U.S. Regains The Ability To Identify Real National Security Threats

Maybe Donald Trump is just not your type of guy, and certainly not the guy you would want to be President; but keep in mind who was the alternative.  Before these things fade into the memory hole, bring back to mind a few of the wildly incompetent policies of the previous administration.  Looking around today for a candidate as the policy of the previous administration that could be the very most wildly incompetent of all, with a very real potential to put the security of the country in serious jeopardy, my leading contender is the decision to declare "climate change" to be a top-priority national security risk.

Do you remember Obama doing that?  It wasn't that long ago.  In his second inaugural address in January 2013, Obama declared that “no challenge – no challenge – poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”  Then, over the next couple of years, he ramped up the claimed "challenge" of climate change from mere "greatest threat to future generations" to an "immediate threat to national security."  Think about that for a minute -- how would it even work?  Suppose the temperature goes up a few degrees over the next few decades.  Does it mean that we don't have an army any more?  Does it mean that our weapons won't work?  Nevertheless, in a National Security Strategy document in February 2015, the Obama administration declared climate change to be “an urgent and growing threat to our national security,”  Then in May 2015, Obama gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut.  Excerpt:

I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.  And so we need to act, and we need to act now.

Supposedly, something like sea level, or maybe wildfires, or maybe floods -- all completely speculative -- would somehow make the country harder to defend.  Meanwhile, when Obama talked about "acting now," what he meant was restricting production fossil fuels in the United States.  What did he think was the fuel that powers the planes and ships and missiles, let alone powering the economy that provides all the logistical support to keep the military functioning?  As far as I could tell, he had no idea.  In the name of "national security" he would hobble and ultimately shut down our own oil and coal and gas industries, leaving us to go begging for the necessary fuel to -- where?  OPEC?  Russia?  Venezuela?  You really need to be delusional not to be able to distinguish the real national security threat here from the imaginary one.

As you probably know, in a new National Security Strategy document released yesterday President Trump reversed this ridiculous policy of President Obama.  The new document does not contain any section explicitly dealing with "climate," but it does have a section titled "Embrace Energy Dominance."  Key quote:

Access to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come.  Unleashing these abundant energy resources—coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear—stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth. Our Nation must take advantage of our wealth in domestic resources and energy efficiency to promote competitiveness across our industries. . . .  Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy secu- rity interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.  The United States will continue to advance an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection.  

Bullet dodged, at least for the moment.

Now, perhaps on reading this, you remain skeptical that hobbling U.S. fossil fuel energy production could jeopardize national security by making the U.S. dependent on the likes of OPEC or Russia for fuel needed to run the military or the economy.  If so, I would urge you to pay attention to what has just been occurring in the UK.  The UK is thought to have substantial natural gas-bearing shale formations (full extent unknown due to lack of exploration) that could be tapped to supply fuel for the country.  However, during the whole time of the shale gas revolution in the United States, the process of horizontal drilling and "fracking" for gas has been essentially shut down by regulators over concerns of environmentalists.  The first exploratory well after the moratorium finally got going just this August.  From the Financial Times, August 17:

Drilling has started on the first UK shale well for six years even as debate intensifies among geologists over how much gas is available for fracking. Cuadrilla, the company leading the push to bring US-style shale gas production to the UK, said on Thursday it had begun drilling a vertical well expected to reach 3.5km beneath its site near Blackpool, Lancashire. . . .   Fracking has been on hold in the UK since 2011 when two small earth tremors were blamed on exploratory operations by Cuadrilla at another site near Blackpool. Cuadrilla was given the go-ahead by the government last year to resume drilling, reflecting ministers’ hopes of replicating the shale revolution that has cut US gas prices and bolstered American energy security.

