According to left-leaning Axios on 2.3.2025: “Senate handily confirms Chris Wright as Energy secretary.” The manufactured home industry’s “why it mattes” arguably differs from that supplied by Axios, but their stance is stated below. More on Wright below from a range of sources that span the left-right media divide. This is a useful opportunity to share updated insights on Wikipedia, AI, and the challenge of discerning what is true and real in society more broadly and manufactured housing more specifically. Those other headline topics will be provided in Part I-IV. That said, back to Axios on Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Wright.
Part I From Various Sources as Shown on confirmation of Chris Wright as Energy Secretary
1) Continuing from Axios.
“Why it matters: Wright will immediately have to smooth out President Trump’s efforts to slow down — or halt entirely — climate change-related spending.
- He’ll also now control the federal government’s most important energy research.
Driving the news: Wright, an engineer and CEO of hydraulic fracturing company Liberty Energy, cleared the Senate 59 to 38.
- Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate progressives opposed his nomination.
What they’re saying: Majority Leader John Thune said on the floor that Wright would be “notable among secretaries of Energy for his depth of experience.
Zoom in: Wright steered clear of partisanship during his confirmation hearing, but pledged to look into ethics allegations surrounding DOE’s loan programs “immediately.”
- He talked up his research into energy and climate issues and backing of nuclear, geothermal, solar, transmission, and energy storage technologies.
- “There isn’t dirty energy and clean energy — all energies are different, and they have different tradeoffs,” Wright told the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Between the lines: Democrats who voted for Wright said they believe he will faithfully continue spending IRA and infrastructure law dollars, despite the administration’s moves to turn off the spigot. …”
The IRA is the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which even Joe Biden (D) admitted in 2024 was misnamed.
JUST IN: President Biden admits that the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ was not actually about inflation after he started ranting without the teleprompter.
Holy sh*t.
Biden said the Inflation Reduction Act was actually about funding Climate Change efforts and said the Act should… pic.twitter.com/rpykPxKRRN
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 5, 2024
🚨Joe Biden just admitted that their so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” was never about reducing inflation.
In fact, it made prices explode across the country.
VP Kamala Harris was the deciding vote for its passage. pic.twitter.com/ZYGOaPThGY
— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) September 5, 2024
2) According to left-leaning Politico:
“Senators voted 59-38 to confirm Wright, including support from some Democrats, despite opposition to his nomination from environmental groups…”
3) Per a media release from the U.S. electric cooperatives trade association was the following.
Electric Co-ops Applaud Confirmation of Chris Wright to Lead DOE, Tackle Grid Reliability Challenges
ARLINGTON, Va. – National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson today issued the following statement on the confirmation of Chris Wright to lead the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Chris Wright’s extensive experience and leadership in the energy industry make him well-suited to lead DOE and address the many challenges and opportunities facing the nation, particularly the skyrocketing demand for power,” Matheson said. “Now more than ever, America’s economic growth and national security depend on reliable, abundant, and affordable electricity.
“We look forward to working with Mr. Wright to prioritize programs that help keep the lights on for families and businesses across America. We also look forward to working with Mr. Wright and DOE to make effective and efficient use of the remaining infrastructure funding appropriated by Congress that supports investments in electric infrastructure and helps co-ops harden their systems.”
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national trade association representing nearly 900 local electric cooperatives. From growing suburbs to remote farming communities, electric co-ops serve as engines of economic development for 42 million Americans across 56 percent of the nation’s landscape. As local businesses built by the consumers they serve, electric cooperatives have meaningful ties to rural America and invest $15 billion annually in their communities.
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4) Representing wind-energy interests.
The American Clean Power Association (ACP) released the following statement from Jason Grumet, ACP CEO following the U.S. Senate confirmation of Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy:
“The American Clean Power Association congratulates Chris Wright on taking the helm at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). We look forward to partnering to advance DOE’s essential role in driving innovation, ensuring energy security, and advancing clean energy solutions. ACP is committed to working with Secretary Wright to address and meet our nation’s rapidly growing electricity demand.”
5) Per left-leaning PBS was the following on 2.4.2025.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Monday confirmed fossil fuel executive Chris Wright to serve as energy secretary, a key post to promote President Donald Trump’s efforts to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.
