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Democrats' Climate Change Emphasis is Hurting Their Own
The Democrats think that climate change is a winning issue for them in 2014—and, if they handle it correctly, this could be a winning issue for the Republicans.
Nothing comes out of the Obama White House by mistake—so you know the recent flurry of noise on climate change is not an accident.
Earlier this month, the Obama Administration announced the creation of 7 "climate hubs" with the stated goal: "to help farmers and rural communities respond to the risks of climate change, including drought, invasive pests, fires and floods."
Then on February 14, President Obama announced a new $1 billion "climate resilience fund" that "would go to research on the projected impacts of climate change, help communities prepare for climate change's effects and fund 'breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure.'
Secretary of State John Kerry has received a lot of attention for his February 16 fear-mongering comments in Indonesia, during which he called climate change a "weapon of mass destruction"—the "world's most fearsome." He said: "Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is…one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk."
On February 17, the New York Times (NYT) reported that billionaire Obama donor Tom Steyer plans to spend as much as $100 million during the 2014 election cycle to "pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers." Steyer has been critical of Democrats who waver on climate issues. The NYT reports that Steyer's new fundraising push "signals a shift within the environmental movement, as donors—frustrated that neither Democratic nor Republican officials are willing to prioritize climate change measures—shift their money from philanthropy and education into campaign vehicles designed to win elections."
However, I see all of this Democratic emphasis on climate change as an opportunity for Republicans—if they realize it as a gift.
The January electricity price index was just released and revealed that the cost of electricity has hit a new high—which doesn't bode well for the rest of the year. CNSNews.com reports: "During the year, the price of a KWH of electricity usually rises in the spring, peaks in summer, declines in fall, and is at its lowest point in winter."
True to the law of supply and demand, rising electricity prices in the U.S. have not been inevitable. According to CNSNews.com, following WWII, the U.S. was rapidly increasing its electricity generation capacity. In the 1950s and 60s the price remained relatively stable. However, since 2007, the U.S. has decreased its electricity production; while the population has increased by more than 14 million people—almost all with multiple electronic gadgets running simultaneously.
The 2007 benchmark is important because 2006/2007 is when the global-warming scare began to influence public energy policy—this is the time frame when states passed laws requiring more-expensive renewable energy to be part of the total energy portfolio (laws that set up the rationale for the $150 billion of taxpayer dollars being spent on green energy projects). It is when the war on coal began.
The CNSNews.com report states: "The Monthly Energy Review also indicates that a large part of the decline in U.S. electricity generation has come from a decrease in the electricity produced by coal—which has not been replaced by a commensurate increase in the electricity produced by natural gas or the 'renewable' sources of wind and solar."
The decline in electricity production—slightly supplemented by more expensive renewables—has directly caused the price spike. And Obama's climate change policies are shuttering more and more coal-fueled power plants—even after they've spent millions on pollution controls. We can expect continuing higher electricity costs heading into the 2014 election.
Recently, I received a phone call from an irate woman. She told me she'd been searching the Internet for someone who could help her and found me. She explained that she was an unemployed, single mom living in an 800-square-foot apartment. She said she didn't turn on her heat because she couldn't afford it. When she got her electric bill, she noticed that it had a line item: $1.63 for green energy—about which she declared: "I don't give a *!%# about green energy! I am so mad at PNM for making me pay for green energy that I don't want!"
I explained that it wasn't the utility company's fault. They are just following the law by incorporating renewables into the portfolio. It is the lawmakers who deserve her wrath—from the local and state representatives all the way up to the president.
I do not know if this woman is a Democrat or a Republican. But I do know she represents the exact type of voter Obama claims to champion—the exact type of voter his climate-change policies are hurting. These voters "don't give a *!%# about green energy"—they care about the rising cost of electricity.
The Democrats own "climate change." The Democrats are hurting their own.
If the Republicans are smart enough to capture the anger of voters—like the woman who called me—and feature it in television ads, the Democrats' climate-change emphasis will be a winning issue for Republicans. (BTW, Karl Rove, I have the caller's phone number. Maybe you could feature her in an ad.)
Those GHG Reduction Deniers…
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Let's see if a couple of global warming advocates have the courage of their convictions. I'm not a Twitterer (being unable to say anything in 140 characters or less), but hopefully some kind reader will bring this particular issue to the attention of Chicago Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman and popular TV personality Bill Nye "The Science Guy".
Let's start here. There are two parts to the global warming (a.k.a.: "climate change") issue as it relates to the US of A. Part one can be roughly defined as: "mankind has a significant, disproportionate effect on the earth's climate, chiefly through the combustion of fossil fuels". I don't happen to agree with that proposition, but I don't make any claims to infallibility either. So, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the combustion of fossil fuels significantly affects the planet's climate. That leads us to part two of this issue: is America reducing greenhouse gas emissions, thus helping to solve this supposed problem?
There are plenty of people who insist that people like me who happen to disagree with proposition #1 are – at best – dirty rotten liars who have sold our souls to evil energy conglomerates. "Deniers" is the popular term applied to us. So be it. Yet, if people like me are supposedly "denying" that human activity is causing massive changes in the global climate, what should we say about those folks who continue to demand that the United States take action to combat "climate change" who remain willfully ignorant of all the time and treasure that has been expended to accomplish that very goal? In practical terms, they are the real "deniers". The very actions they have demanded have been, and will continue to be, implemented. But they pay no attention to this demonstrable fact. It's the Stephen Champmans, the Bill Nyes, etc. of the world who have truly earned the title of "deniers". They claim to be so very concerned about Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHG emissions), but they don't pay any actual attention to the sources of those emissions.
In a recent debate with US Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, engineer Bill Nye said that he wanted "…the U.S. to lead the world in this", referring to GHG emissions reductions. Good news for ya Bill – you've gotten your wish! Nobody in the industrial world has done more to reduce GHG emissions that the USA, and nobody is on track to do more. If you believe this is such a vitally important issue Billy boy, why in the heck aren't you keeping track of GHG emissions? Last time I checked, science depends on data. How about doing your homework? Among other things, you can check out the following: USEPA reports regarding ever-decreasing national GHG reductions, state Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) program reports that have and will continue to reduce GHG emissions, more stringent CAFÉ standards that will continue to reduce GHG emissions from mobile sources, more stringent coal boiler standards that force power production toward less GHG intensive sources, new EPA efficiency power production standards that require more GHG reductions, and new federal permitting requirements that demand new large projects be as minimally GHG intensive as possible. These things are all happening, have been happening and will continue to happen. Those who choose to ignore the demonstrable, verifiable fact the United States has gone through great pains to reduce emissions of fossil fuel generated emissions of carbon dioxide are the ultimate "deniers".
In that vein, Chicago Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman wrote a piece a few years ago in which he upbraided conservatives for not getting on board with the climate change crowd. I penned Stephen a response, believing that he was an honest libertarian expressing a honest opinion, rather than an ideologue. Stephen wrote me back defending his position (as explained below). I stored his response in the memory file, with the intent of revisiting the issue after a few years had passed. A few years have now passed and I sent Stephen the e-mail pasted in below. I've had no response from him as of yet. So how about it Stephen (and how about it Bill Nye?) – any response?
My e-mail to Stephen Chapman:
Dear Stephen,
A few years ago, you wrote a column upbraiding Republicans for not getting on board with legislation to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US. Having long respected you as a honest libertarian (and seeing as how I have been intimately involved in the environmental world throughout my career) , I dropped you a line to let you know that no further action was needed in the US. A combination of anti-coal regulations, energy efficiency standards, state Renewable Portfolio Standards and regional efforts had combined – and would continue to combine – to reduce US GHG emissions. You kindly replied, stating that your sources indicated that the declines in GHG emissions were "short term" and would not continue in the future.
I hope you will appreciate an update. According to USEPA data, the nation has continued to steadily reduce GHG emissions. One can "write off" 2009 emission levels as an aberration associated with the onset of the Great Recession, but the steady decline has continued since then. Here's the latest trend data from USEPA. (Unfortunately it's from 2011, but bureaucratic wheels turn oh-so-slowly…)
As you can see, the US was down to sub-1996 GHG emissions levels in 2011, making the nation – as Exxon-Mobil correctly asserts – the world leader in reducing those emissions.
Here's another look at the same data set from USEPA:
Since 2011, there have been more coal plant shutdowns, more renewable power installations and more energy efficiency initiative implementations. The reductions in GHG emissions for 2012 and 2013 will – and you can quote me – be even more dramatic than what we have seen so far. This curve will continue to head steadily downwards, no matter what Messr. Hawthorne and his pals say to the contrary.
So my problem is this: the Tribune has joined the chorus that proclaims that man-made "climate change" is, if not the most important issue of our times, damn near the top of the list. As a scientist who has spent his career immersed in air quality, I don't happen to agree, but I don't make any claims of infallibility either. But, if the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune sincerely believes that GHG emissions are a threat to human existence, why does your paper consistently ignore the massive – and expensive – efforts that have been successfully implanted in the United States to reduce those emissions? It's like you're covering a four alarm fire and choose to completely ignore the fact that firefighters responded to the call. Identifying GHG emissions as a threat and then dispassionately transmitting the nation's efforts to reduce such emissions would seem to meet the definition of "journalism", as least as I understand it. Unfortunately, that's not what happens. Identifying GHG emissions as a threat and then completely ignoring the verifiable fact that the nation has been reducing such emissions appears to fall under the heading of "advocacy". Perhaps that's what modern journalism has become, but I would hope the venerable old (used to be) Trib would at least be a bit more honest about this issue.
