Obama Impugns Romney in a Flagrant Abuse of Power

Obama Impugns Romney in a Flagrant Abuse of Power

By EDWARD MORRISSEY, The Fiscal Times 

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The Buffett Rule tax increase hawked by President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress uses taxation power to target a small group of individuals for confiscation for no better purpose than to fit their political aspirations. The real purpose targets one individual in particular who might keep Obama from winning a second term in office.

This abuse of power harks back to one of the more curious relics found in our Constitution, which prohibits Congress from passing a “Bill of Attainder.” Article 1, Section 9 prevents any individual or group from being condemned for crimes and having their property seized without all the muss and fuss of trials, juries, and even evidence.

Of course, Obama couches the Buffett Rule tax in fiscal terms. We need to have everyone pay their fair share of taxes, the President has argued, and why should a billionaire like Warren Buffett pay a lower rate on his income than his secretary? That sounds reasonable to the ill-informed, but Buffett pays a lower rate – as do many of the wealthier income earners – because Buffett derives his income from risk-based activities in investments, rather than as employment salary.

Congress has long treated capital-gains income differently than salary income in order to incentivize the risk-taking that leads to innovation and growth. Had Buffett’s secretary earned her income as capital gains, she would have access to the same tax rates as her boss does.

Furthermore, the top earners already pay their “fair share” – and more. According to the 2012 Economic Report of the President and reported by Bloomberg, the median effective tax rate for the middle 20 percent of American taxpayers is 13.3 percent, including income, payroll, and corporate taxes. For the top 1 percent of taxpayers – that group most famously demonized by Occupy protesters – the median effective tax rate jumps to 29.6 percent.

Ah, but that’s the median, the administration will point out. Some of the wealthy that earn more than a million dollars a year pay a lower rate, and that’s certainly true. Some of them pay under 15 percent in effective tax rates, mainly because (again) they derive their income from risk-taking activities that produce capital gains in a given year. How many households actually manage that feat? The non-partisan Tax Policy Center puts the number at about 4,000 households.

However, most of those are on the lower end of that top level of income. The real revenue opportunity comes with the wealthiest of Americans, where a surtax would confiscate much larger amounts of capital. Bloomberg’s Hans Nichaols reported this week that the Buffett Rule actually hopes to target just 400 earners in the nation. That makes this look a lot less like a normal tax policy and a lot more like an attack on specific Americans as a lever to seize their property in service to a President who has openly waged class warfare for the last eight months.

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How much revenue will the policy that mainly goes after these 400 households actually raise? The most optimistic estimates for Buffett Rule revenue estimate a potential $40 billion over a ten-year period. The federal deficit in FY2012 is estimated at $1.3 trillion, and FY2013 in President Obama’s proposal comes in north of $900 billion. In the best case, the Buffett Rule would correct 0.44 percent of the FY2013 shortcoming. We could get ten times more deficit savings by repealing Obamacare, according to a new study of the costs of the President’s signature legislation.

Obama and his allies insist that the actual revenue and deficit reduction matter less than the fairness, but neither matters as much as having a class-warfare club to swing at Mitt Romney in the fall. Bernie Becker at The Hill stated the obvious when he reported that the White House wanted to “hammer” Romney with the Buffett Rule proposal, pointing out that Romney only paid an effective tax rate of 14 percent on tax returns he released this winter during the nomination fight.

Democrats in Congress want to push this bill as a means to punish Romney for his wealth, politically in this case rather than legally, since the bill has zero chance of passing into law. It’s a naked attempt to use Congress to attack and damage the likely challenger to the incumbent President.

In 1788 James Madison, one of the framers of our government, warned about Congressional attempts to issue political and legal punishments. He said, "Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. ... The sober … have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community."

Perhaps we should start paying attention to the Constitution.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/04/12/Obama-Impugns-Romney-in-a-Flagrant-Abuse-of-Power.aspx#page1

"The Five Minute ENERGY Blog: Post 2"

"The Five Minute ENERGY Blog: Post 2" by Tim Dunn

  by: Hugh Hewitt    

Here is the second installment of Tim Dunn's series on the American energy crisis. Part one is here. More to follow in the weeks ahead.

The 5-Minute ENERGY Blog POST 2: Gas: An Energy Success Story

The last Post argued that our Energy Future will largely be determined by who gets to decide, who gets to make energy decisions. If we have decisions made by individual Americans in a competitive market, we will continue to have ample energy. But if we have decisions made by central planners, we will see energy famine and perhaps even the return of poverty to America.

Consider the recent history of natural gas in America as a good illustration how this might work. But before we discuss how recent gas market developments might illustrate the power of the market in making energy choices, let’s first have a bit of conversation about what natural gas actually is.

“Natural gas” is primarily methane gas. It is organic. Methane is what you burn in your house if you have a gas stove or gas heater that runs on gas piped in from the gas utility. Methane gas has a chemical composition of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. When it burns in the presence of oxygen, it converts to CO2 and H2O and releases heat energy, the fire you see on the stove. It is organic because it is made out of carbon and hydrogen.

Methane gas makes up a large part of the gas you might occasionally release from your colon. If a horse flagellates too near an open flame at just the wrong time and place, there will be a substantial ignition. This “poot” methane comes from the digestion of human food, which largely consists of molecules made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The word “carbohydrate” stems from two root words, carbon and hydrate, or carbon and water. Water of course is made of oxygen and hydrogen.

Decomposing organic material, such as food in your stomach, produces methane gas. There are companies that install gas gathering systems in landfills. They know the landfill will have a large concentration of organic matter, and will decompose and form methane gas. They collect the gas and sell it to power generation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion

If you look up “organic chemistry” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry you will see the very definition of “organic” means made out of carbon and hydrogen. That is because that is the essence of life. The main building block of protein molecules is atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

So methane gas is an organic fuel. As a way to remember this, think of natural gas, methane, as the earth flagellating. We burn this gas to generate heat.

Natural gas is generated by nature. Layers of shale buried miles under the surface contain perhaps 1 to 10% organic matter, which decomposes and forms organic molecules, including methane. Oil and gas companies drill holes in the ground to bring this gas to surface. Instead of a colon to transmit the gas, we use steel pipe in the ground.

So now back to recent developments in natural gas, broadly speaking in the 1990’s the wholesale price of natural gas averaged around $2.00 per MMBTU then in the 2000’s jumped to $6 and even $8. This price signal sent drillers scrambling for new gas sources, and they found it using fracture stimulation on shales.

The initial discovery was in the Barnett shale in the vicinity of Dallas Ft. Worth. Then the industry figured it would work elsewhere, and it did. Pretty soon drilling expanded to the Marcellus shale in the eastern states among many other places. The success was immense.

And, as you might expect, so much new supply came on that the price crashed. Currently wholesale prices are back below $2.

This is what happens when the market makes decisions. Imagine a different scenario where energy-crats faced the problem of increased gas prices due to limited supply. Would they go out and risk capital to seek a reward from the market to bring on new supplies? Doubtful. More likely they would impose price controls, guaranteeing the supply will shrink. Or perhaps create a rationing system, to ensure the most important users of gas get first priority.

