A Massive Land and Water Grab

By Alan Caruba

The tension between the states and the federal government is built into the U.S. Constitution and the Tenth Amendment stipulates 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.”

The Constitution was written in an era of monarchies by men who were determined to preserve the rights of individual citizens and of the sovereign republics, the states, who were coming together for their common protection and welfare without ceding any powers to the federal government that would deprive them of the governance of their states.

The Founding Fathers were well aware that it is the nature of all governments to seek to accrue more and more power at the expense of citizens and states or provinces within their borders. The rise of the so-called environmental movement has given ample proof that their concerns were well-grounded. I yearn for the day when we stop calling them “environmentalists” and simply the communists that they are.

The latest in the long war between a rapacious federal government, filled with departments and agencies seeking to control every square inch of the nation’s land mass has been an audacious power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency in league with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There are specific steps any agency must take before it can assert federal control of any kind.

Using the original Clean Water Act which permits the EPA to only regulate “navigable waters”, i.e., rivers and lakes, this rogue agency and the Corps is seeking to ignore the restriction and assert control over every body of water in the U.S. including a puddle of rain water or a pond in your backyard. If it weren’t so absurd and so outrageous, it would sound like science fiction, but the science the EPA uses is usually invented out of thin air.

Specifically, the EPA has issued “a guidance document” saying they want to eliminate or just ignore the word “navigable” so they could control “all waters of the United States and all activities affecting all waters of the United States.”

Senator John Barasso (R-WY) has introduced the “Preserve The Waters of the US Act” (S-2245) to ensure that the EPA and Corps are held in check and required to obey the Clean Waters Act’s previsions and intent.

In March the co-chairs of the National Conference of State Legislatures wrote Sen. Barasso, noting its opposition to the way the EPA and Corps are trying to circumvent “the formal rulemaking process, inclusive of a federalism consultation process with state and local governments” noting that their unilateral declaration of expanded powers “would effectively preempt existing state authority and are too significant to be addressed in a guidance document.”

The Land Rights Network of the American Land Rights Association is calling on Americans to write, call, email and fax their senators to support S-2245. The reason is simple and at the same time chilling. Unless S-2245 is enacted, the EPA and Corps would have unprecedented powers to seize the water or land from families, farmers, small businesses and all others, devastating economic and recreational activity, as well as many small communities throughout the nation that depend on such waters.

The permitting process alone, a major instrument of destruction that the EPA and other agencies of the federal government uses, would explode to the point where some bureaucrat in Washington would decide if you could install a pool, dig a drainage ditch, install a watering pond for livestock, and thousands of other common uses of water.

Parenthetically, the federal government owns nearly 650 million acres of land; almost thirty percent of the land area of the nation. Much of it is in western states and, indeed, it owns virtually the entire state of Alaska. Aside from land that has been put aside as Indian reservations, national parks and forests, and for use as military reservations such as army posts, marine bases, and naval stations, the federal government, spurred on by environmental groups, has been buying private property for habitat protection of alleged endangered species. It is bogus. It is communism.

If the EPA and Corps is not restricted from their latest effort to ignore the Clean Water Act’s limits, they will initiate the further destruction of the Constitution and the rights of both the states and the American people.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Loathsome Liberals

By Alan Caruba

Watching Bill Clinton alternately stab Barack Obama in the back and then “apologize” afterward, all the time knowing that nobody will care or remember anything other than his typical double-dealing, reminded me of just how loathsome a whole generation of Democratic office holders have been.

It remains a mystery to me why “Bill” always seems to get a pass no matter whether he’s having sexual relations with a White House intern about his daughter’s age (“I did not have sex with that woman”) or lying to the special prosecutors, or pardoning a rogue’s gallery of criminals that included his own brother! When the Clinton’s left the White House they tried to take enough furniture to furnish their new digs. Hillary then set about to become Senator from New York and to later run for Bill’s old job.

With few exceptions, Democrat “leaders” get forgiveness for almost anything they say or do. The only unforgivable sin among Democrats is to tell the truth, thus straying from the Party line. Just ask Mayor Cory Booker.

The icons of the Liberal landscape always remind me of former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards who once told a reporter that the only thing that could keep him from being reelected was to be found “in bed with a dead woman or a live boy.” In 200l, after having served four terms on and off, he was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of racketeering.

