While President Obama hobnobs with NBA stars, Mitt Romney addresses the issues.
Over at Yid with Lid, there's an outline of Mitt's energy policy, along with Romney's plan from his campaign website. From what I can see, it's quite good, especially the part where millions of new manufacturing jobs are created. Mitt even goes as far as predicting that his plan will make the US energy independent by the end of his second term in office.
In other words, he'll begin to do what we should have been doing all along. If he does, expect to hear the howls of the Chicken-Little enviro-nazis far and wide.
Here are a few highlights:
State regulatory processes and permitting programs for all forms of energy
development will be deemed to satisfy all requirements of federal law.
Establish a new five-year offshore leasing plan that aggressively opens new
areas for development beginning with those off the coast of Virginia and the
Carolinas.
And here's my personal favorite, the one that will doubtless cause lefty heads to get all 'splody:
Prevent agencies from using “sue-and-settle” techniques behind closed doors to
circumvent the public rulemaking process, impose onerous regulations, and tie
the hands of future administrations.
And...
Disclose federal funds spent reimbursing groups for lawsuits against the
government.
Now this last one is an item that I'd like to see completely eliminated. Why are we paying tax dollars to environmental groups to sue our government to restrict our energy supplies? Whatever it would take to stop this insanity should be done, even if it means the repeal of the Clean Air and Water Acts. At the very minimum, they should be amended to remove these absurd provisions that have held us hostage to fringe radical environmental groups for decades, caused our energy prices to increase and added unnecessary costs to virtually every item produced in the US.
Of course, the Dimocrats will scream that "Those eeeevillll Republicans want dirty air and water and we're all gonna DIE!!!!Eleventy!11!111" In fact, they've already started doing that very thing.
The fact is that our air and water are cleaner now than forty years ago, which is a testament to our efforts so far. But instead of finding a point beyond which we don't need any more onerous regulations, the Obama administration's EPA is imposing new, unnecessary regulations that are closing down perfectly good coal-fired power plants, driving up the cost of energy for all of us. Nothing is ever enough for those who would keep a boot on the neck of our energy producers.
So, under a Romney administration, we can look forward to cheap, abundant energy, which is the foundation of a free market economy. Lower electricity and gasoline prices will provide an immediate kick-start to the economic boom that's just waiting to happen.
Over at Insty's place, there's this link to an article that bolsters the notion of American Onshoring.
What's American Onshoring (or Onshoring for short) you ask? It's the concept of returning our country's energy producing and manufacturing from overseas. In addition to the obvious boost to our economy that such a move would have, it's also in our interest from a national security standpoint.
As we saw during the tsunami in Japan, our dependence on foreign suppliers caused production lines here to be idled. This is unnecessary. Why not just make those parts here? Common sense tells us that the physically closer we keep our parts suppliers, the less vulnerable they are to disruptions due to natural disasters.
I've made this argument before. I'll keep on making it because it's the logical thing to do. There's just no good reason for us not to be making as many of our own products as possible. We're still the largest consumer market in the world, but we're not taking advantage of it.
Now add in the effort to recover from a terrorist attack, the idea of Onshoring takes on a new importance, as the link mentions...
An increasing reliance on imports, combined with
the fraying of the nation’s power grid, highways and rail lines, leaves the
United States more vulnerable to the damage of natural disasters and terrorist
attacks, according to a report to be released Wednesday by former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge.
The report, which Ridge shared with homeland security officials Tuesday
morning, warns that the offshoring of U.S. factories means that rebounding from
a catastrophe will be more difficult because so many critical supplies would
have to come from overseas.
Citing the aftermath of disasters such at Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the
report adds to the long-running debate over whether the offshoring of U.S.
manufacturing has harmed the nation. “At a time when the frequency of large-scale disasters seems to be
increasing, the U.S. seems to be at an all-time low in terms of being able to
supply our own critical needs,” said Scott Paul, director of the Alliance for
American Manufacturing, which sponsored the report by Ridge and Robert B.
Stephan, who was an assistant secretary of homeland security from 2005 to
2008. Paul said, for example, that half of the world’s steel comes from China.
It's right about here that I remind y'all that the Iron Bowl, played in Birmingham, AL, got its name for a very good reason. And how about those Pittsburgh Steelers, too? I don't think that the rich natural resource of iron ore in those areas is gone. What's to prevent us from firing up the smelters and making our own steel once more?
Oh, our own government and its environmental regulations. The same ones that stop us from buying 100-watt incandescent light bulbs at the grocery store.
Never mind, then.
Oh, wait. You say that we could relax those standards? Gosh, I didn't know we could do such a thing.
Perhaps we should. Maybe, while we're at it, we could have a thorough review of all environmental standards.
We're using food as fuel in an attempt to appease the dread goddess Gaia, who, in her benevolence, has repaid our worship in the form of a drought. Corn prices are going through the roof as a result. This will result in an unnecessary spike in prices of meat and everything else that corn feeds. Watch the video in the link (it's short) to get a quick lesson in where the corn crop goes.
Now ask yourself, why wouldn't government lift the mandate for corn fuel (ethanol) during a drought? Normal people would do such a common sense thing. But if your goal is to keep the contributions from the fringe radical environmentalist groups coming in, those are the people you must please in order to keep your power, normal people be damned.
As you may have heard (or not, if you watch NBC News), the House Congressional panel that's investigating the illegal transfer of guns to drug cartels in Mexico was just about to hold a vote to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his less-than-full disclosure about his role in the program.
Then President Obama stepped in to invoke Executive Privilege which essentially prevents Congress from receiving the documents it was seeking from the Department of Justice.
This investigation has been going on since 2011, and virtually ignored by the mainstream media, save for Sharyl Atkisson of CBS.
President Obama had pretty much stayed above it all except to signal his support for Holder. But his citing of executive privilege yesterday now implicates him.
Is this unprecedented? No, it's been done before, most notably by Richard Nixon during the Watergate investigation. That ultimately led him to resign and sent the Republican Party into the wilderness for a generation or so back in the mid-1970's. Other presidents have done it on various occasions.
Here are a few links from when George Bush did it.
Good morning, buckaroos and buckarettes. Today is Economics Wednesday. (Actually, as you may have already figured out, any day can be Economics Day around here.) I ran across these three articles that build the case for free market capitalism that you might be interested in.
The first comes from The American Enterprise Institute and is entitled John Taylor: Yes we can cut and grow. James Pethokoukis is the author and in it he cites Mr. Taylor's research that predicted the "unexpectedly" dismal results of President Obama's budget busting Stimulus Bill. But the best part is Mr. Taylor's proof of something that we all know instinctively: contrary to progressive economic arguments and the European Economic Model (in which "austerity" is a dirty, riot-causing word), cutting government spending will lead to economic growth.
Granted, there's a PDF link inside that post that contains a lot of exotic-looking mathematical symbols, but don't let that concern you. The point is that there is some genuine work going on behind the scenes by serious economists proving the Backwards Postulate of Governmental Economics.
And what is this postulate, Mr. Boy? It's simply that the federal budget is no different than the budget of a typical American household, except with a lot more zeros at the end of it. If more is spent than taken in, problems will result. Don't allow yourself to be fooled by people such as Ben Bernanke and Timmy Geithner. There is no magical formula for solving our economic troubles, and they don't have any special insight into economics that the rest of us don't have. Actually, there is a formula: it has worked before and will work again if we can elect some politician who understand it and will get government out of the way.
Capitalism works.
