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The Senate majority leader is considering employing a legislative maneuver that would virtually eliminate Republican input into health care and cap and trade energy policies

Reid Leaves Open Option for Extreme Maneuver on Health Care, Energy Overhauls

3/26/09

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington Tuesday. (AP Photo)

FILE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The Senate majority leader is considering employing a legislative maneuver that would virtually eliminate Republican input into health care and cap and trade energy policies 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is holding the option of using a legislative maneuver to create not only a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system but also a controversial cap and trade energy program, a move that could torpedo bipartisanship. 

The maneuver, known as "reconciliation," protects legislation to which it's attached from a Senate filibuster. Republicans, in their deep minority status, are in an uproar over the possibility that they will be all but eliminated from the legislative process.

But Republicans are not alone in their opposition. A sizable number of Democrats have protested the move; first and foremost, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who excluded it from his committee's budget passed Thursday.

The House has reconciliation instructions in its budget for health care, and Reid left open the door Thursday to adding energy protections as well.

"We're leaving nothing off the table," Reid told reporters Thursday, a move that has touched off a firestorm of concern behind the scenes. 

So concerned about the possibility of it being used, Sens. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., and Mike Johnanns, R-Neb., sent a letter of strong protest to the majority leader.

As opponents of proposed cap and trade measures, Byrd, the Senate's most senior member and lead watchdog of Senate rules and decorum, and Johanns told Reid, "Enactment of a cap-and-trade regime is likely to influence nearly every feature of the U.S. economy. 

"Legislation so far-reaching should be fully vetted and given appropriate time for debate, something the budget reconciliation process does not allow. Using this procedure would circumvent normal Senate practice and would be inconsistent with the Obama dministration's stated goals of bipartisanship, cooperation, and openness," they wrote.

Conrad and Byrd are not the only Senate Democrats opposed to using reconciliation. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he is prepared to vote against the final budget if it returns from House-Senate negotiations with the restriction. 

Nelson is part of a group of 15 moderate Democrats concerned about levels of spending and growing deficits. They are set to meet Tuesday to discuss how to move forward on the budget.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., top Republican on the Budget Committee, said Wednesday that reconciliation is not always a bad thing. He supported it when President Bill Clinton wanted tax increases to pay down the debt. But Gregg draws the line at creating major changes in environment and health care laws.

"When you are taking the entire health system of the United States, restructuring it, changing it fundamentally, moving it to the left significantly, basically nationalizing it for all intents and purposes ... without any opportunity for changes on the floor of the Senate, well, you might as well not have a Senate. You might as well just have a House of Representatives. It totally undermines the purposes of the two branches of government," Gregg told FOX News.

Republicans are not exactly strangers to using the reconciliation process to create new programs. They tried to open drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge in 2005, with Gregg telling reporters at the time: "The president asked for it, and we're trying to do what the president asked for."

Former President George W. Bush got his massive tax cuts through the Senate, as well, when Republicans used the reconciliation tool.

But Gregg defended those uses. 

"It has always been on issues on policies which already exist -- adjusting tax laws, adjusting tax rates, affecting this program that already exists or that program."

If reconciliation is returned in the budget after House-Senate negotiations, it appears Reid still might have trouble meeting the lower voting threshold of 51 votes for approval. Still, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he sees a possible strategy where Reid could pull it off. 

McConnell said Reid could bring in Vice President Biden, in his capacity as president of the Senate, to break any tie vote, thereby allowing Reid a loss of up to nine Democrats.

If reconciliation is approved, something that is not at all certain, Reid has said he might not use the power. 

The leader said he still wants to give Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., point man on health care reform, "an opportunity to see what he can do on a bipartisan basis." 

But Reid's dangling of the reconciliation carrot is sure to stir a hornet's nest of criticism.

"That is like waving a flag in front of a bull, for both Republicans and Democrats. He has no idea how his rhetoric reverberates through this place. It's like your own members are struggling with this bill and then you say you're going to go hyper-partisan and turn this place upside down?" asked a senior Senate Republican leadership aide.

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Obama climate plan could cost $2 trillion

 

Tom LoBianco
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

President Obama's climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House's initial estimate of the so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.

A top economic aide to Mr. Obama told a group of Senate staffers last month that the president's climate-change plan would surely raise more than the $646 billion over eight years the White House had estimated publicly, according to multiple a number of staffers who attended the briefing Feb. 26.

"We all looked at each other like, 'Wow, that's a big number,'" said a top Republican staffer who attended the meeting along with between 50 and 60 other Democratic and Republican congressional aides.

The plan seeks to reduce pollution by setting a limit on carbon emissions and allowing businesses and groups to buy allowances, although exact details have not been released.

At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president's cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration's early estimate of $646 billion over eight years. A study of an earlier cap-and-trade bill co-sponsored by Mr. Obama when he was a senator estimated the cost could top $366 billion a year by 2015.

A White House official did not confirm the large estimate, saying only that Obama aides previously had noted that the $646 billion estimate was "conservative."

"Any revenues in excess of the estimate would be rebated to vulnerable consumers, communities and businesses," the official said.

The Obama administration has proposed using the majority of the money generated from a cap-and-trade plan to pay for its middle-class tax cuts, while using about $120 billion to invest in renewable-energy projects.

Mr. Obama and congressional Democratic leaders have made passing a climate-change bill a top priority. But Republican leaders and moderate to conservative Democrats have cautioned against levying increased fees on businesses while the economy is still faltering.

House Republican leaders blasted the costs in the new estimate.

"The last thing we need is a massive tax increase in a recession, but reportedly that's what the White House is offering: up to $1.9 trillion in tax hikes on every single American who drives a car, turns on a light switch or buys a product made in the United States," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner. "And since this energy tax won't affect manufacturers in Mexico, India and China, it will do nothing but drive American jobs overseas."

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The U.N. wants a global 'green' tax... 

Investments of $750 billion could create a "Green New Deal" to revive the world economy and protect the environment, perhaps aided by a tax on oil, the head of the U.N. environment agency said on Thursday. Achim Steiner said spending should focus on five environmental sectors including improved energy efficiency for buildings and solar or wind power to create jobs, curb poverty and fight climate change. "The opportunity must not be lost," Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), told Reuters of a UNEP study that will be put to world leaders meeting in London on April 2 to work out how to spur the ailing economy. The UNEP report said investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, or about $750 billion, could bankroll a "Global Green New Deal" inspired by the "New Deal" of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt that helped end the depression of the 1930s. - Reuters

Dominant Social Theme: Responsible investing is the best cure.

Free-Market Analysis: Once one has granted that large bureaucratic entities hold the key to economic recovery, almost any proposal can be logically presented. Now comes the United Nations to point out that "opportunity must not be lost" to spur the world economy by adding yet another tax - this one apparently to benefit United Nations programs of a most critical nature in the area of energy, poverty and climate change.

The United Nations brain trust has been trying to figure out a way to justify direct taxation for the longest time. The dream is that there is a compelling mechanism that galvanizes the world to realize that the UN is important enough to be supported this way. Obviously, the world economic crisis is being seen as a potential justification for the UN's long deferred fiscal vision.

The logic is inevitably socialist - or "Keynesian." The idea is that an economic slump is caused by a lack of spending - never mind the root cause of the spending. The solution is to generate increased consumer spending and almost any kind of make work program can be employed to do this. Government could pay individuals to dig holes in the ground during the day and employ another crew to fill them up during the evening and the result would be economically productive, according to Keynesian theory.

That such illogical thinking could have taken root at the highest levels of American and European policy is pretty incredible. By reducing such programs to individual localities, one can more easily determine the difficulty. Communities need food, shelter and energy. If resources have been mis-aligned due to monetary expansion, then a contraction is inevitable. People need to begin to produce constructively again, and in the meantime there is a certain diminution of economic activity.

The realignment of resources must occur, and for government to step in and actively prevent the realignment from taking place while providing additional funds for make-work purposes does nothing to encourage the underlying work-out that must take place. Since funds must come from somewhere, the revenue that the government is tapping comes either from monetary expansion or from simple tax hikes - both of which will retard recovery as well.

Conclusion:  Even IF the United Nations had it right - that an additional global tax to address climate change and to support "green" energy will produce economic stimulation - the actual nature of these solutions is still in question. If green energy is so necessary to the world, one would think the marketplace itself would support it without the necessity for the United Nations to encourage. The same goes for investments to halt or influence climate - an increasingly amorphous challenge that used to be called global warming. But the economic logic behind the United Nation's proposal is faulty, and the solutions that it proposes are controversial as well.

Bottom line: the United Nations is again proposing a direct global tax, using the financial crisis as a kind of cover. They should simply come out and ask.

 Scientist Fired by Gore Calls Warming Fears ‘Mistaken’

 

Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer, who says he was fired by Vice President Al Gore for failing to adhere to Gore’s views on global warming, has now declared that man-made warming fears are “mistaken.”

Happer, who served as the director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, said, “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism. I did not need the job that badly.”

He said in 1993, “I was told that science was not going to intrude on policy."

Now Happer has asked to join the more than 650 international scientists who have spoken out against man-made global warming fears and are cited in the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environmental and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe, R-Okla.

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer told the committee on Dec. 22.

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as his top science adviser, Harvard University professor John Holdren, is a staunch believer in the dangers of man-made global warming and advised Gore on his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Dr. Happer has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Sen. Inhofe said that the statements of prominent scientists like Happer who are willing to publicly dissent from climate fears strike a blow to the United Nations, Gore, and the media’s claims about global warming.

“The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day," Inhofe said.

Happer declared, “I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect — for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow. Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past . . . 

“Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility.”

 

The Plain Truth about Glorious Carbon Dioxide

by Alan Caruba The Intellectual Conservative

Nature is a self-regulating mechanism that dwarfs any mindless effort to "control" the amount of CO2 produced by coal-fired utilities, steel manufacturers, autos and trucks, and gasoline fueled lawn mowers.

 

Okay, children, let's all sit up straight at our desks. We are going to begin 2009 with a lesson about carbon dioxide (CO2).

