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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Monday, February 01, 2010
More on James O'Keefe Case
As I mentioned the other day, James O'Keefe has been charged under Title 18, Section 1036 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits persons from entering "any real property belonging in whole or in part to, or leased by, the United States... by any fraud or false pretense."
A thing that strikes me about the James O'Keefe case is that people enter Congressional offices all the time under false pretenses. They say they want to talk to the staff or the Congressman in the District office, but once there, they stage a sit-in to stop logging, to demand climate change action, to demand an end to the Iraq War, or to demand sanctions against one country or another.
Yet, the media greets them as heroes and O'Keefe as a criminal.
ACORN, by the way, has a long history of orchestrating sit-ins. I'm sure its members don't always come in and say, "Hi, I'm Jane Doe, I represent ACORN and I'm here to stage a sit-in. Would you mind terribly if I brought a few hundred of my friends in, too?" Obviously, Code-Pink has done it, too.
If at the end of the day the charges against O'Keefe are merely that he entered a federal office under false pretenses and all these lefties have denounced him for doing so, they'll have denounced him for doing essentially the same thing they do all the time.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Project 21's Deneen Borelli to Appear on Fox and Friends Monday
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli will be a guest on the Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends morning show at 6:20 AM Eastern on Monday, February 1.
Deneen will discuss changes the left may be making to its marketing efforts in light of Scott Brown's upset win in Massachusetts.
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Bizarre Climategate Update #2: Prince Charles Supports Lawbreaking Science Unit
After the British government's Information Commissioner's Office concluded the Climate Research Center at the University of East Anglia violated Britain's Freedom of Information Act law, Prince Charles visited to show his support...
...that is, he showed support for the Climate Research Unit, not the Information Commissioner (the report starts at 4:16 in the video).
Surprising to me, the prince specifically met with Phil Jones (reported at 5:21 in the video), the head of the unit (on leave since the scandal broke) and the man most under fire for the FOIA violation.
Typically in these bad-PR situations an institution will get rid of problem-causers first, and then bring the bigwigs in for a photo op expressing support for the replacement team. Fresh start, break with the past, that kind of message.
Seems Prince Charles doesn't see a need for a fresh start.
John O'Sullivan on Climategate.com has another detail about the prince's visit. Reportedly, the prince told the Climategate team:
Well done all of you. Many, many congratulations on your work. I wish you great success in the future. Don't get downhearted by these little blips here and there!
Well done? Blips?
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James O'Keefe has been charged under Title 18, Section 1036 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits persons from entering "any real property belonging in whole or in part to, or leased by, the United States... by any fraud or false pretense."
My question is, why hasn't Landrieu been arrested? Didn't she take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but then vote for a health care bill with unconstitutional provisions on December 24?
Didn't all the 60 Senators who voted for it violate the law when they entered their publicly-owned offices on December 24?
Tell you what... Dismiss the charges against O'Keefe and give the 60 Senators a pass this time on their "fine... or imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or both..."
Or charge the Senators, too.
I'm fine with it either way.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Following the obligatory full disclosure that the National Center for Public Policy Research was not exactly neutral in the case of Citizens United v. FEC when it went before the Supreme Court (we supported and signed on to an amicus brief in the case spearheaded by the Free Speech Coalition last year), I want to slightly defend President Obama vis-a-vis his erroneous remarks about the case during the State of the Union address.
Yes, Justice Samuel Alito was right (Bradley Smith, a campaign finance expert and law professor, proves it succinctly here), and President Obama wrong, on the facts.
But in regards to those who are calling the President a liar on the matter: I doubt it because I doubt the President knew the facts of the case before he spoke. Unlike our last Democratic President, Barack Obama has never been particularly interested in issues, and his speechwriters draw heavily from left-wing sources without fact-checking (as when they blindly trusted Slate's Timothy Noah when drafting Obama's health care speech to the joint session of Congress).
The left-wing position on Citizens United, as Democracy 21 put it, is that a loophole now exists in the law because, although foreign corporations are banned from influencing elections, "there is no statutory prohibition against foreign-controlled domestic corporations from making expenditures to influence federal elections."
But the absence of a statute is not the fault of the Supreme Court, and President Obama and the left is wrong to criticize the Court for it. Congress had plenty of time to anticipate Citizens United v. FEC and to pass legislation to deal with this or any other loophole if it believes a loophole exists.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Citizens United v. FEC in August 2008. The Court heard arguments on it twice (March and September 2009), which led court-watchers to expect that major parts of McCain-Feingold would be struck down. Any legislation affecting the influence of foreign-controlled domestic corporations on U.S. elections would have received extensive bi-partisan support. Yet Congress didn't pass it, and Obama never asked it to try.
The Supreme Court had one duty: to apply the Constitution. President Obama was criticizing the court on public policy grounds the Court would have been out of line to consider.
The role of the Supreme Court is something about which leftists in general tend to be willfully ignorant. For example, in comments about this case, Josh Glasstetter of the popular left-wing Crooks and Liars blog not only ignored the fact that the Supreme Court is supposed to be neutral on policy impacts, but he exaggerated the decision's impact immensely:
[The Supreme Court justices voting in the majority] don't seem to mind that Lukoil (Kremlin Inc.), Citgo (Hugo Chavez LLC), Aramco (King Fahd and Sons Co.), and countless other multinational corporations - including those run as business arms of foreign governments - now have a free hand to influence the government from top to bottom.
If it so chose, Congress could plug any loophole being exploited by Hugo Chavez long before November. Who would vote against it?
So I defend the President on the charge that he lied when he claimed the decision opened "the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," because I doubt he knew any better, but I don't excuse him for acting as if the Supreme Court and the Congress have the same responsibilities.
He's a former law professor, for heaven's sake!
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On January 21, TVNewser reported that "NBC News has filed a formal complaint with the White House press office over the distribution of presidential interviews, specifically that several of the most recent broadcast TV interviews have gone to ABC News - including George Stephanopoulos's interview yesterday and Charlie Gibson's December 15."
Later they posted an update, saying "An NBC News spokesperson tells us, 'NBC News did not file a formal or informal complaint about this interview." The updated post now claimed merely that "NBC News has expressed concern" over the matter.
Whether NBC complained formally or informally, or merely expressed "concern," it is clear that the Peacock network is none too happy with ABC's cozy relationship with the Obama White House. And can you blame them? Goodness, how much can a network throw themselves at a politician before he pays them the requisite attention? Remember MSNBC's Chris Matthews' infamous and lurid "thrill going up my leg" reaction to an Obama speech? Have you seen the nightly Obama cheerleading from virtually the entire MSNBC prime time line-up?
But these are cable commentators you may say, whose sycophantic slobberings are seen by too few to matter (MSNBC regularly comes in a dismal third in the cable news ratings race). Perhaps. But then you have the troubling nuisance of a "hard news" reporter who covers politics for NBC Nightly News admitting "it's almost hard to remain objective" when covering Obama. And the nauseating spectacle of Brian Williams himself, anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, heir to Tom Brokaw and the lodestar of the network's news division, automatically and unconsciously bowing to Barack Obama.
NBC has received some White House access in return for their affections, of course, as the TVNewser story rightly acknowledges. But not enough, it seems, to placate the infatuated NBC newsies.
ABC does seem to have a special place in the President's heart. As I detailed in a recent National Center For Public Policy Research report:
On June 24, ABC devoted a full hour of valuable prime-time real estate to Barack Obama for a Primetime (a production of ABC News) health care forum titled "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," hosted by ABC World News host Charles Gibson and Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer. But ABC News wasn't done making itself a platform for the President's agenda; later that same night, Obama continued his pitch for his health care reform package on Nightline.
Why would ABC farm out its news team to help a politician ply his wares? Well, the fact that the pharmaceutical companies, prime allies of the White House in Obama's national health care push, have constituted the majority of sponsors for ABC World News may have something to do with it. Or maybe ABC just shows Obama the kind of tenderness that NBC can't match, a more subtle and sublime affection which prompts George Stephanopoulos to ask Obama if being president has been "fulfilling" for him.
That's sweet. ABC and Obama make a great couple, and I think they have a real future together. It's going to be a rough Valentine's Day for NBC.
Written by Matt Patterson, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Where are the Vice Chairmen, and Other IPCC Questions
See any vice chairmen? Al Gore (l) and the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri take their bows in Oslo
Acknowledging that there may be even more errors in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC's 2007 climate report than the "scientific fact" the IPCC partially copied from a thinly-sourced World Wildlife Fund propaganda document, IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri seems to be blaming his vice chairmen:
The IPCC's 2007 report, which won it half the Nobel Peace Prize, claimed the probability of Himalayan glaciers "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999.
The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was "poorly substantiated" in the latest of a series of blows to the panel's credibility.
Dr Pachauri said that the IPCC's report was the responsibility of the panel's Co-Chairs at the time, both of whom have since moved on.
They were Dr Martin Parry, a British scientist now at Imperial College London, and Dr Osvaldo Canziani , an Argentine meteorologist. Neither was immediately available for comment.
"I don't want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs," Dr Pachauri said. "Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation."
You'll notice from the picture, however, that when it came time to take bows, the vice chairmen were nowhere to be found.
P.S. For fun, here's a quiz on this blog post:
Question: What did we learn from this story? A. Never trust the IPCC. B. The Nobel Peace Prize can be ridiculous. C. Be wary of people who refer to other people as "chairs." D. All of the above.
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DeSmogblog's most recent word in our "debate," a Tweet about me (and Rush Limbaugh) from Kevin Grandia's Twitter feed that popped up on my online clip service last night:
I assume he means we are both fat (although Rush Limbaugh has lost a lot of weight this past year), but, based on the pictures he choose, Kevin doesn't know the half of it: My hair color is a lot closer to Rush's now.
But to answer the question, no, superficial (and ideological as well as football) similarities notwithstanding, we were not separated at birth. My parents would never have let Rush go.
But it is time, I think, to let this particular "debate" with DeSmogBlog die its natural death. By the time a conversation hits the "you're fat" level, it's no longer even remotely about public policy. Our priorities here at the National Center right now are to stop economically-ruinous environmental legislation (that won't even help the environment!), put a halt to the Administration's forced march toward the pain, fear, misery and premature death that is the hallmark of government-run health care, promote the free-market reforms that can strengthen our health care and retirement security systems, cut the size of government and promote a strong, secure and free America that is governed according to what our Constitution says and according to the principles of our Founders. Pointing out the ideological weaknesses of the left -- such as the DeSmogBlog tactic of demonizing opponents a la "denier" labelling -- promotes this goal, but dwelling upon a message once the statement has been made, or becoming distracted by debates that have devolved into personal insults, does not.
I'm sure I'll visit DeSmogBlog again at some point in the future, and perhaps comment on something they say related to public policy, but not for some time.
In the meantime, I leave followers of this conversation with two links to policy-oriented critiques of other, but very important, aspects of the DeSmogBlog approach to policy that are (alas!) far better written, and far more entertaining, than anything I have posted in this thread:
DeSoggyBog.com - DeSmogBlog parody site that proves DeSmogBlog's true philosophy is the promotion of totalitarianism, created by Donna Laframboise, a former vice-president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (also the creator of NOconsensus.org).
"DeSmog Accidentally Vindicates The Skeptics Handbook" -- absolutely hilarious response of science educator and speaker Joanne Nova to DeSmogBlog's futile effort to rebut "The Skeptics Handbook," which she authored.
And now, back to regularly-scheduled public policy programming.
