Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Politics | Tags: She was a Good Volunteer, Taking Advantage, When First We Practice to Deceive
Jefferson County,Colorado Democrats awarded 66 year-old Estelle Carson the 2012 award for “Democrat of the Year,” for her volunteer work for the Democrat party. Seemed like a good idea but advocates for the developmentally disabled were outraged.
It seems that Carson had been convicted the previous week for stealing checks and money from a 71-year-old developmentally disabled, partially blind, wheelchair bound woman. A Jefferson County jury had convicted her of felony charges for identity theft and theft from an at-risk adult. Se stole checks from the woman top pay her cellphone, internet and cable bills. The victim is on a fixed income of $596 per month. Authorities say Carson befriended the woman and then took control of her checkbook, stealing at least two checks.
Although the party learned of her conviction, they went ahead three days later and named Carson “Democrat of the Year” on January 8, saying the criminal investigation and the award needed to be compartmentalized. The advocates for the disabled called it “appalling” and “outrageous”, and pointed out that Carson had already confessed to the crime. At that point, the Democrats withdrew the award.
Filed under: Election 2012, Islam, Media Bias, Military, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Benghazi Libya, Conventional Media Doesn't, Fox News Does Journalism
Here’s the complete Fox News coverage to date of the Benghazi scandal as it is known so far. Lots to learn yet, but people are angry, especially the nation’s military families and veterans who now know that their government may not “have their backs.” Political expedience trumps all.
Take the time when you can to watch the whole thing. We need to be well-informed on this scandal, for in a cover-up there always are designated fall guys and attempts to shift blame. This can’t ever happen again.
Filed under: Capitalism, Conservatism, Economy, Election 2012, Politics, Statism, The United States | Tags: 23 Million Unemployed, Federal Debt, The Obama Recovery Failed
Filed under: Entertainment, History, Literature, Movies | Tags: In Trouble Off Cape Hatteras, The Bounty Trilogy, The HMS Bounty Replica
The tall ship HMS Bounty, is a replica of the famous ship sent by the Royal Navy on a botanical mission. It was sent to the South Pacific to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to the British West Indies. The mission was never completed. Anger and bad relationships between the ship’s commander, Lieutenant William Bligh and his acting Sailing Master, Fletcher Christian, led to one of the world’s most famous mutinies. Fletcher Christian and about half the crew seized the vessel on October 28, 1789.
On December 23, 1787, the Bounty sailed from Spithead for Tahiti. The crew spent an entire month trying to round Cape Horn, but the weather prevented it. Bligh proceeded East, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and crossed the Indian Ocean. Bounty reached Tahiti on October 26, 1788 after ten months at sea. Bligh and the crew spent five months in Tahiti. Many of the crew formed relations with young women, had themselves tattooed in native fashion. They set sail with their cargo of breadfruit on 4 April 1789.
Some 1300 miles west of Tahiti, near Tonga, mutiny broke out. The ship was taken bloodlessly, and apparently without any struggle except by Bligh himself. Of the 42 men on the ship, 22 joined Christian in mutiny, 18 remained loyal to Bligh and two were passive.
The mutineers ordered Bligh, two midshipmen, the surgeon’s mate, and the ship’s clerk into the ship’s boat, along with a few of the seamen. They sailed 30 nautical miles to Tofua in search of supplies, but were forced to flee when they found the natives hostile and one man was killed. Bligh then set out for the Dutch port of Coupang, 3,500 nautical miles from Tofua, one of the great feats of navigation and seamanship. He safely arrived there 47 days later, having lost no men during the voyage.
The Mutineers returned to Tahiti, where they set the loyalists and sixteen of the mutineers ashore. Fletcher Christian, eight other crewmen, six Tahitian men and eleven women, one with a baby set sail in the Bounty. They passed through the Fiji Islands, and the Cook Islands trying to find a safe place. On 15 January 1790 they rediscovered Pitcairn Island, which had been misplaced on admiralty maps. To prevent discovery and anyone’s escape, the ship was burned in what is now called Bounty Bay.
The stories were admirably told by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall in a trilogy : Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairn’s Island. They were originally published in the 1930s, and in many other versions ever since. Amazon has a selection of all different printings.I loved the books when I was a kid.
Movies have been made of Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, (1935), with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard (1962), and a 1984 movie called The Bounty with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins —who goes somewhat mad. There was an earlier one with Errol Flynn, and one even earlier than that from Australia which is long lost. It’s a great sea story, based on real history, and always popular. Captain Bligh is portrayed as cruel, totally mad, a master navigator and a firm but harsh captain. Books have been written about Bligh’s accomplishments, the aftermath for Pitcairn Islanders, the rediscovery of Pitcairn. That one voyage has proved to be fodder for a multitude of stories.
