Fan those sparks to a flame - fight on for conservative viewpoints

Enough being depressed about the elections

Think about other dark times in our history … gather strength – and get back to work!

Chris Skates

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying on our backs and hugging the elusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot?

– Patrick Henry

I don’t know about you, good reader, but I am tired. I am tired of talking and hearing about politics. I am tired of talking heads on “expert” panels telling me what “most Americans” truly want, or truly believe in, when those same experts clearly have no idea what I think or what anybody I know thinks.

I am tired of losing. I am tired of losing elections, my income through taxes, my country through a trampling of the Constitution, my culture to hedonism, my children’s future through liberalism – and my once energized political campaigners to depression.

When I am honest with myself, since the election there have been times when I’ve had to force myself to write my columns. I wonder if anybody is listening, or if anyone cares about what is happening. Even among those loyal Americans who are reading this and that care very deeply, even among my fellow conservatives, I sense an overall feeling of burnout and defeatism. I know it is there because I’ve struggled with it myself. 

But the message I want to share with each of you today, and the message I think Patrick Henry was communicating back in his era was this: Get over it!!

Remember, I am talking to the man in the mirror as much as I am talking to anyone. But do any of us really have anything to be “burnt out” about? When we compare the challenges and sacrifices that we face to those faced by our founding fathers, the soldiers at Valley Forge, the prisoners on the Bataan Death March, or the paratroops and Army troops who shivered and died during the Battle of the Bulge – we begin to feel very soft and very silly.

I recently had a chance to talk to a man whose father flew fifty combat missions as a waste gunner in WWII. His father NEVER talked about the war. When he tried to talk about it, he got so emotional that he couldn’t finish the story. This man told me that one day his father did share one of his most difficult experiences. He had completed the milestone of his fiftieth air combat mission, and therefore the war was over for him. He didn’t have to go up again.

He could have caught a flight back to the US, but he chose to wait for his best friend, who was on his 49th mission. When his friend was leaving for number 50, the two agreed that they would celebrate and then fly back home together. His friend’s plane came back to base terribly damaged. When it landed the father knew in an instant that his friend was dead. He had to fly home alone.

“You don’t know,” the father wagged a finger at my friend that day. “You don’t know what we went through. I can’t describe it in words. You don’t know what we went through, so that you could be free and have the quality of life that you have now.”

So what should our generation do? Should we throw up our hands and quit trying to change the government through the legal and peaceful means that were won and preserved for us? Should we dig bomb shelters and buy survival food, and then turn on “American Idol” – and tune out of the public discourse, as we wait for the whole American system to collapse?

I know many of us are discouraged. I know the “mainstream media” force us to compete in a heavily rigged game. I know that we have been, and continue to be, blindsided by the ferocity with which our protections against an intrusive state are being bulldozed, and the way our values have suddenly become passé. Still, we barely know what tough times are.

We have yet to absorb anything like the blows that our ancestors took, while never wavering.

If we learned nothing else at the Conservative Political Action Committee events, we should have learned this: The heart is there. The fight is there in the people. Our fellow political soldiers have not given up.

It is therefore incumbent upon every one of us to fan those sparks to a flame. We have to be our own media. Rush, Beck and Hannity, et cetera are not enough. We must inform our own neighbors. We must cajole the non-participants in our own communities into full engagement and participation.

We have to fight, and then falter, and then get up and fight some more. With or without this or that minority group or special interest group’s vote, there are more than enough people in this country to defeat the nation-collapsing progressive agenda.

Ninety three million eligible voters did not vote in 2012. We must make it our mission to bring those voters to the polls in 2014 and 2016 as conservative voters.

Patrick Henry’s challenge to his countrymen is all the more fitting now. This is no time to let up, no time to give up, and no time to surrender.

____________

Chris Skates is an energy specialist and novelist who won the best historical fiction award from the Christian Writers Association for The Rain: A Story of Noah and the Ark, and rave reviews for his second novel,Going Green: For Some It Has Nothing To Do With The Environment.

