The Center Square

Experience Proving Green Mandates Undermine Affordability, Reliability of Electricity

21 June 2021
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The Center Square

Recent experiences in three states provide an insight into how problematic President Joe Biden’s push for renewable energy could be for electric customers nationwide, according to a new report from Power the Future.

The report, titled “Lights Out: How Green Mandates are Undermining the Affordability and Reliability of Electricity,” was written by Larry Behrens, western states director for Power the Future, a nonprofit trade group that speaks for oil and gas workers.

“One thing is clear. The Biden Administration is misleading the American people to impose the Green Agenda,” Behrens said. “Biden can’t achieve his pledge with stifling bureaucratic manipulation in every sector of the market.”

To examine the impact Biden’s policies could have on the country, Behrens looked at scenarios in Texas, California and New Mexico, where more dependence on renewable energy has failed customers.

Texas in mid-February experienced winter storms and record low temperatures that left millions without power and claimed more than 100 lives.

“One factor stood out among the rest,” Behrens said. “The state’s heavy reliance on and subsidization of wind power came up empty at a critical time.”

According to data from the Electric Reliability Corporation of Texas, wind provided 42% of the state’s electricity on Feb. 7. By Feb. 11, when the storms first hit, that fell to 8% as turbines froze. Coal and natural gas plants increased output by 47% and 450%, respectively, to meet increased demand.

In California, state law requires utilities to purchase 50% of their electricity from renewables by 2026. As a result, over the past decade electric bills there increased 30%, seven times more than the national average.

New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act, signed in 2019, required utilities to have 20% of all electricity sales from renewables by 2020. The Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state’s largest utility, missed the mark, and plans to close the state’s largest coal plant next year, costing the local economy hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue.

PNM has also said 75% of customers’ electricity needs will come from renewables by 2025.

“This claim strains credulity coming from a company that failed to meet the state’s 2020 renewable target,” Behrens said.

According to the Associated Press, last August, days after New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham stood by a solar panel installation in Albuquerque praising renewables, PNM took to social media to ask customers to cut back on air conditioning while temperatures increased due to concerns about cloud cover leading to reduced solar generation.

“The lessons learned from these states’ experiences with renewable energy should be pushing policymakers across the country to reject top-down green central planning of the electrical grid,” Behrens said. “But that doesn’t appear to be happening.”

School Funding Ruling to Effect Laws in Other States

31 August 2020
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The Center Square

On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 opinion that the application of Article X, Section 6, of Montana’s Constitution (Montana’s Blaine Amendment) violated the free exercise clause of the U.S. Constitution. The majority held that the application of the state’s Blaine Amendment was unconstitutional because it barred religious schools and parents who wished to send their children to those schools from receiving public benefits because of the religious character of the school.

Blaine Amendments refer to language in state constitutions that prohibit public funding for schools or educational institutions run by religious organizations. The language in each state constitution varies. Blaine Amendments are named after an amendment to the U.S. Constitution—sponsored by James Gillespie Blaine—that was proposed but never passed.

Thirty-seven states have Blaine Amendments in their constitutions as of 2020. Louisiana’s Blaine Amendment was repealed by voters in 1974.

In 31 states, the existing versions of Blaine Amendments were included when the state’s most recent constitution or constitutional revision was ratified by voters, which means voters did not vote specifically on the Blaine Amendment but rather considered an entirely new constitution or a larger set of revisions that contained the Blaine Amendment language. In six states, Blaine Amendments were added through specific constitutional amendments, at least three of which were referred to the ballot by constitutional revision commissions.

In Utah and South Carolina, the states’ Blaine Amendments were amended to remove the prohibition against indirect public funding of religious schools, leaving a prohibition against direct public funding.

Congressmen Get Millions in Pensions and Benefits

27 August 2020
Behany Blankley
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By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

As the nation struggles with record high unemployment, extended job losses, continued statewide shutdowns, and crippling national debt, a new report reveals that congressional leaders will receive an estimated $1 million each in retirement payouts on top of their lifetime pensions, fully funded by taxpayers.


