The Harm a President Can Do ... Alan Caruba

The Harm a President Can Do

 By Alan Caruba

The announcement that Barack Hussein Obama will run for reelection was greeted with little fanfare and less surprise. In order to raise money, he needed to make it official and he was quick to join Rev. Al Sharpton, a man with a dubious history of histrionics, at a Harlem event.

Even with the data available, two years into his first term, it is difficult to grasp how much harm he has done to the nation as its elected leader.

Despite the fact that, until November 2010, the Congress was controlled by the Democrats, he was so busy during his second year that he could not find time to present Congress with a budget. The government shutdown is pure political theatre and should be avoided. If it comes, it will be the result of a political calculation that the President can benefit from it.

Obamacare, the hallmark of his political legacy, is opposed by 26 U.S. States and has been declared unconstitution in a federal court. The House has voted to repeal it. Hardly a week goes by without finding billions in new costs buried within its pages, all of which expand the size of government beyond imagination.

In two years, the nation has accumulated debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as its entire prior history since the day George Washington took office. In January 2009, when President Obama was sworn into office, the national debt was $10.627 trillion. Today it is $14.052 trillion and rising.

The leadership that the world has long looked to America to provide has dissipated. The nations of the West, in particular the European socialist nations, have also spent themselves into penury. Portugal is the latest to cry out for help. Greece, Ireland, Spain, all once among the great powers, have drained their coffers with cradle-to-grave assurances that the government would always pick up the tab.

After two years in which every regulatory obstacle, including an illegal “moratorium” on deep water drilling for oil was imposed, the price of West Texas crude oil went from $38.74 a barrel to $99.02. Other commodities, soybeans, sugar, and corn have all seen similar increases. The price of corn has more than doubled in just twelve months.

America has enormous reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. It has long been a giant agricultural economy, but all this potential wealth is being throttled by men and women in the Obama administration who think Americans must be forced to change their driving and eating habits. In a consumer-driven economy, they want Americans to consume less.

When President Obama was sworn in, there were 2,600,000 long-term unemployed. Today there are 9,193,000 Americans in that category. People living in poverty in America have, in just two year’s time, gone from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000. This occurred during a time when massive “bailouts” were undertaken by the government. They are now widely regarded as failures.

The greatest automotive manufacturer in the world, General Motors, is for all intents and purposes owned by the government. Auto union jobs had to be saved even if taxpayers had to have their taxes diverted for that purpose. Having brought the company to ruin with outrageous work, wage, health, and pension demands, they were still to be rewarded by the Obama administration. The heads of public service unions, among the largest in the nations, have enjoyed an open-door policy at the White House.

Having been elected by campaigning against the war in Iraq, President Obama expanded the number of troops in Afghanistan. While U.S. troop presence in Iraq was being reduced, the President suddenly engaged the nation militarily in Libya without any authorization from Congress.

With one glaring exception, no cohesive foreign policy regarding the Middle East exists. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, an ally of the United States, surrounded on all sides by enemies and threatened daily by Iran, has been abandoned.

Egypt’s Mubarack was publicly abandoned, but Iran’s Ahmadinejad’s stolen election evoked no response when people took to the streets in Tehran to protest it. Col. Gadhafi remains in control of Libya. Syria’s dictator was called “a reformer.”

Domestically, the President calls for windmills to produce energy when they remain one of the least practical means, sustained solely by government subsidies and mandates. The factory in which he made the call belongs to a Spanish company. His call for solar energy is equally fatuous. High speed rail is yet another foolish initiative.

The last two years have been testimony to the harm a President can do to a nation and yet, despite the obvious harm being imposed on millions of Americans, the President continues to enjoy the support of people for whom the growth of the government, the increase in spending, and the nation’s loss of leadership in the world is not understood and will not be until it is too late to reverse the damage.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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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.

Wind power: questionable benefits, concealed impacts ... Paul Driessen

Wind power: questionable benefits, concealed impacts
EPA trumpets dubious shale gas risks – but ignores environmental impacts of wind turbines
Paul Driessen

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America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) and T Boone Pickens’ wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.

Barely two years later, America (and the world) are tapping vast, previously undreamed-of energy riches – as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or “fracking” the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.

