Our Stealth Congress

By Alan Caruba

We are living in an era in which our Congress and much of our government operates like a stealth bomber, destroying rights we assume to be protected by the U.S. Constitution and otherwise encumbering an ailing economy in ways known to make it worse.

Take, for example, the House passage yesterday of the Dream Act, an end-run around the widespread opposition to any form of amnesty for the problem of illegal immigration. While 38 Democrats joined Republicans to vote no on the measure, eight Republicans “crossed the aisle” to support Pelosi, Reid and Obama. The Senate is scheduled to take up the measure on December 9 and it is widely predicted it will fail in that chamber.

Even a massive rejection by the voters appears to have made no impact on the Democrat Party which gives every indication of not giving a damn about We the People even when a million showed up in Washington to protest Obamacare. One is reminded of Speaker Pelosi’s now classic statement that we would have to wait to find out what is in the Obamacare legislation until after the vote was taken.

The result is an increasing number of waivers from aspects of this noxious law for unions, fast food chains, and others to ensure their members and employees do not lose health insurance. This from a bill we were told would extend health insurance to thirty million more Americans.

So the Democrat majority, most of whom did not even bother to read the 2,000-plus monstrosity, voted to have the government take over one-sixth of the nation’s economy and destroy the patient-doctor relationship and just about everything else that made our health system the best in the world.

While Americans were making plans for Christmas and beginning to feel the sting of winter as far south as Florida, Congress voted to approve the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a government created entity that will impose huge tax increases on companies in the northeast in the name of preventing a “global warming” that is not happening.

RGGI is the nation’s first mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) cap and trade regulating entity even though the Cap-and-Trade Act is all but dead in the Senate. Everyone living in ten northeastern states will see their electricity bills soar due to caps on how much GHG their utilities and other major manufacturing facilities emit. This is, I would remind you, is occurring in the midst of the worst recessionary period since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This is equivalent to the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government entities that created the housing bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis.


The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) is concluding its latest and hopefully last conference in Cancun, Mexico, desperately trying to save the Kyoto Protocols. Widely seen as the end of the “global warming” hoax, the UN is far from finished trying to impose its will on the United States and other nations.

As this is written, the Obama administration is trying to get the U.S. to ratify the UN Small Arms Treaty. This is a major goal before it folds its tent in 2012. If the Senate were to ratify the treaty, some 90 million Americans would be required to turn in any banned firearms to local government “collection and destruction” centers. It would prohibit firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling their products to Americans. In short, it would negate the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

This is yet another stealth effort to undermine the U.S. Constitution, along with all the talk about putting government limits on Internet use and dangerous babble coming out of the FCC to impose a “value” system to determine what radio and television stations can report as news.

As this is written, Americans are still waiting to learn whether their taxes will rise or whether tax rates that have been in place for a decade will be extended. Even so, the President claimed that it was the GOP that was holding Americans “hostage.”

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” is not a cliché. It has never been more true than our present times.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

No Science, Fake Science, and the Destruction of the Nation

By Alan Caruba

Any scientist who has not sold his soul to the environmental movement will tell you that the reason that greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), do not cause any warming is due to the fact that they have to conform to the laws of thermodynamics. The first law states that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change form.”

Energy produced by coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear is energy that has changed from one form of matter to another. The attack on these sources of energy is a direct attack on the economic success of America and it is one that is at a dangerous peak of activity generated by the Obama administration, primarily through the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is simply no such thing as “dirty energy.” The push for so-called clean or renewable energy is a fiction to advance the use of the two worst, most unpredictable and unreliable forms of energy, solar and wind. They exist solely because of government subsidies and mandates. They produce little over three percent of the energy used nationwide every day.

The September 12 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek addressed this in an article, “Lisa Jackson’s High-Wire Act on Carbon Controls.” What the article did not say was that, if the EPA gains the authority to control carbon dioxide, it will literally control all business and industrial activity in the nation as well as the lives of all Americans.

What the article did not say is that there is no scientific justification for controlling CO2 because it plays no role in the so-called “climate change”, the new language being used to avoid saying “global warming.” It should be evident to a kindergartner that humans not only do not affect the climate, but have no control over it.

The environmental movement that has devoted decades and millions to perpetrate the greatest science fraud in the history of mankind has backed away from “global warming” for the obvious reason that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past decade, the result of a reduction in solar activity, a dormant period that has a long history of preceding periods of cooling.

One of President Obama’s goals has been to secure legislation, known as “Cap-and-Trade” that would authorize a scheme by which “carbon credits” would be bought and sold by utilities and industry for the right to produce and use energy. It is part of the global warming fraud and its sole purpose is political power while enriching a few insiders betting on the expansion of alternative energy sources.

As the Business Week article noted, the EPA has been attempting to exert authority over CO2, but has been doing so "cautiously" to avoid evoking a public outcry against it. Thus, Lisa Jackson has offered a “tailored” approach “that exempts mom-and-pop dry cleaners and pizza parlors and initially regulates only power plants and oil refineries.”

The effect on oil refineries would drive up the cost of gasoline and every other oil derivatives.

Under the Clean Air Act, however, the EPA does not have this authority as CO2 is exempt from such action. Moreover, as noted, there is zero need to control CO2 as a threat to the environment because, without it, all life on Earth would not exist. It is CO2 that is the plant life equivalent of oxygen that maintains all animal life. The two are symbiotic and have been for billions of years.

Americans and people worldwide have been deluged with fake science based entirely on computer models whose results have been deliberately skewed to produce results that affirm CO2 as a primarily factor affecting the Earth’s climate. It is not.

As Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser has noted in his book, “Convenient Myths”, and in articles on the subject, “The atmosphere contains currently a bit less than 0.04% CO2. The rest is mainly oxygen (20%) and nitrogen (79%).” This represents an increase since the Industrial Age when the amount was an infinitesimal 0.03%.

If all the CO2 produced by power plants and the use of coal, oil, and natural gas was reduced to levels the EPA and environmental groups deem “safe” it would have zero affect on the atmosphere.

As Dr. Klaus noted, “Nearly all life on earth depends on the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. Without any CO2, the Earth would be a barren place like the moon, or our neighboring planets, Venus and Mars.”

The EPA is lying to Americans using fake science. On July 29, 2010 it refused to “reconsider its greenhouse gas endangerment finding.” It avoided citing any of the scientists in its employ, instead it quoted the chief scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that is entirely devoted to the global warming fraud. That so-called scientist, Dr. Steven Hamburg, said “The science behind EPA’s finding is strong. Now America needs to forge clean energy solutions that reduce the vast pollution discharged into our air.”

That is a lie. Indeed, more CO2 in the atmosphere would be extremely beneficial, aiding larger crop yields to feed Americans and others worldwide. It would improve the health and vitality of the planet’s forests. Ads on television touting “carbon sequestration” are part of the lie.

To sum up, Cap-and-Trade and any control of CO2 is in its simplest terms, a vehicle to destroy the nation’s economy.

You won’t read that in the BusinessWeek article, but it is a truth that cannot be denied and it is a battle for the future of the nation that must be won against this administration, against the EPA, and against the environmental organizations that have devoted themselves to this purpose.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Why it's Too Darn Hot

By Alan Caruba

Having written for a decade that the Earth has been cooling, it was rather disconcerting to receive a news release from Accuweather reporting that “The year 2010 is on track to become the hottest year on record since modern record keeping began, according to climate researchers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”

It turns out there is an explanation for the unusual levels of heat from Russia to Pakistan to Japan. It is a meteorological phenomenon called “blocking events” and they are related to the jet stream.

An August 10 article by Michael Moore in New Scientist explained, “According to meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere, unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame. As a result, weather systems sat still. Temperatures rocketed and rainfall reached extremes.”

The public has been buffeted for decades as the global warming fraud produced reams of reports that the Earth was heating dramatically. It wasn’t. In November 2009, the “Climategate” scandal broke, revealing that the data put forth by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was rigged, false, a scam.