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Brown's Victory Sign of a Loss of Confidence in Obama
As the National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit organization, Project 21 played no role in, nor took any position on, the Massachusetts Senate race, but now that Martha Coakley has conceded the race, and Scott Brown has delivered his acceptance speech, Project 21 members have a few thoughts to share on what it all means:
Black Conservatives Comment on Brown Victory in Massachusetts
Washington, DC: Black conservatives affiliated with the Project 21 leadership network are speaking out about the stunning victory of Republican state senator Scott Brown over Democrat state attorney general Martha Coakley in Massachusetts.
Kevin L. Martin: "Scott Brown's victory in the bluest of traditionally blue states can only be viewed as a complete loss of confidence in the policies of the Obama White House and its allies in Congress. People have tasted the fruits of a government dominated by liberal ideologues and they've not found it to their liking. What remains to be seen is if this repudiation has been heard and understood. Will Obama, Pelosi and Reid see the writing on the wall, or will they continue their heavy-handed attempts to ram through their agenda against the will of the people?"
Horace Cooper: "Yesterday's victory by State Senator Brown is reminiscent of the upset off-year elections of 1994. Then, the Democrats could have seen the results for what they were - a repudiation of big government liberalism - but they refused. As someone who worked on the Hill while these races were happening, you have to wonder if this time they'll get the message before it's too late."
Bob Parks: "As someone who ran - and lost - in Massachusetts, it's great to see a conservative win there. While Massachusetts Republicans and independents can enjoy their well-earned opportunity to gloat, they can also revel in the fact they did the impossible in an impossible state. And let's hope leaders in Washington realize that the people responded to a conservative message - not one of moderation."
Ellis Washington: "In Massachusetts, the site of the first tea party in 1773 and the renewed tax revolts of 2009, citizen defiance may have saved our republic. The stakes could not have been higher for the Obama Administration and congressional liberals in this special election. This may be the day in which it is guaranteed that Barack Obama will be a one-term president. Scott Brown's election will help America take a giant step toward renewed freedom and liberty. It bodes well for renewing American exceptionalism, market capitalism and the protection of personal property and sacred inalienable rights."
Project 21, established in 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org).
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...by alluding to the fact that Kevin's website refers to it.
You see, I noted in passing that DeSmogBlog has equated disbelief in the man-made global warming theory with denying the Holocaust.
DeSmogBlog does so by using the term "denier," which is well-established in global warming circles as a slur intended to impugn the morality of global warming skeptics by equating them rhetorically with holocaust deniers.
In fact, according to Google, DeSmogBlog has chosen "denier" over the less-loaded term "skeptic" (or any other term) over 2,200 times.
How do we know the DeSmogBlog crew intends the phrase "denier" to imply a link to Holocaust denial?
Here's a screen shot of the text of a DeSmogBlog post by Jim Hoggan of Hoggan and Associates (a PR firm that runs DeSmogBlog, and employs Kevin), aka, the big boss:
Innocuous as what I wrote was ("Kindness is not usually a term one associates with the anti-Holocaustglobal warming denier website DeSmogBlog, but its staff has made an exception today..."), Kevin has complained about it in a post on DeSmogBlog, another on the Huffington Post, another on AlterNet, and yet another on the Daily Kos, saying in part:
I sent an email to Ridenour [sic] assistant [sic], David Almasi, the other night asking for an explanation and also pointing out that in the four years I have been writing on climate issues I have never used a Nazi analogy in an attempt to bolster an argument or discredit an individual. So far they haven't responded and I think they're [sic] silence is telling.
Kevin added:
[Using a Nazi analogy] is a stupid and useless means of making a point that only creates division and hate.
I agree. Maybe now that DeSmogBlog's staff has done this over 2,200 times, they might consider cutting it out.
Now that everyone's been reminded that DeSmogBlog explicitly linked "denier" to "Holocaust" (as have others in the global warming alarmist community and mainstream press), if the DeSmogBlog staff continues to use the term "denier," we'll know they mean it double.
P.S. Kevin's co-worker at both DeSmogBlog and Jim Hoggan and Associates, Richard Littlemore, chimed in on DeSmogBlog (curiously, Richard commented on Jan. 16 to a post by Kevin apparently published on Jan. 18 -- perhaps Richard knew two days in advance what Kevin would post the same way he knows 100 years in advance what the climate will be?) with the defense that the word "holocaust" has never appeared in a DeSmogBlog post.
I guess what Richard means is that the word "holocaust" didn't appear except when it did, or...
...he's referring to the fact that someone at DeSmogBlog went back to Jim Hoggan's post, about a year after the denier-is-meant-to-refer-to-Holocaust-deniers phrase was posted, and snipped that politically-incorrect Holocaust reference right out of there.
(Background: Some months after the post was published, a contretemps emerged in several media outlets and websites about the use of the term "denier" being a de facto Holocaust-referencing slur (for instance, in this instance, and in another high-profile but later example, here), and Jim Hoggan's post was being referred to in public by skeptics as proof that the Holocaust reference absolutely, positively was intended.
So Jim's honesty was a but inconvenient for the global warming alarmists who were claiming the Holocaust implication was just something the paranoid "deniers" thought up on their own.
Coincidence or not, they snipped it out.)
P.P.S. DeSmogBlog's Richard Littlemore also says DeSmogBlog does not accuse people of being corporate whores. He says they phrase it differently. Whatever.
Finally (I hope!), Richard says he doubts my word that the National Center for Public Policy Research has 100,000 donors. Mea culpa -- I should have said over 100,000 recent donors (defined as within the last 18 months). If Richard genuinely doubts this as he says, he might familiarize himself with the way a great many, if not a strong majority, of U.S. conservative/free-market non-profits are financed (also he might acquaint himself with something called the "public support test" in U.S. tax law). Ordinarily I would not expect an employee of a Canadian PR firm to know much about public financial support for the U.S. conservative movement, but as Richard has written for years for a website that routinely accuses people in the movement (and many, many others) of doing the bidding of corporate paymasters (please note, Richard, I did not put that phrase in quotes), this is a subject he should have mastered long ago.
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The commercial, directed personally by Al Gore, asked viewers to visit one of the websites of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, where, among other things, they would be asked to sign a petition calling for a global climate treaty.
I am not a regular viewer of Robertson's CBN show, The 700 Club, but I had not previously presupposed it to be a support network for global governance.
Possibly CBN personnel were similarly mystified. In an article David linked to in his post, a CBN spokesman tries to say Robertson doesn't have a "firm position" on global warming:
Maybe he didn't, but as the video on Greg's post shows, the commercial encouraged viewers to visit Gore's website wecansolveit.org, which, at the time of the commercials, greeted viewers with these words...
...and then urged people to sign Gore's petition for a global climate treaty.
Robertson, by the way, wasn't the only person on the right to film a commercial asking people to visit Gore's website, and be asked to sign the global climate treaty petition:
The global climate treaty Al Gore has been pushing for is run through the United Nations. Even if Robertson and Gingrich choose to believe in the global warming theory -- in fact, especially if they believe in the global warming theory -- why would they want to address the issue through the useless and corrupt United Nations?
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Rebuttal to Huffington Post's "Right Wing Attacks Climate Scientist with Outrageous Spindoctoring"
Kevin Grandia, managing editor of the left-wing anti-global warming skeptic website DeSmogBlog, has posted an article on the Huffington Post about our exposure (along with that of others) of Michael Mann's $541,184 grant from federal stimulus funds.
Kevin must have known the article was fundamentally incorrect when he submitted it to the Huffington Post.
The post, entitled "Right wing attacks climate scientist with outrageous spindoctoring," can be read here. It was actually written by one of Kevin's DeSmogBlog writers, Mitchell Anderson, and appeared on DeSmogBlog at http://tinyurl.com/desmogblog on Friday.
Because the Huffington Post is one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world, and Kevin/Mitchell's article there was so off-the-wall wrong, I posted a comment on the Huffington Post correcting the basic facts. The comment, which makes the most sense if you read the Huffington Post piece first, is:
Kevin Grandia and Mitchell Anderson embarrass themselves with lines such as "How they arrived at this $450,000 error is unknown - it is puzzling when such free market capitalists clearly can't operate a calculator..."
Mitchell and Kevin are talking about the wrong grant, and Kevin, at minimum, must have known this before he posted this here. Their article here links to the National Center for Public Policy Research (which employs me) press release (partially reprinted by Friskaliberal.com, also linked to here), which calls for a return of a grant of $541,184.
Kevin wrote us Thursday to ask about the grant. We IDed the grant for him as National Science Foundation award #0902133, which is for $541,184.
So Kevin knew, before posting this here, that "the climate denial echo chamber" (as he so charmingy calls us) wasn't talking about an entirely different, $770,000 grant to Penn State/ U of HI, of which Mann received a small portion.
The real story: in June 2009, Penn State accepted a $541,184 grant, to cover three years, to Michael Mann's work. Climategate then exploded. Apparently believing Climategate to be serious, Penn State opened an investigation into Mann's work. Our position is that under these circumstances, the grant should be returned to the National Science Foundation, so the funds can be awarded to another scientist.
Kevin and Mitchell seem to think this would be awful. I'm not sure why. Maybe just because we're the ones who suggested it.
Addendum, 1/17/10: Apparently AlterNet has posted this as well. Why aren't these very major websites doing even superficial fact-checking before they publish pieces? E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | DownloadShattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
Re: Climategate, Left-Wing DeSmogBlog Website Asks Us for Research Help
Kindness is not usually a term one associates with the anti-Holocaustglobal warming denier website DeSmogBlog, but its staff has made an exception today.
It's really very kind of Kevin, especially when you consider that DeSmogBlog is a Canadian website, run by a for-profit public relations firm. How many Canadian for-profits worry about U.S. taxpayers being shafted? And after normal working hours, too!
From: Kevin Grandia Date: January 14, 2010 9:52:52 PM EST To: dalmasi@nationalcenter.org Subject: Mann claim
Hi David,
I am looking for your evidence backing your claim that Mann received stimulus money. I cannot find anything in your press release or on your blog. I also searched the Recovery.gov datbase and cannot find it. Obviously, it is imperative that such a claim is backed by solid sources and research so I would appreciate you sending this on to me as soon as possible.
DeSmogBlog's much anticipated book, "Climate Cover Up: the crusade to deny global warming" is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble - get your copy today! http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-cover-up
And thank you, too, Kevin, for telling us about DeSmogBlog's book highlighting the important work of many of us in the U.S. skeptic community (polite people don't call us "deniers," Kevin) who don't want to disproportionately hurt poor people by raising energy prices based on models that disagree with one another or on an injudicious analysis of the rings of a small number of carefully-selected trees. As it is always interesting to see what the neighbors next door have to say about one, Kevin, I'd be happy to read your boss's new book if you send me a free copy. You might be interested also in my book, which describes in sad detail the way the Canadian left has screwed up your health care system. You can get a free copy of it here. Be warned, though, since you live in Canada, it might come across as kind of terrifying. I regret that, but some leftist Americans want to do to us what yours did to you, and we really have to warn people.
Back to the Michael Mann grant. I can tell from your email, Kevin, that looking in three places on the Internet for information on the grant before giving up has kind of tired you out. Really, I don't blame DeSmogBlog for this, as you are PR professionals, not researchers. I'm sure if we were talking about the best way to market a new brand of laundry detergent, you'd know lots more than we would, so why should I expect you to know a lot about government? Or climate?