First published by Forbes, OpenTheBooks.com’s report, “Why Are Taxpayers Providing Public Pensions To Millionaire Members Of Congress?” compares the financial benefits that both top leaders in Congress receive.


“We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – Congress is an exclusive club where members vote for their own benefits,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of the nonprofit watchdog organization, says.


By law, all 535 members of Congress receive a public pension plan and a taxpayer-funded, five-percent of salary 401(k)-style savings plan, in addition to salaries of $174,000 and higher. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s net worth is reportedly between $50 million and $72 million; Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s net worth is reportedly roughly $22 million. Their current salaries are $223,500 and $193,400, respectively.
Pelosi has received $5.7 million in total salary for the 34 years she has been in office. McConnell has received $5.5 million for the 36 years he’s been in office.


Both the Speaker and the Majority Leader voted for several spending packages this year, including the CARES Act and the Families First relief bill, which will increase the national debt by $1.76 trillion, and $192 billion, respectively, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The small business relief act added $480 billion to the total.
Spending increases and tax cuts in coronavirus legislation may increase debt initially by roughly $2.4 trillion.
Chris Edwards, an economist at the Cato Institute, estimates that the effect of the recession will reduce federal revenues a further $2.2 trillion over the next few years. With higher spending and lower revenues, federal borrowing costs are expected to be approximately $1.2 trillion higher over the next decade.


The basic CBO estimates exclude these costs, Edwards notes. All told, these decisions will add an estimated $5.8 trillion to the national debt.
And both leaders are expected to vote on another stimulus bill, which will add to this total.


Part of the spending problem contributing to this debt, OpenTheBooks.com notes, is the taxpayer-funded lifetime pension and taxpayer-matched savings plans members of Congress receive.


“Critics question the necessity of such a system,” Andrzejewski writes. “Why are U.S. taxpayers providing public pensions to millionaire members of Congress on top of a 401(k)-style plan? (The median net worth for a member recently exceeded $1.1 million.)”


Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com evaluated the financial benefits Pelosi and McConnell receive from taxpayers.


When Pelosi retires, she will receive $153,967 a year in public pension and Social Security benefits, in addition to an estimated $1 million lump sum through her federal saving account, OpenTheBooks auditors found. They explain this “is just the portion of the account that was taxpayer-funded.”
Taxpayers also paid $282,965 into Pelosi’s federal Thrift Savings Plans, which OpenTheBooks estimates grew to $1.03 million if invested in an S&P 500 index fund, as of Dec. 31, 2019.


Similar to Pelosi, taxpayers invested $273,700 into McConnell’s federal Thrift Savings Plans, which OpenTheBooks auditors estimates grew to $1.1 million if invested in an S&P 500 index fund as of Dec. 31, 2019. They add, this “is just the portion of the account that was taxpayer-funded.”
Researchers at the National Taxpayers Union estimate that McConnell’s pension and annuity package will be $142,902 annually if he retires after the 2020 November election.


U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, has proposed a bill to change the law, arguing that members of Congress have the “option to forego the generous retirement plans offered to representatives and senators and opt instead for a more conservative, savings-based plan like those of the Americans they represent.”


The bill, S.439, passed the U.S. Senate on Dec. 19, 2019, and sits in the House.
Braun notes that the median minimum net worth of members of the 115th Congress was $511,000, while the median net worth of a U.S. household in 2016 was $97,300.


The collective wealth of members of the 115th Congress was at least $2.43 billion, with 43 members who were millionaires, he said.
Even factoring in federal employees, only 23 percent of all U.S. workers contribute to a traditional pension, Braun adds, down from 38 percent in 1980, as traditional pensions continue to be phased out by private sector companies in favor of 401ks and other savings plans.

