still make a difference. Money does help. Housing and education make a real difference, too. Religion is certainly a factor, but Stone notes that its role is also fairly complex. Community support is hugely important to facilitating family life, and it does often go hand in hand with organized religion, but that isn’t inevitably the case. Meanwhile, other forms of community can also help lonely people realize their dream of raising a thriving family.

The way forward, Stone suggests, is to tackle the problem from multiple angles, refusing to accept the present misery and despair as an inevitable consequence of a more secular society.

Authored by Daniel Batten via BitcoinMagazine.com,

This article provides a look at my latest research, revealing how it came to be that a 2022 Cambridge Centre For Alternative Finance’s (CCAF) study on Bitcoin’s environmental impact underestimates the amount of sustainable Bitcoin mining going on. I also address why we can be very confident that the actual sustainable energy usage is at least 52.6% of Bitcoin mining’s total energy use.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Whatever your position on ESG investment, the reality is that it’s soaring, on track to reach $10.5 trillion in the U.S. alone. What’s also true is that Bitcoin adoption cannot occur unless this $10.5 trillion of ESG funds feels comfortable that Bitcoin is a net positive to the environment.

Right now, ESG investors largely don’t feel comfortable that this is the case. In speaking with them, my impression is that one reason for ESG investor discomfort with Bitcoin is that the CCAF study, “A Deep Dive Into Bitcoin’s Environmental Impact,” reported that Bitcoin uses only 37.6% sustainable energy.

While ESG investors are generally quick to dismiss the work of Bitcoin-critic Alex de Vries — debunked in an earlier Bitcoin Magazine article — I have found they are also more likely to trust the CCAF study over a Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) study that found Bitcoin uses 58.9% sustainable energy. You can understand why: The Cambridge brand says “reputable, independent research,” while BMC’s says, “industry body.”

Ironically, being an industry body, the very thing that gives BMC access to real-time Bitcoin mining data, also made its findings easier for at least some ESG investors to disqualify. Environmental groups such as Earth Justice and journals such as “The Ecologist” have been similarly quick to assume the CCAF numbers must be the correct ones.

To date, Bitcoiners have had a muted response. The result: The conversation about ESG funds getting behind Bitcoin cannot progress. Bitcoin user adoption stalls.

Meanwhile, environmental groups gain more fuel to lobby governments to regulate Bitcoin mining in a punitive manner.

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR ESG FUNDS TO SUPPORT BITCOIN?

ESG funds require three things before they will invest in Bitcoin projects. These are the same three things that the White House would need in order to not punitively regulate Bitcoin mining: independent, empirical data demonstrating unambiguously:

1. How the CCAF study came to be understated and by how much

2. That the Bitcoin macro trend is quantifiably moving toward sustainable energy

3. That Bitcoin is quantifiably a net positive to the environment and society

The research presented here is the answer to the first requirement for ESG investors. It won’t by itself open the floodgates for institutional ESG investment, but it does knock over the first major barriers.

FINDINGS

Throughout 2022, I was perplexed about the consistent, 20%-plus difference between the BMC and CCAF estimates of Bitcoin’s sustainable energy use. I saw both the Bitcoin community and environmental groups quote the figure that fit their narratives.

Being in the unusual position of straddling both communities, my simple question was, “Who’s right?”

I decided to research the question.

What I realized was that the CCAF model was excluding several factors. No great detective work on my part: It says so on its website under the “Limitations Of The Model” section.

So, I quantified the impact of these exclusions. It turned out that the three exclusions mentioned on its website cause its model to understate Bitcoin’s sustainable energy percentage by 13.6%. This explains two-thirds of the entire variance between the CCAF and the BMC model.

When all exclusions from the CCAF model are factored in, the Bitcoin sustainable energy percentage figure is a full 15.5% higher.

Here’s a full breakdown of all of the CCAF model exclusions. There are nine exclusions in total: seven (in green) that increase the sustainable energy-use figure; two (in red) that decrease it. A full evaluation of each factor and the methodology used to quantify exclusions can be found on my research site.

