Bureaucrats Know Best

At the heart of progressive/liberal thought lies the belief that a big government is essential to guarantee true freedom. In the progressive's bible, The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly describes the ideal form of government as using "Hamiltonian means"(a powerful central government) to achieve "Jeffersonian ends"(individual liberty). Croly understood that such a centralized government required a modern equivalent of the guardians from Plato's Republic(a highly educated and cultured elite) to function properly. We know this unelected, yet powerful elite by the less prosiac term of bureaucrat.

The progressive triumvirate running our country, Obama/Pelosi/Reid understand all too well that while political majorities come and go, bureaucracies last forever. They also understand that because the bureaucracy is not subject to the will of the American people, it is not constrained from acting in ways that politicians who must face the voters are. In the first year plus of the Obama administration the bureaucracy, with a wink and a nod from the president, has been very busy enacting Croly's vision for America.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has decided that she must regulate CO2 as a pollutant and with it the entire American economy. The FDA has decided that its mission isn't solely to make sure the food and drugs sold in our country are safe, but to regulate how much salt Americans can consume per day. The FCC evidently growing bored waiting for a wardrobe malfunction on Dancing with the Stars to fine, has decided to regulate the internet. After being rebuffed by a US Court of Appeals in his first takeover bid, FCC Chairman Genachowski has simply decided to reclassify ISP's as telephone networks and regulate them that way. Both the health care law and the proposed financial reform legislation create new federal regulating authorities and yet more bureaucrats to oversee the health care and financial sectors of our economy.

The late William F. Buckley Jr. famously quipped: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.". Mr. Buckley's statement was not a condemnation of intellectuals, he simply understood human nature better than Mr. Croly. He realized that while one may posess a first rate mind, it doesn't mean they are free of idealogical blinders and their decisions will be negatively affected by this bias. A Democratic government that is representative of our collective and varied knowledge and skills is a better guarantor of individual liberty than one composed of a largely self-selected and perpetuating elite, however benignly they may rule. We must rein the bureaucrats in before they remake our Democracy into their ideal of good government, leaving the voters on the outside looking in.

The Bailout Bill

Now that Senator Shelby (R-AL) has decided that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) has gone as far as President Obama will let him go in negotiating the "financial reform" bill he has ended the talks. He released the following statement:

“I thank Leader McConnell and my Republican colleagues for providing an opportunity for my negotiations with Chairman Dodd to run their course. I believe we owed the American people our best effort to make whatever changes we could to this incredibly complex piece of legislation because it will have wide ranging implications for our economy. Chairman Dodd has assured me that he will address a number of concerns I have expressed with respect to ending bailouts. We have been unable, however, to make any meaningful progress on other important components of the legislation. It is now my belief that further negotiations will not produce additional results.

“This bill still contains a sprawling new consumer protection bureau that will find and force its way into facets of our economy that had nothing to do with the housing crisis. This massive new bureaucracy would have unchecked authority to regulate whatever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants. I am aware of no other arm of the federal government this powerful, yet so unaccountable. In my negotiations with Chairman Dodd, I have consistently supported strengthening consumer protections. I have also advocated for a sensible and meaningful role for safety and soundness regulators in this new agency’s operations. Unfortunately, despite my demonstrated willingness to propose compromise solutions, this sensible step has proved to be a bridge too far.”

You might want to know what all the haggling was about. According to the Heritage Foundation the bill would:

Creates a protected class of too big to fail firms. Section 113 of the bill establishes a "Financial Stability Oversight Council," charged with identifying firms that would "pose a threat to the financial security of the United States" if they encounter "material financial distress." While these firms would be subject to enhanced regulation, such a designation would also signal to the marketplace that these firms are too important to be allowed to fail and, perversely, allow them to take on undue risk.

Creates permanent bailout authority. Section 204 of the bill authorizes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to "make available … funds for the orderly liquidation of [a] covered financial institution." Although no funds could be provided to compensate a firm's shareholders, the firm's other creditors would be eligible for a cash bailout. The situation is much like the bailout AIG in 2008, in which the largest beneficiaries were not stockholders but rather other creditors, such as Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

Provides for seizure of private property without meaningful judicial review. The bill, in Section 203(b), authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to order the seizure of any financial firm that he finds is "in danger of default" and whose failure would have "serious adverse effects on financial stability." This determination would be virtually irreversible in court.

Establishes a $50 billion fund to pay for bailouts. Funding for bailouts is to come from a $50 billion "Orderly Resolution Fund" created within the U.S. Treasury in Section 210(n)(1), funded by taxes on financial firms. However, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the ultimate cost of bank taxes will fall on the customers, employees and investors of each firm.

Opens a "line of credit" to the Treasury for additional government funding. Under Section 210(n)(9), the FDIC is effectively granted a line of credit to the Treasury Department that is secured by the value of failing firms in its control, providing another taxpayer financial support.

Authorizes regulators to guarantee the debt of solvent banks. Bailout authority is not limited to debt of failing institutions. Under Section 1155, the FDIC is authorized to guarantee the debt of "solvent depository institutions" if regulators declare that a liquidity crisis ("event") exists.

