How Republics Fall; The Dishonesty of Manchin-Schumer; & Jenny Heads to Kiev

In his Editor’s Column this week, Michael Walsh discussed how the Roman Republic met its end, with an eye towards the defense of our beleaguered constitution.

'Our Democracy' Needs a Great Reset

You know the American Republic is on its last legs when those trying to destroy it consistently refer to it as "our democracy," which is exactly what it is not and what it was never intended to be. Historically, democracies don't last long, because they quickly turn into tyrannies after passing through the parasitical stage. Democracy in ancient Greece was hardly what we might call "democracy" today, as voting was restricted males with a stake in the system. No votes for women, slaves, or helots. The young male hoplites of Athens had to complete military training as ephebes to earn their right to vote, and not simply achieve their majority, which was effectively 20; additionally they had to buy their own armor and weapons and be prepared to go to war on practically an annual basis. (Any resemblance between this society and the world of Starship Troopers is entirely intentional.) 

Modern experience has taught us that essentially plebiscitary democracies, in which the "right" to vote is applied indiscriminately, and for which there are no qualifications (in some cases, not even breathing) eventually collapse once the citizenry discover they can vote themselves money without having to work for it. Roman democracy in the days of the Republic was a horse-trading racket which gradually broke down during the civil war between Sulla and Marius into a street thugocracy. Caesar's attempt to yank the Republic back from the brink went down in a hail of knife thrusts on the Ides of March in 44 B.C. Augustus called himself Princeps (first citizen) instead of Emperor (which had been a military honorific) but by the time of Tiberius, the Republic was one in name only and Rome had become an Empire, with a command-and-control centralized leadership and a huge, strangulating bureaucracy that made itself very, very rich.

And that is what eventually spelled its doom. But don't take it from me, take it from Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in the epochal year of 1776:

Wherever the seat of government is fixed, a considerable part of the public revenue will be expended by the prince himself, by his ministers, by the officers of justice, and by the domestics of the palace. The most wealthy of the provincials will be attracted by the powerful motives of interest and duty, of amusement and curiosity. A third and more numerous class of inhabitants will insensibly be formed, of servants, of artificers, and of merchants, who derive their subsistence from their own labor, and from the wants or luxury of the superior ranks.

...it was artfully contrived by Augustus, that, in the enjoyment of plenty, the Romans should lose the memory of freedom. But the prodigality of Constantine could not be excused by any consideration either of public or private interest; and the annual tribute of corn imposed upon Egypt for the benefit of his new capital, was applied to feed a lazy and insolent populace, at the expense of the husbandmen of an industrious province.

And here we are: a lazy and insolent populace demands that others feed, house, and clothe them at public expense, in exchange for doing nothing civically useful. And yet we are constantly told by the enemies of the Republic (who aptly call themselves "Democrats") that the "right" to vote is "sacred" and "sacrosanct," which is pretty rich coming from professional atheists who believe only in destruction.

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This past week The Pipeline published the ninth excerpted essay from our new book, Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order. The book will be published on October 18 by Bombardier Books and distributed by Simon and Schuster. It is now available now for pre-order at the links above.

PART III: THE ECONOMIC

Excerpt from "The Economic Consequences of the Great Reset" by David P. Goldman

The Great Reset is not a scheme for implementation in the distant future. It’s happening now, in the form of the most radical transformation of world economic policy in modern history, with the possible exception of World War II. The economic landscape that has emerged after the Covid-19 recession of 2019–2021 is radically different from what preceded it. The world economy has already been reset, and the perpetrators of the Great Reset want to make these changes irreversible.

One-fifth of the industrial nations’ GDP shifted to the balance sheet of governments during the Covid-19 pandemic, by far the biggest and fastest transfer of financial resources to governments in world history. Except for a few communist revolutions, no such transfer of economic power to governments from the private sector ever has occurred and never on a global scale. In 2019, the gross debt of the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stood at about 102 percent of their combined GDP; by 2021 the proportion had risen to about 122 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). That’s an increment of roughly $10 trillion in terms of current U.S. dollars.