So, in summary, the CCAF model does not factor in:

• Off-grid mining (impact: plus 10.8%)

• Flare-gas mining (impact: plus 1.0%)

• Updated geographical hash rate (Kazakhstan miner exodus, impact: plus 1.8%)

With all exclusions factored in, the sustainable energy mix calculation is 52.6%. This figure represents a lower-bound estimate, so it is not incompatible with the BMC study showing 58.9% sustainable energy.

HOW CONFIDENT CAN WE BE THAT BITCOIN’S ENERGY USE IS OVER 50%?

We can simulate this using the revised model. For Bitcoin’s true sustainable energy use to be below 50%, at least one of the following scenarios would have to be true:

• Four large Bitcoin mining operations secretly run off 100% coal-based energy

• ERCOT (The operator of Texas’s electricity grid) has over-reported its true renewable energy numbers by a factor of four

• Despite the widely-reported exodus of miners from Kazakhstan, its claim on Bitcoin mining actually increased its share of global hash rate from 13.2% to 20%

I would rate the chance of any of these being true as far fetched. As for the likelihood that the true sustainable percentage of the Bitcoin network is 37.6%, there is a higher likelihood of you winning first prize in a single-ticket entry lottery where every man, woman and child in the U.S. has a ticket.

WHAT DOES THIS NEW RESEARCH MEAN FOR BITCOIN’S ESG NARRATIVE

Three things:

1. It won’t stop mainstream media from quoting the Cambridge study or environmental groups from using it. But it will make a difference to how ESG investors look at Bitcoin. For the first time, Bitcoin advocates have a legitimate, data-based way to remove the roadblock that the CCAF study has for some time created in the minds of ESG investors.

Past the first hurdle, proponents of Bitcoin can ask the next two big questions that ESG investors and the White House have: Is Bitcoin’s macro-trend quantifiably moving toward sustainable energy? And is Bitcoin quantifiably a net positive to the environment and society?

2. It also means that previous CCAF findings that appear to have used the same partial data set will need to be revisited. Specifically, we will need to revisit its findings that:

• Bitcoin emissions are currently 58.58 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) (likely overstated)

• Bitcoin uses less sustainable energy since the China ban (likely to show a different trend once off-grid mining is factored in)

• Emissions intensity may be increasing (for the same reason as the above)

• The major energy used by the Bitcoin network is coal (in light of off-grid data, it is unclear if there is sufficient evidence for this conclusion)

Initial calculations suggest that all four findings may be incorrect. This will need further analysis before we can say this with confidence. I’ll do that in separate pieces of work.

3. To the best of my knowledge, all other major industries are significantly behind Bitcoin in their use of sustainable energy. Bitcoin can legitimately claim to be leading all other industries in its adoption of sustainable energy sources. This is a very strong ESG case, because it shows an industry taking leadership in the renewable transition, which has the potential to inspire other industries by example.

Also noteworthy is that Bitcoin has achieved this feat in the remarkably quick time of just 14 years.

In summary: One of the three hurdles to institutional adoption of Bitcoin on ESG grounds effectively no longer exists. Both Bitcoin advocates and ESG investors can now feel confident that Bitcoin is predominantly sustainable.

FINAL WORDS

Throughout the process, I was in contact with both Alexander Neumueller, the digital assets project lead at CCAF, and Michael Saylor, the founder of BMC. Each was both encouraging and supportive of the approach I was taking.

To my knowledge, CCAF was the first to create energy and emission data for the Bitcoin network using a valid methodology and high-integrity data. I use both its energy consumption index (CBECI) and its mining map extensively in my own research and have found both the methodology and the data of these two tools to be sound. It is only the sustainable energy percentages where I found that an underestimation was occurring.

When CCAF first started calculating the sustainable energy use of the Bitcoin network in late 2019, it was highly accurate. It is the subsequent proliferation of largely renewable-based, off-grid mining, flare-gas mining and rapid miner movement from Kazakhstan and to Texas that saw its model start to lose tune. As any quant-trader can tell you, “even a great algorithm will lose tune over time.”

