Month: April 2019

The UN has morphed from being an organization for greater world cooperation to a body strategizing for world governance. And shockingly, too many Americans are unwittingly embracing those strategies. There is a fifth column in our country that is committed to subverting our sovereignty.  However, President Donald Trump came out foursquare in defense of American sovereignty when he withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords. His announcement of that withdrawal was made in the Rose Garden almost two years ago. 

Although President Ronald Reagan’s comments often expressed love for and pride in America, the word “sovereignty” did not leap off his speech notes. Then, in post-Reagan years, conservatives were labeled American exceptionalists.  But going to the term sovereignty is more palatable and more accurate than exceptionalism.  Sovereignty draws attention more to the distinct right of a people to write its own laws, define and defend its borders, and to maintain its traditions without outside interference.  Exceptionalism suggests a superiority that some people (not this writer) find offensive.  Sovereignty draws our minds back to the aftermath of WWI when Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations was rejected because the League was seen as an actual and potential infringement on American sovereignty. Whether we are exceptional or not (and I believe we are), our political sovereignty is a jewel that must not be diluted by global initiatives.

Recently, our President has also withdrawn the U.S. signature on the UN Arms Trade Treaty, and he has sent a letter to the U.S. Senate recommending that this pact not be considered for a vote by the Senate.  Again, the premise for formal withdrawal is the threat perceived by the President to U.S. sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Trump’s political opposition has bitterly and unconscionably turned against his emphasis on sovereignty by characterizing it first as “nationalism,” and then as “white nationalism,” and ultimately as “Hiterlian” or “Nazi-style nationalism.”  For any reasonable person who studied history in high school and in college, it is obvious that there are good nationalisms and bad nationalisms. Our Judeo-Christian ethical values, legal system, spiritual foundation, prosperity, emphasis upon rights, respect for the individual, private ownership of property, belief in autonomy and personal responsibility, and commitment to “liberty and justice for all” (always a work in progress) make for a unique and successful nation-state worthy of upholding and defending.

However, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” was adopted by the United Nations during the Obama Presidency (2015), and thus far has not met with any unusual objections from the Trump administration even though it poses a threat to our sovereignty. 

Although the original U.N. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948) placed its greatest emphasis upon rights, that document is now supplemented and superseded by Agenda 2030 which only mentions “rights” one time in Article 19.  In the other 90 articles of this latest document, the word “rights” does not appear.  Instead, in its stream-of-consciousness, mellifluous writing style, it repeatedly refers to “needs” and “sustainable development” as the buzz words around which to justify governance on a global scale, interference with local laws and institutions, and the ideals of a world economy that is anything but free. 

For example, consider Article 9, which states: “We envisage a world in which every country enjoys sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all. A world in which consumption and production patterns and use of all natural resources — from air to land, from rivers, lakes and aquifers to oceans and seas — are sustainable.”  Agenda 2030 is driven by the fear that in our race for productivity, “decent work,” and growth we will destroy our planet.  This “vision” is of a planet that cannot sustain itself because of the contamination of the planet occasioned by the intense productivity of major developed countries. 

But is there not a kind of schizophrenia built into the above conception?  On the one hand, the most developed countries have an obligation not to use up the planet’s resources and not to use resources in a way that they destroy the planet; but on the other hand, the poorer and poorest of countries will need to become more productive and need to get even more cash and more resources from the wealthier countries at the same time as those countries are presumably downsizing to “protect” the world. 

How can richer countries successfully help poorer countries unless they increase their productivity and thus their wealth?  And how can poor countries without flush toilets, regular brushing of teeth, a consistent, disciplined work ethic, viable banking and governmental institutions, and leadership with integrity, hope to increase their wealth? 

