What Newt’s Reading | September 19, 2020

What Newt’s Reading Joe Biden's speech yesterday on climate, as on so much else, shows that he has adopted a policy that is far more extreme than what prevailed in the Obama years. - Newt Biden of the Climate Apocalypse By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal In his speech on Monday, Joe Biden blamed the ongoing West Coast wildfires, Hurricanes Laura and Sally, coastal flooding, a Midwest windstorm, and the summer heat all on climate change. Biden’s speech did not allude to forest mismanagement. For years, leaders have abandoned controlled burns and logging to reduce forest density, leaving plenty of brush to fuel forest fires. Regarding storms and hurricanes, reputable scientific authorities, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have said that they could not yet conclude that human activity worsened Atlantic hurricane or global cyclone patterns. Biden’s hysteria on the issue is accompanied by his extreme climate proposals, including spending $2 trillion in four years building 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations, hiring 250,000 workers to plug abandoned oil-and-gas wells, and building “an end-to-end high speed rail system that will connect the coasts.” Biden’s platform on this issue puts him to the left of former President Barack Obama and demonstrates that the Democratic nominee lacks the political will to stand up to the progressive wing of his party. Today's signed peace agreements between Israel and two Arab countries are a tremendous achievement for President Trump, the region, and the world. - Newt A Rare Middle East Triumph By Bret Stephens New York Times The Trump administration’s diplomacy is often criticized, but the agreements it brokered to normalize relations between Israel and two Arab countries — Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — mark a rare victory in the struggle to achieve peace in the Middle East. While the region has been ravaged by religious extremism and poor governance, the possibility of reform constituted the basis for these deals. Arab states can either choose to follow Israel down a path of economic development, risk coming under the sway of a foreign power like China or Iran, or risk potential implosion like Libya. With the recent deal, it appears the UAE and Bahrain have chosen the first path, much to their credit. Given the Arab League’s refusal to condemn the UAE and Bahrain and the possibility that other countries, such as Oman or Saudi Arabia, might follow suit, it is possible that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be resolved by external pressure rather than internal machinations. While many credentialed experts have criticized Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s obstinacy and President Trump’s unpredictability, one must appreciate their efforts to achieve one of the rare victories for peace in the region. Rev. Marlin Reid, a black Detroit pastor, is teaming up with other minority clergymen to condemn Nike, the NBA, and other multinational corporations for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement while profiteering from slave labor in China. - Newt Black Clergy Take Aim at NBA and Nike for Chinese Slave Labor By Yuichiro Kakutani Washington Free Beacon Rev. Marlin Reid, a black pastor based in Detroit, Michigan, called out Nike, the NBA, and other big corporations for supporting Black Lives Matter while either ignoring or profiting off of atrocities in China. The pastor’s comments come in response to the multitude of corporations that declared their support for BLM following the death of George Floyd in May. Their support for the movement has not wavered despite members of the organization looting homes and local businesses while rioting and calling for the abolition of capitalism. In a particularly egregious example, Nike hired former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to advertise its brand after he knelt for the national anthem while also relying on Chinese suppliers that rely on the coerced labor of the oppressed Uighur Muslims. In response, Reid and three other founding members of the Conservative Clergy of Color sent a letter to Nike President John Donahoe on Thursday, calling on the company to retract its endorsement of BLM and cut all business ties with China. Google/YouTube blocks an interview with a respected White House doctor; instead, it accepts and trusts the words and advice coming from the Chinese Communist Party and enablers at the WHO - Newt Silicon Valley Values By James Freeman Wall Street Journal Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, reported last Sunday that YouTube took down an interview that White House medical adviser Dr. Scott Atlas had done with the Hoover Institution. Dr. Atlas served for more than a decade as chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and also wrote a popular textbook on magnetic resonance imaging. According to Roy, the interview was taken down on the grounds that it contradicted directives from the World Health Organization and local authorities on the disease. Hoover’s Lanhee Chen lambasted Twitter for considering the WHO to be the last word on the pandemic given that the body falsely claimed that there was no human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 and that the body has a blatant pro-China bias. In the blocked interview, Atlas made the point the current approach the US has adopted to fight the pandemic is overly authoritarian and ignores regional and demographic differences. Democrat-run state legislators should address their pension funding issues through fiscal responsibility before depending on federally funded bailouts. - Newt Democratic Leaders Are Ignoring the Single Biggest Threat to Their States By Ryan Fazio New York Post In July, as the state of Connecticut teetered on the edge of a major recession, state government employees received a 5.5 percent raise owing to a previously negotiated collective bargaining agreement. On a broader level, states like Connecticut, New Jersey, and Illinois have committed to pension, insurance, and debt obligations that cannot be sustained given fallen revenues in the coronavirus pandemic. At the federal level, Senate Democrats have proposed massive federal bailouts for these states while Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) has suggested that these states could use the federal bankruptcy code to restructure their obligations. The Democratic solution only encourages future fiscal mismanagement, setting a poor precedent for future emergencies. Thus, the only viable option for these states remains making small changes to guaranteed benefits to state employees, such as reducing cost-of-living adjustments for pensions, switching from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans, and exploring cash buyouts of their employee and retiree pensions so workers get cash in exchange for the elimination of future pension payments. From a legal standpoint, of the 25 major court challenges to reforms challenging public benefits since 2011, 21 of the reforms were upheld. While challenging public sector unions will not be easy for any state government, such steps are imperative if fiscal solvency is to be restored. Newt's Latest Podcasts: Order Newt's Latest Book: https://www.gingrich360.com/trump-and-the-american-future