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- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 30, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 29, 2010
- U.S. v. Arizona -- No. CV 10-1413-PHX-SRB
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 28, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 27, 2010
- Summer Reading 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 26, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., July 24 & 25, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 23, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 22, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 21, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 20, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 19, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., July 17 & 18, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 16, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 15, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 14, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 13, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 12, 2010
- Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., July 10 & 11
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 9, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 8, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 7, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 6, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat., Sun., & Mon., July 3/4/5
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 2, 2010
- Operation Wetback
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 1, 2010
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
12 comments:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703792704575366332240662968.html?mod=WSJ_hps_SECONDTopStories
Eight American troops died in southern Afghanistan in attacks that included a car bombing and gunfight outside a police compound in Kandahar, officials said Wednesday...
So far in July, 45 international troops have died in Afghanistan, 33 of them Americans.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834604575365420739420364.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews
Maine's insurance regulator asked the Obama administration to temporarily exempt the state's health plans from a key provision of the federal health overhaul that would affect their profits.
Mila Kofman, Maine's superintendent of insurance...is an unlikely candidate to seek respite from the overhaul. She is known as a supporter of health reform who has taken tough stances against insurers, most recently denying Anthem a rate increase that would produce a profit.
(*SNORT*)
At issue are tougher rules governing the so-called medical-loss ratio, a measure of how much insurers spend on medical care compared with their administrative expenses and profits. Under the new law, insurers must pay out at least 80% of the premiums collected from individuals on medical care. Regulators at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners are drafting rules to determine what insurers can count as medical expenses and what protections might help smaller plans stay afloat.
* HMM... SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT... THE MULTI-THOUSAND PAGE OBAMACARE LEGISLATION ITSELF DOESN'T DEFINE MEDICAL EXPENSES...??? (*SIGH*)
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Mila Kofman, Maine's superintendent of insurance, said swift application of the new rules could force one of the state's health plans, a unit of HealthMarkets Inc., to stop doing business in Maine. That would leave consumers with just one primary option, WellPoint Inc.'s Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield.
* SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT... A SUPPORTER OF OBAMACARE NOW SAYS THAT IF OBAMACARE ACTUALLY GOES INTO EFFECT AS WRITTEN IN HER STATE THE LEGISLATION WOULD LIMIT RATHER THAN EXPAND CHOICE...??? (REMEMBER HOW THE DEMS CLAIMED "IF YOU'RE HAPPY WITH YOUR INSURANCE YOU'LL BE ABLE TO KEEP IT"? WELL... YOU CAN'T VERY WELL KEEP WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS PUT OUT OF BUSINESS - CAN YOU?!?!)
The law allows HHS to grant exemptions if the requirement will upend markets.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... SHOULDN'T ONE ASSUME THAT A PROPERLY WRITTEN LAW WOULDN'T "UPEND MARKETS...???" (UNLESS OF COURSE THAT WAS THE REAL INTENT OF THE LAW ALL ALONG...???)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/540265/201007131904/Idled-Gulf-Rigs-Head-For-Africa.aspx
What does it say about America’s investment climate when the Republic of Congo now attract oil rigs that once drilled the Gulf of Mexico?
As millions were enjoying the World Cup last weekend, powerful engines began churning the waters of the Gulf of Mexico as Diamond Offshore Drilling began pulling its huge floating rig on a 60-day trip to the Republic of Congo.
Congo is hardly the place that springs to mind for the quality of its investment environment. But because of the Obama administration's nonstop efforts to halt offshore drilling through one executive order after another, that is now the reality.
Diamond Offshore had already moved one of its big floating rigs to the Nile River delta of Egypt a few days earlier, and now another is heading to the Congo. These facilities rent for $510,000 a day - a lot of money to lose as rigs await the Obama administration's "six-month pause" to run its course. Industry analysts estimate that another five of the 33 rigs that have been directly idled will be leaving the Gulf for places with better business climates.
