Democrats for Energy Disarmament

They add AI data centers to their anti-fossil-fuel target list

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"critical minerals required for wind, solar and batteries are mostly processed in China using coal power and leach toxic byproducts."

"Permitting delays and litigation hinder the buildout of transmission lines, pipelines, housing, factories, data centers and more. They are also one of America’s biggest liabilities against China."

"They want to expand transmission to connect more solar and wind to grids in Democratic-run states with renewable mandates—and then pass the costs of these projects onto people in other states."

"why are electric rates so much higher in green-energy beacons like California (30.3 cents a kilowatt hour), Massachusetts (31.2 cents) and New York (28.4 cents) than in states like Missouri (11.8), Arkansas (12.4) and Utah (12.9) that rely principally on fossil fuels?" 

The time price of a family meal at McDonald’s is 25% lower than in 1958

Letter to The WSJ.

"Mr. Greene (Bob Greene’s op-ed “When McDonald’s Was an Inexpensive Treat” (March 21)) notes that his family’s entire meal—six hamburgers, four cheeseburgers, four orders of fries and three milkshakes—cost only $2.66 in 1958. With entry-level wages around $1.12 an hour at the time, that put the time price—the amount of labor time required to acquire a good or service—at two hours and 23 minutes.

Today, that same meal costs about $33.47 at my local McDonald’s. But wages have risen too. With average hourly earnings at limited-service restaurants around $18.69, the time price is now only one hour and 48 minutes. That’s a 25% decline in the time price. In other words, for the same amount of time, a worker today can buy 33% more from McDonald’s than in 1958.

McDonald’s isn’t a more expensive treat—it’s a more abundant one.

Gale L. Pooley (he teaches US economic history at Utah Tech University)"

The Social-Media Shakedown Begins

The verdict against Meta and YouTube is a victory for the plaintiffs bar, not for children or society

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects internet platforms from being held liable for harm caused by user-generated content."

"the link between youth mental health and social media is complicated. Take the 20-year-old plaintiff identified by the initials K.G.M. in the Wednesday case. She said she started using YouTube at age six and Instagram when she was nine. Both require users to be at least 13 years old, so she broke platform rules and bypassed controls."

"are platforms supposed to prohibit users from posting photos that might make someone feel depressed or insecure?"

"She was also exposed to domestic abuse as a young child"

"parenting plays a critical role in mediating and mitigating the impact of social media. Most children who use social media don’t experience severe problems."

"it’s hard if not impossible to prove that social media caused any given individual’s troubles"

"The evidence presented at trial that executives purposefully designed the platforms to be addictive was weak."

"companies aren’t required to design products to prevent abuse or excessive consumption." 

A minimum wage increase caused prices to rise at fast food restaurants

See The Effects of California's $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage on Prices by Jeffrey Clemens, Olivia Edwards, Jonathan Meer & Joshua D. Nguyen.

"We analyze the effect of California's $20 fast food minimum wage (Assembly Bill 1228), enacted in September 2023 and implemented in April 2024, on consumer prices using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Indices for food away from home across 21 metropolitan statistical areas. Food away from home prices in California's four in-sample MSAs increased by 3.3 to 3.6 percent relative to 17 control MSAs through December 2024. Our estimates are stable across a number of specifications. Placebo tests on price indices for goods and services that were not affected by the policy, including food at home, show no differential increases in California's MSAs. The price increases we estimate likely arise in part from spillovers to the full-service sector, as well as changes in the production functions and product quality choices of limited service restaurants."

Another Supreme Court Knockout

All nine Justices reject an attempt to expand secondary liability

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"provider Cox could be held liable for “contributory” copyright infringement merely because it had knowledge that some of its users were pirating music files."

"“Ordinarily, when Congress intends to impose secondary liability, it does so expressly,” Justice Clarence Thomas writes for the Court. But Congress didn’t do so in this instance, and the Fourth Circuit’s holding “conflicted with this Court’s repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest only on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it.”"

"The provider of a service is contributorily liable for the user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement"

Or "the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement"

"Cox didn’t do either." 

Autism-Therapy Firm That Was Paid $340,000 per Patient Is Barred From Medicaid

Indiana officials move to terminate Piece by Piece Autism Centers, cite federal pressure for crackdown after a Journal investigation

By Christopher Weaver of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Indiana is barring one of the nation’s most expensive autism-therapy providers from billing the state’s Medicaid program two weeks after the company’s practices were detailed in a Wall Street Journal article, state officials said.

The autism-therapy provider, Piece by Piece Autism Centers, received the highest per-patient payments in the country in 2023—about $340,000 on average—according to a Journal analysis of Medicaid billing records.

Piece by Piece did so in part by raising its list prices to levels that allowed it to collect as much as $640 an hour from the state for services that could be performed by a high-school graduate. From 2019 to 2023, Indiana directly paid Piece by Piece $58 million for autism-therapy services, the billing records show."

"In letters sent to Piece by Piece this week, the state [Indiana] said it was revoking the company’s provider agreements for all seven of its centers."

The state "would bar the centers from billing Medicaid"

One official said "“There were no guardrails under the prior administration, and they weren’t doing the job of oversight they should have been doing." 

Related post:

The Boom in Autism Therapy Is Medicaid’s Fastest-Growing Jackpot: Some companies have found lucrative opportunities to capitalize on a growing need, billing long hours and extracting payments as high as $800 an hour (2026) 

‘Renewable’ Energy Gives Us a Crisis

The West handed Iran leverage by deluding itself into believing it could wean itself from fossil fuel

By Brenda Shaffer. She is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Energy Academic Group and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. Excerpts:

"Western countries’ abandonment of fossil fuels left the world’s energy supply vulnerable to disruptions and price increases"

"Despite trillions of dollars in renewable technology investments, fossil fuels accounted for 87% of global energy consumption in 2024, almost unchanged from the 1970s. Global oil, natural-gas and coal demand reached record levels in 2025."

"In 2019 the World Bank halted funding for upstream oil and natural-gas projects. The International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero by 2050” report in 2021 called for no new investments in fossil fuels."

"Had investments continued, Africa could have become a critical energy supplier, and the increased supply outside the Middle East could have softened the effect of current energy disruptions."

"Europe chose to rely on volatile liquefied natural gas supplies from distant regions rather than making long-term commitments to more secure sources such as pipeline gas from Azerbaijan."

"As countries increasingly rely on China for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and critical minerals, they risk dependence on a single strategic competitor. Electrification also raises the risk of cyberattacks, which threaten the stability of energy infrastructure."

"renewable energy is still dependent on a baseload of fossil fuels"