A pastor I know worked for the civil service in India — but is now happily a U.S. citizen — and was relentlessly mocked by his coworkers in India because he did not take bribes.  Yet, because he had left Hinduism for Christianity, he understood the true significance of the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.”  An important work, Tropical Gangsters: One Man’s Experience With Development And Decadence In Deepest Africa, details the problems the International Monetary Fund faces with giving money to countries where ethical standards and accounting standards are severely lacking. 

We might also want to look at Article 3 of Agenda 2030 which states, “We resolve, between now and 2030… to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls; and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources.”  How does the U.N. even begin to see itself as qualified to bring the above goals into being?  Most of the societies in the U.N. are unjust and noninclusive.  And what about gender equality?  Vast numbers of countries — especially the Sharia-dominant Muslim countries — reject “gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

It is interesting to note that UN peacekeepers, referred to as “Blue Helmets,” have a Ten Point Code of Conduct pertaining to their presence in a country.  None of the points pertains to fighting, surrendering, or becoming a prisoner.  None refers to honor or duty.  In light of the U.N.’s gender equality reference in Article 3, this writer could only shake his head when reading rule #4 which states, “Do not indulge in immoral acts of sexual physical or psychological abuse or exploitation of the local population or United Nations staff, especially women and children.”  In other words, do not rape or torture any women or children. Does this “rule” show commitment to gender equality or does it show the crude level at which the peacekeepers are operating? The U.S. Military Code of Conduct has only six articles.  Article VI is particularly instructive for revealing who is more willing to respect women and children abroad, a U.S. soldier or a U.N. “Blue Helmet.” Article VI states, “I will never forget that I am an American, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free.  I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.”

The UN has morphed from being an organization for greater world cooperation to a body strategizing for world governance. And shockingly, too many Americans are unwittingly embracing those strategies. There is a fifth column in our country that is committed to subverting our sovereignty.  However, President Donald Trump came out foursquare in defense of American sovereignty when he withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords. His announcement of that withdrawal was made in the Rose Garden almost two years ago. 

Although President Ronald Reagan’s comments often expressed love for and pride in America, the word “sovereignty” did not leap off his speech notes. Then, in post-Reagan years, conservatives were labeled American exceptionalists.  But going to the term sovereignty is more palatable and more accurate than exceptionalism.  Sovereignty draws attention more to the distinct right of a people to write its own laws, define and defend its borders, and to maintain its traditions without outside interference.  Exceptionalism suggests a superiority that some people (not this writer) find offensive.  Sovereignty draws our minds back to the aftermath of WWI when Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations was rejected because the League was seen as an actual and potential infringement on American sovereignty. Whether we are exceptional or not (and I believe we are), our political sovereignty is a jewel that must not be diluted by global initiatives.

Recently, our President has also withdrawn the U.S. signature on the UN Arms Trade Treaty, and he has sent a letter to the U.S. Senate recommending that this pact not be considered for a vote by the Senate.  Again, the premise for formal withdrawal is the threat perceived by the President to U.S. sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Trump’s political opposition has bitterly and unconscionably turned against his emphasis on sovereignty by characterizing it first as “nationalism,” and then as “white nationalism,” and ultimately as “Hiterlian” or “Nazi-style nationalism.”  For any reasonable person who studied history in high school and in college, it is obvious that there are good nationalisms and bad nationalisms. Our Judeo-Christian ethical values, legal system, spiritual foundation, prosperity, emphasis upon rights, respect for the individual, private ownership of property, belief in autonomy and personal responsibility, and commitment to “liberty and justice for all” (always a work in progress) make for a unique and successful nation-state worthy of upholding and defending.

However, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” was adopted by the United Nations during the Obama Presidency (2015), and thus far has not met with any unusual objections from the Trump administration even though it poses a threat to our sovereignty. 

Although the original U.N. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (1948) placed its greatest emphasis upon rights, that document is now supplemented and superseded by Agenda 2030 which only mentions “rights” one time in Article 19.  In the other 90 articles of this latest document, the word “rights” does not appear.  Instead, in its stream-of-consciousness, mellifluous writing style, it repeatedly refers to “needs” and “sustainable development” as the buzz words around which to justify governance on a global scale, interference with local laws and institutions, and the ideals of a world economy that is anything but free. 

