The EPA Wrecking Ball ... J. D. Longstreet

The EPA Wrecking Ball

By Alan Caruba

The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.

“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”

This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.

Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.

Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.

This is evil writ large.

Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about "renewable" energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.

How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?

How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?

How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?

How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?

The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.

Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!

What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.

The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.

Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”

In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”

If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”

NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.

We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan.

© Alan Caruba, 2012
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Oil, Gas and Lies ... Alan Caruba

Oil, Gas and Lies

By Alan Caruba

Why some people are having difficulty identifying the cause of the present high cost of gasoline at the pump as the direct result of the last three years of Barack Obama’s energy policies is one of those great mysteries.

By “energy policies” I mean his administration’s opposition to access to the billions of barrels of oil on federal lands.

I mean his Energy Secretary’s earlier opinion that high gas prices are good for the economy, abandoned as they climb to and passed $4.

I mean Obama’s lies about the recent increase in oil production when he knows it is occurring on private and state owned land, not federal land.

I mean his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.

I mean the waste of billions of taxpayer’s dollars on “renewable energy” firms, many of which have already failed, along with the sales of the Chevy Volt, whose production has been discontinued.

I mean two amendments to the Senate transportation bill that would have created new taxpayer-funded subsidies for natural gas vehicles, extended the production tax credit to underwrite wind energy, and revived the Treasury grant program that gives taxpayer money for the installation of solar panels and other renewable technologies.

I mean the impact his policies are having on everyone’s wallet and its drag on the economy as his policies drive up the cost of gasoline and everything dependent on transporting goods anywhere…and that is everything!

Just how dumb do you have to be not to grasp that when Obama took office on January 20, 2009, oil was selling at $38.74 a barrel and the average retail price of gasoline was around $1.90 a gallon. Today, oil is trading at more than $108 a barrel and gasoline is closing in on $4.00 a gallon. As they say, do the math.

In early March, speaking in Nashua, New Hampshire, Barack Obama said, “Let’s put every single member of Congress on record. You can stand with oil companies or you can stand up for the American people.” This consummate liar is using the same pathetic message and damage done by Jimmy Carter---who got voted out of office after a single term as president.

In his 2005 book, “Why Your Gasoline Prices are High”, Seldon B. Graham, Jr, a graduate of West Point, used his fifty years of experience in the oil industry described what happened when, in 1981, Congress passed a windfall profits tax. “It was a death notice for USA oil. Many U.S. oil and gas companies went bankrupt…and those which survived were forced to go overseas to explore and drill in foreign countries.”

At the very time when the Middle East is in turmoil, the Democrats want to repeat the same blunder of 1981.

In a nation that sits atop billions of barrels of untapped oil in federal lands such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, domestic oil reserves in the lower 48 states, the Gulf of Mexico, and the vast untapped reserves off the nation’s continental coasts, the Obama administration has restricted oil companies from exploring and drilling in areas where new reserves of oil and gas are known to exist, shortened lease terms, and has slowed down permit approvals.

That is the equivalent of declaring an energy war on the nation. Moreover, in a virtual secret, the Obama State Department is involved in a deal to turn over seven Alaskan islands to Russia. One of them is the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined and who knows how much oil lies beneath them?

Oil prices are set by the market principles of supply and demand. By aggressively thwarting access to America’s abundant oil reserves, the Obama administration is deliberately keeping prices high and forcing them higher.

As Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a press conference on March 8, “When crude prices are high, the price at the pump is also high. With a 42-gallon barrel of crude oil topping $106, refiners pay more than $2.50 for each gallon of crude they must purchase. Add in the almost 50 cents per gallon on average in gasoline taxes and you have over $3.00 of what consumers are now paying at the pump.”

Simply by announcing his intent to open new areas for exploration and production, President Obama could signal the market and put downward pressure on today’s and tomorrow’s gasoline prices. This is exactly what happened when President Bush lifted the moratorium on the East and West Outer Continental Shelf back in July 2008. It resulted in a 12% decline in the price per barrel.

Why are we paying more? Why are U.S. dollars going to oil-producing nations that do not like America? Why are we competing for oil with China, India and other emerging economies when we have enough oil, gas, and coal to be energy independent for the next century or longer?

The reason is the policies of the present and past administrations going back to the days of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. The answer given by the White House is greedy oil companies and Wall Street “speculators.” It is a lie.

The worst of it, as a recent Wall Street Journal article explained, “Oil can’t go much higher without derailing the economy…at some point, oil prices overwhelm everyone,” wrote Liam Denning. Keeping them artificially high can have no other purpose than to continue the destruction of the nation and the President knows it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Greener Than Thou ... Alan Caruba

Greener Than Thou

By Alan Caruba

The most obnoxious and hypocritical people are those who are always preaching a “greener” way of life, insisting that anything that constitutes our modern lifestyles is destroying the Earth and depleting its natural resources. Never mind that we depend upon oil, natural gas, coal, and a host of minerals and chemicals for that lifestyle, the absence of which caused people in earlier eras to live shorter, far more unpleasant lives.

Oil, other than ust an energy source is also a component in countless products, starting with plastic, and is so vital to modern life that its value goes far beyond just being able to drive our cars to visit grandma.

Greener than thou has replaced holier than thou ever since Rachel Carson penned her pernicious and seriously flawed attack on DDT and other chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides in 1962. The result has been the needless deaths of millions from malaria in Africa and subtropical nations after the U.S. banned DDT and other nations followed suit. If there was a comparable pesticide available today, the U.S. would not be suffering a biblical plague of bed bugs.

A bone fide environmentalist, David Owen, has written a book that quite literally filets environmentalism, “The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse.” ($14.00, Riverhead Press, softcover).

Owen, who has authored 14 previous books, examines the way environmentalism frequently makes no sense at all. This is not to be confused with conservation, the earlier movement that led to the preservation of some of the nation’s natural wonders.

To live an environmentally acceptable way of life is the same as striving to be a saint, avoiding “sin” in order to secure a place in heaven. It is not only virtually impossible, but to be human is to consume what Nature provides. If you think about, all of Earth's creatures are consumers, depending on where they are on the food chain.

For example, when environmentalists convinced Congress to reduce the amount of water in toilet tanks, the only thing they accomplished was to require that the newer, smaller tanks had be flushed twice to rid he toilet of feces and urine, i.e., more use of water, not less. The EPA has just issued a ruling they claim is necessary to reduce mercury emissions despite the fact that your average volcanic eruption puts more into the atmosphere than any human imposed restrictions could ever achieve. Congress, however, passed a law banning 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, thus requiring people to purchase mercury-filled ones that, if broken, require a hazmat team to clean up after.

Environmentalism is essentially irrational.

It believes that humans actually have anything to do with “saving the Earth” when the natural forces of the Earth are so far beyond any “control” that it routinely reminds us of this fact. We have zero impact on the climate and, as for carbon dioxide, the villain of all “global warming” claims, humans exhale about six pounds of it every day. And there are seven billion of us. Even so, it constitutes barely 0.033 percent of the atmosphere.

