Green Regulations Squeezes Quality of Life

Just what are Obama's ideas for the economic health of the country? Before the election he stated he wanted to destroy the coal industry, but no one took him seriously and with good reason. No one, in there right mind, would do such a thing on purpose. Our entire existence is dependent on coal fired energy. Right? Nearly 55% of all electricity in this country comes from coal fired plants.

Well he wasn't joking then and he isn't joking now about the destruction of all fossil fuel production of electricity in this country and long before there are any realistic alternatives.

If we elect him to another 4 years in office, I wonder how that will effect America's future economic growth as well as how it will impact our quality of life?

Cost of Clean Air
Source: "Cost of Clean Air," Investor's Business Daily, September 2, 2011.

On the Friday before Labor Day, President Obama withdrew drafted rules intended to cut smog levels, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

The regulation would have limited ground-level ozone to between 60 and 70 parts per billion.
That's down from the 75 parts per billion, which was good enough in March 2008, when the Bush administration last set new ozone rules, and the 80 parts per billion set by the Clinton White House.

The green lobby pretends the environmental rules it peddles don't hurt the economy. Yet we have an implicit admission from a president tied to that lobby that the economic benefits of scuttling a regulation are greater than the regulation's ecological benefits.
Obama said he set aside proposed Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards in the interest "of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."

The smog rule was one of seven new regulations the White House acknowledges would cost more than $1 billion each year. This particular regulation is projected to cost from $19 billion to as much as $90 billion a year. Everyone wants clean air. But clean air isn't free. The costs required to meet clean air standards can mean lost jobs, higher consumer costs and lost economic opportunity, all of which bring their own negative health effects.

Federal fuel economy standards are a particularly glaring example of the high costs of efforts to mandate cleaner air. So that they can meet those standards, automakers have been forced to build smaller, lighter cars. This has led to an increase in traffic deaths as the down-sized cars have not fared well in collisions with heavier cars, trucks and fixed objects.

The president, who as a candidate promised his regulatory regime would bankrupt new coal-fired power plants, made the right decision on the ozone rule. But it's just one in a jungle of rules, both written and proposed, to which a machete must be taken, says IBD.

Clean Energy Demands a Smoke Screen

More "boiler plate rhetoric" from the left progressive Democrats. The environmentalist wackos believe they must gain control of all aspects of energy consumption to secure their place in the power structure. Without such control the entire agenda of the left progressives is lost.

As everyone has witnessed in the press the last few days, the fear from the left is manifested in outright hate speech against the Republicans and the Tea Party. The Republicans and the Tea Party participants what common sense solutions that will benefit the country. As a result, the progressives fear they are losing the battle and the war for control of the countries resources which means they lose control of the population.

As seen in Wisconsin, the left and the unions are on a rampage to stop the state from succeeding in controlling all aspects of government. If the state succeeds in become solvent and jobs start coming back, all is lost for the progressive Democrats.


The Reality behind Clean Energy Standards
Source: Kenneth P. Green, "Not Free to Choose: The Reality behind Clean Energy Standards," American Enterprise Institute, August 23, 2011.

Climate activists failed to achieve comprehensive greenhouse gas controls in the United States in the form of a cap-and-trade program. And while they pursue incremental greenhouse gas regulation at both the federal and state level, they have not given up on their Holy Grail of a comprehensive national regime to control greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they have rebranded their campaign, says Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

The current incarnation of the greenhouse gas agenda is hidden in the campaign for a national Clean Energy Standard, or CES. Other terms for this approach are Renewable Energy Standards (RES), or, even more obliquely, Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). While many states have already implemented such standards, the push now is for federalization.

What they all come down to, at the end of the day, is a governmental mandate that energy utilities must buy and distribute a certain percentage of energy that comes from so-called "clean" sources, such as wind power, solar power, nuclear power, "clean coal," and so on.

Here's why Clean Energy Standards are a bad idea:

They are hidden energy taxes.
They are hidden subsidies.
They are hidden greenhouse gas controls.
They are hidden technology standards.
They decrease consumer choice.

The new stealth approach to energy policy being pushed under the guise of a Clean Energy Standard is frankly dishonest, says Green.

Mortage Disaster : Government Involvement

This shouldn't come as a surprise - the government is making the housing problem worse and is the cause of the problem in the first place.

