Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Europe, Politics, The United States | Tags: Camp David Meeting, G8 Summit, Growth/ Jobs and Deficits
The Group of Eight met at Camp David on May 18 and 19 to be lectured by President Obama on how to solve their economic problems. just like he has. At least previously he had no compunctions about telling European heads of state how to manage. I’m sure he advised them to do more Keynesian stimulus — and to raise taxes, particularly on the wealthy. I don’t know any such thing, of course, but it’s a good bet.
Obama does not change his mind. His ideas are set in concrete. In spite of the failure of the previous stimulus, he still wants another. The Group of Eight issued “The Camp David Declaration” which says that “they need to take action to boost confidence and nurture recovery with reforms to raise productivity, growth and demand within a sustainable, credible and non-inflationary macroeconomic framework. We commit to fiscal responsibility and, in this context, we support sound and sustainable fiscal consolidation policies that take into account countries’ evolving economic conditions and underpin confidence and economic recovery.” There, doesn’t that give you a great burst of confidence.
There are 40 points of blather that essentially says that they’ll keep on trying to figure out what to do, and tried to hit all the hot points. They are opposed to the bad things, supportive of the good things, have deep concerns about Iran, the DPRK, and Syria and call on them to straighten out. They note that the people of North Africa have aspirations, and encourage them to have democratic and participatory government while under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood. And, of course they want to promote growth and jobs, and their governments need to take action.
There was, Obama said, “a consensus for progress.”
We know it is possible — in part, based on our own experience here. In my earliest days in office, we took decisive steps to confront our own financial crisis — from making banks submit to stress tests to rebuilding their capital — and we put in place some of the strongest financial reforms since the Great Depression.
At the same time, we worked to get our own fiscal house in order in a responsible way. And through it all, even as we worked to stabilize the financial sector and bring down our deficits and debt over the longer term, we stayed focused on growing the economy and creating jobs in the immediate term.
Of course, we still have a lot of work to do. Too many of our people are still looking for jobs that pay the bills. Our deficits are still too high. But after shrinking by nearly 9 percent the quarter before I took office, America’s economy has now grown for almost three consecutive years. After losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, our businesses have created more than 4 million jobs over the past 26 months. Exports have surged and manufacturers are investing in America again.
There you go. Our economy is all recovered, we just have some tidying up to do. If the Europeans, whose situation is more complicated, will just do as Obama has done, all will be well.
Obama seems to have a separate film in which he is the hero, playing in his head, and he doesn’t understand that we’re watching the tragedy in an adjacent theater and it is building to a desperate climax. It’s not a good show, and a lot of the audience is already filing out.
Filed under: Europe, Freedom, Heartwarming, History, Military, National Security, The United States | Tags: General Mark Welsh III, U.S Military, U.S. Air Force Academy
If you can manage the time tonight, watch this speech by General Mark Welsh III, Commander U.S. Air Forces Europe, speaking to the cadets at the Air Force Academy last November. You will quickly see why he is such a respected leader, and the speech is moving, inspiring, and worth every minute of your time.
This week, General Mark Welsh III was nominated to be the next chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. By all accounts, General Welsh is perhaps the most respected leader in the Air Force today, and for months both active and retired Air Force personnel were rooting for him to occupy the top slot. Currently serving as Commander, U.S. Air Forces Europe, Welsh will take over a service whose mission is more vital than ever, but one that has flown through lots of turbulence in recent years, from severe budget cuts to program mismanagement and security failures. It would be hard to find an American military leader as inspiring as General Welsh, now that David Petraeus has retired, and the Air Force will have a formidable leader in the coming years.
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Filed under: Intelligence, National Security, The United States, United Kingdom | Tags: Britain's MI6 and MI5, Terrorism in Yemen, U.S. Intelligence Community
Good news on the intelligence front has not been particularly plentiful. So when news that a new underwear plot was foiled, too much information was the problem. Former agents from the U.S. intelligence community are blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British intelligence establishment, MI6 and MI5.
Mike Scheur, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, said that leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. “MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president, if he has the balls. This is really tragic” Scheur said.”Any information is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing.”
Robert Grenier, former head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, in an article for al-Jazeera, said the spies of the US intelligence community “rather than quietly celebrating success are wistfully shaking their heads…As the director of national intelligence launches an investigation, he does so knowing the real culprits—in the White House and on Capitol Hill — are beyond his reach. He added “As for British intelligence, …they must be really unhappy. …The Americans are doing a very good jjob of undermining trust, and the problem starts at the top.”