So I will help you out a little. The $541,184 grant from our taxpayers to Climategate scientist Michael Mann is National Science Foundation grant award #0902133. Is documentation about it online? Maybe, Kevin, but how would you learn to do research if we did all your work for you? And besides, if you want to claim we made it up, isn't it your job to prove it?
P.S. I know DeSmogBlog -- amusingly, for a PR agency website -- is in the habit of painting anyone with a differing point of view as a corporate whore, so be aware that the total funding we receive from all corporate sources combined amounts to about one-half of one percent of our total income. About 98 percent of our income comes from small gifts from over 100,000 people who are darned worried about the job-killing, price-raising and liberty-restricting agenda of people like you. Should you write about us, I doubt you'll be able to resist claiming we're corporate funded, but you won't be able to claim we didn't tell you by how much.
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If Carbon Dioxide is Expended by Nancy Pelosi, Does It Still Cause Global Warming?
CBS's Sharyl Attkisson revealed Monday (see a post by Noel Sheppard on Newsbusters for video) that "101 Congress-related" people flew to the Copenhagen climate summit last month, at tremendous cost to taxpayers.
But although Attkisson ended the piece with a brief nod to the environmental impact of the huge Nancy Pelosi-approved delegation, her otherwise excellent report told only part of the story. That is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi approved a Congressional delegation to Copenhagen almost a quarter of the size of the entire Congress, she approved an enormous carbon footprint -- and she did it just a few months after twisting arms (brutally) to get Congress to pass the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.
Using a calculator and some information available to anyone with internet access, my husband David worked out some quick facts regarding the carbon footprint of Nancy Pelosi's delegation. According to David:
Pelosi's delegation expended the same amount of carbon as 1,300 people combined in Bangladesh expend in an entire year;
the Pelosi delegation expended at least 378 metric tons of CO2 and probably considerably more;
Americans presently expend nearly 20 tons of carbon per capita, per year. Each member of the Pelosi delegation, on average, expended 19 percent of that annual amount -- but in just two days.
It is important to cover the way politicians misspend our money. But much of the mainstream press professes concern about CO2 emissions leading to dangerous global warming, so I have just one question: Why aren't reporters covering this part of the story?
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Two Out of Two Majority Leaders Agree: The Public Can Shove Off
While taking a look, for remembrance sake, at some of the calls this organization made for then-Majority Leader Trent Lott to resign during the Strom Thurmond controversy, I ran into an old blog post that highlights another way (besides putting his foot in his mouth) that Lott, in his day, was like Majority Leader Harry Reid today.
Referring to people outside the Senate who had opinions on a then-pending Supreme Court confirmation, the Washington Post reported the following in 2005:
Lott cautioned that outside groups have a limited ability to influence senators of either party. 'I'll call them when I need to hear from them,' he said. 'As far as I'm concerned, they can all shove off, left and right.'
Doesn't that sound like something Senator Reid could say on health care legislation? And, most likely, is what he really thinks?
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Does Government Know the Definition of the Word "Voluntary"?
From the New York Times about a new plan by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to cut the salt intake of all Americans, even those who have never visited New York: "The plan is voluntary for food companies and involves no legislation. It allows [emphasis added] companies to cut salt gradually over five years so the change is not so noticeable to consumers."
Coming up next, a national bedtime.
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Are you "open," "honest," and ethical"? These are three questions National Center for Public Policy Research Policy Analyst Matt Patterson asks the Congressional leadership in a new paper just out today.
* Is it "honest" to hide the true cost of your legislation with budgetary gimmicks in which three years of new taxes precede the bulk of the spending, making your program seem more affordable than it really is in an artificial budgetary window?
* Is it "open" for the Congressional leadership to "secretly craft the final bill behind closed doors," far from the prying eyes of the press, the public, and the rest of Congress, or to have important procedural votes in the middle of the night, or pass critical legislation on Christmas Eve, when most sane people are blissfully distracted from the machinations on Capitol Hill?
* Is it "ethical" to buy the votes of recalcitrant members of your caucus with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in backroom deals, such as "the inclusion of $100-$300 million in added federal aid for Medicaid recipients in Louisiana, the home state of Sen. Mary Landrieu," in return for her vote, or the offer to Senator Ben Nelson of "a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion" for his home state of Nebraska, in exchange for his vote?
"Despite promises made by Congressional leaders, they have shepherded health care legislation through Congress in a manner that is demonstrably secretive, unethical and dishonest," Matt says. "Promise after promise made by the Congressional leadership to conduct an open, bi-partisan process to reform health care has been shamelessly broken. It's really quite astounding; Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama, don't even try to pretend to hold to their many and frequent promises to conduct open and fair negotiations to reform American health care."
Matt concludes: "The question we have to ask ourselves is: Why have they done this in secret? What is it about this process that they don't want the public, the press, or even fellow members of Congress to see?"
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Project 21 member Bob Parks is scheduled to appear on G. Gordon Liddy's syndicated radio show on Thursday, January 7 at approximately 11:30 AM Eastern for around 30 minutes. Bob Scherr is guest-hosting.
Bob will be talking about assertions made by MSNBC's Chris Matthews that tea party ralliers are "monochromatic... all white." Bob and several other members of the National Center's Project 21 black leadership network have attended and even spoken at past tea party rallies. Project 21 issued a press release yesterday about Matthews' racial insensitivity.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
The Washington Times' influential Inside the Beltway column is covering the reaction of Project 21's Bob Parks and Deneen Borelli to MSNBC host Chris Matthews' assertion that the Tea Party rallies of the past year were attended exclusively by whites.
Meantime, no word on the rumor that MSNBC's Chris Matthews and the New York Times' David Brooks were spotted in a hallway arguing fiercely, with Matthews claiming "They're all-white racists!" and Brooks yelling, "They're all dum-dums!"
Poor saps don't realize they're both wrong.
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Possibly this unidentified woman at the July 4, 2009 Tea Party in Washington, D.C. was directing her "Try and Shut Me Up" message to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who claimed Tuesday that black Americans had no voice at Tea Party rallies over the past year.
Photo by David Almasi
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Media Matters is attacking us again. This time, it claims our assertion that "the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming" is wrong because "the program... 'has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering.'"
Two months before the Christmas Day would-be bomber flew over U.S. airspace in what President Obama himself reportedly called an intelligence "screw-up," U.S. intelligence officials were, according to William J. Broad of the New York Times, "collaborating on an effort to use the federal government's intelligence assets -- including spy satellites and other classified sensors -- to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change..."
In light of the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber incident and other threats, and the fact that the U.S. military is currently engaged in two wars, this is one American who is not comfortable having our apparently-overburdened intelligence officials focusing on climate change -- even part of the time.
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I've constantly been hearing about the atrocious column David Brooks has in the New York Times Monday. You've no doubt read it or heard of it -- it's the one in which Brooks implies that participants in the tea party movement are uneducated.
My husband, David, had two observations inspired by the Brooks op-ed. First, he said, when people of modest economic means support the liberals, they're sympathetically called "poor," but when these people oppose the left, they are called "uneducated." Second, David noted that liberals are all against profiling -- except, it seems, as a means of identifying their enemies. (You know, "uneducated," "racist," etc.)
(Apparently, potential shoe-or-underwear bombers don't fit the liberal definition of "enemy.")
I also think David wants to (figuratively speaking) punch Brooks in the nose for his unwarranted insults to good people but that's another matter, and not something David would ever do anyway, it's not his style.
My own response to reading the Brooks piece is that the writing is simply Grade D. Maybe D-. I'm talking about the writing, not the opinions (the opinions are "F"). I'm talking intern-level work here, and I mean the beginning of the internship, not after a few go-arounds with the editing process.
To work out my frustrations a little after reading the piece (secretly, I want to punch the guy too, not that I ever would or would be particularly fearsome if I tried it), I edited it. (Again, not for politics, just for construction.) I've saved the results in a PDF. Curious to see how well David Brooks would do as a National Center for Public Policy Research intern?
If so, feel free to review my edits here. I let him get away with a few things, but as you'll see at the end, the piece would never pass muster here.
P.S. Why do you suppose National Center for Public Policy Research staffers get edited before they are published, while columnists for the so-called "newspaper of record" are not?
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I forgot to alert readers earlier this week that Project 21's full-time fellow, Deneen Borelli, would be on Sean Hannity's "Great American Panel" on December 28 with guest host Tucker Carlson (apologies!). For Deneen's fans -- and based on the emails, I know there are a lot of you out there -- here are videos of her appearance, courtesy of "WebSurferGuyMN," who uploaded them to YouTube.
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Policy Analyst Matt Patterson, working with research compiled by Executive Director David Almasi, exposes some joint Obama-ABC News doubletalk in the Washington Examiner op-ed pages today.
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Project 21's Bob Parks is not at all thrilled with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), for saying this about people who don't want to cripple our health system, bring forth the date of Medicare's bankruptcy and spend ourselves into perdition:
They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.
To this, Bob replies:
President Obama's almost-constant apologies to the world for the our nation's actions and his socialist economic policies at home have energized a normally lethargic American people into gathering in American cities and storming the steps of the Capitol in protest. Senator Whitehouse would have us all just shut up and give Obama his political victories unchallenged. Not doing so makes us all guilty of unprecedented rudeness and - dare I say it - racism.
Despite liberals' historically dismal and revisionist civil rights history, when things with this President fall apart, they are all too willing to resort to playing the race card. The problem is - whether it's the Black Panthers in Philadelphia or Professor Gates in Cambridge - Barack Obama and his administration have conducted themselves so poorly in office that the race label really doesn't bruise the skin anymore.
If President Obama had not entered the presidency with his signature arrogance, the American people may have had more patience, but he and his liberal allies have talked down to the American people like we were stepchildren they were forced to tolerate. Statements like those of Senator Whitehouse only further harden the opposition's resolve.
For myself, I believe Senator Whitehouse has perceptions that are no more reliable than those of a gnat. Too bad this gnat has power and spending ability.
P.S. Here's what Mark Tapscott had to say about it.
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Offsets Help Environmentalists With Feelings of Guilt
Open Hypocrisy Offset in a new window or tab to see full size
The National Center for Public Policy Research is showcasing the hypocrisy of the carbon-emitting travels of global warming activists at COP-15 in Copenhagen by offering conscience-clearing "hypocrisy offsets" (as a humanitarian act) to attendees.
The hypocrisy offsets parody carbon offsets sold and traded allegedly to allow people to live carbon-neutral lives. The hypocrisy offsets also highlight the insincerity of world-traveling, energy-guzzling COP-15 delegates.
In a press release we issued about the offsets, David Ridenour, who has personally distributed the offsets in Copenhagen, explained, "Many of those in attendance to press for additional commitments for carbon reductions traveled thousands of miles and used substantial amounts of carbon-emitting jet-fuel just to get to the conference. We are exposing the hypocrisy by offering them 'hypocrisy offsets' to alleviate their green guilt. As one who is skeptical of the necessity of draconian carbon cuts, I plan to do my part to ensure plenty of hypocrisy offsets are available. I'll refrain from reducing my own personal carbon footprint."
Environmentalists are in Copenhagen demanding global limits on emissions, but they don't want to follow the very rules they are proposing for the rest of the world. Their participation may earn them some media coverage, but it is having no effect on an agreement. In fact, the United Nations mostly banned them from even entering the conference, so their voluntary contribution to carbon emissions -- emissions they insist imperil the planet -- from this unnecessary travel is a stunning act of hypocrisy.
Because we know they must be feeling very guilty about what they've done, and in most cases intend to continue doing indefinitely, we invented hypocrisy offsets as a humanitarian act.