While Edwin Edwards was a charming rogue, another Edwards, a one-time candidate for Vice President of the United States, Sen. John Edwards was nothing more than an ambulance-chasing attorney and an adulterer who fathered a child while his wife was dying of cancer. Thanks to a mistrial, he walks among the free, but let us not forget the man who chose him to share the 2004 ticket, the equally loathsome John Kerry, a former Vietnam War protester who testified in 1971 that his fellow soldiers were guilty of war crimes and than tried to pass himself as a war hero!

Recall, too, Sen. Dick Durbin who, during the Iraq war, compared U.S. soldiers guarding Islamic terrorists at Guantanamo to Nazis.

These men are all Democrats and all Liberals.

In a sane world, men like these would never be elected to office, nor be reelected, but Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, and others have been routinely returned to power. Bill Clinton, of course, was subject to Constitutional term limits. The other exception was New York Congressman Anthony Weiner who was exposed for sending lewd photos exposing himself via the Internet. He was trying to strike up a relationship with some woman while his wife was pregnant! His constituents in a formerly heavily Democratic district replaced him with a Republican in order to get rid of the stench.

I half expect John Edwards to be offered an opportunity to host a television show like the former Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer, otherwise known as “Client 9” of a prostitution ring and who resigned with his dutiful, betrayed wife by his side. Spitzer has since gone from the near moribund CNN to the depths of Al Gore’s TV channel, Current.

Al Gore rivals the late Sen. Teddy Kennedy for loathsomeness. After being defeated for the presidency by George W. Bush, Gore made millions off the global warming scam, but Kennedy will go down in history as the only Senator to survive the horrendous Chappaquiddick incident in which he swam to safety, leaving behind a young woman to drown in the car he drove off a bridge.

Kennedy, a notorious drunkard and womanizer, would go on to become known among Liberals as the "Lion of the Senate." After his death the citizens of Massachusetts replaced him with a Republican whose current political opponent, Elizabeth Warren, has been passing herself off as having Native American ancestry when there isn’t as shred of evidence to support her claim.

Other Liberals are those who show up whenever there is an opportunity to stir racial hatred; the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Sharpton’s career is strewn with the victims of his false allegations while in Jackson’s case there’s a mistress who gave birth to his child. He is famous for referring to New York City as “Hymietown.” Sharpton can be found these days hosting a show on MSNBC.

The fact is that these men have all, with the exception thus far of Weiner, been restored to what passes for respectability by Liberals. The mainstream media still treats them with a respect that conservatives of comparably bad behavior never receive, nor should.

The logical conclusion is that, for Liberals, morality has been replaced with their non-judgmental view of a world in which there is no good or bad, and no evil that cannot be justified in some fashion.

These are the kind of people who want to force the Catholic Church in America to toss aside its most fundamental beliefs in the sanctity of human life.

There has been much written about Obama, but he is already defeated and we are all just waiting for the November 6 election in order to remove him from office on January 20, 2013. It is sufficient to say that it is unlikely that he has uttered a single truthful sentence in his entire life, let alone while President.

Have there been some conservative miscreants? Yes, but they have been swiftly banished to anonymity, stripped of their official titles and powers. Therein lies the difference.

The good news, I believe, is that several generations of Americans have finally grown weary of the litany of Liberal mismanagement of the nation and its treasury, and as the recent failed Wisconsin recall election demonstrated, more and more people are saying “Enough!”

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Listing Obama's Fears

By Alan Caruba

I suspect Barack Obama, thanks to an ego the size of Jupiter, is one of the few people in the White House who doesn’t realize he is going to be defeated in November. Not only have his socialist policies of the past three and a half years in office failed him, events outside the United States or beyond his ability to control all seem to be conspiring against him.

The chatteratti have picked over the bones of the massive rejection he, the Democratic Party and the public service union movement received in Wisconsin. Nothing is going well for Obama and that, dear friend, is the good news.

As the hurricane season begins, he has to pray that a Category 5 hurricane like Katrina does not occur. His handling of the BP oil spill left him hiding in the White House bunker feeling the heat of public opinion and it got worse after his only solution was to shut down oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that posed no threat, further ruining the economy of several states.

His fund raising efforts have drawn the mockery of New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, who noted that “His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading ‘I Meow for Michelle’ for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty has fallen.” And, of course, the news is that Mitt Romney is raising more money than him.

Another unemployment report such as was released by the Department of Labor on June 1 will further sink his chances of reelection. Wall Street went south the same day as the market reacted to the bad news, but typically rebounded.

