Trust Matters

Trust Matters

 by John Schroeder

On the morning after the Supreme Court issued perhaps its most politicized decision ever, the headlines seem to be elsewhere.  Oh, there is coverage of the decision, but the shear volume of stories on Brexit, Trump, and to some extent Clinton just outweighs that coverage immensely.  It leaves one feeling as if abortion is now simply baked into the cake that is America, something that leaves this writer deeply saddened, and mournful.  At the same time, given where the nation is right now, talking about it, pointing out the problems with the decision, arguing with the justices in the court of public opinion is just spitting in the wind.  The word has come from Olympus, it is pointless for mortals to disagree.

Which is part of the problem, Americans don’t like having to swallow unappetizing garbage from the courts or an out of control bureaucracy.  I know there are people that think this is the best thing since sliced bread, and as heinously wrong as I think they are, I can deal with a nation that makes accommodation for their convictions provided it also makes accommodation for mine.  What I have a hard time with is a nation that tells me from on high that my convictions are not as important as theirs.

There was an interesting blog post at the Washington Fee Beacon over night concerning the fact that the EPA has reached a new high in requiring paperwork from the regulated community.

“Years of regulatory accumulation, especially under the Obama administration have pushed EPA’s paperwork burden to its highest level in history,” the report, written by Sam Batkins, said. “Year after year of new regulatory costs have not only translated into shuttered power plants, but also new reporting and recordkeeping requirements. EPA’s paperwork burden now stands at 188 million hours.”

“To put this in perspective, it would take more than 94,200 employees working full-time (2,000 hours a year) to complete one year of EPA paperwork,” the report continued. “The agency’s burden has surged 23 percent since 2009 and 34 percent since 2002.”

The report found the EPA’s increase in paperwork burdens is not due to its new major regulations, but to new requirements for regulations already on the books.

That last paragraph speaks volumes.  Adding reporting burden to existing regulations is a way in which the government expresses distrust of the regulated community.  No longer is it enough that we tell you you HAVE to do something – now we are going to make you prove to us that you did it in exactly the fashion we demand it and to exactly the extent we want.  Perhaps an analogy would help.  Most people speed from time-to-time.  Suppose the government passed a law that said you now have to put a small electronic module in your car that used GPS to determine your location and read your speed from your cars computer.  Then once a month, you had to plug that module into the internet and the government analysed the data and determined how many times you had violated the speed laws and fined you for every one of them.  I think most people would find that more than a bit intrusive.  That is essentially what all this paperwork burden is doing with regards to EPA regulation.

David Gerson has a piece this morning that does a good job of analyzing part of what is going on right now, even if I disagree how he thinks we got there and his proposed solution.  He correctly sees how the cultural changes that have been wrought in recent decades have created societal rifts.  He notes the different values between generations right now, but he acts like that is somehow unique. It’s not, there has been a “generation gap” certainly throughout my lifetime – only I am no longer the disaffected youth, I am the stodgy old guy.  There is a difference though, and that is the rampant cynicism of current youth.

I think that cynicism comes from two places.  One is the failure of my generation to successful model our values – not espouse them, model them.  I’m going to leave that there for you to think about on your own and what you can do about it in your own life.

The second source of the cynicism comes from the fact that it has become to some extent pointless to try and carve your own path through life.  There is no accommodation for a different way of thinking, or creativity generally for that matter.  Edicts come down from on high with massive demands that you prove you are following the edict in the most minute of detail.  Our society now comes with a presumption of guilt and a necessity to prove your innocence rather than the other way around.

Our government does not trust us – Cynicism is a pretty natural response to that.

People are clearly thrashing around right now – they know things are not as they should be.  Restoring faith to its rightful place will go a long way to solve that problem, but for that to happen and for people to begin to be receptive to it, the onerous boot heel of our government must be lifted.  Our government has to trust us once again to make our own decisions.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/trust-matters/#more-31166

California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco

By Virginia Postrel

California's high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected officials finally decide to cancel it. What combination of sweet-sounding scenarios, streamlined mockups, ever-changing and mind-numbing technical detail, and audacious spin will keep the dream alive?