As the energy-crat rationing program transpires, you can imagine the shortage will grow. This will allow the energy-crat communications department to decry the greed and mismanagement of the private sector, and expand the rationing program. To do that they will need more manpower, and more control.

So the market shrivels, the ability to choose is concentrated, innovation dies, and the energy market shrinks dramatically.

There are of course forces at work to promote just this sort of outcome. To them I would offer the noise often associated with certain releases of methane. To the entrepreneurs, investors, technology innovators and industrial workers I offer applause and thanks. This great system of self-governance continues to deliver bounty to be shared by all, and it is a successful wonder to behold.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/e8ef5498-a6b9-400b-ab84-da1ac47983a9 

(DP: Read the speech sending chills through Obamacrats, from Chicago to DC) “A Better America Begins Tonight”

Mitt Romney’s Speech: “A Better America Begins Tonight”

by America's News HQ  

 

Mitt Romney delivered his speech tonight from Manchester, New Hampshire. Below is the transcript and video of his full speech.

Thank you Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York! And tonight I can say thank you, America. After 43 primaries and caucuses, many long days and more than a few long nights, I can say with confidence – and gratitude – that you have given me a great honor and solemn responsibility. And, together, we will win on November 6th!

We launched this campaign not far from here on a beautiful June day. It has been an extraordinary journey.

Americans have always been eternal optimists. But over the last three and a half years, we have seen hopes and dreams diminished by false promises and weak leadership. Everywhere I go, Americans are tired of being tired, and many of those who are fortunate enough to have a job are working harder for less.

For every single mom who feels heartbroken when she has to explain to her kids that she needs to take a second job … for grandparents who can’t afford the gas to visit their grandchildren … for the mom and dad who never thought they’d be on food stamps … for the small business owner desperately cutting back just to keep the doors open one more month – to all of the thousands of good and decent Americans I’ve met who want nothing more than a better chance, a fighting chance, to all of you, I have a simple message: Hold on a little longer. A better America begins tonight.

Tonight is the start of a new campaign to unite every American who knows in their heart that we can do better! The last few years have been the best that Barack Obama can do, but it’s not the best America can do!

Tonight is the beginning of the end of the disappointments of the Obama years and the start of a new and better chapter that we will write together.

This has already been a long campaign, but many Americans are just now beginning to focus on the choice before the country. In the days ahead, I look forward to spending time with many of you personally. I want to hear what’s on your mind, hear about your concerns, and learn about your families. I want to know what you think we can do to make this country better…and what you expect from your next President.

And I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. I’ll probably start out talking about my wonderful wife Ann – I usually do – and I’ll probably bore you with stories about our kids and grandkids. I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company. Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.

I’d say that you might have heard that I was successful in business. And that rumor is true. But you might not have heard that I became successful by helping start a business that grew from 10 people to hundreds of people. You might not have heard that our business helped start other businesses, like Staples and Sports Authority and a new steel mill and a learning center called Bright Horizons. And I’d tell you that not every business made it and there were good days and bad days, but every day was a lesson. And after 25 years, I know how to lead us out of this stagnant Obama economy and into a job-creating recovery!

Four years ago Barack Obama dazzled us in front of Greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change. But after we came down to earth, after the celebration and parades, what do we have to show for three and a half years of President Obama?

Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one? Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job? Do you have a better chance to get a better job? Do you pay less at the pump?

If the answer were “yes” to those questions, then President Obama would be running for re-election based on his achievements…and rightly so. But because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions. That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time. But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid.
People are hurting in America. And we know that something is wrong, terribly wrong with the direction of the country.

We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions.

Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.

This President is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He’s asking us to accept that Washington knows best – and can provide all.
We’ve already seen where this path leads. It erodes freedom. It deadens the entrepreneurial spirit. And it hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. Those who promise to spread the wealth around only ever succeed in spreading poverty. Other nations have chosen that path. It leads to chronic high unemployment, crushing debt, and stagnant wages.

I have a very different vision for America, and of our future. It is an America driven by freedom, where free people, pursuing happiness in their own unique ways, create free enterprises that employ more and more Americans. Because there are so many enterprises that are succeeding, the competition for hard-working, educated and skilled employees is intense, and so wages and salaries rise.

I see an America with a growing middle class, with rising standards of living. I see children even more successful than their parents – some successful even beyond their wildest dreams – and others congratulating them for their achievement, not attacking them for it.

This America is fundamentally fair. We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends’ businesses; we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.

In the America I see, character and choices matter. And education, hard work, and living within our means are valued and rewarded. And poverty will be defeated, not with a government check, but with respect and achievement that is taught by parents, learned in school, and practiced in the workplace.
This is the America that was won for us by the nation’s Founders, and earned for us by the Greatest Generation. It is the America that has produced the most innovative, most productive, and the most powerful economy in the world.

As I look around at the millions of Americans without work, the graduates who can’t get a job, the soldiers who return home to an unemployment line, it breaks my heart. This does not have to be. It is the result of failed leadership and of a faulty vision. We will restore the promise of America only if we restore the principles of freedom and opportunity that made America the greatest nation on earth.
Today, the hill before us is a little steep but we have always been a nation of big steppers. Many Americans have given up on this President but they haven’t ever thought about giving up. Not on themselves. Not on each other. And not on America.

In the days ahead, join me in the next step toward that destination of November 6th, when across America we can give a sigh of relief and know that the Promise of America has been kept. The dreamers can dream a little bigger, the help wanted signs can be dusted off, and we can start again.
And this time we’ll get it right. We’ll stop the days of apologizing for success at home and never again apologize for America abroad.

There was a time – not so long ago – when each of us could walk a little taller and stand a little straighter because we had a gift that no one else in the world shared. We were Americans. That meant something different to each of us but it meant something special to all of us. We knew it without question. And so did the world.

Those days are coming back. That’s our destiny.

We believe in America. We believe in ourselves. Our greatest days are still ahead. We are, after all, Americans!

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

(go to link for video of speech--15 minutes): http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/04/24/transcript-of-mitt-romneys-speech-a-better-america-begins-tonight/

Don's column: Local candidates, causes; leftist tactics

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   4/24/2012

Local candidates, causes; leftist tactics

The Tea Party Patriots will host several candidates at tonight’s 6 PM meeting at the Westside Grange. Steve Chamblin, running for Supervisor District 1, the seat being vacated by Greg Avilla, will address the Patriots. State Assemblyman Dan Logue, who’s running in the recently reshaped 3^rd Assembly District against Bob Williams, will also appear. Finally, someone familiar to many for his candidacy over the years for Congress, Colonel Pete Stiglich (ret.), will round out the slate of speakers. They will all entertain questions under the Patriots’ format – questions only, no statements or speeches in the interests of everyone’s time.