Lacking a home-grown, land-based gas supply from fracking, the UK has been relying on gas from the aging North Sea fields, as well as gas that comes from the Middle East and also Norway via pipelines across Europe.  Both of those sources then suddenly experienced supply disruptions in the past couple of weeks.  From the Telegraph, December 13:

Around 40pc of the UK’s domestic [natural gas] supplies have been wiped out until the new year due to the emergency shutdown of the North Sea’s Forties pipeline, operated by Ineos. Supply from Europe has also been constrained by the explosion at a hub in Austria and technical problems in the Norwegian North Sea.    

Time to crank up the vast reserves of solar panels?  No, dummy, those don't work in the winter.  Wind turbines also have zero ability to step up in an emergency.  The first result of the supply disruptions was a huge spike in natural gas prices in the UK:

[R]ocketing demand in Europe [has driven] the price for gas delivered to the UK to more than $10 per million British thermal units.

For comparison, a representative recent spot price in the U.S. was $2.84 per million BTUs.  But you've got to get your energy somewhere.  So who will sell you gas at a gouging price when you are desperate?  The answer, of course, is Russia:

Britain has emerged as the unlikely first recipient of gas from a sanctioned Russian project after fears of a winter supply crisis drove prices close to five year highs. . . .  Now a deal has been struck to bring the debut cargo from Yamal to the Isle of Grain import terminal via a specially built ice-breaking tanker by the end of the month.

The Telegraph includes this picture of a smiling Vladimir Putin:

It's really hard to believe how dumb these people are to have put themselves in this position.  But then, when they make their decisions, they do it against the backdrop of the U.S. military shield, let alone of the frack-happy U.S. as an alternative emergency supplier when Russia puts on the squeeze.  But if we had shut down our fracking over concerns about "climate change," we would have been dependent on OPEC and Russia like Europe and the UK are now.  Who would have been our emergency supplier when those guys decided to put on the squeeze?  And, rest assured, Hillary, following in Obama's footsteps, would have enthusiastically put the country in this position.  

California And New York Double Down On Plans To "Save The Planet"

With the Trump administration backing off schemes to impose huge reductions in "greenhouse gas" emissions on the populace, some of the blue states are stepping up to "save the planet."  Or so they claim.  The leaders are California and New York.

The California Air Resources Board ("CARB") has just announced its next moves.  On December 14 CARB approved something called its 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan, and issued a big press release to tell the world about it.  From the press release:

Building on the state’s success in decarbonizing its economy, the California Air Resources Board today approved a bold plan to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade while improving air quality and public health, investing in disadvantaged communities, and supporting jobs and economic growth.  “At a time when science shows us that climate change is happening faster than anticipated, California is responding with a bold plan that rises to meet this global challenge,” said CARB Chair Mary D. Nichols. “It builds on proven actions and presents a template for other jurisdictions who are also committed to preventing the worst impacts of a warming planet.”

The "bold" goals are to reduce these evil "greenhouse gas" emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, and then by an additional 40% by 2030, and then by 80% by 2050.  Can we get an idea of how that is going, and of how much it is likely to cost?  I'm spending quite a bit of time here trying to find answers to those questions, and all I can say is, it looks to me like the entire state of California has agreed to a suspension of critical thinking on these issues.  

For example, we can look to something called the California Energy Commission, a state agency with jurisdiction over things like electricity production and usage.  One thing they are charged with is tracking progress on the goals for producing more electricity from "renewables."  So they have put out a big report, just updated this month, called  "Tracking Progress -- Renewable Energy."   This is 30 pages, chock full of rah! rah! Soviet-style statistics of how much new wind and solar electricity capacity they have been installing.  But with the continuing need for back-up from fossil fuel sources to make the electric grid work, does increasing wind and solar capacity actually reduce GHG emissions to any significant degree?  You won't find an answer to that question here.  As an alternative, go to page ES3 of the CARB Scoping Plan linked above, and you will find that -- despite massive installation of wind and solar capacity now providing some 17% of California's electricity -- California's GHG emissions at the latest measurement remain above the 1990 level, and all of the supposed 40% and then 80% reductions that are promised are allegedly going to occur between 2020 and 2050.  Oh, and the peak of emissions was about 480 MMTCO2e in 2005, less than 10% above the 1990 (and projected 2020) level of about 440 MMTCO2e.  So after 20 years or so of effort, they haven't yet succeeded in reducing emissions by 10%; but they're going to achieve a 40% reduction in the next 12 years, and 80% in 32.  Sure!