Sold to the public in 2008 as a visionary plan to whisk riders along at 220 miles an hour, making the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a little over two and a half hours, the project promised to attract most of the necessary billions from private investors, to operate without ongoing subsidies and to charge fares low enough to make it competitive with cheap flights. With those assurances, 53.7 percent ofvoters said yes to a $9.95 billion bond referendum to get the project started. But the assurances were at best wishful thinking, at worst an elaborate con.

The total construction cost estimate has now more than doubled to $68 billion from the original $33 billion, despite trims in the routes planned. The first, easiest-to-build, segment of the system -- the “train to nowhere” through a relatively empty stretch of the Central Valley -- is running at least four years behind schedule and still hasn’t acquired all the needed land. Predicted ticket prices to travel from LA to the Bay have shot from $50 to more than $80. State funding is running short. Last month’s cap-and-trade auction for greenhouse gases, expected to provide $150 million for the train, yielded a mere $2.5 million. And no investors are lining up to fill the $43 billion construction-budget gap.

Now, courtesy of Los Angeles Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian, comes yet another damning revelation: When the Spanish construction company Ferrovial submitted its winning bid for a 22-mile segment, the proposal included a clear and inconvenient warning: “More than likely, the California high speed rail will require large government subsidies for years to come.” Ferrovial reviewed 111 similar systems around the world and found only three that cover their operating costs.

This research should surprise no one who pays attention. Even advocates acknowledge that almost all high-speed rail systems need ongoing subsidies.

But the California High-Speed Rail Authority steadfastly maintains that its trains will be the exception: “HIGH-SPEED RAIL IN CALIFORNIA WILL NOT REQUIRE OPERATING SUBSIDIES,” a 2013 fact sheet declared, in all caps. The authority has to keep up the charade or admit to breaking the promises that persuaded voters to back the project in the first place.

At an April state assembly hearing, the authority’s chairman asserted that “virtually all” the world’s high-speed rail operations make operating profits. Not true. “It is very easy to falsify a claim like ‘Every HSR system in the world collects revenues that cover their cost,' ”Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor at Oxford’s Saïd Business School who studies infrastructure cost overruns, told Vartabedian.

The truly damning revelation, however, isn’t just that Ferrovial’s research flatly contradicts the California authority. It’s that the company's warning on subsidies disappeared from the version of the bid posted on the state’s website. The Times obtained a copy of the full document on a data disk under a public records act request.

The high-speed rail project is a classic example of how concentrated benefits and diffused costs shape public policy, even when the general public has a direct say. Back in 2008, the bond referendum faced no organized opposition. Voters might have preferred that the money go to schools, parks, roads, social services or even local trains, but those alternatives weren’t on the ballot. It was an up-down vote on whether to let a tiny bit of tax money per person go to fund a really cool train -- and all the companies that would work on building it. Voters looked at the streamlined concept images and thought, Wouldn’t that be great? Whoosh!

But a closer look even back then would have made it clear that, barring a miracle, the rail project wouldn’t keep its promises. To do so, it would have to be the fastest, most popular bullet train in the world, with many more riders per mile and a much greater percentage of seats occupied than the French and Japanese systems -- a highly unlikely prospect. Yet only the most determined wonk would have discovered these comparisons.

Some of those who knew better still succumbed to the glamour of the idea. “There's something undeniably alluring about a bullet train -- the technology is so powerful, the speed so breathtaking, it makes quotidian trips seem exotic,” opined the Times's editorial board in October 2008. Admitting that “it seems close to a lead-pipe cinch that the California High-Speed Rail Authority will ask for many billions more in the coming decades, and the Legislature will have to scrape up many millions of dollars in operating subsidies,” it nonetheless concluded that “we still think voters should give in to the measure's gleaming promise.” Give in they did.

Eight years later, the legislature is getting antsy. Last month, the state assembly unanimously passed a bill requiring that the authority provide clearer statements of route changes and projected expenses, including borrowing costs. The state senate will hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday.

The measure sounds like basic democratic hygiene. But it’s a big deal. "It is the awakening of the magnitude of the issue in front of us,” the bill’s sponsor Jim Patterson, a Republican from Fresno, told the Times. "The project has moved from spotty opposition in the legislature to growing concern.”

Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, the first announced candidate for governor in 2018, has said that barring something “really significant,” he can’t see taking the money from other infrastructure projects. The officials who have to make the budget tradeoffs that weren’t on the ballot in 2008 are finally pushing back. The question now is when they’ll have the guts to pull the plug.

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-28/california-hits-the-brakes-on-high-speed-rail-fiasco?utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=buffer65723&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com

Democrats Attack 3 Of The 10 Amendments In The Bill Of Rights

In recent months, Democrats have proposed changes that would weaken the 1st, 2nd and 5th Amendments. (U.S. Archives)

Freedom: Hillary Clinton and other leaders in her party always talk about how they want to grant new rights to Americans. They talk about the "right to affordable health care," the "right to a college education," the "right to a livable wage." But at the same time, many of these same Democrats have been agitating to restrict or outright repeal existing rights enshrined in the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

In just the past few months, in fact, members of the Democratic party  have targeted the 1st, 2nd and 5th Amendments for attack. Here are the details, in reverse order:

Denying Due Process

Last week, House Democrats staged a sit in to demand a vote on a gun control bill that would have denied anyone on the government's "no fly" list the right to buy a gun.

The problem is that someone can make it on the list "no fly" based on the flimsiest of evidence, mere suspicion, or for no apparent reason at all.

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As a result, denying everyone on this list the right to buy a gun would risk denying them due process, a protection guaranteed by the 5th Amendment, which says among other things that no one can "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Even the gun-control-supporting ACLU game out against such bills for that reason, saying that the watch list is "error-prone and unreliable" and that it would "place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names."

Liberal reporter Glenn Greenwald was even more emphatic. "In the lexicon of the leading liberal lights of the Democratic Party, someone deemed by the U.S. government to be suspicious -- placed in secret on a list, with no evidence presented and no court process -- is the equivalent of 'ISIS.' And to demand due process be accorded is to arm ISIS."

It's not as though the Democrats staging the sit in didn't understand this. In fact, they were protesting because the House leadership would only bring up a bill that included due process protections. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., complained that "due process is what's killing us right now" when it comes to denying gun purchases to people suspected of having ties to terrorism.

Torching the 2^nd Amendment

When not trying to limit 5th Amendment protections in their zeal for gun control, Democrats are increasingly calling not just for restrictions on purchases for would-be terrorists or bans on "assault rifles," but to scrap the 2nd Amendment entirely.

"The Second Amendment needs some changing, because Americans don't agree with it and we've had it," Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., declared last week.

After Gabby Giffords was shot, liberal talk show host Bill Maher said that the Democratic party should "come out against the 2nd Amendment." Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., responded, "I sure wish they would."

Retired liberal justice John Paul Stevens wrote on op-ed saying the 2nd Amendment should itself be amended, so that the right to own guns only would apply to those who are actively serving in a militia.

Targeting Free Speech

Incredibly, the Democrats' disdain for the Bill of Rights includes even the 1st Amendment's protection of free speech. Party leaders are openly pushing to limit free speech rights when it conflicts with their own viewpoints.

In a speech at an Iowa community college, for example, Hillary Clinton said: "We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment."

Left unsaid is that the only way to do what she suggests would be to put restrictions on the 1st Amendment. A couple years ago, 54 Senate Democrats voted for a new constitutional amendment that would do just that.

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll taken last May found that a majority of Democrats said they support government limits on what they consider to be "hate speech." Only 26% of Democrats said they opposed such limits.

In California, Democrats pushed a state bill that would have criminalized speech that questions the "consensus" on climate change.

And Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee in March that she has discussed with her colleagues the possibility of pursuing civil actions against "climate change deniers."

Democrats have long expressed frustration, if not outright contempt, for the Constitution whenever it hinders their ability to enact some new government program. President Obama has repeatedly complained about the "messy" process the Constitution's co-equal branches created, and has several times acted as though the Constitution's limits on the president's authority simply don't apply to him.

But the fact that a major U.S. political party -- which still considers itself mainstream -- is now willing to specifically target amendments designed to protect Americans from tyrannical government control is alarming, to say the least.

