Konstantin Kisin at the Oxford Union (VIDEO)

His speech was a bit of a sensation on Twitter.

WATCH: 

Germany Reboots Coal-Fired Plants as Russia Chokes European Energy Supplies

This is a tough time for the climate change cult.

Reality's punching through their worldview of unicorns, rainbows, and electric cars.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Germany Steps Up Measures to Conserve Gas as Russia Slows Supply to Europe":

Berlin to restart coal-fired plants and auction gas to reduce consumption.

Gazprom has blamed the shortfall on missing turbine parts that were stuck in Canada due to sanctions. European officials and analysts dismissed the explanation.

Germany imports about 35% of its natural gas from Russia, down from 55% before the war, and uses most of it for heating and manufacturing, according to German government estimates. Last year, power generation using natural gas accounted for about 15% of total public electricity in Germany, Mr. Habeck said, adding that the share of gas in power production has likely fallen this year.

To accelerate the decline of gas in the power mix, Mr. Habeck outlined a number of steps the government was taking to reduce reliance on gas and build up stores for the coming winter.

In a U-turn for a leader of the environmentalist Green Party, which has campaigned to reduce fossil-fuel use, Mr. Habeck said the government would empower utility companies to extend the use of coal-fired power plants.

This would ensure that Germany has an alternative source of energy but would further delay the country’s efforts to slash carbon emissions.

“This is bitter,” Mr. Habeck said of the need to rely on coal. “But in this situation, it is necessary to reduce gas consumption. Gas stores must be full by winter. That has the highest priority.”

The legislation affecting the use of coal is expected to be approved on July 8 in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, Mr. Habeck said. The measure expires on March 31, 2024, by which time the government hopes to have created a sustainable alternative to Russian gas.

Mr. Habeck also said the government would introduce an auction system that would motivate industry to reduce consumption.

The government released no details about how the auction would work, but Mr. Habeck said it would begin this summer.

Mr. Habeck said the new measures are aimed at diverting the dwindling gas deliveries from Russia into storage tanks to be used during the winter.

 

Energy Inflation Derails Biden's Climate Agenda

Well, I guess that's one good thing about inflation. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Under the president’s watch, emissions have risen, renewable-energy development has slowed and oil and coal use is up":

WASHINGTON—President Biden came to office vowing to cut dependence on fossil fuels, putting environmentalists in charge of energy policy and asking Congress for billions of dollars to fund a transition to cleaner energy.

Seventeen months later, greenhouse gas emissions are up, renewable-power development has slowed, and oil and coal consumption are on the rise. The biggest aspects of the green agenda are stuck in Congress, while Mr. Biden, facing surging energy prices and inflation, urged U.S. oil refiners this week to expand capacity.

Domestic oil and gas production has increased since Mr. Biden came into office and is projected to rise to record highs, but that has just inflamed concerns from environmentalists that Mr. Biden is backing away from his green agenda.

“I thought the country had turned a corner,” said Mary Nichols, a former California regulator and longtime environmental leader, “that the country was headed in the right direction.”

“Now this last year or two leaves you wondering whether that is true,” Ms. Nichols said.

Mr. Biden reaffirmed his environmental commitments Friday at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, a virtual summit he hosted with representatives of more than 20 countries and international groups, including the European Commission and China.

“The critical point is that these actions are part of our transition to a clean and secure long-term energy future,” Mr. Biden said, adding later, “The science tells us that the window for action is rapidly narrowing.”

At home, however, Mr. Biden’s agenda has run into the reality of rising oil prices, punishing inflation and policy conflicts. Mr. Biden pledged last year to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. But doing so will require Congressional approval of measures such as tax incentives for clean energy, analysts say.

Coal-state Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), who derailed Mr. Biden’s roughly $3.5 trillion climate and social spending bill last year, has been negotiating with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on a new bill that would include the tax incentives, but a deal is far from certain.

The stakes for Mr. Biden are high. High inflation and record gasoline prices at the pump are a political liability heading into the midterm elections, where Republicans have a chance to seize majorities in the House and Senate.

At the same time, Mr. Biden risks losing support among young and progressive voters by seeming to back away from his green agenda, activists and political analysts said.

“It is hard to forever turn people out when you’re not producing results,” said Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and co-founder of 350.org, a group dedicated to stopping the use of fossil fuels world-wide. “Especially among young voters who care about this immensely there seems to be real signs it’s doing damage.”