In the aftermath of the recent Hullaballon fiasco, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China’s top diplomat on Saturday that the U.S. will not tolerate violations of its airspace after a Chinese spy balloon flew over North America, but received no apologies from Beijing.

According to Politico, Blinken met with Wang Yi, director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in what was the administration’s first face-to-face meeting with the Chinese government since a balloon was discovered earlier this month and subsequently downed by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina.

According to a State Department readout of the meeting, Blinken “directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law” by the Chinese surveillance balloon “underscoring that this irresponsible act must never again occur.” Blinken later told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview after the meeting that Wang offered “no apology” for the incident.

Just met with the PRC’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. I condemned the incursion of the PRC surveillance balloon and stressed it must never happen again. I warned China against providing materiel support to Russia. I also emphasized the importance of keeping open lines of communication.

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) February 18, 2023

Separately, Blinken also warned Beijing about “implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia or assistance with systemic sanctions evasion,” as Moscow wages war against Ukraine. In the same NBC interview, Blinken said that he is “very concerned that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and I made clear that that would have serious consequences in our relationship.”

Blinken told Yi that the US had information China was considering whether to give Russia assistance, possibly including guns and weapons, for the war in Ukraine. The US has warned China since the start of the invasion a year ago not to do so.

“The concern that we have now is, based on information we have, that they’re considering providing lethal support,” Blinken told CBS’s “Face the Nation” shortly after he met with Wang. “And we’ve made very clear to them that that could cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.”

In response, Wang slammed the Biden administration’s destruction of the balloon and urged the U.S. to “change course, acknowledge and repair the damage that its excessive use of force caused to China-U.S. relations,” according to a statement published by Chinese state media. The statement described the controversy as the “so-called airship incident” in an apparent effort to belittle the U.S. reaction that has included a widening bipartisan uproar about what both a House and a Senate resolution have declared was a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty.

Earlier at the conference, Wang said China would release a new peace proposal for Ukraine in the coming days that would be in keeping with previous efforts by President Xi Jinping. He condemned attacks on nuclear power stations.

“We oppose attacks on nuclear power stations, attacks on civilian nuclear facilities,” Wang said. “We have to work to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear disasters.”

The initial response was cautious. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s idea but said “a just peace cannot mean that the aggressor gets rewarded.” As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, “China is obliged to use its influence for global peace,” Baerbock said. A Russian troop withdrawal from Ukraine is a condition of any peace deal, she said. Amusingly, the geometrically challenged foreign minister also said that “If Putin decides that tomorrow he changes his course by 360 degrees, the whole world will be happy.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock: “If Putin decides that tomorrow he changes his course by 360 degrees, the whole world will be happy.” pic.twitter.com/KUXZv7GOH8

— skadefron (@skadefron) February 18, 2023

Asked about Wang’s peace proposal, a US official who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity said that Beijing appears to be trying to publicly promote peace and stability while covertly supporting Russia’s aggression against its neighbor.

Despite several attempts by the media to describe recent developments as an easing of geopolitical tensions, the readouts suggest that neither side is ready to take steps to move beyond the spy balloon incident in order to steer bilateral ties toward a less-rancorous setting.

At the conference, Wang publicly slammed the U.S. response to the balloon – which Beijing insists was a weather monitoring device – as a “weak” and “near-hysterical” reaction; he also accused the U.S. of warmongering.

The meeting itself came with risks for President Joe Biden, who is trying to balance his administration’s desire to maintain “open lines of communication” with Beijing amid a widening bipartisan uproar about the Chinese balloon. Already, tense relations have been souring since its appearance. Blinken postponed an originally planned Feb. 5-6 trip to Beijing in response to the incursion.

It wasn’t clear until the final hours whether the Munich meeting between Blinken and Wang would happen. U.S. and Chinese officials had spent the last few days trying to broker the meeting, Politico reported citing three people familiar with those efforts. Beijing’s condition that the U.S. formally request the meeting had slowed progress in the talks.

