Worried About Income Inequality - Protect the Border!

Obama and Income Inequality: No New Brazils! - Newsweek

I'd argue Obama's main effort on immigration would, in fact, have made the
inequality problem at the bottom worse. A "comprehensive" bill would almost
certainly have attracted new illegals, but the efforts to stop them at the
border might well have failed, as they failed after a similar 1986 bill. The
result of that failure has been a looser labor market at the bottom. Lower
unskilled wages. Even the emergence of favela-like shantytowns in California. You want
Brazil? Obama's 2009-2010 immigration plan would bring us Brazil. Obama was
putting coalition politics--pleasing Latino voters, and especially Latino
politicians--over economics, at least egalitarian economics.

Exposes the hollowness of the President's concerns about income inequality. Very thoughtful and well written. Mr. Kaus, by the way, is a Democrat.

Time For a Doctrine of Pre-Emption in DOMESTIC Affairs - Ricochet.com

Time For a Doctrine of Pre-Emption in DOMESTIC Affairs - Ricochet.com: "One of the arguments for Bush's Afghanistan and Iraq policies was that we needed to take our our adversaries where they lived so we wouldn't be forced to live at home in a constant defensive crouch.

Well, that's how we conservatives have been forced to live in the world of domestic politics. Even after delivering the President an historic 'shellacking,' we have spent the month of December with our hearts in our throats, fighting off trillion dollar omnibus spending bills, and to achieve tax rate status quo, having to swallow a tax bill larded with Keynesian 'stimulus' that, like the last trillion dollar pork-a-thon will leave us no better off and another trillion deeper in debt."

Follow the link to Ricochet.com for the rest...

A Mind-Blowing Fact You Need to Memorize and Share

EDITORIAL: Obama's mourning in America - Washington Times: "China currently owns $1 trillion in U.S. debt in the form of Treasury bonds and notes. While this certainly is a large sum, it's not even a third of the staggering $3,211,613,265,584.56 in red ink added to the nation's ledgers under Mr. Obama's watch."

From a great editorial that enumerates the ways in which the President's rhetoric and demeanor are fostering "malaise." The recent poll in which Americans mistakenly opined that the China had surpassed the US in economic might is just one example. If they think China owns us now, just wait and see where we'll be if the Democrats' runaway federal spending isn't reined in by the Republicans.

Scary!

Biden Takes On More Influential Role for Obama - NYTimes.com

You know things are desperate when Biden becomes the Oracle of the Potomac. Talk about the one-eyed man in the land of the blind!

Global Warming's Done - Stick a Fork In It

Global warming has halted: That's what happened to 'warmest year on record' | Mail Online: "Actually, with the exception of 1998 - a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) - the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years."

Another leftist fraud exposed and put to rest. RIP Kyoto Treaty. RIP Cap and Trade. RIP AlGore.

Simple Question for the GM Cheerleaders in the MSM

GM selling at a loss should tell you something | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "If the federal government wanted to recoup its investment in GM, then the GM stock price should be much higher than the $33 initial price. In order to break even, as the Deal Journal reports, the stock price would have to rise to around $50 per share. So why is the Treasury Department selling off the company at a loss?"

Yes, how is this $33 IPO in the taxpayer's best interest if GM is such a successful turnaround story? Don't tell me the answer is that the government wants to allow GM to return expeditiously to private control. Post-IPO, GM is still the statists' automotive hobby horse.

Good Crises Make For Good Shake-downs

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: Meet the New-Old GM - WSJ.com: "What would the pre-crash GM have been worth if relieved of $80 billion in IOUs? Assume a 5% yield on GM debt and nine-to-one price-earnings ratio on the stock. The answer (for sake of argument) is $61 billion. This shouldn't be surprising. GM's progress on labor costs, quality and new models were all in the pipeline before its Chapter 11 filing. The main achievement of bankruptcy was a redistribution of rights from GM's creditors to a worrisome and conflicted new set of equity owners, namely the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers."

This shouldn't be surprising. GM's progress on labor costs, quality and new models were all in the pipeline before its Chapter 11 filing. The main achievement of bankruptcy was a redistribution of rights from GM's creditors to a worrisome and conflicted new set of equity owners, namely the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers

.