For example, consider Article 9, which states: “We envisage a world in which every country enjoys sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all. A world in which consumption and production patterns and use of all natural resources — from air to land, from rivers, lakes and aquifers to oceans and seas — are sustainable.”  Agenda 2030 is driven by the fear that in our race for productivity, “decent work,” and growth we will destroy our planet.  This “vision” is of a planet that cannot sustain itself because of the contamination of the planet occasioned by the intense productivity of major developed countries. 

But is there not a kind of schizophrenia built into the above conception?  On the one hand, the most developed countries have an obligation not to use up the planet’s resources and not to use resources in a way that they destroy the planet; but on the other hand, the poorer and poorest of countries will need to become more productive and need to get even more cash and more resources from the wealthier countries at the same time as those countries are presumably downsizing to “protect” the world. 

How can richer countries successfully help poorer countries unless they increase their productivity and thus their wealth?  And how can poor countries without flush toilets, regular brushing of teeth, a consistent, disciplined work ethic, viable banking and governmental institutions, and leadership with integrity, hope to increase their wealth? 

A pastor I know worked for the civil service in India — but is now happily a U.S. citizen — and was relentlessly mocked by his coworkers in India because he did not take bribes.  Yet, because he had left Hinduism for Christianity, he understood the true significance of the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.”  An important work, Tropical Gangsters: One Man’s Experience With Development And Decadence In Deepest Africa, details the problems the International Monetary Fund faces with giving money to countries where ethical standards and accounting standards are severely lacking. 

We might also want to look at Article 3 of Agenda 2030 which states, “We resolve, between now and 2030… to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls; and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources.”  How does the U.N. even begin to see itself as qualified to bring the above goals into being?  Most of the societies in the U.N. are unjust and noninclusive.  And what about gender equality?  Vast numbers of countries — especially the Sharia-dominant Muslim countries — reject “gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

It is interesting to note that UN peacekeepers, referred to as “Blue Helmets,” have a Ten Point Code of Conduct pertaining to their presence in a country.  None of the points pertains to fighting, surrendering, or becoming a prisoner.  None refers to honor or duty.  In light of the U.N.’s gender equality reference in Article 3, this writer could only shake his head when reading rule #4 which states, “Do not indulge in immoral acts of sexual physical or psychological abuse or exploitation of the local population or United Nations staff, especially women and children.”  In other words, do not rape or torture any women or children. Does this “rule” show commitment to gender equality or does it show the crude level at which the peacekeepers are operating? The U.S. Military Code of Conduct has only six articles.  Article VI is particularly instructive for revealing who is more willing to respect women and children abroad, a U.S. soldier or a U.N. “Blue Helmet.” Article VI states, “I will never forget that I am an American, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free.  I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.”

Saturday night’s White House Correspondents dinner once again came and went without most Americans having paid it any serious attention, and for the third straight year, our president chose to miss this increasingly farcical event where journalists pat each other on the back for the fine jobs they believe themselves to be doing.  What made this year’s event a little different than years past is that none of the other senior members of the White House staff attended, either.

“That decision came after Sarah Huckabee Sanders endured cruel taunts at the hands of last year’s featured speaker, comedian Michelle Wolf,” Emily Zanotti reports at The Daily Wire.  “[D]espite a longstanding tradition of good-natured ribbing between the press and the president, through dueling speeches, the White House simply stopped RSVPing to the event.”

Without the luxury of roasting their political enemies in attendance to feign a comedic tone rather than a purely adversarial one, the organizers of the event dropped the façade of humor in favor of a “funerary tone” led by a historian rather than the traditional choice of a comedian. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the event offered anything short of bad comedy.

