The Patriot Post Digest 11-16-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-16-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest

Nov. 16, 2017 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/52465

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Democrats file impeachment articles for the sole purpose of rallying their base.
Is overpopulation a problem with the “moral” solution of fewer children?
Electric cars are so great no one is buying them. In steps the government.
The cultivated ignorance of Millennials leaves socialism as the flavor of the day.
But all they have to do is look at the riches-to-rags story of Venezuela.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“The second office of this government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.” —Thomas Jefferson (1797)

IN BRIEF

Impeach! Impeach! Democrats Yell1

By Thomas Gallatin

Six House Democrats led by Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced five articles of impeachment against Donald Trump on Wednesday. The articles include obstruction of justice regarding the Russian collusion investigation after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, violations of the emolument clause pertaining to Trump’s continuing to profit from his worldwide business empire, undermining the judiciary for his criticism of judges and his pardoning of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and undermining the First Amendment with his repeated criticism of the press. Cohen concluded his announcement by stating, “We’re calling upon the House to begin impeachment hearings immediately.”

This call for impeaching Trump is just the latest chapter in the long-running effort by Democrats to #Resist Trump ever since he won the election. As Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens observed, “House Democrats lack a positive message and are completely unwilling to work across the aisle, so instead they’ve decided to support a baseless radical effort that the vast majority of Americans disagree with. Republicans are focused on issues the middle class actually cares about, like cutting taxes and growing the economy.”

Even Democrat leadership has been wary of the calls to impeach Trump. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) recently opined that it was “not some place I think we should go.” And Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez also pushed back, telling ABC on Sunday, “I am not talking about impeachment, because I’m talking about good jobs for folks. I’m talking about health care for all. I’m talking about making sure that we’re fighting for the issues that matter most.”

The fact is none of these articles raised by Democrats have sufficient evidence or justifiable cause to instigate impeachment hearings. They are merely the political tools of innuendo and hearsay that Democrats are using to energize and pander to their base, particularly in light of their recent election victories in Virginia and New Jersey. As an aide on the House Judiciary Committee stated, “Under the Constitution, impeachment is an extraordinary remedy to remove certain elected officials from office who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors. It’s the policy of the committee to consider impeachment articles if and when the constitutional criteria for impeachment exists.” In other words, we’re not even close, and Democrats know it.

Overpopulation Is Not Killing the Planet2

By Nate Jackson

Population control to save the planet is hardly a new idea. It goes back at least 50 years. Indeed, we’ve written about it many3 times4 before5.

The latest entry in this man-hating earth-worship genre is from NBC News in a “think” piece entitled “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them.6” The author, Travis Rieder of the Berman Institute of Bioethics, begins, “A startling and honestly distressing view is beginning to receive serious consideration in both academic and popular discussions of climate change ethics.”

Um, “beginning to”? Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb was published in 1968 and received a lot of attention from lefty environmentalists. Ehrlich predicted a “substantial increase in the world death rate” within a decade because of the difficulty in feeding so many people. Of course, Ehrlich’s dire prediction didn’t happen — on the contrary, there’s more food now than ever. But when have, er, inconvenient truths ever stopped leftists from hollering the same apocalyptic climate warnings even louder? In fact, despite being a false prophet, Ehrlich wrote two more books on population control in the 1990s.

Note the irony here: Totalitarian regimes are responsible for the only real famines since Ehrlich first warned of food shortages, yet his and other ecofascists’ solution is … totalitarian population control. What could go wrong?

Thus it’s no surprise that an academic like Rieder would smugly assert, “Moral responsibility simply isn’t mathematical. If you buy this view of responsibility, you might eventually admit that having many children is wrong, or at least morally suspect, for standard environmental reasons: Having a child imposes high emissions on the world, while the parents get the benefit. So like with any high-cost luxury, we should limit our indulgence.”

He tries to back off some, adding, “I am certainly not arguing that we should shame parents, or even that we’re obligated to have a certain number of children. As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think there is a tidy answer to the challenging questions of procreative ethics. But that does not mean we’re off the moral hook.”

Yet the implication of such morality remains that if you can’t limit your own “indulgence,” government might just have to step in. The only recipe leftists ever offer is to eliminate choice by way of ever more powerful government — even if it means violating another of their long-held tenets: “Get your laws out of my bedroom/off my body.”

