Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism

Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism
 
Liberals sell innocence from America’s past. If bigotry is pronounced dead, the racket is over.
 
By Shelby Steele -- From Monday WSJ, Aug. 27, 2017

Is America racist? It used to be that racism meant the actual enforcement of bigotry—the routine implementation of racial inequality everywhere in public and private life. Racism was a tyranny and an oppression that dehumanized—animalized—the “other.”

It was a social malignancy, yet it carried the authority of natural law, as if God himself had dispassionately ordained it.

Today Americans know that active racism is no longer the greatest barrier to black and minority advancement. Since the 1960s other pathologies, even if originally generated by racism, have supplanted it. White racism did not shoot more than 4,000 people last year in Chicago. To the contrary, America for decades now—with much genuine remorse—has been recoiling from the practice of racism and has gained a firm intolerance for what it once indulged.

But Americans don’t really trust the truth of this. It sounds too self-exonerating. Talk of “structural” and “systemic” racism conditions people to think of it as inexorable, predestined. So even if bigotry and discrimination have lost much of their menace, Americans nevertheless yearn to know whether or not we are a racist people.

A staple on cable news these days is the “racial incident,” which stands as a referendum on this question. Today there is Charlottesville. Yesterday there were the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others. Don’t they reveal an irrepressible racism in American life? At the news conferences surrounding these events there are always the Al Sharpton clones, if not the man himself, ready to spin the tale of black tragedy and white bigotry.

Such people—and the American left generally—have a hunger for racism that is almost craven. The writer Walker Percy once wrote of the “sweetness at the horrid core of bad news.” It’s hard to witness the media’s oddly exhilarated reaction to, say, the death of Trayvon Martin without applying Percy’s insight. A black boy is dead. But not all is lost. It looks like racism.

What makes racism so sweet? Today it empowers. Racism was once just racism, a terrible bigotry that people nevertheless learned to live with, if not as a necessary evil then as an inevitable one. But the civil-rights movement, along with independence movements around the world, changed that. The ’60s recast racism in the national consciousness as an incontrovertible sin, the very worst of all social evils.

Suddenly America was in moral trouble. The open acknowledgment of the nation’s racist past had destroyed its moral authority, and affirming democratic principles and the rule of law was not a sufficient response. Only a strict moral accounting could restore legitimacy.

Thus, redemption—paying off the nation’s sins—became the moral imperative of a new political and cultural liberalism. President Lyndon Johnson turned redemption into a kind of activism: the Great Society, the War on Poverty, school busing, liberalized welfare policies, affirmative action, and so on.

This liberalism always projects moral idealisms (integration, social justice, diversity, inclusion, etc.) that have the ring of redemption. What is political correctness, if not essentially redemptive speech? Soon liberalism had become a cultural identity that offered Americans a way to think of themselves as decent people. To be liberal was to be good.

Here we see redemptive liberalism’s great ingenuity: It seized proprietorship over innocence itself. It took on the power to grant or deny moral legitimacy across society. Liberals were free of the past while conservatives longed to resurrect it, bigotry and all. What else could “Make America Great Again” mean? In this way redemptive liberalism reshaped the moral culture of the entire Western world with sweeping idealisms like “diversity,” which are as common today in Europe as in America.

So today there is sweetness at the news of racism because it sets off the hunt for innocence and power. Racism and bigotry generally are the great driving engines of modern American liberalism. Even a remote hint of racism can trigger a kind of moral entrepreneurism.

The “safe spaces” for minority students on university campuses are actually redemptive spaces for white students and administrators looking for innocence and empowerment. As minorities in these spaces languish in precious self-absorption, their white classmates, high on the idea of their own wonderful “tolerance,” whistle past the very segregated areas they are barred from.

America’s moral fall in the ’60s made innocence of the past an obsession. Thus liberalism invited people to internalize innocence, to become synonymous with it—even to fight for it as they would for an ideology. But to be innocent there must be an evil from which to be free. The liberal identity must have racism, lest it lose innocence and the power it conveys.

The great problem for conservatives is that they lack the moral glibness to compete with liberalism’s “innocence.” But today there are signs of what I have called race fatigue. People are becoming openly cynical toward the left’s moral muscling with racism. Add to this liberalism’s monumental failure to come even close to realizing any of its beautiful idealisms, and the makings of a new conservative mandate become clearer. As idealism was the left’s political edge, shouldn’t realism now be the right’s? Reality as the informing vision—and no more wrestling with innocence.

Mr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is author of “Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country” (Basic Books, 2015).

Opinion | The Democrats Are in Trouble 

The Democrats Are in Trouble

The party’s riskiest bet is now its likeliest.

By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

• Feb. 21, 2020

Michael Bloomberg leaving the stage after the Democratic debate in Las Vegas.Credit...Mike Blake/Reuters

I’ve been enthusiastic about Mike Bloomberg’s race for president from its inception, partly on the theory that he was best positioned to rescue and represent the Democratic Party’s moderate wing. After Wednesday night’s debate debacle in Las Vegas, I’m starting to fear his candidacy might inadvertently destroy that wing — while wrecking the party’s chances in November.

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It was a debacle in three parts.

The first part was Bloomberg’s performance, the only virtue of which was its real-time reminder of all the things money can’t buy. Everything about it was bad.

Bloomberg was ill-advised to go onstage. He was ill-prepared to be on it. He showed ill grace toward the people with whom he had signed nondisclosure agreements. He showed ill will toward Bernie Sanders for the sin of owning homes whose aggregate value probably doesn’t exceed that of a maid’s room in a Bloomberg mansion. His suggestion that Sanders’s political program amounted to communism turned critique into parody. His apologies for stop-and-frisk made him seem like he was running away from his record, not on it.

Bloomberg will now try to recover with another huge ad spend, and hopefully a better debate performance in South Carolina next week. But he will do so having lost the aura of formidability that, until Wednesday, had been his chief selling point. He entered the fray looking big but now seems all too small. The “Little Mike” moniker that Donald Trump has given him will stick.

