Going Broke By Going Green ... Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Niger Innis

Going broke by going green
Obama Administration energy policies are impairing our jobs, revenues, economy and health
Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Niger Innis

President Obama’s healthcare program came under intense scrutiny in 2010. As we enter 2011, we need to open our eyes to what is really going on behind his green energy propaganda, as well. To some, it may not seem as desperate an issue as healthcare, but it will grow to become just as devastating to those citizens among us who are poor, because access to affordable energy affects everything we do.


The administration’s green policies are being thrust into a precarious American economy. Every “green scenario” shows raised energy costs across the board. Not only will the average person pay more for energy; many will lose their jobs as the forced transition to alternative power sources rocks the stability of current energy-producing and energy-using companies.


Skyrocketing energy prices and lost jobs also mean millions of otherwise healthy Americans are subjected to new health threats: higher air conditioning, heating, transportation and other energy bills. For those who cannot afford the increased costs, this can mean death from heat stroke and hypothermia; reduced budgets for healthy food, proper healthcare, home and car repairs, college, retirement, and charitable giving; and psychological depression that accompanies economic depression.


Land withdrawals and leasing and permitting delays don’t just lock up vast energy storehouses. They kill jobs, eliminate billions in government bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues – and force us to spend other billions to import more oil that we could produce right here at home.


The White House agenda represents a double power grab. It usurps state, local and private sector control over energy prices and generation, and gives it to unelected Washington bureaucrats. It also seizes our reliable, affordable energy, and replaces it with expensive, intermittent power.


While many Americans are duped into thinking renewable energy sources are the ticket to a clean world, they have not looked at the downside to these energy sources. Replacing fossil fuel power with coerced renewable energy means millions of acres will be covered with turbines and solar panels, and built with billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth metals. It means millions of acres of forest and crop land will be converted to farming for inefficient biofuels that also require vast inputs of water, pesticides, fertilizers and hydrocarbon fuels.


Moreover, wind and solar facilities work only 10-30 percent of the time, compared to 90-95 percent for coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Even worse, prolonged cold is almost invariably associated with high atmospheric pressure, and thus very little wind. On December 21, 2010 – one of the coldest days on record for Yorkshire, England (undoubtedly due to global warming) – the region’s coal, gas and nuclear power plants generated 53,000 megawatts of electricity; its wind turbines provided a measly 20 MW, or 0.04% of the total. The same high pressure, no wind scenario happens on the hottest summer days.


“Renewable” and “clean” energy projects received $30 billion in subsidies under the gargantuan stimulus bill. They got another $3 billion in the “lame duck” tax deal. Federal wind power subsidies are $6.44 per million BTUs – dozens of times what coal and natural gas receive, to generate 1/50 of the electricity that coal does. At current and foreseeable coal and gas prices, wind (and solar) simply cannot compete.


As to “green” jobs, Competitive Enterprise Institute energy analyst Chris Horner calculates that the stimulus bill’s subsidies for wind and solar mean taxpayers are billed $475,000 for each job created. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reports that property tax breaks for wind projects in her state cost nearly $1.6 million per job. “Green energy” is simply unsustainable, environmentally and economically.


President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson may be convinced that we face a manmade climate change crisis, and unacceptable health risks from power plant and refinery emissions. However, their “climate science” is little more than a self-proving theory: no matter what happens – hotter or colder, wetter or drier, more storms or fewer – it’s “proof” of global warming.


Thousands of scientists say there is yet no real evidence that we face such a crisis, and most coal-fired power plants and refineries have already reduced their harmful emissions to the point that only the most sensitive or health-impaired would be harmed.


The problem is not runaway global warming. It is a runaway and unaccountable federal bureaucracy.


Putting the green power grab into even sharper focus are these eye-opening comments from two “socially responsible” CEOs, who have lobbied the Congress, EPA and White House intensely for cap-tax-and-trade, far tougher emission policies and still more subsidies. We thank the Wall Street Journal for bringing them to our attention.


