Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor and his counterparts in 20 other states are suing the Biden Administration over new highway emissions rules requiring state transportation departments to set and meet reduction targets for carbon dioxide — and to report their results to the federal government.
The Federal Highway Administration rule, effective Jan. 8, is part of President Joe Biden’s climate change regime.
Atmospheric CO2 is the primary carbon source and is a building block for life on the planet. An over abundance of it can act as a greenhouse by absorbing infrared radiation and holding warmth.
Congress has not given the federal government authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the complaint says.
Although the new rule “certainly follows President Biden’s policy wishes … the Agencies simply do not have the authority to issue it. Congress has not given FHWA or U.S. DOT authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (‘GHG’). Nor can the Agencies compel the State to administer a federal regulatory program or mandate them to further Executive policy wishes absent some other authority to do so—which is lacking as to this rule. Furthermore, the Final Rule is arbitrary and capricious,” the complaint reads.
States suing Biden are Kentucky, South Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western district of Kentucky, and asks the court to vacate the rule and bloc its enforcement.
When many of us were young, the worst possible Christmas threat was a lump of coal in your stocking. Santa only brought it to the naughty kids, rather than nice. As adults, we know better. The world is better because of man’s historic use of coal. Furthermore, if this Christmas season, all the world received coal as a present, we’d be better off as a society moving forward.
Right now, there are climate activists reading this and going apoplectic. Their gnashing of teeth while shrieking, “Coal use is ruining the Earth, the leading cause of the ‘climate crisis’!” is both annoying and deafening.
Let me help them with some facts: Without coal, societies across the globe would perish. Coal continues to have a transformative impact on mankind, where, since prehistoric days, we’ve used coal for heat. In the 1700s, the English began to use it commercially, and in the 1880s, it became a primary power source for generating electricity. Today, over 20% of the world uses coal to power their lives.
Globally, coal use is increasing, with the International Energy Agency’s latest report forecasting 2023 global coal demand to be the highest ever, driven by India’s 8% year-over-year increase and China’s 5% growth. The IEA noted that coal-fired generation will rise by about 158 terawatt-hours, or 1.5%, this year.
China knows coal is a key to its rise as a global manufacturing behemoth, as steel is forged using coal, solar panels are fused using coal and even concrete requires coal in its production. China’s 1.8 terawatts of coal-fired generation is not only five times the U.S.’s capacity, but they plan to open two new coal plants a week through 2023 and 2024. No wonder China’s economic rise is proceeding so quickly.
While coal is a keystone power source worldwide, here in the U.S., it is a victim of an ongoing war, funded by climate ideologues who care more about the climate than the tens of thousands of families working in coal extraction and energy production. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given over $1.1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to establish “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” initiatives, designed to shut down every coal-fired power plant in the country by 2030.
Energy expert Robert Bryce recently chided Bloomberg’s and the United Nations’ efforts to eliminate coal as an energy source as futile in the global scheme of things, noting “the ongoing increase in coal use provides a strong counter-narrative to claims that policymakers made significant progress [at COP28] in Dubai.”
Simply put, ideologues be damned, coal isn’t going away. Nothing can replace its manufacturing necessities, nor its plentiful reserves across the globe. If you truly believe in helping humanity be all it can be, include coal on your gift-giving list this and every future Christmas. Let’s have Santa get with the times and feel good about filling everyone’s stockings with coal.
Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska.
By MICHAELA BURROWS | DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION
A Jan. 27 phone call between the top U.S. general at the time and Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command triggered an eight-day crisis as the Biden administration scrambled to respond to a novel threat from China, NBC News reported.
Biden administration officials privately lamented that the public outcry and reputational consequences for Beijing following the spy balloon’s reveal that rocked the world in early 2023 damaged relations with China while overrepresenting the national security threat actually posed by the balloon, according to NBC.
The administration initially hoped to keep the balloon’s existence a secret from Congress and the public, the outlet reported, citing multiple former and current administration and congressional officials. “Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” one former senior U.S. official briefed on the situation told NBC. (RELATED: Pentagon Says Military-To-Military Talks With China Have Resumed)
However, a senior Biden administration official denied any attempt to conceal the incident, saying decisions were made to protect sensitive intelligence capabilities.
“To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official told NBC. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”
Intelligence officials had notified VanHerck they had been tracking a massive object that had transited across the Indo-Pacific and crossed into U.S. airspace over Alaska, NBC reported. VanHerck told Gen. Mark Milley during the Jan. 27 phone call he planned to send up aircraft sorties to fly alongside the object and attempt to gauge its characteristics.