Administration officials say they are still on course to meet their climate goals, citing measures including executive actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, spending to build out an electric-vehicle charging network and the rejoining of international climate talks.

Mr. Biden wants clean energy “installed here, deployed here and exported from here,“ Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said. ”He has taken steps in every single aspect of that to make those things happen. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Some of the problems bedeviling Mr. Biden were triggered by events beyond his control.

The economy’s sharp rebound from the pandemic fueled higher demand for energy, raising costs. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine further taxed energy markets, leading Mr. Biden to label rising gas costs as “Putin’s price hike.”

Administration critics, however, say White House policy conflicts and political miscalculations made things worse as oil prices rose from roughly $53 a barrel when Mr. Biden took office to nearly $120 now.

One problem, these people say, was a too-rosy view of how smoothly the U.S. could move off fossil fuels. Mr. Biden used his first day in office to block completion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and freeze new oil and gas leases on federal land.

“Unfortunately, what we have seen since January 2021 are policies that send a message that the administration aims to impose obstacles to our industry delivering energy resources the world needs,” Bill Turenne, a spokesman for Chevron Corp., said in a statement to reporters Wednesday.

Mr. Biden is now asking oil-and-gas companies to pump and export more in response to soaring prices and war in Europe, leaving him open to criticism from Republicans that his early decisions fed the problem and from environmentalists that he was backtracking on his climate agenda...

Biden Administration to Open Public Land for Drilling (VIDEO)

At the video, in California alone this would bring roughly 3,000 high-paying jobs and $600 in tax revenue.

And at the New York Times, "Biden Plans to Open More Public Land to Drilling":

The president is under pressure to bring down gas prices, but any new drilling would be years away. The fees that companies pay would rise sharply.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would resume selling leases for new oil and gas drilling on public lands, but would also raise the federal royalties that companies must pay to drill, the first increase in those fees in more than a century.

The Interior Department said in a statement that it planned next week to auction off leases to drill on 145,000 acres of public lands in nine states. They would be the first new fossil fuel leases to be offered on public lands since President Biden took office.

The move comes as President Biden seeks to show voters that he is working to increase the domestic oil supply as prices surge in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it also violates a signature campaign pledge made by Mr. Biden as he sought to assure climate activists that he would prioritize reducing the use of fossil fuels.

“And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period,” Mr. Biden told voters in New Hampshire in February 2020.

In opening new land for drilling, while at the same time requiring companies to pay more to drill, Mr. Biden appears to be trying to walk a line between trying to both lower gas prices and fight climate change. While Mr. Biden came into office with the most ambitious climate change agenda of any president in history, his climate policies have been largely stalled, stymied by inaction in Congress.

Upon taking office, Mr. Biden issued an executive order calling for a temporary ban on new oil and gas leasing on public lands, which was to remain in place while the Interior Department produced a comprehensive report on the state of the federal oil and gas drilling programs. That report, issued in November, recommended an overhaul of the rents and royalty fees charged for drilling both on land and offshore. The report noted one estimate that the government had lost up to $12.4 billion in revenue from drilling on federal lands from 2010 through 2019 because royalty rates have been frozen for a century.

In opening up the new public lands for oil and gas permitting, the Interior Department will raise the royalty rates that companies must pay to the federal government to 18.75 percent of their revenues from 12.5 percent, an increase that could bring in billions of dollars for the federal government. Even at current levels, the royalties are a major source of revenue. Last year, the federal government collected $5.5 billion from drilling on public lands.

“For too long, the federal oil and gas leasing programs have prioritized the wants of extractive industries above local communities, the natural environment, the impact on our air and water, the needs of tribal nations, and, moreover, other uses of our shared public lands,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said. “Today, we begin to reset how and what we consider to be the highest and best use of Americans’ resources for the benefit of all current and future generations.”

The new lease sales mark the second major step the Biden administration has taken to open up public lands and waters for drilling.

Natural-Gas Industry Gets Boost as Biden Shifts Stance

Baby steps. Baby steps.

At WSJ, "Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose as Biden softened position against fossil fuels":

President Biden’s pledge to boost U.S. liquefied natural-gas exports to Europe marks a further retreat from his hard-line stance against fossil fuels, sending share prices surging for natural-gas companies.

The president, who campaigned on a platform to transition the U.S. to cleaner energy, said Friday the U.S. is working to ship 50 billion cubic meters of LNG to Europe annually through at least 2030 to help the continent wean itself from dependence on Russian supplies.