Meanwhile, for better or worse, in New York we have a state government that is going down more or less the same path.  The difference is that not every single person in this state has suspended critical thinking -- only about 99.7% of them.  And thus we have an August 2017 Report from Jonathan Lesser of the Manhattan Institute titled "New York's Clean Energy Programs: The High Cost of Symbolic Environmentalism."    First, what so-called "clean energy" goals has New York adopted?  From the MI Report:

In 2016, the New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC) enacted the Clean Energy Standard (CES). Under the CES, by 2030, 50% of all electricity sold by the state’s utilities must come from renewable generating resources.  At the same time, emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG)—principally carbon dioxide (CO2) but also such gases as methane and chlorofluorocarbons—must be reduced by 40%.  The CES also incorporates New York’s previous GHG emissions reduction mandate, established by Executive Order in 2009,2 which requires that the state’s GHG emissions be reduced 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (the “80 by 50” mandate). 

So the "goals" are more or less the same as those of California.  And now, are the goals achievable, and at what potential cost?  Key finding:

Given existing technology, the Clean Energy Standard’s 80 by 50 mandate is unrealistic, unobtainable, and unaffordable. Attempting to meet the mandate could easily cost New York consumers and businesses more than $1 trillion by 2050, while providing scant, if any, measurable benefits.     

A trillion dollars -- that's real money!  And for "scant, if any" benefits.  This is climate politics at its best.  There are lots of other conclusions illustrating the total absurdity of the proposed program.  Here is one of my favorites:

Even with enormous gains in energy efficiency, the mandate would require installing at least 100,000 megawatts (MW) of o shore wind generation, or 150,000 MW of onshore wind generation, or 300,000 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity by 2050. By comparison, in 2015, about 11,300 MW of new solar PV capacity was installed in the entire United States. Moreover, meeting the CES mandate likely would require installing at least 200,000 MW of battery storage to compensate for wind and solar’s inherent intermittency. 

No problem!  And now, let's assume that the most alarmist of the climate models are completely accurate in their predictions.  How much global temperature rise can the state of New York avoid by going down this road?

The primary reason for the CES, to reduce GHG emissions, will not lead to any measurable impacts on climate and thus no climate-related benefits.  

None, nada, and zilch.  But of course there's this:

Lower-income New Yorkers will bear relatively more of the above-market costs necessary to achieve even the interim [2030] CES goal.

Oh, and meanwhile the world carries on building some 1600 coal power plants (mostly in China, India and Africa).  They are laughing at the likes of California, New York and, for that matter, Europe.

The good news is that there is a 0% chance that these ridiculous carbon-reduction programs will be carried through to conclusion.  I'm just wondering why I got picked to be the guinea pig in an experiment so obviously doomed to failure.  

Good News For Christmas: You Don't Have To Pay Any Attention To Government Dietary Advice

I don't know what you're doing on this weekend before Christmas, but I'm about to head off on a whirlwind round of holiday parties.  It's a hard burden to bear, so I'm looking around for a little encouragement.  And I've found it!  Here's the good news:  All government dietary advice is literally worthless.  You can ignore it completely.  Indeed, it appears that in most instances you are best off doing the opposite of what they recommend, which is likely what you wanted to do in the first place if left to your own devices without their meddling.

I have previously posted on this topic multiple times, for example here back in January 2016.  But it only gets worse.  The latest salvo comes in an open letter today to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine from two guys named Edward Archer and Carl Lavie.  The title is "Nutrition Has a 'Consensus' to Use Bad Science."  This is scathing, to say the least.  Excerpt:

'Nutrition' is now a degenerating research paradigm in which scientifically illiterate methods, meaningless data, and consensus-driven censorship dominate the empirical landscape. . . .  Over time, the sustained funding of demonstrably pseudo-scientific research methods has subverted the self-correcting nature of science and suppressed skeptical scholarship. Consequently, many decades of politics taking precedence over critical inquiry produced contradictory dietary guidelines, failed public policies, and the continued confusion over 'what-to-eat'.

