By Clay Waters ~

A front-page story from Sunday’s New York Times, “Biden’s Push for Racial Equity Hits Legal and Political Snags,” opened and closed with affecting stories of hardship under sympathetic headlines. The story virtually ignored the central reality of racial discrimination within Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.” A program offering debt relief to black farmers only is also under scrutiny.

At least this time the Times is using the correct terminology — “equity,” not “equality” — and didn’t try to sneak the radical proposition of “equity” under the more benign auspices of “equality.” “Equality” advocates for equal treatment going forward, while an “equity” policy tries to make up for past discrimination by divvying out resources in discriminatory fashion.

Yet the story from reporters Michael Shear, Stacy Cowley, and Alan Rappeport offered no condemnation of the Biden administration’s flaunting the Supreme Court’s deep disdain for race-based legislation, or the administration’s defeats in…

By Fred Lucas ~

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates why a lack of knowledge about China’s problems can become the world’s problems, says Rep. Steve Chabot, regarding one of the world’s most powerful, yet also most secretive and oppressive regimes.

Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses a meeting of members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the China Association for Science and Technology in Beijing on May 28. (Photo: Ju Peng/Xinhua/Getty Images)

“No one fully understands what is happening in China. On the one hand, China seems to be an unstoppable juggernaut posing an existential threat to peace and freedom throughout Asia and the Pacific region,” Chabot, R-Ohio, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Friday at The Heritage Foundation, at an event previewing the release next week of Heritage’s “2021 China Transparency Report.”

On the other hand, they seem to be beset by…

By Arnold Ahlert ~

Reality ought to be different, but too many global leaders are bowing to Beijing.

By Tim Graham ~

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reports that Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute, the parent organization of PolitiFact and “mainstream” media think tank, is disturbed at the latest evidence that Americans don’t trust the “mainstream” media — because it’s not. It’s been “reporting” on America like it was under a dangerous threat of a fascist coup for four years, democracy always in danger of “dying in darkness.”

The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.)

The annual digital news report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford also found some improvement in trust in nearly all the countries surveyed — probably thanks to COVID-19 coverage — but not in the U.S…

By Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. ~

During his long – and not always illustrious – political career, Bob Dole was fond of telling crowds on the campaign trail: “I’m the senator from ethanol.”

Dole, still with us at 98, is from Kansas, which along with Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota, Missouri, and Minnesota is part of the Great American Corn Belt. Because ethanol sold in the U.S. as a transportation fuel is derived from corn, ethanol and corn have become inseparable. Roughly 40% of the U.S. corn crop is refined into ethanol at 210 ethanol plants scattered across 27 states.

Friends in High Places

Coddled by politicians in the Midwest and Washington, D.C., ethanol was subsidized by American taxpayers for decades and protected by tariffs from foreign competition. Thanks to a 2005 law, the subsidies and tariffs finally went away, but they were replaced by a mandate requiring that a certain percentage…

By Clay Waters ~

The front page of Friday’s New York Times featured the presumably rehabilitated Jonathan Weisman, who spent a long time in the paper’s doghouse for offending radical Democrats on his Twitter feed.

His latest story is surely safe territory: “With Midterms in Sight, ‘Crisis’ Is Watchword for Republicans.” The text box: “A Lesson of Trump Era: Outrage Works.” Nothing to offend Democrats of any kind here, just 1,700 words of snark directed solely at Republicans, who are fair game to attack.

House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis.

There is an economic crisis, they say, with rising prices and overly generous unemployment benefits; a national security crisis; a border security crisis, with its attendant homeland security crisis, humanitarian crisis, and public health crisis; and a separate energy crisis.

Pressed this week on whether the nation was really so beleaguered, the…

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

Seems like every big policy gun wants to take a shot at fantasizing the decarbonization and electrification of the energy system. No doubt that is where the government policy analysis money is going. Sadly I am on the wrong side of the issue, money-wise, but it sure is fun flogging the fallacies in these so-called studies.

A few weeks ago we looked at the hilarious effort by the International Energy Agency. They were growing the global economy, and electrifying everything in sight, but had the need for juice going down in the process. Clearly impossible.

Two other recent reports are also worth laughing at. Which one is worse is hard to say, they are that bad. The titles begin to give the flavor of fantasy.

One is “The Future of Electric Power in the United States” by the collective National Academies of Science…