Lying Liberals think FACTS are untruths, but do not see green misinformation for what it really is—LIES

Greenie lying bastards

Big Green’s complaints about Donors Trust and climate skeptic money are hollow and pathetic

Ron Arnold

Pathetic and desperate. There’s no other way to describe the new “we hate-industry” movie, Greedy Lying Bastards. Producers spent nearly $2 million to complain about climate skeptic money, in yet another Big Green attack on anyone who disagrees with the climate fanatic industry, which is itself a multi-billion-dollar global enterprise that seeks to impose anti-energy policies in the name of preventing climate change. 

As to content, the Bastards movie is pretty much the same tired parade of the Left’s favorite whipping boys: the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil and other “black hats” are to blame for global warming, think tanks of similar views are mere stooges, out for the money – and other intolerant, insulting, odious characterizations. The movie’s tagline, “They are destroying our world. Now is the time to stop them,” is so easy to turn around on the accusers that you wonder why they used it.

The cost of jet fuel that Bastards burned zooming to American filming locations – and to four countries in Europe, two in Africa, one in South America and the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu – didn’t faze the producers or the funders. Neither did their enormous CO2 footprint. Nor did the fact that Big Green is fed with vastly larger sums from foundations, governments and ideological individuals than the entire gamut of “dangerous manmade global warming” skeptics.

Its context, though, makes this film altogether different from most industry-bashing movies. Bastards writer and director Craig Rosebraugh was formerly the mouthpiece for the eco-terrorist network Earth Liberation Front. He gave the media “communiqués” from nameless criminals, including a cell of now-convicted felons who firebombed a university horticulture center. The zealots incinerated a priceless collection of endangered-plant species, because they erroneously believed scientists there were breeding genetically modified trees.

An appropriate tagline for that exploit – and Rosebraugh’s Bastards – should be “Green radicals are destroying our civilization. Now is the time to stop them.”

Just before Bastards premiered, Greenpeace published a hit piece headlined, “Donors Trust laundering climate denial funding: The shadow operation has laundered $146 million in climate-denial funding.” A few days after that, New York-based media producer Democracy Now! broadcast a story called “The ATM for climate denial: Secretive Donors Trust funds vast network of global warming skeptics.”

This flank of the attack surge began with a PBS Frontline broadcast last October, followed by inquires by The Nation (November), the Center for Public Integrity (December), and Mother Jones (January), all resulting in February articles. The appearance of pre-arrangement, of course, is merely the old journalism fact of life, that the liberal media feed each other, and not necessarily collusion.

What did Donors Trust do to deserve this four-pronged (so far) attack? Nothing. That is, nothing beyond disagreeing with climate jihadists (or whatever the appropriate counterpart to “climate deniers” may be). I spoke with Donors president and CEO Whitney Ball, who told me that all the “shadow” and “secrecy” and “black box” and “dark money” accusations in these attacks could apply to every 501(c)(3) public charity, not just Donors Trust.

By Internal Revenue Code rules, the identity of these donors is not available for public inspection, no matter which group is involved. But the general reader doesn’t know that – so it sounds nefarious. If you’re dubious, contact Greenpeace or any of those other groups, and ask for their individual donor list. You won’t get it. 

Donors Trust, is a “donor-advised fund,” established to promote liberty and help like-minded donors preserve their charitable intent. When donors make a gift to a donor-advised fund, they surrender all legal control over the gift to a steward 501(c)(3), but they may recommend recipients. Thus, “donor advised.” 

In return, donors receive an immediate tax deduction and guaranteed anonymity. The anonymity protects donors from recipients eager for more grants. Being a secret donor is a good way to stay off junk mail lists and not have to worry about fundraiser phone calls during dinner time. And when it comes to donors who give to any 501(c)(3)s, all of them are secret, liberal and conservative alike.

Donors Trust also has its own rules. If a donor requests a liberty-oriented recipient with no more than 25% of its revenue from government sources, Donors Trust generally approves, though it is not legally obliged to do so. 

Greenpeace engages in the same practices it labels as “laundering” when its critics are involved: receiving grant money from donors such as the Packard Foundation ($1.5 million in 2011; total from all foundations, $18.1 million), and then granting it to other non-profits. In 2011, for example, Greenpeace gave $4 million to US groups and $5.6 million to European groups, according to their IRS Form 990.  