Great article. Explains how, at the end of the day, the GM bailout, via government-orchestrated bankruptcy, had only one distinguishing feature from a traditional bankruptcy - it allowed the Dems to steal billions of dollars in equity from private parties and hand it to the UAW. Crony capitalism. Kleptocracy. Did I mention that the orchestrator, Rattner, has pled no contest and agreed to pay a multi-million dollar fine related to an influence peddling charge from the SEC?

This Scandal Will Be Investigated

Findings from the Inspector General (IG) inquiry into the administration's handling of the Gulf oil drilling ban:

Review & Outlook: Science and the Drilling Ban - WSJ.com: "The IG findings include no evidence the decision to shut down an entire industry—at a huge cost to jobs and long-term drilling safety—was done with input from engineers, scientists, economists or anyone with day-to-day oversight of U.S. drilling. S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, former head of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, said she learned about the ban from a deputy, and only after the fact. Preparation for the Interior drilling report was tasked to Steve Black, a lawyer who is officially the Counselor to Mr. Salazar. Yet Mr. Black told the IG the ban was 'a policy decision made by Secretary Salazar and President Obama.' Though Mr. Salazar issued the report, the IG says final edits to the summary were done by Ms. Browner's office."

Callous, reckless, ideological, indefensible. Injurious to our energy security. But who cares? The area impacted didn't vote for Obama. Browner is going to finally have to answer some questions when the new Congress is in session.

Obama's Singular Focus - Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Offshore drilling still on hold - Nov. 12, 2010: "NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Obama lifted his moratorium on deepwater oil drilling nearly a month ago, but the government still hasn't issued any new permits in the Gulf of Mexico.

And most analysts say permits will be slow in coming through 2011."

Thank goodness the "special interests" aren't getting in the way of employment and energy security in the Gulf!

This Is An Ingenious Plan

Jenkins, Jr.: The GOP Can Outsmart ObamaCare - WSJ.com

I think this plan really has promise for "infecting" Obamacare with free market innovations. Read it. Send it to your representatives with your endorsement.

In battle for Senate control, could GOP win by losing? - Washington Times

In battle for Senate control, could GOP win by losing? - Washington Times

This is exactly what I have been saying. "winning" the Senate by a one vote margin buys you virtually nothing, except expectations that are impossible to meet.

Obama the Thinker? - WSJ.com

Obama the Thinker? - WSJ.com: "Occam's razor suggests that Obama is a mere conformist--someone who absorbed every left-wing platitude he encountered in college and never seems to have seriously questioned any of them. Kloppenberg characterizes Obama as a skeptic, not a true believer. We're not sure he has an active enough mind to be either one."

Debt Has Increased $5 Trillion Since Speaker Pelosi Vowed, ‘No New Deficit Spending’ | CNSnews.com

Debt Has Increased $5 Trillion Since Speaker Pelosi Vowed, ‘No New Deficit Spending’ | CNSnews.com

'Nuff said.

One Year After Obama Wins Nobel, World Looks for Signs of Peace - ABC News

One Year After Obama Wins Nobel, World Looks for Signs of Peace - ABC News: "One year after the Nobel prize jury made its controversial decision to award President Obama the prize for world peace, a larger jury is still waiting for the president to live up to those lofty expectations. 

Even some of Obama's allies -- like former Nobel laureates Al Gore and Jimmy Carter -- declined to assess his performance in fulfilling what the peace prize citation said was his 'vision' of world harmony.

The one year anniversary of Obama's prize comes as fighting is escalating in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq continues to smolder and Obama struggles to keep fledgling Middle East peace talks from collapsing. Drones are firing missiles in unprecedened numbers and confrontations with Iran and North Korea are hotter than ever.

In addition, wars rage in Somalia, Africa, Asia and South America, fueled by religion, tribal hatreds, poverty and piracy."

'nuff said

The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

Obama backs off charge that foreign money is funding Chamber ads | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "President Obama on Sunday stepped back from categorical charges he made earlier this week that foreign money was funding conservative TV campaign ads, telling a rally in Philadelphia only that such a scenario was possible.

