Recognizing that voters are increasingly skeptical of extreme climate regulations, dark money groups have stepped in with millions of dollars to alter the conversation.
The goal of these groups, as reported in recent news, is to help climate activists “talk like humans” and present their ideas in a way that doesn’t alienate voters.
Essentially, these groups advise activists on how to sound less radical by softening the rhetoric and framing their climate agenda as more palatable and less divisive. But there’s an obvious catch: this is a messaging campaign, not a policy shift.
If you must teach someone to talk like a human, the message is probably not the problem — it’s the policy, isn’t it?
Beginning with the mythical “new ice age” predicted in the 1970s, the climate alarmists have tried for half a century now to convince us that humans are negatively impacting the climate and that the only solution is for us to diminish the very things — food, energy, and transportation, to name a few — that have brought progress not just to the United States but everywhere around the globe.
The problem is that folks just aren’t buying it, or at least aren’t buying the radical solutions proposed by far-left government officials, out-of-work politicians desperate to make a buck, and the NGOs and think tanks that provide financial backing to them all.
Now, since voters aren’t buying what they’re selling, they want dark money groups to help activists disguise their radical agenda by using softer language, subbing out phrases like “climate change” and “warming” to “extreme weather” and “overheating.”
It seems more than a little ironic that the same voices on the left who accuse energy companies of peddling “fake news” and “climate denialism” to protect their profits are now using a web of dark money to fund a communications strategy that relies on concealment and manipulation. Talk about hypocrisy.
Their problem, of course, lies in the reality that their policy “solutions” do not resonate with the public and do not deliver as advertised. Solutions that actually work and are truly affordable wouldn’t require these kinds of deceptive tactics to gain public support. But their approach is the furthest thing from in touch with what an endless numbers of pre-election surveys and exit polls showed is voters’ most pressing concern today — the economy.
Just look at the adverse economic consequences that came from President Joe Biden’s radical energy policies.
Within hours of assuming office, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline, killing thousands of union jobs. He conducted a regulatory assault on energy companies, limited drilling permits and access, supplied nearly $500 billion in tax dollars to green energy initiatives, and pushed policies that made fossil fuel production more difficult and expensive. Gas prices spiked, and utility bills soared for millions of Americans, hitting the middle class especially hard.
And that’s not all. Of course, nearly every good purchased or consumed is shipped by trucks and trains which run on fossil fuels. Driving up the cost of fuels drives up the price of shipping, which, in turn, drives up the prices of the goods being shipped. That is exactly what Biden’s radical energy policies did. Add to that the fact that, even as fuel prices moderated in recent months, prices for consumer goods have remained stubbornly high, and it’s no wonder the Biden policies became so unpopular.
While the administration justified these policies as steps toward a cleaner, greener future, the main effect felt by average American families was a squeeze on their household budgets and a heightened sense of financial instability.
No amount of dark money will bring the climate alarm movement’s views into line with the mainstream, and no amount of softer language will allow them to change the conversation in a manner that convinces the public to give up their gasoline-powered cars and gas stoves.
There is a fundamental disconnect between the radical Biden policies and the needs of average Americans living out here in “flyover country.” Until they can address the true economic consequences of their climate agenda, they will continue to lose elections and legislative policy battles. And that’s welcome news for us all.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Americans of all persuasions have reached a rough consensus in favor of cutting government spending. We all, with the possible exception of hard-left Democrats, know that our present course is unsustainable and will lead to fiscal ruin.
Yet so far, no politician in a position to do so has been able to accomplish the feat. Ronald Reagan’s heart was in the right place, but he wasn’t able to get a reluctant Congress to go along without giving up his dream of ending the Cold War.
Most presidents and congresses since have been MIA in fiscal discipline. Donald Trump, although successful in many policy initiatives, failed utterly in this most critical area of all.
But now there is suddenly hope arising from an unexpected quarter – Argentina. Javier Milei, their new president, has shown after one year that it is in fact possible to reduce the size and scope of the state. It takes clear vision and resolve, not just bluster and campaign slogans that melt under populist pressure to spend.