If you remember, this all started with Clinton, or even before him with Carter. The Republicans are not guiltless here as well. Bush thought home ownership should be something everyone could achieve. Bush did go to congress on several occasions and told them to this policy was headed in the wrong direction.

But it was Clinton who forced the issue by driving banks to loan to anyone that had a pulse. The borrower didn't need an Social Security number, speak English or even the ability to write their own name.

It got so bad that when banks screamed that this would lead to a disaster, the justice department, under the guiding hand of Sec. Janet Reno, threatened them with suits unless they continued to lend to everyone even knowing individuals could never pay the money back.

Nearly 5 million loans were made to individuals that had no SS number. Fannie and Freddie bought the bad loans from the banks, sold them the everyone around the world which caused a world financial crisis.

Many individuals were buying several homes at the same time, "flipping" is the term for buying several homes then trying to sell them at a profit. Well we all know all this turned out. Worse, most everyone knew this would happen and they were right. It was just politics?

Housing Market Problems and Solutions in a Nutshell
Source: Anthony Randazzo, "Housing Market Problems and Solutions in a Nutshell," Reason Foundation, August 31, 2011.

There are a million things being said about the housing market and about a dozen different interpretations of the data. On top of it all there are several different programs being discussed by the White House as solutions to the market turmoil. So what is going on? Anthony Randazzo, director of economic research at the Reason Foundation, provides a snapshot.

Ignoring household debt does not make it go away. Before we are going to see consumer confidence and demand return in force, household debt needs to fall.

There are four ways that debt can be lowered: (1) Programs that incentivize high debt like the mortgage interest deduction could be cut; (2) The default and foreclosure crisis could be allowed to accelerate its current course; (3) Wages could rise dramatically and the unemployment rate could fall; (4) The Federal Reserve could inflate away the problem. A combination of the first two possibilities in this list would be the best policy approach by the White House and Congress.

It's the housing programs.

There are two big "ideas" on the table right now to try and solve the housing mess. Both would simply perpetuate the problem, says Randazzo.

First, a refinancing program that would essentially let homeowners whose mortgages are owned by Fannie and Freddie get lumped into a universal refinancing deal, setting their interest rate at today's extreme lows of around 4 percent.

Second: Selling government sponsored enterprise homes to create a national rental program.

In summary, we are in a bad place in terms of the housing metrics and household debt is holding us back. Overall, the government has created more problems in housing and failed to address the real problems in the system with its programs, a significant reason why the housing market climate is so stormy at the end of August 2011. The only thing our government hasn't tried is the free market approach, says Randazzo.

America Needs Leadership : Larry IS the One!

A Now here is guy with his finger on the pulse of the nation - common sense rules!


Everyone concentrates on the problems we're having in Our Country lately: Illegal immigration, hurricane recovery, alligators attacking people in Florida... Not me -- I concentrate on solutions for the problems -- it's a win-win situation.

Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border. Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levees. Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border. Any other problems you would like for me to solve today?

Think about this: 1. Cows 2. The Constitution 3. The Ten Commandments

COWS: Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

THE CONSTITUTION: They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS: The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: you cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians, it creates a hostile work environment.

GET 'ER DONE!

Autralia's Proven Gov. AAA Upgrade : It Works!

Here is a guide that we can follow to secure prosperity for the future. All we have to do is follow what the Australians have proven works. It's a ready made formula for success. What's really sad is we knew this all along but weren't motivated enough to do anything until a crisis is forcing the issue.

Paul Ryan's budget was a great start but it was rejected as being unacceptable to the progressive Democrats as it would start to release the population from the grips of government control over the all things domestic. The progressive must have control everything though big government programs that restricts the freedom of the population to determined it's own destiny. Without this control, the entire agenda of the progressive will be lost.

The fact that the population of Australia is so small, compared to America's, they have a much better chance of making changes to their government's operation to serve the needs of the people without destroying their personal freedoms and propensity to succeed.

The rise of the Tea Party is good news for our country. It's a sign we recognize the problem and we are starting to do something about it. Give this some thought next November when you go to vote. It's a chance to start America back to prosperity by voting out the progressives or continue our slide into third world status.


How Australia Got Its Triple-A Credit Rating Back
Source: "How Australia Got Its Triple-A Credit Rating Back," USA Today, August 31, 2011.

Australia lost its AAA credit rating in 1986, suffered a further downgrade in 1989, and then got back to triple-A in 2003. The story of how Australia got its fiscal groove back explains why it has fared so much better in recent years than other major industrialized nations, says USA Today.