Yikes!  Could this be as bad as climate "science"?  That's a close call.  But the essential problem is identical:  an enforced "consensus" causing billions upon billions of federal taxpayer dollars to be spent on worthless research that is then used as a basis for coercive government policy.

The particular issue on which Archer and Lavie focus is the use of "Memory-Based Methods" of assessing diet, which they refer to as "M-BMs."  It seems that most nutritional studies, as well as the government dietary guidelines, are based on assessments of diet derived from these "M-BMs," where people are surveyed and report from their own memory on what they have eaten over some period of time.  It turns out that many people -- and particularly overweight and obese people -- dramatically underreport their caloric intake.  So the nutrition scientific community has just developed protocols where they let researchers delete data that "look wrong" and go with the rest.  How's that for "science"!

Archer and Lavie refer to one of their own studies from December 2015 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, titled "A Discussion of the Refutation of Memory-Based Dietary Assessment Methods (M-BMs): The Rhetorical Defense of Pseudoscientific and Inadmissible Evidence."    A few choice quotes:

[T]he data generated by memory-based dietary assessment methods (M-BMs) of nutrition epidemiology are pseudoscientific and inadmissible as scientific evidence. . . .  Nutrition epidemiology often uses statistical machinations and post hoc data exclusions to “correct” or simply delete implausible data and alter results. . . .  These procedures are not merely correcting erroneous data entries or removing nonrepresentative data (ie, statistical outliers). The result of these machinations is to alter and/or delete the data of individuals most representative of the population of interest. For example, the US population is predominantly overweight and obese, and these individuals are the most likely to misreport. In other words, when the numbers did not add up, nutrition epidemiologists simply changed, ignored, or deleted the implausible data (regardless of the systematic biases they introduced) rather than acknowledge the invalidity of M-BMs. 

So why is this important now?  Because the government, through the National Academies, is in the process of developing a new round of dietary guidelines, and as a major step in that process has just come out with a Report titled "Redesigning the Processes for Establishing Dietary Guidelines for Americans."    And of course, they've gone right ahead and relied on all kinds of research based on these "M-BM" studies.  From today's open letter:

Briefly, the M-BMs employed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and other major nutrition studies produced data that were physiologically implausible, incompatible with life, and inadmissible as scientific evidence. . . .  Implausible dietary data should not be used to establish the DGA; yet that is exactly what the National Academies’ report recommends, and you as Presidents, endorse.

So the next round of government dietary guidelines is going to be just as worthless as all the previous rounds.  No surprise there.  I'm going to go on eating what tastes good and paying no attention whatsoever to government directives.  I hope you do too!

I do find one thing to disagree with in the Archer/Lavie work.  Commenting in their 2015 piece on use by nutrition researchers of data that has had inconvenient portions deleted and altered, they say this:

We are not aware of any research domain in which this type of data doctoring and consequent message distortion would be tolerated. We think that DGAC’s use of these manipulated data and consequent distorted messages to inform public health policy constitutes dubious scientific practices.

Apparently they are blissfully unaware of the field of climate "science."  For a good day's worth of reading on data deletion and alteration in that field to create a surface temperature record that fits a political narrative, see my seventeen-part series "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time."

Two Ways Of Looking At The World: Which One Is Insane?

If you go to my About Page, you will find my short list of some of the required tenets of the official Manhattan Groupthink.  These are the things that you must believe if you want to be part of the in crowd.  My list includes things like:

[T]he government has infinite capacity to tax and spend and does not need to make any choices about spending priorities; the government has an infinite ability to borrow; an appropriate function of government is to take on all down-side risk of life so that no individual ever needs to worry about loss of anything . . . .

