The incredible statist global warming scam….

Part of an essay by Walter Russell Mead: 

"The global green strategy was a comprehensive, unified and coordinated one.  Green activists around the world, in some countries empowered because proportional representation gives fringe groups disproportionate political influence, would unite around the push for a single global solution to climate change.  The global solution involved a treaty to be negotiated under UN auspices that would be “legally binding” and subject the emission of greenhouse gasses to strict global controls.  Developing countries would receive massive transfers of official aid ($100 billion or more a year) to compensate them for the costs they would incur in meeting carbon targets; developed countries like the United States would face stricter targets still.  The target for the treaty was to cap global emissions at levels believed to keep the global temperature rise this century to two degrees centigrade.

To reach this Valhalla, a political strategy was put in place; it is the strategy that the former vice president [Al Gore] is still gamely trying to push in his Rolling Stone article.  It has failed."

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Evil Landlords Who Pick On Tenants

“I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.“ -P.J. O’Rourke

evictionNotice.jpg

I was at a housing office today dropping off some “required paperwork.” As I sat waiting to review the issues that brought me there, I was forced to listen to a couple of young women talk about how they were going to hire attorneys and, “get their landlords.” Their complaints ran the gamut of being forced to get rid of pets (they were not supposed to have in the first place)… to the landlord’s refusal to repair a door broken by a boyfriend during a quarrel. Those Landlord bastards! The nerve of them! how dare they?

It is such conversations that so amuse me. For certain, being a landlord is a difficult endeavor. Take Manchvegas, for example where the city mandates Certificate Of Compliance Inspections (COC); A process that takes place every three years for those of us ‘evil bastards‘ who own multi-family residential housing. This can be an annoying process. One year’s COC inspection I was informed of a requirement to upgrade smoke detectors to the AC type with DC battery back-up. The current smoke detectors were already hard-wired so this wasn’t a difficult task. However, upon reviewing the building code, I found myself needing to call the building department for clarification. I was unable to find that specific reference. I was subsequently told the requirement had not been adopted yet.  Guess it didn’t matter, though. I had already spent the 500 bucks to purchase the AC/DC smoke detector units and install them. For me this was an object lesson in (a) waiting for the post-inspection report to arrive in the mail, and (b) verifying the very issues cited in the report.

Window screens are yet another challenge. I mean, how stupid is that? Window Screens? But, a COC inspection cannot pass muster without the proper window screens in place. I always ensure window screens are in place for COC so that is not an issue. But, despite that, there are often tenants who are fundamentally challenged by the mere existence of window screens. They break them, lose them or destroy them. After I’ve replaced a couple and receive yet another request to do so, I demand the screen-challenged tenant “pony up” 22 dollars for an entire frame and screen replacement and 12 dollars for a screen replacement. The tenant gives me a bunch of indignant static. “It wasn’t on purpose!” he or she exclaims… Standing my ground and insisting, the tenant calls the building department to report my, “refusal to replace a missing window screen.”  The building department subsequently issues a “violation of the COC:” “failure to have the window screens in place.”  A landlord keeping proper track of expenses will quickly conclude that spending $700 per year on window screens is excessive and unreasonable.

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Who is the real NO?

Well, sir, where is YOUR plan?  Oh, just TALKING about having a plan?  

Letter Sent From the Bedford Money Club to all NH state representatives Regarding the Debt Ceiling Debate

July 25, 2011

Letter Sent to State Representatives and Senators

RE:  The Debate About Raising The U.S. Debt Ceiling

Dear US Representatives:

This letter is the first in a series that communicates the position of tax paying members of the Bedford, NH Money Club on a number of pressing issues before the U.S. Congress.  The Bedford Money Club is a women’s financial literacy group affiliated with the Women’s Institute for Financial Education (WIFE.org)—the oldest non-profit dedicated to improving the personal financial literacy of women.  The Club eschews politics, but felt compelled to write these letters because we are appalled at how poorly governments are being managed at all levels in this country.  As citizens of a “donor” state that receives $0.71 for every $1.00 we send to Washington, we’re especially unhappy about the current situation.

Our first letter expresses our position on the debate concerning raising the U.S. debt ceiling.  We have been told that raising the U.S. debt ceiling is essential to preserving the AAA credit rating of the United States of America.  Consequently, we support raising the U.S. debt ceiling.  However, our support is contingent upon Congress immediately implementing significant budget and deficit cuts, rather than delaying these cuts until after the 2012 election year. You work for us, and we want to be in a position to fire you in 2012 if you fail to shrink the budget and debt as we have requested.  We do not want our country in this financial position ever again.  

We further explain our rationale in the letter that follows.

