FULL TEXT: Trump Executive Order on the Antiquities Act

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EXECUTIVE ORDER

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REVIEW OF DESIGNATIONS UNDER THE ANTIQUITIES ACT

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in recognition of the importance of the Nation's wealth of natural resources to American workers and the American economy, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Policy.  Designations of national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906, recently recodified at sections 320301 to 320303 of title 54, United States Code (the "Antiquities Act" or "Act"), have a substantial impact on the management of Federal lands and the use and enjoyment of neighboring lands.  Such designations are a means of stewarding America's natural resources, protecting America's natural beauty, and preserving America's historic places.  Monument designations that result from a lack of public outreach and proper coordination with State, tribal, and local officials and other relevant stakeholders may also create barriers to achieving energy independence, restrict public access to and use of Federal lands, burden State, tribal, and local governments, and otherwise curtail economic growth.  Designations should be made in accordance with the requirements and original objectives of the Act and appropriately balance the protection of landmarks, structures, and objects against the appropriate use of Federal lands and the effects on surrounding lands and communities.

Sec. 2.  Review of National Monument Designations.  (a)  The Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) shall conduct a review of all Presidential designations or expansions of designations under the Antiquities Act made since January 1, 1996, where the designation covers more than 100,000 acres, where the designation after expansion covers more than 100,000 acres, or where the Secretary determines that the designation or expansion was made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders, to determine whether each designation or expansion conforms to the policy set forth in section 1 of this order.  In making those determinations, the Secretary shall consider:

(i)    the requirements and original objectives of the Act, including the Act's requirement that reservations of land not exceed "the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected";

(ii)   whether designated lands are appropriately classified under the Act as "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, [or] other objects of historic or scientific interest";

(iii)  the effects of a designation on the available uses of designated Federal lands, including consideration of the multiple-use policy of section 102(a)(7) of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (43 U.S.C. 1701(a)(7)), as well as the effects on the available uses of Federal lands beyond the monument boundaries;

(iv)   the effects of a designation on the use and enjoyment of non-Federal lands within or beyond monument boundaries;

(v)    concerns of State, tribal, and local governments affected by a designation, including the economic development and fiscal condition of affected States, tribes, and localities;

(vi)   the availability of Federal resources to properly manage designated areas; and

(vii)  such other factors as the Secretary deems appropriate.

(b)  In conducting the review described in subsection (a) of this section, the Secretary shall consult and coordinate with, as appropriate, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the heads of any other executive departments or agencies concerned with areas designated under the Act.

(c)  In conducting the review described in subsection (a) of this section, the Secretary shall, as appropriate, consult and coordinate with the Governors of States affected by monument designations or other relevant officials of affected State, tribal, and local governments.

(d)  Within 45 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall provide an interim report to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, summarizing the findings of the review described in subsection (a) of this section with respect to Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016 (Establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument), and such other designations as the Secretary determines to be appropriate for inclusion in the interim report.  For those designations, the interim report shall include recommendations for such Presidential actions, legislative proposals, or other actions consistent with law as the Secretary may consider appropriate to carry out the policy set forth in section 1 of this order.

(e)  Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall provide a final report to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, summarizing the findings of the review described in subsection (a) of this section.  The final report shall include recommendations for such Presidential actions, legislative proposals, or other actions consistent with law as the Secretary may consider appropriate to carry out the policy set forth in section 1 of this order.

Sec. 3.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
    April 26, 2017.

President Trump Proposed a Massive Tax Cut. Here’s What You Need to Know.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something big. President Trump has made tax reform a priority, and we have a Republican Congress that wants to get it done. This is something that Democrats should support too because it’s good for the American people.

The President is going to seize this opportunity by leading the most significant tax reform legislation since 1986 – and one of the biggest tax cuts in American history.

The President has focused on three things since his campaign: job creation, economic growth, and helping low and middle-income families who have been left behind by this economy. He understands that there are a lot of people in this country that feel like they work hard and still can’t get ahead. They are sick of turning their paychecks over to Washington and having no idea how their tax dollars are spent. They are frustrated by a tax code that is so complicated that they can’t even do their own taxes.

That’s why tax reform is such a big priority for this President.  He cares about making the economy work better for the American people.

We are going to cut taxes for businesses to make them competitive, and we are going to cut taxes for the American people – especially low and middle-income families.

In 1935, we had a one-page tax form consisting of 34 lines and two pages of instructions.  Today, the basic 1040 form has 79 lines and 211 pages of instructions. Instead of a single tax form, the IRS now has 199 tax forms on the individual side of the tax code alone. Taxpayers spend nearly 7 billion hours complying with the tax code each year, and nearly 90% of taxpayers need help filing their taxes.

We are going to cut taxes and simplify the tax code by taking the current 7 tax brackets we have today and reducing them to only three brackets: 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent.

We are going to double the standard deduction so that a married couple won’t pay any taxes on the first $24,000 of income they earn.  So in essence, we are creating a 0 percent tax rate for the first $24,000 that a couple earns.

The larger standard deduction also leads to simplification because far fewer taxpayers will need to itemize, which means their tax form can go back to that one simple page.

Families in this country will also benefit from tax relief to help them with child and dependent care expenses.

We are going to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The AMT creates significant complications and burdens by requiring taxpayers to do their taxes twice to see which is higher. That makes no sense; we should have one simple tax code.

Job creation and economic growth is the top priority for this Administration, and nothing drives economic growth like capital investment. Therefore, we are going to return the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 20 percent by repealing the harmful 3.8 percent Obamacare tax. That tax has been a direct hit on investment income and small business owners.