More Workers Earning 6 Figure Salaries

25 January 2020
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From The Center Square

Earning a salary of $100,000 a year is a major financial milestone for many Americans. The good news is that with steadily rising wages and increasing demand for skilled jobs, the goal of earning a six-figure salary is more attainable than ever before.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the percentage of individuals with a total income of $100,000 or more per year (in 2018 dollars) has increased dramatically. While only 3.5 percent of earners in 1980 had the equivalent of a six-figure salary, that number rose to over 11 percent in 2018. This upward trend closely follows the trend in mean individual income over the same period. Nationwide, the mean annual income was $50,413 in 2018 for all individuals ages 15 and over.

The share of high-paying jobs is expected to increase significantly over the next 10 years, especially due to increased demand in the healthcare, management, and technology industries. The average projected employment growth rate across all occupations for the period 2018-2028 is 5.2 percent, but occupations with a mean annual pay of $100,000 or more are expected to increase twice as fast, at almost 10 percent. High-paying healthcare jobs, in particular, will expand rapidly as an aging population requires increased medical care.

Jobs that are most frequently attaining this goal are CEO’s, college health specialties teachers,  Health Specialties Teachers, marketing managers, construction managers, administrative services managers, pharmacists, medical and health services managers, sales managers, computer and information systems managers, financial managers, lawyers, physicians and surgeons, software developers and programmers, general and operations managers.

Medicaid Expansion = “Medicare for All Lite”

25 January 2020
Behany Blankley
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By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

A new report by the nonpartisan think tank The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) says that Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act is like “Medicare for All Lite,” which has created nothing but “disastrous results.”

If the remaining non-expansion states were to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, FGA argues, about 2 million able-bodied adults risk losing their private insurance. They would then be shifted onto Medicaid and receive less quality care, placing a larger financial burden onto taxpayers.

In “Forced Into Welfare: How Medicaid Expansion Will Kick Millions Of Americans Off Of Private Insurance,” the authors note that the majority of able-bodied adults targeted to enroll in Medicaid already have affordable private insurance through an exchange program.

According to an earlier FGA analysis, nearly 54 percent of potential Medicaid expansion enrollees were already insured, and in some states like Wisconsin, the number was as high as 71 percent.

Chris Jacobs, senior fellow at the New Orleans-based Pelican Institute for Public Policy, reported on the crisis of Louisiana residents being forced to drop their private insurance to enroll in Medicaid, creating a phenomenon known as “crowd out.” After reviewing public records from the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), Jacobs found that 15,000 people dropped their private insurance to enroll in Medicaid every month throughout 2017.

“Crowd out populations pose big potential costs for Louisiana taxpayers,” Jacobs said. “In 2015, the Legislative Fiscal Office assumed that if Louisiana expanded Medicaid, the state would spend between $900 million and $1.3 billion over five years providing Medicaid coverage to individuals with prior health coverage.”

The average expansion enrollee cost per person is $6,286.20 per year in Louisiana, Jacobs calculates based on LDH testimony given to the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year.

Multiplying this average cost-per-enrollee by the number of individuals who dropped private coverage, according to last year’s LSU Health Insurance Survey, the Pelican Institute estimates the potential cost to state and federal taxpayers is $461.6 million per year.

Similar patterns are occurring nationwide, the FGA report notes. Economists, including Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, have concluded that Medicaid expansions in the late 1990s and early 2000s created a crowd-out effect of roughly 60 percent. In other words, for every 10 new Medicaid enrollees, six left private insurance plans, FGA said.

Americans’ View of Economy is Highest in 19 Years

14 October 2019
Behany Blankley
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By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

A continuing robust job market has also boosted U.S. consumer confidence to an all-time high in nearly two decades, according to data released by The Conference Board’s index.

Bloomberg News reports the data exceeded all estimates in its survey of economists, with the highest views on the current economic climate at their highest since November 2000.

