Monthly Archives: July 2025

Environmentalists and Technology

Posted on by
Reply

TL;DR, environmentalists don’t like technological improvements that don’t meet their climate funding industry’s approval. Typical of this is their objection to AI-centered data centers and those facilities’ demand for electricity. Especially typical is their hue and cry over the newly hated-by-the Left Elon Musk’s entry into the business with his Grok AI data center.

The facility [built in Memphis, TN] is partially powered by dozens of small natural-gas turbines—most of which are temporary. A relentless environmentalist campaign erupted, accusing the facility of polluting the skies over predominantly black neighborhoods. The city responded by conducting air quality tests, which showed no dangerous levels of pollutants.

The climatistas reject those test results because they refute—not merely contradict—the climatistas’ claims.

Denial isn’t a river in Egypt, but it does rhyme with climatistas’ dismissal of inconvenient truths.

Right On

Posted on by
Reply

Cliff Asness and Michael Mendelson, of AQR Capital Management, wrote in the Saturday Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section decrying Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement that we “shouldn’t have billionaires.”

The money part of their letter, though, is their closer:

We are tempted to end by saying, with considerably more evidence than Mr Mamdani, that “we shouldn’t have socialists.” The country would be better off without such noxious and destructive ideas. But unlike him, we know we don’t get to decide who exists and who doesn’t.

Right on.

An Outline was Passed

Posted on by
Reply

The House-Senate reconciliation bill has been passed. The bill contains a number of beneficial things and a number of suboptimal things, along with a couple of items that are no good at all (vis., a cut in real dollars on defense spending and an increase in deficit spending and so in national debt of highly dubious estimates, both in size and sign).

So now what?

President Donald Trump (R) offered to use his executive authority to limit spending beyond what’s in the Senate version of the bill, which is what the House passed last Thursday.

In the meetings, Russ Vought, Trump’s White House budget chief, also reassured lawmakers that the administration would use its authority to limit spending, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump and his advisers have argued that Trump has the authority to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress, a contention likely to be tested in court.

That’s nice, even if the courts uphold the specific actions (or most of them) Trump might take. At best though, these would be temporary measures, easily undone by a subsequent President.

Now what, then, are the 12 appropriations bills that the current crop of House Republicans have been promising to pass individually and on time for a couple of Congresses. The outline reconciliation bill represents ceilings on spending and tax rates, not floors, even though the Progressive-Democrats will howl that the levels are floors and so spending and tax rates still should go up.

The 12 appropriations bills are

  • Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Defense appropriations bill
  • Homeland Security appropriations bill
  • State Department and Foreign Operations appropriations bill
  • Interior and Environment appropriations bill
  • Legislative Branch appropriations bill
  • Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Energy and Water Development appropriations bill
  • Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill

These are where real spending and tax rate reductions (not formally part of appropriations, but easily enough included by amendment) can—and must this time—occur. Military construction needs to be focused on facilities for housing our soldiers and on bases—new or modified—for housing more of our weapons systems and for our new weapons systems as they come on line. The VA needs no spending increases, it even could stand spending cuts. I’ve argued for its elimination altogether, and this would be a good time to do that.

State, with its more focused foreign aid spending and more tightly controlled embassies and consulates, can absorb reduced spending. After that, all of the appropriations bills, save Defense and Homeland Security, should get 10% cuts in spending across the board. Defense needs, badly, a 10% increase in real terms, and Homeland Security, given the success of the Trump administration—so far—in resecuring our borders, needs a 5% (vice Defense’s 10%) increase.

With all of that, Congress—the House especially—would have some choices to make, any of which would be to the benefit of our nation: statutorily require the vast bulk of the resulting budget surplus go specifically to Treasury to pay down our national debt, further reduce individual and corporate income tax rates and make permanent the existing temporary tax reductions, or some combination of the two.

Congressmen in both houses need now to focus the energy they spent arguing over spending and tax rate maneuvers in the runup to passing the reconciliation bill on achieving real cuts in spending and tax rates via the appropriations bills. And they need to quit dithering about it this time. Pass the bills individually and on time—no more omnibus bills, no more continuing resolutions. Achievement of this would make arguing over the debt ceiling irrelevant by making the debt ceiling itself irrelevant.

Trump could exercise his executive authority in real, proven terms: announce that he’ll veto any omnibus bills and any continuing resolution, even if it means Congress shuts down the Federal government with its failure to perform. And then do so if Congress actually does fail and cause a shutdown.

Misplaced Attributions

Posted on by
2

A couple of letter-writers in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section are worried about the the Trump administration supposedly pressuring people out of their offices. These are misplaced attributions that exaggerate the strength of “pressure.”

One opines,

Reports that political pressure from outside forces may have contributed to the resignation of UVA’s president are troubling and strike at the heart of institutional autonomy.

This writer should concern himself more with the UVA President’s lack of courage. He resigned; he was not fired. Resigning is entirely a voluntary decision, no matter the level of perceived pressure to leave. What strike[s] at the heart of institutional autonomy is not “political pressure;” it is institutional managers in leadership positions who run away rather than stay and defend their institutions and their own actions in support of those institutions.

The other letter-writer wrote,

President Trump used his political and executive powers to force an end to [Senator Thom Tillis’ (R, NC)] public service….

Leave aside the fact that Tillis had, some months before, reached his decision to not run for reelection and that Trump’s supposed pressure merely accelerated his announcement of his decision. It’s possible that this letter-writer was unaware of that fact.

What should be obvious to this person is the same thing that is so apparent in the UVA President’s case: Tillis’ decision, and his choice of timing for announcing his decision, were entirely voluntary acts entered into by Tillis himself. No amount of pressure from Trump (which were, at bottom, merely words of opprobrium) should have been sufficient to “force an end.” That’s especially true in Tillis’ case, or that of any other politician: a President has no power to force a Congressman of either house to serve or not to serve. That choice is decided entirely by the incumbent in his decision to stand for reelection or not, and in the former case, falls next to the voters of his constituency and to no one else.

Pressure can be decidedly uncomfortable, but only the faint of heart succumb to it, and we’re all better off with the faint of heart departing.

Disingenuousness of the Abortion Industry

Posted on by
Reply

Planned Parenthood is the industry’s canonical example. This organization has announced that it is going to sue the Trump administration over cuts in funds to it that are contained in the just-passed reconciliation bill.

The provisions contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act prohibits abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funding for up to one year for any other reproductive health services they may provide.

Those “other reproductive health services” are primarily related to Planned Parenthood’s and other abortion centers’ abortion activities. Access to any government funding for these is immoral and should be prevented.

Planned Parenthood’s legal beefs, though, are two: one is Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson’s statement:

Everyone deserves access to high-quality, affordable health care.

This is absolutely true (just not by government issue, but that’s a different story), and that care can be provided by a host of facilities, government, NGO, and private. However, abortion is not health care, it’s strictly a matter of killing not yet born babies.

Planned Parenthood’s other beef is this:

Planned Parenthood said the provision puts nearly 200 centers across 24 states at risk of closure and that 90% of those closures would occur in states where abortion is still legal.

That makes explicit that Planned Parenthood puts abortion at the center of what they claim is health care. Aside from that, it’s an irrelevant beef, as is the sub-beef of those business’ locations. No business model creates a government obligation to fund it. If Planned Parenthood, or those centers, wherever they are, want to continue operating, they should change their business models to focus on actual health care provision.

The beefs are wholly irrelevant in another way: government has no obligation to send taxpayer money to any entity, whether NGO or private enterprise.

Even more cynical and disingenuous aspect of this is that nowhere in any abortion providers’ beefs about lack of government funding is there even the smallest syllable of concern for the welfare of the baby being killed by an abortion.