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The second part is the Bloomberg effect on Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, his fellow moderates in the field. Instead of bolstering them, he is competing with them. Instead of blowing wind in their sails, he’s piling dead weight on their decks.

The moderates didn’t help themselves with intramural squabbles about Klobuchar forgetting the name of Mexico’s president (though I found myself wishing the senator could have explained to Mayor Pete that she had merely experienced a senior moment — something that will happen to him, too, when he finally grows up).

Nor did their own attacks on Bloomberg do them much good, beyond lending an assist to Elizabeth Warren’s surgical act of political evisceration. The Democratic contest is essentially one between two camps — the camp of infighters known as moderates, and the camp of out-fighters known as progressives. Wednesday’s debate served as another reminder of why the moderates aren’t winning.

Which brings me to the third part of the debacle: Wednesday’s debate left Sanders unscathed. Nothing and nobody touched him. The Democratic Party’s riskiest bet is now its likeliest.

I say this as someone who wrote, a little earlier than most, that Sanders had the best chance of winning the nomination, and that he has just as serious a shot at winning the presidency as Donald Trump did four years earlier.

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But that shouldn’t obscure the reality that Trump’s victory was an electoral fluke against an overconfident opponent who didn’t have the many advantages of presidential incumbency. And it mustn’t diminish the fact that Sanders’s candidacy would represent a large bet — titanic, one might say — on the willingness of the American public to embrace drastic economic and social change in an era of relative peace and prosperity.

So why would Democrats want to take that chance?

Maybe it’s because they have overlearned the lessons of the 2016 election: that nominating the centrist and responsible candidate served them poorly. Or maybe it’s because they’ve reasoned that “electability,” being an insufficient requirement for the nomination, is an unnecessary one as well. Or maybe they feel that, when their hearts scream Yes, it’s best to ignore the brain’s screams of No.

Alternatively — a darker thought — maybe Democrats aren’t being entirely honest with themselves when they claim their first priority is to end Trump’s presidency as soon as possible. There’s a certain self-righteous pleasure in hating Trump, as well as an entire cottage industry devoted to indulging that hatred, which would mostly vanish the moment he left office.

What’s more, the far-left that Sanders represents has always been at least as interested in wielding ideological power within the institutions that matter most to it — academia, journalism, labor unions, the Democratic Party — as it has been in wielding political power beyond those institutions. If Sanders were to win the nomination and lose the election, many of his supporters might call the result a wash, even a modest victory. The struggle always continues.

For the rest of us — that is, those of us who want Trump and Trumpism defeated and replaced by something considerably and sustainably better — the prospect of a Sanders candidacy is doubly depressing. He is the candidate Trump most wants to run against. And he would be the president least likely to govern well.

This week, as Mike Bloomberg nearly achieved onstage spontaneous combustion, that prospect came appreciably nearer. To call this bad for the Democrats is an understatement. It’s a fiasco-in-the-making for the country, too.

Rep. McCarthy: Baby That Survives Abortion is ‘Human Being,’ Letting Him Die is ‘Murder’

Rep. McCarthy: Baby That Survives Abortion is ‘Human Being,’ Letting Him Die is ‘Murder’

By Bruce Truax | February 27, 2020 | 11:21am EST

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) (Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) -- When asked whether a fetus that survives an abortion is a human being, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, "yes," and added that any policy that would just leave that child to die is "murder."
At a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday, CNSNews.com asked McCarthy, “The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was recently defeated, yesterday. Do you believe that a fetus that survives an abortion is a human being?”

McCarthy said, “Yes, I do. I think almost everybody in the world would believe that too.”
“It's a heart that beats, it's a lung that breathes,” said McCarthy, “and to me, any definition of that would be murder."

On Tuesday, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was defeated in the Senate. If it had become a law it would have required doctors to give full medical care to babies that survive an abortion.
The bill did not meet the three-fifths majority needed to proceed in the legislative process. Fifty-three Republicans and three Democrats voted for the bill while 40 Democrats and one independent voted against it.

(Getty Images)

Recently, Democrats have said that they need to go on “offense" in the abortion debate.
Senator Kristine Gillenbrand (D-N.Y.) in a column for Medium.com when she was still in the presidential race, wrote,  “I’m laying out a plan to truly go on offense to guarantee women’s civil rights. Here are the steps I’d take as president to ensure that everyone in America has access to safe, legal abortion: I will codify Roe vs. Wade into law … In the most sweeping step … I will guarantee access to reproductive healthcare — including abortion — no matter what state you live in."
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) did not vote on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act on Tuesday. However, they did vote against similar legislation in February 2019.

(Getty Images)

On her campaign website, Sen. Warren explains in detail her support for abortion without restrictions.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) said he would support post-birth abortion. During a 2019 interview with WTOP, Northam said,  “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, citing data from the CDC and other government sources, "Between the years 2003-2014, the CDC analyzed death certificates from those states that report this information and found that at least 143 babies were born alive and subsequently died (the cause was not provided) after an attempted abortion.

(Getty Images)

"This 1981 article refers to 'liveborn abortion babies' and concludes that they are 'an every day occurrence' and because they are 'embarrassing' they are hushed up and never reported.
"The state of Arizona reported 10 babies born alive in just 5 months in 2017.
"Canada reports 491 babies were born alive during an abortion between 2000-2009.
"In 2006, a 23-week-old baby boy was born alive at A Gyn Diagnostic Center in Hialeah, Florida. When he began breathing and moving, abortion clinic owner Belkis Gonzalez reportedly cut the umbilical cord and zipped him into a biohazard bag, still alive, after which he died."

Replacing Buses with Ridesharing Would be a ‘Win’ for Everyone

Replacing Buses with Ridesharing Would be a ‘Win’ for Everyone

Janson Quinlan Prieb

|

Posted: Feb 28, 2020 12:01 AM

Source: AP Photo/J. David Ake

In a triumphant moment, New York City announced it would include ridesharing services in its metro budget. Realizing that many residents live in areas with inadequate late night and early morning metro services, the Metro Transportation Authority plans to subsidize ridesharing as early as June to help bridge the gap between people’s bus stop and home.