It was clear that the information from this agent could have gone on for some time, when it was cut off by a leak. His intelligence was helping to target crucial drone strikes within Yemen, including one that killed the man responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The leak appears to have frustrated a painstaking and risky operation.
Yemen has been a key target country for the CIA and MI6 in line with the growing strength of Aqap in recent years. But the lead on the ground has been taken by the Saudi intelligence service, the Mabahith, which is best placed to operate in the local environment and exploit links on either side of the border.
Filed under: Europe, Humor, Pop Culture | Tags: A City Square, Advertising Genius, Belgium
This is just another new commercial, with a different twist.
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Filed under: Australia, Europe, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology, United Kingdom | Tags: Global Warming Skepticism, Obama Wants More Money, Public Skepticism
The European Union’s climate policy is in freefall. Carbon prices (they do cap-and-trade) have lost nearly 14% of their value (April 2). The already depressed carbon price dropped from €7 to a record low of €6.14 by early afternoon.
The Germans are dumping their subsidies for solar energy. The British government has rejected the bogus economics of climate change, though they are not quite ready to announce it formally.
Europe is coming to the realization that on top of all their other economic problems, they don’t need to be subsidizing expensive solar energy that hikes the power bills for the public while producing little energy.
In Canada, Lawrence Solomon writes in The Financial Post that the world is awash in oil, and in the future, the MIddle East will go back to being an obscure backwater because the world will no longer be dependent on its oil.
The Aussies are not happy with Prime Minister Julia Gaillard’s climate efforts and taxes, and are showing their displeasure at the polls, tossing out their Labour government.
And at the University of East Anglia, a new postgraduate course hopes to bring together researchers in the environmental sciences, philosophy, history and literature to develop “new ways of thinking about environmental change and social transitions.” If you have experience in writing “eco-poetry” the UEA wants to hear from you. UAE is noted as the birthphlace of ClimateGate.
Everywhere, a sensible public is becoming more skeptical of outrageous climate claims, and the climate alarmists come up with new stories of impending doom. Dr. Tim Ball, Canadian climate scientist says that “when asked what’s wrong with global warming —most can only say sea level rise.”
And here at home, in alignment with the rest of the world, the Obama administration has requested $770 million in federal funds to combat the effects of global warming in developing countries, according to a congressional report. This continues administration policy of using foreign aid to combat the effects of global warming in the developing world —despite another year of $1 trillion deficits.
According to the Congressional Research Service the administration has spent a total of $2.5 billion on the Global Climate Change Initiative on anti-global warming efforts in Latin America, Asia and Africa. If approved by Congress the latest request would boost foreign climate change spending to $3.3 billion. The money supposedly goes for adaption, clean energy, and sustainable landscapes.
CRS noted that —like most foreign aid programs — there was a high probability that foreign countries would misuse or wast GCCI funds. They also mentioned that “Congress may want to consider the fact that there is a lack of consensus on whether global warming will happen at all.”
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Europe, Junk Science, Liberalism, Statism | Tags: Collapsing Solar Industry, European Carbon Market, Rising Energy Bills: Collapsing Solar
The carbon market in Europe — cap-and-trade — is in freefall. The prices of emissions allowances, which award the holder the right to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, have fallen to a record low this week, down 11% from the beginning of the year, They now trade at less than one-fourth of their July 2008 value. Hopes that other nations would fall in line with the EU program have been dashed, and there is no global consensus.
Recession on the continent has cut back on emissions, and the prolonged economic slump casts doubt on whether the EU can continue to bolster prices on the carbon exchange. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher levels than we have at present. We are currently near the bottom end of the scale, not the top. Greenhouses regularly keep their CO2 levels around 1000 ppm. Plants grow better at higher levels, and are more resistant to drought.
IPCC supporters have been frustrated at the lack of computer-predicted warming, though there has been some warming , perhaps about 0.8 degrees Celsius, since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 1800s, but the timing of the warming suggests that a tangible amount of the warming comes from natural causes and has nothing to do with factories or SUVs.
Germany decided last year to slash the market prices it forces utilities to pay for renewable energy sources, and to cut the subsidies that have locked German taxpayers into €100 billion in handouts to the solar industry. The Germans, being a northern race, have had a long love affair with the sun, but there are limits. They have found that their heavily insulated houses are featuring more mold and mildew. Germany produces nearly half of the world supply of solar energy.
The green manufacturing that was supposed to be the planet’s salvation is just as susceptible to low-cost competition as other industries. Instead of creating a sustainable comparative advantage, German subsidies invited competition, and the rivalry that is now putting their solar industry out of business.