Aren't we nice?
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Green Activist: "We're Going to Stay Until We Can't Stay Anymore"
The National Center's David Ridenour talked to some protesters at the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen. The protesters were carrying signs announcing their sit-in protest: "We will stay until you reach a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement."
David asked them what they planned to do if conference officials clear the building.
Turns out, they're protesting until they're asked to leave.
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A model of Copenhagen during medieval times. Note the sandbags around the perimeter. Green activists had planned to flood the area with water to show the devastating consequences of failing to take action on global warming now.
Note that the area isn't flooded. It seems the model -- like the greens' dire predictions -- doesn't hold water.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Al Gore is testing out a new strategy to incite fear of catastrophic global warming. Not content to be a seer limited to prophecies in prose, Gore has treated us to a rare glimpse of his more sensitive, artistic side.
Yes, Al Gore has penned a poem (included in his most recent book, "Our Choice - A plan to solve the climate crisis"), detailing his apocalyptic forecast for a planet subjected to human progress based in carbon consumption.
One thin September soon A floating continent disappears In midnight sun Vapors rise as Fever settles on an acid sea Neptune's bones dissolve Snow glides from the mountain Ice fathers floods for a season A hard rain comes quickly Then dirt is parched Kindling is placed in the forest For the lightning's celebration Unknown creatures Take their leave, unmourned Horsemen ready their stirrups Passion seeks heroes and friends The bell of the city On the hill is rung The shepherd cries The hour of choosing has arrived Here are your tools
In celebration of America's most recent climatological poet laureate, I too have penned a poem -- albeit a short and quick limerick (...but praise is in order for the self-restraint I marshaled to keep such a notoriously obscene style of poetry clean) and I encourage anyone with a moment of artistic inspiration to take a dive into this new world of Algoretry - poetry pertaining to, addressed to, or by the great Al Gore and his hypocritical liberty-hampering plans for we plebs.
Al Gore's Motivation
by Caroline May
There once was a huckster named Gore Whose speeches were oh such a bore He spoke nothing but lies And filled us with "whys?" Seems his green eyes just wanted more!
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
They even have an anthem, which you can hear on the video if you can stand to watch it to the end.
(Video shot at the COP-15 conference on December 16 by David Ridenour)
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Non-Governmental Organizations Kicked Out of Global Warming Conference - Again
The UNFCC Secretariat decided late tonight to kick out most participants from non-governmental organizations, claiming the action is necessary due to security concerns.
After spending most of the day waiting for details on how I could obtain one of the prized 1,000 passes to enter the Bella Center for the Thursday session (down from 7,000 passes awarded today), the UNFCCC once again broke its word by reducing the number of passes it will award tomorrow from 1,000 to 300.
I attended a meeting of the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGOs) group (of which the National Center for Public Policy Research is a member), which is tasked with distributing passes to groups such as ours. RINGO was given 20% of the passes.
Attached is video in which Marilyn Averill of RINGO describes how its 60 slots will be divied up. Twelve passes were to be used by leaders of RINGO, 40 would be given by lottery to RINGO groups that attended the group's meetings this session, and just eight would be distributed by lottery to those that are on the RINGO membership list, including those that attended the group's meetings.
Special consideration was given to groups that participated in RINGO's meetings because RINGO wanted to encourage greater participation – something that should have been irrelevant to the decision.
Significantly, due to the utter incompetence of the UNFCCC (or perhaps feigned incompetence), many members of RINGO (including yours truly) were unable to participate in the meetings because they were standing outside the Bella Center trying to gain entry.
The RINGOs lottery was clearly a sham. The Pew Center, Stanford University, U of California Santa B and others advocating action on climate change received more than one pass – statistically, a rather unusual result. Not a single one of the 60 passes went to an organization from the right.
(Please note: Marilyn Averill appears on my video because she announced the decisions of the RINGOs management, but she is not responsible for what it decided.)
The security concern cited was the growing violence from environmental organizations, including the environmental organizations' vow to take over the Bella center.
If that was the case, why did they restrict the number of passes available to RINGOs, and not just put a limit on those awarded to environmental activist groups?
A response to a question I posed is illuminating.
The sharp limits on participation weren't about ensuring security. They were about stifling voices.
And that may be the best reason of all to stop this treaty dead in its tracks.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
It is a lie that the United Nations wants to maintain religious neutrality at COP-15. No, Global Warming is the established religion at this international event.
This was made especially clear when, days before the event's commencement, the Denmark Foreign Ministry rejected a donated delivery of Christmas fir trees. "We have to remember that this is a U.N. conference and, as the [Bella] center then becomes U.N. territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the U.N. wishes to maintain neutrality," explained Ministry official Svend Olling.
Religious objectivity, however, is impossible at a conference explicitly engaged in blind adherence to an unproven premise - a faith in the veracity of global warming. For though the science is not settled, participants have convened to devise strategies for what they believe will be the world's environmental salvation, the capping of carbon dioxide emissions.
Global Warming devotees' religious fervor commands action, even if their deliverance comes at the expense of economic devastation. American disciples such as Al Gore and President Barack Obama are more than willing to sacrifice economic stability at the altar of Global Warming.
The faith dictates absolute advocacy for draconian carbon dioxide regulations such as the cap-and-trade scheme detailed in the House-passed "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." To Warming enthusiasts, the $9.4 trillion reduction in aggregate GDP, increase in annual unemployment by 2.5 million jobs, and increase in inflation-adjusted electricity prices by 90 percent, gasoline prices by 58 percent, and residential natural gas prices by 55 percent, all estimated to occur within the first 24 years under such a cap and trade scheme, are merely an afterthought.
Though economists have highlighted the dire financial implications of energy restriction ad nauseam and questions remain about the actual science behind the Global Warming Theory, adherents are steadfast in their belief. Ironically, it seems that most of these Warmers - many of whom are often quick to proclaim creationists as backward - stick to their faith with the unbending will of a St. Paul.
Even in the wake of Climategate and new peer-reviewed studies (which give lie to the notion that apocalyptic climate forecasts are supported by consensus) by such renowned scientists as Brookhaven National Laboratory's Dr. Stephen E. Schwartz, MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen, and the University of Auckland's Dr. Chris de Freitas, Warming adherents remain loyally convinced that man's evil energy usage is destroying Mother Earth.
Faith is belief without verifiable evidence. The unquestioned adherence to the theory of Global Warming bears all the markings of what traditionally would be recognized as a religion. Complete with sin (the emitting of carbon dioxide), scriptures (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports), commandments (drive a Prius, use Compact Florescent Light bulbs, do not eat meat, etc.), indulgences (carbon offsets), proselytism and prophets (Al Gore), priests (scientists), prophecy and apocalypse (floods, hurricanes, dead polar bears), infidels (Warming skeptics), and salvation (the halting of carbon-emitting industrial progress), the religion of Global Warming fits the mold.
Great Britain has already recognized belief in anthropogenic Global Warming as a religion. In November, in a landmark case brought before the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal, the court found that under the "2003 Religion and Belief Regulations," "belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives" qualified for the same employment discrimination protections as a traditional religion.
Though we have yet to see Al Gore or James Hansen walk on water, COP-15 is far from religiously-neutral. Instead, participants are expected to adhere to their one true faith: Global Warming.
Consequently, it makes sense that Christmas trees are welcome at the Church of Global Warming. When was the last time you saw a menorah in a Cathedral?
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
If the United Nations can't run a climate conference, how could it possibly run climate policy? This video of the waiting line outside the COP-15 UN climate conference in Copenhagen on 12/15/09 shows the United Nations is equipped for neither task.
As David Ridenour notes in the video, which he shot, this may look like a waiting line for health care in a country with government-run medicine, but it's actually a waiting line for a conference attempting to establish a world government-run energy rationing scheme.
This liberal scheme is so badly thought-out, even the left is walking out on it.
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Environmental non-governmental organizations staged a walk-out of the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen today, protesting the fact that so many of their properly-registered fellow NGO delegates were banned from entering the conference.
I wonder if some of these individuals and organizations are beginning to re-think their desire to have the world run by the United Nations.
Video shot by David Ridenour
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As John Hinderaker reports on Powerline, longtime global warming alarmist Stephen Schneider spoke at a press conference at the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen.
When journalist Phelim McAleer asked a polite question about Climategate, Schneider's staff called in security to shut down the questioning. A United Nations security officer actually tells the journalist, "If you don't shut that [the camera] off, I'm going to take it away from you." (How typical of the corrupt United Nations!)
Stephen Schneider is too scared to answer a simple question, which tells you all you need to know about Climategate: If it wasn't a big deal, the global warming alarmists wouldn't be so afraid of it.
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John Hinderaker has posted a photograph of a leftie rally at the COP-15 climate conference under the headline "What Astroturf Looks Like."
Check out his post to see that picture. Then compare that picture to some David Almasi took at the 9-12 Tea Party in Washington, D.C. and decide for yourself: Which group is really "grassroots"?
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Media Matters Tries to Blame Climategate on Exxon Mobil, Fails Utterly
The Media Matters Action Network has a page up claiming we at the National Center for Public Policy Research are "doing everything in [our] power" to draw "attention to the so-called 'Climategate' scandal" and implying that the fact that Exxon Mobil has donated to us is the reason.
What dishonest dopes. We've barely touched on Climategate. A few sentences here and there. In fact, given the gravity of the scandal, we really should have done more.
Media Matters is trying to claim it is relevant that handful of groups that have in the past received funding from Exxon Mobil have mentioned Climategate, which is a huge, major story (not broken by any of these groups, incidentally) repeatedly covered by every major newspaper in the English-speaking world and in many many newspapers and other media elsewhere. Hello? Are all the major papers in Britain, including the openly left-wing Guardian and its most famous ultra-green columnist (who takes Climategate very seriously indeed), in the pockets of Exxon Mobil?
Sorry, Media Matters, your desperate ploy won't work. Climategate has shown the unreliability and unprofessionalism of some Ph.Ds the U.N.'s IPCC and other organizations -- including yours, Media Matters -- have relied on for many years to help prove to the world that massive job-killing, government-growing treaties and policies are necessary. This is YOUR scandal, not ours, and even if you put a nice pretty red bow on it, we aren't going to accept it from you as a gift.
Yes, Exxon Mobil has contributed to us and we appreciate its support as we do the support we receive from any of our 100,000+ supporters. (Without Exxon Mobil, the whopping approximately 1.5 percent of our annual revenue that comes from corporate sources would be a little smaller. How much corporate support do you get, Media Matters?)
But Exxon Mobil's funding does not specifically support our work on climate nor has the corporation suggested in any way, shape or form that we mention, promote, acknowledge or otherwise notice Climategate, a scandal that is getting worldwide attention because it is newsworthy.
And we remind Media Matters that the only reason Media Matters knows about Exxon Mobil's gifts to public policy institutions is because Exxon Mobil and many of the recipient foundations (including us) freely and voluntarily disclose this information. (Does Media Matters CEO David Brock voluntarily disclose which corporations and special interests help pay for his nearly $300,000 salary?)
Which reminds me. Media Matters found eight public policy groups that have received at least one contribution from Exxon Mobil since 2001 that either have mentioned Climategate or, in the case of one, are affiliated with an individual who wrote a story about Climategate in an unaffiliated opinion journal (wow, there's a smoking gun for you). Here's a seven-page list of all the public policy institutions that received gifts from Exxon Mobil in 2008 alone. Over 130 institutions, some of them very liberal, are listed, and yet Media Matters could only find eight public policy groups receiving such gifts since 2001 that have mentioned Climategate or work with someone who has? Only eight?