1. Don’t increase our National Debt:  The U.S. Debt Ceiling has been raised 80 times since 1940, and each time, policy makers have failed to take steps to bring spending in line with what the country can afford without becoming enslaved to foreign governments that might use this leverage against our national interests.   Raising the debt ceiling makes it harder for Americans to retain our freedom and control over how our money is to be spent.  Also, we lack confidence that our representatives will follow any increase in the U.S. Debt Ceiling with significant cuts to current and future budgets that would lead to a permanent reduction of this debt.  If you raise the debt ceiling, we want budget and deficit cuts to be made prior to any increase in taxes or tax code reform to offset any increase in the National Debt.  We do not want these cuts deferred or delayed.  We want smaller government now, not ten years from now.

2. Don’t Jeopardize the AAA Credit Rating of the United States and the U.S. dollar as the world’s Reserve Currency: 

 

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In Rebuttal to Tony Soltani

This week a group of friends and supporters gathered at the home of a State Rep in Amherst to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of the Speaker of the House, Bill O’Brien.  Many State Reps were there to express their appreciation for his outstanding leadership as well as his friendship with the members of the House. … Read more

Gosh, and I thought that Harry Reid would have LOVED the plan – look!

TEA Party Principles: Stop the spending, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Markets, Rule of Law

We worked hard to get the best people in place that would carry those principles forward.  This IS the defining moment – do we let the Progressives ruin us financially, making our kids and grandkids slaves to the debt they have poured onto us, or do we stop the insanity and stop the growth of government?

Which translates to: will the Republicans, especially in the House, stand on principle or will it be the usual DC compromise?  Read this from Cato and you can easily guess:

The Boehner plan also doesn’t cut spending in a more fundamental way. It doesn’t lay out any particular programs or agencies to terminate. I’m in favor of spending caps as a secondary enforcement mechanism, but actual cuts have to come first. A caps-only plan like Boehner’s just kicks the can down the road. At best, it simply nudges future legislators to actually cut something specific.

Why doesn’t the House leadership propose real cuts? They’ve certainly got the resources and expertise to do the job. A single senator — Tom Coburn — produced a 620-page report last week detailing hundreds of programs to cut and terminate. Coburn and his staff read through thousands of articles and reports on the real-world performance of federal programs, and they made a good case for each particular cut they proposed. 

So, does the below chart show that DC has gotten the message and stopped the spending via the Boehner plan? No  Current deficit spending is $1.5 Trillion (give or take).  Does the Boehner plan stop the bleeding?    No.  The Rs are touting $3 TRILLION CUTS!  Er, over 10 years.  Translation – $300 Billion / year.  That’s IF later Congress’s stick to it…they don’t have to.  This STILL means deficit spending of $1.2 Trillion / year.

This is not what the TEA Party fought for in November – just more of the same with the Rs not convinced they have the power (even as the House Rs control the actual Purse Strings) to stand up and stand strong.  Once again, we see the wimp factor snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Once again, we see the GOP action (their votes) failing to meet their philosophy (limited government).

With no respect meant for Harry Reid, this is the reason why I would have chuckled to himself ("those rube Republicans – I STILL get to spend lots!")":

 (H/T: Cato)

Even more charts showing in what bad shape we are in here.

They were sent to do a job –

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Notable Quote – Sen. Jesse Helms

“Compromise, hell! That’s what has happened to us all down the line — and that’s the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?” – … Read more

It appears that even the stupidest among us may be learning….

A new article from L.A. Times ("New polls confirm Obama’s democrat base crumbles") comes via a Drudge Report headline, "Obama’s Base Crumbles." In the meantime, a with a rather strong opinion made the following comment after the above L.A. Times article: Wasn’t it P.T. Barnum who uttered the famous phrase, "A sucker is born every minute"? Well, guess what? About … Read more

No Debt Ceiling Increase without Cut, Cap, and Balance

To the Editor:  

Both President Obama and Speaker Boehner failed to deliver acceptable proposals for raising the debt ceiling and both failed to explain the real situation to the American people.  

President Obama hasn’t provided specifics for a  plan, he makes no real attempt at compromise, his desired taxes on “the rich” provide a minuscule income, he continues to lie about the Bush tax cuts which actually increased tax revenues and shifted more of the tax burden to the rich, and he continues to threaten seniors and financial catastrophe.  (We hear similar threats every time our leaders try to pressure our representatives into doing bad things.)   

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Guest post by Mac Kittredge: The NH GOP is Forging Ahead Without an ‘Easy-Button’.