* TAKING NOT JUST THE DRILLING CAPACITY WITH THEM, BUT THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF JOBS; JOBS THAT HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN HELD BY OUR FELLOW AMERICANS - JOBS NOW GONE, ALONG WITH THE REAL ECONOMIC STIMULUS THEY PROVIDED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE ECONOMIC CHAIN OF THE AMERICAN GULF REGION!
Amazingly, one of these places is the Republic of Congo, a country in the middle of a war with Ugandan rebels and busy dealing with 200,000 refugees. The country ranks 169th out of 179 in the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal's 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. That's low even by African standards, with major deficits in property rights, freedom from corruption and even investment freedom. Still, it outranks [Obama's] U.S., where there is [thanks to Obama] no drilling at all. So, in two months' time, Diamond's Ocean Confidence rig, moving across the turbulent Atlantic, will arrive there for high-tech offshore work as far as 35,000 feet below sea level.
* THEREFORE NEGATING ANY PLAUSIBLE WORLDWIDE ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY IMPACT! (*SMIRK*)
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Measured in lost profits, the Obama administration's six-month moratorium effectively amounts to a six-month expropriation. Meanwhile, the Republic of Congo, which relies on oil earnings for 65% of its GDP, will gladly enable Diamond Offshore to earn $234 million on three projects if all goes well.
According to RigLogix, the U.S. offshore rig fleet of 93 rigs of different types is only being used to 38% of capacity. In the Alaskan offshore, none of the four rigs is under use. In the remaining parts of the U.S. offshore, only two of the 28 rigs are in use, a grand total of 7%. By contrast, 148 of the North Sea's 159 rigs are under contract, for a 93% utilization rate. Off the coast of Brazil, 68 of the 79 rigs are in use, for an 86.1% utilization rate. West Africa, which includes Republic of Congo, has 67% of its 76 rigs in use. Even Mexico, much maligned for not investing and squandering opportunities, utilizes 52% of its 62 rigs.
Just as the U.S. is falling behind in exports, amounting to only 17% of GDP as the rest of the world sails by with higher numbers, the 34% rig utilization shows how badly we're falling behind offshore.
The United States should be the global leader on both fronts. Instead, an arbitrary offshore drilling moratorium pushes the country further back in the pack. This is hurting the Gulf of Mexico's economy even more than the BP spill, and now it's giving Congo a competitive edge over us.
It makes no sense to sit and watch as our offshore energy production is off-shored.
* NOT UNLESS YOUR GOAL IS TO UNILATERALLY DISARM U.S. DOMESTIC ENERGY PRODUCTION AND REINFORCE OUR RELIANCE UPON FOREIGN PRODUCED - AND CONTROLLED - OIL.
(*SHRUG*)
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/540250/201007131904/Nothing-Reform.aspx
Democrats needed at least three Republicans [,or rather, Republicans In Name Only - RINOs] to go along with their [financial "reform"] bill after Sen. Robert Byrd died and one of their own - Wisconsin's Sen. Russ Feingold - decided the legislation was too friendly to the banks.
[S]ure enough, help rode in out of New England. Despite "serious problems" with the [Democratic legislation], Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts said this week that they'll vote for the measure. In so doing, they joined Maine's other Republican senator, Susan Collins...
* ONE MORE TIME: SNOWE AND BROWN SHOULD BE "READ OUT" OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
[B]y not addressing the real problems of our financial system, the [Democrat authored legislation] makes another financial meltdown more likely, not less. Republicans who vote for this bill should know that.
They should also know that they're giving bipartisan cover to another bad piece of legislation from Democrats who seem set on killing Wall Street and the economy through their misguided and ill-considered attempts at regulation, stimulus and bailouts.
