Friday, November 27, 2009

Copenhagen Consequences....

What Americans Need to Know About the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference
by Ben Lieberman
November 17, 2009
The Heritage Foundation

What Are the Economic Concerns?

The goal of the Kyoto Protocol, the building block for Copenhagen, is similar to the purpose of the Waxman-Markey global warming bill, which narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June, and of the Kerry-Boxer bill being considered in the U.S. Senate. All three would set limits on emissions from fossil fuels -- the coal, oil, and natural gas that provide America with 85 percent of its energy. Such limits would act as a large energy tax, driving up the energy costs of individuals and consumers, forcing them to use less energy. More stringent emissions targets would require even larger increases in fossil energy prices to further discourage their use.

A Heritage Foundation analysis of Waxman-Markey found that this energy tax would have serious implications throughout the economy. For a household of four, energy costs (electric, natural gas, gasoline expenses) would rise by $436 in 2012 and by $1,241 by 2035, averaging $829 over that period.[11] Higher energy costs would increase the cost of many other products and services. Overall, Waxman-Markey would reduce gross domestic product by $393 billion annually and by a total of $9.4 trillion by 2035.[12] An initial analysis of the Senate bill finds comparable costs.[13]

Would the Environmental Benefits Be Worth It?

No. First, there are growing doubts about whether global warming really is the crisis it was claimed to be heading into the 1997 Kyoto negotiations.[16] For example, global temperatures have leveled off since then.[17] However, putting the scientific doubts aside for a moment, the Kyoto approach seems unlikely to slow global warming effectively. One scientific study estimated that, even if the treaty reached its targeted emissions reductions, it would reduce the earth's future temperature by about 0.07 degree Celsius by 2050 -- an amount too small to make any difference and impossible to verify because natural variability is far greater.[18] Obviously, more stringent targets at Copenhagen would reduce the temperature more, but not by much, especially if developing nations were still exempt from emissions reductions.

Is U.S. Sovereignty at Risk?

Yes. Kyoto has no international enforcement mechanism with any real teeth. To actually reduce emissions, any successor treaty coming out of Copenhagen would need an effective enforcement mechanism. Domestic U.S. enforcement of the treaty, if ratified, would be problematic enough, but any binding international enforcement provisions would create additional serious problems.

Compliance with such a treaty would require massive changes to the U.S. economy, and U.N. bodies would decide many of the details of those changes. For example, one way to comply with Kyoto or subsequent treaties is to purchase so-called offsets to carbon dioxide emissions. Offsets allow regulated entities to pay others to undertake projects that presumably reduce emissions globally, such as paying landowners to plant trees or bankrolling the installation of solar panels in poor countries. In many cases, companies find offsets cheaper than actually reducing their own emissions. However, these projects have been subject to fraud. For example, some offset projects have not actually reduced emissions, while others involved industrial facilities with unnecessarily high initial emissions for the purpose of profiting by lowering them later.[19] Currently, the Clean Development Mechanism under the U.N. decides which offset projects are acceptable. Thus, unelected international bureaucracies would control this critical aspect of a climate treaty, which would have significant implications for the U.S. economy.

Great article. I hope you read the entire article.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Great, let's piss off our greatest ally...

Bob Ainsworth criticises Barack Obama over Afghanistan
Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, has blamed Barack Obama and the United States for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan.
James Kirkup, Thomas Harding and Toby Harnden
Published: 9:00PM GMT 24 Nov 2009
Telegraph.co.uk

Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the US President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban.

A “period of hiatus” in Washington - and a lack of clear direction - had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said.

Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the US President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban.

A “period of hiatus” in Washington - and a lack of clear direction - had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said.

The Defence Secretary’s blunt remarks about the US threaten to strain further a transatlantic relationship already under pressure over the British release of the Lockerbie bomber and Mr Obama’s decision to snub Mr Brown at the United Nations in September.

Nothing like throwing away a 100 year old ally in the first 10 months of your first term. Way to go BHO! I do think we are better friends with Syria now, however....

Monday, November 23, 2009

Racism, Obama and the Left....


Obama the Racist?

By Kevin Jackson
November 23, 2009
American Thinker

Excellent article on American Thinker regarding Obama, racism and why so many liberals are racists without even knowing it. I love this author. Check out his blog" The Black Sphere Blog

Excerpts:

One would think that with BET and The WB, and the all-black radio stations that you can find in any major city, that there is no longer a need for Black Nationalists like Van Jones, or even a Black Nationalist movement in general. However, no sooner was Van Jones appointed than we were treated to the racist stylings of Mark Lloyd, his most famous quip being, "...white people need to relinquish their power to others." Others being "non-whites."

