Our Stealth Congress ... Alan Caruba

Our Stealth Congress
By Alan Caruba

We are living in an era in which our Congress and much of our government operates like a stealth bomber, destroying rights we assume to be protected by the U.S. Constitution and otherwise encumbering an ailing economy in ways known to make it worse.

Take, for example, the House passage this week of the Dream Act, an end-run around the widespread opposition to any form of amnesty for the problem of illegal immigration. While 38 Democrats joined Republicans to vote no on the measure, eight Republicans “crossed the aisle” to support Pelosi, Reid and Obama. The Senate is scheduled to take up the measure on December 9 and it is widely predicted it will fail in that chamber.

Even a massive rejection by the voters appears to have made no impact on the Democrat Party which gives every indication of not giving a damn about We the People even when a million showed up in Washington to protest Obamacare. One is reminded of Speaker Pelosi’s now classic statement that we would have to wait to find out what is in the Obamacare legislation until after the vote was taken.

The result is an increasing number of waivers from aspects of this noxious law for unions, fast food chains, and others to ensure their members and employees do not lose health insurance. This from a bill we were told would extend health insurance to thirty million more Americans.

So the Democrat majority, most of whom did not even bother to read the 2,000-plus monstrosity, voted to have the government take over one-sixth of the nation’s economy and destroy the patient-doctor relationship and just about everything else that made our health system the best in the world.While Americans were making plans for Christmas and beginning to feel the sting of winter as far south as Florida, Congress voted to approve the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a government created entity that will impose huge tax increases on companies in the northeast in the name of preventing a “global warming” that is not happening.

RGGI is the nation’s first mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) cap and trade regulating entity even though the Cap-and-Trade Act is all but dead in the Senate. Everyone living in ten northeastern states will see their electricity bills soar due to caps on how much GHG their utilities and other major manufacturing facilities emit. This is, I would remind you, is occurring in the midst of the worst recessionary period since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This is equivalent to the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government entities that created the housing bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) is concluding its latest and hopefully last conference in Cancun, Mexico, desperately trying to save the Kyoto Protocols. Widely seen as the end of the “global warming” hoax, the UN is far from finished trying to impose its will on the United States and other nations.

As this is written, the Obama administration is trying to get the U.S. to ratify the UN Small Arms Treaty. This is a major goal before it folds its tent in 2012. If the Senate were to ratify the treaty, some 90 million Americans would be required to turn in any banned firearms to local government “collection and destruction” centers. It would prohibit firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling their products to Americans. In short, it would negate the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

This is yet another stealth effort to undermine the U.S. Constitution, along with all the talk about putting government limits on Internet use and dangerous babble coming out of the FCC to impose a “value” system to determine what radio and television stations can report as news.

As this is written, Americans are still waiting to learn whether their taxes will rise or whether tax rates that have been in place for a decade will be extended. Even so, the President claimed that it was the GOP that was holding Americans “hostage.”

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” is not a cliché. It has never been more true than our present times.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit

Hardcore Politically Stupid People ... Alan Caruba

Hardcore Politically Stupid People
By Alan Caruba
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If you harbor the suspicion that a lot of voters are not bright enough to understand the issues, the candidates, or anything about those who hold public office, you are right.

Considering the critical issues affecting the security, economy, and the future of the nation, it is clear that we are being ruled by a cabal in Congress who vote the Democrat Party line without regard for anything other than political self-interest.

They got there, however, because of a solid core of voters who consistently demonstrate what dim bulbs they are.

Assuming some of these morons read the newspaper or got their news from the Internet sites of what is called the mainstream media, a 2004 Pew Research Center poll found that five times more journalists described themselves as politically “liberal” than those who said they were conservative.

That same year, a poll by the University of Connecticut found that journalists backed John Kerry over George W. Bush by a margin of two-to-one. Not much has changed since, except that daily newspapers keep going out of business; more than 120 dailies shut down in 2009.

Journalists keep asking themselves why???

Perhaps slobbering over Barack Obama and getting him elected might have contributed to a general sense of dissatisfaction among people whose I.Q. is higher than room temperature.

For many years there has been an annual Battleground Poll conducted by a bipartisan polling organization known for its rigorous methodology. It seeks to determine how Americans self-identify themselves politically. One of its questions asks, “When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be…” Then the respondent can choose from “very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal, very liberal, or unsure/refused.”

The April 2010 poll results revealed that Americans overwhelmingly describe themselves as conservative. Over the years the percentage has never been less than 58% and, over the course of the years, 60.2% on average call themselves conservative.

This raises the question, of course, why the Congress is filled with so many “progressives” or “liberals”, depending what they call themselves or why Ronald Reagan’s two terms and George H.W. Bush’s single term was followed by William Jefferson Clinton? He, in turn, was followed by George Walker Bush. Voters then turned to a completely unknown candidate with no experience beyond having been a “community organizer”, Barack Hussein Obama.
Nothing resembling logic explains this, but there is a factor that stands out in poll after poll and that is raging stupidity.

A casual look at poll results in just the past month gives evidence of this. For example, despite the greatest man-made disaster of recent times, the BP oil spill, Rasmussen Reports revealed that 25% of adults nationwide had a favorable opinion of BP. Indeed, 6% had a “very favorable” opinion of BP.Rasmussen polls asking for opinions of Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, revealed that 32% had a “somewhat favorable” opinion of this pinhead and 21% had no opinion regarding her performance in office.

Asked about Attorney General Eric Holder, one in four voters (26%) “still don’t know enough about Holder to venture any kind of opinion about him” and 35% professed to hold a favorable view. This is the AG who criticized the Arizona illegal immigration statute without having read it.

Ignorant of U.S. history and our Constitution, 28% of those polled said that civilian control of the military is bad for the U.S. The Founding Fathers, including James Madison, the chief author of the U.S. Constitution, advocated civilian control to ensure a stable democracy.

Finally, for my purposes, there are the polling results regarding whether the nation is on the right or wrong track these days. As recently as late June 28% of likely voters said that the country is heading in the right direction!

We have a Congress voting on bills, often in excess of two thousand pages, without knowing what they entail or the changes they will impose.

We have a President who has taken barely a year and a half to double the national debt, crisscrossed the world to apologize for protecting huge portions of it from despotism, has nationalized one sixth of the economy with a hated healthcare act and is pushing for a Cap-and-Trade bill that will impose crushing taxes on all energy use. He also intends to raise our income taxes in the midst of a raging Recession.

You don’t have to be a statistician to figure out that somewhere between 25% and 30% of the voters are stupid beyond redemption, oblivious to events and trends that show a nation in deep trouble.

I suggest this is the core constituency of the Democrat Party that has been pandered to from the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The remainder, the 60.2% who identify themselves as conservatives had better get to the polls in November to save this nation from utter ruin
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© Alan Caruba, 2010
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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

When Idiots Join Hands ... Alan Caruba

When Idiots Join Hands
By Alan Caruba
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After the June 23 Cabinet meeting, President Obama said:
“We talked about energy. In the context of the oil spill, as I said last week during my Oval Office address, this has to be a wakeup call to the country that we are prepared and ready to move forward on a new energy strategy that the American people desperately want but for which there has been insufficient political will.”
“It is time for us to move to a clean energy future.”