[Thanks to the likes of Snowe, Brown, and Collins,] a period of severe disillusionment is coming, as the bill's shortcomings and absurdities become clear. Here are just a few:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go untouched. The two government-sponsored enterprises played a definitive role in creating the subprime derivatives market, funded or backed trillions in questionable mortgage loans, and still control half the U.S. mortgage market. Bizarrely, they're ignored by the so-called "reform," even after already costing U.S. taxpayers $146 billion.
"Too big to fail" doesn't end. In fact, reform puts it at the center of our financial system, giving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. power to bail out or declare insolvent any financial company that runs into trouble, using a $50 billion bailout fund.
The economy will suffer. The Business Roundtable, a CEO group representing companies with $6 trillion in revenue and more than 12 million employees, warned the White House that the new regulations would restrain lending, slash capital spending as much as $6 billion a year and kill as many as 120,000 jobs.
(*SIGH*)
During the Depression, some misguided Republicans mistakenly supported FDR's "progressive" New Deal reform agenda, thereby helping prolong the nation's financial misery.
How sad to see some making the same mistake again.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-14/a-failed-financial-bill/?cid=hp:exc
* THE AUTHOR - HARVEY PITT - IS A FORMER CHAIRMAN OF THE SEC.
Dodd-Frank is a ponderous beast. If Congress were paid by the word or the page, this verbiage might be understandable. But neither of those conditions exists, meaning all we can be certain of is that no one in Congress or the administration has actually read the entire bill. Passing legislation without understanding its contents is akin to allowing inmates to run the asylum. Only congressional staffers and paid lobbyists know what’s in the bill, and perhaps only specific provisions. In a bill this large, dealing with subjects this complex, all the rest of us know are the sound bites prepared by the shepherding committees.
The legislation teems with unintended consequences. A case in point is the provision requiring the SEC to establish an investor advocate. Putting to one side the fact that this is the SEC’s mandate, this provision unleashes an SEC adversary - someone who must express unfiltered judgments on the job performance of everyone else at the agency, including the five commissioners, giving this person an unlimited budget and allowing this person to hire outside counsel to sue the SEC or FINRA, if he or she disagrees with their actions!
The bill sets the SEC up for failure. The SEC is given more rulemaking, more studies and more onerous responsibilities than any other financial regulatory body. Worse, the SEC must now regulate 10,000 hedge funds and several thousand private-equity firms, but was denied what many other financial regulators have - the ability to self-fund its operations. (The SEC presumably was denied this authority because the members of its Appropriations Committees don’t want to jeopardize campaign contributions from those the SEC regulates.) In particular, the SEC won’t be able to inspect tens of thousands of new firms it will oversee - or pay to get the kind of expertise to compete with the private sector.
The bill doesn’t do what it set out to accomplish. The most important goal of this bill was to fix the regulatory regime that permitted - and even fostered - the last crisis. Viewed from that prism, the ugly truth is this bill will make our system more vulnerable, not less.
What was, and is still needed, is a regulatory regime with better flexibility that is more nimble, and able to spot potentially damaging trends before those trends become full-blown crises. Instead, what we have is a bill that makes government less nimble, and more ponderous.
[W]orst of all, the bill doesn’t provide the transparency so desperately needed for new products, new services, and new activities.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/14/justice-sanctuary-cities-are-no-arizona/
The Obama administration said this week that there is no reason to sue so-called sanctuary cities for refusing to cooperate with federal authorities...
(*SNORT*)
* ACTUALLY... IN A SENSE THEY'RE RIGHT! THE FEDS SHOULDN'T "SUE" STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS WHO ACTIVELY CONSPIRE TO EVADE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAW... THESE FOLKS SHOULD BE ARRESTED, CHARGED, TRIED, CONVICTED, AND JAILED!!!
[Quoting Arizona Governor Jan Brewer,] "President Obama's administration has chosen to sue Arizona for helping to enforce federal immigration law and not sue local governments that have adopted a patchwork of 'sanctuary' policies that directly violate federal law. These patchwork local 'sanctuary' policies instruct the police not to cooperate with federal immigration officials."