Why do we need to know about CO2? Because the President-elect, several of his choices for environmental and energy agencies, the Supreme Court and much of the U.S. Congress have no idea what they are talking about and, worse, want to pass legislation and regulations that will further bankrupt the United States of America.

Do I have your attention now?

For the purpose of the lesson, I will be borrowing heavily from a paper on CO2 written by Robert A. Ashworth. It requires some understanding of science, but anyone with a reasonable education and common sense should be able to read it on their own. Ashworth is a chemical engineer.

Suffice it to say that if any of the nitwits babbling about CO2 and global warming ever went to any of the several dozen excellent websites that provide accurate scientific data and analysis, they would cease from their abusive manipulation of the public and perhaps find honest work.

To begin at the beginning: at the heart of the global warming hoax is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While it purports to represent the views of thousands of scientists, it does not. As Ashworth notes, "Most scientists do not agree with the CO2 global warming premise. In the United States 31,072 scientists, including the author, have signed a petition rejecting the Kyoto global warming agreement." An additional 1,000 scientists are being verified to be added to the list. Thousands more exist who find the assertion the CO2 will destroy the Earth totally absurd.

Here's what you need to know: if an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) is directly related, i.e. causes changes in the Earth's temperature, there would be a direct correlation between the two. As CO2 rose, we would see a comparable rise in the Earth's temperature. This correlation does not exist.

Global warming liars, however, insist that CO2 builds up on the atmosphere over a 50 to 250 year period, but this is untrue. "Every year around April, increased CO2 absorption by plants in the Northern Hemisphere starts reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere," notes Ashworth, "and the reduction continues until around mid-to-late August when plants start to go dormant."

"It is clear that nature reacts very fast in its consumption of carbon dioxide." Farmers call this the growing season, followed by the harvest season, followed by snow and cold during which nothing grows. Modern civilization, beginning about 5,000 years ago, is predicated on the ability to provide food to both humans and livestock, all based on these obvious seasonal cycles.

The ancient Egyptians and Mayans understood the seasons, but they are apparently too difficult a concept for today's many ex-politicians, some PhD's, United Nations flunkies, and high school teachers.

Warming and cooling cycles are well known throughout human history, reaching back to the days of ancient Rome. There were Viking settlements in Greenland because they arrived in warmer times. By 1410 the place froze up. Shakespeare lived during a Little Ice Age when the Thames would freeze too. The man-made emissions of CO2 had nothing, zero, to do with these climate events.

The IPCC, however, with its agenda to tax and control energy use that produces CO2, is not based on either the obvious or more complex science involved. Its "data" is the invention of computer models that are deliberately manipulated to produce false results which, in turn, can be announced and repeated worldwide.

In March 2008, The Heartland Institute brought together more than 500 climatologists, meteorologists, economists, and others for two days of seminars and addresses that totally destroyed the IPCC's lies. It will do so again for a second time, March 8-10 of this year in New York City. Suffice it to say that the mainstream media did its best to ridicule or ignore the event and will no doubt do so again.

Here, then, is a fundamental fact about CO2 you need to commit to memory. "Nature absorbs 98.5% of the CO2 that is emitted by nature and man." Nature is a totally self-regulating mechanism that dwarfs any mindless effort to "control" the amount of CO2 produced by coal-fired utilities, steel manufacturers, autos and trucks, and gasoline fueled lawn mowers, not to forget fireplaces where logs glow or just about any human activity you can name, including exhaling two pounds of the stuff every day!

"Further," says Ashworth, "no regulation by man is necessary because CO2 is not a pollutant; it is part of the animal-plant life cycle. Without it, life would not exist on Earth. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases plant growth, which is a very good thing during a period of world population growth and an increasing demand for food."

"Taxing carbon," Ashworth adds, "would do absolutely nothing to improve the climate but would be devastating hardship to the people of the world."  For example, U.S. Representative John Dingell's plan to tax carbon would add 13% to the cost of electricity and 32% to the cost of gasoline; just what we need during a Recession that threatens to become a Depression.

Dr. Tim Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, recently asked, "How many failed predictions, discredited assumptions and evidence of incorrect data are required before an idea loses credibility? CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. It is not a toxic substance or a pollutant."

It is time to rebuke everyone attempting to foist the global warming hoax and carbon taxes on the United States and the rest of the world. It is time let Congress and the White House know that Americans will not be ruled by laws that have no scientific merit.

Obama Administration Transportation Policy Needs a Jump-start

The Obama administration’s initial efforts at transportation policy are off to a rocky start. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood this morning came out in favor tracking and taxing drivers on the miles they drive instead of the amount of gas they consume. Almost immediately a spokesperson at the Transportation Department said such a system will not be part of the Obama administration’s policy, suggesting Secretary LaHood is still early on in his learning curve. Scotching this idea was right, however, because it was a bad idea to begin with.

The vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax would fund transportation projects and increase conservation by increasing the cost of driving. It is unnecessary, however, because the gas tax already accomplishes these tasks—and is much cheaper to administer. A VMT would be expensive to implement because every car would need to be fitted with a device that both records miles driven and transmits the information to a government database. This complicated system would cost millions and raise concerns of big brother watching our every movement.

Americans don’t like paying the gas tax, but they are sure to be even more unhappy having to deal with the administrative nightmare the VMT promises. Secretary LaHood would be better served coming up with a plan returning responsibility for transportation funding to the states where it rightly belongs.

 

 

February 6, 2009
The Problem with Increasing Energy Loan Guarantees

by Jack Spencer


There has been a push to expand the clean energy loan guarantee program established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Despite there already being tens of billions authorized for guarantee, some are pushing to add up to $100 billion more in the stimulus bill.

Although most alternative and renewable energy sources are eligible, only nuclear energy has the near-term promise to actually achieve America's economic and environmental goals. Therefore, it is critical to the future of the nation to understand how loan guarantees will help or hinder nuclear power.

Market Distortion

The program, under which the government guarantees bank loans for power projects, was originally sold as a way to help move new, clean energy sources toward market viability. Regarding nuclear power, given the past role of organized political opposition and overzealous regulators in making the industry uncompetitive, some limited, near-term help to reduce government-imposed risk seemed appropriate. In support of including nuclear energy as part of the program, former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham argued, "I am not calling for massive ongoing subsidies to the nuclear industry, [but] I do believe some federal financial participation is in order to help defray a percentage of the high, first-time costs associated with new generation construction."The same was argued for other energy sources as well.

But as America edges toward a $150 billion loan guarantee program, not all of which will go to nuclear, this starts looking very much like an ongoing subsidy.

And it is a subsidy that does not need to be extended. Consider an exchange between Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu during his recent confirmation hearing. Senator Burr suggested that the existing loan guarantee program was so poorly run that utilities were being forced to build reactors without the loan guarantees.

Emblematic of the subsidy-first mentality of modern U.S. energy policy, Burr and Chu deduced not that this demonstrates the market viability of nuclear power but that the subsidy program should be more workable. They are inviting government dependence.

And that is the problem with loan guarantees: They distort normal market forces and encourage government dependence.

One problem with the larger national economic debate is the notion that money--or, more accurately, savings or capital--does not grow on trees. It comes from real people who have saved and invested and exists in finite amounts. By subsidizing a portion of the actual cost of a project through a loan guarantee, the government is actually distorting the allocation of resources by directing capital away from a more competitive project.

This signals to industry (be it nuclear, wind, clean coal, natural gas, or anything else) that it does not have to be competitive. It reduces incentives to manage risk and be independent, innovative, and efficient. The end result will be a new nuclear industry that is built for the short run and not sustainable.

While a loan guarantee may be good for the near-term interests of the individual guarantee recipient, it is not good for consumers, taxpayers, or long-term competitiveness.

How Loan Guarantees Distort the Market

They remove incentives to decrease costs. The loan guarantee discounts the cost to build a project, and this artificial price reduction allows the recipient's project to be market viable at a point where it otherwise would not be. The consumer will eventually have to pay for this artificial reduction either through higher prices once the subsidy is removed or by being denied access to the less expensive technology that the guarantee recipient displaced. Eventually, these inefficiencies will result in higher electricity prices for consumers.

They stifle competition and innovation both between sectors and within sectors. The loan guarantee artificially reduces the cost of capital, which allows a recipient to offer its product at below actual cost. This removes the incentive to look for less expensive or more competitive options. If a product is not competitive in a free market, then it should be allowed to adjust or fail.

Part of the success of nuclear energy will depend on competition within the industry. While a utility might not be able to afford a single large reactor without subsidies, it might be able to afford multiple smaller rectors or a reactor based on some other technology. This would create competition, and the subsidized technologies would have to either reduce costs or lose market share. This competitive environment, with other energy sources and within the nuclear sector, would force the entire industry to become more efficient, innovative, and cost effective.

They perpetuate the regulatory status quo. Nuclear energy could transform how the nation produces energy. But one of the big problems with the success of nuclear power in the United States is not that it lacks subsidies but that the regulatory environment for nuclear power does not promote growth, innovation, or competition.

Assuming the permitting process works perfectly, it takes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission four years to permit a new reactor. That is too long. Furthermore, the commission is prepared to permit only one type of reactor, essentially limiting competition to a handful of companies and one technology.

Another regulatory obstacle is the nation's dysfunctional nuclear waste management strategy. The federal government has taken responsibility of nuclear waste (or used fuel) management, allowing nuclear power users to ignore waste production--a critical element of the nuclear fuel cycle--when developing their business models. Because each nuclear technology produces a unique waste stream that has its own characteristics, some reactor types would be more attractive than others depending on how the waste was being managed. But so long as nuclear operators do not have to consider waste management, reactors with attractive waste characteristics can be ignored.

Furthermore, developing a sound approach to waste management would substantially reduce investor risk, which would be reflected in lower financing costs. Guaranteeing the loans reduces near-term pressure to fix this ongoing problem.

They suppress private-sector financing solutions. Companies invest in major projects with substantial risk all the time and do so without government loan guarantees. If they believe that the potential reward justifies the risk, they figure out a way to secure financing. This might include forming a consortium with other firms to share risk or developing an industry insurance scheme of some sort. Numerous companies exist in the private sector to insure large projects. Finding a way to develop an investment is at the heart of capitalism. But loan guarantees distort this process and remove the incentive to come up with better long-term solutions.