A handful of rogue climatologists working together from East Anglia, England, to Penn State University provided deliberately false information. At the time their private emails were leaked they were seriously worried because a natural cooling cycle had begun in the late 1990s.

Thus, while news of 2010 being potentially one of the hottest years since 1880 seems to give new life to the discredited global warming claims, it doesn’t.

The New Scientist article further explained that, “Renowned for its influence on European and Asian weather, the jet stream flows between 7 and 12 kilometers above ground. In its basic form it is a current of fast-moving air that bobs north and south as it rushes around the globe from west to east.”

Climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball, took note, writing on August 16 that, “Finally, a weather person has mentioned the word ‘blocking’ when talking about the heat and fires in Moscow. It’s a natural event as the world shifts from the warming trend of the 1990s to a cooling trend since 2000.”

The IPCC assaults on valid and verifiable measurements of the Earth’s actual climate were difficult for people with no knowledge of meteorology to debunk, but NOAA has been engaged in similar chicanery. Its report, “State of the Earth’s Climate 2009”, prepared under the direction of the U.S. National Climate Data Center, was equally flawed and deceptive.

Unreported in both the IPCC and NOAA reports is the fact that countless faulty weather stations, often placed near heat sources, and malfunctioning weather satellites make it virtually impossible to make any kind of accurate evaluation of short or long term climate trends.

Moreover, whether the Earth is warming or cooling, all manner of unusual weather events always occur. They are, in themselves, literally meaningless when it comes to forecasting trends.

That is why, in the midst of a new and natural cooling cycle based on reduced solar sunspot activity, we are having a very warm summer and possibly even a very warm year thanks to a jet stream experiencing “blocking events.”

We all need to get passed the notion that humans have anything to do with the weather. It is too vast, too chaotic, and too unpredictable to rationally suggest that a little bit of carbon dioxide is driving the whole thing. It has virtually nothing to do with the climate whereas the Sun has everything to do with it.

There are rumors that the Senate will attempt to take up yet another version of the Cap-and-Trade bill passed in the House during a lame duck session. Based on the bogus global warming, it is a total fraud, a scheme to sell “carbon credits” and make a few people rich while the rest of us are fleeced by rising energy costs. If it passes, those that vote for it will truly be traitors because they will have doomed any economic recovery. It is a nation-killer.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cap-and-Trade is a Nation Killer

By Alan Caruba

There are many reasons why the Cap-and-Trade Act will harm the future of the nation, but among the worst is that it is entirely based on a lie. The very worst, however, is that it is a nation killer.

Cap-and-Trade is intended to set up a trade scheme in “carbon credits” that is estimated to be worth a trillion dollars if enacted. The rationale is the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), to avoid global warming.

There is no global warming and no need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The vast bulk of CO2 is natural. The Earth produces 97% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is essentially and overwhelmingly water vapor. CO2 plays no role in climate change.

Cap-and-Trade is a tax on energy use and Americans are constantly told that energy use in any form—-coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear—-is bad. That’s not just a lie, it is insane.

Americans are told that “renewable” or “clean” energy can replace the energy generated by the use of coal, natural gas, and by nuclear plants. Solar and wind energy can never achieve this. They depend on totally unpredictable sources, the sun and wind. All such “green energy” must have existing plants as backup.

Green energy produces electricity. Oil is not used for this purpose, but one of the primary “reasons” offered for Cap-and-Trade is a reduction in the importation of oil. There is literally no connection between the two.

Cap-and-Trade authorizes the government to set a limit on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be produced. It then gives existing industries credits for the amount they are already producing. Those industries can then use the credits or trade them on exchanges set up for that purpose.

Renamed the “American Power Act”, the bill put forth by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) borders on being an act of treason against all Americans.

The Institute for Energy Research commissioned Chamberlain Economics to do an economic and distributional analysis. Here are some of their findings:

# The American Power Act would reduce U.S. employment by roughly 522,000 jobs by 2015, rising to more than 5.1 million jobs by 2050.

# U.S. households would face a gross annual burden of $125.9 billion per year or $1,042 per household. The costs would be disproportionately borne by low-income households and senior citizens

In July 2009, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snow (R-ME) introduced a bill to make the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the sole regulator of the carbon market that Cap-and-Trade creates. It is an independent agency of the federal government. Here are some facts the mainstream media is not reporting:

# The chairman of the CFTC is Gary Gensler. Formerly employed by Goldman Sachs, he was nominated by President Obama.

# Goldman Sachs is a part owner of the Chicago-based exchange where carbon allowances would be traded.

# Goldman Sachs has spent millions of dollars lobbying for Cap-and-Trade legislation in anticipation of making billions at the expense of taxpayers and energy consumers.

# Goldman Sachs employees are heavy contributors to the Democrat Party, giving it more than $4.4 million in the 2008 election. Barack Obama’s campaign received more than $997,000.

Utilities and investment banks in the U.S. and Europe see carbon trading, a wholly fictitious new financial instrument, as a huge new profit center. Carbon trading could top $1 trillion a year by 2020.

This totally artificial “market” will create a “bubble” that, when it bursts, will dwarf the losses that have occurred in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown that caused the current financial crisis.

Meanwhile, hidden within the Cap-and-Trade bill is a provision prohibiting homeowners from selling their homes unless they completely retrofit their homes to comply with energy and water efficiency standards. The costs will, for many, make it impossible to sell their home.

A Wall Street Journal editorial stated that “The whole point of Cap-and-Trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas…These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station, but in every manufactured good, from food to cars…Americans should know that those Members (of Congress) who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history.”

There no scientific or economic justification for the passage of Cap-and-Trade legislation. The President knows this. The Democrats in Congress know this. It’s more than just a tax. It is a nation killer.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Hardcore Politically Stupid People

By Alan Caruba

If you harbor the suspicion that a lot of voters are not bright enough to understand the issues, the candidates, or anything about those who hold public office, you are right.

Considering the critical issues affecting the security, economy, and the future of the nation, it is clear that we are being ruled by a cabal in Congress who vote the Democrat Party line without regard for anything other than political self-interest.

They got there, however, because of a solid core of voters who consistently demonstrate what dim bulbs they are.

Assuming some of these morons read the newspaper or got their news from the Internet sites of what is called the mainstream media, a 2004 Pew Research Center poll found that five times more journalists described themselves as politically “liberal” than those who said they were conservative.

That same year, a poll by the University of Connecticut found that journalists backed John Kerry over George W. Bush by a margin of two-to-one. Not much has changed since, except that daily newspapers keep going out of business; more than 120 dailies shut down in 2009.

Journalists keep asking themselves why???

Perhaps slobbering over Barack Obama and getting him elected might have contributed to a general sense of dissatisfaction among people whose I.Q. is higher than room temperature.

For many years there has been an annual Battleground Poll conducted by a bipartisan polling organization known for its rigorous methodology. It seeks to determine how Americans self-identify themselves politically. One of its questions asks, “When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be…” Then the respondent can choose from “very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal, very liberal, or unsure/refused.”

The April 2010 poll results revealed that Americans overwhelmingly describe themselves as conservative. Over the years the percentage has never been less than 58% and, over the course of the years, 60.2% on average call themselves conservative.

This raises the question, of course, why the Congress is filled with so many “progressives” or “liberals”, depending what they call themselves or why Ronald Reagan’s two terms and George H.W. Bush’s single term was followed by William Jefferson Clinton? He, in turn, was followed by George Walker Bush. Voters then turned to a completely unknown candidate with no experience beyond having been a “community organizer”, Barack Hussein Obama.

Nothing resembling logic explains this, but there is a factor that stands out in poll after poll and that is raging stupidity.

A casual look at poll results in just the past month gives evidence of this. For example, despite the greatest man-made disaster of recent times, the BP oil spill, Rasmussen Reports revealed that 25% of adults nationwide had a favorable opinion of BP. Indeed, 6% had a “very favorable” opinion of BP.

Rasmussen polls asking for opinions of Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, revealed that 32% had a “somewhat favorable” opinion of this pinhead and 21% had no opinion regarding her performance in office.

