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The Right to Agricultural Technology by Henry I. Miller - Project Syndicate

Promoting that lunacy, the United Nations Human Rights Council recently published a report by Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Hilal Elver that called for a global agroecology regime, including a new global treaty to regulate and reduce the use of pesticides and genetic engineering, which it labeled human-rights violations.

How a Gawker-Affiliated Website Made ESPN Politically Correct - WSJ

Rather than sue Mr. Denton’s bullying internet pirates into submission the way tech billionaire Peter Thiel did, ESPN chose to acquiesce and adopt progressive ideology and diversity as groundbreaking business innovations. ESPN is the exact network Deadspin desired. It’s diverse on its surface, progressive in its point of view, and more concerned with spinning media narratives than with the quality of its product.

GOP Regulatory Repeal: Congress Is Reducing Red Tape | National Review

Still, “reduce regulations” is a perennial Republican campaign promise, and Trump and the GOP Congress deserve credit from conservatives for chipping away at the worst of them.

Litvaking and Lending - Bloomberg View

Investment banking is a gift economy in which banks give clients an array of thoughtful but random gifts -- free financial modeling, revolving loan facilities, introductions to potential board and executive hires, the chance to meet Barack Obama -- in the hopes that one day the clients will give them the massive gift of a merger advisory mandate.

Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes & Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture | National Review

Moreover, the degradation to our culture far outweighs any short-term, tribal political benefit. The message sent when conservatives rally around the flag to defend the indefensible is exactly the message the Democrats sent so loudly as they continued to prop up the Clinton machine through scandal after scandal. Only winning matters. Ambition is everything. Political movements are about personalities, not ideas — so you’re left with the political equivalent of warring mafia families in which the highest value is loyalty, and the ends always justify the means.

Tomi Lahren Sounds Off on Glenn Beck: ‘I Won’t Lay Down and Play Dead’ - The Daily Beast

“When your outlet is taken away from you, when your catharsis is stripped away from you, and you don’t understand why and you’re so disappointed and you’re so blindsided by it, it hurts,” she said. But as much as she “hurts,” she was careful not to come off as purely a victim.

National ‘Ban Fracking’ Activist Groups Hide Behind Kids in Oil and Gas Lawsuit

For national activist groups, “signing up multiple children to be plaintiffs in the various lawsuits” is consistent with their age-old tactic of deploying children as visual aids and training children to lobby their agenda.

Chevron pivots to Permian shale as mega-project era fades | Reuters

Within a decade, Watson expects Chevron's production in the Permian to grow eightfold to more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day. By the end of next year, nine drilling rigs will join the 11 that Chevron already has poking holes into Permian land.

NRDC Swings . . . and Misses | Institute for 21st Century Energy

At its most fundamental level, reducing carbon dioxide emissions from energy is a technology challenge, which is why we here at the Energy Institute put heavy emphasis on developing new technologies. We recognize that unless and until alternate technologies can compete with traditional fuels on cost, performance, and scalability, they will not be used commercially to a great degree. That’s why, unlike NRDC, we’ll continue to support policies designed to lower the cost of alternative energy rather than raising the cost of traditional energy.

Why Is Asia Returning to Coal? | The Diplomat

As China deals with a slowing economy and India tries to keep up with the demands of a fast-growing and increasingly affluent population, the only way to reconcile energy demands with public outcry over emissions and pollution is by finding cost-effective ways of integrating low-emissions coal technology into their power infrastructure.

North Dakota oil output set to rise as controversial pipeline opens | Reuters

The state's drilling rig count has jumped 40 percent since early February, when Trump gave final approval to the pipeline. By the end of the year, analysts expect the rig count to rise another 10 percent or more.

One Thousand Years From Now We'll Still Be Burning Coal

Yet, because there aren't any realistic options to completely replace it, coal use is bound to continue (unless people agree to go without electricity).  In the best case scenario for the climate, worldwide coal use will continue to slowly decline, but it won't go away, and it won't be enough to make any sizable dent in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of whining about President Trump’s budget, work for entitlement reform - AEI | Economics Blog » AEIdeas

The Trump budget’s severe cuts in government programs will shock many in Washington. But instead of outrage, the correct reaction should be to join a coalition for entitlement reform. For decades, as entitlements have grown, the controllable parts of the budget—the parts for which Congress actually appropriates money—have become a smaller and smaller percentage of the government’s spending. Unless we are willing to see the nation’s debt increase to an unsustainable level—bringing on uncontrolled inflation and a financial crisis at some unpredictable point in the future—painful cuts in the controllable parts of the federal government’s spending are inevitable.

Energy security requires not going 'green' - Washington Times

In Germany, the world leader in green energy, electricity prices have now reached a level triple those paid in the United States.

Entitlements Driving Washington to Trillion-Dollar Deficits | Economics21

A decade from now, rising entitlement spending and interest on the national debt will consume 99 percent of tax revenues – forcing virtually the entire discretionary spending budget to be financed on the nation’s credit card.