Owen begins by posing the question, “How do we truly begin to think about less—less fossil fuel, less carbon, less water, less waste, less habitat destruction, less population stress—when our sense of economic, cultural, and personal well-being is based on more?”

The real question at the heart of all environmentalism is what do we do when there are seven billion humans using the resources of the Earth and the real answer for environmentalists is how do we reduce the Earth’s population and how do they grow rich in the process? That is what lies at the heart of all the “solutions” put forth by the United Nations environmental program; an enemy of the human race if there ever was one.

What environmentalists want is “a vast, unprecedented transformation of human behavior in our relationship with energy and consumption.” The next time you hear anyone call for a “transformation” know also that they are a charlatan seeking control over your life.

The environmental assumption is that the Earth is running out of the sources of energy and that consumption is bad. Both are equally wrong because the Earth is not running out of the sources of energy and consumption is what humans and all other species on Earth do every day.

Owen believes that humans are “the world’s main emitter of manmade greenhouse gases” and this is utterly false. The so-called greenhouse gases are the ones in the atmosphere that not only keep the Sun from turning the Earth into a desiccated version of Mars or the Moon, but in the case of carbon dioxide, it is responsible for every single element of vegetation upon which all life depends.

Owen and many environmentalists would prefer that all of humanity live packed side-by-side in crowded cities, using mass transit or bicycling to work to save the Earth, but anyone who gives two thoughts to the amount of energy consumed to maintain a city knows this too is yet another idiotic environmental conceit.

Indeed, Owen notes that “There are many downsides to density, including the fact that squeezing people and their destinations close together makes diseases, wars, and natural disasters more efficient, too.”

That, says Owen, is a conundrum. Indeed, his book is filled with environmental conundrums that he tries to resolve while overtly and inadvertently exposing the idiocy of environmentalism.

Simply put, farmers are the world’s natural environmentalists, relying on the weather—which they cannot control—and the stewardship of their land to feed themselves and others. They must, however, have a means to move their crops to places where other humans can acquire them and that requires a massive system of transportation which, in turn, requires the affordable use of energy.

Environmentalism’s goals, clean air and water, are laudable, but a massive governmental bureaucracy to require that people use less energy and consume less is not.

Time and time again we see examples of environmentalism that only manage to kill people, whether it is the banning of beneficial chemicals or the use of the least efficient forms of electrical power, wind and solar energy.

The least reported story out of Europe these days is the extreme cold that is literally killing people because it puts the lie to all the environmental “solutions” advanced since the 1960s. Environmentalism has been decried as a religion and, for those who want to deny a greater power, Nature or God, it remains their holy grail.

© Alan Caruba, 2012.
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit. 

Iraq’s Five-Day Democracy

Iraq’s Five-Day Democracy

Instant Civil War

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Surprise!  Surprise!  A free and democratic Iraq didn’t make it a week.  Who would have thunk it?  Actually, a LOT of people warned that the moment American troops left Iraqi soil, the so-called sectarian war would begin once again.  The moment Obama announced the date for US troops to be out of Iraq, the Iraqi Civil War was assured.  THAT was a DUMB move on the part of Obama.  It was just another in his foreign policy blunders for which America will be paying for generations.

Ok.  So we are clear:  I endorsed America’s invasion of Iraq -- to topple Saddam Hussein.  I thought it was necessary to preserve the free flow of oil out of the region.  There was no doubt that had Saddam been left unchecked he would have rolled over, and through, Kuwait and taken Saudi Arabia -- and he would have had his hands around the world’s throat.  That could not be allowed.  What I did not endorse was the ensuing policy of “nation building” implemented by the Bush Administration and continued by the Obama Administration.

A couple of things:  I am from the old school.  I believe in defeating an enemy – totally -- and then, either taking the nation as a prize of war, or walking away -- leaving the former opposition sitting atop a pile of rubble for as far as the eye can see.

I do not like nation-building … period.   The price of war with the US should be a landscape that closely resembles a moonscape.  The cost of rebuilding should be paid in the blood, sweat, and tears of the defeated nation.

Another lesson the US has yet to learn, it seems, is that democracy is not for some people.  Democracy does not, and will not, work in tribal nations.  Sorry, but them’s the facts.

Look.  Fighting a war in the Middle East, for any reason other than punitive, will suck a country, no matter its wealth, dry.  That region of the globe is destined for turmoil until the earth, as we know it, is no more.  But – the utter stupidity of our own government is such that we have no choice but to try and secure the source of our energy, oil, from those countries in the Middle East that hate our very shadow.

The US has enough oil for centuries into the future beneath our own soil and beneath our own territorial offshore waters.  But the US government has bought into the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind, “Global Warming,” and, as a result, the government will not allow us to use our own natural resources, the very resources that made this nation great in the first place. 

So what, if we have to sacrifice the lives of a few thousand American servicemen and servicewomen every few years in “oil wars?”  What’s the loss of life as opposed to the billions to be made in so-called green energy, in so-called renewable energy, etc?  Not to mention the increase in power over the people that accrues to the government through the passage and enforcement of “green laws and regulations.”  Need I remind you of the hulking EPA?

Iraq is a lost cause -- Afghanistan, too. Nation building is a total waste of American blood and money.  Does anyone remember that we went into Afghanistan to smash Al Qaida and capture, or kill, Bin Laudin?  Well, Bin Laudin is dead and Al Qaida ran across the border into a nation friendly to them, Pakistan.

If there was a way to wall off the Middle East from the rest of the world so they could continue to happily fight their tribal and religious wars amongst themselves, and the adult nations of the world could get on with civilization, then I’d endorse it in a second.  The US could get along just fine without them, especially when you consider their major exports are dope, oil, and terrorism.

The plain truth is, however, we can’t even shun them because we are inextricably tied to them by our own government’s refusal to allow us to get at our own source of oil. 

So. The question now is – how long until Iran steps in and asserts its authority over Iraq?   My guess would be sooner rather than later.  With the Iraqi government, such as it is, already on the verge of collapse, just days after America withdraws, and with Iraq’s President Nouri al-Maliki’s ties to Iran, one must wonder how soon he will turn to Iran and ask for military support.  Iran, already seeking hegemony in the region, will happily roll tanks and troops across their shared border and – take over the country.  And believe me, Iran is not interested in “nation-building.”

J. D. Longstreet

Killing Energy, Killing Jobs, Killing America ... Alan Caruba

Killing Energy, Killing Jobs, Killing America

By Alan Caruba

America has been under attack since Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009. The primary target has been the nation’s ability to generate energy for electricity and transportation, without which this nation will slide into Third World status and economic decline.

This appears to be the goal of this administration from the President to his Secretaries of Energy and Interior, to his Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no other rational explanation for what they are doing.

We are days away from the latest Environmental Protection Agency assault in the form of the “MACT” rule allegedly to reduce mercury and other emissions that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission says will reduce electricity generation in America by about 81 gigawatts in the years ahead. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said “this could compromise the reliability of the electric system if as much as 8% of generating capacity is subtracted from the grid.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that eleven Governors have written the EPA to ask that it delay the final rule in November. Twenty-five state Attorneys Generals have filed suit “to lift a legal document known as a consent decree that the EPA is using as a fig leaf for its political goals.”

