Skip

Er, not so much.  Just like how the Government standards on saturated fats have just been dropped (e.g., meats, dairy, eggs) and now it seems that the low carb diet is now falling out of favor.  Yes, so much for settled science.  And again, we are seeing that in governmental policy that the best watt is the watt not used – not as much of an ROI as we’ve been told by the Greenies and the Left (who have been trying to deindustrialize us and lower our standard of living (Weekly Standard, emphasis mine):

This change involves environmentalists having to undergo an embarrassing about-face and recognize that one of their favorite slogans isn’t true. For years environmentalists have promoted energy conservation measures for buildings and homes with the claim that such improvements “paid for themselves” and were more cost-effective than building new power plants. The EPA and the Department of Energy happily touted claims that conservation resulted in lower energy bills, and were therefore competitive, cost-effective investments.

But there’s a growing body of economic research going back more than 15 years that finds the conservation claims to be exaggerated, when they are not completely wrong.

Read more

OC Register (emphasis mine):

Across the nation, progressives increasingly look at California as a model state. This tendency has increased as climate change has emerged as the Democratic Party’s driving issue. To them, California’s recovery from a very tough recession is proof positive that you can impose ever greater regulation on everything from housing to electricity and still have a thriving economy.

And to be sure, the state has finally recovered the jobs lost in the 2007-09 recession, largely a result of a boom in values of stocks and high- end real estate. Things, however, have not been so rosy in key blue-collar fields, such as construction, which is still more than 200,000 jobs below prerecession levels, or manufacturing, where the state has lost over one-third of its employment since 2000. Homelessness, which one would think should be in decline during a strong economy, is on the rise in Orange County and even more so in Los Angeles.

Read more

MAGINE AN ELECTION—A close one. You’re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let’s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it’s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.

Read more

Uh-huh, another day, another problem from the Feds (w/contributions from the States, too).  This is what happens when the Smart People decide they know better for everyone than each of those hundreds of million everyones making their own decisions for themselves.  Get that – those in govt believe that they not only have the Smarts but the Right to outweigh the millions of choices made by individuals whom each is making those choices out of their OWN self-interest.  This is the thing that Statists can’t grasp or accept – that people are better at this individually and in the aggregate bottom up than they are. So here we go again (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Federal subsidies have created a massive “green bubble” in the solar industry that is in danger of bursting when they expire next year, leaving taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars, according to a report by theTaxpayers Protection Alliance(TPA). Homeowners and businesses that install a solar energy system are currently entitled to a 30 percent Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which was initially passed by Congress in 2006 and extended for another eight years in 2008.

However, the ITC will drop to 10 percent for commercial and zero for residential properties on Dec. 31, 2016.  And even members of the heavily-subsidized solar industry, which provides less than one percent of the nation’s electricity, are worried that it cannot stand on its own without government handouts.

Read more

Snippets from a post by Ruben Navarrette, Jr., a 30-year pro-choice male who is starting to realize, with prompting from his wife, of a major responsibility of being a man (reformatted, emphasis mine):

…As I’ve only realized lately, to be a man, and to declare yourself pro-choice, is to proclaim your neutrality. And, as I’ve only recently been willing to admit, even to myself, that’s another name for “wimping out.”  At least that’s how my wife sees it. She’s pro-life, and so she’s been tearing into me every time a new video is released. She’s not buying my argument that, as a man, I have to defer to women and trust them to make their own choices about what to do with their bodies. To her, that’s ridiculous—and cowardly.

“You can’t stand on the sidelines, especially now that you’ve seen these videos,” she told me recently. “That’s b******t! These are babies that are being killed. Millions of them. And you need to use your voice to protect them. That’s what a man does. He protects children—his own children, and other children. That’s what it means to be a man.”

Read more

Scare quotes around “epidemic” because, once again, the common language is being abused.  Epidemics are spread by germs – not choices made by people to put needles into arms or powder up noses.  That said, this is typical when help is asked for by locals of the Feds.  That “free” money is never free – first to the taxpayers and as we see here, all the rules and “strings attached” cost plenty, too – and result in LESS help than more – Union Leader (reformatted, emphasis mine)

Drug treatment beds: Reduced by order from Washington

In the midst of a heroin addiction epidemic in which Democrats, Republicans and substance abuse experts all agree that more treatment center beds are desperately needed, the federal government is forcing treatment centers in New Hampshire to reduce the number of available beds. Such is the logic of the federal bureaucracy.

And you expected otherwise?  This is why I have said for years that local should stay local – the cost is too high.  Yes, you can get the money, but any control you had for this local problem dissipates quickly.  And in this case, the Feds go “bossy” (isn’t that the word that Hillary hates?)

Read more

After this, then there is this from Instapundit (emphasis mine):

JOEL KOTKIN: More Local Decisions Usurped by Ideological Regulators. “Nothing is more basic to the American identity than leaving basic control of daily life to local communities and, as much as is practical, to individuals. The rising new regulatory regime seeks decisively to change that equation. To be sure, there is a need for some degree of regulation, notably for basic health and public safety, as well as maintaining and expanding schools, parks, bikeways and tree-planting, things done best when supported by local voters. But the current regulatory wave goes well beyond traditional methodology. It reflects policies more akin to those central planners, who, as Chapman University researcher Alicia Kurimska suggests, dominated city planning in the once-massive Soviet bloc.”

And as we all know, how well did all those massive Public Housing high-rises work out?  Not well – crime ridden, drug filled, and broken family filled.  Most of them were torn down.  Lesson learned? Hardly.  They do consider themselves the Smart People who know what is best for all. And instead of learning the lessons, they just keep going.  It’s like they are micro-tyrants:

Read more

Yep, that’s what it is, Scott.  This time, it is Allison Gilbert whining out of both sides of her mouth in the Concord Monitor about the NH Executive Council’s vote on Planned Parenthood contract denial (reformatted, emphasis mine):

My Turn: Executive councilors have questions to answer

I am outraged and disgusted by the New Hampshire Executive Council’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire. I want to thank Colin Van Ostern and Chris Pappas for voting in support of all New Hampshire women and families. We all know that Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire provides critical sexual and reproductive health care and educational services to low-income women and men.

Ah yes, like Obamacare doesn’t exist to supply ALL of our needs – including “critical sexual and reproductive health care”.  Thus, you should be able to go ANYwhere you want (er, that IS why the Incremental Socialists known as Democrats passed it) right Allison?  That’s what we were told over and over, right?  Oh wait!

Read more

Once again, the GOP Ruling Class and Higher Than Us is taken to task for looking down their noses at those “Trumpian rubes” – how dare the great Unwashed speak up, ignore us, and dare not to give us their votes for OUR candidate to which we are entitled?  Er, boys?  Let’s go back to the original tenet of politics – you earn the votes.  David Limbaugh writes (reformatted, emphasis mine), once again, that the GOP Intelligencia is completely missing the boat at best, or joining in with the Democrat Socialists at worst. A couple of snippets (go read the whole link):

These commentators seem more disgusted with Trump defenders than with President Obama’s destructive agenda and the threat it represents to America.  Their angst, I would argue, is not primarily about Trump. Their real beef is with Reagan conservatives and others who refuse to be calm about Obama’s assaults and are sick of lectures on bipartisanship and “civility.”

Which seemingly is true.  The GOP has spent more time, from the view of Joe and Jane Sixpack, fighting what should be seen as the most passionate part of their base.  Their only sin is that, in the eyes of the Smart People, is that they actually believe what the GOP says it does (but often doesn’t do).

Read more