That is not the only revolution in economic affairs to occur between March 2020 and the middle of 2021.

• Transfer payments jumped to 75 percent of federal expenditures from 60 percent before the crisis, leaving vast numbers of lower-income Americans dependent on government spending for the majority of their income.

• A handful of technology giants dominated stock market returns, in sudden concentration of wealth not witnessed since Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.

• A massive reordering of global investment priorities in the service of the quixotic goal of eliminating carbon emissions, on a scale so ambitious that it would absorb virtually the entire public and private investment budget of the West for the next thirty years. Not even in wartime has the industrial world been subject to such a radical economic reordering.

This is a utopian experiment as sweeping as the old Marxist vision of state-owned industries directed by a technocratic elite. Like all utopian experiments, it is doomed to failure. The redirection of investment toward the alleviation of supposed manmade climate change will destroy productivity and living standards. The massive increase in taxation proposed to alleviate income equality will crush entrepreneurship and economic growth. The inflation resulting from massive increases in government-created demand will erode the incomes of the least prosperous citizens of the United States and produce the opposite of the result that the Great Reset proposes to achieve, by making the poor poorer. And the destructive consequences of the Great Reset for the productivity of the Western industrial nations may well hand the leadership of the world economy to China by default.

Worst of all, the toxic combination of ballooning government debt and declining productivity is likely to set in motion a global financial crisis worse than the 2008 crash. The structural weakness at the center of the 2008 crisis was the overleveraging of consumer balance sheets, mainly through the mortgage market. The industrial nations relied on the borrowing capacity of governments to control the crisis, expanding the debt of industrial nations and the balance sheets of central banks at a pace without precedent in peacetime. The Covid-19 crisis has prompted an even faster expansion of government debt and central bank balance sheets, and the Great Reset proposes to continue this rate of expansion into the indefinite future. In place of consumer or corporate debt, government debt is now the finance system’s weak link; when the next crisis arrives, there will be no entity in the world with the capacity to bail out governments.

Economists and financiers associated with the Great Reset project argue that there is no limit to governments’ spending capacity as long as central banks suppress interest rates and the carrying costs of increased debt burden. This assertion ignores the most salient fact of the world economy, namely the presence of a strategic competitor to the West with a population half again as large as the combined population of the United States, the European Union, and Japan. China’s
economy measured by purchasing power parity is already one-fourth larger than America’s, and China’s ambition is to replace the United States as the center of the world financial system.

The monetary policy associated with the Great Reset will undermine the role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency and shift the center of gravity in the world economy to China. The WEF and other elite organizations act as if the advanced industrial nations live in their own bubble. In reality, the Western democracies are in a contest for economic dominance with China. The Great Reset virtually guarantees that China will prevail, with devastating consequences for the United States. With a negative net foreign investment position of $13 trillion and a current account deficit of $1 trillion per year as of late 2021, the United States depends on the willingness of foreigners to hold U.S. dollar investments. China already is promoting its own currency as a substitute for the dollar, and its success would be devastating for America’s financial system.

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Related — David Solway is concerned that most people don’t understand how big The Great Reset actually is.

The Great Reset: Testing, Testing…

It is disturbing to note that the greater portion of the public do not seem to be aware of the vast ideological movement for social transformation called the Great Reset. Those who are at least partially informed consider it merely another conspiracy theory. Some among the so-called elite—the media, the academy, the political stratum—consider the Great Reset as a rational and benevolent response to the specter of overpopulation and the threat of populist uprisings. Others among the patrician class, doubtless a majority, are engaged in promoting what they know to be a concerted attempt to destabilize and supplant the long-established order of ideally democratic governance that has slowly and incrementally characterized the liberal societies of the West, dating from the Magna Carta (1215) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the approximate present.