Wright, CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change. He says more fossil fuel production can lift people out of poverty around the globe and has promised to help Trump “unleash energy security and prosperity.”
The Senate approved his nomination, 59-38. Eight Democrats — including both senators from Wright’s home state of Colorado — voted in favor.
The centerpiece of Trump’s energy policy is “drill, baby, drill,” and he has pledged to dismantle what he calls Democrats’ “green new scam” in favor of boosting production of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal that emit planet-warming greenhouse gases.
“President Trump shares my passion for energy,” Wright said at his confirmation hearing last month, promising that if confirmed, he would “work tirelessly to implement (Trump’s) bold agenda as an unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable and secure American energy.”
That includes oil and natural gas, coal, nuclear power and hydropower, along with wind and solar power and geothermal energy, Wright said.
Trump’s energy wishes are likely to run into real-world limits, including the fact that U.S. oil production is already at record levels. The federal government cannot force companies to drill for more oil, and production increases could lower prices and reduce profits.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the second-ranking Republican, called Wright an innovator who “tells the truth about energy production.”
While Wright “acknowledges that climate change is real, he knows more American energy is the solution — not the problem,” Barrasso said, calling Wright’s “energy realism” welcome news.
Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Wright “understands that energy policies should focus on making energy abundant and affordable for families” and businesses.
“Our nation deserves a champion for American energy and innovation, and we’ve got the Wright guy for the job,” Lee posted on X.
Colorado’s two Democratic senators both supported their home-state nominee.
“Chris Wright is a scientist who has dedicated his life to the study and use of energy. He believes in science and supports the research that will deliver the affordable, reliable and clean energy” that will lower costs and make the country more secure, Sen. John Hickenlooper said.
“While we don’t always agree, we will work together because none of us have four years to wait to act,” Hickenlooper said.
Sen. Michael Bennet called Wright a successful Colorado entrepreneur with deep expertise in energy innovation and technology. He pledged to work with Wright to “ensure Colorado continues to lead the country in energy production and innovation.”
While acknowledging that climate change is real, Wright said at his hearing that he believes “there isn’t dirty energy or clean energy.” Rather, he said, there are different sources of energy with different tradeoffs.
Wright, 60, has been chairman and CEO of Liberty Energy since 2011 and has no prior experience in government. He grew up in Colorado, earned an undergraduate degree at MIT and did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and MIT. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which helped launch commercial shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before founding Liberty Resources in 2010.
As energy secretary, Wright will join Interior Secretary Doug Burgum as a key player on energy policy. Both will serve on a new National Energy Council that Burgum will chair.
…
Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, an environmental group, said Democrats should have unanimously opposed Wright.
“Senate Republicans just handed Trump’s Big Oil allies the keys to the Department of Energy,” she said in a statement. “Chris Wright built his career expanding fossil fuels and denying climate science. Now, he’ll be in a position to help Trump” stall clean energy investments, hike energy prices “and keep Americans addicted to expensive, volatile fossil fuels.”
Now is the time, she added, “for Democrats to stand united and fight back against Trump’s relentless push to rig the system for Big Oil.”
6) According to Utility Dive on 2.4.2025 was the following.
Senate confirms Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as DOE secretary
The Senate on Monday confirmed Liberty Energy Chairman and CEO Chris Wright to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy on a 59-38 vote.
The action follows the confirmations of Doug Burgum to be Interior Department secretary on Thursday and Lee Zeldin to be the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator on Wednesday.
DOE, Interior and the EPA will play key roles affecting the power sector at a time when electric demand forecasts have jumped — partly on data center development — and growing electricity bills are sparking concerns among state utility regulators and consumer advocates.
During his confirmation hearing last month, Wright told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as DOE secretary, he would try to increase U.S. power supplies to help lower electricity prices.
“The only way you can drive down the price of a critical commodity is to grow the supply, so there’s going to be many different avenues to pursue this,” Wright said during his confirmation hearing. “I’m 100% committed to growing our electricity grid and our energy production and removing those barriers that are standing in the way.”
Wright said he would like the United States to grow all sources of “affordable, reliable … pure energy,” including renewable energy.
