Tempting Human Nature By M.E. Boyd Miss Constitution
“[A]dd to your faith virtue, and to your virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity.” 2 Peter 5:7 King James Version
Since faith is one of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), “adding” virtue must mean virtue of a certain type, or virtue in sync with reason and experience. Both reason and experience tell us that tempting human nature can be very dangerous. And yet this is exactly the political policy of the current executive branch of the federal government – a stress test on brotherly kindness – a stress test on loving one’s neighbor as oneself. The political gamble is that human “deficient inclinations”, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines them, will prevail over patience and charity resulting in a cultural meltdown into chaos, violence, and baseness. Human nature, in other words, at its worst.
Miss Constitution thinks this is no accident. Having made the decision to end the nation-state of the United States of America by allowing an international invasion, the guess is that the normally rule-conscious and big-hearted American citizen will eventually break down into indiscriminate loathing that will then be labeled “racist” and “un-Christian” – the opposite of St. Peter’s admonition above. If deliberate, this is a clever and wicked plan. It is a plan only the clever and wicked could devise.
Add to your virtue, knowledge. . .
Our society is in the current fad of seeing all through the prism of race. Thousands of years ago Asians crossed a now non-existent land mass to come to North America and divided into distinct tribes. Some writers like to call these tribes First Peoples. One might call them aboriginal, like the forests some of them inhabited. With the invention of the compass, explorers began to take dangerous journeys by sea, and these tribes were discovered. The French, the Spanish, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danish, the British, and others were some of the first to emigrate from Europe to the west. Sometimes they were welcomed, sometimes they were not. Some of the peoples already here were “virtuous”, some were not. Some who emigrated here were “virtuous”, some were not.
And yet, the issue of immigration emphasizes the group, not the individual, and this distorts the discussion. American law on immigration has always been reactive of the times and that is why when one looks at the history of that law there are no real anchors or principles that undergird the statutes or the enforcement of those statutes. Other aspects of America’s Rule of Law are anchored in the timeless, in individual unalienable rights, in the existence of the soul, in man’s quest for liberty, in duty to God, country, and neighbor, in the very definition of citizen and republic.
Immigration, on the other hand, based on nationalities, religions, and races not persons, sways in the political wind of the “now.” When the British failed to re-conquer America in the War of 1812, Irish Catholics and Lutheran Germans came to America in droves. Catholicism in a Protestant country was seen by many as abhorrent. With the rise of industrialism after the Civil War, labor unions saw Chinese immigration as a threat to wages and the Chinese were excluded. Woodrow Wilson wanted to convince the nation that all Germans are blood-thirsty rapists so he could justify entering WWI.
And on and on it goes – immigration as a reaction to current events. The rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s created the perfect environment for national self-loathing and a change in immigration policy. From the concept that those who emigrate to America must learn our system and assimilate into a giant melting pot of stability to the concept of punishing “whiteness” by systematically eliminating the white majority was established by Congress in 1965 and signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. Chain migration (anchoring one family member so all are allowed to come) and virtually eliminating British and other founding nationalities, sealed the deal. The white American majority will be gone by mid-century. Senator Ted Kennedy proclaimed the dramatic change “will not upset the ethnic mix in our society. It will not relax the standards of admission.” Really? The United Nations and other globalist organizations are piling on relentlessly with notions of the elimination of nation-states and free international immigration.
And to knowledge, patience and brotherly kindness. . .
What had been the practice of emphasizing the group as a reaction to the political winds of the day, but screening the individual in that group, has been deliberately abandoned. Instead of the individually virtuous from many ethnic groups, it is assumed that race itself is a marker of the good. Nothing could be further from the truth. No notion could be more damaging to any society. And so, America is experiencing a stress test in brotherly kindness. Groups have invaded without screening individuals in these groups and Americans are asked to be patient and to be kind – a tempting of human nature.
And to brotherly kindness, charity. . .
How, then, are Americans to react to this obvious dismantling of our society? The US Constitution specifically prohibits, in Article IV, section 4, this current national policy of open borders. The Constitution, unfortunately, is not in play. What is in play is the individual American citizen. Tempted or not, impatient or not, temperate or not, it is not antithetical to St. Peter’s reminder for the individual American to feel righteous anger. Righteous anger translated into a demand for personal scrutiny of every person who has bypassed examination and entered the United States illegally. This anger is not tied to race, it is tied to reason, experience, and necessity.