As but one example, in Illinois, Ameron announced the planned shutdown of its Meredosia and Hutsonville energy centers, The Meredosia center generates 369 megawatts. The Hutsonville center has a generating capacity of 151 megawatts.

The EPA, even before the Obama administration, has been using the 1970 Clean Air Act to bludgeon the nation’s ability to access the energy resources required to generate electricity, primarily coal that provides 50% of such generation, and oil that fuels our transportation capability.

In late October, James J. Mulva, the CEO of Conoco-Phillips, addressed the subject of the growing discoveries of natural gas being found throughout the nation. “More than 600,000 Americans already explore, produce, store and produce natural gas, according to consultancy IHS Global Insight.”

At least 15 states now produce shale gas and others may join them,” noting that the largest shale area, the Marcellus which covers much of the Northeast” “already supports 140,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.”

The Obama administration, beginning with the president’s admitted goal of shutting down as much of the coal industry as possible, has demonstrated his intention of deterring the provision of energy. When the BP Oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration imposed a moratorium on all drilling. The decreased production cost 360,000 barrels a day in addition to lost jobs related to oil drilling in the Gulf. Rigs that are needed to drill have since been moved to other sites around the world.

The U.S. is home to more than 150 billion barrels of conventional oil that has the capability of generating thousands of new jobs if access to it was permitted. The most immediate result has been the rise in the cost of gasoline at the pump. Two courts ordered that the moratorium be lifted.

Oil companies currently pay more than $30 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. Meanwhile the Obama administration has been wasting billions in loan guarantees to essentially useless solar and wind power companies, the latest of which, Solyandra, will cost taxpayers millions when the solar panel producer went belly-up. Others will follow.

Meanwhile, the President crisscrosses the nations demanding higher taxes on companies engaged in coal, oil and natural gas. When Jimmy Carter imposed a windfall tax on oil companies many ceased to explore for new sources here, moving their efforts to other nations. Today, by withholding the necessary permits to produce energy in Alaska, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System is operating at one third of its capacity.

A proposed pipeline from Canada still awaits approval and, on November 6th, led by the Sierra Club, the largest protest against its tar sands is expected to draw thousands to Washington, D.C. to join hands and circle the White House to ensure the Keystone XL pipeline is kept from providing the U.S. with the oil extracted. The proposed pipeline would reduce the U.S. dependence on Middle East oil. The U.S. already has more than 50,000 safely operating oil pipelines to support our transportation and other needs.

In January 2010, Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, warned that the Obama administration “continues to embrace Washington-dominated, command-and-control energy policies focused on mandates, subsidies, and political favors—not market forces.” He criticized “subsidizing one form of energy,” wind and solar, “while restricting the exploration of another,” warning that it “will lead to several measurable outcomes, increasing energy prices across the board, fewer jobs, and a weaker footing in the global economy..”

Nearly two years later, that warning has come true with a vengeance.

Oil, coal, or natural gas, it doesn’t matter to an administration and a president determined to restrict the amount of energy Americans need for their present and future needs. The result, in part, has been a stalled energy sector and a contributing factor in an economy with an estimated 20 million unemployed or under-employed.

The losses in income taxes and the taxes paid by this industry sector, in addition to the hideous borrowing and spending by the Obama administration is doing enormous harm to America and yet Barack Obama wants a second term in office.

Little wonder that Americans fear for the future of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit. 

“Starve America First” -- Obama’s Socialist Strategy for America

“Starve America First” -- Obama’s Socialist Strategy for America
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Just a few days ago we wrote an article in which we proclaimed that America does not need oil from sources found anywhere but here on our own property. The article was dismissed by most, but those who seriously consider the possibility that our very own government, under the direction of our current president, Barry Soetoro – aka -- Barack Obama, is intentionally forcing American citizens, against our will, to “make do with less,” in order to pre-condition Americans for the socialist government to come, DID take it seriously and some have spoken out – and -- in so doing have given even more credence to our suggestion that we DO have all the oil we need right here on our own shores or beneath that portion of the oceans owned by the citizens of the US under international law.

Those writers, too, have drawn even more attention to the machinations of the Obama Regime’s intensive planning for a socialist take over of the US government.

I know it sounds like a screenplay for a fictional dramatic motion picture. Problem is … it is true!

The article I wrote, “Another Recession Keyed By High Oil Prices?” can be found HERE.

Here is a quote from the article: “Look. America is awash in oil. We’ve got more oil than the Arabs! But – our government won’t let us get to it -- and use it -- and flip the bird to the Middle Eastern Oil Princes.” We continue: “So what the deuce is going on? I mean, why the heck are we Americans sitting on our hands and not DEMANDING that our government “cut the cr*p” and allow the oil companies to dig, and drill, for all this oil? WHY is the US continuing to ship our treasure and our blood to the Middle East -- and to our unfriendly southern neighbors -- for oil?

We are on the cusp of back-to-back recessions with the second dip looming today. The cost to Americans for oil is threatening to push us over that brink and into a recession that will, most likely, become a depression even worse than the one our parents and grandparents experienced in the 1930’s."

I ask the same question today that I did then: “Why are we allowing a small group of people to dictate our lives and our economy, indeed, our future as a viable nation?It is past time to fight back, America. Demand that the US Congress defund the Environmental Protection Agency right off the bat. Get rid of it.” (I would add the Department of Energy to “get rid of” list.)

In the previous article we pointed out the following: “Just as important is the necessity to elect a President with the cajones to override the environmentalist and open up America to drilling and digging for our own vast reserves of oil sloshing beneath our feet and just offshore and under the tundra.” You can find the entire article HERE.

Now comes Ron Arnold with an article entitled: “Obama's 'starve America first' energy policy creates a backlash”

Mr. Arnold says: “With shaky foreign energy supplies threatening to deepen the worst recession since World War II, why doesn't America protect its capacity to do work by drilling for more oil and gas here at home? Simple truth from Politics 101: Big Green's extreme anti-energy ideology permeates the Obama administration.” He goes on to say: “Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research, told me, 'The Obama administration is deliberately embargoing our own domestic energy from us, from Americans. He and his agency heads all believe in the politics of scarcity -- force society to live with less. The most anti-energy interior secretary in history is Obama's Ken Salazar -- who is also presently in contempt of court for withholding deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil drilling permits."

So what about our claim that America has more domestic oil than Saudi Arabia? In his article Mr. Arnold says: “Never mind that the Congressional Research Service has released a study, U.S. Fossil Fuel Resources, that shows America's combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth, far larger than that of Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada (6th) combined.

None of that matters to the Obama administration, which has blocked dozens of energy developments on federal lands and now forbids recovery of 83 percent of our oil resources.”
We recommend that you read Mr. Arnold’s article in its entirety. You will find it HERE.

You DO see the pattern here – don’t you? As wild and outrageous as it sounds, we have to believe the Obama Regime is deliberately forcing the price of oil products, including the price of gasoline, up to realize his socialist dream of having all Americans learn to live with less and precondition the entire country to accept socialism with open arms.

America – there is no reason we have to import a single drop of oil. There is no reason we have to pay $4.00 a gallon for gasoline. We are floating on a sea of oil – far more oil than those who are gouging the living daylights out of us now.