Asked about Attorney General Eric Holder, one in four voters (26%) “still don’t know enough about Holder to venture any kind of opinion about him” and 35% professed to hold a favorable view. This is the AG who criticized the Arizona illegal immigration statute without having read it.

Ignorant of U.S. history and our Constitution, 28% of those polled said that civilian control of the military is bad for the U.S. The Founding Fathers, including James Madison, the chief author of the U.S. Constitution, advocated civilian control to ensure a stable democracy.

Finally, for my purposes, there are the polling results regarding whether the nation is on the right or wrong track these days. As recently as late June 28% of likely voters said that the country is heading in the right direction!

We have a Congress voting on bills, often in excess of two thousand pages, without knowing what they entail or the changes they will impose.

We have a President who has taken barely a year and a half to double the national debt, crisscrossed the world to apologize for protecting huge portions of it from despotism, has nationalized one sixth of the economy with a hated healthcare act and is pushing for a Cap-and-Trade bill that will impose crushing taxes on all energy use. He also intends to raise our income taxes in the midst of a raging Recession.

You don’t have to be a statistician to figure out that somewhere between 25% and 30% of the voters are stupid beyond redemption, oblivious to events and trends that show a nation in deep trouble.

I suggest this is the core constituency of the Democrat Party that has been pandered to from the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The remainder, the 60.2% who identify themselves as conservatives had better get to the polls in November to save this nation from utter ruin.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

How to Make a Bad Problem Worse

When Idiots Join Hands

By Alan Caruba

After the June 23 Cabinet meeting, President Obama said:

“We talked about energy. In the context of the oil spill, as I said last week during my Oval Office address, this has to be a wakeup call to the country that we are prepared and ready to move forward on a new energy strategy that the American people desperately want but for which there has been insufficient political will.”

“It is time for us to move to a clean energy future.”

First, let it be said that the American people do not desperately want “a new energy strategy.” They did not want Obamacare. They do not want Cap-and-Trade. They do not want amnesty for an estimated ten to twenty million illegal aliens.

Along with the totally discredited global warming hoax, this has got to be the biggest lie Obama keeps repeating, along with promises of thousands of “green jobs.”

What is Clean Energy?

Obama is referring to solar and wind energy. Neither of these enterprises would last longer than an episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” were it not for the billions of taxpayer’s dollars provided as subsidies to producers who, once the subsidies end, will abandon these most useless of all ways to generate electricity.

When the government mandates that part of the electricity you purchase must be supplied by wind or solar, they are forcing utilities to invest in means of generation that must always be backed up by coal-fired, natural gas, hydroelectric, or nuclear plants. Neither wind, nor solar can be depended upon to produce sufficient electricity, particularly during times of peak uses.

When you see those windmills turning even when there is no wind, there is a plant somewhere providing them with electricity because, unless they constantly turn, their mechanisms famously break down. Solar farms are even less efficient, particularly since the sun does not shine all the time and cloud cover often reduces their capacity.

This, however, will not deter the hoped-for thousands of people who will turn out on Saturday, June 26, to participate in some 700 events across the nation and, we’re told, worldwide in a mega-event called “Hands Across the Sand.” It is intended to encourage more “clean energy.”

“This simple, but powerful human expression of unity will send a clear message to our leaders that more offshore drilling is not the answer and now is the time to create our clean energy future,” said event founder, David Rauschkolb, described as a restaurant owner in Seaside, Florida.

That’s who we want making energy policy, a restaurant owner!

Among the sponsors of the event are Audubon, the Alaska Wilderness League, the Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Day Network, Endangered Species Coalition, Energy Action Coalition, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, MoveOn.org, Ocean Conservancy, Rainforest Action Network, and the Sierra Club.

In other words, the most mendacious environmental groups, all devoted to impeding the development and access to the huge quantities of energy needed to maintain industry, agriculture, and an economy that, despite their constant interference and obstruction, is still the world’s leader in value of goods produced.

To them, the Gulf oil spill is the best thing that ever happened. One well out of hundreds in the Gulf of Mexico has suffered a horrible failure, but these are the people who want to shut down all of them despite a fifty-year history of safety.

No doubt the mainstream media will have a field day showing us coverage of countless idiots holding hands on beaches, near waterways, and wherever else they will gather in the name of not having any gasoline to fill the tanks of the cars that brought them there, not having the electricity to power the air conditioners in their homes, not having anything made from plastic, not even having asphalt on the highways and streets they will drive upon after the event.

It is not likely to occur to any of them that deepwater oil wells are the result of the bans environmental organizations continue to demand as they oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or anywhere along the 85% of U.S. coastal areas where huge amounts of untapped oil and natural gas exist.

This nation faces many hazards, but the greatest hazard of all is a President who wants to pass the biggest tax in U.S. history, Cap-and-Trade, on energy use. It is not a climate bill. It is not a jobs bill.

It is just another scheme based on the fraud of reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions. The Earth produces 97% of these emissions. They are a part of the atmosphere of the Earth, albeit the atmosphere is almost entirely composed of oxygen and nitrogen. It is best understood as primarily water vapor!

The cartoon character, Pogo, famously said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” You can watch them join hands on Saturday and demand a return to the Dark Ages.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

EPA Ready to Drive the Car Off the Cliff

A Congress that is Immune to Facts and Truth

By Alan Caruba

Here’s what we know about “global warming.” There isn’t any. The only warming that has occurred has been the entirely natural warming that occurred when the Little Ice Age ended around 1850.

By contrast, the Earth has been cooling for the past decade. Warming and cooling cycles are well known to climatologists who have not sold their souls to the global warming fraud. Thousands of those who have not have been signing petitions to protest the lies about global warming, now called “climate change.” The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Its climate has always been in a state of change, including a number of well-known ice ages.

What is also known is that carbon dioxide (C02) plays no role in global warming or climate change. The Earth’s atmosphere is primarily composed of water vapor. There has been no atmospheric rise in CO2 for the past 160 years. CO2 comprises 386 parts per million in the atmosphere, whereas human exhalation contains 40,000 parts per million, more than one hundred times as much.

Without CO2 there would be no life on Earth. All vegetation depends on it. More C02 would be extremely beneficial, increasing crop yields, aiding the growth of forests.

The claims of global warming have been entirely based on computer models. Those justifying drastic action to reduce CO2 emissions have been proven to have been deliberately false, the handiwork of a handful of “scientists” who have received millions in research grants. Every report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been filled with lies.

Despite this, on June 10 the U.S. Senate, by a party line vote of 53-47, defeated a resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AL). Six Democrats joined Republicans in voting against it. The resolution would have restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort, comparable to the Cap-and-Tax bill, to regulate CO2 on the grounds that it was a “pollutant” that poses a danger to human health and life.

The effort to require limits on greenhouse gas emissions, primarily CO2, would affect all industry and business activity in America, making it increasingly costly, less competitive, and generating a financial scheme based on the sale and trade of “carbon credits” that has already enriched people like Al Gore.

At the same time, many European nations that signed the UN Kyoto Protocol requiring such limitations have learned that it has harmed their economies without any benefits whatever. The alleged value of such carbon credits in Europe has diminished steadily, particularly in the wake of the failed UN Conference on Climate Change last November.

The Conference failed after the leak of thousands of emails between the global warming conspirators that demonstrated their efforts to hide keep their data from being examined by other scientists, a standard practice, and seeking to subvert science journals from publishing articles disputing their global warming claims.

Beyond the conspiracy to foist the vast global fraud on the world are the enormous investments and government subsidies for “clean energy” such as wind and solar.

President Obama hailed the vote saying it moved the nation “toward (a) clean energy economy, but such an economy ignores the fact that America and all other nations are dependent on the use of oil, natural gas, and coal. So-called clean energy provides barely three percent or less of all the electricity generated in America. It can never replace these established sources of energy.

Energy policy in America must of necessity be determined by a Congress responsive to the voters, not by faceless bureaucrats with an environmental agenda whose purpose is to destroy the nation’s economy. The transfer of power from the legislative branch to the executive is sinister and a threat to the future of the nation.