It is in this midst of faulty ideology, of gross incompetence, of clever and wicked plans, of the abandonment of ancient and trusted principles, that the individual response must remain firm but humane. It is how the inappropriate are removed that is the measure of brotherly love. Of whatever race wanting to emigrate to America, whether tired or poor, whether yearning to be free, the American people have a right to ask that each person be virtuous.
Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 1 Peter 3:9
In a Constitutional Republic we repay evil and wickedness through free and fair elections. For those elections to have meaning, a virtuous people must have knowledge. Miss Constitution, again, calls for vigorous Civics Education, K-12, philosophy, authentic American history, Western Civilization, theology, the ancient languages, and ethics. Knowledge is the shield against the worst in human nature, charity the goal – in the firm hope that America may again obtain God’s blessing.
Feds Flagged Terms Like ‘Trump,’ ‘MAGA’ For Banks To Comb Through Customer Data, Jordan Says
Feds Flagged Terms Like ‘Trump,’ ‘MAGA’ For Banks To Comb Through Customer Data, Jordan Says
•
January DailyWire.com
Federal officials instructed banks to comb through customer data if terms like “TRUMP” or “MAGA” were used in transactions, according to documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The revelations were made as House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced he had requested an interview with Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
“We now know the federal government flagged terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘TRUMP,’ to financial institutions if Americans completed transactions using those terms,” Jordan said. “What was also flagged? If you bought a religious text, like a BIBLE, or shopped at Bass Pro Shop.”
FinCEN reportedly asked banks to help federal law enforcement identify transactions of persons of interest using specific typologies and Merchant Category Codes after January 6, 2021. FinCEN provided the banks with documentation on various typologies and suggested search terms, according to Jordan.
“These materials included a document recommending the use of generic terms like ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA’ to ‘search Zelle payment messages’ as well as a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators,’” Jordan wrote.
“According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,” Jordan added.
The letter also said that other transaction keywords identified by the feds included “Cabela’s” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods.”
“Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus — and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights — FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FinCEN’s respect for fundamental civil liberties,” Jordan wrote.
The letter asks Bishoff to be prepared to speak to lawmakers about what safeguards FinCEN has in place to safeguard constitutional liberties, the government’s use of private financial information, and coordination between FinCEN and the private sector.
Jordan also sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray to request an interview with FBI official Peter Sullivan over testimony that the FBI had requested information from Bank of America on “ANY historical purchase” of a gun six months before January 6, 2021, of anyone who had been in Washington, D.C., around January 6.
Read more in:
Inside the Darién Gap | AGENDA 2030 MASS MIGRATION PLAN EXPOSED | Muckraker Report
Video explains it all
Illinois mandates mental health screenings of students starting this fall
Illinois mandates mental health screenings of students starting this fall
- By Zeta Cross | The Center Square contributor
- Jan 15, 2024
https://trinitymedia.ai/player/trinity-player.php?pageURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecentersquare.com%2Fillinois%2Farticle_955a22ee-b199-11ee-b2ca-7bd3a8dbef51.html&partner=Flex&FAB=1&textSelector=I2FydGljbGUtYm9keQ%3D%3D&unitId=2900003117&userId=6cd37fea-6f0b-4091-8d74-e8e9f6795241&isLegacyBrowser=false&version=20240116_807dcfc10c268a34338087833991e873a82a753b&useBunnyCDN=0&themeId=140
(The Center Square) – Starting in the fall of 2024, a new state law, the Wellness Checks in Schools Program Act, will require yearly mental health screenings for Illinois’ 2 million school students.
Mark Klaisner, executive director of West 40 in West Cook County, said schools only have a few months to find a screening model and train people to administer the screenings. The Illinois State Board of Education is currently working through the challenge of exactly how to get a mental health screening process up and running.
The goal is to identify troubled children and intervene before their mental health problems escalate. On Jan. 3 in Perry, Iowa, a small rural school district, a 17-year-old who had been bullied for years shot seven people, including the principal, before killing an 11-year-old boy and himself.
“In 1999, we were all shocked by Columbine. How could that happen? Now it happens every week,” Klaisner said.
The problem is more widespread than the cases that get on the news, Klaisner said.
“If you were to walk into any school and talk to the principal or the dean, they will tell you that behavioral incidents are way up from what they were 3 to 5 years ago,” Klaisner said. “It’s fights in the hallways. It’s kids acting out.”
