European economy

The United States must once again come to the rescue of Europe because of policies they have pursued. It began, in earnest, with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 where countries agreed to limit production of green house gas emissions. Europe, concerned about global warming, moved to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar. It was an emotional decision done without considering the long-term ramifications. First off Europe doesn’t have that much wind or sun and second, they didn’t consider the fact that both wind and solar are intermittent and need back up. Germany, the industrial powerhouse of Europe decided to shut down their coal plants along with their nuclear plants. Then they chose to stop using Russian natural gas and watched their energy cost quadruple. In 2008, the GDP per capita in Europe was 76% of the US and by 2023 that had fallen to 50%. Europe can no longer compete on the world market and production is moving to China and the US. One of the ironies is that Europe is using windmills and solar panels made in China where 60% of their energy comes from coal. The result is that Europe is now dependent on liquified natural gas (LNG) from America, where imports have increased from 4% to over 60% over the past five years. Without this LNG their economy would crash.

Voter fraud

California is under investigation for voter fraud but that should be the last state to rely on fraud. The state has 10 million registered democrats and 5 million registered republicans so there would be no need for fraud. The system is set up to cause concern about fraud. Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail. They do not have voter ID and voters can return their ballot by mail, in person, put it in drop box or have a third party deliver the ballot. Ballots are sent out a month before election and this causes some concern because ballot harvesting is legal in California. Prior to 2013 a voter had to be ill or disabled for someone else to return their ballot and that person had to be a family member. After 2013 any family member could return a ballot regardless of health. In 2016 anyone could return ballots and there was no limit on how many they could return. Those who are concerned about fraud suggest that people could be contacted by ballot collectors and could then be instructed on how to fill out the ballot.

Unions

I have long been a proponent of private company unions but opposed to public unions. At the end of WW 2 over 30% of workers were members of private unions but today that figure has fallen to 6% and in the process wages for working people have stagnated. The growth in public sector unions has been the reverse going from less than 4% in 1950 to 32% today. Public unions create inherent conflicts of interest and lack market constraints since they negotiate with taxpayer money. The result has been long term debt accumulation by states and the federal government. Public unions have kept defined pension benefit plans while most private companies have moved on to the far less costly 401k plans. A simple example clearly explains the problem. John starts his career working for the state at age 24 and retires at age 62. His final salary is $80,000. He contributes $4,800 (6%) into his pension. He pays $6,120 (7.65%) into social security/Medicare. He pays $6,931 in federal income tax and $3,625 in MN state income tax. His take home pay is $58,524. At retirement his pay is 1.7% times the number of years he worked (38) times his final salary of $80,000 or $51,680. His social security benefit is 19,000 for total gross income of $70,680. After tax he takes home $60,431 which is more than he was making while working. All states are in debt, primarily because of pension obligations but some states like California, New York and Illinois are particularly egregious. The public unions in California are in many ways running the state. The number of California retirees collecting a public pension of more than $100,000 hit an all time high of 79,235 last year, up 85% since 2013. Of these 13,000 are teachers. President Franklin D. Roosevelt opposed public sector unions because he believed the government employer is the public itself. He argued that a strike by government workers was an intolerable effort to obstruct the operations of government, and that democratic processes—not collective bargaining—should dictate public policy

Dumping

China is up to its old tricks but this time on steroids. They have a glut of manufactured items that they are trying to dump on the world market but countries are following the US and placing high tariffs on imports from China. In September 2024 the Biden administration increased tariffs on Chinese EV’s to 100% and this ended any EV’s coming from China. Europe is finally waking up and is now increasing tariffs on Chinese EV’s but they are not high enough yet to make the Chinese cars as expensive as European EV's produced in Europe. The current tariff on Chinese imported EV’s is 50% but that is not high enough to level the playing field because sales of Chinese EV’s account for 42% of all EV’s sold in Europe. China is using the same dumping process on many other products.

Cleanup

It is not always easy to get accurate information and here are a couple of examples. According to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), homicides fell 21 percent between 2024 and 2025, approaching the lowest rate in 125 years. Gun assaults dropped 22 percent, and carjackings plummeted 43 percent (CCJ, 2026). Taken together, violent crime is now lower than it was before the pandemic. Here is a recent report from NPR President Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. has reduced petty property crimes, but has had little to no effect on violent crime, despite the high cost to taxpayers, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Niskanen Center. This is a report about the cleanup in Washington DC Washington, D.C. is undergoing a massive cleanup effort. Spearheaded by the "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful" task force and federal agencies, authorities have dismantled over 140 homeless encampments and made thousands of arrests for narcotics, firearms offenses, and other crimes Here is a report from NPR Despite President Trump's federal intervention in D.C. and clearing of homeless encampments, there are people who still live on the streets. Service providers just have a harder time finding them.

China

After Japan was defeated in WW 2, Mao took control of China and an estimated 50 million people died because of self-induced famine, mass political executions, force labor and brutal purges. Between 1949 and 1956 the government nationalized all private enterprises, restricted private ownership and placed all industry and commerce under state control, a full communist government. The country stagnated until Dung Xiaoping took control in 1978. He started the “Reform and Opening-up” policy, shifting away from a planned economy to a socialist market economy. Dung had been to the West and understood free market capitalism but wanted to keep political control in the hands of the federal government. Many In the West believed that once the people got economic freedom, they would demand political freedom but that did not happened. The West gladly did business with China to capture the billion new potential customers and China began to grow slowly at first but accelerating later. China was given special status as a developing country and in 30 years became a major economy on the world stage. The free-market approach allowed people to retain their profits and this led to the rapid expansion where a half billion people were moved out of poverty.

Crime

In the world today there is some confusion about race and skin color. The people in North Africa, the Middle East, North Asia along with Europe are all Caucasians but their skin color is slightly different. Many people from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have lighter skins than many from Southern Italy and Greece. The same is true for people from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. All too often people are divided by oppressor and oppressed as determined by skin color with Whites being seen as the oppressor. For those who champion the oppressed this poses a dilemma. It means the Jews are the oppressors and the Palestinians are the oppressed. Here in the US, some judges see non-White skin people as oppressed and feel uneasy about sending them to prison. These judges see these people as victims of some past real or perceived mistreatment which caused them to commit criminal acts. They see the prison inmates who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic as proof of their conclusions and thus are reluctant to add more minorities to the prison population. This explains the many cases of individuals with multiple criminal convictions who are roaming the streets. About 68% of released state prisoners are rearrested within 3 years, jumping to 83% over a 9-year follow-up period. One of the best ways to reduce crime is to put repeat offenders in jail. Often times minor crimes are indicative of major crimes. In New York City, 38 individuals arrested for assault in the transit system in a single year were collectively linked to 1,100 additional crimes across the city. City date shows that 542 people arrested for shoplifting were responsible for committing 7,600 other crimes.