Wright said as head of DOE he would have three immediate priorities: expanding energy production and cutting energy costs, accelerating the work of DOE’s national laboratories and building energy infrastructure.
Under Wright, DOE could eliminate its Grid Deployment Office and revamp its priorities for the its Loan Programs Office, according to experts.
…
After the Senate confirmations of Wright, Burgum and Zeldin, the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents independent power producers, said competitive electricity markets could help shield consumers and taxpayers from investment risks during a period of rising electric demand.
7) It will be recalled that Utility Dive previously reported the following about the litigation-pending DOE Energy Rule on July 14, 2021.
Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Energy is considering new energy efficiency standards for manufactured housing, and plans to release a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNOPR) by Aug. 16 that will be based on the 2021 version of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). The agency published a related notice on Wednesday, detailing plans to consider the air quality impacts of sealing manufactured homes more tightly.
…
The Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform opposed the 2016 proposed standards and warned the “outrageous requirements” could drive up the price of manufactured homes by $6,000 or more.
8) The left-leaning Washington Post previously said on 1.21.2022 this on the pending DOE Energy Rule.
After decades, Biden plans to make mobile homes greener, sparking a fierce debate.
…Spurred by a court order, the Biden administration is proposing long-awaited updates to energy-efficiency standards for manufactured homes that it projects will save mobile-home owners thousands of dollars and prevent millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere in the coming decades. But the new standards, due in May, have also sparked a fierce debate about costs, equity and the future of manufactured housing.
To state the obvious for clarity, there is zero savings for “mobile-home owners,” despite the statement’s phrasing by the Washington Post, above. The DOE Manufactured Home Energy rule would not apply to existing mobile homes or manufactured homes, but rather would apply to new construction after the rule goes into effect. That noted, back to WaPo’s article.
The changes that the Biden administration has put forward include updates to insulation and windows, as well as heating and cooling systems.
Some say the Energy Department’s plan goes too far. “We believe in the importance of energy efficiency,” said Lesli Gooch, CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade organization. “We just don’t think that this proposal is going to have the desired impact. And in fact, it’s going to have a negative impact on the supply of affordable, manufactured housing.”
“To us, the primary metric needs to be the upfront cost of the home,” added Mark Weiss, president of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform, another industry trade association. “Our concern is that these new requirements are going to make them substantially more costly.”…Manufactured homes use less overall energy because they are relatively small. And nearly a third of such houses shipped in the United States in 2020 were Energy Star certified — according to the Systems Building Research Alliance, a nonprofit research organization that supports the factory-built housing industry — including almost all the homes Flanders sells. Some go beyond Energy Star.
…And mobile homes consumed about 35 percent more energy per square foot than detached single-family homes.Congress has been attempting to improve on the HUD standards for more than a decade. In 2007, it passed a law that gave the DOEuntil 2011 to release updated efficiency requirements for manufactured houses. But that never happened. Obama administration officials started the process but did not finish in time, and the Trump administration withdrew the proposal.…In 2017, the Sierra Club environmental organization sued the Trump administration to force the issue. The court ordered the DOE to finalize a rule by May 16, 2022, and it released a proposed rule last summer, along with updated data in the fall and a draft environmental impact statement this January.
10) More on the DOE energy rule is found in the article linked below and, in the interview linked here on the MHARR website. More on the DOE Manufactured Home Energy Rule and manufactured housing will follow in Part V.
11) With that backdrop, this is an appropriate point to pivot to the balance of the headline topics. “The Moat” may be thought of by some as financial or similar advantages that are held by a company or organization. But there is an evidence-based argument to be made that there can be “a moat” established by routinely providing reliable information. More on that in Part IV.
Part II From the WND News Center to MHProNews is the following
‘Constant overdrive to tear down opponents’: Wikipedia goes total dark side to destroy the political right
‘Obviously designed to indoctrinate Americans into despising anything good and decent about mainstream conservatives’
By Bob Unruh |
Just as President Donald Trump’s agenda includes wiping out the government-tech conspiracies that launched and executed millions of censorship moves during the administration of Joe Biden, one already-leftist online source is beginning its own campaign to censor anything conservative.