Safe schools, designated schools where Illinois children are assigned after multiple suspensions and expulsion, are “busting at the seams,” Klaisner said.
“Way before COVID, we saw the increase of instances of disturbed kids acting out at school,” Klaisner said.
The COVID school shutdowns have made the problem worse, he said.
“The rise of behavioral and mental health issues coming out of the pandemic has been astounding,” he said
For years, experts at the Lurie Children’s Hospital, the Center for Childhood Resilience, and the Chapin Hall Center at the University of Chicago have consulted with Illinois on the best ways to care for students with mental health problems.
Ideally, a screening session will be a 15-minute, one-on-one conversation between a trained social worker or counselor and a student. Trained screeners have more success in finding problems when they can look for body language and cues, Klaisner said.
Anxiety and depression are triggers for behavioral problems. Screeners may find a child who is concerned about coming to school. The child may think that othert students are looking at him or talking about him, indicating a higher-than-normal level of anxiety.
“Let’s follow up with that young person and see what is going on with them,” Klaisner said.
A decade ago, social workers in schools only dealt with kids who had disabilities, he said. Now schools are finding that many families are dealing with difficult, trauma-based issues that manifest in schools.
“You will find educators who are feeling the pressure of ‘one more thing on our plate.’” Klaisner said. “It is already on our plate and we can’t deny its existence.”
DRY JANUARY SAVINGS: ILLINOIS WINE TAXES 4X HIGHER THAN NEW YORK, CALIFORNIA
DRY JANUARY SAVINGS: ILLINOIS WINE TAXES 4X HIGHER THAN NEW YORK, CALIFORNIA
Dylan Sharkey
JANUARY 15, 2024
Dry January savings: Illinois wine taxes 4x higher than New York, California
Illinois’ excise tax on wine is more than 4 times higher than the same bottle in New York or California. Buying in Chicago adds extra tax layers, hitting 6 times the taxes of other big cities.
Illinoisans looking to save calories by abstaining from alcohol during “dry January” will also save some cash by foregoing a glass of wine at home.
Illinois taxes wine at $1.39 per gallon. At the local level, Cook County adds another $0.24 per gallon if it’s up to 14% alcohol by volume and Chicago adds another $0.36.
The other two biggest metropolitan areas in the country, New York City and Los Angeles, both tax wine at a fraction of Illinois rates: $0.30 for NYC and $0.20 per gallon for LA. California is tied with Texas for the lowest per-gallon rate in the country.
States with similar populations tend to have similar tax patterns. For example, Illinois, California and New York are within one-tenth of a percent when it comes to combined state and local sales taxes. But California and New York aren’t as harsh to wine drinkers’ wallets, nor are their biggest cities.
Illinois’ tax revenue from wine hasn’t even kept up with inflation. From fiscal years 2014 to 2023, state wine tax revenue grew a meager $10 million.
Springfield lawmakers should look to real pension reform instead of regressive sin taxes to fix the state’s financial problems. Illinoisans should be left to fix their bad habits at their own discretion.
WHAT MAKES NATIONS WEALTHY?
WHAT MAKES NATIONS WEALTHY?
WHY THE SECRET TO NATIONAL PROSPERITY MAY RUN DEEPER THAN ECONOMICS
January 2024
- 2 1/2 miles. It’s not very long.
Only slightly longer than the National Mall in Washington.i Not even 2/3 of the length of the Las Vegas Strip.ii
But also … it can be the distance between two different worlds. In fact, 2 1/2 miles is the distance between Australia and Papua New Guinea at their nearest point, in the Torres Strait.iii
In Papua New Guinea, the national wealth averages out to about $3,500 per person per year. In Australia, it averages out to around $65,000 per person per year.iv Two-and-a-half miles apart … and nearly 20 times wealthier.
How does this kind of thing happen? Actually, we know the answer.
Because it turns out that the secret to how nations get wealthy … isn’t really a secret at all.
The world has never been as wealthy as it is right now.v That’s the good news.
The bad news? That prosperity is far from universal.
In fact, even though the world’s poverty rate has been steadily declining for some time, vi it’s still the case that 6.7 billion people around the world live on $30 a day or less.vii
How did this happen? How do some countries become fantastically wealthy while others remain trapped in poverty?