And so forth.  And then, of course, there's the tenet that anyone who disagrees on any of the other tenets is not just wrong, but evil.

I wrote that back in 2012.  Since that time, several new tenets have been added.  For example, a tenet that has been added is that the Trump campaign conspired with a foreign adversary (Russia) to influence the 2016 election, and that the FBI and now Robert Mueller and his team have been engaged in a righteous effort to protect national security and the integrity of our elections.  Another new tenet is that anyone who disagrees with this latest tenet is not merely wrong, and not merely evil, but also "insane."

How do I know these things?  Because I have read the lead editorial in today's New York Times.  The headline is "Fox News v. Robert Mueller."   The editorial focuses in part on recent commentary from a Fox News anchor named Jeanine Pirro.  In what the Times calls Ms. Pirro's "most unhinged rant yet," aired on Saturday December 9, the Times quotes her as saying that the FBI and Justice Department "need[] to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired but who need to be taken out in handcuffs," and that Mr. Mueller "can't come up with one piece of evidence."  Then this:

To put it mildly, this is insane.  The primary purpose of Mr. Mueller's investigation is not to take down Mr. Trump.  It's to protect America's national security and the integrity of its elections by determining whether a presidential campaign conspired with a foreign adversary to influence the 2016 election . . . .

See, it's like I said.

Unfortunately for Pravda, they chose to publish this as a lead editorial on the same day that the text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his mistress and also FBI agent Lisa Page finally got released.  So here at MC, let's not engage in "unhinged rants," but rather, let's just quote some of the Strzok/Page texts to see which is the more reasonable inference:  either (1) they were in good faith trying to "protect national security and the integrity of our elections," or (2) they hate Trump and want him taken down.

• From Fox News, today:  Text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in 2016 that were obtained by Fox News on Tuesday refer to then-candidate Donald Trump as a "loathsome human" and "an idiot."
• Page to Strzok, March 4, 2016:  "God, Trump is a loathsome human."
• Strzok to Page, July 19 (at the Republican convention, referring to Trump and his family):  "Oooh, TURN IT ON, TURN IT ON!!! THE DO*CHEBAGS ARE ABOUT TO COME OUT."
• From the Wall Street Journal today, Page to Strzok, also July 2016 during the Republican convention: “Wow, Donald Trump is an enormous d*uche.” Strzok response:  “How was Trump, other than a d*uche?”
• Page to Strzok, August 6: "Jesus. You should read this. And Trump should go f himself."

OK, those things make a strong showing of general animus.  But are there any of the texts that go beyond general animus, and give rise to an inference of specific intent to take Trump down?  As a matter of fact, there are:  

• Again from the Wall Street Journal today, Page to Strzok, August 2016:  “Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace.”
• And from the Daily Caller, today, Page to Strzok, August 15, 2016:  “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.  It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”  The Caller identifies "Andy" as Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director of the FBI.

Let's turn to a calm, cool head -- John Hinderaker of PowerLine -- for a reasonable conclusion:

Actually, I don’t think President Trump has been as critical of the CIA and the FBI as he should be. The leaders of those agencies have disgraced themselves and let down the American people by putting loyalty to the Democratic Party above all else. Way, way more bureaucrats need to be fired.

One side of this debate likely is insane.  Which one?

The Stupidest Litigation In The Country Reaches The Ninth Circuit

There is quite a lot of stupid litigation in this country.  So how does the Manhattan Contrarian know which of thousands of candidates is actually the very stupidest of all?  Well, let me tell you about my candidate, and then you judge whether it is even remotely possible that there could be any case even stupider.

