Back to Basics

Since his election, New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie has been remarkably successful in dealing with the Democrat controlled state legislature and has rocketed to national fame for simply being the real deal when it comes to conservative politics and policies.

That is, until he signed a bill on August 19 that one columnist described as touting “the idea of raising your electric rates to place windmills in the ocean off New Jersey.” In this case the windmill would be 75 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty! None of the residents of Union Beach want a windmill no matter how far out in the Atlantic it’s built.

So-called alternative or renewable energy is always far more expensive than the kind generated by nuclear or coal-fired plants.

It is always more unreliable insofar as the wind does not blow all the time, thus requiring a traditional plant to be online to back up those ugly insults to the natural beauty of land and sea when they fail to feed the grid.

Few people know that, even without wind, the windmills must be kept turning, using electricity to avoid mechanical failures.

Gov. Christie signed a bill that would put the windmill so far out at sea it could not be seen from the land, but that ignores the fact that it will cost taxpayers $7 million to construct it, half of which will be paid by a federal grant, and the result will be an increase in consumer rates. Why would any sensible person want to spend that kind of money on a single windmill?

Part of the answer is something called the Renewable Electricity Standards (RES) that the U.S. Senate is contemplating. As Dr. S. Fred Singer noted in an August American Thinker.com commentary, “It would force electric utilities to generate a large and increasing percentage of their power from wind and solar—rising to 15% by 2021.” In other words, the U.S. Senate is about to select winners and losers in the energy marketplace by requiring utilities to use expensive and inefficient wind and solar power.

For the past few months, I’ve been spotlighting the Obama administration’s War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s War on Jobs,
and the White House land lock-up (Part 1, Part 2). Today’s column exposes the next Obama environmental power grab — into the sea.

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And now: The Stealth Obama Ocean Grab
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

It’s not enough that the White House is moving to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land in the name of environmental protection. The Obama administration’s neon green radicals are also training their sights on the deep blue seas. The president’s grabby-handed bureaucrats have been empowered through executive order to seize unprecedented control from states and localities over “conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes.”_

Democrats have tried and failed to pass “comprehensive” federal oceans management legislation five years in a row. The so-called “Oceans 21″ bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Sam Farr of California, went nowhere fast. Among the top reasons: bipartisan concerns about the economic impact of closing off widespread access to recreational fishing. The bill also would have handed environmentalists another punitive litigation weapon under the guise of “ecosystem management.” Instead of accepting defeat, the green lobby simply circumvented the legislative process altogether.

In late July, President Obama established a behemoth 27-member “National Ocean Council” with the stroke of a pen. Farr gloated: “We already have a Clean Air Act and a Clean Water Act. With today’s executive order, President Obama in effect creates a Clean Ocean Act.” And not a single hearing needed to be held. Not a single amendment considered. Not a single vote cast. Who gives a flying fish about transparency and the deliberative process? The oceans are dying!

On November 18, 1978 the world was shocked to learn that more than 900 members of the People’s Temple had committed suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. They took their lives at the urging of Jim Jones, the Temple’s founder.

Until 9/11 it was the single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster and the tragedy still ranks high among the largest mass suicides in history. Jones had been a charismatic preacher who founded the Temple in the 1950s in Indiana, later moving it to California.

It is increasingly evident with every passing day that Barack Obama is America’s Jim Jones, undermining the U.S. Constitution while urging Americans to drink his Kool-Aid lies. Need a reminder? Here are a few:

Stimulus Act Kool-Aid
Obamacare Kool-Aid
Financial Reform Kool-Aid
Reach out to Muslims Kool-Aid
Mosque at Ground Zero Kool-Aid
Amnesty for illegal Aliens Kool-Aid
Bailout General Motors Kool-Aid
Cash-for-Clunkers Kool-Aid
Union Card Check Kool-Aid
Green Jobs Kool-Aid
Close Down Gitmo Kool-Aid
Climate Change Kool-Aid
Regulate Carbon Dioxide Kool-Aid
Gulf Oil Drilling Moratorium Kool-Aid

Americans are resisting the behemoth of the federal government under Obama’s control. The Tea Party movement is evidence that the American spirit is far from spent. Many states are joining together in legal suits to oppose Obamacare and to demand the federal government shut down the border traffic that is breeding crime and other costs.

It is a life or death struggle for America. Niall Ferguson, a British historian and author of “The Ascent of Money”, recently gave a lecture for the Center for Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia. He warned that “In the history of empires the end is abrupt and those that rely on them need to be ready.”

I have often referred to America as an empire and so have others, given its global military presence, the global reliance on the U.S. dollar as the standard against which other currencies are measured, its moral stature as a defender of human rights and advocate for freedom, and its vast worldwide cultural impact.

Waving goodbye to property rights…

My column today raises bright red flags about a little-noticed, radical green land grab program underway at the White House called the “Great Outdoors Initiative.” Keep in mind my previous coverage of Obama’s War on the West and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s job destruction. The War on the West is a war on property rights, a war on the economy, and a war on the American way of life.