Top Headlines7

Sen. Ron Johnson says he will not support tax-reform bill (The Hill8.)

Cue an eye roll — Blue Dog Democrats: We can’t support tax reform if it adds trillions to deficit (National Review9)

House Republicans have tax reform in the bag (Washington Examiner10)

Clinton calls Uranium One story a “distraction,” warns of dictatorship (Fox News11)

Gabby Giffords’s gun control group releases report warning of muzzleloaders (The Washington Free Beacon12)

Senate approves Trump’s Army pick (The Hill13)

Harvard Business School professor: Half of American colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years (CNBC14)

Two more women describe unwanted overtures by Roy Moore at Alabama mall (The Washington Post15)

Senator Al Franken kissed and groped me without my consent (KABC16)

Policy: A new energy milestone, thanks to natural gas (Washington Examiner17)

Policy: The GOP’s proposed tax reforms are imperfect but deserve support (City Journal18.)

For more of today’s news, visit Patriot Headline Report19.
Don’t Miss Alexander’s Column

Read Whatever Is True, Noble, Just and Pure…20. “There’s a lot of wrong in this country. But there’s a lot of right.”

If you’d like to receive Alexander’s Column by email, update your subscription here21.

FEATURED ANALYSIS
The Problem With Electric Cars22

By Caroline Camden Lewis

In spite of what you may have heard, electric cars don’t have the market share you might think. A new report23 from the Energy Information Administration reveals that although plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) (which include battery electric vehicles and hybrid plug-in electric vehicles) have reached 1.2 million in worldwide sales in 2015, such cars account for only 1% of vehicles in global use.

Why is this?

Some of it has to do with consumer preference — what people want to drive. Some of it has to do with public policy — that the government isn’t forcing people to get rid of their fossil fuel dependent cars. Yet.

Many countries realize that consumers prefer gas and diesel vehicles to electric ones and thus seek to remedy this “problem” by coercion. Britain24 and France25 have both vowed to ban the sale of gas and diesel vehicles by 2040. California’s governor has also made statements26 about phasing out traditional cars. These sorts of statements always carry with them a hidden coercive element, because, as research shows, people won’t switch if it’s up to their preferences. People will only switch if the government mandates it.

Driven by central planning authorities, governments and leaders hope to control the population’s preferences by simply changing their choices. Instead of “Which car do you want?” they hope to ask, “Which of these electric car options do you want? You have no other options.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 11-16-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Coercion not only compromises the free-market ethic of choices, but it stands as a hallmark feature of totalitarianism and can be identified in practices of the former Soviet Union, modern Cuba and every other communist nation. Cuba’s communist dictatorship holds elections, but only gives the citizens communist “options.” The regime enforces “free and fair elections” by threatening to punish those who do not vote. Ultimately, government coercion does not allow freedom — of choices, of preferences, or of life in general.

Moreover, electric-car supporters seem to charge America with the greatest culpability in not being “green enough.” Yet recent data27 reveals that the U.S. has declined in emissions, while global emissions have increased. How? China.

China’s emissions account for 30% of the world’s emissions according to28 the Center for International Climate Research. China stands as the world’s largest polluter and according to the recent Global Carbon Project study, with an expected 3.5% increase in emissions this year.

When confronted with this reality, many environmentalists simply state, “Well, America should lead the way. We should be the world’s example.” Yet this hasn’t seemed to change China’s mind. Prudent policy toward cleaner global air should include confronting China with its problem, not simply cleaning up the U.S. as an “example.”

We should also be asking the question, “Who is getting all of the money?” The answer lies in government-subsidized electric car companies. Even Bloomberg observes29, “Clean-energy vehicles still aren’t attractive enough to compete without some form of subsidy.” Take, for instance, Tesla, which would have been underwater long ago if it had not been for government (i.e. taxpayer) money. The Las Angeles Times reports30 that Tesla, along with her sister companies Solar City Corp. (solar panels) and SpaceX (space exploration) have received roughly $4 billion dollars in government subsides.

In short, the entire premise of going “all electric” so far relies solely upon government money. This means that even if you don’t buy an electric car, your tax dollars are essentially paying for someone else’s — or at least covering the sales loss if they don’t sell.