The softening of Obama’s language reflects the impact of a Saturday report on the issue by the New York Times, which concluded that charges originally made by a blog run by a Democratic-aligned think tank were baseless."

While Obama's charges were baseless, it is a fact that the Obama campaign made no effort to identify or exclude illegal foreign contributions during the 2008 campaign. More Alinksy-style "accuse your opponents of your own transgressions" propaganda.

Enviro-Hysteria? Unheard of...

One third of 'extinct' animals turn up again | Mail Online: "Conservationists are overestimating the number of species that have been driven to extinction, scientists have said.

A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well."

UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT!!! Bloomberg: Obama ‘not particularly interested in business’ |

Bloomberg: Obama ‘not particularly interested in business’ | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday gave a mixed but decidedly negative review of President Obama’s economic policies, saying that the reason for joblessness is uncertainty in the private sector caused by government and that the president is uninterested in business."

You can say that again, and again, and again.

OK, I Didn't Expect to Be Saying This...

I wish the President would heed Leonid Breznev's advice when it comes to the economy:

"'The fundamental problem we face is that we can only distribute and consume what is actually produced.' Leonid Breznev, Communist Party Congress, 1972."

Inspiring the Country, One Voter at a Time

Check out the guy behind him, too.

Remember Those Quaint Old Nixon Days When Presidents Just Sponsored "Dirty Tricks?"

Obama Linked To Houston Voter Fraud Scandal (Wizbang): "Oh, my. The voter fraud situation in Houston -- which may have started with the burning of voting machines, but now has developed into a full-fledged ACORN-esque mess of fraudulent voter registrations -- and it looks like it goes all the way up to President Obama himself.

The fraudulent voter registrations were the product of a group called Houston Votes, an ACORN Lite. Houston Votes volunteers were recruited through President Obama's web site, www.barackobama.com. (He doesn't actively run it, but turned it over to his campaign staff after the election, now operating as 'Organizing For America.') And one of the chief recruiters was a local Democratic activist (a very active one) named Maria Isabel.

To call Isabel 'active' would be like describing Jeffrey Dahmer as 'a man of interesting appetites.' She once brought a friend and fellow organizer for www.barackobama.com to a health care town hall hosted by crazy whackjob Representative Sheila Jackson Lee. The friend stood up and said that she, as a doctor, backed ObamaCare. But the friend was about as much of a doctor as I am"

I am missing Nixon's high integrity in the Oval Office

Lying About Lying

Obama: GOP hasn't been honest with Americans - Yahoo! News: "Arguing doggedly against returning Republicans to power, President Barack Obama told Iowa voters Wednesday that the GOP has been dishonest about what needs to be done to revive the economy and restore middle-class dreams.
'We can't pretend that there are shortcuts,' the president said, addressing about 70 voters in a grassy backyard.
'When you look at the choice we face in this election coming up,' Obama said, 'the other side, what it's really offering is the same policies that from 2001 to 2009 put off hard problems and didn't really speak honestly to the American people about how we're gonna get this country on track over the long term.'"

Right out of Alinsky - accuse your opponent of doing what you yourself in fact are doing. This guys is so not serious.

Warm Words From the Great Uniter

Review & Outlook: Blaming the Voters - WSJ.com: "This week President Obama chimed in with another uplifting message about the American electorate. Mr. Obama told Rolling Stone that the tea party movement is financed and directed by 'powerful, special-interest lobbies.' But this doesn't mean that tea party groups are composed entirely of corporate puppets. Mr. Obama graciously implied that a small subset of the movement is simply motivated by bigotry.

The President said 'there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the President.' The tea party is now supported by a third of the country in some polls."

So which are you, a corporate puppet or a knuckle-dragging bigot? Or both?

Let the Mudslinging Begin!

Democrats Unleash Ads Focusing on Rivals’ Pasts - NYTimes.com: "Democratic candidates across the country are opening a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and save their Congressional majority."

When you can't defend your policies, your record or your ideas, all you have left are ad hominem attacks.

Study: Obama adminstration underestimated moratorium job loss | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Study: Obama adminstration underestimated moratorium job loss | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment: "An interagency report released last week by the Obama administration underestimated the number of jobs lost because of the deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico by about half, according to a study released Tuesday by the American Energy Alliance.

