Daily Caller
Bureaucrats Worry Democracy Will Get In The Way Of Their Climate Agenda
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
I have frequently written over the last several years that the agenda of the climate-alarm lobby in the western world is not consistent with the maintenance of democratic forms of government.
Governments maintained by free elections, the free flow of communications and other democratic institutions are not able to engage in the kinds of long-term central planning exercises required to force a transition from one form of energy and transportation systems to completely different ones.
Why? Because once the negative impacts of vastly higher prices for all forms of energy begin to impact the masses, the masses in such democratic societies are going to rebel, first at the ballot box and if that is not allowed by the elites to work, then by more aggressive means.
This is not a problem for authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government, like those in Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, where long-term central planning projects invoking government control of the means of production is a long-ingrained way of life. If the people revolt, then the crackdowns are bound to come.
This societal dynamic is a simple reality of life that the pushers of the climate alarm narrative and forced energy transition in western societies have been loath to admit. But, in recent days, two key figures who have pushed the climate alarm narrative in both the United States and Canada have agreed with my thesis in public remarks.
In so doing, they are uttering the quiet part about the real agenda of climate alarmism out loud.
Last week, former Obama Secretary of State and Biden climate czar John Kerry made remarks about the “problem” posed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that should make every American’s skin crawl. Speaking about the inability of the federal government to stamp out what it believes to be misinformation on big social media platforms, Kerry said: “Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” adding, “I think democracies are, are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing.”
Never mind that the U.S. government has long been the most focused purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in our society, Kerry wants to stop the free flow of information on the Internet.
The most obvious targets are Elon Musk and X, which is essentially the only big social media platform that does not willingly submit to the government’s demands for censoring speech.
Kerry’s desired solution is for Democrats to “win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to, to, implement change.” The change desired by Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats is to obtain enough power in Congress and the presidency to revoke the Senate filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, enact the economically ruinous Green New Deal, and do it all before the public has any opportunity to rebel.
Not to be outdone by Kerry, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of Canada, who is a longtime member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum, was quoted Monday as saying: “Our shrinking glaciers, and our warming oceans, are asking us wordlessly but emphatically, if democratic societies can rise to the existential challenge of climate change.”
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the central governments of both Canada and the United States have moved in increasingly authoritarian directions under their current leadership, both of which have used the climate-alarm narrative as justification. This move was widely predicted once the utility of the COVID-19 pandemic to rationalize government censorship and restrictions of individual liberties began to fade in 2021.
Frustrated by their perceived need to move even faster to restrict freedoms and destroy democratic levers of public response to their actions, these zealots are now discarding their soft talking points in favor of more aggressive messaging.
This new willingness to say the quiet part out loud should truly alarm anyone who values their freedoms.
David Blackmon is 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.
From The Center Square
Some longshoreman regularly earn more than the president of the United States along with most other U.S. workers.
Under the existing contract with the East Coast union, a top-scale longshoreman could earn up to $39 an hour, which translates to about $81,000 a year. However, many workers take overtime and extra shifts that have higher rates.
Some 50,000 International Longshoremen’s Association members went on strike Tuesday against the East and Gulf Coast ports, hampering the flow of goods in what some predict could be the most disruptive strike in decades.
Dockworkers often earn more than $100,000 a year because of work rules and overtime requirements.
More than half of 3,726 dockworkers at the Port of New York and New Jersey earned more than $150,000 in the fiscal year that ended in 2020, according to the port’s regulator, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. About one in five dockworkers at the port earned more than $250,000 that year.
Eighteen dockworkers brought in more than $450,000 that year – more than the annual salary as the U.S. President ($400,000) and more than most U.S. workers. The real median household income for all Americans was $74,580 in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Some dockworkers get paid even if they don’t work.
“Every terminal within the Port still has special compensation packages given to certain ILA longshore workers, the majority of whom are white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership,” according to the Commission’s 2019-2020 annual report. “Based on the industry’s reported figures, the Commission has again identified over 590 individuals who collectively received over $147.6 million dollars last year in outsized salaries, or for hours they never worked.”