The Tea Party Patriots candidates’ forums are not the only venues for the public to meet, hear and question those running for federal, state or local offices; they offer a somewhat more intimate, casual and personal opportunity to rub elbows with folks that have taken that bold step as citizens to step up and let voters judge their worthiness for office. Such forums are hardly the only informative service performed by the Tea Party; members provide updates on Supervisor meetings (not many of us can regularly spare hours of our time on Tuesday mornings), as well as the local and regional activities (some would say malicious designs) of the Forestry, Fish and Game, and Caltrans departments. We have updates on the Antelope Sewer Project, such as it is.

An upcoming June event will be the Support Rural America Sheriffs Event at the Tehama District Fairgrounds. It will be a public informational meeting with free admission, hosted by our Tehama County Sheriff Dave Hencratt, and a panel of Sheriffs addressing Constitutional issues with a Q and A following.

You see, while liberals and Democrats tirelessly lambaste and pillory the character and politics of the Tea Party movement that, through its members, wishes only for fiscal restraint, Constitutional liberty and economic freedom, the real Tea Party Patriots across the country found that it all starts locally. That key to the longevity and impact of the Tea Party is perhaps what is behind the hateful, hysterical histrionics emanating from liberals from Washington to Portland to Chico.

But not everywhere: We’ve seen local Democrats come, take notes and depart with little to reinforce predetermined images. We’ve seen the Coffee Party movement come, fizzle and go. The Occupy crowd made a couple of local articles and photos, after which they, like the Coffee folks, folded into the only local, or nationwide, home for the left – the Democratic Party.

Since so-called “Tax Day” protests have become rallying events for the Tea Party, the Occupy and other left wing rabble have taken to tactics of disruption and intimidation, as happened in Portland and Chico recently. Portland being a nexus for the more whacked-out of the Occupiers, they organized just such a counter protest at the place and time of the Tea Party rally. In the finest Andrew Breitbart tradition, our side took great photos and videos of the outrageous signs, actions and screaming directed our way, and immediately posted it all for everyone to see.

One priceless vignette: an Occupier/union/student type giving a double-middle-finger gesture, complete with twisted, screaming face, in front of a young woman simply singing the national anthem. Classy, no? Disgusting, yes! Based on Internet sites catering to that crowd, it was clear that this attempt to intimidate and silence conservatives’ free speech was well organized and planned. I heard of a similar show of disruption occurred in Chico at their Tea Party rally.

Not so at the Bend Tea Party rally we attended on Sunday, the 15^th, in a downtown Bend, Oregon, park, which drew about 400 Patriots to hear speakers and get state and national updates on various topics. The issue of vote fraud was to be addressed by none other than James O’Keefe, whose exposés of reprehensible and illegal activities at ACORN offices forced them to disband and lose funding. There have been numerous prosecutions and convictions of ACORN employees for vote fraud.

O’Keefe has more recently recorded how easy it is to commit fraudulent voting, first by just walking into a voting precinct back east and using the names of dead people from the obituary page; no ID was requested. He then went into a Washington, DC, voting location and identified himself as one “Eric Holder” (as in the Attorney General), asking if they wanted to see any identification to prove it. They insisted it was not necessary.

Bear in mind that he never voted, never produced any fake ID, but on the advice of his attorneys, he did not appear at the Bend rally because the Justice Department was investigating – not the ease with which an unidentified person could easily, illegally, vote – but rather whistleblower O’Keefe for saying he was Eric Holder. Also, when I asked what they knew about vote fraud in Oregon, the speakers told me they knew of as many as 10,000 phony votes in Portland routinely used to tip elections.

Last but not least, lefty activists from Occupy Philly and Fight For Philly attempted to crash a Philadelphia Tea Party event attended by Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Organizer Don Adams heroically blocked their entrance; their attempt to use disruptive tactics under the guise of “just asking questions” failed.

The GSA Scandal: What Does It Mean?

The GSA Scandal: What Does It Mean?

 by John Hinderaker in Federal Budget, Liberals

We haven’t said much about the GSA scandal. Is it important? The dollars involved are small, by Washington standards, but it illustrates a timeless truth: no one else will spend the money you earned as carefully as you will. When you are spending other people’s money, why shouldn’t you waste it? That is the attitude that generally (although not always, of course) prevails in government. Michael Ramirez sums it up:



If you don’t want the government to waste your money, there is only one solution: don’t give it to them.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/the-gsa-scandal-what-does-it-mean.php

My Primer for Obama--(DP: EVERY WORD IS WORTH READING; GET INFORMED BIG TIME, BY A REALLY SMART GUY)

My Primer for Obama

by Richard A. Epstein (Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow and member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force)

On the differences between Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics.

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President Obama’s recent speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors signaled the opening of a political gambit in the upcoming presidential election. In dealing with the proposed budget of Representative Paul Ryan, the president sought to discredit nineteenth-century laissez-faire economics by linking that movement to Social Darwinism: Ryan’s plan, the president said, “is thinly veiled Social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who is willing to work for it.”

The president’s well-crafted reference to the term ushered in a fierce political dispute between his supporters and detractors. In the midst of the din, no one has undertaken the essential task of sorting out the theoretical differences and similarities between Social Darwinism and laissez-faire.

Illustration by Barbara Kelley

Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published in 1859. Darwin’s tome offered the first complete view of evolution, which in two words boils down to “natural selection.” Random variation is found in all attributes of any large population of species. Those members that have variations that prove successful win out over their less successful rivals. In nature, this process takes place by a bloody process of competition for scarce resources. Individual organisms stop at nothing in order to satisfy nature’s imperative of self-preservation. The familiar expression “nature red in tooth and claw” spelled death for the losers in the Darwinian race for survival.

The social contract theory that projects the same grim fate for human beings is found in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, which envisions life in the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Only state power could supply the needed antidote. The critical question became, what kind of state? The standard laissez-faire answer has always been a state that is strong enough to prevent aggression and fraud.

Even if government did nothing other than control those twin perils, there would still be an enormous gulf between biological and social competition. With biological evolution, death follows from the failure to marshal resources. In social settings under laissez-faire, bankruptcy is the fate of the individual or firm that is unable to succeed in competitive markets. It has long been understood that the unregulated operation of the market can produce major inequalities of wealth. To listen to President Obama speak, one would conclude that that is just about the only thing that markets do.

With biological evolution, death follows from the failure to marshal resources.

Put otherwise, open markets under laissez-faire have made this country a “land of opportunity.” Markets work through voluntary exchange. State enforcement of these exchanges improves the odds that they will produce joint benefits for all parties involved, regardless of their relative wealth. A state that adopts laissez-faire, therefore, commits itself to a regime of freedom of contract, meaning the government will not intervene to set prices, wages, and terms and conditions in competitive markets. The basic intuition is that contract terms set by the state will always reduce the gains from trade, even if they do not destroy the transaction in its entirety.

The question is whether laissez-faire requires more than the faithful enforcement of ordinary contracts. Of course it does. In particular, it was widely understood that the creation of public infrastructure and the organization of national defense are government functions, given that the government can’t coordinate the behavior of private actors without the use of state-based coercion.