Mr. Obama took an active role in targeting Arizona, including ordering the Justice Department to get involved. But on sanctuary cities, the White House has deflected questions, repeatedly telling a reporter it would get an answer as to the president's thinking but eventually shifting questions over to the Justice Department.
In his original directions to Justice to review the Arizona law, Mr. Obama asked for lawyers to look into both potential conflicts with federal immigration law and potential civil rights violations, such as racial profiling. When it was file July 6, though, the Justice Department lawsuit only attacked the law as infringing on federal prerogatives. It did not make any allegations the law violates civil rights.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez defended the Arizona lawsuit on Monday, telling the American Constitution Society the federal government can't tolerate different policies.
* Unless of course the "different policies" are sanctuary policies specifically designed to assist foreign nationals in evading federal immigration law. (*SMIRK*)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/13/spy-swap-puts-halt-to-fact-finding/
The Obama administration's rapid release of 10 Russian intelligence officers removed the prospect of a public trial revealing embarrassing facts about Russian influence operations, like the targeting of a key Democratic Party financier close to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
* WHOA...
The swap of the 10 "illegals," or deep-cover agents, last week - 12 days after their arrest - also prevented trial disclosures of other potentially embarrassing details, like the identities of what an FBI criminal complaint described as a "former legislative counsel for the U.S. Congress" and "former high-ranking United States government national security official" both of whom provided information to two Boston-based Russians in the case. Both officials' names were omitted from the complaint.
* WOW...
The Russians spies, according to the FBI complaint, were tasked with developing sources in government, the business community and academia who could provide secrets and other information useful to Moscow.
The criminal complaint stated that in February 2009 a New Jersey-based Russian, who posed as Cynthia Murphy and was later identified as SVR officer Lydia Guryev, met several times with a "prominent New York-based financier" who was active in politics and a "active fundraiser" for a "major political party, name omitted." He also was described as a "personal friend of [a current Cabinet official, name omitted]."
One of the figures to emerge from the case is Alan Patricof, director of the venture capital firm Graycroft LLC and a donor to Democratic candidates, including Mrs. Clinton when she was a senator from New York.
(Mr. Patricof acknowledged in a statement that he was the person outlined in the FBI criminal complaint who met several times with one of the Russian spies and who was targeted by the SVR in their efforts to skew U.S. policies in favor of Moscow.)
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, asked whether Mrs. Clinton was the Cabinet official mentioned in the complaint, said in an e-mail that "there is no reason to believe that the Secretary of State was a special target of this spy ring."
Former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney said releasing the spies so quickly prevented full learning about Moscow's influence operations and its targets. "I was very troubled when the administration moved so swiftly to shut the whole thing down and send these people to where they could no longer be debriefed," he said.
The administration was either trying to prevent damage to U.S.-Russia relations by making the swap, or the administration wanted to avoid disclosures about Russian influence targets and their ties to people like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Gaffney said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/13/time-to-fire-americas-management/
The U.S. has been losing market share as a percentage of global gross domestic product, in part, because many competitors, particularly in Asia, have been leading with pro-growth economic policies while the U.S. is piling more taxes and regulations on the productive sectors of its economy.
Most economists understand that the corporate income tax is one of the most destructive forms of taxation because it is an additional tax on the factors of production, capital and labor. There have been many studies of the evils of the corporate income tax, yet the politicians in Washington have saddled the U.S. with the highest effective corporate tax in the world - even higher than in France, Germany or any other country in the European Union.
Now, a new, very comprehensive peer-reviewed study of the effects of the corporate income tax, using data from 85 countries, has been published in the July issue of the American Economic Journal. The authors (Simeon Djankov, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho and Andrei Shleifer) conclude that "effective corporate tax rates have a large and significant adverse effect on corporate investment and entrepreneurship."
They go on to say: "Higher effective corporate income taxes are also associated with lower investment in manufacturing but not in services, a larger unofficial economy, and greater reliance on debt as opposed to equity finance. In these new data, corporate taxes matter a lot, and in ways consistent with basic economic theory." (If you tax something, you get less of it.)
