Business
Biden Admin Reportedly Throws Support Behind UN Push To Decrease Global Plastic Production
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
“If the Biden-Harris Administration wants to meet its sustainable development and climate change goals, the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less. Plastics enable solar and wind energy, are critical to modern healthcare, deliver clean drinking water, reduce home, building and transportation energy needs, and help prevent food wastage.”
The Biden administration is reportedly now in favor of a United Nations-led effort to reduce global plastic production, according to multiple reports.
U.S. officials now reportedly support a developing U.N. treaty that would aim to impose a cap on plastic production worldwide, a shift from its earlier position of allowing countries to determine production levels for themselves, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters and Politico. Biden administration officials have also reportedly signaled that they will support measures to target particular types of plastics and establish a list of specific chemicals to address with new, uniform obligations.
Senior White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) official Jonathan Black reportedly informed industry stakeholders and environmental activists of the shift in position during two private meetings that were closed to the media, according to Politico. Reuters first reported on the administration’s pivot on the UN plastic treaty on Wednesday, and CEQ spokesperson Justin Weiss confirmed the outlet’s reporting in subsequent correspondence with Politico.
It is currently unclear exactly how such a treaty would actually be enforced if adopted.
Prior to the administration’s position shift, U.S. officials had endorsed a more “flexible” approach rather than a global cap on plastic production and had not offered much indication as to whether or not the Biden administration supported an effort to crack down on specific chemicals, according to Politico. Negotiations on the U.N. treaty are still ongoing and are expected to conclude at a November conference in Busan, South Korea; that meeting will take place after Nov. 5’s U.S. presidential election, according to Reuters.
The Biden administration’s reported change of position on the matter now aligns the U.S. with countries like South Korea, the European Union’s member states, Canada and Peru, according to Reuters. Nations that are major petrochemical producers, like China and Saudi Arabia, have attempted to block further discussions about a possible cap on global plastic production and instead want countries to focus on less divisive initiatives, such as improving waste management.
“As the White House caves to the wishes of extreme NGO groups, it does a disservice towards our mutual ambition for a cleaner, lower carbon future where used plastic doesn’t become pollution in the first place,” Chris Jahn, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council, said of the pivot in a Wednesday statement. “If the Biden-Harris Administration wants to meet its sustainable development and climate change goals, the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less. Plastics enable solar and wind energy, are critical to modern healthcare, deliver clean drinking water, reduce home, building and transportation energy needs, and help prevent food wastage.”
Meanwhile, Greenpeace — a major environmental group — is pleased to see the Biden administration harden its stance on a global plastic production cap.
“This shift in U.S. policy is crucial for creating the unified approach needed to tackle the plastics crisis,” Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director John Hocevar said in a Wednesday statement. “By supporting global criteria for phasing out harmful chemicals and avoidable plastic products, the U.S. is helping to ensure that the treaty will have the teeth needed to protect families and ecosystems alike. It is a welcome signal that they are finally listening to the demands of the American people, almost two-thirds of whom support a Global Plastics Treaty that would ban single-use plastic packaging.”
Neither the White House nor the CEQ responded immediately to requests for comment.
Business
‘Context Of Chemsex’: Biden-Harris Admin Dumps Millions Into Developing Drug-Fueled Gay Sex App
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Owen Klinsky
The Biden-Harris administration is spending millions funding a project to advise homosexual men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse.
The University of Connecticut (UCONN) in July announced a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) for Assistant Professor Roman Shrestha to develop his app JomCare — “a smartphone-based just-in-time adaptive intervention aimed at improving access to HIV- and substance use-related harm reduction services for Malaysian GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex,” university news website UCONN Today reported. “Chemsex,” according to Northern Irish LGBTQ+ nonprofit the Rainbow Project, is the involvement of drug use in one’s sex life, and typically involves Methamphetamine (crystal meth), Mephedrone (meth), and GHB and GBL (G).
Examples of the app’s use-cases include providing a user who has reported injecting drugs with prompts about ordering an at-home HIV test kit and employing safe drug injection practices, UCONN Today reported. The app is also slated to provide same-day delivery of HIV prevention drug PrEP, HIV self-testing kits and even a mood tracker.
“In Malaysia, our research has indicated that harm reduction needs of GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex are not being adequately met,” Shrestha told UCONN Today. “Utilizing smartphone apps and other mHealth tools presents a promising and cost-effective approach to expand access to these services.”
Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and is punishable by imprisonment, according to digital LGBTQ+ rights publication Equaldex. Drug use, including of cannabis, is illegal in Malaysia, and drug trafficking can be a capital offense.
The Old Border Czar VS The New Border Czar pic.twitter.com/9Ie8JRsroR
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 12, 2024
The NIH disbursed $773,845 to Shrestha in July to conduct a 90-day trial testing the efficacy of JomCare among 482 chemsex-involved Malaysian gays. It also provided Shrestha with $191,417 in 2022 to “facilitate access to gender-affirming health care” for transgender women in the country.
“Gender-affirming care” is a euphemism used to describe a wide range of procedures, including sometimes irreversible hormone treatments that can lead to infertility as well as irreversible surgeries like mastectomies, phalloplasties and vaginoplasties.
Shrestha has a track record of researching mobile health (mHealth) initiatives for foreign homosexuals, co-authoring a 2024 study entitled, “Preferences for mHealth Intervention to Address Mental Health Challenges Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in Nepal.”
The proliferation of LGBT rights has been a “foreign policy priority” under the Biden-Harris administration, a State Department spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation, with President Joe Biden instructing federal government department heads to “to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”
“Around the globe, including here at home, brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) activists are fighting for equal protection under the law, freedom from violence, and recognition of their fundamental human rights,” a 2021 White House memorandum states. “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle — speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values.”
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Nov. 12 that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would collaborate to establish a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Musk claiming the agency would feature a leaderboard for the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.” Some DOGE cuts could come from LGBTQ+ programs, such as a grant from the United States Agency for International Development to perform sex changes in Guatemala and State Department funding for the showing of a play in North Macedonia entitled, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”
“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.”
Shrestha and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment, a UCONN spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, “specific questions about the grant and the decision to award it to our faculty member should be directed to the NIH, since that’s the funding agency.”
From the Fraser Institute
By Alex Whalen and Tegan Hill
Back in the summer at a meeting in Halifax, several provincial premiers discussed a lawsuit meant to force the federal government to make changes to Canada’s equalization program. The suit—filed by Newfoundland and Labrador and backed by British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta—effectively argues that the current formula isn’t fair. But while the question of “fairness” can be subjective, its clear the equalization program is broken.
In theory, the program equalizes the ability of provinces to deliver reasonably comparable services at a reasonably comparable level of taxation. Any province’s ability to pay is based on its “fiscal capacity”—that is, its ability to raise revenue.
This year, equalization payments will total a projected $25.3 billion with all provinces except B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan to receive some money. Whether due to higher incomes, higher employment or other factors, these three provinces have a greater ability to collect government revenue so they will not receive equalization.
However, contrary to the intent of the program, as recently as 2021, equalization program costs increased despite a decline in the fiscal capacity of oil-producing provinces such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador. In other words, the fiscal capacity gap among provinces was shrinking, yet recipient provinces still received a larger equalization payment.
Why? Because a “fixed-growth rule,” introduced by the Harper government in 2009, ensures that payments grow roughly in line with the economy—even if the gap between richer and poorer provinces shrinks. The result? Total equalization payments (before adjusting for inflation) increased by 19 per cent between 2015/16 and 2020/21 despite the gap in fiscal capacities between provinces shrinking during this time.
Moreover, the structure of the equalization program is also causing problems, even for recipient provinces, because it generates strong disincentives to natural resource development and the resulting economic growth because the program “claws back” equalization dollars when provinces raise revenue from natural resource development. Despite some changes to reduce this problem, one study estimated that a recipient province wishing to increase its natural resource revenues by a modest 10 per cent could face up to a 97 per cent claw back in equalization payments.
Put simply, provinces that generally do not receive equalization such as Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan have been punished for developing their resources, whereas recipient provinces such as Quebec and in the Maritimes have been rewarded for not developing theirs.
Finally, the current program design also encourages recipient provinces to maintain high personal and business income tax rates. While higher tax rates can reduce the incentive to work, invest and be productive, they also raise the national standard average tax rate, which is used in the equalization allocation formula. Therefore, provinces are incentivized to maintain high and economically damaging tax rates to maximize equalization payments.
Unless premiers push for reforms that will improve economic incentives and contain program costs, all provinces—recipient and non-recipient—will suffer the consequences.
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