Unfortunately, the current Congress and those preceding it have ignored the facts about energy, denying Americans access to its own vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas by designating massive amounts of the nation’s land as wildlife reserves and “protected” areas known to have those reserves.

They have ignored the fact that global warming is a fraud and a hoax.

They ignore the impossibility of solar and wind energy to meet the needs of America for reliable electrical power.

They ignore ours (and every other nation’s) dependence on oil for transportation and industrial use.

A Congress that cared about America would disband the Environmental Protection Agency as an enemy of progress and growth.

Instead, it continues to heedlessly seek to give it control of the nation’s future and with it our lives.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

It Doesn't Matter What Obama Says About the Oil Spill

By Alan Caruba

It doesn’t matter what President Obama says from the Oval Office Tuesday evening. He can lay out all manner of things that BP must do in the wake of what is shaping up to be a major ecological disaster, but he and Congress are also working to put a cap on BP’s financial liability. Both know that this leak will ultimately cost upwards of a trillion dollars or more to ameliorate.

It’s not that BP isn’t liable for the leak, but rather that it had the great, good fortune to tap what in the oil industry are called “elephants”, discoveries of huge multi-million barrel reserves. It had the bad fortune to have the huge rig blow up and a leak so far down only robots can attempt to shut it off.

What one rarely hears about are the “dry” holes that oil companies drill. They don’t make news, but they spell disaster for an oil company that does it too many times. As Tom Bower says in his timely new book, “Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century”, “In recent years, dry holes had wrecked major oil companies. The skeletons of Gulf, Texaco, Arco and other past icons mercilessly testified that only the fittest and bravest survived.”

The amount of investment in a single hole is significant. When that hole is in deep water, a billion dollars can be spent at a rate of hundreds of thousands a day to rent a rig. Naturally, the oil companies use every form of technology available to geologists to decide where to drill, but even then it is a high risk gamble.

To cite one BP gamble, when in 1969 Arco drilled in Alaska it only found non-commercial gas. BP geologist, Jim Spence, concluded the oil was closer to the rim of a potential reservoir instead of its “sweet spot.” The result saved BP. The company then put its chips on the Gulf of Mexico. It became the largest acreage-holder and owned a third of all the oil discovered there.

All the major oil companies knew that the Gulf of Mexico represented a treasure of oil, but it was BP that rolled the dice the most. In 2005, one deep water rig called Thunder Horse was nearly ready when Hurricane Dennis hit the Gulf and it had to be abandoned. When the engineers returned, they found flaws in some of its valves. In hindsight, it foretold the problems encountered by the Deepwater Horizon.

The irony was that BP’s latest discovery was the mother lode of oil reservoirs. Vladimir Kutcherov is a Russian specialist in the theory of the abiogenic deep origin of oil, the view that it is not created from the activity of living organisms; that oil is the result of dead dinosaurs.

Oil, it would appear, is created deep within the Earth. Kutcherov believes that BP drilled into “a migration channel”, a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of the planet migrate to the crust.

The other irony is that the BP disaster should put an end to the widely disseminated “peak oil” theory that says the Earth is running out of oil. If Kutcherov is right—and I think he is—that means the “hole” that President Obama and BP wants “plugged” is comparable to trying to plug a volcano. The effort could take months, if not years.

That is why whatever President Obama tells Americans and the rest of the world is probably going to be something far less than the truth. Obama faces some fearful political consequences no matter what he says. BP is heavily invested in America. It employs several thousand. It pays huge royalties. Many British pensioners depend on its dividends as do other investors.

The unions to which Obama owes much for his election are resistant to allowing non-union workers to help protect against the growing spill affecting Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The spill also threatens to reveal how closely associated BP was with many leading environmental organizations.

As F. William Engdahl, the author of “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, points out in a June 11th Global Research commentary, “”The deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right back to the oil industry, notably to BP.”

“Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake itself with an ‘environmentally friendly face’, as in ‘beyond petroleum’, the company’s new branding.”

Among those groups have been the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, and Audubon.

The drive to drill in deep waters off shore was in part driven by the resistance by environmental organizations to doing so far more safely on land. The refusal to allow drilling in Alaska’s ANWR is a glaring example. The fact that oil companies began decades ago to look far afield of the U.S. and its forbidden offshore reserves of oil is another.

A president who has already managed to destroy whatever popularity he had when he took office a scant year and a half ago is not likely to survive the BP disaster no matter what he says or does.

All Americans must be especially watchful for an effort by Obama to impose what was called “Cap-and-Trade”, then called a “climate” bill, and now is touted as a “Jobs” bill. It will require a major effort to thwart the Senate from signing yet another suicidal piece of legislation that would impose huge taxes on all energy use.

As always, Mother Nature will have the final word.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The EPA Runs Amuck

By Alan Caruba

On Thursday, the Senate will vote on S.J. Resolution 26. It is an effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating “greenhouse gas emissions” without any legislative accountability. If the vote fails, the EPA will be free to continue its assault on the nation’s economy and every aspect of your personal life.

Here’s what my friend, Dr. Kenneth P. Green, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, had to say about the energy and environment “advisor” to President Barack Obama:

“Carol Browner’s selection as ‘energy coordinator’ (sometimes called energy czar) virtually guarantees that the Obama administration’s energy and environmental policies will be anything but moderate.”

“Her two terms as Environmental Protection Agency boss were marked by adversarialism, punitive enforcement actions, draconian tightening of environmental regulations and the message that business is destructive of the environment and dishonest about the cost of environmental regulations.”

And that was just the nice things he had to say about Browner. It is worth noting that Browner has been the lead spokesman about the BP oil spill for the Obama administration after it became obvious that Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, was generating negative public reaction to his ‘get tough’ approach and there have been few public statements issued by Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy.

The current administrator of the EPA is Lisa Jackson who learned her trade working under Browner until she was picked to head the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. A Browner acolyte, Jackson has presided over an EPA run amuck.

Jackson will be remembered for leading the EPA fight to get carbon dioxide declared a “pollutant” that can then be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This is the same reasoning put forth by the constantly renamed Cap-and-Trade Act that is was a “climate” bill and has now become something else. It is based on the same totally bogus “science” that gave us “global warming” until Mother Nature decided that the Earth should begin to cool about a decade ago.

President Obama just announced that, just like the much-hated healthcare reform bill, he is going to devote himself to getting Cap-and-Trade passed by Congress. Combined, they should be called The Destroying America’s Economy Act.

Suffice to say that, other than oxygen, carbon dioxide is the other gas on which all life on Earth depends. It’s what all vegetation “breaths” and, coincidently, it is what all humans and other animals exhale. It has nothing to do with the climate.

Dr. Green points out that, “When it comes to climate change, she is a disciple of Al Gore for whom she worked from 1988 to 1991,” adding that “Browner believes that ‘climate change is the greatest challenge ever faced’ and that the EPA is the agency to face it.”

I have been watching the EPA in action since it was created in the 1970s by Mr. Watergate himself, Richard Nixon. It has since expanded like a cancer cell, doing a lot of damage along the way. There must be a sign on the wall of EPA headquarters that says, “If it’s a chemical, we will ban it.” On May 24, the EPA announced it was discussing the perils of oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. Please, let’s do nothing to disperse the oil!

From its earliest days, the EPA set out to ban or limit the use of any and all pesticides nationwide. They have never stopped. It is essential to understand that what passes for EPA “science” is merely a charade to advance their agenda.

It can cost up to $15 million or more for a company to get a pesticide registered for use. If you take away the pesticides, all that’s left is the pests, but this simple truth is lost on the EPA. They have come up with a proposed new “permit requirement that would decrease the amount of pesticides discharged to our nation’s waters and protect human health and the environment.” If you really want to protect human health, you have to kill the billions of insect and rodent pests that have always spread disease.

So far in the last month, the EPA has announced they will release “a draft health assessment for formaldehyde that focuses on evaluating the potential toxicity of inhalation exposures to this chemical.”