EPA’s regulations “increase operating costs for coal-fired generators and ultimately increase the price of energy” for families and companies that need electricity, observed Exelon CEO John Rowe. “The upside for Exelon is unmistakable. Exelon’s clean [mostly nuclear] generation will continue to grow in value in a relatively short time. We are of course positioning our portfolio to capture that value.”


“Even without legislation in Congress, EPA is marching forward in terms of regulating carbon dioxide,” noted Lewis Hay, CEO of NextEra Energy, America’s largest producer of wind and solar power. “That puts us in a very good position.”


The Journal summarized the situation succinctly in a recent editorial: “The EPA is abusing environmental law to achieve policy goals that the democratic process rejected, while also engineering a transfer of wealth from the 25 states in the Midwest and South that get more than 50 percent of their electricity from coal. The industry beneficiaries [of these destructive regulations] then pretend that this agenda is nothing more than a stroll around Walden Pond, when it’s really about lining their own pockets.”


It is time to face reality. Misnamed “green energy” policies severely undermine any opportunity America may have to rebuild her economy. Perpetuating current jobless rates would be just the tip of the iceberg, if we follow the path that EPA and the White House have laid in front of us.


Let your legislators know that you do not support the White House’s current green programs. We cannot afford to go broke trying to go green.

_________

Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and Niger Innis are co-chairs of the Affordable Power Alliance, a humanitarian coalition of civil rights, minority, small business, senior citizen and faith-based organizations that champion access to reliable, affordable energy: http://www.affordablepoweralliance.org/

Will The GOP Stop Obama?

Will The GOP Stop Obama?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

I sense another conservative revolt in the political atmosphere.

Conservatives have their backs up, their hackles are trembling with anticipation of what they feel will be the inevitable sell-out by the GOP in coming weeks and months. They are on tiptoe, leaning forward, every muscle taunt with tension, ready to explode in a firestorm of action that will ultimately create another political party in America and instantly plunge the GOP into third party status.

The republicans seem not to understand that this is their last shot at getting it right. Conservatives grudgingly gave them this chance because there was no other viable political party they felt they could entrust with the battle plan to unseat Obama and his socialist agenda for the United States.

It was a gamble. Conservatives knew that. But with no conservative political party on the field of battle, there was no choice.

There is very little faith within the conservative community that the GOP can get the job done. In fact, many of us are sure THEY WILL NOT GET THE JOB DONE because the GOP is not that different from the liberal-socialists of the Democratic Party.

Defeatist? Call it what you like. I call it as I see it.

Now, here, as I see it, is what we conservatives need -- our own political party.

The plain truth is -- conservatives can never hope to have a lasting effect upon politics in the United States until they/we have our own political party.

Conservatives cannot join with the liberal-socialists of the Democratic Party and we cannot trust the limp wrists in the Republican Party to speak for us. Therefore, we have no alternative but to pull out of the GOP, or any other political party affiliation we may have, and combine our strength, numbers, and our boundless energy in our own political party.

I know, I know. It has been tried before and failed. Remnants of past conservative political parties haunt all of us. Their failure, in my opinion, was the direct result of not having the absolutely, positively, most important component of a political party’s core. That is grassroots commitment.

Today’s Tea Party movement provides, what I think could very well be that core element for a third, and a successful, political party, a conservative political party.

As I have noted in earlier commentaries – I believe the Tea Party movement has “maxed-out” as a political movement. That is not meant as a “pit-down.” It is an observation, by a long-time watcher of politics in America – me.

There is only so much a political movement can do. Often that proves to be their success in pushing conservatives candidates victoriously across the finish line and into seats in Congress and state legislatures. And that is extremely important. Unfortunately, one the candidate is ensconced in his or her congressional or senatorial seat, they tend to fall in line behind the leaders of their respective caucus and simply ignore the political movement whose tireless efforts got them there in the first place. That is the fear expressed so often to me by my conservative friends and contacts about the newly elected conservatives in the US House of Representatives. Once they are in office, there is, in truth, little a political movement can do except threaten to withhold support for their next political campaign. However, by that time the national party apparatus can offer its support to that incumbent to swing their fealty to them instead of the political movement that got them there in the first place.