But unlike the proponents of the modern social democratic state, the defenders of laissez-faire understood that state powers had to be tightly limited, so that they tended to favor flat taxes for general revenues and just compensation for property taken for public use. Put otherwise, only the critics, and never the supporters, of laissez-faire claimed that private markets could operate without public support.

The above account is a thumbnail sketch of laissez-faire given over fifty years ago by the great economic historian Jacob Viner, one of its most thoughtful critics. To Viner, laissez-faire fell short on one dimension: Namely, it did not provide for any redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, which forms such a large part of the Obama tax crusade.

Yet Viner’s criticism is overstated when set against the behavior of the champions of laissez-faire, who in the late nineteenth century understood much about the diminishing marginal utility of wealth even without government prompting. On their own, many of the richest people of that age acted in the same generous way as the financial titans of our own age. The theoretical foundation for their actions lay in the elusive notion of an “imperfect obligation,” or an obligation that was binding on conscience and enforceable by informal social sanctions even if not enforceable by law.

It is tempting to pooh-pooh the force of a fuzzy notion like “imperfect obligation” by claiming that it subjects the welfare of the poor to the whims of the rich. But putting the point in perspective changes the focus from income to consumption. At this point, we should think of robber-barons such as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Leland Stanford, who founded the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University, and Stanford University respectively. In modern days we can think of the Sloan-Kettering Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Buffett Foundation as organizations whose founders acted in accordance with deeply ingrained principles of philanthropy.

Under laissez-faire, bankruptcy is the fate of those unable to succeed in the market.

The same attitudes, moreover, carried over to the creation of charitable hospitals and the provision of care to the poor through churches and organizations like the Salvation Army, all of which would be a lot bigger in the absence of heavy competition from state-run institutions that operate off of tax dollars. For once, Warren Buffett got it right when he observed that he is a lot better at giving away money than the federal government is.

These principles of laissez-faire, which I am proud to endorse, do not amount to a grisly form of Social Darwinism, as the critics of laissez-faire claim. Social Darwinism has no view whatsoever on the question of how the state supplies public goods to its citizens. Social Darwinism also (at least in some of its versions) takes a decidedly hostile attitude toward private charity. In its weaker version, the argument is that charitable assistance only weakens the fiber of the human race and thus should be assiduously avoided. Classical liberals never denied that risk, but thought that they could design their private institutions in a way that provided for short-term need without planting the seeds of long-term breakdown in social mores.

In its stronger (and rarer) version, Social Darwinism argued that the state should prohibit voluntary assistance to the poor and perhaps take on the ugly business of eugenics and forced sterilization of mentally impaired human beings. That view received a grudging constitutional blessing from Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote that “three generations of imbeciles is enough” in his opinion for Buck v. Bell (1927), sustaining Virginia’s program of forced sterilization for the feeble-minded.

The irony here runs deep. The same Justice Holmes was the perennial favorite of the Progressives because of his one sentence denunciation of laissez-faire in the 1905 case of Lochner v. New York: “The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.” Yet Holmes never bothered to identify which Supreme Court justice, if any, had taken a position remotely similar to the one that Holmes falsely attributed to Spencer.

It is worth stressing that the Supreme Court had many thoughtful defenders of variations of laissez-faire, such as Melville Fuller, who served as Chief Justice between 1888 and 1910. Other defenders included Stephen J. Field (1863–1887), John Marshall Harlan (1877–1911), Rufus Peckham (1895–1909), and David Brewer (1889–1910). These men brought to the bench different backgrounds and attitudes and (Harlan excepted) stand sorely condemned for their endorsement of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Unlike laissez-faire, Social Darwinism takes a decidedly hostile attitude to private charity.

As the legal historian James Ely has argued, it would be quite a mistake to think that any of them in any way endorsed the Social-Darwinist position that influenced Holmes. Instead, their program was one that we would do well to emulate today. Their greatest institutional challenge was to find the correct approach to rate regulation for the railroads and public utilities—the most pressing judicial issue between the end of the Civil War and the rise of the New Deal.

Their performance was far from perfect, but they were consistent in their effort to let regulators bleed out monopoly profits without allowing them to confiscate the capital invested in these public utilities. Similarly, they understood that regulating rate and hours in competitive industry produced dislocations that could be avoided by federal action. They also sought to limit the unwise expansion of federal power under the Commerce Clause in a set of decisions that I have already discussed.

On the negative side of the ledger, they were too statist insofar as they gave their blessing to land-use regulations, including rent control and zoning. Nor did they do anything to rein in state or federal powers of taxation when they sanctioned progressive taxes, estate taxes, and inheritance taxes. The bottom line is that if these justices erred, they did so on the side of big government, not on the side of any lean version of laissez-faire economics.

Yet their intellectual failures are miniscule in comparison with those of President Obama. His insistence that his program will open up opportunities for all Americans across the board is a bit of idle self-promotion in the face of the deadly combination of high unemployment rates and shrinking labor-market participation that his policies have wrought. His plea to restore the dignity of the middle class is code for his nonstop program of strengthening the hand of labor unions whose regressive and exclusionary policies undermine job opportunities for the very individuals Obama purports to hold closest to his heart.

He compounds these errors by insisting that the enormous contributions of those at the top of the income scale are futile exercises in “trickle down” economics, without bothering to note the literally thousands of good jobs created by the new technologies and businesses introduced by the billionaire entrepreneurs whom he castigates at every turn. His final insult is to denounce those who pay the bulk of the nation’s tax revenues as free riders on those who take much from it. Right now, the top one percent that garners roughly 20 percent of the income pays about 40 percent of the taxes. But in our current political culture, it receives only a small fraction of the particularized goods that constitute the bulk of the entitlement budget.

Yet Obama, without argument, always treats the current social distribution of burdens as the legitimate baseline. Every new increase of burdens on the rich is legitimate. Any effort to undo them is not. But it is not possible to cut the taxes on those who at present pay no taxes nor to cut benefits on those who at present receive no benefits.

It is imperative for all thinking citizens to oppose programs that have two objectives: increasing transfer payments and destroying the productive base. Every defender of laissez-faire should oppose the president’s policies, even at the cost of being dubbed a Social Darwinist. It is, after all, a small price to pay.

---

Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, intellectual property, and property rights. His most recent books are Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (2011), The Case against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover Press, 2009) and Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property (Oxford Press, 2008).
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/113956

Happy Earth Day, 2012!

Happy Earth Day, Power Line readers. I know it’s hard, but try to contain your ecstatic frenzy as you go about your day. What?—You mean you aren’t assiduously checking off all the boxes on your “50 Ways to Save the Planet” list today?