Italy is taking notice and are cutting back on ‘excessive” subsidies for solar and wind power. The Obama administration has shown no signs of such good sense, but we may have lucked out. Solar Trust last year received a conditional commitment for a $2.1 billion loan from the Department of Energy, but declared itself insolvent after its German parent Solar Millennium filed for bankruptcy in March, and Q-Cells, another German solar company filed for bankruptcy this week. Solarhybrid, and Solon went out of business earlier, and according to one analyst, more bankruptcies are on the horizon. Consumers can expect a $260 hike in their energy bills.
The administration’s recovery.gov website lists five pages of other solar projects, with current and future loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even after the Solyndra debacle and all the other bankruptcies, Washington boosters still insist that these projects are the key to America’s economic and energy future. They just believe.
The belief in “renewable energy” is religious in nature, and not susceptible to contrary information. Solar and wind remain beautiful dreams with no more substance than a rainbow. And the dream of cheap, unlimited power from “natural” sources is like chasing the end of the rainbow looking for the pot of gold.
Filed under: Iran, Politics, Progressivism, United Kingdom | Tags: David Axelrod, Democrats, Eric Holder, Medvedev, Obama
Bill Whittle addresses this administration and all its works and finds them to be “Merchants of Despair.” Whether intentionally or unintentionally, they have brought Chicago style politics to the nation’s capitol. Actions have consequences, and they did not understand what the consequences of their actions would be.
They thought it was a game, a political game, in which they won, and so could take advantage of the financial crisis to do things that they well knew that the American people did not want. But they did them anyway, in a kind of thumbing of the nose to the public, who did not understand what was afoot.
They brought debt and unemployment, inflation and misery to millions of Americans, and thought it didn’t matter. They used the ‘government’s money’ to pay back those who supported them, and thus rewarded, they can expect support again, to do it all over. That’s not free market capitalism, and not a free country and not a free people. And we don’t do things that way.
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Filed under: Politics, Foreign Policy, The Constitution, Economy, Conservatism, Freedom, Capitalism, United Kingdom, National Security, The United States, Iran | Tags: Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Strategy and Tactics
This week on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell discusses why the glacial pace of deliberations and decisions in the Senate is a feature, not a bug.
“Once it was clear the president was going to try to turn us into a Western European country as rapidly as he could, about the only strategy you have left when your opposition has a forty-seat majority in the House. . . . We knew we couldn’t stop the agenda. But we thought we had a chance of creating a national debate about whether all of this excess was appropriate. And the key to having a debate, frankly and candidly, was to deny the president, if possible, the opportunity to have any of these things be considered bipartisan.”
This interview will do a lot towards explaining American politics and American government— at least the Senate version. Why the Founders created the Senate the way they did.
Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Progressivism, Capitalism, United Kingdom, Law | Tags: The Supreme Court, Britain's National Health Service, Only "Scare Stories"
As the Supreme Court hears arguments about the fate of ObamaCare, it is useful to once again take a look at the country with the longest experience with socialized medicine. Britain adopted their National Health Service just after World War II.
When we read the accounts of NHS care in the British papers, we are told that they are only “scare stories.” They would never happen here, we are told. Yet, we were told, Obama’s health care advisers — Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Peter Orzak, Tom Daschle, and Dr, Donald Berwick — were all extravagant admirers of the National Health Service. They talked a lot, we were told, about the fact that the highest costs of medicine came in a person’s final years.
That’s where the ideas for the Independent Pay Advisory Board (IPAB) that Congress is trying to repeal right now, came from. That’s where “comparative effectiveness research” came from. Obama even referred to it when confronted with a woman in one of his campaign events, who wanted to know what value ObamaCare would place on ‘zest for life’ when deciding on a procedure for an older person (in this case, her mother who needed a pacemaker at age 100 — got it— and has enjoyed 5 more years and is still going strong). Obama mumbled a little and said something about there was a time when radical expense maybe wasn’t worth it, and pain pills were more in order.
Monday, March 25, 2012, The Telegraph reports: Elderly Dying due to Despicable Age Discrimination in NHS.
A lack of treatment or insufficient treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year in people over the age of 75, Macmillan Cancer Support has found, in what it called an ‘unacceptable act of discrimination’.
Deaths from cancer are reducing in most age groups but at a slower rate in those aged 74 to 84 and are increasing in people aged 85 and over, the report said.
Professor Riccardo Audisio, Consultant Surgical Oncologist at St Helens Hospital, said: “It is despicable to neglect, not to offer, not to even go near to the best treatment option only on the simple basis of the patient’s age. “This has been a horrible mistake that, particularly in the UK, we have suffered from.”
According to research published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, there would be 14,000 fewer deaths from cancer in those aged over 75 per year if mortality rates from cancer matched those in America.