The index “shows hiring and income gains are keeping consumers upbeat and assuaging concerns about the economy’s prospects in light of slowing global growth, volatile financial markets and escalating U.S.-China trade tensions,” Bloomberg reports.

The majority of respondents saying jobs are plentiful jumped to 51.2 percent, the highest since September 2000, according to the index, while those saying jobs are hard to find declined to the lowest level in three months.

“While other parts of the economy may show some weakening, consumers have remained confident and willing to spend,” Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at the Conference Board, said in a statement. “However, if the recent escalation in trade and tariff tensions persists, it could potentially dampen consumers’ optimism regarding the short-term economic outlook.”

The report comes after record job numbers were published by the U.S. Department of Labor and record highs were reached by the Dow Jones and S&P 500 in mid-July.

Within a record-setting 24-hour period, the S&P 500 surpassed 3,000 for the first time since its founding in 1896, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 27,000 for the first time since its founding in 1885.

In the first six months of 2019, the Dow rose by 16 percent and the S&P 500 by 20 percent.

In April, 263,000 nonfarm jobs were added to the economy, with hourly wage growth up by two-tenths of a percent and unemployment at 3.6 percent, its lowest level since December 1969. In June, 224,000 nonfarm jobs were added, far more than what economists predicted.

In July, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 164,000, with an unchanged unemployment rate of 3.7 percent.

Positive responses also came after President Donald Trump said in August that he was considering indexing capital gains to inflation. Conservative groups argue this will build on the success of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that spawned economic growth, job creation and wage increases.

“Indexing is something that a lot of people have liked for a long time and it is something that would be very easy to do,” Trump said. “I can say that a majority of the people in the White House, at the level that does this kind of thing, they like indexing. So it is something I’m thinking about.”

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) President Grover Norquist said, “Taxing inflation is wrong and unfair,” adding that ending the taxation of inflation on capital gains would strengthen the economy.

A coalition of 51 conservative groups sent President Trump a letter earlier this year urging him to end the inflation tax on savings and investment. They maintain, “American families and job creators should not have to pay taxes on phantom income.”

ATR notes that because of the TCJA, 90 percent of American wage earners have higher take-home pay.

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Op-Ed: Control the Language and Control History

15 September 2019
William Haupt
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by William Haupt III, The Center Square

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.”

– Socialist Norman Thomas, 1928

During a decade of political chaos that brought us the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aldous Huxley and Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell reacted to this mobocracy introducing the world to his dystopian Big Brother. His book “1984” was an attempt to dissuade existentialism in a world reinventing itself after two great wars.

During the rebuilding of politically polarized Europe, Orwell had concerns for the rise of regimes that promised liberation and freedom under the countenance of prorating free enterprise by controlling every action a citizen made. Orwell saw the past failed attempts to do this with artillery as a prime fortuity to complete this maneuver, replacing powerful weapons with words.

Words have always been a commanding form of control in adjudicating beliefs. When you short-circuit the capacity of a person’s ability to think logically, they will obey authority without force. In ancient China, the arrival of a new dynasty brought about a “rectification of definitions.” This was a ceremony in which the erosion of the meaning of tactical words used within previous dynasties was re-clarified by new rulers. The subjects were ordered to learn these new definitions and never use the old or it would cost them their heads. One who failed this litmus test and spoke wrongly was labeled a traitor. We are doing a repeat performance of this in our common core classrooms today.

After the Great Wars, it was apparent rhetoric and demography was a highly effective weapon for victory. Those who witnessed Adolph Hitler’s charisma and Lenin’s ability to sell socialism to a region after the bloodiest of battles in modern history took notice. The battlefields of the Cold War were fraught with threatening words, not deadly carcinogenic howitzers.

If you control language, you control the argument. If you control the argument, you control information. If you control information, you control history. If you control history, you control the past. We are living that nightmare right now in the 21st century.

“He who controls the past controls the future.”