“It’s a two-way discussion to land a meeting,” the diplomat said, adding that the Biden administration wouldn’t “bend the knee” to get the meeting. Beijing’s readout described the encounter as an “informal contact” that occurred “at the request of the U.S. side.”

Another Washington, D.C.-based diplomat with knowledge of the talks said Blinken had requested a meeting but “had no response from China” as he boarded his flight for Munich on Thursday.

Submitted by Matt Rosenberg and Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints

Cancel culture is alive and well in Chicago’s mayoral race. This time, it’s Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ turn to be “de-platformed.”

Mayoral challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is trying to cancel a meeting Monday in Elmhurst between Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed another challenger, Paul Vallas, and DeSantis. Garcia has demanded that Vallas “condemn” the FOP for hosting DeSantis, whom Garcia calls “a dangerous and xenophobic authoritarian.” 

Governor J.B. Pritzker has joined in, stating of the FOP-DeSantis meet-up, “Every candidate hoping to hold public office in the Land of Lincoln should condemn this event.” That’s a rather hypocritical position for Pritzker who just two weeks ago, in a spat over school curriculums with DeSantis, appointed himself a champion of free speech.

Even worse, Vallas succumbed to the pressure and issued a press release condemning the looming meeting and parroting hard-left distortions of DeSantis’ socially-conservative positions. He added, “I wholeheartedly agree with Governor Pritzker that there is simply no place in Chicago for a right-wing extremist like Ron DeSantis, and I am disappointed in FOP leadership for inviting him to speak to officers.” It turns out the DeSantis campaign contacted the FOP about the event and asked the union to promote it to its members, which it did.

No matter. Vallas’ condemnation of the gathering isn’t for Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson. He’s called for Vallas to go even further and reject the FOP’s endorsement.

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has also piled on. “Ron DeSantis has perfected being a bigoted, racist demagogue. But Paul Vallas is fast on his heels.”

All this as Chicago continues its descent into chaos and misrule. Rather than focus fully on the city’s Wild West streets and its failing schools, contenders for mayor want to play the de-platforming game. 

Czar of permissible meetings

Here’s how it all unfolded. Make sure to follow the odd twists and turns. 

Chicago’s FOP has endorsed Vallas, who stands out with a voluble law-and-order message at a time when Chicagoans must increasingly resort to armed self-defense because of a complete breakdown in public safety. Garcia’s “logic” is that, because of FOP’s Vallas endorsement, Vallas owns their words and actions. And the scheduled meeting between FOP members and DeSantis constitutes a forbidden act because DeSantis has angered progressives with his policies towards what he and many others in Florida see as overly racialized and overly sexualized curricula in public schools.

There’s one problem here. What exactly does any of this have to do with Chicago’s most urgent needs and priorities? Like black family disintegration, rising crime, and wearing the national murder crown for the 11th straight year? 

Garcia’s fake outrage amounts to a declaration that, “As Mayor I will be Czar of Permissible Speech, and Permissible Meetings.” 

Buckling under

Vallas’ submission to Garcia’s attempt to cancel DeSantis coming to Illinois is also reprehensible. You either stand up for free speech, free association, and free debate, or you don’t. 

There’s something deeper going on here and it’s a national concern. Cancel culture has run amok. Watch the response of the go-along-to-get-along progressive orthodoxy when anyone challenges the narrative: paint them as intolerant, dangerous, beyond the pale, not to be tolerated. They must be “de-platformed,” is how it’s put lately. Ban or shadow-ban them from social media. Rally to disinvite them from speaking engagements at universities. Call their ideas “dangerous disinformation.”

One of the most succinct ways to advance a cancellation attempt now is to accuse someone of hateful speech. Flailing incumbent Lightfoot aired an ad calling her crime critics “haters.” 

Lightfoot also aired an attack ad on Vallas suggesting – based on years-old interview footage – that he might be a Republican. But it’s results, policies and plans that matter. Not allegations that a Scarlet “R” belongs on someone’s forehead. A Garcia ad claimed Vallas is anti-abortion. But abortion is a state issue and abortion is legal under state law. 

