Utopia, you are standing in it!

Suetonius

Not much is known about Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, generally referred to as Suetonius. He was born around 70 AD, probably in a town in modern-day Algeria. He may have taught literature for a while, he seems to have practiced the law. He is recorded as serving on the staff of Pliny the Younger when the latter was governor of Bithynia in north Turkey in 110 to 112 AD. Subsequently he served on the staff of emperors, being in charge of the emperor’s libraries under Trajan and then managing the emperor Hadrian’s correspondence. Pliny describes him as a quiet and studious man devoted to his writing. He wrote The Lives of Illustrious Men, 60 or so biographies of poets, grammarians, orators and historians, almost all of which has been lost (except for short lives of Terence, Virgil and Horace).

The Lives of the Caesars, by contrast, has survived…

The wind industry was built on lies and runs on subsidies; cut the subsidies and the whole thing collapses in a heartbeat.

Wind turbine makers like Germany’s Siemens are having a rather miserable time of it, of late. Subsidies were already being wound back across Europe (and with it demand for these whirling wonders) when an ambitious Russian decided to storm across Ukraine in an effort to expand Russia’s territorial control.

All of a sudden, focus was drawn on Europe’s critical dependence upon Russian gas; a critical component of their reliance upon intermittent wind and solar.

The Germans have now renounced their purported disdain for nuclear and coal-fired power, opting to have power as and when they need it. The French, among others, are determined to expand their nuclear power generation capacity, as if their lives and livelihoods depend upon it. Needless to say, the love affair with the unreliables…

Back in 2015, I explained to Neil Cavuto that easy money creates the conditions for a boom-bust cycle.

It’s now 2022 and my argument is even more relevant.

That’s because the Federal Reserve panicked at the start of the pandemic and dumped a massive amount of money into the economy (technically, the Fed increased its balance sheet by purchasing trillions of dollars of government bonds).

As the late, great Milton Friedman taught us, this easy-money, low-interest-rate approach produced the rising prices that are now plaguing the nation.

But that’s only part of the bad news.

The other bad news is that easy-money policy sets the stage for future hard times. In other words, the Fed causes a boom-bust cycle.

Desmond Lachman of the American Enterprise Institute explains how and why the Federal Reserve has put the country in a bad situation.

Better late than never. Today, the…

Here are some of America’s main economic problems.

• Painful inflation caused by bad monetary policy by the government.
• Excessive spending and debt caused by bad fiscal policy by the government.
• Rising prices and waste caused by bad health policy by the government.
• Inflexibility and inefficiency caused by bad regulatory policy by the government.

And that’s just a partial list. I’m not asserting that markets produce perfect results. Indeed, markets are a never-ending process of creative destruction.

But what I am stating is that intervention by politicians and bureaucrats almost always leads to bad outcomes.

So you can imagine my angst and disappointment at this recent polling data from Echelon Insights. A plurality thinks the government should “do more.”

I’m tempted to speculate whether 47 percent of Americans are morons.

But let’s take the high road and simply dig into the numbers. Whenever I see polling data, I always check…

Wind and solar generators happily take credit when the sun’s up and the wind’s blowing, but dodge all criticism when blackouts follow sunset and/or calm weather. The standard trick is to point in every direction – except the obvious – when power rationing (euphemistically called “demand management”) or unplanned power rationing (aka widespread blackouts) follows routine and unpredictable collapses in wind and solar output.

All care and no responsibility, renewable energy rent seekers then point the finger at coal and gas generators – where a few of their units are often offline for routine maintenance, or, if they suffer a breakdown, are repaired and up and running in a jiffy – and assert that the chaos was all their fault.

The line goes that wholesale prices spiked and/or power supplies were cut because a coal-fired or gas-fired generator failed to deliver X hundred MWs of power, cleverly ignoring the fact…

In yesterday’s presidential election in Colombia, the top two candidates were from the extremes of the political spectrum. Leading the pack is Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla of the M-19 (which demobilized about thirty years ago and has been a political party, or component of various alliances, since). He won 40.3% of the vote. In second place is Rodolfo Hernández, with 28.2%. He is an outsider–having had only municipal political experience in a medium-sized city¹–and presents as Colombia’s Trump/Bolsonaro/Bukele. Or worse, as he is on record saying he admires Hitler.

Regular readers of this blog or followers of my published research will know I have always been skeptical of two-round majority election of presidents. And this Colombian runoff pairing is a perfect demonstration of why–sometimes reducing choices to two means a choice between two brands of poison. Consider the third-place candidate: Federico Gutiérrez, who finished just under five…

The Times recently (11 May 2022) reported that the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, had received, and given, legal advice to the effect that proposed government action in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol was compatible with international law.  As I write, we have still not seen details of either the proposals or the legal arguments on which the government intends to rely.  What is going on?

First, it is unusual and unsatisfactory that the existence of this legal advice has been leaked. For one thing, unless the leak was authorised by the Attorney General herself, it looks like a breach of the Ministerial Code, paragraph 2.13 of which says:

The fact that the Law Officers [that is, the Attorney General, Solicitor General and Advocate General for Scotland] have advised or have not advised and the content of their advice must not be disclosed outside Government without their authority.

Note…

May 29, 1630 & 1660. On this date in 1630 the future Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland is born. On this date in 1660 Charles II enters London on the Restoration of the British monarchy.

Charles II was the eldest surviving child of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria de Bourbon of France, the daughter of King Henri IV of France and Navarre and Marie de Medici.

Charles II had set out for England from Scheveningen, arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660 and reached London on 29 May, his 30th birthday and he was received in London to public acclaim.

Although Charles and Parliament granted amnesty to nearly all of Cromwell’s supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 50 people were specifically excluded. In the end nine of the regicides were executed: they were hanged, drawn and quartered, whereas others…

Bumpy road ahead?[image credit: RWE]
Possibly the longest running climate ‘lawfare’ case ever. Sometimes the duration of a case is itself a large part of the desired effect, whatever the outcome. Lawyers win as usual.
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German judges and experts have arrived at the edge of a melting glacier high up in the Peruvian Andes to examine a complaint made by a local farmer who accuses energy giant RWE of threatening his home by contributing to global warming, says Digital Journal.

The visit by the nine-member delegation to the region is the latest stage in a case the plaintiffs hope will set a new worldwide precedent.

Leading the demand for “climate justice” is 41-year-old Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya, who lives in the mountains close to the city of Huaraz.

He has filed suit against the German firm RWE, saying its greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for…

With the “Top Gun” sequel firmly (Hah!) set for release on May 27, it occurred to me that I should at least re-familiarize myself with this icon of ’80s “High Concept” cinema. And then it occurred to me that I’ve never actually seen it, start to finish.

I was reviewing films for a newspaper when it came out, and I’m guessing the fellow I shared those duties with drew this assignment. It’s not like I didn’t try to watch it, once or thrice. I’d get 5-20 minutes in while channel surfing, mutter “Why people ever liked this is beyond me” and move on.

“Top Gun” is Reagan Era American jingoism at its glossiest, something worth remembering when watching it. A common criticism of this film of-its-time/at-that-time was that it was a “recruiting film.”

Reagan’s gone, the Navy moved on from the ruinously expensive to maintain,/Achilles Heeled F-14 Tomcat, and Hollywood…