Best Regards,
Still waiting for a response.
Not holding my breath…
Obama Wants to Waste a Billion on Climate Change
Barack Obama will be remembered for many things during his two terms in office, but high on the list, right after lying to everyone about everything, will be his determination to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on every Green scheme from solar and wind energy to electric cars, and now on "climate change."
He is calling for a billion-dollar climate change fund in his forthcoming budget, due out next month. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the fund "would be spent on researching the projected effects of climate change and helping Americans prepare for them, including with new technology and infrastructure, according to the White House.
We don't need any research and we don't need any new technology. The National Weather Service has hugely expensive computers that enable it to predict what the weather will be anywhere in the U.S. with some measure of accuracy for up to three or four days. After that, it gets fuzzy. What will the weather be next week? Well, maybe a bit warmer or a bit colder.
As for the effects of weather events, we have centuries of knowledge regarding this. We know what happens after a blizzard or a hurricane, a drought or a flood.
When a huge storm like Sandy hit the East Coast, we had FEMA that was supposed to come in and help the victims. The federal government also came up with a couple of million for the States most affected, but it is still a problem that local first responders and utilities have to address most directly.
Obama was out in California to show his concern for the drought-stricken farmers and the administration is speeding delivery of $100 million of aid to livestock farmers, $15 million for areas hit hardest, and $60 million for California food banks to help the poor. Rep. Kevin McCarthy(R-CA) pointed out that the drought has been "exacerbated by federal and state regulations" including an environmental rule that placed "the well-being of fish…ahead of the well-being" of communities.
Like Rep. McCarthy, those on the scene point out that the drought is in part the result of the failure to restore the water flow from California's water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. House Bill 3964 does that, but only if the Senate will stop holding it up. Rep. McCarthy is joined by Rep. Devin Nunes explaining that California's system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years.
As Investors Business Daily pointed out, "Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of three million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years."
Obama made no mention of that, but it is an example of how, in the name of climate change billions are wasted or lost, such as when the outcry over Spotted Owls caused a vast portion of the Northwest's timber industry was decimated by the false claim that they were "endangered."
All this traces back to the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program. The IPCC was given a formal blessing by the UN General Assembly through Resolution 43/53.
And what has the IPCC done? It has championed the utterly false claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for warming the Earth and that all the industries and other human activities that create CO2 emissions had to reduce them in order to save the Earth. In 2007 the IPCC and Al Gore would share a Nobel Peace Prize. As an organization and as an individual these two have proved to be the among the greatest liars on planet Earth.
Dr. Craig D. Idso, PhD, is the founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He is an advisor to The Heartland Institute and, with Dr. Robert M. Carter and Dr. S. Fred Singer, authored the 2011 study, "Climate Change Reconsidered", for the entertainingly named NIPCC—Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. Published by The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank that has led the effort to expose the IPCC since 2009, sponsoring eight international conferences, the report was updated in 2013 and a new update is due in March.
Writing in The Hill on January 30, Dr. Idso said "the President's concerns for the planet are based upon flawed and speculative science; and his policy prescription is a recipe for failure" noting that "literally thousands of scientific studies have produced findings that run counter to his view of future climate":
As just one example, and a damning one at that, all of the computer models upon which his vision is based failed to predict the current plateau (the cooling cycle) in global temperature that has continued for the past 16 years. That the Earth has not warmed significantly during this period, despite an 8 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, is a major indictment of the model's credibility in predicting future climate, as well as the President's assertion that debate on this topic is 'settled'.
"The taxation or regulation of CO2 emissions is an unnecessary and detrimental policy option that should be shunned," said Dr. Idso. Unfortunately for Americans, that is precisely the policy being driven by Obama's Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Department of the Interior and other elements of the government.
So the trip to California with its promise of more million spent when, in fact, the Green policies of that State have caused the loss of the Central lands that produce a major portion of the nation's food stocks, reveals how utterly corrupt Obama's climate-related policies have been since he took office in 2009.
Billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered by the crony capitalism that is the driving force behind the IPCC's and U.S. demands for the reduction of CO2 emissions.
There is climate change and it has been going on for 4.5 billion years on planet Earth. It has everything to do with the Sun, the oceans, volcanic activity and other natural factors. It has nothing to do with the planet's human population.
What is profoundly disturbing is the deliberate political agenda behind the President's lies and Secretary of State John Kerry's irrational belief that climate change is the world's "most fearsome" weapon of mass destruction.
[First published at Warning Signs.]
The Other Union Ruining Schools
David Horowitz has a new campaign in which he points out rotten schools thrive in Democrat-controlled inner cities and predominantly hurt poor, minority children. His new one-minute ad dramatically makes that point, calling the situation an "atrocity" and pointing a finger at teachers unions as the cause.
"One out of three children in America's inner cities fails to graduate," the clip's narrator says. "Half of those who do are functionally illiterate."
The problem, she says, is adults who oppose reform: Democrats and unions.
Teachers unions do block reforms that would benefit kids. Policies they favor degrade education, such as firing and hiring teachers according only to how long they've been in a particular school rather than their quality or area of expertise.
As President Franklin Roosevelt noted, government employee labor unions also are a scam against taxpayers because they let unions elect the officials they'll bargain with, effectively directing tax money to political activism and ensuring no taxpayer or child advocate sits at the bargaining table.
Unions are certainly among those responsible for the 702 percent increase in school staff since 1950, while student enrollment increased only 96 percent. Public schools have gotten approximately 300 percent more expensive but hardly a whit better since the 1970s, as the Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson has documented. That's a disgrace.
Although it's fair to blame the unions for many ills besetting the nation's schools, unions are by no means the only big problem affecting education.
I've talked to many teachers whose jobs were threatened when they exercised free speech, and often the local union was their only protection. Unions occasionally meet real needs in a school teaching market monopolized in each locality by a single player — the government.
Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute also discusses some freedoms school leaders don't realize they have, partly because of union-blaming.
"The problem is not just the very real statutory, regulatory, and contractual barriers, but also the 'culture of can't,' a culture in which even surmountable impediments or ankle-high obstacles are treated as absolute prohibitions," he said.
Horowitz's ad risks oversimplifying the problems with public education and overpromising success. Probably the biggest reason for the inner-city atrocity this ad targets is not teachers unions or the "culture of can't" but the lack of another kind of union: marriages.
Family structure is the single largest predictor of economic mobility, a new Harvard University study found. It's also a predictor of education success. Children raised by both biological parents have higher graduation rates, math and reading test scores, college-going and completion rates, fewer behavior problems and other family-generated riches.
Combine this with the dismal statistics that 7-in-10 African-American children and 1-in-2 Hispanic children are born to unmarried mothers. That fact alone clouds their life prospects.
It's easier — and fairer — to beat up on a big, bad labor union boss than a struggling single mom. But we can and should beat up on deadbeat dads, as Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute has suggested, and without involving government.
We could start with positive public education campaigns, touting the benefits of stable, married parents for all children. It is a scandal the way the media ignores this huge and growing social, educational and economic problem. Pretending it is the teachers unions who deserve blame, without mentioning the failures of parents' unions, will only perpetuate kids' failure and suffering.
[First published by Watchdog.org]
A Brutal Chicago Winter, Global Warming, and Just Weather
I moved to Chicago in 2010 after five years of living in perfect Pasadena, California — where I looked at the sun setting on the beautiful San Gabriel Mountians every day during what for East Coasters and Midwesterners can be a miserable train commute home.
Sure, sometimes the mountains were on fire, but I wasn't too concerned. The view was still beautiful to a man raised in Pittsburgh. Hell, I played softball in the shadow of the historic Rose Bowl — at night in December and January. How could one find something to complain about weather wise? As far was I as concerned, Pasadena in winter was the definition of Lower 48 paradise.
But for most of my life I've known what "real winter" is like. I hate it, but I can endure it. My blood didn't get "vampire thin" during my interregnum from actual weather for five years in SoCal. And I enjoyed the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011. It was a great one day reminder of what winter really is like for most of the country.
But this year has been brutal — as if I moved to Winnipeg, not Chicago. As you're reading this on the morning of February 17, 2014, Chicago is getting another six inches of snow. That wouldn't be so bad except for the 60 inches of snow that has already fallen. That's about 250 percent more snow at this date than has usually fallen in a typical Chicago winter. We have had almost no days to melt it off all year — this being the coldest winter in Chicago in generations — and we still have about six weeks of winter left to go. This is already the snowiest winter in 34 years in Chicago. And if we get one more significant storm after this one, Chicago could see its snowiest winter EVER since records began in 1884.
So why is the title of this post, "A Brutal Chicago Winter, Global Warming, and Just Weather"? Well, these things happen. I feel bad for the residents of Chicago from 1977 to 1979. They averaged almost 90 inches of snow each of those winters. Less than a handful of times in the intervening years has the snowfall been even half that amount.