Many of the members of Congress who consistently wail about the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs are the same ones who, time and time again, vote to crush U.S. companies with more taxes and regulations. ... [Pelosi and Reid's Democratic] Congress seems hellbent on heading in the wrong direction.
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that when an organization is confronted with a choice about where to locate a new business whose products will be sold globally, the U.S. is likely to be far down on the list.
This same Congress that is destroying the ability of U.S.-based businesses to compete internationally is also making it nearly impossible for foreign banks to invest their clients' money in the U.S. In a misguided attempt to keep U.S. citizens and green-card holders (but not illegal immigrants) from investing in the U.S. through foreign financial entities, Congress has passed a new set of regulations. Those regulations make it extremely costly and almost impossible for financial institutions to comply, and, in some cases, they require the violation of foreign laws. The unintended result is likely to be that the U.S. will lose perhaps trillions of dollars of needed foreign investment over time.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/13/AR2010071306114.html
Judged in isolation, American exports have rebounded smartly since the depths of the recession, up roughly $63 billion through May compared with the corresponding period a year ago... But employment growth over the past year has remained relatively flat, and experts point to the widening trade deficit during the same period as possibly offsetting whatever boost in jobs has occurred.
New data released Tuesday show that dynamic at work. Exports in May rose by a healthy 2.3% from April, as U.S. businesses sold billions of dollars more across a broad array of goods, from heavy equipment to chemicals and corn. Imports, however, increased by even more, pushing the monthly trade deficit to $42.3 billion.
(*SNORT*) (*SNICKER*)
Though the value of one major import - oil - declined in May, purchases of imported consumer goods, capital equipment and other products raised the prospect of American debt continuing to prop up the global economy - an imbalance...cited as a cause of the recent crisis, and something that world economic authorities argue needs to change.
The trade deficit "is a net detractor for jobs so it does make it harder to restore full employment," said C. Fred Bergsten, head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "It is heading back up and no one knows at what point it might hit a crisis level."
* OH... AND BTW... AS NOTED BY THE AUTHOR, AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS ARE A MAJOR U.S. EXPORT. THING IS... OUR DOMESTIC AGRICULTURAL SECTOR IS A HOT ZONE OF ILLEGAL ALIEN EMPLOYMENT - CORRECT...??? (*SMIRK*) SO IF THE JOBS BEING GENERATED ARE GOING TO MEXICANS AND NOT AMERICANS... WHERE'S THE GAIN OTHER THAN MONEY TO THE "OWNER" CLASS?
The current monthly U.S. trade deficit remains far below the historic peak reached in the run-up to the financial crisis, when the figure topped $60 billion monthly. But its steady expansion during the economic recovery means the United States may not be heading toward the hoped-for pattern of a higher national savings rate and less wealth being sent overseas.
"The widening trade gap is putting downward pressure on U.S. [gross domestic product] when it is most vulnerable," PNC Bank chief economist Stuart Hoffman wrote in a research note. "Less domestic production, because of increased imports and less demand for higher-priced U.S. exports, means less job creation in the manufacturing sector, a higher unemployment rate, and less income growth domestically."
http://reason.com/archives/2010/07/14/whos-afraid-of-federalism
Last week a federal judge confounded both sides of the political spectrum by ruling that the 10th Amendment requires the federal government to recognize state-approved gay marriages. Progressives worried that U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro's reasoning cast doubt on the constitutionality of many existing federal programs, while conservatives worried that it required equal treatment of same-sex unions.
[I]t seems to me that conservatives are engaging in the sort of result-oriented constitutional analysis they so often decry when they shrink from a consistent application of federalism because it lends support to a social trend they fear.
* I AGREE.
The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which declared that states need not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states...