Keep in mind that this is just, we are told, a “scare story” from England, and has nothing to do with ObamaCare.
Free market medicine is based on competition, which helps to keep the costs down, and rewards excellence. Socialized medicine, which offers all things pretending to be “free,” encourages overuse, because nobody really knows what anything costs. It’s just that the taxes keep going up. And both the providers and the administrators focus becomes reducing the cost. Providers try to receive adequate recompense for their efforts; administrators make more rules to slash expenses. The incentives have changed, and excellence goes by the wayside. It’s just the way of the world.
Filed under: Economy, Energy, Environment, Junk Science, United Kingdom | Tags: Extraordinarily Expensive, Not Worth the Cost., Wind Power
One of the United Kingdom’s leading energy and environmental economists has warned that wind power is an extraordinarily expensive and inefficient way of reducing CO2 emissions. There is a significant risk he said, that annual CO2 emissions could be greater as a result of Britain’s flawed wind policies when compared with the option of investing inefficient and flexible gas combined cycle plants.
Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University found that
—Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 13 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity at a cost of about £120 billion.
—The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants at a cost of £13 billion — an order of magnitude cheaper than the wind version.
—Under the most favorable assumptions for wind power, the Government’s wind policy will reduce emissions of CO2 at an average cost of £270 per metric ton (at 2009 prices) which means that meeting the UK’s renewable energy target would cost a staggering £78 billion per year in 2020.
The key problems with current wind power policies are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment resources in a technology that is not very green in the sense of saving a lot of CO2, but which is very expensive and inflexible. Unless the UK Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, it’s policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder.
The full report is here. Perhaps someone should forward it to Secretary Chu? Obama? Granted, it’s all delineated in British pounds, but the message is fairly clear.
As far as I can tell, all wind farms go in with the assumption that they will be successful and last for a long time. That does not appear to be the case. I read very recently that their expected shelf-life is only about 20 years. I have also read that you will never see a wind farm where all the turbines are actually turning. There are dreadful pictures available of abandoned wind farms. That’s a lot of metal and electronics and who knows what else to dispose of.
Do we pay attention to warnings like this? Or do we just swallow the promoters songs about capacity? Surely there is someone somewhere who wants to save money? Britain is far from alone in taking a second hard look at wind power.
The problem is government renewable energy mandates which have locked them in on doing something stupid. The name may change, to clean energy technologies, or some other descriptor, but it’s still the same old cap-and-trade by a different name.
Filed under: Energy, Environment, Junk Science, Science/Technology, United Kingdom | Tags: Matt Ridley, The Matt Ridley Prize, The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley, author of many books, especially The Rational Optimist,in a new article in The Spectator, points out that the British government has finally seen through the wind-farm scam, but getting rid of it is something else. Now he is confronted with a personal problem. A family trust has signed a deal to receive £8,500 from a wind company, which is building a turbine on land that once belonged to his grandfather. He is not a beneficiary. But he finds the idea that any part of his family is receiving ‘wind-gelt’ so abhorrent that he has decided to act.
He is offering a checque for £8,500 as a prize for the best article devoted to rational, fact-based environmental journalism. It will be called the Matt Ridley prize for environmental heresy, and he hopes that it will somehow bring David Cameron to his senses.
To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.
If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often willfully deaf. …The biggest investors in offshore wind — Mitsubishi, Gamesa and Siemens — are starting to worry that the government’s heart is not in wind energy any more. …
So even if you accept the most alarming predictions of climate change, those turbines that have ruined your favourite view are doing nothing to help. The shale gas revolution has not only shamed the wind industry by showing how to decarbonise for real, but has blown away its last feeble argument — that diminishing supplies of fossil fuels will cause their prices to rise so high that wind eventually becomes competitive even without a subsidy. Even if oil stays dear, cheap gas is now likely to last many decades.
Great fun. If you have not read The Rational Optimist, you are missing something splendid. Or go to TED, and watch his lecture on “When Ideas Have Sex.”
Filed under: Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology, United Kingdom | Tags: House of Commons, Professor Richard Lindzen, The Climate is Always Changing
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT is one of the world’s greatest atmospheric physicists. He spoke to the House of Commons this last week. As James Delingpole says:
“Dick Lindzen does not need to raise his voice. He does not use hyperbole. In a tone somewhere between weariness and withering disdain, he lets the facts speak for themselves. And the facts, as he understands them, are devastating.
Here is how he began his speech, which was organized on behalf of the Campaign to Repeal the Climate Change Act:”
Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.
The full text of Professor Lindzen’s speech is available here.