The attacks against Donors Trust try to make donor-advised funds sound alien, unusual, and dangerous. However, they are so common that Fidelity, Vanguard and Schwab all run one.  IRS Form 990 even devotes a page to reporting on DAFs and asks every non-profit if it maintains DAFs. (It’s in Schedule D, Part 1, for the curious.) Tides Foundation, for example, houses hundreds of them.

Tides has also given over $1 billion to leftist causes, says its website (versus $2 million to “climate deniers,” aka groups that challenge claims that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.)

One of the most egregious insults to seep out of this insult-laden barrage came from UK Guardian correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg, during a recent Democracy Now! broadcast.

Ms. Ball asked, “How is it that the Tides Foundation, which funds environmental causes and does not publish donor lists, is never characterized in the same way by reporters?” Goldenberg replied: “There’s something really different here.” Donors Trust grantees “spread information that is factually incorrect, that is untrue…. You can’t draw this equivalence here.” In contrast, DT’s organizations, Goldenberg insisted, “were funded for the express purpose of spreading disinformation.”

Based on the Tides output I’ve seen, it’s the other way around: the climate alarmists are spreading deceit, disinformation, climate horror stories and junk science that have no basis in fact and made Climategate 1 and 2 such fascinating reading.

Anyone who sees the Bastards movie credits might think the film was “funded for the express purpose of spreading disinformation.” Consider the sources.

The Bastards movie boasts a “Thanks to” list of 117 contributors, including Denis Hayes of the Bullitt Foundation, EarthJustice (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund), Greenpeace USA, Natural Resources Defense Council, Noam Chomsky, Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Laboratory, Vladimir Romanovsky, of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, and Russell Train, who was the second administrator of the increasingly alarmist Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

All have career or financial vested interests in the climate change scare and would be harmed by any public doubt about their theories and political agendas. Well-funded climate skeptics are a direct threat to their incomes, career prospects, political success and reputations.

Anyway, just for your information, a massive database of IRS Form 990s shows that total US foundation support for environmental causes over the past decade or so is 331,256 grants totaling $19.3 billion, with a “b.” The portion specifically devoted to global warming or climate change is $797 million.

And the Greedy Lying Bastards producers are complaining about a couple million to manmade climate cataclysm skeptics. The film’s pathetic efforts underscore how desperate climate alarmists have become. There goes 30,000 feet of good (hydrocarbon-based) film stock, all shot to hell.

Ron Arnold is executive director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Portions of this report originally appeared in the Washington Examiner, which is investigating environmentalist funding.

In a burst of common sense, a governmental agency cuts wasteful programs, instead of across-the-board cuts. How revolutionary!!!

Read CARE favorite Diana Furchtgott-Roth's take on the issue

To Navigate $8M Sequester, BLS Cuts Green Jobs 

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

RealClearMarkets.com
March 5, 2013

In a triumph of common sense, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is responding to the sequester by eliminating its count of green jobs, an $8 million annual waste of taxpayer funds.

BLS press spokesman Gary Steinberg told me, "Permanent across-the-board cuts generally do not work for the BLS, as this approach jeopardizes the quality of all BLS data. Instead, the BLS strategic approach is to reduce or eliminate selected product lines or programs, rather than reduce the quality of all programs by spreading the cut equally."

In addition, BLS is ending its comparisons of international statistics (savings: $2 million), and its count of mass layoffs (savings: $1.7 million). The three programs scheduled for elimination cost $12 million, 2 percent of BLS's $613 million budget.

More government agencies should use the BLS approach of setting priorities rather than using across-the-board cuts. Mr. Steinberg explained that while the programs targeted for elimination produce important information, the data from BLS's principal federal economic indicators, such as the employment situation and the inflation indices, are more critical for monitoring and understanding trends in the U.S. economy.

There is no reason for BLS to collect data on firms' layoffs. Data are widely available in the press, few users access them, and their elimination has been suggested for over five years. Data on international comparisons are published by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and their elimination was proposed in the fiscal year 2011 budget.

The most egregious misuse of taxpayer funds is the green jobs survey, issued for the first time last March.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is responsible for the federal definition of green jobs under Title X of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law by President George W. Bush. Title X was originally a stand-alone bill, the Green Jobs Act, sponsored by then-Representative Hilda Solis, a California Democrat. Solis became Secretary of Labor in 2009, and was charged with implementing her legislation.