Encouraging Government Dependence

While the significant costs of the program are paid by the applicants and limited subsidies can have a role in overcoming some initial regulatory uncertainty, expanding the loan guarantee program as part of the stimulus bill is not appropriate. It is detrimental to taxpayers, consumers, and long-term competitiveness.

It seems that business models are being based more on subsidies, preferences, and protections rather than on sound market principles. The result is that the prospect of a rebirth of the American nuclear industry is coming dangerously close to being completely dependent on government largesse before even one plant is built.

And that is why adding a massive, long-term energy loan guarantee program is just one more example of how the stimulus package has gone awry. Instead of a series of short-term incentives that promote real and sustainable economic growth, it is a massive spending bill with provisions that should go through the normal legislative process.

Jack Spencer is Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

 

Green Stimulus:

Tying Economic Package to Energy and Environment

Plan Is Not Workable

by Ben Lieberman

There is plenty of reason to believe that Congress's proposed stimulus package will not work. A recent Heritage Foundation analysis noted that such government spending "cannot be stimulative because every dollar that government spending 'injects' into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. Rather than create new purchasing power, these policies merely redistribute existing purchasing power."

Even worse than being a zero-sum game, government spending creates less economic activity than if the money had been left in the private sector.This misallocation of resources is only worsened with the attempt to fashion a green stimulus, as the spending projects deemed environmentally acceptable tend to be ones that are especially questionable from an economic standpoint. A better approach would involve removing the impediments to private investment rather than substituting them with misguided public investment.

A Green Stimulus Is a Contradiction in Terms

First and foremost, it should be noted that a green stimulus is an inherent contradiction in terms. The environmental movement itself is, by design, anti-growth. After all, these are the individuals and organizations that regularly fight to stop new factories, power plants, and construction projects. For them, environmental concerns, real or exaggerated, almost always trump economic ones, and it is rare for them to be lacking an excuse to oppose a project. Several leading environmentalists even admit that reduced economic growth is part of their strategy. For example, scientist and activist John Holdren, President Obama's choice for chief science advisor, once stated that "[a] massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States."

The environmental movement's many successes in imposing this agenda has for decades been a drag on the economy and a net destroyer of jobs, especially high-wage blue-collar jobs in such areas as manufacturing and energy production. And even when environmental obstructionists do not ultimately prevail, their routine use of protracted litigation and other delay tactics would almost certainly negate any attempts at an immediate boost to the economy.

Granted, the environmental community does support some politically correct projects for things like renewable energy, public transportation, and efficiency improvements in buildings. These types of endeavors will comprise the green component of the stimulus package. But in terms of economic activity and jobs, these items are miniscule compared to the myriad activities environmentalist continue to oppose, including virtually all heavy industry, the production and use of the fossil fuels, and many if not most major construction projects such as new roads and housing developments.

Overall, an economy that tries to operate to the satisfaction of environmental activists will be a substantially weakened one, and an attempt at a stimulus via a greening of the economy will always be self-defeating and a net job killer.

To the extent the new Administration and Congress pay heed to the wishes of environmental activists, they will be embarking on an anti-stimulus package that will swamp even the largest stimulus. This will be even truer if the 800-pound gorilla of anti-stimulus packages--a crackdown on fossil energy use in the name of combating global warming--is ever imposed.

Renewable Energy Is Anti-Stimulus

Part of the green stimulus involves using taxpayer dollars to subsidize renewable energy, especially wind and solar for electric generation and biofuels for transportation. This would backfire and hurt the economy. It is well established that affordable energy is critical to economic health, and higher energy costs will hurt the prospects for an economic recovery and post-recovery growth. But virtually all of the alternative energy sources that are part of the green stimulus are more expensive than their conventional counterparts. If renewables like wind and solar energy or biofuels were economically competitive, they would already be in growing use without federal subsidies. The fact that they currently enjoy many government handouts and apparently need even more from the stimulus package is a red flag that they cost too much. Indeed, this is why federal efforts to pick winners and losers among energy sources invariably end up backing losers: The winners are the ones that do not need Washington's help.

Support for renewables would likely cost more jobs than are created. For example, subsidies for wind and solar energy would, at least from the narrow perspective of the wind and solar industries, create new jobs as more of these systems are manufactured and installed. But the tax dollars needed to help pay for them cost jobs elsewhere, as would the pricey electricity they produce.

The only reason to consider promoting these renewables is for their environmental benefits, which are questionable in most cases. But the economic argument for saddling the nation with this costlier energy falls completely flat. Some suggest that an entire "new" economy could be based on renewable energy sources, but the only thing new about it would be how weak and globally uncompetitive it is.

Throwing New Money After Old

Most of the ideas that comprise the green stimulus are not new. Things like public transit and energy efficiency programs have long been accorded politically correct status and have been the favorites of Washington spenders for decades--with little to show for it.

There already are a host of federal laws providing subsidies for public transportation as well as tax code provisions encouraging its use. And the 2005 and 2007 energy bills added to the array of existing programs encouraging energy efficiency, from new home appliance and automobile efficiency standards to tax breaks encouraging the use of insulation and other energy-saving devices in homes and commercial buildings.

As is the case with renewable energy, such past federal efforts have a mixed track record. For example, decades of generous federal funding has propped up a number of transit systems with inadequate ridership (less than 2 percent of all passengers and 5 percent of commuters use public transit), which along with other problems negates any economic and environmental benefits And while market forces have led to increased energy efficiency in nearly all energy-using products and industrial processes, there are a number of federally mandated efficiency measures that have backfired, from energy-saving clothes washers whose performance was panned by Consumer Reports to automobile fuel economy standards that were found by the National Academy of Sciences to make vehicles less safe

Removing Environmental Impediments: A Real Stimulus Package

There are better options for creating worthwhile economic activity. The real way toward a stimulus is through the private sector, and much could be done by streamlining environmental impediments to private sector growth and job creation.

For example, consider the benefits of removing the legal and regulatory roadblocks to increased domestic oil and natural gas production.Vast energy-rich onshore and offshore areas are currently off-limits, and energy companies are eager for the opportunity to expand into them. In sharp contrast to the renewable energy expenditures in the stimulus package, the jobs created by increased domestic oil and natural gas drilling would be paid for entirely by the private sector. And the extra production would lower oil and natural gas prices, thereby providing further economic benefits that accompany affordable energy--the exact opposite of what happens when the government tries to foist uncompetitive renewables onto the market.

The Wrong Stimulus

A stimulus package can create makework jobs, including green makework jobs, but since these jobs require federal funding that must come from somewhere else where jobs are being lost, the exercise is zero-sum at best. And after the green stimulus money is spent, the end result is primarily boondoggles with little long-term economic value. The private sector could better use those resources, especially if legal and regulatory impediments are removed.

Trying to spend ourselves rich has always proven to be a bad idea. And trying to simultaneously spend ourselves rich and green would be even more disappointing.

Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

How Green Are Forest-Based Carbon Offsets?

 

Using an online calculator, a consumer can determine the amount of greenhouse gases he or she produces either over the course of a year or when going on a trip. The consumer can then pay someone to "offset" or neutralize the gases he has put into the atmosphere.

For trading purposes, greenhouse gases are measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). Other greenhouse gases such as methane, which is 20 times as potent, are converted into CO2 equivalents.

Anyone who demonstrably neutralizes a ton of CO2 can then sell that cancellation to an offset provider, who resells it to consumers such as the hypothetical celebrity. The actual price to the consumer to offset his or her greenhouse gases varies by provider and project.

(The consumer market is entirely voluntary, which differs from the industrial market; in the industrial market,  bussinesses that exceed greenhouse-gas targets can purchase credits called carbon financial instruments from other businesses with excess credits to spare.)

 

 

A Look into The Future of the USA Under Socialist Rule?

2 Kids, 1 Adult Killed in Stabbing Spree at Belgian Day Care

Friday, January 23, 2009

Jan. 23: People react as they leave a building where families received assistance near the scene of a knife attack at a day care in Dendermonde, Belgium. An assailant killed two children and an adult in the knife attack, authorities said. Ambulance services said at least 10 others had been injured.

 

  • Jan. 23: People react as they leave a building where families received assistance near the scene of a knife attack at a day care in Dendermonde, Belgium. An assailant killed two children and an adult in the knife attack, authorities said. Ambulance services said at least 10 others had been injured.
  • Jan. 23: An unidentified woman, left, speaks with police officers at the scene of a stabbing incident at a daycare center in Dendermonde, Belgium.
  • Jan. 23: A medical team arrives with a stretcher to a crisis center after a stabbing incident at a daycare center in Dendermonde, Belgium. An unidentified man entered the day care center in Belgium and went on stabbing spree Friday, killing two young children and a female worker and sending 10 others to the hospital, officials said.
  • Jan. 23: Parents comfort each other at a crisis center after a stabbing incident at a daycare center in Dendermonde, Belgium.
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NOTE: The OCA is pleased to have this article, taken from The White House website minutes before Obama was innaugrated. The very second of innauguration, the White House website changed to the Obama website looking more link his campaign quarters for 2012 than it does the peoples websire:

 

President Bush's Global Health Initiatives

Are Saving Lives Around The World

President Bush Helped Save Millions Of Lives Through The President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief And The President's Malaria Initiative

America Has Led An Unprecedented Effort To Combat HIV/AIDS Around The World

President Bush has made a historic commitment to the fight against global HIV/AIDS. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush announced the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to combat global HIV/AIDS. Later that year, President Bush signed the initial 5-year, $15 billion authorizing legislation that had been approved with strong bipartisan support. This President views this commitment as a central part of our foreign policy to help alleviate the despair that allows extremism to take hold.

PEPFAR is the largest international health initiative in history to fight a single disease. This effort has helped bring life-saving treatment to more than 2.1 million people and care for more than 10 million people – including more than four million orphans and vulnerable children – around the world. PEPFAR's success is rooted in U.S. support for local programs that use the power of partnerships among governments, foundations, non-governmental organizations, faith-based groups, and the private sector.