We must show Mr. Obama the door in November of 2012 and we need, immediately, to beginning sinking wells and sucking that energy from the ground, the sea, and the rocks. The “Big Green cultists” can go off somewhere and sulk in their SUV’s and McMansions. Most sentient human beings have learned that THEIR environmentalist religion is based on a lie and we want no more of it.

America needs energy. And that energy comes from oil. Now we know we have enough oil for a couple of thousand years right here, on our own shores! We have to vote Obama out if we want to get a single drop of that oil. Hey, that’s an easy choice.

J. D. Longstreet

You Must Love the EPA--Or Else! ... Alan Caruba

You Must Love the EPA--Or Else!

By Alan Caruba

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes as close to George Orwell’s version of Big Brother as any element of the federal government. It operates on a totally irrational basis, ignoring anything that even passes for real science. Through its regulatory power it imposes insane mandates that drive up the cost of everything and is trying to drive major elements of energy provision out of business.

What, for example, is the EPA doing offering “tips to protect eyes, skin from the Sun’s harmful rays”? Does the EPA sell sunscreen products? Charged with cleaning the nation’s air and water, why is it venturing into areas better served by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services? Charged with keeping the U.S. waters clean, why has the EPA launched a “National Water Conservation Campaign” complete with tips such as checking the toilet for “silent leaks” or replacing your showerhead with a “WaterSense labeled model.” Do we really need the EPA in the business of approving some showerheads over others?

The answer is that the EPA wants to be involved with all aspects of people’s lives and sees no limits on its authority or power and it wants you to love it for all the effort it is making to save you from a horrible death.

Recently the EPA classified milk as oil! How crazed is that???

It based this on the fact that milk contains animal fat which is a non-petroleum oil. The result is that dairy farming has become even more costly and you can bet the costs will be passed on to consumers. While the Gulf of Mexico is polluted by millions of gallons of oil from the BP disaster, Frank Konkel of Silver Sky Dairy in Hesperia, Michigan, and all other dairy farmers will have to develop and implement spill prevention plans for milk storage tanks. The rules are set to take effect in November.

In another blow to the economy, in late June the EPA announced it was voiding certificates of approval for the import of up to 200,000 gas-powered off-road motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles. The reason? The EPA “suspects that tailpipe emissions information was either incomplete or falsified.” All vehicles imported or manufactured in the United States are required to have certificates of conformity which are issued by the EPA. I suspect the EPA does like any vehicle that runs on gasoline and is used for recreational purposes.

The tentacles of the EPA reach into every enterprise in the nation. Like the FBI, the EPA even has its own fugitive list. When not magically changing milk into oil, the EPA continues its crazed campaign to regulate every aspect of life in America.

In June, it finalized requirements under its national mandatory greenhouse gas reporting program for “underground mines, industrial wastewater treatment systems, industrial waste landfills, and magnesium production facilities.” The target this time is methane, among the most minor elements of the Earth’s atmosphere one can identify. In 1998, the amount of methane in the Earth's atmosphere was estimated to be 1,745 parts per billion. Swamps and bogs around the globe naturally produce methane and always have. Identifying it as a “greenhouse gas” is part of the global warming hoax that claims methane and carbon dioxide are causing the Earth to heat up. Apparently no one has told the EPA that the Earth has been cooling for the past decade.

And, finally for the purpose of this quick look at EPA lunacy, to the joy of the taxpayer-subsidized biodiesel industry, the EPA announced that it would require the domestic use of 800 million gallons of biodiesel in 2011. It is made from animal products. This is part of the EPA’s never-ending war on oil.

As a close observer and expert on the oil industry pointed out to me, “The EPA always speaks in pints, quarts and gallons. That makes it sound larger. Step back and 800 million gallons equals 19 million barrels of biodiesel annually. This is the proverbial drop in the bucket when total oil demand is 5,501 million barrels annually.” Biodiesel and biofuels have been subsidized with taxpayer’s money for some three decades at this point. The annual biofuel ethanol production increased only 16% in 2009 to 256 million barrels. This annual production is less than 8% of U.S. foreign oil imports of 3,307 million barrels. There is no way ethanol can replace foreign oil. There is no sensible reason to go on subsidizing biofuel or biodiesel.

The EPA has been totally out of control almost from the day it was established in 1970 by an executive order. Within two years it banned DDT. That ban was picked up by the World Health Organization and the result has been an estimated 400 million people who have since died from malaria. If that isn’t genocide, I don’t know what is.

Alan Caruba

© Alan Caruba, 2010
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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

When Idiots Join Hands ... Alan Caruba

When Idiots Join Hands
By Alan Caruba
******************
After the June 23 Cabinet meeting, President Obama said:
“We talked about energy. In the context of the oil spill, as I said last week during my Oval Office address, this has to be a wakeup call to the country that we are prepared and ready to move forward on a new energy strategy that the American people desperately want but for which there has been insufficient political will.”
“It is time for us to move to a clean energy future.”

First, let it be said that the American people do not desperately want “a new energy strategy.” They did not want Obamacare. They do not want Cap-and-Trade. They do not want amnesty for an estimated ten to twenty million illegal aliens.

Along with the totally discredited global warming hoax, this has got to be the biggest lie Obama keeps repeating, along with promises of thousands of “green jobs.”

What is Clean Energy?

Obama is referring to solar and wind energy. Neither of these enterprises would last longer than an episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” were it not for the billions of taxpayer’s dollars provided as subsidies to producers who, once the subsidies end, will abandon these most useless of all ways to generate electricity.

When the government mandates that part of the electricity you purchase must be supplied by wind or solar, they are forcing utilities to invest in means of generation that must always be backed up by coal-fired, natural gas, hydroelectric, or nuclear plants. Neither wind, nor solar can be depended upon to produce sufficient electricity, particularly during times of peak uses.

When you see those windmills turning even when there is no wind, there is a plant somewhere providing them with electricity because, unless they constantly turn, their mechanisms famously break down. Solar farms are even less efficient, particularly since the sun does not shine all the time and cloud cover often reduces their capacity.

This, however, will not deter the hoped-for thousands of people who will turn out on Saturday, June 26, to participate in some 700 events across the nation and, we’re told, worldwide in a mega-event called “Hands Across the Sand.” It is intended to encourage more “clean energy.”

“This simple, but powerful human expression of unity will send a clear message to our leaders that more offshore drilling is not the answer and now is the time to create our clean energy future,” said event founder, David Rauschkolb, described as a restaurant owner in Seaside, Florida.

That’s who we want making energy policy, a restaurant owner!
Among the sponsors of the event are Audubon, the Alaska Wilderness League, the Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Day Network, Endangered Species Coalition, Energy Action Coalition, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, MoveOn.org, Ocean Conservancy, Rainforest Action Network, and the Sierra Club.

In other words, the most mendacious environmental groups, all devoted to impeding the development and access to the huge quantities of energy needed to maintain industry, agriculture, and an economy that, despite their constant interference and obstruction, is still the world’s leader in value of goods produced.