In 2022, scholars at the Atlantic Council divided all the countries in the world into four categories: really prosperous, mostly prosperous, mostly unprosperous, and really unprosperous.viii
There are two things to note about this analysis. First, some of the categories may not line up with your expectations. A country like China, for example, may have a huge economy overall, but in terms of income per person it ranks behind countries like Libya or Serbia.ix
Second, if you’re trying to find a pattern on this map … good luck.
Are certain regions of the world just uniquely blessed — or cursed?
If so, you’d be hard pressed to explain why Japan, Singapore, and South Korea are doing so much better than the rest of Asia.
Or why Venezuela or Guyana are doing so much worse than the rest of South America.
Or why Israel stands out in the Middle East.
Is it all a matter of who has the most natural resources?
Venezuela’s poverty comes despite the fact that it has the world’s largest reserves of oil. x
Africa has 40 percent of the world’s gold, 90 percent of its platinum, and the largest supply of diamonds on the planet.xi And yet not a single country on the continent is classified as even moderately prosperous.
Meanwhile, Belgium is one of the 20 richest countries on the planet and, best we can tell, their biggest natural resource is The Smurfs.
But if there’s no answer to be found on this map, there might be one to be found on this one:xii
Now, we know what you’re thinking: It’s the same map. But here’s what’s interesting: It’s not.
This is a map of the countries of the world ranked not by how wealthy they are, but by how free they are — which turns out to be the key to whether or not they become wealthy.
The Atlantic Council’s analysis found that every single country classified as “free” … was also classified as prosperous — and virtually all of the unfree ones weren’t.xiii And it’s not just a modest difference, by the way.
Citizens of the “free” countries were six times wealthier than those in the “mostly unfree” countries. In fact, they were even five times wealthier than those in the “mostly free” countries.
And here’s the thing: This isn’t just a matter of a handful of the ultra-wealthy skewing the numbers. Another study on the same subject found that the poorest people in free countries were more than twice as wealthy as the average person in unfree countries.xiv
It almost seems too simple to be the answer. But the track record here is pretty clear: People have a natural incentive to make money. They want to do well. They want to take care of themselves and their families. And as long as a nation gives them the basic tools to do that — the right to freely do business with others, the right to control their own property, the right to have their day in court if someone tries to cheat them — the whole country is going to prosper in the process.
For proof of this, we only need to look at how the same groups of people perform when they’re given economic freedom versus when they’re not.
During the Cold War, the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were controlled by the Soviet Union. This is what their national wealth looked like at the time.xv After the brief, rocky period when they gained their independence, they started implementing economic freedom … and their national wealth began to look like this:
Another Cold War example comes from Germany. In communist-controlled East Germany, national wealth looked like this. While in free West Germany, it looked like this:xvi
Communist China versus a free Taiwan looks like this:xvii
And while a totalitarian North Korea looks like this, a free South Korea looks like this:xviii
Sorry, fellas, but this line isn’t gonna get you K-pop.
It’s easy to get depressed by global inequality. How can so many people live in such grinding poverty while the rest of us live lives that seem so comfortable by comparison? But what this research tells us is there’s also cause for optimism here. Because no nation is doomed to be poor.
When people are allowed to prosper … they will. Romania was once a country known almost exclusively for its poverty. But between 1950 and 2016, it became 20 times wealthier.xix In that same time period, Singapore — a country that’s smaller than New York City and has virtually no natural resources — became nearly 30 times wealthier.xx And those people did it … simply because they were allowed to.
All of which means that the future of the world’s poorest countries … will be as bright as their governments allow them to be. So, let’s hope they choose wisely.
I mean, c’mon, it’d be embarrassing to be outperformed by The Smurfs people.
SOURCES
- The National Mall Is America’s Most Visited National Park, Where the Past, Present and Future Come Together — Destination DC
- The Las Vegas Strip — The Neon Museum
- Home: Saibai — Torres Strait Island Regional Council
- GDP per Capita, Current Prices — International Monetary Fund
- World GDP Over the Last Two Millennia — Our World in Data
- Share of Population Living in Extreme Poverty, World — Our World in Data
- “Extreme Poverty: How Far Have We Come, and How Far Do We Still Have To Go?” (Max Roser) — Our World in Data
- “Do Countries Need Freedom To Achieve Prosperity?” (Dan Negrea and Matthew Kroenig) — Atlantic Council, pg. 10
- GDP per Capita, Current Prices — International Monetary Fund
- OPEC Share of World Crude Oil Reserves — Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
- Our Work in Africa — United Nations Environment Programme
- “Do Countries Need Freedom To Achieve Prosperity?” (Dan Negrea and Matthew Kroenig) — Atlantic Council
- Ibid.
