Amy Ridenour is the president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. She and her husband David, the vice president of the National Center, are the parents of three third graders. David's comments, like those of other National Center staff members, directors, associates and fellows, often appear in this blog.
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Friday, July 03, 2009
Climate Policy: No Gain, No Pain
Thanks to a head's up from Climate Depot, I read with interest the following on the weakness of the computer models used to predict climate from the Britsh Number Watch website:
Most computer models are nonsense. This does not include those used by engineers in designing airplanes, bridges etc., which are based on detailed experiments on the systems involved and tested in a variety of real conditions before being used.
The reason they are nonsense is that they tend to be based on guesses of the value of coefficients assumed, particularly and disastrously feedback coefficients. There are few, however, that are quite as bad as climate models, where the physics of the interactions between variables and parameters is virtually unknown to mankind.
...Imagine you settled down in your seat in a jumbo jet and noticed a plaque on the back of the seat in front which reads 'This machine was designed with the aid of a super-computer. We did not know the values of all the parameters, so had to guess most of them.' You would get off in a hurry. Yet the world's political and media establishment are asking you to gamble the economic future of yourself and your descendants on just such a proposition.
Yes, that really is what the global warming debate comes down to. Shall we believe computer models that are at best based on educated guesses (and which disagree with one another), and enact policies that significantly harm the economy based upon them, even knowing that the policies themselves wouldn't affect the climate noticeably?
I say no; it's wrong to hurt people based on a theory you have no idea is correct, especially if you know the solution won't fix the problem even if your theory IS correct.
You've heard of "no pain, no gain" with regard to weight training? The cap-and-trade climate debate is the reverse: "no gain, no pain." That is, as there isn't going to be any noticeable gain from Waxman-Markey and its ilk, why inflict the pain?
National Center's Tom Borelli Discusses Cap-and-Trade on Glenn Beck
In case you missed it, here's the segment of Glenn Beck's Fox TV show from Wednesday night featuring Tom Borelli of the National Center for Public Policy Research and David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation.
The topic is cap and trade, USCAP, corporations doing the bidding of the left, the Waxman-Markey global warming bill and the use of last minute amendments filled with goodies (amendments Congress wasn't given time to read, of course) by the House leadership to get the legislation approved by the House.
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Naughty Conservatives Shouldn't Mind Votes for Waxman-Markey (Or So We're Told)
In an error-riddled column posted Wednesday on TownHall.com, the supposedly conservative Michael Gerson has a novel take on the Republican Congressmen who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill: He blames conservatives for minding.
One of his reasons: "It is typical that we praise independent judgment and political nerve in our elected officials -- until they actually show those qualities."
If any conservatives and/or others dedicated to limiting government called on our elected representatives to show "independent judgement and political nerve" in service of anything other than principle, they were wrong to do so.
Gerson doesn't quote anybody, though, and I can see why: There are a lot more quotes available of conservatives calling upon their elected representatives to govern conservatively.
Gerson's try to tar the conservative movement with a hypocrisy tag doesn't work.
Gerson is honest, though, in saying he likes the bill (I find it difficult to believe this man is a conservative).
He likes it because, he says, the global warming theory is the dominant view of the "scientific community" (a brush broad enough to include gynecologists), because "some scientists" warn of "possible 'tipping points'," and because, supposedly, mankind's carbon dioxide emissions have reduced crop yields and driven some species to extinction. How he could possibly know this is not mentioned, possibly because what he claims is beyond the current ability of modern science to prove or disprove.
Gerson says "global warming since the 19th century is undeniable," which is another way of saying the planet warmed as the Little Ice Age ended, though Gerson does not mention that there even was a Little Ice Age (and before it, warmer temperatures, though no SUVs).
Gerson doesn't mention, either, that if concern for crop yields is paramount, a little more CO2 in the atmosphere might be just the thing.
And then there's his comment that warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is "closely correlated with increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide," which by itself would prove nothing if it were true, but it isn't.
There's more, such as Gerson's ludicrious comment that in failing to appreciate cap-and-trade, "conservatives seem strangely intent on ignoring the power of markets to encourage... innovation," as if Waxman-Markey had anything whatsoever to do with free markets (oops, Gerson left the word "free" out, so there goes the innovation).
I could go on, but there's really no need. I linked to the version of this column on TownHall with comments. The column is impossible to appreciate, but some of the comments are superlative.
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Project 21 just issued a press release criticizing the Congressional Black Caucus's apparent plans to retaliate against the House Office of Congressional Ethics, which concluded that several CBC members should be investigated by the full Ethics Committee for alleged violations of gift rules.
The release says:
Project 21 Critical of Members of Congress Under Ethics Investigation for Retaliating Against House Ethics Office and for Playing 'Race Card'
An apparent effort by the Congressional Black Caucus to deter ethics investigations of its membership is drawing sharp criticism from members of the black leadership group Project 21.
CBC members reportedly are considering changes to the law authorizing the House Office of Congressional Ethics, or OCE, in retaliation for the OCE referring allegations against several CBC members to the House Ethics Committee.
CBC members reportedly also have complained that the OCE does not have enough minority staffers, adding a racial element to the apparent retaliation.
"What does the racial or ethnic makeup of the Office of Congressional Ethics have to do with the fact that these members of the Congressional Black Caucus may have violated ethics laws? It has absolutely no bearing on the charge, and to claim that is a lack of diversity at the OCE is playing the race card plain and simple," said Project 21 member Joe Hicks, also a commentator for Pajamas Television. "It is laughable that CBC members are charging the OCE with some sort of racial targeting. The OCE was created by Speaker Pelosi, someone who shamelessly bends over backwards to be politically correct."
Of the three investigative counsels hired by the OCE, one is black. The chairman of the formal Ethics Committee investigation sparked by the OCE referral is a black Member of Congress, Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), a CBC member.
"A legitimate complaint has been filed and an investigation has begun, but political pressure is now being applied to cover up the allegations and brush everything under the rug," said Project 21 member Bishop Council Nedd II. "So much for those promises to 'drain the swamp' and root out the 'culture of corruption.' It seems that swamp has turned into a hot tub for them rather quickly."
"President Obama has long proclaimed that it is special interest lobbyists who are the root of what is wrong with our federal government. This latest lapse in congressional sensibilities exposes the fact that it is wayward members of Congress themselves, whether Republican or Democrat, who pose the greatest threat to good government for the citizens of this country," said Project 21 member John Meredith. "The idea of disbanding the one avenue the citizens of this great nation have to track congressional malfeasance is an affront to the pledge of transparency in government and the use of the race card to facilitate the closing of the Office of Congressional Ethics is insulting not only to black people but to people of every color."
In November 2008, Flaherty attended the "Caribbean Multi-Cultural Business Conference" on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. Although the conference officially was sponsored by the Carib News Foundation, according to Flaherty, signs and materials present indicate the event was funded by Citigroup, Pfizer, American Airlines, Verizon, IBM and other large corporations with business before Congress. CBC members Charles Rangel (D-NY), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Donald Payne (D-NJ), Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Delegate Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) attended the event.
Members of Congress have been prohibited since 2007 from taking funded trips of over two days if those trips are paid for or coordinated by companies that "employ or retain a registered lobbyist."
Flaherty alerted the OCE. In his letter to the OCE, Flaherty noted: "My characterization of the trip as a 'junket' is based on my observation that the sessions were lightly attended. Most attendees spent significant time at the beach or the pool. Members of Congress attended the sessions when they had a speaking role." Flaherty also said any suggestion that attendees could not see evidence of corporate involvement was "implausible."
American Spectator Covers African-American Energy Poll
Thanks to W. James Antle for his story "Lights Out," in the American Spectator, which mentioned The National Center's poll of the African-American community on energy issues.
The article appeared on Rush Limbaugh's "Stack of Stuff" Thursday.
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Many thanks to Mark, whose editorial page is a must-read. If you aren't reading daily now, try it for a week -- heck, try it for a day -- and you will be hooked.
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David Ridenour calls the Waxman-Markey bill the "Waxman-Markey Economic Climate Change" bill, because the only climate Waxman-Markey has a prayer of changing is our economic one.
And prospects for that, if it passes, are very good indeed.
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The New York Times, referring to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill: "The bill has shortcomings."
Ya think?
P.S. Apologies. I forgot to add that, except for the sentence quoted above, the NY Times editorial is also one of the most dishonest bits of writing you'll ever come across. To name just one example, it ends on an implied claim that Waxman-Markey will prevent "drought, famine, [and] coastal devastation."
In fact, Waxman-Markey, if adopted, will have an impact on the environment that is too scant to measure even if human beings are causing global warming through CO2 emissions.
Even environmentalists should oppose hurting people for no reason -- and some of them, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, do oppose Waxman-Markey.
The rest have no excuse.
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House Leadership Takes Suicidal Stand Against Its African-American Base - Townhall.com
David Ridenour has a new column published on TownHall.com examining the Democratic Congressional leadership's seemingly suicidal lack of concern for the wishes of its most loyal core constituency, African-Americans.
It begins:
Overly influenced by certain big-name green groups, misled by their own ideology and perhaps also a bit dazzled by the unlikely stardom of failed-politician-turned-climate-hero Al Gore, Democrats on Capitol Hill seem bent on self-destruction when it comes to climate change...
Poll Shows: Black Americans Prefer Delaying Action on Climate Change; Want Economy Fixed First
76% of African-Americans want Congress to make economic recovery, not climate change, its top priority, says a poll just released by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
The U.S. House of Representatives is planning a vote today on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill.
The legislation, if adopted, is expected to reduce aggregate GDP by $7.4 trillion in an effort to reduce global warming, based on a Heritage Foundation analysis.
The survey of 800 African-Americans, 80% of which were self-identified Democrats and 4% self-identified Republicans, found significant concern that government action on climate change would have a harmful and disproportionately negative impact on the African-American community.
Among the key findings:
* 38% believe job losses from climate change legislation would be felt most strongly in the black community. 7% believe job losses would fall most on Hispanics and 2% on whites;
* 56% believe Washington policymakers have failed to adequately consider economic and quality of life concerns of the black community when addressing climate issues;
* 52% of respondents don't want to pay more for gasoline or electricity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 73% are unwilling to pay more than 50 cents more for a gallon of gas; 76% are unwilling to pay more than $50 more per year for electricity;
* Black Americans are virtually deadlocked on plans to reduce emissions if it would increase prices and unemployment. 44% opposed reductions under these circumstances, 45% supported them.
* 76% want Congress to make economic recovery the top priority.
The survey was conducted by Wilson Research Strategies and has a margin of error of +/- 3.4%. The questions we asked, plus summary materials, can be viewed at: http://www.nationalcenter.org/BlackOpinion.html.
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Climate Depot unveils two shocking examples of hypocrisy by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) when it reports that global warming zealot Schumer is seeking federal aid for New York farmers because below-average temperatures are affecting crop yields.
That's my opinion, anyway.
Hypocrisy #1: Schumer has been co-sponsoring climate legislation that would have immense negative economic effects on the American public, supposedly in the interest of preventing global warming. So now he wants to hit up the taxpayers because it's too cold?
Hypocrisy #2: To hear him tell it, Schumer is extremely worried about farmers in New York who lost crops due to below-average temperatures. Federal funds are needed, he says, to mitigate the damage of nature: "We must provide immediate assistance after the unusually low temperatures that destroyed... crops and profits for the season."
But does Schumer do anything when federal laws -- federal laws he supports, such as the Endangered Species Act -- restrict vital water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, causing what one California Congressman, Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D), called a "Dust Bowl migration," as thousands of families are moving away from his district, thanks to unemployment nearing 50 percent in some communities.
Schumer calls upon the federal government to act immediately when nature hurts the farmers of his state, but when policies he ardently supportS hurt the farmers of California, he just doesn't care.
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Roll Call reports that negotiations over climate legislation among Democrats on Capitol Hill blew up last night.
This mimics the disorder among members of the Congressional majority on health care. CNN reported today that that the Democrats' plans to advance government's role in health care may be "on the rocks"; that's our sense of things as well.
Believers in a free market should not become overconfident, however; the left still holds most of the cards, and it has shown in the past that it is willing to pass nearly anything, as long as it is left-wing and/or shovels tax money to groups and individuals allied with the left. The Congressional majority will gladly pass bad, even horrendous, bills on climate and health care (indeed, from what I can see, they are only considering horrendous bills), so the odds against our team remain high.
That said, I'm amazed at the incompetence and lack of discipline going on in leftist ranks on the Hill. Congressional liberals were mostly out of power from 1995-2007 (House liberals were the entire time). They wanted to curb our use of energy and increase government's role in health care decisionmaking during that entire period, so why did they not get together and make plans? Work out drafts and get those drafts scored?
The Republican majority in Congress had its problems, but it sure hit the ground running in 1995.
This makes no sense to me.
P.S. One possibility just occurred to me. Possibly the environmental groups, with their hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, did not expend enough effort to get folks together on their version of climate heaven because they figure, if a climate bill passes, they wouldn't be able to do fundraising on global warming anymore. That's just a guess on my part, though. Could be they've just been incompetent.
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The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Clean Water Restoration Act by a party-line vote this morning.
This was expected.
Prospects for CWRA on the Senate floor are less predictable. It could go either way, although the left appears to have an advantage given 1) its control of Congress, and 2) the limited public attention (even from conservative media) the onerous provisions of this massive bill are receiving.
On a more positive note, excluding the bigger-the-government-the-better crowd, the more Americans look at this bill, the less they like it. And why would they like it? Who wants to get a federal permit, or the very least have to investigate whether they need a federal permit, just to landscape their own back yards?
It is not as though the original Clean Water Act, which is a powerful law by anyone's definition, has been repealed or expired. We don't need CWRA to have clean water.
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Senator James Inhofe's opening statement on CWRA from the hearing is a useful addition to the debate.
I hadn't previously realized the National Association of Realtors and had come out against the bill (perhaps I should stop reviewing the environmental groups' propaganda sheets, which often claim only right-wing dirty water lovers oppose CWRA).
An excerpt from Senator Inhofe's statement:
I see this bill as a significant part of a hostile agenda aimed squarely at rural America. Whether it’s new energy taxes from cap-and-trade legislation or more unfunded environmental mandates, it’s clear that this bill is yet one more raw deal for rural America.