To them, the Gulf oil spill is the best thing that ever happened. One well out of hundreds in the Gulf of Mexico has suffered a horrible failure, but these are the people who want to shut down all of them despite a fifty-year history of safety.

No doubt the mainstream media will have a field day showing us coverage of countless idiots holding hands on beaches, near waterways, and wherever else they will gather in the name of not having any gasoline to fill the tanks of the cars that brought them there, not having the electricity to power the air conditioners in their homes, not having anything made from plastic, not even having asphalt on the highways and streets they will drive upon after the event.
It is not likely to occur to any of them that deepwater oil wells are the result of the bans environmental organizations continue to demand as they oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or anywhere along the 85% of U.S. coastal areas where huge amounts of untapped oil and natural gas exist.

This nation faces many hazards, but the greatest hazard of all is a President who wants to pass the biggest tax in U.S. history, Cap-and-Trade, on energy use. It is not a climate bill. It is not a jobs bill.

It is just another scheme based on the fraud of reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions. The Earth produces 97% of these emissions. They are a part of the atmosphere of the Earth, albeit the atmosphere is almost entirely composed of oxygen and nitrogen. It is best understood as primarily water vapor!

The cartoon character, Pogo, famously said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” You can watch them join hands on Saturday and demand a return to the Dark Ages.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Worst President, Ever! ... Alan Caruba

Worst President, EVER!

By Alan Caruba

******************

Does anyone recall the first weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency? He was everywhere on the media all the time. His constant use of TelePrompters became an instant joke, suggesting he could not say anything unless it was scripted. Indeed, listening to him try to speak without them is a painful process of a very slow selection of words and very long pauses in between.

After his first press conference he stopped holding them until 309 days later when he addressed the oil spill in the Gulf. It was such a lame performance that his advisors apparently thought a speech from the Oval Office, his first, would make up for that. It didn’t.

In this age of 24/7 news coverage, Barack Obama has managed to make himself ubiquitous to the point of complete inanity. So, I have a bit of advice for him: Shut up, Barack.

The seas have not ceased to rise because you were elected (as promised) and the Earth has not “healed itself.” Indeed, it is bleeding oil at a prodigious rate, confounding BP’s engineers, all graduates no doubt of the Acme School of Oil Drilling.

What have we learned about Barack Hussein Obama? If George W. Bush was considered an amiable dunce, Obama has demonstrated to everyone he is the worst kind of ideologue, totally tone deaf to the Voice of the People. When nearly a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. on September 12th last year to protest Obamacare, his communications advisor, David Axelrod dismissed them saying, “They’re wrong.”

Axelrod was on all the network and cable news shows the day following his Oval Office appearance defending a speech that essentially said we don’t know what we’re doing, but we blame BP. The good news is that the president has finally found someone else to blame other than George W. Bush for his own ineptitude and incompetence.

In case you haven’t noticed, Obama’s approval ratings in the polls are in the low 40s and heading south. There is a hard core of about 30% who support Obama no matter what he does or doesn’t do. In an article by the Editor-in-Chief of CNSnews, Terence P. Jeffrey, he noted that “The middle class is abandoning President Barack Obama, according to data released by the Gallup Poll. The only income bracket among which a majority still says they approve of the job he is doing as president are those earning $2,000 per month or less.”

Anyone still making a living comparable to achieving the American Dream has long since abandoned the great Community Organizer with the exception of union members. When you lose the middle class, you have lost the great engine of the American economy.

With the exception of the growing legion of government workers, the unions had been losing members for years. They were held in generally low esteem and their destruction of General Motors and Chrysler bears out their parasitic relationship with business and industry. Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s support from teacher’s unions suggests why our educational system has been in the toilet for decades.

Every time Obama opens his mouth, his approval falls. It began with his great Apology Tour to the Middle East at the beginning of his presidency, continued with his acceptance of a Nobel Peace Prize for having done nothing notable, and plunged with his advocacy of the much-hated Obamacare shoved down the throats of all Americans.

In addition to advocating a Cap-and-Trade bill that is a huge tax on energy use, he is now babbling about a “clean energy future” that apparently involves paving over America with millions of acres of solar farms and coast-to-coast wind turbines.

Obama doesn’t like coal that provides fifty percent of all the electricity we use every day and, of course, oil that fuels our cars, trucks, tractors, et cetera.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Barack Hussein Obama is living proof of that.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

“Oil Addiction” Lies ... Alan Caruba

“Oil Addiction” Lies
By Alan Caruba

*******************

Next to the huge international hoax about global warming allegedly caused by carbon dioxide, the biggest lie being told to Americans these days is that we are “addicted” to oil and that we must convert our economy and society away from its use.

The first time I recall hearing this was during George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Speech and, frankly, I was astounded to hear it from the son of a former President who made his fortune in oil. The latest to repeat the lie is President Barack Obama, but he is allied with environmental organizations that are anti-energy no matter what form it takes.

Americans and everyone else around the world are not “addicted” to oil or other forms of energy sources such as coal and natural gas. They are used to maintain and enhance modern life.

Data from 2006 makes it abundantly clear that 85.5% of the electricity we use comes from carbon-based fuels. Nuclear and hydroelectric energy add over 20% of the rest. All that magical “clean” energy, solar and wind, provides 3% or less of the electricity the nation requires.

As Robert Bryce, an editor of Energy Tribune and author of several books on energy, says, “The simple unavoidable truth is that we humans cannot (and) will not quit using oil. If oil did not exist, we’d have to invent it. No other substance can compare to oil in terms of energy density, flexibility, cost, and convenience.

“About 95% of the world’s transportation fuel comes from oil,” notes Bryce. “Thus, without oil, there is no commerce.” No commerce, no world economy.

Americans are being force-fed lies about energy and the worst of them are about “clean energy research and development.” There are no viable or sensible substitutes for oil, coal, and natural gas.

According to an October 28, 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service “U.S. proven reserves of oil total 21.3 billion barrels and reserves of natural gas are 237.7 trillion cubic feet. Undiscovered technically recoverable oil in the United States is 145.4 billion barrels, and undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas is 1.162.7 trillion cubic feet. The demonstrated reserve base for coal is 489 billion short tons, of which 262 billion short tons are considered technically recoverable.”

So why has the Obama administration announced a shutdown of the auctioning of oil leases? Why have several administrations refused to allow access to the oil beneath the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve or the potentially vast offshore Alaskan reserves?

If the ban on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas on 85% of the U.S. offshore regions is maintained, the nation will be forced to rely on foreign sources, many of whom are unfriendly, even hostile.

Think about this. Beneath a 1.5 million acre tract on the North Slope of Alaska there are an estimated three to nine billion barrels of recoverable oil. In 1987 the Department of Interior recommended development. There has been none because a succession of Congresses has refused to allow drilling on what would amount to a postage-size part of the vast Coastal Plain.

The U.S. must import the vast percentage of the oil we require, some 60%, and yet Americans are being denied the right to access, extract, refine and use the oil we have or look for more. Oil companies are routinely demonized despite the billions they must spend in exploration, extraction and refining.

Are we that stupid?

