The Heritage Insider: Choking the golden goose, socialized transit is hazardous, who will get the felon vote? mandating renewables will cost you, and you're not getting all the climate news

May 7, 2016

 

Will today’s newborns live better than their parents? The trends are not as hopeful as Americans have come to expect. Socialized transit is hazardous to riders’ health. No, mandating renewables will not cut your electricity bills. Yes, illegal voting does benefit one party, but that’s no reason to favor illegal voting. There is a reason climate activists want to avoid a discussion of both the costs and the benefits of their policies. Plus, over 30 new studies, articles, speeches, videos, and events at The Insider this week. Visit to see what the conservative movement has been thinking, writing, saying, and doing to win battles for liberty. 

 

 

Choking the golden goose: Every generation of Americans has lived better than its parents, but, as Jim Agresti notes, a number of trends threaten to disrupt that record of progress: The rising national debt that future generations will have to pay, the decline in work, the growing regulatory burden on the economy, and the breakdown of the family. [The Insider]

Unsafe at any speed. Why is Washington’s Metro planning to shut down whole rail lines for days and weeks at at time? The backlog in maintenance that has created safety problems can be traced to the socialized set-up of transit, says Randal O’Toole: “Where systems funded out of user fees would build no more than people are willing to pay for, political decisions led Washington and other regions to build hundreds of miles of expensive rail lines they can’t afford to maintain.” [Cato Institute]

Who will get the felon vote? Liberals claim conservative support for voter-ID laws is part of an effort to reduce the number of Democratic voters who cast ballots. Actually, as Jim DeMint notes, the point is to reduce the number of illegal voters, and it turns out that illegal voting does have political consequences: “While members of both parties have been convicted of election fraud, an extensive database compiled by the Heritage Foundation shows that the majority of such cases involved Democrats stealing votes. Moreover, when voting fraud occurs, it most often occurs in precincts that tend to vote heavily for liberal candidates.” [National Review]

If renewables were really cheaper, they wouldn’t need to be mandated. Some politicians want you to think mandates for renewable electricity will lower your electricity bill. The experience of Europe, as Robert Bryce points out, suggest the opposite will happen: “EU countries that have intervened the most in their energy markets—Germany, Spain, and the U.K.—have seen their electricity costs increase the fastest. During 2008–12, those countries spent about $52 billion on interventions in their energy markets. During 2008–12, Germany’s residential electricity rates increased by 78 percent, Spain’s rose by 111 percent, and the U.K.’s soared by 133 percent.” [Manhattan Institute]

The climate distortion: The news reports the negatives while ignoring the positives of global warming, notes Bjorn Lomborg. For example, more people die of cold than of heat. Therefore, raising global temperatures slightly would probably prevent more deaths than it causes. We don’t hear that news, because climate activists know that a balanced discussion of the costs and benefits would reveal the inadequacy of their proposals, writes Lomborg: “[A] policy which could eradicate global warming for 1 per cent of global GDP would probably be a good deal. Unfortunately, we do not have such a deal on the table. The Paris climate treaty will cost around 2 per cent of global GDP and fix much less than a tenth of the problem.” [The Telegraph]

 

 

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