We should make no mistake about this. The revolutionary project, whether denominated as the New World Order, the U.N.’s Agenda 2030, or the Davos-centered Great Reset—different terms for essentially the same impetus—under the influential leadership of Klaus Schwab is apocalyptic in its aims. It envisages a world in which the middle-class will have been expunged, the global census markedly winnowed, and a China-like social credit system introduced in which citizens will be under constant digital surveillance determining what they are allowed to possess, rent, use or spend.

Those who are skeptical that a novel and destructive global dispensation actually exists and is already being installed need only observe recent developments in the social, economic and political world we have long taken for granted as normative. Years of media censorship, tainted elections, the presumably scientifically-backed hallucination of global warming or “climate change,” and consequent government policies shrinking the Constitutional space of individual autonomy, business as usual, and entrepreneurial initiative represent the first phase of authoritarian control.

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Steven Hayward wrote about environmentalist’s disappointment with Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

Inside the Dishonest 'Inflation Reduction Act'

Before analyzing the substance of the climate portions of the bill, the political aspects should be recognized. First, there has never been a piece of energy or environmental legislation of this scale that wasn’t the product of extensive committee hearings, scholarly analysis, and floor debate that usually took months if not a year or more to complete, and always resulted in a bill that was able to achieve some bipartisan support, this ensuring its durability.

But the IRA was cobbled together in secret and in haste by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin. More likely the bill is being celebrated because it is thought to have saved Democrats, who equate their existence with civilization itself, from electoral rout in November. Both the partisan process of the bill’s passage and the lack of a regular lawmaking process suggest the bill’s stability and longevity may be limited. A future Republican Congress and/or administration may well cut it back.

If you had proposed the climate portion of the bill to Democrats when Biden first took office last year, the environmental left would have erupted in outrage because it fell so far short of the designs of their beloved “Green New Deal.” In fact the price tag for the entire IRA is only about half of what Manchin proposed to Schumer in July of last year—an offer that the left scorned and raged about at the time. Now they have settled for half of a half a loaf while acting like they acquired the whole bakery. So desperate were Democrats to pass something—anything—they can point to as a “significant accomplishment” that this history is conveniently forgotten. Bernie Sanders is about the only leading progressive who has been candid about this.

On the substance of the bill, there are some prospective changes that further confuse the scene. The bill does represent a break with the previous demands of climate orthodoxy to impose a carbon tax and/or a cumbersome regulatory scheme on the electricity sector (though there is mischievous language in the law that may allow an opening for EPA regulation, as Chris Horner has pointed out here at The Pipeline).

It also purports to include support for reviving nuclear power, reducing—though not removing—the chokehold on some domestic fossil fuel production, and a “promise” of regulatory reform to come, which Manchin somehow neglected to get in writing, much less demanding a vote for regulatory reform before voting for the IRA. The heart of this bill is simply massive subsidies for wind and solar power and electric cars to the tune of $370 billion over the next decade. And everyone is rolling over for the talking point that these subsidies will enable the U.S. to achieve its “net-zero” ambitions by 2050, and its intermediate 2030 emissions reduction target under the Paris Accord.

Are these grandiose predictions realistic? Leaving aside the crucial defect of the intermittency of wind and solar power along with the necessity of vastly expanding our electrical grid to accommodate more “renewables,” there are reasons to doubt these promises. A traditional congressional markup process that included public hearings and expert analysis might have revealed some of the tradeoffs and wishful thinking behind the bill. The Los Angeles Times reported: “Princeton University researchers estimate that zeroing out U.S. carbon emissions by 2050 could require installing solar panels and wind turbines across more than 225,000 square miles, an area much bigger than California.” Anyone think the country is down for that much land defaced with windmills and solar panels?

The idea of “net-zero” arose when it became evident that achieving literally no carbon emissions by 2050 was ridiculous if not impossible, and thus the “net” part of “net-zero” will allow for lots of cheating, though the cheats will be called “offsets,” or “carbon sequestration,” which, despite 20 years and billions in research funding has yet to show carbon can be sequestered at scale and an a reasonable cost.

To reach the 2030 emissions reduction target, the rate of decarbonization in our energy sector will have to more than double, from about 4.5 percent a year since 2005 (thanks mostly to natural gas replacing coal rather than any effect of windmills) to more than 11 percent, according to the careful calculations of Roger Pielke Jr: “Is it possible that U.S. electricity emissions decrease by 70 percent by 2031? Sure, it is possible. Is it likely? No, in my view, not remotely. If the IRA emissions-reductions projections are indeed oversold, then it will be interesting to see responses, especially among climate advocates who may feel that they were duped.”

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David Cavena contributed a piece about non-ruinous ways to reduce levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Want to Go 'Carbon-Free'? Go Nuclear

If the problem is too much CO2, the solution is reducing it. Do we have technological solutions that can do this? Yes. Plankton consume carbon in massive quantities.

Plankton remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere during growth and transfer it to the deep ocean when their remains sink to the bottom. Iron fertilization has previously been suggested as a possible cause of the lower CO2 levels that occur during ice ages.

A tested technological solution would be to “fertilize” certain ocean areas with iron dust causing a plankton bloom and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. This was, in fact, proposed in 1988:

“Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age” may rank as the catchiest line ever uttered by a biogeochemist. The man responsible was the late John Martin, former director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, who discovered that sprinkling iron dust in the right ocean waters could trigger plankton blooms the size of a small city. In turn, the billions of cells produced might absorb enough heat-trapping carbon dioxide to cool the Earth’s warming atmosphere.

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Causing a plankton bloom anticipates additional positive effects:

[M]ore plankton might produce more of a chemical called dimethylsulfide, which can drift into the atmosphere and encourage cloud formation, thus cooling the atmosphere and helping to counteract greenhouse warming. And others argue that increased plankton supplies might enhance fish stocks.

Perhaps a “half a tanker of iron” and increased food supplies would be preferable to killing all the cows, plowing-under all the wheat and corn, reducing global energy consumption, and impoverishing the planet?

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Clarice Feldman took another look at the ongoing, ESG-related troubles of investment behemoth BlackRock.

Another Bad Day at BlackRock

Recently the state of West Virginia announced it would no longer do business with companies that boycott the fossil fuel industry—which includes BlackRock. The ban will “cost the firms $18 billion a year” according to West Virginia’s treasury office. That business loss is now potentially in the trillion-dollar range as 19 state attorneys general point to Fink’s record and assert the company he heads is “an explicit leader in the such to ‘retire fossil fuels’”. The letter to BlackRock Chairman Fink reads like a legal pleading with very extensive factual and legal citations. It begins:

Based on the facts currently available to us, BlackRock appears to use the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment, as well as their vote. BlackRock’s past public commitments indicate that it has used citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements such as the Paris Agreement that force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States. These agreements have never been ratified by the United States Senate. The Senators elected by the citizens of this country determine which international agreements have the force of law, not BlackRock. We have several additional concerns that fall under our jurisdictional authority as attorneys general.

Those "additional concerns" should also be concerning to BlackRock. On the question of “neutrality” on energy, the AGs put paid to the company's claim, noting its many actions to wipe out the fossil fuel industry. “Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field. It mocks the company’s claim that it wishes to “dialogue” on energy issues, and accuses Blackrock of violating its fiduciary duty as the investment manager for state pension funds, as well as the company's poor energy projection record and its priorities. “Given these facts, it strains credulity to believe that a sole focus on financial returns would lead an asset manager to manage all assets for the achievement of net zero by 2050 and make climate issues the number one portfolio company engagement factor.”

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Tom Finnerty blogged about California’s insane plan to shut down the Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant, in the midst of an energy crisis, and without a clear plan as to how they’re going to replace the electricity (nearly 10 percent of the state’s total annual usage) that the plant provides.

California's Dreaming

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And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy, jets off to the city formerly known as Kiev.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Kyiving

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Thanks for reading, and keep a look out for upcoming pieces by John O’Sullivan, Joan Sammon, and Tom Finnerty, as well as another excerpt from our new book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order. All this and more this week at The Pipeline!