Ms. Solis resigned in January. Perhaps that is why BLS is discontinuing the survey.

In his 2008 campaign, President Obama called for the creation of 5 million green jobs over the next decade. His administration then proceeded to give out grants and guaranteed loans for green energy projects to try to make his dream into reality.

Last year BLS tallied 3.1 million green jobs in the U.S. economy. When people hear of green jobs, they think workers are making wind and solar power, and electric cars and batteries. But most were jobs that had always existed, but were colored green for the purpose of the BLS survey.

For instance, BLS counts plumbers who install "Lo-Flo" toilets as having green jobs, but not plumbers who put in regular fixtures.

Farmers who grow corn for ethanol have green jobs, so do farmers who grow both corn for ethanol and corn for people or animals to eat. But if the farmer grows corn only for eating (either by people or animals), that farmer doesn't have a green job.

A green job must meet one of five BLS definitions, including "environmental compliance, education, training and public awareness." As I write this column, my job is counted as green, but if I were writing about Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve's excess production of greenbacks, my job would not be green.

Similarly, those who manufacture paper cups with environmental logos are counted by BLS as having green jobs, but if the cups did not have such a message, the jobs would not be green.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided the Labor Department with $500 million for grants in research and training for green jobs. The funds were awarded to state workforce agencies, community colleges, and nonprofits.

They were used to train workers in green industries such as hybrid- and electric-car auto mechanics, weatherization of buildings, and solar panel installation.

However, the grants have a low success rate, concluded the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor in a report on the $500 million program, published in October.

Assistant Inspector General Elliot Lewis wrote that 113,000 people had participated in the green jobs training programs, and $329 million had been spent, by June 30, 2012. Of these participants, 72 percent had completed training; 27 percent of participants entered a new job; 22 percent of participants got a job relating to their training; and 10 percent kept their new jobs for at least six months. However, six months had not yet elapsed for all participants who had entered new jobs.

That's a cost of about $28,000 for each job retained for six months or more.

A report last month by the Gregory Friedman, Inspector General of the Energy Department, found here, describes the misuse of a $150 million grant awarded to LG Chem, a South Korean-owned battery manufacturer in Holland, Michigan. LG Chem was supposed to create 440 jobs and make enough batteries to run 60,000 electric cars by December 2013.

According to Mr. Friedman, "we confirmed that employees spent time volunteering at local non-profit organizations, playing games and watching movies during regular working hours." LG Chem, meanwhile, filled U.S. demand with batteries made in South Korea. That's money from Uncle Sam for green jobs in Asia.

The Pentagon should learn from BLS and eliminate its $510 million, three-year program to develop new biofuels for ships and tanks. These biofuels cost $27 per gallon, rather than $3.80 per gallon for conventional fuel. With the Pentagon facing a $43 billion sequester this year, in addition to previous cuts of $260 billion over five years, this is not the time for a $510 million experimental program.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly told the public, most recently in his State of the Union Address, that renewable energy will create "tens of thousands of good, American jobs." And that the federal government must invest in renewable energy to make them exist.

Yet Labor Department data show that relatively few green trained workers got jobs in renewable electric power (14 percent), the manufacture of sustainable products (5 percent), energy efficiency assessment (8 percent), energy efficient vehicles (1 percent), deconstruction and materials use (2 percent), or biofuels (1 percent).

February's jobs numbers will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. No one except Mr. Obama will care whether the new jobs are green. Kudos to BLS for cutting the green survey.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Want to go back to outhouses and walk-ups? Keep being green—It's going to happen sooner rather than later!

Britain Narrowly Escapes "Green" Blackout

By Dennis T. Avery

For years, many of us have warned the “green energy” craze would throw First World countries into blackouts, factory knockouts, more deaths among the elderly and all manner of avoidable tragedies. It nearly happened to Britain in January, as bitterly cold weather put a massive strain on Britain’s creaking power plants.  

London’s Sunday Express says 1 million homes narrowly escaped blackout last month as the island suffered its fifth harsh winter in a row. Blackout was only avoided because of an oil-fired power station, which is, itself, due to be closed before next winter. Only now,  after 30 years of cheerleading, are British media finally waking up to the awful future they have been demanding.