P.S. to Media Matters: Have you guys apologized yet for promoting environmentally-useless climate policies that can hurt people based on unverifiable information? People really do rely on the jobs you want to kill, you know.
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Quote of Note: Democrats' Health Care Sleight of Hand
"As a former (recovering) professional magician, I've seen and perpetrated my share of sleight-of-hand. But I have never seen anything quite like the linguistic and budgetary legerdemain Democrats have performed to make President Obama's health-care plan appear 'affordable.'
Congressional Democrats have been forced into such chicanery because of the price goal the president set for his reform, which, he claimed in September, 'will cost around $900 billion over 10 years' -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This $900 billion target is seemingly arbitrary, but is psychologically important - the president must know that the trillion dollar mark would be a deal breaker for many citizens and lawmakers. (Retail goods are labeled 'only' $9.99 instead of $10 for the same reason.)
Congressional Democrats have bent over backwards, sometimes painfully, to accommodate the president's target price. For example, the $848 billion price tag that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claims for his new health care overhaul package is a mirage, produced by 'assuming unrealistic tax increases and Medicare cuts that members of Congress will not be willing to follow through on,' as spoiler-sport Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) points out.
This sort of trickery has been going on all year long. On October 29, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crowed that her new health-care reform bill 'meets President Obama's call to keep the costs under $900 billion over 10 years.' -- The claim was pure misdirection, a wild gesticulation to distract from the Congressional Budget Office's estimate that the gross total cost of the bill is $1.05 trillion over ten years. But don't look there!
And even that astronomical $1.05 trillion figure is only arrived at because Pelosi's bill backloads the spending in the 2010 to 2019 timeframe - in fact, the vast majority of the spending in that period would not kick in until after 2013! That's three years of little or no spending to artificially bring down your cost. Ta dah!"
-Matt Patterson, Policy Analyst, The National Center for Public Policy Research, "Democrats' Health Care Sleight of Hand," FOXNews.com, November 29, 2009
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Sadly for COP15 attendees willing to shell out 5,999 Danish Kroner ($1,209) to shake hands and get their picture taken with the illustrious Al Gore, the profiting prophet's expensive VIP appearance in Copenhagen has been cancelled.
Berlanski Media, the event's Danish coordinators, announced Thursday that, despite enthusiasm and high ticket sales, the affair will no longer take place due to complications with the monotonous mountebank's Copenhagen schedule (but for my money, the real reason is the potential for questions by/confrontations with rogue attendees about Climategate).
Though they can no longer pay to meet their hefty hero at the Climate Conference, there is still a conciliation prize awaiting devastated Gore acolytes needing stimulation in Copenhagen...
It seems that actual prostitutes have taken up where Gore left off... only these ladies are offering more than a handshake to attendees of the U.N. Climate Summit. And, unlike Gore, the women are providing their time and services gratis.
The "working girls" of Copenhagen are offering this... well... carbon-negligible activity for free in order to protest admonitions from the Copenhagen city government that COP15 attendees should "Be sustainable - don't buy sex."
The mayor and city council have especially focused on urging hotels in the area "not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," even going so far as to send out postcards with the anti-brothel message. The women have responded in kind by offering any delegate with an official COP15 tag and one of the cautionary postcards an evening that will perhaps make up for a Copenhagen fortnight without Gore for far less than $1,209 -- for free, in fact.
So there it is... along with all the other nicknames for the events in Copenhagen, such as Hopenhagen, Nopenhagen, and Dopenhagen, we now have... GROPENHAGEN.
Fabulous.
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Criticizing This Administration Is Getting Way Too Easy
Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House has an op-ed in The Washington Post today entitled, "A Leap Forward to Better Care."
The last great leap forward left more than 30 million Chinese dead.
You'd think this wouldn't be the word association the White House would be wanting to promote.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. Please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private.
The United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen is fast approaching, and with cap and trade legislation languishing in Congress, developing nations averse to binding regulations, and the public preoccupied with a faltering economy, hopes by climate treaty advocates that a climate agreement will be reached this December are diminishing. Nevertheless, advocates for a sovereignty-usurping, economically-devastating, wealth-redistributing and environmentally-fraudulent treaty are tirelessly churning out materials meant to sway the public and assert pressure on leaders to reach an enforceable agreement.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) provides an example. Agitating for a "green industrial revolution," the WWF is a vociferous advocate for global warming legislation and environmental activism - regardless of the practical consequences. Last month, for example, the outfit came out with the breathless pronouncement that the world has less than five years to drastically cut carbon emissions or, it claims, climate catastrophe will be inevitable. (To be fair, this was less absurd than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's October 19 prediction that the global community had only 50 days to avert disaster.)
Several days ago the WWF crossed a line, releasing a propagandistic video of children of WWF staffers parroting the illogical doomsday scenarios the group works to propagate. The WWF explained the video's objective:
"To urge the President to lead us in Copenhagen and outline what we'd like to see in the agreement, we invited children of WWF staffers to tape a personal message to the President asking for his support... We hope you'll be inspired to send an email or write a letter to the White House that tells President Obama that you want him to go to Copenhagen to protect our planet."
Child welfare officials have investigated the now infamous parents of "Balloon Boy" for allegedly coaching him to lie in a publicity scheme. These WWF parents coerced their children for political influence, and, should their efforts succeed, a thoroughly destructive climate treaty.
Which is worse?
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. Please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private.
Now That This Important Business Has Been Dispensed With, Perhaps Our Commander-in-Chief Could Notice Afghanistan
Thanks to a bill signed into law by President Obama today, it's illegal to murder a gay person now.
What, you say? It was illegal yesterday?
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Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli will be a guest on the Fox New Channel show "Fox and Friends" Monday, October 19. She is expecting to discuss the White House war on Fox News as well as left-wing pressure on the White House to adopt a second "stimulus" package.
If you want to tune in, you can catch her at approximately 6:15 AM Eastern.
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I am glad people are talking about boycotting the NFL. I have already emailed them to let them know of my intent. I almost ditched the Steelers last Super Bowl when Mr. Rooney thanked President Obama. As a huge Steelers fan myself, this was the last straw for me and the entire NFL.
Thanks.
Joseph McCoy Oil City, PA
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Unlike the opposition, Rush Limbaugh handled this situation with class. But let this be a warning! This is a good snapshot of what is happening to OUR country. How dare the left stand on their soap box and play the race card. So far their objectives and goals about Rush Limbaugh are the only transparent objectives and goals of this administration.
Best regards,
Jeanne
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On Rush Limbaugh and the NFL, more from the mailbag:
When our youngest (of 3) child became a serious soccer player, he introduced us to the world of international "football" or soccer. Now twenty years old, he has announced that he will never buy an NFL ticket or another NFL jersey, and he doesn't even listen to talk radio. If you were to check out his Facebook page, you would see an appeal to free Plaxico. He is well informed about the NFL and its players and the rather uneven penalties meted out to the players depending on where they may be found "guilty", and he may still watch a Panthers game or two, but he will save his money for English Premier League, European Soccer or World Cup.
And this is where the NFL is (pardon the expression) idiotic. The world of sports viewership is now global. And as William has pointed out this week to us, you don't hear the EPL players making political statements or any of the European or African players we follow. The governing bodies of international soccer may be territorial, but they are most definitely not commenting on the politics of team owners. A Russian thug can buy an English team, but that won't affect whether we root for Chelsea FC or not (we are, in fact, Arsenal FC, another London club, fans; and they are affectionately know as the "gooners", nothing politically correct about that, despite the rampant political correctness in the UK).
So, good luck NFL, I have been introduced to the excitement of the EPL and I will now allow that to monopolize my weekend viewing. An American actually owns a piece of Arsenal, but that doesn't affect my affections one iota. I will delight in the skills of players from Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Russia, France, England, Bosnia, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mexico, and any other country that produces Arsenal talent. And, guess what, these players even understand economics (unlike some loud mouths from the NFL who have no problem alienating me and my pocketbook) and have commented on how the increase of UK income taxes from 40% to 50% this year will affect where they choose to play and the contracts they negotiate. Witness the top player in the world leaving Manchester for a Spanish team this year.
We now live in a GLOBAL economy. The NFL has just revealed how provincial it really is. So weekdays if I'm in my car, I'll listen to Rush; and weekends I'll be tuned in to the soccer channels. I grew up on Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts. I'll relish my football memories as I savor political debate. Life is too short to waste time on Keith O's pregame show or whining football players. RIP, NFL. Your competition is global and your days are numbered. That's what they put the nets up for, regardless of the sport.
Mary Bejan Durham, NC 27707
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"...most of the same people who want Limbaugh ostracized are the same ones who think it is OK for Roman Polanski to drug and rape a 13 year old. These are also the same people, the white ones, who do not want Michael Vice to ever play again, or at least to make his life a living hell as long as he does play.
In the end, and to their shame, the group of potential owners caved in and removed Rush Limbaugh from the investor group saying that it was not worth it to keep Rush involved if it risked their not getting the franchise.
In the past 2 days ESPN and other media outlets have been announcing that Rush Limbaugh has been punted, and there is I am sure great rejoicing in this in many quarters, particularly in the black community and on the left. They see this as some great victory. This is very sad. Why? Because I ask the simple question, who really won and who really lost? Did Rush really lose? Did black players or even more so black Americans win?
Rush is still the most popular radio personality in America. He will still earn over $25 million a year, and he will still want Barack Obama to fail. Nothing has changed.
At the same time, will one black child do better in school? Will one less gang killing take place in Chicago, Philly LA. Will the Rams play any better? The answer is of course no. No new jobs have been created and Iran, North Korea are still feverishly building nuclear weapons.
This is a sad state for our nation. Black America in the grip of the Liberal establishment is more addicted to mediocrity than they are to 'Crack Cocaine.' They are the willing pawns in the Liberal game. This is a sad state. In the end everyone that needs to win loses."
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My favorite letter of the day, and not just because it is from a Pittsburgher:
Amy,
I completely agree with your suggestion to boycott the NFL. I too am originally from Pittsburgh and know exactly what you mean when you say that you care strongly about the sport. In fact, I almost feel like someone has died now that I canceled the NFL Sunday Ticket. I can't however continue to financially support an organization that would single out a private citizen for punishment simply because they don't agree with their political views. Is NBC aware of the hateful vomit that is spewed daily from Keith Olbermann?
In addition, I wonder what sacred "standards" the Commissioner was referring to in his press conference the other day. Are they the same standards that turn a blind eye to sadistic dog killers, wife beaters, suspected murders, and other unsavory thugs? Apparently the Commissioner is fine with filling the NFL ranks with the likes of Michael Vick, Dante Stallworth, Pacman Jones, and Ray Lewis - but conservative talk radio hosts need not apply. I am a proud conservative that is appalled at what is happening to this country. Too bad the NFL doesn't like my political views. I guess they don't like spending my money either. They will never get another penny of it.
It is a sad day for America,
Leah Pembroke Pines, FL
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Sharpton and Jackson Attack on Rush Limbaugh a "Racist Act," Says Black Conservative
It's not up on the Project 21 webpages yet, but Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli has issued a statement about the Rush Limbaugh situation that may interest readers:
Jackson & Sharpton Effort Against Rush Limbaugh is an Effort to "Get Whitie" and a "Racist Act," Says Leading Black Conservative
Statement of Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli
The left-wing jihad against Rush Limbaugh is un-fair and un-American. Rush is being targeted simply because he is a conservative and a leading critic of President Obama's wealth redistribution policies.
