“America deserves an international trade policy that is based on free-market mechanisms, not paying foreign companies to buy exports from large corporations with political connections. We, the undersigned organizations, urge you to oppose reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank.”

– Christine Harbin Hanson (Americans for Prosperity), “Growing Coalition To Congress: End The Export-Import Bank,”  April 21, 2015.

“Enron was a political colossus with a unique range of rent-seeking and subsidy-receiving operations. Ken Lay’s announced visions for the company—to become the world’s first natural-gas major, then the world’s leading energy company, and, finally, the world’s leading company—relied on more than free-market entrepreneurship. They were premised on employing political means to catch up with, and outdistance, far larger and more-established corporations.

– Robert Bradley, “Enron: The Perils of Interventionism,” EconLib, September 3, 2012.

“Export-Import loans have been particularly controversial because of prior expropriations of U.S. oil company property by beneficiary governments. Mexico’s nationalization of U.S. oil properties in 1938 was followed by a loan of $30 million for roads in 1941, a $10 million refinery loan in 1943, and a $150 million loan for general development in 1950. A 1946 loan of $5.5 million to Bolivia for production, refining, and pipeline expenditure followed nationalization a decade before.”

The Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) was created by Executive Order 658l (February 2, 1934) to “facilitate exports and imports and the exchange of commodities between the United States and other nations or the agencies or nationals thereof.”  The bank could borrow, lend, guarantee debt, and “do a general banking business” with its $700 million budget. (See Appendix below for a description of the agency today.)…

“The real ‘criminals’ are those who use climate fear-mongering to justify fraudulent science and policies that kill, by denying people access to life-saving fossil fuels.”

Contrary to global warming hype, cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to a study that analyzed 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. And contrary to climate models and predictions, recent winters have been long and cold – a far cry from climate alarmist claims that snow and skiing would soon be a thing of the past.

In Britain, many pensioners now ride buses or sit in libraries all day during the winter to stay warm, while others burn used books in stoves, as they are cheaper than coal or wood. Thousands die of hypothermia each winter, because they can no longer afford to heat their homes properly, due to soaring electricity costs under Britain’s climate and renewable energy policies.…

“Climate-change prevention schemes threaten human welfare and promote environmental injustice. Thus it is imperative that the case of manmade greenhouse-gas prevention be based on science and not pseudo-science.”

Climate change has been “real” throughout Earth and human history. Thankfully, modern housing, energy and other technologies help us cope with climate and weather events much better than ever before.

With biotechnology we could even handle another Little Ice Age, despite the shorter growing seasons and reduced arable land that would result – unless anti-technology activists erect more obstacles to this, too. About the only thing that would really give us trouble is another Pleistocene ice age that buries lands and cities under mile-thick glaciers, and sends global temperatures and plant growth plummeting.

For 18 years though, contrary to computer models and White House proclamations, average planetary temperatures have barely budged, even as carbon dioxide levels “soared” from 0.03 percent of Earth’s atmosphere to 0.04 percent.…