It’s been my theme here that the entire green crusade has lost its mojo and is unlikely to get it back (which is not to say that the enormous momentum of the EPA’s bureaucratic-regulatory juggernaut will slow any time soon). The latest annual Gallup survey on the environment finds that public concern about air and water pollution is at historic lows, and concern for global warming has fallen 10 percent (from 40 to 30) since 2000, and continues to come in dead last on the ranking of environmental problems American worry about. The climateers are touting a recent Yale survey that finds an uptick in people who link this year’s warm winter to climate change, but this is a thin reed, as it will disappear with the next cold winter, and in any case clashes with the desire of the public for lower gasoline prices so we can use an adequate amount of fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, the MediaMatters crowd has its knickers in a bunch because their supposed allies in the mainstream media have grown bored with climate change and aren’t covering it as much as they used to as I have been predicting for at least three years would eventually happen. This hed is the most fun: “Sunday Show Coverage Of Climate Change Fell 90% Between 2009 And 2011.” (But irony of ironies, guess what Sunday news show gave the most coverage to the issue: the dreaded Fox News Sunday! Heh.)

Extra Credit for Spotting the Blooper Here

So what’s a desperate greenie to do? Fantasize about the good old days mostly. The Nation magazine’s Mark Hertsgaard notes that “some environmentalists have called for abolishing Earth Day. But that would be throwing the baby out with the polluted bathwater. Instead, why not recall the real history of Earth Day and revive its original—and much more demanding—vision? . . . As on that first Earth Day, we need millions of Americans to stand up and take action, risks and political scalps.

As climate crusader Mohamed Nasheed, the deposed Maldives president, told The Nation recently, ‘You need to put a million people in the streets to show politicians you are serious.’”

But that will kind of get in the way of (Re-) Occupy, won’t it?

But if the old anti-Vietnam War/Civil Rights Era massive march model can’t be revived, there’s always civil disobedience and violence against one’s opponents. A few years back there was talk of holding “Nuremberg Trials” for climate skeptics, and then there was the infamous and appalling “Climate 10:10” video entitled “No Pressure” showing climate skeptics—including school children—being blown up, Monty Python-style, only without the slightest trace of humor. (My contribution to the “Hitler Learns About. . .” genre on this episode can be found here.)

Forbes.com columnist Steve Zwick offers one of those head-smackers right out of the “we-know-where-you-live” genre in an attempt to compete with the other crazies:

We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn until the innocent are rescued. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.

I wonder if Zwick will start with that well-known beachfront property owner Al Gore.
I’ll say it again: Losers.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/happy-earth-day-2012.php

"The 5-Minute ENERGY Blog: Post 1"

"The 5-Minute ENERGY Blog: Post 1" by Tim Dunn

 by: Hugh Hewitt

I am pleased to introduce Tim Dunn, CEO of CrownQuest Operating, one of the top oil producers in Texas. Tim is also the vice-chair of the Texas Public Policy Institute and a thorough-going, thoughtful conservative. I asked Tim if he would consider writing a primer to the nation's energy issues, one which broke it down for the average man or woman staring at the gas pump and wondering "What am I going to do?" and "What is the country going to do?" The first installment is below:

The 5-minute ENERGY Blog by Tim Dunn

POST 1: IS AN ENERGY CRISIS LOOMING?

No one knows the future, but here is a prediction:

Whether we face continued energy abundance in the US, or face a looming crisis will largely depend on the political choices we make in the next dozen or so years.

Energy is to the economy what food is to a human. You can’t get much more basic than the need to eat. Energy provides the ability for humans to accomplish many times more than their own physical efforts. It is energy that drives the machines that allows an American to be many times more productive than workers in non-industrial economies, from tractors to computers.

The US economy needs Calories to burn for the same reason the human body needs Calories to burn: to accomplish work and activity, to generate heat and support life. Impoverished people do not have sufficient Calories from food, so they suffer a lack of energy to work and might even die.

So what is the outlook for “food” for our economy? Are we headed for a subsistence diet of gruel and bread crust, or will we continue to eat beef and potatoes?

I would say “It depends.” It depends on a number of factors. But what I believe it depends on most is the political choices Americans make over the next dozen or so years. And the primary question is “Who decides?” Who will make energy choices for Americans?

If we decide as a country that policy experts in Washington DC should make decisions about energy, then I predict the bureaucracy economy in DC will be very fat and powerful, and the rest of the economy will get very thin and weak. On the other hand, if we are able to retain our heritage of self-governance, and allow individual Americans to make their own choices in a free marketplace of ideas, businesses and consumer choices, then I think we will have a fit and prosperous economy for the indefinite future. And, of course, the bureaucrat economy will have to go on a diet.

It’s one or the other. We can’t have market choices and a centrally planned economy.

There is every reason to believe we have plenty of resources. Some prices may increase. Adaptation and innovation will be needed. But I don’t think retreat is necessary. We won’t need to put everyone in the economy (except the rulers of course) back on a subsistence diet.

The Ruling Elite and their sycophants seem to understand this well. The burning of fuel, including human food, generates carbon dioxide as a by-product. Regulating carbon dioxide emission means controlling essentially any activity that generates work. It is an avenue to a centrally planned economy. They get that.

Whoever controls the energy economy will control, well, the economy. Right now consumers have substantial control of the energy economy. We still get to make most of our own transportation choices, for example.

And that, I think, is what is under attack. Statists don’t like us being able to make our own choices. They prefer a smaller, more controllable economy. Industrial forces much prefer regulations that limit competition (ie our choices) and guarantee profits. And political forces see the immense money flowing through the energy economy as an endless fuel source for the economy they care most about: the political patronage economy.

If energy decisions are made in a self-governance manner, in the marketplace, then we will have hundreds of millions of enthusiastic and gifted Americans working every day to solve energy problems and make energy work for our mutual benefit. There is great reason to hope and be optimistic with that perspective.

But if energy decisions are made by a handful of “experts” we will get what every other country who has ever adopted central planning gets: tyranny and poverty.

I am optimistic. Even though I think the battle will be tough, I believe the American Spirit will prevail, and we will find a way to preserve our heritage of self-governance.

 http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/91d9aba8-6a67-4ae8-8cf7-2a6c2f357c93

President Obama’s Medicare slush fund

President Obama’s Medicare slush fund—Benjamin E. Sasse & Charles Hurt - NYPOST.com

Call it President Obama’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President — a political slush fund at the Health and Human Services Department.

Only this isn’t some little fund from shadowy private sources; this is taxpayer money, redirected to help Obama win another term. A massive amount of it, too — $8.3 billion. Yes, that’s billion, with a B.

Here is how it works.

The most oppressive aspects of the ObamaCare law don’t kick in until after the 2012 election, when the president will no longer be answerable to voters. More “flexibility,” he recently explained to the Russians.

But certain voters would surely notice one highly painful part of the law before then — namely, the way it guts the popular Medicare Advantage program.

For years, 12 million seniors have relied on these policies, a more market-oriented alternative to traditional Medicare, without the aggravating gaps in coverage.

But as part of its hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts, the Obama one-size-fits-all plan slashes reimbursement rates for Medicare Advantage starting next year — herding many seniors back into the government-run program.