Obama, who has never so much as run a lemonade stand, looks clueless in the face of the European Union’s continent-wide problems. A defection by Greece would have disastrous effects and would undermine Spain, Italy and other EU member nation’s banking systems. Obama can only watch from the sidelines.

At the risk of being an unrelenting scold, this is what happens when nations choose socialism as their economic model.

He is equally hamstrung by the prospect of the war inside Syria could spread beyond its borders evoking an Israeli military response. The bases of Iran’s proxy military arm, Hezbollah in Lebanon would be attacked by the Israelis who might also decide to level the presidential palace in Damascus. The Israeli 2006 war with Lebanon draw considerable criticism, but there has been peace on its border ever since.

In an address on May 20, Israeli Defense Force Maj. Gen. Yair Golan told a military conference at Bar-Ilan University that “We are indirectly waging a daily war with Iran. It doesn’t matter if it’s through (Islamic) Jihad in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran is here, and its negative influence is significant. It isn’t a question of maybe. Its influence in Syria is too discernible.”

“It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to picture Syria becoming an additional front line for Hezbollah,” said Gen. Golan. “Things that seem unlikely today could take place in a few months.”

It’s one thing to be waging a political campaign at home and quite another to be faced with a decision to support Israel against Syria if it comes under attack by Scud D missiles from Hezbollah’s Lebanon bases.

A president who has taken pride in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan is an unlikely candidate to want to get involved in a new shooting war in the Middle East, least of all five months before Election Day.

Meanwhile the release of information about secret projects has backfired in Congress and among a public asking why such obvious leaks have occurred. Attorney General Holder hurriedly appointed two staff members to track down the culprits who gave The New York Times everything short of the blueprints to CIA headquarters.

The event Obama must be dreading is the likelihood that the Supreme Court will rule Obamacare unconstitutional. This was his “signature” legislation in the effort to “fundamentally transform” and its rejection would severely damage, if not end, any chances for reelection. As he campaigns non-stop, he never makes mention of it or of his failed “stimulus.”

No doubt, Obama is very angry at Americans for failing to appreciate his brilliance and his leadership.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Only if the Wind is Blowing

By Alan Caruba

I’ll bet you didn’t know that June 15th is Global Wind Day. Wind is part of the Earth’s atmosphere and, depending on whether it is blowing gently or strongly, there isn’t a darn thing anyone can do about it. Except for measuring its velocity and direction, wind like clouds remains largely a mystery to meteorologists.

Not so for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control, the people who brought you the global warming hoax, asserting that carbon dioxide, a gas on which all vegetation depends, was raising the global temperature—largely as the result of burning coal and oil as sources of energy.

The Earth, however, has been in a natural cooling cycle since 1998 and the advocates of “green energy” have been in a tailspin, a death spiral of an inadequate capacity to deliver electricity and the inability to compete with more reliable, affordable, and traditional energy sources.

Simply put, wind and solar energy is a fool’s dream and one that must be backed up by traditional energy sources at all times in the event the wind isn’t blowing or during the nighttime or if clouds obscure the sun, causing solar energy to cease producing electricity. Only an idiot would want to be dependent on wind or solar to provide a reliable source of electricity.

The Renewable Energy Industrial Index (RENIXX) tracks the stock value of wind and solar companies. In May—though you did not read about it in the mainstream media—it announced that thirty of the largest renewable energy companies were trading at “an all- time low” and the index “had lost over 90% of its value since 2008.”

So, naturally, the Sierra Club was eager to tell me about Global Wind Day and that my home state of New Jersey had the “potential to replace all the dirty coal and gas plants in the state.” The distance between “potential” and reality is roughly the distance between New Jersey and the planet Neptune.

The Sierra Club (along with a rogue’s gallery of environmental organizations) wages war on all forms of energy production and use. They urged me to join others “at a beach near you for a kite-flying rally and celebration of New Jersey’s offshore wind potential.” Not only does it oppose the use of America’s vast reserves of coal, but it also has a “Beyond Natural Gas” program as well; another huge source of power for the nation.

I won’t bore you with the list of RENIXX companies that have filed bankruptcy, but they include the ill-famed Solyndra, Beacon Power, Ener1, and others in which the Obama administration has “invested” and lost billions in taxpayer funds that could have been devoted to highway and bridge repair or restoring our ailing military power. Another fourteen companies were listed as “teetering on the brink” of bankruptcy.

