HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: New Harvard Sustainability Action Plan aims to unite climate justice with DEI.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
November 28, 2023
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HEY, JUST BECAUSE CONSUMERS DON’T WANT TO PAY FOR THEIR WORK: Top journalism school pushes taxpayer funding of reporters and media outlets.
Our government and media are in bed already. Let’s not make it worse.
DON SURBER: Democrats are splitting up: Bad policies on inflation, immigration and Israel catch up with the party.
Enjoy the chaos, but don’t get cocky. Plus:
The New York Times said, “Never before was consumer sentiment this consistently depressed when joblessness was so consistently low. And voters rate Mr. Biden badly on economic matters despite rapid growth and a strong job market. Young people are especially glum: A recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that 59% of voters under 30 rated the economy as poor.”
By never before, NYT means since Carter was president.
NYT blames TikTok.
#Journalism.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: George Floyd’s death led to a racial reckoning — where’s the antisemitism reckoning?
MONEY DOES TALK: Wary of Deportation, Elite Colleges Won’t Expel Anti-Semitic Foreign Students. “There are roughly one million foreign-born students enrolled at American colleges and universities. At elite institutions like MIT, nearly a quarter of all students hail from another country. Keeping these students on campus is that one reason college administrators have opted not to punish students making anti-Semitic comments, even as Jewish students say they feel unsafe. The Washington Free Beacon could not find a single incident of a student suspended over a protest, even in cases where police made arrests.”
It’s not only that these particular students pay full freight tuition, it’s that their governments send a steady stream. The Congress needs to do something about this purchase of influence.
STUPID CUSTOMERS: Money talks, and Disney doesn’t like what it says.
KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: The Biden Energy Slush Fund: A $400 billion pile of cash dwarfing most private green investment vehicles.
Mr. Shah isn’t a household name—unless your household includes lobbyists, financiers or crony capitalists. Those are the clients of Mr. Shah’s fief, the revived Energy Department Loan Programs Office. Last humiliated a decade ago, it’s part of that crack DOE bureaucracy that bet on such green tech ventures as Abound (the failed solar company), Fisker Automotive (the failed electric-car maker) and A123 (the failed battery maker). “This announcement today” is about “investing in the infrastructure and technology of the future,” crowed Vice President Biden in 2009, unveiling a $535 million DOE loan for a solar outfit he promised would power 500,000 homes and create 1,000 jobs. That outfit was Solyndra.
As if to prove that anything Mr. Biden could botch 10 years ago he can botch bigger and better now, the loan office is back, baby. Americans gasped at the audacity of Barack Obama’s $814 billion stimulus bill in 2009—and of gambling some $80 billion on clean energy—but that’s peanuts. The Biden spending rampage has bestowed on Mr. Shah, director of the loan department, a stunning $400 billion to hand out to green companies too risky for traditional lenders, or too politically powerful to turn down. According to a July Journal story, the “pile of cash is at least 20 times as big as most private green-energy funds.”
With that kind of funny money, Mr. Shah and DOE aren’t restricting themselves to small-time bets. The agency agreed to a $1 billion loan for Monolith, a company that promises to make hydrogen out of natural gas. Sunnova, a solar company, landed a $3 billion loan guarantee. Then there are all the real paupers. General Motors and LG scooped up $2.5 billion to build electric-vehicle battery plants. Ford landed a record $9.2 billion battery commitment. The Ford loan would be $3.3 billion larger than what the company borrowed during the Detroit meltdown of 2008-09.
The Obama-era loan office was tarred by accusations of cronyism; dollars had a way of going to the politically connected. Now Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, have sent a letter to Mr. Shah demanding answers about an October report in the Washington Free Beacon. It claimed a private trade association Mr. Shah founded as a “networking hub” in 2017 has “become a gatekeeper for companies seeking billions of dollars in financing from Shah’s office.”
The report explains that the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable didn’t even “have a website until three years ago,” though in the year after Mr. Shah left its revenue “more than tripled.” It says Cleantech “hosts sold-out receptions featuring Shah for its paying members.” In September Cleantech and the loans office “co-hosted an invitation-only conference” in D.C. “for companies looking for loans—and Cleantech Leaders was in charge of the invite list and ticket sales.”
Since 2021, when Mr. Shah was named loan-office head, “companies connected to the trade association have raked in cash from Shah’s office.”
Culture of corruption.
