Tag Archives: Economy

Economy, Energy

Wind Energy? N.I.M.B.Y.

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Cape Wind, is  a dynamic green energy company specializing in wind energy. Their slogan is ‘Energy For Life.’ That’s because energy generated by wind, not to be confused with ‘hot air’, is free and in infinite supply. Oh wait, that might not be the best comparison when you  consider the spin-meisters in politics. Especially where the environment is concerned.

Let me be clear. I’m all for tapping energy resources wherever they may be. And I’m all for doing it responsibly. Emphasis on ‘doing it.’ The ‘responsibly’ part goes without saying. Seems to me that’s where the conventional environmentalists, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and I disagree.

Cape Wind is proposing America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Miles from the nearest shore, 130 wind turbines will gracefully harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. In average winds, Cape Wind will provide three quarters of the Cape and Islands electricity needs.

You see, I’m totally on board with the proposed 130 turbine wind farm that Cape Wind has been trying to do for the last eight years. RFK, Jr. is not. Through all the hard work and devotion to environmental lawsuits Kennedy has toiled on over the years, when it comes to the Cape Wind project, it’s Not In My Back Yard.

He want’s them further from shore. Where he can’t see them. And where they would be in deeper water putting the turbines and ships at risk.  From Cape Wind . . .

By placing the turbines in the shallow water of Horseshoe Shoal, we ensure that they will not interfere with large ships. With each turbine about o­ne third of a mile apart, the wind park will be easily navigated by recreational boaters and fisherman.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Jason Jones 180 – Nantucket
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Looks like  ‘dithering‘ is President Obama’s strong suit. Unlike sending in reinforcements to Afghanistan, this is not a life and death decision for American troops. This is a decision for clean energy and green American jobs.

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Economy, Florida, Media, Pensacola, Politics

Liberals And Free Speech, Part 2

The political tsunami that swept our country yesterday, paving the road for the socialization of health care and the end of the private health insurance industry, is one for the history books. It’s an issue that has been brewing for the last 60 or 70 years that seemed to be coming to a head last week. And so it was that I set out to see what the Left had to say about it.

I thought I would find something on the Ring of Fire. But I was wrong.

So I asked a couple questions to a post entitled ‘This Week on Ring of Fire’ . . .

All that, and no mention about ‘deeming’ major legislation to be passed without a vote? No whisper about the constitutional issues with it all?

Don’t have 60 votes? Eh, no big deal. Well, don’t have 51 votes? No problem. Let’s just skip the voting part, let the RINO’s (Representatives In Name Only) take care of substituting that process with another one.

No mention about the process at all? Like President Obama as much as said to Bret Baier when he dodged his question about the ‘process.’ The end justifies the means.

Is the ROF ducking the most important issue facing America today?

Background Note: For those not familiar with the Ring of Fire, it was an Air America Radio program, hosted by a local (Pensacola, FL) attorney named Mike Papantonio. It still is, only Air America went bankrupt for the last time a few months ago. And at its outset, Papantonio boldly claimed (paraphrasing here) that his show and network was going to be the answer to Rush Limbaugh. He mentioned Rush by name, and then some. And being a fan of Rush, my interest in this show was piqued.

What followed that was a real gem. Follow the comment thread, if you can stand it, to see what the ‘process’ was to getting an answer from the show’s producer, Farron Cousins.

Continue reading Liberals And Free Speech, Part 2 →

Economy, Fair Tax, Politics

Ways And Means Closed The Door On FairTax

I encourage the input from all Americans, from both sides of the aisle. If you have a better idea, I want to hear it. That is the talking point from this honest and open administration. That is what President Obama has said, over and over. It is his alleged open door policy.

But actions speak louder than words. What are the actions?

Leaders Fiddle While the Nation Burns

The United States hit a new record this month—more public debt piled up than any month before in the history of the nation. Unapologetic, Congress bought five luxury private jets for a brand new Congressional fleet because they didn’t feel that military jets were good enough for their junkets or their refined tastes.

Where did the money come from? The nation borrowed it from foreign creditors and secured the debt with our earnings and the future earnings of our children and grandchildren.

The FairTax ends the corruption practiced daily by tax writing committees who treat $2.5 trillion a year in tax receipts as their private property. It bars lobby deals and special favors and shifts power from the government to the citizen. It restores the role of the American people in deciding how much and when taxes are paid by their consumption decisions and it creates a new era of robust American economic growth.

