March 28, 2024

Loss Of U.S. Moral Authority Undermines Democracy Around The World

March 28, 2024/ Francis Menton

Around the world today, lots of countries claim to be “democracies”; but then the state thugs use various ploys to assure that no opposition can ever prevail. Among such ploys, the tactic currently in vogue is to gin up some collection of flimsy criminal charges to get the opposition leader and/or his/her supporters arrested or otherwise sidelined.

If you haven’t been following the subject closely in recent months, you may not realize how pervasive the use of this tactic has become.
Sure, imprisoning the opposition leaders has long been part of the playbook of the worst thugocracies. It’s what you would expect of a small-time African dictatorship or of a Central American banana republic, not to mention the likes of Russia or China.
But recently the tactic has been spreading like a case of poison ivy to countries otherwise pretending to grown-up, or semi-grown-up, status. Countries like India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. And, did I mention, the United States — once known for claiming to be the shining exemplar for the world of good governance, and for seeking to use its moral authority to induce others to follow its lead. Today, governing cliques in other countries are greatly emboldened by the brazen abuse of power orchestrated by Biden and the gaggle of Democratic prosecutors pursuing Trump. Hey, we’re just conducting business the same way you Americans do in your own country! You have no standing to criticize us!

March 20, 2024

Starting To Notice That The Energy Transition Is Not Happening

March 20, 2024/ Francis Menton

Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates.
Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?

No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.
A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14.

March 15, 2024

March 15, 2024/ Francis Menton

For those interested in why some countries become wealthy while others remain in extreme poverty, Haiti is one of the most important case studies.
Despite being only a few hundred miles from the U.S. mainland, and even closer to Puerto Rico, with investment capital readily available and unlimited opportunities for trade, Haiti has essentially no economic development and is one of the poorest countries in the world.
And instead of improving, conditions in Haiti only get worse. The past few weeks have seen yet a new extreme low point, with the Prime Minister locked out of the territory and the country taken over by armed gangs.
At this blog I have returned repeatedly to the subject of Haiti over the years, in the attempt to understand how things could have gone, and continue to go, so terribly wrong.

December 08, 2023

December 08, 2023/ Francis Menton

Yesterday, Hunter Biden was finally indicted — on tax charges. Here is a copy of the indictment, filed by Special Counsel David Weiss in the Central District of California, and signed by his principal deputy Leo Wise. The nine counts include three felonies.
The indictment makes for moderately entertaining reading. The gist is that Hunter Biden, rather than paying taxes of about $1.4 million that he acknowledged he owed for years 2016-19, instead “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle.” Well, we all knew that.
A more important question is why it has taken until now to produce an indictment for crimes that were this obvious and on which the statute of limitations was running.
So where are the bribery charges?

October 05, 2023

October 05, 2023/ Francis Menton

Offshore wind turbines — those are the magical solution to all our energy problems. The wind is clean and free. And way out in the ocean — where you can barely even see the towers — the wind blows steadily almost all the time. Just put up a few turbines to catch the breezes, and those evil fossil fuels will quickly be banished.
Anyway, that has been the talk for at least three decades. After 30 years of talk, the number of actual functioning wind turbines out in the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. coast is now exactly seven: five off Block Island (part of Rhode Island), and two off Virginia. Those provide some tiny fraction of 1% of the electricity for the mid-Atlantic states and New England.
But the Biden Administration has much grander plans.

September 25, 2023

September 25, 2023/ Francis Menton

A few days ago, on Friday September 22, the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted the senior Senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, for bribery.
A full copy of the indictment can be found at this link at the New York Times. There is also a detailed summary of the charges in a Department of Justice press release here.
The Menendez indictment gives us the opportunity to look at the conduct of Menendez claimed to constitute “bribery” and compare it to some of the well-known conduct of President Biden.
Is there any significant difference here that makes one bribery and the other not?