While this is a good start, if cities wanted to improve their public transit, they would replace their bus systems in favor of ridesharing.

Earlier this month, New York City Chief Innovation Officer, Mark Dowd, announced the city is looking to partner with transportation network companies to help ‘fill the gap’ with some of the cities most unreached areas. As millions of New Yorkers currently work outside the typical 9-5 work schedule, “the program will provide subsidized e-hail rides to outer-borough residents living more than half a mile from the nearest subway station, whose off-hour commutes force them to contend with infrequent subway and bus service,” according to Dowd.

Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, notes that many residents are “taking two buses in many cases, and sometimes these connections take upwards of half an hour late at night.” Indeed, with one of the longest commutes in the country, the average New Yorker can expect to spend 58 minutes traveling each day. Meanwhile, ridesharing services would reduce these travel times helping residents get home sooner. 

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Yet, despite these apparent benefits, some are worried that the funding isn’t going towards public transit. New York City Comptroller, Scott Stringer, contends that improving the rail system would be a better use of funds. However, people like Stringer should embrace the change as cities across the U.S. have already seen great success in subsidized ridesharing.

In Dallas, the city was able to save $10 per ride when it contracted a portion of its coverage to Uber. Similarly, in Ontario, Canada, city officials scrapped the idea to implement a bus route that would’ve cost $26 per trip when they found that Uber would only charge $7 per rider. And in 2015, after Denver started to subsidize Uber rides to the airport, David Genova, chief executive of the Regional Transportation District at Denver’s Union Station boasted that his “colleagues around the country are very, very interested in this [project].”

With cheaper alternatives in the market, it should come as no surprise that the industry has skyrocketed in popularity. With more affordable fares and better service, in 2017, New York City Ubers suppressed taxis in daily ridership. Meanwhile, the future for public transit looks grim, as 200 million fewer rides were taken in 2019 than in 2008.

Instead of trying to revitalize a declining industry, like Stringer proposes, or only subsidizing ridesharing to “fill in the gaps,” cities should allow ridesharing to replace public buses entirely. Not only would this provide a great benefit to many of the city’s residents, but it would also substantially free up some funds as well. A National Bureau Economic of Research paper found that privatizing every bus route in the nation would save around $6 billion in tax dollars along while simulating an extra $500 million in economic activity.

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And while some might be skeptical about replacing the bus with ridesharing, one city has shown it can work. Already in Arlington, Texas, the city has had great success after it decided to scrap its bus system in favor of the rideshare company, Via, which has given residents the ability to ride for only $3.

As cities learn to integrate ridesharing in their budgets, they should go a step further and fully replace public buses with contracting ridesharing services. Not only will this provide a better and cheaper service to its residents, but cities will be able to cut costs on their public transit budget. As New York City has shown, ridesharing is here to stay. Now it’s up to lawmakers to give both commuters and cities a ‘win’ by fully embracing a free-market solution.

A Supreme Court Case That Could Affect the 2020 Election

A Supreme Court Case That Could Affect the 2020 Election

Rob Natelson

February 27, 2020 Updated: February 27, 2020

 

 

We don’t elect our president directly. The president is elected about six weeks after the November popular vote by presidential electors chosen by the people.
Those seeking to be presidential electors generally announce to the voters which candidates they will support for president and vice president. Nearly all electors honor their pledges. Occasionally, however, they change their minds and vote for someone to whom they are not pledged.
Some states have statutes punishing or purporting to remove any elector who does change his or her mind. This spring, the Supreme Court will decide two cases challenging laws of that kind, one adopted in Washington State and one in Colorado.
The cases arose this way: After the November 2016 popular vote, some Democratic electors became convinced that they should not support a candidate as flawed as Hillary Clinton. Some Republican electors became concerned about the qualities of Donald Trump. They began to explore other possibilities.
Eventually, several Washington State Democratic electors announced they would vote for Colin Powell. Three Colorado Democratic electors indicated they would vote for Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. In Texas, two Republican electors declined to vote for Donald Trump.

The Washington State dissenters cast their ballots for Gen. Powell, but the state fined them $,1000 each for doing so. Colorado officials went further: They browbeat two of the dissenters into voting for Clinton. When the other dissenter tried to vote for Kasich, they physically removed him and replaced him with someone willing to do as he was told.
The Washington and Colorado electors then challenged the state laws that prevented them from exercising their best judgment. The Washington Supreme Court upheld its state’s law, but a federal court of appeals voided the Colorado measure. The two cases were consolidated in the U.S. Supreme Court.
After a first glance, you might say, “Why isn’t it constitutional for a state to hold an elector to his pledge? After all, voters elected him based on that pledge!”
But when you look below the surface, other issues come into focus.