But as good as the FairTax is for the nation, it is still ignored, at best, and distorted and despised, at worst, by those in the political elite who profit from corruption of the federal tax code. This week your FairTax organization delivered nearly 100,000 petitions to the House Ways and Means Committee–who could not be bothered to meet with national FairTax campaign chairman, Ken Hoagland.

“I am furious that the leading alternative to the income tax has again been ignored along with every American who petitioned their government for redress of grievances,” said Hoagland. “This betrayal of the voice of the American people adds fuel to the fire of our determination to break through the wholly unacceptable and un-American shell of disdain for the common man that we are seeing from Washington, D.C.”

Hoagland said that April 15th events planned including the “Storm the Hill” and “Operation FairTax” rallies as well as the on-line tax revolt march www.onlinetaxrevolt.com were needed efforts to “break through to our leaders”. “We will not give up, we will not stop and we will not rest until we have ripped this broken tax system and culture of political privilege out by the roots. That is a promise.”

Economy, Politics

The President Berates Health Insurance Industry

If it were not for the words ‘American’ and ‘Congress’ in this quote, one might think it this quote came out of the mouth of a dictator like Hugo Chavez. But no, these are the words of a community organizer on the campaign trail, who has made the health insurance industry (that makes a profit margin of 3-4%) a demon to be run out of town. Problem is, it is also the words of the President of the United States.

At the heart of this debate is the question of whether we’re going to accept a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people — (applause) — because if this vote fails, the insurance industry will continue to run amok. They will continue to deny people coverage. They will continue to deny people care. They will continue to jack up premiums 40 or 50 or 60 percent as they have in the last few weeks without any accountability whatsoever. They know this. And that’s why their lobbyists are stalking the halls of Congress as we speak, and pouring millions of dollars into negative ads. And that’s why they are doing everything they can to kill this bill.

That, coupled with the lies like this, is simply disgraceful.

Now, the third thing that this legislation does is it brings down the cost of health care for families and businesses and the federal government. (Applause.) Americans who are buying comparable coverage in the individual market would end up seeing their premiums go down 14 to 20 percent. (Applause.) Americans who get their insurance through the workplace, cost savings could be as much as $3,000 less per employer than if we do nothing. Now, think about that. That’s $3,000 your employer doesn’t have to pay, which means maybe she can afford to give you a raise.

Another of his bullet points, which are not true in the long run . . .

If you like your doctor, you’re going to be able to keep your doctor. If you like your plan, keep your plan. I don’t believe we should give government or the insurance companies more control over health care in America. I think it’s time to give you, the American people, more control over your health.

None of that will happen. What will happen is what he is not saying. Which is that this legislation will lead to the end of the private insurance industry and the birth of a single-payer system. Which will give the government control over the American people regarding their health care. Which, by the way, is his only objective. Other consequences are higher premiums and fines imposed on Americans, higher taxes, fewer doctors, more government dependents, longer waiting periods, government rationing (as opposed to you making your own rationing choices) of health care, and a health care system comparable to those in Europe or Canada.

If the plan was so good, it would have public support and Congressmen would not have to have their arms twisted or bribes made in order to ‘gain’ their vote.

His favorite lie of the whole campaign is how, the Cornhusker Kickback was removed. Fact is, it wasn’t. Instead, they are extending the same welfare subsidy to all the states rather than taking the one for Nebraska out. And this is going to lower costs? Pass the pixie dust please.

Does this look presidential to you?

Is it just me or do you get the impression that he doesn’t know how to sit at his desk in the oval office and calmly explain to the American people exactly what it is he wants to do, how much it will cost, and how he intends to do it? He should also be held accountable to explain why passing this legislation by deeming it passed is appropriate.

Bret Baier asked him about that process and Obama blew it off. So much as to say that the end justifies the means.

What was in that oath again? I recall it saying something about protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States.

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Economy, Media, Politics

Talking Points vs. Reality

In a swindle that would make Bernie Madoff look like an amateur, Barack Obama has gotten a substantial segment of the population to believe that he can add millions of people to the government-insured rolls without increasing the already record-breaking federal deficit.

Those who think in terms of talking points, instead of realities, can point to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office has concurred with budget numbers that the Obama administration has presented.