Cancel culture is a threat to democracy. The intent of it is to fence off discussions about government accountability for things like continuing violent crime or the failure of public schools to impart basic reading and math skills to students, especially black and Latino students. Under cancel-culture rules, vexing failures must always be described as due to “systemic racism” or “underfunding.” Case closed. Anyone who persists in a results-based critique runs the risk of a cancellation attempt – by being called “racist,” “classist,” or “far-right.”

Intimidation shortchanges us all. And remember this: those that engage in it inherently concede the bankruptcy of their arguments. 

Unless Chicagoans, including politicians, stand up to authoritarian attempts at controlling political thought, political speech, and free association, the city will continue to inch – or more likely gallop –  toward a political police state. 

It can ill afford to do so.

New Yorkers should not be surprised by new TomTom traffic data that shows the Big Apple’s traffic is the worst in the US.

On average, New Yorkers spent a whopping 236 hours (9.83 days) in rush hour in 2022, according to TomTom’s geolocation data that tracks congestion and traffic trends. 

TomTom’s report analyzed 80 US cities and measured how long drivers traveled 6 miles. The number two spot is Washington, then San Fransico, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, Seattle, and Philadelphia. 

A one-way commute (around 6 miles) to work in New York is also the most expensive in the US. 

Time spent in rush hour will add up over the years. Perhaps all this wasted time can be saved by a hybrid work week or remote work. At least now, there’s a clear understanding of what major metro areas to avoid during rush hour. 

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Pentagon is stonewalling inquiries as to whether one of the unidentified objects it shot down off the coast of Alaska earlier this month was a $12 dollar hobby balloon.

Speculation that the unidentified aerial object the administration shot down earlier this month was actually a cheap hobbyist pico balloon began to build this week after a group dedicated to the hobby reported one of its balloons “missing in action” over Alaska.

A blog post from the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) recounted that it had lost contact with its hobby balloon on Feb. 11, and that it was last recorded at an altitude of about 39,000 feet off the coast of Alaska.

please tell me the white house did not spend the month of february scrambling jets to fire $400,000 missiles at the local hobby club’s TWELVE DOLLAR BALLOON

lord have mercyhttps://t.co/4D7DaTncvT

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 16, 2023

Pico balloons are small mylar balloons equipped with trackers that are used by hobbyists to measure weather patterns and can cost as little as $12.

The U.S. military shot down an unidentified object in the same general vicinity at an altitude of 40,000 feet on the same day using a $400,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile.

When asked whether that included a pico balloon or if the department had in any way followed up with the NIBBB, the Pentagon deflected.

“We have nothing to provide on this,” a Department of Defense (DOD) spokesperson said in an email.

For its part, the NIBBB has said it is not unusual for such a balloon to go without transmission for some days at a time, and until remains from the balloon were collected, the assertion that the U.S. military shot it down was not verifiable.

“As has been widely reported, no part of the object shot down by the U.S. Air Force jet over the Yukon Territory has been recovered,” the NIBBB said in a blog post.

Read more here…

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

It appears that Hunter Biden’s art dealer believes that his art should be left entirely to the eye of the beholder — and not Congress. Georges Bergès reportedly refused last week to provide the House Oversight Committee with the identities of the buyers of Biden high-priced art work. While counsel William Pittard insists that the list of purchasers must remain secret, it is hard to see the viable legal basis to refuse the demand of the House Oversight Committee, if made subject to a congressional subpoena.

The Biden sales have long been a subject of intense debate over whether it is another form of influence peddling or money laundering. Even President Barack Obama’s ethics head has raised objections.

Former Obama-era ethics official Walter Shaub called the art sale a “terrible idea” and noted that “it just is implausible that this art from an unknown artist would be selling at this price if it didn’t have the Biden name attached to it.”

A new artist, Biden is fetching prices that exceed the prices of some Picassos. The quality of the work will be left to others to debate, but the Oversight committee has a legitimate interest in looking into whether the art is being used to funnel money to the family of President Joe Biden.