If you can manage your household budget and have money left over at the end of the month, you're more qualified to set economic policy that either one of those guys.
It isn't rocket surgery. Understand the fundamentals of capitalism and stick to the basics, the rest will take care of itself as a matter of course.
No hard numbers here, just a moral argument for free market capitalism and the role it has played in lifting up the life of mankind the world over. Here's a sample:
Americans learn early on in school that the Declaration of Independence claims for us as our birthright the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Founders used this phrase because they wanted to make a moral case for our nation's struggle for independence.
But what does the right to pursue happiness mean? It means earned success: The right to define and seek our happiness as we see fit, through creating value in our lives and in the lives of others. For some people, this leads to prosperity in business. But for others it means saving souls, helping the vulnerable, raising kids who become good men and women, cleaning up the environment, or creating beautiful art. Either way, it doesn't mean mindlessly pursuing money for its own sake.
Really? Who are you to declare what I, or anyone else needs, Ms. Unelected Bureaucrat? She says, "So the issue is how to get human development that will see it continue to rise for the world’s poorest people and people in developing countries."
Here's an idea for you, Ms. Clark: how about abandoning the disproven theory that mankind is causing the Earth's climate to change, and start recommending what we know works, namely freedom and free market capitalism. You will not achieve your goals by tearing down Western nations and redistributing the wealth they created through your taxation and regulation in a New World Order of reparations. The answer is not to stifle capitalism, but to promote it.
It's true the Earth's resources must be exploited to meet the needs of humans (that's why it's here). But the wealth generated by that also provides the means for the cleanup. Destroy the wealth and we'll be worse off environmentally. Much worse.
(Have you noticed that so many restrictions have been placed on the free market that it's nearly inoperable? And how those who have distorted capitalism are the first to say it doesn't work? It's madness, I tell you.)
She seems oblivious to the fact that the poorest countries are nearly all dictatorships. She is also ignorant of world history, specifically the Twentieth Century where aggregate world incomes increased and poverty decreased at the fastest rate on record. This was driven not by governmental mandate (or anything the United Nations did), but by capitalism and freedom.
So, you have your reading assignment for the day. The articles are pretty short so read them all and click on all the links and be glad that some people recognize simple economic truths.
I'm sure that all fourteen of you have heard someone on the Left spouting some platitude about "fairness." Somewhere, there's always something or someone who isn't being "fair" about something.
Inequity is fairly screaming for someone to right this grievous injustice. This self-appointed hero will come riding in on his or her white horse and gleaming armor to save the day for the downtrodden masses. Ideologically, it all sounds well and good, right up until you discover what their remedy really is: some new, stifling government regulation that adds unneeded complexity and additional cost to your life. It really doesn't fix the problem. It creates a new set of them. Which calls for new regulations, creating more problems, ad infinitum.
The end result is what we see today, culminating in the Progressive\Obama Administration. The size and cost of the Federal government has increased some thirty percent during this time. There have been over 10,000 new regulations issued. Our debt is at record high levels and shows no sign of even being addressed, much less reduced. Thanks, Harry Reid, for blocking all the House's attempts to reduce the budget.
To backtrack just a bit (without fully digressing), the idea of "fairness" has translated into a leviathan government that only cares for those who inhabit it, negative real-world impacts be damned.
Now, back when I was young and dirt was still clean, there was one truism that everyone knew: Life Is Not Fair. You weren't always going to get everything you wanted. Some things wouldn't proceed according to your plan. Roadblocks would be put in your way. But if you persevered, you would eventually win the day.
Intertwined in this truism was the concept of merit: that if you did the very best you knew how, learned as much as you could and became the best at what you did, you were rewarded with success. For a long time, this concept was the core of the American mindset. It was a societal normative, one of the rules by which great things could and would be achieved.
Now, I'm not pining for the fiords when I write this. I'm not some curmudgeon longing for the good old days when men were men, your word was your bond, honesty was valued and a hard day's work was rewarded.
Well, actually, I am. So what?
In today's America, we're bombarded with the word "diversity." It's the Leftist cultural dogma that any group of people must reflect the racial divisions of the country, regardless of any other consideration. This was born out of the racial inequalities of the post WWII era, and that were fixed to a great extent with the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and various other pieces of legislation that sought to right the past's injustices. For the most part, and while some may disagree, those inequities have been solved or at least greatly reduced. We're just that type of people.
But that wasn't good enough for lots of Leftards. After the psychological seed was planted that America was somehow inherently racist, all sorts of people grabbed a rake and a hoe and proceed to tend this garden and foster the idea that even though we fought a civil war to abolish slavery and have passed numerous laws to correct institutional racism, we were still a nation of racists. Take a look at Bell's "Critical Race Theory" as an example. This was in the early '70's. A young Barack Obama was one of his supporters. Given the racially selective nature of the enforcement of laws during his tenure, do you doubt that he still supports this outrageously false "theory?"
Sensing an opportunity to tap into the emotion of guilt, many people and organizations sprang up to harvest the garden of racism and sell it's false product to the public. You know to whom I'm referring: the professional racists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and their various organizations, many of whom extort and threaten boycotts of innocent businesses in order to enrich themselves. You only need to look at the misinformation and outright lies surrounding the Trayvon Martin case to see this in action. Ask yourself whether they look at character or skin color.
The victim in this debacle is the idea of merit. "Diversity" is to be valued above and beyond merit and actual knowledge and accomplishment. Do I need to point out that, as the melting pot of the world, we were already a diverse culture?
Our Founders were bold enough to build our country around the idea that all men (and women, that's implied, but you already knew that) are equal before the authority of the law (which we all agree upon through our representative form of government, wherein our neighbors act in our stead in Washington to write our laws, in theory at least). But this idea has been perverted, to our great detriment, by those whose delusions of grandeur compel them to extend this notion to life itself, with them as the arbiters of this supposed "fairness" they force upon the rest of us.
So, how's that working out?
How is taxing the rich helping anyone else? Is that money going into your pocket? Do you have a better job because some eeeevvilll rich person has less money?
There are two main ways to define fairness: fairness in terms of opportunity, and fairness in terms of outcomes. The first means leveling the playing field, and the second means spreading the wealth around. The first means lifting people up on the basis of merit, and the second means bringing successful people down.
By focusing on raising taxes on the wealthy rather than pursuing meaningful policies to reduce unemployment or encourage economic growth, the President is using this second definition of fairness.
It's far past the time for us to embrace the idea of merit in the workplace and in life.
There is one word you should never see in any US Government document: All.
As in...
"...all forms of energy;"
"...all forms of civil transportation."
"... all other materials, services, and facilities,"
Basically, this EO appears innocuous enough, until you start gaming the possible scenarios, especially the one where this administration starts viewing the American People as a threat. If you think that's something your government would never do, think again.
Sorry about the absence. I haven't forgotten about you guys, I really haven't.
Bill Gates is nice enough to automatically update my computer every few weeks or so. Most of the time, I don't even notice them, but occasionally, I'll have some sort of trouble following an install. That's what happened this time.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Anywho, here's what I was going to post last Thursday.
When Did Making Money Become Wrong?
I’ve been wondering a few things lately, so today, I’ll be Mister Question Boy. Not to be confused with Dave Barry, who frequently becomes his alter ego, Mr. Answer Man.
The main question on my mind this morning is this: When did making money become wrong?
Granted, there have been some folks whose love for money has caused them to make it any way they could, without regard to how they would feel if they were on the receiving end of their own actions. That’s why we have laws, to *ahem* remind these unscrupulous people that we, as a society, don’t take kindly to their tactics.