Allowing EPA and the Corps to exercise unlimited regulatory authority over all inter- and intrastate water, or virtually anything that is wet, goes too far and is certainly beyond anything intended by the Clean Water Act. But, that is what S. 787 does. It vastly expands Federal control of private property, despite assurances contained in S. 787. In fact, the very premise of the bill is to override a State’s fundamental right to oversee waters within its borders and to usurp the power of land owners to manage their property as they see fit. The Constitution never envisioned federal jurisdiction being boundless; it carves out room for state and local governments and private property owners to manage their resources.
Two of my Republican colleagues have filed amendments to S. 787, which highlight some very legitimate concerns with the bill. I have chosen not to try and amend the bill because, frankly, I don’t think this bill is fixable. Allow me to just briefly list some of the groups that have expressed concerns with this bill that are not covered by any the amendments filed today: The Associated Builders and Contractors, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, the American Forest and Paper Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of REALTORS, the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Association of Airport Executives, and the list goes on for about 14 pages...
1) Which two states hate the Clean Water Restoration Act so much, their legislatures actually passed resolutions urging the Congress not to enact it?
A. Texas and Oklahoma B. Georgia and Alabama C. Washington and Oregon D. Idaho and Montana C. Rhode Island and Massachusetts
2) Which of the following groups oppose the Clean Water Restoration Act?
A. National Association of Counties B. National Cattlemen's Association C. American Farm Bureau D. National Association of Home Builders E. All of the above
3) Which is more accurate:
A. The original Clean Water Act, which remains in effect, was intended to cover all waters in the United States, but the U.S. Supreme Court limited its scope. The Clean Water Restoration Act would simply restore the original scope of the Clean Water Act.
B. The original Clean Water Act, which remains in effect, limited federal authority to "navigable" waters of the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld this definition. The Clean Water Restoration Act would expand federal authority beyond navigable waters to virtually every drop of water in the United States, including water on private property.
Answer to 1: D - Idaho (House and Senate) and Montana (Senate). Answer to 2: E Answer to 3: B
Quote of Note: Clean Water Restoration Act Means Troubled Waters
"For years, the 1972 Clean Water Act has been misused in the name of protecting America's waters and wetlands. The statute’s original limitation that its key provisions only apply to navigable waters was largely ignored. Instead, the law was broadly applied to a wide variety of circumstances, including remote and inconsequential drainage ditches or temporary puddles and even to completely dry land.
The statute’s complex and costly provisions interfered with the economic use of the lands it encompassed, including farming and ranching operations, construction of housing and other buildings, and domestic oil and gas production.
Fortunately, two Supreme Court decisions, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States in 2001, and Rapanos v. United States in 2006 partially reined in these excesses.
Now, the CWRA seeks to overturn these Supreme Court decisions and make the statute more expansive than ever. In fact, it would turn the Clean Water Act into what some analysts believe to be the most dangerous federal intrusion on private property rights in existence..."
"The Biggest Bureaucratic Power Grab in a Generation"
If you haven't visited the National Center for Public Policy Research's new Clean Water Restoration Act Information page (or even if you have), you can get a good 2 1/2 minute summary of CWRA from Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) from the video above.
Senator Inhofe starts the video with "Rural America, watch out!" and goes on to call CWRA "the biggest bureaucratic power grab in a generation."
If you have a blog or web page yourself, please consider posting this video. Although few people have heard of this bill, Senator Inhofe is not exaggerating about its scope.
It's important that people become educated about CWRA -- the issue is that big.
The White House is running away from Senator Ted Kennedy's health care reform bill, now that the bill is receiving adverse publicity.
I don't believe any of the liberal bills calling for an increase in the government's role in our health care system are a good idea for America, but I can't call myself impressed by the way the White House is dissing Kennedy here. Kennedy at least is man enough to put a bill out there.
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CBO: Kennedy's Health Care Bill Would Increase Deficit by $1.0 Trillion from 2010-2019
The Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation staff released this evening (PDF) a "preliminary analysis" of Title I of the draft of the Affordable Health Choices Act, which was created by Democrats on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
...According to our preliminary assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010-2019 period. When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million.
These new figures do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation, for several reasons. The estimates provided do not address the entire bill—only the major provisions related to health insurance coverage. Some details have not been estimated yet, and the draft legislation has not been fully reviewed. Also, because expanded eligibility for the Medicaid program may be added at a later date, those figures are not likely to represent the impact that more comprehensive proposals—which might include a significant expansion of Medicaid or other options for subsidizing coverage for those with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—would have both on the federal budget and on the extent of insurance coverage...
The price tag is obviously the big news in this item, but the CBO/Joint Committee estimate that 15 million people would lose their employer-provided health insurance deserves some note.
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The American Farm Bureau is reporting, correctly, that if the Clean Water Restoration Act (Senator Russ Feingold's S.787) becomes law, the federal government will claim the authority to regulate "all water" in the United States.
"S. 787 would remove any bounds from the scope of Clean Water Act jurisdiction, so that the regulatory reach of the act would extend to all water -- anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater," says a letter signed by the group.
Since its enactment in 1972, the Clean Water Act has regulated “navigable waters,” or waters of the U.S. The proposed legislation would delete the term “navigable” and replace it with “all intrastate waters” and add confusing language allowing the federal government to regulate “activities affecting these waters.” Although technical and hard to get your head around, these terms, if interchanged, would pose serious consequences for most landowners.
The legislation would grant -- for the first time ever -- the Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over all wet areas within a state, including groundwater, ditches, pipes, streets, municipal storm drains and gutters. It would grant these same agencies -- for the first time ever -- authority over all activities affecting those waters, regardless of whether the activity is occurring in water or adds a pollutant. With unfunded mandates, this slippery slope takes away power from state and local jurisdictions, shifting the control to the federal government for development and use of local land and water resources.
What does this mean for the typical residential landowner? Likely, a lot of hassle, expense and time spent in court. The legislation clearly states "all waters." Those of you with farm, stock and even goldfish ponds – beware.
Project 21's Ak'Bar Shabazz has an op-ed opposing a new federal tax on driving in Sunday's Washington Examiner.
It begins:
During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama endeared himself to many voters with a promise that 95 percent of Americans would get a tax cut and those making under $250,000 "would not see a single dime of tax increase - not on anything."
Since Obama won and he's already spent so much, it was only a matter of time before his pledge went by the wayside. First came new taxes on tobacco to pay for middle-class kids' health care.
Now Rep. James Oberstar, D-MN, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wants a vehicle mileage tax (VMT) imposed on every vehicle. And he wants it right away.
When a colleague suggested state-level pilot programs to test the feasibility of the tax, Oberstar replied: "It's going to be done, it's something we have to do. Why not just move it along?" Oberstar hopes for a vote as early as June.
Obama's transportation secretary, former Illinois Republican Rep. Ray LaHood, promoted a VMT back in February. Although the White House backed off LaHood's trial balloon then, Congress may now try to ram it down Americans' throats...
Clean Water Restoration Act Information Webpage Created
The National Center for Public Policy Research has created a webpage with links to resources about the Clean Water Restoration Act.
The page has links to resources about CWRA published not only by the National Center, but by a variety of other organizations as well. If you are a columnist, blogger, speaker or talk show host planning to address the issue, you will find plenty of useful information on the page.
As National Center Senior Fellow R.J. Smith noted below, the legislation is scheduled for a markup and vote in the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee on June 18.
Clean Water Restoration Act Scheduled for Senate Committee Vote June 18
An important message from National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith on the Clean Water Restoration Act, which is less about protecting our nation's waters and more about expanding the federal government's power to regulate private property.
From R.J. Smith:
I received an email at 11:05 p.m. last night from Senate Environment and Public Works staff that Senator Barbara Boxer and company are going to bring the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) up for full committee mark-up and vote in their Thursday 18 June business session scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in the EPW Hearing Room, 406 Dirksen.
This is Senator Russ Feingold's S.787, which was introduced on April 2.
With the Democrats having nationalized the financial, banking and automobile industries -- bringing a strong layer of socialism to the key portions of the US economy -- they are now moving to nationalize the American land and water.
Under the Clean Water Act, the Federal government only had the authority to regulate "navigable waters" and control the discharge of pollutants and dredge and fill activities within those navigable waters.
The so-called Clean Water RESTORATION Act restores nothing. That is a hoax. Instead, it removes the restrictive and limiting terms "navigable" waters and unconstitutionally extends the Federal regulatory authority over ALL waters of the United States. This includes the driest desert areas that may only hold water for a few weeks a year during summer monsoon rains. And it includes completely isolated prairie potholes (small ponds and marshes) with no connection whatsoever to any other waters.
Furthermore, the bill will now prohibit ALL activities affecting all waters of the United States. This means that anything a landowner, a business, a county roads department, a waterfowl conservation program undertakes that could conceivably affect anything that is wet -- will be subject to the discretionary jurisdiction of Army Corps or EPA bureaucrats. They will then be able to make the lives of family farmers, ranchers, tree farmers, home builders -- almost anyone and everyone -- literally impossible. They will have the total power to force every farmer or rancher or ordinary business owner to run a gauntlet of permits, red tape, delays -- that will delay projects long enough and cost so much as to essentially shut down or bankrupt even the most necessary and innocuous projects.
There are copious examples of wetlands horror stories over the last 20 years in which people have been imprisoned and fined staggering amounts for simply building their own home, cleaning up dumps, or creating habitat for waterfowl. And that occurred under the CWA restrictions of "navigable waters" and prohibitions only on discharging pollutants and dredge and fill activities.
Once those constraints are removed by the CWRA, life will quickly become a bureaucratic nightmare with no exit -- particularly so throughout all of rural America. This bill would be much more honestly named "The Rural Cleansing Act of 2009."
This will be a tough battle given that the E&PW Committee make up is 12 Ds and 7 Rs (which includes Senators George Voinovich and Lamar Alexander).
It is important that people who are concerned about this enlist the help of the agricultural community, especially county and state farm bureaus. They should notify not only the members of the Senate E&PW but also the Senate Agriculture Committee.
It is also vital to contact Rep. Collin Peterson Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and request that he ask for oversight hearings on the impact of the CWRA on America's farmers and the nation's food production.
They should also request that the farmers and ranchers they know and their county and state farm bureaus and cattlemen's associations contact the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, asking them to strongly oppose the CWRA.
Addendum (6/14/09): For more information on the Clean Water restoration act, please visit our new CWRA information webpage at http://www.nationalcenter.org/CWRA.html.
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A liberal crusade for decades has been the transfer of the U.S. health care system to government hands.
So when the liberals are about to make their most serious run at their cherished prize in 16 years, you'd think they'd leave the pork out of their bill, wouldn't you? Because pork in the bill is a turnoff for many voters, regardless of their position on government-run health care.
I thought so. I was wrong.
According to Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), who is Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the bill released by the Democrats of said committee last week has plenty of work.
According to Enzi, the bill includes:
A "Community Makeover Program" to spend billions to "beautify" streets, up to $10 per person in selected communities;
A federal government program to build new sidewalks and bike paths, and put up street lights;
Financing of new grocery stores and farmers’ markets;
Mandate that a new Washington health police bureaucracy dictate what local restaurants can offer their customers; and,
Subsidizing community projects such as jungle gyms in parks.
The big-spenders are so addicted to pork, they can't keep it out of anything.
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The NRDC would have done itself a favor to stay home from work that day. Heritage's response to the critique so thoroughly nails the NRDC that all the NRDC has done is give the Heritage study more publicity.
For instance, in the second paragraph of its critique, the NRDC complains that the Heritage Foundation analysis of the cost of the Waxman-markey cap-and-trade bill fails to take into account the "cost of inaction," that is, the cost of the bad stuff that would happen if Waxman-Markey is not adopted.
HEL-LO! Anybody home, NRDC? Waxman-Markey, even in a best-case scenario, would have negligible, if any, impact on the climate. And the Heritage Foundation DID mention this, to whit, in the original study:
The impact of Waxman-Markey on the next generation of families is thousands of dollars per year in higher energy costs, over $100,000 of additional federal debt (above and beyond the unconscionable increases already scheduled), a weaker economy, and more unemployment. And all for a change in world temperature that might not be noticeable [emphasis added].
You don't need to take Heritage's word for it, or mine. Even prominent environmental organizations that agree with the NRDC about the global warming theory say Waxman-Markey would not (to their way of thinking) sufficiently affect the climate.
Optimists are saying Waxman-Markey might (believe me, nobody knows) lower world temperatures by half a degree celsius over 40 years or so.
If spending all that money isn't going to solve the alleged problem, then what's the point of spending the money?
By way of congratulations to Heritage, let's recap Heritage's conclusions...
If Waxman-Markey is adopted, by 2035:
The typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year.
Pain at the electric meter causes consumers to reduce electricity consumption by 36 percent. Even with this cutback, the electric bill for a family of four will be $754 more that year and $12,933 more in total from 2012 to 2035.
The higher gasoline prices will have forced households to cut consumption by 15 percent, but a family of four will still pay $596 more that year and $8,000 more between 2012 and 2035.
In total, for the years 2012-2035, a family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $24,000. These inflation-adjusted numbers do not include the indirect energy costs consumers will pay as producers are forced to raise the price of their products to reflect the higher costs of production. Nor does the $24,000 include the higher expenditure for such things as more energy-efficient cars and appliances or the disutility of driving smaller, less safe vehicles or the discomfort of using less heating and cooling.
As the economy adjusts to shrinking GDP and rising energy prices, employment takes a big hit. On average, employment is lower by 844,000 jobs. In some years cap and trade reduces employment by more than 1.9 million jobs.
The negative economic impacts accumulate, and the national debt is no exception. Waxman-Markey drives up the national debt 29 percent by 2035. This is 29 percent above what it would be without the legislation and represents an additional $33,400 per person, or more than $133,000 for a family of four. To reiterate, these burdens come after adjusting for inflation and are in addition to the $450,000 per family of federal debt that will accrue over this period even without cap and trade.
No wonder the NRDC was so desperate to try to undermine Heritage's credibility.
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Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal writes: "Something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged."
Not quite. Two things are wrong. The White House shouldn't be making stuff up, and the media should be challenging the President over it.
Heck, according to the article, even the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, is exposing the White House on this. If liberal Democrats can do it, why can't the media?
