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.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
A winning message
Conservatives worry that Carly Fiorina is another liberal republican in the mold of the ladies from Maine, Sens. Collins and Snowe. If nothing else, she wil be solid on health care. One can hope that if she realizes a government takeover in one sector of the economy imperils freedom, she can be convinced when it comes to energy etc. She will also be a huge improvement over Barbara Boxer. Her message will resonate with the general public, particularly women.
Friday, December 4, 2009
To Create Jobs, First Do No Harm
The unemployment numbers for November were just released and Wall Street is chearing that only 11,000 Americans lost their jobs. The news media will no doubt be trumpeting the success of President Obama's job summit. I can just see a gleeful Brian Williams informing America that "only one day after his job summit President Obama has turned the economy around". The sad truth is that 10% unemployment is nothing to crow about. Even more troubling, is that the president doesn't understand that his policies are to blame. In the snippet of the summit aired on the Nightly News an unidentified businessman told the president that companies weren't hiring because of the pending cap and trade and health care legislation. The president nodded and then told this gentleman, who presumably knows a thing or two about creating jobs, that when passed, the legislation will help, not hurt the economy.
For a cool aid free assesment, here's the Heritage Foundation's take:
"Executives like Dan DiMicco, CEO of steelmaker Nucor Corp, who told the Wall Street Journal: “Companies large and small are saying, ‘I am not going to do anything until these things — health care, climate legislation — go away or are resolved.’” Or Porta-King CEO Steve Schulte who tells USA Today his company is not investing because “proposals in Congress to tackle climate change and overhaul health care would raise costs.” These businessmen have every right to be worried. As we’ve detailed before, the Senate Health Bill currently being debated in the Senate would be a disaster for the U.S. economy."
Kills Jobs: All told, the Reid Bill raises taxes by $370.2 billion over the next ten years with many of those taxes starting to be collected this year with unemployment at 10.2% and rising. Worse, the bill includes a job killing employer mandate which taxes companies for hiring people. Specifically, companies with more than 50 employees that do not offer a health plan approved by federal bureaucrats will be forced to pay a $750 per employee job tax.
Hurts Small Businesses: The Reid Bill acknowledges it is terrible public policy for small businesses and tries to address this problem by including a “small business tax credit” to minimize the impact of the job killing employer mandates and regulation-caused increases in private health insurance premiums. But the tax credit only lasts two years and largely excludes small business owners, small businesses with high-average payrolls, and firms with 25 or more workers. Essentially, after all exclusions, the only eligible firms are those firms with 10 or fewer workers as well as those with low-income workers—the least likely to offer coverage even with a significant price reduction.
Hurts Poor: The Reid Bill’s employer mandate is especially punitive on poor families. Firms that hire an employee from a low-income family who qualify for an insurance subsidy are charged a tax penalty of $3,000. So a company could save $3,000 by hiring, say, someone with a working spouse or a teenager with working parents, rather than a single mother with three children. Worse, companies only have to pay $750 an employee instead of $3,000 if one quarter of employees are low-income. This creates a situation where, if a company has a lot of low-income workers, they can actually save money by dropping their health plan and just dumping all their employees into the federal exchange at their own expense."
President Obama refuses to see that his plans for ever bigger government are not good for the American economy. Even the revelations of Climategate haven't changed his mind on the need to reduce carbon emissions via painful tax increases. He only sees the green jobs potentially created covering the states of Arizona with solar panels and West Virginia with windmills.
The American economy will eventually recover and begin to actually add jobs instead of just losing them at a slower pace. The fewer shackles the government places on businesses and consumers, the faster the economy will recover and more jobs will be created.
For a cool aid free assesment, here's the Heritage Foundation's take:
"Executives like Dan DiMicco, CEO of steelmaker Nucor Corp, who told the Wall Street Journal: “Companies large and small are saying, ‘I am not going to do anything until these things — health care, climate legislation — go away or are resolved.’” Or Porta-King CEO Steve Schulte who tells USA Today his company is not investing because “proposals in Congress to tackle climate change and overhaul health care would raise costs.” These businessmen have every right to be worried. As we’ve detailed before, the Senate Health Bill currently being debated in the Senate would be a disaster for the U.S. economy."
Kills Jobs: All told, the Reid Bill raises taxes by $370.2 billion over the next ten years with many of those taxes starting to be collected this year with unemployment at 10.2% and rising. Worse, the bill includes a job killing employer mandate which taxes companies for hiring people. Specifically, companies with more than 50 employees that do not offer a health plan approved by federal bureaucrats will be forced to pay a $750 per employee job tax.