First, let it be said that the American people do not desperately want “a new energy strategy.” They did not want Obamacare. They do not want Cap-and-Trade. They do not want amnesty for an estimated ten to twenty million illegal aliens.

Along with the totally discredited global warming hoax, this has got to be the biggest lie Obama keeps repeating, along with promises of thousands of “green jobs.”

What is Clean Energy?

Obama is referring to solar and wind energy. Neither of these enterprises would last longer than an episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” were it not for the billions of taxpayer’s dollars provided as subsidies to producers who, once the subsidies end, will abandon these most useless of all ways to generate electricity.

When the government mandates that part of the electricity you purchase must be supplied by wind or solar, they are forcing utilities to invest in means of generation that must always be backed up by coal-fired, natural gas, hydroelectric, or nuclear plants. Neither wind, nor solar can be depended upon to produce sufficient electricity, particularly during times of peak uses.

When you see those windmills turning even when there is no wind, there is a plant somewhere providing them with electricity because, unless they constantly turn, their mechanisms famously break down. Solar farms are even less efficient, particularly since the sun does not shine all the time and cloud cover often reduces their capacity.

This, however, will not deter the hoped-for thousands of people who will turn out on Saturday, June 26, to participate in some 700 events across the nation and, we’re told, worldwide in a mega-event called “Hands Across the Sand.” It is intended to encourage more “clean energy.”

“This simple, but powerful human expression of unity will send a clear message to our leaders that more offshore drilling is not the answer and now is the time to create our clean energy future,” said event founder, David Rauschkolb, described as a restaurant owner in Seaside, Florida.

That’s who we want making energy policy, a restaurant owner!
Among the sponsors of the event are Audubon, the Alaska Wilderness League, the Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Day Network, Endangered Species Coalition, Energy Action Coalition, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, MoveOn.org, Ocean Conservancy, Rainforest Action Network, and the Sierra Club.

In other words, the most mendacious environmental groups, all devoted to impeding the development and access to the huge quantities of energy needed to maintain industry, agriculture, and an economy that, despite their constant interference and obstruction, is still the world’s leader in value of goods produced.

To them, the Gulf oil spill is the best thing that ever happened. One well out of hundreds in the Gulf of Mexico has suffered a horrible failure, but these are the people who want to shut down all of them despite a fifty-year history of safety.

No doubt the mainstream media will have a field day showing us coverage of countless idiots holding hands on beaches, near waterways, and wherever else they will gather in the name of not having any gasoline to fill the tanks of the cars that brought them there, not having the electricity to power the air conditioners in their homes, not having anything made from plastic, not even having asphalt on the highways and streets they will drive upon after the event.
It is not likely to occur to any of them that deepwater oil wells are the result of the bans environmental organizations continue to demand as they oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or anywhere along the 85% of U.S. coastal areas where huge amounts of untapped oil and natural gas exist.

This nation faces many hazards, but the greatest hazard of all is a President who wants to pass the biggest tax in U.S. history, Cap-and-Trade, on energy use. It is not a climate bill. It is not a jobs bill.

It is just another scheme based on the fraud of reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions. The Earth produces 97% of these emissions. They are a part of the atmosphere of the Earth, albeit the atmosphere is almost entirely composed of oxygen and nitrogen. It is best understood as primarily water vapor!

The cartoon character, Pogo, famously said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” You can watch them join hands on Saturday and demand a return to the Dark Ages.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Cap-and-Trade: A $cam Based on a Scam ... Alan Caruba

Note from Longstreet:

The Obama Regime, not satisfied with power, is now reaching for absolute power with the Cap and Trade bill.

Beginning today, King Obama, and his host of "courtesans" in the West Wing and in Congress, will try to RAM the Cap and Trade bill down the throats of Americans just as they did the ObamaCare Bill. They must be stopped.

Below is a commentary, by Alan Caruba, in which he does not mince words concerning his opinion of the Cap and Trade boondoggle. This is a read well worth your time.

May we suggest you contact your Senator and your Congressperson and strongly suggest they vote against the Cap and Trade bill.

Not much is left of the America we knew. We must do everything we can to hold on to what is left until we can purge the US government of the socialists/marxists/progressives now in control.

Please scroll down and read Mr. Caruba's column.

J. D. Longstreet

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Cap-and-Trade: A $cam Based on a Scam

By Alan Caruba

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It is almost beyond comprehension that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will introduce the Cap-and-Trade Act on Wednesday, May 12th, for consideration by the Senate. It is being passed off as a “climate bill” with provisions for more oil drilling, but it is an assault on reality, on science, on common sense, and on any future economic growth of the nation.

The nation’s prisons are filled with men still claiming to be innocent after trials filled with evidence of their guilt. Denial of the truth is their last resort and this metaphor reflects what is happening in the utterly corrupt community of “global warming” liars and their associates in the U.S. government.

Recently 225 “scientists” wrote a letter defending global warming. It was published in the journal “Science”, one of the many such publications that have become as corrupt as those at the center of the global warming scam. Based on last November’s leaked emails among those most responsible for the data at the heart of the global warming scam, it was revealed that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been systematically publishing false climate information and analysis.

Moreover, the photo used to illustrate the “scientists” letter was photo-shopped to show a polar bear on a small piece of ice surrounded by water. The deception included the fact that many of the signatories to the letter lack credibility. Among the first 20 listed, none work in the field of climate science.

As reported by Tony Hake of Climate Change Examiner, “Pediatric surgeons, an expert in the Maya and Olmec civilizations, a chemist that studies bacteria, and a ‘computer pioneer’ with Microsoft, an electrical engineer, the chairman of a biotechnology firm, and even an expert studying corn are but a few of the 225 experts that signed the letter.”

Dr. Gerhard Kramm, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, fired off a letter disputing the usual claim that human activity is causing carbon dioxide emissions that are, in turn, causing global warming. “Until today, there is no scientific evidence that an increase of the globally averaged near-surface temperature by less than one Kelvin during the last 160 years can be linked to the increase of the atmospheric concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases.”

There is no global warming. Whatever warming occurred followed the end of a mini ice age that began around 1350. Around 1850 the Earth’s temperature increased about one degree Fahrenheit to its current level. The United Nations has been the locus of the greatest hoax perpetrated in the modern era, codified in the bogus Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that many nations signed onto in1997. The Clinton administration signed the agreement, but did not implement it due to a Senate resolution that unanimously rejected it. The real aim of the global warming scam is the prospect of selling “carbon credits” in exchanges around the world, in effect selling air!

If the Cap-and-Trade Act is passed at the urging of the Obama administration, it will constitute the greatest tax on energy use in the history of the nation and it will energize exchanges, such as the one in Chicago, set up to buy and sell the carbon credits.

As reported by Investor’s Business Daily on May 7, “The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-Trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.”