Resource Cursed or Policy Cursed? US Regulation of Conflict Minerals and Violence in the Congo: Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists: Vol 4, No 1

Using georeferenced data, we find the legislation increased looting of civilians and shifted militia battles toward unregulated gold-mining territories. These findings are a cautionary tale about the possible unintended consequences of imposing boycotts, trade embargoes, and resource certification schemes on war-torn regions.

Don’t End NAFTA. Fix It. - POLITICO Magazine

Trade in Texas – specifically along our Southern border with Mexico – doesn’t just work in theory. It’s the reality on the ground too. Last week I led a congressional delegation to the border to see this economy in action. We visited the Pharr International Bridge in the Rio Grande Valley – a bridge that facilitates about $30 billion in trade a year. We also visited Laredo, a port that handles about a third of all international trade in Texas, with 14,000 trucks passing through daily. In other words, the Texas border serves as a major gateway for agriculture and manufactured goods trade. It moves more freight along its 1,200-plus miles of southern border than any other border state. And this trade in turn fuels economic growth and vitality across the region and the entire country. But like anything that’s dated, there’s room for NAFTA to be improved. It’s now more than 20 years old. Texas and the United States as a whole would benefit from a revised agreement that makes trade freer and fairer. By fixing NAFTA, we can address modern-day challenges and preserve and protect America’s unrivaled stability and prosperity into the next century.

Socon Signaling

The Beltway Socon cannot see this obvious reality because he has allowed his shallow personal connections to Left Liberals to blind him to what the nature of what their true relationship should be. Namely one of open and continual personal enmity. His conflict with the Left Liberal is an existential one and one that has to extend to the personal level, as all politics, whether one chooses to admit it or not, are inherently personal.

D'Amato: No silver lining in Packers' loss

So desperate was defensive coordinator Dom Capers to stem the bleeding that on one play late in the first quarter he dropped nine into coverage and rushed two – and Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan still completed a 16-yard pass to Mohamed Sanu. When your nine can’t cover their five, it’s going to be a long day.

Race to save rare breed of pig hinges on eating them

The way to save declining breeds of livestock, she argues, is to get people to eat them — thereby increasing demand that will lead to more breeding. She wants the mulefoot restored to its early 20th-century status as a premier pig. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is listening. The agency is giving her $50,000 to help increase interest in products made with mulefoot meat, and Frank is spreading her gospel to chefs, restaurants and markets around New England and New York. "I know it sounds weird, but you have to eat a rare breed to help it come back," she said. "I see it as a way to spread the word about mulefoot."

Can U.S. Shale Add 1 Million Bpd In 2017? | OilPrice.com

U.S. shale is already up about 300,000 barrels per day from a low point in the summer of 2016, at least according to preliminary data. The gains are expected to continue. The industry is producing about as much oil as it was two years ago, with only one-third of the more than 1,700 rigs in 2014. Drillers are producing just as much oil with a lot less effort.

Jamie Dimon on Trump, Taxes, and a U.S. Renaissance - Bloomberg

I think it’s a reset moment for how businesses are going to be treated: 145 million people work in America; 125 million of them work for private enterprise; 20 million work for government—firemen, sanitation, police, teachers. We hold them in very high regard. But you know, if you didn’t have the 125 you couldn’t pay for the other 20. Business is a huge positive element in society. But for years it’s been beaten down as if we’re terrible people. So I think it’s a good reset.

Rise of the alt-right: How mainstream conservatives’ obsession with purity fueled a new right-wing radicalism - Salon.com

The bracing critique of the conservative infotainment complex leveled by the dissident right is something to which most conservative elites simply have no answer. For every conservative leader like National Review’s Goldberg or David French who are willing to admit that the right has been fleecing its grassroots with fake medical cures and wild conspiracy theories, there are at least 10 more who are doing that exact thing or renting out their email lists to companies who do.

What the Dakota Access Pipeline Is Really About - WSJ

Political expediency in a White House that does not see itself as being bound by the rule of law. The Obama administration has decided to build a political legacy rather than lead the country. It is facilitating an illegal occupation that has grown wildly out of control. That the economy depends on a consistent and predictable permitting regime seems never to have crossed the president’s mind.

Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek

Not only will power still, in practice, be exercised chiefly by a small cadre of individuals – who by this very reality will be, or will inevitably become, elite – the fact that the power that is exercised by the state will be no less, and perhaps more, than is the power that is exercised under the system displaced by populism means that the the poison remains.

Misty Callahan

But why "fact-check" anymore when fiction make you feel good? We have become, as a culture, more obsessed with feeling right than actually being right.  Which is good for the ego, but it's not good for soiciety in general. If we only accept that which appeals to our biases, or our feelings, it creates echo-chambers or emotional enclaves that reason can not penetrate. When you get to a point where reason nor reality can penetrate the psyche of an individual, at best at best you're dealing with denial, at worst, a delusion. Both can give way to a mob-mentality which, historically, is often detremental to society.