In January, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) requested that Bergès testify before Congress. Comer has long alleged that Chinese buyers are behind the sales, though there is no public proof to support that allegation. He has stated that “arrangement with Hunter Biden raises serious ethical concerns and calls into question whether the Biden family is again selling access and influence.”

Pittard wrote that “[i]n light of these considerations, providing the documents and information requested in your letter seemingly would defeat the efforts of Mr. Biden and the White House to avoid the ‘serious ethical concerns’ that you raise.” He added that “Mr. Berges hopes that you and Mr. Biden can resolve that tension.”

The question is what happens if they cannot “resolve that tension.” The Oversight Committee is investigating a host of avenues through which foreign interests were allegedly able to funnel millions into the Biden family coffers. It is hard to see how a court would find that these business records could not be subpoenaed by a congressional committee if they decide to move forward.

Berges could refuse to testify without a subpoena, but he must appear if so served. He could then invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to refuse to testify.

What is interesting is that this is only the latest lawyer to defy Congress on a Hunter Biden inquiry. We previously discussed how Hunter Biden’s personal counsel Abbe Lowell refused a demand for evidence sought by the House.

These moves appear to be channeling the same strategy of Steve Bannon who was ultimately charged with contempt and convicted. At the time, I said that Bannon was asking for a contempt charge and Biden appears to be replicating this same ill-considered strategy.

These may be just the opening salvos to seek to negotiate with Congress, but they can backfire as they did with Bannon. The categorical refusals could expedite matters in pushing these conflicts before a court where Congress would have the advantage.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

The kids are not okay, and it is time for us to face the truth. 

As long as I have been writing, surveys have shown that the mental health of our young people has been steadily getting worse.  But now we are learning that things really took an enormous turn for the worse during the pandemic.  As you will see below, one expert is warning that the number of kids that are dealing with mental health issues “has increased exponentially since the pandemic”. 

The facts that I am about to share with you are likely to make you very angry. 

Our system does not work, and millions upon millions of young people are having their lives ruined as a result.  The following are 13 numbers that show how dramatically we have failed America’s children…

#1 One recent survey found that 40 percent of U.S. parents “worry their children struggle with anxiety or depression”.

#2 During the pandemic, suicide became the second leading cause of death for U.S. children between the ages of 10 and 14.

#3 Suicide is also the second leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 15 and 24.

#4 According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 46 percent of U.S. kids between the ages of 13 and 17 have experienced cyberbullying.

#5 40 percent of U.S. high school students “felt so sad or hopeless” in 2021 that “they were unable to do their regular activities”.

#6 According to the CDC, “more than 95% of children and adolescents in the U.S. spend much of their daily lives in school”.

#7 At 23 schools in Baltimore, not one single student is proficient in math.

#8 At 30 schools in Illinois, not one single student can read at grade level.

#9 At 53 schools in Illinois, not one single student can do math at grade level.

#10 According to the CDC, nearly 20 percent of all adolescent female students experienced sexual violence in 2021.

#11 According to the CDC, nearly 60 percent of all adolescent female students “experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” in 2021.

#12 According to the CDC, nearly 25 percent of all adolescent female students “made a suicide plan” in 2021.

#13 The proportion of adolescent female students that actually attempted suicide in 2021 was 60 percent higher than a decade ago.

There is nothing “normal” about these numbers.

The mental health of our young people has been declining for years, and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics is telling us that the number of kids and adolescents dealing with mental health issues “has increased exponentially since the pandemic”…

“I would say over the last 10 years, since I’ve been practicing as a general pediatrician, I have seen a shift both in the amount of patients and of all ages dealing with anxiety and depression. And their parents being concerned about this is a key issue,” said Dr. Katherine Williamson, a pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Even before the pandemic, we were seeing skyrocketing numbers of kids and adolescents dealing with mental health issues, and that has increased exponentially since the pandemic.”

We told our leaders that the incredibly sick and twisted mandates and restrictions that they were forcing upon our young people were going to have very serious mental health consequences.

And that is precisely what has happened.

But of course we must also acknowledge that the mental health of our young people was steadily deteriorating long before the pandemic ever came along.

It has become clear that no matter how much money we pour into our schools, it isn’t going to make things any better.