Hurts Small Businesses: The Reid Bill acknowledges it is terrible public policy for small businesses and tries to address this problem by including a “small business tax credit” to minimize the impact of the job killing employer mandates and regulation-caused increases in private health insurance premiums. But the tax credit only lasts two years and largely excludes small business owners, small businesses with high-average payrolls, and firms with 25 or more workers. Essentially, after all exclusions, the only eligible firms are those firms with 10 or fewer workers as well as those with low-income workers—the least likely to offer coverage even with a significant price reduction.
Hurts Poor: The Reid Bill’s employer mandate is especially punitive on poor families. Firms that hire an employee from a low-income family who qualify for an insurance subsidy are charged a tax penalty of $3,000. So a company could save $3,000 by hiring, say, someone with a working spouse or a teenager with working parents, rather than a single mother with three children. Worse, companies only have to pay $750 an employee instead of $3,000 if one quarter of employees are low-income. This creates a situation where, if a company has a lot of low-income workers, they can actually save money by dropping their health plan and just dumping all their employees into the federal exchange at their own expense."
President Obama refuses to see that his plans for ever bigger government are not good for the American economy. Even the revelations of Climategate haven't changed his mind on the need to reduce carbon emissions via painful tax increases. He only sees the green jobs potentially created covering the states of Arizona with solar panels and West Virginia with windmills.
The American economy will eventually recover and begin to actually add jobs instead of just losing them at a slower pace. The fewer shackles the government places on businesses and consumers, the faster the economy will recover and more jobs will be created.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Chris Matthews jumps the shark
The cadets at West Point do not represent an " enemy camp". I have no doubt they will do their best, some will give their lives to defend our nation. Just because they didn't seem to have a collective tingle up their legs at the President's oratory doesn't mean they will not follow the orders of their Commander and Chief. To suggest otherwise is reprehensible. Chris Matthews owes them an apology. If you agree I urge you to e-mail hardball@msnbc.com .
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Letter from a Mississippi doctor
This letter is making the rounds, but I thought I would post it here as well.
Dear Sirs:
"During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.
And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture - a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Don't you agree?
STARNER JONES, MD Jackson , MS
This tracks with a conversation I had over Thanksgiving. A woman approaching retirement age stated that when she was younger, she made buying health care coverage a priority over going out all the time. She asked me why she should have to pay to cover people that make the opposite decision than she did. I had no answer for her. Before they institute nationalized health care the politicians better be able to give her one.
Dear Sirs:
"During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.
And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture - a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Don't you agree?
STARNER JONES, MD Jackson , MS
This tracks with a conversation I had over Thanksgiving. A woman approaching retirement age stated that when she was younger, she made buying health care coverage a priority over going out all the time. She asked me why she should have to pay to cover people that make the opposite decision than she did. I had no answer for her. Before they institute nationalized health care the politicians better be able to give her one.
Platform for Prosperity
The Colorado GOP gets it. They are offering a platform, like Newt did in 94 with the Contract for America. Here are the policy positions that they are asking all Republican candidates to endorse.
Key Points from the Colorado GOP's 'Platform for Prosperity'
*Oppose efforts to increase taxes and fees unless they're put to a popular vote
*Restore a cap on state spending
*Invest in roads, bridges, higher education and workforce training
*Support a law to make health insurance portable from job to job
*Allow patients to purchase health insurance across state lines
*Promote responsible development of Colorado's energy resources
*Expand charter schools
*Require employers to verify that their workers are in the U.S. legally
*Prohibit state grants for women's health care to any organization that also provides abortions
*Oppose future stimulus bills
2010 has the potential to be a great year for Republicans. The Democrats will continue to enjoy a huge financial advantage however, which may limit their losses. Having a platform to run on can aid underfunded challengers that lack the ability to pay for mailings or advertising defeat entrenched Democrats. It's possible, the first time voters may see the name of the Republican candidate is when they are in the voting booth, but they will know what that Republican stands for.
Key Points from the Colorado GOP's 'Platform for Prosperity'
*Oppose efforts to increase taxes and fees unless they're put to a popular vote
*Restore a cap on state spending
*Invest in roads, bridges, higher education and workforce training
*Support a law to make health insurance portable from job to job
*Allow patients to purchase health insurance across state lines
*Promote responsible development of Colorado's energy resources
*Expand charter schools
*Require employers to verify that their workers are in the U.S. legally
*Prohibit state grants for women's health care to any organization that also provides abortions
*Oppose future stimulus bills
2010 has the potential to be a great year for Republicans. The Democrats will continue to enjoy a huge financial advantage however, which may limit their losses. Having a platform to run on can aid underfunded challengers that lack the ability to pay for mailings or advertising defeat entrenched Democrats. It's possible, the first time voters may see the name of the Republican candidate is when they are in the voting booth, but they will know what that Republican stands for.
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