The announcement came a day after Democrats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission backtracked on new environmental policies, suspending implementation of heightened requirements on reviews that industry officials and Republicans said would impede gas-pipeline development.

Shares of large U.S. natural-gas companies rose 9% on average Friday as major stock indexes were mixed. Shares of EQT Corp and Southwestern Energy Co., two large producers, shot up to close about 12% and 16% higher.

Cheniere Energy Inc., LNG 5.46% the top U.S. exporter, was up about 5.5%. Tellurian Inc., which is seeking financing for an LNG project, soared 21%.

The gas industry’s prospects have been a concern among the sector’s executives because of Mr. Biden’s stance against fossil fuels. But the president has softened some of his positions in the wake of rising energy costs, which have been driven in part by the economic rebound from Covid-19, and more recently by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The White House pivot has also put the U.S. and its vast oil and gas reserves in shale rock back at the center of a global scramble for energy resources as a bulwark against petrostates and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer.

Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global and a noted oil-industry historian, called recent developments “a huge turn.”

“There’s a recognition now that shale—and particularly LNG—is a real geopolitical asset,” Mr. Yergin said.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have said they are still committed to ending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, including gas, and will continue to fund renewable energy as part of their work with European allies. But they also acknowledged the need to deal with the reliance that exists today.

“While gas is still a substantial part of the energy mix, we want to make sure that the Europeans do not have to source that gas from Russia,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Friday.

Toby Rice, chief executive of top U.S. natural-gas producer EQT, said the Biden administration’s shift is an extremely encouraging political signal that natural gas will play a key role in the world’s future energy mix.

Mr. Rice said the U.S. could sharply increase LNG exports over time if companies build thousands of miles of new pipelines and billions worth of new LNG facilities. But unleashing that will require broader support for that infrastructure and speeding up the sluggish permitting process, he said.

“The problem we face is it takes longer to permit something than it takes us to build it,” Mr. Rice said. “The faster we move, the faster we move toward achieving our climate goals and providing energy security for people around the world.” Shippers of LNG have already sent most U.S. cargoes to European destinations this year, as prices have skyrocketed following Russia’s invasion. American exporters are moving cargoes as fast as physically possible and are on pace to send a record 11.4 billion cubic feet a day of LNG overseas this month, with more than 60% bound for Europe, according to market intelligence firm Kpler.

FERC has approved 13 LNG facilities across the U.S. that have remained unbuilt with the combined capacity to export about 25 billion cubic feet each day, according to FERC’s February update. Companies haven’t begun construction on those largely because they haven’t yet gathered enough supply agreements with customers overseas to finance the construction of those facilities.

Part of the arrangement between the U.S. and Europe is to ensure that European countries also come through to show they can take more U.S. gas. They are to build out their infrastructure to accept up to 50 billion cubic meters of additional U.S. supply a year between now and 2030, Mr. Sullivan said.

Before the Russian invasion, Biden administration officials had been hesitant about putting U.S. development money into fossil-fuel projects abroad...

 

Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall

At Amazon, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power.

Bethany McLean, Saudi America

At Amazon, Bethany McLean, Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World.

The Next Energy Revolution

A great piece, from David G. Victor and Kassia Yanosek, at Foreign Affairs, "The Promise and Peril of High-Tech Innovation":

Three trends are driving the new energy revolution: management, data analytics, and automation. https://t.co/ft3nbboy1O

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 18, 2017

The technology revolution has transformed one industry after another, from retail to manufacturing to transportation. Its most far-reaching effects, however, may be playing out in the unlikeliest of places: the traditional industries of oil, gas, and electricity.

Over the past decade, innovation has upended the energy industry. First came the shale revolution. Starting around 2005, companies began to unlock massive new supplies of natural gas, and then oil, from shale basins, thanks to two new technologies: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Engineers worked out how to drill shafts vertically and then turn their drills sideways to travel along a shale seam; they then blasted the shale with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to pry open the rock and allow the hydrocarbons to flow. These technologies have helped drive oil prices down from an all-time high of $145 per barrel in July 2008 to less than a third of that today, and supply has become much more responsive to market conditions, undercutting the ability of OPEC, a group of the world’s major oil-exporting nations, to influence global oil prices.

That was just the beginning. Today, smarter management of complex systems, data analytics, and automation are remaking the industry once again, boosting the productivity and flexibility of energy companies. These changes have begun to transform not only the industries that produce commodities such as oil and gas but also the ways in which companies generate and deliver electric power. A new electricity industry is emerging—one that is more decentralized and consumer-friendly, and able to integrate many different sources of power into highly reliable power grids. In the coming years, these trends are likely to keep energy cheap and plentiful, responsive to market conditions, and more efficient than ever.