  • As of September 30, 2008, PEPFAR was supporting life-saving antiretroviral treatment for more than two million people living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.When the President announced PEPFAR in 2003, only 50,000 people in all of Sub-Saharan Africa were receiving antiretroviral treatment.
  • Through Fiscal Year 2008, PEPFAR has also:
    • Supported prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission for women during more than 16 million pregnancies.
    • Supported prevention of nearly 240,000 infant infections.
    • Supported more than 57 million counseling and testing sessions for men, women, and children.
  • PEPFAR draws upon the capabilities of faith- and community-based organizations to create an effective, multi-sectoral response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. These organizations are uniquely positioned to promote HIV/AIDS stigma reduction and prevention messages and provide counseling and testing, home care, clinical services, and antiretroviral treatment with particular success in the hardest-to-reach communities. Last year, 87 percent of PEPFAR partners were indigenous organizations, and nearly a quarter were faith-based.
  • PEPFAR supports a comprehensive prevention portfolio. In addition to the balanced, evidenced-based ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, and correct and consistent use of Condoms) approach, the United States also supports programs that address mother-to-child transmission, blood safety and safe medical injections, male circumcision, injecting drug users, HIV-discordant couples, alcohol abuse, and other key issues.

On July 30, 2008, President Bush signed legislation to reauthorize PEPFAR, authorizing an additional $48 billion over the next five years to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Under this legislation, the next phase of the American people's generous commitment to those suffering from HIV/AIDS will support:

  • Treatment for at least three million people;
  • Prevention of 12 million new infections; and
  • Care for 12 million people, including five million orphans and vulnerable children.

As a result of the President's leadership, in 2007, G-8 leaders made a commitment to complement U.S. efforts so that together G-8 nations will support treatment for five million HIV/AIDS-infected individuals, prevent 24 million new infections, and care for 24 million people, including 10 million orphans and vulnerable children

The United States is also working through multilateral organizations in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. The United States is the largest contributor to the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis, pledging $4 billion and providing more than $3.3 billion since 2001.

The Administration And Its Partners Have Worked Together To Save Lives Through The President's Malaria Initiative

In 2005, President Bush launched the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), committing $1.2 billion over five years to reduce malaria deaths by 50 percent in 15 targeted African countries. The President has also challenged the private sector to join the fight against malaria. It is estimated that the PMI has already reached 25 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2007, more than six million long-lasting, insecticide-treated mosquito nets were distributed through public-private partnerships to which PMI contributed.

The United States is leading the way in the efforts against malaria and has urged other nations to join. In 2007, G-8 nations matched the United States' commitment so that together, G-8 nations will work to cut malaria deaths in 30 countries by half. As part of fulfilling these and other commitments on malaria, in 2008, G-8 nations agreed to provide 100 million bed nets by the end of 2010 in partnership with other stakeholders. G-8 nations should continue to take action on these promises.

In 2006, President and Mrs. Bush hosted a White House Summit on Malaria to discuss and highlight measures for combating this preventable disease. This summit brought together international experts, multilateral institutions, corporations and foundations, African civic leaders, NGOs, and faith-based and service organizations to discuss and highlight measures for controlling malaria.

President Bush's Initiatives Are Providing More Effective Resources For Health Around The World

In 2008, President Bush announced a new initiative to combat neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) around the world. This Initiative committed $350 million available over five years to provide integrated treatment for more than 300 million people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, targeting seven major NTDs: lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis); schistosomiasis (snail fever); trachoma (eye infection); onchocerciasis (river blindness); and three soil-transmitted helminthes (STHs – hookworm, roundworm, whipworm).

President Bush successfully challenged other nations to join the NTD effort. At their summit on June 10, 2008, the United States and the European Union announced that they would join together to combat NTDs. In July 2008, G-8 leaders committed to join the United States in fighting NTDs by working to support the control or elimination of NTDs in order to reach at least 75 percent of people affected with certain major NTDs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In September 2008, the United Kingdom announced a £50 million commitment to NTDs, citing the contribution built upon President Bush's $350 million announcement and his call to the G-8.

In 2008, President Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a commitment to work together alongside other partners to fight diseases and support stronger health systems, public and private sector health institutions, and health workers. The United States and European Union announced on June 10 that they would work together to support partner countries to strengthen health systems and improve availability of appropriately trained health workers.

President Bush worked with international partners such as Australia, Canada, the European Union, and Japan to ensure a coordinated response to a potential outbreak of avian or pandemic flu.

As part of his "Advancing the Cause of Social Justice in the Western Hemisphere," President Bush launched new healthcare initiatives for Latin America, including ordering the USNS Comfort to Latin America and the Caribbean on a Humanitarian Mission in 2007. Alongside the USNS Comfort medical crew were staff from the Department of Health and Human Services and volunteers from U.S. non-governmental organizations such as Project Hope and Operation Smile to provide free health care services to communities in need over a four-month deployment to the region. More than 98,000 people received care during this deployment. In 2007, the United States also opened the first regional healthcare training center in Panama. This innovative U.S. health diplomacy program trains nurses, technicians, and community health workers from six Central American countries.

# # #

A,mrica Is Running Out Of Electricity

by Alan Caruba  The Intellectual Conservative

The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that overall energy demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.

 

The provision of electrical power nationwide has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs.

The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that overall energy demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.

The effort to insure Americans will not have enough electricity is deadly serious. Take, for example, the exultant news release (Jan 17) from the Rainforest Action Network, “Proposed Coal Plants Losing Steam,” celebrating “59 coal plants cancelled or shelved in 2007.”

Since coal-fired utilities provide over 50 percent of the electricity generated in America, the need for additional plants would seem obvious. A May 2007 Business Week article about coal noted that, “Today, making electricity from coal can cost half as much as using cleaner-burning natural gas.” Half as much at the plant translates to half as much in the monthly energy bill to homeowners and others.

The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and assert the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are successfully denying Americans electrical power.

There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.

The brownouts in California are testimony to what happens when there are an insufficient number of plants to generate electricity, whether it comes from coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power.

Right now the population of America is just over 300 million. The rate of population growth is 3 to 4 million people a year. All will want and need electricity. Where will it come from if the Greens are successful in thwarting the building of power generation plants?

“Coal-fired power plants are the wrong investment for our climate, our health, and our economy,” said Becky Tarbotton, director of Rainforest Action Network’s Global Finance Campaign. (1) Such plants do not affect the climate. (2) Americans now have the longest life expectancy ever, so our health is not an issue. (3) Our economy is entirely based on the availability and provision of electrical and other forms of energy.

The Greens opposed nuclear energy so successfully we haven’t seen a new plant built in thirty years. If you want to increase the amount of electricity and, at the same time, reduce the cost of electricity, build a few and watch what happens.

Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine points out that, “The construction of just one nuclear power station like Palo Verde (CA) in each of the 50 states, with a full complement of 10 reactors, would supply all of the energy that the United States currently imports — with, in addition and at current prices, $300 billion per year worth of excess energy to export.”

If we can’t get nuclear facilities built and we can’t get any new coal-fired plants, what does RAN propose? The same thing as the other Greens do. So-called “renewable energy.” And “efficiency.”

Neither solar, nor wind energy is EVER going to be able to produce the amount of energy Americans use and need. The laws of physics eliminate these “solutions” to our energy needs

Energy is measured in British Thermal Units, BTUs. One BTU is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2006 the United States used 99.5 quadrillion BTUs of energy for electrical energy and for our transportation needs.

What energy sources were used to generate the power? Fully 40% came from oil, 23% came from coal, 22% came from natural gas, 8% came from nuclear plants, 2.9% came from biomass, including ethanol, 2.8% came from conventional hydroelectric dams, and less than 1% came from all other alternatives combined, geothermal, wind and solar power.

Along with the efforts to stop any means to provide the power America needs for its present and future energy, the U.S. government heavily taxes energy industries and has placed so many restrictions on new nuclear and hydrocarbon power production that there has been very little development for two generations. On top of this, it has mandated that a large portion of the nation’s corn crop, an essential element of our food supply, be liquefied and burned for fuel!

The most recent “energy bill” passed by Congress and signed by the President actually bans Thomas Edison’s most famous invention, the incandescent light bulb!

If this keeps up, we are going to run out of energy in America for electricity and for transportation. The vast oil tar deposits in Canada are a target of the Natural Resources Defense Council that has challenged the granting of permits required to expand refineries and pipelines on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border.

A recently proposed billion-dollar project by ExxonMobil to construct a storage facility and pipeline for liquefied natural gas off the shore of New Jersey immediately drew criticism by environmental groups seeking to thwart access to this energy source. Meanwhile the State’s largest daily reported on February 9th that New Jersey ratepayers “will see double-digit increases in their electric bills.”

Whether it’s coal, gas or oil, the Greens are doing everything they can to return the United States to the same conditions that existed from before the Revolution to fifty years after the Civil War. The use and expansion of electrical energy did not really begin until the last century.