Anyone who is so old-fashioned as to stop and think, instead of being swept along by rhetoric, can understand that a budget— any budget— is not a record of hard facts but a projection of future financial plans. A budget tells us what will happen if everything works out according to plan.

The Congressional Budget Office can only deal with the numbers that Congress supplies. Those numbers may well be consistent with each other, even if they are wholly inconsistent with anything that is likely to happen in the real world.

The Obama health care plan can be financed without increasing the federal deficit— if the administration takes hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare. But Medicare itself does not have enough money to pay its own way over time.

However money is juggled in the short run, the government’s financial liabilities are increased by adding this huge new entitlement of government-provided insurance. The fact that these new financial liabilities can be kept out of the official federal deficit projection, by claiming that they will be paid for with money taken from Medicare, changes nothing in the real world.

I can say that I can afford to buy a Rolls Royce, without going into debt, by using my inheritance from a rich uncle. But, in the real world, the question would arise immediately whether I in fact have a rich uncle, not to mention whether this hypothetical rich uncle would be likely to leave me enough money to buy a Rolls Royce.

In politics, however, you can say all sorts of things that have no relationship with reality.

If you have a mainstream media that sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil— when it comes to Barack Obama— you can say that you will pay for a vast expansion of government-provided insurance by taking money from the Medicare budget and using other gimmicks.

Whether this administration, or any future administration, will in fact take enough money from Medicare to pay for this new massive entitlement is a question that only the future can answer, regardless of what today’s budget projection says.

On paper, you can treat Medicare like the hypothetical rich uncle who is going to leave me enough money to buy a Rolls Royce. But only on paper. In real life, you can’t get blood from a turnip, and you can’t keep on getting money from a Medicare program that is itself running out of money.

An even more transparent gimmick is collecting money for the new Obama health care program for the first ten years but delaying the payments of its benefits for four years. By collecting money for 10 years and spending it for only 6 years, you can make the program look self-supporting, but only on paper and only in the short run.

This is a game you can play just once, during the first decade. After that, you are going to be collecting money for 10 years and paying out money for 10 years. That is when you discover that your uncle doesn’t have enough money to support himself, much less leave you an inheritance to pay for a Rolls Royce.

But a postponed revelation is not part of the official federal deficit today. And that provides a talking point, in order to soothe people who take talking points seriously.

Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized— or even recognized— before it becomes a fait accompli and “the law of the land.”

Would you buy a used car under these conditions, even if it was a Rolls Royce?

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.  Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

Economy, Media, Uncategorized

Mainstream Media Breaks New Ground

The Associated Press is breaking new ground in journalism. If you pay attention to news and the news media, you are already conditioned to the method the legacy media uses to frame their bias; how they put good spin on a bad event, or bad spin on a good event, by employing the ‘more (less) than expected’ phrase.

But I’m at a loss to figure this one out. This is new.

Referring to an interview with the chief economic figure in the government, the AP makes this assessment . . .

[F]ollowing the closing of the annual session of the party-dominated national legislature, which earlier Sunday approved a blueprint to keep government spending high, though at half the rate of last year, to buffer any economic turbulence.

Can someone, anyone, explain this ‘analysis’ for me?

The bias here is in favor of government spending, which happens to be the M.O. of  economically-illiterate bleeding-heart Liberals. Otherwise, one would expect to see something like ‘draconian cuts in welfare programs.’ That there was no perspective given to either the dollar amount or the ‘rate’ also serves to obfuscate what the real news is, that government spending can be harmful to your economic health.

Maybe it is because the subject of the story is Premier Wen Jiabao of Communist China?

There are other important issues raised in this AP piece, like the global economy showing signs of unraveling (see The State Of The Welfare State), but this one kind of blew me away.

WSJ JournalNow – News – Associated Press.

2010 Election, Economy, Media, Politics

The State Of The Welfare State

And by Welfare State I’m not talking about food stamps for the poor. What I’m talking about is the focus of where President Obama and his circle of advisers want to take this country. Which is to a place where European countries are. This is a place where the government takes on the responsibility of caring for their citizens by way of their health care and retirement plans. The latter of which is called Social Security in the United States.