I'm sure some reporters are too dumb to realize they're being lied to flat-out, but surely not all of them are idiots.
What's the point of us paying the price of a newspaper if the President can lie and the media doesn't notice?
P.S. If you don't have a Wall Street Journal subscription and you're wondering what President Obama made up, it's a fake figure for the number of jobs his so-called "stimulus" spending bill has "saved." As the article explains, there's no measurement for anything like that. The White House had to have made it up.
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Quote of Note: Obama on the Need for Justices to Have "Empathy"
"...while adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or constitutional construction will dispose of 95 percent of the cases that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95 percent of the cases -- what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult. In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy.
"In those 5 percent of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision. In those circumstances, your decisions about whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination in this country or whether a general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right of women to control their reproductive decisions or whether the commerce clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce, whether a person who is disabled has the right to be accommodated so they can work alongside those who are nondisabled -- in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart."
Quote of Note: Obama on the Senate's Advise and Consent Role
"As we all know, there's been a lot of discussion in the country about how the Senate should approach this confirmation process. There are some who believe that the President, having won the election, should have the complete authority to appoint his nominee, and the Senate should only examine whether or not the Justice is intellectually capable and an all-around nice guy. That once you get beyond intellect and personal character, there should be no further question whether the judge should be confirmed.
"I disagree with this view. I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge's philosophy, ideology, and record..."
The Obama administration has said repeatedly that it won't use its majority stake in General Motors Corp. to meddle in the company's daily affairs. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill aren't being so shy.
The areas of potential concern to lawmakers range from proposed plant and dealership closings to longer-term plans for more fuel-efficient cars. And key elected officials are already promising to weigh in even as President Barack Obama and his aides say they will shield GM from outside pressure.
"I think members will express themselves for sure. We should do that," said Rep. Sandy Levin, a Michigan Democrat whose district lies just north of Detroit. "We should express the interests of our constituents."
...Lawmakers have already shown they have muscle with GM, and they aren't likely to back off now. Members of the Michigan delegation rebelled last month when word got out that GM, post-bankruptcy, planned to boost its imports of cars made at GM factories in China. As a result, GM agreed as part of its talks with the United Auto Workers union to reopen two idled plants by 2011 to manufacture as many as 160,000 compact cars a year.
Rep. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat whose district north of Detroit includes three plants set to cease production, is one of many lawmakers in the region who want the refitted plants in their backyard.
He has backing from Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said Monday that she is going to be "aggressive" about trying to snare a facility that will help keep some automotive jobs in the state, which has the highest unemployment rate in the country.
Ms. Granholm, besides countless television appearances pleading for aid, has made about a dozen trips to Washington to meet with Mr. Obama, the president's automotive task force and dozens of other officials...
"I think where GM builds its next plant is going to be more of a political decision than a business decision," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Republican from western Michigan. "For the foreseeable future, these car companies will be run by the Obama administration, and it will not be arm's length."...
Lawmakers care about their own prominence and re-electability, not profitability. They are not going to run General Motors successfully. Mostly (as is obvious from the priorities stated by the Congressmen in the article above, and by such things as the adoption of legislation forcing automakers to meet unrealistic and anti-family mileage standards), they aren't even going to try.
General Motors didn't stay competitive. Even hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars won't change that fact.
If the U.S. government actually wanted to help the domestic car business, Congress and the Administration would repeal mileage standards (which kill Americans as well as car companies), stop pro-union public policies and get the government out of car company management and ownership immediately.
The government isn't doing any of those things.
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Black Leader Says Sotomayor Nomination Perfect Catalyst for Debate About Judicial Activism
Project 21's Mychal Massie has thoughts on the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination.
Among other things, he says the Sotomayor nomination is the perfect catalyst to begin a national debate on the appropriateness of "judicial activism," when judges essentially cut lawmakers out of the legislative process and try to rule from the bench.
The ...investigation of the Speaker of the House has been an opportunity to direct public attention to several issues that conservatives have considered key. Among these: the unprecedentedly heavy-handed tactics of the majority in Congress...; the frequently-disastrous self-serving involvement of Members of Congress into foreign affairs...; the leaking of classified information for partisan gain...; the unfair targeting of conservatives only in politically-motivated "ethics" probes.
If you guessed May 22, 1989, you are correct.
It could almost be written today, couldn't it?
The paragraph comes from an in-house report I wrote on May 22, 1989 regarding National Center for Public Policy Research activities to bring public attention to the ethics problems of Speaker of the House Jim Wright of Texas. I found the report while searching some old files for something else entirely and couldn't resist posting part of it after I realized the date was twenty years ago exactly today.
I was amused by the following paragraph:
Our second activity was a "Clean the House" rally "in demand of a full and fair investigation of Speaker Wright" held at the Democratic National Committee on April 20... The Democrats were not pleased. An internal DNC memo circulated to all staff inside the headquarters in advance of the rally instructed DNC staffers to ignore the rally and forbade them from looking out the windows overlooking the rally site. Some staffers disobeyed, however, and threw a large stack of copies of photographs of Republican Members of Congress and leading conservatives (Oliver North, Jerry Falwell) from the DNC roof onto the rally.
I no longer recall, but as we all had carried brooms at the rally, I guess we swept them up.
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This AP article claims President Obama signed H.R. 627, the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009, into law today, May 22. The legislation had formally been adopted by Congress on May 20.
The AP must have lied.
While running for president, Barack Obama promised to give "the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any non-emergency legislation."
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Tom Borelli of our Free Enterprise Project is warning against the folly of adopting cap and trade in a column in the recent issue of Power magazine:
When the housing bubble burst, it exposed an unseemly alliance between special interests and the financial sector. Activists wanted homes for all at any cost, and lenders were happy to oblige despite the inherent risk.
Although the economic devastation this bubble wrought is still not under control, a similar toxic alliance is working on the next one: The green bubble.
Failing companies such as AIG, General Electric, and General Motors, already propped up by tax dollars, have partnered with radical environmentalists in a scheme their CEOs believe will allow them to profit on fears about global warming...
I don't often agree with you, but I think you are half right this time. The President should definitely pick either a woman or a man.
But I'm concerned that your position overlooks the fight against another terrible form of discrimination.
You wrote:
Women make up 51% of our nation's population.
Yet only 17% of the seats in Congress are held by women. Only 3% of corporate CEOs are women. And just one out of nine Supreme Court justices is a woman.
Women have been discriminated against, and continue to be discriminated against, so the President should choose a woman for the Supreme Court. That's your position in a nutshell, right?
Have you considered that you may not be going far enough?
Let's face it, Senator. It isn't just women who are discriminated against. It's older women.
Older women are definitely discriminated against more than younger, more beautiful women.
If the President is going to use his Supreme Court pick to take a stand against discrimination, the President shouldn't just pick a woman for the Supreme Court. He should pick one of the women who are discriminated against the most.
That is, an older woman.
And the older the woman he chooses, the stronger a statement he'll make.
So please join me in urging the President to nominate someone really old to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The older the better.
Like 98 or so.
The noble fight against sexism and ageism requires no less.
Outrage of the Day: The Max Baucus Proposal to Tax Our Health Insurance Benefits
The left says its move to expand the federal government's role in health care is spurred by a desire to make sure all Americans have health insurance coverage.
But Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is now suggesting that Americans should pay income taxes on the health insurance they receive from employers, with proceeds from the tax earmarked to pay for an expansion of government-run health care.
If you tax something, you get less of it.
So if your goal is to see to it that the amount of health insurance coverage Americans have is increased, the last thing you should do is impose taxes on health insurance benefits.
As Max Baucus is hardly an insignificant player in the left's effort to impose government-run health care, his proposal raises the question: When it comes to health insurance, is the left's real goal to expand the government's role while reducing the private one?
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Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former Senator George McGovern comes out against the mandatory arbitration provisions in the card check bill.
He says, "George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO for nearly 30 years before retiring in 1979, had it right in condemning mandatory arbitration as 'an abrogation of freedom.'"
You know the liberals in power are way, way out there when George McGovern quotes George Meany to criticize them.
I was amazed to see that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently has reneged on his pledge to Arlen Specter that Specter could keep his seniority if he switched from Republican to Democrat, which Specter has, of course, since done.
Writing for U.S. News & World Report, my old friend Peter Roff says the Democrats are making the wrong political calculation.
Easton, Pennsylvania Tea Party Photo by Mychal Massie
Writing in his regular, independent column for WorldNetDaily, Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie has strong words for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and no doubt others (such as David Axelrod) who belittle the Americans of all political persuasions who gathered across the country last week in "tea party" protests.
Said Mychal:
Any doubt about the condescending arrogance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her ilk was laid to rest when she attacked the tea parties as being initiatives "funded by the high-end, we call it Astroturf -- it's not really a grass-roots movement -- its Astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich, instead for the great middle class."
The Obama White House said those attending the tea parties were either disaffected, bitter Republicans, or voters acting out of frustration. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano characterized military veterans and the types of Americans attending tea party events as right-wing extremists and warned that said extremists (i.e., anyone that dares disagree with Obama policies) would use the bad economy and the election of a black man as president to recruit members. Government officials fomenting the agitprop that the rich white boogeyman is out to get you shows how far those in government are willing to go to increase their control over our rights, liberties and pursuits of happiness.
Americans are angry. Americans are disaffected, and voters are darn sure frustrated...
...I not only attended a tea party, I watched them develop and take root. I can assure the White House and Pelosi that those in attendance were of all political persuasions. I can assure Napolitano that we are angry, and we are recruiting members...
...The line in the sand has been drawn -- the pressing issue for those of us, from every political persuasion, who are fighting back is: What do we do next? We turned out by the hundreds of thousands across the nation -- but what now? What now is that we stay disgusted, determined and focused. Our enemy is worried because they know that if we do, they are in trouble.
They have insulted us as extremists, while Pelosi and the mainstream media referred to the illegal aliens that attempted to disrupt our economy by staging nationwide job walkouts as patriots.
We cannot afford to forget or relent. We have their attention and we must keep it...
...This isn't about Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent -- it is about those of us who collectively have had enough of the wasteful spending and taxation. It is about those of us who are outraged over the debt that is being passed on to our children and grandchildren. It is about those of us who refuse to have foreign courts tell Americans in Kansas, Iowa or Kentucky what they can do with their land. We may not agree on every political issue -- but the tea parties are showing that we are united on those crucial issues...
After an appearance last month in the halls of Congress, a live "kangaroo" appeared today at a federal hearing in San Francisco to protest the "kangaroo court" atmosphere at an important meeting to discuss the future of national energy policy.
Obama Administration Interior Secretary Ken Salazar presided over a public hearing today that effectively represented only one aspect of the debate over offshore energy development. The kangaroo is meant to point out that oil and gas exploration is being largely ignored in favor of promoting wind power along the Pacific coast.
The kangaroo was seen protesting the hearing outside the Robertson Auditorium on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco (1675 Owens Street) between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
"Oil and gas exploration could create trillions in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs, but this hearing is likely to overlook this economic stimulus package in favor of dubious green technology," said National Center executive director David W. Almasi. "Right now is the window of opportunity. The government is considering the next five-year plan for energy policy. To ignore drilling today is irresponsible, which is why it is considered a kangaroo court and why participants will find a live, bouncing marsupial there today."
Today's hearing is the third of four being conducted by Salazar and the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service. The hearings follow a report issued by the Obama Administration that says Southern Oregon and Northern California are prime areas for wind-energy development. This is despite the acknowledgement that current technology and the ocean terrain in the region are incompatible and that the region also lacks the transmission infrastructure necessary to accommodate any offshore production of wind energy.
To the contrary, the Point Arena Basin off Mendocino County, California is thought to have a more than 1.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The California coastline is already the home to many offshore drilling operations.
A kangaroo visit was already made to a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources in Washington, D.C. on March 31. A similar "kangaroo court" on drought conditions in California was being protested at that time. Before last-minute testimony by area congressmen was added, this hearing was expected to be simply a platform for government officials and environmental radicals to promote further regulation of resources in the name of combating global warming.
"As was seen in yesterday's tea parties against out-of-control government spending and taxation, it's clear that people want their leaders to be more accountable," said The National Center's Almasi. "The same applies to the creation of public policy. When crafting something as important as our nation's energy future, a one-sided hearing just won't do. If they continue in this manner, they can expect to be seeing a lot of this kangaroo."
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit 501(c)(3) communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems. For more information, visit the National Center's website at www.nationalcenter.org or call (202) 543-4110.
The Senate has voted 89-8 to oppose cap-and-trade if it raises electricity or gasoline prices.
Of course, cap-and-trade would raise electricity and gasoline prices, so the Senate has effectively just gone on record 89-8 against cap-and-trade.
In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which opposed the adoption of any climate treaty that exempted developing nations. As the Kyoto global warming treaty exempted developing nations, Byrd-Hagel was seen as a signal that the Senate would not ratify Kyoto. As a result, though then-Vice President Al Gore signed the Kyoto Treaty on behalf of the United States, the Clinton-Gore Administration never submitted it to the Senate for ratification.
Will Senator John Thune (R-SD)'s amendment be the new Byrd-Hagel? Not without continuing hard work by those of us who don't want electricity and gasoline prices to rise in a wasteful and expensive effort to enrich a handful of businesses and wage a futile effort to control the planet's climate...
The California Drought's Congressional "Kangaroo Court"
The kangaroo waits for the hearing to begin.
The kangaroo listens attentively to hearing proceedings. The National Center for Public Policy Research's Jeff Temple and Devon Carlin are seated to the kangaroo's left.
Devon Carlin provides a report on the U.S. House Resources Committee hearing Monday -- the one to which the National Center for Public Policy Research sent a "kangaroo" (actually, an undercover operative in a kangaroo suit).
By Devon Carlin:
Rural Californians are in their third year of a severe drought, but Congressional leaders seem more fixated on finding a "comprehensive" solution that accommodates endangered species and adheres to the belief in catastrophic man-made global warming than in dealing with very real human suffering.
This was our observation during a March 31 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources hearing, titled "The California Drought: Actions by Federal and State Agencies to Address Impacts on Lands, Fisheries, and Water Users."
According to the hearing's initial announcement, the hearing was to feature only one panel of witnesses - one overwhelmingly comprised of federal bureaucrats.
