New piece in The Hill, French & Ungar-Sargon on the podcast, Mississippi Kites in OK

New Piece in The Hill on Manchin-Schumer, David French and Batya Ungar-Sargon on the podcast, & Mississippi Kites in Oklahoma

A lot of travel this week. On Monday, I was in Wichita speaking to the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association. The turnout was pretty big: I estimate there were about 500 people in the audience. But the memorable thing for me wasn’t so much the size of the crowd, but rather the size of the trade show. At the convention center, there were dozens of booths at the trade show, the majority of which were owned by small-to-medium-sized businesses that were providing goods and services to the industry. They were selling everything from insurance to monitoring equipment. And once again, the common refrain I heard from many of the people running the booths was the need for more people. One of the people I spoke to worked at an Oklahoma City-based company that provides environmental and safety technology to the industry and will do about $10 million in revenue this year. He said the company had 12 openings that it can’t fill. The problem: too few applicants can qualify and those that can either don’t want to work that hard or can’t pass a drug test. 
 
After speaking in Wichita, Lorin and I jumped in the 4Runner and drove to Denver where I spoke at CU-Denver’s annual International Commodities Symposium on Tuesday morning. It was a lot of fun to connect with my new friend, Tom Brady, who runs the J.P Morgan Center for Commodities at CU-Denver, and to hear how he and other professionals in the commodities sector see the world. The punchline I heard from many of them: commodity prices are going to stay strong for a while, and in particular, base metals,(copper, tin, zinc,) etc. In addition to metals, it’s clear that hydrocarbons are in high demand. Nat gas prices are now over $9 per mmbtu and coal is back above $400 per ton. Also this week, I was pleased to be on Chris Keefer’s Decouple podcast to talk about the Manchin-Schumer bill. Chris is doing great work in Canada to help save that country’s nuclear reactors and build more of them. I admire Chris’ work ethic and devotion to the pro-nuclear effort. One more thing: this morning, I uploaded another video to TikTok. This one is on Germany’s decision to reverse its stance on nuclear energy and keep its remaining reactors open. Check it out.

Now to business. Four items today: 

• The Hill: Manchin-Schumer’s unconscionable giveaways to wind & solar  

• David French on Divided We Fall, two years after

• Batya Ungar-Sargon talks about her book, Bad News

• Mississippi Kites in Oklahoma

The photo above is from a page in my new favorite bird book, the fifth edition of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. 
 

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Last Sunday, The Hill published my latest piece on the Manchin-Schumer reconciliation bill. As you may have noticed, I’m not a fan of the legislation. In my view, it's just more evidence of how The Swamp actually works. Furthermore, the media coverage of the legislation has been wretched. It's been more stenography than actual reporting. Few reporters have bothered to read the Congressional Budget Office report which details exactly how the $370 billion in climate-related spending will be allocated. I began:

• The hype around the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, also known as the Manchin-Schumer bill, has been extraordinary. On Aug. 8, New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman published a piece headlined “Did Democrats Just Save Civilization?” in which he declared that “experts on energy and the environment are giddy over what has been accomplished” and the “world is a more hopeful place than it was just a few weeks ago.”

• Five former Treasury secretaries declared that the measure will “help increase American competitiveness, address our climate crisis, lower costs for families, and fight inflation.” Meanwhile, Leah Stokes, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claims the bill will “create manufacturing all across this country.

• Amid all the hosannas, precious little media attention has focused on exactly how the $370 billion in energy-related spending will be divvied up...According to the CBO, Big Wind and Big Solar could collect as much as $126.9 billion in new federal tax credits between now and 2031. If that occurs, the total cost of federal giveaways for wind and solar will more than double — and could total nearly $240 billion by 2031.

I concluded:

• Why should you care? First and foremost, you should care because these tax credits are just another form of corporate welfare. For years, advocates for renewable energy sectors have claimed that wind and solar are cheaper than traditional forms of electricity generation. To cite just one example, John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate envoy, recently claimed that “Solar and wind are less expensive than coal or oil or gas. They just are less expensive.” If that were true, the wind and solar sectors wouldn’t need tax credits.