Back in the late '70s, talk of an approaching ice age was all the rage. And in the '90s and '00s, man-caused "global warming" caused by man was the fashion. Even Robert Kennedy Jr. talked of his kids never enjoying a skiing or a sled ride.
But I'm not so vain to believe this season's anomalies in Chicago and elsewhere prove a given climate theory. Weather does not equal climate — though that is what the alarmists always say.
This year has just given Chicago a winter that makes me angry. It will pass. Spring will come. And the real data about what is happening to our climate will endure.
Carbon Benefits Exceed Costs by up to 500:1
[Ed: Dr. Roger Bezdek is the co-author of this post.]
The Environmental Protection Agency, other government agencies and various scientists contend that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming and climate change. They use this claim to justify repressive regulations for automobiles, coal-fired power plants and other facilities powered by hydrocarbon energy.
Because these rules are costing millions of jobs and billions of dollars, a federal Interagency Working Group (IWG) devised the "social cost of carbon" concept (SCC) – which attaches arbitrary monetary values to the alleged impacts of using hydrocarbons and emitting carbon dioxide. SCC estimates represent the supposed monetized damages associated with incremental increases in "carbon pollution" in a given year.
With little publicity, debate or public input, in 2010 the IWG set the cost at $22 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. Then, in 2013 (again with little notice), it arbitrarily increased the SCC to $36/ton, enabling agencies to proclaim massive, unacceptable damages from "carbon," and enormous benefits from their regulations. Recently, the Department of Energy used the $36 formula to justify proposed standards for microwave ovens, cell phone chargers and laptops!
The SCC allows unelected bureaucrats to wildly amplify the alleged impacts of theoretical manmade climate disasters, exaggerate the supposed benefits of rules, minimize their costs, and ignore the value to society of the facility, activity or product they want to regulate. That is exactly what is happening.
Fundamental flaws in the SCC concept and process make the agencies' analyses – and proposed rulemakings – questionable, improper, and even fraudulent and illegal. A new Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) analysis examines this in detail.
1) Executive Order 12866 requires that federal agencies "assess both the costs and the benefits of the intended regulation and, recognizing that some costs and benefits are difficult to quantify, propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify its costs." (EO 12866 was issued by President Clinton in 1993.) A recent Office of Management and Budget statement notes that careful consideration of both costs and benefits is important in determining whether a regulation is worth implementing at all. Indeed, any valid and honest benefit-cost (B-C) analysis likewise requires that agencies consider both the benefits and the costs of carbon-based fuels and carbon dioxide emissions.
Thus far, the EPA and other government agency analyses, press releases and regulatory proposals have highlighted only the alleged costs of carbon-based fuels and their supposed effects on climate change. They have never even mentioned the many clear benefits associated with those fuels and emissions.
2) EPA claims the government is "committed to updating the current estimates, as the science and economic understanding of climate change and its impacts on society improve over time." Given the Obama Administration's history and agenda, it is highly likely that SCC values will only increase in forthcoming updates – with literally trillions of dollars at stake.
3) The IWG methodology for developing SCC estimates is so infinitely flexible, so devoid of any rigorous standards, that it could produce almost any estimates that any agency might desire. For example, its computer models are supposed to combine climate processes, economic growth, and feedbacks between the climate and the global economy, into a single modeling framework.
However, only limited research links climate impacts to economic damages, and much of it is speculative, at best. Even the IWG admits that the exercise is subject to "simplifying assumptions and judgments, reflecting the various modelers' best attempts to synthesize the available scientific and economic research characterizing these relationships." [emphasis added] Each model uses a different approach to translate global warming into damages; transforming economic damages over time into a single value requires "judgments" about how to discount them; and federal officials have been highly selective in choosing which "available scientific and economic research" they will utilize. As objective outside analysts have concluded, this process is "close to useless."
4) The differences in the 2010 and 2013 SCC estimates are so large, and of such immense potential significance, as to raise serious questions regarding their integrity and validity – especially since, prior to 2010, the "official" government estimate for carbon costs was zero!
Finally, and most importantly, the agencies hypothesize almost every conceivable carbon "cost" – to agriculture, forestry, water resources, "forced migration" of people and wildlife, human health and disease, coastal cities, ecosystems and wetlands. But they completely ignore every one of the obvious and enormous benefits of using fossil fuels … and of emitting carbon dioxide! Just as incredibly, they have done this in complete disregard of EO 12866 … and the OMB ruling that careful consideration of both costs and benefits is important in determining whether a regulation is worth implementing at all. Had they followed the law and B-C rules, they would have found that:
Hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide benefits outweigh the cost by as much as 500 to 1!
In other words, the costs of EPA and other restrictions on fossil fuel use exceed their benefits by 50:1 (using the 2013 SCC of $36/ton of CO2) or even 500:1 (using the 2010 SCC of $22/ton). The entire process is obviously detrimental to American lives, jobs, living standards, health and welfare. Yet it is being imposed in the name of preventing highly speculative "dangerous manmade climate change."
The successful development and utilization of fossil fuels facilitated successive industrial revolutions, launched the modern world, created advanced technological societies, and enabled the high quality of life that many now take for granted. Over the past 200 years, primarily because of hydrocarbon energy, people's health and living standards soared, global life expectancy more than doubled, human population increased eight-fold, and average incomes increased eleven-fold, economist Indur Goklany calculates.
Comparing world GDP and CO2 emissions over the past century shows a strong and undeniable relationship between world GDP and the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. In fact, the fossil fuels that provide the vast bulk of the world's total energy needs – and from which CO2 is an essential byproduct – are creating $60 trillion to $70 trillion per year in world GDP! That relationship will almost certainly continue for the foreseeable future. Today, 81% of the world's energy is from fossil fuels. For at least the next several decades, fossil fuels will continue to supply 75-80% of global energy.
That means any reductions in United States fossil fuel use or carbon dioxide emissions will be almost imperceptible amidst the world's huge and rapidly increasing levels of both. In fact, the World Resources Institute says 59 nations are already planning to build more than 1,200 new coal-fired power plants – on top of what those nations and Germany, Poland and other developed nations are already building
However, hydrocarbon use has also helped raise atmospheric concentrations from about 320 ppm carbon dioxide to nearly 400 ppm (from 0.032% of the atmosphere to 0.040%). The Obama Administration (wrongly) regards this slight increase as "dangerous." That is an erroneous, shortsighted perception that improperly ignores the enormous benefits of this increase in plant-fertilizing CO2.
Carbon dioxide truly is "the gas of life," the basis of all life on Earth. It spurs plant growth, and enhances agricultural productivity. Plants use it to produce the organic matter out of which they construct their tissues, which subsequently become sources of fiber, building materials and food for humans and animals.
Carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by humans 1961-2011 increased global crop production by some $3.5 trillion, plant biologist and CO2 expert Craig Idso calculates. Human CO2 emissions will likely add $11.6 trillion in additional benefits between 2013 and 2050 – based on actual measurements of CO2-induced plant growth and crop production, not on computer models, Idso estimates.
Carbon dioxide benefits overwhelmingly outweigh the SCC – no matter which government reports are used. In fact, any estimate for "social costs of carbon" is hidden amid the statistical noise of CO2 benefits.
Prodigious amounts of fossil fuels are required to sustain future economic growth, especially in developing countries. If the world is serious about increasing economic growth, reducing energy deprivation, and increasing or maintaining living standards, fossil fuels are absolutely essential. Their benefits far outweigh any conceivable costs, and will continue to do so for decades to come.
These undeniable facts must form the foundation for energy, environmental and regulatory policies. Otherwise, regulations will be far worse than the harms they supposedly redress.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death. Dr. Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc., in Washington, DC.
Presidents Day and 'The Decline of the Republican Spirit'
Government Broadband Overbuilds Are Anti-competitive
Governments do not "compete" with companies. Governments tax, limit, police and judge companies.
So when governments try and offer a similar service that private companies have long provided consumers, these governments effectively are opposing and undermining private companies in the marketplace – not "competing" with them.
That's why some municipalities, which are overbuilding existing wire-line and wireless broadband companies' services, are acting anti-competitively – not pro-competitively as they try to claim.
So what's going on here? It's simply politics.
At the local level, activists of common carrier net neutrality have long pushed municipalities to offer broadband as a government-owned utility service.
It is a key element of a broader political grassroots movement that seeks a government mandate that the Internet be a public information commons – not an e-marketplace.
These utopian activists oppose the "economics of scarcity," i.e. free market competition and private property of Internet infrastructure or content.
They imagine a new virtual society based on the "economics of abundance," i.e. no cost use of the Internet because the government owns or subsidizes the cost of broadband infrastructure, and common carrier regulates a zero-price for downstream traffic.
Since these activists politically oppose unregulated broadband competition, it is no surprise that they claim there is insufficient broadband competition to serve or protect consumer interests. Conveniently, they ignore that America enjoys the most facilities-based broadband competition in the world.
Tellingly, this utopian movement's municipal broadband record to date has been one of mostly waste and failure.
At the federal level, these activists continue to pressure the FCC to force broadband to become a public utility by unilaterally "reclassifying" competitive broadband companies' businesses from an unregulated Internet information service to a monopoly telephone service.