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/democrats-now-attack-3-of-the-10-bill-of-rights/

Obamacare Insurers Are Looking for a Taxpayer Bailout

Obamacare Insurers Are 

Looking for a Taxpayer Bailout

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Edward Morrissey

Insurers helped cheerlead the creation of Obamacare, with plenty of encouragement – and pressure – from Democrats and the Obama administration. As long as the Affordable Care Act included an individual mandate that forced Americans to buy its product, insurers offered political cover for the government takeover of the individual-plan marketplaces. With the prospect of tens of millions of new customers forced into the market for comprehensive health-insurance plans, whether they needed that coverage or not, underwriters saw potential for a massive windfall of profits.

Six years later, those dreams have failed to materialize. Now some insurers want taxpayers to provide them the profits to which they feel entitled -- not through superior products and services, but through lawsuits.

Earlier this month, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina joined a growing list of insurers suing the Department of Health and Human Services for more subsidies from the risk-corridor program. Congress set up the program to indemnify insurers who took losses in the first three years of Obamacare with funds generated from taxes on “excess profits” from some insurers. The point of the program was to allow insurers to use the first few years to grasp the utilization cycle and to scale premiums accordingly.

As with most of the ACA’s plans, this soon went awry. Utilization rates went off the charts, in large part because younger and healthier consumers balked at buying comprehensive coverage with deductibles so high as to guarantee that they would see no benefit from them. The predicted large windfall from “excess profit” taxes never materialized, but the losses requiring indemnification went far beyond expectations.

In response, HHS started shifting funds appropriated by Congress to the risk-corridor program, which would have resulted in an almost-unlimited bailout of the insurers. Senator Marco Rubio led a fight in Congress to bar use of any appropriated funds for risk-corridor subsidies, which the White House was forced to accept as part of a budget deal. As a result, HHS can only divvy up the revenues from taxes received through the ACA, and that leaves insurers holding the bag.

Related: Obamacare: Costs Go Up, Insurers Drop Out and Consumers Get Screwed

They now are suing HHS to recoup the promised subsidies, but HHS has its hands tied, and courts are highly unlikely to have authority to force Congress to appropriate more funds. In fact, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services formally responded by telling insurers that they have no requirement to offer payment until the fall of 2017, at the end of the risk-corridor program.

That response highlights the existential issue for both insurers and Obamacare. The volatility and risk was supposed to have receded by now. After three full years of utilization and risk-pool management, ACA advocates insisted that the markets would stabilize, and premiums would come under control. Instead, premiums look set foranother round of big hikes for the fourth year of the program.

Consumers seeking to comply with the individual mandate will see premiums increase on some plans from large insurers by as much as 30 percent in Oregon, 32 percent in New Mexico, 38 percent in Pennsylvania, and 65 percent in Georgia.

Thus far, insurers still claim to have confidence in the ACA model – at least, those who have not pulled out of their markets altogether. However, massive annual premium increases four years into the program demonstrate the instability and unpredictability of the Obamacare model, and a new study from Mercatus explains why.

Related: Obamacare: Costs Go Up, Insurers Drop Out and Consumers Get Screwed

The claims costs for qualified health plans (QHPs) within the Obamacare markets far outstripped those from non-QHP individual plan customers grandfathered on their existing plans – by 93 percent. They also outstripped costs in group QHP plans by 24 percent. In order to break even without reinsurance subsidies (separate from the risk-corridor indemnification funds), premiums would need to have been 31 percent higher on average for individual QHPs.

The main problem was that younger and healthier people opted out of the markets, skewing the risk pools toward consumers with much higher utilization rates – as Obamacare opponents predicted all along. With another round of sky-high premium increases coming, that problem will only get worse, the study predicts.

“[H]igher premiums will further reduce the attractiveness of individual QHPs to younger and healthier enrollees, resulting in a market that will appeal primarily to lower-income individuals who receive large subsidies and to people with expensive health conditions,” it concludes. “To avoid such an outcome, it is increasingly likely that the individual insurance market changes made by the ACA will have to be revised or reversed.”

Related: It’s Time to Blame Obamacare for Losing So Many Full-Time Jobs

Galen Institute senior fellow Doug Badger, one of the study’s co-authors, wonders how long insurers will continue to publicly support Obamacare. In an interview with methis week, Badger noted how critical that political cover is for the White House, but predicted it won’t last – because the system itself is unsustainable, and no one knows this more than the insurers themselves, even if they remain reluctant to voice that conclusion. Until they speak up, however, the Obama administration can keep up their happy talk while insurers quietly exit these markets, an act that should be speaking volumes all on its own.