In fact, to me it is quite apparent that our absolutely pathetic system of public education is a big part of the problem.

If you want your teens to hate life, just put them into a public high school.

Having said that, I want to stress that having strong nuclear families is even more important to the mental health of our young people.

Unfortunately, the traditional family unit is under attack like never before, and in many cases it is being replaced by “new arrangements”…

Alysia and Tyler Rogers were already parents to two children, now ages 7 and 8, when they embarked on a romantic relationship with married friends Sean and Taya Hartless.

The two couples, originally from the US, moved in together as a polyamorous foursome in 2020 and the following year, Alysia and Taya delivered babies seven months apart.

Neither woman knows who biologically fathered the kids, with Alysia maintaining they will help the children discover that down the road if they ever want to.

I don’t even know what to say about all of that.

Unfortunately, a smaller percentage of U.S. children are being raised in a traditional home with a traditional father and a traditional mother than ever before.

And that has very serious implications for our future.

As we all get older, we are going to need the next generation to take care of us.  According to the Washington Post, it is being projected that the number of elderly people in the United States will grow very rapidly in the years ahead…

That represents 55.7 million people, an increase of 15.2 million (38 percent) of people 65 and above since 2010, compared with just 2 percent growth in the under-65 population. It also reflects a consistent increase in the nation’s older population since 1900, when there were 3.1 million Americans 65 and older (4 percent of the population).

The report projects a climb to roughly 80.8 million residents 65 and older by 2040, more than double the number in 2000. It also predicts a doubling of the number of even older residents by 2040, with the count of those 85 and older expected to grow from 6.7 million in 2020 to 14.4 million by 2040. In 2020, there were nearly 105,000 residents 100 or older.

When we are all old and gray, we will be depending on the next generation to be the leaders of tomorrow.

But thanks to our failures, the next generation is going to be incredibly messed up.

Our society is being “fundamentally transformed” right in front of our eyes, and that is really bad news for all of us.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

China is the largest market for electric vehicles in the world. Germany was the second until the US just displaced Europe’s largest economy as EV sales accelerated. 

BloombergNEF data shows the US is now the world’s second-largest EV market, shifting Germany down to the third spot. Last year, nearly one million EVs were sold in the US, compared with 650,000 in 2021.

Not surprising is Tesla’s dominance in overall sales. Elon Musk’s automaker sold a whopping 510,610 vehicles last year. Ford Motor Company was number two with 74,000. 

“The US is poised for a breakout year in 2023 with new EV manufacturing capacity and a fairly generous federal tax credit expected to drive sales to around 1.6 million,” BloombergNEF noted. 

Last month, Tesla slashed the prices of its vehicles so buyers could take advantage of the $7,500 US government tax credit. Now the Model Y sold out until April. Electrek’s Fred Lambert said the price cuts sparked “unprecedented demand” in the US. 

Meanwhile, Ford shares stumbled this past week after it paused production and shipments of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup due to a potential battery issue. 

The Biden administration is the biggest proponent of electrifying America’s future, pushing for decarbonization across the entire transportation system. On the local level, California, New York, and other states are moving to phase out the sale of gasoline-powered cars by the end of the decade to mitigate the ‘effects of climate change.’

And while a decarbonized future sounds great, readers know there is no such thing as zero-emissions vehicles… 

Authored by David Gordon via The Mises Institute,

Thorsten Polleit’s outstanding new book is packed with insights about both the philosophy of economics and economic policy, and as he shows, his philosophical standpoint enables him to grasp the essence of the financial world, of which he is a master.

Polleit is a follower of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and like them, he argues that economics offers us a priori truths about the world. “What is meant by the term a priori theory? The term a priori means that something is evident, that can be regarded as true and universal, independent of experience.” By “independent of experience,” Polleit of course doesn’t mean that a priori truths have no bearing on experience—the point of a priori truths is that they’re known to be true of experience just by thinking about them—but rather that their truth doesn’t depend on empirical testing. In economics, unlike the physical sciences, we don’t have adequate empirical grounds to establish laws: “there are “too many” variables and no quantitative constants.