For example, the White House Correspondents Association’s president Olivier Knox committed to a “dark sermon,” according to Grabien News. 

Olivier Knox at the WHCA Dinner

Photo credit: NBC screen grab via YouTube

In February of 2017, he told the audience, “the president called us the enemy of the people,” he said.  A few days later, he said, his son asked if Donald Trump was going to put him in prison.  “At the end of a trip to Mexico,” he continued, “he mused that if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.”

For the record, Trump has never threatened to imprison a journalist or prevent a citizen journalist from reentering the country from abroad.  If Knox were an honest man, he might have told his son: “No, son, none of that will happen.  You only believe that because a lot of people make their living by making up such nonsensical stories about how this president might do such things.”

But he certainly wouldn’t say that, because those are the lies upon which this entire event was centered.  There was a calculated effort to portray this administration as uniquely at odds with a free and critical press in the scope of American history.  For example, historian and host Ron Chernow quipped that “George Washington felt maligned and misunderstood by the press, but he never generalized that as a vendetta against the institution.”

Can any sane person, much less a “historian,” actually argue that Trump is the only president to malign the free press, as an institution, for spreading “fake news?”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly did, and he remains a hero of the left despite having done so.

According to Columbia professor Raymond Moley, a close confidant of FDR, his president believed that a “long list” of newspapers was “guilty of falsifying news.”  He said that “nothing would help him more [in the 1936 election] than to have it known that the newspapers were all against him.”

Sure enough, in the 1936 election campaign, FDR “claimed that 85% of newspapers were against him,” complaining about their “poisonous propaganda.”  Despite there being an awful lot of criticism about the employment of his “new instruments of public power,” FDR was almost certainly exaggerating the extent of the newspapers’ bias against him.  Even still, he was none too kind toward the press about their consistent criticism, and generalized his opinion as a “vendetta against the institution” of the then-mainstream press. 

Should we expect Trump, today, to be any different?  Trump endures a constant barrage of criticism via 24-hour news cycles, prominently disseminated by mainstream coverage, and practical data has suggested that as much as 91% of that coverage is negative.  So, while it’s easy to argue that FDR was imagining (or purposely fabricating) such widespread opposition among the press, such bias against President Trump definitely exists, and it’s obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. 

The difference is that Trump hasn’t used his power to clamp down on his opposition in the press beyond offering harsh criticism.  Sure, he’s been highly critical of the mainstream media which is obviously aligned against him, but he’s never used the power of the federal government to punish journalists.  The closest he’s come, one might argue, is temporarily revoking Jim Acosta’s White House press pass, which was certainly warranted due to his childlike, attention-seeking antics in refusing to surrender his microphone after asking several questions and grandstanding for political effect. 

FDR, on the other hand, famously used the power of the federal government to strongarm newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.  A one-time supporter of Roosevelt in 1932, Randolph had “turned against his ally,” leading FDR to instruct the “Treasury Department to closely monitor Hearst’s taxes,” according to David Beito of Reason.com.

It’s convenient for the left to occasionally ignore this sort of activity, obviously.  After all, the leftist media chose to ignore Barack Obama’s secret monitoring of phone call records of New York Times, AP, and Fox News reporters and exclusion of Fox News from conference calls available to other media, among other abuses. (But “not a whisper of a scandal” in the Obama years, says Joe Biden.)

On the contrary, Trump’s used his executive authority to do no such thing to his political opponents.  Yet, somehow, Trump is the real threat to the First Amendment?

Journalists like Olivier Knox pretending that there’s any realistic possibility that they could be jailed or prevented from reentering the country by this president for having said nasty things about him is worse than an honest fear or fantasy.  It’s nothing more than a comical effort to earn a badge of heroism from his media colleagues on the cheap.  Firstly, there is nothing more fashionable in the broad media circles than criticizing President Trump.  Secondly, the possibility that President Trump might abuse his power in any such way is nothing more than a phantom threat that Knox’s kid might believe, but few others would.