The European Emissions Trading System is a warning to America. IBD described it as “a scam built upon a scam.” British and German law enforcement authorities have been busy arresting miscreants “as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT tax fraud.” And VAT, a valued added tax, is being advanced in the United States as a way to raise money to pay off our ever increasing debt.

“Last December,” reported IBD, “Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trade System fraud had resulted in about five billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raid, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.”

The entire global warming theory has been a scam, a hoax and a fraud from the day it was first put forth. Its advocates, corrupt scientists, corrupted science journals, and all of the environmental organizations are hoping the same Congress that foisted Obamacare on Americans will do the same with Cap-and-Trade.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Caruba's Crystal Ball ... Alan Caruba

Caruba's Crystal Ball

By Alan Caruba

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I rarely make predictions. Events can change the entire direction of a nation in the blink of an eye. It happened in my lifetime with Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, and with 9/11.

As this is being written, air traffic to, from, and throughout Europe is barely recovering because of an Icelandic volcano and no one really knows how long that will continue. So, barring any catastrophic natural events or wars, I will look into my crystal ball and narrow my predictions to the period between now and the midterm election on November 2, 2010.

Having forced a healthcare program on America that 85% of the voters did not want, the Obama White House now knows it can do the same with other major pieces of legislation intended to “transform” America into a socialist wreck comparable to European nations, one of which, Greece, is bankrupt while two others, Spain and Italy, are close to it.

The Obama administration is getting ready to put a chokehold on the nation’s financial sector by claiming it needs more regulation. It is a lie. Few sectors of the nation are more heavily regulated by the government. What is needed is more effective enforcement of existing regulations. Had that been the case there would have been no Bernie Madoff and the 2008 crisis brought about by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could have been avoided.

The next piece of legislation to be imposed on Americans before November will be Cap-and-Trade, a law based on a “global warming” crisis that is not happening. It will impose “caps” on how much energy industries, businesses, and finally individuals can use and it will institute a “trade” mechanism in bogus carbon credits that will make a few companies, utilities, and individuals very rich while bleeding Americans by taxing energy use at every level. The era of abundant and affordable energy will end and, with it, the economy of the nation. Companies that manufacture goods will move offshore to friendlier places such as China and India. Both were exempted in the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol intended to force greenhouse emission caps on industrialized nations like America and Europe.

The coal industry, responsible for providing the source of half of all the electricity generated in America, will be under attack in every way at the government’s disposal. Mountain top mining will be the next target. Beyond that, all coal-fired plants will encounter a regulatory hell. There will be no offshore exploration for new sources of oil and natural gas.

When the brown-outs and black-outs begin, the nation will be five to ten years from providing new sources of electrical power whether it’s coal, natural gas, or nuclear. By then billions in government (your money) subsidies will have been wasted on “green” or “clean” or “alternative” energy in the form of wind and solar. They currently represent about one percent of all the electricity generated in America.

By the midterm elections, the unemployment rate will have likely increased. A growing, permanent class of the unemployed will be maintained with endless extensions of government support.

The southern border from Texas to California is becoming a war zone. There’s a reason the State of Arizona just passed a law allowing its citizens to carry concealed weapons and another law to empower its law enforcement authorities to rid the State of illegal aliens. Do not be surprised by the rise of southwestern state militias to deal with the constant invasion. Watch for an effort to pass an amnesty law as well.

What Americans have not caught onto as yet is that the Obama administration’s policies and actions are now fully controlled by people who did not have to go before the U.S. Senate for approval. They are Obama’s “czars” and they wield as much influence or more than constitutionally appointed cabinet secretaries.

So the real question between now and November is “How much damage can the Obama White House inflict?” and the answer is a lot.

Alan Caruba
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© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Yucca Mountain Blues ... Alan Caruba

The Yucca Mountain Blues

By Alan Caruba

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Are you worried about your “carbon footprint”?

Still think “global warming” is real despite the fact that one of its leading advocates, a climatologist, recently said that there’s no significant data to demonstrate any warming since 1995?

Can’t figure out why the White House is still trying desperately to pass the “Cap-and-Trade” bill based on the totally discredited claim that carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere are “causing” the non-existent “global warming”?

Do you increasingly think that you are Alice in Wonderland and now living in a nation where the White House and Congress keep telling you things that are totally absurd?

Let’s put aside the claim that we have to borrow and borrow in order to keep on spending and spending to save the economy when common sense says that is the worst way to end the economic death spiral they have created.

The latest ploy by the White House was a move in the direction of nuclear power to generate the electricity the nation needs for its current and future needs. Since the 1970s, for reasons that defy understanding, several administrations, Democrat and Republican, have done little to encourage nuclear power despite the fact that a nation like France derives most of its electricity from it.

Even so, nuclear provides about twenty percent of the electricity we use while coal provides just over fifty percent. In both cases, neither has anything to do with “greenhouse gases” because the gases play no role in climate change. Indeed, more carbon dioxide, being plant food, would greatly enhance the growth of crops and forests.

“Cap-and-Trade” is nothing more than a tax on energy use. Simply put, it has been cheap, abundant energy that has fueled the economy of the United States since it was founded. The discovery of oil in 1859 also played a major role and, despite the lies, the U.S. has an abundance of oil.

Like nuclear power, however, successive administrations since the 1970s have ensured that U.S. oil companies were kept from exploring for it, extracting it, refining it and selling it to us at affordable prices.

This is in sharp contrast to the endless babble about the need to be “energy independent.”

The talk about support for the nuclear energy industry is welcome, but what the White House is not saying is that his proposed budget has no funding for the nuclear waste facility in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.

Congress passed a Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 and amended it in 1987. Yucca Mountain is the only permanent nuclear waste repository in the nation. I repeat, the only one. Why isn’t it in operation? Glad you asked. Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, has blocked its completion and use.

So we could build two or a dozen new nuclear plants—a very good idea—but there would still be no place to put the waste despite the fact that the U.S. has spent $9 billion on the first phase to build the Yucca Mountain site. A $13 million tunnel boring machine sits idle at the site.

That has not stopped the White House from wanting to put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for $8 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors in Georgia.

The purpose of all this is to get a few senators to sign on to the passage of Cap-and-Trade, a bill based on a non-existent threat from “greenhouse gases” in order to avoid a non-existent “global warming.” There are two fears; one that the Senate might pass the bill and, two, that the White House might impose it by executive order.

What we are witnessing is yet another really big, really bad idea out of the White House that continues to lie to everyone and anyone who thinks the problem is “global warming” when the problem really is a mad desire to destroy of the nation’s economy.

This has always been the single goal of the environmental movement when the global warming fraud began in the late 1980s. It accelerated with the UN Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The U.S. has never accepted the Protocol and those nations that did have since discovered that it’s been a very costly fraud.

Cap-and-Trade is a fraud. Let your senators know you oppose their vote for it. Any senator that does vote for it should be replaced if they are running for reelection in the November midterm elections.

Alan Caruba

Crazy Nancy, Cunning Barack ... Alan Caruba

Crazy Nancy, Cunning Barack
By Alan Caruba
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When President Obama announced he would commit the nation to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” in accordance with the failed UN Copenhagen Climate Change Conference goals, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, issued yet another utterly crazed statement on January 29th.