Soon after that call, U.S. military jets used targeting pods to determine the object was a balloon the size of three school buses and equipped with a massive surveillance payload but no offensive capabilities, NBC reported.
VanHerck began peppering senior Department of Defense leaders, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Milley, with details of the object’s location, potential flight path, threat and likely intent.
Three days after the phone call, on Jan. 31, Biden’s aides informed him of the object. Biden requested options for military response, but his advisers told him that the thousands of pounds of debris falling 65,000 feet to earth in a possible debris field about 70 miles wide and 70 miles long would endanger Americans.
But a resident in Montana spotted the balloon, and NBC News informed the administration it planned to report that a Chinese spy balloon was crossing over the U.S. on Feb. 1, the outlet reported. Officials set up last minute briefings for Congress and the media to set the narrative.
The balloon stopped transmitting signals back to China after news of its transit broke, and U.S. officials believe China planned to self-destruct the balloon rather than bringing it back home to retrieve photos and other kinds of data stored on board.
Officials in the National Security Council and Defense Department previously said they had taken steps to protect sensitive installations from the spying capabilities of the Chinese balloon.
That was also the first time Austin spoke to VanHerck about the balloon, taking a 3 a.m. phone call from Asia.
“They weren’t paying attention,” a senior U.S. official later told the outlet.
Biden directed the military to shoot the balloon down as soon as safely possible. The military and NASA began devising ways to reduce the impact of a shoot-down, eventually downing the object six miles off the coast of South Carolina.
Nearly one year later, President Joe Biden’s promise to establish norms of behavior in the skies have not been realized, and VanHerck worries the U.S. still lacks the radar ability to monitor long-range aerial threats before they reach the U.S. homeland, NBC reported. Beijing continues to dispatch surveillance balloons across the world.
“It caused so many problems,” one senior administration official told the outlet.
The White House and National Security Council did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Michaela Burrows is a national security, defense & foreign affairs reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Far-left media notoriously make various historical and statistical errors that lead the public to a divisive conclusion on Israel-Gaza/Hamas wars.
The arguments are: (1) Unjust creation of Israel in 1948 had provoked conflicts in the Middle East; (2) Foreign aid to Israel is about one-half of Israel’s Gross National Product, and 85 percent of that aid come from the United States; (3) Israel’s response to Gaza’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023 is excessive and disproportionate.
Creation of modern-day Israel. The Arab-Israel conflict in the Middle East is centuries old. The conflict over land is particularly perplexing. Before the time of Christ, the Jewish people lived in their own kingdom; a Jewish-ruled state was located where Israel is today. In 586 B.C., however, the Babylonian Empire defeated Israel. As a result of it, many Jews were brought to Babylonian as slaves.
Returning to their homeland after years of captivity, the Jewish people constructed a new state, only to be incorporated into the Roman Empire. Then, in 70 A.D., the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people scattered throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. From this time until 1948, Jews had no state.
During the intervening centuries prior to 1948, Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic religion predominated in the territory where Israel had been. The Palestinians, like the Jews, claimed the territory as their own. Thus, at one time or another, Palestinian Arabs and Jews both owned the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. This leads to a question, “Whose land is it?” Unfortunately, there is no simple, universally accepted answer.
In 1948, the United Nations proposed that Palestine be partitioned, with Jewish state being created along the Mediterranean coast and Palestinian state inland. It was not a perfect solution, and few people, least of all the Arabs, were pleased with it. But, at least, it was a solution, and both superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were behind it.
U.S. foreign aid to Israel. U.S. foreign aid to other nations in need is not only a critical humanitarian effort but also is in the national interest of the United States.
During World War II (1939-45), the United States instituted a huge Lend-Lease Program (US$50 billion at that time) to 42 recipient countries, including 11 countries who fought Nazism. The origin of U.S. modern-day foreign assistance dates back to the Marshall Plan.After World War II (1946-50), the United States instituted the Marshal Plan, which granted US$13.2 billion (over US$130 billion in today’s dollars) to help restart the world’s economy and stabilize potential U.S. allies in Western Europe.