In 1986, it had been running deficits for decades. Many of its industries were heavily regulated.
And the same natural resources companies that are booming now were in the doldrums.
The downgrades came as a shock and had a transformative impact on the entire political landscape. The government immediately began offering much more austere budgets.
The country later adopted a measure called the Charter of Budget Honesty, which requires government leaders to go before Parliament to explain what went wrong if their budget projections fall short.

The law has no automatic trigger mechanism to force cuts if goals are not met, but the potential for a public shaming has been enough to keep government leaders from overpromising.

Australia has shifted most current workers out of a state-run pension plan like Social Security and into a compulsory 401(k)-type savings plan. It also, quite fortuitously, steered clear of the types of housing policies prevalent in the United States, where the federal government subsidizes mortgage debt with generous tax breaks and exposes taxpayers to risk through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As a result of these and other policies, Australia's accumulated government debt is less than a quarter of its annual total economic output, and it's projected to shrink. In fact, it has one of the lowest debt-to-gross domestic product ratios in the industrialized world. By contrast, the United States' national debt, including obligations to Social Security, topped 100 percent of economic output this month and is forecast to grow.

Social Security : Unworkable

Little wonder congress has such a low popularity rating - they say one thing but do another depending on how politically profitable it is to themselves. Social Security is a coming train wreck that the politicians refuse to recognize. Is it just politics as usual? Take the money and run, let others fix the problem later? If past history is reviewed, the answer is yes.

But the tide is changing, the new breed of legislator is making a difference, they actually have a conscience. Maybe it's the voter that told them 'make a difference or you're gone" and this time they mean it.

Social Security Is a Ponzi Scheme
Source: Michael Tanner, "Yes, It Is a Ponzi Scheme," National Review Online, August 31, 2011.

Texas governor Rick Perry is being criticized for calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme." But if anything, Perry was being too kind, says Michael Tanner, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.
The original Ponzi scheme was the brainchild of Charles Ponzi. Ponzi convinced people to allow him to invest their money, but he never actually made any investments. He simply took the money he was given by later investors and gave it to his early investors, providing those early investors with a handsome profit. Unfortunately, in order to keep paying previous investors, he had to continue finding new investors. Eventually, he couldn't expand the number of new investors fast enough, and the scheme collapsed.

Social Security, on the other hand, forces people to invest in it through a mandatory payroll tax.
A small portion of that money is used to buy special-issue Treasury bonds that the government will eventually have to repay, but the vast majority of the money is not invested in anything.
Instead, the money you pay into the system is used to pay benefits to those who are retired today. When you retire, you will have to rely on the next generation of workers behind you to pay the taxes that will finance your benefits.

As with Ponzi's scheme, this turns out to be a very good deal for those who got in early. Indeed,
the very first Social Security recipient, Ida Mae Fuller of Vermont, paid just $44 in Social Security taxes, but collected $20,993 in benefits.

Of course, Social Security and Ponzi schemes are not perfectly analogous. Ponzi, after all, had to rely on what people were willing to voluntarily invest with him. Social Security, on the other hand, can rely on the power of the government to tax. As the shrinking number of workers paying into the system makes it harder to continue to sustain benefits, the government can just force young people to pay even more into the system.

In addition, at least until the final collapse of his scheme, Ponzi was more or less obligated to pay his early investors what he promised them. With Social Security, Congress is always able to change or cut those benefits in order to keep the scheme going, says Tanner.

Hurricane Forecasts Questioned : CYA Policy?

Changing the ground rules on how a hurricane is identified as a hurricane reflects poorly on the science. Understandably, taking the high road on making a mistake as to the potential of an coming storm is note worthy, but when this philosophy is the cause for a huge migrations of people from their homes only to find their never was a serious storm, begs questions about the storm prediction science itself.

When all available data about an oncoming storm says it's just that, a storm and not a hurricane, but the people responsible for making these decisions decide the data isn't sufficient, and they arbitrarily upgrade it to a hurricane 'just in case' because of the fall out from a mistake, we need better models and some common sense understanding about weather predictions.

No Evidence Global Warming Is Making Hurricanes Worse
Source: Patrick J. Michaels, "Irene Wasn't All That," Cato-at-Liberty.org, August 29, 2011.

Hurricane Irene has prompted the usual rhetoric from the usual suspects about global warming making these storms worse. Too bad there is no evidence for this whatsoever on a global scale, says Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.