- “Economic Freedom of the World: 2022 Annual Report” (James Gwartney, et al.) — Fraser Institute, pg. 9
- GDP per Capita, 1973 to 2018 — Our World in Data
- The Two Germanies: Planning and Capitalism – GDP Per Capita, 1950 to 1989 — Our World in Data
- GDP per Capita, 1950 to 2018 — Our World in Data
- GDP per Capita, 1943 to 2018 — Our World in Data
- “Which Countries Achieved Economic Growth? And Why Does It Matter?” (Max Roser) — Our World in Data
- Ibid.
SHOWNOTES
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‘No Blessing for Homosexual Couples in the African Churches,’ African Bishops Conferences Announce
‘No Blessing for Homosexual Couples in the African Churches,’ African Bishops Conferences Announce
CV NEWS FEED // The Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) have published a response to the recent Vatican document Fiducia Supplicans stating that there will be no blessings given to same-sex couples in Africa, stemming from “concern about potential confusion and scandal within the Church community.”
The “Episcopal Conferences across Africa, which have strongly reaffirmed their communion with Pope Francis, believe that the extra-liturgical blessings proposed in the Declaration Fiducia supplicans cannot be carried out in Africa without exposing themselves to scandals,” wrote SECAM President and Archbishop of Kinshasa Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu in the letter:
They remind, as Fiducia supplicans clearly does, the clergy, religious communities, all believers and people of good will, that the Church’s doctrine on Christian marriage and sexuality remains unchanged.
For this reason, we, the African Bishops, do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples because, in our context, this would cause confusion and would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities. The language of Fiducia supplicans remains too subtle for simple people to understand.
“Furthermore, it remains very difficult to be convincing that people of the same sex who live in a stable union do not claim the legitimacy of their own status. We, African Bishops, insist on the call for the conversion of all,” Ambongo added:
Jesus comes to bear witness to the tenderness of God: “He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners”. Of this there is no doubt. But Jesus also stretches out his hand to the sinner so that he may rise, so that he may convert…
As the salt of the earth and the light of the world, the merciful mission of the Church is to go against the tide of the spirit of the world and to offer it the best, even if it is demanding.
The statement synthesizes all responses of the African bishops to Fiducia Supplicans, or “Declaration on the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings,” and in light of the clarification press release released several weeks later.
Ambongo noted that the SECAM January 11 statement “has received the agreement of His Holiness Pope Francis and of His Eminence Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
Rome-based journalist Diane Montagna shared the full text of the letter on social media on January 11.
“Within the Church family of God in Africa, this Declaration has caused a shockwave, it has sown misconceptions and unrest in the minds of many lay faithful, consecrated persons and even pastors and has aroused strong reactions,” Ambongo wrote.
“The African Bishops’ Conferences emphasize that people with a homosexual tendency must be treated with respect and dignity, while reminding them that unions of persons of the same-sex are contrary to the will of God and therefore cannot receive the blessing of the Church,” Ambongo continued:
The Episcopal Conferences generally prefer – each Bishop remaining free in his diocese not to offer blessings to same-sex couples. This decision stems from concern about potential confusion and scandal within the Church community.
The constant teaching of the Church describes homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered” and contrary to the natural law. These acts, considered as closing the sexual act to the gift of life and not proceeding from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity, must not be approved under any circumstances.
“To support this position, a large majority of the interventions of the African Bishops are based above all on the Word of God,” Ambongo added, citing Scriptural “passages which condemn homosexuality,” in both the Old and New Testament.
“In addition to these biblical reasons, the cultural context in Africa, deeply rooted in the values of the natural law regarding marriage and family, further complicates the acceptance of unions of persons of the same sex, as they are seen as contradictory to cultural norms and intrinsically corrupt,” Ambongo continued.
Ambongo highlighted the African Episcopal Conferences’ previous individual statements on Fiducia Supplicans and how they reaffirmed “their unwavering attachment to the Successor of Peter, their communion with him and their fidelity to the Gospel,” and “recognize collectively that the Church’s doctrine on marriage and the family remains unchanged.”