The study, conducted by Dr. Joseph Mason, endowed chair of banking at Louisiana State University, found that the moratorium has cost the Gulf region 19,536 jobs, not the 8,000 to 12,000 jobs estimated by the Department of Commerce report."

Thank goodness Obama is not beholden to any "special interests," like the environmental lobby. I think it's better to be safe (i.e. put 19,000 people out of work) than sorry (risk another oil spill).

Hats Off to the Washington Post for at Least Noticing...

President Obama picks Elizabeth Warren ... and thumbs his nose at the Senate: "President Obama picks Elizabeth Warren ... and thumbs his nose at the Senate"

Constitution, What Constitution?

Review & Outlook: Elizabeth III - WSJ.com: "We have here another end-run around Constitutional niceties so Team Obama can invest huge authority in an unelected official who is unable to withstand a public vetting. So a bureau inside an agency (the Fed) that it doesn't report to, with a budget not subject to Congressional control, now gets a leader not subject to Senate confirmation. If Dick Cheney had tried this, he'd have been accused of staging a coup."

Frankly, the amount of power vested in executive branch officials by recent abominations like TARP, Dudd-Frank, and ObamaCare is scary enough. But now, the Executive doesn't even deem it reasonable to subject these officials to confirmation by the legislative branch. How does that oath of office go, "I solemnly swear to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States..."?

And of course, the deafening silence of the MSM goes without saying...

Defend It, Don't Mend It

You can do a lot with 59 Senate votes, and that was certainly clear this week as Majority Leader Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats slammed the door on a bipartisan attempt to repeal ObamaCare's new 1099 reporting requirement on small business. 

The Democrats, unable to sell ObamaCare to their consituents, have resorted to saying:  "it's not perfect, but it's a start, and we will fix the problems with it over time."  Well, the issue of the 1099 reporting requirements shows how empty that promise is.  Virtually everyone, including the IRS' own Taxpayer Advocate,  agrees that the new 1099 reporting requirements are an abomination:

The office of the National Taxpayer Advocate within the IRS estimates that this provision will affect 40 million businesses. In July, they issued a harsh report on the consequences of the 1099 provision. They noted that small businesses in particular will be harmed by the new reporting requirements.

They state that the new burden on businesses would be disproportionate compared the actual revenue gained. For a relatively small increase in revenue, small businesses across the country would need to purchase new software and accounting services to handle the new paperwork.

Well, the opportunity to fix this clearly flawed provision of ObamaCare came up this week, with a bipartisan majority of senators supporting it.  But Harry Reid made sure it didn't pass.  If the Democrats can't mend this provision, they can't mend any provision of ObamaCare.   They intend to defend it, not mend it.

Crippling Our Economy for the Sake of Green Myths

 

John Stossel: Going "green" | Washington Examiner

Awesome Article on Fallacies of Green Thinking. Some Highlights:

Al Gore's group, Repower America, claims we can replace all our dirty energy with clean, carbon-free renewables. Gore says we can do it within 10 years...

"It's simply not possible," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The Myths of 'Green' Energy." "Nine out of 10 units of power that we consume are produced by hydrocarbons -- coal, oil and natural gas. Any transition away from those sources is going to be a decades-long, maybe even a century-long process. ... The world consumes 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons per day. We would have to find the energy equivalent of 23 Saudi Arabias."...

How about wind power?

"Wind does not replace oil. This is one of the great fallacies, and it's one that the wind energy business continues to promote," Bryce said....

The media rave about Denmark, which gets some power from wind. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says, "If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark. "Friedman doesn't fundamentally understand what he's talking about," Bryce said. Bryce's book shows that Denmark uses eight times more coal and 25 times more oil than wind.(emphasis added)

"One nuclear power plant in Texas covers about 19 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Manhattan. To produce the same amount of power from wind turbines would require an area the size of Rhode Island. This is energy sprawl." To produce the same amount of energy with ethanol, another "green" fuel, it would take 24 Rhode Islands to grow enough corn. (emphasis added)

Thank goodness we now have an administration that makes decisions based on science, not superstition or ideology!