The case in question goes by the name Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States, et al.  It was brought in 2015 in the Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon.  (The documents in the case are available from the federal Public Access system, which unfortunately is behind a paywall.  I'm picking up the cost to read some of the documents on behalf of all of my readers!) The Amended Complaint contains a very lengthy description of Ms. Juliana, of which the following are not necessarily the most ridiculous portions:

Kelsey is 19 years old and was born and raised in Oregon, the state where she hopes to work, grow food, recreate, have a family, and raise children. During the fall of 2014, Kelsey walked 1,600 miles from Nebraska to Washington D.C. in the Great March for Climate Action to raise awareness about the climate crisis.  Kelsey is harmed by Defendants’ actions and inactions regarding carbon pollution and the resulting climate destabilization and ocean acidification. . . .  Kelsey spends time along the Oregon coast in places like Yachats and Florence and enjoys playing on the beach, tidepooling, and observing unique marine animals. . . .   The current and projected drought and lack of snow caused by Defendants are already harming all of the places Kelsey enjoys visiting, as well as her drinking water, and her food sources—including wild salmon. . . .  Defendants have caused psychological and emotional harm to Kelsey as a result of her fear of a changing climate, her knowledge of the impacts that will occur in her lifetime, and her knowledge that Defendants are continuing to cause harms that threaten her life and wellbeing.   

Ms. Juliana is just one of twenty-one individual plaintiffs, all under the age of 21; plus there is an environmental group calling itself "Earth Guardians."  Oh, and then there's another plaintiff known as "Future Generations."  Wouldn't want to leave them out!  

That business about drought and lack of snow is what they wrote in 2015.  I guess it sounded good as something to cause "psychological and emotional harm" to poor Ms. Juliana.  Of course, today, two years later, exactly zero of the State of Oregon is experiencing a drought of any kind, even the most mild.  And then, do you wonder, as I do, how Ms. Juliana regularly gets from Eugene, over the coastal mountain range and down to the ocean to "play on the beach, tidepool, and observe unique marine animals"?  It's about 60 miles.  Maybe on her bicycle?

Anyway, by now I'm sure you have guessed that this is the case where a group of minor children have sued seeking to get a court injunction to force the U.S. government to end the use of fossil fuels in this country.  The claim supposedly arises directly under the U.S. Constitution, particularly the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

This action is brought pursuant to the United States Constitution. It is authorized by Article III, Section 2, which extends the federal judicial power to all cases arising in equity under the Constitution. . . .  That grant of equitable jurisdiction requires Article III courts to apply the underlying principles of the Constitution to new circumstances unforeseen by the framers, such as the irreversible destruction of the natural heritage of our whole nation. An actual controversy has arisen and exists between Plaintiffs and Defendants because Defendants have placed Plaintiffs in a dangerous situation, continue to infringe upon Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, and have abrogated their duty of care to ensure Plaintiffs’ reasonable safety, among other violations of law. 

And the relief they seek?  Hey, let's go big!  Among some nine different requests, each more overreaching than the next, we find this gem:

Order Defendants to prepare and implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO2 so as to stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the future will depend . . .

We're not just going to force them to "phase out" all fossil fuel use, but we'll also make them suck the CO2 out of the air!  Might there be any technical or cost issues in trying to remove billions of tons of a 0.04% trace gas from the earth's atmosphere?  Not our problem!

And now we get to the response of the Obama administration to this case.  It would be a very reasonable inference that somebody was scheming to lose.  In 2015 they made a halfhearted motion to dismiss the case, entirely directed to technical legal issues like what is known as "standing" and "justiciability."  After sitting on the motion for a while, the court denied that motion in mid-2016.  Whereupon the government had to serve what is known as an "Answer," responding paragraph by paragraph to the allegations of the Complaint.  Now the Complaint here contains one after another of preposterous and unverified allegations of predicted future disaster -- every horrible imaginable, from sea level rise to drought to flood (both at the same time? why not?) to hurricane and other storms to searing temperatures to disease to starvation to literally anything else you can think of.  None of it has actually happened yet?  So what -- we just know that it will!