We conservatives NEED TO BE THAT POLITICAL PARTY to have -- and wield – that sort of power.

In two years the most important election (even more important that the election last November) will be upon us. To be frank, it will be a humongous, nearly impossible, task to repeat the success of the Tea Party in the last election.

In order for conservatives to succeed in replacing the socialist- liberal Obama with a conservative (NOT A RINO, and NOT A MODERATE) president, claim enough seats in the Senate for control of that house, and maintain control of the House, we absolutely NEED the power of political PARTY!

It is urgent that the leaders of the conservative movement in America pull together the resources needed to organize and initiate a conservative political party at the earliest possible moment.

A conservative party must be made a reality if conservatives are ever to escape treatment as the “red-headed step-child” we so often decry.

The foundation for such a party already exists. Conservatives, it seems, need to be convinced of its necessity, and the upper echelons of the movement apparently need the will to take the plunge.

For the sake of our republic, we cannot wait. Now is the time. Today is the day.

J. D. Longstreet

American Amazons -- To The Front!

American Amazons -- To The Front!
The Left’s Degradation Of American Women Continues
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Women assigned to frontline combat units is just another way to degrade women and prop-up the lie that women are equal to men -- in all things. Notice – I did say LIE! I admit it. I believe it! That is MY OPINION.

Now, I am the first to admit that men are not equal to women in a number of things. The first thing to come to mind is childbearing. We simply cannot do that. (Nor do we want to!)

I am convinced it is just another avenue the left has chosen to destroy what used to be the finest military the world has ever known. Today, the US military is quickly becoming second -- behind the Israeli Defense Force.

We can only pray that we will soon have a conservative Commander-in-Chief who will rebuild out military into a war-fighting force rather than the armed peace corps it has been transformed into by the liberal-socialists in the Congress and the White House.

If the current trend continues we will have the best dressed, best equipped, most inclusive military in the world, but -- one, which is unable to fight its way out of a wet paper bag.

With homosexuals able to serve openly in the US military, I expect the country will have no other recourse than to allow women to serve in frontline units! Men, sure as hell, will not want to willingly join a service where homosexuality, a life-style condemned by none other than God, Himself, is accepted.

Oh, did I forget to mention the slaughter of women in frontline combat units? Well, of course, if we only require our military to act as good will ambassadors, charged only with winning the hearts and minds of the enemy (Pardon me while I laugh at “winning the hearts and minds of the enemy!”), and not winning battles or winning wars, then women on the front lines will be OK. Bored to death -- but not shot to death.

On the other hand, should we actually find that we have no other choice but to fire real bullets at an enemy and take incoming fire from said enemy, our women soldiers will be slaughtered.

You may choose to believe Hollywood productions in which tiny women toss men about as if they were dresses piled up on a sales table during a half-price sale, or, you can believe the truth. The truth is: It ain’t possible. Oh, sure, a handful of women can toss an average size man about – but that would be a miniscule number by any stretch of the imagination.

Know this: When ordered to place women in frontline combat positions, the US military WILL DO IT! It is far to politicized to balk and appeal to reason with its civilian commanders. Women will be sacrificed in large numbers before anyone has the cahones to protest that the frontline is no place for a woman – period!

Frontline combat in high intensity warfare is no place for a woman. It is dirty, it is brutal, and it is horrifying. It tears the strongest men to pieces -- physically and mentally. The blood, guts, and gore, the stench of death is everywhere. Once exposed to this degradation a soldier’s mind is forever scared.

Have we Americans become so crass, so insensitive to truth, so ignorant of the laws of nature that we are willing to place who reproduce our species in mortal danger in an attempt to prove an improvable lie that women and men are the same physically, mentally, and emotionally? Societies wishing to survive do not do something this utterly stupid.