But with some other presidents in American history, such a threat might have been very real. 

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson “warned that those who were disloyal had given up their civil liberties,” and would face “stern repression.”  He used an executive order to create “a new federal agency that would put the government in the business of actively shaping press coverage,” called the Committee on Public Information (CPI). The Committee recruited 75,000 “Four-Minute Men” for their skills in propagandizing Wilson’s agenda in speeches, and it produced newsreels rallying support for the war.  It produced “guidelines” for U.S. newspapers for “patriotic” newspaper editors to follow, and actually published a daily “Official Bulletin,” which some view as the “closest the United States has come to a paper like the Soviet Union’s Pravda.”  Even outside the government press, the CPI publications appeared, at taxpayer expense, in “20,000 newspaper columns each week,” effectively burying the private press beneath mountains of government propaganda.

The Wilson administration’s most famous action against the free press was the Espionage Act of 1917, under which 2,000 people were charged during WWI, and jailed many members of the press.

Interestingly enough, it was under the auspices of the Espionage Act that President Obama cracked down on journalists “more than any other administration since Woodrow Wilson,” according to Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner in 2013.  He cites 20-year veteran of The New York Times, David Sanger, as having called the Obama administration “the most closed, control-freak administration” he’d ever witnessed.

And yet, the same leftist media mouthpieces claiming that Trump is some monumental threat to press freedom were oddly silent during Obama’s presidency while all of that was going on.

Members of the media today suggesting that Donald Trump represents some uniquely dangerous presidential threat to our free press are either in desperate need of education, or they knowingly lack an interest in truth.  And all of the evidence suggests the latter, and that they are willing to sell lies in order to claim some specious mantle of victimhood. 

William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.

Saturday night’s White House Correspondents dinner once again came and went without most Americans having paid it any serious attention, and for the third straight year, our president chose to miss this increasingly farcical event where journalists pat each other on the back for the fine jobs they believe themselves to be doing.  What made this year’s event a little different than years past is that none of the other senior members of the White House staff attended, either.

“That decision came after Sarah Huckabee Sanders endured cruel taunts at the hands of last year’s featured speaker, comedian Michelle Wolf,” Emily Zanotti reports at The Daily Wire.  “[D]espite a longstanding tradition of good-natured ribbing between the press and the president, through dueling speeches, the White House simply stopped RSVPing to the event.”

Without the luxury of roasting their political enemies in attendance to feign a comedic tone rather than a purely adversarial one, the organizers of the event dropped the façade of humor in favor of a “funerary tone” led by a historian rather than the traditional choice of a comedian. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the event offered anything short of bad comedy.

For example, the White House Correspondents Association’s president Olivier Knox committed to a “dark sermon,” according to Grabien News. 

Olivier Knox at the WHCA Dinner

Photo credit: NBC screen grab via YouTube

In February of 2017, he told the audience, “the president called us the enemy of the people,” he said.  A few days later, he said, his son asked if Donald Trump was going to put him in prison.  “At the end of a trip to Mexico,” he continued, “he mused that if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.”

For the record, Trump has never threatened to imprison a journalist or prevent a citizen journalist from reentering the country from abroad.  If Knox were an honest man, he might have told his son: “No, son, none of that will happen.  You only believe that because a lot of people make their living by making up such nonsensical stories about how this president might do such things.”

But he certainly wouldn’t say that, because those are the lies upon which this entire event was centered.  There was a calculated effort to portray this administration as uniquely at odds with a free and critical press in the scope of American history.  For example, historian and host Ron Chernow quipped that “George Washington felt maligned and misunderstood by the press, but he never generalized that as a vendetta against the institution.”

Can any sane person, much less a “historian,” actually argue that Trump is the only president to malign the free press, as an institution, for spreading “fake news?”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt certainly did, and he remains a hero of the left despite having done so.