Within a year, US recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates. That’s 36 years’ worth, based on what the USA currently consumes from all gas sources, or the equivalent of 74 years’ of current annual US oil production. The reserves span the continent, from Barnett shale in Texas to Marcellus shale in Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states – to large deposits in western Canada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and other states (and around the world).

Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter. The gas can move seamlessly into existing pipeline systems, to fuel homes, factories and electrical generators, serve as a petrochemical feedstock, and replace oil in many applications. States, private citizens and the federal government could reap billions in lease bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes. Millions of high-paying jobs could be “created or saved.” Plentiful gas can also provide essential backup power for wind turbines.

Production of this much gas would reduce oil price shocks and dependence on oil imports from the likes of Gadhafi and Chavez, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Talk about a game changer!

What’s not to like? Plenty, it turns out. The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas passé: the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens’ Plan and forests of wind turbines.

What to do? Environmentalists voiced alarm. HBO aired “Gasland,” a slick propaganda film about alleged impacts of fracking on groundwater. Its claims have been roundly debunked (for instance, methane igniting at a water faucet came from a gas deposit encountered by the homeowner’s water well – not from a fracking operation). A politically motivated Oscar was predicted, but didn’t happen.

The Environmental Protection Agency revealed a multiple personality disorder. Its Drinking Water Protection Division director told Congress there is not a single documented instance of polluted groundwater due to fracking. (Studies by Colorado and Texas regulators drew the same conclusion.)

EPA’s Texas office nevertheless insisted that Range Resources was “endangering” a public aquifer and ordered the company to stop drilling immediately and provide clean water to area homes. EPA officials then failed to show up at the hearing or submit a single page of testimony, to support their claims.

Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to conduct a “life-cycle” or “cradle-to-grave” study of hydraulic fracturing drilling and gas production techniques, to assess possible impacts on groundwater and other ecological values. Depending on whether the study is scientific or politicized, it could lead to national, state-by-state or even city-by-city drilling delays, bans – or booms.

The industry and many states that have long experience with drilling and are confident the needed regulations, practices and testing procedures are already in place. They voice few worries, except over how long a life-cycle study could take or how political it might become. In fact, it’s a very useful tool.

But if a life-cycle study is warranted for hydraulic fracturing, because drilling might pass through subsurface formations containing fresh water, similar studies are certainly called for elsewhere: wind turbine manufacturing, installation and operation, for instance.

Turbines require enormous quantities of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth minerals – all of which involve substantial resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping. Land and habitat impacts, rock removal and pulverizing, solid waste disposal, burning fossil fuels, air and water pollution, and carbon dioxide emissions occur on large scales during every step of the process.

Over 95% of global rare earth production occurs in China and Mongolia, using their technology, coal-fired electricity generation facilities and environmental rules. Extracting neodymium, praseodymium and other rare earths for wind turbine magnets and rotors involves pumping acid down boreholes, to dissolve and retrieve the minerals. Other acids, chemicals and high heat further process the materials. Millions of tons of toxic waste are generated annually and sent to enormous ponds, rimmed by earthen dams.

Leaks, seepage and noxious air emissions have killed trees, grasses, crops and cattle, polluted lakes and streams, and given thousands of people respiratory and intestinal problems, osteoporosis and cancer.

In 2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals – and over 15,000,000 tons of waste. To double current global installed wind capacity, and produce rare earths for photovoltaic solar panels and hybrid and electric cars, China will have to increase those totals significantly – unless Molycorp and other companies can rejuvenate rare earth production in the US and elsewhere, using more modern methods.

Made in China turbines are shipped to the USA, trucked to their final destinations, and installed on huge concrete platforms; new backup gas generating plants are built; and hundreds of miles of new transmission lines are constructed. That means still more steel, copper, concrete, fuel and land. Moreover, the backup power plants generate more pollution and carbon dioxide than if they could simply run at full capacity, because as backups for turbines they must operate constantly but ramp up to full power, and back down, numerous times daily, in response to shifting wind speeds.

Wind farms require roads and 700-1000 ton concrete-and-rebar foundations, which affect water drainage patterns in farm country. The 300-500 foot tall turbines affect scenery, interfere with or prevent crop dusting over hundreds of acres, and kill countless birds and bats. Farmers who lease their land for wind turbines receive substantial royalty payments; neighbors are impacted, but receive no compensation.