An Environment Catastrophe In the Gulf But ANWAR is Safe

Monday, May 31, 2010

Oil spill culprits run deep | obama, oil, deep - Opinion - The Orange County Register

Here's my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Krauthammer implies there is a downside to banning offshore drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Alaskan wilderness. Doesn't he know that leftist policies have no downsides? The Left has repealed the laws of nature, they can:

- hobble the economy by cutting off energy resources and LOWER unemployment (thanks to all those windmill and solar panel jobs - ask Spain how that's working out for them)
- raise taxes to confiscatory levels on the most productive in our society without sapping their incentives to create wealth for the society
- give everyone in the nation access to free healthcare but not create massive shortages and rationing
- SPEND their way out of a debt crisis

Come on, Krauthammer, your thinking is so 19th century!

Don't Flush MY Money Down The Greek Toilet

This is from a free email newsletter by John Mauldin.  An incredible resource on economics and finance:

Should the US Bail Out European Banks?

The obvious answer to the above question, at least on this side of the Atlantic, is no. But that is the plan being foisted on US tax-payers by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF wants to create a $250 billion dollar bailout fund for Greece, Portugal, et al that the US will contribute roughly 20% to. This fund will loan money and that IMG debt will be subordinate (junior!) to regular Greek debt, so when Greece does default, and they will, the IMF is the last in line to get paid.
Where will the money go? It will buy mostly Greek rollover debt from European banks getting out of their Greek debt. It is a back door bailout for German and French banks. The US Senate voted 94-0 that the US should not fund any such debt if the Treasury cannot certify the probability of getting repayment. If the Obama administration allows this funding to go through, the hue and cry will be large. It is bad enough that we have to pay for Freddie and Fannie (already $400 billion and counting!). Not meaning to be churlish, but the French and Germans can bail out their own banks.

Don't let them tell you we are bailing out the Greeks - we are once again bailing out the big bankers (didn't Pres Obama refer to them as "Fat Cats?") but this time FRENCH and GERMAN FAT CATS.  And the sad fact is that this bailout has no chance of saving the Greeks - it's just money down the toilet.

Obama's Answer To Devastating Critiques of His Plan - Dismiss them as "Talking Points"

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/IBDEditorials.aspx?p=1#: "But [few in the mainstream media] notie Obama's conspicuous non-rebuttal to Rep. Paul Ryan.

It was the Wisconsin congressman who made the most pointed remarks about Obama's reform proposal. For example:

• 'This bill does not control costs (or) reduce deficits. Instead, (it) adds a new health care entitlement when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have.'

• 'The bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending. The true 10-year cost (is) $2.3 trillion.'

• 'The bill takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that's really reserved for Social Security. So either we're double-counting them or we don't intend on paying those Social Security benefits.'

• 'The bill takes $72 billion from the CLASS Act (long-term care insurance) benefit premiums and claims them as offsets.'

• 'The bill treats Medicare like a piggy bank, (raiding) half a trillion dollars not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program.'

• 'The chief actuary of Medicare (says) as much as 20% of Medicare providers will either go out of business or have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries.'

• 'Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage (Medicare through a private insurer) will lose the coverage that they now enjoy.'

• 'When you strip out the double-counting and ... gimmicks, the full 10-year cost of the bill has a $460 billion deficit. The second 10-year cost of this bill has a $1.4 trillion deficit.'

• 'The 'doc fix' (restoring cuts in Medicare reimbursements) costs $371 billion ... a price tag (that) made the score look bad. (So) that provision was taken out, and (put) in stand-alone legislation. But ignoring these costs does not remove them from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending does not reduce spending.'

• 'Are we bending the cost curve down or are we bending the cost curve up? If you look at your own chief actuary at Medicare, we're bending it up. He's claiming that we're going up $222 billion, adding more to the unsustainable fiscal situation we have.'

In response to all this, Obama basically talked up the benefits of Medicare Advantage. Call us sticklers, but we expected something a little more, uh, professorial."

You'd think in 7 hours, over two of which the President himself filibustered, he' have had a chance to refute one of these devastating points by Rep Ryan.