To some, this was seen as a "kangaroo court" that would promote the global warming and endangered species gospel with little or no opposition. It seemed to lack everything but an actual kangaroo. But the National Center for Public Policy Research was more than happy to provide one!
As the overflow crowd lined up for entry into the hearing room, the National Center's kangaroo stepped out of a nearby elevator. As participating members of Congress arrived, they certainly noticed the large, brown kangaroo. When acting Committee Chairwoman Grace Napolitano (D-CA) gaveled the hearing to order, our kangaroo was prominently seated in the audience.
As National Center Senior Fellow R.J. Smith pointed out in a press release that was handed out at the hearing:
At the height of a California drought and during a serious recession with massive unemployment in California's Central Valley, one would hope that the Committee cared enough about agricultural workers and minorities to invite as witnesses actual unemployed farm workers from the scores of communities closing down. Let's have an open Committee hearing and hear real people discussing the impacts on their lives from government regulations and massive job losses - instead of more government bureaucrats who are only causing the problem.
The furry, National Center-provided visual reminder - and some last-minute intervention from a bipartisan delegation of Congressmen from districts affected by the drought - helped to provide balance.
While it seemed the Committee's leaders had already made up their minds, they and the witnesses they selected nevertheless ended up receiving an earful about the human suffering brought about by poorly-applied government regulations and what could be done to alleviate the distress.
It was originally announced that testimony would be given exclusively by the panel of representatives of government agencies. Invited agency representatives were Mary M. Glackin of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; J. William McDonald of the Bureau of Reclamation; Candy Thompson of the Farm Service Agency and California Secretary of Natural Resources Mike Chrisman. The lone critic was to be Allen Ishida, a Tulare County Supervisor and farmer.
Things changed due to the last-minute inclusion of a bipartisan panel of Congressmen representing the region worst hit by the drought. This panel was comprised of Representatives Mike Thompson (D-CA), Dennis A. Cardoza (D-CA), George Radanovich (R-CA), Devin Nunes (R-CA), Wally Herger (R-CA) and Ken Calvert (R- CA).
This new panel, unanticipated at the time the hearing was announced (and the kangaroo was called) brought much-needed balance.
All participants appeared to agree that California is in bad shape. The lack of an adequate supply of water in affected areas is putting farmers and ranchers out of work. Their crops aren't growing and livestock are going thirsty. Employment rates in affected areas range from 20 to over 40 percent, and job losses could rise to nearly 80,000. Families are flocking to food lines. Depleted food bank pantries reflect the state's shortage of produce. Incredible numbers of acres are left even more vulnerable to the type of brush fires that consumed more than one million acres last year. Agricultural economic losses are projected to exceed $3 billion by year-end.
What people want to know is what the government is going to do to help. The representatives of the government, and their liberal supporters among the Committee majority, seem committed to a "comprehensive" solution that protect the environment first and merely seeks to aid the afflicted human population. Conservatives, however, offered concrete plans to alleviate human suffering and increase agricultural productivity while minimizing environmental impact.
Congressmen from the affected areas - both on the Committee and on the testifying panel - noted that, despite California's historic familiarity with natural drought conditions, the problem this time is man-made. With rainfall and snow-pack totals nearing the average when compared to recent years, neither nature nor global warming can be blamed for the water shortage.
One of the many regulatory culprits is the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The Delta Smelt, for example, is a three-inch long fish that has been declared "threatened" under the ESA. Federal water officials reallocated a substantial amount of the water supply to flow out to sea in order to help protect the Delta Smelt. In the process, it recklessly slashed water deliveries to agricultural areas of California.
The local Congressman pointed out factors in the Smelt's population decline that are not man-made, such as larger predatory fish. Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA), who represents the region and is a member of the Committee, noted from the dais that more water diverted for the good of the Delta Smelt has not helped its recovery.
When queried, the government officials, who gave very dry presentations about "comprehensive" relief strategies, offered no precise ways to bring about an end to the human suffering in the region.
Conversely, the lawmakers whose constituents were affected and have a sense of the needs of the region proposed multiple relief plans and suggested reform of the ESA that would bring water back to residents in need and pose a minimal threat to the Delta Smelt population.
In the short history of the Obama Administration, conservatives have been cast as obstructionist and lacking ideas by their liberal counterparts. At this hearing, exactly the opposite was the case.
One proposed idea, known as the "Two-Gates" project, involves the installation of two temporary gates in the central Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. These gates would reduce the number of smelt removed from the Delta, thus permitting water export restrictions to be minimized.
Another proposal was to reform the ESA to overcome an ESA-based lawsuit that forced the Red Bluff Diversion Dam ("RBDD") to cease operating. Prior to the lawsuit, the RBDD performed as an efficient, gravity-fed water diversion. Shutting the existing diversion down has created the need for a comparable alternative. A popular pitch for its replacement is a power-driven, screened pumping plant that would supply 150,000 acres of agricultural land with irrigation water.
These and other relief proposals were called "shovel-ready" and within the scope of projects that could be funded by the recently-passed "stimulus" bill. The committee liberals' response? Representative George Miller (D-CA) mocked members of the Congressional panel who voted against the "stimulus." As for human suffering at the hands of government regulation, he considered that "cherry-picking history." He passed off any blame to a judge, whose decision set the policy.
This liberal disdain is surprising when the drought was called the "Katrina of California" by both panelists and members of the committee alike.
Near the end of the hearing, freshman Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) came right out and asked the direct and nearly rhetorical question that was surely on the minds of many in attendance: "What's more important - people or fish?"
This post was written by Research Associate Devon Carlin. To send comments to the author, write her at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
NY Times Story Gives Huge Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax Bill One-Sided Treatment
When the New York Times today told its readers about the massive Henry Waxman-Ed Markey 648-page draft global warming tax bill, it bent over backwards to report the pros and cons of the proposal.
Not.
The March 31 story, supplied by Darren Samuelsohn and Ben Geman of Greenwire:
* Included sponsor Rep Waxman's claim that "this legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution," without a balancing rebuttal or reference to the economic damage passage of the bill would almost assuredly cause.
* Followed that favorable quote by California liberal Democrat Waxman with a favorable quote by California liberal Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
* Followed those two favorable statements with seven sentences quoting Democrats Rep. Charles Gonzales (D-TX), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Rick Boucher (D-VA), who have quibbles on the margins about the proposal but who like the concept.
* Followed that with two sentences from the lone voice of rebuttal, the only Republican/conservative quoted, and the only person quoted who addressed the massive negative impact the bill, if adopted, would likely have on the economy, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).
* Followed the two sentences allocated to Rep. Barton with 32 paragraphs of discription of the bill, none of it a critical analysis.
* Concluded with seven paragraphs headlined "Reactions," which covered quotations and opinions from four organizations on an ideological spectrum ranging from very left-wing to far left-wing: The Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Oxfam America and Environment America. No economists, energy experts, free-market groups, businesses or business groups or any other individual or institution other than left-wing environmental organizations were quoted or cited.
No one with a straight face could call this a balanced story.
U.S. House Holds Kangaroo Hearing to Fool Public About Causes of California Drought
The National Center for Public Policy Research has sent a 'kangaroo' to a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Resources Committee on climate change and the California drought.
The kangaroo's appearance will to protest the fact that the hearing is expected to ignore the contribution of environmental regulations in exacerbating the drought, and also the fact that only representatives of government agencies, mostly federal, have been invited to testify.
Our press release explains:
'Kangaroo-Court' Hearing a One-Sided View of California Drought
Washington, D.C.: The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources is holding a one-sided hearing this morning on the California drought that is expected to blame climate change for a critical water shortage while glossing over the role of activist-inspired environmental policies in exacerbating the shortage, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
The hearing, entitled "The California Drought: Actions by Federal and State Agencies to Address Impacts on Lands, Fisheries, and Water Users," will be held today, March 31, at 10:30 am in Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building.
Only representatives of government agencies will be permitted to testify at the hearing. Most of the witnesses will be from federal agencies.
To draw attention to the biased nature of the proceedings, The National Center for Public Policy Research will send a representative to the hearing best suited for a kangaroo court - a kangaroo.
"At the height of a California drought and during a serious recession with massive unemployment in California's Central Valley, one would hope that the committee cared enough about agricultural workers and minorities to invite as witnesses actual unemployed farm workers from the scores of communities closing down," remarked R.J. Smith, a Senior Fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research. "Let's have an open Committee hearing and hear real people discussing the impacts on their lives from government regulations and their massive job losses - instead of more government bureaucrats who are only causing the problem."
California - the nation's largest producer of tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, apricots, strawberries and many other crops - risks agricultural losses of over $2 billion for the upcoming season and $3 billion in total economic losses in 2009. According to a University of California at Davis study, 80,000 jobs could be lost in the Central Valley.
Although global warming is expected to receive much of the blame for this economic disaster, government regulation is a more significant - and preventable cause - of it, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
For example, state and federal water officials have sharply cut agricultural water deliveries in California so that more water can go out to sea as part of an effort to protect the Delta Smelt - a three-inch long fish listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In February, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced a "zero allocation" of water from the Central Valley Project, cutting off the massive federal irrigation system that serves numerous California farms. The supply of water from California's State Water Project is 20 percent of normal.
"By demanding that the water flow into the Pacific Ocean, government meddlers have forced farmers to abandon production, threatening both the nation's fresh food supplies and the jobs of farm workers, many of whom are among the nation's poorest minorities," said Mr. Smith. "Ironically, the cut-off of agricultural water has done nothing to help the Delta Smelt. Every year less water is diverted for agriculture, yet the fish population continues to decline."
The state of California also deserves blame for the water shortage because it has failed to build the water infrastructure necessary for the state's growing population.
Donn Zea, President of the Northern California Water Association, wrote in the March 5th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle that although California's population has doubled over the past 40 years, the state has not meaningfully updated its water storage capacity since 1967. "As a result, when drought hits, we have an amount of water suitable for California in 1960 - not 2009," wrote Mr. Zea.
The Resources Committee - which has a history of promoting global warming alarmism - is expected to explore the dubious link between a modest increase in global temperatures and localized weather patterns devastating California.
"If certain members of the House Natural Resources Committee want the world to believe that a regional drought in an arid area of California is further 'proof' of global warming, then let's hope that they apply the same reasoning to the floods that are ravaging eastern and central North Dakota," remarked Dr. Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research. "By the thousands, residents of Fargo and Bismarck are trying to protect their cities from the rising waters of the Red and Missouri Rivers. The blocks of ice on the Missouri River north of Bismarck were so huge that explosives were used to blow them up. Will Chairman Rahall invite Fargo's mayor and other North Dakota officials before his committee to testify on how ordinary citizens spent hours in sub-freezing, snowy weather protecting their homes and businesses from the effects of global cooling?"
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit 501(c)(3) communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems. For more information, visit the National Center's website at www.nationalcenter.org or call (202) 543-4110.
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Here's hoping our 'kangaroo' (actually, a man in a kangaroo costume) is able to draw some attention to government regulations that are needlessly hurting Californians.
On the other hand, he's given the high-profile position of "climate change czar" to former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, whose record leads many to suspect she believes that anti-lobbying laws are there to be broken.
As David Ridenour (full disclosure: my husband) of the National Center for Public Policy Research writes in Monday's Washington Times:
...Throughout her years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act - a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for "telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress."
In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James F. Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials "distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations ... directly lobbied the Congress." Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong Op-Ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Mr. Byrd - who has made a career of steering pork to his state - complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Mrs. Browner was forced to terminate the program.
The following year Mrs. Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute - so-called "midnight" - environmental regulations. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Mrs. Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Judge Lamberth subsequently held the EPA in contempt for "contumacious conduct."...
Did President Obama stern admonish Carol Browner that behavior of this sort would not be tolerated in an Obama Administration (and, if so, why take the risk of appointing her at all?)? Or are rules against "outside" lobbyists the only ones Barack Obama wants enforced?
* Note: In my view, the new directive to supposedly limit lobbyist influence on spending of the so-called stimulus won't mean much in the end. Businesses, unions, lobbying firms, lobbyist law firms, state and local governments and special interests wanting a piece of our tax dollars will simply lobby for it using personnel who are not required to register as a lobbyist under the terms of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (or, in some cases, people who are required to, but didn't). The only way to keep lobbyists from going after federal money is to shrink the pot of federal money available as government-distributed handouts (for instance, by leaving it in the hands of those who earned it in the first place).
Hat tip: I learned about the ACLU's position on the new lobbying directive from the Don Irvine Blog.
Outrage of the Day: Senate Majority Leader Calls Chief Justice a Liar
In what only makes sense as his latest entry in the highly-competitive Laughstock of Washington contest, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday called Chief Justice John Roberts a liar.
Reid claims that, in not one but two judicial confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate,* Roberts lied to the Senate about "who he was."
From the March 28 Washington Times story by Stephen Dinan:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings by pretending to be open-minded about his judicial philosophy.
"We got into a little jam with Roberts. Roberts didn't tell us the truth. At least [Justice Samuel A.] Alito told us who he was," Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said, comparing former President George W. Bush's two successful Supreme Court nominees.
"We're stuck with those two young men," Mr. Reid said, though he added that Democrats hope to try to balance out the judiciary overall by "having some moderates in the federal court system as time goes on."...
Harry Reid acts more and more every day like the nation's crazy uncle. Of course John Roberts told the Senate "who he was" (Reidspeak for "judicial philosophy"). For his Chief Justice confirmation hearings alone, Roberts answered a lengthy Senate questionnaire, participated in four days of questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, had all his past decisions, public writings and statements heavily scrutinized, had the 39 cases he'd argued before the Supreme Court minutely reviewed, had his professional history (including stints in the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses and clerking for former Chief Justice William Rehnquist) gone over with a microscope, and a good bit more.
The famous arroyo toad quip ("The panel's approach in this case leads to the result that regulating the taking of a hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California constitutes regulating 'Commerce... among the several States...'") all by itself should have given Reid a big clue that Roberts wasn't the "living-Constitution-let's-see-what-the-French-think" style of jurist the left seems to prefer.
Or, as Reid calls them, "moderates."
I assume, of course, that Reid understood the point, or could even tell you what the Commerce Clause is (and yes, he's a lawyer).
But if even if all that is Greek to Reid, there's still the fact that Senate Democrats not once but twice (1991 and 2001) delayed giving Roberts his confirmation hearings when he was nominated to lower courts. We can assume it wasn't because Senate Democrats thought Roberts too "moderate."