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How Obama is locking up our land
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Have you heard of the “Great Outdoors Initiative”? Chances are, you haven’t. But across the country, White House officials have been meeting quietly with environmental groups to map out government plans for acquiring untold millions of acres of both public and private land. It’s another stealthy power grab through executive order that promises to radically transform the American way of life.

In April, President Obama issued a memorandum outlining his “21st century strategy for America’s great outdoors.” It was addressed to the Interior Secretary, the Agriculture Secretary, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. The memo calls on the officials to conduct “listening and learning sessions” with the public to “identify the places that mean the most to Americans, and leverage the support of the Federal Government” to “protect” outdoor spaces. Eighteen of 25 planned sessions have already been held. But there’s much more to the agenda than simply “reconnecting Americans to nature.”

The federal government, as the memo boasted, is the nation’s “largest land manager.” It already owns roughly one of every three acres in the United States. This is apparently not enough. At a “listening session” in New Hampshire last week, government bureaucrats trained their sights on millions of private forest land throughout the New England region. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack crusaded for “the need for additional attention to the Land and Water Conservation Fund — and the need to promptly support full funding of that fund.”

When it comes to liberals, there are simply not enough hours in a day for one person to record all of their mischief. Speaking for myself, even if I had a staff the size of Mrs. Obama, I’d probably still fall behind.

For instance, liberals love to pretend that “separation of church and state” appears in the Constitution, although I’m sure that most of them are aware that the words only appeared in a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association. What’s more, they in no way contradicted the First Amendment, which merely prohibited the federal government from establishing a state religion, such as existed in England. But on the other hand, when attacking the Second Amendment on the grounds that the Founders only wanted guns in the hands of “a well regulated militia,” those same liberals never bother mentioning that it was Jefferson who said “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms” and “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

Next, I hope that once all the primaries are over, conservatives will suck it up and vote for the victorious Republican candidate in November. I know it won’t always be easy, but it is essential that Nancy Pelosi loses the speakership, and the only way that happens is if the Democrats lose control of the House.

I’m aware that on a few occasions over the past 18 months, a few Republicans have lost their minds and voted with the liberals. In one case, it was the two ditzy women from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, voting for the stimulus bill. More recently, Scott Brown, who is the closest thing to a Republican who could have gotten elected in Massachusetts, joined the two ladies to vote for Obama’s financial regulation bill. It disgusted me as much as anyone that the three New Englanders jumped ship to aid and abet the enemy, but at least they have voted the right way more often than not, which is more than you could expect of the Democrats they defeated in their last elections.

It’s not just that liberals all vote the wrong way, but when it comes to sheer, blatant ignorance, you can’t beat them when they get going. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, for instance, claimed there were two Vietnams existing peacefully side-by-side, North and South Vietnam. Of course even if there were two such nations, we’d know them as East and West Vietnam. When the error was called to her attention, she naturally said she’d misspoken.

I guess it’s thanks to omnipresent technology that when they put their stupidity on display these days, politicians no longer insist they’ve been misquoted. Now, thanks to videos, open mikes and cell phone cameras, they have instead to insist that their lies, gaffes and absurdities, are all the result of misspeaking.

So it was that when Rep. Hank Johnson claimed to be worried that the island of Guam might tip over if too many American servicemen were stationed there, he quickly explained that he’d misspoken, as did Wisconsin state supervisor Peggy West after she’d taken Arizona to task for its immigration bill when, as any school child knows, it doesn’t even share a border with Mexico.

Like so much that emanates from Washington, this latest summer of corruption tale stinks.

Back in February 2009, you may recall that government spending watchdog GOP Sen. Tom Coburn first called attention to a $2 billion earmark in the Obama stimulus bill to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Dept. of Energy defunded because the project was inefficient. The pet project of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin ballooned in cost, but survived attempts to kill it. Obama continued to deny the existence of earmarks in the stimulus bill, even as his administration moved forward to dole them all out.

Well, last week, Obama’s Energy Department crowed about a repackaged FutureGen earmark — the biggest in American history at $1 billion:

August 5, 2010
Secretary Chu Announces FutureGen 2.0
Awards $1 Billion in Recovery Act Funding for Carbon Capture and Storage Network in Illinois

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin announced the awarding of $1 billion in Recovery Act funding to the FutureGen Alliance, Ameren Energy Resources, Babcock & Wilcox, and Air Liquide Process & Costruction, Inc. to build FutureGen 2.0, a clean coal repowering program and carbon dioxide (CO2) storage network. The project partners estimate the program will bring 900 jobs to downstate Illinois and another 1,000 to suppliers across the state.

“Today’s announcement will help ensure the US remains competitive in a carbon constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing greenhouse gas pollution,” said Secretary Chu. “This investment in the world’s first, commercial-scale, oxy-combustion power plant will help to open up the over $300 billion market for coal unit repowering and position the country as a leader in an important part of the global clean energy economy.”