An energy catastrophe is looming for the nation and Americans cannot even look to Congress to avert it.

by the Intellectual Conservative

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/02/11/america-is-running-out-of-electricity/

NOTE: The OCA is pleased to have this article, taken from The White House website minutes before Obama was innaugrated. The very second of innauguration, the White House website changed to the Obama website looking more link his campaign quarters for 2012 than it does the peoples websire: 

Fact Sheet: President Bush Has Advanced Cooperative Conservation And Protected The Environment

President George W. Bush delivers remarks on Conservation and the Environment Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. Said the President, "We have pioneered a new model of cooperative conservation in which government and private citizens and environmental advocates work together to achieve common goals. And while there's a lot more work to be done, we have done our part to leave behind a cleaner and healthier and better world for those who follow us on this Earth." White House photo by Chris Greenberg

Because Of The President's Efforts To Encourage Cooperative Conservation, Innovation, And New Technologies, America's Air Is Cleaner, Our Water Is Purer, And Our Natural Resources Are Better Protected

Encouraged And Promoted Conservation Of Our Natural Resources

  • Instituted policies that helped reduce air pollution by 12 percent from 2001 to 2007 and adopted new policies that will produce even deeper reductions.  Established stringent air quality standards and adopted rules that will cut hazardous industrial emissions and will cut power plant emissions by nearly 70 percent and diesel engine emissions by more than 90 percent.
  • Signed an Executive Order making cooperative conservation the national policy of the United States and directed Federal agencies to implement resource laws cooperatively with State, local and tribal governments, and the public.
  • Cleared dry brush and dead trees and thinned overstocked forests on 27 million acres of forest and range lands through the Healthy Forest Initiative to help prevent catastrophic wildfires, assist in executing core components of the National Fire Plan, and restore these ecosystems to healthy, natural conditions.  
  • Restored, improved, or protected more than 3 million acres of wetlands, improving water quality and creating wildlife habitats, largely through farm bill conservation programs, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, and other cooperative conservation efforts.  Set a new goal to protect, improve, and restore another 4 million acres.
  • Expanded Federal tax incentives to encourage landowners to donate their property for conservation purposes.  Strengthened and expanded the Conservation Reserve Program through which we are helping ranchers and farmers restore grassland habitats on their land.
  • Created 15 new National Wildlife Refuges and emphasized recovery goals under the Endangered Species Act. 
    • Efforts to conserve the populations of both the bald eagle and the Yellowstone grizzly bear have led to their recovery and removal from the Endangered Species List.   
    • The Administration listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act and has further developed a polar bear action plan to help protect the species. 
  • Facilitated an agreement among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming on water allocation during shortages and surpluses.  This two-year effort enables the Department of the Interior to better manage Federal reservoirs while meeting the water needs of the seven States.
  • Advanced a series of highly complex, regional resource conservation and management initiatives in partnership with the States, including with regard to the Everglades, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, Pacific Coast, Columbia River, and Klamath River Basin.

Preserved Our National Parks And Community Heritage

  • Announced the National Park Centennial Initiative in 2006, which increased funding to hire more park rangers, repair buildings, improve natural landscapes, and engage more children as junior rangers – an initiative Mrs. Laura Bush has actively supported and promoted. 
  • Performed more than $1 billion in assessments and clean-ups where necessary on more than 10,000 abandoned and contaminated industrial sites through the Brownfields Program. 
  • Provided nearly $17 million in grants through the Preserve America Initiative to advance efforts to protect our cultural and natural heritage in all 50 States: awarded more than 220 Preserve America grants and recognized more than 700 communities as Preserve America Communities.  Mrs. Bush has also actively supported and promoted this initiative.
  • Signed an Executive Order to facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat.

Preserved Our Oceans

  • Accomplished conservation in marine environments over the last eight years on par with what we've achieved on land over the past 100.
  • Released an Ocean Action Plan in 2004 and created the first ever Cabinet Committee on Ocean Policy.  All 88 actions recommended in the Ocean Action Plan have been met or are on track, making our oceans' coasts and Great Lakes cleaner, healthier, and more productive.
  • Designated nearly 140,000 square miles of coral reef ecosystems and surrounding waters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which contains more than 7,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else on earth, as the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument – giving the area our Nation's highest form of marine environmental protection.
  • Designated three areas of the Pacific Ocean, covering more than 195,500 square miles, as marine national monuments: the Mariana, Pacific Remote Islands, and Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments.
  • Announced the expansion of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary by 775 square miles to include the Davidson Sea Mount. 
  • Protected our oceans by taking action to end overfishing and conserve habitats.
  • Increased funding for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration by $770 million since he took office.

Protected Fish And Birds

  • Directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in consultation with Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, to strengthen efforts to protect sustainable fisheries and call for an end to destructive fishing practices on the high seas.  In December 2006, in an effort spearheaded by the United States, the United Nations passed a resolution to help protect fish stocks and marine habitats from destructive fishing practices.
  • Signed an Executive Order to conserve as gamefish two of America's most popular recreational fish – striped bass and red drum – for the recreational, economic, and environmental benefit of present and future generations. 
  • Signed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006 and reaffirmed our commitment to protect America's fisheries and keep our commercial and recreational fishing communities strong. 
  • Preserved and restored stopover habitat for migratory birds in the United States through the Migratory Bird Initiative and put forth an innovative policy called "recovery credit trading," which provides a new tool to help in habitat conservation.

Christian Du Four, a local prosecutor, and witnesses said the man rode his bike to the Fabeltjesland day care center, entered about 10 a.m. and immediately began slashing a knife around. The dead included two children — ranging in age up to 3 — and a woman working in the day care center.

Du Four said in the mayhem that ensued the attacker simply walked out and got back on his bicycle before being arrested in a nearby supermarket shortly after the attack.

 

Dr. Ignace Demeyer, director of the local hospital, said 10 children arrived at his hospital with very serious stab wounds, all required surgery, and all were now in stable condition.

He said the attack was very violent and the children had multiple stab wounds all over their bodies.

Demeyer also said 21 children were at the daycare at the time of the attack, and nine were unharmed.

Du Four did not immediately identify the suspect, who was injured as police detained him and taken to a nearby hospital. Local residents told The Associated Press the suspect had a history of mental illness.

Du Four said police showed shaken parents digital photographs of the youngsters who had been taken to the hospital, asking them to identify their children.

"People are totally in shock," said Leene Du Bois, a spokeswoman for the regional government of Flanders. "Nobody would have imagined anyone could do so much harm. There is much grief."

She said the perpetrator had no connection to the day care center.

The city opened up a nearby community center to provide psychological counseling to victims and witnesses of the stabbings.

Veerle Heeren, the social welfare minister for the regional Flemish government, said she would be investigating security measures at the center.

 

DENDERMONDE, Belgium —  A man went on a rampage at a day care center in Belgium Friday, stabbing two young children and a female worker to death and slashing 10 other children all over their bodies, officials said.

Sobbing parents rushed to the scene and to hospitals, and medical workers in the town sprung into action, performing 10 operations to save the badly wounded children.

The attack caused widespread panic in the day care center, which serves up to 30 children on a residential street in this town 20 miles northwest of Brussels.

"An act of great brutality has happened here against our weakest citizens," said mayor Buyse Piet. "The whole city is united in support for the parents who are in deep grief."

 

 

A number of different types of offsets exist for consumers. For example, wind farms create credita that can be traded. An amount of "clean" energy produced by a wind farm is thought of as displacing an equal amount of energy from a "dirty" source, such as a coal-burning electrical plant.

Another option is through "avoided deforestation," in which an endangered forest is purchased and allowed to stay as it is, thereby preserving the carbon already contained in its biomass and letting its trees continue to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen.

But the third oft-used option is reforestation — planting new trees to absorb CO2 — and environmentalists aren't sure whether it really works.

Carbon Catalog, a Web site that lists and reviews offset providers, gives bonus points to those whose portfolios don't have a majority share of reforestation projects.

TerraPass, a San Francisco-based offset company, doesn't offer any forestry options for its customers And the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, which establishes standards for what constitutes credits, excludes forestry projects.

The Forests and the European Union Resource Network, a European environmental group with offices in Brussels and rural England, "does not believe tree-planting offsets should be granted any carbon credits," according to communications manager Richard Wainwright.

"Trees grow rather slowly. And particularly when they're small, they don't sequester much carbon," explains TerraPass co-founder Adam Stein on his company's Web site.

"The small print on tree-planting offsets typically indicate a 40-year maturity," Stein explains. "TerraPass's promise to our customers is that we fund greenhouse gas reductions that take place now."

To that end, TerraPass features investments in wind farms or landfill gas-captures that destroy methane before it escapes into the open air.

Stein also worries about the longevity of reforestation projects.

"Forests carry an inherent risk, because trees can die," Stein said, adding that decaying trees release the carbon they've absorbed during their lifetimes. "To manage that risk, you have to build in a lot of buffer."

Yet bigwig environmental groups such as the New York-based Rainforest Alliance and Conservation International and the Jane Goodall Institute, both based in Arlington, Va., have signed the Forests Now Declaration [http://www.forestsnow.org/declaration.php] petitioning carbon-credit markets to include reforestation and avoided deforestation projects.

"Tropical forests continue to be excluded from carbon markets," the declaration reads in part. "Instead, perverse incentives are in force, encouraging continued conversion and degradation of forests and discouraging their restoration and capacity to contribute to sustainable development."

The companies that sell reforestation offsets don't have any doubts about their effectiveness.

"Certain protection measures are built into the certification process," said Russell Simon, communications manager with Carbonfund.org, an offset seller based in Silver Spring, Md.

Carbonfund has three forestry projects: a 1,000-acre reforestation of former pastureland in Nicaragua [http://www.carboncatalog.org/projects/return-to-forest-reforestation/], a 1,100-acre reforestation of an old cotton field in Louisiana [http://www.carboncatalog.org/projects/tensas-river-valley-reforestation/] and a similarly-sized reforestation of abandoned cropland and grassland in southwestern China [http://www.carboncatalog.org/projects/protecting-biodiversity-in-tengchong/].

Simon explained that Carbonfund sets a deadline for its reforestation projects. The amount of CO2 sequestered by the Nicaragua project is measured only for the first 40 years.

"It becomes a closed loop at that point," said Simon. "Trees die and new ones are born," so that any carbon released by dead trees is reabsorbed by young growing trees.

Simon said the Nicaraguan project, orchestrated by local nonprofit Paso Pacifico, was modeled on existing areas of nearby rainforest. The project included multiple species of vegetation and was spread over 12 separate parcels of land as insurance against a catastrophe like a forest fire, which would release all of the sequestered carbon.

"That's just the nature of forestry — it's a long-term business," says Jeff Hayward, verification services manager with the Rainforest Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit. "You have a huge asset that's out there at risk of fire and pest and theft. Managing risk is part of the business."

Hayward explains that tree-planting projects sometimes withhold 20 percent of their credits for the duration of the project in case there's some kind of setback such as fire. Another mechanism, he said, is to insure those credits being sold by a planter to a provider.

The Alliance was hired by Carbonfund to verify that the Nicaragua project would sequester the amount of CO2 stated by Paso Pacifico.

Third-party verifiers check to see if a project lives up to a recognized standard. If so, they certify it with the certification then used as a marketing tool by the provider.

"We looked through all of their numbers," said Hayward, referring to Paso Pacifico.

And Simon believes that while renewable energy and methane capture are good because they don't add to greenhouse gases, they're useless at reducing existing excess carbon dioxide.

