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The United States announced that, consistent withPresident BidenJoe BidenPfizer CEO says vaccine data for those under 5 could be available by end of year Omicron coronavirus variant found in at least 10 states Photos of the Week: Schumer, ASU protest and sea turtles MORE's Januaryexecutive order, it will end financing of oil and gas projects. Considering the likelihood of sizable exemptions, we remain skeptical.

In spite of our differences one of us is a libertarian who opposes all government-granted privilege to corporations, while the other is a progressive who believes government should provide a strong social safety net from cradle to grave and aid in the uptake of clean renewables we agree that the government should not prop up wealthy, politically connected corporations. Yet thats what the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) does, including for its wealthy friends in the oil and gas industry.

On average, the industry receives roughly$20.5 billion annuallyin direct U.S. subsidies, and$121 billion in tax breaks. When the pandemic started, the industry was fast to claim between $3 billion and $7 billion in free money from the Small Business Administrations Paycheck Protection Program. In addition, several federal agencies go to great lengths to serve their friends in the oil and gas industry, with the full support of Republican and Democratic White Houses and Congresses.

The Export-Import Bank is one such agency. Ex-Im describes its mission as supporting American jobs by facilitating U.S. exports. While this may sound good, its devilishness is revealed in its details. Historically,65 percent of Ex-Imfinancing has benefited 10 large domestic corporations, with 25 percent of its activities benefiting the oil and gas industry.

But Ex-Ims worst offense is its lapdog-like devotion to a few clients, such as Pemex, the Mexican state-owned energy giant and its biggest recipient. From 2007 through 2019, Pemex receivedsome $8.5 billion in taxpayer-backed loans.Between 2009 and 2017, fires, explosions and collapsing oil rigs killedmore than 190of its workers and injured more than 570. These accidents also resulted in severe environmental damage, including polluting three rivers, resulting in a half-million Mexicans losing access to clean drinking water.Recently, Pemexs disregard for environmental protection and safety caused aninferno in the Gulf of Mexicoresulting from a projectEx-Im supported.

These facts are well known to Ex-Im management. Yet, the agency nevertheless extended another $400 million in loan guarantees to Pemex last September. Now, its preparing another deal for Pemex, this time in a category with even less oversight.

Ex-Im is not afraid to go the extra mile to make its big oil-and-gas friends happy. In 2019, it announced a $5 billion deal (later revised to $4.7 billion) to support the development and construction of a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in Mozambique. Documents provided by the agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request revealed how itwillfully ignoredwarnings of the many associated risks.

Enter bigwigs in the American LNG industry, who were upset over a foreign competitor getting a leg up from Ex-Im financing, even though they have also been a recipient. They threatened to go public with their opposition to the Mozambique project. After some arm twisting, Ex-Im decided to placate the industry with its own deal: a 90 percent guarantee for a $50 million supply-chain-finance deal for the benefit of a Texas-based company, extended through a supply-chain finance provider in January 2021.All Ex-Im had to do to make it happen was to use the cover of the pandemic to lifta pesky requirement that 50 percent of suppliers be small businesses benefiting from the Ex-Im program.

Satisfied, the LNG industry withdrew its opposition to the Mozambique project, as revealed bya letter released under transparency laws and produced bySource Material, a non-profit investigative journalism organization.

Despite cheerful press releases celebratingbothdealsas milestones for the agency, not all was right in the world of subsidized oil and gas. By May 2021, the aforementioned finance providercollapsed into insolvencyand the Mozambique projects operatordeclaredforce majeure, which allowed it to cancel contracts, withdraw all its staff and avoid promised compensation to poor project-affected communities because of an insurgent attack.

Ex-Im should have known better. Indeed, the financier in question had already beenunder investigation by a German regulatorfor some time, which led to a criminal complaint in March 2021. More damning was that in September 2020, when Ex-Im was working on the deal, the finance providers insurer opted not to extend coverage for its lending, a move that ultimately led to its collapse.Such lack of due diligence is nothing new for an agency that caters to special interests far more than taxpayers or the public welfare.