But this transition will not be straightforward. It could destabilize countries whose economies depend on revenue from traditional energy sources, such as Russia, the big producers of the Persian Gulf, and Venezuela. It could hurt lower-skilled workers, whose jobs are vulnerable to automation. And cheap fossil fuels will make it harder to achieve the deep cuts in emissions needed to halt global warming...

More.

'Dirty Hippies' No Match for Donald Trump (VIDEO)

At the Rebel, "U.S. grants Keystone XL permit: “Dirty hippies” no match for President Trump."

Donald Trump's Cabinet Picks Are Among the Most Conservative in History

Following-up from a little while ago, "Trump to Make Energy Policy Major Theme of Administration."

Like I said, I'm pleased as punch.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump's Cabinet picks are among the most conservative in history. What that means for his campaign promises":

Donald Trump promotes himself as a man divorced from party ideology, a president-elect just as open-minded to input from Al Gore as from Newt Gingrich.

But with his Cabinet nearly complete, he has chosen one of the most consistently conservative domestic policy teams in modern history, setting himself up for hard decisions and potential conflict with some of his supporters when he begins to govern.

The internal conflicts have emerged with nearly every pick.

Trump campaigned against the big banks, then chose a former Goldman Sachs partner, Steven Mnuchin, to run his Treasury Department. He pledged to save Medicare and Social Security, then chose Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who has advocated sweeping revisions in Medicare and Medicaid, to run Health and Human Services.

Trump has placed the burdens of working people at the top of his agenda, yet chose as Labor secretary an executive, Andrew Puzder, who talked in an interview about the advantages of replacing human workers with machines because they are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.”

And even as Trump aides put out word that the president-elect’s daughter Ivanka would be an influential administration voice in favor of curbing global warming, Trump named a man who has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the scientific consensus on climate change, Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

“This is a big mystery to a lot of people, and it’s going to be one of the hardest things about this presidency,” said Elaine Kamarck, a former advisor in the Clinton administration now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, who has written extensively about the inner workings of White Houses.

Trump has so far shown a deftness at drawing attention away from sticky policy debates with bold, attention-grabbing strokes, a tactic that may help him deflect controversies when he moves to the Oval Office. On Monday, he announced he was delaying until next month a news conference at which he had promised to address his business conflicts of interest, then on Tuesday morning, he staged a photo opportunity at Trump Tower with entertainer Kanye West.

He defied some ideologues in his party, and won goodwill from many supporters, by dramatically persuading Carrier Corp. to keep some of the air conditioning company’s manufacturing jobs in Indiana rather than ship them to Mexico.

Despite criticism over singling out an individual company with tax incentives and implicit threats to its government contracting business, Trump was able to use the publicity over the deal to promote a message that workers, particularly those in manufacturing, were at the top of his agenda.

“We are going to see a lot of symbolic politics,” said Lara Brown, a professor of political management at George Washington University. She expects gestures like the Carrier deal to prove effective for some time.

Trump’s supporters, Brown said, are more invested in shaking up the system than a particular policy agenda.

But the splashy moves could wear thin if Trump fails to deliver on signature promises, like a jobs boom...

It's all going to be fine.

I'm sure of it.

But keep reading, in any case.

Trump to Make Energy Policy Major Theme of Administration

I'm pleased as punch with Trump's nominations.

It's absolutely thrilling. I mean, jeez, it's like a policy revolution in the works, about to completely destroy the radical left's anti-everything regulatory regime.

I can't wait to get cracking!

At IBD, "Can Trump's Energy-Savvy Cabinet 'Make American Energy Great Again'?":

With a spate of major Cabinet picks, President-elect Donald Trump has made one thing abundantly clear: He intends to make reform of U.S. energy policy a major theme of his administration.

On Tuesday word leaked out that Trump would choose former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as his new Energy Secretary.

Perry, whose economic success as Texas governor speaks for itself, is a terrific pick who'll need very little on-the-job training about what plentiful energy means to real people in the real economy — especially when compared to President Obama's energy secretaries, the UC Berkeley physicist Stephen Chu, who focused largely on global warming and pushing the idea of a "global glucose economy" based on energy from tropical plants, and physicist Ernest Moniz, who spent most of his time on helping push the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.