What the Constitution Says

The Constitution’s framers knew that our presidential election system had to operate well or the republic would not survive. A bad system could produce civil war, dictatorship, mob rule, or (as in the case of hereditary monarchy) gross incompetence.
So, in crafting our presidential election procedure, the framers considered a long list of factors. (Despite what you hear these days, slavery wasn’t a major item on the list.)
For example, the framers believed that a president should have wide popular support. But they had to avoid an election procedure that might produce mob selection of dictators or demagogues.
They also sought to avoid excessive regionalism—choice of the president by a few big states or by one or two areas of the country. At best, excessive regionalism would make the country more difficult to govern. At worst, it would produce civil war and perhaps a permanent break-up in the Union.
Similarly, the framers knew that the insights of congressional and state leaders entitled them to some voice in the procedure, but that they should not control it.
There were other factors as well, and the Constitution’s presidential election procedure was the product of careful balancing of all of them.
But in one respect, the system has not operated as intended: The best judgment of presidential electors has been largely abolished by state laws that convert them into mere marionettes.
There’s no serious doubt that when our Founders provided for “electors” to vote by “ballot” they meant electors who exercised their best judgment and voted by secret ballot.
Defenders of puppet-elector laws usually admit this, but they have some counter-arguments. First, they point out that the Constitution gives the states power to appoint presidential electors. They argue that the power to appoint includes the power to control. Second, they claim that the 12th Amendment, adopted in 1804, changed the rule that electors could exercise discretion.
However, the first argument disregards how the Constitution actually works. Under the Constitution, a mere power to appoint does not create a power to control unless the document says so. It does say so regarding executive branch officers: One part of the document allows the president to appoint those officers and other parts empower the president to control them. But the rule is otherwise for federal judges: The president appoints them, but retains no authority to control them.
The latter situation also applies to electors: The Constitution empowers the states to appoint them, but doesn’t grant any power of control.
As for the claim that the 12th Amendment changed elector discretion: It’s just not true. The amendment altered some things, but it left the Constitution’s language governing elector discretion essentially unchanged. Moreover, the debates in Congress over the 12th Amendment show that the authors of the amendment still expected electors to exercise their best judgment through secret ballots—even though political parties had begun to dominate the popular vote.
Advocates of puppet-election laws fail to understand that electoral discretion is part of ensuring that the presidential election system works correctly.
Of course, in the overwhelming majority of cases, presidential electors are minor figures who merely vote according to their pledges. And in most elections this works fine. But allowing electors to exercise discretion would encourage leading statesmen to seek the job. Then, when problems do arise, the electors would have the skills needed to solve them.
Following are examples of situations in which elector discretion is important:

• The winning presidential candidate may die or become incapacitated shortly after the November vote. The vice presidential winner may not be the best replacement. (As every political observer knows, presidential nominees often choose running mates of dubious qualifications.) In this case, experienced electors can choose intelligently among the available options.
• Damaging information about the nominal winner may arise after much or all of the electorate has voted. This is a growing risk, both because new information is always coming to light and because state laws are allowing more and more people to vote early. Presidential electors, particularly if they are leaders in their respective states, are likely to learn of damaging information before the general public does, and they can move more quickly to process and apply it.
• In an election with several major candidates, the nominal “winner” may receive only a tiny plurality of the popular vote. For example, in the three-candidate 2006 presidential election in Mexico, nearly two-thirds of Mexican voters opposed the plurality “winner.” In such circumstances, the power of electors to consider other options may prevent subversion of the popular will, widespread civil disturbance, or even civil war.
• Our current system awards the presidential election to the popular vote winner about 92 percent of the time. And the most the electoral winner has fallen below the popular vote winner is only 2.8 percent (Rutherford Hayes in 1876). Suppose, however, a candidate wins a majority of the electoral vote while losing the popular vote total by 10 or 15 percent? In that situation, electors pledged to the electoral vote winner may consider either (1) casting their ballots for the popular vote winner or (2) seeking a compromise candidate.

The Constitution’s presidential election system represents an ingenious and effective response to many different issues. The Supreme Court should, and probably will, void state laws that attempt to alter it.
Rob Natelson is a senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the pro-freedom think tank Independence Institute in Denver. He was a law professor for 25 years and is the author of “The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant” (3rd ed., 2014).

Median household income is at an all-time high. Are you happy yet?

Median household income is at an all-time high. Are you happy yet?

Economist Mark J. Perry talks about rising incomes, flattening inequality, low unemployment, and why none of it seems to make us feel better.

October 3, 2018

Here’s some really good news: Median household income in the United States is at a record-high, inflation-adjusted $61,372. When you factor in the fact that today’s households contain fewer people, the news is even better. In 1975, for instance, average income per person per household was just $19,500 in 2017 dollars. Now it’s $34,000.
And get a load of this: There’s no evidence that income inequality has grown since the 1990s, or that the ability to move up and down the income ladder has shrunk in that time period. More people than ever live in households pulling down $100,000 (again, adjusted for inflation) than ever. Fewer households make less than $35,000 (adjusted for inflation).
All of this comes courtesy of the U.S. Census, as compiled and analyzed by economist Mark J. Perry. Perry works at the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Michigan (Flint), and he runs the blog Carpe Diem.

Do you feel happy yet? On today’s Reason Podcast, I talk with Perry both about his findings and why we don’t feel richer, happier, or more secure than we do. Perry isn’t a Trump booster by any means, but he suggests that some of the president’s policies—particularly the reductions in certain taxes and regulations—are helping to keep an economic expansion that started under Barack Obama moving along. At the same time, he worries about accumulating debt and trade wars that can raise prices and introduce wild uncertainty into the economy. When investors “see that there’s uncertainty about policy,” he says, “that starts to distort decision making and capital spending.”
Perry suggests one reason we don’t feel more satisfied with economic improvements is that they are a feature and not a bug of a free enterprise system. “The benefits of a market economy and the march of progress are so constant and so gradual that either we don’t appreciate it or don’t notice it,” he says. “So we have an under-appreciation of how much better things get all the time. If it happened all at once, we’d probably just be amazed.”

Census data released today show continued gains for middle-class Americans and little evidence of rising income inequality
 

Census data released today show continued gains for middle-class Americans and little evidence of rising income inequality

September 12, 2018

The Census Bureau released its annual report today on “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2017” with lots of new, updated data on household and family incomes, and household demographics through 2017. Below are four charts with commentary based on the new Census data on household income through 2017. Shortly I’ll post my annual analysis “Explaining US income inequality by household demographics,” here’s my post from a year ago for 2016 data.

