President Obama’s Energy Speech at the University of Miami February 23 added more details to his energy thoughts as given by his State Of The Union Speech and 2013 Fiscal Year budget submitted to Congress.
His ideas are based upon curtailing use of fossil fuels, in particular coal, due to fears carbon dioxide produced from combustion cause catastrophic global warming. This is the reason why given for our failed energy policies. Detailed discussions of climate science are too lengthy to be given in this paper.
There is little experimental data to support combustion of fossil fuels play a big part in climate. However, there is a vast amount of data showing the role of carbon dioxide is minor compared to other factors influencing climate such as the sun, earth’s orbit, volcanos, ocean currents (El Nino and La Nina), and clouds. The administration’s actions should be taken as future energy policies for the next four years. Policies implemented and policies ignored will lead to a dismal future for the United States.
The United States has the most abundant fossil fuel reserves in the world, the greatest agriculture system, and the most innovative population which should lead to prosperity for centuries. A few remarks about energy policies follow.
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(Reactions to recent events by Harrison Schmitt — Heartland Institute Board member, former U.S. Senator (R-N.M.), and the last man (and first scientist) to set foot on the moon. (Cross-posted at America’s Uncommon Sense):
America’s eroding geopolitical stature, highlighted by the July 21, 2011, end to flights of the United States Space Shuttle, has reached crisis proportions. Obama Administration officials now spin the nebulous thought of Astronauts flying many months to an undetermined asteroid in 2025 as an actual “National Space Policy”.
On the other hand, Republican candidates for President have not yet recognized the importance of international civil space competition in the federal government’s constitutional function to provide for the nation’s “common defence”. Candidates appear to be uninterested in having the United States lead deep space exploration, including the establishment of American settlements on the Moon; or may actually consider Obama’s unfocused proposals as being credible rather than realizing that those proposals would transfer geopolitical dominance to China and control of American space transport to Russia.
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Those who have implied that the President’s health care law will establish “death panels,” have encountered excessive criticism. Yet, more and more information is being released identifying that rationing of care will in fact occur, and that it will be done by government bureaucracies.
For example, a phone call into The Mark Levin Show on WLS 890 from a Chicago neurosurgeon last month revealed that a Health and Human Services (HHS) document, associated with the Obama Administration’s federal health law, will inhibit patients over the age of 70 from receiving neurological care. Instead of receiving “advanced neurosurgical care,” “units,” (meaning patients), over 70 will receive care to make them “comfortable.” In order to provide the neurosurgical care, a physician would have to appeal to a “ethics committee” made up of administrators, not physicians, to determine if the services can be administered.
This document, not surprisingly, has not been presented to the public.
Listen to the call by clicking the link below:
Obamacare Rationing – A Phone Call From A Neurosurgeon
NOTE: Part One of this series of posts can be found here.
The top one percent of federal income taxpayers paid more than the bottom 95 percent, according to the Tax Foundation in 2009, based on the latest figures (2007) available from the IRS at that time.
Note the trends. The share of taxes paid by the bottom 95 percent has been declining for 20 years. The share paid by the top one percent has been increasing over the same period.
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Of course, Obama says he is for those things, but his actions work against all of them. Ben Franklin said, “Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.” Obama has learned nothing from the Keynesian experiences of the U.S. or other nations. He hasn’t even been able to learn from the already evident failure of his own Keynesian policies.
For him, it is as though economic history never existed. He fits Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek’s observation that the most orthodox disciples of Keynes have consistently “thrown overboard…all that used to be the backbone of economic theory, and in consequence, in my opinion, to have ceased to understand any economics.”
Obama claims we need a $447 billion spending bill to create jobs and stimulate the economy. He has learned nothing from the results of his earlier $800+ billion stimulus. It and other federal spending produced a massive increase in the money supply, as shown here, yet were ineffective in stimulating the economy or job growth. Unemployment remains stubbornly at 9 percent. [click to continue…]
According to conventional wisdom, Solyndra, Inc. failed because of recent, unforeseen competition from Chinese solar companies with vast government subsidies.
Or because the Obama administration rushed through its approval of the Solyndra $535 million loan guarantee to reward an Obama campaign contributor.
Or because Solyndra misrepresented its financial position to the feds.
These explanations may be entirely true or partly true. Whatever.
But there’s an even more important and frightening explanation not being reported at all. That is the incompetence of the Obama administration. The Obama administration’s incredible, mind-bending incompetence.
Someone should go to jail. Maybe Energy Secretary Chu. [click to continue…]
This is almost too good. Failed solar industry company Solyndra, which received more than a half billion dollars of questionable federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration, is back at the federal money trough.
This time, the money would be consumed to retrain for new jobs the hundreds of Solyndra workers who never would have had their now-vanished “green jobs” without government money in the first place.
Attorney and writer Scott Lincicome has beautifully summarized the situation:
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When even The New York Times publishes an article that says President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board is harming employment and the economy, you know the government is out of control. Here’s NYT columnist Joe Nocera on the NLRB’s attack on Boeing trying to build its Dreamliner aircraft in South Carolina:
But a fair-minded person would have to acknowledge that the N.L.R.B.’s action is exactly the kind of overreach that should embarrass Democrats who claim to care about job creation. It’s paralyzing, is what it is.
The law, to be sure, forbids a company from retaliating against a union. But the word “retaliation” suggests direct payback — a company shutting down a factory after a strike, for instance. Boeing did nothing like that. It not only hasn’t laid off a single worker in Washington State, it has added around 3,000 new ones. Seven out of every 10 Dreamliners will be assembled in Puget Sound.
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I turned on the TV this morning and watched a news report that for some reason really frosted me: White House and Chrysler officials practically playing kissy-face over Chrysler paying back $7.6 billion of money the government used to rescue the company.
Then I remembered and understood why I was so bothered: The nation has heard this story before.
Back in the 1980s, Chrysler and government officials lauded themselves over the company’s early repayment of a government bailout loan. Television commercials and newspaper ads featuring Lee Iacocca, who then ran Chrysler, crowed about Chrysler’s turnaround and early payback.
So should we really be excited about Chrysler doing today what it did 20-some years ago? How many lives does a failed automaker get to live? And how many times will Americans allow themselves to be scammed by our government and politically connected businesses like Chrysler? Here’s what I mean:
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Reactions to recent events, cross-posted at America’s Uncommon Sense:
Budget and National Debt
If not now, when? If not the House, who? These two questions lie at the core of the budget challenge faced by conservatives in Congress. The liberal/moderate spending agenda in healthcare, bailouts, unemployment, and so-called “stimuli” is unsustainable as well as largely unconstitutional.
Our children’s future and our national security are at stake. Except for national defense, public safety, administration of Social Security payments, and tax collection, SHUT THE GOVERNMENT DOWN! Start it up again only in return for total de-funding of Obamacare and no less than 100 billion in real discretionary and entitlement cuts for 2011. In addition, conservatives must draw the line in the concrete for the 2012 and subsequent budgets. Begin the gradual reduction in entitlement funding, overall, and use the 2013 budget to begin to lower current federal tax rates, reduce the size and reach of government, and stimulate private sector job creation and tax revenues. [See essays No. 6 and No. 42]
Libya and the Middle East
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