“They all noted the passages where Fiducia supplicans reaffirmed this traditional position of the Church and explicitly excluded the recognition of homosexual marriage,” Ambongo continued. “This position, rooted in the Sacred Scriptures, has been taught without interruption by the universal Magisterium of the Church.”
“Therefore, rites and prayers that could blur the definition of marriage- as an exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, open to procreation – are considered as unacceptable,” he wrote.
Ambongo added that the individual African Episcopal Conferences also reaffirmed “the Church’s commitment to continuing pastoral assistance to all its members,” and that “clergy are encouraged to provide welcoming and supportive pastoral care, particularly to couples in irregular situations.”
“We will continue to reflect on the value of the general theme of this document, apart from just blessings for couples in an irregular situation, that is to say on the richness of spontaneous blessings in everyday pastoral care,” Ambongo concluded, adding that he calls on Christian communities not to allow themselves to be shaken. His Holiness Pope Francis, fiercely opposed to any form of cultural colonization in Africa, blesses the African people with all his heart and encourages them to remain faithful, as always, to the defense of Christian values.
Pritzker Gives Chinese Company Gotion $125 million With No Work Shown
January 12, 2024
CONTACT: State Rep. Caulkins
Pritzker Gives Chinese Company Gotion $125 million With No Work Shown
Decatur, Illinois – Today State Representative Dan Caulkins discovered that the state of Illinois issued checks to Gotion totaling $125 million without any requirement that a certain amount of work be completed. The first check is dated December 8, 2023 for $50 million, just three days after zoning approval by the Village of Manteno. The second check is dated January 2, 2024 less than two weeks after the property’s deed was recorded to a new owner, a newly formed limited liability company registered in Delaware on October 16, 2023.
Governor Pritzker signed the deal with Gotion, a Chinese owned and controlled company, on September 9, 2023. That deal includes a total of $536 million in taxpayer incentives for Gotion to build an electrical vehicle battery plant in Manteno.
The $125 million came from a deal closing fund that only needs approval by Gov. Pritzker with simple notice to the Senate President and Speaker of the House. The remaining $411 million promised comes through tax incentives based on creating 2,600 jobs and investing about $2 billion.
The payment of $125 million to Gotion happened without Gotion having building permits in place or having performed any site improvements. Unlike the fanfare at the announcement of the Gotion deal by Pritzker and others, this massive payment happened with no press release or notice.
Currently, the Village of Manteno is being sued by a group of residents alleging the zoning change approved on December 5, 2023 was done in violation of existing laws. The lawsuit also challenges the Gotion project over environmental concerns, including the use of highly toxic chemicals, and national security concerns.
“This deal is the most offensive, outrageous thing I have ever heard of! While people were busy with the holidays and figuring out how to afford a nice Christmas, Governor Pritzker gave away massive amounts of our money to a foreign company that hasn’t done anything to earn it,” said State Representative Dan Caulkins.
“This deal has smelled bad from the beginning. Pritzker is funding our enemy. Gotion is controlled by Chinese communists, our number one political, economic and military adversary and they are setting up shop in Illinois to compete against American companies.
Additionally, the EV market is falling apart. Gotion could sit on our millions and make millions more off of the $125 million without doing anything constructive. There is no way Pritzker would make this deal if he were using his own money.”
State Rep. Dan Caulkins represents the 88th District.
Progressive lawmakers line up behind costly fix for error they made in renewable energy plan
Progressive lawmakers line up behind costly fix for error they made in renewable energy plan – Wirepoints
January 15, 2024
By: Mark Glennon*
When Congress voted to spend hundreds of billions to switch electricity production to solar and wind, it forgot something: transmission lines. New ones will be needed going to the locations of the new power sources, but nobody bothered to figure out who will pay for it or how much it will cost.
Congressmen Sean Casten (D-IL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced a bill last month to fix their omission, largely at your expense. The bill has already picked up 76 co-sponsors, including eight from Illinois.
Grab your wallet. Here are the details:
In 2022, Congress passed the mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion, far exceeding initial claims. The IRA actually was the largest energy bill in U.S. history. Tax credits for renewable energy production, among the biggest elements of the law, are estimated to cost $263 billion.
No cap was placed on those tax credits and they were generous – 30% of project costs. That’s part of the reason for the cost overrun but it also means that new solar and wind production projects are underway. All the better, say IRA supporters.