That would reverse a consistent forty-three years of FCC precedents to not apply monopoly telephone price regulations on the competitive computer data services market to promote innovation.
At the state level, these same activists oppose state legislation geared to prevent municipalities from undermining market-based broadband competition and investment with anti-competitive government entry into the broadband business.
Why is it anti-competitive for municipalities to oppose private broadband companies in their localities?
First, in the 1996 Telecom Act Congress made promoting communications competition the law of the land. To forward that goal the FCC ruled broadband was an interstate service under federal regulatory jurisdiction.
Nowhere in that law did Congress define or conceive a government to be a potential "competitor."
Second, everyone knows the old adage, "You can't fight city hall." A private company certainly cannot compete with the regulator who controls their business' livelihood – access to public rights of way underground, on poles, or on wireless towers.
Moreover a company can't compete with their tax assessor, permit-grantor, police force, etc. – no more than a citizen can "compete" with the powers of a policeman, prosecutor, or judge.
Third, a private company cannot compete with a municipality that can compel taxpayers to subsidize the municipality's overbuild broadband network even if they don't vote for it, sign up for it, or if they want to use a private company service. That's not competition – it's a rigged game.
Fourth, who thinks government can deliver complex technology better than private companies?
Building and operating a broadband network is much more than digging trenches and laying fiber. It is a very complex and difficult systems integration and management endeavor to do competently, economically and responsibly.
Moreover, governments are well known to vastly underestimate the complexity and degree of difficulty in delivering successful systems integration.
Americans learned this lesson only too well last fall when the HealthCare.gov website managers failed to anticipate that one needs to not only test individual systems, but also how all the different subsystems work or don't work together, under most all circumstances.
Provisioning and operating advanced technology networks is a job for professional technologists and experienced systems integrators who have successfully done it before – not municipalities, which have neither the core competency nor the experience to do it.
Sadly, this is why so many municipalities have run up large broadband infrastructure debts that can't be repaid. It is why they have failed in creating economically sustainable and operationally proficient broadband networks.
Fifth, municipalities building opposing networks create a predatory and hostile market environment that unnecessarily and unfairly chills much needed private capital investment to best serve consumers.
Lastly, what about all the obvious privacy and surveillance conflicts? Who thinks it is a good idea for the mayor or the police to have access to local voters' emails and web surfing histories?
In short, municipalities building broadband networks are not "competition," they are effectively political opposition to the existence of private broadband networks.
In this light, municipal broadband networks are highly anti-competitive, heavy-handed government actions.
[First published at the Daily Caller.]
Presidents Day and Tevi Troy's Book a Perfect Match
The Heartland Institute last week hosted a luncheon lecture with author and presidential scholar Tevi Troy, who talked about his new book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House. [Watch the video of his presentation here, or in the player embedded below.]
Troy, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, is the rare presidential historian who has also served as a high-level White House aide. Confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 2007 as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration, Troy is now recognized as an expert on health care policy. Having earned his doctorate in American Civilization at the University of Texas at Austin, Troy is also the author of Intellectuals and the American Presidency.
As an icebreaker, figuratively speaking now that Lake Michigan is mostly frozen over, Troy acknowledged being in Obama's home town, and spoke about Obama's Chicago connections — before digressing into Obama's recent State of the Union address by noting how these annual addresses are continuing to receive less and less attention. While 67 million watched Clinton address the nation, Obama's recent State of the Union address captured only 30 million listeners.
Further noted was how seldom memorable phases occur in a State of the Union address which linger on to elevate an address above the ordinary run-of-the-mill. Such was the situation with Obama's recent State of the Union Address. But that didn't stop Twitter from lighting up with nearly 2 million tweets expressing support of disdain for what they heard Obama say.
Initially as a way to market his book, Troy considered calling it From Cicero to Snooki: How Culture Shapes Our Presidents. What made Troy believe Snooki and Cicero could exist in the same title? As Troy explained, he recognized Obama's affinity for pop culture, observed during the time of the Congressional battle over Obama's health-care bill. President Obama told a joke at the White House Correspondents Dinner that zeroed in on Snooki and Minority Speaker John Boehner, referencing the indoor tanning tax within Obamacare. Not long afterwards, however, Obama denied knowing who Snooki was when appearing on The View.
Perhaps fortunate for Troy is that his submitted title proposal wasn't a hit with his publisher, who thought it made no sense to link the names of Cicero and Snooki together. The two names just didn't overlap in any way. Snooki was but a "flash in the pan" pop media sensation (the reality TV show featuring Snooki wasn't even around during the presidency of George W. Bush) whereas the collected works of Cicero are just as relevant today. Which led Troy to an unanswered question: "Is it better to have a president who knows about Snooki or one who doesn't?"
Prompted by his publisher's rejection, Tevi Troy settled on What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 year of Popular Culture in the White House as a way to tell the story of how our presidents have been shaped by popular culture. And what a delightful and entertaining story Tevi Troy had to tell as he regaled his attentive Heartland audience with fascinating tidbits of information that only stoked the fire to learn more about how presidents have affected the culture and culture has affected them as set forth in Troy's book.
In Thomas Jefferson's day, only two "pop culture" options were available: Reading books and attending live performances, and 18th century presidents availed themselves to both. Even though books were very expensive, Thomas Jefferson had a library of 6,000 books. John Adams' library consisted of 3,000. Books shaped the American Revolution, which shaped our nation. It was the writings of John Locke, Troy said, which formed the basis for our Constitution. Not well known is that the early colonists were literate — likely to have a Bible and Shakespeare in their homes. Thus a concept of governing evolved that called for an enlightened leader to preside over an educated populace.
By the beginning of the 19th century every president had attended at least one live theater performance. Presidents even went on good-will tours to be seen. As theatrical performances could vary as to the actors of stage, and the way the audience reacted to the dialogue, political expression developed.
Such was the situation in the reelection bid of President John Quincy Adams in 1828 — when Andrew Jackson defeated first term incumbent Adams, having first lost to Adams in his bid for president in1824 in an election decided by the House of Representatives. The win of Adams over Jackson in 1824 was known as a "corrupt bargain," angering Jackson supporters. So it was during a Washington, D.C. theatrical performance with John Quincy Adams present in the audience that ad lib dialogue by actors conveyed comments favorable to Andrew Jackson. This was enough to give Jackson more than the edge he needed to defeat Adams handily in 1828. The unschooled Jackson was seen as a "man of the people," and it irked Adams that Jackson was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard, Adams' own alma mater.
Abraham Lincoln was likewise good at conveying the common touch, according to Troy. Lincoln knew how to speak to the people in the language they understood. Lincoln also loved books and was obsessed with reading. In light of how expensive books were, and not being a wealthy man, Lincoln owned only a limited number of books — among them being the Bible, Shakespeare, and Aesop's Fables, from which Lincoln learned how to tell tales that resonated with voters. Books elevated Lincoln from his humble beginnings and into a self-educated man, proof that America was a land where one could rise up from poverty to become successful and even become president.
While the railroad was an important technical development in the 19th century, radio emerged as a seismic change in the 20th century. President Warren G. Harding was the first president to use the radio to get his message out, reaching the then amazing total of 125,000 Americans. President Calvin Coolidge was likewise skilled in the use of the radio, using this tool effectively as a savvy radio operator.
FDR was a skilled radio operator, even before being elected president 1932, Troy said. Roosevelt was the first president who shaped his speeches, not for the people in the room, but for the many listening at home. Although Roosevelt is now known for his "fireside chats," FDR only gave them a few times a year because he didn't want to over-expose himself to the American people.
Troy noted in his talk taht Roosevelt took his radio speeches very seriously — proven by the fact that he used special paper that didn't crackle when turning pages, and FDR's insertion of a false tooth in the front of his mouth to eliminate a whistling sound when he spoke. Roosevelt also crossed out all the "fancy words" his speech-writers gave him, Troy said, so he could better connect with the common folk. FDR was so fixated on appearing as "man of the people," he served hot dogs to the Queen of England on her visit to the White House. Could it ever happen today that Roosevelt's bout with polio, leaving him wheel chair bound during his presidency, was unknown to most Americans? The media stuck to publishing photos of Roosevelt minus any hint of a wheelchair.
FDR also exploited the Silver Screen's ability to distribute political messages. Roosevelt made use of the film industry indirectly to protect him and also gathered celebrities round him for their support — who never depicted him in a wheelchair.
It was with the introduction of TV that presidential politics and the culture were redefined, Troy said. A novelty during the presidency of Harry Truman, it came to be a make-or-break medium in presidential politics. By 1956 percent 73 percent of American homes were in areas capable of receiving TV programming.
President Eisenhower was the first president to host a televised press conference. What is still considered Ike's most famous presidential speeches of all time is his televised farewell address in which he warned of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."
Ike, the first presidential TV junkie, especially liked I Love Lucy. It just so happened that the birth episode of little Ricky happened during the time of Ike's Inaugural speech in 1953. To Ike's chagrin at the time, the I Love Lucy episode received more viewers than did his inaugural ceremony. TV did remain a problem for Ike during his campaign. It made Ike look old and gray and lacking the appearance of a war hero. Hollywood adviser Robert Montgomery was brought in to help perk up Ike's image, Troy said.