Ryan Maue, at Florida State University, tracks global tropical cyclone energy back to 1970, which is the time at which adequate data on hurricane winds became available. His "Accumulated Cyclone Energy" index peaked in the mid-1990s and in recent years has been at or near the lowest point ever recorded. Indeed, his most recent refereed paper, in press at Geophysical Research Letters, is called "Recent Historically Low Global Tropical Cyclone Activity."

However, there is an interesting trend in Atlantic hurricane activity.

The Department of Commerce's National Hurricane Center (NHC) is naming tropical storms that they clearly would have ignored in previous years. At the time of this writing, we have had 10; Michaels doubts that seven of these would have made the grade years ago.
In fact NHC's Chris Landsea agrees that NHC is naming systems that they would have previously ignored or missed.

A recent paper in Journal of Geophysical Research, by Princeton's Gabriele Villarini, noted the contamination of the Atlantic hurricane data by what he called "shorties."
Why NHC is doing this, and why they kept Hurricane Irene's "category" (one through five) high despite acknowledging that hurricane hunter aircraft were having trouble finding enough wind, has more to do with risk aversion than any putative conspiracy to toe the politically correct line on global warming.

The result is that ships at sea are "warned" of brisk winds and high seas that might have previously surprised them, and that politicians and emergency management officials can justify massive evacuation orders. This used to be known as covering one's posterior. Now NHC sometimes calls it "the course of least regret."

It is also a dangerous practice. People who endure the endless torture of a hurricane evacuation from barrier islands like the North Carolina Outer Banks from storms that cause little damage may be reluctant to leave when the next -- big and real -- one shows up, says Michaels.

America IS Exceptional : Shelby Steele

What a fantastic article - this is a must read for all of us - do it now and think about what Mr. Steele is saying and how it impacts you, your family and our country.

Obama and the Burden of Exceptionalism
Post-'60s liberals, with the president as their standard bearer, seek to make a virtue of decline. WSJ 9-1-2011
By SHELBY STEELE


If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama's character, today's left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there.

Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency:
Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-'60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America's exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America's greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.

Mr. Obama did not explicitly run on an anti-exceptionalism platform. Yet once he was elected it became clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. There was his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street—as if his mandate was somehow to overcome, or at least subdue, American capitalism itself.

Anti-exceptionalism has clearly shaped his "leading from behind" profile abroad—an offer of self-effacement to offset the presumed American evil of swaggering cowboyism. Once in office his "hope and change" campaign slogan came to look like the "hope" of overcoming American exceptionalism and "change" away from it.
So, in Mr. Obama, America gained a president with ambivalence, if not some antipathy, toward the singular greatness of the nation he had been elected to lead.

But then again, the American people did elect him. Clearly Americans were looking for a new kind of exceptionalism in him (a black president would show America to have achieved near perfect social mobility). But were they also looking for—in Mr. Obama—an assault on America's bedrock exceptionalism of military, economic and cultural pre-eminence?

American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.

Yet today America is fighting in a number of Muslim countries, and that number is as likely to rise as to fall. Our exceptionalism saddles us with overwhelming burdens. The entire world comes to our door when there is real trouble, and every day we spill blood and treasure in foreign lands—even as anti-Americanism plays around the world like a hit record.

At home the values that made us exceptional have been smeared with derision. Individual initiative and individual responsibility—the very engines of our exceptionalism—now carry a stigma of hypocrisy. For centuries America made sure that no amount of initiative would lift minorities and women. So in liberal quarters today—where historical shames are made to define the present—these values are seen as little more than the cynical remnants of a bygone era. Talk of "merit" or "a competition of excellence" in the admissions office of any Ivy League university today, and then stand by for the howls of incredulous laughter.

Our national exceptionalism both burdens and defames us, yet it remains our fate. We make others anxious, envious, resentful, admiring and sometimes hate-driven. There's a reason al Qaeda operatives targeted the U.S. on 9/11 and not, say, Buenos Aires. They wanted to enrich their act of evil with the gravitas of American exceptionalism. They wanted to steal our thunder.
So we Americans cannot help but feel some ambivalence toward our singularity in the world—with its draining entanglements abroad, the selfless demands it makes on both our military and our taxpayers, and all the false charges of imperial hubris it incurs. Therefore it is not surprising that America developed a liberalism—a political left—that took issue with our exceptionalism. It is a left that has no more fervent mission than to recast our greatness as the product of racism, imperialism and unbridled capitalism.