1. Median and Average Household Income, and Average Household Size. The chart above shows: a) average annual household income in 2017 dollars (light blue line), b) median household income in 2017 dollars (dark blue line), and c) average household size (brown line), all from 1975 to 2017.
Median household income last year of $61,372 was an increase of 1.8% from 2016 and brought median income for US households to the highest level ever, above the previous record level last year of $60,309. The income gain last year was the fifth consecutive annual increase in real median household income starting in 2013, following five consecutive declines from 2008 to 2012 due to the effects of the Great Recession. The last period of four consecutive gains in annual median household income was during the late 1990s at the end of the longest economic expansion in US history (120 months from March 1991 to March 2001). Although it doesn’t get as much attention as median income because it’s influenced by outliers on the high-end, average household income also increased to a new record level last year of $86,220, which was an increase of 1.5% from 2016 and the seventh consecutive annual increase starting in 2011.
Also notable is the fact that average size of US households has been falling steadily for the last 70 years (or more) and was 2.54 persons in 2017, up slightly from 2.53 persons in 2016, a record low. The 2.54 average members per household last year was down by 0.50 persons from the 2.94 average in 1975 and down by more than one full person since the 3.56 average persons per household in 1947 (not shown above).
Income adjusted for household size is calculated and presented below, but it should be obvious that a comparison of median household incomes over time is distorted because the average size of US households has been declining. It’s also important to note that the typical US household in 2017 had an annual income of $61,372, which is $12,464 more (in 2017 dollars) than the typical household in 1975 ($48,908) – that’s more than $1,000 in additional inflation-adjusted income every month for the typical household today compared to 42 years ago. And when you consider that the cost of most manufactured goods and many services including clothing, footwear, appliances, electronics, TVs, household furnishings, sporting goods, airline travel, telephone service, computers and automobiles have become cheaper and more affordable over time (relative to increases in overall consumer prices and incomes), along with the increased availability of services that are now almost free (GPS, music, cameras, Craigslist listings, Wikipedia information, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.), that $12,000 annual increase in real household income since 1975 translates into a much higher standard of living for the average American today compared to a generation ago.

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2. Average and Median Income per Household Member. The chart above displays average and median household income adjusted for household size. Both the average and median income per person in the US reached all-time highs in 2017 of nearly $34,000 (in 2017 dollars) for average income per person, and $24,160 for median income per household member last year. Compared to 1975, the average household income per US household member has increased by 74% from $19,500 to $34,000, while the median household income per person has increased by 45% from $16,600 to $24,160. Without adjusting for household size, average household income increased by only 50% since 1975 (vs. 74% adjusted for average household size) and median income increased only 25% (vs. 45%), demonstrating the importance of adjusting for changes in household size when comparing median household incomes over time.

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3. Married 2-Earner Households. The chart above shows annual median income from 1949 to 2017 for families headed by married couples with both spouses working. Income for a typical family in this group reached an all-time high last year of $111,000, and the median family income for this group of Americans has been above $100,000 (in 2017 dollars) for the last five years. Since 1949, the real inflation-adjusted median income for married couples with two earners has more than tripled (from $34,800) and since 1963 has more than doubled (from $54,700).

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4. What Rising Income Inequality? We hear all the time about “rising income inequality” in America (there are more than 100,000 Google search results for that term), about “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” the “stagnant or disappearing middle class,” all of the recent income gains going to the rich,” the lack of income mobility and other narratives of pessimism. In a December 2013 speech, President Obama described rising income inequality as the “defining challenge of our time” and promised that for the rest of his presidency, he and his administration would focus all of their efforts to stop the increase in income inequality. And yet, the data in today’s Census Bureau tell a much different story.
a. The top chart above shows the shares of total income earned by the top 20% and top 5% of US households from 1993 to 2017. In 1993, 48.9% of total income went to the top quintile of US households, and 24 years later in 2017, the share of income going to the top 20% of households has increased to only 51.5%. Likewise, in 1993 the share of total income going to the top 5% of US households was 21.0%, and that share had increased to only 22.3% last year. Interestingly, the 22.3% share of income earned by the top 5% of households last year was lower than the share that group earned in 2016 (22.6%) and 2001 (22.4%), and the same as in 2006, 2011 and 2012. Over the last two decades, the income shares of the top 20% and top 5% have been remarkably stable at about 49-51.5%  and 21-22.6% respectively, and there has been no statistical evidence of significant “rising income inequality” according to these measures.
b. The bottom chart above shows the annual Gini index of income inequality (a statistical measure of income dispersion that quantifies income inequality on a range from 0.0 for complete equality to 1.0 for complete inequality) for US households from 1993 to 2017. Like the first two measures above, the Gini index measure of income dispersion reveals that there has been no significant trend of “rising income inequality” for US household incomes over the last quarter century. The Gini index in 1993 was 0.454 and last year it was 0.482, the same as in 2013, and this statistical measure of income inequality has also shown remarkable stability for the last several decades in a narrow range between 0.46 and 0.48.
Whether we look at Census Bureau data on the share of total income going to the top fifth and top 5% of American households, or Census data on Gini coefficients for US household income, there is very little statistical support for the commonly held view by the public, academia, and the mainstream media that income inequality has been rising in recent years or decades. A more accurate description of income inequality over the last several decades in the US would be to say that it has been remarkably stable for the last 25 years starting about 1993.
So why are we having a national debate about solutions to the “non-problem” of rising income inequality that doesn’t even exist according to several standard Census Bureau measures? Maybe it’s another example of what H.L. Mencken called an “imaginary hobgoblin”:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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5. The Disappearing Middle Class? The chart above represents what might be one of the most important findings in the new Census data and confirms a trend I’ve highlighted many times before. Yes, the “middle-class is disappearing” as we hear all the time, but it’s because middle-income households in the US are gradually moving up to higher income groups, and not down into lower-income groups. In 1967, only 9% of US households (only 1 in 11) earned $100,000 or more (in 2017 dollars). Last year, more than 1 in 4 US households (29.2%) were in that high-income category, a new record high. In other words, over the last half-century, the share of US households earning incomes of $100,000 or more (in 2017 dollars) has more than tripled! At the same time, the share of middle-income households earning $35,000 to $100,000 (in 2017 dollars) has decreased over time, from more than half of US households in 1967 (53.8%) to less than half (only 41.3%) in 2017. Likewise, the share of low-income households earning $35,000 or less (in 2017 dollars) has decreased from more than one-third of households in 1967 (37.2%) to below one-third of US households last year (29.5%), a near-record low.
Bottom Line: Here are some of the key takeaways from the new Census report on US incomes through 2017:

• The 1.8% gain in real median US household income last year brought median income to more than $61,000, the highest level ever recorded.
• The income gain in 2017 was the fifth annual increase and the first period of five consecutive increases in median household income since the late 1990s.
• Compared to 1975, the typical US household today has $12,464 more annual income (in 2017 dollars) or more than $1,000 more per month in real, inflation-adjusted dollars to spend on goods and services, many of which have become much more affordable today than in the 1970s (or weren’t even available then).
• Adjusted for household size, which has been falling over time, real median household income per household member last year of $24,160 (in 2017 dollars) was the highest in history.
• Real median income for married couples with both spouses working reached a new all-time record high last year of $111,000 and has more than doubled from $54,700 in 1963.
• By three different measures — income shares of the top 5% and 20% and the Gini coefficient — there is no evidence of a significant rise in income inequality over the last 25 years; all three measures have been remarkably flat for more than two decades.
• The share of US households with incomes of $100,000 or more (in 2017 dollars) reached a new record high of 29.2% last year, which is more than triple the share of households in 1967 with that level of income. At the same time, the share of US low-income households (real incomes of $35,000 or below) fell to a near-record low of 29.5%.
• America’s middle-class is disappearing but into higher, not lower, income categories over time.

Walter Williams: America Isn't a Democracy. In Fact, the Founders Feared Democracy 

Walter Williams: America Isn't a Democracy. In Fact, the Founders Feared Democracy

By Walter E. Williams | January 28, 2020 | 11:12am EST

An American flag waves. (Photo credit: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

During President Donald J. Trump's impeachment trial, we'll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we've become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation's two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution's Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."
John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said, "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe." Contrast the framers' vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.
Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual."


  At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that "in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: "We are now forming a republican government. (Liberty) is found not in "the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. ... If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy."
John Adams reminded us: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
Thomas Paine said, "A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is."
The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can't run roughshod over small, less-populated states.
Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government "of the people." Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.
It's Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers' distrust is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress "shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied." When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we know that we're in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God couldn't be trusted.

Gov. Polis appoints director to Office of Just Transition 

Gov. Polis appoints director to Office of Just Transition

News | February 21, 2020

Joshua Carney

jcarney@craigdailypress.com

Wade Buchanan, who currently serves as Gov. Jared Polis’ director of policy and research, will leave that job at the end of February to head the Office of Just Transition, which will be part of the state Department of Labor and Employment, according to a press release from the governor’s office.

The Office of Just Transition was created by a law passed by the state Legislature last year. The creation of the office came shortly after lawmakers passed bills addressing climate and energy generation in the state, as Gov. Polis launched a push for the state to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2040.
“As we work toward achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2040, we need to make sure that Coloradans in coal-dependent communities have the tools they need to thrive in today and tomorrow’s economy. Wade is just the right person to lead the office’s efforts as our economy makes this transition,” Polis said in the press release.
“Wade has years of experience advocating for practical and sensible energy and natural resource policy,” Executive Director of the Department of Labor and Employment Joe Barela said in the press release. “His ability to build coalitions, as well as his wealth of knowledge and significant leadership experience, will serve the state well as we all work together to ensure we create an economy that elevates all Coloradans.”
Buchanan had previously served as senior adviser on aging in the administration of former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, and earlier in his career was acting executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and director of the Colorado Office of Energy Conservation for former governor Roy Romer. Buchanan also previously served as president of the Bell Policy Center, according to the press release.

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association announced in mid-January that it will close all of its coal-fired power plants and mines in New Mexico and Colorado by 2030. The power provider serves nearly 20 rural electric cooperatives. Tri-State announced the closure of its Escalante Power Plant in Prewitt, New Mexico, by the end of 2020. It plans to close Craig Station Units 2 and 3, and the Colowyo Mine in Northwest Colorado by 2030.
That announcement also affected Trapper Mine in Moffat County, which provides coal for Unit 1 at Craig Station. With the impending closure of the plant, Trapper Mine will close between 2026 and 2030, according to President and General Manager Michael Morriss.
Due to the future jobs lost from the closures, the Office of Just Transition created an advisory committee in the hopes a developing a just transition plan by the end of 2020.
According to the press release, the bill creating the office requires that plan to include information and recommendations concerning proposed benefits for former coal workers to help them support themselves and their families, including through access to education and training leading to high-quality jobs, while also addressing strategies to help affected communities, and grants and other funding to help them create more diversified economies.
The Colorado Department of Labor is holding a Just Transition from Coal Advisory Committee Community Open House in Craig on Wednesday, March 4 from 6-8 p.m. at CNCC.
During the meeting, the Just Transition Advisory Committee wants to hear and learn from community members on how the state can best support Craig, Moffat County, and surrounding areas through an energy transition. Attendees will also be introduced to the newly formed Just Transition Office within the CO Dept of Labor & Employment and learn more about their charge and goals in assisting communities facing energy transitions.
For more information on the Just Transition Office and Advisory Committee, please visit online at: JustTransition.cdle.co.

Global Warming: Media Ignore Sharp Drop In Global Temperatures Over Past Two Years

Global Warming: Media Ignore Sharp Drop In Global Temperatures Over Past Two Years

Don't Tell Anyone, But We Just Had Two Years Of Record-Breaking Global Cooling

• 04:33 PM ET 05/16/2018

Inconvenient Science: NASA data show that global temperatures dropped sharply over the past two years. Not that you'd know it, since that wasn't deemed news. Does that make NASA a global warming denier?

Writing in Real Clear Markets, Aaron Brown looked at the official NASA global temperature data and noticed something surprising. From February 2016 to February 2018, "global average temperatures dropped by 0.56 degrees Celsius." That, he notes, is the biggest two-year drop in the past century.
"The 2016-2018 Big Chill," he writes, "was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average."
Isn't this just the sort of man-bites-dog story that the mainstream media always says is newsworthy?
In this case, it didn't warrant any news coverage.
In fact, in the three weeks since Real Clear Markets ran Brown's story, no other news outlet picked up on it. They did, however, find time to report on such things as tourism's impact on climate change, how global warming will generate more hurricanes this year, and threaten fish habitats, and make islands uninhabitable. They wrote about a UN official saying that "our window of time for addressing climate change is closing very quickly."
Reporters even found time to cover a group that says they want to carve President Trump's face into a glacier to prove climate change "is happening."
In other words, the mainstream news covered stories that repeated what climate change advocates have been saying ad nauseam for decades.