"Wind farms don't destroy CO2. They just reduce the need to produce electricity from dirty sources," he says. "Sequestration is the only kind of project out there that takes CO2 that's already been released and does something with it."

A movie star appears on a talk show, lectures viewers about saving the environment, then boards a trans-Atlantic flight for a premiere in Milan, releasing untold amounts of greenhouse gases in a vapor trail of hypocrisy and excess.

It's OK, says the star's publicist — because the celebrity offset the trip by giving money to a forestry project. The trees that get planted will absorb the carbon released by the airplane, making the jaunt carbon-neutral.

But is that really the case? Or are forestry-based voluntary carbon offsets just a big scam?

 

"Does planting trees reduce global warming? Not in most places on the earth," Joseph Romm, senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for American Progress and former acting assistant secretary of energy during the Clinton Administration, warned in a 2007 essay on the environmental news site Grist.

"If you are thinking about purchasing offsets, be wary of any company that says it plants trees."

Offsets work by appealing to consumers' sense of responsibility — or guilt.
  

 Lose your property for growing food?
Big Brother legislation could mean prosecution, fines up to $1 million

Posted: March 16, 2009 8:56 pm Eastern

 

Some small farms and organic food growers could be placed under direct supervision of the federal government under new legislation making its way through Congress.

Food Safety Modernization Act

House Resolution 875, or the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in February. DeLauro's husband, Stanley Greenburg, works for Monsanto – the world's leading producer of herbicides and genetically engineered seed.

DeLauro's act has 39 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Agriculture Committee on Feb. 4. It calls for the creation of a Food Safety Administration to allow the government to regulate food production at all levels – and even mandates property seizure, fines of up to $1 million per offense and criminal prosecution for producers, manufacturers and distributors who fail to comply with regulations.

Michael Olson, host of the Food Chain radio show and author of "Metro Farm," told WND the government should focus on regulating food production in countries such as China and Mexico rather than burdening small and organic farmers in the U.S. with overreaching regulations.

"We need somebody to watch over us when we're eating food that comes from thousands and thousands of miles away. We need some help there," he said. "But when food comes from our neighbors or from farmers who we know, we don't need all of those rules. If your neighbor sells you something that is bad and you get sick, you are going to get your hands on that farmer, and that will be the end of it. It regulates itself."


The legislation would establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services "to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."

Federal regulators will be tasked with ensuring that food producers, processors and distributors – both large and small – prevent and minimize food safety hazards such as food-borne illnesses and contaminants such as bacteria, chemicals, natural toxins or manufactured toxicants, viruses, parasites, prions, physical hazards or other human pathogens.

 

Under the legislation's broad wording, slaughterhouses, seafood processing plants, establishments that process, store, hold or transport all categories of food products prior to delivery for retail sale, farms, ranches, orchards, vineyards, aquaculture facilities and confined animal-feeding operations would be subject to strict government regulation.

Government inspectors would be required to visit and examine food production facilities, including small farms, to ensure compliance. They would review food safety records and conduct surveillance of animals, plants, products or the environment.

"What the government will do is bring in industry experts to tell them how to manage all this stuff," Olson said. "It's industry that's telling government how to set these things up. What it always boils down to is who can afford to have the most influence over the government. It would be those companies that have sufficient economies of scale to be able to afford the influence – which is, of course, industrial agriculture."

Farms and food producers would be forced to submit copies of all records to federal inspectors upon request to determine whether food is contaminated, to ensure they are in compliance with food safety laws and to maintain government tracking records. Refusal to register, permit inspector access or testing of food or equipment would be prohibited.

"What is going to happen is that local agriculture will end up suffering through some onerous protocols designed for international agriculture that they simply don't need," Olson said. "Thus, it will be a way for industrial agriculture to manage local agriculture."

Under the act, every food producer must have a written food safety plan describing likely hazards and preventative controls they have implemented and must abide by "minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water."

"That opens a whole can of worms," Olson said. "I think that's where people are starting to freak out about losing organic agriculture. Who is going to decide what the minimum standards are for fertilization or anything else? The government is going to bring in big industry and say we are setting up these protocols, so what do you think we should do? Who is it going to bring in to ask? The government will bring in people who have economies of scale who have that kind of influence."

DeLauro's act calls for the Food Safety Administration to create a "national traceability system" to retrieve history, use and location of each food product through all stages of production, processing and distribution.

Olson believes the regulations could create unjustifiable financial hardships for small farmers and run them out of business.

"That is often the purpose of rules and regulations: to get rid of your competition," he said. "Only people who are very, very large can afford to comply. They can hire one person to do paperwork. There's a specialization of labor there, and when you are very small, you can't afford to do all of these things."

Olson said despite good intentions behind the legislation, this act could devastate small U.S. farms.

"Every time we pass a rule or a law or a regulation to make the world a better place, it seems like what we do is subsidize production offshore," he said. "We tell farmers they can no longer drive diesel tractors because they make bad smoke. Well, essentially what we're doing is giving China a subsidy to grow our crops for us, or Mexico or anyone else."

Section 304 of the Food Safety Modernization Act establishes a group of "experts and stakeholders from Federal, State, and local food safety and health agencies, the food industry, consumer organizations, and academia" to make recommendations for improving food-borne illness surveillance.

According to the act, "Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law … may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act."

Each violation and each separate day the producer is in defiance of the law would be considered a separate offense and an additional penalty. The act suggests federal administrators consider the gravity of the violation, the degree of responsibility and the size and type of business when determining penalties.

Criminal sanctions may be imposed if contaminated food causes serious illness or death, and offenders may face fines and imprisonment of up to 10 years.

"It's just frightening what can happen with good intentions," Olson said. "It's probably the most radical notions on the face of this Earth, but local agriculture doesn't need government because it takes care of itself."

Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act

 

Another "food safety" bill that has organic and small farmers worried is Senate Bill 425, or the Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act, sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Brown's bill is backed by lobbyists for Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson. It was introduced in September and has been referred to the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. Some say the legislation could also put small farmers out of business.

Like HR 875, the measure establishes a nationwide "traceability system" monitored by the Food and Drug Administration for all stages of manufacturing, processing, packaging and distribution of food. It would cost $40 million over three years.

"We must ensure that the federal government has the ability and authority to protect the public, given the global nature of the food supply," Brown said when he introduced the bill. He suggested the FDA and USDA have power to declare mandatory recalls.

The government would track food shipped in interstate commerce through a recordkeeping and audit system, a secure, online database or registered identification. Each farmer or producer would be required to maintain records regarding the purchase, sale and identification of their products.

      A 13-member advisory committee of food safety and tracking technology experts, representatives of the food industry, consumer advocates and government officials would assist in implementing the traceability system.

The bill calls for the committee to establish a national database or registry operated by the Food and Drug Administration. It also proposes a electronic records database to identify sales of food and its ingredients "establishing that the food and its ingredients were grown, prepared, handled, manufactured, processed, distributed, shipped, warehoused, imported, and conveyed under conditions that ensure the safety of the food."

It states, "The records should include an electronic statement with the date of, and the names and addresses of all parties to, each prior sale, purchase, or trade, and any other information as appropriate."

If government inspectors find that a food item is not in compliance, they may force producers to cease distribution, recall the item or confiscate it.

"If the postal service can track a package from my office in Washington to my office in Cincinnati, we should be able to do the same for food products," Sen. Brown said in a Sept. 4, 2008, statement. "Families that are struggling with the high cost of groceries should not also have to worry about the safety of their food. This legislation gives the government the resources it needs to protect the public."

 

Recalls of contaminated food are usually voluntary; however, in his weekly radio address on March 15, President Obama announced he's forming a Food Safety Working Group to propose new laws and stop corruption of the nation's food.

The group will review, update and enforce food safety laws, which Obama said "have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt."

The president said outbreaks from contaminated foods, such as a recent salmonella outbreak among consumers of peanut products, have occurred more frequently in recent years due to outdated regulations, fewer inspectors, scaled back inspections and a lack of information sharing between government agencies.

"In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president but as a parent," Obama said. "No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch just as no family should have to worry that the medicines they buy will cause them harm."

The blogosphere is buzzing with comments on the legislation, including the following:

  • Obama and his cronies or his puppetmasters are trying to take total control – nationalize everything, disarm the populace, control food, etc. We are seeing the formation of a total police state.
  • Well ... that's not very " green " of Obama. What's his real agenda?
  • This is getting way out of hand! Isn't it enough the FDA already allows poisons in our foods?
  • If you're starving, no number of guns will enable you to stay free. That's the whole idea behind this legislation. He who controls the food really makes the rules.
  • The government is terrified of the tax loss. Imagine all the tax dollars lost if people actually grew their own vegetables! Imagine if people actually coordinated their efforts with family, friends and neighbors. People could be in no time eating for the price of their own effort. ... Oh the horror of it all! The last thing the government wants is for us to be self-sufficient.
  • They want to make you dependent upon government. I say no way! already the government is giving away taxes from my great great grandchildren and now they want to take away my food, my semi-auto rifles, my right to alternative holistic medicine? We need a revolution, sheeple! Wake up! They want fascism ... can you not see that?
  •  The screening processes will make it very expensive for smaller farmers, where bigger agriculture corporations can foot the bill.
  • If anything it just increases accountability, which is arguably a good thing. It pretty much says they'll only confiscate your property if there are questions of contamination and you don't comply with their inspections. I think the severity of this has been blown out of proportion by a lot of conjecture.
  • Don't waste your time calling the criminals in D.C. and begging them to act like humans. This will end with a bloody revolt.
  • The more I examine this (on the surface) seemingly innocuous bill the more I hate it. It is a coward's ploy to push out of business small farms and farmers markets without actually making them illegal because many will choose not to operate due to the compliance issue.

Diane Feinstein---> No Solar Panels in MY Back Yard

 

 

by Yid With Lid, Sammy Benoit

Posted: 21 Mar 2009 05:44 PM PDT

The Hypocrisy of the environmentalists in congress never ceases to amaze me.  Last year we had Ted Kennedy fighting electric power generating wind mill Called cape wind. Cape Wind was proposing America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Miles from the nearest shore, 130 wind turbines will  harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of clean, renewable energy.Teddy Kennedy didn't want those wind mills in HIS back yard.