The basic problem: Britain feels it put man-made warming on the world map with its Met office and East Anglia University computers. They became determined to lead the world’s “green energy” revolution.  However, Britain’s wind turbines, despite decades and billions in subsidized investment, today provide only 7 percent of its electricity. And the turbines must be backed by fossil fuel powered plants, in “spinning reserve,” equal to at least 80 percent of their installed capacity.

Meanwhile:

1. A whole fleet of Britain’s older coal and oil-fired power stations are being phased out under an EU commandment driven by CO2 hysteria.
2. They have scheduled another 10 percent of the generating capacity for phase-out next year.
3. The Met Office has finally admitted there’s been none of the predicted man-made warming for 16 years!
4. UK coal power is fading just as the North Sea gas, which has powered the UK’s newer stations, is running out.
5. British leaders had been counting on a big new set of new nuclear power plants, but the advent of fracking and cheap shale gas has frightened investors about the billions of investment dollars they might never get back.

After my New York Times best-seller, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, came out in 2007, I wrote that the man-made warming frenzy would implode—but would meanwhile cost trillions in misdirected global investment dollars.  The warmists since have been giving ground oh-so-slowly as the non-recoverable costs of the renewable fuels “investments” continue to mount.

The German industries that have powered the EU’s economic engine now threaten to leave Europe unless they can get energy as cheaply as India, China—and the U.S. (America’s shale gas revolution has pegged its natural gas prices at about one-third of Europe’s.)

Reuters reports German renewable energy subsidies may cost its consumers an extra $1.34 trillion over the next 20 years (about $6,400 per family)—but won’t provide much dependable power!

Elsewhere, Spain is being sued by green investors after it cut back unsustainable solar and wind subsidies over the past two years, and the Bulgarian government has resigned after consumer protests against high EU-mandated electricity costs.

In the U.S., James Hanson’s NASA continues to “adjust” the temperature records from the 1930s to mask the reality that they were higher than recent “record highs.” Our next big cost will be the dismantling of U.S. coal power.  Obama has ordered his EPA to cut back electricity, starting with the coal-fired plants and working up to the natural gas from “fracking.” In case you might have forgotten, the President has not revised his basic goals, which include our having less energy available and only at prices “which will necessarily skyrocket.”

No one yet admits that the “Greenpeace Plan” would kick us back to the days of inner city walk-up apartments, with privys to match.  


Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may write to him at PO Box 202 Churchville, VA 2442; email to cgfi@mgwnet.com. Visit our website at www. cgfi.org

And we're all going to down with this ship if someone doesn't fight back!

Scuttling the Ship of State to appease climate activists

- Tom Harris (Bio and Archives)  Thursday, February 14, 2013 (0) Comments | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

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Imagine you are travelling on the safest, most powerful ocean liner in the world. One day, the captain announces, “We are approaching a severe storm so we’re scuttling the ship. Man the lifeboats!”

A deck-hand explains to the incredulous passengers, “The Captain believes that big vessels like ours are causing an increase in ocean storms. So we must sink the ship!”

Hours later, the crew assure frightened passengers huddled in lifeboats, “A smaller ship is due in a few days. We’ll be fine as long as a real storm doesn’t blow up.”

In his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama demonstrated that, like scuttling the best ship in the fleet to control the weather, he too is risking America’s prosperity with irrational climate and energy policies.

If it were actually true that “Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and intense”, as the President said in his address, then he should be boosting the most affordable and reliable energy sources to prepare for and cope with these hazards. After all, we would need more electricity to handle greater demands for air conditioning and heating. More power would be required to irrigate lands, build dikes, strengthen public infrastructure and relocate populations living on flood plains or at risk from tornadoes and hurricanes.

Yet, in discussing his solution to these dangers, Obama promoted wind and solar power, the least reliable and most expensive sources. He said nothing about the most reliable and cheapest energy source available—coal, from which comes half of all America’s electricity.