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is promising to bring the Cap-and-Trade bill, an energy tax bill now called a “climate” bill, to a vote in July. Studies suggest its passage would destroy more than two million jobs nationwide.

One analysis projected that the bill would reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.4 trillion over the next 25 years. The U.S. doesn’t have 25 years. Our current national debt is $13 trillion and our GDP is $12.9 trillion. Do the math!

Likewise, raising taxes on oil and natural gas companies would reduce the amount of private capital available for vitally needed investments to access our energy resources.

The big, awful oil and natural gas industry has already invested $58.4 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and there is no need to reduce carbon dioxide. It plays no role whatever in a global warming that is NOT happening. The Earth has been cooling for a decade. Significantly, an increase in carbon dioxide would yield more crops and healthier expanded forests.

Finally, let’s get a grip on reality. As bad as the leak has become, there is just one oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico leaking oil. It’s out there because environmentalists and government policies have forced oil companies to explore and drill in hazardous places.

The rest of the rigs, several hundreds, are still safely pumping oil. The BP Deepwater Horizon rig will be capped eventually. That problem will end. The spilled oil will be worked on by the forces of nature, dispersing and evaporating it. In five years, just like the Valdez spill, there will be no evidence of the spill.

The real “addiction” that threatens the United States is a Congress that will not stop borrowing and spending an unsustainable amount of money on programs that should have been abandoned or adjusted years ago.

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Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Crazy Nancy, Cunning Barack ... Alan Caruba

Crazy Nancy, Cunning Barack
By Alan Caruba
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When President Obama announced he would commit the nation to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” in accordance with the failed UN Copenhagen Climate Change Conference goals, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, issued yet another utterly crazed statement on January 29th.

“President Obama’s announcement marks a critical step forward in our effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the federal government—the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy.” For the record, the Capitol building’s electric power is provided by a coal-fired plant. And, for the record, the Speaker’s use of an executive jet to travel back and forth from her home in California every week has burned through $2.1 million while producing tons of greenhouse gases.

“With the President’s renewed call to complete work on a clean energy bill this year we look forward to putting people to work building up the industries of tomorrow, reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and preserving our natural resources for generations to come.”

Allowing large and small oil companies to explore and extract our national reserves of oil would reduce our dependency, but from the late 1970s onward, it has been government policy to prohibit this, despite the role it plays in our national security and, of course, the cost of a gallon of gas at the pump. There’s a reason much of our military power is deployed to protect Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in the Middle East. We get 40% of our oil from there.

The so-called clean energy bill is “Cap-and-Trade”, a piece of legislation that would tax the use of energy by all Americans, thus raising their energy bills and reducing their ability to spend their money on consumer goods and services. The alleged “industries of tomorrow” include wind and solar energy companies, along with biofuel companies, all of which are totally dependent on government subsidies and mandates for their use. Remove the subsidies and they would go out of business.

In a February 2nd letter from the National Biodiesel Board to leaders in Congress says that the expiration of the biodiesel tax incentive that expired on December 31, 2009 “has essentially caused the production and use of biodiesel in the U.S. to cease…” No kidding!

Speaker Pelosi’s idea of “preserving our natural resources” is to restrict access to the billions of barrels of oil locked up in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve and to continue the ban on all off-shore exploration and extraction of countless billions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas estimated to exist in the 85% of the continental shelf that remain off limits.

While Congress continues on its wild borrowing and spending spree, Speaker Pelosi brags that the Congressional Record will be printed on “100 percent recycled paper” and that Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulbs will be replaced with “energy-efficient alternatives”; light bulbs that all contain mercury.

What justification can be made for denying consumers the right to purchase incandescent light bulbs? None!

President Obama has announced that, as soon as “Cap-and-Trade” is enacted, the U.S. will begin to “cut carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.” To achieve this, we will all return to the practice of riding horses and using oxen to plow the fields for the planting of crops.

The fact that global warming is being discredited daily with new revelations about the bogus “science” used to justify it by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).seems to have escaped the notice of Speaker Pelosi, the President, and others in Congress.

What Americans are witnessing is a calculated agenda to undermine access to the energy the nation requires for present and future generations and thus undermines the economy of the nation that is totally dependent on the sufficient provision of electrical energy and the ability to utilize the nation’s vast oil, coal, and natural gas reserves, a policy that has been in place since the 1970s.

In his State of the Union speech, the President did call for more nuclear plants, but the government has stalled the building of all but two new nuclear plants since the 1970s and, thanks to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is unable to utilize the multi-billion dollar Yukka Mountain facility in Nevada for the storage of nuclear waste.

This and other proposals are a direct threat to the economy of the nation, diverting billions (of borrowed money) to phony “green jobs” and “clean energy.” It is bad news for America.

In September of last year, nearly a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. to protest healthcare reform and it is a wonder of civility that they and others have not returned to the nation’s capitol with pitchforks and torches to drive out the likes of Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Life in a Box ... by Paul Driessen

Life in a box
Is there an exit strategy for this energy, environment, and economic predicament?
By: Paul Driessen
****************

“Life in a box is better than no life at all,” playwright Tom Stoppard famously opined, through the personage of Rosencrantz. (Or was it Guildenstern?)
That’s lucky for us, because our energy, environmental and economic policies have certainly put us in a box – and there is no easy way out.

Congress passed a $787-billion “stimulus” bill, and a $3-billion cash-for-clunkers program that trashed perfectly good cars, and the energy and raw materials that created them. It’s halfway toward imposing nationalized healthcare that could cost taxpayers another $2.5 trillion over its first decade.

Unemployment now stands at 10.2% officially, or 22% if you include people who have given up on finding a job. At this point, 25 states have borrowed $23 billion from the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund, to meet their obligations to work-deprived workers.

Meanwhile, over in Copenhagen, the G-77 poor nations snubbed Europe’s offer of $10 billion over three years, for climate change reparation, mitigation and adaptation. “The world’s scientists and policy makers say this is the greatest risk humanity has ever faced,” G-77 chairman Lumumba Di-Aiping noted. Something closer to $1 trillion every few years would be more appropriate, he suggested.

That’s in addition to regular foreign aid – and on top of the $50 trillion in life support for corrupt dictators that the developed world has already provided to still-impoverished nations since 1950.
In response, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dutifully pledged that the United States will importune taxpayers, private donors and other countries to raise $100 billion annually through 2020, to help poor nations cope with the “ravages” of global warming – or our current “CO2-driven” global cooling. She claims the money will be provided only if China and other major developing countries agree to binding emission targets that can be verified internationally (a condition that they have steadfastly rejected).

But of course, neither Di-Aiping nor Clinton wants to remind anyone of a few elephantine realities. This “greatest risk humanity has ever faced” is based on fraudulent claims, data, models, analyses and peer reviews. The proposed 83% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 would send the United States back to levels last seen in 1908 – or 1868 when population, energy use and technology changes are considered.

The cap-tax-and-trade laws and Copenhagen treaty represent the greatest transfer of wealth, power and control in the history of mankind. Perhaps worst, the energy taxes and restrictions amount to economic suicide by PDCs – previously developed countries.