According to Columbia professor Raymond Moley, a close confidant of FDR, his president believed that a “long list” of newspapers was “guilty of falsifying news.”  He said that “nothing would help him more [in the 1936 election] than to have it known that the newspapers were all against him.”

Sure enough, in the 1936 election campaign, FDR “claimed that 85% of newspapers were against him,” complaining about their “poisonous propaganda.”  Despite there being an awful lot of criticism about the employment of his “new instruments of public power,” FDR was almost certainly exaggerating the extent of the newspapers’ bias against him.  Even still, he was none too kind toward the press about their consistent criticism, and generalized his opinion as a “vendetta against the institution” of the then-mainstream press. 

Should we expect Trump, today, to be any different?  Trump endures a constant barrage of criticism via 24-hour news cycles, prominently disseminated by mainstream coverage, and practical data has suggested that as much as 91% of that coverage is negative.  So, while it’s easy to argue that FDR was imagining (or purposely fabricating) such widespread opposition among the press, such bias against President Trump definitely exists, and it’s obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. 

The difference is that Trump hasn’t used his power to clamp down on his opposition in the press beyond offering harsh criticism.  Sure, he’s been highly critical of the mainstream media which is obviously aligned against him, but he’s never used the power of the federal government to punish journalists.  The closest he’s come, one might argue, is temporarily revoking Jim Acosta’s White House press pass, which was certainly warranted due to his childlike, attention-seeking antics in refusing to surrender his microphone after asking several questions and grandstanding for political effect. 

FDR, on the other hand, famously used the power of the federal government to strongarm newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.  A one-time supporter of Roosevelt in 1932, Randolph had “turned against his ally,” leading FDR to instruct the “Treasury Department to closely monitor Hearst’s taxes,” according to David Beito of Reason.com.

It’s convenient for the left to occasionally ignore this sort of activity, obviously.  After all, the leftist media chose to ignore Barack Obama’s secret monitoring of phone call records of New York Times, AP, and Fox News reporters and exclusion of Fox News from conference calls available to other media, among other abuses. (But “not a whisper of a scandal” in the Obama years, says Joe Biden.)

On the contrary, Trump’s used his executive authority to do no such thing to his political opponents.  Yet, somehow, Trump is the real threat to the First Amendment?

Journalists like Olivier Knox pretending that there’s any realistic possibility that they could be jailed or prevented from reentering the country by this president for having said nasty things about him is worse than an honest fear or fantasy.  It’s nothing more than a comical effort to earn a badge of heroism from his media colleagues on the cheap.  Firstly, there is nothing more fashionable in the broad media circles than criticizing President Trump.  Secondly, the possibility that President Trump might abuse his power in any such way is nothing more than a phantom threat that Knox’s kid might believe, but few others would.

But with some other presidents in American history, such a threat might have been very real. 

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson “warned that those who were disloyal had given up their civil liberties,” and would face “stern repression.”  He used an executive order to create “a new federal agency that would put the government in the business of actively shaping press coverage,” called the Committee on Public Information (CPI). The Committee recruited 75,000 “Four-Minute Men” for their skills in propagandizing Wilson’s agenda in speeches, and it produced newsreels rallying support for the war.  It produced “guidelines” for U.S. newspapers for “patriotic” newspaper editors to follow, and actually published a daily “Official Bulletin,” which some view as the “closest the United States has come to a paper like the Soviet Union’s Pravda.”  Even outside the government press, the CPI publications appeared, at taxpayer expense, in “20,000 newspaper columns each week,” effectively burying the private press beneath mountains of government propaganda.

The Wilson administration’s most famous action against the free press was the Espionage Act of 1917, under which 2,000 people were charged during WWI, and jailed many members of the press.

Interestingly enough, it was under the auspices of the Espionage Act that President Obama cracked down on journalists “more than any other administration since Woodrow Wilson,” according to Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner in 2013.  He cites 20-year veteran of The New York Times, David Sanger, as having called the Obama administration “the most closed, control-freak administration” he’d ever witnessed.