But this leaves the left mired in an absurdity: It seeks to trade the burdens of greatness for the relief of mediocrity. When greatness fades, when a nation contracts to a middling place in the world, then the world in fact no longer knocks on its door. (Think of England or France after empire.) To civilize America, to redeem the nation from its supposed avarice and hubris, the American left effectively makes a virtue of decline—as if we can redeem America only by making her indistinguishable from lesser nations.

Since the '60s we have enfeebled our public education system even as our wealth has expanded. Moral and cultural relativism now obscure individual responsibility. We are uninspired in the wars we fight, calculating our withdrawal even before we begin—and then we fight with a self-conscious, almost bureaucratic minimalism that makes the wars interminable.
America seems to be facing a pivotal moment: Do we move ahead by advancing or by receding—by reaffirming the values that made us exceptional or by letting go of those values, so that a creeping mediocrity begins to spare us the burdens of greatness?

As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them.

Like me, he is black, and it was the government that in part saved us from the ignorances of the people. So the concept of the exceptionalism—the genius for freedom—of the American people may still be a stretch for him. But in fact he was elected to make that stretch. It should be held against him that he has failed to do so.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Among his books is "White Guilt" (Harper/Collins, 2007).

President Obama Dishonors Ft. Hood Dead

This is the scene at the Ft. Hood Memorial - The president has decided that having his hand over his heart when honoring the flag of the United States of America is unbecoming of a true progressive socialist.

Sadly, he is not alone - our congress has many that follow in his foot steps and have for generations. They see America as the problem not the solution.

How did we get to this point in our history where even the president of the United States believes the country that he was elected to lead is not worth saving from destruction?

And worse maybe is that 44% of the population still believes he's doing a good job. Are they sleep at the wheel or just don't care enough to take notice of why their quality of life is disintegrating?

EPA's New Regulations to Cost Billions for Everyone

The question that remains is what is the motivation of the EPA to try and regulate our economy into the ash heap of history. And when it fails, who will take responsibility for the failure?

Who will stand up and say 'I was wrong, this was a bad idea' We need to change this so it will work for our country'. This will never happen.

It will always be someone else's fault and the people that caused the disaster will get a pass. This is nothing new, progressives have always been this way and they have no intention of changing their tactics of stealing or destroying all things worth working for and then claiming it was 'those people over there that caused the disaster'.

Examples are everywhere, all one has to do is open your eyes and ears to the main stream media to witness the insane denial of common sense and reality.




Five EPA Rules that Will Cost More than $1 Billion
Source: Conn Carroll, "Five EPA Rules that Will Cost More than $1 Billion," Washington Examiner, August 26, 2011.

In a letter to President Obama last week asking the president to identify all pending regulations that could hurt job creation, House Speaker John Boehner specifically mentions one regulation that "will cost our economy as much as $90 billion per year." That rule, titled "Reconsideration of the 2008 Ozone Primary and Secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards," (the "Ozone Rule") is the biggest drag on growth that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has formally proposed so far, says Conn Carroll, senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner.

The EPA has published at least four other proposed regulations, however, that would inflict costs on the U.S. economy over or near $1 billion a year:

The Ozone Rule: Sections 108 and 109 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) direct the EPA Administrator to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for air pollutants that "endanger public health or welfare." According to the EPA's own Regulatory Impact Analysis, the new standards would impose $90 billion of costs on the U.S. economy annually, as mentioned in Boehner's letter.

The Coal Ash Rule: Section 3004 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requires the EPA to establish standards for hazardous waste disposal. The EPA estimates the new regulations would cost $20.3 billion a year.

The Utility MACT Rule: Section 112 of the CAA requires the EPA to set plant-specific maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards for hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, at power plants. EPA estimates compliance with the new Obama standards will cost the economy $10.9 billion a year.

The Boiler MACT Rule: While generating electricity for factories and other facilities, boilers often emit pollutants. Section 112 of the CAA requires the EPA to set National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for major stationary sources using the maximum achievable control technology. EPA pegs upfront compliance costs at $9.5 billion and annual costs at $3.2 billion.

The Cross State Air Pollution Rule: Section 110 of the CAA requires the EPA to limit hazardous emissions form upwind states that make it harder for downwind states to meet their NAAQS. EPA estimates that the regulations will cost $1.4 billion in 2012 and $0.8 billion annually after that.