In May 2011, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie pulled the state from membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the only mandatory cap-and-trade program in the U.S. The RGGI would have required New Jersey to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (the vital carbon dioxide plants need). Maine and New Hampshire had previously bowed out of the former ten-state coalition that would have reduced their capacity to provide electrical power. In doing so, Governor Christie diverted $65 million from RGGI and helped balance the state budget.

It is worth mentioning that New Jersey derives 50% of its electrical power from nuclear facilities. For reasons beyond my understanding, Governor Christie signed off on a project to build a grid of a wind farm of 96 turbines 16 to 20 miles off our shoreline. If the permitting process can be stopped, New Jersey’s shoreline will not be saddled with this awful project and the miles of cable it will require to deliver the few megawatts its “potential” promises.

Europe which led the charge to build wind and solar power projects as the result of its obsession with carbon dioxide emissions has since discovered that neither can compete with fossil fuel and nuclear power. France is the exception, getting most of its power from nuclear facilities. In England, its citizens are increasingly suffering from “fuel poverty” as the cost of electricity continues to soar thanks to its reliance on wind and solar projects.

Not only is the European continent suffering a financial crisis thanks to the failure of the European Union’s effort to get 27 sovereign, member nations to act in concert with one another, it is facing a shortage of energy to maintain its industrial base and service the needs of its population.

So, on Global Wind Day, feel free to go to the beach, but remember that it is an extraordinary bad way to generate energy.

It will no doubt be on the agenda for the forthcoming June Rio+20 Earth Summit that is self-described as “the 'institutional framework for sustainable development'; a system of global governance” aimed at achieving the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel’s plan to control the world’s “social, environmental, and economic” policies.

And you thought wind and solar power was just about electricity.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Cartoon Round Up

Wheat and World Politics

By Alan Caruba

We normally gauge the politics and actions of nations on whether they are having economic problems and whether they are threatening their neighbors or their citizens, but there is another measurement and it is the import and export of wheat because it is a vital component of food for billions of people around the world.

The good news for the nation and the world is that U.S. wheat farmers are expected to have bumper crops this year. An estimated 1.69 billion bushels will be produced, 13% more than last year.

Drawing on reports in Wheat Life magazine, here’s a look at the world these days.

Nations that fail to pursue peace pay a price for it. For example, several weeks after agreeing to provide North Korea with 240 metric tons of food for its starving population, the U.S. withdrew its offer in the wake of its missile launch. The launch was a failure, but so was the decision that aroused the fear of other nations regarding North Korea’s intentions. There’s a point when humanitarian action is useless in the face of Communist aggression and intransigence.

The government of Syria has another factor to worry about in addition to the opposition to its dictatorial rule. Officials there are also faced with the need to increase cereal imports by about a third after local grain output dropped ten percent. The inability to feed its restive population may prove to be as great a problem as their opposition to Assad’s regime.

Another troublemaker, Iran, is ramping up its imports of wheat in what appears to be a strategic reserve in anticipation of further, harsher sanctions aimed at curbing its nuclear program. In recent months, Iran has purchased wheat from the U.S., Australia, Brazil and Kazakhstan. Iran’s constant pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East, funding terrorist organizations, aiding Shiite unrest against Sunni Muslims, and general meddling in the affairs of its neighbors portends the possibility of shortages that could evoke more internal unrest.

Pakistan, America’s fair weather friend, recently permitted 100,000 tons of wheat to move from India to Afghanistan. What makes this of interest is that Pakistan regards India as an enemy that might attack it at any moment and one that is seeking to have good relations with Afghanistan, which the Pakistanis want to control via the Taliban. Thus the wheat transfer was a major exception that was accomplished when the Pakistanis pretended that it was Afghanistan, not India, using it as a transit point.

Meanwhile around the world, the introduction of genetically altered food crops that include wheat are possibly the greatest revolution of all. A salt-tolerant wheat which would thrive in the thirty percent of soils worldwide has been developed in Australia. It prevents salt build-up in leaves. In England, researchers have developed a genetically engineered wheat that releases a chemical that alerts the greenfly and blackfly to danger while attracting natural predators. This has the added benefit of reducing the use of pesticides to knock down the fly population.