* IS EITHER CONSTITUTIONAL OR IT ISN'T. PLEASE SEE ARTICLE IV, SECTIONS 1 & 2 OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT LACKS ANY CONCEIVABLE CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO PASS, LET ALONE ENFORCE, A LAW SUCH AS DOMA. (ONLY A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT CAN LEGALLY UNDERCUT EXISTING CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS, MANDATES, AND AUTHORITIES.)
(*SHRUG*)
Judge Tauro concluded, the federal government was impermissibly intruding on family law, "a quintessential area of state concern." He noted that the definition of marriage has long been viewed as a power "reserved to the states" by the 10th Amendment because it is "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States."
* AHH... BUT HERE WE NEED TO BACK UP. JUST BECAUSE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOESN'T HAVE THE POWER TO "RELEASE" STATES FROM THEIR MANDATE UNDER ARTICLE IV, SECTIONS 1 & 2 OF THE CONSTITUTION, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS IN ANY WAY OBLIGED TO FUND STATE ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS.
(*SHRUG*)
Tauro also relied on the principle of equal protection in overturning DOMA's exclusion of gay couples from federal benefits tied to marriage, having concluded in a related case that such discrimination fails even the highly deferential "rational basis" test.
* NOPE. THAT ONE I DON'T BUY. THE "RATIONALITY" IS EVIDENT BASED SIMPLY ON NATIONAL - AND INDEED WORLD - HISTORY.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/14/morning-bell-cap-and-ban/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
On Monday the Obama administration reissued a ban on offshore oil drilling in the gulf after federal courts twice invalidated the first ban, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.” The new ban is, if anything, more restrictive than the first, thus guaranteeing even more job losses for the already devastated Gulf region.
The first Obama oil drilling ban already caused some oil rigs to leave U.S. waters entirely. The threat of a second moratorium effectively created a de facto oil drilling ban and, even if they lose in court, the Obama Interior Department can further the de facto moratorium “through tough new safety regulations and by extending the time it takes to review drilling applications.” Studies show that more than 200,000 jobs are tied to the offshore drilling industry and 35,000 workers are directly involved each day when the rigs are in use. The American Petroleum Institute forecasts that if the drilling ban continues, more than 120,000 jobs could be lost in the Gulf Coast and key resources abandoned or moved elsewhere.
Worse, CNN reports that shallow water drillers say the Obama administration has not issued any permits since April 20, effectively creating a stealth ban on all offshore drilling. Heritage analyst David Kreutzer has crunched the numbers and found that a full Obama administration ban on all offshore drilling would be absolutely devastating to the U.S. economy.
Meanwhile, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is set to introduce a bill that will cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Taken together, the President’s Cap and Ban approach to energy policy will accomplish exactly what he set out to do from the very first day he was sworn into office: decrease the amount of carbon the U.S. economy emits by drastically increasing the cost of energy.
* FOLKS... I DON'T KNOW HOW ELSE TO PUT IT: OBAMA AND THE DEMS WANT AMERICANS TO PAY MORE MONEY FOR LESS ENERGY! IF THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF "CONSUMER FRIENDLY" THEN YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A BIG FAN OF LOGAN'S RUN!
The mechanism Sen. Reid will use to cap carbon emissions is Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) renewable electricity standard (RES) legislation (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), which caps carbon from power plants by forcing them to produce a growing percentage of the electricity they produce from government-approved renewable energy sources every year.
This is essentially cap and trade but without the trade.
If these new renewable energy sources were actually cost effective, there would be no need to mandate them. Cost-minimizing firms would adopt the technology on their own to stay competitive. But renewable energy is not cost-effective. It is significantly more expensive than traditional fuels, hence the need for the government mandates which will raise everyone’s energy costs. The ultimate victim of these higher energy prices will be you the consumer and the American economy.
* THERE'S SIMPLY NO ARGUING WITH HERITAGE'S DESCRIPTION OF WHAT OBAMA AND THE LOONY LEFT ARE TRYING TO FOIST UPON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
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