It is Wikipedia, which has been busy embedding feminism and racial justice in its databanks, labeling Zionism as “colonialism,” distorting the history of the Holocaust, concealing details about Hunter Biden’ scandals, and has been slammed as “thought police” by one of its own founders, that is taking censorship to its own new level.
A report at Newsbusters said the website platform now has a “protocol that directly and unerringly produces the worst descriptions about conservatives and Republicans by virtually guaranteeing that right-leaning media sources cannot be cited.”
Already, its previous CEO, Katherine Maher, pushed it into left field by making sure not a single right-leaning outlet was deemed “reliable.”
That’s while more than eight of 10 leftist publications are.
The report said a study by the Media Research Center Free Speech America discovered the organization “has effectively blacklisted all right-leaning media from being used as source material, exclusively relying on leftist, legacy media notoriously known to spread misinformation and attack opponents of the left.”
Blackballed are Breitbart, The Daily Caller, Daily Mail, Newsmax, OANN and the MRC. But leftists including Mother Jones, Pro-Publica and even National Public Radio are approved sources.
“This blatant misinformation means that Wikipedia is purposely feeding Americans information exclusively through the lens of one side of the political spectrum—the left,” the report said.
A direct result of the ban on “blacklisted” organizations is that “Conservatives, Republicans and Trump appointees are smeared, maligned and slandered by the most popular online source for information about people.”
MRC spokesman Dan Schneider said the effect is that Wikipedia now is “only reliable for pushing a radical narrative.”
“The leadership as well as the rank and file editors are in constant overdrive to tear down their political opponents. From the policy issues Wikipedia highlights to the tone their editors use to castigate Trump and his appointees. Wikipedia is obviously designed to indoctrinate Americans into despising anything good and decent about mainstream conservatives,” he said.
The report said even now, as Trump’s cabinet members are being confirmed by the Senate, “Wikipedia is marring its pages with derogatory misinformation due to the dominance of leftist media sources, poisoning the Senate confirmation process because it exclusively gives fodder to one political faction attempting to discredit Trump’s appointments and nominees.”
The report said a Media Bias Chart, from AllSides, a media ratings company, lists 29 sites as “lean right” or “right,” and Wikipedia disallows every one, by not deeming them “generally reliable.” In fact, 22 are “blacklisted.”
Those “generally unreliable” include the Washington Free Beacon, New York Post, Federalist and more.
Meanwhile, virtually all of the media sources widely recognized as “left” or such, were considered “generally reliable.”
Among the conspiracy ideologies pushed by the site is that COVID-19 was from a natural jump by a virus from animals to humans, while the best experts now say it came out of a Chinese lab that could have been working on bioweapons.
Further, the site continues to praise media outlets that deliberately withheld the truth from Americans when the scandal over Hunter Biden’s laptop erupted.
At one point, Larry Sanger, a liberal Wikipedia cofounder, revealed, “Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy.”
He accused the organization of having a “glaring bias” against President Trump, Christianity and pro-life Americans.
A report at LifeNews explains that the agenda “disturbingly disadvantages right-leaning media.”
Part III From the Daily Signal to MHProNews is the following on Meta/Facebook
Commentary
Mark Zuckerberg Wants Us to Forgive, Forget Facebook’s Sins
1) It will be recalled that the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) has consistently and persistently pushed back against the leftist ‘energy interests’ agenda pressing the Department of Energy (DOE) manufactured housing energy rule from the outset. By contrast, the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) was revealed to have flip-flopped from cooperating with the DOE to posturing opposition while quietly working with those energy interests to create an energy rule, and other arguably problematic behavior from the Arlington, VA based MHI trade group.
2) As tipsters recently observed, the DOE Manufactured Housing Energy Rule has apparently been used as a part of the “Clayton Moat.”
3) If not for the existence of MHARR and their steady spotlight and pushback on this topic, this energy rule might have been sprung on the manufactured housing industry about a decade ago. But their knowledge of how Washington, D.C. often operates – and how MHI may posture or say one thing while doing something quite differently, resulted in the discovery of MHI’s active participation of ‘negotiated rulemaking’ that was eventually stopped following exposure.
4) According to left-leaning Google’s AI Powered Gemini, which cited Investopedia and other sources is the following.
In business, an economic moat is a long-term competitive advantage that protects a company from competitors. The term is a metaphor for the moats that surrounded medieval castles.