California's Mojave Desert is ideally suited for solar energy production but not according to Diane Feinstein. Taking a cue from "Uncle Teddy, Feinstein  is fighting the use of the desert as a "solar panel farm."

Feinstein: Don't Spoil Our Desert With Solar Panels

WASHINGTON -- California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy.

Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 desert acres, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Friday such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public.

Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.

The Wildlands Conservancy orchestrated the government's purchase of the land between 1999-2004. It negotiated a discount sale from the real estate arm of the former Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad and then contributed $40 million to help pay for the purchase. David Myers, the conservancy's executive director, said the solar projects would do great harm to the region's desert tortoise population.

"It would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem," said David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy.

Feinstein said the lands in question were donated or purchased with the intent that they would be protected forever. But the Bureau of Land Management considers the land now open to all types of development, except mining. That policy led the state to consider large swaths of the land for future renewable energy production.

"This is unacceptable," Feinstein said in a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "I urge you to direct the BLM to suspend any further consideration of leases to develop former railroad lands for renewable energy or for any other purpose."

In a speech last year, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger complained about environmental concerns slowing down the approval of solar plants in California.

"If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it," Schwarzenegger said at Yale University.

But Karen Douglas, chairman of the California Energy Commission, said Feinstein's proposal could be a "win-win" for energy and conservation. The governor's office said Douglas was speaking on the administration's behalf.

"The opportunity we see in the Feinstein bill is to jump-start our own efforts to find the best sites for development and to come up with a broader conservation plan that mitigates the impact of the development," Douglas said.

Douglas said that if the national monument lines were drawn without consideration of renewable energy then a conflict was likely, but it's early enough in the planning process that she's confident the state will be able to get more solar and wind projects up and running without hurting the environment.

"We think we can do both," Douglas said. "We think this is an opportunity to accelerate both."

Greg Miller of the Bureau of Land Management said there are 14 solar energy and five wind energy projects that have submitted applications seeking to develop on what's referred to as the former Catellus lands. None of the projects are close to being approved, he said.

The land lies in the southeast corner of California, between the existing Mojave National Preserve on the north and Joshua Tree National Park on the south.

"They all have to go through a rigorous environmental analysis now," Miller said. "It will be at best close to two years out before we get some of these grants approved."

Feinstein's spokesman, Gil Duran, said the senator looks forward to working with the governor and the Interior Department on the issue.

"There's plenty of room in America's deserts for the bold expansion of renewable energy projects," Duran said.
Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list. Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

 

Ensuring Access to

Affordable Health Insurance:

A Memo to President-elect Obama

 

by  Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D.

and

Nina Owcharenko


On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes--government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong, and that's why they've proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference.

--Barack Obama, "Plan for a Healthy America: Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Plan" from barackobama.com

If you already have insurance, the only thing that will change under my plan is that we will lower premiums. If you don't have health insurance, you'll be able to get the same kind of health insurance Members of Congress get for themselves.

--Barack Obama, "Closing Argument" speech, Canton, Ohio, October 26, 2008

President-elect Obama, during the campaign you pledged to build a health care system in which Americans can be assured of access to affordable health insurance. You guaranteed Americans who already have insurance that nothing would change except that their coverage would be less expensive. You pointed to the health system that Members of Congress have as your model for expanding coverage. And you agreed that choice of doctor and care is a basic principle. These laudable themes struck a chord with Americans.

Achieving this widely supported vision will be challenging in these difficult economic and budget times. It will be politically difficult. It is just 15 years since another Democrat with strong public support for health care reform--Bill Clinton--saw that support quickly evaporate when he crafted a partisan legislative proposal that departed from what Americans thought they had voted for.

In order to succeed, then, the legislation upon which you and Congress agree must be consistent with the principles of health reform that Americans believe they heard in your speeches. This means that your legislation should include the following important elements:

  • Use the consumer-choice system available to Members of Congress as a true model, not as a façade for government-run health care. The system you and other federal employees have enjoyed, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), is not like Medicare or Medicaid. It is an employment-based system with important characteristics. Its "health insurance exchange" functions like a shopping mall for plans, making it easy for families to shop each year for plans and to have portable coverage. Plans range from managed care to health savings accounts. There is no standard, congressionally mandated benefits package, and there is no national health board, so Members of Congress can choose the benefits that are right for them.

    The FEHBP consists of truly competing private plans, with no "public plan" enjoying a sweetheart deal. And it has private options available throughout the nation that even the sickest employees can afford. You are to be applauded for citing this as a model of choice and competition, but you must make sure that Congress does not play bait-and-switch, talking about the FEHBP but enacting something quite different.
  • Create a level playing field of competing private plans and real choice, and do not allow a "public plan" to undermine your other commitments to Americans. You spoke of including a government-sponsored "public plan" as one of the competing plans in your proposed health exchange, but there is no public plan in the FEHBP--and for good reason. There can be little doubt that if the government sets the rules for competition in an exchange and also runs one of the plans, the rules will be rigged to favor the public plan.

    Moreover, employers who currently offer coverage could switch their workers to this plan, and millions of Americans would discover that their employers had ended their existing private coverage. That would be an unacceptable violation of your "no change" commitment. Indeed, recent estimates from the Lewin Group, a leading health econometrics firm, suggest that more than 22 million Americans would experience an unexpected change in coverage with a public plan in place.
  • Reform the tax treatment of health insurance to make it more equitable and efficient for taxpaying families. There is wide and bipartisan agreement that the current tax relief for health insurance is poorly designed and exacerbates uninsurance. Today's unlimited tax relief for employer-organized health insurance gives large breaks to executives and other highly paid employees but little or no relief for families without employment-based insurance or with only limited coverage at the place of work. The value of this "tax exclusion" is over $200 billion, or about 10 percent of all the nation's spending on health care.

    Policy analysts across the spectrum would limit the tax exclusion and use the revenue to provide tax relief for those without tax help to make coverage more affordable. A sweeping proposal came from one of your top advisers, Jason Furman. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) recently discussed tax reform in his "white paper" on health coverage. Even Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) proposed a tax cap during the primaries. Converting part of the tax exclusion to a tax credit or similar tax relief for taxpayers without adequate insurance is a critical element of reform and is similar to the FEHBP's subsidy for premiums.
  • Use incentives and perhaps automatic enrollment in private plans, not government mandates, to foster wider coverage. You spoke eloquently during the primaries of the unfairness of forcing families to purchase coverage they couldn't afford. You also challenged your primary opponents to say which police powers they would use to enforce a mandate. As you explained, the main reason why working Americans are uninsured is that they cannot afford coverage.

    But inertia leads some other Americans who can afford coverage not to acquire it, in many cases because they know they can rely on the taxpayer-supported emergency room. For those Americans, you should explore the idea of "auto-enrollment" in private plans, in which the default is that working families are automatically signed up and must actively decline coverage if they don't want it. It turns out that default enrollment sharply increases sign-ups for pension plans, and you supported legislation to make it easier and affordable for firms to institute such enrollment procedures.

    You should therefore urge your staff and Congress to explore the effectiveness of a combination of automatic enrollment and financial incentives to widen private coverage, and not to draw up plans for more mandates or expansions of Medicaid or other public programs.
  • Refocus employment-based coverage to promote family control and choice rather than mandating employers to offer government-defined coverage. There are large gaps in the system of employer-sponsored coverage. Many smaller firms do not offer coverage at all, and others offer coverage that many of their workers don't want or can't afford. The solution to this is not to mandate that firms offer an expensive, comprehensive plan determined by Congress or else pay a tax. That would mean one-size-fits-all coverage while changing coverage that many workers are happy with--which you pledged not to do. Moreover, employer mandates and taxes hide the cost for employees because firms just cut back on cash income.

    You should instead take steps to enable families to choose and retain their health coverage from job to job, with the employer facilitating this through such things as arranging payroll deductions, much like their role in arranging 401(k) retirement plans. You could foster this with health tax breaks for employees who opt for plans with benefits they like that are offered through health exchanges, just as Members of Congress do.
  • Say "no" to the Daschle Federal Health Board. Even worse than congressionally mandated benefits would be mandatory coverage designed by the powerful Federal Health Board proposed by your nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD). Daschle envisions a remote board of "experts," perhaps modeled on the Federal Reserve Board. This board, he says, would be "insulated from politics. Congress and the White House would relinquish some of their health-policy decisions to it." Shielded from public opinion and from representative government, it would have "teeth," says Daschle, potentially deciding such things as premiums and appropriate services, and "all federal programs would have to abide by [its recommendations]." He also imagines that the board would "link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board's recommendations."

    Tom Daschle's Federal Health Board would have enormous power over medical decisions affecting every American. This is unacceptable, and would break your pledge to give Americans choice. You should reject his idea.
  • Take bold action to allow states to experiment with better ways of reaching the nation's health coverage goals rather than imposing a national plan on states and families. Our system of federalism is intended to allow states to determine the best ways to achieve objectives we share as a nation, thereby appropriately limiting the role of the central government and fostering creative diversity. We value that principle of federalism in such areas as education and welfare. It is important to utilize it fully in health care. Thus, rather than try to create a Washington-designed system with a national health exchange and impose it on states, businesses, and families, you should instead make greater use of the power of federalism.

    The better course would be for Washington to clarify the broad goals of a health system and to encourage states to devise the best ways to achieve those goals. That can be done in a bold way by making it possible for states to obtain approval from Congress for significant changes in existing laws and programs--by granting the states waivers from laws, not just regulations--so that they can restructure programs and try creative ways of expanding affordable coverage. Bipartisan bills have already been introduced in both houses of Congress to accomplish this. Supporting the federalism approach would give real meaning to the commitment in your campaign proposal to give states the flexibility to experiment with better ways to accomplish national goals for health care.
  • Be bipartisan when working with Congress. President Bill Clinton made a critical mistake in failing to draw ideas and support from both sides of the aisle. Working only with his own party and relying on only a narrow range of outside experts, he rejected sensible ideas, and his final proposals were out of sync with the public. You must not repeat that mistake. In such areas as the tax treatment of health care, federal-state cooperation, insurance reform, and other critical pieces of health reform, there are well-developed bills already before Congress, several of them bipartisan. Outside of Congress, there has been an unusually thoughtful, bipartisan discussion on coverage. And there has been important state experimentation in both red and blue states. You should build on these important developments, not ignore them.