No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the current social undercurrent being promoted by, well, pretty much the entire political leftosphere. Every time I hear someone like Nancy Pelosi criticize “the rich,” I wonder who she means. After all, isn’t she worth several million dollars herself? What sense does it make for her to rail against rich people, the overwhelming majority of whom worked their tails off to get that way.
A casual observer would think that something was amiss. That’s a pretty big psychological inconsistency. Here’s this rich person constantly saying how bad rich people are for being rich.
If anyone can explain this, I’d be interested to hear it.
I’ll carbon-date myself again and say that I can remember a time when this wasn’t so. Making money the old-fashioned way (earning it) was a point of pride. It used to be that the business of America was business. Every American pretty much wanted to be successful, to have more money and the affluence that came along with it. There was nothing wrong with it as long as you did it legally. It was even better if you did it with good cheer and a recognition that you were helping your neighbor to have a better life.
But somewhere along the way, this notion has been turned around until today, even our own President goes against traditional American social convention to ridicule “corporate jet owners,” “fat-cat bankers,” and a few others that I haven’t heard of.
It’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t take much of this type of official rhetoric before the weak-minded begin to parrot it too. Without realizing it, they have allowed themselves to become psychologically and emotionally manipulated through an authority figure.
But, if you point this out, you’ll likely be told that “society has changed.” Which brings up another question: How and why did it change? OK, that’s really two questions, I know, but you get my drift.
Here’s one more: Has society changed for the better? Are we any better off as a result of this new and decidedly leftist passion to “punish the rich?” I heard Rush ask this question the other day while citing the statistic that American is losing millionaires at a rapid pace. Did anyone magically receive any of the hated rich’s money?
No?
I know I certainly didn’t. I bet you didn’t either.
An hour spent researching some world history will reveal that this idea of class warfare isn’t American. Not by any means. The entire philosophy of Marx, Engels, and many other “revolutionaries” was based on economics. They wanted to upend the free market system and create a workers utopia where everyone was "equal," with them overseeing the great new society they had created.
How did that work out? Did Mother Russia become a superpower as a result? Yes, for a time. Were their people happy? Was there plenty of food on the shelves in their grocery stores? Were their automobiles the worlds’ fastest or best?
Were their people more free or less free to innovate and bring new and exciting products to market to make our lives easier or give us more time to spend with our families?
Well, what a weekend on the economic front. S&P downgraded our credit rating, as I post this, the DJIA is down over 200 points, and the uber-lefties in Washington are in high dudgeon, feebly trying to blame the Tea Party members in Congress for the downgrade.
It won’t work.
Watch and listen for the next few days, as a Dem talking point is mindlessly repeated by the usual cast of characters. I fully expect Rush Limbaugh to have a montage of it by tomorrow. If you’re unfamiliar with how he does those, he takes sound bites of liberals saying the exact same phrase and compiles them into a handy reference.
You’ll hear this phrase repeated: “Tea Party Downgrade,”
Senator John F. Kerry and David Axelrod began the meme on yesterday’s political talk shows. It’s a shameless and false attack on the only group of people in Washington who truly recognize the trouble we’re in as a result of the wild Obama, Reid and Pelosi spending spree of the past two years.
And word travels quickly. Just prior to writing this piece, one of my best friends called me and started to rant about throwing all the bums out in Washington and starting over. When I suggested that we keep the Tea Partiers, he became particularly animated, and repeated the false talking point that TP’ers were the cause of all this economic chaos. I reminded him who controlled Congress for the last four years.
He finally gave up and said not to get him started.
My friend, you should be riled up, but you need to direct your anger towards the ones who are directly responsible for this mess, and it ain’t the Tea Party.
I’ll wade into the shallows of psychology for a moment to explain why this is so.
There are people in Washington who have egos so large that the Grand Canyon couldn’t begin to hold them. For years, they’ve bamboozled the public into keeping them in office through various types of deceit. These people love power and will do anything to keep it.
Which reminds me of a saying I heard: “Those who love power do not crave freedom. Those who love freedom do not crave power.” After some exhaustive Internet research, consisting of thirty seconds on Bing, I can’t find the proper attribution for that quote, else I’d credit the proper person for that little bit of wisdom. It’s very true.
The aforementioned “people” have also succumbed to the corrupting power of power. They have a fatal flaw in that they want to tell other people what to do, how to live and what to think. Instead of treating everyone the same way, they play favorites with their contributors and grant them special favors in return for their support. This is how our tax system grew into the monster it is today. And that’s not the only manifestation of corruption and favoritism to be found in Washington.
The Tea Party members of Congress threaten to take away the power of the People of Large Egos by removing them from office. Much like a mama bear seeking to protect her cub, these PoLE’s will attack anything or anyone that threatens their power baby.
It is a pitiful thing to watch, really. Our government was never designed to be inhabited by career politicians. Our Founders envisioned citizen legislators who served a term or two and then returned to their home to live under the laws they created.
This is what the Tea Party represents, a return to our political roots. And those in power will do everything they can to squash anyone who keeps them from their “right to rule.”
OK, digression over. There’s a title up there somewhere that I should talk about.
I’ll give you a few morsels until you can read the whole thing.
Which of these is the most important question to ask in the present economic crisis: how can we promote growth? Should we pay off government debt more or less quickly? Is the US in worse trouble than Europe? Answer: none of the above.
The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society? On this side of the Atlantic, the model of a national welfare system with comprehensive entitlements, which is paid for by the wealth created through capitalist endeavour, has been accepted (even by parties of the centre-Right) as the essence of post-war political enlightenment.
That right there is some good stuff, but wait, there’s more…
This is a political as much as an economic crisis, but not for the reasons that Mr Obama believes. The ruckus that nearly paralysed the US economy last week, and led to the loss of its AAA rating from Standard & Poor’s, arose from a confrontation over the most basic principles of American life.
Contrary to what the Obama Democrats claimed, the face-off in Congress did not mean that the nation’s politics were “dysfunctional”. The politics of the US were functioning precisely as the Founding Fathers intended: the legislature was acting as a check on the power of the executive.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you for pointing that out, Ms. Daley.
The Tea Party faction within the Republican party was demanding that, before any further steps were taken, there must be a debate about where all this was going. They had seen the future toward which they were being pushed, and it didn’t work. They were convinced that the entitlement culture and benefits programmes which the Democrats were determined to preserve and extend with tax rises could only lead to the diminution of that robust economic freedom that had created the American historical miracle.
And, again contrary to prevailing wisdom, their view is not naive and parochial: it is corroborated by the European experience.
In other words, we have reached the tipping point where our federal government is about to tip our economy over into a full-blown depression thanks to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. And this is being done on purpose, ironically by folks who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and defend the country from enemies both foreign and domestic.
We have met the enemy, and it is Progressivism.
These next few months up until 2012 will decide which path our nation is to tread for the foreseeable future and what we will embrace as national policy. We have only two choices before us, one that served us well until around fifty years ago, where Americans were upwardly mobile, creative and free. The alternative, which has proven itself to be a failure of Biblical proportions in only two years, is one of redistribution, control, poverty, and a massive and unnecessary waste of human capital and potential.
You are the government. Your votes determine this.
It’s Monday and time to get out the razor blades and draw a warm bath.
Good Morning!
I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend free from the political shenanigans going on in Washington over the debt crisis, I really was. But Friday nights’ dueling press conferences between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner was too good to miss.
