Daily Digest: An actor makes sense on guns, the EPA's latest ethanol mandate, studying dangerous "far Right" social media, and Baltimore gets more violent

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Daily Digest

June 2, 2015   

THE FOUNDATION

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." —John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Actor Supports Guns in Schools, Hollywood Goes Hysterical

It takes courage to come out conservative in Hollywood. And actor Vince Vaughn, known for his roles in "assembly-line comedies," has stepped into the political crosshairs. "You think the politicians that run my country and your country don't have guns in the schools their kids go to? They do," Vaughn told UK-based Sky News. "And we should be allowed the same rights. Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won't rid the world of criminality. … In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these ... schools because they know there are no guns there.

They are monsters killing six-year-olds." Hollywood and UK media quickly labeled Vaughn an idiot. But Charles C. W. Cooke notes that Vaughn's thinking is correct, if a bit underdeveloped, as Vaughn never specifies how he envisions guns in schools. But Vaughn gets the concept of self-defense: "It's well known that the greatest defense against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back." Given that Hollywood hypocrites make so much money from gratuitous violence, it's refreshing to hear an actor support the Second Amendment.

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May Concludes With 43 Homicides in Baltimore

In recent years, Chicago has been the focal point of attention regarding violence among minorities in large cities, but Baltimore has rocketed up the chain after a record-setting number of homicides in May. Criminal activity jumped following the death of Freddie Gray, and the spree continued on Sunday with three additional felonious deaths. The month ended with a staggering 43 murders, the most of any May and "the deadliest month since the early 1970s, when 44 people were killed in December 1971 and 45 people in August 1972," USA Today reported. Unsurprisingly, the upward swing in homicides is commensurate with a precipitous drop in the number of suspects being apprehended (32% by one estimate).

The city has registered 116 homicides year-to-date. And while that may not sound impressive compared to areas like Chicago, on a per-capita-basis Baltimore in its current climate is actually far more dangerous. As Daily Caller contributor Derek Hunter writes, "The 48 murders in Chicago [in May] are disturbing, but the city has a population of 2.7 million people. In the month of May, there was one murder for every 56,250 Chicagoans. Meanwhile in Baltimore, a city with a population of only 622,000, their 43 murders puts them at a rate of one murder for every 14,465 residents." In other words, "Residents of Baltimore were 3.8 times more likely to be murdered than residents of Chicago in the month of May," Hunter concludes. Most alarmingly, imagine the homicide figures in a city like Chicago if it were to experience a Freddie Gray-type incident.

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About MSU's Study on 'Far Right' Groups

This is the key question: How do the National Institute of Justice and Michigan State University define "far right" groups? Through the NIJ, the Department of Justice awarded a $585,719 grant to MSU to study how "extremist groups use web forums, social media, and technology to enculturate and radicalize individuals to violence." It's a question worth studying, as the U.S. government currently worries about supposed "lone-wolf" terrorism. While the study aims to analyze extremists' social networks to "identify the hidden networks of individuals who engage in extremist movements based on geographic location and ideological similarities" (which is a good descriptor of Jihadistan), the study will look at three jihadist forums — but four from the "far Right."

There are questions about what the Obama administration considers to be dangerous right-wing groups. MSU could be studying the sovereign citizen movement. But in 2009, Mark Alexander warned that Obama's government was warily eyeing the Tea Party movement. In that same year, the Department of Homeland Security thought veterans returning from combat could be dangerous. If MSU wants to remain objective, it should also study the communications of far-Left groups. But then again is objectivity the point? More...

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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

EPA Proposes More Corn for Fuel, Not Food

By Paul Albaugh

Compared to this time last year, Americans are paying much less at the gas pump. Enjoy it while you can, though, because gas prices are about to rise. The expected price increase isn't due to chaos in the Middle East or a shortage of fossil fuels. No, it's due to the Environmental Protection Agency and its newly released proposal to increase ethanol production. By the way, do you like your food bill? Get ready, because that's about to increase too.

The EPA's proposed three-year ethanol mandate will increase the amount of biofuel mixed into the gasoline supply. This may sound great to supporters of so-called renewable energy, but it's actually doubling down on a terrible idea.

Why? Well, there are several problems with requiring more ethanol in America's fuel.
First, several gasoline refiners have warned that the proposal "moves more quickly than the market can support." In 2007, when Congress expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard, only half of all gasoline contained 10% ethanol. Right now, nearly all of the gasoline produced and used in the U.S. contains 10% ethanol. However, the decrease in demand for gasoline due to more fuel-efficient vehicles means a corresponding decrease in demand for ethanol. The EPA would rather ignore reality and aims to increase ethanol production anyway.

According to The Hill, the EPA "set its overdue 2014 requirements at the actual level of production — 15.93 billion gallons of biofuel — increasing the total to 16.3 billion gallons this year and 17.4 billion gallons in 2016. The statutory requirement for 2016 is 22.25 billion gallons." Under the EPA's new proposal, about 4.7 billion gallons of renewable fuel are expected to come from advanced forms of biofuel such as cellulosic ethanol derived from plant mass material, despite its slower-than-expected development. The remainder will be corn-based ethanol, which brings us to problem number two: increased food costs.

The mandate drives up food prices because corn is a staple food and is also used by livestock for feed. Has anyone noticed the skyrocketing price of beef over the last several years? Furthermore, if more corn is used for ethanol, then there is less food for people in the world who are starving. Quite the double standard for progressives and environmentalists who rage about the human population dying from climate change. No doubt hungry people would love to have some corn to eat, but, nah, let's burn it for fuel so we can save mankind in the future.

Last year, Mark Alexander noted some staggering statistics that are worth repeating: More than 90% of our nation's corn crop went toward feeding people and livestock in the year 2000, with less than 5% of the crop going toward ethanol. In 2013, however, a whopping 40% went toward ethanol. To illustrate this grossly inefficient use of our natural resources, the amount of grain required to fill a 25-gallon automotive fuel tank with ethanol is enough grain to feed one person for an entire year.

The third problem with the EPA proposal is that ethanol itself is more costly for drivers and consumers. Despite auto engines being built to better handle ethanol's corrosive effects, ethanol gasoline causes significant and costly mechanical problems for small boat engines and yard equipment. But auto engines are about to be impacted in the near future, too. How so? It turns out that Barack Obama is set to pledge $100 million to expand the use of ethanol blender pumps to allow drivers to mix more ethanol into their gasoline. Sure, it may work for new flex fuel vehicles, but not so well for older cars. Some people won't discover that until it's too late.

This is a pathetic pledge and ultimately pathetic policy, funded by the American taxpayer. People will have to pay a little more in taxes to pay for these pumps, pay a little more for the ethanol that comes out of the pumps and then pay more to fix what the ethanol destroys.

The final problem with the EPA's proposal — and perhaps one of the primary reasons for it — is that there are subsidy recipients who stand to profit handsomely. In other words, the government is picking winners. While we're not opposed to people and businesses making profits, we are adamantly opposed to the central planners who by regulations and fiats force products into the market. Some farmers and ecofascists stand to benefit, but when free market principles are cast aside America loses.

In the coming months, we'll be watching to see where the Republican presidential candidates stand on this issue. So far, most of them are singing praises of the ethanol mandate. It seems they're more concerned about getting votes in Iowa and bowing to King Corn than they are for standing for free market principles. Note to Republican presidential candidates: Try not to get on board with the ethanol mandate, because it's ultimately part of Obama's climate change agenda.

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TODAY AT PATRIOTPOST.US

• ANALYSIS: Paul and Graham Both Have Something to Learn
• Meme: Obama's Version of 'American Exceptionalism'
• Humor: Hush Money

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

• Ed Feulner: Minimum Wage, Maximum Hypocrisy
• Dennis Prager: Differences Between Left and Right, Part II
• Arnold Ahlert: Demoralizing Police Forces Is Insane
• David Limbaugh: Leftist Censors Strike Again
• Thomas Sowell: Paying the Price
• Michael Barone: Is It Time for Civil Disobedience of Kludgeocratic Bureaucracy?

For more, visit Right Opinion.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Dennis Prager: "[C]onservatives believe that good is achieved far more gradually than liberals do. The process of making a better world is largely a one-by-one-by-one effort. And it must be redone in every single generation. The noblest generation ever born still has to teach its children how to battle their natures. If it doesn't, even the best society will begin to rapidly devolve, which is exactly what conservatives believe has been happening to America since the end of World War II. The Left does not focus on individual character development. Rather, it has always and everywhere focused on social revolution. ...

The Founders all understood that the transformation that every generation must work on is the moral transformation of each citizen. Thus, character development was at the core of both childrearing and of young people's education at school. ... [F]reedom requires self-control. Otherwise, external controls — which means an ever more powerful government — would have to be imposed. The more that Leftist ideas influence society the less character education there is. ... [T]he age-old wisdom embraced by conservatives remains as true as ever: Before you fix society, you must first fix yourself."

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SHORT CUTS

Insight: "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build
and nobody wants to do maintenance." —author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

Non Compos Mentis, Part I: "[T]he best way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a verifiable, tough agreement. A military solution will not fix it. Even if the United States participates, it would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program but it will not eliminate it." —Barack Obama, taking options off the table when he promised not to do so
Non Compos Mentis, Part II: "People don't remember, but when I came into office, the Untied States in world opinion ranked below China and just barley above Russia, and today once again, the Untied States is the most respected country on earth." —Barack Obama

Non Compos Mentis, Part III: "As I always point out, democracy is hard. I think many of the things said about me are terribly unfair. But the reason American democracy has survived so long is because people, even if they are wrong, have the right to say what they think." —Barack Obama
Village Idiots: "We must find a formula which is valuable for everybody and valuable for the U.S. without going to the Congress." —French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on reaching a climate accord in Paris later this year

Woman of the people: "Go to the end of the line." —Hillary Clinton to supporters wanting a photograph with her

And last... "Hillary Clinton's campaign revealed she'll announce for president at a rally next week in New York. She'll kick off the day by giving an interview to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. The announcement was made by Hillary Clinton's press spokesman, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News." —Argus Hamilton

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Managing Editor Nate Jackson
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