Even the Kaiser Foundation, which has supported Obamacare, has admitted that the flood of red ink has become a major issue. “I don't know if we're at a point where it's completely worrisome,” spokesperson Cynthia Cox told NPR, “but I think it does raise some red flags in pointing out that insurance companies need to be able to make a profit or at least cover their costs."

Red flags have flown all over the Obamacare model for six years. Instead of suing the federal government for losses created by a system for which they bear more than a little responsibility, insurers should finally admit out loud that the ACA is anything butaffordable – not for insurers, and certainly not for consumers or taxpayers. When that finally happens, we can then start working on a viable solution based on reality rather than fealty to a failed central-planning policy. 

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2016/06/30/Obamacare-Insurers-Are-Looking-Taxpayer-Bailout

ObamaCare Is Killing The Blues

Blue Cross Blue Shield in Minnesota announced that it was pulling out of that state's individual market after suffering staggering losses as a result of ObamaCare. Blue Cross affiliates across the country are suffering similar losses. (AP)

Health Reform: The health care law President Obama signed six years ago was supposed to fix the individual insurance market with enlightened rules and regulations. Instead, ObamaCare is destroying this market. Just look at what's happening to Blue Cross Blue Shield.

If any insurer could cope with ObamaCare, it should have been Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Blue Cross companies came into the ObamaCare exchanges with decades of experience writing individual policies. Most of them are non-profits, which gives them an automatic leg up on the competition. And their plans captured the largest share of the exchange markets across the country.

But as with everything else about ObamaCare, it hasn't work out that way.

Last week Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota made a stunning announcement that it was pulling out of the state's individual insurance market altogether, after losing $500 million.

It might not be the last of the Blues to abandon ObamaCare. Across the country Blue Cross affiliates are losing staggering amounts of money thanks to the law, and are putting in for premium hikes that would have been unimaginable before ObamaCare.

For example, Health Care Services Corp. -- which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas -- lost $1.5 billion on its ObamaCare-compliant plans last year.

As a result, it's requesting a nearly 60% rate hike in Texas, and almost 50% in Oklahoma. HCSC pulled out of the New Mexico exchange last year after the state turned down its 50%-plus rate increase.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, meanwhile, lost about $300 million in ObamaCare's first two years and is likely to lose another $100 million this year. It wants a 62% increase in premiums, on top of the 36% it got last year.

Highmark Group, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, lost $266 million in just the first nine months of 2015.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina lost $280 million on ObamaCare in 2015. Earlier this year, CEO Brad Wilson talked about possibly pulling out of ObamaCare, saying that "we can't offer something for sale in this marketplace that we know every time it's purchased we're losing money."

Arizona'S Blue Cross wants a 65% rate hike after reporting $185 million in losses in ObamaCare's first two years.

In Alabama, Blue Cross figures it lost $135 million last year, and $64 million in Nebraska.

Then there's the departure of UnitedHealth Group from most of its ObamaCare markets, Humana's exit from several, and the demise of 13 of the 23 ObamaCare-created insurance co-ops, and double-digit rate requests across the country.

Cynthia Cox of the Kaiser Family Foundation admitted to NPR that ObamaCare isn't exactly working out as intended. "The hope was that these markets would encourage exchange competition and (get) more insurers to come in.

"I don't know if we're at a point where it's completely worrisome," she went on, "but I think it does raise some red flags in pointing out that insurance companies need to be able to make a profit or at least cover their costs."

We are well beyond the point where it's "worrisome." Obama and his fellow Democrats tried to refashion the insurance market to their liking, and failed.

The question now isn't whether ObamaCare exchanges will somehow stabilize someday, but what comes next.

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/obamacare-is-killing-the-blues/

THIS WEEK’S POLLS SHOW IMPROVEMENT FOR TRUMP

THIS WEEK’S POLLS SHOW IMPROVEMENT FOR TRUMP

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, DONALD TRUMP, HILLARY CLINTON, POLL

This week saw the release of six major surveys of a Clinton-Trump head-to-head race. Five of them have Clinton in the lead. They are IBD/TIPP (Clinton +4), Fox News (Clinton +6), PPP, a Democratic firm (Clinton +4), Quinnipiac (Clinton +2), and Reuters/Ipsos (Clinton +10).