The President presents the transition to wind and solar as drivers of strong economic growth. This is a serious mistake. Even though wind and solar power have had decades to mature, energy from these sources still costs between three and ten times that from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear. While Obama was right to say that, “Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America”, this only happened because the American government funneled vast amounts of money into subsidies for the field. The U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that for 2010, non-hydroelectric renewable electricity generation was still only 3.6% of all generation even though it received 53.5% of all federal financial support for the electric power sector.

No industrialized society can successfully replace dependable coal-fired electricity generation stations with intermittent and diffuse sources such as wind and solar. We need massive quantities of reliable, high quality power to run steel mills, Internet servers and our transportation system, even when the wind drops or a cloud passes in front of the sun. Obama’s conclusion, “So let’s generate even more [wind power]”, begs common sense.

Obama also promoted natural gas in his address. Given the vast reserves that modern fracking technology is making available, this is sensible. But it is a mistake to use natural gas to replace coal as the country’s main base load electricity source. Natural gas should be saved for domestic cooking and heating, transportation, fertilizer production and for peaking power when electricity demand rises suddenly. And, if gas resources turn out to be less plentiful than forecast, America will need its coal-fired stations to avoid freezing in the dark.

Obama’s drive to dismantle coal is not about providing energy and economic security for the country. After all, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal with enough reserves to last for centuries. The President is basing national energy policy on the improbable hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion is a major cause of dangerous climate change. Although coal combustion does emit more CO2 than most other sources, Obama was wrong to refer to CO2 as “dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet.” CO2 is not a pollutant.  It is essential to life on Earth and its increasing concentration has led to greater agricultural productivity. And the idea that the rise in CO2 is causing a climate crisis is falling into disrepute as the world fails to warm as alarmists predicted.

Obama was also wrong to imply that “the overwhelming judgment of science” supports man-made climate catastrophe theories.  It has never been demonstrated that there is any consensus about the causes of climate change among scientists who specialize in this research. Polls that have attempted to make this connection either asked the wrong questions or are so methodologically flawed that they cannot be taken seriously.

Even if there were a climate crisis of our making, Obama’s expensive energy policies would have little climatic impact as long as China, which derives 80% of its electricity from coal and is planning to build 500 coal‐fired plants over the next ten years, continues on its current path. To say they are “going all-in on clean energy”, as the President did in his address, is simply a mistake.

Obama warned Congress that if it doesn’t enable climate legislation soon, he will direct his Cabinet to devise “executive actions” that he could use to force strong climate policy on the country. If he fulfils this threat, his legacy will be one of mass unemployment and millions of Americans joining the billions throughout the world already mired in energy poverty. And climate will continue to change as it always has with the impact of America’s sacrifice being too small to even be measured.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition.
Tom can be reached at: tom.harris@climatescienceinternational.net

Think Energy! Think Jobs! Don't Think Like Obama!

Republican response to Obama throwing down the gauntlet on climate and energy was weak, wholly inadequate

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Tom Harris

Americans who know anything about the crucially important role energy plays in human affairs should be very afraid of the direction President Barack Obama is taking the United States. In clear, unambiguous language, he told the nation in his State of the Union address exactly where his dangerous quest to control the planet’s climate is headed. Obama delivered nothing short of an ultimatum to Congress, a direct threat to the country’s prosperity and fundamental way of life, when he said:

President Barack Obama delivering his State of the Union address on February 12, 2013 in which he warned Congress to deliver climate legislation or he will impose policy by fiat.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

Note 1: When the President said “pollution”, he was really speaking of the benign gas carbon dioxide which he erroneously blames for more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, and even “Superstorm Sandy”, as he calls the level 1 (lowest) hurricane.
Note 2: When the President said he is going to “speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy”, he really means he is going to continue to kill coal as America’s largest source of electricity (currently 50% of their electric power generation) in favour of hopelessly inadequate wind and solar power.
Obama dedicated 630 words in his address (see * below for that whole section) to explaining his rationale for such extreme actions and his relentless determination to lead the country to energy suicide, no matter what Congress says.
If Obama fulfils this threat, his legacy will be one of mass unemployment and millions of Americans joining the billions throughout the world already mired in energy poverty. In the meantime, climate will continue to change as it always has with the climatic impact of America’s sacrifice being too small to even be measured.
President Obama’s frighteningly aggressive stance demanded a direct, no-holds-barred response from Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio who gave the GOP’s response to the address.  Instead, Rubio practically ignored the issue, never even mentioning the word “climate”.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio gave a weak response to President Obama throwing down the gauntlet on the nation’s energy policy.