Myth - Government Run Healthcare Is An Answer to Healthcare Inflation

Obamacare’s Costly Flaw - Dr. David Gratzer - National Review Online: "Health care might be cheaper in socialized systems (in part, because of rationed care), but, even with their long waiting lists, costs are rising just as quickly there as here...

And how did the United States do with its lack of Obama-inspired Canada-Irish-German-style bureaucratic controls? Health inflation here was 3.4 percent last year, just over double the basic inflation rate. Tellingly, the worst cost increases were experienced by . . . government. Medicare costs were up 8.6 percent, and Medicaid, up 9.9 percent."

Government-run systems globally are doing barely better than the United States in controlling healthcare costs, even with government rationing. In the United States, the portion of our health care economy that seems least able to control inflation is the government, where costs are rising at a nearly 10% rate. Does this suggest to a rational (i.e. non-Leftist) mind that we should shift control for MORE of our healthcare system to the government? And remember, Medicare and Medicaid price controls are already effectively shifting a considerable amount of the burden for those programs onto private insurers. If not for that fact, the inflation numbers for government-run healthcare would look even worse.

Don't Mess With Texas

"DALLAS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Texas and several national industry groups on Tuesday filed separate petitions in federal court challenging the government's authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions."

OK, Other Than That, Is There Any Reason to Doubt Anthropogenic Global Warming?

Climategate U-turn: Astonishment as scientist at centre of global warming email row admits data not well organised | Mail Online: "The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

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."

I can't think of anything I need to add to this...

If Dems Have Their Way, We'll Be Bailing Out Utilities Next

"But addressing a Heritage Foundation seminar last May, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, Professor of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid explained what Feed In Tariffs and other wind subsidies did to Spain (as well as Portugal and Greece) got into debt:

'The feed-in tariff... would make (utility) companies go bankrupt eventually. So...the government guarantees...to give back the money in the future -- when (they) are not going to be in the office any more. Slowly the market does not want to have these securities that they are selling. Right now there is a debt related to these renewable energies that nobody knows how it is going to be paid -- of 16 Billion Euros.'


In early 2009 the Socialist government of Spain reduced alternative energy subsidies by 30%. Calzada continues:

'At that point the whole pyramid collapsed. They are firing thousands of people. BP closed down the two largest solar production plants in Europe. They are firing between 25,000 and 40,000 people....'

'What do we do with all this industry that we have been creating with subsidies that now is collapsing? The bubble is too big. We cannot continue pumping enough money. ...The President of the Renewable Industry in Spain (wrote a column arguing that) ...the only way is finding other countries that will give taxpayers' money away to our industry to take it and continue maintaining these jobs.'


That 'other country' is the United States of America.

Waxman-Markey seems dead, and Europe's southern periphery is bankrupt. But the wind-subsidy proposals being floated in Congress suggest that American political leaders have yet to understand that 'green power' means generating electricity by burning dollars."

A great article that explains in detail why wind power generation "capacity" is usually vastly overstated. Coal and natural gas plants must be standing by at all times to cover the ~75% of the time when wind turbines aren't generating power. Also, I didn't know this - California is littered with the hulks of derelict windmills from the 80's and 90's.

Obama Fiscal "Freeze" Is a Hoax

"President Obama sold the $862 billion in stimulus spending as 'targeted, timely and temporary.' Critics said that was highly unlikely, and now the 2011 Obama budget has proven them right.

To wit, the White House is proposing to convert spending sold as a one-time economic boost into a permanent feature of future government growth. As both the Tax Policy Center and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget have pointed out, supposedly temporary parts of the stimulus—expansions of the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit and Pell Grants for college students—have now found their way into the budget baseline.

True to the way Mr. Obama has honored his campaign pledge of transparency, this news was buried in a footnote on page 170 of the budget's Analytical Perspectives.

...

The Responsible Federal Budget folks estimate that this fiscal sleight-of-hand would cost about $266 billion over 10 years, which by itself almost cancels out the White House's spending freeze."