That collective seppuku would benefit some in emerging economies but bring little or no environmental gain or climate stabilization. The surging economies will emit far more pollutants and CO2 than the US, Europe and Canada can eliminate, even if they send emissions to zero; and carbon dioxide is a minor player in climate change, compared to the sun and a host of other natural forces.

Where will the United States find the trillions of dollars to pay for all this? “We’re out of cash,” President Obama has pointed out. So he and Congress have announced the usual progressive “solutions.”

They raised the national debt ceiling to $14 trillion – a 39% increase since Democrats took charge in 2007. (The debt is now 60% of the nation’s GDP.) They plan to raise taxes, print more increasingly devalued currency, and unleash the Internal Revenue Service on businesses and families. And of course implement cap-tax-and-trade – to take $300 billion a year from energy consumers, and transfer it to government bureaucrats and companies with good lobbyists.

They adamantly refuse to raise revenue by doing what built America: tapping the energy and mineral resources that America still has in abundance: a century’s worth of oil, natural gas and shale oil in Alaska, the Western states and Outer Continental Shelf (OCS); two centuries’ of coal on public and private lands; and vast stores of uranium, metals and rare earth minerals. Oil shale deposits alone contain 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, nearly equal to the world’s total known conventional oil reserves, the Institute for Energy Research calculates.

These resources could generate trillions of dollars in bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes, and create or save millions of high-paying jobs. They could provide the billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, plastic films and rare earths that will be needed to cover millions of acres with wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal facilities and transmission lines, for the new “eco-friendly” economy.

But many of our best energy and mineral prospects are locked up in over 500,000,000 acres of wilderness, park, refuge, recreation, scenic, endangered species habitat, and ecological study areas and “protective buffer zones.” Offshore, the vast majority of our OCS energy is likewise off limits.

Developing these resources is ideologically anathema to Democrats and greens, who concoct new anti-development rationales and restrictions every week.

Instead of developing these bounties and reaping the energy and economic benefits, we spend trillions importing replacements: oil, natural gas, uranium, metals and even wind turbines. A new 240-turbine wind farm in western Texas has reportedly created 2,800 jobs – but 2,400 of them are in China, where the turbines are manufactured! The 400 new green-collar American jobs include truck drivers to haul the gargantuan parts from the West Coast to West Texas, an installation and landscaping crew, and a small army of bureaucrats, lawyers and accountants.
This is the green, sustainable economy of the future? America’s oil and natural gas industries alone support more than 9 million American jobs and contribute well over $1 trillion annually to the US economy, PricewaterhouseCoopers has calculated. Coal likewise generates vast job and economic benefits. At 400 temporary jobs per wind farm, renewable energy has a long way to go.
How long the US economy and family can survive such “sustainability” is a question our illustrious law and policy makers had better start addressing.

“Quite frankly, from our point of view,” Polish Finance Minister Jan Rostowski recently said, “it’s totally unacceptable that the poor countries of Europe should help the rich countries of Europe help the poor countries in the rest of the world.” Those Eastern European countries lived under Nazi and Soviet regimes for five decades. They have no desire to live under a UN climate dictatorship.

Copenhagen and the circling of alarmist wagons over the climate change email and computer code scandal has made one thing absolutely clear, to anyone with open eyes and minds. The caterwauling over warming has nothing to do with science or saving Planet Earth.
It has everything to do with global governance, UN control of energy, economies and lives, and of course money – for research, renewable energy, bureaucracies, and international welfare.
Rosencrantz was satisfied with life in a box. “You’d have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, ‘Well. At least I’m not dead.’”

Have we now become Rosencrantz? Or does the spirit of Patrick Henry still reside within? “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Hopefully, the 1776 redux will come at the ballot box. But if the eco-tyranny continues, Earth’s climate may really heat up.
____________
Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which sponsors the All Pain No Gain education campaign and petition against job-killing global warming policies, and the ClimateDepot website for the latest news and views on climate change. He is also a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story!

From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: A Horror Story

By Alan Caruba
******************


John F. Kennedy, standing in front of the Berlin Wall, said “Ich bin en Berliner” to declare his solidarity with Western Germany, divided from its eastern half by the compromises with the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Ronald Reagan would later demand, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” as well as declare his solidarity with the Polish people seeking to free themselves from Soviet domination.

I have heard two versions of what President Obama has done in response to the Iranian uprising. One says that he was right to keep a low profile so that the United States would not be blamed for the rebellion against the tyrannical ayatollahs. This, it’s said provides “deniability” in the event the regime successfully puts down the rebellion. The other version says he should be outspoken in his support for the Iranian people.

History will decide whether President Obama has chosen the right course of action, but we know he has already made major efforts to reach out to the “Supreme Leader” and his mullah cronies. Death to the U.S. and Israel has always been the rallying call for the thirty-year-old Islamic revolution. We are the external enemies by which the mullahs assert their right to run Iran. At the same time, by distancing himself from the Israelis, President Obama has let the whole of the Middle East know he has cast his vote for Islam.

In 1979 there were crowds in the streets of Tehran that drove out the Shah. President Jimmy Carter appeared to have been caught off-guard by what happened. So were the U.S. diplomats and the CIA who apparently had no idea how deep the hatred ran for the Shah. The exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tapped into that hatred. Soon our diplomats were to be held hostage for 444 days, released only when Ronald Reagan took the oath of office and Jimmy Carter was rendered a powerless and defeated one-term ex-President.

Jimmy Carter was incapable of demonstrating the power and the will of the American people to free our diplomats. He blamed earlier decisions regarding Iran as a buffer state against the Soviet Union and a source of oil to the West. Did the CIA “meddle” in Iran’s affairs, engineering the overthrow of a prime minister in 1953? Yes, along with the British we did and, from what I can determine, it was the right decision.

By the time Carter was elected President in 1977, the memories of the 1973 oil embargo were still fresh in the minds of Americans. The members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries used the embargo to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel, re-supplying its military during the Yom Kippur war.

Despite later negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, it is safe to conclude Carter was no friend to Israel and that animus has deepened over the years. Israel relinquished the Sinai desert, just as it would later withdraw from the Gaza in a vain hope of peace. There's a museum in Cairo devoted to the "victory" Egypt claims it secured in the war.

As Seldon B. Graham, Jr. points out in his book, “Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High”, “On January 23, 1980, President Carter announced to Congress that the U.S. would defend the Persian Gulf area by military force if necessary. Thus, the official energy policy of the United States abandoned USA oil and gave the supply to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).”

Carter had already called for a “windfall profits tax” on U.S. oil companies and Graham calls it, “a death notice for USA oil”, noting that “Many US oil and gas companies went bankrupt because of the Windfall Profits Tax.” During his campaign, President Obama called for a similar tax.

In the wake of that earlier tax, not one single new refinery has been built by U.S. oil companies because (a) they cost well over a billion to construct and (b) there is no way they can be sure another such tax would not be imposed.

Exploration for America's vast reserves of oil have been meager as well. Virtually the entire continental shelf of the nation was put off-limits to exploration and extraction. An effort by the Bush administration to lift the restriction was swiftly rescinded by the Obama administration. Congress still will not let oil companies drill in Alaska's ANWR.