The government filed the Answer on January 13, 3017.  Yes, that was exactly one week before the inauguration of the new President.  And in the Answer, the outgoing administration admitted one after another of the ridiculous predictions of impending disaster.  There are way too many to give you more than just a taste.  Here is the first sentence of paragraph 1 of the Amended Complaint:

For over fifty years, the United States of America1 has known that carbon dioxide (“CO2”) pollution from burning fossil fuels was causing global warming and dangerous climate change, and that continuing to burn fossil fuels would destabilize the climate system on which present and future generations of our nation depend for their wellbeing and survival.       

And here is our genius government's "Answer":

With respect to the first sentence, Federal Defendants admit that for over fifty years some officials and persons employed by the federal government have been aware of a growing body of scientific research concerning the effects of fossil fuel emissions on atmospheric concentrations of CO2—including that increased concentrations of atmospheric CO2 could cause measurable long-lasting changes to the global climate, resulting in an array of severe deleterious effects to human beings, which will worsen over time. 

Or consider paragraph 150 of the Amended Complaint:

During the last decade, Defendants have repeatedly stated that allowing “business as usual” CO2 emissions will imperil future generations with dangerous and unacceptable economic, social, and environmental risks. As Defendants have acknowledged, the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions, placing our nation on an increasingly costly, insecure, and environmentally dangerous path. 

And your government's "Answer":

Federal Defendants admit the allegations in this paragraph [150].

Over to you, President Trump!  When the Trump administration got its act together after a few months, it decided to go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to try to get what's called a "writ of mandamus," directing the District Court to put an end to the madness.  Unfortunately, a writ of mandamus is a very unusual remedy for the denial of a motion to dismiss, let alone that the government was by this time way beyond the normal deadline for asking for such relief. 

The mandamus effort then came up for argument yesterday in the Court of Appeals, before Judges Thomas, Berzon and Kozinski.  Here is a link where you can watch the full argument, which is about an hour.  It's fair to say that Judge Kozinski gave the plaintiff's lawyer an appropriately hard time about the ridiculousness of her case.  However, the other two judges (Clinton appointees in both cases) were clearly indicating that they didn't think mandamus was an appropriate remedy, and Kozinski did not signal disagreement on that point.  It is likely that this case, with or without a Kozinski dissent, will now go back to the District Court for discovery and trial.  The stupidest litigation in the country, marching on!

Assuming that is right, the Trump administration now must withdraw the preposterous government "Answer" and start over.  This will be a real test of competence.  They need to fight on every point, assuming that they are going to lose in the District Court and probably in the Ninth Circuit, and only prevail in the Supreme Court several years from now.    

At least the new people cannot possibly be as incompetent as the prior administration in selling the people of the United States down the river in service of the latest progressive fad.  (The alternative hypothesis is that the prior administration was not incompetent, but actually hated the United States and everything it stands for, and was intentionally seeking to destroy the economy and impoverish the people.)  If you ever have the feeling that Donald Trump is not your type of guy and you would rather that he was not President, just keep in mind what Barack Obama and his administration did in throwing the defense of this case and trying to hand to one activist judge in Oregon the ability to order the de-industrialization of our economy and the energy impoverishment of the people.  

Extreme Corruption Of The Political Process: Wisconsin

While this blog has devoted a good amount of space to criminal prosecutions of various pols on the take, I have long expressed the view that that kind of corruption is of relatively minor consequence compared to the "most extreme corruption."  The "most extreme corruption" is the use by government officials of the powers of the government itself to advantage one side of the political divide and disadvantage the other.

In that linked post from May of this year, I suggested that the Trump/Russia collusion narrative was nothing more than a "preposterous cover story" offered up by ex-CIA chief Brennan and other Obama administration intelligence officials to justify their extreme corruption of surveilling the Trump campaign and transition for partisan advantage.  Right now, that's looking like a rather good call.  I'll have plenty more fun with that one as more details emerge.  But for today, let's consider another instance of the same phenomenon, this one coming from the state of Wisconsin.