That's not to say that a two-year stretch of cooling means that global warming is a hoax. Two years out of hundreds or thousands doesn't necessarily mean anything. And there could be a reasonable explanation. But the drop in temperatures at least merits a "Hey, what's going on here?" story.
What's more, journalists are perfectly willing to jump on any individual weather anomaly — or even a picture of a starving polar bear — as proof of global warming. (We haven't seen any stories pinning Hawaii's recent volcanic activity on global warming yet, but won't be surprised if someone tries to make the connection.)
We've noted this refusal to cover inconvenient scientific findings many times in this space over the years.

Hiding The Evidence

There was the study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate showing that climate models exaggerate global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45%. It was ignored.
Then there was the study in the journal Nature Geoscience that found that climate models were faulty, and that, as one of the authors put it, "We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models."
Nor did the press see fit to report on findings from the University of Alabama-Huntsville showing that the Earth's atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed.
How about the fact that the U.S. has cut CO2 emissions over the past 13 years faster than any other industrialized nation? Or that polar bear populations are increasing? Or that we haven't seen any increase in violent weather in decades?
Crickets.
Reporters no doubt worry that covering such findings will only embolden "deniers" and undermine support for immediate, drastic action.
But if fears of catastrophic climate change are warranted — which we seriously doubt — ignoring things like the rapid cooling in the past two years carries an even bigger risk.
Suppose, Brown writes, the two-year cooling trend continues. "At some point the news will leak out that all global warming since 1980 has been wiped out in two and a half years, and that record-setting events went unreported."
He goes on: "Some people could go from uncritical acceptance of steadily rising temperatures to uncritical refusal to accept any warming at all."
Brown is right. News outlets should decide what gets covered based on its news value, not on whether it pushes an agenda. Otherwise, they're doing the public a disservice and putting their own already shaky credibility at greater risk.

EDITORIAL: Private homeownership now on the progressive hit list

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a Newport Town Hall Breakfast at the Newport Opera House in Newport, N.H., in December 2019. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter, File)

 

Las Vegas Review-Journal

January 5, 2020 - 9:00 pm 

The Nation is the country’s oldest weekly magazine, dating to the end of the Civil War. For the better part of the past century, it has provided reliable cover to leftist totalitarians, offering praise to Stalin, opening its pages to communist apologists and acting during the Cold War as a leading voice of “moral equivalence,” which held that America was no better, and likely worse, than the USSR.

In 2016, the publication endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-professed socialist, for president.

Four years later, Sen. Sanders is again mounting a lively campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported he raised $34.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, more than front-runner Joe Biden. His campaign’s financial health makes him a formidable contender in the crowded field.

No doubt Sen. Sanders doesn’t agree with everything that appears in The Nation. But the magazine’s devotion to progressive authoritarianism and its animus toward capitalism offers moderate voters a preview of the kind of thinking that might gain significant currency in a Sanders administration.

Consider a Dec. 23 essay by Kian Goh, a UCLA assistant professor of urban planning, published in The Nation under the subhead “If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate changes, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership.” The piece offers a mother lode for those mining insights into the left’s radical agenda.

Focusing on California’s wildfires, Ms. Goh writes that “cheap energy is untenable in the face of climate emergency” essentially because it allows people to more freely settle where they choose and encourages consumption. In addition, “individual homeownership should be seriously questioned.”

Ms. Goh envisions a future in which the state curtails property rights in favor of “new or reconstituted forms of cooperative housing” and “community land trusts.” The author applauds the “resurgent interest in government-planned and -built public housing.” A greater emphasis on “rental housing” is also on Ms. Goh’s wish list, “although we should be wary of perpetuating the power of landlords.” It’s a wonder she doesn’t advocate for the mass collectivization of U.S. agricultural interests.

If being forced out of their homes and herded into communes and “the projects” might not appeal to many Americans, they’re contributing to “further marginalizing oppressed groups of people” and are part of the problem.

Defenders of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a Bernie backer, derided critics of her Green New Deal when they claimed that progressives hope to ban airplanes and eliminate cows. But now that Ms. Goh has added private homeownership to the endless list of modern conveniences in the left’s crosshairs, perhaps such worries shouldn’t seem so far-fetched.

How Colorado's Green Little Deal Is Set To Ruin The State Economy

How Colorado's Green Little Deal Is Set To Ruin The State Economy

How Colorado’s Green Little Deal Is Set To Ruin The State Economy

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his merry band of Green Little Dealers offer a national alarm bell for the national Green New Deal proposal.

By Jimmy Sengenberger

November 4, 2019

When I was a kid, I had a green dream that I would one day save the world as the Green Power Ranger. These days, the political left’s “green dream” is a massive Green New Deal (GND) brainchild of the likes of socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The GND is at least as far-fetched as my green ranger dream.
Yet that isn’t stopping the agenda from rampaging — just watch the Democratic presidential candidates speak. The agenda isn’t just national, either, it’s localized in states. Advocates for free markets, affordable energy for everyday people, and expanding our miraculous energy independence must closely watch what’s happening among the states. Case in point: Colorado’s Green Little Deal (GLD).

Colorado’s Green Little Deal Mirrors the Green New Deal

Fundamentally, the GND and Colorado’s GLD are cut from the same cloth. Both are explicitly centered on a “fair and just transition” from fossil fuels to vastly reduce greenhouse gas emissions through central planning. The GND wants to meet “100 percent of [U.S.] power demand … through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” Green Little Dealers likewise target “100% Renewable Energy by 2040.”
Both plans directly attack key industries such as coal, oil and gas, and automobiles while giving considerable power to government to regulate and transition workers, all disregarding economic realities. Supporting politicians pretend to know the future and want to regulate away any technology contrary to their “bold vision.”
Aligned with the GND’s command-and-control approach, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and his merry band of Green Little Dealers are unleashing a plague of environmental radicalism upon Colorado. In eight months, they hastily passed an anti-oil and gas bill tried Californicating vehicle emissions standards, established an expansive “Climate Action Plan,” and mandated onerous, statewide building code changes. To help jettisoned workers cope with such policies, Polis has established Offices of “Just Transition” and “Future at Work.” Such compassion!
The GND echoes all of the above on a national scale. The big difference between the GND and Colorado’s GLD has been strategy. While the GND originally proposed radical transformation in one stroke, Green Little Dealers prefer to feed us piece by piece, bill by bill, regulation by regulation. Just last month, though, Ocasio-Cortez said lawmakers are now “breaking [the GND] up into parts,” following Colorado’s lead. This tactic lulls people into a false sense of security, is harder for opponents to stop, and provides a more viable recipe for other states to follow.
Colorado’s GLD involves three key, harmful tacks: decimate oil and gas production, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by government edict, and cover up the harm with a centrally planned “workforce transition.”

Deconstructing the Oil and Gas Industry

In Colorado, the oil and gas industry sustains more than 230,000 jobs (including direct industry employment and jobs stemming from it), more than $30 billion in economic output, and up to $1.2 billion in state and local tax revenue. Plus, it offers high-paying, blue-collar jobs. The average oil and gas worker nationally makes nearly $50,000 more than the typical 2016 worker across all industries, and in Colorado earns more than double the state’s average wage.
So, it’s no surprise Coloradans resoundingly voted “no” last November on a proposed 2,500-foot setback of any new oil and gas drilling from homes, businesses, and waterways. Proposition 112 would have effectively wiped a critical industry off the Colorado map, eradicating an estimated 147,800 jobs by 2030.
Undeterred by that pesky “will of the people,” leftist majorities in the state legislature introduced and rammed SB19-181 through in little more than a month. Polis joyfully signed the bill, which will devastate Colorado’s industry. Colorado is America’s fifth-largest state producer of natural gas and seventh-largest generator of oil.
With SB181, radical environmentalists preyed upon Coloradans’ fondness for “local control” in areas such as education. The bill hands vast regulatory authority over oil and gas production to counties and municipalities. If a community wants to go beyond the “regulatory floor” set by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), it can. But if one wants less regulation than the COGCC, that’s forbidden.
SB181 greatly strengthens the COGCC’s power and even lets the commission disregard whether its mandates are cost-effective or even technically feasible if the goal is — wait for it — environmental protection. If a rule comes down from the COGCC, industry can cry a river about how it’s impossible to meet. But that’s not the commission’s problem. Moreover, several GLD governments such as Adams County and the People’s Republic of Boulder have already seized on SB181 by setting moratoriums on new production and drastically tightening regulations even more.
Colorado has one of the nation’s hottest economies, driven by low taxes and regulations, a unique Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and growing industries such as technology and tourism. Oil and gas remains an important and innovative player. For example, the state’s economy grew in 2018 at its fastest pace in three years, and the industry was instrumental in generating the pivotal fourth-quarter growth.
It’s too soon to assess SB181’s full impact, but projections aren’t good. While it may take a few years, the law will squeeze Colorado’s economy and choke off considerable funds to local communities. In stirring committee testimony, a public school teacher from rural Grand Junction noted that marijuana isn’t funding their schools: Oil and gas activity is. “What’s your Plan B?” she pointedly asked.

Micromanaging Greenhouse Gas Reductions

Oil and gas aren’t the only targets of GND and GLD advocates. The GND resolution is vague on how it would bring us to “net-zero emissions,” but Colorado’s GLD offers insights. Colorado Democrats passed bills to establish extreme “statewide greenhouse gas pollution goals” through stricter regulations and require that the fiscal note for all future legislation assess a bill’s “greenhouse gas pollution impact.”
They approved legislation to force localities to “adopt one of the 3 most recent versions of the international energy conservation code at a minimum, upon updating any other building code” (emphasis added). Similarly, Ocasio-Cortez revealed she’ll introduce legislation forcing a shift to carbon-neutral buildings.
Also, at Polis’ direction, Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission adopted California’s stringent zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) standards. Thankfully the Trump administration put the kibosh on this for now, but attorneys general (including Colorado’s) are suing to undo the administration’s action.
If it gets reinstated, then by 2023, 4.9 percent of Colorado dealer sales will need to be ZEVs — such as plug-in hybrids, fuel-cells, and electrics — and by 2030, 6.1 percent of dealer sales will need to be ZEVs. As of July 12, only 23,946 electric vehicles were registered — or 0.004 percent of Colorado’s 5.9 million total registered vehicles. It’s not that we have so few ZEVs on the road because government hasn’t done enough. It’s because consumers don’t want them. But who is the consumer to judge? Green New Dealers know best!
The Colorado Automobile Dealers Association argues this would damage dealers, who already lose an average $570 per new car sold. Consumers would have fewer conventional choices available as more ZEVs just sit on lots. Not enough data is available yet to show just how badly these parts of Colorado’s GLD will squeeze the economy, but basic economics tells us that the state’s economy will take a beating. GLD advocates essentially admit it.

The Bottom-Line Harm of a Green Little Deal

Any casual observer can tell that the GND and Colorado’s GLD will both precipitate massive job losses in heartland industries such as coal mining, oil and gas, and even automobile dealerships. It’s so obvious that proponents don’t hide it. In fact, they embrace it.
As I noted before, Polis and his merry band of Green Little Dealers went so far as to create Offices of “Just Transition” and “Future at Work.” Because naturally the government grasps what the future holds better than the private sector.
Climate change is a legitimate issue. But altogether, Colorado’s Green Little Deal, like its big brother Green New Deal, will suffocate ingenuity and prosperity for minuscule environmental benefits. While the Centennial State might get away with this behavior for a time because it’s part of a large, robust American economy, what happens when other states — or the whole country — follow Colorado’s lead in taking this monstrous, government-knows-best approach?
I shudder to think.