“President Obama’s announcement marks a critical step forward in our effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the federal government—the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy.” For the record, the Capitol building’s electric power is provided by a coal-fired plant. And, for the record, the Speaker’s use of an executive jet to travel back and forth from her home in California every week has burned through $2.1 million while producing tons of greenhouse gases.

“With the President’s renewed call to complete work on a clean energy bill this year we look forward to putting people to work building up the industries of tomorrow, reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and preserving our natural resources for generations to come.”

Allowing large and small oil companies to explore and extract our national reserves of oil would reduce our dependency, but from the late 1970s onward, it has been government policy to prohibit this, despite the role it plays in our national security and, of course, the cost of a gallon of gas at the pump. There’s a reason much of our military power is deployed to protect Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in the Middle East. We get 40% of our oil from there.

The so-called clean energy bill is “Cap-and-Trade”, a piece of legislation that would tax the use of energy by all Americans, thus raising their energy bills and reducing their ability to spend their money on consumer goods and services. The alleged “industries of tomorrow” include wind and solar energy companies, along with biofuel companies, all of which are totally dependent on government subsidies and mandates for their use. Remove the subsidies and they would go out of business.

In a February 2nd letter from the National Biodiesel Board to leaders in Congress says that the expiration of the biodiesel tax incentive that expired on December 31, 2009 “has essentially caused the production and use of biodiesel in the U.S. to cease…” No kidding!

Speaker Pelosi’s idea of “preserving our natural resources” is to restrict access to the billions of barrels of oil locked up in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve and to continue the ban on all off-shore exploration and extraction of countless billions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas estimated to exist in the 85% of the continental shelf that remain off limits.

While Congress continues on its wild borrowing and spending spree, Speaker Pelosi brags that the Congressional Record will be printed on “100 percent recycled paper” and that Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulbs will be replaced with “energy-efficient alternatives”; light bulbs that all contain mercury.

What justification can be made for denying consumers the right to purchase incandescent light bulbs? None!

President Obama has announced that, as soon as “Cap-and-Trade” is enacted, the U.S. will begin to “cut carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.” To achieve this, we will all return to the practice of riding horses and using oxen to plow the fields for the planting of crops.

The fact that global warming is being discredited daily with new revelations about the bogus “science” used to justify it by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).seems to have escaped the notice of Speaker Pelosi, the President, and others in Congress.

What Americans are witnessing is a calculated agenda to undermine access to the energy the nation requires for present and future generations and thus undermines the economy of the nation that is totally dependent on the sufficient provision of electrical energy and the ability to utilize the nation’s vast oil, coal, and natural gas reserves, a policy that has been in place since the 1970s.

In his State of the Union speech, the President did call for more nuclear plants, but the government has stalled the building of all but two new nuclear plants since the 1970s and, thanks to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is unable to utilize the multi-billion dollar Yukka Mountain facility in Nevada for the storage of nuclear waste.

This and other proposals are a direct threat to the economy of the nation, diverting billions (of borrowed money) to phony “green jobs” and “clean energy.” It is bad news for America.

In September of last year, nearly a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. to protest healthcare reform and it is a wonder of civility that they and others have not returned to the nation’s capitol with pitchforks and torches to drive out the likes of Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

All Pain, No Gain ... by Paul Driessen

All Pain, No Gain

Restricting and taxing energy use to prevent speculative climate disasters will be disastrous
By Paul Driessen
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“Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under cap-and-trade,” President Obama has admitted. “Industry will have to retrofit its operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that cost on to consumers.” Cap-and-trade, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) eagerly observed, is “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time.”

Not one congressman even read the numbingly complex 1427-page Waxman-Markey global warming bill, before the House of Representatives voted on it. A new version of the Kerry-Boxer Senate bill provides no details about how carbon allowances would be allocated under a mandatory emissions reduction program.

The process recalls Churchill’s description of Russia: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Here we are dealing with estimates wrapped in assumptions inside speculation – based on assertions that Earth faces a manmade climate disaster.

The only thing known with certainty is that cap-tax-and-trade will inflict intense pain for no environmental gain – on regions, states, communities, industries, companies and families. It is a complicated regulatory scheme that penalizes businesses and people who use electricity and other forms of energy derived from oil, gasoline, natural gas and coal.

Cap-tax-and-trade would place limits on how much carbon dioxide America would be allowed to generate, and the limits would decrease drastically over time. Companies and utilities would be issued permits, saying how much CO2 they can put into the air each year. If they cannot stay within that limit, they will have to switch to wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal energy (assuming those sources can be built, in the face of regulation and litigation); capture the CO2 and store it somewhere (via technologies that do not yet exist); or buy more permits from US or foreign companies that don’t need as much energy (through a new international financial, trading and carbon derivatives market).

Cap-and-trade restricts and taxes hydrocarbon energy use. Because 85% of America’s energy is hydrocarbons, prices will soar for everything we heat, cool, drive, make, grow, eat and do. The impacts will be especially painful in states that depend on coal for 50-98% of their electricity, refine petroleum for the nation’s vehicles, and manufacture products that improve, enhance and safeguard our lives.

The complex system will be administered by profit-seeking carbon management and trading firms, regulated and policed by thousands of government bureaucrats, and paid by every family, driver, business, school district, hospital, airline, traveler and farmer.

The ostensible goal is to stabilize planetary temperatures, climates and weather patterns that have never been stable, by slashing carbon dioxide emissions 83% below 2005 levels by 2050.

The last time America emitted that amount of CO2 was 1908! Once we account for the far lower population, manufacturing, transportation and electrification levels of a century ago, 2050 carbon dioxide emissions would have to equal what the United States emitted after the Civil War!

That would require monumental changes in lifestyles and living standards. It would mean politicians and unelected pressure groups, bureaucrats and judges will limit or dictate home building, heating, cooling and lighting decisions; transportation and vacation choices; how food can be grown and shipped; what kinds of products can be purchased and how they must be manufactured; and how much energy must come from subsidized, unreliable renewable sources.

Restrictions and taxes on fossil fuels will hit our manufacturing heartland especially hard, as it is heavily dependent on coal and natural gas. The American Council for Capital Formation calculated that Waxman-Markey would spike Indiana’s electricity prices nearly 60% by 2030 – increasing school and hospital energy costs 28-42% and causing numerous jobs to be exported to Asia, where there will be few restrictions on CO2 emissions. Numerous other states would be similarly hard hit, says ACCF.

Other experts have calculated that cap-and-trade would destroy millions of American jobs … raise energy costs for the average US family by $1,400 to $3,100 per year … and send overall food and living costs upward by $4,600 annually. Will you be able to afford that?

Poor families may get energy welfare. Wealthier families can absorb these costs. But cap-and-trade will severely affect middle class families. They would be forced to pay skyrocketing energy and food costs, by cutting their college, retirement and vacation budgets. Hospitals and school districts would have to raise fees and taxes, or cut services. Cities and states would have to cover rising welfare and unemployment costs, as tax revenues dwindle. Tourism-based businesses and economies would get hammered.