Right now, and before Obama became president, Social Security and Medicare are poised to bankrupt the country, if you will allow the use of the term bankrupt as an adjective. Those two programs total $42.9 trillion in unfunded mandates. Due to the demographics of our population, there will soon be people owed benefits with no money in the bank to pay for it. This isn’t a right-wing talking point. This is an economic fact.

Starting his second term, Bush opened up the debate to head off this catastrophe, but there was no support for it, and, he was derided by the media. It was labeled as the third rail, something not to be touched. Well, except to tax it. It involved ‘privatizing’ 1-1/2 percent of it and letting the person actually own his share of contribution. We all know how that ended up.

Fixing social security is still not on the President’s radar. But health care is. The solution proposed by President Obama is to essentially, increase the coverage of Medicare to include the entire country. It will also include the demise of the private health insurance industry for their inability to cover more people regardless of medical pre-conditions on the modest 3-4% profit margin they earn. This is keeping in step with the European model that Democrats in Washington seem to champion.

So what’s wrong with that?

First of all, to compare the United States with any European country is like comparing apples and oranges. Or watermelons and grapes. The economic stability of the European countries are quite shaky right now. But something deeper and more fundamental is at work which the global credit crisis has merely helped to expose. Most European countries today operate under economic and labor policies crafted during the height of the post-war baby boom, featuring middle-class entitlements like generous pension systems that allow early retirement, liberal disability programs that exempt many laborers from work, and extended unemployment systems that make going on the dole and staying there easier than in the U.S.. Europeans designed these policies in an era when there were, in many European minds, too many people competing for jobs and a bulging work population to support those who were retired or on disability.

Now, this house of cards is falling down. The demographics are nothing today like they were 60 or 70 years ago. Now, not only are there less people working, but there are more people on the government dole collecting retirement pensions. Europe has baby boomers too.  Governments, like Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, have no money to sustain this welfare state and they and other countries face riots in the streets at the very thought of trying to reform (take away) the unsustainable benefits they have put in place.

Back to the watermelons v. grapes comparison. Many of these countries are smaller than  most states in the United States. And they’re going bust. It takes more than the audacity of hope and hubris to suppose that a country the size of the United States, already heading to default, can pull itself out by expanding a health insurance entitlement program to include the combined populations of France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, and Greece. Not only that, but President Obama is still claiming that it will lower the premium costs and increase the quality and availability of care. Oh, and that’s after cutting $500 Billion from Medicare first. I think we should run that proposition by the people in Canada and Europe who travel to the United States for medical treatment and see if they think that modeling a health care system after what they have would be a good idea.

The European countries are suffering from a demographic shift that is compounding their economic situation.  In addition to their workforce shrinking, and their retired populations growing, their birth rates are falling below what is considered to be a replacement rate. Clearly, they need to change course. The old paradigm of the Welfare State is not sustainable.

Although we are demographically robust compared to Europe (our working age population will increase by a projected 17 percent over the next 40 years) and we work longer, our own baby boom was so large that we will still need substantial changes in Medicare and Social Security to meet our future obligations. Meanwhile, our states face a tough road because many of them have granted European-like retirement benefits to government workers that are exacerbating state budget problems. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see a trend here. But it is a trend that seems to escape Democrats in Washington.

Why is it that, despite the history and conditions in Europe, the Obama administration insists that creating our own Welfare State here is the way to go? Obama and his advisers are of the wrong century. Still high from their heyday of the 60’s, only now they are in control of our government and espousing something called ‘social justice.’ Essentially, they are heading the country southbound in the northbound lane. And instead of advising him to turn around, they’re telling him to speed up. And before too long, this great country will be in the same shape as Greece, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and the rest of them.

Economy, Politics

Obama Presents, Govt Health Care R Us

It took Hillary Clinton many months of closed door secret meetings to come up with her version of so-called health care reform. Which had no support.

In 12 months under Barack Obama, we have a house version and a senate version. Then in 4 weeks we have a combined version. All of which were rejected.

Don't like that one? Here's another.

Last week, the President had a TV show called a bi-partisan meeting to resolve the differences and start from square two, not square one, to presumably force Republicans to surrender their principles and succumb to government run health care. So that didn’t go as he had planned.

Now, in four days time, tomorrow, the President will present yet another health care / health insurance ‘reform’ plan.