Last week left-wing Rep. Barney Frank called Justice Antonin Scalia a "homophobe." This week, left-wing Senator Harry Reid calls the Chief Justice a liar.
Do you suppose the left is irritated that our country still has strong good men who defend our Constitution?
Must be.
_______________________________________________________ * 2003: U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; 2005: U.S. Supreme Court Image: Flickr - absentee_redstate - Creative Commons
Diverse Coalition Appeals to Congress Regarding Unjust Provisions of Omnibus Land Management Act
Readers with an interest in property rights, civil rights or simply staying out of jail for doing something one has no idea is illegal will want to review the coalition letter sent to the Congressional leadership, the Attorney General and to President Barack Obama by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences and the National Center for Public Policy Research during the last 24 hours.
Our respective organizations have diverse viewpoints, but we share a deep and abiding belief in due process under the law. We believe that that Congress should perform careful diligence before adding violations to the criminal codes, that federal crimes should be narrowly defined and show clear criminal intent, and that the use of asset forfeiture must be narrowly tailored so that it does not unduly punish the accused before a trial has proven their guilt. As such we have grave concerns about sections of the pending Omnibus Land Management Act of 2009, which passed the Senate last week as H.R. 146, regarding "paleontological resources preservation."
These sections, now contained in the bill under Subtitle Dof Title VI, seek to empower the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior to"protect paleontological resources on Federal land using scientific principles and expertise." We understand that preventing theft of and harm to important fossils on federal land is a serious objective. However, we are concerned that the bill creates many new federal crimes using language that is so broad that the provisions could cover innocent human error. There is also, in defining the crimes, a troubling lack of words such as "knowingly" that clearly establish criminal intent as a prerequisite for prosecution. As Georgetown University legal ethicist John Hasnas has written, to serve the greater goal of justice, all criminal laws must require the government to establish that "one had to knowingly or at least recklessly act in a morally blameworthy way to be subject of criminal punishment."
H.R. 146 would make it illegal to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface or attempt to excavate, remove, damage, or otherwise alter or deface any paleontological resources located on Federal land" without special permission from the government. Penalties for violations include up to five years imprisonment. "Paleontological resources" are loosely defined as all "fossilized remains ... that are of paleontological interest and that provide information about the history of life on earth." We are troubled by this definition that paleontological organizations say could cover many common rocks that adults and children collect. The Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences has warned that with this wording, it is easy to visualize "a group of students unknowingly crossing over an invisible line."
We are also concerned about the bill's prohibition against "false labeling" of fossil specimens, an offense that also carries criminal penalties. The bill makes it a crime to "make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any paleontological resource excavated or removed from federal land." This broad language could criminalize innocent misidentifications, limit scientific inquiry, and infringe on the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech. Fossil labeling is a complex process, and even the top museums of the world have been known to revise labeling in their exhibits upon scholarly review or new facts being discovered ..Thus, the fear of making an honest mistake in fossil labeling or even having fossil identifications proven "false" in light of new scientific discoveries could have a chilling effect on new research in paleontology.
We are pleased that the Senate recently improved provisions regarding forfeiture. Language in earlier versions of the legislation would have allowed government officials to engage in the pretrial seizure of "all vehicles and equipment of any person" accused of theft or harm to a "paleontological resource." Forfeiting a person's property without a conviction undermines the bedrock principle of our legal system: that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Past abuses of forfeiture led to bipartisan passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, and we had feared that these provisions would go against the spirit of these reforms. The Senate heeded our concerns with an amendment, and as passed on March 20, "vehicles and equipment" were removed from the forfeiture language, so that the forfeiture provisions apply only to the "paleontological resources" taken from federal land. This is a marked improvement, and we would oppose any attempts to reinsert forfeiture of personal property in a revised bill.
Above all, we are concerned that a bill containing new federal crimes, fines and imprisonment, and forfeiture provisions may come to the House floor without first being marked up in the House Judiciary Committee. That committee is tasked with providing centralized oversight of criminal legislation, thereby enhancing the fairness and consistency of those enactments. As such we strongly urge that the criminal provisions of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act be stripped from any final legislation until they are subject to Judiciary Committee review and amendment."
Representatives of the signatory organizations of this letter would be happy to meet with you or members of your staff to address these concerns.
Sincerely,
Caroline Fredrickson Director American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office
Tracie Bennitt President Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences
John Berlau Director, Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs Competitive Enterprise Institute
Kyle O'Dowd Assoc. Executive Director for Policy National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
David A. Ridenour Vice President The National Center for Public Policy Research
Cc: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer House Majority Whip James Clyburn House Minority Whip Eric Cantor House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith President Barack Obama Attorney General Eric Holder
For more information on this issue, see this blog's previous coverage of this here and here. ________________________________
Ask one of your friends who believes in the adoption of cap-and-trade to read just one sentence against it. If they agree, send them to this Nick Loris post on the Foundry.
(By the way, the "honorable House" referred to at the beginning is our House of Representatives, believe it or not.)
Massive Omnibus Public Land Management Act to See Another Vote
By R.J. Smith:
Sometime today the Omnibus Public Land Management Act will come up for its final vote in Congress. A courageous band of defenders of energy production, natural resources use, public multiple-use of the public lands, and property rights and private land ownership have tenaciously fought this massive 160+ bill package since the fall of 2007.
On Thursday 19 March the Senate completed the complicated bill switch, replacing H.R. 146 (the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act) with S.22 and then voting on that. The Senate passed the bill 77-20 (2 NV). 20 GOP voted Nay. 21 RINOs voted Yea to further shut down the West, destroy domestic energy production, lock-up tens of millions of acres of public lands in categories that much of the public will never be able to use. Destroying energy production, mining, timber harvest, grazing, and recreation.
Bad enough in normal times. Unforgiveable in a recession and energy shortage.
In addition to the 1,000 miles of new Wild and Scenic River designations there were 2,800 miles of new National Trails that will have the authority to shut down anything that can be seen from the trails that the Feds disapprove of.
Senator Reid had allowed Senator Coburn to offer 6 amendments, 5 of which were defeated, and one of which the Democrats had agreed to pass on a voice vote.
Coburn's successful amendment was to the Paleontological Resources Protection Act section of the Omnibus which would criminalize any private collection of fossils on the public lands. His amendment removed the criminalization of "casual and unintentional" collection of rocks that may contain a fossil or portion of a fossil. However, any knowing collection of a fossil is now a felony, with the Feds having nationalized all fossils on public lands and essentially closing down amateur and independent paleontological discovery, research and collection on the public lands.
But the most important provision of Coburn's amendment was that it removed the bill's draconian provisions to apply civil asset forfeiture laws to all who collect any fossils -- giving the Feds the authority to seize the vehicles and equipment and even the homes, ranches, farms and lands of amateur and professional paleontologists.
Because the original H.R. 146 had already passed the House, the complicated Senate actions sent the Omnibus and the Battlefield bill back over to the House on Monday, with the House needing only to vote to concur with the amended Senate bill.
Yesterday the House Rules Committee voted to consider it under a closed rule -- eliminating the possibility of a motion to recommit and all amendments to the bill. The House Natural Resources Committee minority members had submitted about a dozen amendments for the Committee to consider, but they were rejected. There will now be a one hour debate on the rule and then a one hour debate on the Omnibus -- and then a simple majority vote, guaranteeing that this monstrous bill will pass.
The Democrat leadership even rejected an amendment to codify the right to carry concealed weapons on National Park and National Wildlife Refuge lands -- one of the last regulations from the Bush Department of Interior. A week ago a U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction blocking the regulation. Reportedly the Democrat leadership promised the pro-gun, conservative and Blue Dog Democrats that they would bring up a stand-alone bill to restore Second Amendment rights. But it is highly unlikely that Rep. Pelosi and other extreme liberals will ever allow such a bill.
The genuine hero in the long convoluted efforts to kill this terrible bill was Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and everyone should make an effort to thank him. He kept the land-grab bottled up for almost a year and a half.
In the House, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rob Bishop (R-UT) certainly deserve your thanks for fighting this bill in the House and for attempting to have honest and open hearings and debates on the scores of bills in the Omnibus which the House had never considered or debated.
This is another massive "mystery meat" bill with well over a thousand pages of bills which no one has read or understands. Driven by the shameful lust of Congressional members to bring pork to their districts at the expense of American freedom, energy production and security, natural resources use and the locking-out of more and more of the public from the use of their lands.
It is a step closer to making America a Third World country and a feudalistic nation with the government owning an ever-increasing majority of the land and resources.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Addendum: Here's how the vote ended up. ________________
Outrage of the Day: Congress Receiving TARP Funds as Campaign Contributions
Who's getting bailout money?
Michael Isikoff and Dina Fine Maron, writing in Newsweek's March 30 edition, say it just might be your Congressman:
There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
A Newsweek review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program...
Businesses receiving bailout money, and/or businesses even partially owned by government, should not be making campaign or PAC contributions. Nor should Members of Congress or other candidates or officeholders accept these contributions if they are offered.
And while we're on the subject, government-subsidized or owned or partially-owned businesses should not lobby or employ lobbyists until they are privately-owned and completely off the dole.
George Will's 'Partial List of Recent Lawlessness, Situational Constitutionalism and Institutional Derangement'
I recommend George F. Will's column in the Washington Post and other papers Tuesday.
If it doesn't make you want to fight what's going on in Washington, nothing will.
The column begins:
With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.
TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."
Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is...
Outrage of the Day: Turncoat Retailers Shop Card Check Compromise
As Mike Allen reports in this Politico article from Sunday night, three large retailers, Starbucks, Costco and Whole Food, are shopping around a so-called compromise on "card check" legislation, even though the position of business -- that workers should be allowed to vote on whether their own workplace should be unionized -- seems to hold the winning hand in the U.S. Senate.
(For those who haven't followed the issue, the card check bill, formally and Orwellianly known as the Employee Free Choice Act, would allow labor unions to unionize workplaces without first winning a secret-ballot vote of the workers involved.)
Opponents of the legislation, which is backed by Big Labor (naturally!), the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party's Congressional leadership, say the bill does not now have the sixty votes it needs to pass the Senate.
As Mike Allen reported:
Rhonda Bentz, on behalf of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which is working to defeat the measure, said: "Those three companies do not represent the business community’s position. Unions don't have 60 votes in the Senate [for the measure] … A compromise such as this is at best seriously misguided or at worst akin to snatching defeat out of the hands of victory."
I agree.
On a related issue, no word yet on whether President Obama will propose legislation to permit him to be re-elected if he can get 50 percent-plus-one of registered voters to call a secret phone number that will be monitored privately by the Democratic National Committee.
Hat tip: Carter Wood and Keith Smith at Shopfloor.org. ___________________
Legislation to specifically target AIG employees with a 90 percent tax on retention bonuses directly conflicts with the founding principles of the United States, Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli charged today on the Fox News program "Strategy Room."
Saying Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from passing laws "impairing the obligation of contracts," Borelli says the AIG bonus controversy is a creation of the lawmakers who rushed bailout legislation earlier this year without due consideration. These are the same lawmakers who now seek to hide their mistakes by pushing this new and selective tax.
"Politicians need to be reminded that we are a nation of laws. To impose a hastily-concocted tax as a means of rectifying a problem that the government itself created and mismanaged calls their ability to lead into question," says Borelli. "To suddenly enact a new tax to punish a few dozen people for something that was legal at the time is ludicrous, and it smacks of the British treatment of the colonists that provoked the revolt that created the United States. Have we come full circle already?"
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview Friday on 365gay.com that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a "homophobe."
"At some point, [the Defense of Marriage Act] is going to have to go to the United States Supreme Court," Frank said. "I wouldn't want it to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current court."
I predict Justice Scalia won't call Rep. Frank any nasty name in response, which should tell us all we need to know about which of them has more class.
Some people call others names because their brain boxes are too small to permit them to think through and then articulate an idea. Barney Frank, however, is very intelligent, so we can put this one down to nastiness. ___________________
Outrage of the Day - Congress Treats Death Threats Lightly
Today awarded to Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) for his callous response to death threats received by private citizens, including children, employed by or related to someone employed by AIG.
Sound public policy relating to AIG - whatever that might be and not that we can expect this Congress to enact it - does not require that Congress possess the actual names of AIG employees who received contractual bonuses. Even the farcical policy of handing out money only to tax it right back (really, how ridiculous can Congress get?) does not require that Congress have these names. (The IRS would take care of collections.)
Congress leaks. And leaks. And leaks. (Usually for very selfish reasons; once in a while due to stupidity or carelessness.) Anyone who cares a fig for the safety and peace of mind of these people should just err on the side if caution and leave people's names out of the debate.
Or maybe we've just reached a place in this country in which Congress doesn't care if children are the focus of death threats. ______________________________
Outrage of the Day: Waxman Drags Feet on Needed CPSIA Reform
Today's Outrage of the Day to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), for his refusal to hold hearings on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), legislation adopted last year (see this blog's prior coverage here and here) that has forced charities and thrift shops to toss out large volumes of used clothing and other goods, caused used bookstores to toss out children's books published before 1985, halted sales of dirt bikes, handmade toys and other children's goods, and more.
Congress adopted this law in apparent response to widespread reports of children ingesting dirt bike parts.
No, not really. Congress adopted adopted this law in part because it has no idea what it is doing (that's what happens when lawmakers vote on bills no one has read, coming from an ideological bias that the bigger government grows, the better we'll be), but that's no excuse for not revisiting the issue now that the truth is kicking many people in the teeth.
Every day this law remains unreformed, jobs get killed and books (some of which are irreplaceable) get tossed away.
You can tell that to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), though, chairman of the House Committee with jurisdiction, and he'll tell you he'll get to it later.
...Waxman, for his part, has announced his intent to hold no hearing on the law until the Obama Administration installs a new chair at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That serves the multiple functions of 1) stalling (while more small enterprises are driven out of business and thus are neutralized as political threats); 2) reinforcing the impression that the ball is in someone else’s court on addressing the law’s harms; 3) assisting in orchestrating whatever hearing is eventually held, since he expects an ally of his own to be installed as CPSC chair...
So now, as Overlawyered reports it, ordinary citizens are now planning their own "people's hearing" on the matter, hoping through direct action to get some relief.