We are going to repeal the death tax. The threat of being hit by the death tax leads small business owners and farmers in this country to waste countless hours and resources on complicated estate planning to make sure their children aren’t hit with a huge tax when they die. No one wants their children to have to sell the family business to pay an unfair tax.

We are going to eliminate most of the tax breaks that mainly benefit high-income individuals.  Home ownership, charitable giving, and retirement savings will be protected – but other tax benefits will be eliminated.

This is not going to be easy. Doing big things never is. But one thing is for certain: I would not bet against this President.  He will get this done for the American people.

Gary Cohn is the chief economic advisor to President Donald J. Trump and Director of the National Economic Council

Capitalism Is the Moral High Road

Higher education in the United States is engulfed in an ideological campaign against the American political and economic traditions of individual liberty, free competitive markets, and constitutionally limited government. In its place is the “progressive” agenda of collectivist identity politics, the interventionist economy, and political plunder.

Surveys of political orientation and bias in American academia have strongly suggested that the large majority of college and university professors are “left-of-center.” Conservatives and classical liberals are relatively few and far between at most institutions of higher learning.

But the worst thing about this phenomenon is not simply the marginalizing of those labeled as being on the political “right,” but the growing intolerance of any views other than the left-of-center majoritarian ones. As we’ve seen in the media, this intolerance has taken the form of both verbal and even physical attacks in some instances.

War on Individualism and Capitalism

There is a near totalitarian “progressive” dogmatism on some campuses that, like its Marxian ancestor, views everyone to their political “right” as agents or apologists for exploitation and oppression. These new ideologues believe that individualism, capitalism, and an impartial rule of law based on equal rights (not privileges) are a smoke screen to delude the masses into accepting abuse by businessmen and the privileged.

They feel called upon to resist and silence these “enemies of the people” everywhere and especially in the halls of academia. For them, colleges and universities are a “hot house” for the cultivation of a new collectivism and the nurturing of generational indoctrination in the young. Any alternative seeds of individualism and free market capitalism must be eradicated from the educational nursery that is fertilizing the “raised consciousness” of social, racial, and gender collectivism.

In this setting, the task of the classical liberal-oriented economist is to oppose this dangerous direction and trend. Not through matching dogma and closed-mindedness, but through reason, argument, and persuasion. It is essential for the economist friend of freedom to show how and why the free market economy is the basis for human liberty, cultural betterment, and material prosperity.

The starting point, in my view, is to emphasize that there are basically two ways human beings can interact and associate with each other: through the threat or use of force or by mutual agreement and voluntary consent.

Everyone Wants to Be Free

I sometimes start out a class at the beginning of the semester by asking the students, which one of them woke up this morning just wishing that, some time during the day, someone would kill them? And at the end of the day was disappointed it had not happened?

No hands are ever raised.

I ask, which one of them started the day really hoping that someone would rob or defraud them during some social or market interaction? And, again, if it had not happened, they ended the day disappointed and frustrated that no one had stolen from them or cheated them?

Again, no hands are raised.

I also ask, which one of them started the day really, really hoping that someone would put a gun to their head and tell them that from now on they were going to be that person’s slave, who would order them around, telling them what to do, how to do, and when to whatever the slave-master commanded, under penalty of threatened physical harm if they disobeyed? And, once more, they were very sad that this had not happened by day’s end?

And, once more, no hands are raised.

Finally, I ask, if someone in this class were to be murdered, robbed, defrauded or enslaved, would they consider this right, good, or just? No one says, yes.

I suggest that all of them would prefer to have life, liberty, and property respected by others, free from the use of force or its threat. They imply that they consider it good and just that each of them be left to manage and direct their own lives, in their own way, peacefully, unmolested by others in society.

Capitalism’s Premise: Individual Rights and Liberty

I then explain that the economic system that most closely offers an implied right and security for each person to be that free individual is the free market economy, capitalism.

I ask, when have any of them ever walked into a shoe store, looked around, maybe tried on a pair of shoes, and, when you decided to leave without buying anything, an intimidating character with a club or a gun said, “The boss says you ain’t leaving without buying something”? Likely none of us, I point out, has ever had such a direct experience.

Why? Because the moral premise underlying transactions in the marketplace is that each participant has the right to say, “Yes” or “No” to an exchange.

Virtually every other philosophical and political system throughout human history has been based on some version of the opposite. That is, that you do not own yourself; your life and property are at the disposal of the primitive tribe or the medieval king or the community.

This is the premise of all forms of political and economic collectivism: You work for the group, you obey the group, and you live and die for the group. Political authority presumes to have the right to compel your acquiescence for the needs and desires of the collective group.

Only liberal, free market capitalism, as it developed in parts of the Western world, and especially in the United States, broke free of the collectivist conception of the relationship between individuals and society. The modern ideas of individual liberty and free enterprise have transformed lives and the ethical premises underlying human association.

A new morality emerged under which human relationships became based on mutual consent and voluntary agreement. Men could attempt to persuade each other to associate and trade, but they could not be compelled and plundered so one person could get what he wanted from another without their consent.

For Americans, it is heralded as the fundamental principle under which our country was based: It is held to be a self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights among which are their individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Fostering Honesty and Manners

As a consequence of this principle of liberty, in the marketplace of the free society individuals learn and practice the etiquette and manners of respect, politeness, honesty, and tolerance. This naturally follows from the fact that, if violence is abolished from all human relationships, or at least minimized, the only way any of us can get others to do things we would like them to do for us is through reason, argument, and persuasion.