“When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather – he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.
“One of the best ways to encourage growth is through our energy industry. Of course solar and wind energy should be a part of our energy portfolio. But God also blessed America with abundant coal, oil and natural gas. Instead of wasting more taxpayer money on so-called “clean energy” companies like Solyndra, let’s open up more federal lands for safe and responsible exploration. And let’s reform our energy regulations so that they’re reasonable and based on common sense. If we can grow our energy industry, it will make us energy independent, it will create middle class jobs and it will help bring manufacturing back from places like China.”

This is a wholly inadequate reaction to Obama throwing down the gauntlet on the nation’s energy policy. Rubio must understand that, with a President who is working to destroy coal, America’s largest and most important energy source, nothing less than a candid, factual, point-by-point correction of the address was urgently required.
Rubio was, of course, completely right when he said,

“On foreign policy, America continues to be indispensable to the goal of global liberty, prosperity and safeguarding human rights. The world is a better place when America is the strongest nation on earth. But we can’t remain powerful if we don’t have an economy that can afford it.”

He should have added that, without plentiful, inexpensive and safe energy, America will collapse into poverty and eventually chaos and failure. And with it, will go Canada and most of the free world. Then, the “next chapter in the amazing story of the greatest nation man has ever known”, as Rubio correctly described the United States, may be its last.
_____________________________________________________________
Compare Rubio’s weak response above to Obama’s fearless but reckless energy challenge as extracted from the State of the Union Address:

“Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race. We need to make those investments. And today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy.
“After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before – and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
“But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.
“Now, the good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
“And four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.
“In the meantime, the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. That’s why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. That’s got to be part of the all of above plan. But I also want to work with this Congress to encourage the research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and water.
“In fact, much of our new-found energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together. So tonight, I propose we use some of our oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good. If a non-partisan coalition of CEOs and retired generals and admirals can get behind this idea, then so can we. Let’s take their advice and free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long. I’m also issuing a new goal for America: let’s cut in half the energy wasted by our homes and businesses over the next twenty years. We’ll work with the states to do it. Those states with the best ideas to create jobs and lower energy bills by constructing more efficient buildings will receive federal support to help make that happen.”

America, and indeed the whole free world, desperately needs a strong Republican response to this serious threat.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition, and a Research Fellow to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Carbon Tax Regressive, Hurts the Poor, and Disadvantages American Businesses

Not to Mention that it is NOT needed and Congress didn't read the bill

What Else Could be the Matter with It? Read on and Find out.

Don't Be Fooled By the Meritless Carbon Tax 
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

RealClearMarkets.com
January 15, 2013

The American Taxpayer Relief Act, passed by Congress on January 1 after a day's negotiation between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, should be the death knell for the carbon tax, the favorite of many academic economists for restructuring the tax system.

The method by which the new tax law was passed offers little hope that Congress is capable, much less likely, to craft thoughtful tax solutions. Since the Bush tax cuts were passed in 2001, politicians have known that taxes were scheduled to rise. Surely, one might imagine, years of careful planning would inform the next tax law.

Yet Congress passed permanent tax laws at the last moment, without reading the bill. One must wonder what Senators and House members knew of the detailed language of the new tax law, such as provisions favoring special interests such as Hollywood, Nascar, and green energy.

In the past, Congress considered carefully new tax laws such as the Bush tax cuts in 2001 or the Tax Reform Act of 1986. No longer.

This is especially relevant to the carbon tax, because a quickly-passed carbon tax in the hands of Congress would be just another add-on levy, with exemptions for friends and punishments for enemies.

Proponents of the carbon tax include a bipartisan group of economic professors such as University of California's Robert Reich, Harvard's Martin Feldstein, Edward Glaeser, and Gregory Mankiw, Columbia University's Joseph Stiglitz, and Cornell University's Robert Frank. More names can be found here.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute has held several conferences on the merits of the carbon tax, the latest on November 13. It featured Gilbert Metcalf, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the Department of the Treasury, who has written extensively on the design of a carbon tax while a professor at Tufts University.