Carter's actions effectively left the United States dependent to a large degree on Middle East oil, although these days the U.S. now imports much of its oil from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Denying the U.S. of its own vast energy reserves and attacking its energy producers has been a consistent theme in a straight line between President Carter and President Obama.

President Obama apparently also hates coal, vowing to “bankrupt” any company that attempted to build a coal-fired plant to provide much-need electricity to our growing population. In addition to rescinding the opening of the continental shelf to exploration, one of the first acts of the Obama administration was to cancel leases to explore for oil deposits in states where it is known to exist in large quantities.

Both the Carter and Obama administrations display the weakness liberals have for despots and despotic regimes of every description. In their hearts they see them as an appropriate way to keep people in bondage.

The leaders of many foreign nations have already taken Barack Obama’s measure.

The North Koreans hold him in such contempt they intend to fire a ballistic missile at Hawaii, probably on Independence Day. If he really wanted to show some character and a clear intent to defend the nation, he would destroy it in flight because we have the capacity to do this. He won’t.

Obama’s Democrat majority in Congress is beginning to back away from his disastrous taxing and spending proposals. It is widely rumored that the proposed “Cap-and-Trade” legislation, based on the bogus global warming hoax, will fail in Congress.

Similarly, the panic in the White House as it attempts to cope with a failing economy can be smelled a few blocks away on Capitol Hill. Obama’s constant drumbeat of one “crisis” after another is beginning to wear thin and it is likely too that his healthcare “reform” will fail as well.

Raising taxes in the midst of the worst recession since the days of the Great Depression is not likely to find much favor either.

On Independence Day, nearly 1,500 or more protest rallies, “Tea parties”, will be held in America from coast to coast. Their message will not be lost on Congress though you can be sure the slavish mainstream news media will do what they can to mislead the public into believing they were minor events.

Only they will not be minor events, nor will those that will follow. Americans will be in the streets in the weeks and months that follow. They will reflect the same determination of Iranians who want the freedom we too often take for granted.

In October 2010, Americans will have an opportunity to neuter this narcissist, this pretender in the White House. It is time to prepare for the midterm elections. It is time to take America back from the liberals that are ruining it.

Alan Caruba
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The US is Committing National Suicide ... Alan Caruba

The US is Committing National Suicide

By Alan Caruba

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Growing up as a teenager in the 1950s, I could not wait to get my license to drive and I liked the sporty look of the British MG. These days I drive a Volkswagen. In that short tale can be found the seeds of the end of the American auto industry.

Here’s some history. In 1952, the merger of several British auto companies resulted in the British Motor Corporation. It was the largest of its day with 39% of British output. Despite established dealerships for the various models, a series of poor management decisions resulted in the loss of market share.

By 1968, British Leyland was formed out of British Motor Corporation and became British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd. In 1975, it was partially nationalized and the government became a holding company. UK market share barely changed and despite brands such as Jaguar, Rover and Land Rover, the government motor company continued its decline.

By 2005, the MG Rover Group went bankrupt, bringing to an end the production by British owned companies. The MG became part of Chinese Nanjing Automobile.

The 1970s were difficult economic times for the United Kingdom and its Labor government (1974-1979), as noted above, created a holding company with the government as the major shareholder. At that point British Leyland employed 159,000 people in its many divisions that included a bus and truck operation.

In 1984, Jaguar Cars became independent once more through a public sale of its shares, but the Leyland truck and bus operation was sold to Volvo in 1988. The Rover Group was sold by the government to British Aerospace that in turn sold it to BMW. Suffice it to say, the British auto industry is now largely owned by companies in other nations or operating as a mere shadow of its former self.

Anyone who thinks that General Motors will revive is wrong. As Larry Kudlow, the radio-TV business maven, recently wrote, “Taxpayers won’t get their money back” and that figure now stands at $50 billion.

Both GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to choose bankruptcy months ago, but the U.S. government in its infinite wisdom has thrown our money down a rat hole created by bad management and excessive labor union demands over the past four decades. Meanwhile, as was the case in the UK, Chrysler is now owned by an Italian auto manufacturer.

The U.S. government now owns GM, AIG an insurance company, and billions in housing mortgages through the government entities of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae. Kudlow said, “We’re talking about hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that will never be repaid.”

That news is bad enough, but consider now that the U.S. government has just increased the standards of how much mileage must be achieved from a gallon of gasoline at the very same time it demands that more of that gasoline be mixed with ethanol. Ethanol reduces mileage. President Obama has already made clear that he wants GM to manufacture “green” automobiles. No one will buy them.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper, recently did the math on the price of “green” cars, noting that the present UK models cost the equivalent of more than about $5,000 US. “To benefit from the difference in fuel efficiency, you would have to drive 198,000 miles, the equivalent of driving around the world eight times.” The same will apply to comparable American-made “green” cars.

Here in America, the biofuels industry receives a 45-cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol or biodiesel it produces or about $3 billion a year. The US government requires that 10% of all gasoline be blended with these biofuels whether consumers want it or not. This mandate is scheduled to double by 2015.

Not only will the automobiles cost more and get less mileage per gallon, but the Congressional Budget Office last month reported that “the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10% to 15% of the rise in food prices.” That’s because the main ingredient of ethanol is corn. That is insane.

At the same time, the government refuses to permit exploration and extraction of known oil reserves in the nation’s interior and off its continental coastal shelf despite estimates of literally billions of barrels of untapped oil.

In the Bakken Formation under North Dakota and Montana, there are an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil. And we’re not even talking about the billions of barrels off the coast of California, Florida and other coastal states. The U.S. by some estimates has eight times as much oil as Saudi Arabia, eighteen times as much as Iraq and twenty-two times as much oil as Iran.

There is one, single reason why we can’t get at those oil and natural gas reserves, as well as being denied access to the massive amounts of U.S. coal reserves. It is the environmental organizations that maintain a campaign against energy use in the nation.

The government is to blame, of course, but you can thank Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Environmental Program, among countless others that have fought against any and all development, any and all economic expansion and growth.

This campaign is coming to a head with a “Cap-and-Trade” bill making its way through Congress that would impose a huge tax on “greenhouse gas emissions” by every industry and business that produces or uses energy. It has no scientific justification. Even the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality has released a study demonstrating that the reduction of CO2 emissions would be minimal at best, but such reductions are absurd because there is no global warming.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the midst of a historic economic crisis, at a time when such emissions will continue in other nations around the world, and when such emissions are known to have no effect whatever on a totally bogus “global warming” or “climate change” is a program for national suicide.

Government control of the auto industry is now merely a prelude to its eventual end. Jobs will disappear forever. “Green jobs” are a myth. The economy will suffer a grievous loss. And, if you draw the lessons from the British experiment, you can accurately predict the future of our auto industry.

Only if control of Congress by the Democrats is ended can measures be taken that will permit the nation to turn away from the destruction being inflicted upon it. Vote in October 2010 as if your life, your children’s lives, and your grandchildren’s lives depend upon it, because it does.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com and a weekly commentary at http://www.anxietycenter.com, the website of The National Anxiety Center.

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Global+Warming+Hoax+Oil+Cars+Nationalization