Switching to renewable energy does not merely increase costs and reduce reliability. It also affects the environment. Ethanol mandates would mean growing corn or switchgrass on farmland the size of Montana, and using vast amounts of water, fertilizer, diesel fuel, natural gas and insecticides.

Wind and solar power would mean covering millions of acres of scenic, habitat and farm land with huge turbines and solar panels. Hundreds of millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals would be needed to build them and thousands of miles of new transmission lines to get the expensive renewable electricity to distant cities. Because the turbines and panels only work 30% of the time, back up natural gas generators would also be needed, meaning still more raw materials.

Even worse, all this pain would bring no benefits. Using global warming alarmists’ own computer models, climatologist Chip Knappenberger calculated that even an 83% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions would result in global temperatures rising just 0.1 degrees F less by 2050 than not cutting US carbon dioxide emissions at all.

That’s because CO2 emissions from China, India and other countries would quickly dwarf America’s job-killing reductions. These nations are building a new coal-fired power plant every week and putting millions of new cars on growing networks of highways – to modernize, reduce poverty, improve human health, and ensure that families, offices, schools and hospitals have electricity. Germany plans to build 27 new coal-fired power plants by 2020, and Italy expects to double its reliance on coal by 2015.

Moreover, the 0.1 degree temperature reduction assumes rising CO2 causes global warming – a belief that thousands of scientists vigorously challenge, because there is little actual evidence to support the thesis.

Of course, some will gain from penalizing, taxing and hyper-regulating our economy. Al Gore and others involved in emission trading stand to make billions, from trillions of dollars in cap-and-trade transactions. Coastal states and companies that don’t rely on coal will benefit, as will companies that get excess or low-cost emission permits and can sell these allowances for handsome profits. Well-paid bureaucrats will have “green jobs” – as will scientists, eco-activists and renewable energy companies, who will share $6-10 billion annually in taxpayer cash, as long as they continue to conduct climate research, issue dire warnings about global warming cataclysms, and build wind and solar projects.

Besides massive pain for no gain, cap-tax-and-trade will create an intrusive Green Nanny State that destroys jobs, reduces personal freedoms, and hobbles economic opportunities and civil rights.

Our Earth is cooling. Our economy is in the tank. Congress and the White House need to stop hyperventilating about global warming, and let the free market get our economy back on track.
______________

Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. This article first appeared on World Net Daily: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115253

****************

Conservative+Cap-and-Trade+Taxes

How Is Obama Doing So Far?

So… How’s Obama Doing??? HUH???
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet***********************************

Awful! Just awful! That’s how he is doing!

In a few short months, just over half a year in office, Obama has managed to wreck the economy, and lay an unspeakable tax burden on our children, our grandchildren, and quite possibly - our great-grandchildren, as well.

Obama, in league with Pelosi and Reid and their fellow socialists in the US Congress, have sure as heck brought change, all right! Boy, have they EVER!

As we look back over the past seven months, now, we can see the devastation left in the wake of the liberal/socialist/”progressive” battlestar as it smashed its way through an unsuspecting America looting the treasury as it went.

Why, just look at the money the Obama government has spent! Worse even than the squandered money is the power they have accrued unto themselves. As they repealed welfare reform and scared the American people half to death with their manic drive to chain America’s sick and elderly to a socialized form of healthcare we Americans don’t want and forcing worried American citizens to take to the streets of the capital city in a mass protest scheduled for September 12th.

Oh, but that is just a part of the sorry story of America’s worse president - ever! There is the Cap and Trade bill, which, if passed through the US Senate, will drive every American’s gas, fuel oil, and electricity costs through the roof. At the same time, industry will be dealt a lethal blow forcing many industries to close plants and lay off workers thus driving up unemployment and demoralizing some of the most productive workers on the planet.

And look what he has done for America overseas. He has managed to tick-off the UK and India and is doing a major “suck-up” job on our enemies such as Russia, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela to our south, just to name a few.

Over at the Federal Communications Commission, the stage is being set to institute a stealth Fairness Doctrine to clear the radio airwaves of conservative talk shows. Of course, they will deny it, but when you fan away enough of the smoke, you can see it quite clearly.

What we are seeing develop, dear reader, is a country far different from the America with a representative republican form of government the forefathers of this once great land envisioned when they founded it. What we are seeing is a socialist state aborning! Socialism is the incurable cancer of nations. It rots the soul, the spirit, and the heart out of all nations so hapless as to allow it to get a foothold within its government. You have heard it said that the very foundations of America are under attack. And it is true.
As we survey the wreckage of this beloved land we would suggest that those of you who believe in the power of prayer, should begin fervently to pray to God to intervene and save this last great hope of mankind on this planet. America has never, I repeat, never been in the peril she finds herself today, not even during the Great War for Southern Independence, nor the Second World War, nor the 40-year-long Cold War when soviet missiles were pointed down our throats from only ninety miles away.

It is becoming clearer as the days of the Obama Administration increase that the American electorate has made a monumental blunder - a historic mistake – and, as a result, we have an anomaly in the oval office. It is beginning to appear that the only recourse we have is to plead with the Republican senators to shut the US Senate down and allow no legislation to pass until after the next election in 2010. It can be done procedurally and as an American citizen concerned over what I see as a socialist takeover of this nation, I personally plead with the Republican minority leader in the Senate to do just that.

In the meantime I will resort to that age-old practice of calling on Providence, in His mercy, to intervene and save America from herself.

J. D. Longstreet.

********************

cap-and-trade+ Democrats+ healthcare reform+ mainstream media+ President Obama+ public relations" rel="tag">Conservative+cap-and-trade+ Democrats+ healthcare reform+ mainstream media+ President Obama+ public relations

The September 12th March on Washington

The September 12th March on Washington

**********************************

On Saturday, September 12th, 2009, thousands of grassroots patriotic Americans will march on Washington, D.C. for the largest "tea party" in history -- the 09.12.09 March on Washington.

What’s happening in America? Well, it looks to this scribe as if Americans are fed-up with the worse government we have had in the history of this nation and they’re going to Washington to tell them so!

The folks over at www.gather.com/ say the following: “The politicians in Washington, D.C. take our hard-earned money with taxes and inflation. Then they bail out their buddies in the banks with $700 Billion of our money. Then they bail out their buddies in the auto industry... before taking over the biggest ones. Then they pass a so-called "stimulus bill" that is nothing more than a HUGE piece of pork. Then they try to pass the largest tax increase in history with their fake-environmental "cap and tax" bill.

THEN... they try to take over the American healthcare system, and try to ram socialized medicine down our throats. We've had enough, and we're NOT taking it any more. The "sleeping giant" is waking up." Read the article HERE.

Let’s take a look at a press release from FreedomWorks:

FreedomWorks Taxpayer March on Washington Scheduled for September 12, 2009

“WASHINGTON - (Business Wire) Over the last six months the national debt skyrocketed by nearly $3 trillion. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, our national debt will more than double by 2019. Americans will have to pay for this stratospheric spending spree first by begging foreign nations to buy our bonds, and later through higher taxes and inflation.