Insect predation, along with rodent predation, is a major factor in the loss of food crops, causing the loss of millions of tons that would otherwise feed large populations. Weeds, too, must be controlled. While genetic engineering is welcome pesticides and herbicides protect vital food crops worldwide.

Finally, as the European Union struggles to keep itself intact, we learn that consumers in France have been paying inflated prices for retail flour as the result of rigging the domestic market. The practice has gone on since 1965. In 2002, German flour mills were brought into the deception as both nations colluded to limit cross border sales of packaged flour. Germany pulled out in 2008 when an investigation into the corrupt practice began. The French antitrust watchdog authorities fined their flour millers $318 million for participating in the illegal action. Presumably the price of a croissant or baguette has dropped.

The song, America the Beautiful, speaks of “amber waves of grain” for good reason.

America is a major wheat producing nation and it contributes billions to our economy. Wheat farmers like other elements of agricultural community have to deal, not only with Mother Nature, but also with a constant cascade of regulations and other policies that can impact their ability to not only feed us, but millions more around the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Obama Forced a Change Nobody Wanted

By Alan Caruba

Barack Hussein Obama promised to transform America with an ill-defined message of change during his 2008 campaign. As Americans discovered what that change involved, they began to reject it. It was a change to the Left, to liberalism, to socialism.

The first sign of rejection was the 2010 election when voters returned power in the House of Representatives to Republicans. Since the 2006 midterm elections that gave the Democratic Party a sweeping victory and elevated Nancy Pelosi as the first woman to become Speaker of the House, Americans have had an opportunity to experience the liberal agenda and they don't like it.

They didn’t like the way Obama wasted 2009 on pushing his socialization of one sixth of the nation’s economy with Obamacare, a bill then-Speaker Pelosi told voters that the bill would have to be passed so they “could see what was in it.” Soon enough the Supreme Court will render a decision on its constitutionality and the likely outcome is that it will be struck down.

The voters didn’t like Obama’s massive “stimulus” redistribution of their taxes that included a bailout of General Motors and Chrysler that could have been avoided by simply allowing them to go through the normal process of bankruptcy and restructuring. Instead, Obama screwed their creditors, normally the first in line to be compensated for their losses, and gave the auto unions a seat on the auto companies’ boards of directors, erasing the line between management and unions.

Recall, too, that the 2006 elections reflected the dissatisfaction of voters with the long years of wars in Afghanistan and, in particular, in Iraq. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, just before the national elections, combined with the unalloyed worship of a completely unknown Illinois Senator, the outcome was the election of Obama.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Now the shame of the failure to address the financial crisis in time-tested and proven ways is Obama’s. He could have cut taxes. Instead he pushed for an end to the Bush tax cuts and talked endlessly about raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” In point of fact, his tax programs were and are aimed at the middle class. He could have cut government spending. Instead he increased it with all manner of phony schemes such as “cash for clunkers.”

Since 2009 Obama has added four trillion dollars to the nation’s debt and has presided over the first, historic downgrade of America’s triple-A credit rating. The continuing news of taxpayer losses in his administration’s disastrous “investments” in solar and other “clean energy” firms that continue to fail has added to the clear perception of an ideologically driven agenda that is out of touch with reality.

The victory of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, barely five months before the forthcoming November elections is yet another reason to celebrate the rejection of Obama and his policies that have given the nation 42 months of an unemployment rate that is unprecedented since the Great Depression. Gov. Walker’s election signals the decline of the union movement and his reforms resulted in tens of thousands of union members choosing to leave the unions in Wisconsin.

The realization that unions, in particular the public service unions, have raped the public coffers of states, marks a turning point that will result in reforms that will greatly aid recovery. The millions the union movement poured into the defeat of Gov. Walker are millions that have been diverted from Obama’s reelection.

USA Today reported that “The residents of only nine states have returned their economies to the level that existed before the downturn struck at the end of 2007—and most of those states are energy producers.” The nation runs on the energy that the oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear provide. Obama has waged a war on oil and coal in particular and the public has taken notice of how insane this policy has been.

The outcome of the Wisconsin elections has not been lost on the Democratic Party. It will now be in full panic mode and Americans will be subjected to a campaign of lies intended to distract and deceive them.

Obama can no longer blame former President Bush for his failures, cannot blame events in Europe, and cannot blame Mother Nature. He has only himself to blame. Voters from the Left to the Right know this. Except for the hardcore liberal base and the mainstream media, the rest are ready to reject Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2012