Also announced was news that the EPA “is initiating a rulemaking to better protect the environment and public health from the harmful effects of sanitary sewer overflows and basement backups.” They are “reviewing” Florida’s coastal water quality standards, a move that will wreak havoc on its agricultural and tourist industries.

Another EPA announcement noted that “It just got harder for a TV to earn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star. Starting May 1, 2010, TV’s that carry the government’s Energy Star label are, on average, 40 percent more efficient than conventional models.” This is all done in the name of “reducing greenhouse gas emissions” when, in fact, this is the baseless justification for the global warming hoax.

If at this point, you are beginning to think the EPA is just a tad intrusive regarding your basement backup problems, the kind of television set you should purchase, and other previous decisions such as how much water your toilet can use or the banning of incandescent light bulbs nationwide, you will be happy to know that in May the EPA took the time to “encourage ways to travel green by checking into an Energy Star labeled hotel.”

While in the hotel, you are advised to “turn off the lights and TV when leaving the hotel room”, “adjust the thermostat to an energy-saving setting so it doesn’t heat or cool the room while empty”, “to open curtains to take advantage of daylight when possible”, and “re-use linens to save both water and energy.”

If, by now, you’re getting the feeling that the EPA is more intrusive into the most mundane aspects of your life than any other government agency or combination of agencies, you’re right.

And very little of it has anything to do with protecting your health or the environment. It has everything to do with advancing a fanatical green agenda intended to threaten every form of energy production, manufacturing process, property rights, and your right to make a wide range of personal lifestyle decisions.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Murdering America

By Alan Caruba

We are all witnesses to the crime; the deliberate murder of the United States of America.

In just under a year and a half, the White House in collusion with the Democrats in Congress has conspired not to “save” America from a financial crisis they created, but to kill America through a series of multi-billion dollar “bailouts” that have two things in common. (1) They did not work and (2) they have created levels of national debt beyond anything in the entire previous history of the nation.

Seen in this light, they are a brilliant game plan for destroying what was once the greatest economy in the world. It was based entirely on capitalist principles of free market competition, constant innovation, and entrepreneurial enterprise. Tied now as we are to the economies of other nations, there’s not much good news of late.

The Obama administration has imposed the takeover of one sixth of the nation’s economy through its so-called health care “reform” and there are already revelations that it will not save money, but cost much more. It will deprive Americans of the right to make decisions with their physicians regarding all manner of treatment, some of which will literally determine life or death. It will reduce options for medical care as physicians, particularly in private practice, close their doors.

Writing in the June issue of Health Care News, John C. Goodman said, “Despite assurances, the Medicaid expansion included in the health care legislation signed by President Barack Obama is not another unfunded mandate foisted on the states, many states will find their budgets bloated with new Medicaid spending.” Goodman is CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. It defied credibility that millions could be added to Medicare and Medicaid roles without raising the costs of these programs. In the end, Obamacare was forced upon Americans, the majority of whom opposed it and still do.

Among the priorities of a new Congress, in the event that power passes to the Republican Party, is the repeal of Obamacare.

The new financial “reforms” need to be rolled back as they too place limits on Wall Street that found itself victimized by the fact that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government sponsored entities” are directly responsible for the housing bubble. It is insane that the federal government should hold the majority of mortgage loans. Yet the “reforms” just passed make no mention of either agency!

The Cap-and-Trade Act, renamed a “climate” bill and awaiting a vote in the Senate, would raise the cost of all energy use in the nation and literally destroy the economy. Likewise, the effort of the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide would have the same effect.

Another priority is to take General Motors off life-support for the unions that destroyed it through their salary, healthcare and pension demands. Here again, the federal government has no rational justification for such ownership. The most recent proposed bailout at a cost of $165 billion is yet another bailout for union pensions and this, too, is not a responsibility of American taxpayers.

There was a time in the nation’s history when unions were needed, but now they are largely parasitic, draining the treasuries of the federal and state governments, and no where is this more obvious than in the Service Employees International Union. Obama is so closely allied with SEIU that one wonders why so little attention was paid during the 2008 campaign. This union alone is alleged to have spent as much as $60 million to secure his election.

There are other government worker’s unions such as the teacher’s unions that exert political power in money, campaign manpower, and votes. The teacher’s unions have largely failed their mission to impart the most basic skills, leaving American students behind their counterparts in other nations. Their health and pension benefits, well in excess of the private sector, are a massive drain on the public treasuries of state governments.

There are only two protections left to Americans, the courts and the ballot box. The courts appear to moving far too slowly on the issue of constitutionality regarding Obamacare and, in particular, Barack Obama’s eligibility to be President.

All this demonstrates an astounding lack of power that has always being attributed to Wall Street and to corporations in general. Environmental opponents popularly refer to them as Big Oil, Big Coal, or Big Pharma. They appear to have no power against an aggressively Marxist President, his administration, and a Congress dominated by progressives.

On May 22nd, Rasmussen Reports revealed that 72% of likely voters say they are not confident that Congress knows what it’s doing as regards the economy. There has been little change in this opinion since September 2008.

The voters, however, have demonstrated their power in the election of a Republican as Senator from Massachusetts and two Republican Governors in formerly Blue States. The primaries are demonstrating that the only way to win is to be anti-Obama and the best way to lose is to be an incumbent participating in the destruction of the nation.

The current national state of mind is understandably one of growing fears and it should be in the face of the determined effort to destroy America.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Observing Absurdities

By Alan Caruba

We have an unemployment rate in America that rivals that of the 1930s Great Depression, high foreclosure rates on homes, and credit card defaults are reaching new levels, but we are still being told that America is “in recovery.”

The longer I watch the members of the Obama administration and the President himself, the more I am impressed by a long list of absurdities they expect us to believe. Glassy-eyed or with a straight face, they tell us things that would make children go “huh?”

The recent performance—-that’s the only thing you can call it—-of Attorney General Eric Holder before a Senate committee set me thinking. How was it that the AG could not or would not connect the dots between the Fort Hood murders, the Christmas Day bomber, and the failed Times Square bomber? With stunning obtuseness, he professed he could not find any Islamic connection despite, of course, all three being Muslims and all three having communicated with or trained with Islamic terrorist groups.

If the AG is that dumb, Janet Napolitano, the head of the Department of Homeland Security and her intelligence colleagues in the White House has demonstrated a comparable level of willful ignorance. She’s like the cop at the scene of a bloody massacre saying, “Move along, nothing to see here.”

When, out of desperation, Arizona passed a law saying that illegal aliens should be subject to be asked if they are illegal, the President thought that was downright unconstitutional even though the Arizona law mimics the federal law that seeks the same determination. Even so, cops would only be able to ask if they believe a crime was being committed or about to be. It’s not that different from the frisk law that allows them to pat down suspected law-breakers.

It is much worse when you consider that the Senate is going to be asked to vote on a so-called “climate bill” that is based on the totally debunked science that says carbon dioxide has anything to do with climate change. It doesn’t. It’s barely 380 parts-per-million in the Earth’s atmosphere and most of the rest is just plain, old water vapor.

The Senate, however, knows it’s not a climate bill, but rather a stupendous way to raise gobs more money for the government to spend and waste. It would tax energy use, raise the cost of gasoline, and further impoverish Americans. It is pure fiction and pure robbery. It will kill the U.S. economy and with it the nation.

It’s the same kind of fiction that was passed off as healthcare reform. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, thinks Americans are so stupid, she actually said, “We have to pass it so we can find out what’s in it.” That’s what we want; legislators that no longer actually read the laws they’re passing. And, of course, weeks after passage, the CBO took a look at the bill and concluded it will increase the cost of medical care by billions.

Every time some White House advisor or Cabinet Secretary opens their mouth, it just adds to the flummery because they are either clueless, lying, or both. They are, however, mostly just lying.

So, Americans are supposed to believe now that it is perfectly alright for Iran to develop the capability to make nuclear weapons. Iran is a nation that sits atop billions of barrels of oil but has never built a refinery, perhaps because it is too busy refining uranium to a weapons grade level.