Grassroots anger at the inability of Washington to live within a budget has been building for some time, and began to boil over in late 2007 as the Bush Administration and Treasury Secretary Paulson abandoned their claimed free market principles to bail out automakers and Wall Street banks through TARP.

When newly elected President Obama and his allies in Congress passed the $780 billion debt stimulus plan in February 2009, activists took to the streets.

On tax day, the tea party movement began in earnest. Until now the movement has remained at the local levels. No longer will that be the case. The movement is coming to Washington on September 12, 2009 for a march and rally at the US Capitol.

From autos to banking, the government is crowding out the private sector of our economy. Where Bush bailed out the private sector, Obama is making hostile government takeovers. Ignoring our multi trillion-dollar deficit, Washington is considering a massive new energy tax and a takeover of health care.

On Saturday, September 12th FreedomWorks will be joined by over ten thousands of liberty-loving activists to take a stand against politicians who are bankrupting our future. National co-sponsors include Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, National Taxpayers Union, Americans For Tax Reform, Young Americans for Liberty, Ayn Rand Center, Campaign for Liberty, Free Republic, Young America’s Foundation, Smart Girl Politics, and The Club for Growth.

The event will kick-off on September 10th and 11th with various events throughout Washington including grassroots leadership training and Capitol Hill visits. The three-day event culminates on September 12th as taxpayers march on the Capitol building.

For more information, including media inquiries, registration, contacting event coordinators, and the schedule of events, please visit our event website at http://www.912dc.org/.” You can check this site out for yourself HERE.

Over at http://www.912dc.org/ the folks say this: “It’s time to take the tea party movement directly to Washington, D.C. Please join thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans from across the country as we gather in our nation’s capital to deliver a message to the politicians: Enough!

We’ve had enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government, and the soaring deficits. And we reject the future tax increases to pay for all of this spending and debt down the road. We are gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!”

Sounds as if these folks are determined to be heard - and to get their point across by taking their protest directly to the nation’s front yard. It is about time! When Moses won’t come to the mountain, then the mountain must go to Moses!

I have been on this earth a long time and I don’t recall ever experiencing a US government as disconnected from the people of the nation as is this government.

Now the fun begins! By the “fun” I mean watching the Mainstream Media trying their very best to ignore this building crescendo of citizen protest. Oh, make no mistake about it. The MsM will make every effort to ignore or “play down” this March on Washington. For if people turn up in vast numbers it will make the media look extremely bad!

It was a Tea Party in Boston that helped get this experiment we call America off and running. Now it is a Tea Party in the capitol of the nation the original tea party helped spawn that may, very well, play a part in saving that experiment!

I have only a couple, or three, questions: Whose got the tar? And whose got the feathers? And, oh yeah, the rails! Whose got the rails? Huh?

J. D. Longstreet

********************

Conservative+Democrats+Healthcare-reform+MsM+Obama

Watch For The Signs! ... Alan Caruba

Watch for the Signs
By:Alan Caruba

********************

There are some lessons one learns from a life spent first as a journalist and then for many decades as a public relations professional. You cannot succeed in PR if you cannot spot the early signs that the media herd is heading in one direction or the other.

It was obvious from the beginning that the mainstream media (MSM) fell in love with Barack Obama. Like Chris Matthews, it was a complete crush. Obama was the anti-Hillary, come to save America from her shrill voice and to redeem our sad history of racism.

At this point, however, it is just as obvious that he has managed to say and do any number of things that have aroused the distrust of the all but the 28% of those convinced he is a dandy President. The rest no longer feel that way.

The MSM is presently sticking its finger in the wind to find out which way it is blowing. They are checking Rasmussen and Gallup polls. Once they conclude that Obama is unpopular to a point beyond which they can no longer obscure or influence, they will do what all fearless MSM do; they will begin to gang up on him.

By the time Jimmy Carter left office, even the Peanut Farmer’s Gazette was glad to see him go.
Watch the signs. The week that either (or both) Time Magazine and Newsweek publish a cover story asking, “What Went Wrong?” or “Healthcare Reform is Very Sick” or anything similar that suggests—gasp!—Obama has suffered a major political setback, you can be confident that, in their editorial board offices amidst leather chairs and a huge polished mahogany table, someone will have intoned, “It’s not going well for Obama.”

The other beacon to watch is, of course, The New York Times. When Maureen Dowd can tear herself away from berating Sarah Palin to say an unkind word about Barack Obama, you know the beginning of the end will have arrived. When Paul Krugman thinks out loud that maybe a three trillion dollar debt is probably not a good idea, the banana peel will have been thrown into the Rose Garden.When the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson can no longer find an excuse for Barack Obama’s blunders and inability to sell a very bad healthcare reform and even worse Cap-and-Trade tax on energy, you might as well break out your GOP lapel pin and start to wear it in public.

There’s a reason for the rapid demise of the Obama Dream. It’s called reality.

Americans are not great fans of those who spend all of their time “apologizing” for the U.S.A. and blaming others for why the job they wanted has turned out to be a real stinker. It is now Obama’s foreign policy, Obama’s economy, and Obama’s gay rights agenda. Despite all the “green shoots” and other alleged signs that the economy is getting better, real people know it’s not.
Coming to a town near you or maybe your street, will be more mortgage foreclosures. Banks are being closed and their assets sold to other banks, but while that is a palliative measure to protect customers, it doesn’t change the fact that credit flow is still a trickle. A credit card meltdown is likely on the way. Job losses? Yes, that too.

Plainly speaking, the federal government is running out of monetary tricks to make the Recession go away. It will never dawn on them to actually cut spending. It is only now just dawning on them that the public hates the billion-dollar “bailouts” and “stimulus” bills.

The MSM is shedding jobs as if a plague has struck their newsrooms. And it has. First they shed their credibility as objective and reliable sources of news and now they are shedding consumers of news who prefer Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

We are all just weeks from the first significant cracks in the MSM herd mentality regarding Barack Obama, his ever growing circle of “czars”, and those wacky Congress critters like Pelosi and Reid. By the end of the year, the MSM will desert him.

As a PR Counselor, I would advise Obama to say something critical about al Qaeda’s perpetrators of 9/11 and not blame the victims when that anniversary comes around. Otherwise, he’ll be able to watch the slow drift of the MSM turn into a stampede.

Alan Caruba

*******************

Conservative+Democrats+Healthcare-reform+MsM+Obama

Seasoned Protesters ... Alan Caruba

Seasoned Protesters

by Alan Caruba

************************

Have you taken a close look at the protesters showing up at the town hall meetings being held by the horrified members of Congress? These folks are often quite OLD.

Unlike the union or ACORN thugs that Democrats use to intimidate attendees, some of those giving their Congressman an ear-full show up in wheelchairs or using walkers. The healthier among them seem quite at ease raising their voices and why is that?

Being among that generation, it occurred to me that they are the same people who showed up for the Civil Rights marches and at the Vietnam War protests in Washington, D.C when I was a young man. I was there, too. I saw these folks show up to demand President Nixon resign after the Watergate scandal got too big for him to silence.