Even so, the media had a field day with the Perry pick. Why? In a 2011 presidential debate, he vowed to get rid of three government agencies if elected. One was Commerce, one was Education, and the third ... he couldn't remember. Oops! It was Energy.

Yes, ironic and good for a laugh. But also irrelevant. Because Perry, as the top executive in the nation's No. 1 energy state, knows the energy industry and energy regulation backward and forward. And just because he would eliminate the Energy Department — for the record, so would we, because it's utterly useless — he will be a wise and steady leader when it comes to deregulating the overly regulated energy industry.

Our hope is that he will free up federal land for more energy exploration and drilling, but also find ways to ease burdens on energy users and producers. We would, for instance, like to see the anti-business, anti-industry, anti-consumer, anti-energy Clean Power Plan done away with entirely. If he does all that, the energy and fracking revolutions will continue — bringing decades if not centuries of relatively cheap energy to fuel U.S. growth.

But Trump's energy Cabinet isn't just about Perry...

Keep reading.

Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose Hugged by Prime Minister Trudeau After Her Speech on Fort McMurray (VIDEO)

At the CBC, "Fort McMurray wildfire: Justin Trudeau to survey damage on Friday."

And watch, "Ambrose hugged by Trudeau after speech."

Gary Sernovitz, The Green and the Black

I love this.

The guy's a leftist.

At Amazon, The Green and the Black: The Complete Story of the Shale Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future of Energy.

Gary Sernovitz leads a double life. A typical New York liberal, he is also an oilman - a fact his left-leaning friends let slide until the word "fracking" entered popular parlance. "How can you frack?" they suddenly demanded, aghast. But for Sernovitz, the real question is, "What happens if we don't?"

Fracking has become a four-letter word to environmentalists. But most people don't know what it means. In his fast-paced, funny, and lively book, Sernovitz explains the reality of fracking: what it is, how it can be made safer, and how the oil business works.

He also tells the bigger story. Fracking was just one part of a shale revolution that shocked our assumptions about fueling America's future. The revolution has transformed the world with consequences for the oil industry, investors, environmentalists, political leaders, and anyone who lives in areas shaped by the shales, uses fossil fuels, or cares about the climate - in short, everyone. Thanks to American engineers' oilfield innovations, the United States is leading the world in reducing carbon emissions, has sparked a potential manufacturing renaissance, and may soon eliminate its dependence on foreign energy. Once again the largest oil and gas producer in the world, America has altered its balance of power with Russia and the Middle East.

Yet the shale revolution has also caused local disruptions and pollution. It has prolonged the world's use of fossil fuels. Is there any way to reconcile the costs with the benefits of fracking?

More.

Sarah Palin Floats Nomination as Energy Secretary in Potential Trump Administration (VIDEO)

I suppose that's better than nomination as treasury secretary, heh.

Watch, at CNN yesterday, "Sarah Palin Recommends Herself for Energy Secretary."

And here's the full interview, "Sarah Palin on State of the Union: Full Interview."

Interesting too that the public debate has Donald Trump not only as the hypothetical GOP nominee, but as winning the White House altogether. Folks are looking ahead realistically, and it's big.

Police Boats Ram Kayaks, Knocking Greenpeace Protesters Into the Water (VIDEO)

You have to listen through some of this Amy Goodman interview with Greenpeace Executive Director Annie Leonard, at the clip, "Police Remove Greenpeace Activists from Portland Bridge After They Forced Shell Ship Back to Port."

Scroll foward to about 2:00 minutes in. It's pretty funny, though. I thought the cops were gonna kill that kayaking Greenpeace mofo for a second, heh.

Plus, flashback to Greenpeace's 1970s-era communist foundations, at Free Republic, "Greenpeace Wages Redwar."

And ICYMI, "Shell Icebreaker Breaks Through Greenpeace Protesters Hanging from St. John's Bridge in Portland (VIDEO)."

Shell Icebreaker Breaks Through Greenpeace Protesters Hanging from St. John's Bridge in Portland (VIDEO)

At the Oregonian, "Shell Oil's MSV Fennica icebreaker passes through protestors and under St. Johns Bridge."



PREVIOUSLY: "Greenpeace Enviro-Radicals Block Shell Icebreaker in Portland, Oregon (VIDEO)."

Greenpeace Enviro-Radicals Block Shell Icebreaker in Portland, Oregon (VIDEO)

At Oregonian, "Greenpeace protest: Officials circle kayakers; St. Johns Bridge closed again (live updates)."