Obama's first racist act as president was to remove the voucher program that Bush had established in D.C., a program that Democrats vote against overwhelmingly. This program was producing proven positive results, but it was eliminated -- and black children in D.C. were relegated to socialized schools in crime and drug-infested neighborhoods. Simply put, why give black children the choice to opt out of the indoctrination?

There are many other examples of these train-wreck policies of Liberals, and particularly with this administration -- an administration that had poor blacks believing that Obama was Santa Claus. As with most policies implemented by Liberals, the real trickle-down impact ends up costing blacks more, making them that much more dependent on the government...the endgame orchestrated by then-Senator and racist Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson, when he commented in 1957:

These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again.


On blacks' ancestral continent, there is not one country that provides a beacon of hope. Africa is where one would think Obama could prove that his policies would work for blacks. Yet in Africa today, there are wars and rumors of wars. The outcome depends only on the "cide" you are on...infanticide, homicide, fratricide, or genocide. Dictators are pillaging the countries they should be serving, and the African people have nothing to show for it but abject poverty and oppression.

Great job Kevin, great job! I strongly encourage you all to go read the entire article, go read his blog and watch for him on TV, where he has been a commentator lately. I wish he could talk to every child in school white, black, Hispanic and tell them the truth.

NOW they are worrying about too much debt...?

Weighing Jobs and Deficit
White House Is Unenthusiastic on Legislation That Would Raise Government Debt
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON
NOVEMBER 23, 2009
The Wall Street Journal

The White House is lukewarm about proposals by congressional Democrats to introduce broad legislation to create jobs, instead favoring targeted measures that would be less likely to inflate the deficit, administration officials said.

There is as yet no agreement within the White House or in Congress on how to try to curb the U.S. jobless rate.

Are they that STUPID? (That's a rhetorical question.)

Do they not know that lowering taxes, increasing business tax deductions by allowing businesses to depreciate capital expenditures, by decreasing government mandates (re: healthcare) on businesses and by promoting individual self reliance (instead of continuously extending unemployment benefits)? Why do they not know this stuff?

How did they get to where they are without knowing this kind of elementary economics?

Why do we keep electing these boneheads?

Are we out of oil or not...?

Oil's Expanding Frontiers
By George Will
November 22, 2009
RealClearPolitics.com

...America has exhausted its hydrocarbon supplies. Repeatedly.

In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. In 1939, the Interior Department said the world had 13 years worth of petroleum reserves. Then a global war was fought and the postwar boom was fueled, and in 1951 Interior reported that the world had ... 13 years of reserves. In 1970, the world's proven oil reserves were an estimated 612 billion barrels. By 2006, more than 767 billion barrels had been pumped and proven reserves were 1.2 trillion barrels. In 1977, Scold in Chief Jimmy Carter predicted that mankind "could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade." Since then the world has consumed (BEG ITAL)three times(END ITAL) more oil than was then in the world's proven reserves.

Rattie says U.S. known reserves of natural gas, which are sure to become larger, exceed 100 years of supply at the current rate of consumption. BP recently announced a "giant" oil discovery beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Yergin, writing in Foreign Policy, says "careful examination of the world's resource base ... indicates that the resource endowment of the planet is sufficient to keep up with demand for decades to come."

Huh. So we have 100 years of natural gas and a couple decades (that we know of) of petroleum and a few hundred years of coal. So why are we pouring so much government money into "alternative" or "green" energy? Why not make what already have burn cleaner?

Friday, November 20, 2009

Here are the results of long time Democrat "nanny-state" mentality

California Was Among States With Record Unemployment
By Courtney Schlisserman
Bloomberg Press

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- California, Delaware, South Carolina and Florida registered record rates of unemployment in October as weakness in the labor market stretches from coast to coast and limits the economic recovery.
Joblessness rose in 29 U.S. states last month compared with 22 in September, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Michigan had the highest jobless rate at 15.1 percent, followed by Nevada at 13 percent and Rhode Island at 12.9 percent.
The national rate last month reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, weighing on consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Nov. 17 that joblessness “likely will decline only slowly,” a reason policy makers will keep interest rates near zero to ensure growth is sustained.
“We’ve had a surprisingly [it's ALWAYS unexpected or a surprise] sharp jump in the jobless rate,” said Richard DeKaser, president of Woodley Park Research in Washington. “Businesses have truly been doing an extraordinary job of wringing out productivity from the labor force.”

Is it just a coincident that the states with the highest unemployment are also the ones that have been run by Democrats for generations....

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

This is scary stuff.... Yeah, the real reason healthcare is so important to this administration.