Imposes one-size-fits-all reform in derivative markets. Derivatives are already increasingly being traded on clearinghouses thanks to private efforts coordinated by the New York Fed. But the Senate bill would require virtually all derivative contracts to be settled through a clearinghouse rather than directly between the parties. Applying such ill-designed blanket regulation would make financial derivatives more costly, more difficult to customize, and, consequently, less widely used—which would increase overall risk in the economy.

Evidently Chairman Dodd was unwilling to compromise on the "consumer protection" aka economy wide regulating agency. What the FDA is doing in trying to limit the amount of salt an American can consume in a day and the EPA deciding it has the power to regulate the amount of CO2 produced in America. Now we will have an agency that regulates all our financial transactions and limits our decisions. If this bill passes the Democrats will have the trifecta, they'll be able to control what we eat, that our job is green and how we spend our money, after we pay our taxes of course.

$7 a gallon gas?

Fuel Taxes Must Rise, Harvard Researchers Say
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.

To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving would simply have to increase, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The research also appears in the March edition of the journal Energy Policy.

The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for fiscal 2010.

In their study, the researchers devised several combinations of steps that United States policymakers might take in trying to address the heat-trapping emissions by the nation’s transportation sector, which consumes 70 percent of the oil used in the United States.

Most of their models assumed an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax starting at $30 a ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 a ton in 2030. In some cases researchers also factored in tax credits for electric and hybrid vehicles, taxes on fuel or both.

In the modeling, it turned out that issuing tax credits could backfire, while taxes on fuel proved beneficial.

“Tax credits don’t address how much people use their cars,” said Ross Morrow, one of the report’s authors. “In reverse, they can make people drive more.”

Dr. Morrow, formerly a fellow at the Belfer Center, is a professor of mechanical engineering and economics at Iowa State University

Researchers said that vehicle miles traveled will increase by more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2030 unless policymakers increase fuel taxes.

[From Andy R.: March 4, 7:58 a.m. | Update ] Rush Limbaugh weighed in on this post yesterday, as some may have surmised given the spike in comments, and the tenor of many. Some important points were raised by his audience, including a listener calling from his car in Nebraska to say how a gas tax would unfairly burden workers in sprawling states with no public transportation options. I’ll be posting more from the research team on some of this.

Since the research was done by a team from Harvard and published in the NY Times it is doubtful that the study was funded by those "evil oil companies" that are intent on pillaging the planet and wrecking the environment of "mother earth".

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson is intent on exercising her court appointed authority to regulate the economy:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Wednesday that an effort in Congress to stop the agency from regulating pollution linked to climate change would be an “enormous step backward for science” if successful.

Testifying before a Senate Appropriations panel, Lisa Jackson defended EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare by contributing to global warming.

That “endangerment” finding requires EPA to regulate emissions under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, Jackson said.

“The science behind climate change is settled,” Jackson said during testimony Wednesday morning before the Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on EPA’s 2011 budget request.

“Multiple lines of scientific inquiry” and the consensus of climate scientists hold that climate change is happening and humans are the cause, Jackson said.

Fom her statements it would appear that Lisa Jackson has been without internet access since last November. That "consensus" she speaks of is in tatters. Even the UN has ordered a independent review of the science after all the errors in the IPCC report were exposed. Errors, which incidently, all favored the theory that climate change was being driven by human activity. The fact is that satellite data shows that there has been no appreciable warming in the Earth's atmosphere since 1979. Humans have burned a lot of fossil fuels since that time, it's curious that all that CO2 hasn't had a measurably significant impact.

You can bet that Ms. Jackson's regulations will have an immediate impact on the living standards of every American. I think even the very wealthy will feel the pinch of $7 gas. After all, if gas is going up to $7 what will jetfuel cost? Those Gulfstreams have pretty big gas tanks.

They Call This Science?

The global warming alarmists have been caught lying again, unfortunately, if one wants to find out about "glaciergate" it is necessary to go to British papers. The American press is treating this story just like "climategate", as far as they are concerned there is nothing to see here. Unlike with climategate, the IPCC is implicated directly in this fraud. They shared the Nobel Peace Prize with noted alarmist Al Gore:

"The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action."

That political pressure has worked as planned. The EPA, relying on the fraudulent reports of the IPCC has decided it must regulate CO2. In regulating emissions of CO2 the EPA is essentially regulating the entire American economy. A bill is being introduced in Congress attempting to keep this economy killing regulation from taking effect:

"Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is leading the charge to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gasses, and today she got some support from across the aisle: Three Democratic senators signed onto Murkowski resolution to bar such regulation.
The Democrats, the Associated Press reports, are Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Murkowski’s resolution says a rule submitted by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gasses “shall have no force or effect.” '

Every Senator in New England needs to support this bill. In these tough economic times we shouldn't be forced to pay more money to heat our homes when the "science" the EPA decision was based on fraudulent data. In fact, they admit the 2035 date for the disappearance of glaciers was simply made up.