The contrast was glaring. President Obama held his presser first. Thanks to NiceDeb, here is the video.
What we saw was a president who is clearly aware he’s losing the battle of the budget. He was petulant and impatient; it was all over his face. His demeanor was unseemly for the Leader of the Free World. There was very little in the way of facts. All he did was try to shift the blame for the budget crisis onto the Republicans.
By comparison, Speaker Boehner was calm and collected, one could almost say defiant. Again, from NiceDeb, Boehner’s press conference.
Overall, I get the impression that Boehner is the adult in the room, not Obama, despite the presidents’ attempt to appear that way, aided and abetted by a compliant (and lying) media.
At some point, reality will intrude. I don’t think it will happen all at once, but there are growing signs that President Obama and the Senate Democrats, led by Harry Reid, are losing the public debate over the debt and the deficit.
If it weren’t so serious, it would be comical. On the one hand, there is Obama desperately trying to bankrupt the country and using every rhetorical trick in the Progressive playbook to make it appear as though it’s the Republicans who got us into this mess. Obama seems to be saying, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
On the other hand is Boehner, whose exasperation level seems to be rising exponentially with every passing day. He truly does realize that something has to be done to cut spending and that right soon.
And so do the American people. Polls are showing the President losing support, even among Democrats. That’s a bit misleading, though, as the Dems are unhappy that he appears to be waffling in his insistence upon a larger and more intrusive federal government than the country has ever seen before.
Someone needs to explain that to me. How can anyone look around today and say that anything this president and the last Congress has done has worked to America’s benefit?
Unemployment stands at 9.2%. It was 7.8% at the beginning of Obama’s term. Real inflation is around 10%, not the miniscule number of around 1.5% that Washington uses. Gasoline prices are nearly double what they were in January of ’09. And I don’t have to tell you that the price of groceries has nearly doubled in four years.
Gentle reader, none of this is happening by accident. None of it.
It’s the direct result of a command-and-control economy that is being commanded and controlled by people who want us to suffer.
I hate to sound so pessimistic about that, but there’s no other explanation. We’re being screwed on purpose. And make no mistake, there are people who are profiting quite nicely, thank you, from our travails.
One of the most prominent beneficiaries just so happens to be one of the architects of this crisis, Nancy Pelosi. Her net worth increased, and you’d better sit down for this one, a whopping 62% last year. I’ll bet y’all know of at least one friend whose worth decreased that much over the last few years.
Harry Reid’s personal worth increased also, and to be fair, so did John Boehner’s. So it would seem everyone in Washington is on the gravy train.
Too bad we’re not on it too.
Now, there is a very popular misconception amongst radical leftists and Progressives (but I repeat myself) that capitalism is a zero-sum game. To decode this for you, that means that in order for one person to gain, that gain must come from someone else’s loss.
I’m sorry, but if you really believe that, you need a constant reminder to breathe. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If that were true, then no economy would experience any growth, period. Think about it and you’ll come to the inevitable conclusion that those who think that way have been conditioned, which is merely a polite word for brainwashed.
For the longest time, I, and probably you too, gave this administration the benefit of the doubt when it came to their economic policies. However, that was then and this is now. After two years of declining economic numbers, we are coming to the sad conclusion that what’s happening to our economy is being done on purpose.
I’ve outlined one possible cause, that of outside pressures being brought on our economy for the expressed reason of bringing us down. I’m not alone in considering that possibility. Here’s a link to an interview that you should hear. Yeah, it’s dull and dry, since it’s about economics, but it’s well worth listening to. It’s from an economist named Catherine Austin Fitts and its entitled “Now That We Got Your Money, We’re Going to Change the Deal.” Once more, thanks to NiceDeb, who’s proving to be a valuable source of the obscure, and a good blog buddy, too.
Of course, no discussion on economics would be complete without me doing my Ron White imitation and dancing on my soapbox. So, for your consideration, I’d like to propose a solution to our problem. I’m generous that way.
We need to retreat from this whole idea of a global economy. I know, we’re being told it’s the wave of the future and everybody’s doing it and there will be rainbows, unicorns and skittles for everyone if we do.
Much like global warming or climate change or whatever that’s being called this week, this whole notion of a global economy is based on the false premise of multiculturalism. As you know, that’s the idea that all cultures are equal and therefore equally good. We all share the same values and ideals and we will all work together in glorious harmony for the greater good of mankind.
Kinda sounds like a workers’ paradise, doesn’t it? Now, where have I heard that before? Hmmm...
It’s worth noting that environmentalism is part and parcel of the New World Order of things. Check any study on it, particularly from that august body of internationalism, the United Nations, and you’ll see the environmental buzzword “sustainability.”
Let me get my decoder ring out again for you. That word doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s another false premise, that there are too many people in the world consuming too much of its natural resources and that the industrial economic model cannot support this growing population.
That’s just a lie, plain and simple. The only thing restricting the exploration and harvesting of our natural resources is government. Capitalism and freedom have done more to elevate the condition of man than any other form of economy.
And that’s a fact.
Why are third-world countries third-world countries? You need look no further than their governments, the overwhelming majority of which are dictatorships. The people aren’t free, nor will their strongman governments permit such freedom. Such is power.
Here’s my solution. I know that I’ll be called all sorts of names for even suggesting this like xenophobic and nationalist and all that, but I really don’t care.
A global economy cannot work. What we need to do is concentrate our efforts on America first. This means that we should be enacting new laws to spur investment by American companies here at home. We should also repeal laws that have been shown to be detrimental to our economy, like NAFTA and GATT. A robust and diverse economy at home should be the policy of our government along with a dedication for us to have the highest standard of living in the world.
We are still the world’s largest economy. We should be taking advantage of that market by making our own products here while producing enough extra for export and trade with other countries. We can compete in a global market, but it must be favorable to us first. And as this effort towards a global economy is currently being implemented, the goal is not for other countries to move to more freedom for their people, the goal is to dismantle our freedoms and our economy for redistribution to the rest of the enslaved world.
This is the wrong way to go and we know it.
The world isn’t fair or equal, despite the intentions of many powerful people to make it that way. They see our success as something to be plundered. This is nothing but envy on their part.
If we keep on electing politicians who think of themselves as ”citizens of the world” instead of Americans, we are doomed for no good reason.
It’s time for America to rediscover and reinvent herself.
Here’s a little news to begin your workweek: President Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors released its Seventh Quarterly Report on the impact of the Stimulus last Friday just as the long holiday weekend was beginning.
There was a reason for the timing of the report’s release: it’s pretty damning for the Obama administration. A quick perusal of the numbers combined with some simple math shows the Stimulus has resulted in the saving or creation of 2.4 million jobs at the cost of a mere $666 Billion dollars so far. Nice number, that last one.
OK, let’s see here, $666 Billion spent, divided by 2.4 Million jobs created equals, hmm, carry the two, divide by the square root of infinity, multiply by the number of Nancy Pelosi’s Botox injections and you get the answer: each job added only cost you $278,000!
Isn’t this math thingy fun?
Oh, wait, my calculator is starting to smoke and there are sparks coming from it. I coulda swore it just said, “Danger, danger Will Robinson!” I swear didn’t know calculators could talk.
Of course, any numbers that come from this administration will be revised soon, and those revisions will be “unexpectedly” worse. It’s almost like they can’t count, or something.