Which brings us back to today. The HMS Bounty, which I believe is the replica built for the 1962 movie, was caught up in Hurricane Sandy off Cape Hatteras today. They lost steerage, and were taking on water. The Coast Guard performed a heroic rescue, and picked up 14 of the 16 crew members, all in survival suits. Two were missing, but the Coast Guard continued to search.
The sea is relatively warm, around 70° and one was known to be wearing a survival suit, though they didn’t know if the other missing man had one. It’s not known if the Bounty is still afloat. It is 223 years and one day since the original Mutiny took place.
ADDENDUM: The Coast Guard has suspended their search for the Captain of the Bounty. The missing crew member was found, unresponsive, and died at the hospital. The ship has gone down.
Filed under: Freedom, Heartwarming, Military, The United States | Tags: Country, Duty, Honor
Hurricane Sandy is causing a lot of misery. Wind is no longer the biggest problem, but storm surge and high tides and great quantities of rain. The Old Guard doesn’t let a little weather interfere with duty.
ADDENDUM: This picture I have learned, is not from this storm, but from an earlier storm in September. But it is a particularly fine photo by photographer Karin Markert, and especially representative of the commitment of the Tomb Sentinels.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Intelligence, Islam, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, Terrorism, The Constitution | Tags: Benghazi, Cover-ups Don't Work, The Truth Will Out
President Obama fired back today at critics who have accused his administration of orchestrating a cover-up over the September 11 attacks in Libya, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in an interview that aired Monday. The president said:
I do take offense with some suggestion that in any way, we haven’t tried to make sure that the American people knew as the information was coming in what we believed.
If we find out there was a big breakdown, and somebody didn’t do their job, they’ll be held accountable.
Ultimately, as commander-in-chief, I’m responsible, and I don’t shy away from that responsibility. My number one responsibility is to go after the folks who did this, and we’re going to make sure we get them.
Your responsibility, as commander-in-chief, Mr. President, was to protect sovereign American territory, our ambassador, and the other people in that consulate.
The correct response was to send in a rapid response team to rescue the inhabitants of the consulate and the annex, eliminate the attackers, and secure the premises and whatever materials are contained at the two locations that should not fall into other hands. No, you didn’t need the consent of the Libyan government, the U.N. or anybody else. As you keep reminding us, but do not demonstrate, you are responsible and you are the commander-in-chief.
The most notable thing so far in your four years, Mr. President, is that you do shy away from responsibility of any kind. Whatever it is, it’s always someone else’s fault. You’re very big on promising “investigations” which usually linger on until everyone gets bored and new events take over the front pages, and no one is responsible and no one gets fired. (See Fast and Furious)
You take responsibility when what you did is popular. You can’t stop taking responsibility for killing bin-Laden, though that “gutsy call” took nearly a year and constant assurances that it was Osama and he was there. If you take responsibility for that, you have to take responsibility for the doctor who helped to prove that it was indeed bin-Laden and is sentenced to years in prison for his help. And you have to take responsibility for endangering the lives of members of SEAL Team Six and their families— which is real.
As I understand the timeline of events, you watched, in the situation room, events in real time as they evolved for at least seven of the nine-hour battle. You didn’t just do nothing, you actively prevented anyone else from doing anything — purely for political purposes. Instead of following the story, you went off to Las Vegas to raise money.
You turned down constant calls for help, and you actively prevented those in the AC-130 gunships overhead from firing, even when Glen Doherty was painting the mortars that eventually killed both of these brave SEALS..
General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, got the same emails begging for help received by the White House, and put a rapid response team together and notified the Pentagon it was ready to go. He was ordered to stay put. “His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow,” writes Jim Robbins at the Washington Times. “Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.” He was officially replaced by General Rodriguez.
According to various reports, one of Ambassador Stevens main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadaffi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 —portable SAMs—to Islamists and other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria. Stevens routinely used our Benghazi mission to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East. Stevens, according to Egyptian security sources played a central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad regime in Syria. There were two warehouses in the compound.
Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty fought for something like seven hours to rescue the consulate staff, and killed 60 of the attackers before they were killed themselves by mortar fire.
This whole incident has me sick with shame, anger and disgust. This is the worst thing ever done by any president of the United States. Lots of presidents have had to order men into battle, order them on missions from which they might not return, commit them to battle in a war that seemed never to end. But they did it for necessary reasons for the security of the whole nation.
