Saturday, December 31, 2011

Harvard prof flunks economics--Should just pipe down over Keystone

Harvard prof flunks economics - BostonHerald.com

Should just pipe down over Keystone
By Michael Graham 
Photo
Ready for your Massachusetts IQ test? Which sounds smarter to you:

A) Building a pipeline to bring oil from Canada, or B) Continuing to import oil from terror-sponsoring nations like Saudi Arabia.

A) Killing jobs in the middle of a recession, or B) Putting 20,000 blue-collar American workers to work.
Running for U.S. Senate as, A) The candidate in favor of American jobs and energy independence, or B) As the candidate who opposes them.

If you picked A on all of the above, congratulations. You’re smarter than a Harvard professor! And her supporters.

Yesterday afternoon, while you were at the job you are ever more thankful to have, Liz Warren’s political allies were marching around Sen. Scott Brown’s office, protesting the Keystone pipeline project. Keystone would bring millions of barrels of oil from our friend and ally Canada, oil we would no longer have to buy from Arab sheiks or South American thugs.

Keystone would also create “20,000 direct high-wage jobs,” according to Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research, and “an additional $5.2 billion in property tax revenue and thousands of indirect jobs relating to the project.”

So why do Liz’s kids oppose it? Because, they claim, getting our oil from Canada means “Massachusetts can expect higher rates of climate disasters.”

Really? As opposed to getting the same amount of oil from Venezuela or the UAE? Not to be mean-spirited, but how dumb is that?

Oh, and as to their claim that alleged “global warming” is leading to more disasters in Massachusetts — sorry. As Dr. William Gray, America’s leading expert on hurricanes, has repeatedly noted, “global [hurricane] activity has shown a distinct decrease over the last 20 years when CO2 amounts were increasing.”

Yes, it’s true that 2011 has been the costliest year on record for natural dis-asters, but earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand were, by themselves, about two-thirds of that. So unless you believe that global warming causes shifts in Earth’s tectonic plates (and a frightening number of enviro-kooks do) — pretty dumb.

It’s interesting. As political maven Michael Barone points out, “Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of smart people.” And that’s doubly true of Warren’s supporters, who refer to her Harvard curriculum vitae in tones of hushed reverence.

How striking it is then to hear the utter vacuousness of their proposed policies and positions. For example, her attacks on Brown for not raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” to pay for the payroll tax cut.

Giving workers earning $50,000 a year a tax cut of $20 a week may be a good issue to whip up the Occupods, but as a fiscal strategy to get unemployed people working again, it flunks Econ 101. Ask any economist not working for the White House and they’ll tell you the same thing.

This isn’t about partisan debate. There are legitimate points to debate on the economy and energy policy. But just shouting “No war for oil!” isn’t a debate. It’s adamant stupidity.
By the way, why aren’t we shouting “No war for oil!” anymore? If you really believed that, you’d support domestic drilling and the Canadian pipeline, right?

Instead, the Liz Warren left starts with “No war for oil,” then “No oil from Canada,” “No nukes,” “No coal” and then the inevitable, “Hey — wait! My iPad just died and there’s no electricity to charge it.

Where’s my oil?!”

Remember: They’re the smart ones.

Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
Article URL: http://bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1388834

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