If you are fortunate enough to still have a job, then these numbers may not mean much to you. Perhaps the only thing you’ve noticed is that your paycheck doesn’t go quite as far as it did last year. Gasoline prices have only doubled on Obama’s watch. And actual inflation, measured the old way, has removed about ten percent of your buying power, not the “official” number of 1.5%.
“These things happen” may be your reaction. And you would be right, almost. In the past, our economy has had its ups and downs, as do all economies. But a curious thing has started to happen in the last, oh, twenty years or so. As we’ve seen a reduction in the stable base of our economy, more and more of our economy has become dependent upon disposable income.
Now you may remember what disposable income is, or at least was. It’s that part of your money that’s left over after you pay for the things you have to have in order to live: your mortgage or rent, groceries, clothes, gas, the car payment. Overhead, it’s commonly called. Now these expenses are pretty much fixed, unless you need a home or car repair of some sort. What remains is your “disposable income.” Most families spend that money on things that aren’t essential, like IPods or going out to the movies, or a vacation.
So when your overhead increases, say, it costs more for groceries and gas, it means you have less money left over for the “nice to have” items. So, a larger part of our economy has become dependent on disposable income, which tends to fluctuate a pretty good bit. This is a big reason for the bubbles that have occurred in our economy. Instead of showing gradual and steady growth over the long term, we now see sharp spikes and deep drops as bubbles form and are eventually deflated. And when they do deflate, the results are becoming more destructive.
Those of you who were around at the time might remember the “dot-com” bubble of the ‘90’s. More recently, we’ve seen the “housing bubble” where home prices started to rise well above the four or five percent annual appreciation that we once counted on. New home prices began their sharp upward climb and when that bubble burst, it sent the entire economy into a tailspin that we’re still struggling to pull out of.
Now, what separates the housing bubble from previous downturns is the direct role of Washington and its meddling in the economy. It was a direct result of a little known piece of legislation passed during the Jimmy Carter administration called the Community Reinvestment Act. I’ve touched on this before.
While the basic idea of this act was commendable, its execution was, and is, deeply flawed. Basically, it forced banks to change the formula they previously used to qualify folks seeking home loans. You may remember how easy it was to get a home loan a few years ago. The requirements were relaxed to the point that you didn’t even need to prove you had income, a marked departure from the previous standard that normally required a sample of your blood and some sort of claim by the bank on your firstborn child.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging Americans to own a home. It’s the bedrock of our economy and way of life. But instead of measures that insure a strong economy with a diversity of job opportunities for everyone, this law forced banks to lower their lending standards to include folks who previously wouldn’t have qualified for a home loan.
But that isn’t what you’ve heard as the reason for the housing market crash. What you’ve heard from Democrats is the myth that deregulation and Wall Street greed is what caused it.
Don’t be fooled. Banks and major lending institutions knew they were now subject to new regulations that defied the laws of economics. So they devised some rather ingenious ways to package these worthless loans in an attempt to recoup some of the money they were forced to lose as a result of the CRA.
So, what we have here is a failure to communicate the truth in order to gain a political advantage over Republicans.
Not content with that, the Obama administration has tried to fix one problem caused by government interference in the economy with even more interference in the form of the failed Stimulus and the Frank-Dodd financial takeover of Wall Street.
The evidence of this failure is all around us. Although we’ve been told that the recession ended some time ago, job creation has been painfully slow to rebound. While our economy is indeed growing, it has yet to reach the level needed to keep up with population growth, around 2.6%. It may be technically correct that we’re no longer in recession, the efforts of this administration have proven to be insufficient to match the normal levels of growth that we’ve seen in previous recoveries.
It’s pretty clear that Obama’s approach to fixing our economy isn’t working as advertised. New laws and the regulations that flow from them are having the opposite effect as companies sit on money that would normally be invested in expansion. One business leader after another says essentially the same thing, “There’s far too much government meddling in our economy for us to expand and hire. We’re waiting for a more stable environment before we start to invest in America again.”
One of these days, when I can find all the information, I intend to present my Backwards Economic chart that shows the clear connection between the rise of government regulations and the fall of economic activity. It’s one of those things I know to be true, and you probably do, too, it just needs some numbers in order to be credible. There’s just no way Washington can create jobs except in Washington. Each new law and regulation that comes from there only serves one purpose: to restrict our economy.
The solution is simple. In order to get our economy back on track, there must be a drastic and immediate reduction in federal interference in the economy. That won’t be easy to do, especially with the prevailing attitude of this administration, summed up recently by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is that taxes cannot be cut because then “you have to shrink the overall size of government programs.”
Um, Timmy, that’s exactly what needs to be done.
Maybe it’s time to redefine the real difference between the public and private sector. We could do this by calling them the “productive” and “non-productive” sectors, since this is a much more accurate description of their economic roles.
Or maybe “normal people” and “government leeches.”
It’s a sad fact of life that many politicians can’t understand the very simple concept of cause and effect. It’s playing out before their eyes, and yet they can’t see it.
But for the rest of us who populate the World Outside the Beltway, the concept is as plain as day. Well, almost. I’ll explain that one later*.
If there is any place to observe cause and effect in action, it’s in the area of economics. Shirley, you’re familiar with the phrase “supply and demand” and how it relates to prices: if demand is great and supply isn’t, then prices are high. Conversely, if demand is low and supply is great, then prices are low.
It should be a standard that’s taught first in any basic economics class. The relationship between supply and demand is well established and is a simple fact of economic life.
Except, of course, to that subspecies of humanity called Homo Regularis, commonly known as the modern politician.
Anymore, when addressing these people (as opposed to my readers, who are the most intelligent and well-informed people anywhere), I feel the need to use small words and type verrrrry slooowly, so they can understand the simple principles that the rest of us take for granted.
Now, when you and I read that headline, we think that gas prices will go up even more, mostly because they will. That headline may as well say, “Obama Administration Seeks Higher Gas Prices for Americans” because that’s pretty close to the truth, if not dead-on accurate.
We know that if we aren’t drilling, then the supply of oil will be less, resulting in high prices at the gas pump. It’s not rocket surgery.
So, if we know this simple fact of life, why don’t our politicians also know it? After all, weren’t they also raised and educated right here in the good ol’ US of A? Popular wisdom is popular because it needn’t be taught in a classroom; it comes out in casual conversation as just one of those things that everybody knows.
There’s only one other reason for their seeming ignorance of supply and demand: they are doing this knowing full well what the result will be.
I was willing to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt for a while. I, along with anyone else who had the slightest bit of curiosity about the man who would be our President, knew that he had never run a business nor even ventured much outside of the ivy-ed walls of academia except to organize some communities in that bastion of political verisimilitude, Chicago. So, I was willing to wait for a while he used his political training wheels to tool around the Oval Office.
But after two and a half years of having access to the awe and wonder that is the greatest information-gathering organization of all time in the Federal Government, it’s time to start questioning his intentions.
It appears, through his words and his actions, that he’s doing this on purpose.
Mr. Boy, you might ask, whatever would give you that idea?
Oh, nothing, gentle reader, except this clip that I never get tired of running.
*Explanation time – Here’s a Marist poll that shows that Americans really don’t understand the concept of supply and demand all that well, or at least the Americans whom Marist polls. 34% think that the evil oil companies are to blame for the price of a globally traded commodity. This ignores the simple fact that everyone in the world pays more when the price of oil goes up.
Either they’ve been misinformed or they haven’t been taught about supply and demand. That second one wouldn’t surprise me at all. Actually, the first one wouldn’t surprise me either. Maybe it’s a witch’s brew of both.