It is apparent that what we are seeing are cobbled versions of what has already been proposed, and rejected. Else we are supposed to believe that the President has done, in a matter of days, what it took probably hundreds of people many months to do.

But only he can do it. He is Barack Hussein Obama. Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm.

Question is how does he do it? Simple. He goes to Government Health Care R Us and takes a plan off the end-cap. Or maybe he just pulls one out of his, uh, hat.

Economy, Politics

Pay-Go, Or Not Pay-Go, That Is The Question

Lost in all the accusations of gridlock aimed at Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), as if gridlock is always a bad thing, is the fact that Bunning is holding the administration’s feet to the fire. Why? Well, because he can. And good for him.

He is holding Congress to the Pay-Go legislation that was passed that Democrats held up as being responsible and as a hedge to deficit spending. All Bunning is doing is forcing them to obey their own law.

Bunning’s case is this. If they can show how it will be paid for, he’ll not block a ‘unanimous consent.’ Besides all that, why shouldn’t every Senator be made to record their vote, not hide behind ‘unanimous consent,’ and go on record for voting for increasing the debt with this piece of legislation?

Link: One Senator Holds Up Bill, in New Level of Gridlock – WSJ.com.

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics, United Nations

Investing In Global Warming, Cap And Trade

Hardly a week goes by lately where news comes out that adds to the doubt about ‘man made’ global warming. From incomplete and manipulated data, to selective science of hand-picking tree samples, to lost or destroyed supporting data, and lately to statements of Phil Jones.

Phil Jones was forced to step down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after a series of leaked emails and other documents suggested that the data supporting global warming theories had been “cooked” and that opposing theories were being suppressed.

But this was not the end of the revelations.

“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

“And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”

What do you mean ‘statistically significant‘ you ask? According to Phil Jones . . .

This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level.

And associating climate change to man-made global warming, there’s this question to Jones . . .

“How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?”

Jones: “I’m 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”

OK fine. And we now know all about their data and record keeping problems.

So what’s the point? The whole point of this ‘man-made’ global warming hysteria is to execute a transfer of wealth through whatever way possible, under the pretense that we can adjust the global thermostat as well as sea-level. It’s is a political movement that has turned into a near religion with environmentalists.

Then there’s this gem about rising sea levels . . .

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

Whether it by by the United Nations, the Kyoto Protocol, and more locally, the administration’s Cap & Trade legislation, all of these schemes are designed to move money from our side of the earth to the other, with the side benefit of depressing our economy and raising prices even further. I mean it just makes sense. If you’re a slip and fall lawyer, you go after the money. In the global scale, the ‘richest’ nation in the world is right here. And for anyone who was in Copenhagen, you saw who the evil one was. It was the United States, and it was capitalism.

In light of what is now known, we are starting to see signs in the US of hopping off this man-made global warming bandwagon. But not everyone.

Know who is heavily invested in this scheme? Al Gore. He probably has the most to lose when the cap and trade and carbon credit trading schemes fall through. Starting with a company he and another investor started called Generation Investment Management LLP. I’m all for capitalism, and according to Al Gore and the media, he’s just putting his money where his mouth is. The reason capitalism works is because there is risk taking. When the market demands it, entrepreneurs will provide. Responding to the market, or not, determines who wins and who looses. Gore’s company is an associate member of the Chicago Climate Exchange. A carbon credit trading exchange. (Available right now at $.10/share. Their stock fell 33% after the Copenhagen global warming festival in December.) How much Gore has invested varies from guesstimates from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. Suffice it to say, if things go the way he hopes they will, he’ll make George Soros’ wealth look like small change.

So yesterday, either in denial or a last ditch attempt to saves his investments, or both, Al Gore opines in the New York Times ‘We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change.’ The first sentence of his opinion piece says it all . . .

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Right. The sky is falling. On him. Then, from high on the mountain, not far from the burning bush, Gore ends with this. From Rick Moran at American Thinker.

Finally, this bit of weirdness that shows Gore for what he is; a megalomaniac:

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis – inconvenient as ever – must still be faced.

Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer – as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an “instrument of redemption?”

Who else has put their money where their mouth is? Well, in a more muted and covert kind of way, the BBC has. They have $12.5 billion of their pension funds invested in companies whose future depends on the success of the whole man-made global warming movement and subsequent laws and regulations.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you see an article about a man-made global warming ‘crisis.’