Many of them--often quite liberal--continued showing up for environmental causes or for a march to find a cure for breast cancer. These are seasoned protesters; often liberal in their youth and just as often now conservative in their older years.

This generation of elder protesters has had plenty of practice and now has plenty to protest about. They aren’t a bunch of kids with no knowledge of history. These people lived history!

To begin with, they don’t want the government messing around with their medical insurance plans and they don’t want the government telling their doctors what they can and cannot do to ensure they get the best medical care available.

Those liberal programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, plus the prescription add-ons, may be socialism, but they like that kind of socialism; it’s the kind that helps pay their bills. Beyond that, they want the government to butt out.

Crazy schemes to sell carbon credits in order to limit carbon dioxide seem like the most absurd notions to the elderly, many of whom moved to warmer climates in Florida and Arizona to get away from the cold winters of the northern states. Global warming? They’re for it!

Like the rest of the population, they know that the weather has turned cooler all around the nation and those that keep up with such matters know there is no “global warming” and that they’re being scammed in order to put a huge new tax on the use of all energy.

One of the great appeals of Barack Obama when he was campaigning was his youth. Poor John McCain looked and sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge beside him. Youth, however, has some inherent problems such as the lack of the kind of experience needed to run a superpower, to find the right answers to end a deep recession, and to deal with the real threats to security and peace in the world.

At this point, the old folks know that the unemployment rate is much higher than the “official” announcement by the government. They know that Obama is doing nothing to thwart Iran from getting nuclear weapons. They know he hates Israel and they are seriously beginning to think he hates America, too.

All those old folks showing up at the town hall meetings were seriously offended when President Obama ran around the world apologizing for America’s having saved a large portion of it from the Empire of Japan and the Nazis in World War II, for having faced down the former Soviet Union for most of their lives, and for having had to invade Iraq (twice!) to stop Saddam from making war on his neighbors.

Some recall Pearl Harbor and all of them recall 9/11 like it was yesterday.

Listening to the new Dear Leader Barack telling some members of Congress to shut up and get out of the way because he wants to turn the U.S. into a giant Communist commune does not go down well with those old folks.

Their bones may ache a bit and their gait may be slower than in former days, but they know how to protest so they went to the town hall meetings to let their Congress critter know they don’t like being ignored, bullied, or taxed into the grave and beyond.

On September 12, there’s going to be a mass march in Washington, D.C. to protest proposed taxes and, even though I am in my 70s, I might just show up.

Alan Caruba

*********************
cap-and-trade,+Congress+healthcare reform President Obama" rel="tag">Conservative+cap-and-trade,+Congress+healthcare reform President Obama

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

Forests of Concrete and Steel

Forests of Concrete and Steel
By Paul Driessen
****************************
“Many words could describe wind energy and green jobs. “Sustainable” is not one of them.”
Paul Driessen
*******************************************
Boone Pickens, Nacel Energy, Vestas Iberia and others have been issuing statements and running ads, extolling the virtues of wind as an affordable, sustainable energy resource. Renewable energy reality is slowly taking hold, however.

Spain did increase its installed wind power capacity to 10% of its total electricity, although actual energy output is 10-30% of this, or 1-3% of total electricity, because the wind is intermittent and unreliable. However, Spain spent $3.7 billion on the program in 2007 alone, King Juan Carlos University economics professor Gabriel Calzada determined.

It created 50,000 jobs, mostly installing wind turbines, at $73,000 in annual subsidies per job – and 10,000 of these jobs have already been terminated. The subsidies have been slashed, due to Spain’s growing economic problems, putting the remaining 40,000 jobs at risk.

Meanwhile, the cost of subsidized wind energy and carbon dioxide emission permits sent electricity prices soaring for other businesses – causing 2.2 jobs to be lost for every “green” job created, says Calzada. Spain’s unemployment rate is now 17% and rising. That’s hardly the “success” story so often cited by Congress and the Obama Administration.

Across the Channel, Britain’s biggest wind-energy projects are in trouble. Just as the UK government announced its goal of creating 400,000 eco-jobs by 2015, major green energy employer Vestas UK is ending production. All 7,000 turbines that Downing Street just committed to installing over the next decade will be manufactured – not in Britain, but in Germany, Denmark and China.

For businesses, existing global warming policies have added 21% to industrial electricity bills since 2001, and this will rise to 55% by 2020, the UK government admits. Its latest renewable energy strategy will add another 15% – meaning the total impact on British industry will likely be a prohibitive 70% cost increase over two decades. This is the result of the government’s plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions 34% below 1990 levels by 2020, and increase the share of renewables, especially wind, from 6% to 31% of Britain’s electricity.

These cost hikes could make British manufacturers uncompetitive, and send thousands more jobs overseas, the Energy Intensive Users Group reports. English steel mills could become “unable to compete globally, even at current domestic energy prices,” says British journalist Dominic Lawson; “but deliberately to make them uncompetitive is industrial vandalism – and even madness … a futile gesture ... and immoral.”

On this side of the pond, President Obama and anti-hydrocarbon members of Congress are promoting “green” energy and jobs, via new mandates, standards, tax breaks and subsidies. However, the United States would need 180,000 1.5-megawatt wind turbines by 2020, just to generate the 600 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity that compliance with the narrowly passed Waxman-Markey global warming bill would necessitate, retired energy and nuclear engineering professor James Rust calculates.
This would require millions of acres of scenic, habitat and agricultural lands, and 126 million tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals for the turbines, at 700 tons per turbine; prodigious quantities of concrete, steel, copper and land for new transmission lines; and still more land, fuel and raw materials for backup gas-fired generators. America’s new national forests will apparently be made of concrete and steel.

Those miners and drillers would likely be reclassified as “green” workers, based on the intended purpose of their output. However, the raw materials will probably not be produced in the States, because so many lands, prospects and deposits are off limits – and NIMBY litigation will further hamper resource extraction.

Air quality laws and skyrocketing energy costs (due to carbon taxes and expensive renewable energy mandates) will make wind turbine (and solar panel) manufacturing in the USA equally improbable. Thus, manufacturing could well be in China or India, and most “green” jobs could be for installers, as Spain and Britain discovered.
Posturing has already collided with reality in Texas, the nation’s wind energy capital. Austin’s GreenChoice program cannot find buyers for electricity generated entirely from wind and solar power. Its latest sales scheme has been a massive flop: after seven months, 99% of its recent electricity offering remains unsold.

Austin officials admit that “times have changed,” and the recession and falling energy prices may make it impossible for the city to meet its lofty goals. The company’s renewable electricity now costs almost three times more than standard electricity, and even eco-conscious consumers care more about the color of their money than the hue of their purported ideology.