TV certainly played a part in the September 1960 Nixon/Kennedy election, which featured the nation's first televised debate. Ike, Troy noted, had warned Nixon not to debate Kennedy on TV, realizing Kennedy's superior ability in projecting himself favorably — and all who watched the Nixon/Kennedy TV debate declared Kennedy the winner. While Kennedy came off as calm and confident, Nixon appeared sickly and sweaty. Radio listeners actually picked Nixon as the winner. Kennedy would never have won the presidency had TV not been so unkind to Nixon.
When elected, Kennedy skillfully used TV and excelled at doing unedited live news conferences. Note from the Troy presentation: Kennedy was warned by his advisors about being too close to Hollywood celebrities. We know now that Kennedy for the most part disregarded this advice.
Skipping ahead, we all now live in the era of generations raised in the 24-hour news cycle on TV — and worse, the era of Twitter and Facebook, of which Obama is a master. The one time Obama's father came to visit young Obama in Hawaii, Troy said, he tried to get Obama's grandparents to turn off the "contraption," upset that his son was watching too much TV.
Obama still likes to watch TV — arguably too much — and favors shows watched by the "1 percent" of Americans, rather than the "99 percent." Obama's publicly expressed favorite shows, Troy said, are Homeland, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Entourage, and The Wire — all on premium pay-cable. Once, when told about a sleeper terrorist cell, Obama replied that it sounded like "Homeland," Troy said.
In the 2012 match-up between Mitt Romney and President Obama, the incumbent president used pop culture to his advantage by appearing on soft media venues like "The View" and Leno — making Obama the first president to go on a late night TV show. Romney, in contrast, appeared dated. When asked about a favorite movie, Romney chose a 1986 movie, Bueller's Day Off, which didn't resonate with the younger crowd. Hanging out with celebrities also helped Obama look better and provided him with a platform to amplify his message, thereby contributing to his wins in 2008 and 2012.
Troy said, however, that there was a positive message for Republicans. He believes conservatives are in a better position today than they were thirty years ago to have their message heard, although liberals continue to have the advantage in pop culture, Hollywood, and messaging through film.
Discounting the Republican disadvantage with Hollywood and the mainstream media, conservatives do own the talk media. Troy noted that recently Duck Dynasty has become associated with conservative TV viewing. Knowing how to engage in the cultural battle is essential to a winning strategy.
Troy's book contains a wealth of material following its final and eleventh chapter. Featured is a comprehensive "notes" section — which, chapter by chapter, tells the location of the presented material. There is also a helpful index to easily locate the references made throughout the book. (I was most interested in the Appendix with its "Rules for Presidents Engaging in Pop Culture." It would behoove Republican candidates to read up on these rules.[UPDATE: On February 13th Troy wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal titled, "The Presidential Bible Class," which features information presented in his book.]
Watch the video of his presentation below:
Want A Government Official To Change His Mind? Hire Him!
As President Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar was charged with being one of the biggest defenders of the Obama agenda on energy and environmental issues – among them, running interference on the potential construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. But now that he's out of government, Salazar feels free to change his tune:
Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an interview Thursday that his endorsement of construction of the Keystone oil sands pipeline comes after learning new information, including that the pipeline would not greatly increase carbon emissions.
Speaking at an energy conference in Texas earlier this week, Salazar said he supported the project. He said he believed construction could "be done in a way that creates a win-win for energy and the environment."
This is the first time Salazar, now a lawyer in the private sector, has endorsed the pipeline, which would carry crude from tar sands in Canada to refineries along the Gulf Coast."
Of course, this wasn't Salazar's tune less than two years ago, when he was releasing statements like this:
As Secretary of the Interior my job is to help protect America's natural resources, our cultures and tribal communities, and supply energy for the long term. My concerns about the Keystone Pipeline are in line with the Obama Administration's position on the issue. I feel that the President acted responsibly in rejecting the initial proposal on the grounds of environmental issues.
The rushed decision to give the President a 60 day period to review the Keystone pipeline, which goes through six states, hindered any probability of it being passed. If the reformed version of the proposal poses no threats to our nation's resources and does not endanger communities along the pipeline, then I am in support of it's approval. Until the guidelines for this project are significantly altered, the pipeline should not be constructed because of the potential risks it poses to the well being of US citizens. Of course the main concern is the possibility that the pipeline could rupture near the Ogallala aquifer, the main source of drinking water in the Midwest.
We trust that the Administration and the EPA will exercise prudent judgement and will not approve a proposal that poses such threats. While the southernmost portion is being built, we will wait for an acceptable and detailed plan before constructing the rest of the pipeline. We strongly urge TransCanada to present a more pragmatic and nonpartisan approach that will serve the best interests of the American people.
Now, it may be that Salazar has had a legitimate change of heart on this matter, or that new evidence altered his perception of the matter… or it could be that his employer just changed. About that lawyer in private practice job the Denver Post mentioned: Salazar is now a partner at WilmerHale, charged with building business for the Washington, DC-based firm's new Denver office. And what is he working on there?
WilmerHale's energy and environmental practice is nationally known for advising companies in the technology, life sciences, energy and manufacturing sectors, and for shaping regulatory and policy developments on both a federal and state level. The firm's strategic response practice handles multifaceted, high-profile challenges with legal, public policy and media dimensions.
Our investigations and litigation practices draw on the collective experience of our many lawyers who have served in senior government positions, handling matters across the nation and abroad. The firm's Native American law practice has a long track record of handling high-stakes litigation and complex regulatory matters on a range of issues—including energy and natural resource development, land acquisition, water rights, and gaming matters of particular importance in the western United States.
In other words, Salazar was happy to be part of an administration that's done everything it can to block energy development and particularly the Keystone pipeline… but now that he's employed by those with different priorities, he is happy to flip flop.
I wonder whatever that "new information" could be that made Salazar change his mind. Was it "you're hired"?
[First published at The Federalist.]
Do We Really Need Nuclear Fusion For Power, or Might its Quest Be Another Government Spending Boondoggle?
[Editor's Note: Ed Ingold is the co-author of this post.]
According to a February 12 article in USA Today by Wendy Kock titled "Quest for pollution-free fusion energy takes major step":
The decades-long quest to develop a pollution-free energy source via nuclear fusion — the power source of the sun and other stars — has taken what scientists say is a major step forward.
The article cites a study by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the government funded U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in which a lab experiment produced more energy out of fusion than was put into the fuel that sparked the reaction. What followed in the article was an admission that the lab results fell short of what is considered the "holygrail of fusion: ignition — the point at which more energy is produced than was used throughout the process."
A day later, February 13, the quest to develop nuclear fusion was questioned by James Conca, a Forbes.com contributor, in his article, "Do We Really Need Nuclear Fusion for Power":
Why build a fission reactor to make tritium via neutron capture on deuterium to make the fuel for a fusion reactor, when you could just use the fission reactor to make the energy ion the first place?
Ed Ingold remembers his father-in-law saying there is enough uranium above ground, much of it stored in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he worked, to power 1,000 reactors of 1,000 MW each. To put that in perspective, each of those reactors would have twice the output of all the windmills in the US.
So-called "fast" reactors refer to the harnessing of high energy (fast) neutrons to "burn" naturally occurring uranium 238. Unfortunately, the Fast Breeder Reactor Project at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) was halted by the renowned "nucular [sic] engineer," President Jimmy Carter, and the scientists involved were re-tasked to harnessing the limitless power of coal. The other "nuclear" problem, spent fuel disposal, can be credited to another famous Navy veteran, President Richard Nixon, who halted development of fuel reprocessing. We aren't burying nuclear ashes. To the contrary, only about 5 percent of nuclear fuel is consumed before fission products accumulate, absorbing neutrons, until the fission reaction cannot be sustained.
Fusion reactors don't burn "limitless" fuel, vis-à-vis hydrogen, like the sun. They burn relatively rare isotopes of hydrogen – deuterium and tritium. Deuterium constitutes only 0.016 percent of naturally occurring hydrogen, as found in water. The separation process consumes huge amounts of electricity and a vast supply of water. A 200 MW power station, dedicated to producing deuterium, would yield about twelve liters of "heavy water" (D2O) a year. Tritium does not occur naturally (12 year half-life), but is made in fission reactors. As the good professor points out in the linked article, you can make tritium on the fly by irradiating lithium with fast neutrons. Incidentally, that's how it works in a hydrogen bomb, packed with (among other things) solid lithium deuteride. One downside is that 99 percent of the world's lithium is found in the mountains of Peru and China, and most of what we import goes into batteries.
There also some questions about the "limitless" energy available from fusion reactions. The project hailed in the Forbes article uses a D+T reaction, which yields helium and a fast neutron. About 80 percent of the energy of this reaction is imparted to the neutron. The tritium (T) comes from neutron bombardment of lithium, which is endothermic (consumes energy).
The net result is 99 percent of the energy is in the form of fast neutrons. Since neutrons don't interact well with materials, only about 30 percent of this energy can be converted into heat for turbines, and replacing the heat needed to sustain the fusion reaction. The by-products of the fusion reactions are not radioactive (other than tritium, which is difficult to contain), but the neutrons render everything they contact radioactive. In short, instead of burying spent fuel, you bury the reactor, once the materials of its construction are transmuted until they are not structurally sound.
