Americans take electricity for granted. Electricity powers our lights, our computers, our offices, and our industries. But misguided environmental policies are eroding the reliability of our power system.
It is refreshing to read a book that reflects one’s own views and “Guardian of the Republic” by Allen West, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army for over twenty years and a former, one-term congressman from Florida, who is perhaps best known these days as a Fox News channel contributor, is such a book. He is a very conservative, articulate black American.
Environment/Energy · Government
The Obama Environmental Protection Agency recently slashed the maximum allowable sulfur content in gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10 ppm. The agency claims its new “Tier 3” rule will bring $7 billion to $19 billion in annual health benefits by 2030. “These standards are a win for public health, a win for our environment and a win for our pocketbooks,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy insists.
It’s all hokum. Like all too many rules emanating from EPA these days, the gasoline regulations are a case study in how America’s economy, jobs, living standards, health, and welfare are being pummeled by secretive, deceptive, and indeed fraudulent and corrupt government practices.
Education · Featured · Government · Health Care
Who could forget about the botched ObamaCare roll out of last fall by the Obama administration when on September 26 Obama said, “… most of the stories you’ll hear about how ObamaCare just can’t work is just not based on facts. Every time they have predicted something not working, it’s worked.” But when people did start shopping for insurance coverage on October 1, Healthcare.gov crashed.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom · Politics
President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and 28 Senate Democrats remain fixated on “dangerous manmade climate change.” In the process, they are ignoring real threats to our living standards and very lives.
Just one year ago, the Wall Street Journal has reported, saboteurs attacked a power substation near San Jose, California. They cut fiber optic cables and shot up 17 transformers, causing them to overheat and fail. Apparently, they wanted to trigger a monumental blackout. Thankfully, grid operators were able to reroute power and avoid blackouts.
A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official called the attack “purposeful, extremely well planned and executed by professionals who had expert training.” Other utility experts said it could have been a “dress rehearsal” for much bigger operation – one that could take down much of the entire US or even North American electricity grid for weeks, months or even a year. That would have a devastating effect on our economy, living standards and lives. Indeed, many people would likely die, as food, fuel and even safe drinking water become unavailable.
Environment/Energy · Government · Regulation · Science
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal took note of what has occurred since the 1990s when some three dozen gray wolves were captured in Canada and transferred to the wilderness of Idaho. According to federal biologists, this was necessary to restore the ecological balance in a region teeming with elk and other creatures on the gray wolf food chain.
The article noted that more than 650 wolves roam the state today according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game which has been hearing a lot of complaints that the wolves “are wreaking havoc on Idaho’s prized elk and livestock, and prompted the governor’s office to embark on an effort to wipe out three-quarters or more of the population.”
Economics · Environment/Energy · Government · Politics
The Ukraine Crises is an example of future events until the United States develops fossil fuel energy production superiority. The Ukraine Crisis–just as the 1973 Oil Embargo– is a great gift to stop the environmental movement’s eliminating fossil fuel production and insistence on relying on solar, wind, ethanol from corn, etc. as energy sources. These renewable energy sources are of no consequence in conduct of foreign policy. Do we want peace and prosperity or “green energy”, poverty, and the possibility of nuclear war?
Economics · Environment/Energy · Featured · Legal Affairs · Regulation
For years environmentalists have usurped individual private property rights and thwarted economic development. Now, thanks to Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, it appears that the job creators may have finally learned something from the extreme tactics of groups, like the Wild Earth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which have been using the courts to their advantage by filing lawsuits against the federal government.
On Monday, March 17, on behalf of the state of Oklahoma and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), Pruitt filed a lawsuit against the federal government, specifically the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The lawsuit alleges the “FWS engaged in ‘sue and settle’ tactics when the agency agreed to settle a lawsuit with a national environmental group over the [Endangered Species Act] listing status of several animal species, including the Lesser Prairie Chicken.”
Government · Internet/Telecom · Liberty · Regulation
Crony Socialism is, in part, the government cutting special deals for certain companies – at the expense of other companies, and the free market. It is particularly pathetic when companies publicly troll for this treatment. It’s almost as if they’ve given up on actually, you know, trying.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Science
Last week AAA released findings from tests it had run on three models of electric automobiles, and announced that the heavily subsidized vehicles suffer dramatic driving range loss in both cold and hot temperatures.
The news wasn’t new, but apparently the broader media noticed because the pronouncement from the nation’s largest consumer automotive club made it official. NLPC (beginning with a Consumer Reports experience) has reported from time to time on such problems since late 2011. The Tulsa World reported that AAA found driving distance for electric vehicles can be diminished up to 57 percent in extremely cold temperatures, and by one-third in very hot temperatures.
Economics · Environment/Energy · Featured · Government
The U.S. has the greatest energy reserves, coal, oil and natural gas, of any nation in the world, but Obama has been waging a “war on coal”, delaying the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, and slow to issue permits to explore for new sources of energy reserves on federal lands. The impact on the economy is incalculable, but it is driving up the cost of energy for everyone and every industry.
Health insurance is the most important thing on the face of the earth — more important than food, more important than clothing, or housing, or a job, and certainly more important than cell phones and cable TV, according to the President.
With this contemptuous attitude towards the people the elite is trying to “help” perhaps it is not surprising that the helpees are not behaving the way the helpers would like them to. Amy Goldstein writes in the Washington Post that “Health insurance marketplaces (are) signing up few uninsured Americans…”
On February 12, the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a news release inviting the public to a joint meeting with the UK Royal Society.
As Captain Renault said in the classic 1942 movie Casablanca “Round up the usual suspects”, the usual crew of advocates for promoting abandoning fossil fuel use due to global warming fears are cited as authors of the report “Climate Change: Evidence & Causes”.
A new effort by the Obama Administration to change the Medicare Part D prescription drug program by imposing new rules on how the plans are set up and managed risk[...]
Scott Cleland has released a new video detailing the pressing need in America for a new communications law.
Fossil fuel use is the lifeblood of developed industrial nations. It has eliminated hunger, poverty, lack of shelter, drudgery, and provided healthier, more comfortable, and longer lifespans. The United States is blessed by having over one hundred years or more supply of inexpensive or moderate cost deposits of each of the fossil fuels–coal, oil, and natural gas. Secretary Kerry, along with President Obama and his supporters, want to eliminate use of the nation’s abundant, reliable, and economical fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy sources–wind and solar–whose present state of technology make them expensive, unreliable, and impractical to scale up to the size of present fossil fuel capabilities. These policies will substantially lower the standard of living for Americans and condemn developing nations to perpetual poverty.
Environment/Energy · Health Care · Legal Affairs · Liberty · Politics · Regulation
It falls to the voters themselves to rescue the rule of law and the Constitution from the President Obama’s lawlessness.
Environment/Energy · Featured · Science
EPA “cost of carbon” analyses ignore huge benefits of hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · FIRE
The full bill for Obama’s failed economic policies has yet to arrive. But no such explosion of debt has ever escaped a day of reckoning, and no such monetary surge has ever had a happy ending.
Every presidential administration issues rules and regulations, but President Obama and his administration head the pack.
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