Unholy Union
Why is the SEIU boss the White House’s most frequent visitor?
STEPHEN SPRUIELL

The "Highlights: (or low-lights, as the case may be):
The Friday before Halloween, in response to requests from the public, the White House released records of the visitors it had received between January and July. ....the man who appeared most frequently is less well-known. His name is Andrew Stern, and during the first six months of Obama’s tenure, he visited the White House 21 times — about three times per month. Most of these visits included an intimate meeting with the president or other senior officials. Among outsiders, Stern enjoys unrivaled access to the White House. And the more you know about him, the spookier that sounds.

Stern is president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a federation of health-care, public-sector, and custodial workers that claims approximately 2 million members....

In 2005, Stern engineered a break with the AFL-CIO over frustrations with Sweeney’s leadership. Six other unions, including the Teamsters, followed Stern. The breakaways formed their own federation called Change to Win and adopted SEIU’s one-two punch: intimidate businesses and, if that doesn’t work, exploit their soft spot for corporate welfare.

On the intimidation front, SEIU has worked with the radical Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The group once served as a valuable ally, but its reputation now lies in tatters....

The SEIU-ACORN link is deep and longstanding. At least one SEIU local, Chicago’s Local 880, was organized by ACORN and run by it for 20 years. An SEIU official recently testified that the local had severed its ACORN ties, but Chris Berg, a former special assistant at the Office of Labor Management Standards, says, “I’m very skeptical.” Keith Kelleher, who spent many years running ACORN in Chicago, is still the local’s head organizer. “They’ve been wed together for so long, I don’t think they can divorce,” says Berg.

Stern’s real breakthrough came when he realized that labor could offer a carrot as well as a stick Around 50 percent of SEIU’s members work in the health-care industry as nurses, hospital attendants, and lab techs. The facilities that employ such workers benefit from a number of government programs. SEIU’s pitch was simple: Let us organize your workforce, and we’ll use our lobbying power to push for increased government spending on health care.

It worked. Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo recently observed in The Weekly Standard that, “under the brilliant leadership of Dennis Rivera, [SEIU Local] 1199 built a top-notch political operation, and with the hospitals, which were barred from political activity, formed a partnership to maximize the flow of government revenue.” The alliance has been so successful, they wrote, that New York now spends as much on Medicaid as California and Texas combined. Rivera now serves as the SEIU’s point man on national health-care-reform legislation, with over 400 union staff members working full time at his disposal. Sen. Chuck Schumer called him “one of the few key players” shaping the final bill.

In pursuit of his vision, Stern has turned the SEIU into a massive grassroots army that can mobilize in behalf of candidates and legislation. The scope of its activities in 2008 was epic. Stern bragged that “we spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million, to be exact — and we’re proud of it.”

Undaunted, SEIU has set aside $85 million to spend over the next two years on political advocacy. The union started the year with three major objectives: a union-friendly stimulus, a union-friendly health-care bill, and a bill that would make it easier to organize workers into unions. It has brought its influence to bear on all three of these debates, with varying degrees of success.

The most illustrative example of SEIU’s clout during this process came when the Obama administration threatened to withhold stimulus funds from the state of California if it went ahead with a planned reduction in payments to home health-care workers. The administration set up a conference call with state officials to discuss whether the cuts violated the terms of the stimulus, and state officials were surprised to learn that the administration had invited SEIU representatives to join the call. “This was really atypical and outside any norm I am familiar with,” California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe told the Los Angeles Times. The administration backed down from the threat, but only after the story had leaked and caused significant blowback.

The creation of a government-run insurance plan is an especially important priority for the SEIU. “The nexus between government and private industry would give SEIU a toehold to organize more workers,” explains J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts. Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option “might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions,” Wilson says.

So far, SEIU has been successful at getting most of its priorities included in the health-care bill. Democrats have renewed their commitment to the public option, which once looked dead on arrival.

Card-check legislation: As important as the Democrats’ health-care plan is to SEIU, the union’s top priority remains the Employee Free Choice Act, otherwise known as the card-check bill. Under SEIU’s preferred version of the bill, employers would have to recognize a union once a majority of its employees had signed petition cards. This process would allow union organizers to identify holdouts and pressure them into signing up. The bill would also require business owners to allow union organizers to hold meetings with employees on the business’s property, while forbidding the owners to hold mandatory meetings to discuss unionization.

Finally, the bill includes a binding-arbitration provision that would allow the NLRB to impose a union contract on a business if negotiations with its union broke down. SEIU loves this provision, because Obama just named one of its lawyers, Craig Becker, to the NLRB. Businesses negotiating with the SEIU would have two choices: accept SEIU’s demands voluntarily or have the SEIU-friendly NLRB accept them for you.