The report noted the special packages were not memorialized in the applicable collective bargaining agreements. Rather than eliminate or cap them, the NYSA and ILA negotiated a 2013 Memorandum of Settlement of Local Conditions in the Port of New York-New Jersey. That guarantees special packages to certain people. Those individuals are paid for hours not worked or hours worked by others, as long as they are at the Port for 40 hours each week, according to the Commission’s report.
Such conditions have endured for decades, according to the Commission’s report.
“The hearings revealed that the hiring, training and promotion practices of the industry led to low-show jobs, favoritism and nepotism, the abusive and illogical interpretation of collective bargaining agreements, and the impact of those practices both on the competitiveness of the Port and on the morale and career prospects of decent, hard-working Port employees,” according to the report. “Connected individuals are awarded high paying, low-show or no-work special compensation packages, in some cases earning salaries in excess of $500,000. Such positions were overwhelmingly given to white males connected to organized crime figures or union leadership.”
The ongoing strike, which extends from Maine to Texas, could affect everything from bananas to European beer and automobiles.
The International Longshoremen’s Association blamed the United States Maritime Alliance for refusing a contract offer.
It’s the first strike at these ports since 1977. The strike will affect 36 U.S. ports handling about half of U.S. ocean imports. Included are Boston, New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.
Negotiations have been tense since June. The disagreement is between the International Longshore Association and Warehouse Union, which represents port workers across the country, and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents terminal operators and ocean carriers.
Wages of East and Gulf coast workers are a base wage of $39 an hour after six years. The union is asking for a 77% pay increase over six years. It is also asking for more restrictions and bans on the automation of cranes, gates, and container movements used to load or unload cargo.
Brett Rowland
Investigative Reporter
FBI Director Christopher Wray
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Republican Texas Rep. Lance Gooden is demanding the FBI answer questions about the alleged gaps in their recently released 2023 crime report that paints a misleading picture of crime, according to a letter provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Gooden is joined by Republican Texas Rep. Randy Weber and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany in the letter questioning the FBI crime data’s validity, pointing to the agency’s past of “inaccurate claims” on crime by omitting certain department’s data from their numbers, according to the letter. The FBI data showed a 3% reduction in violent crime in 2023, which Gooden says in the letter “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“Underreporting or misreporting crime statistics significantly impacts public perception and policy decisions, leading to a misunderstanding of crime trends, which causes unwarranted fear or complacency,” Gooden said in the letter. “Cherry-picking statistical data to deliberately mislead the public into thinking their community is safer than before would be an abhorrent act of ‘misinformation,’ especially considering the source of the misguided claim is an elite federal law enforcement agency.”
The letter asks several questions to the FBI, such as if they omitted any data from various major cities, how many agencies provided incomplete data and if the data would be retroactively adjusted to reflect an increase in violent crime, like it had in 2022 according to the Crime Prevention Research Center. In 2022, over 6,000 agencies did not report data to the FBI, accounting for 32% of all police departments in the U.S., according to the letter.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been touting the newly released data, saying that violent crime is at a “50-year low” and crediting their American Rescue Plan bill for the alleged decrease, according to a September White House press release. Most recently, the FBI published a quarterly report that reported for the first six months of 2024 that violent crime was down 10.3% compared to the first six months of 2023, according to an FBI press release.
However, the data only counted reports from 72% of law enforcement agencies, according to the press release. It is also unclear which agencies are omitted in the quarterly report.
Another survey of crime in the nation is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NVCS) carried out by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which showed from 2021 to 2023, the NVCS reported a 36% increase in the violent crime victimization rate, according to the report. The UCR and the NVCS differed substantially, differing by over 45% in 2022, according to the Marshall Project in 2023.
“If key data about the actual criminal activity in our cities is missing, it has not been reflected in either your claim or the accompanying press release,” Gooden said in the letter. “A selective and deliberate omission of relevant and necessary context amounts to an inexcusable case of spreading ‘misinformation’ by an agency of the Federal government.”
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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Some dockworkers earn more than $400,000 a year