We are supposed now to believe that Israel, an ally of the U.S. since its founding, is not seeking a peaceful solution with the Palestinians after having already pulled out of Gaza and turned it over to them while also granting a measure of authority over a section of the West Bank. Never mind the endless attacks on Israel and its citizens, a daily affair.

The pioneer in space exploration, the United States will now abandon these and comparable efforts. To get to the space station, we will have to hitch a ride with the Russians or Chinese. This too is absurd, but it is also Obama’s new policy.

As for those annoying wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama has announced the date we shall leave. This is a great comfort to our enemies there. Why fight our enemies in their backyard when we can just wait for them to show up here?

Turning General Motors over to the unions that literally destroyed their golden goose and doing as little as possible to defend our southern border are just more absurdities, but we might as well get used to them because they is the main dish on the Obama menu.

Obama’s America has been turned into a giant funhouse full of mirrors and a rollercoaster ride to hell.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cry Treason!

By Alan Caruba

Treason is generally defined as the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one's country or of assisting its enemies in war. Benedict Arnold burned his name into U.S. history by conspiring with the British to turn over West Point to them. When his plot failed, he fled to England.

Having all formerly been traitors to the Crown, the framers of the Constitution defined treason narrowly. Historians tell us this was to lessen the possibility that those in power might falsely or loosely charge their political opponents with treason.

Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution says “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

Let it be said that probably all presidents have been called treasonous by their political opponents.

A growing body of popular opinion, however, is beginning to regard the actions of Barack Obama as treason because they coalesce into a pattern that suggests a deliberate effort to undermine national security and the economy. The liberties we take for granted, privacy, freedom of speech, and others are seen to be in jeopardy.

What is troubling to many was the way Obamacare was foisted on a nation that clearly opposed the takeover of one sixth of the economy. The political process by which passage was achieved was ugly, but it was not treason.

Now the Cap-and-Trade Act is being ushered hastily into the Senate for a vote despite widespread opposition to the fact that it is based on a total fraud, “climate change”, otherwise known as “global warming.” Can a law based on a lie be lawful? Is passing such a law treasonous?

The President’s displeasure with the Arizona law that mirrors almost word for word the federal law regarding illegal aliens presages a likely effort to grant amnesty to millions here illegally; a measure that is also widely opposed by the majority of Americans.

The hasty passage of any or all of these laws, now that the midterm elections loom in November, is completely legal, but they all represent a refusal to acknowledge the will of those in whom the Constitution posits ultimate power, the People.

The Tea Party movement, taking its name from an act of insurrection against the Crown, is ample evidence of the unrest among many Americans. The effort to smear members as racists or violent suggests the seriousness with which the White House takes the movement.

Given the virtual free hand any president has to determine foreign policy, he has consistently offended our allies and raised questions among them as to his judgment. That is not treason, but it is harmful when the U.S. needs to call upon them for support.

His actions regarding Iran have been a green light to continue their quest for nuclear weapons. His actions toward Israel are nothing less than astonishing given the long record of cooperation and mutual support that has existed since its founding.

Surrounding himself with White House staff, one of whom was an admitted communist, another who praised Mao Tse Sung, and still others whose views reflect bizarre “scientific” theories or proposals, raise questions and legitimate concerns regarding his true political philosophy, but it is not treason.

The takeover of General Motors, his firing of the company’s CEO, the disgraceful treatment of investors and creditors should have raised serious constitutional questions. When Harry Truman tried to take over the nation’s steel manufacturers, he was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. The U.S. retains an ownership position with AIG, the insurance company.

Obama’s attacks on insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, even physicians, then migrated to attacks on Wall Street despite the fact that banks receiving TARP funds swiftly repaid the loans. There is at this point no aspect of life in America that has not been sharply criticized by the President.

None of this can be called treason under the strict and narrow definition of the Constitution, but taken together it is a pattern of acts that pose what many are coming to see as a clear and present danger to the nation.

The midterm elections in November represent the only constitutional means to rebuke the passage of legislation that has saddled the nation with greater debt than all previous administrations, with the takeover of key elements of the economy, and the prospect of the further erosion of our national security and sovereignty.

Everything that President Obama and the Democrat leaders in Congress have done has the sanction of law, but not the approval of the people whose lives will be affected by it.

It is not treason, but it has the look, the feel, and the smell of treason.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cap-and-Trade: A $cam Based on a Scam

By Alan Caruba

It is almost beyond comprehension that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will introduce the Cap-and-Trade Act on Wednesday, May 12th, for consideration by the Senate. It is being passed off as a “climate bill” with provisions for more oil drilling, but it is an assault on reality, on science, on common sense, and on any future economic growth of the nation.

The nation’s prisons are filled with men still claiming to be innocent after trials filled with evidence of their guilt. Denial of the truth is their last resort and this metaphor reflects what is happening in the utterly corrupt community of “global warming” liars and their associates in the U.S. government.

Recently 225 “scientists” wrote a letter defending global warming. It was published in the journal “Science”, one of the many such publications that have become as corrupt as those at the center of the global warming scam.

Based on last November’s leaked emails among those most responsible for the data at the heart of the global warming scam, it was revealed that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been systematically publishing false climate information and analysis.

Moreover, the photo used to illustrate the “scientists” letter was photo-shopped to show a polar bear on a small piece of ice surrounded by water. The deception included the fact that many of the signatories to the letter lack credibility. Among the first 20 listed, none work in the field of climate science.

As reported by Tony Hake of Climate Change Examiner, “Pediatric surgeons, an expert in the Maya and Olmec civilizations, a chemist that studies bacteria, and a ‘computer pioneer’ with Microsoft, an electrical engineer, the chairman of a biotechnology firm, and even an expert studying corn are but a few of the 225 experts that signed the letter.”

Dr. Gerhard Kramm, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, fired off a letter disputing the usual claim that human activity is causing carbon dioxide emissions that are, in turn, causing global warming. “Until today, there is no scientific evidence that an increase of the globally averaged near-surface temperature by less than one Kelvin during the last 160 years can be linked to the increase of the atmospheric concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases.”

There is no global warming. Whatever warming occurred followed the end of a mini ice age that began around 1350. Around 1850 the Earth’s temperature increased about one degree Fahrenheit to its current level.

The United Nations has been the locus of the greatest hoax perpetrated in the modern era, codified in the bogus Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that many nations signed onto in1997. The Clinton administration signed the agreement, but did not implement it due to a Senate resolution that unanimously rejected it.

The real aim of the global warming scam is the prospect of selling “carbon credits” in exchanges around the world, in effect selling air!

If the Cap-and-Trade Act is passed at the urging of the Obama administration, it will constitute the greatest tax on energy use in the history of the nation and it will energize exchanges, such as the one in Chicago, set up to buy and sell the carbon credits.

As reported by Investor’s Business Daily on May 7, “The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-Trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.”

The European Emissions Trading System is a warning to America. IBD described it as “a scam built upon a scam.” British and German law enforcement authorities have been busy arresting miscreants “as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT tax fraud.” And VAT, a valued added tax, is being advanced in the United States as a way to raise money to pay off our ever increasing debt.

“Last December,” reported IBD, “Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trade System fraud had resulted in about five billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raid, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.”

The entire global warming theory has been a scam, a hoax and a fraud from the day it was first put forth. Its advocates, corrupt scientists, corrupted science journals, and all of the environmental organizations are hoping the same Congress that foisted Obamacare on Americans will do the same with Cap-and-Trade.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Is the USA Too Big To Fail?

By Alan Caruba

Lately I have been playing with the question, is the United States of America too big to fail?

Greece’s bonds are now rated as “junk.” It will have to be bailed out with billions from the nations of the European Union, but Portugal is not far behind and so are Italy and Spain. Iceland went belly-up months ago. Meanwhile, the sovereign debt of the United Kingdom, plus the assets of its five largest banks, exceeds 500% of its gross domestic product (GDP)!