Under federal “open-enrollment” guidelines, seniors must pick their Medicare coverage program for next year by the end of this year — which means they should be finding out before Election Day.
Nothing is more politically volatile than monkeying with the health insurance of seniors, who aren’t too keen on confusing upheavals in their health care and are the most diligent voters in the land. This could make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

Making matters even more politically dangerous for Obama is that open enrollment begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the polls.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.

This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.
But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.

The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.

That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.

Obama can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967 statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency and economy of health services.”

Past demonstration projects have studied new medical techniques or strategies aimed at improving care or reducing costs. The point is to find ways to lower the costs of Medicare by allowing medical technocrats to make efficient decisions without interference from vested interests.

Now Obama means to turn it on its head — diverting the money to a blatantly nonexperimental purpose to serve his political needs.

A Government Accounting Office report released this morning shows, quite starkly, that there simply is no experiment being conducted, just money being spent. Understandably, the GAO recommends that HHS cancel the project.

Congress should immediately launch an investigation into this unprecedented misuse of taxpayer money and violation of the public trust, which certainly presses the boundaries of legality and very well may breach them.

If he’s not stopped, Obama will spend $8 billion in taxpayer funds for a scheme to mask the debilitating effects on seniors of his signature piece of legislation just long enough to get himself re-elected.

Now that is some serious audacity.

Benjamin E. Sasse, a former US assistant secretary of health, is president of Midland University. Charles Hurt covers politics in DC.
charleshurt@live.com

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/an_billion_trick_ImTBFfz7MeuZLJY7JzXEIJ#ixzz1sv1WBBN9

What's Color of Change hiding about itself?

What's Color of Change hiding about itself?

byMark Tapscott Executive Editor

Coca Cola executives who recently decided to stop supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) did so in response to demands from an obscure left-wing activist group, Color of Change (COC). So were executives of giant candy-maker Mars, Inc. when they announced a similar decision earlier today.

That is why Color of Change may be the most powerful group in America you've never heard about.

The demand that Coke, Mars and other corporate donors stop making contributions to ALEC - a long-established conservative legislative group that researches and writes model legislation that is often adopted by state legislatures - is only the latest COC campaign to hit a nerve.

Previous COC successes include pushing advertisers on Glenn Beck's Fox News Show to withdraw their ads, a campaign that played a role in the cable news and opinion network'a decision to drop the controversial production in June 2011.

Others who have felt the wrath of COC include now-former MSNBC opinion analyst Patrick Buchanan, Fox Business News anchor Eric Bolling, Lou Dobbs when he was on CNN, and the late Andrew Breitbart.

On its web site, COC said ALEC should be boycotted because "the right wing has been trying to stop Black people, other people of color, young people, and the elderly from voting — and now some of America’s biggest companies are helping them do it. Demand that these companies stop funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)."

The conservative group's model Voter ID laws require those seeking to vote in state and local elections to present photo IDs, just as commercial airline passengers are required to do when going through security or when customers in a pharmacy buy certain prescription or over-the-counter drugs.

Rob Scheberle, ALEC's executive director, responded to COC's charges:

“Over the last 24 hours, ALEC has been inundated with letters of support from elected officials, community leaders and concerned citizens in response to the intimidation campaign launched by a coalition of extreme liberal activists committed to silencing anyone who disagrees with their agenda.

“I am thankful for the support and want to take this opportunity to remind people what we are facing:

“First, the people now attacking ALEC and its members are the same people who have always pushed for big-government solutions. Our support for free markets and limited government stands in stark contrast to their state-dependent utopia.

This is not about one piece of legislation. This is an attempt to silence our organization and it has been going on for more than a year.

“Second, ALEC is one of America’s premier ideas laboratories when it comes to advocating free market reforms. We are a target because our opponents believe they have the opportunity to attack an effective, successful organization that promotes free-market, limited government policies that they disagree with.

Go here for the rest of the ALEC response to COC.
More recently, the group has sought to apply its influence to lobbying Congress against passage of anti-Internet piracy legislation and to prevent cuts in funding for student loans.

But for all of its successes in generating public pressure against conservative advocacy groups and media figures, COC remains something of a mysterious organization.

The organization was not forthcoming about details of its operation when approached earlier this week by The Washington Examiner. No response was received to two emails sent to one of the individuals indentified in a news release as spokesmen for COC.

Though it claims to have more than 81,000 "members," the group, which is registered with the IRS as a 501(C)(4) advocacy organization, has a small paid staff of four people and revenues of $515,219, according to its 2010 Form 990 tax return. Only $21,000 was listed for employee salary and benefits costs.

James Rucker is named by the 990 as executive director, but no compensation figures are included for him, even though he is listed as devoting 40 hours per week to the organization.

Only one other officer is listed, Heidi Hess, who is named "director," but spends only two hours per week on COC business and receives no compensation, according to the 990.

Rucker is described by Huffington Post as "co-founder of ColorOfChange.org. Founded in the wake of Katrina, ColorOfChange.org is the leading online citizen lobby for African-Americans and their allies. Formerly, Rucker was director of grassroots mobilization at MoveOn.org."

Rucker and Hess are jointly listed on Key Wiki as having contributed $10,000-$14,999 to Dream Reborn, a project of Green for All, which is described as "a national organization that aims to build a green economy 'strong enough to lift people out of poverty.' Its goal is to secure $1 billion in funding for green-collar job training." Former Obama White House green jobs czar Van Jones was a founder of Green for All.

The group's largest single expense - for $197,486 - is listed as "Other," with no further details provided.

The group does have significant liabilities, including a debt of $110,084 owed to "GetEqual," and repayment of a loan by Rucker to the organization in the amount of $72,040 "to temp. fund operations." Other accounts payable and accrued expenses totalling $269,795, for total liabilities of $451,949.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/whats-color-change-hiding-about-itself/477641

"Who is Warring on Whom? What is the White House Strategy and Why"

"Who is Warring on Whom? What is the White House Strategy and Why" by Clark Judge

       

The weekly column from Clark Judge: managing director, White House Wirters Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute

Yesterday, senior White House campaign strategist David Axelrod put his finger on the exact question of the 2012 campaign.

He did it in a Twitter rebuttal of the Gallup Poll’s latest survey. The sampling was taken between Thursday and Sunday and shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by five points. Gallup, Axelrod wrote, "has a sample that looks much more like the electorate in 2010 than the voting population that is likely to turn out in 2012."

You may have been wondering about the bizarre blizzard of charges blowing out of Team Obama of late. Is there anything, in their telling, the GOP has not declared war upon? Race, class, gender – no matter what your identity, the GOP, they insist, has gone into battle against you. It is a fair bet that no campaign in American history has embraced identity politics as completely as has the Obama effort, and we are only in April.

But how could the candidate who said, “There is no black America or white America…. There is just the United States of America,” have flip flopped so completely?

That is not a rhetorical question. Part of top-level politics is establishing a consistent identity. Think of the presidents of the last thirty years: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush. Each had clear personality traits that he displayed from the beginning to the end of his public life and that infused his every position and presentation. And as a result, voters felt they knew who these men were.