5) According to Investopedia is this on Moats.
Popularized by legendary investor Warren Buffett—it’s [The Moat] perhaps his favorite metaphor, used in dozens of investor talks going back decades—the term “economic moat” draws an evocative parallel with the water-filled trenches that protected medieval castles. In the business world, these moats characterize sustainable competitive advantages that shield a company’s profits from marauding competitors.
But what constitutes an economic moat and, more importantly, how do companies build them? From patents to unbeatable brand recognition, the makeup of these competitive fortifications is far more diverse than their watery antecedents. Understanding economic moats isn’t just academic—it’s a crucial skill for investors seeking companies with the potential for long-term outperformance.
Key Takeaways
- “Economic moat” is a term that refers to a business’s ability to maintain a competitive edge over its competitors.
- The analogy relates to the moats that would surround medieval castles and act as a barrier of protection.
- A company can create an economic moat by taking advantage of its size, intangibles, lower costs, and high switching costs.
- The term economic moat was made popular by legendary investor Warren Buffett.
- Morningstar offers the best-known proprietary metric of companies that have economic moats.
6) Moats can arguably involve antitrust violations, as Biden-Harris (D) era Ast. Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said is a valid concern to be considered and discerned.
7) There is an argument to be made that the goal of many moats, in the Buffett worldview, is to establish or protect some type of monopoly over a given market.
8) Exposing the truth, facts, hard evidence on a range of issues in an era when big media and big tech manipulation are demonstrably factors can become for the stalwart and faithful a kind of moat. That’s because a moat is a strategic advantage, so, by exposing the truth-facts-evidence consistently and persistently is an advantage. That moat of truth and evidence may not always be ‘sexy.’ It may not always pay an immediate dividend. But it has the advantage of being consistent in a manner that routinely stands the test of time.
Deception and misdirection may seem to carry the day for quite some time, perhaps even years on end. But once the truth is known and exposed it becomes difficult to unsee.
9) MHI has forged a group of more or less aligned trade media and bloggers that in some cases never critique MHI, or in other cases occasionally critique MHI more as an apparent distraction tactic to deflect from their own problematic behavior. That may have seemed like a good strategy for those involved at some time in the past. But in hindsight, years of misinformation, half-truths, and apparent policy failures by MHI and those aligned with that consolidation-focused agenda have yielded almost a quarter of a century of poor results for the industry’s independents. Who says? The hard statistical evidence.
10) While it has not come without a cost, the known evidence reveals that MHI has apparently been caught or perhaps surpassed in traffic by MHARR, which looking at the known evidence has about double MHI’s pageviews per visit. MHI doesn’t do that with fancy meetings and mixers, but rather with information that is routinely reliable and focused on their core mission.
10a) MHProNews is similarly known to have surpassed MHI by a wide margin, and in fact, appears to have surpassed MHI and all of its allied bloggers/trade media combined.
11) There is likely to be a kind of information warfare that erupts in the foreseeable future as more Trump nominees take office and begin to assess what needs to be done in their various roles with respect to HUD Code manufactured housing. For those who come across MHProNews, MHLivingNews, and/or the Patch, they can see evidence that MHI has long played footsy with Democrats. Indeed, Nathan Smith said he had former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (OH-D) in his cell phone contact numbers. Former MHI Chairman Smith is known to be a self-declared ‘leader’ of the ‘anti-Trump’ resistance.
Indeed, the SSK triumvirate prior to the company rebranding as Flagship Communities, had as a cofounder another diehard Democrat, Alice Sparks.
12) MHProNews plans to maintain its de facto moat in MHVille trade media by continuing to report reality, facts, and evidence as it is, not as some fiction writers would like to portray themselves. While it remains to be seen what Trump 2.0 does with the DOE energy rule for manufactured housing, it would be expected that they would send it to file 13 and dispose of it. Chris Wright’s decisions will be closely watched. Given that MHARR is pressing publicly for killing the manufactured housing energy rule, it will not be a surprise if MHI suddenly finds religion on this subject and postures something similar to MHARR’s stance. Whatever happens, MHProNews will monitor and report accordingly, because that’s the benefit of seeking and reporting based on evidence and common sense.
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By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