“As with the original FutureGen, Mattoon and the state of Illinois are positioned as leaders in innovative technology that can serve as a model for the nation,” said U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. “The new project stays true to the original goal of dramatically reducing pollution and providing thousands of good paying jobs in our state.”

A funny thing happened on the way to the Illinois pay-off, though. While Durbin rushed to secure the money and bragging rights, the people of Mattoon, Illiniois are saying not so fast:

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin demanded Monday that officials in an eastern Illinois town decide by Friday whether they still want it to be part of a futuristic clean-coal project despite radical changes that scrap plans to build an experimental power plant.

If 10% ethanol in gasoline is good, 15% (E15) will be even better. At least for some folks.

We’re certainly heading in that direction – thanks to animosity toward oil, natural gas and coal, fear-mongering about global warming, and superlative lobbying for “alternative,” “affordable,” “eco-friendly” biofuels. Whether the trend continues, and what unintended consequences will be unleashed, will depend on Corn Belt versus consumer politics and whether more people recognize the downsides of ethanol.

Federal laws currently require that fuel suppliers blend more and more ethanol into gasoline, until the annual total rises from 9 billion gallons of EtOH in 2008 to 36 billion in 2022. The national Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) also mandates that corn-based ethanol tops out at 15 billion gallons a year, and the rest comes from “advanced biofuels” – fuels produced from switchgrass, forest products and other non-corn feedstocks, and having 50% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum.

These “advanced biofuels” thus far exist only on paper or in laboratories and demonstration projects. But Congress apparently believes passing a law will turn wishes into horses and mandates into reality.

Create the demand, say ethanol activists, and the supply will follow. In plain-spoken English: Impose the mandates and provide sufficient subsidies, and ethanol producers will gladly “earn” billions growing crops, building facilities and distilling fuel.

Thus, ADM, Cargill, POET bio-energy and the Growth Energy coalition will benefit from RFS and other mandates, loan guarantees, tax credits and direct subsidies. Automobile and other manufacturers will sell new lines of vehicles and equipment to replace soon-to-be-obsolete models that cannot handle E15 blends. Lawmakers who nourish the arrangement will continue receiving hefty campaign contributions from Big Farma.

However, voter anger over subsidies and deficits bode ill for the status quo. So POET doubled its Capital Hill lobbying budget in 2010, and the ethanol industry has launched a full-court press to have the Senate, Congress and Environmental Protection Agency raise the ethanol-in-gasoline limit to 15% ASAP. As their anxiety levels have risen, some lobbyists are suggesting a compromise at 12% (E12).

Some call the Barack Obama administration progressive. Some call it socialist. Other terms used are Marxist and communist.

I have called it fascist and corporatist in the past. Now I’ll just call it Evil.

That’s because the rule of law is dead in America. Now we have the rule of man—or government agency. The rule of man—or government agency—is a rule of Evil because it knows only the moral bounds of those making the rules. And it’s evident this administration, its appointments and its goals are amoral, if not immoral.

In America there is a Federal law that makes being in the United States illegally illegal. There is a requirement in the law that those who are not United States citizens but are here legally must carry papers designating their legal status.

That law is not enforced. Why? Someone decided not to. Granted it hasn’t been enforced for some time, maybe since its enactment in the 1940s, but it is a law and it should be enforced or changed. Were we under the rule of law it would be.

In Arizona the legislature followed the rule of law—and the will of its citizens—and passed an immigration law, subsequently signed by Governor Jan Brewer, that mirrored the U.S. law. However the Obama administration made it plain it would not only not help Arizona enforce its law it would work actively against its enforcement. It sued to stop the law from being enacted. It ordered its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Division not to pick up any illegals Arizona arrested under the law.

Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?

The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.

Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if manmade greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.

Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.

Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.

As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.

I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at www.CFACT.org)

There are ten planks in the Communist Manifesto and it will come as no surprise to anyone to discover that they are being implemented by the Obama administration in league with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The first plank called for the abolition of all private property ownership and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.

The Constitution regards the ownership of private property to be of such importance that the Bill of Rights’ Fifth Amendment includes an injunction against the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. The object was to keep as much private property as private as possible.

Some of the other Communist goals included a heavy progressive or graduated income tax and abolition of all rights of inheritance. If the Bush tax cuts are not extended, the “death tax” on estates will partially implement the inheritance goal and, of course, everyone currently anticipates that income tax rates will rise.

The federal government has long been involved in sequestering land from private ownership and in cases such as the establishment of National parks and forests it has proven to be a good idea, ensuring the protection of landmarks such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park.

Such efforts ensured that the U.S. still has 70% of the forest land that existed in 1600—737 million acres. Of these 33.5% are reserved from harvest by law or represent slow-growth areas unsuitable for timber production. The rest are timberlands that, for forest management purposes, are still harvested.

This has not stopped environmentalists, often called tree-huggers, from trying to stop any harvesting and the 1980s Spotted Owl hoax in the Northwest was so successful it closed down timber and sawmill operations, devastating an important industry. The claim was that the owls were endangered. Like most environmental claims it was false.