Partisans may say that shenanigans were to be expected under President TrumpDonald TrumpHillicon Valley State Dept. employees targets of spyware Ohio Republican Party meeting ends abruptly over anti-DeWine protesters Jan. 6 panel faces new test as first witness pleads the Fifth MORE. But the Pemex/Ex-Im alliance, as well as the agencys commitment to oil and gas subsidies, existed long before Trump entered politics. It will endure under President Bidens tenure unless Congress forces Ex-Im to endallhandouts to the oil and gas industry.

Veronique de Rugyis the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow with theMercatusCenter at George Mason University.Kate DeAngelisis an international finance program manager with Friends of the Earth U.S.

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Don't bank on an end to oil and gas handouts | TheHill - The Hill

Rep. Nancy Mace is frequently in the news. On Thursday, it was the apparentlysudden exit of her chief of staff and campaign manager. And for much of the week, the libertarian-ish South Carolina Republican has been feuding with the wilder and woolier members of her conference, especially the ubiquitous Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)

The seemingly trivial spat is actually a glimpse into the future of the Republican Party. How the party should deal with self-promoting lawmakers like Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert(R-Colo.)is a proxy for its bargain with former President Donald Trump. The GOP's small but vocal liberty wing split over Trump, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)largely aligning himself rhetorically (if not always voting the MAGA line) and former Rep. Justin Amash(first R, then L-Mich.)ultimately leaving the party in protest.

Mace was initially inclined to stand with Rand on the side of Trump, but since Jan. 6 she has drifted, however fitfully, in the Amash direction to the degree that the 45th president would like to see her unseated in a primary. This was the fate that befell her predecessor, former Rep. Mark Sanford, another quietly libertarian-leaning Republican, whose criticism of Trump ended a political career that had improbably survived scandal. (Trump's interference also caused the district to fall to the Democrats for two years, though redistricting will make this outcome less likely.)

While some Republicans of Mace's ilk hoped to capitalize on Trump's less hawkish foreign policy rhetoric, others had deep disdain for the low-brow populism he unleashed within the party. They'll be forced to take a standif he runs in 2024. It's not clear that mud-wrestling with Trump's imitators is necessary, however. Trading insults with Greene gives her more oxygen while alienating Mace from conservatives who want their representatives to give liberals no quarter. Supporting primary challengers against Greene, Boebert, and palshas the potential to do more good than launching a flame war.

And however either type of fight plays out, it's worth watching. We can be fairly sure the Republican future isn't Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and the establishment, neoconservative throwbacks she leads. The debate is whether the GOP should steer toward Greene or Mace, and that debate is probably unavoidable.

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Mace vs. Greene is the fight for the future of the GOP - The Week Magazine

The respected libertarian Cato Institute annually releases their list of most free and least free states and no surprise, the bluest statesCalifornia includedare at the bottom of the list. Read more and check out their interactive map here: https://www.freedominthe50states.org/

From the report: The overall freedom ranking is a combination of personal and economic freedoms.

ANALYSISCalifornia is one of the least free states in the country, largely because of its long-standing poor performance on economic freedom. However, Californias economic freedom has improved since the late 2000s and, perhaps as a result, so has its economic performance. California has long suffered from a wide disparity between its economic freedom and personal freedom ranking, but it is not as if the state is a top performer in the latter dimension. Indeed, it is quite mediocre on personal freedom, although its recent decline in rank has more to do with other states catching up and passing it than any backsliding in the state itself.

More here:
California NOT land of the free. Here's the proof - KABC

As you preside over the bewildering and nonsensical inconsistency of mask-wearing in schools, I thought I might distract you with another matter of great importance: the behaviour of Ofsted inspectors.

As all of us involved in schools in England know, we work in a territory policed by a triumvirate: Ofsted, the league tables and the Sats results. There are no Covid-like press conferences where representatives of these three stand at lecterns being quizzed by journalists. Why not? After all, at key moments in the year (like GCSE Handwringing Day or International Performance Comparison and Sneering Day) education in schools is presented as if it were a pandemic of decline.

Perhaps we are supposed to believe that the three parts of the triumvirate work independently of each other, doing good, in the manner of Oxfam, Christian Aid and Children in Need, though with you at the helm. But if you had wanted to invent a set-up that was as undemocratic as possible and as unrepresentative of the people working in it, youd be hard pushed to beat it.