With conservative blood in the water, it's predictable to see the 'race card duo' -- Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- circling the victim. Since the election of the first black president, they have been searching for some white meat to feed on and Rush just happens to be a juicy target. Whipping up unjustified black anger is their specialty.
Frankly, I see their effort as 'get whitie' -- an inherent racist act.
It's outrageous that the 'race card duo' are worried about Rush buying a football team following a graphic example of black on black gang violence in Chicago -- Jackson's home town. As so-called black leaders they should be putting their time and effort in dealing with the human tragedies in the urban community: crime and failing schools and not a conservative exercising his right to play in the free market.
Written by Amy Ridenour. E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
NFL, Rush Limbaugh & the Rams: What Conservatives Should Do
In regards to potential NFL approval of Rush Limbaugh being part of a bid to purchase the NFL's St. Louis Rams, SI.com is reporting "...League sources told SI.com that Limbaugh's candidacy in any Rams bid had 'zero chance' of being approved by the league's owners."
I think conservatives have to stand up and take notice that outspoken mainstream conservatives are not welcome in the NFL. I see two possible practical responses:
1) Boycott; 2) Monitor every liberal NFL owner, coach, player, office worker or dogsbody employed directly or indirectly by the NFL and raise a huge and public stink every time they say anything remotely liberal on a public policy issue.
One way to begin #2 is for those of us so inclined to create Google Alerts covering as many of these people we have time for, and be prepared to make a fuss.
For myself, I am perfectly willing to boycott if others are. I already did it for one season after Limbaugh was treated badly the first time, and I'm from Pittsburgh, which is all that need be said about whether I care strongly about NFL football.
If mainstream conservatives aren't allowed in the NFL club, I see no particular reason why mainstream liberals ought to be, either. Leave the NFL to the unopinionated drones.
Written by Amy Ridenour. E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
Stop the presses! Stop the presses! The London School of Economics has discovered the solution to global warming: Condoms!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, birth control will save us all from the hypothesized temperature increase, sea level rise, polar bear demise, and the need for extra interns at the World Meteorological Organization (which is tasked with finding unique names for hurricanes) resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.
Last month the School released a study sponsored by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) titled, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost." Its report concluded that "family planning methods should be a primary tool in the optimum strategy for reducing carbon emissions." The authors' reasoning is sound - if not ominously Malthusian - namely, they argue that the more children mankind produces, the more people there are to engage in carbon emitting activities. Further, using condoms is an easier and cheaper method of carbon abstention than, say, using solar-powered vehicles.
The chairman of OPT, Roger Martin, was thrilled the study validated his think tank's mission: to save the planet via a decrease in the human population "It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can't shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up." He and his group have since called on international leaders to include population control mechanisms as part of the negotiations at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.
While it is amusing to poke fun at the premise's simplicity and overt sexual overtones, the London School's conclusions are profoundly disturbing. They highlight the truly ant-ihuman approach to environmental policies some anthropogenic global warming crusaders advocate. Indeed, if a catastrophe caused by manmade global warming is truly imminent, using their logic, the most effective remedy would be the mass extinction of that evil, omnivorous, environment altering, CO2 breathing species: humanity.
Ironically, quite chilling.
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Outrage of the Day: More Racist Rants from the Anti-Black-Conservative Left
Sometimes I wonder how stupid you have to be to be a liberal. I mean, really. Take this, for example. Some liberals are so, I guess the word would be "threatened," that not all black Americans chose to live on the liberal plantation that they actually have an Internet thread going about how Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli (who is black) looks lighter-skinned in one of the four photos of her they found online than in the other three.
The guy who started the thread, an "administrator" of the website U.S. Politics Online who goes by the pseudonym (presumably it is a pseudonym) "O'Sullivan Bere," questions whether it is "unethical" for there to be a photo in circulation in which Deneen's skin looks lighter.
What is it, buddy? Afraid she'll "pass"?
Another dope on the thread opines, "She obviously realizes that most conservatives won't listen to her if she looks really black."
People, get real. The photo in which Deneen looks "lighter" is a professional studio shot. Studios have special lighting. Everybody looks different in professional portraits -- that's why people pay good money for them. (As to whether the portrait studio photoshopped it a bit, who knows. That's standard nowadays, even for white subjects. If the "administrator" used his own photo instead of one I bet he stole off a movie-related website for his own picture, he'd probably know that.)
So the guy, the dishonorable "O'Sullivan Bere," questions Deneen's ethics in his headline while using stolen photos on his website to raise the ethics issue. I took the Fox News photo O'Sullivan Bere posted on my home computer -- a screen shot of Fox programming off my computer monitor using a $29 piece of software (gee, I wonder why a screen shot looked different than a professionally done studio pic?) and I don't remember the fellow who is pretending to be a character in a movie asking me for permission to re-post the photo. Deneen's husband, Tom, took the shot of her at the Tea Party rally in which she looks darker, and sent it to us for this blog -- so if the Borellis have a plot to make Deneen look lighter in public photos, they sure have a weird way of going about it.
I suppose in all fairness I should note that it appears the apparently-fake O'Sullivan Bere did not steal Tom's Tea Party photo of Deneen directly from my blog. He took it (with permission? I bet not) from this blogger, another idiot. Presumably, that blogger, who also wrote disparagingly about Deneen's skin tone, stole it from our blog, although I won't rule out the possibility that there was another racist little photo-stealing twerp in the mix somewhere, and they all stole from one another after they stole from us.
Now that I have said all that, I'm going to go all moderate for a minute and admit not all liberals are stupid. I bet most of them would find this sort of thing at to be an embarrassment -- for their side. They'd be right.
P.S. Ironically, the thread about Deneen supposedly being unethical for supposedly having her her studio shot photoshopped to make her look lighter had the following ad running when I visited:
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E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
Cut Off Health Care to ObamaCare Opponents, Says Bitter Old NPR Guy
Garrison Keiller fantasizes about cutting off ObamaCare opponents' access to the health care system.
Thanks, Keiller, for another reminder of why government-run health care really s---ks, because in those systems, bitter old fogeys like yourself really can cut off the health care access of people who disagree with them, shocking as it may seem.
Recall what Britain's National Health Service did to senior citizen Edward Atkinson, who had the temerity to mail pro-life literature to a government hospital that aborts young Britons.
If you want hospital administrators deciding they don't want to treat you based on your public policy or political views, then by all means, support government-run health care. Just be sure you really mean it, because once you get it, government-run health care is notoriously difficult to get rid of (you see, the employees unionize, and give campaign contributions, and before you can say 'why can't I have cancer drugs?,' you find the politicians are willing to let them let you die).
P.S. To Mr. Keiller: I don't recall you ever supplying any of my health care, so you have scant business talking about cutting it off. I, on the other hand, have been forced against my will to help pay for NPR...
P.P.S. If readers of this blog haven't yet read our new book, Shattered Lives; 100 Victims of Government Health Care, what on earth are you waiting for? If you are willing to read it on your computer you can downloaded a free PDF of the full book here. That's free, as in no money, no catch. But if you hate reading a computer screen, or want to give a copy of the book to someone who doesn't use computers, you are welcome to purchase a paper copy of Shattered Lives on Amazon.com for $14.95.
Written by Amy Ridenour. E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | Download our book Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
On Rt. 50 this morning, I saw a black VW plastered with left-of-center bumper stickers. These made clear the driver's support for an expansion of the nanny state and for laws designed to protect us from ourselves.
Imagine my surprise to see the driver reading a document and pulling a cigarette out of a package all while attempting to drive down this heavily-trafficked major highway.
Guess she isn't familiar with the slogan, "Think globally, act locally."
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Daily Kos Wants Tea Party Participants to Forgo All Government Services, But Still Pay All Taxes
At times, activists of the superficial left write such stupid things, it is embarrassing to read them.
Such is the case with a Laura Clawson Daily Kos post Friday in which lefties are encouraged to send a faux "Socialist Free Purity Pledge" around the Internet. The gist of Clawson's message is that anyone who attended a Tea Party rally is a hypocrite if they from this point forward ever use a single thing funded by the federal government.
The post had at the time I read it 265 comments, most of which were favorable to the idea, which many of them actually thought was clever.
I ask myself, can the activist left be so uniformed as to believe that when it comes to government spending, there are only two positions possible, that of wanting the feds to spend more and grow larger, and that of wanting the feds to spend not one penny? That anyone who does not support President Obama's government-expansion plans is, ipso facto, the strictest of libertarians?
Seeing how badly the left governs when in office, I conclude "yes." Yes, they really can be this ignorant.
Which explains why the leftists in Congress and the White House think socialized medicine works and that the best way to deal with the Kremlin is from a position of slobbering, supplicating subservience.
The leftists think anyone who attended a Tea Party rally should sign a document pledging they will never use a government service again...
...but what the lefties don't put in their "Socialist Free Purity Pledge" is a pledge of their own to pass legislation offering to refund the tax dollars coercively paid by every person who might choose to sign their Purity Pledge and who sticks to it.
So selfish, these lefties. In their bitter little world, even the people who don't use any government will be forced to pay for it.
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Media Matters Attacks Me as "Nativist" for Criticism of Andrew Sullivan
Got attacked by Media Matters today for what I wrote here (I also cross-posted it at Newsbusters, where you can leave a comment if you like).
Media Matters regards me as "nativist" because I expressed discomfort with Andrew Sullivan involving himself extensively in U.S. domestic affairs while retaining his British citizenship and not making it clear that he has done so.
Would a little disclaimer once in a while of the I'm-telling-you-how-to-vote-but-be-aware-if-I-ever-get-drafted-it-won't-be-the-U.S.-Army's-unform-I-wear variety really have gone amiss?
Because the team a writer is playing for actually is important information for a reader to know.
Media Matters didn't mention me saying that Sullivan should include a disclaimer occasionally. It's not as if I called for Sullivan to be deported.
Media Matters also complained that in June I quoted Mark Steyn saying that the only way to reduce health care costs is to have less of it. You see, Mark Steyn is Canadian. Unlike Sullivan, though, Steyn frequently mentions this. I've been reading Sullivan since the mid-1980s and I had the impression he became an American a long time ago. When Sullivan writes phrases such as "our nation's history," referring to the USA, is it strange that I thought so?
Anyway, my original comments are here. You can read them and decide for yourself if I'm "harken[ing] back to the good old days of Know-Nothingism and immigration quotas" and believe "Sullivan shouldn't be trusted because he's a 'foreigner,'" as Media Matters says.
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The thematic mantra emanating from the Obama administration this week has been a general lamentation of the "coarsening of our political dialogue."
So you can imagine my shock and indignation, while commuting to work on the Washington Metro this morning, when my attention wandered from the dulcet tones of Mark Levin's podcast commentary and my eyes focused on an inflammatory back page advertisement in the Washington Post Company's daily tabloid Express. Sponsored by a website called Avaaz.org, the ad featured a large picture of former Vice President Dick Cheney with the caption "Could this be Al Qaeda's best recruiter?" followed by "Close Guantanamo. End Torture. Investigate All Abuses."