Look, the US military needs soldiers who will stare death in the face and still leap toward the enemy as they are being splattered with their friend’s blood and gore, with the dying screams of their buddies to their left and right tearing at their ears through the cacophony of battle and STILL charge forward toward the enemy ripping and tearing his life from him until the battle is won.

Women cannot do that. Most women are not physically capable of performing in such a manner. Most women are not capable of withstanding the dirt, filth, blood, gore, and the pure animalistic bloodlust to kill, to wrench another man’s life from his body as he stares, horrified, into their eyes.

A combat soldier must live the remainder of his life with the memories of what he has done to a fellow human being on the field of battle. Those nightmares live forever. Do we really want the future mothers of our children to suffer from the effects of those mind shattering flashbacks and memories that create a living hell for them when the sounds of the guns cease?

Here in the South, southern boys are taught from early childhood to protect our womenfolk. They are made aware that women are the bearers of our children, that women are chief “child-care” specialists for our children as they are reared. We are taught that women bring civility, gentility, and yes, even religious faith to our society. Our women are more precious than the most priceless of gems. They are the linchpin that holds our society together. Without them – we would be nothing.

A southern soldier’s first reaction in combat will be to make every effort to protect the women in his unit – no matter that those women are also armed and trained to defend themselves. It is nearly instinctual for that southern cavalier to give his life to protect them FIRST, even placing their safety before the success of his mission. The military will have to train that out of him.

That, then begs the question: what kind of man will he become when he returns to his home after having been trained that his mother, his wife, his sister, his daughter is to be treated no differently than his beer-drinking buddies.

The ramifications of women in frontline combat units will have far reaching effects upon American society. There will be an immediate clash with southern culture and, I expect, with the cultures of the other regions of the country as well.

American society is already a near mirror image of the sordid society of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. We have a couple of generations, at least, that have been deeply influenced by the leftists fecal matter pumped into our homes (through television) from the sewer that is the leftist entertainment business. Our movies are profane, pornographic, and titillating. Our mainline religious denominations have surrendered to the leftist ideals of something called “social justice,” which is nothing more than pure Marxism. In short we are disgusting as a civilized society. We have become an embarrassment to ourselves! And yet, we continue our steep slide into the abyss.

Further degradation of American women by placing them in frontline combat units is unacceptable and, by any standards of human decency, should be unthinkable.

J. D. Longstreet

The Great "Climate Change" 2011 Rip-Off ... Alan Caruba

The Great ‘Climate Change’ 2011 Taxpayer Rip-Off
By Alan Caruba

Unless I am seriously mistaken or misinformed, the rate of unemployment in the U.S. remains high and the foreclosure rate on homes is approaching the level of the Depression years. Two major bond rating companies, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s just warned that, if the federal government doesn’t stop spending and borrowing, America’s Triple-A highest ranking will be down-graded.

Along with all the other things in the federal budget wish list for 2011 are millions to be spent on climate change.

It helps to understand how obscene this is if you pause to consider (1) there is not one damn thing anyone can do about climate change, (2) climate change has been researched and studied since the late 1980s, enough to fill an entire wing of the Congressional Library to hold all the reports, and (3) the only climate change Americans really need to know about is what the weather will be tomorrow.

With a tip of the hat to Climatequotes.com and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) report on “research development, fiscal year 2011”, let me share just a few of the ways the Obama administration intends to squander your money.

The magic number is $2,481,000,000 and it represents specific amounts devoted to "climate change" research or other programs requested for the 2011 budgets by an alphabet soup of federal agencies that include the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, Department of Energy (DOE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA).

The figures cited all come from chapter 15 of the AAAS report and you can access it via Climatequotes.com

NOAA’s total budget request is for $5.6 billion, an increase of 17%. It intends to devote $437 million for climate research funding, an increase of $77 million over last year.

Over at the National Science Foundation (NSF), its budget of $7.4 billion (that’s a lot of science!) includes a request for $480 million for Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, $765.5 million for NSF’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program and $19 million for a joint program with DOE “to promote education in clean energy research. An additional $10 million would fund “Climate Change Education” in the nation’s schools. It’s not education, it’s indoctrination.