The reason the salesman is motivated to act with courtesy and deference towards his customers is because he cannot force them to buy a pair of the shoes he wants to sell. They can simply walk away and buy shoes from another seller that is interested in winning their business, or they can abstain from buying anything at all.

The clichés of “service with a smile,” or “the customer is always right,” are manifestations of the voluntarist principle that is the basis of all market transactions. No businessman is likely to keep his market share or even stay in business in the long run if he earns a reputation for rudeness and dishonesty.

The famous Scottish economist of the eighteenth century, Adam Smith, long ago explained that the motivation for polite, deferential behavior on the part of any businessman is his own self-interest. Every enterpriser who has learned the importance of branding and reputation knows this.

Respectful behavior may start out as an attempt to secure profits, but over time “good behavior” becomes a part of routine interactions, until, they are finally transformed into customs which we expect in all human encounters, inside and outside of the marketplace. In this way, capitalist conduct contributes to a more cultured and humane civilization.

Creating a Spirit of Humility

Free market capitalism also inculcates a spirit and attitude of humility. In the open and competitive marketplace, in principle, anyone who has an idea or a dream is free to try to bring it into reality. No private person or political power has the right to prevent him from entering the field of enterprise to discover if his idea can be brought to fruition.

The capitalist “rule of the game” is that anyone is at liberty to enter the arena of enterprise if he has the will, determination, and drive. Not one of us has the ability to know beforehand which ideas and efforts will turn out to be a success or a failure.

The Austrian economist and Nobel Prize-winner, F. A. Hayek, once referred to competition as a “discovery procedure.” The humility of the marketplace is that no one – not even the most well-informed government bureaucrat – has sufficient knowledge and forethought to successfully “pick winners” and “avoid losers” for the good of society as a whole.

This can only be found out through the competitive rivalry of private enterprisers, with each trying to gain the business of customers who decide which producers best fulfill their wants and needs.

Taking the High Road

The watchwords of capitalist free market morality, therefore, are liberty, honesty, and humility: The freedom of each individual to live and choose for himself; the ethics of fair dealings; and the modesty to admit that none of us is wise enough to plan society.

Not only would it be morally wrong to reduce people to the status of commanded followers, but it would limit what mankind can accomplish to only what the central planner can imagine. It is better for both the individual and for society if everyone is at liberty to act according to their own interests. All of society can benefit from what one human mind can conceive of that another may not.

We live at a time in which capitalism is stymied in almost every direction by the heavy hand of government control. In the real world, we have politically managed and manipulated capitalism that is very far from the truly free market capitalism that I outline to my students in terms of its moral premises and social virtues.

A truly free market is certainly not the twisted conception of “capitalism” that is presented in the media and in the classrooms of too many college and university professors. Real free market capitalism recognizes and respects the rights of the individual and is that economic system that offers humanity the most moral system of human association imaginable by and for man.

Free market capitalism is the ethical high road to human dignity and mutual prosperity. If its moral and related foundations can be successfully articulated to students in a persuasive manner, the totalitarian progressives can be opposed through the power of reason and a basic understanding of the connections between economic liberty, social peace, mutual well-being, and a better future for all of mankind.

(Based on a presentation delivered at the annual meeting of the Association of Private Enterprise Education in Maui, Hawaii, April 11, 2017, for a session devoted to “Teaching the Economics, Philosophy, and Morality of Free-Market Capitalism.”)

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Trump’s Kept and Not Yet Kept Promises in First 100 Days

President Donald Trump has scoffed at the measurement even as the White House heralded the successes of his first 100 days in office.

In the final week before this key presidential marker, Trump made progress on several promises such as unveiling a tax reform proposal and talking with leaders of Canada and Mexico about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trump’s budget proposal addressed a slew of the promises from his first 100-day plan.

Trump is also the first president since 1881 to gain a Supreme Court confirmation in the first 100 days, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus boasted during an NBC News interview.

A new president’s first 100 days became a barometer for success beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who aggressively signed numerous bills and executive actions after taking office.

Trump issued more than 30 executive orders, the most in five decades during a president’s first 100 days, according to the White House. Among these orders: authorizing construction of a border wall, requiring that for every new regulation that two others be undone, and imposing a federal hiring freeze.

He also signed executive orders approving the Keystone XL and Dakota oil pipelines and lifting restrictions on energy production, including reversing Obama administration regulations on coal.

“Increasing American energy independence is important to national security and it is something the president has done, with deregulation,” White House spokesman Michael Short told The Daily Signal. “Approving the Keystone and Dakota pipelines will help us toward the goal of getting off Middle East oil.”

Courts have stalled some of Trump’s agenda on immigration reform, regarding “extreme vetting” of certain would-be travelers to America and the administration’s effort to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.

Though his legislative achievements seem thin on the surface, Trump has signed 28 pieces of legislation into law, technically more than any president since Harry Truman, the White House says.

The bulk of that legislation has come from the use of the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations promulgated by the Obama administration. Under that law, Congress has 60 legislative days to disapprove a rule and get the president’s signature on that joint resolution.

Notably, the administration had a significant legislative setback when conservatives and centrists of Trump’s own party in the House didn’t support the Trump-backed health care bill pushed by the chamber’s Republican leadership to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Trump’s two  predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both managed major legislative accomplishments in their first 100 days.