Sufficiently angered by the disrespect shown to not only one of the country's most effective Vice Presidents but also the men and women of our armed services and intelligence agencies (all of whom have kept the nation safe and protect the very rights permitting such contemptible displays), upon finally arriving to work, I quickly signed on to my Internet browser for a bit of Nancy Drew investigation. Here are my findings:
Avaaz.org advertises itself as "a community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. The aim of Avaaz.org is to ensure that the views and values of the world's people shape global decisions." That is, to ensure a voice for the views and values of the world's people who promote provocative activism on such issues as human rights (especially as they pertain to that bastion of evil - the USA), ending the war in Iraq, and global warming... Your basic liberal nightmare group.
In addition to the tasteless display of drivel to which I was treated this morning, there will be other editions of the ads. One has Osama bin Laden in an "I love Gitmo" t-shirt (in the wake of bin Laden's recent endorsement of Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," it might be more fitting to feature the terrorist in an "I love Jimmy Carter" t-shirt) and another quotes from President Obama and Senator John McCain.
Though these ads appear to have a limited scope, due to the group's D.C. focus, they are nonetheless disturbing and deserve a response. The MoveOn.org General Petraeus "General Betray Us" advertisement in the New York Times two years ago garnered mass condemnation by a wide variety of powerful political leaders. We ought to demand a similar response to these Avaaz.org ads. Any less is an insult to those who fight each and every day to maintain our freedom to even have a commute.
This post was written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
The Atlantic is telling the world its own Andrew Sullivan is the 9th most influential commentator in the United States, which is hogwash (or did I miss the nation following Andrew Sullivan's obsession with Sarah Palin's last pregnancy?).
The Atlantic's often-silly list (Paul Krugman is #1!) is not completely without value, however, as it provides a cautionary tale of how foolish we can look when we pretend there is no such thing as a conflict of interest.
But back to Andrew Sullivan.
Why has a man who is not a citizen of the United States been commenting on U.S. domestic policy for the last couple of decades as if he had a citizen's stake in the nation? As Robert Stacy McCain, Ace, Patterico, Ann Althouse, Glenn Reynolds and others have reported (somewhat incidentally, given the more interesting scandal with intriguing implications to which their attention was primarily directed), after a couple of decades of telling us how to arrange our domestic affairs (in more ways than one), Sullivan's retained his foreign citizenship, at least until whenever his upcoming citizenship hearing is.
Way back in the days when Andrew Sullivan was still a 20-something toiling for the New Republic, I took a phone call from a pollster during a major British election while at a friend's house in London. As I was keenly interested in the outcome of the election, I was sorely tempted to assist my favored candidate with a miniscule poll bump. But I kept my opinions to myself and told the pollster, that, as I am an American, I have no business influencing Britain's internal political processes as if I were a British subject.
Sullivan took a different course. He has been happy to tell Americans how to vote while owing his allegiance to a foreign power. (I don't see a disclaimer on the linked page anywhere, do you?)
A bio of Sullivan I found in a source he presumably approved (an employer, not the often-fictional Wikipedia) doesn't mention his citizenship either way (beyond the fact that he was born and raised in England, a fact he does mention reasonably often), but it does say he testified before the U.S. Congress on domestic legislation as early as 1996. He may have testified as a neutral expert and taken no position on the legislation, but seeing as how the bill was the Defense of Marriage Act, I'm not going to bet on it. And an article Sullivan penned for the October Atlantic entitled "Dear President Bush" is topped by a paragraph including the phrase "our nation's history" (referring to the United States of America), starts with Sullivan saying to the most recent President Bush, "I supported your presidential campaign in 2000, as I did your father's in 1988," and includes the words "the America I love and have made my home."
I ask you, are these activities and phrases that could lead a reasonable reader to believe Andrew Sullivan, domestic commentator, had become an American? And was advising us as one?
Would a little disclaimer once in a while of the I'm-telling-you-how-to-vote-but-be-aware-if-I-ever-get-drafted-it-won't-be-the-U.S.-Army's-unform-I-wear variety really have gone amiss?
Because the team a writer is playing for actually is important information for a reader to know.
Next time I'm in London I suppose I'll answer the pollster (though given that the two biggest parties these days are both run by climate-deluded NHS vote whores, I can't imagine endorsing either one of them). So what if I have no allegiance to the Queen?
Cross-posted at Newsbusters, where comments are enabled
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Rebutting False Racism Claims - Upcoming Deneen Borelli TV Appearances
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli will be a guest on Fox's "Your World with Neil Cavuto" today at approximately 4:10 PM Eastern to discuss claims by former President Jimmy Carter and others that critics of the Obama Administration are motivated by racism. Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments today comparing current political rhetoric to that preceding the murders of two San Francisco elected officials in 1978 are also likely to be discussed.
The Fox News Channel has also booked Deneen for an appearance Sunday, September 20 at 11:05 AM Eastern.
Deneen also has been scheduled to appear as a part of the Great American panel on the September 24 Hannity Show on the Fox News Channel, and, as noted yesterday in this blog, will be a guest on Fox and Friends on Friday, September 18 at approximately 6:20 AM Eastern.
Deneen also continues to be interviewed by a variety of print and radio news organizations, so if you are a fan, keep an eye & ear out for her as she continues to rebut the offensive nonsense being spewed by the intolerant left (for example, this).
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Project 21's Deneen Borelli on BBCAmerica Wednesday Night to Discuss Race and Obama Opposition
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli is scheduled to appear on the "BBC World News America on the BBCAmerica channel on Wednesday September 16 at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM eastern.
Deneen has been asked to discuss the issue of race and opposition to the Obama Administration agenda. Deneen was a speaker at the 9/12 rally on the Capitol grounds this past Saturday. Coverage of her speech can be found here.
Deneen's comments on the issue of race and Obama in light of former President Jimmy Carter's comments on the issue can be found here.
Check your local listings for BBCAmerica on cable. BBCAmerica is available on channel 189 on Fios, channel 135 on Dish Network and channel 264 on DirectTV.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
On the way in to work this morning, I saw a vehicle with a bumper sticker "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" and various other green bumper stickers. Presumably, the point was that by buying local, you avoid extra greenhouse emissions from transportation.
The vehicle was a Subaru Forester... one of the few Subarus with 0% domestic content.
This post was written by David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters, please note if you prefer that correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
The perpetually non-serious (despite his grim look) New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claimed on ABC's This Week that "the argument against the public option is sheer nonsense, we know that, it's nothing except the insurance lobby." (See the last few seconds of video, above.)
So the tens of millions of Americans who ardently oppose a public option (takeover) are insurance companies?
Gee, with millions of insurance companies out there, infesting Congressional town hall meetings, tea parties and whatnot, you'd think we wouldn't need the so-called "enhanced competition" of Krugman and Obama's public "option."
Earlier this month, ObamaCare opponents were racists. Now we're insurance companies. What will we be in September -- potted plants?
Download a pre-production PDF of The National Center for Public Policy Research's upcoming new book, Shattered Lives: 100 Stories of Government Health Care, for more on the way waiting lists affect the lives of people living in countries with government-run medicine. Feel free to email a free copy to Krugman.
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6,000 surgical operations may be cut to make up for budgetary shortfall in Vancouver. Would 6,000 Canadians trade health insurance for health care? (Let's ask when some of them visit.)
How much would you spend to apply a solution that doesn't work to a problem that doesn't exist? Me: Not so much. Congress: $8 billion. (H/T Celebrity Paycut)
The Cash for Clunkers program's rules say dealers will be reimbursed within ten days, but dealers have found themselves on waiting lists. Reminds me of this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. You can't make government efficient by passing a law saying it has to be.
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This post by National Center for Public Policy Research Vice President David Ridenour. E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to this blog's feed. | Follow on Twitter.
Is Obama Really Dropping the So-Called Public Option? Not a Chance
The media is making much of the Obama Administration's hints that the President will no longer insist on a so-called "public option" in a health care bill he signs, but the idea of a government-started "co-op" alternative to private health insurance has not been abandoned.
What we have here is the left, finding a block on a road heading left, choosing another read, also heading left.
A closer look suggests that the only thing intriguing about the co-op alternative is whether it is a completely meaningless construct or simply camouflage for the "Public Plan" option...
...The new co-ops would presumably have to advertise like other insurance companies, build physician networks, pay competitive reimbursement rates, and in general act like, well, every other insurance company. It is suggested that the new federal co-ops would be nonprofits, and therefore would offer better service and lower costs. But many insurance companies, including "mutual" insurers and many "Blues," are already nonprofit companies. If the new co-ops operate under the same rules as other nonprofit insurers, why bother?
And there's the rub. Supporters of government-run health care have no intention of letting the co-ops be independent enterprises that operate by the same rules as other insurers. This is not really about creating more choices and competition. In fact, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) makes it clear, for example, that the co-op's officers and directors would be appointed by the president and Congress. He insists that there be a single national co-op. And Congress would set the rules under which it operates. As Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) says, "It's got to be written in a way that accomplishes the objectives of a public option."
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks likes a duck, it's probably a duck.
Moreover, several previous attempts by governments to set up co-ops have, in fact, failed. Perhaps the largest such failure was the Florida Community Health Purchasing Alliance, which was set up by the State of Florida in 1993, and at one time covered 98,000 people. It was unable to attract small business customers and ultimately went out of business in 2000. Does anyone really believe that a Congress that is busy bailing out banks and automobile companies because they are 'too big to fail" is going to sit idly by while one of these new co-ops suffers a similar fate?
If a "co-op" is run by the federal government under rules imposed by the federal government with funding provided by the federal government, it's simply government-run health insurance by another name. Opponents of a government takeover of the health care system should not be fooled.
A single national co-op with officers and director appointed by the President and Congress and set up to accomplish the objectives of a public option.
Sounds exactly like government-run health care to me.
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If PhRMA doesn't want America to think it was bribed by the White House not to oppose government-run health care, it could oppose government-run health care.
Warning: You won't want to read this apology if you want to keep offensive words out of your life.
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Egg on Face of Left, But It's Probably the Right's Fault Anyway
The left-wing Think Progress website reports that the situation of Kenneth Gladney, the "Don't Tread on Me" t-shirt salesman who reportedly was assaulted at a town meeting last week, "underscores the vital need for health care reform" because Gladney "has no affordable health care option available."
Another website the group quotes, the Moderate Voice, says, "If anything was more calculated to make the Right look foolish than this St. Louis incident then I'd love to see it."
But of course the Right is always defending the accuracy of the mainstream media, so the whole muck-up is probably still our fault.
To Think Progress' credit, it updated its blog post with the information that Mr. Gladney does have health insurance.
Nevertheless, something more needs to be said: this debate is not only, or even primarily, about access to health insurance. It is about access to health care. No one argues that Mr. Gladney got that, and promptly, too.
As a new book the National Center for Public Policy Research will soon release, "Shattered Lives: 100 Stories of Government Health Care" aptly demonstrates, prompt (or even any) access to health care is not something people in Britain, Canada, Australia or other nations with government-run health care systems can take for granted.
Insurance they got.
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Pelosi and Hoyer: "'Un-American' Attacks Can't Derail Health Care Debate"
Here's a link to the op-ed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD).
It's not very good, and not at all factual (haven't they read the bill?), but as its headline, helped along by Drudge, has made it notorious, I thought folks might like a link.
By the way, who agrees with me that "the promise of affordable health care for all" -- as the Representatives put it -- has not been the most debate domestic issue since the Lyndon Johnson Administration, as Pelosi and Hoyer claim? Just a guess, but I think the honor for that title would go to the abortion debate.
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Congressman Barney Frank: Public Option is Route to Single Payer
One thing I have always appreciated about Rep. Barney Frank is that he is a very effective communicator.