But who can we now say Mr. Obama is? Uniter? Divider? Post-identity politics? Propounder of identity politics? Hope and change? Same old same old? This is the kind of identity disruption that usually spells the early end to electoral viability.

In the present instance, though, it reflects serious concern about Mr. Obama’s reelection chances.

In recent history, it is said, when a president has been unseated after a single term, the prior popular off-year-election vote by party for the House of Representatives has been within one or two percentage points of the next presidential vote.

And that is the Obama campaign’s problem.

Unless the administration can change the national topic from state of the economy and size of the deficit, this year’s balloting is sure to be dj vu (2010 version) all over again. It doesn’t take a political savant to see that the unending list of wars that Team Obama accuses the GOP of waging is in part a drive to distract. If everyone is talking about Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney, no one will be talking about the still stagnant economy and the futility of the unprecedented stimulus spending. And the nation’s debt will not be even a blip on the nation’s political pulse meter.

But it is more than that.

Women, African-Americans, any American with a high school educations or less: disproportionately these are the people who lost jobs in the downturn and are least likely to find new ones in the absence of a vigorous upturn. In other words, they are the voters who the moribund economy has hurt the most – and that economy is now the political property of the president.

Looking forward, they are also the Americans who will be most hurt by the president’s proposed doubling of the capital gains tax (the effect of the Buffet Rule). That move that will choke off the capital that funds the creation and expansion of new enterprises and of the jobs they generate. What’s more, they are the ones Obamacare’s damper on business expansion will most harm.

And they are the voters on whom the president’s reelection most depends.

Here, then, is Mr. Axelrod’s calculation: If these voters show up at the polls this year in the same numbers as they did in 2008, the president can win. If their turnout duplicates 2010, the president loses. With his record, the president can’t pull them out with hope. So he and his aides are turning to fear.

What a change.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/02c13461-2255-4fa3-a5b0-eae4639baa5e

Ed Gillespie lays out the race

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Ed Gillespie lays out the race

By Jennifer Rubin

I caught up with the newest addition to the Mitt Romney campaign, former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. He was on the road, but in a series of e-mail exchanges he gave Right Turn his take on the race. He is joining the campaign as a senior adviser, although he’s volunteering his time.

His experience in helping Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell win in a landslide may be more useful than he ever imagined. He tells me, “Bob McDonnell showed that a principled conservative can win big in a swing state, and he did it by talking about not only the features of conservative policies but the benefits. In other words, he didn’t just talk about keeping taxes low, he said that would help create jobs and enable people to decide for themselves how best to spend their hard earned money. We called it ‘finishing the sentence,’ and there is a valuable lesson in Gov. McDonnell’s success.”

Although Gillespie didn’t mention it, McDonnell also avoided getting bogged down in social issues in a race in which Democrats strained to raise wedge issues. That’s a wise pattern for Romney to follow as well.

Unlike President Obama, who seems determined to veer left, Gillespie has his eye on critical independent voters. It is not a matter of Romney changing his message but making sure his message is heard. Gillespie observes: “There is ample evidence in public polling that independents like Obama personally but have doubts about his leadership ability and ability to get things done. There’s a sense he’s wasted a lot of time in office on things that haven’t helped make things better for average Americans.” That suggests that Romney can do damage but should avoid shrill personal attacks. Gillespie agrees: “There is an opening there in the general election.”

Gillespie does not seem worried about unifying the Republican base. He contends, “Gov. Romney got more votes from conservatives in the GOP primary than any other candidate, and in a general election conservatives will be enthusiastic to put a stop to President Obama’s policies. I think our base will be energized by the very clear contrast between the president and our nominee in the fall election.” In other words, despite Rick Santorum’s last-gasp argument, the difference between Romney and Obama will be so vast that conservatives seeking to halt the Obama march leftward should be keen on electing Romney.

Right now polling shows a dramatic gender gap between Romney and Obama. But Gillespie insists that any concern about this is overblown. He tells me, “Both parties have had a gender gap for decades, with Republicans underperforming with women and Democrats underperforming with men.” He hints that the key to reducing it is a more refined economic message that focuses “on the damaging effects of President Obama’s policies when it comes to their jobs or their children’s opportunities, the cost and quality of health care, the higher prices for gas and food.” He argues women voters, in particular, are “not going to be distracted by the administration’s diversionary tactics and harsh rhetoric.” He claims, “That gap will close.”

With an anemic recovery underway, Romney has to walk a fine line between skewering the president’s policies and avoiding the appearance of talking down the economy. Gillespie turns the issue around: “Ironically it’s President Obama who seems to be talking down the economy, or at least lowering expectations. Suddenly ‘could be worse’ is supposed to be the norm for us. I don’t believe the American people believe that stagnant growth, unemployment at 8 percent, record high food stamp enrollments, massive debt and government control of our economy is really the new normal, as the administration seems to think it is.” Gillespie advances the idea that Romney will be the sunny optimist: “When Gov. Romney talks about the dreamers and entrepreneurs and the free enterprise system as the best means to lift millions out of poverty and provide for upward mobility, he taps into the innate optimism of the american people.”

Some Republicans, including many Romney supporters, think the extended primary has damaged Romney for the general election. Gillespie gives a less bleak assessment: “No doubt this has been a bruising primary, but I think it has been a net positive for Mitt Romney in terms of being a stronger standard bearer for our party and our principles.” Somewhere between Newt Gingrich’s attacks on Bain Capital and the harangues from Rick Santorum, Romney did formulate detailed and conservative positions on spending, taxes, entitlement and foreign affairs. In his last debate, he essentially leveled Santorum, and he then began in a series of victory speeches to make a more positive appeal based on free markets. Gillespie asserts: “I think he learned a lot from the other candidates, proved to be a strong debater, put together a national organization and found a compelling voice in terms of freedom itself being on the ballot in November.”

Republicans hope he is right. Gillespie is an experienced hand that should give Republicans some comfort. But even the best staff is at the mercy of its candidate. Romney will need to reassure the base while reaching out to moderates, to cut down on gaffes but find a way to connect with voters, and to indict Obama’s record without seeming mean-spirited. No one ever said this was going to be easy.

By Jennifer Rubin |

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/exclusive-interview-ed-gillespie-lays-out-the-race/2012/04/10/gIQAQfpU8S_blog.html

Engineers, scientists, astronauts ask NASA administration to look at empirical evidence rather than climate models

Hansen and Schmidt of NASA GISS under fire for climate stance: Engineers, scientists, astronauts ask NASA administration to look at empirical evidence rather than climate models

by Anthony Watts

An embarrassing image for NASA: James Hansen, arrested in front of the White House in Keystone pipeline protest. Image: via Wonk Room

Looks like another GISS miss, more than a few people are getting fed up with Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and their climate shenanigans. Some very prominent NASA voices speak out in a scathing letter to current NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr.. When Chris Kraft, the man who presided over NASA’s finest hour, and the engineering miracle of saving Apollo 13 speaks, people listen. UPDATE: I’ve added a poll at the end of this story.