The Department of Energy which currently is projecting that permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be forthcoming until, maybe, June. DOE seems oblivious to the fact that the price of oil is set to hit $100 a barrel and higher costs will hit everyone driving anything using gasoline or diesel fuel. Fuel oil prices will rise and any business that uses oil or anything made with oil will be forced to raise its prices. In short, everything.

DOE, however, is in no hurry and, of course, the Obama administration is dead set against ANWR or off-shore exploration and extraction of the BILLIONS of barrels of crude oil projected to exist.

However, DOE is set to receive $28.4 billion in 2011 and that includes $4.6 billion for research and development in its Office of Science and $2.4 billion for energy research and development. Its Office of Biological and Environmental Research is devoted to atmospheric science, including “climate modeling”, which would be allocated $627 million. Last time I checked, oil, coal, and natural gas were not found in the “atmosphere”, but rather were extracted from deep within the Earth.

The entire global warming hoax was and is based on “climate modeling”, all of which consistently found that the Earth was warming at an alarming rate. Except that the Earth is NOT warming. It has been cooling since 1998. And DOE intends to waste $627 million on more modeling. It is worth noting that the most sophisticated models of the National Weather Bureau still cannot predict with any confidence what the weather—not the climate—will be next week.

The Environmental Protection Agency, gearing up to regulate all utilities that produce carbon dioxide and all other industries that do the same, has zero authorization to do so under the Clean Air Act. It is CO2 that is designated by the warmists as the chief culprit for the global warming that is NOT happening.
Despite this, EPA has requested $169 million “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, with $43.5 million in new funding for “regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” through the Clean Air Act. And it wants $22 million for its Global Change Research Program. It is time to shut down this rogue agency before it totally destroys the economy.

Even the Department of Agriculture wants $159 million for “climate change research”, an increase of 42% and $179 million for renewable energy, to “help farmers.” Farmers are heavy users of fossil fuels to operate the machinery needed to till, plant, and harvest crops. They need reliable energy, not "renewable" energy.

The Recovery Act of 2009 has managed to blow more than $600 million on climate change research and billions on greenhouse gas mitigation.

This is just the tip of the ‘climate change’ rip-off in terms of billions wasted or soon to be wasted on “research” that can only be deemed an obscene diversion of taxpayer money that will not benefit a single taxpayer, generate any new jobs except for those in government agencies, and further bankrupt a bankrupted nation about to have its credit rating reduced.

The “scientists”, “regulators”, and “administrators” feasting off this federal largess should be handed a shovel to earn a living on one of those “shovel ready” projects we were told about.

Beyond that, if Congress was really intent on cutting back on spending, they could begin by defunding or shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and all the other federal grifters with their snouts rooting around in the climate change trough.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

America: On The Brink

America: On The Brink
Freedom Of Speech In Peril
Civil Unrest, Civil Disobedience, Rioting In The Streets Of America To Follow?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The political left in America is playing with fire. As Americans of my generation can tell you our parents warned us many times that playing with fire would get you burned.

The left doesn’t know that. If they do -- they are choosing to ignore it – at their own peril.

So, allow me to lay it out for the left as simply and as plainly as I know how. I apologize for the condescending manner in which this may appear, but, it seems the only way to get through the thick wall between the unrealistic world in which the left lives and the REAL world, where the rest of us live, calls for measures normally reserved for use with pre-school children.

Here goes: As long as Americans have the freedom to speak their minds openly, there will be, at least, some civility. If American’s freedom to speak freely is taken, or restricted, all hell will break lose and that includes the strong possibility, and yes, even the probability of armed resistance.

As I said, the left is playing with fire. They cannot control it. If they do not back off, it will soon become a raging firestorm that will consume them in its ferocity.
Civil discourse is great. Even uncivil discourse is, at least, discourse. But when the discourse stops, the remaining avenue of expression is -- combat. It begins with civil disobedience.

THIS IS NOT NEW. AMERICA HAS BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE. It resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The pain suffered by our families still burns in the breasts of many Americans even today. It will never go away. The wounds are still open; the scars are still visible, the damage done can never be repaired. America was permanently wounded.

We Americas find ourselves, today, in the same intolerable situation as our forefathers found themselves on that early Spring morning 150 years ago this coming April.

America is split right down the middle in 2011. There are those who love freedom and vow to fight to the last drop of their blood to defend it. Then, there are those who feel that human beings are not capable of handling freedom and therefore it must be taken from them and they should be under the care of a more enlightened government.

THAT is where we stand in America today.

We all know it cannot continue thus.

The coming conflict between freedom lovers and the lovers of slavery is very real and it is just coming into view over the distant horizon.

Maybe we could avoid the coming conflict if Americans were to agree to split, oh, say, at the Mississippi River, and the Socialist Americans choose to live on one side, or the other, of the river and the Free Americans on the other.

Even then I would suggest a wall be built between the two. The wall is to stop fleeing leftists from crossing into the REAL America when their side of the continent is afflicted with a collapsing economy, or they are invaded and simply overrun by some tin pot dictator with a third rate army who simply shouts: “BOO!”

OK. So that idea is ridiculous. Right? Are you SURE about that? I ask only because we Americans are quickly nearing the point at which we can no longer live with each other. Shuffling the seating arrangements in the chamber of the US House of Representatives, during the President’s State of the Union address, is ample evidence that I am not alone in understanding how great the divide has become. Just know this: I am not buying into a cheap demonstration of “togetherness” by our leaders who still think you and I are dumber than fence posts! Not only is that ploy embarrassing – it is insulting!

The divide between left and right in America is now a yawning chasm. There was a time, not so long ago, when I actually thought the rift could be healed. I have since grown up and come to realize that it is not only impossible, but neither side wants the rift healed. Each side wants the other side to just go away.

The differences are, indeed, too great, too vast, too profound, too rooted in our souls, in our personalities, even in our religious faiths.

We must stop the charade. We must admit, openly, that we are two separate peoples. Then, we must do what is necessary to segregate ourselves, one from the other. We must try to do this without going to war, again, with each other. It would be far too costly to the Socialist Americans and to the Free Americans.

The United States exists in name only.

Come on, folks! We are anything but “united!” “Hatred” is the name of the river that divides us! Like the peoples of the Balkan states, we are ready to grasp the throat of our counterpart on either side

Yes, I know this is raw, and I don’t expect you will read it anywhere else. But, don’t you think it is about time we face the truth about ourselves?

There are two Americas -- and never more shall the twain meet. WE are no longer a single country, if we ever really were. We are, in fact, two countries – Socialist America and Free America. (I am happy to say that I am among the Free Americans.)

I have never been much for debating any issue. I educate myself on the issue and make a decision. Debating it will not make me change my mind. It isn’t in me.

Debating whether or not America can be healed is not up for debate with this scribe. Since 1865 Americans, both north and south, have placed band-aids over the gaping wounds that divide us and pretended they were healed. The simply truth is -- they have never healed. Not only that but those wounds have metastasized.

It was flat-out idiocy to ever believe those wounds would heal. You cannot have a nation disembowel itself and then believe that nation can go on as if nothing happened. That is stupid! But – that is what Americans tried to do.

The day of reckoning is nigh. Will the Socialist Americans and the Free Americans agree to separate relatively peacefully, or will the two sides go to war. It is a simple question and one that burns to the core of the problem.

Mind you, if we go to war, it will be a never ending war, much as the war in the Balkans never ends and much as the war between the so-called “Palestinians” and the Israelis will continue until Judgment Day.

I read somewhere that Americans immigrating to Australia is at its highest level in many years. Did they already see the handwriting on the wall and decide to get out before the really nasty stuff begins in America? I suspect some of them did.

The dye is cast. The socialism of Obama and the Democratic Party was the catalyst. Americans are gathered on the banks of the Rubicon. All it will take now is the slightest nudge from either side.

J. D. Longstreet