From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

“When something is unsustainable, it eventually stops,” former Vice President Al Gore said in an op/ed published by The Wall Street Journal. Given recent events, one might think Gore was referring to the ruinously costly attempts by governments of the Western world to force an energy transition via trillions of debt-funded dollars in subsidies for unreliable, intermittent energy sources like wind, solar and green hydrogen.

It has become obvious to most in the energy business now that the stick-and-carrot approach to a forced transition implemented by the Biden administration is not just unsustainable but a colossal failure. The stick of heavy-handed regulations and mandates combined with the carrot of economically ruinous government subsidies has resulted in a massive uptick in the national debt along with a playing field littered with dozens of bankruptcies by both startups and pre-existing green energy companies alike. Collectively, their waste of federal dollars makes the Obama-era Solyndra failure look like pocket change.

As critics of the Biden Green New Deal suite of policy choices repeatedly warned, the rent-seeking industries that became the chosen clients of the Democratic Party over the last four years – wind, solar, electric vehicles and green hydrogen – cannot displace fossil fuels in any scalable sense because the laws of physics don’t allow it. Too many companies in these industries also cannot be sustained for more than short periods of time without constant new injections of additional government subsidies, all of which in the U.S. have the impact of increasing the national debt.

When the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act passed on party line votes in congress in 2022, I and others warned that the Democrats in congress and the Biden White House viewed the bill as just an initial down payment on their long-term goals. A steady succession of new IRA-type debt-funded bills would be required in the coming decades to sustain the transition, and without those added tranches of trillions of dollars in additional subsidies, most startups in those non-competitive energy businesses would ultimately fail. It wasn’t hard to see this coming.

In his op/ed, Gore writes all this financial carnage off with his typical climate alarm fearmongering, saying things like “treating the transition to a sustainable economy as optional isn’t an option,” and “the cost of inaction is indefensible and unbearable.” To which the only proper response is to ask Gore to tell that to all the lower income Americans who have seen their utility bills and food prices inflate to unbearable levels as they have borne the brunt of the inevitable outcome of the policies Gore, Biden and their cronies have happily forced onto the public. It’s one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the poor to the wealthy in global history. If you want an example of unsustainability, there it is.

Most hilariously, Gore states that “in the U.S., the fossil-fuel industry, its allies and captive policymakers seek to punish companies and investors pursuing sustainability goals with frivolous lawsuits, smear campaigns and the withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management.” Holy smokes, talk about a prime example of Clintonian projection, there it is.

No industry has been subjected to a decades-long constant stream of frivolous lawsuits and smear campaigns from critics quite like the coal and oil and gas industries have sustained in modern times. Right now, today, the oil industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars defending itself against a well-organized lawfare campaign in which left-wing law firms recruit friendly, mostly-Democrat officials in cities, counties and states around the country to file frivolous lawsuits claiming billions of dollars in unsubstantiated damages related to climate change theoretically caused by emissions coming mainly from China. That is the very definition of a frivolous smear campaign and lawfare campaign rolled into one.

But it is Gore’s complaint about the effort by the Trump administration to implement a “withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management” that really takes the cake here. Apparently, this former vice president believes that elections really don’t matter at all.

But elections do matter, policies can change and billions of dollars in funds awarded to political cronies of one president can indeed be clawed back by another. Gore can rage against these winds of change all he likes, but that is American democracy in action.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

Several foreign embassies housed more Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents posing as genuine State Department officials between 1950 to 1960, according to a document found in the more than 63,000 pages relating to former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, released to the public by the Trump administration Tuesday evening.

CIA mission chiefs under diplomatic cover sometimes wielded more influence than the ambassadors, even advocating policies in conflict with official U.S. diplomacy, according to a June 10, 1961, memo. Kennedy was warned by historian Arthur Schlessinger Jr. in the document that CIA agents posing as State Department officials — so-called “Controlled American Sources” (CAS) — risked delegitimizing U.S. diplomacy.

“The effect is to further CIA encroachment on the traditional functions of State,” he wrote.

The CIA mission chief often exerted more power than the top diplomats, sometimes to conflicting ends, he said.

“On the day of President Kennedy’s inauguration, 47 percent of the political offices serving in United States Embassies were CAS,” the memo reads. “Sometimes the CIA mission chief had been in the country longer, has more money at his disposal, wields more influence (and is abler) than the Ambassador. Often he has direct access to the Prime Minister. Sometimes (as during a critical period [unreadable]) he pursues a different policy from that of the Ambassador. And he generally well known locally as the CIA representative.” (RELATED: Trump Administration Releases JFK Assassination Files)

Schlessinger’s 1961 memo to the president about the CIA — in which he advocated for a reorganization of the agency — had been of interest to historians and independent researchers as a Rosetta stone for understanding hostility between the former president and the nation’s foreign intelligence gathering services.

One section of the memo, however, spanning roughly 1.5 pages, remained redacted and was only revealed Tuesday night. The section described the CIA’s widespread use of diplomatic cover and its risks. Diplomatic cover was less expensive than other methods, quicker, and more attractive for agents, the memo states.

It’s unclear why the information has been concealed from the public for decades.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard praised the release of some 2,182 files related to the Kennedy presidency Tuesday and signaled that more documents could be released upon being released from court seal.

“President Trump is ushering in a new era of maximum transparency,” she said in a statement.

Schlessinger listed the number of CIA agents or “CAS personnel” populating embassies abroad.

“In the American embassy in Vienna, out of 20 persons listed in the October 1960 Foreign Service List as being in the Political Section, 16 are CAS personnel; of the 31 officers listed as engaging in political activities, over half are CAS,” he wrote. “Of the 13 officers listed in the political section of our embassy in Chile, 11 are CAS.”

Schlessinger expressed concern about the CIA’s dominance in the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

“In the Paris embassy today, there are 123 CIA people. CIA [in Paris] has long since begun to move into areas of political reporting typically occupied by State. The CIA men doing overt internal political reporting outnumber those in the Embassy’s political section by 18-2. CIA has even sought to monopolize contact with certain French political personalities, among them the President of the National Assembly,” he said.

The memo makes apparent reference to rumored CIA backing of the April 1961 Algiers putsch, in which generals unsuccessfully attempted a coup d’etat in French Algeria. French President Charles de Gaulle was moving Algeria toward self-determination and away from French control, which the generals opposed.

“CIA occupies the top floor of the Paris embassy, a fact well known locally; and on the night of the Generals’ [unreadable] in Algeria, passersby noted with amusement that the top floor was ablaze with lights,” he wrote. “I am informed that Ambassador Gavin was able to secure entrance that night to the CIA offices only with difficulty.”

Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and a longtime advocate for declassification, had identified this redaction section of the memo as among his top priorities ahead of the new release.

Schlessinger suggested a review of policies instituted around Jan. 19, 1961 — the day before Kennedy’s inauguration. The historian had warned Kennedy about so-called “controlled American sources” becoming a permanent feature of the foreign service, while also advocating for the “steady reduction” of CIA agents at U.S. embassies.

“Before State loses control of more and more of its presumed overseas personnel, and before CAS becomes permanently integrated into the Foreign Service, it would seem important (a) to secure every ambassador the firm control over the local CAS station nominally promised in the [unreadable] Directive of January 19, 1961, and (b) to review the current CAS direction with an eye to a steady reduction of CAS personnel,” he wrote.

The degree to which diplomatic cover for CIA agents remains a threat to the State Department’s independence and legitimacy also remains unclear. A New York Times story on March 6 about the shuttering of some foreign embassies noted that the prospect of further cuts had “generated some anxiety within the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“The vast majority of undercover American intelligence officers work out of embassies and consulates, posing as diplomats, and the closure of diplomatic posts would reduce the C.I.A.’s options for where to position its spies,” the paper reported.