– George Orwell’s Big Brother, 1984

In modern free societies, a vigorous war of words is being waged for those who know the benefit of tactical deception. Liberals call it political correctness, a phrase captioned by cultural Marxists for thought control. Operatives against republican democracy have entrenched “got-yas” in their rules for modern radicals. Progressive-socialist thought-crime laws control free speech. This handicaps expression of individualism and secularizes religious teachings with sanctioned ideology. It is now politically incorrect to scold an out-of-control government when they abuse the limited powers we relegated to them. The progressive propaganda machine must approve everything said today.

Before the rise of socialist Norman Thomas and his infusion of socialist ideology with Democratic Party politics, we saw limited threats of media manipulation in favor of the left. But the efforts of Thomas, Saul Alinsky, Henry Wallace, Mary Harris, Margaret Sanger, Barack Obama and others incited liberal thought that forced the press to betray their code of ethics. With the rise of new progressivism, media truth became a thing of the past. Our once trusted government watchdogs became lapdogs to exploit facts, exaggerate, distort and fabricate half truths and mistruths to advocate for far left progressive conceptualistic idealism.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

Controlling the world’s communal language has been more effectual in making dramatic changes in history than munitions. Hypnotic rogue leaders appealing to disillusioned citizens have turned them into obeying subjects without firing a shot. The right words spoken at the right time, no matter how generically empty they are, convince people that corrupt, incompetent leaders will lure them into Elysian Fields. Sometimes it is as simple as reiterating one word like “change” to electrify an entire base! But when this prodigal son leaves them with only two bits in their purse, his proletariats must invent new catch phrases to keep this flock from backsliding into the world of real communication.

If one questions why the far left firmly sits atop the pantheon of the media manipulators, they do not have to look any further than their own gullibility. Scandalous headlines defaming institutional Constitutionalism, conservative politicians, and legitimate center right current events are generated daily by media-friendly leftists. They have their own personal staff of writers, marketers and press agents influencing the news to benefit leftist causes. This enables them to keep fake news trivia in the forefront of liberalist social media giants like Facebook and Twitter where most Americans go to read news about the current events.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

– Vladimir Lenin

Stories about the Democrats who doubled welfare and destroyed private healthcare never make headlines. Yet liberal media’s obsession to defame Trump for his Constitutional assertiveness is a phobia. While Trump is proving he is the most prodigious economic leader in modern history, not one news source mentions this! Under his watch, unemployment hit 3 percent, the lowest of this century. Black and Latino unemployment is 4.6 percent; the lowest recorded level. That’s 50 percent less than under Obama. To control the dialogue, liberal elites write vitriolic hate articles to poison the narrative of the first non-politician, non-patrician citizen elected to run America since George Washington!

During one Civil Rights march, Dr. Martin Luther King told us, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Historical revisionism is a key component for enemies of capitalism to support claims of the success of socialism.

Media mistruth and progressive lies repeated on social media, local news, un-retorted in public forums are components for the left to realize their dream of American socialism. Relinquishing control of the language is surrendering control of our republic to legitimize progressivism. The left has reinvigorated the socialist movement that took root during the Depression. FDR, who was keenly influenced by socialism, deeply wounded U.S. capitalism and we have never recovered.

“All socialism means to me is democracy with a small ‘d’.”  – Bernie Sanders

George Orwell’s predictions about unprotected democracy in many parts of the world have come to fruition. As one of history’s most intuitive social critics, his knowledge of the frailties of mankind has proven uncanny. The left has taken control of our language and now control the message. They are Orwell’s “Big Brother” we feared for decades. They have stepped from the wings onto the stage to snatch republicanism right from under our noses. We’ve lost control of free thought and liquid conversation. We’ve allowed this so long, many people think this is what our nation is really about. Everything they say and publish is taught in our classrooms and pulpits and posted on social media

Grasping Size of US Economy

21 July 2019
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U.S. Worker Production Dwarfs Most Countries – big time!

By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

American workers out-produce workers worldwide, a fact that is readily reflected in gross domestic product (GDP) numbers.

The U.S. GDP is more than $21 trillion, dwarfing the economies of most other countries in the world. China’s GDP hovers over $14 trillion; Japan’s over $5 trillion.

The U.S. is neither the largest country by land mass nor population (4.4 percent of the world’s population) yet its GDP represents 24.2 percent of the global GDP.

“That’s a testament to the superior, world-class productivity of the American worker,” says Mark J. Perry, professor of finance and business economics at the University of Michigan-Flint and scholar at The American Enterprise Institute.

Most Americans can’t appreciate or comprehend how large these GDPs are, explains Mark J. Perry, professor of finance and business economics at the University of Michigan-Flint and scholar at The American Enterprise Institute. That’s why he creates a map every year comparing economies of states to countries to “help people understand how enormously large the U.S. economy is,” he told The Center Square.

Four states, California, Texas, New York and Florida, produced more than $1 trillion in output. If they were each countries, they would have ranked in the world’s 16 largest economies in 2018.

California’s GDP was greater than the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (U.K.); Texas’ was larger than Canada’s; New York’s was larger than Russia’s, and Florida’s is comparable to Indonesia’s.

Combined, they produced nearly $7.5 trillion in economic output in 2018, which would be the third-largest economy in the world.

GDP broadly measures a nation’s overall economic activity, representing the monetary value of all completed goods and services produced in that country within a specific time period. GDPs are calculated annually and quarterly.

Samuel Stebbins and Grant Suneson at the financial website 24/7 Wall St. point out that the majority of U.S. states are smaller in both population and landmass than their GDP comparable-countries. They also compared state GDPs to countries in a similar report to Perry’s.

Because U.S. states have far more developed economies, their GDPs per capita are higher, they note. U.S. consumer spending and highly developed industries backed by advanced technology also contribute to states’ economic advantages over their country counterparts.

Perry’s analysis compares the nominal GDP of each state and the District of Columbia to the nominal GDP of a country over the same time period based on Bureau of Economic Analysis and International Monetary Fund data.

The state with the greatest GDP is California.

With $3 trillion worth of economic output in 2018, California as a country would have been the 5th largest economy in the world, greater than the UK’s $2.81 trillion, France’s $2.79 trillion, and India’s $2.61 trillion worth of economic output.

California’s economic output is greater despite the U.K.’s labor force being nearly double. Perry argues the U.K. would need a 75 percent larger labor force of 14.5 million more people to produce the same economic output last year as California.

The second largest state economy and the world’s 10th largest economy last year was Texas’ $1.8 trillion worth of economic output. The Lone Star’s GDP was slightly greater than Canada’s $1.71 trillion GDP. In order for Canada to produce the same amount as Texas, it would need 6.2 million more workers, Perry notes.

Despite California’s output, California leads the nation in out-migration, and more of its residents are leaving for Texas. It costs more to leave California for Texas than it does to leave Texas for California, Perry found.

“There is a huge premium for trucks leaving California for Texas and a huge discount for trucks leaving Texas for California,” he says.

A one-way truck rental from Los Angeles to Houston costs $3,965; from Houston to Los Angeles, $967. A one-way truck rental from San Francisco to Dallas costs $4,275; from Dallas to San Francisco, $1,282.

U-Haul’s one-way truck rental rates are market-based, he argues, which is why truck shortages in California increase costs. There are also more trucks in Texas and there is a relatively low demand to go to California from Texas.

In the same analysis conducted in 2016, the ratios for the same matched cities were much smaller, 2.2 to 2.4 to 1, which he says suggests that “the outbound migration from California to Texas as reflected in one-way U-Haul truck rental rates must have accelerated over the last three years.”

The third and fourth largest GDPs were New York and Florida, respectively.

Pennsylvania’s GDP of $788 billion and Illinois’ GDP of $864 billion were greater than oil rich Saudi Arabia’s $782 billion.