It shouldn't be necessary. Congress made a huge mistake. It should admit it, and fix it.
Today's Outrage of the Day goes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his reported intention to try again to get the monster Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S. 22) into law without proper deliberation.
Following the bill's defeat last Wednesday (under suspension of rules) in the House, Reid reportedly plans to try again by attaching the huge bill as an amendment to a bill, H.R. 146, "The Revolutionary War and War of 1812 Battlefield Protection Act," that has already received House approval, and is to be voted on early this week in the Senate.
As National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith pointed out in this extensive commentary last week, it's likely that no one has read the bill-cum-amendment, as it's 1,294 pages long and nine inches thick. There have been no hearings, mark-ups or floor debate about most of it.
Looks like the lefties get mighty edgy when they get questioned.
Earlier this week we had Disney Chairman Robert Iger swearing at conservative activist Tom Borelli. Now we have the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charlie Rangel, asking a young man who asks him about his subsidized cars and apartments, "why don't you mind your G-- d----- business"?
I'm thinking it became the young man's business when he had to help pick up the tab. _____________________________
Outrage of the Day: U.N. Secretary General Calls U.S. "Deadbeats"
Apparently dissatisfied with the United States paying a full 22 percent of the expenses of the ridiculously wasteful and notoriously corrupt United Nations, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon referred to the U.S. as a "deadbeat" nation while on a visit to the U.S. Congress Wednesday.
Ban effectively said that it is not only important for the United States to be the world's largest donor to the United Nations by an overwhelming margin, be perennially kicked in the teeth and insulted by U.N. proceedings, and host the United Nations here in America on some of the world's most valuable land donated by an American in a building refurbished by a massive interest free-U.S. loan, but we must also pay our dues on the timetable the U.N. specifies.
The offensiveness of the sentiment combined with the stupidity of the choice of location in which to say it makes this a whopper of a gaffe indeed.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Let us get out of the United Nations and let's kick the whiny you-know-whats out of here.
For additional commentary, see also Don Surber's "Dump Mr. Ban" on his Charleston Daily Mail blog, Jules Crittenden's "Deadbeat Nation" on the Jules Crittenden blog and Rory Cooper's "United Nations says to America: 'You're Deadbeats'" on the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry blog. Surber and Crittenden appear to be as irritated as I am; this is a quote those of us who appreciate the United Nations for what it truly is can't let die.
Let us get this one on some t-shirts.
Rory Cooper's piece should be read for information about Senator John Kerry's nauseating response, which is to give the United Nations ratification of its dangerous Law of the Sea Treaty. Kerry's obviously never going to give up his hate-America-first schtick; he must have some kind of psychological problem.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called Ban's word choice "unfortunate," and called on the U.N. to respect the rather substantial financial contributions of American taxpayers (a sentiment we hope the Administration begins to extend to domestic budgetary matters). It wasn't quite the statement I, or, I suspect, Don Surber, Jules Crittenden or Rory Cooper would have made, but considering how pro-U.N. Barack Obama is, it was a good B+ effort.
NY Times Blog's "Fair Analysis" of Public Lands Bill
R.J. Smith is calling this post by Kate Phillips on the New York Times Caucus blog "a pretty fair analysis" of recent Hill action surrounding the Omnibus Public Land Management Act (S. 22). ___________________
More on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act (S. 22)
R.J. Smith has expanded his remarks regarding Wednesday's defeat of the horrible Omnibus Public Land Management Act, yet another huge bill Congress voted on without reading. ___________________________
Omnibus Public Land Management Act Defeated - For Now
A followup to our blog post on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act (S. 22) posted during the wee hours this morning, from the New York Times, by Eric Bontrager:
The House rejected an amended omnibus package of more than 160 public lands, water and resources bills despite a last-minute change designed to ease concerns about the bill.
By a vote of 282-144, the House failed to pass S. 22 (pdf) under a suspension of the rules, which barred any amendments from being added to the bill but also required a two-thirds majority for passage...
Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 on House Floor Today - 170 Bills in One; Half Have Had No Hearings
By R.J. Smith:
S. 22, the giant Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, will go to the House floor today (Wednesday, March 11) under suspension of rules. This means debate will be limited to a mere 40 minutes and amendments will not be permitted. Congressmen will be asked to vote on the bill without knowing what is in the 1,294-page, 9-inch thick bill! Some 170 separate bills have all been rolled into this one omnibus. Nearly half of them have never had any hearings, review or mark-up in the House.
The major concern with the bill is the vast expansion of every sort of Federal land ownership, including new and expanded National Parks, National Trails, National Heritage Areas, National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, National Preserves, National Historical Parks, National Historic Sites, and more.
It creates 82 new Wild and Scenic Rivers including over a thousand miles of rivers.
It will also create millions of acres of new Wilderness Areas.
In addition, S. 22 will give legislative authority and statutory permanence to the National Landscape Conservation System. The NLCS was created by decree in June 2000 by then Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. It effectively removed at least 26 million acres from BLM multiple-use management, giving these lands near-Wilderness status. Federal bureaucrats and environmentalists have longed to give this new land-management system official designation, placing it on a par with the National Park System and preventing future secretaries from opening the lands to even necessary and vital energy exploration.
This massive Omnibus bill would lock up millions of acres of land at the height of an economic recession and at a time the U.S. is struggling to improve energy security. Instead of creating jobs and increasing resources, energy supplies and wealth -- it would destroy them. It will shut down cattle grazing, mining, timber harvest, energy exploration and production and recreation.
And it will add another $10-12 billion of Federal spending.
Hundreds of millions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas will be locked up. It will kill a vital new Liquefied Natural Gas terminal/port in Massachusetts so that Congressman Barney Frank -- who frequently rails against oil companies for pushing energy prices higher -- won't have it spoil his view.
The Omnibus creates a new Coastal and Estuarine Conservation program as well.
It also includes provsions providing Global Warming and Climate Change programs on public lands.
Under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act it makes it a Federal crime to collect or pick up fossils or fossilized rocks on any Federal lands. It will become a Federal crime for school children to collect fossilized sharks' teeth. And in a scary twist it would extend civil asset forfeiture, permitting the government to seize ownership of all vehicles and equipment used in the gathering of any fossilized material.
The good news is that because the bill is coming up under suspension, it requires a 2/3 vote of the House of Representatives. This means only 146 votes against the bill will be sufficient to derail it.
Please spread the word about this bill and encourage people to contact their Congressman. Because it is coming up tomorrow, time is of the essence.
Thanks for your help.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow R.J. Smith. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
Senior Fellow Tom Borelli has an op-ed in the D.C. Examiner: "Congress, corporate lobbyists creating Green Bubble."
It begins:
With President Barack Obama and his allies in Congress pushing for a cap-and-trade regulatory program to reduce greenhouse gases, the future of American energy is at a crossroads — and the creation of an economic “Green Bubble” is in the works.
It’s not surprising that liberal politicians embrace the cap-and-trade cause, but to many it is shocking and surprising to see corporate CEOs joining the crusade. The 21st century business model of these CEOs seems to be: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
But their capitulation is likely to lead to history repeating itself, and not in a good way.
If there’s one lesson we all can take from the housing bubble, it’s this: The pursuit of liberal policy goals is not a sustainable business strategy.
The housing crisis developed after businesses yielded to social activism and the seduction of politically-driven and unsustainable economic incentives. It started with the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, which encouraged banks to lend in poor neighborhoods. The Clinton administration later lowered credit standards, and set subprime lending quotas for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the leftist advocacy group, also pressured banks to make loans, and Congress skewed laws to encourage lenders to give mortgages to buyers with poor prospects for ever repaying them.
With the game rigged to make unsound lending practices profitable over the short-term, Wall Street was happy to play in this government-constructed casino. For a time, it was a win-win situation.
Profits were made, ACORN was pacified and lawmakers deemed lenders “responsible” for providing loans to low-income households with nary an eye cast to the soundness of it all. But when the over-inflated housing market collapsed, all the fun came to a crashing halt.
Yet, like hard-core gambling addicts, some CEOs haven’t learned their lesson. Instead of returning to selling good products at market prices, they want to go back to the craps table. They’re lobbying Congress to create yet another “bubble” in which government regulatory policy creates artificial value, this time in a ubiquitous gas, carbon dioxide.
Call this forthcoming disaster the “Green Bubble,” for it’s based on the notion that fortunes can be made buying and selling something for which there is no real-world market, greenhouse gas emissions credits...
Outrage of the Day: Rep. George Miller's "Dirty Money"
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has long been known for carrying water for labor unions. Now Kevin Mooney of the D.C. Examiner asks if he's carrying dirty union money around, too:
"WHO: Rep. George Miller, D-CA, chief House sponsor, Employee Free Choice Act (aka Card Check).
WHAT: Miller received the following dirty money: Communication Workers of America (PAC) $10,000 in 2008 cycle; $10,000 in 2006 cycle; Boilermakers Union (PAC) $10,000 in 2008; $6,500 in 2006. American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) $2,500 in 2008; $1,500 in 2006. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) $10,000 in 2008; $10,000 in 2006.
WHY IT'S DIRTY: At least eight members of these four unions have been convicted since 2001 of felonies ranging from embezzlement, falsifying official reports to government, mail fraud and conspiracy."
Anti-global warming protester uses a "Stop Global Warming" sign as an ice scraper at rally at the U.S. Capitol coal-fired power plant Monday
"We don't want the world to boil, no coal, no oil!"
There was no chance, despite the warning of this protest chant, of anything boiling outside in Washington, D.C. today. Global warming activists who threatened "mass civil disobedience" in the nation's capitol Monday probably never expected to be competing with the biggest snowfall of the season.
Not going to get much power from this snowy solar panel...
Yet this seems to happen every time the global warming activists plan a major event to talk about how hot our planet is going to get. (For more information about this practice, see the children's story "Chicken Little.")
...as the non-functioning light bulbs supposedly powered by that solar panel demonstrate.
Hundreds of activists - mostly students, from the looks of it - were protesting Nancy Pelosi's private coal-fired power plant. It's the plant that powers the Capitol complex. Until recently, Pelosi and company pretended to have a carbon-neutral Congress by using taxpayer dollars to buy "carbon offsets" that essentially gave them little more than peace of mind. This practice has since been discontinued. An analysis found it might not be doing any good, and they no longer have faith in throwing money at their embarrassment (now, if we can get them to expand this line of thinking to their spend-and-tax agenda).
David Almasi and Devon Carlin of the National Center for Public Policy Research
Anyway, the Competitive Enterprise Institute enlisted the help of The National Center for Public Policy Research, FreedomWorks and other groups to point out that coal and oil provide plentiful and affordable energy to average Americans. Energy bills are up this year, and there is no way wind and solar - the darling energy-generation methods of today's protestors - are going to provide people with the amount of energy they need at the prices they can afford.
No one is against new and alternative sources of energy, but it's their way or the highway in the minds of these protestors. If they are successful, expect bigger bills and energy shortages in the future.
This blog post was compiled largely from notes compiled by David Almasi. _________________________
Note in this blog post by environmentalist Bill McKibben the announcement that James Hansen, who directs an agency of the U.S. government, is planning to get arrested in order "to give [Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress] the political space they need to act on their convictions."
McKibben believes those convictions include banning the burning of coal, which provides about half of our electricity, and other radical acts related to combatting the alleged threat of human-caused global warming. Evidently, these guys believe that a few radicals getting arrested will convince Congress to wreck what's left of the economy on purpose.
My sense is that, despite a fairly high percentage of duffuses among Congressional Democrats, they aren't dumb enough to intentionally sabotage economic recovery while spending hundreds of billions that they told the public are being spent to "stimulate" the economy.
There's a reason, you know, that President Obama has signaled to Congress that he will be perfectly happy to wait until 2010 for an anti-global warming bill. My guess is that perfect timing for him is soon enough to appease the left in the 2012 Democrat primary, and late enough that the economic pain of such legislation won't be felt until after the November 2012 election.
But somehow, all that seems almost a side issue, compared to the spectacle that is a government agency head getting arrested by government employees in order to pressure the government to do something it supposedly wants to do anyway.
I'm not sure this really is a government. It looks more like a bad circus.
Addendum, 2/25/09: See Hansen, on videotape, inviting the public to participate in what organizers apparently hope will be the "largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history." [Snapshot shown above]
Hansen doesn't claim to be speaking for NASA's Goddard Institute in this video, but it seems inappropriate at best for a government agency head to urge his fellow citizens to break the law. If federal agency heads don't respect the law, why should the rest of us?
Possibly old-fashioned concepts like obeying the law, along with paying for our own mortgages, went out with the Bush Administration.
Though in this particular revolution, it appears they are starting with children's books published before 1985.
Possibly that's to get us used to the idea.
To be fair, though, Congress didn't only vote to ban books. The legislation behind this, the Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act of 2008, also eviscerates a significant chunk of our nation's cultural heritage, kills jobs (see the links below for stories about what this is doing to some small businesses), and hurts charities.
(If you hadn't yet heard that used bookstores, thrift shops and other establishments have begun throwing out large numbers of children's books, as well as children's clothes, toys and other goods, read this article by the Manhattan Institute's Walter Olson, and then head over to his superlative website, Overlawyered.com, for more details and updates.)
I checked to see if our fearless leader voted for this bill, but he blew off the vote entirely. His chief-of-staff Rahm Emmanuel, then an Illinois Congressman, was an original co-sponsor in the House, and Rep. Bobby Rush, also of Illinois, was the main sponsor.
In the Senate, the only "no" votes were: Allard (R-CO), Barrasso (R-WY), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Kyl (R-AZ), Vitter (R-LA) and Wicker (R-MS).)
Folks, this is what big government gets you. Brace yourselves for more.
P.S. If you sell used clothes on EBay, yard sales, etc., beware. The penalty for breaking this law is fines up to $100,000, prison time, or both. You don't have to harm anyone to go to prison.
Don't miss Senior Fellow Tom Borelli's op-ed in today's Washington Examiner. It begins:
When the housing bubble burst, it exposed an unseemly alliance between special interests and the financial sector. Activists wanted homes for all at any cost, and lenders were happy to oblige despite the inherent risk.
Although the economic devastation this bubble wrought is still not under control, a similar toxic alliance is working on the next one: The green bubble.