This president kept honorable Americans from going to the aid of other honorable American in dire need — because he was afraid it might make him look bad right before the election. That is craven, cowardly and sick-making.
The president may have initiated one of the biggest cover-ups in history, or demonstrated enormous incompetence, but with a hurricane hitting the East Coast, he wants you to know that he’s right there on top of everything. He’s been to the National Response Coordination Center at FEMA headquarters in Washington DC, he’s been to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be briefed and talked seriously on his telephone, and urged people to get some extra cash from the ATM, and pick up a solar or hand-crank charger for your cell phone. And get some emergency supplies like water, nonperishable food, batteries.
Filed under: Capitalism, Conservatism, Entertainment, Heartwarming, Liberalism, Politics | Tags: Conservative in Hollywood?, Examining American Culture, Leftist Thought
The Left is deeply concerned about income inequality, you know that, they tell us so often enough. They have observed that some people live in poverty while others, particularly corporate CEOs, who get ridiculously enormous salaries that they certainly don’t deserve, are very rich. The Left considers this observed inequality as unnatural. In his book The Secret Knowledge, playwright David Mamet tackles the origins of the problem:
To correct this observed inequality, which the Left sees as unnatural, it invented the term “social justice.” But a system of Justice already exists, formulated by Legislature, in supposed expression of the will of the people, and administered by the Judiciary. This is called the Judicial System. What then is this additional, amorphous “social justice”? It can only mean, as Hayek wrote, “State Justice.” Here, though the Left will not follow the reasoning out to its end, the State (operating upon what basis it alone knows, and responsible to no law enacted by the people) confiscates wealth accumulated under existing laws and redistributes it to those it deems worthy.
History proves that the worthiest in these Marxist schemes are or quickly become, those in charge of distribution, which is to say “the State,” it’s constitutional powers usurped by those we know as “dictators.”
To the Left it is the State which should distribute place, wealth, and status. This is called “correcting structural error,” or redressing the legacy of Slavery,” or Affirmative Action, or constraining unfair Executive Compensation; but it is and can only be that spoils System which is decided at the ward level as “cronyism.” And lauded at the national level as “social justice.” It is nothing other than the distribution of goods and services by the government for ends not specified in the Constitution; and in response to pressure from or in attempts to curry favor with groups seeking preferments or goods not obtainable either under the law, or through those practices of mutual benefit called the Free Market. What obscenities are created in the name of “social justice?” What could possibly be less just than policies destructive of initiative and based upon genetics?
David Mamet was once a Democrat, and thought better of it. Actually he thought long and deeply about it, read a lot, and turned his considerable writing skills to explaining just why he changed his mind. It is a perfectly delightful book, and as a lifelong Conservative, I learned a lot.
David Mamet is an American playwright, screenwriter, author,and director renowned for Glengarry Glen Ross (Pulitzer, Tony nomination). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict and Wag the Dog. His books include: The Old Religion, Five Cities of Refuge, The Wicked Son, and a long list of books and movies, television shows and even radio dramas.
The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, is Mamet’s book detailing his conversion from modern liberalism to “a reformed liberal.” It was released in June of 2011, and I recommend it heartily.
Filed under: Intelligence, Law, National Security, Terrorism, The Constitution | Tags: Attack on the Consulate, Benghazi, Weekly Standard Editor
In response to questions regarding the events of September 11, in Benghazi, the president said this:
“Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do. But we want to make sure we get it right, particularly because I have made a commitment to the families impacted as well as to the American people, we’re going to bring those folks to justice. So, we’re going to gather all the facts, find out exactly what happened, and make sure that it doesn’t happen again but we’re also going to make sure that we bring to justice those who carried out these attacks.”
The interviewer followed up: “Were they denied requests for help during the attack?”
“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”
Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard mentioned that since the president was in the White House from the time the attack began at around 2:40 pm ET until the end of combat at the annex, sometime after 9 pm ET. So Mr. Kristol had a few simple questions about what he did that afternoon and evening, which should be easy by just consulting meeting and phone records.
1.) To whom did the president give the first of his “three very clear directives”—that is, “make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to?”
2.) How did he transmit this directive to the military and other agencies?
3.) During the time when Americans were under attack, did the president convene a formal or informal meeting of his national security council? Did the president go to the situation room?
4.) During this time, with which members of the national security team did the president speak directly?
5.) Did Obama speak by phone or teleconference with the combatant commanders who would have sent assistance to the men under attack?
6.) Did he speak with CIA director David Petraeus?