It's also puzzling why it's claimed that this experiment produced more energy than it consumed. The brief (7 billionths of a second) reaction released about 9,400 joules of energy due to the fusion reaction, above that used to heat the reactants. To achieve this, approximately 1.8 trillion joules of energy was imparted by a bank of X-Ray lasers, which occupy a 10 story building with a footprint of over an acre. It's like an inveterate gambler who brags about $500 of winnings, after laying down $5,000 on the ponies during the season — or Congress, where spending less than you wished is called savings.
There's nothing wrong with the science, and it's important to continue. For the foreseeable future, we should recognize that the most important gains are in the form of knowledge and technology, rather than a viable source of electricity. How few men stepped on the moon, but who doesn't benefit from the technology which came out of the Apollo project? Who hasn't worn or used something made of Teflon, used a computer, watched a program broadcast by satellites, or handled a cell phone? Someday there will be a Scottie who knows just what to do with a dilithium crystal or two.
On Fox: Debate Over Climate Change Heats Up
On Valentine's Day evening, "Special Report with Bret Baier" took President Obama's desire for a $1 billion climate change "resililence fund" to discuss the science and politics of the issue.
Charles Krauthamer rightly calls the left's adherence to climate change as the cause of all calamities a "religion." And Steve Hayes counters the typical "97 percent" line put out by Juan Williams, and most climate alarmists. (What Steve lacked was something to cite showing why it's bunk; Heartland's James M. Taylor does so in his Forbes column.)
You'll want to watch it below.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
There is No Global Warming and Will Be None for Decades
I recently received an unsigned email about my Sierra Club commentary in which I pointed out that it opposes traditional forms of energy and made a passing reference to Obama's lie that "climate change," the new name for global warming, was now "settled science."
Global warming was never based on real science. It was conjured up using dubious computer models and we were supposed to believe that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could actually predict what the climate would be 20, 50, or 100 years from now.
The writer of the email disagreed with me:
lol you are a f**king idiot. you don't believe there is global warming going on? you need to let your prejudices go and stop basing your views on what your political stance is. . . . do you research you f**king f**got.
Now, not everyone who believes in global warming is as rude as this individual and certainly not as ignorant, but his message suggests that those who do not believe in it do so as the result of "a political stance" when, in fact, our views are based on science.
Anyone familiar with my writings knows that a lot of research is involved. In my case, it dates back to the late 1980s when the global warming hoax began to be embraced by politicians like Al Gore who made millions selling worthless "carbon credits" while warning that "Earth has a fever."
A small army of scientists lined their pockets with government grants to produce data that supported the utterly baseless charge that carbon dioxide was causing the Earth to warm. They castigated other scientists or people like myself as "deniers" while we proffered to call ourselves skeptics. They were joined by most of the media that ignored the real science. And the curricula in our schools were likewise corrupted with the hoax.
Then, about 17 years ago the Earth began to cool. It had nothing to do with carbon dioxide — which the Environmental Protection Agency deems a "pollutant" despite the fact that all life on Earth would die without it — and everything to do with the sun.
A few days after the email arrived, two-thirds of the contiguous U.S.A. was covered by snow. As this is being written, Lake Superior is 92 percent frozen, setting a new record. As of February 5, the entire Great Lakes system was, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, 77 percent covered with ice.
On February 1, NOAA and NASA held a joint press conference in which they released data about 2013's global surface temperature. They made reference to a "pause" in the temperature that began in 1997. Dr. David Whitehouse, science editor for the BBC, noted:
When asked for an explanation for the 'pause' by reporters, Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA and Dr. Thomas Karl of NOAA spoke of contributions from volcanoes, pollution, a quiet Sun, and natural variability. In other words, they don't know.
Both of these government agencies, along with others like the EPA and the Department of the Interior, are staffed by people who understand that their employers are deeply committed to the global warming hoax. One should assume that almost anything they have to say about the "pause" is based entirely on politics, not science.
Then, too, despite the many measuring stations from which data is extracted to determine the Earth's climate, there is a paucity of such stations in cold places like Siberia. Stations here in the U.S. are often placed in "heat islands" otherwise known as cities. If you put enough of them close to sources of heat, you get thermometer readings that produce, well, heat.
People in the U.S., England, Europe and other areas of the world who do not possess Ph.Ds in meteorology, climatology, geology, astronomy, and chemistry have begun to suspect that everything they have been told about global warming is false. Between 1300 and 1850 the northern hemisphere went through a mini-ice age. After that it began to warm up again. So, yes, there was global warming, but it was a natural cycle, not something caused by human beings. Nature doesn't care what we do. It is far more powerful than most of us can comprehend.
This brings us back to the sun. which determines, depending on where you are on planet Earth, how warm or cold you feel. The sun, too, goes through cycles, generally about eleven years long. When it is generating a lot of heat, its surface is filled with sunspots, magnetic storms.
When there are few sunspots, solar radiation diminishes and we get cold. Scientists who study the sun believe it may encounter another "Maunder minimum," named after astronomer Edward Maunder, in which the last "Little Ice Age," between 1645 and 1715, occurred. The Thames in England froze over as did the canals of Holland froze solid.
There is no global warming and scientists like Henrik Svensmark, the director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark's National Space Institute, believes that "world temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more."
I agree.
[First published at Warning Signs.]
'Alex' Tokeville Has Some Choice Words For President Obama
In his remarks at the White House the other day during the state visit of French President François Hollande, President Obama curiously referenced "Alex" De Tocqueville. Here's the video (click the speaker in the upper left-hand corner of the video for sound):
It's an interesting choice, given how much Tocqueville has to tell us about the world – and the Obamacare economy – we inhabit today. His critique of socialism during the Second Republic, in context, transitions beautifully to the modern day debate over Keynesian projects and the entitlement state. As the introduction notes, "The new republic believed that the unemployment problem which was plaguing Paris could be solved by setting up government work-projects, guaranteeing employment at a certain wage rate for all who desired it". Tocqueville even makes reference to why the American democracy he wrote about would never consider socialism. He even argued against a false understanding of inequality which led to socialist calls for more redistribution:
"Democracy extends the sphere of personal independence; socialism confines it. Democracy values each man at his highest; socialism makes of each man an agent, an instrument, a number. Democracy and socialism have but one thing in common—equality. But note well the difference. Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude."
This passage is apt as well, on the danger of a government which provides too much, and in the name of the best interests of a people, seizes away our liberty. But this passage of his represents perhaps the best response you'll ever read to Obama's approach to governance:
What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called "the government." They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law with the spirit of a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license. When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.
That's from Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 5, translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Of course, Tocqueville's views were not without controversy at the time. They still are in some corners.
Given @bdomenech's tweeting over the last 10 minutes, he seems to think we live under a 19th century monarchy.
— Jeff Spross (@jeffspross) February 11, 2014
@jeffspross No, we've got the phone to go with the pen now.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) February 11, 2014
[First posted at The Federalist.]
What The Washington Post's Factchecker Gets Wrong About Obamacare
If you set yourself up as the arbiter of all that is factual in the nation, you'd better keep your own facts straight.
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler is just such an arbiter, tossing out "Pinocchios" like Mardi Gras beads to all who offend his sense of rectitude. But from time to time, his rush to play "Gotcha" gets ahead of reason.
The most recent example was his pronouncement that Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) earned "Four Pinocchios" (the worst possible rating) for stating on Meet The Press, "Many employers are not hiring people because of Obamacare, 70 percent in some of the surveys of small businesses are saying that Obamacare is already harming their ability to hire people."
Kessler objects to this statement because he doesn't think the survey Portman referred to — a survey conducted by the Chamber of Commerce — is a very good one. That may very well be true, but it is still a survey, so Mr. Portman's statement is factual as far as that goes.
More importantly, Kessler writes:
The Chamber failed to disclose that 83 percent of small businesses surveyed said they would not be affected by the employer mandate, meaning any results that were reported were based on a subsample of just 17 percent.
Once the possibility of multiple answers are accounted for, it turned out just 4.5 to 8.5 percent of small business executives surveyed said they will reduce hours or full-time staff in response to the employer mandate.
In other words, the 74-percent claim was at least an eight-fold exaggeration.
Notice that Kessler is now focused exclusively on the employer mandate, but Portman didn't say anything about the employer mandate. Portman was talking about the overall effect of Obamacare on small business hiring. Small businesses (those under 50 employees) are not affected by the mandate, but they sure are affected by all the other provisions of the law. Because of the new benefits that are required in every insurance policy (things like coverage of pediatric dental services, 100 percent coverage of preventive care, allowing adult "children' to stay on their parents' policies, and so on), premiums have skyrocketed. For a moving example of this, see this video of the employees of a Pennsylvania company finding out what their new costs will be.
These new costs definitely "harm (small employers') ability to hire people." They also harm small employers ability to retain workers already hired. Portman is right and Kessler is wrong.
[Originally published on The Federalist]
A Broadband System Upgrade
As has been widely reported today, Comcast has proposed a $45.2 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., a merger of the number one and number four video service providers (DirecTV and Dish are numbers two and three). The consumer benefits are abundant, which the business proposal will demonstrate even under regulatory review, so that consumers can start enjoying the benefits as quickly as possible.