To the Editor,                                                                                                                               
The premise of an article in the Nashua Telegraph  (“State GOP facing trouble in paradise” 7/25/2011), is that the New Hampshire GOP, despite overwhelming victories in the legislature and the Executive Council, is basically floundering in Concord, nearly out of cash and rife with “. . infighting and back-stabbing.” It also opines that Governor Lynch’s job-approval ratings should have diminished far more, given the “. . . huge political advantage in the House and Senate.” Really? Does the author think that the luster of NH’s premier ribbon cutter is a good metric for measuring results in the legislature and Executive Council? Or that Republicans forgot that they were sent to Concord to get results and restore fiscal sanity, not to merely polish or tarnish reputations?

A close reading of the article shows naked partisanship by the unidentified author. This collection of carefully tailored facts set among unsupported allegations and hearsay assertions; (i.e. no details on the polls, where taken, questions asked, etc.) are clearly chosen to put Republicans in a bad light.

Why else report on a State GOP account balance, from several months ago, when the current balances are much more substantial? Why play with the timelines, if the article is supposed to take the pulse and viability of the NH GOP now? Why hint and wink about “back-stabbing” without presenting any detail or juicy evidence? I invite voters to carefully review this rancid political suppository for themselves (it’s almost all innuendo) and to then consider the rest of the story.
For example:

The basic premises of the article are patently false. Having a charming, popular, and largely statist Governor Lynch is not ‘paradise’ for the GOP. On election day,…

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Conservatives believe that the best form of welfare is a job. Govt thinks otherwise.

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

I sat and read "Atlas Shrugged" a couple of summers ago for the first time.  My friend Chan (of WeekendPundit – I always read his Thoughts on a Sunday) warned me to have some kind of anti-depressants around as I read through the first 100 pages or so.  Thought that advice was a bit of an exaggeration.

I was wrong.

Since Obama’s inauguration,  how the Congress has neglected the Constitution more and more and shucked off its law making responsibility, and Federal agencies seem to want to make law by executive fiat more and more in larger and larger contexts, I have become more and more distraught.  Indeed, some are of such consequence, they should be the result of Congressional action, debated in the open, instead of by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. This is the Progressive technocrat state and not the governance model promulgated by our Founders. The parallels between what has been building up over the last few decades in our Government and the plot in Atlas Shrugged (even if overdrawn over too many pages) is scary.

This story, of Ronnie Bryant, has gone viral. David McElroy has this story of a coal mine operator that decided to "go Galt", the essence of the book.  Which means, instead of operating his business and providing good paying jobs and providing the fuel that keep our electric lights on, he has had enough:

…Mine operators and state environmental officials say the mine can be operated without threatening the water supply. Environmentalists claim it will be a threat.

I’m not going to take sides on that environmental issue, because I don’t know enough to stake out an informed opinion. (With most of the people I listened to today, facts didn’t seem to matter as much as emotional implications.) But Ronnie Bryant wasn’t there to talk about that particular mine. As a mine operator in a nearby area, he was attending the meeting to listen to what residents and government officials were saying. He listened to close to two hours of people trashing companies of all types and blaming pollution for random cases of cancer in their families. Several speakers clearly believe that all of the cancer and other deaths they see in their families and communities must be caused by pollution. Why? Who knows? Maybe just because it makes for an emotional story to blame big bad business. It’s hard to say.

After Bryant listened to all of the business-bashing, he finally stood to speak. He sounded a little bit shellshocked, a little bit angry — and a lot frustrated.

My name’s Ronnie Bryant, and I’m a mine operator…. I’ve been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people…. [pause] Nearly every day without fail — I have a different perspective — men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just … you know … what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.     

So, 125 families will go without a paycheck and continue dependency on Daddy Government.  Fuel that we need to keep the lights on will not keep those lights on; no energy means no ability to do work.  As David observed:

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Facebook Doodlings – Obama’s mini-speech

A couple of observations from Facebook as President Obama spoke to the nation at 9pm this evening (and once again, gave the networks agina): Obama’s Presser: " I think these Patriotic American willing to pitch in. In fact over the last few decades, they’ve pitched in every time we’ve passed a bipartisan deal to reduce … Read more

The Harry Potter of the debt ceiling debate – that which cannot be named.

Or, at least to this point, hasn’t been talked much at all and if so, in hushed tones – actually paying the $14.5 Trillion debt actually racked up, not to mention the piling onto it by Obama and the Democrats spending?  Instead we’ve heard about:

  • The tax revenue enhancement
  • Closing loopholes
  • Flattening the individual and corporate rates
  • Restructuring the entitlements 
  • The deal is on, the deal is off, there’s a new deal
  • Obama is a petulant President.
  • And today, we know that Obama has been cut out of the dealing.
  • And Obama is one very scared President, with the realization that he’s fast becoming a one term President

Especially if the best efforts of Pelosi, Reid, Geithner, and Obama can’t keep the GOP from a two tiered effort with a short term effort that will result in yet another vote right smack dab in the Presidential general election.