On December 6, 2017, the Attorney General of Wisconsin released a Report on the subject of "violations of the John Doe secrecy orders."  Here is a link to the full Report.  While the specific focus of the Report is criminal leaks of certain information from state government investigations that were subject to court secrecy orders, the Report also addresses the more fundamental basic corruption of large numbers of identified Wisconsin state bureaucrats.  Words are not minced.  For example:

DOJ [Wisconsin Department of Justice] is deeply concerned by what appears to have been the weaponization of GAB [Wisconsin Government Accountability Board] by partisans in furtherance of political goals. . . .          

Since you may not have followed the story of the Wisconsin "John Doe" investigations, here is some background.  Scott Walker (a Republican) was initially elected Governor of Wisconsin in 2010, and then immediately became subject to a campaign for "recall," forcing him effectively to run again in 2012.  He won that recall election (and then another full term in 2014).  In 2012, shortly after the recall election, a so-called "John Doe" investigation of Walker's campaign was initiated by various Democratic DAs around Wisconsin, with the assistance of a central state bureaucracy called the Government Accountability Board, which purported to have expertise in state election law.  A "John Doe" investigation in Wisconsin is an investigation under a particular state statute that requires that the investigation proceed in secrecy under the supervision of a "John Doe Judge."  

The supposed subject of these particular John Doe investigations was alleged violations of campaign finance law by the Walker campaigns and certain independent groups for improperly "coordinating" their activities.  During 2012 to 2014, despite the cloak of secrecy, there were frequent reports out of Wisconsin of extraordinary investigatory tactics being employed, including subpoenas numbering in the hundreds directed to every Wisconsin Republican of consequence, and numerous middle-of-the-night no-knock home invasions, supposedly to collect evidence of campaign finance law violations.  In July 2015, responding to a lawsuit brought by certain (unnamed) targets of the investigations, the Wisconsin Supreme Court shut the investigations down.  From a report in watchdog.org:

In a ruling issued Thursday morning, the [Wisconsin] high court ordered an end to the politically motivated investigation into conservative groups in Wisconsin that has been dragging on for more than three years. . . .  “It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing,” [Supreme Court Justice Michael] Gableman wrote in the opinion. “In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a ‘perfect storm’ of wrongs.”

But the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision did not end the matter.  The prosecutors sought certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Shortly before that Court was expected to rule on the request, a large trove of the supposedly secret materials collected in the investigations was leaked to the Guardian newspaper, which ran a big story in September 2016 that included a link to the complete collection of all the leaked materials.  Was the leak an intentional effort by Wisconsin bureaucrats to influence the U.S. Supreme Court?  (The U.S. Supreme Court denied the cert petition in October 2016, thereby ending the matter.)

And then we haven't heard from the matter for over a year, until the release of the Wisconsin AG's Report this past week.  Maybe it's just me, but I would call this Report a bombshell in its revelation of extreme corruption by a group of government bureaucrats -- Democrats -- using the machinery of the government, including its most dangerous secret investigatory powers, to advantage their side and disadvantage the other side.  Key quote from the Report:

After reviewing the emails exchanged between the attorneys at GAB, it is apparent that GAB attorneys had prejudged the guilt of Governor Walker, Wisconsin Republicans, and related organizations that they were investigating and this dramatically influenced their ability to give competent legal advice.  GAB attorneys did not act in a detached and professional manner. The most reasonable inference is that they were on a mission to bring down the Walker campaign and the Governor himself. 

There's much more, including:  the leak of the information was a criminal act; it came from the intense partisans at the Wisconsin GAB; and it was timed specifically to try to influence the U.S. Supreme Court.  I guess if you truly believe that the Republicans are evil, and that maintenance of power by the progressive faction is the most important thing in the world, you can justify just about anything.  

I've done quite a bit of looking to see if I can find any mention of this Report in any "mainstream" news source, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, and so forth.  But, even though the Report has been out for four days now, I can't seem to find any mention.  Funny, isn't it?  

Question:  When all the facts are out, will the fundamental corruption of the federal intelligence agencies be even worse than this one?