One poll, by Rasmussen, has Trump ahead (+4).

Quinnipiac and Reuters had the largest sample sizes. The margin of error (MOE) for these two polls is 2.4 and 2.8, respectively. The MOE for the Rasmussen poll is 3.0. The largest MOE (3.5) is for the IBD/TIPP poll.

Collectively, these six polls suggest that Clinton leads by about 4 points. That’s a statistically significant lead but not a very large one. The previous week’s polling suggested that Clinton’s lead was 7 points.

Clinton doesn’t reach 50 percent in any of the six recent polls. She averages a little under 44 percent.

There were also six polls released this week of a three-way race that includes Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Five of the six were by organizations that also polled the two-way race. The sixth poll was by Economist/YouGov. It had Clinton 5 points ahead of Trump. Rasmussen didn’t do a poll that included Johnson.

Even with no Rasmussen survey to help Trump, Clinton’s average lead was under 5 points.

Yesterday, FiveThirtyEight estimated that, based on its analysis of polls, Clinton has just about an 80 percent chance of winning in November. The polls it relied on show Clinton leading Trump by 7 points. If the lead is 4 points, then Trump is less of a long-shot.

I continue to believe that, assuming no criminal indictment or FBI recommendation of one, Clinton will prevail. However, the most recent batch of polls suggests that the contest may be a tight one and that Trump has a decent shot at winning.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/this-weeks-polls-show-improvement-for-trump.php

Obama Makes An Impossible Clean Energy Promise

President Obama wants 50% of North America's energy to come from "clean" sources by 2025. (Eye Ubiquitous/Newscom)

Energy: At a "Three Amigos" summit in Ottawa this week, President Obama and the leaders of Canada and Mexico will pledge that in less than a decade, half of North America's energy will come from "clean" sources. The administration calls it "ambitious." We call it "ludicrous."

Since the U.S. accounts for three-quarters of the total energy produced by these three countries, the responsibility of living up to any such agreement would fall most heavily on the U.S. So is there a reasonable chance that the U.S. could achieve such a goal?

Let's look at some of the relevant facts.

According to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, "clean energy" -- nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, biomass, etc. -- makes up less than one-fifth of U.S. energy production.

Nuclear accounts for a little more than 8%, biomass just over 4%, solar and wind 3%, hydroelectric a bit more than 2%.

So the only way to get there would be to dramatically increase one or all of these sources in nine years.

But environmentalists don't particularly like hydroelectricity, since it involves damming up rivers. In fact, they've successfully pushed to have many existing hydroelectric dams torn down. Unless this outlook suddenly changes, hydropower's share of energy isn't going to budge. In fact, the EIA expects it to be flat for the next 40 years.

How about nuclear? Even if the government decided to go whole hog for nuclear, it wouldn't make any difference over the next decade. The permitting, construction and approval process alone would take more than nine years. And that's assuming environmentalists don't oppose such a plant every step of the way.

Nuclear industry officials say they expect just five new reactors to enter service by 2020, and some of that supply will just replace plants that are aging out of service. The youngest nuclear power plant in the United States — Tennessee's Watts Bar 1 — is 20 years old.

As a result, the EIA forecasts that nuclear-powered energy production will be roughly the same in 2025 as it is today.

So that pretty much leaves wind, solar and biomass. But production levels from these sources would have to increase something like 470% in nine years for clean energy to account for half of the nation's energy production.

Then, of course, there's the question of whether our neighbors to the north and south would live up to any promise they make this year.

Is Mexico really going to strap on a clean energy millstone to its still-developing and always-struggling economy? And while Canada's leftist leader, Justin Trudeau, might think it's cool to set such goals, it's not clear Canadians will agree to suffer for his current obsession.

For a guy who is desperately fishing around for something to claim as a legacy, President Obama's running around making promises that he knows will never be kept is an odd way to go about things.

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/obama-makes-an-impossible-clean-energy-promise/