Bush signed a tax cut bill, while Obama signed a massive economic stimulus bill, said Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, an organization that provides information to new White House staffers to help streamline the change from one administration to the next.

“In both cases, there were a substantial number of bills these presidents pushed in Congress,” Kumar told The Daily Signal. “In Trump’s case, the 28 bills he signed were mostly reversing what Obama had done.”

Jenny Beth Martin, president of Tea Party Patriots, said she would give Trump an A grade for his first 100 days for keeping most of his promises.

“He has worked to secure the border and has done as much as he can through executive action,” Martin told The Daily Signal. “One of the reasons he hasn’t been able to get as many major legislative items has been Senate Democrats. The Obamacare replacement from House Republican leadership was also disappointing.”

Perhaps the biggest Trump initiatives of the first 100 days weren’t expected.

These came on the national security front: The U.S. struck a Syrian air base used to carry out dictator Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own civilians. A week later, the U.S. dropped the so-called “mother of all bombs” on an Islamic State hideout in Afghanistan.

As a candidate, Trump made a series of promises during a campaign speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he laid out his plan for the first 100 days. Here’s a look at promises kept and not kept:

‘Clean Up the Corruption and Special Interest Collusion’

Part of Trump’s plan to “drain the swamp” was taking on both lobbyists and Capitol Hill, and he had a six-point plan.

The first item was to “propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.” As president, Trump hasn’t advocated this yet, nor has he thrown the weight of his office behind an existing term limits proposal in Congress.

He did immediately keep the second promise, however, with a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce the federal workforce through attrition. He exempted military, public safety, and public health employees.

Trump promptly kept his promise to sign an executive order requiring two regulations to be eliminated for every new one created.

He imposed a five-year ban on White House officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service. He put in place a lifetime ban on White House officials’ lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

However, the president didn’t impose a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections, or on congressional staff from becoming lobbyists—both measures requiring an act of Congress.

‘Protect American Workers’

The first action listed under this category was Trump’s plan to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the trade deal among the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

After reports the Trump White House drafted an order to pull out of NAFTA, Trump talked to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by phone on Wednesday.

“I decided rather than terminating NAFTA, which would be a pretty big, you know, shock to the system, we will renegotiate,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “If I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States, meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA. But we’re going to give renegotiation a good, strong shot.”

Trump already acted on his second promise in this category, withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal with 11 countries that the Obama administration signed but Congress never ratified.

Trump the candidate also vowed that he would direct his Treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator. However, after meeting recently with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump put a hold on this idea because, he said, he believes China will help pressure North Korea to scale back its nuclear ambitions.

Trump also vowed that he would direct the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative “to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.”

In March, he followed through with an executive order directing a country-by-country and product-by-product review. Just last week, Trump announced the administration was launching an investigationinto steel dumping.

Dumping is a form of price manipulation in which a manufacturer of a product—in this case, steel—floods a country with the product, pricing it below market value and sometimes below the cost of production to increase market share and harm competition in a foreign market.

Trump rolled out an energy plan almost identical to his campaign proposal to “lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas, and clean coal.”

Trump has moved, both by signing legislation and taking executive actions, to roll back Obama-era energy regulations.

Trump also signed an executive order to remove barriers to the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. The Keystone pipeline was specifically part of the 100-day plan.

The final vow in this category was to “cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.”

The White House’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal would “cease payments to the United Nations’ climate change programs.”

‘Restore Security and the Constitutional Rule of Law’

Trump said he would “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum, and order issued by President Obama.” He has reversed some, but others are still in place, such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which shields children of illegal immigrants from deportation.

The second pledge in this category was to nominate a Supreme Court justice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February. The Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court last month in perhaps the biggest victory for Trump so far.

Trump also followed through on his pledge to cancel unspecified federal funding to sanctuary cities. This matter was recently blocked by a court, but the administration will appeal.

With increased enforcement for the border and the interior, the administration has already begun to deport criminal illegal immigrants. Trump pledged to remove 2 million illegal immigrants in his 100-day pledge, which is in progress.

He signed an executive order that prioritized removal of criminal illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration is down 61 percent since Trump came into office, according to the White House, and at a 17-year low.

In perhaps the most controversial move, the Trump administration followed through on a promise to “suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.”

Trump also called this “extreme vetting.” However, this matter is also stuck in litigation and under a judge’s temporary restraining order. Critics of the policy call it a “Muslim ban.”

Legislative Agenda

Trump announced a tax reform proposal Wednesday, the first legislative item listed on his 100-day plan. Trump’s plan would cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, and reduce the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three: 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent.

Trump’s legislative list also included the “Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act.” This turned out to be the House Republican leadership’s American Health Care Act.

While the initial bill failed, Republicans in Congress are putting forward a new proposal that has the support of most members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well as centrist Republicans who balked at the earlier version. A slim chance exists of a vote before the end of the week.

Trump the candidate promoted a “School Choice and Education Opportunity Act.” His budget addressed the issue by advocating a $1.4 billion boost to cover charter schools, permitting public dollars to follow children to other public schools, and a federal voucher system for parents to pay for private schools.

However, the administration hasn’t directly addressed other legislative proposals that were part of the 100-day plan, such as a major infrastructure initiative, tariffs, new ethics laws, and a child and elder care tax credit.

Candidate Trump promoted an “End Illegal Immigration Act,” which included funding construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. An initial payment for the wall of $1.5 billion was part of the Trump budget proposal.

However, the administration reportedly isn’t willing to risk a government shutdown over the issue, which Senate Democrats have threatened to do, to achieve the funding in a short-term spending bill to keep the government operating through Sept. 30.

Trump did establish a law enforcement task force to help local police combat violent crime and determine how federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors can dismantle criminal gangs. However, he did this through an executive order rather than through the proposed “Restoring Community Safety Act.”

The 100-day plan also included proposing a “Restoring National Security Act.” The provisions have been spread across several proposals and presidential actions.

Trump’s budget proposal would increase the military budget by $54 billion to $603 billion, offset by cuts to foreign aid.

This same campaign proposal would provide veterans more choices of private health care providers paid for by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Last week, Trump signed a bill extending the health care voucher system for veterans.

The measure improves on a 2014 system that was about to expire, which was put in place as a response to the veterans’ waiting list scandal exposed in 2013.

Are ‘Antifascists’ Employing a Crude Form of Terrorism?

Days before its April 29 parade, Organizers of the 82^nd Avenue of Roses Parade in Portland received an anonymous message. Via the Oregonian:

"You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely," the anonymous email said, telling organizers they could cancel the Republican group's registration or else face action from protesters. "This is non-negotiable."

The letter, the paper reports, was precipitated by the presence of the Multnomah County Republican Party in the parade, which “drew ire from some of the city's left-leaning protest groups”—despite the fact that the group participated in previous years.

How did parade organizers respond? They canceled the event, lest a riot ensue.

These tactics are familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to U.S. campuses. As NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt explained in an April 26 article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, intimidation is the new normal on college campuses.

“Any campus speaker who arouses a protest is at risk of a beating,” said Haidt. “Can this really be the future of American colleges?”

The answer appears to be yes.

Haidt explains that these agitators--who sometimes call themselves "antifascists"-- justify their actions by presenting themselves as victims:

“A common feature of recent campus shout-downs is the argument that the speaker ‘dehumanizes’ members of marginalized groups or ‘denies their right to exist.’ No quotations or citations are given for such strong assertions; these are rhetorical moves made to strengthen the case against the speaker.”

Thus far, universities have mostly indulged the escapades of these bad-behaving students. Why? Perhaps it’s because there is a deep-rooted tradition of protesting in America’s history. Perhaps it’s because college officials are sympathetic to the students’ ends (keeping dissenting voices off campus).

Whatever the case, by indulging the student agitators who employ threats, intimidation, and violence, college leaders are tacitly affirming their tactics. This is dangerous.

Haidt, for one, believes our university system may be at a crossroads.

“This year may become a turning point in the annals of higher education. It may be remembered as the year that political violence and police escorts became ordinary parts of campus life. Or it may be remembered as the year when professors, students, and administrators finally found the moral courage to stand up against intimidation, even when it is aimed at people whose ideas they dislike.”

It’s troubling that universities have not taken a stronger stance against these tactics. More troubling is that—as the cancelation of the parade in Portland demonstrates—we could soon see these methods proliferate beyond the campus since they have proven so effective.

That would be bad. What has largely been overlooked is that these tactics are a crude form of terrorism.

If you Google “terrorism” this is the definition you will find: Ter·ror·ism (noun) the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

People have a right to peaceably assemble and protest. But when people use threats, intimidation, and violence against civilians to achieve political aims, they are employing tactics that go beyond civil disobedience.

Take the recent episode in Portland. A clear threat (disruption and potential violence) was issued designed to achieve a specific political result (ostracization of a political group). It worked.

​We tend to not recognize the actual nature of these acts because they are done so openly and brazenly. It's a brilliant and age-old ruse. In G.K. Chesterton's wonderful novel The Man Who Was Thursday, the president of the Central Anarchist Council shrewdly observed the safest place for a terrorist to hide.

"You want a safe disguise, do you? . . . A dress in which no one would ever look for a bomb? Why, then, dress up as an anarchist, you fool!"

This is not to imply that all protesters are terrorists or that the FBI should send agents to Berkeley. But we need to be honest about the brutish tactics being employed and recognize that they are designed to achieve political goals. It's a dangerous path, as anyone familiar with Germany's Spartacist Uprising knows.

The most frustrating part is that colleges have no problem flexing their muscles and cracking down on offending students... when it’s a couple of kids handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution. But when mobs of students wearing masks organize to infringe on the rights of others, college leaders inexplicably go into a shell.

It doesn’t have to be this way. College administrators could send a strong message by promptly expelling a few ringleaders caught engaging in intimidating or violent behavior. It doesn't belong on campus and should not be tolerated.

They have the ability. Do they have the will?

--

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This post Are ‘Antifascists’ Employing a Crude Form of Terrorism? was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Jon Miltimore.

Supreme Court slams Trump immigration case

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts took issue on Wednesday with the Trump administration's stance in an immigration case, saying it could make it too easy for the government to strip people of citizenship for lying about minor infractions.

Roberts and other Supreme Court justices indicated support for a deported ethnic Serb immigrant named Divna Maslenjak over her bid to regain her U.S. citizenship after it was stripped because she falsely stated her husband had not served in the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s after Yugoslavia's collapse.

Roberts seemed particularly concerned that the government was asserting it could revoke citizenship through criminal prosecution for trivial lies or omissions.

He noted that in the past he has exceeded the speed limit while driving. If immigrants failed to disclose that on a citizenship application form asking them to list any instances of breaking the law, they could later lose their citizenship, the conservative chief justice said.

"Now you say that if I answer that question 'no,' 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, 'Guess what, you're not an American citizen after all?'" Roberts asked Justice Department lawyer Robert Parker.

Roberts described the administration's interpretation as inviting "prosecutorial abuse" because the government could likely find a reason for stripping citizenship from most naturalized citizens.

"That to me is troublesome to give that extraordinary power, which, essentially, is unlimited power, at least in most cases, to the government," Roberts added.

President Donald Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally.

Maslenjak entered the United States with her husband and two children in 2000, granted refugee status over a claimed fear of ethnic persecution in Bosnia at the hands of Muslims. They settled in Ohio. She became a U.S. citizen in 2007. At issue is her concealment of her husband Ratko's service in a Bosnian Serb Army brigade that participated in the notorious 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

Maslenjak's citizenship was revoked. She and her husband were deported to Serbia last October.

'RATHER SURPRISING'

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer shared Roberts' concern, noting he had once walked into a government building with a pocketknife on his key chain in violation of the law.

"It's, to me, rather surprising that the government of the United States thinks that Congress is interpreting this statute and wanted it interpreted in a way that would throw into doubt the citizenship of vast percentages of all naturalized citizens," Breyer said.

Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy also rebuked Parker, saying, "It seems to me that your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship."

There are around 20 million naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The legal question is whether Maslenjak's false statements had a material effect on the U.S. decision to grant her refugee status. The government argued it only matters that she made a false statement, not whether it had any impact on its decision to grant refugee status.

At a 2009 hearing to help her husband avoid deportation after he was convicted of making a false statement by concealing his military service, she admitted that when she had applied to be a refugee she had not revealed that from 1992 to 1997 the family lived in Bosnia and her husband served in the military. She was later convicted of lying on her citizenship application.

This was the last oral argument of the court's current term. A ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Trump advisers likely to meet in days on Paris climate pact

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump administration officials will likely meet in May to reach a final decision on whether the United States should stay in the Paris climate deal, after holding an initial meeting on Thursday at the White House, an administration source said.

The group of advisers, which includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, was on track to make the decision before a Group of Seven summit on May 26, the source said.

President Donald Trump made canceling the Paris agreement part of his 100-day plan for energy policy. He later said he was open to staying in the pact if Washington got better terms.

Tillerson, the former head of Exxon Mobil Corp  and Perry have said the country should remain in the agreement. McMaster shares that view, a source outside the administration said.

Opponents of the pact include Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of oil-producing Oklahoma, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Nearly 200 countries struck the Paris agreement to limit climate change by cutting carbon dioxide emissions and making investments in clean energy.

Many companies such as BP Plc  and Microsoft Corp have urged the United States to stay in the agreement to protect their competitiveness.

In addition, a group of nine Republican lawmakers urged Trump to stick to the pact, but to weaken the U.S. pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Representative Kevin Cramer of oil-producing North Dakota and eight other Republican House of Representatives members sent a letter to Trump urging him to use the country's "seat at the Paris table to defend and promote our commercial interest, including our manufacturing and fossil fuel sectors."

If the United States is to stay in the 2015 agreement, Washington should present a new emissions cutting pledge that "does no harm to our economy," said the letter from Cramer, who advised Trump on energy and climate during his presidential campaign.

Trump's Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, had pledged a 26 percent to 28 percent cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels, by 2025. Most scientists say the world needs to curb greenhouse gas emissions to limit the effects of climate change, including rising seas, deadly heatwaves, and severe storms and droughts.

The Republican lawmakers also said Washington should retain its seat on the Green Climate Fund, which aims to tackle climate change in poor countries, but not make additional transfers to it. Obama pledged $3 billion to the fund in 2014, and gave $1 billion to it, with the last $500 million payment coming in his last days as president.



 (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis)

If you think America doesn't need commercial farm labor, you don't eat

A lot of activists say we don't need farm labor because, "I can grow my own food."

They must not eat.

 

Look simply at one of the most popular farm products.  The average American eats 117 pounds of potatoes a year, which is about two bushels. A highly efficient potato farm, run by experts with commercial farm labor, needs 316 square feet of land to grow two bushels of potatoes.

 

Not only do you need more than 316 square feet of space, because you're not going to be as efficient as a professional, commercial-scale farm, you also need to take time every day to check for water needs, presence of pests and fungus, as well as soil composition and pH -- and then you need to harvest it.

All of that is done by commercial farm labor.

Even if you were, you'd still only be producing the equivalent of one potato every three days. You can't survive on one potato every three days. You need to replicate that exponentially to grow all the vegetables you need simply to avoid starvation and malnutrition.

That requires commercial farm labor.  You can't do it yourself.

Trump says he thought being president would be easier than his old life

By Stephen J. Adler, Jeff Mason and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - He misses driving, feels as if he is in a cocoon, and is surprised how hard his new job is.

President Donald Trump on Thursday reflected on his first 100 days in office with a wistful look at his life before the White House.

"I loved my previous life. I had so many things going," Trump told Reuters in an interview. "This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier."

A wealthy businessman from New York, Trump assumed public office for the first time when he entered the White House on Jan. 20 after he defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an upset.

More than five months after his victory and two days shy of the 100-day mark of his presidency, the election is still on Trump's mind. Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map.

"Here, you can take that, that's the final map of the numbers," the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. "It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us."

He had copies for each of the three Reuters reporters in the room.

Trump, who said he was accustomed to not having privacy in his "old life," expressed surprise at how little he had now. And he made clear he was still getting used to having 24-hour Secret Service protection and its accompanying constraints.

"You're really into your own little cocoon, because you have such massive protection that you really can't go anywhere," he said.

When the president leaves the White House, it is usually in a limousine or an SUV.

He said he missed being behind the wheel himself.

"I like to drive," he said. "I can't drive any more."

Many things about Trump have not changed from the wheeler-dealer executive and former celebrity reality show host who ran his empire from the 26th floor of Trump Tower in New York and worked the phones incessantly.

He frequently turns to outside friends and former business colleagues for advice and positive reinforcement. Senior aides say they are resigned to it.

The president has been at loggerheads with many news organizations since his election campaign and decided not to attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington on Saturday because he felt he had been treated unfairly by the media.

"I would come next year, absolutely," Trump said when asked whether he would attend in the future.

The dinner is organized by the White House Correspondents' Association. Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason is its president.



 (Writing by Jeff Mason; Editing by Kieran Murray and Howard Goller)

US Ally Kazakhstan Essential to Russia, China Policy

As the U.S. grapples with many complex challenges to its interests in the vast region of Eurasia, one country should attract Washington’s particular attention.

Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth-largest country by land mass, sits right in the heart of Eurasia on what is best described as a convergence of global challenges and strategic opportunities for the U.S.

These key challenges include nuclear proliferation, a resurgent Russia and rising China, Islamic extremism, and competition for energy resources. Partnership with Kazakhstan on these issues is important for the U.S. moving forward.

In addition to these challenges, there are many opportunities for the U.S., too—and these opportunities cannot be ignored.

Kazakhstan is a major hydrocarbon player and has the potential to help Europe alleviate some of its hydrocarbon dependency on Russia. In addition, major transit routes pass through Kazakhstan along the old Silk Road, connecting East Asia with Western Europe.

(The train that recently made history as the first Chinese freight train to stop in London passed through Kazakhstan on this route.)

Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country but is staunchly secular in its politics, maintaining cordial relations with all countries in the Middle East—from Israel to Saudi Arabia to Iran and everyone in between.

This makes Kazakhstan a potentially key intermediary for contentious global issues important to the U.S.

Kazakhstan has begun its two-year term as a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council this year and has been a leading voice on the global stage for the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, having given up hundreds of nuclear weapons it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Kazakhstan’s example, in fact, can be useful in the debate over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The U.S. investment in Kazakhstan’s energy sphere runs in tens of billions of dollars, and there is potential for more. Additionally, there are also trade and investment opportunities. U.S. exports to Kazakhstantotaled more than $1 billion in 2016.

During the early years of its independence from the Soviet Union, between 1991 and 1995, the Kazakh economy contracted by 31 percent. Since 1995, annual growth in Kazakhstan has averaged a respectable 5.16 percent.

When The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom started scoring Kazakhstan’s performance in 1998, the country ranked 136th in the world in terms of economic freedom.

Today it ranks 42nd, making it the leader in Central Asia and placing it ahead of Western nations such as Belgium, France, and Italy.

Kazakhstan has also been in the news this year as a host for what came to be known as the “Astana process”—a series of meetings to help bring an end to the six-year-long civil war in Syria.

Kazakhstan’s role here, while technically that of a neutral host, is critical as it can bring to bear its clout as a nation maintaining positive ties with all the parties involved, including with the West.

It remains to be seen how successful these talks will be, but Kazakhstan should be given credit for doing what it can to help push a diplomatic solution to the war.

Central Asia is a rough neighborhood. Since the announced drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, American influence in the region has waned. Russia and China are now economic and military players in the region like never before—and not always with benign intentions.

A second tier of actors like Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and India are also becoming more active in the region. Sometimes this is for economic, security, or even social and religious reasons, but their motives are not always clear.

This makes the geopolitical chess board even more complex.

Kazakhstan is constantly balancing its relationships with regional and global powers. It must do so in order to thrive in a region where power is constantly in flux.

But as one senior Kazakh official told me during my visit to Astana last month: Kazakhstan has to balance its relations with the U.S., China, and Russia, but this is made more difficult because it doesn’t know what the new U.S. administration’s policy toward Russia and China is.

This is inevitable with any new administration, but it is still a fair point.

As the U.S. faces continued challenges in Afghanistan, right now would be a good time to further boost the U.S.-Kazakh relationship and get the U.S. back on the map in Central Asia.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry’s C5+1 initiative—a U.S.-led effort creating a multilateral format for the five Central Asian republics and the U.S. to build relations—was a good start, and should indeed continue.

But Central Asia is a region best suited for bilateral relations, and the most important U.S. bilateral relationship in Central Asia is undoubtedly with Kazakhstan.

A sensible U.S. strategy for Central Asia should be viewed as a chair with four legs, focusing on security, economic cooperation, energy, and good governance. If one leg is longer than the other, the whole chair is unbalanced at best, or unworkable at worst.

For too long, the U.S. has focused too much on just one of these four issues, and usually at the expense of the others. This is not a healthy or sustainable way to advance U.S. interest in the region or its relationship with countries like Kazakhstan.

The Central Asia region has been, is, and will continue to be an area of great geopolitical importance for the U.S.

If the new administration is to have a grand strategy to deal with a resurgent Russia and an emboldened China, promote nonproliferation, confront transnational Islamist terrorism, and improve Europe’s energy security, it cannot ignore Kazakhstan.

Trump admin says strategy on North Korea centers on sanctions, open to talks

By Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration said on Wednesday it aimed to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and remained open to negotiations to bring that about.

The U.S. stance, which appeared to signal a willingness to exhaust non-military avenues despite repeated warnings that "all options are on the table," came in a statement following an unusual White House-hosted briefing for the entire U.S. Senate followed by a briefing to the House of Representatives.

The statement from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats described North Korea as "an urgent national security threat and top foreign policy priority."

North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threat is perhaps the most serious security challenge confronting President Donald Trump, who has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile - a capability experts say Pyongyang could have some time after 2020.

"The President’s approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our allies and regional partners," the statement said.

"The United States seeks stability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. We remain open to negotiations towards that goal. However, we remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies."

U.S. lawmakers have been seeking a clear White House strategy following repeated North Korean missile tests and fears it could conduct a sixth nuclear bomb test. But some lawmakers on both sides went away dissatisfied.

While the administration has said military strikes remain an option, officials have stressed tougher sanctions as the key strategy given the risks of massive North Korean retaliation - essentially representing a continuation of the policy of former President Barack Obama's administration, which failed to slow Pyongyang's weapons programs.

Democratic Senator Christopher Coons told reporters after the White House briefing that military options were discussed.

"It was a sobering briefing in which it was clear just how much thought and planning was going into preparing military options, if called for, and a diplomatic strategy that strikes me as clear-eyed and well proportioned," Coons said.

Tillerson will chair a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday that is expected to discuss tougher sanctions, which U.S. officials say could include an oil embargo, banning North Korea's airline, intercepting cargo ships and punishing Chinese and other foreign banks doing business with Pyongyang.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said another means of diplomatic pressure would be for nations to close North Korean missions and to ostracize North Korea in international organizations.

China objects to North Korea's weapons development and has called for a return to international negotiations, but U.S. officials have said Washington sees no value in talks until Pyongyang shows it is serious about denuclearization.

'A WILD DREAM'

Earlier on Wednesday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry called U.S. attempts to make Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons through military threats and sanctions "a wild dream" and like "sweeping the sea with a broom."

The administration is hoping for greater Chinese cooperation after a summit between President Xi Jinping and Trump last month, and a senior White House official said Beijing now appeared to acknowledge North Korea as a threat to China too.

"You have seen some early indications of China doing a better job enforcing existing U.N. sanctions on North Korea," the official said, adding there had also been a clear effort to communicate to North Korea in the Chinese press "that its nuclear tests, missile tests, the existence of these programs can't be tolerated."

China has been angered, however, by U.S. deployment of  the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile defense system in South Korea, complaining that its radar can see deep into China and undermines its security.

The top U.S. commander in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, told Congress on Wednesday the system would be operational "in coming days" and suggested Beijing should focus on influencing North Korea rather than worrying about a purely defensive system.

The front-runner in South Korea's May 9 presidential election has called for a delay in THAAD deployment, saying the new Seoul administration should make a decision after gathering public opinion and more talks with Washington.

Harris said he believed Pyongyang's threats needed to be taken seriously and that the United States may also need to strengthen missile defenses in Hawaii.

He said these were sufficient for now but could one day be overwhelmed, and suggested studying stationing new radar there as well as interceptors to knock out any incoming North Korean missiles.

"I don't share your confidence that North Korea is not going to attack either South Korea, or Japan, or the United States ... once they have the capability," Harris told one lawmaker.

U.S. officials have warned that a conflict with North Korea could have a devastating effect on ally South Korea and U.S. troops based there, a point Pyongyang underscored by a big live-fire exercise on Tuesday to mark the foundation of its military.Harris conceded that North Korean retaliation to any U.S. strikes could cause many casualties, but added that there was the risk "of a lot more Koreans and Japanese and Americans dying if North Korea achieves its nuclear aims and does what (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) has said it’s going to do."

North Korea has vowed to strike the United States and its Asian allies at the first sign of any attack on its territory.

In a show of force, the United States is sending the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters off the Korean peninsula, where it will join the USS Michigan, a nuclear submarine that docked in South Korea on Tuesday. South Korea's navy has said it will hold drills with the U.S. strike group.

Harris said the carrier was in the Philippine Sea, within two hours' striking distance of North Korea if need be.



 (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Phil Stewart, David Brunnstrom, Patricia Zengerle and Amanda Becker in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Here’s How Wrong Past Environmental Predictions Have Been

Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom.

Let’s take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today’s environmentalists’ predictions.

In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of “The Population Bomb,” declared that the world’s population would soon outstrip food supplies.

In an article for The Progressive, he predicted, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.”

He gave this warning in 1969 to Britain’s Institute of Biology: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

On the first Earth Day, Ehrlich warned, “In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct.”

Despite such predictions, Ehrlich has won no fewer than 16 awards, including the 1990 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ highest award.

In International Wildlife (July 1975), Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.”

In Science News (1975), C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization is reported as saying, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”

In 2000, climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that within “a few years,” snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” in Britain. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”

In the following years, the U.K. saw some of its largest snowfalls and lowest temperatures since records started being kept in 1914.

In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt told a Swarthmore College audience:

The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.

Also in 1970, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis., wrote in Look magazine: “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian (Institution), believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

Scientist Harrison Brown published a chart in Scientific American that year estimating that mankind would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver were to disappear before 1990.

Erroneous predictions didn’t start with Earth Day.

In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.

Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey said the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

The fact of the matter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is that as of 2014, we had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, which should last about a century.

Hoodwinking Americans is part of the environmentalist agenda. Environmental activist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989:

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: “We’ve got to … try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong … we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies.