May 8, 2025
GONE FISHING: I’m off to a secure, undisclosed vacation for a week and will be as offline as I can manage. I have a few posts saved, but the rest of the Insta-Crew will keep the lights on while I enjoy a much-deserved (and much-needed!) break. See you in a week! Well, a bit more than that.
THIS IS THE TYPE OF THING GREAT PULP NOVELS WERE WRITTEN ABOUT: The Great Timbuktu Book Heist. How the city’s librarians smuggled 400,000 ancient texts past Al-Qaeda.
TO BE FAIR, THEY’RE VERY FLAMMABLE: Bill Maher Again Sets the Woke Left Aflame in Latest Commentary.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A MEDIA CRITIC TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND’S BLOWING: Media Critic Nails What NY Mag’s Hit Piece on John Fetterman Is Really About.
DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC: ‘Absolute Silliness’: DOE Delays Biden-Era Rule On Emissions.
ONCE YOU ALLOW THE ARRANT FRAUD OF VOTE BY MAIL, YOU END UP WITH THIS KIND OF CLASSLESS CLOWN: Colorado Senator Mocks Jesus Over Trans Issue.
HMM: CFTC ‘Staff’ Placed on Leave Amid Investigation. “The interesting reference Chairman Pham made regarding the union leadership’s part in facilitating this fraud might also turn out to be uncomfortable for those folks, considering the seriousness of the violations listed in the IG report. Chairman Pham does say ‘criminal violations of the law’ in her official statement and ‘members’ of the staff have been put on administrative leave. Could be a serious house cleaning coming.”
The government needs a lot of that.
MAD MAXINE COULDN’T OUTSMART JOE BIDEN: Bessent Keeps His Cool as Waters Tries (and Fails) to Belittle, Outsmart Him.
BUT BUT BUT CRISIS. CLIMATE CHANGE…. Antarctica’s Ice Sheet Expands for the First Time in Decades.
IT WAS AS BAD AS WE THOUGHT: Remember Biden’s Failed Pier in Gaza? It Turns Out It Was Worse Than We Thought.
VERY MUCH ABOUT TIME: Trump’s 2026 Budget Pulls Plug on Biden’s Green Energy Scams.
YES, WE NEED AN ENTIRE SEA CHANGE ON HOW WE VIEW CHILDHOOD: Kids belong in public. Sequestering kids away from the adult world is a sad indictment on how we conceive of childhood
THEY NEVER MISS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY: It Looks Like Democrats Are Once Again Choosing the Wrong Side of an 80-20 Issue.
To be fair to them, they hope if the tax cuts expire Trump will be blamed for the ruin that follows!
HONESTLY, IF YOU WEREN’T ON THE BIDENTIA’S ENEMIES LIST, IT’S TIME TO ASK WHAT YOU’RE EVEN DOING WITH YOUR LIFE: An Enemy of the State.
MEH. MOST OF THE PEOPLE DEPORTED ARE CRIMINALS OR PEOPLE WHO ASSOCIATE WITH THEM: Be careful what cart you hitch your horse to.
It’s kind of amazing how rarely known associates of bad people are good people.
Frankly I think the rule should be: Here illegally? Out you go. That’s due process enough.
WELL, THEY CAN SELF-DEPORT BEFORE IT COMES TO THAT, NO? Deported Illegal Immigrants May Get Sent to Libya…but a Key Detail Is Missing From Reports.
YES, THE DUELING FUNDRAISERS SMELL OF PSI-OPS. THERE WAS NOTHING ORGANIC ABOUT THE GEORGE FLOYD OUTRAGE, EITHER: In Sickness and Health.
May 7, 2025
JOEL KOTKIN: Who Gets Hurt with Green Policies?
Since the early 2000s, governors and legislators from both parties have signed onto a climate agenda in California that is making energy steadily unaffordable.
Gasoline in California, according to AAA, which tracks national gas prices daily, costs an average of about $4.78, compared with $3.16 nationally. The cost of electricity in the state is now the highest in the continental U.S., at 30.22 cents per kilowatt hour.
You might want to blame the discrepancies on greed — Big Oil practicing price gouging, as Gov. Gavin Newsom has suggested, and utilities lining their shareholders’ pockets. But at the pump and on your light and power bill, California’s high energy prices are better understood as a self-inflicted wound, traceable to the state’s quixotic green energy policy.
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Joel Kotkin
The high cost of California’s green energy policies
A vehicle plugged in for charging
An electric vehicle plugged in at a charging station in Anaheim. California’s climate agenda relies on expensive, and intermittent, energy sources, such as wind and solar.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
By Joel KotkinContributing writer
May 7, 2025 3 AM PTSince the early 2000s, governors and legislators from both parties have signed onto a climate agenda in California that is making energy steadily unaffordable.
Gasoline in California, according to AAA, which tracks national gas prices daily, costs an average of about $4.78, compared with $3.16 nationally. The cost of electricity in the state is now the highest in the continental U.S., at 30.22 cents per kilowatt hour.
You might want to blame the discrepancies on greed — Big Oil practicing price gouging, as Gov. Gavin Newsom has suggested, and utilities lining their shareholders’ pockets. But at the pump and on your light and power bill, California’s high energy prices are better understood as a self-inflicted wound, traceable to the state’s quixotic green energy policy.
The notoriously high cost of gas in the state is the result of a lot of factors — we tax gas to pay for road infrastructure and a less-polluting fuel mix in the summer months. Last year, Sacramento decided to move harder, faster toward its goal of a carbon-less future, adding disincentives for refineries and incentives for EVs that the California Air Resources Board has predicted will add 47 cents a gallon at the pump.
AdvertisementOverall, California’s zero-carbon climate policies — pushing EVs as your next car purchase and heat pumps to cool and heat your house — rely largely on electricity that in turn depends on expensive, and intermittent, energy sources, such as wind and solar. Come hell or high water, California’s leaders are trying to regulate, tax and incentivize their way to electricity that is 100% carbon-free by 2045.
Unfortunately, as green-skeptic energy analyst Robert Bryce notes in books and on his Substack, wherever governments have tried to base their energy supply on a swift shift to renewables — the UK, Germany, California — the result has been huge spikes in energy prices. Germany’s vaunted industrial economy has slowed in part, according to most observers, because of the high cost of renewable energy.
It’s a built-in cost of government run by crooks and morons.
ED MORRISSEY: Pulitzers Carry On Grand Tradition Of … Walter Duranty.
OH, THERE’S A SHOCK: Stanford Review: China Conducting Academic Espionage at Stanford.
CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER:
This is a 1980's Ghostbusters movie moment.😳 https://t.co/xWbs5s8ft3 pic.twitter.com/UZIA487sok
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) May 7, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Enjoy!