In this video, he can't be more plain: The Obama/Democrat leadership health care "public option" is intended to lead the U.S. to single-payer health care.
The left will keep denying it, but there's no doubt its Barney Frank in this video, and he's in a position to know.
If you have a blog, I hope you will consider re-posting this video. It's YouTube page is here.
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The memos purport to show the benefits that will head toward constituents of the individual Members if only they would sell their souls to obtain the benefits.
Talking Points Memo helpfully displayed the one created for the district of Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR). Like others I reviewed, this document is just one page -- a curiously short summary for an over 1,000 page bill with literally life-and-death implications.
Such things as the following also were missing from the summaries:
revealing that people who pursue healthy lifestyles and are rewarded by lower premiums will lose this benefit ("hardly a formula for lower costs," says CNN Money) if the House bill becomes law;
the Lewin Group estimate that 88.1 million Americans could lose their present health care coverage, even if they don't want to;
the fact that an estimated 1.2 million small businesses would be hit by a 5.4 percent surtax, and many Americans would face a higher income tax rate than do taxpayers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan;
It appears that Talking Points Memo and the Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee want the public to be educated on what is in the House bill -- but not too educated.
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House Left Moves to End Community Service Requirement in Public Housing
The Congressional conservatives' Republican Study Committee reports that Congressmen Rangel (D-NY), Frank (D-MA), Waters (D-CA) and Watt (D-NC) will introduce an amendment to the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill later today to prohibit requiring people in public housing to contribute eight hours per month to community service or spend a comparable time in an economic self-sufficiency program.
Eight hours per month must have been too much to ask.
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It seems the White House plans to re-write the health care bill after some version of it passes the House and Senate, then jam the re-written version through Congress before anyone in Congress -- or the public -- has a chance to see what's in it.
Is this the transparency candidate Obama promised?
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Paul Mirengoff says Walter Cronkite "didn't represent the victory of substance over style, but rather the victory of a style that implied substance over substance itself." I agree.
Struggling for purpose in light of the election of the first black president, the NAACP moves in the wrong direction, says a group of black conservatives, when it endorses a climate policy in tandem with the World Wildlife Federation that is opposed by a majority of black Americans.
"I'm all in favor of the nation's oldest civil rights group redefining its mission and agenda; however this indicates that the NAACP continues to struggle with current realities that face the nation's black communities by promoting policies they are opposed to," said Project 21’s Joe Hicks, who is also a PajamasTV commentator. "If this group simply wants to be defined as another left-wing organization touting the weak science on climate change, then it is destined to face ever-growing irrelevancy."
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli added: "It's outrageous for the NAACP to place liberal ideology over the welfare of the nation. By aligning with the environmental activist lobby, the NAACP is now an official member of 'Club Green' - the exclusive club of elites waging war against fossil fuels. Tragically, the cover charge for their membership - job losses, reduced standard of living and high energy costs - will be borne disproportionately by the very people the NAACP claims to represent."
The NAACP's zeal for regulation is opposed by most black Americans. A recent poll of 800 black Americans found 76 percent believe Congress should make economic recovery, not climate change, its top priority. 56 percent believe policymakers do not adequately consider the quality of life of black Americans when addressing climate policy. When asked how much they would pay for gas and electricity to reduce greenhouse emissions, 76 percent said they would be unwilling to pay more than $50 a year while 52 percent were unwilling to pay anything at all.
Hicks added: "The NAACP shows how out of touch it has become by advocating Obama Administration policies on so-called climate change that impact the very population that claim to represent - poor, black Americans. Adding an increased burden of higher coast for essential things like gasoline and electricity at a time of economic hardship demonstrates that they have no independent course of leadership, but instead is blindly following this administration's disastrous lead."
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), a doctor in the real world, gives a good description of the majority's health care destruction bill in these comments delivered to his fellow members of the House Education and Labor Committee. Following Price's sharp exchange with Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) over something Price says Speaker Pelosi said and Miller says she didn't, my favorite part is Price saying this: "You know what [the American people] will have access to? They have access to an opportunity to get in line. They'll be able to get in line."
Price also said, flatly, that the House Democrats' bill "will destroy health care in this nation."
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The Congressional Budget Office said today taxpayers should expect no net savings if one of the health care plans being developed by House and Senate Democrats is adopted.
In a nutshell, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf says any savings the plans might deliver are offset by additional costs they impose.
President Obama, has, of course, been insistent that health care reform is necessary so cost savings can be achieved.
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Video of Tom Borelli on Obama's Corporatism Strategy on Glenn Beck
Here's the video of Monday's broadcast of the Glenn Beck Show on the Fox News channel in which Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project and Wall Street analyst/Fox Business News commentator Charles Payne talk about GE's quasi-merger with the Obama Administration, GE's hiring of Linda Daschle as a lobbyist, the recent appointment of a GE executive to a top Obama Administration post at the EPA and how, as Glenn Beck put it in the segment, "the little guy gets screwed."
If The Average of 25 and 75 Is 50, Does That Make Us All Middle-Aged?'
Would you buy a used climate model from a man who could say this?
The average age of scientists in the space center control room was 26, which means they were 18 when they heard President Kennedy say he wanted to put a man on the Moon in ten years.
P.S. The high temperature yesterday in the Oxford, England area, where Al Gore spoke, was 64 degrees F. According to weather.com, the average high for that date is 8 degrees F higher.
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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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Many readers will be aware that New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman wrote in his Monday column that individuals who did not support the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill when it came up in the House for a vote last Friday are guilty of "a form of treason" against the planet.
A thought experiment: If two doctors were to disagree on a patient's diagnosis, and Krugman agreed with one of them, would the one Krugman disagrees with be guilty of a form of treason?
Even that analogy is too generous to Krugman, as doctors take an oath to (essentially) be loyal to their patients' welfare, but it is not at all common for people with opinions (of any kind) on cap-and-trade or even global warming to first take an oath of loyalty to the planet.
What many of us have done is take oaths of loyalty to the United States. The Waxman-Markey bill would ship American jobs overseas, raise energy prices, shovel money to special interests corruptly, drag down economic growth and impose regressive regulatory taxes on consumers. It would not have a measurable effect on temperature. As it does bad without doing good, the Waxman-Markey bill is bad for the United States of America.
Thus, by Paul Krugman's definition, anyone who supports Waxman-Markey is guilty of "a form of treason" against the United States.
Fortunately for Krugman, his definition of treason is even more silly than it is offensive, which is saying a great deal.
P.S. Climate Skeptic has very good commentary about Krugman's treason charge, going into different areas than I did. (I read it after seeing a link on Coyote Blog.) Interesting that neither Krugman nor his editors knew that you can't write "degrees" with meaning without specifying the temperature scale being used.
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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."
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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Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's decision to give up for now on a federal public health care plan has to be a blow to the Administration and the left.
Daschle, while retired from the Senate, remains an influential and respected voice in the Democratic party. This can't be happy news for the left.
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"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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A Somewhat Happy Ending to the Latest Death Threat Story...
...first covered in Climate Depot about the global warming believer and blog writer at the prominent liberal blog Talking Points Memo who asked: "at what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers?"
"The Insolent Braggart," as the anonymous blogger is known, isn't the first to wish death upon those of us who aren't convinced that human beings are causing soon-to-be-catastrophic global warming. (My own e-mail in-box is proof of that.) Over the years, I've reached the conclusion that most of these folks have stopped thinking of their political opposition as human beings, so when they express death wishes or grotesque threats, it doesn't seem real to them.
Until somebody who hasn't drunk the Kool-aid notices, that is.
Ironically, given how he got his 15 minutes of fame, "The Insolent Braggart" is probably a perfectly nice, if occasionally misguided, fellow.
Here's predicting that one day he'll feel about the global warming theory the same way he now feels about writing blog posts about executions.
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General Electric boss Jeffrey Immelt faced a tough crowd at GE's annual stockholder's meeting in April, and it's just now becoming clear how much he minded.
At the meeting, Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli asked if media reports that Immelt had tried to silence anti-Obama reporting on GE-owned networks are true. During her dialogue with Immelt, her microphone was cut off (it was restored after she continued talking anyway).
Then Fox News Channel O'Reilly Factor Producer Jesse Watters, a GE shareholder, asked Immelt about Keith Olbermann's handling of the Janeane Garofalo interview. Watters' microphone was soon cut off as well, but this did Immelt no good, as next up was the National Center for Public Policy Research Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli, who, as I reported here in April, asked Immelt about GE's business with Iran, GE's lobbying for cap-and-trade, and GE's double-hit on senior citizen stockholders [by cutting dividends after saying it wouldn't while lobbying for cap-and-trade regulations that will dramatically raise consumer energy prices].
Following the meeting, in an apparent counterattack against Borelli, false allegations were made that Tom was there as a front for Fox News, which competes with GE-owned MSNBC and CNBC. Tom has no relationship with Fox News except that he appears on the network periodically as a guest and he lent an audiotape he made of the GE shareholder's meeting to Fox, which broadcast it (leading fact-challenged Keith Olbermann to falsely accuse Fox's Jesse Watters of making the perfectly legal tape and lying about it to GE security guards).
So why bring all this up now? Because it seems that GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom one would think has better things to do, was so upset that three shareholders -- Deneen Borelli, Jesse Watters and Tom Borelli -- would ask him questions about the GE-owned networks' liberal bias, trade with Iran and lobbying for cap-and-trade that he ordered retaliation against a news media outlet that reported they had done so.
Specifically, the LA Weekly's Nicki Finke's Deadline Hollywood column reported Friday night that after Paul Bond of The Hollywood Reporter wrote a story about the three questions and the shareholder's meeting (a story immediately picked up by the Drudge Report), Immelt immediately ordered a GE-wide ban on Nielsen Business Media, which owns The Hollywood Reporter.
That's when, sources inside and outside Nielsen Business Media tell me, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt ordered a GE company-wide ban on all of THR's parent company: advertising, editorial, the works. After a few days, the ban was reduced to GE's NBC Universal against Nielsen Business Media's The Hollywood Reporter and lasted six weeks. (My NBC Universal sources believe the ban was lifted yesterday.)
My reporting is the first about the ban or what led to it. "People need to know that GE is using its media arm to stifle coverage about its company, and this is coming from Immelt and Zucker," a Nielsen Business Media insider said.
Finke adds:
...sources inside and outside Nielsen Business Media tell me, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt personally issued a GE ban on all of the Nielsen company. "Jeff Immelt severed relations between all of GE with all of Nielsen over that story. Immelt called Zucker, and Zucker took it from there. Then, after a few days, GE backtracked, and then it became NBC Universal severing relations with The Hollywood Reporter."
As the National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit organization, Project 21 played no role in, nor took any position on, the Massachusetts Senate race, but now that Martha Coakley has conceded the race, and Scott Brown has delivered his acceptance speech, Project 21 members have a few thoughts to share on what it all means: 
Ever heard the definition of chutzpah? It's the man who murders his parents and asks for the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.
CBS's Sharyl Attkisson revealed Monday (
Are you "open," "honest," and ethical"? These are three questions National Center for Public Policy Research Policy Analyst Matt Patterson asks the Congressional leadership in a new paper just out today.
Media Matters 
The Media Matters Action Network has a page up 
"As a former (recovering) professional magician, I've seen and perpetrated my share of sleight-of-hand. But I have never seen anything quite like the linguistic and budgetary legerdemain Democrats have performed to make President Obama's health-care plan appear 'affordable.'
Sadly for COP15 attendees willing to shell out 5,999 Danish Kroner ($1,209) to 