These three goals have one thing in common: All are meant to raise the percentage of workers who belong to a union. State by state, unions are ensuring that the only employers eligible for stimulus money are those with union workforces. On health care, the Democrats’ bill is designed to shift a mind-boggling amount of money into the health-care sector while increasing the government’s administrative control over it — and anyone who believes the Democrats’ rhetoric about cutting costs is encouraged to look at what Dennis Rivera accomplished in New York. Meanwhile, card-check legislation would throw open the doors of private businesses to union organizers and tie their hands when they try to resist.

Why do I suddenly believe all the stuff Glenn Beck has been saying.....?

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Not to worry though... I'm sure they'll get healthcare right....

Edmunds:Cash For Clunkers Cost Taxpayers $24K Per Vehicle Sold
OCTOBER 28, 2009
WSJ

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

The government's "Cash for Clunkers" program may have only added 125,000 vehicle sales, according to Edmunds.com, which said the rest of the units sold would have happened regardless of the program.

In total, the car-shopping Web site said about 690,000 vehicles were sold during the program. Edmunds.com said that based on the actual sales gained from the program, the Cash for Clunkers program cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold.

"Our research indicates that without the Cash for Clunkers program, many customers would not have traded in an old vehicle when making a new purchase," said Edmunds.com senior analyst David Tompkins. "That may give some credence to the environmental claims, but unfortunately the economic claims have been rendered quite weak."

Edmunds.com Chief Executive Jeremy Anwyl noted that while sales are up in October from September, growth would have been even better without the program. He said that suggests the auto industry's recovery is gaining momentum.

Sales surged in late July and most of August as the program was in effect, giving certain new-car buyers up to $4,500 in rebates if they traded in a gas-guzzler. But U.S. auto sales slid in September absent clunker-related deals. Other countries still have so-called scrappage programs in effect.

-By John Kell, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2480; john.kell@dowjones.com

I'm sure they are just honest mistakes. At least these government bureaucrats don't anyone’s lives on the line with these decisions... Yet...

Not to worry though... I'm sure they'll get healthcare right....

Analysis finds stimulus confusion
By Brad Heath and Matt Kelley
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The federal government sent Bob Bray $26,174 in stimulus aid to fix a fence and replace the roofs on public apartments in Blooming Grove, Texas, a town of fewer than 900 people outside Dallas. He hired five roofers and an inspector to do the job.

But the number of jobs he reported to the government looked very different — 450 jobs.

Oh, no," said Bray, who runs the local public housing authority part-time with his wife, Linda, when asked about the discrepancy. He said that he told the government that he had created six jobs but that a federal official told him that wasn't right. So he reported the number of hours the roofers worked instead. The Department of Housing and Urban Development caught the mistake, but he couldn't fix it before the jobs figures were published. "The money was great, but the reports are really confusing," he said. "I've been fighting with it for over a month and a half."

The police department in Plymouth, Conn., claimed in its report that a $15,355 grant used to buy new computers had created or saved 108 jobs. The department had 22 law enforcement officers last year, according to the FBI. Mayor Vincent Festa said that the town has resorted to "counting paper clips" to save money but that it had no plans to lay off any of its police officers, even without the stimulus. He said he could not explain the report, and the town's police chief did not return telephone calls Monday.

•The Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, which employs about 500 people in its Head Start preschool program, reported creating or saving 935 jobs with about $1.3 million in funding. Beverly Wise, the group's fiscal officer, said she followed the advice of federal officials to come up with the number. "I thought it was high," Wise said of the number she reported, adding that the process was confusing. The group is using its stimulus money to give a 1.84% pay raise to its employees and pay for other needs such as playground equipment and training for the teachers who serve 2,300 low-income children.

•Teach for America, which helps place recent graduates in teaching jobs in urban and rural districts, reported that a $2 million grant created or saved 1,425 jobs. Spokeswoman Kerci Marcello Stroud said officials used that money to pay part of the salaries of 125 employees; a separate $6 million allowed it to expand the training program to include 1,300 more graduates.

I'm sure they are just honest mistakes. At least these government bureaucrats don't anyone’s lives on the line with these decisions... Yet...

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Ironically, this is what I've been saying for months...

We're Governed by Callous Children
By PEGGY NOONAN
OCTOBER 31, 2009
Wall Street Journal

I am not a particularly big fan of Peggy Noonan. I believe she is part of the NE country club elite Republicans. But, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in while.

The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can't figure a way out. Have you heard, "If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better"? Or, "If only we follow the Republicans, they'll make it all work again"? I bet you haven't, or not much.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.