Right now Ofsted is causing particular concern. Did you see last weeks Guardian article, I cant go through it again: headteachers quit over brutal Ofsted inspections, and the readers letters that followed? If you missed them, please take a look. They paint a picture of a profession in distress. Headteachers say Ofsted inspectors are refusing to take into account the effects of Covid on schools. The head of Lancaster Royal grammar school, Dr Chris Pyle, says that some recent Ofsted reports exclude all specific references to the pandemic.

As Id hope you would acknowledge, the impact of the illness itself, the absences, the casualties, the lockdown and the online teaching has been a trauma felt acutely by school communities. Of what benefit can it be for Ofsted to turn up at a school and trample over people who have experienced such high stress and, in some cases, loss and bereavement?

The fact is this high-handed approach is bred by the structure and terms of reference of Ofsted. The idea that a judge, prosecution and jury arrive one day at a school, at short notice, conduct a trial and then leave is a poor way to run education. In my school visits these days, I also rush in and out though usually I give them a bit more notice of my arrival! But Im not inspecting teachers, Im doing that very non-Ofsteddy thing of coming in to support teachers and pupils. While Im there, I often hear from teachers about Ofsted visits. The one theme I hear over and over again is that they feel the inspectors were not sympathetic to the specific conditions of the school. Its as if inspectors come briefed with a notion that teachers are bad people making excuses for their own incompetence. So the report that some inspectors dont want to hear about the experience of Covid came as no surprise to me.

One headteacher told me an Ofsted inspector complained that the Year 6 results were showing a significant decline. The headteacher pointed out that the dip in scores coincided with the sudden arrival of a cohort of refugee children, none of whom spoke English. In other words, the composition of the class had changed between one set of scores and the next. Though the refugee children had made huge advances in the few months they had been here, the effect on the data was that the scores were low in an absolute sense. What did the inspector say to the headteacher? That it was no excuse. In Ofsteds world, data can exist independently of the people being measured. Please, Mr Zahawi, listen to the teachers and headteachers in the Guardian article and the letters. The system is not benefiting teachers, pupils or families, and its all predicated on the idea that the only way to improve education is through top-down hectoring.

How interesting to see that your government is trying to cope with Covid by encouraging people to choose the right path, whether that be the wearing of masks, getting vaccinated or holding parties. This approach is much preferred, Ive heard ministers saying on the radio, to making such measures compulsory. And yet when it comes to education, you and your colleagues drop this libertarian approach and opt for the big stick. Tell us: why should education be excluded from your libertarian methods?

We really do have to make our minds up whether we think education should be about consent or coercion. Here we are, in the midst of two crises threatening humanity: disease and climate change, and the best we can come up with for schools is the authoritarian triumvirate. Does it ever give you pause for thought that a coercive system might not be the best way to foster creative and questioning minds, the kind of minds we desperately need to solve humanitys problems?

Yours, Michael Rosen

Originally posted here:
Dear Nadhim Zahawi, please sort out Ofsteds lack of humanity. Theres no excuse - The Guardian

I wholeheartedly agree with Larry Penners opinion piece about the consequences of us becoming a debtor nation, the same way I agree with the authors opinion piece from ten years ago when he had his written tete-a-tete with then-Congressman Gary Ackerman on these very pages.But..The author makes suggestions about how leading Dems Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, and friends should show their faith in the bill.

But the author, who appears to lean Republican/Libertarian in his political opinions, neglects to mention that some Democrats voted against the bill and some Republicans for it.

Doesnt the author care enough about his opinion pieces to stop telling half-truths and tell the entire story?

The author is entitled to his opinion and is entitled to express his opinion. He should not omits facts inconvenient to his opinion.

The inference is the Democrats are bad and the Republicans are good when the truth lies in the middle. Let me add that at almost 60 years old I have never been a registered Democrat. Ive been Republican, Independence, Blank, and Conservative. Every enrollment except Blank has been affiliated with Republicans.

Nat Weiner

Bronx

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Readers Write: TANSTAAFL - For donkeys and elephants - Readers Write - The Island Now