Faster broadband service will more quickly roll out to the eight million consumers that Comcast will be earning. Comcast has increased its broadband speeds essentially annually for well more than a decade, including being an industry leader in introducing DOCSIS 3.0, a significant boost to broadband speed. The FCC has noted that Comcast's broadband speeds are consistently higher than those at Time Warner Cable.
How is it that a "cable" company is advancing so rapidly? Cable companies are increasingly "tech" companies and Comcast more so than any. Most of the work of cable companies is now being done in the cloud, not in trenches through the earth. Comcast's Brian Roberts has remarked, "That's how you build a software company. In fact I think we would describe ourselves more as a technology and innovation company . . . "
The new product offerings by Comcast, and those in the pipeline, make clear that his assertion is more than just wishful thinking, it is the truth. A truism of the technology industry is that anything that can be expressed in hardware can be expressed in software and vice versa. Comcast is now demonstrating that in the cloud. The X1 Entertainment Operating System and Comcast's video on demand offerings provide 50,000 choices on TV. Comcast also offers 300,000 plus streaming choices on XfinityTV.com, and Xfinity TV mobile apps that offer 35 live streaming channels plus the ability to download to watch offline later. The innovations continue with the integration of Web video into the traditional stream of video content, an improved user interface focused on ease of use and customization, and a voice driven interface for the visually impaired.
As for hardware, Comcast's newly launched X1 DVR, which enables customers to watch their entire TV channel lineup and DVR recordings on mobile devices in the home, and download recorded content to take on-the-go are leading the industry.
And it is not just products, but services too. Comcast offers a program designed to get more students and families online by offering broadband and a home computer at drastically reduced prices for those who could least afford broadband. The program has signed up more than one million Americans, rapidly adding to the number of people with broadband at home. The low income families who qualify for the service have been using the online connection to try to better their situation. Fifty eight percent of the customers report that they have been using the broadband service to search and apply for employment.
All of these benefits-speed, products, services — will now be available to new customers, as Comcast's multi-billion dollar upgrade to its system now spreads.
With the number of cable subscribers declining in the last eight years bringing advanced technology and services to consumers is an industry imperative just to be able to stay in the game. During those same years satellite subscribers have grown by seven million subscribers and traditional telecommunications companies have scooped up another 11 million. The competition is real and fierce, and not about to lessen.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable serve completely different markets without overlap. So consumer choice is absolutely maintained even while consumers gain better technology and greater services. As for Comcast's competitors, which are growing in number, they will still face the same amount of competition
Further proof of the rabid competition siphoning off "cable" customers is that, in the end, Comcast really will end up with around 30 million subscribers, less than 30 percent of all the video subscribers in the U.S., approximately the size it was in 2006.
Regulators and legislators should tread carefully to not disrupt the ever accelerating innovation marketplace. Others may try to invent storylines about this business proposal but the facts make clear that consumers and innovation will win again.
How the Google-EC Competition Deal Harms Europe
Europe is the big loser in the Google-EC competition settlement.
Rather than enforcing European competition law against systemic abuses of dominance by the single most dominant company in Europe, this political deal surrenders inexplicable concessions, including defining Google's 90 percent share as not dominant, claiming its multiple abuses of dominance are legal and implying Google did nothing wrong.
Simply put, this expedient settlement imagines Europeans are better off captive to an unfettered dominant Google than holding Europe's leading corporate scofflaw to account.
This deal's tagline should be, "Europe Online Powered by Google."
Rather than prohibiting abuses of dominance under EU law, this settlement ensures that Google will become much more dominant over the next five years. No company, including Google, really thinks this deal's labeling of search results will result in any material difference in marketplace outcomes.
The worst part of this deal is it throws Europeans under the bus.
The fountainhead of all of Google's market and political power in Europe flows from its 90 percent dominance of Internet search and search advertising, and its unfettered ability to discriminate and self-deal to dominate more and more online markets like mobile, mapping, etc.
This Google-driven deal wholly evades accountability to EU competition law.
If Googleopoly can negotiate a "get out of jail free" card for systematically abusing its exceptional dominance, what political message does that send to the rest of the European Commission that is trying to hold Google accountable for gross violations of data protection, tax, and copyright law?
The privacy authorities of Germany, France, U.K., Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands are all furiously trying to get dominant, data-voracious, Google to obey European privacy law and respect EU data protection sovereignty. This sweetheart settlement suggests that Google's lobbyists have more political influence with the EC than these countries do as members.
Europeans are very upset about pervasive NSA spying. They hoped potential revocation of the US-EU data protection safe harbor could be a lever to get privacy disrespecting U.S. firms like Google to better protect EU data. Now they must worry the EC-Google privacy-evasion fix is in here as well.
European tax officials are indignant with dominant Google's aggressive tax stance that the company does not owe any taxes on Google's advertising profits from tracking Europeans' private behavior.
Google's shameless position is they should owe no EU taxes, not even on profits made from its now-sanctioned abuses of dominance.
In a nutshell, Google takes Europeans private data without authorization, profits from it handsomely, but should owe no European taxes for this partially ill-gotten gain in Europe. Game, set, match to Google's EC lobbyists.
Last but not least, many European content creators have long accused Google of profiting from the use of their copyrighted material without permission or compensation.
Tellingly, after several years of refusing to compensate Belgian media for profiting off the theft of their content, Google conveniently agreed to a multi-million Euro payment to the EC Brussels-based media at the exact time it knew that the Brussels-based EC antitrust investigation was coming to a head.
At a minimum, Google's self-serving timing created the public perception of trying to buy favorable coverage and political support for a Google-favorable, settlement deal – which is what they got.
True or not, Google's Belgian content settlement creates the perception of a quid pro quo that Google's vast EC lobbying operation helps those that help them.
In the short term, this expedient deal most meets the political needs and schedule of the Directorate General for Competition.
However, it does so at the expense of what's best in the long term for Europeans. That's because it makes the jobs harder for all the other directorates and countries that still have the difficult responsibility of getting Google to respect EU rule of law and European sovereignty going forward.
When Google predictably ignores Europeans' legal concerns in the future, they can thank the Directorate General for Competition for throwing them under the bus.
In sum, the biggest problem with this expedient Google-EU settlement, which allows Google's leadership to boast they have done nothing wrong, is that it affirms the view that Google is so politically well-connected that it is largely untouchable, and effectively above the law in the EU.
Getting away with a 90 percent share in dominance, an abuse of dominance, and no admission of wrongdoing will only embolden Google to thumb their nose at competition, privacy, tax, and copyright law enforcement going forward.
The old adage is true, "One gets the behavior one tolerates."
[Originally posted at Daily Caller]
Undercover Environmentalists Invade Science Conference
The annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) started today in Chicago and runs through February 17.
In addition to reinforcing the public's widely held belief that scientists are unable to obtain dates for Valentine's Day, a more insidious aspect of the conference is the presence of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an environmental activist group masquerading as a legitimate (if loveless) scientific organization.
With all due apologies for the good-natured joke directed at the scientists attending the event, the presence of the UCS is no laughing matter.
A natural reaction upon seeing this group is a sponsor for the event may be "so what?"—but there are serious, negative implications to having a group at the conference whose agenda is more focused on soundbites than sound science.
Attending the conference lends them credibility by being seen at an event where real science is occurring. The phrase "guilt by association" can be turned on its head, and having this organization present at a legitimate scientific conference is akin to reputation-laundering.
Here are just a few examples where the UCS has failed to live up to its self-proclaimed "rigorous and independent" scientific standards, resulting in misleading and mischaracterized "science" better suited for fundraisers than fact sheets:
Hydraulic fracturing, aka "fracking": The UCS knows fracking can be done in an environmentally responsible manner, which is why President Obama implicitly endorsed the game-changing technology in his State of the Union address, much to the ire of environmental groups. The problem is, the UCS donor base is so adamantly opposed to fossil fuels they refuse to endorse any use of them, even though natural gas—not wind and not solar—is a key reason the United States has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest levels since 1994.
One UCS smear tactic against fracking is to imply fracking is unregulated and is dangerous to water supplies because it is exempt from provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. UCS doesn't acknowledge the reason why fracking is exempt. The Clean Drinking Water Act was created to protect the water we drink, but fracking occurs thousands of feet below the surface (the average fracked well is 7,500 feet deep) and thousands of feet below the deepest sources of fresh water. A U.S. Department of Energy study confirms the chemical additives used in hydraulic fracturing stay thousands of feet underground and pose no threat at all to drinking water.
Global warming: Even though most of the country is in the clutches of the second "Arctic Vortex" of this winter season and there has not been any significant warming of the Earth for the past 16 years, the UCS continues to claim there is a "scientific consensus" a manmade global warming catastrophe is happening. The claim of a scientific consensus is blatantly untrue. A new report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change Reconsidered 2- Physical Science (published by The Heartland Institute, where I work), shows current temperatures are well within the range of natural variation. Unlike reports by the global warming alarmists, CCR-2 bases its findings on observed evidence, not flawed computer models.