Despite these ecological costs, wind farm projects are often fast-tracked through NEPA and other environmental review processes, and are exempted from endangered species and migratory bird laws that can result in multi-million-dollar fines for oil, gas and coal operators, for a fraction of the carnage.

Perhaps worst, all this is supported generously by renewable energy mandates, tax breaks, feed-in tariffs, “prioritized loading orders,” and other subsidies, courtesy of state and federal governments and taxpayers. In fact, wind power gets 90 times more in federal subsidies than do coal and natural gas, per megawatt-hour of electricity actually generated, according to US Energy Information Administration data. And wind-based electricity costs consumers several times more per kilowatt-hour than far more reliable electricity from coal, gas and nuclear power plants.
Simply put, the wind might be free, when it blows. But the rest of the “renewable, green, eco-friendly” wind energy system is anything but.

It might be far better all around to simply build the most efficient, lowest-polluting coal, gas and nuclear generating plants possible, let them run at full capacity 24/7/365 – and just skip the wind power.

Life-cycle studies would be a positive development – for all energy sources. In fact …
“Think globally, act locally” might be a very good motto for EPA and wind energy advocates.
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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.

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.

Worst President, Ever! ... Alan Caruba

Worst President, EVER!

By Alan Caruba

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Does anyone recall the first weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency? He was everywhere on the media all the time. His constant use of TelePrompters became an instant joke, suggesting he could not say anything unless it was scripted. Indeed, listening to him try to speak without them is a painful process of a very slow selection of words and very long pauses in between.

After his first press conference he stopped holding them until 309 days later when he addressed the oil spill in the Gulf. It was such a lame performance that his advisors apparently thought a speech from the Oval Office, his first, would make up for that. It didn’t.

In this age of 24/7 news coverage, Barack Obama has managed to make himself ubiquitous to the point of complete inanity. So, I have a bit of advice for him: Shut up, Barack.

The seas have not ceased to rise because you were elected (as promised) and the Earth has not “healed itself.” Indeed, it is bleeding oil at a prodigious rate, confounding BP’s engineers, all graduates no doubt of the Acme School of Oil Drilling.

What have we learned about Barack Hussein Obama? If George W. Bush was considered an amiable dunce, Obama has demonstrated to everyone he is the worst kind of ideologue, totally tone deaf to the Voice of the People. When nearly a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. on September 12th last year to protest Obamacare, his communications advisor, David Axelrod dismissed them saying, “They’re wrong.”

Axelrod was on all the network and cable news shows the day following his Oval Office appearance defending a speech that essentially said we don’t know what we’re doing, but we blame BP. The good news is that the president has finally found someone else to blame other than George W. Bush for his own ineptitude and incompetence.

In case you haven’t noticed, Obama’s approval ratings in the polls are in the low 40s and heading south. There is a hard core of about 30% who support Obama no matter what he does or doesn’t do. In an article by the Editor-in-Chief of CNSnews, Terence P. Jeffrey, he noted that “The middle class is abandoning President Barack Obama, according to data released by the Gallup Poll. The only income bracket among which a majority still says they approve of the job he is doing as president are those earning $2,000 per month or less.”

Anyone still making a living comparable to achieving the American Dream has long since abandoned the great Community Organizer with the exception of union members. When you lose the middle class, you have lost the great engine of the American economy.

With the exception of the growing legion of government workers, the unions had been losing members for years. They were held in generally low esteem and their destruction of General Motors and Chrysler bears out their parasitic relationship with business and industry. Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s support from teacher’s unions suggests why our educational system has been in the toilet for decades.

Every time Obama opens his mouth, his approval falls. It began with his great Apology Tour to the Middle East at the beginning of his presidency, continued with his acceptance of a Nobel Peace Prize for having done nothing notable, and plunged with his advocacy of the much-hated Obamacare shoved down the throats of all Americans.

In addition to advocating a Cap-and-Trade bill that is a huge tax on energy use, he is now babbling about a “clean energy future” that apparently involves paving over America with millions of acres of solar farms and coast-to-coast wind turbines.

Obama doesn’t like coal that provides fifty percent of all the electricity we use every day and, of course, oil that fuels our cars, trucks, tractors, et cetera.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Barack Hussein Obama is living proof of that.

© 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.