The U.S. President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Request included US$60.4 billion for the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Countries that received the most foreign aid from the U.S. in 2021 are:Israel ($3.3B), Jordan ($1.6B), Afghanistan ($1.4B), Ethiopia ($1.39B), Egypt ($1.29B), Yemen ($1.04B), South Sudan ($954M), and Congo (Kinshasa) ($825M).
The United States currently gives billions of dollars in security assistance to both Israel and Egypt to help maintain peace and stability in the Middle East. The United States considers Israel its most reliable ally in the Middle East and gives it more than $3.3 billion per year in foreign aid, and gives nearly $2 billion to Egypt as well. In September, 2023, Israel Gross National Product was reported at $126.855 billion, (U.S. dollars.) Israel total foreign aid from other countries (mostly USA, England, France) in security assistance is about $5 billion.
Israel-Gaza/Hamaswar. Far-left media and activists accuse Israel in excessive and disproportionate use of force against Gaza/Hamas in defending itself in today’s war initiated by Gaza. Historically, there have never being proportionate wars. None.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, and destroyed or damaged 19 U.S. Navy ships, including eight battleships.
In response, on Aug 6 and 9, 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 Japanese respectively, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
The allied bombing of Germany from 1942-1945 almost completely ruined several major cities (Dresden, Berlin, Cologne), in bombing essential infrastructure and, in the process, killing thousand civilians. Nearly 27 million Soviets were killed during the war, including some of my relatives in Kiev, compared to nearly 9 million civilian and military Germans death by allied forces during the war.
On the 9/11, 2001, the Arab terrorists cowardly attacked and killed 2,977 people and injured thousands at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. In response, the United States and its allies invaded two countries—Iraq and Afghanistan—and, in the process, disproportionately killed and wounded tens of thousands civilians and military personnel.
The causes of Oct. 7, 2023 heinous Gaza’s attack of Israel are deeply rooted in multi-faceted historic, religious and ethnic issues of global terrorism. Historically, terrorism always has been a complex problem for humanity and for peace-seeking nations. And only “united we win” again.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
Evidently, the ayes didn’t have it among the bankers of Bethel. The man trying to organize five non-managerial employees at the Wells Fargo Bank in the western Alaska hub community has withdrawn his intent to hold a vote to unionize.
Walker Sexton, a personal banker, had filed notice of a union election to join Communications Workers of America’s Wells Fargo Workers United cancelled their vote on Wednesday, the day that a Wells branch in Albuquerque, N.M., voted to create the first unionized branch of any major U.S. bank. Communications Workers of America is a division of UNI Global Union, an international union that is a staunch critic of Israel and that does not condemn Hamas terrorist operations.
The abandonment of the union vote effort left Rep. Mary Peltola holding the bag. The “worker power” effort had the full support of Peltola, who wrote last month, “Worker power doesn’t stop where the road system ends. I’m excited to see workers standing together in my hometown of Bethel.”
But not everyone in the bank seems to have agreed with Peltola.
“Although those of us at the Bethel branch have decided to withdraw our petition and hold on moving forward with a union election at this time, our values have not changed,” Sexton told reporters, not revealing the cause but saying they needed time to get on the “same page.”
Workers can apply for another vote after six months, right before the August primary election.
Some places in Alaska could use a little of that global warming right now.
The western Alaska community of Manokotak is under a declared state of emergency after a winter storm earlier this month cut the power.
The town of about 450 finally declared the emergency on Dec 21, and has asked the State of Alaska for assistance as more cold weather bears down on the region this weekend, where it is 14 degrees and blizzard conditions. Manokotak is about 25 miles from Dillingham.
About 300 people are affected by the power outage and burst water pipes that ensued.
Alaska Energy Authority declared an emergency on Dec. 20, and began the process of ensuring stable power in Manokotak, the city said.
The community’s utility is owned by Manokotak Natives Limited, which undertook a renovation project in June 1. The Native village corporation has asked for help from local contractors to troubleshoot and resolve power issues, but faces challenges due to depleting resources and unavailability of contractors and parts. The village corporation does not have the funds to do the repairs.
Manokotak Mayor Melvin P. Andrew declared a state of disaster emergency and has requested that Gov. Mike Dunleavy provide disaster assistance.
“The city specifically requests disaster relief to cover labor, parts, and equipment needed to make temporary and permanent repairs to the city’s power infrastructure, and to assist in restoring power, water, and sewer to all affected areas and facilities,” the declaration says.
Meanwhile, the city government has opened the school for emergency shelter as a winter storm bears down on Saturday.