Now, however, there’s widespread, bipartisan recognition that those projects are futile without transmission linking them into the electrical grid. Progressive economist Paul Krugman, for example, cheered the IRA but wrote despairingly in the New York Times that “we may need a third, bureaucratic miracle to fix the electricity grid and make this whole thing work.”
Casten, also an avid IRA supporter, now admits to the gravity of the problem saying that “80% of the clean energy progress we made with the Inflation Reduction Act will be lost unless we reform transmission and permitting.”
Enter Casten and Levin with their solution, the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act (CETA), which they introduced in the House last month.
What’s in it?
More tax credits, which is to say more subsidies by taxpayers. A 30% tax credit would go toward qualifying new transmission lines going to renewable sources. The total amount of credits available is again uncapped.
That’s just part of the 210-page bill. It would also amend the IRA to let the Department of Energy finance transmission facilities designated by DOE as “national interest.”
It would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive siting authority for “national interest” transmission lines, directing FERC to base its decision to exercise such authority on factors that include enabling the use of renewable energy. That’s important because it appears to be an attempt to override growing roadblocks local citizens have been putting up to new renewable projects on their landscape.
The bill also contains a range of provisions under the label of “empowerment.” It would, among many other things, establish an Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights; codify the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights in the EPA; codify the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council; provide for development an Interagency Federal Environmental Justice Strategy to address “current and historical environmental injustice,” and designate “Tribal Community Engagement Officers” in each agency.
The bill has 76 House co-sponsors and counting, all Democrats, in addition to Casten and Levin, including Illinoisans Jan Schakowsky, Nicole Budzinski, Jonathan Jackson, Eric Sorensen, Bill Foster, Brad Schneider, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Mike Quigley.
What will all this cost?
So far, I have seen nothing at all from bill sponsors or in the press. As always, cost matters little if the results are green.
But lots of evidence suggests that the cost would certainly be many tens of billions and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, interconnection costs sometimes 10 times higher than projects that ultimately got built. Earlier this year, a renewable executive told The New York Times that interconnection costs have become the “no. 1 project killer.” For Texas alone, according to one study, extending the reach of transmission lines to connect more zero-carbon power sources would cost $11 billion by 2035.
And stories abound about individual projects facing huge interconnection problems. CNBC devoted a three-part series to it.
Remember that the cost to the government from tax credits or grants to fix the problem is just the start. Utilities would bear a large part of the remaining cost which gets passed through to consumers in rate increases. Insofar as other private sector investors fund the rest of the price, there’s an opportunity cost of capital that might have been invested elsewhere.
The bill has no chance of passing in its current form in the Republican-majority House. It’s important nevertheless because it represents the progressive starting point of negotiations on a massive problem that both parties recognize. Republicans unanimously opposed the IRA in the House and Senate, but may negotiate a bill to address the problem in order to salvage something of value from what’s already been spent.
The new bill is also important because it reflects the thinking of progressives and what they’d like to do if they regain full control of Congress. “While acknowledging that the bill stood little chance of passage in the current House,” The Hill reported, “Casten said it would serve as an ‘anchor of democratic energy policy when a window opens up to have that conversation again.”
Is the public ready to pay up once again for renewable electricity? Most Americans support renewable sources but want a balance with traditional, fossil fuel sources. Good. That’s sensible. But where’s the balance?
There’s a final, huge kicker near the end of the bill that has nothing to do with energy or transmission lines: It would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit disparate impact discrimination.
I found the buried section by chance when going through the bill. No bill sponsor or reporter has mentioned it. “Disparate impact” is a critical issue in discrimination cases. It’s about whether the mere fact of unequal outcomes proves illegal discrimination and what excuses there may be for it. It’s complicated, and Supreme Court rulings depend on who is getting sued, among other variables.
Suffice it to say, however, that Section 603 of CETA would vastly expand the scope of what would constitute illegal discrimination under the Civil Rights Act, making it easier to sue based on unequal outcomes.
Why did they hide this proposal in an energy bill. Afraid of what voters would think it they put it up straight as a standalone bill?
Getting back to the main thrust of CETA, when Paul Krugman wrote that it would take a “bureaucratic miracle to fix the electricity grid and make this whole thing work,” he must have been fantasizing about CETA.
CETA is that fantasy and more.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
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