See also: The Right Stuff: what the NASA astronauts say about global warming

Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change position

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.com

Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence

HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.

49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance.

H. Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit Plants Need CO2, noted that many of the former NASA scientists harbored doubts about the significance of the C02-climate change theory and have concerns over NASA’s advocacy on the issue. While making presentations in late 2011 to many of the signatories of the letter, Steward realized that the NASA scientists should make their concerns known to NASA and the GISS.

“These American heroes – the astronauts that took to space and the scientists and engineers that put them there – are simply stating their concern over
NASA’s extreme advocacy for an unproven theory,” said Leighton Steward.


 “There’s a concern that if it turns out that CO2 is not a major cause of climate change, NASA will have put the reputation of NASA, NASA’s current and former employees, and even the very reputation of science itself at risk of public ridicule and distrust.”

Select excerpts from the letter:

• “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
• “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
• “We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”

The full text of the letter:



http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss-under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to-look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/

America's Debt Is Greater than Entire Eurozone's (and U.K.'s) Combined Debt

America's Debt Is Greater than Entire Eurozone's (and U.K.'s) Combined Debt
 By DANIEL HALPER

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will release this chart later today, clearly showing that America's debt is greater than the combined debt of the entire Eurozone and the U.K.:



As the chart shows, America's debt is currently $15.1 trillion, while the Eurozone (which includes France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and others) has a combined debt of $12.7 trillion. (All dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars, and the data refers to closing 2011 numbers.)

The Eurozone is larger than the United States, so America's debt per capita also exceeds the Eurozone's. According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. has a population of 313 million, whereas the Eurozone has a population in excess of 331 million.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney frequently warns that the United States should not become like Greece. "We need to rein in government and unleash the extraordinary vitality and creativity of the American people," Romney wrote in a December op-ed. "We must not wait to suffer a crisis like Greece's or Portugal's to right the ship of state."

But with charts like this, that formulation might already be out of date, considering the enormity of America's debt burden.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/americas-debt-greater-entire-eurozones-and-uks-combined-debt_636847.html

In the eyes of Nature, warming can't be natural

In the eyes of Nature, warming can't be natural

Christopher Booker

A scientist examines an ice core sample in Iceland Photo: ALAMY

By Christopher Booker

Since the fading belief that the world is in the grip of runaway man-made global warming still threatens us with the biggest bill in history, it is rather important to know how far we can trust the science which is said to support that belief. One of the most vociferous cheerleaders in the cause has been the Nature, which calls itself “the world’s most prestigious weekly journal of science”.

Whenever some landmark event in the story is approaching – such as a world climate conference or a new report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – Nature can be relied on to come up with a new paper purporting to refute one of the more embarrassing objections to the orthodox theory. However thoroughly such a paper is then dismantled by expert critics, it will remain established as a pillar of the orthodoxy.

In 1996, as the Kyoto treaty approached, it was a paper claiming to show how the “fingerprint” of warming – the part of the atmosphere where it was most obvious – confirmed that it must be due to human activity. Two scientists promptly explained how the data showed precisely the opposite – warming that was man-made should be greatest in the upper troposphere and not, as it actually is, on the earth’s surface. The chief author of that bid to defend the orthodoxy was Ben Santer. It was his last-minute rewriting of a key passage in the IPCC’s second report – contradicting the text agreed by all the scientists responsible – that provoked the IPCC’s first real scandal. Frederick Seitz, the eminent US physicist who exposed this flagrant breach of the rules, described it as the most “disturbing corruption of the peer-review process” he had come across in all his 60 years as a scientist.

In 1998, Nature published the first of the two iconic “hockey stick” graphs by an obscure young physicist, Michael Mann, which rewrote climate science by appearing to show that temperatures had suddenly shot up in the late 20th century to easily their highest level in history. Mann became the blue-eyed boy of the IPCC, which made his graph the centrepiece of its 2001 report. Only then was it exposed, by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, as a meaningless piece of artifice, created by a skewed computer model.

In 2009, months before the Copenhagen conference was planned to produce the most expensive treaty in history, Nature came up with a much-publicised cover story by Eric Steig and a team which included Michael Mann as its adviser on computer modelling. This claimed to show that, against all previous evidence, Antarctica had for 50 years been warming, not cooling. It took McIntyre and Anthony Watts’s science blog Watts Up With That (WUWT) only days to expose this as being, again, no more than the product of a tricksy computer model.

Now, a year ahead of the IPCC’s next major report, Nature has again provoked controversy with an article, by Jeremy Shakun et al, claiming to disprove what has long been seen as one of the most awkward facts for warmist theory. This is the evidence of ice cores which shows that, for millennia, rising levels of carbon dioxide have not preceded rising temperatures but have followed them, as warming releases more CO2 from the mighty carbon sink of the oceans.

As can be seen in full on WUWT, one of its expert contributors, Willis Eschenbach, has now carefully plotted all Shakun’s data, to show how it does not confirm his headline thesis at all. Even the Nature article admits that, when the earth was emerging from the last ice age some 15,000 years ago, it was temperatures that rose first, later followed by rises in CO2. But when Eschenbach downloaded all the CO2 data he could find, he came up with a startling discovery. Shakun had only used one CO2 data source – and he had mysteriously cut off his graph about 6,000 years ago.

When the additional data was fed in, it clearly showed CO2 continuing to rise after this point, for thousands of years, at the same time as temperatures went into a long decline. So once more the theory that a rising level of CO2 automatically leads to a warmer world – the central assumption on which the orthodoxy rests – has been demonstrated to be seriously awry.

As the respected US scientist Judith Curry put it last week, talking about another seemingly flawed paper published by the same journal: “Nature seems to be looking for headlines rather than promoting good science.” It could serve as an epitaph for the way that journal has been promoting this cause for 20 years. Whether, on the basis of so many curious manipulations of data, we should be happy to pay the biggest bill in history is another matter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/9204223/In-the-eyes-of-Nature-warming-cant-be-natural.html

Gas Prices Grow More Under Obama than Carter

Gas Prices Grow More Under Obama than Carter

By Lauren Fox

Marking the similarities between President Barack Obama's time in office and former president Jimmy Carter's is nothing new. But as of Monday, Obama has hit one more Carter benchmark - both saw gas prices double in their first term of office. [See Where Gas Prices are Spiking the Most]

In fact, while just barely, Obama has seen an even higher gas price increase than Carter dealt with under his administration.

Under the Carter administration, gas prices increased by 103.77 percent. Gas prices since Obama took office have risen by 103.79 percent. No other presidents in recent years have struggled as much with soaring oil prices. Under the Reagan administration, gas prices actually dropped 66 percent. When Bill Clinton was president, gas prices grew by roughly 30 percent, and under both Bush presidencies, gas prices rose by 20 percent. [See pictures of Obama's re-election campaign.]

The National Republican Congressional Committee called attention to Obama's recent "dishonorable distinction," blaming the Democrats' rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline as a major factor for skyrocketing gas prices.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/04/09/gas-prices-grow-more-under-obama-than-carter