Perhaps the greatest oversight in the electric car debate is the issue of public health. Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Family and Community Health at University of California, Berkeley, has written31 extensively about the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) risks posed by electric and hybrid cars, which emit both EMR and extremely low frequency (ELF). Since 2001, ELF has been deemed “possibly carcinogenic32” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer/World Health Organization. Sustained exposure to EMR may cause cancer and other health problems.

Moskowitz also notes the insufficient, unreliable data issued by the self-appointed international commissions that establish the EMR guidelines. He recommends that they must be replaced by high-quality research studies, independent of the industry in order to avoid a conflict of interest. However, the industry and environmental lobby have discreetly ignored the need for better research studies — perhaps because of the great profits to be had through public grants, subsidies and product sales.

The highly subsidized electric car business has become a sort of “cottage industry” for the federal government from which both electric car companies and the government benefit. Combined with the increased desire to coercively force consumers to purchase them while ignoring health concerns shows a lack of both intellectual freedom and free market purchasing freedom.

Ultimately the debate over electric cars should be about what you prefer to drive, not about what the government forces you to buy.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

The Cultivated Ignorance of Millennials35 — “It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” —Thomas Sowell
Venezuela: Riches to Rags36 — We know it’s shocking to hear, but the socialist “paradise” can no longer pay the bills.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Mona Charen: The Uses of Disgrace37
Tony Perkins: Senate Tax Force Aims for ObamaCare38
Ed Feulner: Extra Money for Defense Could End Years of Underfunding39
Larry Elder: No, Colin Kaepernick Is No Muhammad Ali40
Cal Thomas: A Moving Experience41

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion42.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Mona Charen: “Some liberals are now coming around to the idea that, as Matt Yglesias of Vox put it: ‘I wonder how much healthier a place we’d be in as a society today if Bill Clinton had resigned in shame back in 1998.’ The key words are ‘in shame.’ Bill Clinton’s shamelessness — and his party’s acquiescence in it — corrupted our culture in profound ways. What we choose to shame or overlook determines what kind of society we are. We didn’t want to hold him to account, and so we told ourselves convenient lies, such as that it ‘was just sex.’ It wasn’t. It was classic harassment, and assault, and abuse of power, and perjury. But his worst transgression was refusing to acknowledge our unwritten code of honor. If he had done the right thing and resigned, he would have taken the disgrace on his own back, where it belonged. By brazening it out, he made all of us complicit in it. His refusal to resign said, ‘I’m an abusive pig, and you are a country of abusive pigs if you permit me to remain in office.’ Inevitably, because we let Bill Clinton off the hook, we had to downplay the seriousness of his offenses. So here we are. It is quite possible that Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Weiner and Kevin Spacey and Roger Ailes and the rest of the rotten roster of sex abusers thought, even if only in the back of their minds, that if they got caught, in our age, this sort of thing gets a wink and a nod. After all, it’s just sex.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.” —Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911)

Non Compos Mentis: “Remington may never have known Adam Lanza, but they have been courting him for years. The courtship between Remington and Adam Lanza is at the heart of the case.” – Attorney Joshua D. Koskoff

Belly laugh of the week: “The tragic reality of gender and climate is that women, especially women of colour, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, but are far less likely to be empowered to cope because they have fewer resources such as power and access to finance and technology.” —Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine in a piece titled, “Global climate action must be gender equal”

Leftists’ ultimate goal: “Ultimately, if gun-control advocates really want to stanch the blood, there’s no way around it: They’ll have to persuade more people of the need to confiscate millions of those firearms, as radical as that idea may now seem.” —The Boston Globe’s David Scharfenberg in his piece, “Hand over your weapons”

Vitriol: “We will remember if [Republicans] don’t help us kill this [tax reform] bill. They better kill this bill or we’re going to kill them in the next election.” —Rep. Alan Lowenthal

And last… “Last year, a grand total of 17 unarmed blacks were killed by the police, according to The Washington Post. Contrast this with the approximately 6,000 to 7,000 blacks killed annually, almost all — as many as 90 percent — by other blacks. Where is [Colin] Kaepernick on the fact that the No. 1 cause of preventable death for young blacks is homicide, while the No. 1 cause of preventable death for young white men is ‘unintentional injuries,’ or accidents?” —Larry Elder

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher