Tuesday, April 30, 2019

How bleeding heart liberals create a Clockwork Orange society...Seattle's version of Einsteins comment on insanity .

A Seattle Judge Sent A Homeless Man With 72 Convictions To Jail, The City Attorney Was Furious

JOHN SEXTONPosted at 10:01 pm on April 29, 2019

This is the sort of thing that would only happen in Seattle (okay, maybe in Portland). A 55-year-old homeless man named Francisco Calderon punched a complete stranger in the mouth one day in November, giving him a bloody lip. The victim called 911 and Calderon was arrested and charged with assault. He pleaded guilty to the crime. That turned out to be his 72nd time being convicted of a crime, fourteen of those convictions were felonies. And yet, City Attorney Pete Holmes worked out a plea deal with Calderon’s public defender which would keep him out of jail. Instead, he would get probation and drug treatment. Enter Municipal Court Judge Ed McKenna whose job it was to sentence Calderon. McKenna wasn’t convinced no jail time was appropriate in the case and questioned the plea deal.

When the case was first brought to Seattle Municipal Court Judge Ed McKenna for sentencing on Dec. 10, he questioned the Assistant City Attorney about the plea deal in light of his Calderon’s long criminal history. The city attorney stood by the deal.

McKenna then asked that Calderon undergo a pre-sentencing review so he could better understand Calderon’s personal history before passing judgement. He also asked the Assistant City Attorney to review the plea deal, a message which could be interpreted as he was unhappy with it.

When the court’s probation department first contacted Calderon for the review, he refused to participate, telling officers “I don’t give a crap.”

Just days before a second sentencing hearing in January, he agreed to the review.

When sentencing day arrived, he refused to appear in court. McKenna had to sign an order for two marshals to forcibly remove Calderon from his jail cell. Calderon arrived in court handcuffed and chained around the waist with two marshals standing over him.

Having been literally dragged into court, Calderon pleaded to be allowed to serve probation instead of jail time, saying he didn’t foresee any future problems. Again, this is a person who is 55-years-old and who has been convicted of 72 crimes. Judge McKenna didn’t buy it:

“I’m not sure I have ever seen a more significant history of violent offenses,” McKenna said in court. “Everything in that criminal history tells me that he’s a violent offender and is going to re-offend.”…

“As a judge, I have a duty and responsibility to protect the citizens of Seattle and impose a sentence that I think is going to provide protection,” McKenna said in court. “I don’t think this court is willing to risk having someone else assaulted.”

So McKenna threw the book at Calderon. Instead of probation, he got 364 days in jail, the maximum possible sentence for the charge of 4th-degree assault. All of which seems perfectly sensible under the circumstances. But this is Seattle. In response, City Attorney Pete Holmes and director of the Department of Public Defense Anita Khandelwal wrote a letter accusing Judge McKenna of violating the canon of judicial ethics and specifically claimed he had invited a reporter and a local activist to court to witness the sentencing, perhaps as part of a “premeditated display.”

On Jan. 10, 2019, you sentenced Mr. Calderon, who was charged with and convicted of misdemeanor assault. Notwithstanding your Probation Department’s advice and the City Attorney’s and defense attorneys’ joint recommendation that Mr. Calderon be ordered to complete treatment with the balance of the sentence suspended (he had already served 50 days in jail), you sentenced him to 364 days in jail. This was an extraordinary sentence, the maximum allowed by the law, rarely imposed in Seattle Municipal Court. Enhancing the spectacle of this sentencing, you issued a “drag order,” requiring corrections officers to bring him to court against his will.

KOMO news reporter Matt Markovich and Jennifer Coats, a member of the group Speak Out Seattle, attended the sentencing. While we welcome the transparency that media and public scrutiny bring to court proceedings, we rarely see members of the press or the public watch these proceedings, and their presence in combination with your resort to a drag order raise the specter of a premeditated display.

In fact, evidence suggests that Ms. Coats and Mr. Markovich came at your invitation to witness your unusual sentencing philosophy at work. On Nov. 7, 2018, you spoke before the North Precinct Advisory Council regarding the need for longer jail sentences and the “pressures SMC judges” face from defense attorneys to keep the jail population low. You invited attendees, including Ms. Coats, to visit your courtroom. It is exceedingly unlikely that Ms. Coats and Mr. Markovich coincidentally decided to watch court on the same day…

We request that you either comport yourself in a way that conforms with the Canons of Judicial Conduct or that you recuse yourself in all criminal matters.

Here’s Holmes and Khandelwal claiming they are defending the integrity of the judicial system while claiming a judge was plotting a stunt:

As mentioned in the clip, Judge McKenna wrote a letter defending himself against the accusations.

“I categorically deny your allegations that I have violated the Cannons (sic) of Judicial Conduct by initiating invitations to my court and by pre-determining a sentence,” his response states. “Both individuals you reference have publicly denied any invitation on my part to observe the case or any form of sentencing collusion as you infer.”…

McKenna ends his letter by reminding both Holmes and Khandelwal of their ethical obligations to maintain the integrity of their profession.

“I intend no actions and I’m not asking you for an apology,” the letter reads. “I simply ask that each of you initiate an effort to publicly correct your errors.”

The claim about Judge McKenna inviting two people to court for a premeditated stunt was false. KOMO News Reporter Matt Markovich issued a lengthy statement explaining how he became aware of the case. He said, “At no point did Judge Ed McKenna invite us into his courtroom to cover the case of Francisco Calderon.” He added, “I had no prior knowledge of Judge McKenna’s sentencing. Any reporter who had done their due diligence in the case heard, would have researched what happened in a previous hearing and could see what may happen in the final sentencing.”

Jennifer Coats, who was also accused of being invited to court in the letter, has also denied that claim. “I initiated going to the courtroom on my own,” Coats said adding, “I was not invited.” She had written about Calderon for a Facebook site called Safe Seattle and was there of her own accord. Furthermore, she said neither the City Attorney or anyone else ever asked her about why she was there. Apparently, the City Attorney just leveled this charge without any evidence.

The allegations against Judge McKenna were too much for the Seattle Times which published a strongly-worded editorial today castigating the City Attorney for making a political hit on a judge who seemed to be doing his job:

This was a political hit. Coming after McKenna publicly voiced concerns about justice-system failures, it looks like retribution for McKenna threatening the status quo. It also sent a message to other judges that they best not speak out of turn.

One question is whether McKenna was seeking “harsh” sentences, or inquiring about a general dearth of jail sentences sought for crimes committed. A recent study of prolific offenders found Holmes’ office often agrees to little or no post-conviction jail time for repeat offenders, even if they violated terms of a prior release. Perhaps McKenna was asking prosecutors if they had forgotten something…

Will any other elected official dare speak the forbidden words that McKenna uttered, acknowledging that Seattle’s leniency and generous social services are attracting criminals from around the state and nation? He forgot the script saying it’s the fault of Jeff Bezos and evil homeowners who should make way for more apartments…

In going out on this limb, McKenna is building confidence that his court is independent from the City Hall political machine that’s failing too often to provide safety and civility.

It’s pretty clear what’s really happening here. Judge McKenna’s decision to set aside the agreement Pete Holmes reached with a defense attorney was an embarrassment. Holmes apparently has a reputation for being willing to accept light sentences for repeat offenders and that sort of thing has become less acceptable in the wake of the “Seattle is Dying” documentary. So Holmes came out swinging with a bogus insinuation about the judge inviting people to court for a premeditated verdict.

If the reaction of the Seattle Times is any indication, that doesn’t seem to be working out too well for Holmes. This incident shows there are still some people in authority in Seattle who think giving a man with 72 convictions a year in jail is too harsh but not as many as there used to be. Thank goodness for that. Holmes should apologize for his behavior even though Judge McKenna hasn’t asked him to do so.

Two days after synagogue shooting, Buttigieg kisses anti-Semite Al Sharpton’s ring

by Becket Adams

| April 29, 2019 05:05 PM

00:00

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., boasted this month that there is “no taint” of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party.

She may want to tell that to her colleagues, especially the 2020 presidential candidates, many of whom continue to kiss the ring worn by noted race hustler and anti-Semite, Al Sharpton.

On Monday, just two days after a gunman opened fire at a San Diego synagogue, killing one and injuring three others, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg dined with Sharpton in New York. The two spoke at length about the upcoming presidential election and homophobia in churches and faith-based communities.

“We need to deal with homophobia in the faith and the black communities and you should be judged by your merits, and we can’t fight bigotry based on race, and we’re going to bigots based on sexual orientation,” Sharpton said.

He continued, complimenting Buttigieg’s courage in running as a gay candidate.

“My sister’s gay, and I grew up watching her having to navigate between being black and being gay at a time, I’m talking about the ’60s,” Sharpton said.

That is sweet and all, but are there really so few Democrats left who remember Sharpton’s despicable anti-Semitic exploits? Or do they remember and simply not care? For the record: The Sharpton is a loathsome human being with an equally loathsome past. In case you have forgotten, my Washington Examiner colleague Philip Klein explains why:

Sharpton first became a major public figure during the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, in which he claimed the black teenage girl had been abducted and raped by a white gang that included an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County, Steven Pagones. In numerous media appearances Sharpton pointed the finger at Pagones and declared a racist cover-up by law enforcement — with zero evidence to support his claims. In 1988, a grand jury cleared Pagones of any wrongdoing, finding that the alleged incident never even happened. But the damage was already done. Pagones’s career as a prosecutor was over, he and his family were under constant death threats and his marriage eventually broke up under the resulting stresses. In 1998, Pagones won a defamation suit against Sharpton, but Sharpton refused to pay the $65,000 in damages owed, claiming he didn’t have the money. After nearly three years of foot dragging, Sharpton supporters paid the debt on his behalf, but he has never apologized to Pagones.

In July 1991, a controversy erupted when Leonard Jeffries, a professor at New York’s City College gave a speech blasting 'rich Jews' for financing the slave trade and for controlling Hollywood so they could 'put together a system of destruction for Black people.'

Sharpton rushed to defend Jeffries, and in the middle of the swirling controversy, declared, 'If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.'

A day after Sharpton made that comment, in August 1991, a Jewish driver accidentally ran over a 7-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and an anti-Semitic riot broke out in which Jewish rabbinical scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death. Instead of calling for calm, Sharpton incited the rioters, leading marches in the streets that included chants of 'No Justice, No Peace!' and 'Kill the Jews!' At a funeral for the boy who had been run over, Sharpton said, 'The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights.' For those unfamiliar, 'diamond merchants' was a thinly-veiled reference to Jewish jewelers.

After an investigation, no indictment was made of the driver who had accidentally run over Cato, and he left for Israel. Sharpton flew there in an attempt to 'hunt down' the driver and hand him a civil law suit. According to the Daily News, at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, a woman spotted Sharpton and shouted, 'Go to hell!' Sharpton yelled back: 'I am in hell already. I am in Israel.'

There is more. Much more:

About four years after the Crown Heights affair, in 1995, Al Sharpton, through his National Action Network, injected himself in a landlord-tenant dispute in Harlem, which soon turned deadly. As recounted in Fred Siegel’s book Prince of the City, a black Pentecostal church raised the rent of its Jewish tenant, who owned the store Freddy’s Fashion Mart, so the Jewish owner in turn raised the rent on his black sub-tenant, who ran a record store. Sharpton immediately saw an opening for racial demagoguery, and went on radio, declaring, 'We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street.' His underling, Morris Powell, vowed, 'This street will burn. We are going to see to it that this cracker suffers.'

Protesters led by Sharpton’s National Action Network picketed outside the store day after day, referring to Jews as 'bloodsuckers' and threatening, 'We’re going to burn and loot the Jews.' The demonstrators also struck matches and threw them into the store’s doorway. Two months into the protest, one of the demonstrators stormed into the store armed with a gun, and burned the place to the ground, killing seven people, and shooting himself.

Seeking Sharpton's blessing is the Democratic equivalent of Republican presidential candidates seeking approval from Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, ahead of the first in the nation primaries. Yet, between Sharpton and King, only one is reviled universally by the press and polite society. Hint: It is not Sharpton. On the contrary, Sharpton is a welcome and sought-after fixture in elite media and political circles, despite his history as an anti-Semite.

One of the two political parties that run this country considers him an indispensable ally. Sharpton has a show on MSNBC. He appears at major political events, sometimes as the headlining speaker. In return, leading Democratic lawmakers appear regularly at Sharpton’s annual National Action Network conference to deliver barnburner speeches to the left-wing faithful. Presidential candidates even continue to seek out Sharpton’s blessing, even though his history of anti-Semitic, race-hustling outrages are not exactly closely guarded secrets.

A simple Google search will turn up any of the incidents documented by Klein, which brings me back to the two questions I asked at the beginning of this article: Are there really so few Democrats who remember what Sharpton has done? Or do they remember and just not care?

Son, It Was Obama We Journalists Had to Fear

April 30, 2019

Son, It Was Obama We Journalists Had to Fear

By Jack Cashill

In May 2010, when Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Law, few of America’s reporters and editors were aware that Obama as president represented the single greatest threat to press freedom in their professional lives. True to his reputation as messiah, Obama would soon make even the willfully blind see.
In May 2013, the illusion of an unfettered press disappeared like a magician’s bunny. It was in this month that the Associated Press learned Obama’s Justice Department had quietly seized all of the relevant records for twenty AP telephone lines a year earlier. These included the personal and professional lines of several reporters.
The seizure had to do with AP reporting on a covert CIA operation in Yemen. Although only five reporters were involved in that story, more than one hundred reporters used the lines and switchboards whose records were seized. AP President Gary Pruitt wrote Attorney General Eric Holder that the “government has no conceivable right to know” the content of those records. On Face the Nation, Pruitt boldly assessed White House strategy, “I know what the message being sent is: If you talk to the press, we’re going after you.”
A coalition of some fifty newsgathering organizations promptly came to the AP’s defense. In a barely polite letter to Holder, the coalition accused him of ignoring the Department of Justice’s decades-old guidelines governing subpoenas of journalists and news organizations. The authors of the letter reminded Holder, “The approach in every case must be to strike the proper balance between the public’s interest in the free dissemination of ideas and information and the public’s interest in effective law enforcement and the fair administration of justice.”
The DOJ did none of the above. Its attorneys went behind the AP’s back, failed to negotiate the scope of the subpoena with the AP, and refused to explain what threat to the integrity of the investigation made the subterfuge necessary.
An even more disturbing story broke a week later. It seemed that for the prior three years the DOJ had been secretly dipping into the personal and professional communications of Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen. The case involved Rosen’s interactions with a State Department contractor monitoring North Korea’s nuclear program.
What troubled the media community most about the DOJ response was the use of search warrants to investigate a reporter and the threat to prosecute him under the terms of Espionage Act as an “as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”

“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin told the Washington Post. “That’s a very dangerous road to go down.”
On May 16, 2013, a few days after the AP story broke but a few days before the Rosen story did, Obama took a moment during a joint press conference with the Turkish prime minister to say he would “make no apologies” for investigating national security leaks that threatened the well-being of the American military.
“I don’t think the American people would expect me as commander in chief not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed,” Obama said defiantly.
This was one of those finesses that served Obama so well with the uninformed. In fact, the probes dug much deeper than “national security.” A few weeks later, in June 2013, the McClatchy newspapers broke the story of an “unprecedented” Obama administration initiative launched in 2011 in the wake of the Bradley (or, in NYT-speak, “Chelsea”) Manning leaks.
Much like Nixon’s “plumbers,” the operatives of “Insider Threat Program,” as it was known, worked to suppress leaks in the national security agencies. Unlike the plumbers, however, the Insider Threat people extended their mission into the seemingly benign regions of education, agriculture, and social security.
Scarier still, in the Maoist spirit of the Obama administration, everyone was expected to plumb. The administration obligated employees to turn themselves and their coworkers in for failing to report leaks. Specifically, the program’s strategic plan mandated supervisors to “penalize clearly identifiable failures to report security infractions and violations, including any lack of self-reporting.”
None of this, of course, stopped Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who first went public with his massive document dump a week before the McClatchy article. What the Internal Threat Program could do, however, was discourage employees from reporting routine waste and corruption.
“You don’t get people speaking up when there’s wrongdoing,” said Liana Greenstein former CIA case officer. “You don’t get people who look at things in a different way and who are willing to stand up for things. What you get are people who toe the party line, and that’s really dangerous for national security.”
Most of all perhaps, the Internal Threat Program discouraged disgruntled employees from talking to the media. “The suspicion has to be that maybe these ‘leak’ investigations are less about deterring leakers and more about intimidating the press,” opined the Wall Street Journal.
Liberal First Amendment lawyer James Goodale was harsher still. In a Times op-ed Goodale declared that “President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom” In liberal circles, the Nixon comparison was very nearly as damning as the Hitler one. Ouch!
Unlike Richard Nixon, who had good reason to distrust the media, Obama has no apparent motive for his secrecy other than that it gave him the space to do as he pleased and get away with it. “They feel entitled to and expect supportive media coverage,” admitted veteran correspondent Josh Meyer in speaking of the White House press office. For all the love that the media showered on the Obama administration, what they got in return, said Meyer, was “across-the-board hostility.”
In the age of Obama, however, many in the media had a hard time holding a grudge, and Obama knew it. Weeks after the Rosen story broke, the president made what the New York Times called a “ringing affirmation of press freedom.” The Times reported that Obama was “troubled” by the revelations of DOJ mischief and that wingman Holder -- take out those hankies -- “shared those concerns.” The Times summarized the speech with the redemptive headline, “Obama, Offering Support for Press Freedom, Orders Review of Leak Investigations.”
Obviously, not everyone in the media was as easily appeased as the Times editors, but too many were. Six months after Goodale’s blistering op-ed and three months after the release of the devastating CPJ report, New Yorker editor and Obama biographer David Remnick went unchallenged on the Charlie Rose Show when he listed as one of Obama’s many accomplishments “the fact that there's been no scandal, major scandal, in this administration, which is a rare thing in an administration.”
For all its merits, the CPJ report did not use the word “scandal” or any of its derivatives either. It has been said that a political incident becomes a scandal only when the Times calls it a “scandal” on its front page. Despite Obama’s shocking disregard of his commitment and the media’s acknowledgement of the same, the Times editors chose to reserve the S-word for bigger things like, say, a president’s failure to attend a dinner where even eleven-year-olds get to ding him.

“I was driving my then 11-year-old son somewhere, probably soccer practice, when he burst into tears and asked me, ‘is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?'” So claimed the embarrassingly serious Olivier Knox, the White House Correspondents Association president, at the association’s annual grub fest on Saturday.
What Knox should have said is, “No, son, President Trump is at least open in his hostility. The First Amendment gives him the same rights as it gives us. It was President Obama’s dirty, covert war on the media that had me worried.” At this point, little Knox should have asked, “Did this sneaky, back-door attack prefigure Obama’s subversion of the Trump candidacy?” Now, there is a correspondent’s dinner I would pay to watch.
In May 2010, when Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Law, few of America’s reporters and editors were aware that Obama as president represented the single greatest threat to press freedom in their professional lives. True to his reputation as messiah, Obama would soon make even the willfully blind see.
In May 2013, the illusion of an unfettered press disappeared like a magician’s bunny. It was in this month that the Associated Press learned Obama’s Justice Department had quietly seized all of the relevant records for twenty AP telephone lines a year earlier. These included the personal and professional lines of several reporters.

Terrorism and the Islamists of America

Linda Sarsour to keynote fundraisers for radical terror-tied group

Islamic Relief Worldwide

Surprising good news for gun owners.

Congress sends bill to President Trump's desk encouraging more public shooting ranges

'This is something that's been long sought by the sports community

NATE MADDEN

The U.S. House and Senate have passed a bill aimed at encouraging the creation of more public shooting ranges throughout the United States.

TheBlaze Daily ==> Click here to get news you can trust delivered right to your inbox. It's free!
In a Monday afternoon voice vote, the House passed, HR 1222, The Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act, which was co-sponsored by Reps. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Ron Kind (D-Wis.)
"This is something that's been long sought by the sports community," Bishop said on the House floor in support of the legislation.
"As this nation becomes more urbanized," Bishop added, "the ability of having people a safe place where they can go and they can practice — target practicing, it becomes even more significant that these ranges have to be maintained, they have to be improved in some particular way."
Since the passage of the Pittman-Robertson Act in 1937, federal conservation efforts have been largely funded by sportsmen and women who pay excise taxes on guns and ammunition, as well as other sporting goods and outdoor licenses. The Department of Interior takes up the funds and then gives them to state wildlife agencies.

Under current federal law, state governments have to come up with 25 percent of the construction, maintenance, and operation funding for a public shooting ranges while the PRA's specially designated excise tax funds cover the rest.

But even just 25 percent of the total cost can be pretty steep for a state-level wildlife agency's budget. This bill aims to lower the state threshold to 10 percent to make it easier for them to put together shooting range builds and projects.

And since the extra money involved comes from within the "user pays" framework for federal wildlife funding, a CBO report on the Senate version of the bill found that enacting the legislation "would have no significant effect on direct spending."

"What we're doing here is, I think, taking the right approach: With a fund that already exists, giving states flexibility and encouraging the sporting community," Bishop said on the House floor. "That's why the sportsmen of our country have long sought for this particular provision; they look at this as a major and important win."

But target ranges aren't just for fun; they can also play a big part in gun safety.

"Public shooting ranges provide hunters a place to sight in rifles and shotguns before hunting seasons, for people to take firearm safety and hunter education courses and, for recreational target shooters to enjoy their sport," a statement in support of the measure from National Shooting Sports Foundation Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence Keane said.

The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) passed out of the upper chamber earlier this month.

"Providing states more flexibility to develop shooting ranges gives sportsmen new opportunities for target practice and boosts the outdoor recreation economy," Bennet said in a statement accompanying the bill's introduction.

Monday, April 29, 2019

The danger that walks our streets.

Man who attacked NYPD cops with Taser arrested for third time this week

He can’t stay out of trouble.

The man who attacked a group of cops with their own Taser was arrested again early Sunday for assaulting a Brooklyn corrections officer – marking his third attack on law enforcement officers in a week, law enforcement sources said.

Anthony Salgado, 25, whose wild melee with four cops in Brooklyn last Sunday was caught on video, was charged with assault for socking the corrections officer in the eye at the Brooklyn Detention Complex, sources said.

The attack left the officer with a broken eye socket.

Salgado landed another assault charge early Tuesday morning when he lost his temper while handcuffed to a bed at Kings County Hospital, punching a 23-year-old NYPD cop who was monitoring him.

The violent suspect had been in police custody since last Sunday night after he put a fight with a group of four NYPD cops who tried to arrest Salgado, a suspect in string a cell phone robberies in Brooklyn.

During the brawl outside a deli on Nostrand Avenue, Salgado somehow managed to grab an officer’s Taser and stun three of the cops, despite being whacked by two officers with their batons.

He ran away with the weapon but was nabbed a block away.

Left wing college breed insanity

How a student’s dad allegedly became a sex cult ringleader at Sarah Lawrence College

Bernie Sanders cognitive dissonance about Norway

If Bernie wants us to be more like Norway then we need to drill for more oil since oil is the base of Norway's economy.

So, if Bernie is anti drilling he would kill its economy.

Norway is Norway because it's populated by Norwegians. So, why don't we encourage Norwegians to emigrate to the US.

The Economy Of Norway

The Norwegian economy is a developed, mixed economy wherein the state control some of the most important economic sectors.

Overview Of The Economy Of Norway

Norway practices a mixed economy with both privately and publicly owned enterprises. Most of the economy is based on natural resource exploitation, including fishing, petroleum, and hydroelectric power.

The Norwegian economy's total gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014 was $499 billion and a 2015 GDP per capita of $70,000. The services industry contributes 52.7% of the GDP, followed by industry (45.1%) and agriculture (2.2%). Of the 2.8 million-person labor force, approximately 76% work in the services sector, 21.1% in the industry sector, and 2.9% in the agriculture sector. Other important sectors in the economy here are food processing, shipbuilding, shipping, chemicals, paper products, metals, timber, and textiles. Norway has a 4.3% unemployment rate. In addition, it has $55 billion in foreign reserves and an AAA Standard & Poor’s credit rating.

Leading Industries Of Norway

Production and exploitation of North Sea oil and natural gas drive the economy of Norway. Profit from these industries finance the country’s manufacturing and welfare systems, including the Government Pension Fund Global. Oil and natural gas exports contribute 17% of the national GDP. The largest oil company in the country is Statoil, two-thirds of which is owned by the government.

Top Export Goods And Partners

Norway exports $149 billion worth of goods annually. Its principal export goods include: crude petroleum ($45.1 billion), petroleum gas ($43.6 billion), refined petroleum ($6.5 billion), non-fillet fresh fish ($4.94 billion), raw aluminum ($3.14 billion). The majority of these exports go to the following countries: the UK ($28 billion), Germany ($26 billion), the Netherlands ($20.8 billion), Sweden ($10.1 billion) and France ($9.1 billion).

Top Import Goods And Partners

This country imports $90.7 billion worth of goods every year. Considering imports and exports, Norway has a positive revenue of $59.1 billion. The majority of its imports are cars ($5.54 billion), refined petroleum ($2.81 billion), computers ($2.06 billion), passenger and cargo ships ($2.03 billion), and nickel mattes ($1.84 billion). The biggest import partners are Sweden ($11.4 billion), Germany ($10.9 billion), China ($8.23 billion), the UK ($5.86 billion), and Denmark ($5.53 billion).

Challenges Faced By The Economy Of Norway

Although the economy of Norway is considered healthy, developed, and growing, it does face some serious challenges. This country has a high cost of living and labor. Most of the labor force is concentrated in the petroleum industry, which places an emphasis on unskilled labor. Because of its reliance on petroleum, once reserves are exhausted Norway will not be able to maintain its high quality of living and economic success. Because of this reliance on nonrenewable resources and unskilled labor, economic growth is vulnerable to any downturns in the global market.

Future Economic Plans

In the 1970’s, the world experienced an increase in oil prices which benefited Norway’s economy. Because of this, the government had no reason to invest in and encourage the growth of private business. Over the last few years, however, both federal and local governments have been working toward increasing private industries that are not focused on petroleum production and exploitation. The principal focus is on the high-technology industry. Public investments have been made in centers of expertise, particularly in cancer biotechnology in Oslo.

“GREEN” ENERGY POLICIES HURT THE ENVIRONMENT, ANOTHER CASE STUDY

POSTED ON APRIL 28, 2019 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ENERGY POLICY, ENVIRONMENT, GREAT BRITAIN

“GREEN” ENERGY POLICIES HURT THE ENVIRONMENT, ANOTHER CASE STUDY

Britain has a fracking industry–or could have one, anyway, if it weren’t for the Greens’ political clout. It finally became too much for Natascha Engel, Britain’s “fracking czar,” who quit with a blistering letter of resignation:

Natascha Engel’s decision to walk away from such a high-profile role is driven, she says, by her dismay that Ministers are jeopardising Britain’s energy security because they would rather appease noisy green campaigners than listen to scientists’ advice.

The result, she says in an exclusive interview, is that government policy is strangling the UK shale gas industry at birth – despite overwhelming scientific evidence that fracking, if properly regulated, is totally safe.

Killing off this industry, says Ms Engel, a former Labour MP, will cause higher, not lower, greenhouse-gas emissions, as we are forced to rely on increased imports of gas.

The United States is the only country to reduce significantly its CO2 emissions; we did it by substituting natural gas for coal in power generation. But Britain’s Greens won’t let that country develop its considerable natural gas reserves.

Extinction Rebellion (XR), which is demanding zero emissions by 2025 – bringing Central London to almost a standstill for much of the past two weeks with its ‘direct action’ protests – also campaigns against fracking.
***
[L]ast night, [Engel] revealed, she submitted an explosive resignation letter to Energy Secretary Greg Clark. It says she is stepping down because ‘a perfectly viable industry is being wasted because of a Government policy driven by environmental lobbying rather than science, evidence and a desire to see UK industry flourish’.

The Government, it adds, is ‘listening to a small but loud environmental movement that opposes in principle all extraction of fossil fuels. The campaign against fracking has been highly successful in raising the profile – and filling the coffers – of some campaign groups, but they do not represent local residents nor the wider population.’

British Greens suppress natural gas production by limiting earth tremors caused by fracking to 0.5 on the Richter scale, a barely detectable level. No such standard applies to, for example, quarry blasting or construction. Engle explains:

Ms Engel says: ‘A 0.5 tremor is much weaker than the rumble you might feel when walking above a Tube train. Yet if a frack unleashes a tremor rated 0.5 [caused when water is pumped underground into the shale to crack it and release the gas it holds] operators have to stop what they’re doing for 18 hours… this is making fracking impossible.’

The success of fracking in the US and Canada has led to an economic boom in these countries but also, crucially, lower emissions – because burning gas produces far less CO2 than burning coal, which it has partly replaced. In America and Canada, the limits imposed on the tremors that can legally be caused by fracking are much greater, according to Ms Engel: between 2 and 4.5 on the Richter scale.

Given the Greens’ intransigence, how does Britain generate electricity? It simply imports gas that was produced elsewhere, thus increasing CO2 emissions and outsourcing jobs and tax revenues to other countries. It also commits the ultimate environmental folly by burning “biomass,” i.e., low-quality trees from the southern U.S. that are shipped to Britain at considerable expense. I wrote about the biomass folly, which is imposed on Britain by environmentalists, here and here. The last link is especially informative if you are interested in the details of the biomass fiasco.

Britain’s Greens want to substitute renewable energy sources for the natural gas that can be produced by fracking. But, as Ms. Engel explains, this simply can’t be done:

The irony, she says, is that by wrecking the shale gas industry, which the British Geological Survey says has the potential to supply Britain with gas for many decades, the Government is certain to increase emissions.

‘If you look at energy use as a whole, including heating and transport, gas accounts for 40 per cent of the total. There is simply no way renewables can fill that gap at the moment. We get less than five per cent of our total energy from wind and only 0.5 per cent from solar.’

Hence, she says, the inevitable consequence of killing the shale gas industry is that the quantity of gas burnt in UK homes, businesses and power stations imported from abroad will soar – and with it, the far bigger carbon footprint caused by the process of making liquified natural gas and transporting it here. Ms Engel says imported gas already costs £7 billion a year.

I don’t think most environmentalists care at all about the consequences of the policies they advocate. Modern environmentalism is tribal virtue-signaling, nothing more. And the rest of us are stuck with the bill.