Milei’s political persona is brash and flamboyant. He sported a chainsaw during his presidential campaign to dramatize his zeal for cutting spending. But he is a serious economist, a former university professor who has published over 50 academic papers. He fully understands the relationship between free-market principles and economic growth.
He doesn’t pander. During his campaign, he was candid about the effect of the large cuts in spending he contemplated including the termination of tens of thousands of jobs, the elimination of government agencies, and the loss of regulatory protection many would experience.
Here’s the key. Unlike most politicians who make extravagant promises, he did what he said he would. The International Monetary Fund confirms that in his first year, he cut government spending by an astonishing 30%, he eliminated or downsized 12 government ministries, he canceled 80% of public infrastructure projects, and he reduced the public payroll by 20%.
The results already speak for themselves. Argentina has a balanced budget for the first time in 10 years. The first quarterly surplus appeared in April. Significantly, inflation has been reduced from an intolerable 25% monthly in 2023 to about 2% per month currently. Argentina’s credit ratings are starting to improve. Output is beginning to expand.
Once Argentina’s banks ceased printing money to cover chronic deficits, economic pain was bound to ensue. Massive debt is still out there. As Milei warned, unemployment is up and the poverty rate has jumped to nearly 50%.
Yet Argentines seem willing to stick with the program. The amazing drop in inflation (they have their money back) and the belief that the pain will be worth the gain seems to be keeping up morale. Milei’s approval rating is 55% and rising, with few signs of widespread discontent.
It helps that deregulation has already produced benefits. The Milei government has improved everyday life by slashing red tape around things like air travel, divorce, and satellite Internet. A housing boom has developed with rent deregulation. Rents have stabilized and mortgages are once again available. The poverty rate is already falling.
The left is not impressed, of course. Al-Jazeera calls Milei’s presidency a “disaster.” The BBC worries that he is “influencing” America’s new policy makers, asserting that “taking inspiration from Milei to reduce the size of government doesn’t make any sense.” The New York Times frets about the hardships being forced on Argentines.
The tantrum on the left is understandable. Argentina, once a wealthy nation, has been brought low by decades of autocratic, collectivist economic governance. Milei convinced voters that Argentina should not follow Cuba, Venezuela, and other failed economies down the “soak the rich” path.
He preached not more government but less, not more trade barriers but fewer, not higher taxes but lower. If Argentina succeeds, leftists have some serious explaining to do.
The incoming American administration seems interested in learning from Argentina’s experience. “The deficit was the root of all evils – without it, there’s no debt…no inflation,” Milei counsels.
There is no secret sauce either, just the basic sound economic principles that are the known roots of prosperity. We don’t need more study at this point, just the steely determination to do the right thing.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
“It’s an absolutely sh*t situation.” That is the assessment of Norway’s energy minister, Terje Aasland, about his country’s electricity costs rising to record levels due to its exports of power to the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and other European countries.
It is an outcome that many warned the Norwegian government would come about as the decisions were made to build the interconnects to export power into the European Union and the UK. Those critics were of course ignored as those in charge of Norway’s fortunes at the time felt compelled to genuflect to the demands of the EU and other globalist organizations.
Norway derives the vast majority of its electricity from hydropower, which currently provides 90% of the country’s power generation. Most of the remainder comes from wind power, and the nation enjoys a large excess of generating capacity on most days. Thus, all other factors being equal, it made some financial sense to establish those interconnects to sell the surplus into other countries.
But it only made sense when those other countries were taking care to ensure the continuing health and adequacy of their own electric grids. That certainly has not been the case in either the UK or Germany, whose governments have in recent years chosen to discard a former wealth of reliable baseload capacity provided by coal and nuclear plants in favor of relying too heavily on intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar.
Now, when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn’t shining, those customers of Norwegian power exports drain the host country’s surplus, causing the extremely high energy costs to flow back upstream, hitting Norwegians with abnormally high utility bills. It all came to a head this week when low wind speeds, combined with abnormally cold temperatures on the European mainland, caused power rates in Norway to spike to as high as €1.12 ($1.18) per kilowatt hour (kwh).
By comparison, the average electricity rate per kwh in New York is around 22 cents, while Texans typically pay around 15 cents per kwh. What that price spike meant for Norwegians on December 12 is that taking a 5-minute warm shower would have cost them $5. Doing the same in Texas would have cost around 16 cents.
Naturally, public outrage in Norway over these needlessly high electricity rates is now causing policymakers there to run for political cover. The Financial Times reports that both the ruling leftwing Labour Party and conservative Progress Party are now making plans to campaign next year on platforms to limit or end the export of electricity via these international interconnections.
That is a prospect that no doubt sparks fear in the hearts of the central planners in both Germany and the UK, where electricity imports from Norway play a central role in their own emissions reduction plans. Those plans involve the willful destruction of reliable baseload power stations and forcing power costs to dramatically increase, which in turn results in heavy industries like steelmaking and other manufacturing to leave the country. In that way, these governments are essentially exporting their emissions to China, whose own government is only too happy to serve as home to these heavy industries and power them with the hundreds of coal-fired power plants they build each year.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats have pursued essentially the same strategies in California in this century, with predictable results: Californians pay among the highest power rates in the United States as their power grid has become overloaded with intermittent generation and increasingly reliant on imports from other states. Rather than exporting its emissions to China, California exports them to Nevada and Utah and other U.S. states.
The Biden administration has attempted to take the entire country down this same economically ruinous path for the past four years. Fortunately, voters awakened just in time this year to head off the most damaging impacts now being seen in Germany and the UK.
For Norway, is this an example of the law of unintended consequences setting in? Sure, to some extent. But it is also a clear example of entirely foreseeable consequences stemming from poor policymaking by multiple national governments flowing across borders. This “sh*t situation” was all avoidable, and frankly should have been.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
One of the highest priorities for the incoming Trump administration should be to end the Democrats’ weaponization of powerful government agencies against taxpayers and businesses they don’t like. Nowhere has this mission been more pernicious than the party-line vote to fund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with nearly $80 billion and hire tens of thousands of new tax snoops.
By the way, according to the IRS press office, the additional audits have so far raised less than $2 billion, far less than the additional expenditures. So how is this program “paying for itself”?
This was never about seeking tax fairness as liberals claimed. It was about unleashing an aggressive, permanent and unchecked enforcement assault on U.S. taxpayers to rake in more tax dollars to pay for liberals’ political agenda. The American people voted to end such madness, and the IRS should now act accordingly and immediately by ignoring the Biden administration’s 11th-hour efforts to ram through a slew of costly new rules and regulations as they now head toward the exit.
Progressive leaders made wildly erroneous claims that a supersized IRS would raise nearly $1 trillion over 10 years from stepped-up enforcement against higher-income earners and businesses. And they attempted to justify their proposals by broadly portraying entrepreneurs, small businesses, family-owned private enterprises and the wealthy as tax cheats.
The entire exercise was designed to harass lawful taxpayers and threaten them as guilty parties until they could prove themselves innocent.
Fortunately, most voters saw their efforts for what they were: a liberal fantasy grab of other peoples’ money and an attempt to assert greater control over their livelihoods. Democrat leaders did not help themselves by immediately oversteering the car. This included efforts to have the IRS spy on personal bank accounts and require income reporting for basic Venmo payments among friends, as well as punitive measures on those whose incomes are derived from tips or numerous other types of transactions.
Another target for IRS harassment has been business partnerships. Such businesses are one of the most common and practical ways to structure private enterprises of all sizes. A simple analogy might be when one party owns an available tractor and another has available land, and they go into business together to farm the land.
All told, there are an estimated 4.5 million business partnerships in America. Collectively, these partnerships generate more than $12 trillion in revenue and employ millions of U.S. workers.
Yet the IRS, before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office, is now stealthily attempting to implement new rules that threaten the future viability of such partnerships. These proposed changes to the tax code impact what is known as “basis shifting” — a routine and legal practice that business partners use to adjust the tax basis of their respective assets. In short, the proposed rules would deliberately embed uncertainty and subjective IRS interpretations of how taxable assets are treated when one transfers or sells their interest in a business partnership. Basically, the opposite of tax fairness.
Meanwhile, the multibillion-dollar bounty the Biden administration claimed their newly armed IRS would secure through added enforcement and new tax rules has completely failed to materialize. The IRS recently disclosed that just $1 billion had been recovered since their aggressive campaign went into effect two years ago, and there is no way of knowing if that would have occurred with or without it.
How ironic and sad is it for taxpayers to learn that the vast amount of the $80 billion Democrats awarded to the IRS to recover or find new “savings” is instead on pace to serve as a massive cost to the U.S. Treasury?
The last thing voters now want is for the IRS to impose any more costly last-minute tax changes that will make problems even worse for taxpayers, workers and employers. Accordingly, the Biden team and the IRS should put down their pencils.
And if they persist with these fourth-quarter rule changes, the Trump team should be prepared to immediately repeal them in January.
Stephen Moore is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
Seldom have a few days of energy-related news provided a clearer illustration of the stark contrasts between the crony-capitalism-based energy policies of the Biden administration and the American energy dominance policies to come during a second Trump administration as the news from the past week.
On Nov. 26, the Biden Department of Energy led by Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced an award of $6.6 billion to struggling electric vehicle maker Rivian in the form of a low-interest loan. The infusion of capital is designed to help the company finance a new Georgia-based plant with a production capacity of 400,000 cars per year. Rivian already operates a plant in Illinois capable of turning out 150,000 units annually.
So, what is the problem, you might ask? Well, first, Rivian — like every other U.S. EV maker other than Tesla — has consistently struggled financially. The company so badly missed its sales targets in 2023 that it was forced to discount prices and layoff workers to maintain its ability to service its existing debt load.
Second is the fact that Rivian has only managed to sell a little more than 37,000 units this year as U.S. consumer demand for EVs has stalled, at a financial loss of over $107,000 per car. This begs the question why a car company struggling to sell 50,000 units per year somehow needs the taxpayers to pony up $6.6 billion to raise its production capacity to 550,000 per year, or roughly 13 times its current annual sales.
Third is the fact that Amazon, owned in large part by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is one of Rivian’s biggest investors. Bezos is currently listed as the world’s second-richest individual by Forbes, with a net worth of more than $226 billion. If pouring another $6.6 billion into Rivian is a terrific financial idea — as DOE claims — then why haven’t Amazon and/or Bezos been eager to do that?
The answer seems fairly obvious: This really isn’t a good financial idea at all. What is really happening here is the desperation last gasp of Biden era crony capitalism, shoving those billions of IRA dollars out the door before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in and starts reining in the madness.
The day before DOE announced its award to Rivian, Trump announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on all imported goods from both Canada and Mexico if the governments in those countries do not immediately move to stop the flows of illegal immigrants and drugs across their borders with the United States. It is key to note that, when you talk about all goods coming in from Canada and Mexico, you are talking about America’s two biggest trading partners for crude oil. Canada is far and away the biggest exporter of oil into the United States, with Mexico ranking second on the list, well ahead of any OPEC nation.
The strategic objective behind announcing these tariff plans two months before being sworn into office was to give the governments of these two countries time to act quickly to slow the flows across their borders and commit to major reforms so the tariffs never have to be actually invoked. It is Trump exercising leverage in a negotiation, a skill that has made him a billionaire in his business life. It is a strategy Biden has never attempted to use related to the open borders the flow of deadly fentanyl that now kills more than 100,000 Americans annually.
Within 48 hours, Trump had held initial talks with socialist Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, reporting significant progress. Trump reported far more progress than Sheinbaum was willing to admit, another clear negotiating tactic.
By Friday, Nov. 29, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was jetting down to Mar-a-Lago to hold talks with Trump on border reforms his government is willing to make to avoid the tariffs. Again, Trump is still seven weeks away from being sworn into office.
Joe Biden remains president, at least nominally, but the days of his crony capitalist approach to energy policy are running out fast, and will soon be displaced by a Trumpian return to American energy dominance. It is a change that cannot come soon enough.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
With the major election season behind us, voters are undoubtedly recovering from the fatigue of non-stop political ads flooding their TVs and social media apps, but potential candidates are already setting their sights on 2026, which—while not the presidential Superbowl—will have hugely impactful consequences for Arizona. Fresh off a nationwide red wave, Republicans in Arizona are hoping to capitalize on this momentum by taking back important statewide offices won by Democrats in 2022. Fortunately for Republicans, Arizonans, and the rule of law, we have an excellent candidate who could be the next Arizona Attorney General. In many ways, he already is.
Both of us have worked with or closely observed every Attorney General since Bob Corbin in 1979. Sadly, we’ve never seen an Attorney General whose decisions about the use of power are more partisan than Attorney General Kris Mayes. Lawlessness, wokeness, and injustice have become recurring themes under her leadership. In response, Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen has taken her on, thwarting and mitigating her run-a-way train of progressivism.
Thanks to a law passed by a prior legislature, the Senate President may intervene in cases where the Attorney General refuses to defend the law. Over the past two years, this tool has proven to be invaluable, and Warren Petersen has deployed it, both smartly and aggressively.
When Attorney General Mayes bowed to the radical left and refused to defend Arizona’s law ensuring biological boys and men could not compete on female-only sports teams, President Petersen got involved to protect our girls and women, serving as the last line of defense for the Save Women’s Sports Act. When Mayes gave bogus legal advice to provide cover for the lawlessness of Katie Hobbs and her violations of the separation of powers, Petersen checked Mayes in court and made sure Arizona laws were followed, stopping a Mayes-approved illegal scheme, where Governor Hobbs avoided confirmation of agency directors.
When Mayes tried to hijack the state budget and assert control of $115 million in state opioid settlement funds, Petersen fought back, won, and was awarded over $40,000 in attorneys’ fees against Mayes. Perhaps nothing more clearly demonstrates that Petersen is already fulfilling the role of moral leader of the Attorney General’s Office than his call to Mayes to end her illegal delay in following court ordered executions. Within a week of Petersen’s public statements, Mayes reversed course.
President Petersen has not only filled the void in state court litigation, but he’s also picked up the slack to fight the Biden administration’s big government overreach in federal court, while Mayes has remained silent. Petersen led the legal fight on national issues of importance to Arizona. From Covid vaccine mandates to forced-electric vehicle mandates, infringement of second-amendment rights, homeless encampments, immigration enforcement, and business-crushing federal regulations, Petersen has intervened in a variety of issues important to the lives and livelihoods of our citizens. Meanwhile, Mayes has been AWOL, seemingly driven by a leftist ideology instead of objective law enforcement.
And now comes the astounding revelation that a “far-left” group, the States United Democracy Center, gave Mayes a forty-seven-page memo which served as her “plan” to prosecute the 2020 alternate electors. If true, it represents an unprecedented abdication of the independence we need from our Attorney General.
We do not need four more years of highly partisan bias and selective application of the law for Arizonans to appreciate the value of having a true advocate in the Attorney General’s Office. And while there are two more years to go under Mayes, we should be thankful that we have two more years of Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen there to continue his protection of our state constitution and laws.
We’ve worked with President Petersen on legal issues for over a decade. Whether as Judiciary Chairman, or now as Senate President; time and time again, he has demonstrated the ability, courage, and leadership to put Arizona first and fight for its interests, whether at the legislature, or in the courts. In many ways, for the last two years, Petersen has been the moral voice for justice in our legal affairs. Now is the right time for him to run to become the actual Attorney General.
Steve Twist is a lawyer in Scottsdale. Seth Leibsohn is a radio host in Phoenix and Senior Fellow with the Claremont Institute.