Antibiotics in agriculture: UCS caught the attention of the nation when it released its report Hogging It, a supposed exposé on the "overuse" of antibiotics in agriculture. The report was not based on "rigorous scientific analysis" but instead was an estimate, and not a very good one at that. A study by Kansas State University, using U.S. Department of Agriculture data, stated as little as 1.6 million pounds of antibiotics are used to produce pork, starkly less than the 10.3 million pounds the UCS claimed are used to put food on our tables.
A closer look at the UCS shows its claims of dedication to "rigorous and independent" science are false boasts. UCS is seemingly willing to put funds before facts whenever it's convenient. The American Association for the Advancement of Science should disassociate itself from UCS lest it undermine its own credibility.
[Listen to Heartland's Issac Orr and Jim Lakely discuss this topic in a recent edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast in the player above. Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes.]
Too Much Snow and Ice
From 1955 until I graduated in 1959, I was a student at the University of Miami. Those were halcyon years for me, enhanced by Florida's famed bounty of sunshine and warmth. Born and raised in New Jersey, it was a respite from the Garden State's winters, shoveling snow, and enduring the chill.
The last time I was in Florida was in 2004 to visit my older brother in Boynton Beach and when the wall of heat hit me as I exited the West Palm Beach airport, I knew I would remain in Jersey.
I am no fan of winter. I don't ski or ice skate. When it's cold I stay inside where it's warm. I venture outside once a day to turn over the car engine while picking up a lottery ticket in hopes of winning enough money to live somewhere warm during the winters here.
I don't know how many blizzards or just big snowstorms I have lived through at this point in my life. In my experience, most people tend to forget them when springtime arrives. Winter, which often seems to have no end, is still only four months, a quarter of the year.
After decades of "global warming" lies from Al Gore, environmental organizations, and government agencies, I knew well that, while the northern hemisphere had begun to warm around 1850 after a long cold cycle and the amount of warmth was sufficient to provide comfort, it was too small for anyone to effectively measure.
One of my favorite quotes is from Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT: "Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."
I am pretty sure that those who lived through earlier blizzards and snowstorms did not consider them as anything other than normal. Some, though, made history. History.com even has a list of major U.S. blizzards. Perhaps the most famed was the Great Blizzard of 1888. It dumped 40 to 50 inches of snow in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. More than 400 people died; the worst toll of a winter storm. A year later in 1889, a blizzard started in Florida and then moved up the coast dumping 20 inches of snow on Washington, D.C. and 34 inches on New Jersey.
The Great Blizzard of 1888 led legislatures in Boston and New York to break ground on the country's first underground subway systems.
Those of us on the East Coast would wait a century until 1993 for a combination blizzard and cyclone "wreaked havoc from Cuba to Canada" killing 310 people in its wake. In February 2010, snowstorms were raging from northern California to North Carolina, but typically it was the Mid-Atlantic and New England States that were hardest hit.
In January, record freezing temperatures gripped the entire nation. Energy consumption set some new records as well. Icy conditions in storms since then have left some areas without any energy and yet the environmental organizations keep fighting the development of any new sources of coal, oil and natural gas to provide needed energy. The White House has done everything in its power to accommodate this idiocy.
On February 7, The New York Times published an article by Porter Fox, the features editor at Powder Magazine—as in snow powder—and author of "Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow." Fox may know about skiing, but his knowledge of snow consists of his belief that, all over the world, "snow is melting." This is straight out of the global warming belief that the small amount of warming since the mid-1880s was a threat to the planet. "The planet is getting hotter." As Dr. Lindzen points out, a few tenths of a degree is meaningless.
A few years ago, The New York Times shut down its environmental reporting unit, laying off some and reassigning others. Now, apparently, it is content to publish utter nonsense about how all the snow is melting everywhere.
In recent weeks and days there has been heavy snow in Tokyo, Japan, that took some lives. Heavy snow has fallen in Austria and Italy, as well as northern Iran. People around the world are looking out their window and seeing snow.
Blizzards are a seasonal reminder that humans do not control the Earth's climate. The Sun does that along with the oceans, volcanic activity and other natural factors. They only thing humans can and must do is endure them.
[Originally posted at Warning Signs]
Congress Must Wake Up Soon to Out-of-Control Spending
Romina Broccia of the Washington Times suggested that for lawmakers battling over the debt ceiling they should stop to watch "Groundhog Day."
In the movie Phil Connors asks, "What would you do if you were stuck in on place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?" Connors was able to break out of his Groundhog Day cycle after reexamining his life and changing his approach to problems. Lawmakers could also do the same if they were willing to break out of the spending and debt cycle by putting the budget on a path to balance through cuts in mandatory as well as discretionary spending.
House Republicans have once again come face to face with this nation's debt limit. A letter sent to House lawmakers on Friday, February 7, by Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, warned Congress that unless the debt ceiling is raised by Thursday, February 27, the treasury Department will all but completely exhaust its abilities to pay the nation's bills (The borrowing cap was to be addressed back in October of last year, but it was suspended as part of the deal to end the government shutdown).
Predictably House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hammered home Lew's stated deadline to House Republicans by demanding that Republicans enact a clean increase to the debt ceiling without any policy riders, further reminding Republicans that only a limited numbers of days remain when both chambers are in session before the deadline.
Do House Republicans dare not to heed this warning from Nancy Pelosi?
With only five days left in session before the deadline, we must act now. Democrats are ready to work with our Republican colleagues to enact a clean increase in the debt ceiling. Democrats hope the Republican leadership makes the right choice and brings this up for a vote, so our country can pay our bills.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made his view known on the issue when on Thursday, January 24 he seemingly reinforced the wish of Nancy Pelosi and fellow Democrats that it would be unwise for House Republicans to use the issue of increasing the borrowing limit to challenge President Obama on raising the federal debt limit. Although at the time Gingrich did accuse Obama of trying to "bully House Republicans," he further said that the GOP shouldn't "pick fights" that they cannot ultimately win.
Newt Gingrich's advice is getting to be rather stale. Time and again Republicans are told to keep their powder dry and wait for another occasion down the road to challenge the Obama administration on its massive spending and debt accrued since Obama was election in 2008 – $7 trillion dollars. When is the right time for House Republicans to stand up and fight on behalf of the American people and future generations of Americans for a bit of sanity against raising the nation's debt ceiling for the purpose of allowing the Obama administration to borrow more money and further erode the financial stability and health of this nation?
Initially Republican House Speaker John Boehner reassured the American people that he would request President Obama to give up a key provision of ObamaCare in exchange for his consent to raise the debt ceiling. According to a Hill report, Speaker Boehner and his lieutenants on Wednesday, February 5, abandoned plans to tie an increase in the nation's debt limit either to the repeal of a provision in ObamaCare or to the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a decision made only hours after the Congressional Budget Office said ObamaCare will eradicate 2.5 million jobs and add a trillion dollars to this nation's debt! Some patriots in the U.S.House, like Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, feel that agreeing to a clean debt ceiling is capitulation, and that he didn't get elected by the District of Texas to come here to Washington and capitulate.
Only a few years ago, Obama spoke vehemently against putting America in debt as then Senator Barack March 16, 2006.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.
But this is now. Obama as president likes the power and control the office bestows on him, and uses it at will to enact policies that are consistent with his extreme leftist political philosophy. Now Obama seemingly wants the power to raise the debt limit by himself, anytime. Abandoned by Obama is any notion that members of Congress should get permission from the people they represent to borrow and spend more money.
Is it really necessary to borrow more money to pay our nation's debt obligations? The United States collects more than enough tax revenue each and every day to easily satisfy the repayment of our debt. Without a limit increase on the use of the nation's credit cards, our government officials would actually have to prioritize debt repayment and make modest cuts to out-of-control government spending now, instead of pretending that cuts are in the offing somewhere down the road. The interest on the debt is around $30 billion per month and the Feds are taking in $250 billion. The only reason the U.S. would default is if Obama and Jack Lew, Secretary of the Treasury, refused to service the debt.
Will the decision be made in the House to betray the American people without consulting the American people about mortgaging the hopes and dreams of future generations of Americans? Figures cited in a report of Wednesday, September 25, 2013, place the national debt at nearly $17 trillion or $140,000 per American household. Since Obama has been president the debt has been raised seven time, causing the per-household tab for the debt to soar by $43,000 in just the last four years.
A last minute meeting was called by House Republicans leaders and its conference last night (2/10) to try to come up with a legislative strategy on the debt ceiling regarding what they might attach to an increase in the nation's borrowing limit.
Don't hold your breath in hoping that House Republicans will do anything of substance in reducing spending other than to allow a clean debt ceiling increase to reach the floor. The latest is that the House did move toward a vote Wednesday on legislation that would lift the debt ceiling and reverse recent changes to military retirement benefits. Even so this plan is a gamble, as it's uncertain whether the package will pass the House without the support of a fair number of Democrats.
Is it too much to ask that Congress wakes up to a new day, and soon? It's time for Republicans to grow a backbone and stand up to Obama. Most Republicans are scared stiff to challenge the media, fellow Republicans pundits and elitists, and President Obama and his operatives, ending up instead cowering in fear over their own political fortunes, while neglecting those they represent and indirectly the generations of Americans who will follow in their wake.
[First published at Illinois Review.]