“Check on your neighbors and lend a helping hand,” the city wrote on social media. “Contact emergency services immediately if there is EMERGENCY! TPOs and Health Aides been notified.”
The city leaders also asked for prayer: “In all this keep praying.”
The Alaska Democratic Party is exploring amending its platform to call for an end to all oil drilling and fracking in the state, according to documents obtained by The Daily Wire, via Must Read Alaska, which published supporting documents earlier this month that show the direction the party is heading with its climate platform.
The Daily Wire, which has millions of readers every day,wrote a news report about the Alaska State Democratic Party’s Climate Caucus, which is working on changes to the party platform in which the party may call for a complete end to oil development in Alaska. That platform will be voted on by delegates to the party’s state convention, which takes place in Juneau on May 18.
One member of the caucus, Tim Hinterberger, a professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, proposed that the party delete a statement from its current platform that pledges support for “responsible oil development performed in a manner that protects our fish, game, and wildlife resources.” He said in his notes that no oil is the only responsible path.
Rick Whitbeck, Alaska state director for Power the Future, was quoted in the story, calling the move “radical and irresponsible.”
“Alaska would quickly be bankrupt if our petroleum industry was shuttered. Nearly 20% of our private-sector workforce is paid – directly or indirectly – by oil and gas development revenues, so you’d see a mass exodus of people as well,” Whitbeck told The Daily Wire. “Philanthropy would dry up, our vibrant arts and culture programs would go unfunded and our infrastructure would crumble without revenues to keep them maintained.”
Joseph Caisse, the state assessor for Alaska, has announced his resignation.
Caissie’s exit from the State of Alaska coincides with a statewide movement to change Alaska’s statutes to protect the public from arbitrary and unjust property tax assessment valuations.
Recently, Caissie came under criticism for implying that members of the Board of Equalization should accept mass appraisal models, even if the methodologies produce assessments of 150% or 200%, which is contrary to the state statute’s mandate that assessments be based on full and true market value.
Caissie announced he will leave at the end of January to take a full-time position leading a 501(c)(4) that promotes something known as Georgism policy, which pushes taxation of land based on what the government thinks it should be developed for, rather than what the property owner decides to do with the land.
According to his parting letter to municipal assessors, Caissie will “be pushing for more jurisdictions to adopt this policy” in his new role.
Georgism, sometimes referred to as the single-tax movement, is a controversial theory of land value taxation. Its basic tenet is that government should be funded by taxes on the unimproved value of land, rather than by taxes on other forms of economic activity.
Caissie’s letter informing local assessors of his coming departure also hinted that he could not stay on as the state assessor: “If there was a way I could stay on as State Assessor while doing this, I absolutely would – this has been the best job I’ve ever had, and it’s been great learning from you all. I wouldn’t be shocked if this isn’t forever – there are some amazing things about this state that I’ve come to take for granted, and I’ve often joked that this place is like the island from LOST (sorry, season 3 spoiler coming up): when I’ve left in the past, I’ve felt a craving to come back. But it’s farewell for now.”
He also offered to coach his successor assessor, saying the job is “not an exempt position, the way I imagine most local assessor jobs are. You are insulated from the public – I’ve had to beg, unsuccessfully, to the higher-ups to let the State Assessor’s Office take on more heat from the local assessors. I’m sure if any of you take the position, having been a local assessor, you will also push for this, and I wish you luck. I’ll send out the job posting to the AAAO list when it goes up, and that should be shortly.”
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Friday to hop over the appeals court process and decide itself whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution relating to his efforts to delegitimize the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The court denied the request by Biden Administration special counsel Jack Smith that it bypass a lower appeals court. This may mean that the trial involving Trump will not be heard March 4, the week of Super Tuesday. Smith had argued, “Given the weighty and consequential character of the constitutional questions at stake, only this Court can provide the definitive and final resolution.” Whatever the appeals court decides, the matter will certainly be elevated to the high court.
Smith, on behalf of the Biden Justice Department, has several charges pending against Trump, who also faces numerous charges by Democrat state prosecutors in Georgia and New York. In addition, New York City and State have filed civil complaints against Trump and his business enterprises relating to taxes and property assessments.
State officials in Michigan are reportedly investigating an allegation made by the Detroit News, which said it’s reviewed a recording of a phone call between Trump and local election officials of Wayne County, during which Trump can be heard urging two local Michigan Republicans not to sign the Wayne County certification for the 2020 election.