Failing companies such as AIG, General Electric and General Motors, already propped up with tax dollars, have partnered with radical environmentalists in a scheme their CEOs believe will allow them to profit on fears about global warming...
The Democratic leaders were in such a big hurry to get the stimulus bill passed, they couldn't even wait 48 hours (as the members of the House of Representatives requested) to hold the vote. Yet, Emily Pierce reported Friday night for RollCall:
...the Senate gave final approval to a $787 billion economic stimulus bill on a 60-38 vote at 10:46 p.m. Friday. President Barack Obama plans to sign the landmark recovery package into law on Monday.
Too much of a hurry to let the House and Senate read the bill -- or even look it over much -- before voting. Not in enough hurry, though, for the President to lift a pen before Monday.
The Left is Afraid of America - the Rush to Vote on the Stimulus is the Proof
Rep. Jerrry Lewis (R-CA) just spoke on the House floor to say that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office had just scored the so-called stimulus bill, releasing its report a few minutes past noon (a little more than an hour ago).
Lewis reports that the CBO says less than half the spending in this bill will occur over the next two years, and 11 percent of it will occur this year.
Given these numbers, how can it possibly be imperative to our economic recovery (to avoid a "permanent recession," in President Obama's infamous phrase, as if such a thing is even possible) for the Congress to vote on all of this spending immediately? Unless something nefarious is going on, at the very least, even those who believe this bill is needed for stimulus purposes should be willing to defer debate and passage of three-quarters or more of the spending in this legislation so legislators can read and refine it.
But they aren't. Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the others who lead the left in our nation's capitol are unwilling to wait -- even to wait 48 hours as the House of Representatives unanimously urged -- because they are afraid. Afraid of permanent recession? No, they are afraid the American people will find out what's in this bill.
John Hinderaker at Power Line has posted a chart showing the federal deficit (or surplus) as a percentage of GDP from 1965 to now, including an estimate of what the 2009 deficit will be if the stimulus bill is adopted.
Today we have shown that, working together, we can address the enormous economic crisis affecting our country. I am particularly pleased that we have produced an agreement that has a top line of $789 billion dollars. That is less than either the House- or Senate-passed bills. It is a fiscally-responsible number that reflects our efforts to truly focus this bill on programs and policies and tax relief that will help turn our economy around, create jobs and provide relief to the families of our country.
I am also very pleased that we were able to increase the amount of funding for infrastructure. That is the most powerful component in this bill to create jobs. Overall, there is about a hundred and fifty billion dollars in infrastructure this bill when you add together transportation, environmental, broadband, and other projects.
Note that, 40 seconds into the video, just an instant after Senator Collins says "working together," the three Democratic Senators standing directly behind Collins crack up.
I have to agree with the Democrat Senators that any pretense of bipartisanship on bill this one was a joke -- a $789 billion dollar sick joke on the American people that definitely is not, Senator Collins, in any way, "fiscally responsible."
And, say what you will about Senator Specter (really, please do!), in this video he at least has the presence of mind to look absolutely grim. _____
Amazing Video of Senators on Health Care Provisions of Stimulus
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has posted some amazing video from Youtube (shown above) of Fox News anchors interviewing Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) on the health care provisions on the trillion dollar stimulus bill nobody's read.
Anchors Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer did a great job with these interviews; holding each Senator to account when it was painfully obvious that neither Senator knew what was in the bill they each were about to vote for. Kudos to each of the anchors.
Brian M. Riedl: Stimulus Bill Should Not Bail Out States
Brian M. Riedl says it is a bad idea for Congress to bail out what he terms "irresponsible states" in the stimulus bill:
...Congress already sends $467 billion a year to state and local government--up 29 percent after inflation since 2000. This is well beyond what is needed to reimburse states for federal mandates (and Washington has imposed few new unfunded mandates on the states since 1996). The feds continue to give heavy subsidies to state health, education, and transportation programs. But apparently that is not enough.
States depend on volatile tax sources such as income taxes, so common sense suggests building rainy day funds during booms to cushion the inevitable recessions. And yet states keep responding to temporary revenue surges with permanent new spending programs. Between 1994 and 2001, states flush with new revenues shunned rainy day funds and instead expanded their general fund budgets by 6.2 percent a year.
All booms eventually end, and these free-spending states left themselves totally unprepared for the 2002-2003 economic slowdown. Yet instead of sufficiently paring back their bloated budgets, the states demanded--and received--a $30 billion bailout from Washington in 2003.
Bailing out someone who has behaved irresponsibly encourages future misbehavior. And that is just what happened: After the 2003 bailout, states went right back to spending--with annual budget hikes averaging 7.2 percent over the next four years.(Some also built up their rainy day funds, but not enough.)...
Project 21 says there are at least three provisions in the so-called "stimulus" bill that could funnel money to the radical left-wing activist group ACORN:
Black Activist Slams "Stimulus" Spending Making Billions Available to ACORN
In the nearly trillion dollars in spending contained in the so-called "stimulus" bill the U.S. Senate is now considering are programs that could go into coffers of the left-wing group ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).
"It's outrageous that potentially billions of taxpayer dollars may end up aiding a group instrumental in causing the economic crisis in the first place," said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the Project 21 black leadership network.
ACORN became infamous during the 2008 presidential campaign when it's involvement in fraudulent voter registration efforts and ties to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama were revealed. ACORN lobbying and intimidation tactics targeting financial institutions are also blamed for helping to create the current mortgage crisis.
In an analysis of the Senate bill by Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center on the web site of The American Spectator, there are at least three provisions in the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009" that could be used to funnel money to ACORN:
* Title XII would make $1 billion available for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). Vadum writes: "The [CDBG] program gives [local politicians] wide latitude... to use federal dollars on local projects that they wouldn't dream of spending their own local tax dollars on. ACORN loves CDBG because it is adept at lobbying for CDBG funds."
* The Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Opportunity Program would provide $10 million for rehabilitating low-income housing.
* The 4.19 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program would help with foreclosure relief. $3.44 billion would be available to states, localities and nonprofit groups such as ACORN, while $750 million would be available to exclusively to groups.
ACORN has been linked to multiple vote fraud investigations. 63 percent of voter registrations submitted by ACORN in St. Louis in 2003 were determined to be invalid. In Washington last year, only six of 1,800 voter registrations filed in Seattle were valid. Washington Secretary of State Scott Reed called the incident "the worst case of voter-registration fraud" in state history.
Additionally, in a New York Post commentary on the mortgage crisis, University of Texas at Dallas economics professor Stan Liebowitz wrote: "From the current hand-wringing, you'd think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards - at the behest of community groups and 'progressive' political forces" such as ACORN.
Project 21's Borelli added: "Just imagine the havoc ACORN could accomplish with as much as $5 billion in taxpayer money. It's obvious that giving ACORN billions of dollars will do nothing to stimulate the economy - but it will guarantee left-wing political success. It seems like little more than a political payoff, and it is just plain wrong."
Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21's website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html
"Scaring People is Not Leadership... Having Lunch is Not Leading... Doing TV Interviews is Not Leading"
If you've heard about Senator Lindsey Graham's comments yesterday about President Obama being "AWOL" on the stimulus debate and how the entire stimulus process "stinks," but haven't seen it, the Ocean State Republican Blog has the video. ____
Both Tom Borelli, senior fellow of the National Center for Public Policy Research and co-director of our Free Enterprise Project, and and Mychal Massie, chairman of Project 21, have been doing a good bit of local and national radio on our behalf on the so-called "stimulus" plan.
I've got links to podcasts to two of the national radio interviews conducted of Tom this week. These links permit you listen to all or part of these interviews at your convenience:
* The G. Gordon Liddy broadcast, February 5. The show's podcast page is here; a link to the actual feed of Tom being interviewed by Gordon Liddy is here.
* Radio America's Dateline Washington, Greg Corombus, host, February 4. Podcast page here; direct link to MP3 podcast file here.
If I acquire podcast links to any of the other immediate past or future broadcast media interviews our folks do on the stimulus, I'll try to add them, schedule permitting. Unfortunately, most shows, even major ones, do not make interview podcasts available. ____
Ak'Bar Shabazz: States and Localities Should Be Wary of Federal Strings
Columnist and spokesman Ak'Bar Shabazz of Project 21 says states and localities should be very wary that huge federal infusions of cash don't bring with them a decline in local autonomy. ____
Open Letter to the U.S. Senate on the So-Called Stimulus
Along with other individuals from a variety of organizations, I signed the following letter, distributed today to members on the Senate, urging them not to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in a so-called stimulus plan. The plan has been rushed; it is wasteful, and it won't work.
In my view, a true plan to stimulate the economy would cut taxes, trim regulations where possible and help make energy more accessible and thus, more affordable.
The text of the letter and the list of signers follows:
February 4th, 2009
To the Members of the U.S. Senate:
We the undersigned public interest organizations, representing millions of members and supporters nationwide, hereby call upon you to reject the $819 billion spending bill that passed the House of Representatives last week.
This legislation will total some $1.2 trillion when interest is calculated over the next decade, and represents an unsustainable growth of government.
In addition, the Congressional Budget Office calculates that the budget deficit will already be $1.2 trillion for 2009. On January 3rd, the Washington Post reported that the deficit could total as much as $2 trillion. In part, it depends on how badly the recession hits the U.S., but also on how much productive capital the government takes out of the broader economy.
The irresponsible expansion of the budget to bail out state governments from their own budget deficits, expand Medicaid, boost education spending, food stamps and unemployment benefits, build federal buildings, provide more for public housing, construct climate change supercomputers, erect trade barriers overseas, create refundable tax credits, and make special interest payouts will not stimulate sustainable economic growth.
Instead, the astronomical growth of government spending, coupled with further monetary easing and protectionism, will discourage investment, savings, and capital creation, because in the longer term it means higher taxes, higher interest rates, and inflation. It will destroy jobs in the private sector, thus increasing individual dependency on government.
Importantly, it will steep American taxpayers ever deeper into a spiral of debt, now nearly $10.7 trillion. That includes $4.3 trillion owed in the form of unfunded obligations to Social Security, Medicare, and other commitments, and $6.4 trillion held privately, $3 trillion of which is held overseas. 40 percent of the debt held privately comes due this year. The only way for the government to pay it is to borrow yet more money.
As a result, the federal government is running the serious risk that it will default on its financial obligations, as the nation's creditors during the current economic downturn may be unable to continue sustaining the uncontrolled growth of spending, leaving the nation in financial ruin.
America needs a plan now to begin paying down the national debt, not an ill-conceived scheme that will make that task impossible for our children and our children's children. The nation needs to tighten its belt, and learn how to live on less credit, less borrowing, and less debt.
This is a change that must occur at the individual level, at the county level, the state level, and the national level. It is not a change that should begin by doubling down on a hasty, careless gamble.
In addition, permanent tax cuts that change incentives are much more effective than temporary targeted tax incentives and spending. What economists call the "permanent income hypothesis" shows that individuals and businesses only change their spending and investment habits significantly when they expect policy changes to be permanent. It takes more than one-year, for instance, to build a factory, and businesses may not do so if they think that tax incentives are only temporary.
Preventing tax increases on individual income, capital gains and dividends, changing the tax code to allow full-cost, first-year expensing for business equipment rather than the arbitrary IRS depreciation schedule, and lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate, among the highest in the world, would yield much more bang for the buck in ensuring a rapid economic recovery than the current package of massive spending with a sliver of targeted tax cuts.
Again, on behalf of our members nationwide, we the undersigned urge you to reject the $819 billion spending bill now being considered. Instead, we ask you to promulgate a real plan for change, to finally set the nation's fiscal house in order, to provide permanent tax relief to businesses and individuals, to free the American people from the boom-to-bust economic cycle, and to at last retire the national debt.
Sincerely,
Fred L. Smith, Jr. President Competitive Enterprise Institute
Gary Aldrich Chairman CNP Action, Inc.
William Wilson President Americans for Limited Government
Mark Williamson Founder and President Federal Intercessors
Thomas McClusky VP for Government Affairs Family Research Council
David N. Bossie President Citizens United
James L. Martin President 60 Plus Association
Duane Parde President National Taxpayers Union
Mark Chmura Executive Director Americans for the Preservation of Liberty
Thomas Schatz President Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Dr. William Greene President RightMarch.com
Ken Blackwell Chairman Coalition for a Conservative Majority
John Berlau Director Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs
Ron Shuping Executive Vice President of Programming The Inspiration Networks
Alex-St. James Chairman African American Republican Leadership Council
Cliff Kincaid President America's Survival, Inc.
Richard Falknor Chairman Maryland Center-Right Coalition
Amy Ridenour President National Center for Public Policy Research
At least $8.6 billion of President Obama’s proposed $1.2 trillion stimulus plan is meant to fund dubious special interest policy initiatives of environmental activists and should immediately be jettisoned, says Deneen Borelli, full-time Fellow with the Project 21 national black leadership network.
"It's outrageous that taxpayer money is slated to be used to fund the agenda of environmental special interest groups. These special interest groups are using global warming alarmism to fund dubious projects while discouraging the use of fossil fuels," says Borelli. "If liberal lawmakers really cared about stimulating the economy, they would remove rules and regulations that block the development of more fossil fuels. This would provide good-paying jobs and lower energy costs for Americans. Instead, they appear only interested in using their combined force of money, power and influence to fleece taxpayers of their money and their freedom."
Among the green earmarks in the bill legislation cited by Borelli:
* A $2 billion expenditure for "near zero emissions powerplant(s)." This money apparently will be used to revive the FutureGen coal-fired power plan in Mattoon, Illinois. Federal funding for FutureGen was cut off by the Department of Energy in 2008 due in part to excessive construction costs. Reviving funding has been a goal of Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), and is included despite past criticism of coal-based power generation by President Obama, Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Stephen Chu.
* $600 million set aside to purchase new hybrid vehicles for federal employees. While there is no documented need for the replacement of vehicles in the federal motor pool, hybrid vehicles have been criticized for performance, cost, safety and the environmental risks created through the production and disposal of their batteries.
* In a December 6, 2008 address, then-President-elect Obama called for a "massive effort" for “replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs" in federal buildings. The stimulus bill would earmark $6 billion to address this by, among other actions, changing the use of conventional incandescent light bulbs to riskier compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), which pose a risk of mercury poisoning if broken.