Did anyone else notice something about that Fox article, namely who they quoted?
...Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case. Earthjustice was joined by Center for Biological Diversity and the Alaska Wilderness League in challenging the air permits.
Hmm, that’s funny. Three radical, left-wing environmental groups determining whether or not we can drill for our own oil? I coulda swore that’s why I voted, so my elected representative could make that kind of decision, doing what's best for the country, like they're suppose to…
Oh well. I guess that’s the way things work up there in Washington. I’m just a simple fellow with a computer. And a printer. And did I mention I need to get some gas today?
And did I also mention that I just might leave one of these taped to the pump? (h/t Instapundit)
In a speech yesterday at a town hall meeting at Gamesa Technology Corp., a Spanish-owned company that makes wind turbines, President Obama mocked one questioner in the crowd complaining about the high price of gasoline.
“Let them eat cake!”
OK, that was Marie Antoinette, but the sentiment was the same. An out-of-touch, narcissistic leader, well insulated from the masses, makes a condescending remark to the honest concern of an average American about high gas prices. Out loud. "You may want to think about a trade-in."
Clueless Incompetence, thy name is Obama.
Or, is that what it really is?
As you should know (as a regular reader of this blog), candidate Obama very simply and succinctly laid out his energy agenda thusly:
Is there any doubt that he’s pursing that strategy with vim and vigor? The saddest part (heh, I almost typed “the sadist part”) is that we don’t need to be held hostage by high energy prices. But in the town hall meeting yesterday, he tried to sell his energy policy as one that will help America by becoming “energy independent.”
Now, that’s not a bad idea, in and of itself. Other countries are striving to do that very thing, realizing that it’s in their national interest. There’s only one thing wrong with the approach that Obama wants: it defies the laws of physics and economics.
Obama wants to make a major shift in the nations’ energy production into “green energy.” Ask Spain how many private sector jobs are lost for every one “green energy” job. The answer is 2.5. Aside from the problem I just outlined, he blissfully ignores another fact or two: we already have in place a large and efficient infrastructure for the distribution of the best form of portable energy currently known to man, oil.
Physically, oil is the most energy-dense substance on Earth. It can be made into many things. Ironically, it’s the primary component in helping to achieve higher mileage in cars due to its light weight, replacing heavier metal parts. As I’ve pointed out before, you probably had some of it rubbed on your bottom as a child. It’s not the evil substance that it’s made out to be by the rabid enviroNazis. It’s such a vital component of everyday life that to reduce its use would be a serious economic blow, and a stupid one at that. We’re not “addicted to oil” like some helpless junkie. We use it precisely because it is useful in a staggering variety of ways. That isn’t addiction, it’s common sense.
But that doesn’t stop Obama from peddling his mistaken beliefs on an increasingly unwilling nation. His actions and policies are the main reason we now have to pay twice the amount for a gallon of gas than we did on the day of his coronation. Illegal drilling moratoriums while helping a foreign competitor (and Soros investment partner Petrobas) are directly responsible for the unnecessarily high prices we now pay, high prices that can only stifle the very fragile economic recovery that we’re told is happening.
Evidence is coming to light that this is bad policy, but you knew that already. Every time the price goes up at the pump, you receive a cut in pay. If you’re poor, a minority, or a senior living on a fixed income, the increased costs of energy are an even larger burden. Nancy Pelosi railed against President Bush when the cost of gas was over $3.00 dollars a gallon. Don’t you find her silence as prices exceed $4.00 just a bit odd? It seems that high gas prices under a Republican president are outrageous, but just hunky-dory under a Democrat president.
It’s funny how that works.
Obama seems to think that alternative fuels are the answer. As we’re slowly finding out, making fuel from food sources isn’t all that good. The regulatory rush to mandate the use of biofuels has some very bad results, as this article points out. Skyrocketing food prices and deadly food shortages are just two of the results. But, of course, you already knew that, too.
There is a sensible solution to our energy problems, the very same problems that were brought about by the childish belief in the Global Warming Monster. It doesn’t exist, it never did exist and it never will exist. Mankind is incapable of inflicting any form of long-term damage to the Earth. But it provided a handy excuse for political radicals to use to weaken America from within. Repetition of this lie has cost us trillions in wasted time, jobs, and capital.
It’s time to put that belief in the Global Warming Monster back under the bed where it belongs. Or back in the closet.
And to tell the truth to the children in charge of our national energy policy.
Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me. I did a search for the term “global warming theory” and got over 1.5 million results. Then I did a search for “global warming postulate,” you know, a theory that’s been proven to be true.
I got 9 results.
Naturally, your mileage may vary. But that's a pretty big difference in results.
Now think of all the environmental rules and regulations that have been passed in the last twenty-five years or so. What have they been based upon?
A theory. An unproven theory. Not a postulate, a theory. Something might or might not be happening. It could be, but then again, it could just as easily not be. Could go either way. Tough to tell.
Kind of fills me with, um, well, I’m not really sure what it fills me with. It ain’t confidence, that’s for sure.
You see, I sort of expect people to automatically recognize what is true. Having spent my entire life in the manufacturing arena, I’ve dealt in absolutes: something either works or it doesn’t. When I made a part, it either passed or failed inspection. There was no in-between and no grey area. This was particularly important when making parts for the military, or the medical industry, or Space Shuttle flight hardware: someone’s life could very well depend on the part I made. Failure was not an option.
In fact, the term “true” applies as a principle in manufacturing. A round part is said to “run true” only if it doesn’t deviate from indicated zero. If that same round part rotates, it has to run true in order to be balanced and eliminate vibration.
If absolutes didn’t exist, nothing in our world could operate. Planes wouldn’t fly, autos wouldn’t run, and buildings wouldn’t stand. This simple fact of life also reveals the absurdity of postmodernism wherein no absolutes exist. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But I digress.
While I realize that the rest of the world doesn’t always deal in absolutes to quite the degree that engineering and manufacturing do, nonetheless the world must adhere to them. When it comes to human nature, not so much.
Now, let’s apply the notion of absolutes to politics and government. For generations, those in government were generally guided by absolutes, popularly known as the truth. Take our interstate highway system as a relatively recent example. The need for an efficient, high-speed network of roads across the country was met with a natural, common-sense response based on simple absolutes. This was how things once were.
However, today we have a much different method of operation when it comes to setting policy in Washington. Truth and absolutes have somehow taken a back seat to vagaries and possibilities, not actual outcomes. Gauzy thought and “what if” scenarios have replaced concrete results.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our national energy policy. Rather than examining our needs and meeting them with proven technology, we’re being forced to use so-called “green technology” that has yet to mature and cannot sustain itself except through large blocks of taxpayer money in the form of one-time grants. It causes further damage in the form of displaced jobs from traditional energy sectors.
All of this is based on a theory. That theory is called “man-made global warming.” It’s premise is that mankind’s actions are causing the climate of the entire world to change in the long term.
And it has yet to be proven true.
But that hasn’t stopped the supporters of this unproven theory from forcing their belief upon the rest of us. Look around you, the evidence is everywhere. From incandescent light bulbs that will soon be illegal, to aerosol propellants, to the reduced energy that our gasoline now has due to the mandated use of ethanol.
All based not on sound science, as we are told, but on a theory.
Now, before the rabid environmentalists begin their cry that BackwardsBoy wants us to have dirty air and water and we’re all gonna die, let me say for the record that I don’t want any of that. I’m all for reducing pollution within reason. But the argument that mankind has the capability to negatively affect the world’s climate is outrageous on its face, and is being taken to its absurd extreme by people who see an opportunity to gain power and to exert control over our lives.