According to Forbes, in the United States the total federal debt, including debt held by government agencies like the Social Security fund has ballooned by 50% since 2006 to $12.3 trillion. The U.S. government debt-to-GDP radio is 84%. A tipping point into default is generally believed to be 90%.

Can the whole financial system be gamed? Well, yes. On September 15, 2008 there was a suspicious, coordinated withdrawal of $550 billion from American banks just before the end of the 2008 election campaigns. It forced the Federal Reserve to shut down the drain of funds leaving the nation.

Within days the then-Secretary of Treasury, Henry Paulson was asking Congress to cut him a blank check for billions in order to stave off the collapse of major financial institutions. Subsequently, one of them, Lehman Brothers, was allowed to fail while a forced marriage between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch ensued to keep the latter from failing.

Troubled asset or TARP funds were dispensed and repaid. It’s hard not to make a profit when the Federal Reserve is lending you billions at zero interest rates.

It is now official White House policy to berate Wall Street and threaten it with a ruinous expansion of regulation. Others considered enemies of the state by the Obama administration include insurance and pharmaceutical companies, along with producers of oil and coal.

The whole world of central banking is deliberately murky to the outsider. I have no idea how it works except that their first imperative is to remain solvent so that the sovereign entity they serve remains solvent as well.

That is not easy in an era when most nations have socialist regimes requiring very high taxes with which to redistribute their nation’s wealth. This is further complicated if the nation’s population is aging as is the case throughout Europe. America is aging too as the Baby Boomer generation begins to reach 65.

In point of fact, Social Security, the oldest Ponzi scheme in town, is now taking in less money than it is paying out.

Ironically, an element of this aging is the fact that America has had a remarkable healthcare system that has contributed to expanding average life expectancy to 78 among men and over 80 among women. That will change if Obamacare is allowed to make the rules. Old people will become expendable.

The other Ponzi scheme is Medicare and Medicaid. They are expected to go broke in about eight years or so. All of the billions collected from income taxes every year now go to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and to defense spending. To pay all other government expenses, the money must be borrowed.

When you “reform” Medicare as the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress just did and it turns out that it is going to cost billions more than the former system, you have to wonder about the depths of stupidity involved?

A child born today arrives with a debt of $30,000. To secure a college education, the average expense is around $100.000. Life in America is going to be ruinously expensive, including for the 40% of Americans who pay no income taxes.

Beyond the borrowing and spending is another factor that is being ignored or undermined. The nation requires a dependable supply of electricity to keep EVERYTHING going. When the electricity stops, the nation will stop. It will be unable to function. Computers, the banks, the trains, the airlines, the supermarkets, gas station pumps, television, heating and cooling systems, elevators….EVERYTHING.

This is hardly the time to be lavishing billions in federal subsidies on dubious “clean energy” systems such as wind and solar, but that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing.

The reality is that coal-fired, natural gas and nuclear energy generates 88% of the electricity we use. We need more, not less, as our population increases.

At what point do Americans begin to ask why the Obama administration:

# Has imposed a very expensive overhaul of the nation’s health system,

# Is opposing the development of traditional sources of electrical power and for transportation,

# And is attempting to impose the biggest tax on energy use (Cap-and-Trade) in the nation’s history.

Perhaps the worst idea is a VAT (value added) tax that will affect every purchase of, well, everything.

At what point will the economy of the United States of America simply fail under this very unpleasant set of conditions? The answer in part is when other nations decide not to buy our treasury notes.

The United States has gone from the greatest economy the world has ever seen to being a creditor nation whose currency is in danger of being devalued.

I don’t like thinking about such things. No one does, but someone must.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Cap-and-Trade Treason

By Alan Caruba

If you thought that the way the Obama administration and its cohort of Democrats in Congress rammed through the takeover of the nation’s healthcare system was appalling, prepare to watch the same process applied to Cap-and-Trade. Your government no longer represents you, the voter, the citizen.

Cap-and-Trade (H.R. 2454) allegedly is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is no scientific justification for this because there is no “global warming” that requires it, nor is manmade, anthropogenic, generation of carbon dioxide (CO2) a threat to the planet. Just the opposite, everything dies without it; all vegetation and all animal life. Life on Earth would thrive if there was even more CO2.

To what end would Congress impose such emission limits when they do not exist throughout China, India, third world “developing” nations, and are being abandoned by European Union nations where the Kyoto Protocol limits have harmed their economies?

Global warming has been exposed as a massive hoax and fraud. Why would the United States Senate proceed to enact a bill based on it? In essence, it will make some corporations, utilities, and people very rich and impoverish the rest of us.

Having passed the House, the Senate will be handed a huge bill that, like healthcare, few will have read before they vote. It will impose the largest tax the nation has ever seen.

The act will bless the various “exchanges” created for the sale and trade of “carbon credits” that have no value whatever. It creates a bubble comparable to the sub-prime mortgage debacle that triggered the 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession.

The amount of CO2 will not be reduced because the Earth produces 97% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere. Even then, that amount is the smallest part of the atmosphere that consists of more than 95 percent water vapor!

Cap-and-Trade is an act of betrayal because it will destroy the U.S. economy, destroy jobs, and further impoverish Americans in a variety of ways.

The Cap-and-Trade Act that has already passed the House will be put in play by Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman. It was created in the House by Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Edward Markey. They know the bill will set in motion the destruction of the nation whose life’s blood is affordable and abundant energy use.

Just as the Obama administration moved swiftly to acquire ownership of General Motors and Chrysler, to take over insurance giant AIG, control one sixth of the nation’s economy through the healthcare act, and is now seeking to expand the regulation of Wall Street, Cap-and-Trade will ensure the destruction of the nation as manufacturing flees to other parts of the world.

Beginning one year after enactment, homeowners will not be able to sell their homes without complying with onerous and unnecessary energy and water “efficiency” standards. These standards, moreover, will increase annually. Within five years, 90 percent of the residential market will be controlled by the government.

On April 19, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new guidelines for “Energy Star” homes requiring them to increase “efficiency” by 20 percent more than those built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code. Home ownership, already the largest expense for Americans, will be further increased by required upgrades.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, in a few years the average cost of energy use to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one will be exempt from energy taxes and you can expect the cost of a gallon of gasoline to rise beyond $4 to European levels.

In Europe, industrial carbon quotas have enriched the continent’s biggest energy users such as steel and cement makers. Their surplus carbon permits, often provided for free, are estimated to be worth more than $4 billion at current market rates by 2012. There is no scientific justification for them.

It will be the U.S. government that will determine who receives the initial free “carbon credits”, thus giving corporations that have supported Cap-and-Trade a huge advantage over those who do not. Not only will the government rake in billions from the taxes to be imposed, but utilities will raise their prices and pass it along to consumers.

There is no need whatever to reduce use of so-called “fossil fuels.” There is no need for the “efficiency” and “conservation” measures that will be imposed. If the government would permit access to the nation’s vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, none of this would be needed, but it will not.

The nation is under attack from within by a consortium of fanatical environmentalists and rent-seeking corporations and utilities seeking to profit from these government mandates and limits.

It is the perfect storm. It is treason.

Editor’s Note: Politico.com: (4/24/10) The planned Monday unveiling of a bipartisan climate bill was postponed after one of its three authors, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said that he couldn’t support the legislation if Democrats moved it to the backburner to focus first on immigration reform. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced the postponement Saturday evening, saying that “external issues have arisen that force us to postpone only temporarily.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

A Thousand More Days of Damage

By Alan Caruba

On Saturday, April 24, President Barack Hussein Obama, will have one thousand days left in which to ruin America.

As we know from his first fifteen months in office, he is capable of doing a lot of damage. This is rather extraordinary insofar as he only had 142 days as a U.S. Senator before he was inaugurated.

He has had the support of a majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, but he has set the agenda. The result is trillions of dollars of debt, despite the fact that the banks and investment houses have all paid back the TARP funds they received.

We know the “stimulus” billions had little or no effect on the economy because the rate of unemployment has risen continually since he took office and is like to exceed Depression era rates by the time he leaves.