Even worse for global warming alarmists and renewable energy advocates and rent seekers, global warming patterns have reversed during the past decade. Satellite data reveal that the planet is cooling, despite steadily rising carbon dioxide levels, and summertime low temperature records are being broken all over the United States.
“You'd better hope global warming is caused by manmade CO2 if you're investing in [renewable] sectors,” says Daniel Rice, the past decade’s best-performing US equity fund manager (BlackRock Energy and Resources Fund). But evidence for manmade catastrophic global warming is dissipating faster than carbon dioxide from an open soda bottle on a hot summer day.

The crucial fact remains: wind and solar are simply not economical without major government subsidies or monstrous carbon taxes. Moreover, cap-and-tax legislation currently being promoted in the House and Senate is “not enough to do anything” about supposed global warming disasters notes Rice.

“All it does is provide Obama a pass to Copenhagen,” where the UN will host a climate change conference in December, Rice says. And those subsidies and taxes would drive energy prices still higher, killing jobs and skyrocketing the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

Congress and the Administration are dragging their feet on nuclear power, closing off access to more resource-rich lands, and imposing layers of new regulations on oil, gas and coal energy – denying Americans these vast stores of energy and hundreds of billions in revenue that developing them would generate. Meanwhile, slick wind turbine ad campaigns promote expensive, heavily subsidized, unreliable technologies that only climate activists and company lobbyists would describe as sustainable, affordable, eco-friendly or socially responsible.

The ads and lobbyists seek more mandates, tax breaks and subsidies. Wind promoters want to quiet opponents long enough to get energy and climate legislation enacted – before Americans realize how it would drive the price of energy still higher, kill jobs, curtail living standards and liberties, and raise the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

___________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power • Black Death.
*********************

cap-and-trade, coal+ Congress+ energy+ environmentalists" rel="tag"> Conservative+cap-and-trade, coal+ Congress+ energy+ environmentalists

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story!

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story

By Alan Caruba
******************


John F. Kennedy, standing in front of the Berlin Wall, said “Ich bin en Berliner” to declare his solidarity with Western Germany, divided from its eastern half by the compromises with the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Ronald Reagan would later demand, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” as well as declare his solidarity with the Polish people seeking to free themselves from Soviet domination.

I have heard two versions of what President Obama has done in response to the Iranian uprising. One says that he was right to keep a low profile so that the United States would not be blamed for the rebellion against the tyrannical ayatollahs. This, it’s said provides “deniability” in the event the regime successfully puts down the rebellion. The other version says he should be outspoken in his support for the Iranian people.

History will decide whether President Obama has chosen the right course of action, but we know he has already made major efforts to reach out to the “Supreme Leader” and his mullah cronies. Death to the U.S. and Israel has always been the rallying call for the thirty-year-old Islamic revolution. We are the external enemies by which the mullahs assert their right to run Iran. At the same time, by distancing himself from the Israelis, President Obama has let the whole of the Middle East know he has cast his vote for Islam.

In 1979 there were crowds in the streets of Tehran that drove out the Shah. President Jimmy Carter appeared to have been caught off-guard by what happened. So were the U.S. diplomats and the CIA who apparently had no idea how deep the hatred ran for the Shah. The exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tapped into that hatred. Soon our diplomats were to be held hostage for 444 days, released only when Ronald Reagan took the oath of office and Jimmy Carter was rendered a powerless and defeated one-term ex-President.

Jimmy Carter was incapable of demonstrating the power and the will of the American people to free our diplomats. He blamed earlier decisions regarding Iran as a buffer state against the Soviet Union and a source of oil to the West. Did the CIA “meddle” in Iran’s affairs, engineering the overthrow of a prime minister in 1953? Yes, along with the British we did and, from what I can determine, it was the right decision.

By the time Carter was elected President in 1977, the memories of the 1973 oil embargo were still fresh in the minds of Americans. The members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries used the embargo to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel, re-supplying its military during the Yom Kippur war.

Despite later negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, it is safe to conclude Carter was no friend to Israel and that animus has deepened over the years. Israel relinquished the Sinai desert, just as it would later withdraw from the Gaza in a vain hope of peace. There's a museum in Cairo devoted to the "victory" Egypt claims it secured in the war.

As Seldon B. Graham, Jr. points out in his book, “Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High”, “On January 23, 1980, President Carter announced to Congress that the U.S. would defend the Persian Gulf area by military force if necessary. Thus, the official energy policy of the United States abandoned USA oil and gave the supply to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).”

Carter had already called for a “windfall profits tax” on U.S. oil companies and Graham calls it, “a death notice for USA oil”, noting that “Many US oil and gas companies went bankrupt because of the Windfall Profits Tax.” During his campaign, President Obama called for a similar tax.

In the wake of that earlier tax, not one single new refinery has been built by U.S. oil companies because (a) they cost well over a billion to construct and (b) there is no way they can be sure another such tax would not be imposed.

Exploration for America's vast reserves of oil have been meager as well. Virtually the entire continental shelf of the nation was put off-limits to exploration and extraction. An effort by the Bush administration to lift the restriction was swiftly rescinded by the Obama administration. Congress still will not let oil companies drill in Alaska's ANWR.

Carter's actions effectively left the United States dependent to a large degree on Middle East oil, although these days the U.S. now imports much of its oil from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Denying the U.S. of its own vast energy reserves and attacking its energy producers has been a consistent theme in a straight line between President Carter and President Obama.

President Obama apparently also hates coal, vowing to “bankrupt” any company that attempted to build a coal-fired plant to provide much-need electricity to our growing population. In addition to rescinding the opening of the continental shelf to exploration, one of the first acts of the Obama administration was to cancel leases to explore for oil deposits in states where it is known to exist in large quantities.

Both the Carter and Obama administrations display the weakness liberals have for despots and despotic regimes of every description. In their hearts they see them as an appropriate way to keep people in bondage.

The leaders of many foreign nations have already taken Barack Obama’s measure.

The North Koreans hold him in such contempt they intend to fire a ballistic missile at Hawaii, probably on Independence Day. If he really wanted to show some character and a clear intent to defend the nation, he would destroy it in flight because we have the capacity to do this. He won’t.

Obama’s Democrat majority in Congress is beginning to back away from his disastrous taxing and spending proposals. It is widely rumored that the proposed “Cap-and-Trade” legislation, based on the bogus global warming hoax, will fail in Congress.

Similarly, the panic in the White House as it attempts to cope with a failing economy can be smelled a few blocks away on Capitol Hill. Obama’s constant drumbeat of one “crisis” after another is beginning to wear thin and it is likely too that his healthcare “reform” will fail as well.

Raising taxes in the midst of the worst recession since the days of the Great Depression is not likely to find much favor either.

On Independence Day, nearly 1,500 or more protest rallies, “Tea parties”, will be held in America from coast to coast. Their message will not be lost on Congress though you can be sure the slavish mainstream news media will do what they can to mislead the public into believing they were minor events.

Only they will not be minor events, nor will those that will follow. Americans will be in the streets in the weeks and months that follow. They will reflect the same determination of Iranians who want the freedom we too often take for granted.

In October 2010, Americans will have an opportunity to neuter this narcissist, this pretender in the White House. It is time to prepare for the midterm elections. It is time to take America back from the liberals that are ruining it.

Alan Caruba
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