Also, from Britain:

"A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.” '

Unbelievable, the Brits are enduring the coldest, snowiest winter in decades, but it will be deemed the warmest to further the global warmists agenda. The model they are using wouldn't pass muster at a 7th grade science fair.

Soros, EPA Tagteam America

George Soros is about to make a mint off his investments in the Democratic party. The benefit of being worth billions is that he could afford to squander millions in his effort to defeat former President Bush in 04 and turn around and spend even more on democrats in 06 and 08. The Obama admistration just made those bets pay off. Big time!

Yesterday EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared CO2 a danger to public health that will henceforth be regulated by the Federal government. This decision gives the Federal government complete control over our economy. Ian Murray and Marlo Lewis explain the probable scope of the decision:

"Large apartment buildings and hospitals would need EPA operating permits to continue running their furnaces. Lawnmowers and aircraft alike would be regulated for fuel economy like automobiles. And as the EPA orders a retooling or even closure of the nation's power plants, electricity prices would skyrocket, and blackouts would become common."

and

"It will trigger a regulatory avalanche that vastly expand the number of activities that require EPA permitting -- fast-food franchises, apartment buildings and hospitals will soon all have to face the same crushing federal bureaucracy that has bedeviled energy firms for years."

When Europe went down this road they tried to ban propane grills. Having a backyard barbecue makes one an eco-criminal to the average EU bureaucrat. Seattle WA is trying to ban campfires on the beach because they claim it contributes to global warming. The statists meeting in Copenhagen won't be happy until they can regulate i.e. control everything we do. The Obama administration chose to ignore the Climategate scandal and its implications because they see the finish line before them. An honest person/administration would have admitted that the leaked e-mails cast the "consensus" of man made global warming into doubt and would not have labled CO2 a health hazard.

The Lisa Jackson's of the world can't accept that climate change happens regularly. More importantly, they can't accept that humans have very little impact on whether the planet warms or grows colder. Admitting this fact would undermine their ability to control our behavior. The American people would never submit to the massive tax increases and energy bills living under this regime would entail if they were told it would have no benefit to the planet and their ability to live on it. Until some archaeologist digs up a fleet of fossil fuel burning vehicles that early man drove across the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska causing the glaciers to melt and the flooding of the Bering Sea; I'll continue to believe that solar cycles, not man are the main cause behind climate change.

How did Ms. Jackson's decision benefit Mr. Soros? Simple.He's betting big on Brazil, in particular Petrobas. "Among investors bullish on Petrobras is George Soros, who last year made the oil company the largest single holding in his investment fund, according to Bloomberg." While the folks that he helped put in office are putting the American economy in a straight jacket he's putting his money into country that doesn't choose to commit economic suicide. For him it's the best of both worlds. He can live in a country following his progressive dream and still make a fortune in a country that won't sacrifice economic growth to appease the warmists at the UN.

Obama Declares Ostrich To Be New National Symbol

President Obama, uncomfortable with the martial image portrayed by the bald eagle has found a new bird to embody the new, improved America, the ostrich. Following her leader, Lisa Jackson of the EPA has embraced the new symbol with gusto. The ostrich's claim to fame is that it chooses to bury its head in the sand rather than face the ugly truth. That's exactly what the EPA has done with Climategate.

From the Wall Street Journal:

By IAN TALLEY
WASHINGTON--"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.

Such an "endangerment" decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

While environmentalists celebrate EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it has caused many large emitters to cringe at the potential costs of compliance.

According to a preliminary endangerment finding published in April, EPA scientists fear that man-made carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are contributing to a warming of the global climate. Senior EPA officials said in November the agency would likely make a final decision in December around the time of the summit."

The Obama administration won't let a little data fudging at CRU stop its drive to regulate the American economy into submission. Much of the world, heck even the UN understands that the leaked e-mails undercut the case for making drastic, painful reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide. Instead of abandoning this policy, or at the very least questioning whether increasing the costs of energy production and consumption will provide any benefit at all, the Obama administration is going full steam ahead. In fact, President Obama is still planning to go to Copenhagen to negotiate higher taxes for Americans when we are still in recession, paying winter heating bills and shopping for Christmas gifts. Ignoring the leaked e-mails, with phrases like "hide the decline" and "it's a tragedy we can't explain the cooling" is borderline criminal.

The refusal of the president and his administration to see that these documents have changed the game provides republicans with a wonderful opportunity. The American public gives democrats credit for their supposed dedication to science. By ignoring the fact that the global warming alarmists were cooking the books, democrats and the president are destroying that image. Ask the average American how long they would keep a financial advisor who told them to invest everything they have with Bernie Madoff after his ponzi scheme had been revealed. They would fire that person in a heartbeat. What the president is doing by ignoring the cooked warming data is no different than looking at Madoff's cooked returns and saying "it's easy money, only a fool wouldn't invest". Well, as the saying goes a fool and his money are soon parted. If democrats keep insisting that the American people be saddled with massive taxes to "save the planet" they'll soon be parted from their majorities in Congress.