Borelli added: "Lawmakers are cramming a feel-good energy and environmental agenda into this so-called stimulus bill. Investing in FutureGen, hybrid vehicles and light bulbs will only stimulate the special interest groups that are inflating the 'green bubble' that could be the next thing to threaten our nation's economic stability."
Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21's website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html
Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli on the Stimulus Plan
Statement by Tom Borelli, PhD, director of the Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research on the stimulus plan:
The adage 'haste makes waste' applies to Obama's massive stimulus plan. In response to our economic crisis the liberal majority is rushing to spend taxpayer money without regard to the consequences of its plan. We've seen this movie before - when Congress panics, taxpayers suffer. Just a few months ago, billions were spent on TARP with little effect on the economy.
In reality it's a left-wing spending plan masquerading as economic stimulus. Only about 5 percent of the current bill will be used for infrastructure costs while millions of dollars are earmarked for other pet projects, such as renovations for the Department of Commerce headquarters, digital television coupons, the National Endowment for the Arts and the liberal group ACORN.
Even worse, according to the Congressional Budget Office, most of the infrastructure projects for roads and bridges will not happen for two years or more. This spending will not provide immediate help to our floundering economy.
The plan is really a rewards program for the left-wing groups that got Obama elected. The only thing stimulating about this plan is the anger it's arousing among Americans.
Maiden Speech of a New Senator: Will History Erase Our Debt?
Freshman Senator Mike Johanns (R), a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Nebraska governor elected last November, gave his maiden speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate just now on the topic of President Obama's controversial stimulus plan.
A choice quote from the speech, as jotted down quickly by me:
It's as if some thought we could just use a credit card, and history itself would somehow forgive the debt.
Senator Johanns made other good points I was not able to get down, but I wouldn't be surprised if his office soon posts the text of his remarks on his Senate web page, which can be found here, and, of course, it will appear later in the Congressional Record. _____
From Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), on the stimulus plan:
We got into this mess by spending and investing money that didn’t exist. We won’t get out of this mess by doing more of the same.
Dr. Coburn also said:
...the American people will be nauseated by the numerous and shameless special interest projects that have been slipped into this bill in spite of President Obama’s call to keep this bill free of earmarks. Including a $246 million earmark to bailout Hollywood when Hollywood just enjoyed its biggest January ever is insulting to the millions of American families who are struggling to make ends meet. This bill also contains the biggest earmark in history – a $2 billion handout to the not-ready-for-prime-time ‘FutureGen’ near-zero-emission power plant in Matoon, Illinois that has been called ‘prohibitively expensive’ by the Washington Post and is not supported by scientists at MIT..."
As a followup to this press release, Tom Borelli will be a guest on the G. Gordon Liddy national radio broadcast on Friday, January 16, at 10:30 AM Eastern. _____
So Was Barbarossa, Buddy, But It Doesn't Mean We Approve of It
"'The fact that we got this coalition to coalesce around a set of choices I think is impressive,'" said Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric." -Coalition Agrees on Emissions Cuts, Steven Mufson, Washington Post, January 15, 2009
More on our take on rich executives lobbying Congress to raise energy prices on poorer people so they can get richer still here. ____
At Energy and Commerce Hearing, House Conservatives Call CEOs to Account
Looks like conservatives on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling turncoat corporate CEOs to account on the Hill today:
From Stephen Power's account on the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog, as posted there by Keith Johnson:
The Waxman era begins: The first congressional hearing of 2009 on climate change got off to an acrimonious start Thursday, as House Republicans blasted a group of corporate CEOs and environmental groups for staging a press conference instead of appearing before the House Ènergy and Commerce Committee to answer lawmakers’ questions about their ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Republicans also vowed to hold members of the US Climate Action Partnership accountable for their own use of fossil fuels, by demanding they explain to the committee whether they traveled to Washington by corporate aircraft and how much fuel they used.
“Be prepared for a battle,” Illinois Republican John Shimkus said at the start of the hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Mr. Shimkus vowed to “hold accountable” any Democrats from coal-abundant and petroleum-producing states who vote in favor of legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions and set up an emissions trading system in which companies would have to buy permits allowing them to pollute.
Mr. Shimkus and other Republicans called such legislation, which is favored by President-elect Barack Obama, “a shell game designed to hide” the true costs of regulation from consumers...
Good, good, good.
Using Congress for profiteering is reprehensible; doing it in the name of conservation while flying in on corporate jets to lobby for disproportionately-higher energy costs on lower-income and minority populations makes it doubly so.
I'm not at the hearing, but who wants to bet they have it heated nice and toasty on this bitterly cold global warmy January day?
The only creature comfort the conspirators will be missing is a collection of puppies for the CEOs and the liberal Congressmen to kick on their way out of the hearing room (or so I assume).
We issued a press release on this expensive nonsense earlier this morning:
Energy Bubble, Anyone?
Henry Waxman Gives Public a Look at the Corporate-Congressional Alliance that Threatens to Raise Energy Prices in Pursuit of Private Profit
Thursday's first hearing of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee since Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) ousted Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) as chairman is drawing criticism from the National Center for Public Policy Research, which says the hearing illustrates how powerful corporate interests are working with influential special interests and with the liberal majority in Congress to use government to enhance private profits at great cost to economic growth and liberty.
The hearing will, according to the committee's announcement, "present the perspectives of members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership ('USCAP'), a coalition of over 30 businesses and nongovernmental organizations that has called for Congress to pass legislation to address the climate change threat."
"Today's hearing on the U.S. Climate Action Partnership exposes the dangers posed by the new political economy," said Tom Borelli PhD, director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research. "The alignment of corporations, special interest groups and liberal members of Congress aiming for this legislative goal is frightening. The housing bubble was born from an alliance of similar interest groups and now we are about to repeat the same mistake with energy policy."
Corporate members of USCAP are trying to profit from a government-mandated "cap and trade" anti-global warming policy by selling so called carbon credits from reductions in greenhouse gases. Under cap-and-trade, emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, would be limited by the federal government. Companies that are over their emission allotment will be forced to purchase credits from another company that is below its allowance.
Under a cap-and-trade policy, companies would be forced to raise energy prices to reduce their emissions. This would unleash a series of adverse economic consequences and hardships for Americans, as the National Center's Vice President David Ridenour noted in a recent article in Investor's Business Daily:
* A study by the National Association of Manufacturers projected that emissions caps, similar to those rejected earlier this year by the U.S. Senate calling for a 63% cut in emissions by 2050, would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by up to $269 billion and cost 850,000 jobs by 2014.
* According to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the restrictions could raise gasoline prices by 29%, electricity prices by 55% and natural gas prices by 15% by 2015.
* A 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office, examining the costs of cutting carbon emissions just 15%, noted that customers "would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would."
"The alignment of corporate and government agendas for the so called "social good" is eerily similar of the warnings in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged which described the unraveling of capitalism" said Deneen Borelli, a full-time Fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research-sponsored African-American leadership network Project 21.
"Pursuing legislation that will raise energy prices in the middle of a recession is economic suicide. It exposes the inability of these CEOs to connect the dots between economic growth and their future earnings," added Tom Borelli. "Let's not forget USCAP corporate membership reads like a who's who list of corporate losers; AIG and Lehman Brothers were founding members and General Electric stock is trading at multiyear lows. Ford, Chrysler and GM are also members -- need I say more?" said Tom Borelli.
"Unfortunately for shareholders, the USCAP CEOs, like their banking industry colleagues, have executed poor risk management regarding the impact of cap-and-trade on their businesses. While banking CEOs thought real estate prices could only go up, USCAP CEOs somehow think there is no downside risk to high energy prices and handing over more power to government bureaucrats. They also think the environmental special interest groups are their friends. That's incredibly naïve," Tom Borelli said.
"We know for a fact that some USCAP CEOs have not analyzed the impact of cap-and-trade on their business. In response to my question about the company's participation in USCAP at the Caterpillar shareholder meeting in 2007, CEO James Owens admitted he did not conduct a cost benefit analysis of cap-and-trade on his business. Shareholders should be outraged over such incompetence," said Deneen Borelli.
"ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva has also not done his homework," said Tom Borelli. "ConocoPhillips has made a significant investment in Canadian oil sands, which release about three times the amount of carbon dioxide than traditional oil. Since cap-and-trade will increase the cost of carbon emissions, Mulva is lobbying to increase the cost of his investment. In addition, his USCAP partner Natural Resources Defense Council is taking legal action to block the processing of the oil sands at a ConocoPhillips refinery."
"Finally, if General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt is so concerned about the state of the planet," Tom Borelli Continued, "why was he selling electricity infrastructure equipment to Iran? Nuclear Iran poses a much greater threat than carbon emissions."
America doesn't need cap and trade and it doesn't need a carbon tax. Any look at the sorry state at the USCAP portion of America's business community, however, makes clear that of the two, cap and trade is worse, because it pits the profit interests of big business directly against the pocketbook interests of the little guy. ____
Rumor has it that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is re-introducing his massive federal land control bill.
The National Center for Public Policy Research polled African-Americans on the legislation. 52% oppose the legislation while only 37% support it.
As our vice president, David Ridenour, noted when the poll was released:
This is a key test of whether liberal politicians listen to African-Americans who cast 95% of their votes for Barack Obama and accounted for nearly one-quarter of all of President-elect Obama's votes. Black Americans don't want more land locked up if it means restricting energy development and home construction, driving up the price of both. And that's precisely what this bill would do.
The Omnibus Public Lands Management Act, an amalgamation of more than 100 bills that would place new restrictions on energy exploration, home construction, and business activity, has been scheduled by Harry Reid (D-NV) for a vote during this week's special lame duck session of the Senate.
The bill would restrict use of millions of additional acres of land, both public and private, through the creation of new National Heritage Areas (a program creating de facto federal zoning), new wilderness area designations, and management practices that would clear the way for special protections for so-called "view scapes," "sound scapes," and even "smell scapes."
The National Center also helped Americans for Tax Reform gather signatures for a coalition letter to the U.S. Senate on this issue that ATR spearheaded, a PDF of which can be found here.
Addendum, January 12, 2009: The bill was brought to the Senate floor Sunday, January 11, and adopted 66-12. ____
Husband David has an op-ed in today's Washington Times as well as other papers on what a cap on greenhouse gas emissions would due to our economy.
An excerpt:
When our economic bus is teetering at the edge of a cliff, it's a bad time to throw on some extra weight.
Yet government-mandated restrictions on carbon emissions would do precisely that, adding enormous additional weight to an economy already reeling. This additional weight shouldn't just be thrown from the bus -- it should be thrown under it.
Most econometric studies agree that restricting greenhouse-gas emissions would slow our already sluggish economy.
A study by the National Association of Manufacturers projected that emissions caps similar to those rejected earlier this year by the U.S. Senate calling for a 63-percent cut in emissions by 2050, would reduce U.S. gross domestic product by up to $269 billion and cost 850,000 jobs by 2014.
The Heritage Foundation estimated such restrictions would result in cumulative GDP losses of up to $4.8 trillion and employment losses of more than 500,000 a year by 2030.
Other studies suggest smaller economic costs: Duke University's Nicholas Institute estimates a GDP loss of $245 billion by 2030 while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates a GDP drop of $238 billion to $983 billion.
Sharp emissions restrictions would also push the costs of energy and other consumer products higher. According to a study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the restrictions could raise gasoline prices 29 percent, electricity prices 55 percent and natural-gas prices 15 percent by 2015.
The people most vulnerable to such price increases are the poor. A 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office examining the costs of cutting carbon emissions just 15 percent noted that customers "would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would." Indeed, the lowest quintile income group would pay nearly double what the highest quintile income group would, as a proportion of income, pay in increased energy costs.
And it appears that all this economic pain would be an utterly meaningless gesture. Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists, who is now with the Cato Institute, says reducing U.S. emissions 63 percent would prevent a mere 0.013 degrees Celsius in warming. With emissions from China, India and other developing nations growing at breakneck speed, even this modest benefit would be completely erased.
Some argue that we should undergo this pain anyway to set an example for others to follow. The European Union tried that and now, apparently, they're throwing in their collective recycled-material towel... Read it all here.
Charlie Rangel's Many Scandals Subject of Project 21 Commentary in Washington Times
By David Almasi:
Remember how Washington's "culture of corruption" played such a large role in the 2006 elections? The issue hasn’t gone away...
Consider the slow burn of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). Currently, the number of allegations of questionable ethics of his part number at six - ranging from allegations of abuse of the rules of the House garage to allegedly not filing proper disclosures of income to allegedly using House resources to raise money for a non-governmental pet project.
Project 21's Council Nedd wrote a commentary about the Rangel situation that recently appeared in The Washington Times. Council pointed out the irony that Rangel's 1970 election was due in part to the scandal-plagued history of his predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Council wrote, in part:
Four decades later, Mr. Rangel is experiencing uncanny parallels to situations that destroyed Mr. Powell's congressional career. Despite the ignominious circumstances of Mr. Powell's forced retirement, he remains fondly remembered for his civil rights work and his pre-scandal legislative accomplishments.
History may not be so kind to Mr. Rangel, since he and his colleagues assumed power on a promise to clean up Washington's "culture of corruption."
...It is troubling when Mr. Rangel pleads ignorance about his tax problems; more so when one considers that he heads the committee tasked with writing the nation's tax laws.
Mr. Powell was stripped of his committee chairmanship by his Democratic colleagues and later expelled by a vote of the entire House. He did win back his seat, but - after years of legal squabbling - Harlem voters chose to replace him with Mr. Rangel.
The House Ethics Committee is now investigating many of the charges against Mr. Rangel. Despite promises of stronger ethics, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to have no intention thus far of disciplining a man she calls "very distinguished."
...Mr. Rangel was elected, in part, to clean up Mr. Powell's mess. Now, he has become his own mess. It reflects poorly on him and hurts Harlem and Washington. Harlem needs another renaissance - an ethical one this time.
This post was written by National Center for Public Policy Research Executive Director David Almasi. To send comments to the author, write him at info@nationalcenter.org. Please state if a letter is not for publication or if you prefer that it be published anonymously.
In what only makes sense as his latest entry in the highly-competitive Laughstock of Washington contest, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday called Chief Justice John Roberts 
Apparently dissatisfied with the United States paying a full 22 percent of the expenses of the ridiculously wasteful and notoriously corrupt United Nations, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon 