Conclusion

While Americans express frustration with our current health system and want action to make coverage more dependable and affordable, they also want the nation's health system to retain important principles and features. Americans demand choice, for instance, and if they are content with the coverage they have, they do not want it disrupted. Moreover, they resist the idea of a standardized system being imposed on them from Washington.

Millions of Americans voted for you because they believed your words meant that you shared these principles. You now have the opportunity to craft health legislation that abides by these principles and is compatible with your pledge.

Stuart M. Butler, Ph.D., is Vice President for Domestic and Economic Policy Studies, and Nina Owcharenko is Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Health Policy Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

 

 

Growing Our Energy Supply

The GOP of ENERGY

 

We must aggressively increase our nation’s energy supply, in an environmentally responsible way, and do so through a comprehensive strategy that meets both short and long term needs.  No amount of wishing or hoping can suspend the laws of supply and demand.  Leading economists agree that any actions that will increase future energy supplies will lead to lower energy prices today.  Increasing our production of American made energy and reducing our excessive reliance on foreign oil will:

  • Bring down the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel.
  • Create more jobs for American workers.
  • Enhance our national security.

In the long run, American production should move to zero-emission sources, and our nation’s fossil fuel resources are the bridge to that emissions-free future.

Growing American Energy Production

If we are to have the resources we need to achieve energy independence, we simply must draw more American oil from American soil.  We support accelerated exploration, drilling and development in America, from new oilfields off the nation’s coasts to onshore fields such as those in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska.  The Green River Basin in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming offers recoverable shale oil that is ready for development, and most of it is on federal lands. 

To deliver that energy to American consumers, we will expand our refining capacity. Because of environmental extremism and regulatory blockades in Washington, not a single new refinery has been built in this country in 30 years.  We will encourage refinery construction and modernization and, with sensitivity to environmental concerns, an expedited permitting process.

Any legislation to increase domestic exploration, drilling and production must minimize any protracted legal challenges that could unreasonably delay or even preclude actual production.  We oppose any efforts that would permanently block access to the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Nuclear Power: the Earth’s Clean Future

Nuclear energy is the most reliable zero-carbon-emissions source of energy that we have.  Unwarranted fear mongering with no relationship to current technologies and safeguards has prevented us from starting construction of a single nuclear power plant in 31 years.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has for decades relied upon nuclear-powered vessels, and other nations have harnessed nuclear power to provide a major portion of their energy consumption.  There is no reason why the United States cannot catch up and do the same.  Confident in the promise offered by science and technology, Republicans will pursue dramatic increases in the use of all forms of safe, affordable, reliable – and clean – nuclear power.

As new plants are constructed using the highest safety and operation standards, the nation’s industrial and manufacturing base will be rejuvenated.  The labor force will expand, with nearly 15,000 high quality jobs created for every new nuclear plant built – and those workers will lead the nation away from its dependence on foreign oil.

Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Hydropower

Alternate power sources must enter the mainstream. The technology behind solar energy has improved significantly in recent years, and the commercial development of wind power promises major benefits both in costs and in environmental protection.  Republicans support these and other alternative energy sources, including geothermal and hydropower, and anticipate technological developments that will increase their economic viability.  We therefore advocate a long-term energy tax credit equally applicable to all renewable power sources.

Republicans support measures to modernize the nation’s electricity grid to provide American consumers and businesses with more affordable, reliable power.  We will work to unleash innovation so entrepreneurs can develop technologies for a more advanced and robust United States transmission system that meets our growing energy demands.

Clean Coal

Although alternate fuels will shape our energy future, coal – America’s most affordable and abundant energy resource and the source of most of our electricity – remains a strategic national resource that must play a major role in energy independence.  We look to innovative technology to transform America’s coal supplies into clean fuels capable of powering motor vehicles and aircraft.  We support coal-to-liquid and gasification initiatives, just as we support investment in the development and deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies, which can reduce emissions.  We firmly oppose efforts by Democrats to block the construction of new coal-fired power plants. No strategy for reducing energy costs will be viable without a commitment to continued coal production and utilization.

Natural Gas

Natural gas is plentiful in North America, but we can extract more and do a better job of distributing it nationwide to cook our food, heat our homes, and serve as a growing option as a transportation fuel.  Both independently and in cooperation with alternative fuels, natural gas will be an essential part of any long-term energy solution. We must ensure it gets to consumers safely and quickly.

Energy Cooperation

We embrace the open energy cooperation and trading relationship with our neighbors Canada and Mexico, including proven oil reserves and vast, untapped Canadian hydroelectric generation.


Reducing Demand for Fossil Fuels

While we grow our supplies, we must also reduce our demand – not by changing our lifestyles but by putting the free market to work and taking advantage of technological breakthroughs.

Increase Conservation through Greater Efficiency

Conservation does not mean deprivation; it means efficiency and achieving more with less.   Most Americans today endeavor to conserve fossil fuels, whether in their cars or in their home heating, but we can do better.  We can construct better and smarter buildings, use smarter thermostats and transmission grids, increase recycling, and make energy-efficient consumer purchases.  Wireless communications, for example, can increase telecommuting options and cut back on business travel.  The Republican goal is to ensure that Americans have more conservation options that will enable them to make the best choices for their families.

New Technologies for Cars and Other Vehicles

We must continue to develop alternative fuels, such as biofuels, especially cellulosic ethanol, and hasten their technological advances to next-generation production.  As America develops energy technology for the 21st century, policy makers must consider the burden that rising food prices and energy costs create for the poor and developing nations around the world.  Because alternative fuels are useless if vehicles cannot use them, we must move quickly to flexible fuel vehicles; we cannot expect necessary investments in alternative fuels if this flexibility does not become standard.  We must also produce more vehicles that operate on electricity and natural gas, both to reduce demand for oil and to cut CO2 emissions.

Given that fully 97 percent of our current transportation vehicles rely on oil, we will aggressively support technological advances to reduce our petroleum dependence. For example, light-weight composites could halve the weight and double the gas mileage of cars and trucks, and together with flex-fuel and electric vehicles, could usher in a renaissance in the American auto industry.

PETA wants PetSmart to stop live animal sales

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, better known as PETA, is petitioning PetSmart Inc. to stop selling live animals and said it is going to submit a petition to shareholders to vote on during its 2009 annual meeting.

PETA owns 151 shares of PetSmart (Nasdaq: PETM) and said it submitted a shareholder resolution that wants the firm to study “the feasibility of phasing out the sale of live animals” to be voted on by shareholders.

PETA contends that the company is cruel to animals, does not train its employees in animal care and harbors sick animals.

“Consumers care about animal welfare. As word of PetSmart’s routine mistreatment of animals spreads, the company’s stockholders need to get the message,” said PETA Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch in a statement.

PetSmart Spokesman Bruce Richardson said PETA has targeted the Phoenix-based company before. Richardson said the group has tried twice to get a similar measure approved by stockholders in years past and failed both times.

PetSmart has two Wichita locations.

@@

 

Obama Health Plan Disaster Awaits

In a speech before the AFL-CIO in 2003, Obama stated he favored a single payer system once “we took back the White House, the Senate, and the House.” Private insurers will be crowded out by Obama's government plan (because Obama’s government plan will be subsidized and private insurers will be subjected to unfair, costly mandates that will force them to charge higher premiums). Once the conversion to the dark side of single payer is achieved, you, the public, will only have one option for your insurance and if you don’t like it, too bad. Further, the cost of Obama’s plan will be staggering and, therefore(as has happened in Canada) care will be rationed and the government will be forced to cover less. Also, like in Canada, quality doctors will leave the system(because they will be paid less) and(because demand will increase) waiting times for surgeries and diagnostic tests will increase dramatically. We need to deal with the 10% of this country who are uninsured(a quarter of which are illegals by the way) but single payer is not the solution(nor is a subterfuge such as Obama's which gets us to single payer eventually anyway a solution either).

Is There An Alternative For You & Isn't This Better Than Relying On Foreign Countries For Our Energy Supplies?

There are more than a dozen alternative and advanced fuels in production or use today. Although government-regulated and voluntary private fleets are the primary users of these fuels, consumers are showing a growing interest in them. Use of these fuels is critical to reducing dependence on foreign oil and improving air quality.

This page serves as a table of contents for the Alternative and Advanced Fuels section. For more information, choose the links below.

Alternative Fuels

These fuels are defined as alternative fuels by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and are currently, or have been, commercially available for vehicles.

Other Fuels

Several emerging fuels are currently under development. Many of these fuels are also considered alternative fuels and may have other benefits such as reduced emissions or increased energy security.

Fuel-Related Topics of Interest

For more information on alternative and advanced fuels, go to the following pages:

 

 

 

The New WhiteHouse Website

It Changed the Moment Obama was

Coronated. The Website Now looks More like  A

Campaign Site Than It Does About Care For America. Here is What They Have in The Health Page.

Note How Often Obama's Name Appears. Did he forget Who Hired Him and Who He Is Working For?

HEALTH CARE

 

(Under Obama)

 

On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes -- government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong, and that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference. 

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors, and plans. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats. 

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options. 

Make Health Insurance Work for People and Businesses -- Not Just Insurance and Drug Companies.

  • Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions so all Americans regardless of their health status or history can get comprehensive benefits at fair and stable premiums.
  • Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees.
  • Lower costs for businesses by covering a portion of the catastrophic health costs they pay in return for lower premiums for employees.
  • Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.
  • Make employer contributions more fair by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees' health care.
  • Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.
  • Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums.

Reduce Costs and Save a Typical American Family up to $2,500 as reforms phase in:

  • Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs, and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.
  • Require hospitals to collect and report health care cost and quality data.
  • Reduce the costs of catastrophic illnesses for employers and their employees.
  • Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anticompetitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care.

The Obama-Biden plan will promote public health. It will require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. 

A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility: Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/health_care/ 

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