The President is not serious about even slowing the spending. He is driving us over the debt cliff. This budget is full of phoney gambits, like the fact that the freeze doesn't start till next year, that they freeze budgets at levels bloated by two years of unprecedented Obama discretionary spending growth, that they assume massive savings from some future pie in the sky health care plan. But this one alarmed me more than all the others - $266B that they tried to trick us into believing was part of the current budget baseline, when in fact it is just another $266B of additional Obama robo-spending. As the link notes, just this one trick cancels out any benefit of the President's puny stab at fiscal responsiblity.

President Me! The Musical

"President Me! The Musical"

Health Care Bipartisanship Comes To TOwn

"In fact, the only thing bipartisan about ObamaCare is the opposition."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Chicago Tribune (!) - Washington - First, Do No Harm

It's crucial to keep in mind that recessions are temporary things, and they end even without decisive measures by Congress. What the political class does in the coming weeks is not likely to have a big effect on total employment.

In the long run, however, sound policies that give private companies the freedom to do what they do best, without onerous taxes and regulations, can make a difference. In the current political climate, unfortunately, Washington is more likely to do the opposite."

Chicago paper's EDITORIAL PAGE gets it right. Hope the boys in the White House still read the hometown rag.

Steyn Nails the Obama Analysis of Scott Brown's Victory

So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is that he overestimated you dumb rubes' ability to appreciate what he's been doing for you. "That I do think is a mistake of mine," the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we're making a good rational decision here, then people will get it."

But you schlubs aren't that smart. You didn't get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start "speaking directly to the American people."

A couple of weeks old, but still uproariously funny, and painfully true.

Investors.com - GOP Idea Man Charts Course For Solvency

Investors.com - GOP Idea Man Charts Course For Solvency

"in January 2010, Ryan released an updated version of his 'Roadmap for America's Future,' a cure for the most completely predictable major problem that has ever afflicted America."

George Will lays out the GOP vision for dealing with the impending fiscal apocalypse. Contrast this with the "tax and spend our way out of our tax and spending problem" mindset at the center of the disastrous Obama budget.

Obama Takes Spending to Ludicrous Speed

Investors.com - If 'Unsustainable'Is New Normal, Collapse Is Closer Than We Think

"The other day, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, described current deficits as 'unsustainable.' So let's make them even more so.

The president tells us, with a straight face, that his grossly irresponsible profligate wastrel of a predecessor took the federal budget on an eight-year joyride, so the only way his sober, fiscally prudent successor can get things under control is to grab the throttle and crank it up to what Mel Brooks in 'Spaceballs' (which seems the appropriate comparison) called 'Ludicrous Speed.'"

Mark Steyn, of course.

Krauthammer on the Obama Foreign Policy

George Will on the Stimulus, er, "Jobs" Bill

"He called Wednesday for a third stimulus (the first was his predecessor's, in February 2008) although the S-word has been banished in favor of 'jobs bill.' It will inject into the economy money that government siphons from the economy, thereby somehow creating jobs. And you thought alchemy was strange."

KAHPOW!!!

Republicans Should Call for a Stimulus Reset

The Dems seem to like the image of the "Reset Button." Let's use it on them. Nearly 2/3 of the $800B+ Stimulus Bill passed last year has yet to be spent. Clearly, the Stimulus Bill hasn't worked. It hasn't produced any private sector jobs. It has mainly fended off state and local public employee layoffs that might have occurred due to state and local government budget crises.

Now the Dems want to double-down on stimulus. They are being careful to call it "jobs" vs "stimulus" because they know the word stimulus has become discredited. But why should net new funds be spent on a "jobs bill?" Let's hit the reset button on the stimulus bill, claw back the unspent funds (which if they haven't been spent by now can hardly be expected to be stimulating anything), and use them to fund real stimulus, i.e. meaningful and permanent tax cuts. For example, making the Bush tax cuts permanent and more.

The case that the unspent billions are not stimulative, and merely represent shameless and unprecedented pork barrel spending, is easily made. And in the current climate of voter sensitivity to runaway spending, such a case would be most compelling.

In one fell swoop, the conservatives could reverse hundreds of billions of wasteful spending and the associated debt hangover, and find a source to fund the tax cuts we need to truly get the economy back on its feet again.