And yes, Pelosi is scratched out as she has become irrelevant.  And yes, I scratched the GOP.  Sure, it is Republicans Cantor, Boehner and McConnell that are driving the bus up front.

But they ain’t the engine – the TEA Party is.  From a rag tag collection of fed up regular type folks that started off complaining that the Govt was going to pay their neighbor’s mortgage to staging rallies attracting <tens| hundreds |tens of thousands> of people to influencing municipal, county, and state level officials and elections.

And then on to getting Federal candidates elected to both the US House and the US Senate. The TEA Party was ALWAYS the force that could derail the Progressive train-wreck-to-happen right from the get/go, and the Progressives knew it at the start.  They realized that as soon as there was no one single leadership, they were doomed – it was only a matter of time.  And this past November, the TEA Party doomed a lot of the Progressive politicians (mostly Democrats but a fair number of Republicans as well)

And it is the US House that is in the driver’s seat and Obama knows it.  And Obama knows that it is this populist uprising against his expansion of Government to full blown Socialist levels & a vast expansion of the welfare state. And this is the nexus of raising or not raising the debt ceiling:

Are we going to allow the foundational philosophy of a limited government evaporate?

Mark my words – unless the spending is racheted down NOW, at THIS point in time, there may no longer be an environment where we, rather than government, can determine our future (or our present).  The spending has to stop – either…

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Can We Agree On The Value Of Broadband?

The most recent such move is the purchase of T-Mobile by AT&T. (Would that make them AT&T&T?) The debate is on whether or not this is good for broadband. Potential competitors say no, obviously, but most almost everyone else seems to think yes.

TeleTown Hall with Frank Guinta

Got a call and was joined onto Congressman Frank Guinta’s TeleTownHall event.  In listening to some of the others, a couple folks had some things to say that, of COURSE, I have opinions on: Al basically said to just tax the rich; they need to pay their fair share.  Well, All, using the latest numbers … Read more

“Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev.”

From the increasingly direct-speaking George Will: Richard Miniter, a Forbes columnist, is right: "Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev." Beneath the tattered, fading banner of reactionary liberalism, Obama struggles to sustain a doomed system.  Democrats’ dependency agenda — swelling the ranks of government employees, multiplying government-subsidized industries, enveloping ever-more individuals in … Read more

An apologist’s defense for funding Planned Parenthhood.

Executive Councilor Chris Sununu has an op-ed in the UL this morning defending why he voted to let a contract to biggest abortionist organizations in the United States, Planned Parenthood.  However, without even exploring the issue of abortion, he should really listen to his own words for the advice he should really implement.  The relevant portions:

Let me be clear that I am not fan of Planned Parenthood. From their excessive administrative costs and political lobbying, to its attempts to thwart parental notification, there is no shortage of issues I have with this organization. Like most Americans, I have never supported the public funding of abortions. But contrary to popular belief, that’s not what this contract is about.

As to the first – the financial point; he should vote no. He is already admitting that he has already voted once to give money to an organization that cannot spend our money wisely – and now is on the cusp of doing it twice?  Isn’t that the primary mandate of the Executive Council, to see that contract money IS spent correctly? So why vote to spend more money than what is necessary? At the very worst, why not make the demand that PPNE make structural changes as to its internal costs?  After all (heh!) if Obamacare can do that to healthcare insurance company administrative costs, why can’t NH do a similar thing to healthcare providers?

In any case, while you are concerned with health providers in your district, a lot of your constituents put you into place because your predecessor spent too much.  They will be remembering their top concerning, unwise spending, your own words "excessive administrative costs" and wondering: really?

"Thwart parental notification" – to the second which is the political point.  So you have an organization that forcefully and vigorously not only campaigns against a pillar of the Republican platform, and this does not concern you?  You have voted for an organization that is openly supportive of those that would throw you out of office (as well as your fellow Republicans)?  After all, you just pointed out that they do political lobbying – is this part of the re-election calculus?

So why are you letting a contract with fungible money only to see it used for political purposes? Some of the commentors at the UL talk about ideology – why should we give contract money to an organization that has demonstrated an ideology that is counter to most NH people?

Executive Councilor Sununu, all you have to do is to listen to your own words as to listening to good advice.

He continues on – the third point: structural point:

So why must it be Planned Parenthood? Why not some other provider that doesn’t have the scrutiny of this group? That’s the exact question I asked Health and Human Services Commissioner Nick Toumpas prior to the initial vote. Unfortunately, these contracts do not overlap geographically. Every provider is assigned specific towns to ensure that disadvantaged women (many of whom don’t even own a car) don’t have to travel great distances to get their care.

You are an MIT trained engineer – as your Dad pointed out to me…

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