What is a carbon tax? Why do so many academics love it? And why does the new tax law prove that it's an idea whose time has not come?

The love affair with carbon taxes comes from a concern that energy use is raising global temperatures and causing global warming. No matter that by many measures global temperatures have not increased over the past decade. No matter that American emissions in 2012 were the lowest since 1992. No matter that only 16 percent of global carbon emissions are caused by America, and that reductions would have little effect on global temperatures.

America has substantial energy reserves, and our air is continually getting cleaner as newer technology takes the place of old. Energy in its many forms confers benefits of comfort and mobility, and if consumers are willing to pay the price, they should use it.

Proponents claim that in taxing carbon dioxide, Congress would take action to reduce energy use, while raising revenue that would permit a reduction of income tax rates.

A carbon tax, which would discourage energy consumption, would be simpler and less intrusive than a cap-and-trade system, considered in the 111th Congress. Under that approach, the government would set limits on the emissions of individual plants-electric utilities, petrochemicals, and others. Emitters would have to buy permits from the government. Plants emitting less than their allowance could sell unneeded permits to those exceeding their limits.

In contrast, a carbon tax raises the price of energy and so discourages consumption without regulation. Some claim that carbon tax rates could be calibrated to be revenue neutral or to yield a net rise in federal tax receipts, with the increment possibly dedicated to reducing deficits.

Treasury Department official Metcalf concluded that a 10 percent rise in the price of energy would result in a 3 percent reduction in consumption. He suggested a tax rate of $15 per ton of CO2.

U.S. carbon emissions in 2012 were about 5.2 billion metric tons, so the Metcalf proposed tax would raise about $78 billion a year, assuming that industrial consumers used the same amount of energy. If, on the other hand, consumers reduced consumption by about 5 percent, a response suggested by the government's Energy Information Administration, the tax would raise about $74 billion per year.

Such a revenue stream could potentially be used to reduce the deficit, to lower individual tax rates, or to pay off sectors of the economy, such as coal, that are unduly harmed by carbon taxes. Since high income tax rates reduce incentives to work, this could conceivably add to economic efficiency.

While many academic economists see carbon taxes as a substitute for the income tax, many tax policy analysts see the carbon tax as an additional source of revenue. Historically, the income tax has not been lowered as new excise taxes have been brought online. There is little reason to expect the carbon tax will lower income taxes where other new tax revenues have failed.

Moreover, carbon taxes are regressive. Since low-income people use more energy as a percentage of their income than high-income people, low-income households were bear a higher share of the carbon tax burden. Those policymakers who seek to avoid regressive taxes, including much of Congress, might add complex income transfers to low-income groups to lessen their tax burden.

This is not simple, because many low-income earners are not required to file returns, and they would have to do so in order to be identified and compensated.

Another problem is that carbon-intensive sectors, such as coal, would be the biggest losers under the new tax. Politicians from coal-producing regions are influential in Congress and they would demand a share of revenues.

Finally, a carbon tax in America raises the prices of energy-intensive goods relative to imports from countries without carbon taxes. One effect of a carbon tax is that Americans would increasingly prefer to buy imports of energy-intensive goods, and American firms would correspondingly lose business. Proponents of the tax suggest putting tariffs on imports in proportion to their carbon content so that American companies would not be at a disadvantage. But the precise quantities are complex to calculate, and tariffs might be illegal under World Trade Organization regulations.

So, for a carbon tax to make our tax system more efficient, many fine-tuned adjustments would be necessary. First, its revenues would have to be used to lower income taxes. Second, its negative effects on low-income Americans and on energy-intensive regions would have to be ameliorated. Third, border adjustments would have to be made so that domestic goods were not disfavored. Each of these adjustments would require careful analysis and formulation.

But the lesson from the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 shows that Congress is incapable of crafting a carbon tax with these attributes, even if they are given a decade's warning. Under our system of government, any tax on carbon would be an additional tax, without the offsets that make it so attractive to academics. It would hurt the poor and raise prices in America compared to overseas.

A carbon tax would just be another regressive revenue raiser, costing $75 billion a year, hurting the poor, disadvantaging American manufactures, and all without any effect on global temperatures. After the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.