We know he reneged on a missile defense system for Poland and Czechoslovakia that would have been a deterrent to Iranian missiles (that could reach the U.S.) and Russian ambitions to gain control again of Eastern Europe.

We know he has taken control of General Motors and his “reforms” of the nation’s healthcare system puts one-sixth of the nation’s economy under government control. In an unfolding chapter of our history, twenty States have signed onto a court challenge to nullify Obamacare.

We know he is now seeking control over Wall Street. Legislation for its “reform” and it will give the government extraordinary and unwarranted powers. It will likely be rammed through the Senate in a week or so.

We know that his administration is doing nothing to secure the nation’s southern border and is likely to ram through “amnesty” legislation that is opposed by as wide a margin of Americans as was healthcare reform.

We know that he wants Cap-and-Trade legislation which would declare carbon dioxide (CO2) a “pollutant” even though it is vital to life on planet Earth, but more importantly, its regulation would give the Environmental Protection Agency control over all energy use, generate billions in the biggest tax on energy ever enacted, and further kill the economy as manufacturing flees for other nations.

We know he wants to close down “Gitmo” and likely place known terrorists in federal prisons where, of course, they will be able to claim Constitutional rights. Many of those released from Gitmo are known to have returned to the battlefield.

He will have accomplished much of this in just over 450 days in office so another thousand, unless he is deterred by a Republican-controlled Congress, will magnify this horrendous level of damage.

Who would have ever believed that a majority of American voters would elect a President who hates America?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Caruba's Crystal Ball

By Alan Caruba

I rarely make predictions. Events can change the entire direction of a nation in the blink of an eye. It happened in my lifetime with Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, and with 9/11.

As this is being written, air traffic to, from, and throughout Europe is barely recovering because of an Icelandic volcano and no one really knows how long that will continue.

So, barring any catastrophic natural events or wars, I will look into my crystal ball and narrow my predictions to the period between now and the midterm election on November 2, 2010.

Having forced a healthcare program on America that 85% of the voters did not want, the Obama White House now knows it can do the same with other major pieces of legislation intended to “transform” America into a socialist wreck comparable to European nations, one of which, Greece, is bankrupt while two others, Spain and Italy, are close to it.

The Obama administration is getting ready to put a chokehold on the nation’s financial sector by claiming it needs more regulation. It is a lie. Few sectors of the nation are more heavily regulated by the government. What is needed is more effective enforcement of existing regulations. Had that been the case there would have been no Bernie Madoff and the 2008 crisis brought about by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could have been avoided.

The next piece of legislation to be imposed on Americans before November will be Cap-and-Trade, a law based on a “global warming” crisis that is not happening. It will impose “caps” on how much energy industries, businesses, and finally individuals can use and it will institute a “trade” mechanism in bogus carbon credits that will make a few companies, utilities, and individuals very rich while bleeding Americans by taxing energy use at every level.

The era of abundant and affordable energy will end and, with it, the economy of the nation. Companies that manufacture goods will move offshore to friendlier places such as China and India. Both were exempted in the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol intended to force greenhouse emission caps on industrialized nations like America and Europe.

The coal industry, responsible for providing the source of half of all the electricity generated in America, will be under attack in every way at the government’s disposal. Mountain top mining will be the next target. Beyond that, all coal-fired plants will encounter a regulatory hell. There will be no offshore exploration for new sources of oil and natural gas.

When the brown-outs and black-outs begin, the nation will be five to ten years from providing new sources of electrical power whether it’s coal, natural gas, or nuclear. By then billions in government (your money) subsidies will have been wasted on “green” or “clean” or “alternative” energy in the form of wind and solar. They currently represent about one percent of all the electricity generated in America.

By the midterm elections, the unemployment rate will have likely increased. A growing, permanent class of the unemployed will be maintained with endless extensions of government support.

The southern border from Texas to California is becoming a war zone. There’s a reason the State of Arizona just passed a law allowing its citizens to carry concealed weapons and another law to empower its law enforcement authorities to rid the State of illegal aliens. Do not be surprised by the rise of southwestern state militias to deal with the constant invasion. Watch for an effort to pass an amnesty law as well.

What Americans have not caught onto as yet is that the Obama administration’s policies and actions are now fully controlled by people who did not have to go before the U.S. Senate for approval. They are Obama’s “czars” and they wield as much influence or more than constitutionally appointed cabinet secretaries.

So the real question between now and November is “How much damage can the Obama White House inflict?” and the answer is a lot.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Revolt of the States

By Alan Caruba

President Obama, his weird circle of advisors (czars), and the ideologues within the Democrat Party led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid only have a few months left to completely destroy the separation of powers between the States and the federal government.

A major battle is looming over the Tenth Amendment which declares that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Almost everywhere one looks today, the States are in rebellion to the overreaching of the federal government. The process involved is called nullification, a legal theory that a U.S. State has the right to nullify, i.e., invalidate, any federal law deemed unconstitutional. Since the Supreme Court moves at a glacial pace, the States through their legislatures have taken the lead in many cases.

Nullification is not secession as in the case of the Civil War, but there is a history of nullification that includes the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both argued that the States are the ultimate interpreters of the Constitution, arguing that the States could “interpose” themselves to protect their citizens from unconstitutional national laws.

Much of the discord in the nation today has its roots in the vital difference between a conservative attachment to traditional values and a liberal ideology that would impose a One World Government on our sovereign nation.

The great philosopher of American conservatism, Russell Kirk, wrote “True conservatism is the antithesis of ideology. It is the negation of ideology. For conservative is grounded in the past. Its principles are derived from the Constitution, experience, history, tradition, custom, and the wisdom of those who have gone before us—‘the best that has been thought and said.’ It does not purport to know the future. It is about preserving the true, the good, the beautiful. Conservatism views all ideologies with skepticism, and the more zealous and fanatic with hostility.”

A case in point is the way that State after State has lined up to oppose through the courts and by individual legal action the imposition of the president’s healthcare legislation, passed on strict party lines by the Democrat Party and only after the most vile revelations of bribery and backroom deals. It is a bill whose content Speaker Pelosi said Americans should supinely consider only after it was passed.

There has been a rapidly growing awareness and rejection of the assertion that the federal government can “own” General Motors or that the government should be in the business of buying and selling mortgages.

Pending financial reform legislation would permit the federal take over any company to install its own board of directors and thus control the economy. The failure to exercise existing regulation of the financial sector hardly calls for more regulation. It calls for stronger enforcement of existing laws.

The increasing awareness and rejection of the false “theory of global warming” is being rejected on the basis of the widely perceived cooling of the earth during this decade and the wild projections of warming 25, 50, a hundred or more years into the unknown future. More and more Americans now know it is based on feeble and deliberately false “computer models”.

That is why the Cap-and-Trade bill, a huge tax on energy use, awaiting action in the Senate, even if imposed in the same fashion as the healthcare bill, will be rejected by the States. There is no need to regulate carbon dioxide, a natural gas that has nothing to do with “warming”, but a rogue government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is set to assert this falsehood through massive regulation that will destroy the nation’s economic base.

With increasing pace, the States are demanding that the Second Amendment protecting the right to own and bear arms be respected and asserting their right to pass laws permitting gun ownership, including the right to carry concealed arms for self defense. States that have enacted such laws have seen a dramatic decrease in crime.

The assertion of unconstitutional federal powers lies at the heart of the State’s rejection of these efforts. Unfunded federal mandates are bankrupting the States and they want an end to them. The rapacious taking of State lands is crippling theirs and the nation’s ability to access our natural resources.

A growing spectrum of federal laws intruding upon the sovereignty of individual States is being challenged and this is a good thing. We should all take heart from these challenges as well as the spontaneous occurrence of the Tea Party movement that is a dramatic demonstration that the spirit of individual liberty and of States rights is alive and well in America.

A new generation of Americans is learning that the Constitution was designed to ensure a small and limited federal government and that the States, like the Union, are individual republics.

The battle has been joined.

© Alan Caruba, 2010