And at the now supposedly straight-news MSNBC, "Dangling Greenpeace Protesters Block Shell Icebreaker."

Related at Politico, "MSNBC cancels three shows amid transition."

Abby Huntsman and Krystal Ball will be leaving the network. Good while it lasted, I guess.

We Don't Need to Pay More Gas Taxes

From the editors, at the O.C. Register:

Some members of Congress – apparently intent on ensuring that no positive development in American life goes unpunished – have had a surprising reaction to the steep decline in gas prices that has taken place in recent months: It’s time to make fueling your car more expensive.

That’s the message coming from many Democrats and a handful of Senate Republicans – foremost amongst them Tennessee’s Bob Corker, who joined with Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy to propose increasing the levy by 12 cents over two years and indexing it to inflation. Other members of the GOP – Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, for instance – have refused to rule out such a proposal.

We’re not unsympathetic to the underlying concern in this case. The federal gas tax – currently 18.4 cents per gallon – hasn’t been raised since 1993. That’s salient because the revenue from the tax goes to finance the Highway Trust Fund, the mechanism by which the feds fund transportation infrastructure projects. Without a doubt, these kinds of expenditures represent a legitimate use of public money.

Equally unquestionable is that there are serious problems besetting the fund. Current estimates have it facing a shortfall of $160 billion over the next decade. Moreover, much of the country’s infrastructure is in dire need of a facelift.

However, this is more than a question of simple economics. It’s a question as to how best to organize public finance. We believe that federal money ought only to be spent for truly federal purposes. On that front, the Highway Trust Fund falls short.

Originally organized to finance the Interstate Highway System – a genuinely federal project if ever there was one – the fund now suffers from severe mission creep. About a quarter of its revenues aren’t even spent on highway projects, going, instead, to decidedly local concerns like mass transit or bicycle paths. According to congressional testimony from the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards, that spending adds up to about $9 billion a year.

As John Marshall observed, “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” That’s why we regard any proposal for higher levies with caution. We believe that tax increases are only ever justified when the federal government can prove three things: 1) That it is only spending public money on legitimate public purposes; 2) that it is not spending public money on tasks better left to state and local governments; and 3) that it is spending public money efficiently. The Highway Trust Fund fails on all three counts...

Raising gas taxes precisely as Americans get a break is particularly sleazy as well.

Still more.

Gas Prices Have a Way to Go to Be Historically Cheap

At the Wall Street Journal, "Why Gas Feels Cheap—and Why It’s Not, Historically Speaking: Recent Price Plunge Looks Good After Years of High Costs, but Fill-Ups Were Less Expensive From 1986-2003."

When my wife and I bought our Honda Odyssey van, in December 2001, gas was $1.19 a gallon. So yeah, prices have a way to go before they're that cheap. But historically speaking, the current low prices are pretty mind-boggling.

Can Robust U.S. Economy Lift Global Markets?

Good news for the U.S. economy. Not so much for the rest of the world.

At LAT, "Overseas problems won't derail growing U.S. economy, analysts say":

NEW YORK — Call it the Great Divide: The new year figures to be one of robust economic growth in the U.S., with slowdowns, stagnation and setbacks everywhere else in the world.

The list of global problems is indeed long and worrisome. Europe and Japan teeter on the edge of recession. Russia careens toward a full-blown economic crisis. China's once-torrid growth is slowing faster than previously forecast. And many emerging economies are getting slammed by plunging oil prices.

All the overseas problems put together, though, are not enough to derail a strong U.S. economy, Wall Street analysts say. The Commerce Department stunned markets Dec. 23 by reporting that the nation's total economic output grew at an annual pace of 5% in the third quarter. The result blew past an already strong estimate of 3.9%.

"Spirits unleashed," was how Mark Zandi of research firm Moody's Analytics Inc. described the U.S. economy even before the final estimate for the third quarter came in.

The good U.S. economic news, forecasters said, will translate into solid but not spectacular returns in the stock market, which has been on a long bull run.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up about 11.4% for 2014, its third straight year of gains since the Great Recession. Most forecasts call for returns to be about half that in 2015 and beyond.

Forecasts can always be wrong, of course, but the new year begins with a set of unusually well-defined themes that, unless something dramatic happens, figure to play an important role in shaping the year's global economic picture. Here are a few of them...

Falling oil prices are a major factor in U.S. economic growth --- to the great consternation of the leftist climate change enviro-freaks.

But keep reading.