• Furthermore, these tax credits are fueling land-use conflicts across America as rural communities fight back against the landscape-blighting sprawl of wind and solar projects. The Renewable Rejection Database shows that since 2013, more than 340 communities across the country have rejected or restricted wind projects. Communities are also rejecting solar projects. In March, NBC News reported that “at least 40” towns and counties have enacted moratoriums on solar projects since last year. Although NBC did not publish a list, the Renewable Rejection Database shows that 41 solar projects have been rejected in the U.S. since 2019. The latest example: Greensville County, Va., where the Board of Supervisors rejected a 123-megawatt solar project on Aug. 8 because it was not in “alignment with the county’s Comprehensive Plan.”

• The punchline here is clear: Climate change is a concern, but it is not our only concern. Congress must be fiscally responsible. The CBO report shows that Manchin-Schumer contains unconscionable giveaways to the wind and solar sectors. If wind and solar are cheaper than conventional energy production, it’s time for them to prove it — without another $127 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Again, here's a link.

David French: "There's a culture that says, not only are you wrong, but I want to see your career destroyed"    

Two years ago, I had David French on the podcast to talk about his book — Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, David (who first appeared on the podcast in 2020) is a senior editor at The Dispatch. He’s also one of my favorite journalists. I always look forward to his Sunday “French Press” newsletter. In fact, one that he sent last month, on the “God Gap” in the Democratic Party led me to invite him back on the podcast. In this episode, David told me that America is even more divided now than it was when he published his book. He said that the pandemic exacerbated the divisions in America. “Where I live masking was seen as kind of a blue thing and people just rejected it,” he said. We also talked about gun laws, basketball, and why public figures like LeBron James, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Dolly Parton can help unite the country. 

The audio and transcript of the episode are here. The episode is also on YouTube. Please share it. 

Batya Ungar-Sargon: "Class is the number one issue in America"    

I met Batya Ungar-Sargon earlier this year in Houston at an Urban Reform Institute event. Our mutual friend, Joel Kotkin, introduced us and Joel went out of his way to make sure that I got her recent book, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy. In general, I don’t like media criticism. But given Joel’s recommendation, I did as he instructed and I am glad I did. Her book was a real eye opener for me as it exposed how insular -- and yes, the right word is elitist – many of America’s biggest media outlets have become. The book provides an excellent history of the American newspaper business and how it has evolved since its early days of catering to the working class. In this episode, Batya, who is a deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, explains how journalism has become a “profession of astonishing privilege,” how the Left has become “the side of the elites and they are focused increasingly on environmentalism,” and why she is “on the side of whatever party thinks class is the number one issue in America.” Batya brings a unique perspective to the debate around media in America. I highly recommend Bad News. The audio is available here. It’s also on YouTube.

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Mississippi Kites in Tulsa and Pawhuska     

In Tulsa, Lorin and I saw a bunch of Mississippi Kites (Ictinia mississippiensis) near Eileen’s house. At first, I thought they were Hawks, but my pal Chris, reminded me that Kites are pretty common around Tulsa. (The photo of the Kite above was taken by Steven Paultanis in 2020.) We saw a bunch of them the next day as we drove through Pawhuska on our way through the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. (Highly recommended, by the way.) I learned to identify them by the dark tail with the notch in the center as well as their relatively narrow wings. Wikipedia says this: 

• A small bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. Mississippi kites have narrow, pointed wings and are graceful in flight, often appearing to float in the air. It is common to see several circling in the same area. Mississippi kites are social birds, gathering in roosts in late summer. They do not maintain territories.The diet...consists mostly of insects which they capture in flight. They eat cicada, grasshoppers, and other crop-damaging insects, making them economically important. They have also been known to eat small vertebrates, including birds, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals. They will usually hunt from a low perch before chasing after prey, eating it in flight.  They will fly around cattle and horses to catch insects stirred up from the grass...nest in colonies. Both parents incubate the eggs and care for the young. They have one clutch a year, which takes 30 to 32 days to hatch. The young birds leave the nest another 30 to 34 days after hatching. Only about half of broods succeed. Clutches fall victim to storms and predators such as raccoons and Great Horned Owls. Because there are fewer predators in urban areas, Mississippi Kites produce more offspring in urban areas than rural. They have an average lifespan of 8 years.

Have a good weekend. 

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