In this connection, Polleit makes a brilliant observation. Because many socialists do not understand the relevant a priori laws, they fail to recognize that socialism is inherently tyrannical.

Even the worst experiences with socialism—think of Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot—are not enough to discredit it once and for all. This is mainly due to the following reason: in the field of human action, of human history, experience can never provide the convincing and conclusive proof that something had to proceed as it did. . . . It is precisely this insight that the socialists make active use of. They explain that socialism, where and when it was put into practice, did not produce the hoped-for results, with the following: socialism has not been implemented consistently enough.

To refute this defense requires resort to the a priori in two ways, one of which will be well known to most readers of the Mises Wire. I refer of course to Mises’s calculation argument, which shows that in the absence of money prices, a socialist system cannot engage in economic calculation and is doomed to collapse.

But this argument by itself does not suffice to answer so-called democratic socialists, who do not call for full-scale central planning but want a “mixed” system that does not entirely dispense with the market. To close the gap, Mises makes effective use of a “slippery slope” argument against such people—interventionism can quickly lead to socialism. Polleit reinforces Mises’s logic by raising another point as well. It is an a priori truth that the state is an oppressive institution that by its nature violates rights; furthermore, over the course of its existence, it will become more oppressive:

From the point of view of the logic of action, the state—if it is a territorial compulsory monopolist to which the individual is subjected to, for better or worse—is contradictory and thus literally wrong. It de facto degrades the individual to a slave, and this is incompatible with the logic of human action—because property, self-ownership, is an indispensable category of human action. . . . The modern democratic state especially is continuing to expand. Attempts to tame and enclose it prove to be an illusion. Even a minimal state becomes a maximal state sooner or later. (emphasis original)

Here Polleit draws on the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer (who, Polleit tells us, was the doctoral supervisor of Ludwig Erhard, the man responsible for the German “economic miracle” after World War II) and Hans Hoppe. I’d advise readers to pay particular attention to the sentence Polleit has italicized, as the book’s central argument depends on taking the proposition it expresses to be an a priori truth.

What does the contemporary state have in store for us? In answering this question, Polleit relies on another of the most important of the a priori laws of human action: because human beings differ, they benefit from specialization and trade. Given this undeniable truth, we must next endeavor to determine the requirements of extensive trade, and here we soon come to money, the commonly accepted medium of exchange.

Because the advantages of trade increase the wider the market is, a free market world would ideally use the same money:

[The thoughts presented in this book] are based on a central insight: if there were a global system of free markets in which everyone could freely buy what they wanted to buy, and in which producers could freely produce what consumers wanted, there would be a free market for money, and—through a voluntary agreement of all parties—a single world currency would emerge. This is because that would be economically optimal. If everyone in the world uses the same money, the productive effect of money is exploited to the full: the economic calculation carried out with money—calculating with money prices—is thus optimized for everyone. (emphasis original)

Polleit now combines this insight with his earlier argument that the ever-expanding state seeks to bring more and more resources under its control. In order to accomplish this, the state must seize total control of the monetary system, not allowing any commodity currency to compete with its own fiat money. And—another crucial point—because national currencies can be traded against each other, it becomes imperative to establish a unique world fiat currency that allows no evasion or escape.

In other words, our current world monetary order parallels the free market tendency toward a single world currency:

If states monopolize money production, there is no free market for money on which a single world currency could develop through voluntary decisions by people. In that case, national fiat currencies exist for the time being. But this is not a stable equilibrium. Rather, here too, there is a tendency to create a single world currency, because, as I said, it is optimal if everyone trades and calculates with the same currency.

A fiat money of the sort imagined here would subject the world to a dictatorship of socialistically inclined global bankers. As Polleit explains, only free market money in a “private law society” offers lasting refuge from the “dystopian nightmare” the globalists have in mind for us. Polleit’s book will encourage resistance to their plans.

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The Global Currency Plot: How the Deep State Will Betray Your Freedom, and How to Prevent It

by Thorsten Polleit, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2023; 190 pp.