Even the catastrophe in Japan is being blamed by some on this theory. Already, politicians on the left are marshaling their forces in an effort to eliminate nuclear energy. Is nuclear energy dangerous? As we’re seeing in Japan, there are natural forces that can destroy the most well designed reactors. But as a result, we now have more information that will enable us to design new and better reactors, so even this unfortunate event can provide us with better nuclear technology than we had before. That, my friends, is real progress.
But even though energy production is dangerous, we've been doing it safely for quite a while. There is also another tendency for those on the left to shrink from any endeavor due to danger. This attitude is effeminate in nature, and is not conducive to the advancement of technology, or life, for that matter. Just because something is dangerous is no excuse not to do it. Danger can be contained.
My point is that environmentalism has been fundamentally transformed from a common-sense effort to curb excessive pollution into a political excuse to impose an ever more intrusive government on a people who don’t want or need it. For too long, our politicians have blindly accepted this theory as truth, and legislated badly as a result. Instead of exercising a healthy skepticism, they have swallowed every prediction and believed every doomsday scenario forwarded by these environmental zealots. Let’s forget about the large sums of money that environmental groups pour into the campaign coffers of these pols for a moment and focus on the truth of their premise.
Year after year of increasingly stringent pollution regulations aren’t enough to satisfy them, even though our air and water are cleaner than ever. Nothing is ever enough, and the continued push for more restrictions on our energy supplies should tell you something else is at work. We’ve passed the point of merely curbing unhealthy pollution and have moved into an area where we are being told that by simply living our lives, we’re causing devastation on a helpless planet. This guilt allows unscrupulous politicians to do things that, once upon a time, would’ve been considered far outside the realm of politics. But now, they have what seems (to them) to be the perfect excuse and they use it often.
“How can you be for pollution?” they ask. “Don’t you care about the effect of pollution on people’s lives? What about the children?” Invariably, big corporations are targeted too. In their mind, everyone is guilty of wanting to kill the planet just by being born. Only they have the necessary morals and high purpose to “care” enough to do something about it, just ask them.
It’s time for us to put aside this national notion of mankind as some parasite on Earth. As we’ve seen in Japan, the planet is far more powerful than man is, and can confound and destroy anything that we’ve done.
It’s time to dispense with the theories and start basing our national decisions on the cold, hard facts.
In other words, it's time to get real about our energy policy.
It only took two years, but we’re starting to realize just how much damage “progressivism” and the Obama administration are doing to us. There’s a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos released yesterday that shows president Obama’s agenda to be in trouble. 64% of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track.
The honeymoon is officially over.
If you haven’t already, click on over and read the link, but be prepared for a bit of spin. One pollster can only attribute this to the recent spike in oil and gasoline prices. The rest of us out here in the real world know it’s not just the pain at the pump, prices are rising at the grocery store, too. And this comes as the majority of Americans have lost almost all, if not all of, the equity in their homes. Businesses are failing, record numbers of people are unemployed and on food stamps. There’s civil unrest in Wisconsin, and Ohio and Indiana as their legislatures do what the good citizens of those states elected them to do and the unions rebel in an increasingly more violent way.
The effects of ObamaCare are starting to be felt nationwide, unless you belong to the growing numbers of unions and other organizations that have received waivers and are exempt from it, that number having grown to over 1000 as of this writing.
Amidst all of this, oooh, look there’s Charlie Sheen! Hmm, could he be the embodiment of America today? Strung out and haggard, the result of hookers and blow, babbling incoherently and the focus of dead pools?
It’s enough to make you retreat to your local watering hole, turn on a basketball game, and let the rest of the world consume itself.
I wouldn’t blame you if you did. In fact, that sounds like a really good idea. But we have a bit of work to do first.
We have a nation to rescue.
We’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that we’ve been had. When nearly two thirds of the country realizes we have a problem, then maybe, just maybe, we can start to fix it. What’s happening to us is our own fault: we’ve let unscrupulous scoundrels worm their way into office, saying one thing (what we want to hear) and then when in office, doing something far different. Political gain and their power is what they want, not what’s best for the country.
You may ask yourself, “Self, what can I do, as a regular American, to stop this?”
Your self would reply, “Get up and get informed! Read! Find out about your own government and how it was originally supposed to work. Then you’ll know just how far we’ve gotten away from what the Founders intended, and how your freedom is suffering as a result. Understand that there are people in government who are actively working to bring you under their direct control and determine what you think and how you act. Is that what you want? For others to control you? Or do you want to control your own life?”
Set yourself to change your country, only this time in a positive way. Use your intuition (it's not just for women anymore) to tell you what’s true and what isn’t. Find out about candidates, what they believe and which organizations are funding their campaigns. Read their speeches, watch their YouTube videos and gauge their actions against your own sense of right and wrong.
In other words, become the American you were intended to be.
Proud, independent, fiercely protective of your family and your God-given rights, truthful and intolerant of lies, particularly when they come from the people you elect to act for you, engaged, informed and capable of defending what you know is your heart is right.
Become a warrior for truth and country. And know you are not alone.
Imagine that your government controls when you have electricity and when you don’t.
Imagine a refrigerator full of spoiled food.
Imagine that you can’t turn on the TV.
Imagine that you can’t access the Internet.
Imagine children dying from extreme heat because the power is off.
Imagine your grandparents dying from extreme cold because the power is off.
Imagine you or a loved one who relies on a medicine that must be constantly refrigerated.
Imagine you can’t charge your electric car and cannot travel, even for a medical emergency.
All this and more is the result of so-called “Green Technology” and the socialistic control of what was once considered a public utility – electricity. And it’s coming to Britain.
Electricity consumers in the UK will need to get used to flicking the switch and finding the power unavailable, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the country’s grid operator. Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.
“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”
Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets. Wind-based power systems are necessary to meet the government’s targets, he has explained, but they will require lifestyle changes.
Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.
Smart grids are being developed by utilities worldwide to allow the government to control electricity use in the home, down to the individual appliance. Smart grids would monitor the consumption of each appliance and be capable of turning them off if the power is needed elsewhere.
Holliday’s startling comments on BBC Radio 4 were reported by The Daily Telegraph.
(Emphasis mine.)
This, my friends, is the future as envisioned by our energy overlords. Even the idea of a battery backup is excluded.
I’m not even sure I need to expand on the insanity of this policy, as the examples I’ve outlined above should suffice. I’m sure you can think of a few more.
How the notion of moving civilization backwards ever caught on in political circles is beyond my comprehension, despite this blog’s title. But rest assured there are many in Washington with the same goal. One need look no further that the Obama administration’s continued illegal moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to see where we’re headed.
We’re being constantly bombarded with the idea of some sort of new “green energy economy” as the self-avowed communist Van Jones puts it. The more we hear about this supposed need to rely on technology that has proven unreliable and has failed in the marketplace, the more it crowds out the fact that there are proven technologies that are being shoved aside. It won’t take long for folks to forget that there are such things as clean coal, natural gas and nuclear power. Even petroleum power is far cleaner today than it was a generation ago, and the overall improvement of air quality in many major cities proves it.
Yet this isn’t enough for the environmental movement. Now, it’s becoming clear how truly radical this movement is. They are intent on retarding mankind’s’ progress. This is truly ironic since the so-called political “progressives” are the ones promoting this madness.