And yet, the same leftist media mouthpieces claiming that Trump is some monumental threat to press freedom were oddly silent during Obama’s presidency while all of that was going on.

Members of the media today suggesting that Donald Trump represents some uniquely dangerous presidential threat to our free press are either in desperate need of education, or they knowingly lack an interest in truth.  And all of the evidence suggests the latter, and that they are willing to sell lies in order to claim some specious mantle of victimhood. 

William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.

PG&E will respond to California’s reckless environmental policies that cause huge wildfires by unplugging electricity on windy days, despite risks to shut-ins and the elderly.

The California public utility, forced into its second bankruptcy in 16 years after facing $30 billion in liability claims from 2017 and 2018 wildfires, announced a ‘Public Safety Power Shutoff’ policy that will shut down its electrical grid for up to 5.4 million users during ‘Red Flag’ periods with low humidity and sustained winds above 25 mph.

The bankrupt company stated that the shutoff could last up to five days and suggested that special needs, such as the elderly and shutins that “require electricity to sustain life,  may wish to Create An Emergency Preparedness Plan” that could include having public service phone numbers, a backup location, and informing local authorities.

County officials were stunned by the new PG&E policy, expressing fear that patients on medical equipment could be at risk of dying. There are also concerns that PG&E electrical shutoffs during the Carr Fire that swept through Redding and Camp Fire that burned Paradice to the ground, many seniors could not open garage doors to escape.

PG&E argues it has been forced to adopt electrical shutoffs under a bizarre 1999 California Court of Appeals opinion that made utility assets subject to “inverse condemnation” through legal claimant “taking,” without regard any determination of negligence by the utility or its staff, for wind-driven power line sparking wildfires along PG&E’s 18,466 circuit miles of interconnected electric transmission lines.

California has suffered more and larger wildfires since the Clinton administration in 1994 adopted the Northwest Forest Plan that prioritized protecting endangered species, water quality, and old-growth forests in 4.5 million acres of Northern California national forests. Logging roads that acted as fire breaks were abandoned as the industry shriveled, resulting in heavier underbrush and forest tree spacing becoming much denser. As a result, wildfires became bigger, hotter, and more remote from firefighters.

The Bush administration tried to reverse the policies, but environmentalists used lawsuits until the Obama administration reinstated the anti-logging policies and supported Gov. Brown’s California ‘Forest Practice Rules 2015’ that led to even less logging and more road abandonments.

After insurance companies suffered a shockingly high $5.1 billion in wildfires losses over a 10-year period through 2016, underwriting consultant Verisk Solutions warned at the start of the 2017 fire season: “4.5 million U.S. homes were identified at high or extreme risk of wildfire, with more than 2 million in California alone.”

The National Interagency Coordination Center found that Northern California in the last decade had suffered a 385 percent annual increase in acres burned, versus prior years. Of the 129,582 U.S. wildfires that burned 18,793,578 acres between 2017 and 2018, California accounted 15 percent of fires and almost 20 percent of the area burned.  

Facing a high-wind event In October 2018, PG&E shut off power lines in high-risk areas. After no fire occurred, customers protested and the utility was hit with 146 claims for losses, including 25 claims of business economic impacts. A similar wind event the next month sparked the Camp Fire that killed 86 people and destroyed 18,661 structures.

PG&E has not disclosed health issue claims for shutting off power to the 3.8 million, or about 20 percent, of its service area that are over age 60, because under Senate Bill 901 passed by the California Legislature and signed by former Gov. Brown, in 2018 relieved all utilities for liability during a so-called wildfire “de-energizing” event.

With the utilities financially off the hook for wildfire de-energizing claims, the financial liability and burden to care for seniors now falls directly on state and local government.

Newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a ‘Wildfire State of Emergency’ on March 22 that suspended all environmental mitigation mandates to expedite a $50 million for forest clean-up projects before the fire season. Radical environmental and progressive activists that were key to his election were furious when Newsom stated:

“The increasing wildfire risks we face as a state mean we simply can’t wait until a fire starts in order to start deploying emergency resources.”

PG&E will respond to California’s reckless environmental policies that cause huge wildfires by unplugging electricity on windy days, despite risks to shut-ins and the elderly.

The California public utility, forced into its second bankruptcy in 16 years after facing $30 billion in liability claims from 2017 and 2018 wildfires, announced a ‘Public Safety Power Shutoff’ policy that will shut down its electrical grid for up to 5.4 million users during ‘Red Flag’ periods with low humidity and sustained winds above 25 mph.

The bankrupt company stated that the shutoff could last up to five days and suggested that special needs, such as the elderly and shutins that “require electricity to sustain life,  may wish to Create An Emergency Preparedness Plan” that could include having public service phone numbers, a backup location, and informing local authorities.

County officials were stunned by the new PG&E policy, expressing fear that patients on medical equipment could be at risk of dying. There are also concerns that PG&E electrical shutoffs during the Carr Fire that swept through Redding and Camp Fire that burned Paradice to the ground, many seniors could not open garage doors to escape.

PG&E argues it has been forced to adopt electrical shutoffs under a bizarre 1999 California Court of Appeals opinion that made utility assets subject to “inverse condemnation” through legal claimant “taking,” without regard any determination of negligence by the utility or its staff, for wind-driven power line sparking wildfires along PG&E’s 18,466 circuit miles of interconnected electric transmission lines.

California has suffered more and larger wildfires since the Clinton administration in 1994 adopted the Northwest Forest Plan that prioritized protecting endangered species, water quality, and old-growth forests in 4.5 million acres of Northern California national forests. Logging roads that acted as fire breaks were abandoned as the industry shriveled, resulting in heavier underbrush and forest tree spacing becoming much denser. As a result, wildfires became bigger, hotter, and more remote from firefighters.

The Bush administration tried to reverse the policies, but environmentalists used lawsuits until the Obama administration reinstated the anti-logging policies and supported Gov. Brown’s California ‘Forest Practice Rules 2015’ that led to even less logging and more road abandonments.

After insurance companies suffered a shockingly high $5.1 billion in wildfires losses over a 10-year period through 2016, underwriting consultant Verisk Solutions warned at the start of the 2017 fire season: “4.5 million U.S. homes were identified at high or extreme risk of wildfire, with more than 2 million in California alone.”

The National Interagency Coordination Center found that Northern California in the last decade had suffered a 385 percent annual increase in acres burned, versus prior years. Of the 129,582 U.S. wildfires that burned 18,793,578 acres between 2017 and 2018, California accounted 15 percent of fires and almost 20 percent of the area burned.  

Facing a high-wind event In October 2018, PG&E shut off power lines in high-risk areas. After no fire occurred, customers protested and the utility was hit with 146 claims for losses, including 25 claims of business economic impacts. A similar wind event the next month sparked the Camp Fire that killed 86 people and destroyed 18,661 structures.

PG&E has not disclosed health issue claims for shutting off power to the 3.8 million, or about 20 percent, of its service area that are over age 60, because under Senate Bill 901 passed by the California Legislature and signed by former Gov. Brown, in 2018 relieved all utilities for liability during a so-called wildfire “de-energizing” event.

With the utilities financially off the hook for wildfire de-energizing claims, the financial liability and burden to care for seniors now falls directly on state and local government.

Newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a ‘Wildfire State of Emergency’ on March 22 that suspended all environmental mitigation mandates to expedite a $50 million for forest clean-up projects before the fire season. Radical environmental and progressive activists that were key to his election were furious when Newsom stated:

“The increasing wildfire risks we face as a state mean we simply can’t wait until a fire starts in order to start deploying emergency resources.”