WELL, RUTH MARCUS: WaPo Poster Girl Ruth Marcus Wrote a 500-Page Book on Brett Kavanaugh. It Took One Sentence to Implode. “It’s not just the bias. It’s the incompetence. Too many journalists, even the ‘veterans,’ are simply bad at their jobs. In no other profession can such blunders result not in pink slips but promotions. I recently read Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover by Ruth Marcus, a writer at the Washington Post. The tome is nearly 500 pages. Yet in one sentence Marcus makes it clear that she has no business being a reporter.”
Plus: “The Washington Post, whatever reputation it might once have had, is no more. I trace this to July 2016, when the paper ran a piece by New York University professor Jay Rosen, who argued that Donald Trump made it necessary for journalists to change tactics.”
NATE SILVER: The McDonald’s theory of why everyone thinks the economy sucks.
I wonder how often Jeff Stein and Taylor Lorenz — the authors of a recent Washington Post story on customer perceptions about the economy — eat from chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell. I’m guessing it’s not very much. Because despite their attempt to frame consumer perceptions about high fast-food prices as “misinformation”, it’s in fact a category where there’s been a big increase in how much consumers are spending, and one that tells us a lot about why Americans are unhappy with the economy overall.
Well, Taylor Lorenz. But read the whole thing, which is quite interesting. Another excerpt:
Inflation — the price of a fixed basket of goods — increased a lot during this period: by 16 percent. But consumption increased by considerably more than that: by 25 percent. That’s right. From December 2020 through June 2023, Americans’ financial outlays increased by 25 percent. It’s not just that the fixed basket of goods was getting more expensive — they’re also putting more in their baskets.3
Now, it’s also true that consumption generally increases at a faster rate than inflation — as Americans get wealthier, they have more money to spend in real dollars. However, over the past few years, between higher prices for the same goods, clever strategies to get you to spend more, algorithmically-driven price discrimination, and pandemic-driven changes in spending habits — for instance, people who work from home are paying more for housing — Americans are really draining their batteries to zero. Here is the personal savings rate, which is now hovering at about 3 percent — about as low as it’s ever been save for a similar stretch just before the financial crisis.
I think people know more about how they’re doing than WaPo writers earning six figures.
November 27, 2023
ATTACKS ON JEWS ALL OVER AMERICA, and Merrick Garland is warning about right wing “extremists.”
MORE ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE IN THE BIDEN ERA: Two women arrested in NYC attack on Jewish victim who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters: cops.
AT AMAZON, Cyber Monday Deals.
OPEN THREAD: Make this Monday special.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China makes progress on Raptor-like engines for super heavy rocket.
HMM: Cutting Back on One Amino Acid Increases Lifespan of Middle-Aged Mice Up to 33%. “Isoleucine is one of three branched-chain amino acids we use to build proteins in our bodies. It is essential for our survival, but since our cells can’t produce it from scratch, we have to get it from sources like eggs, dairy, soy protein and meats. But there can always be too much of a good thing. Earlier research using data from a 2016-2017 survey of Wisconsin residents found dietary isoleucine levels were linked with metabolic health and that people with higher BMIs were generally consuming much greater quantities of the amino acid.”
Isoleucine is a popular bodybuilding supplement, and I’ve considered taking it. I think I’ll give it a pass.
THERE SHOULD BE TRIALS:
Senior US health official, tormented by conscience, reveals dangerous lab work behind Covid that Fauci covered up.https://t.co/xkdYIHPXjo
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) November 27, 2023
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: George Floyd’s death led to a racial reckoning — where’s the antisemitism reckoning?
MICHAEL WALSH: WTF? “Indeed, it might better said that the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s head and thinking you retain the ability to function is the test of a ninth-rate intelligence, and in fact explains many of the problems that currently plague this third act of American life. Here are three.”
REAL ESTATE: Everything is going swimmingly. “This is the uncomfortable equilibrium the market finds itself in today. Nobody’s selling because nobody’s buying. Nobody’s buying because nobody’s selling. Nobody can afford to sell. Nobody can afford to buy. Prices are high; mortgage costs are high. Rents are high, too, and there’s not a huge amount of rental inventory. Everyone’s stuck and paying more than they want to.”
SO READING TO YOUR KID IN THE WOMB ISN’T SO DUMB: Language heard while still in the womb found to impact brain development.
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: New York City’s Police Department Imploding.
SPEED TEST: 0 to 150 to 0.