They must be purged from American politics. They have proven themselves to be the enemy of mankind. Why this is so is anyone's guess, but the fact remains: this will be American if they are allowed to continue to restrict our ability to harvest our natural resources.
We read what you had to say at that little fundraiser over the weekend. You said that your Democratic friends in Congress are having difficulties in this election because we aren’t thinking clearly. You said,
"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama told the assembled Democrats, who paid $15,200 a person to attend. "And the country is scared."
Hmmm. Is that what you think? Really? Well, I have some news for you.
You’re wrong. Very wrong. In fact, you couldn’t be more wrong even if you tried to be.
We’re not scared. We know what you and your Democrat party are trying to do to us. We’ve watched you and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi very closely ever since you took office.
We watched as you went around the world and apologized to our enemies. We watched you disrespectfully return the bust of Churchill to our British allies. We watched you put your feet upon the Presidential Desk. We watched you bow to leaders of foreign countries as though you were their servant instead of standing before them as their equal.
We watched you play golf while our fighting forces made the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefields of a war you refuse to name. We watched you force one unpopular law after another through Congress against our will. We watched while you criticized those in business who dared to make a profit. We watched you disparage doctors as greedy people who can’t wait to chop off someone’s leg. We watched as you tried to give our sworn enemies the same rights as normal Americans in our court system instead of treating them as the animals they are.
We watched as you looked down your nose at everyday Americans and we heard you call us “bitter clingers” for adhering to our faith in American values. And now, we have to hear you say that we’re scared and can’t think for ourselves.
I’m terribly sorry if that’s what you think. You see, we are thinking very clearly because we aren’t scared.
We’ve learned a lot since you took office. We learned that you don’t think very much of your own country, although we don’t know why. After all, you should thank us for electing you even though you haven’t had much in the way of experience, either in politics or in everyday life. We know you’ve never had a real job with real responsibilities and real people depending on you for their families’ livelihoods. We know that you don’t want us to know anything about your time in college since you won’t release any of your records. We know you voted “present” a lot. An awful lot.
No, Barry, we can see a few things for ourselves. We know when we’re being lied to. What you call “facts and science and arguments” we call “radical left-wing progressive talking points”. Just words, really, with no truth in them, designed to manipulate us into giving you and your party more power over us in order to satisfy your incredibly large and arrogant egos.
No, Barry, we’re thinking very clearly and we aren’t afraid at all. In fact, we’re defiant.
We’re defiant of you and your efforts to “fundamentally transform” the country into something far less that it was. That’s why your party is in trouble. We’re going to send you an unmistakable message in a few weeks that we don’t like the place where you want to take us.
And you’d be wise to listen to us.
We want our government small and responsive to our needs. What we need right now aren’t vague platitudes and socialist talking points. We need a return to American principles like personal responsibility and accountability. We need to get the economy going again so we can have a future to give our children and their families.
We want a government that is honest and listens to us. We want a government operated by folks like us, that understands what we want from life and that will write laws that benefit us all, and repeal the laws that don’t. We want a government of, by and for us. And we know that’s not what you want.
So, pardon us if we don’t live down to your mistaken ideas and false notions of what we are or aren’t thinking.
My regular readers (all three of you) are aware that I was once a machinist. At least I think I told you. If I didn't, I guess I'll tell you now.
I was once a machinist, and a Certified one at that. During high school.
After I graduated, I found work at a local tool and die shop making tools and dies. They had an apprenticeship program that I attended for four years. Then I was a certified Tool and Die Maker.
A few years later, I got a job as a Quality Control Inspector. Soon, I was a Certified QC Inspector.
Does anyone see a trend emerging?
I went from that job to another in manufacturing where I learned how to program and set up computer controlled machine tools. Another skill for the old resume: CNC Programmer and Setup.
I then moved into a job as a computer draftsman drawing computerized machine shop blueprints. That's another skill set: Computer Draftsman.
The logical extension of that was the next position as a Mechanical Designer. One more resume bullet point.
Then it was on to Shop Foreman and eventually to Manufacturing Manager.
So I've done quite a lot in manufacturing. More than most people. Along the way, I found an old saying that fit me perfectly. "Find a job you love and you'll never work another day in your life." Being the gearhead I was, I'd finally found a job that was engaging and allowed me to work with my hands and my mind. For, you see, there's a lot to know to be a really good machinist. Things like geometry and trigonometry. Laws of Physics. Metallurgy. How to make metal parts harder or softer.
In short, being a machinist isn't just something you can turn off. The industry is made for those with inquiring minds. I'd like to challenge our current manufacturing czar, Ron Bloom, to a Jeopardy game where all of the categories are subsets of manufacturing. He'd be crying like a little girl when I was through winning.
But I digress.
Watching the jobs I loved disappear to some faraway land hurt. Not only should I now be making some serious money, I would also have the chance to pass along some of my knowledge to a new generation, just as I was able to learn from my industrial mentors.
How could this happen? How could a nation that once valued "Rosie the Riveter" ever turn its back on an entire sector of the economy that contributed so much to our nation and the world? How could we ignore the obvious benefits to our standard of living by not promoting manufacturing? Too many things just didn't make sense. And we've suffered greatly as a result of, wait for it, uninformed politicians.
Today, that has the potential to change. We're not so far removed from the time when we were the worlds' Maker of Things, and some in Congress are starting to finally realize that we should be doing that again.
In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House recently passed the National Manufacturing Strategy Act of 2010. This bill, while not directly addressing what needs to be done to encourage American manufacturing, sets up the framework for the President and Congress to start examining policies and how they effect the industry.
HR 4692 has the potential to actually benefit the country. You don't know how much it surprises me to type that sentence during this administration.
Naturally, it also has the potential to be filled with nonsense and to be skewed in favor of the unions, or some type of fantastical "green initiative". If that is the case, then just consider the $30M price tag of this bill as another waste of your tax dollars.
This will be what I'll be looking for from any committee:
1. Reducing the regulatory burden on business. This is rather sweeping, but should be the foundation of any recommendations. The last twenty years have seen more and more costly regulations imposed on businesses, so much so that we're reaching the saturation point: we can't keep on regulating the private sector to death. More recently, we have the Health Care Bill and the new Financial Regulations Bill and others coming from this Congress. Since no one in Congress actually read these bills before they voted on them, even the members of Congress don't know the provisions nor how they will negatively impact businesses. These bills set up countless new regulatory agencies and edicts that will cost jobs.
2. Environmental regulations need to be scaled back dramatically. Of course, we all know what would follow: the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the rending of (union made) garments by the radical environmentalist groups who now control our agenda despite not being elected to any office. These people have somehow convinced themselves and many gullible others that we should be living in some pre-industrial paradise with none of the modern day conveniences like air conditioning.
Naturally, if the Cap-and-Trade goes through, that one piece of legislation will make this whole exercise irrelevant. We won't be able to afford the energy we need to manufacture anything. Which brings me to a third point.
3. We need inexpensive energy. Manufacturing is energy intensive. Large machine tools require a great deal of electricity. This should give us the incentive to develop local sources of energy that include oil, natural gas, and nuclear power and reduce or eliminate our dependence of foreign sources of energy. Needless to say, it's already in our national interest to do this, but weak-willed politicians have actively prevented us from achieving this goal.
4. We need a national right-to-work law. There is no rational reason to be forced to join a union in order to work.
We have now a national, unified interest in reviving our manufacturing sector. We can diversify our job market through the many other indirect jobs that are also required like painters, welders, truck drivers and others.
I hope that common sense will prevail in this effort.