7.) Was the president made aware of the repeated requests for assistance from the men under attack? When and by whom?
8.) Did he issue any directives in response to these requests?
9.) Did the president refuse to authorize an armed drone strike on the attackers?
10.) Did the president refuse to authorize a AC-130 or MC-130 to enter Libyan airspace during the attack?
The Weekly Standard awaits the response from the White House. The rest of us do too.
Filed under: Intelligence, National Security, Terrorism, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Benghazi Libya, Deliberately Denying Help
The story gets uglier, the questions larger and more insistent. Over at National Review in the Corner, David French had an apt metaphor:”Benghazi is like peeling an increasingly rotten onion. Each layer is fouler than the last.”
He adds”Our embattled diplomats literally had the enemy in their sights, we had military assets in range, and not only were air strikes denied but special operations was told to wait. We abandoned our people, left them to die.”
An editorial at Investors pulls no punches:
Despite real-time video, emails to the White House and desperate cries for help, our defense secretary says we didn’t send rescue forces to our Benghazi consulate because we didn’t know what was going on.
In a statement bordering on the Kafkaesque, Leon Panetta told a news conference Thursday that four Americans, including our Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens, were left to die without a rescue attempt by nearby U.S. military forces because there’s “a basic principle here, and the basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.”…
Excuse us, Mr. Secretary, but your administration had a drone over the consulate on Sept. 11, and you and President Obama had a meeting that included Vice President Joe “Nobody Told Us” Biden in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. Washington time, a little more than an hour after the onset of the attack. There were at least 50 minutes of real-time video of the attack as the battle was sent streaming directly to the Situation Room in the White House.
Real-time emails were also pouring into the Situation Room detailing that 20 armed terrorists were attacking our Benghazi consulate, that Ambassador Stevens was crouched in a safe room waiting for help as the al-Qaida terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia was taking credit for the attack. Most claims of responsibility for a terrorist attack come days after the event. This was, as they say, in “real-time.”
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Election 2012, Middle East, Military, National Security, Terrorism, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: A Matter of Character, AC-130 Gunships, Constitutional Duties
The Benghazi Scandal just keeps getting uglier and uglier. The security situation in Libya was clearly deteriorating, the naive dreams of an “Arab Spring” and a new burst of democracy and freedom were proving just to be the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a more radicalized Middle East, but President Barack Obama and his campaign had adopted a theme on which they pinned the president’s re-election hopes. Obama’s great accomplishment was the “gutsy call” that ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and now the terrorist group al Qaeda was “on the run.”
Al Qaeda had chosen a new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood alum, and moved to play a larger role in the Middle East. It was moving to gain power in Tunisia. In Egypt, the most populous of the Arab nations, the Muslim Brotherhood had won elections and begun to dominate that country’s political life. The Muslim Brotherhood established the Islamic supremacist ideology that gave rise to al Qaeda.
Then came the riots and attack on the embassy in Cairo, and the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. That spoiled the narrative. But the riots in Cairo presented an out. The Benghazi attack could be blamed on the clumsy YouTube video that had been out for months and which nobody had seen.
Four Americans died in the attack. It was the first time an American ambassador had been killed in over 30 years. It took American investigators three weeks even to reach the burned consulate compound. The American government paid a reported $70,000 to air TV ads in Pakistan blaming the movie and apologizing for it, as if we should apologize for our Constitutional rights of free speech. Secretary Clinton spoke of the “despicable video”. Five days after the attack the administration dispatched UN ambassador Susan Rice to five Sunday talk shows to blame the video. The man who made the video was identified by the government, picked up and imprisoned on a “parole violation” and sentenced to solitary confinement until after the election.
But the administration story kept falling apart. It was not a riot or spontaneous attack, but an organized military assault. We had a drone overhead that recorded much of the attack. Although there were military bases in Sicily that could have reached Benghazi, nothing was dispatched.
Now we learn that there were two AC-130 gunships overhead,that had been stationed in Libya since March, ready to fire on the attackers, but they were not allowed to fire. A spokesman at the CIA, presumably at the direction of General Petraeus, said “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need, claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.” The Secretary of Defense could not have made such a decision on his own. It would have been a presidential decision. Although Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called criticism of the administration’s handling of the terror attack “Monday Morning Quarterbacking.” Secretary Clinton’s legal counsel said that Clinton has asked for more security, but President Obama denied the request. Circling the wagons.
In an interview with 9News in Denver today, reporter Kyle Clark committed some actual journalism and asked the President some simple direct questions— Were the Americans under attack in Benghazi denied requests for help?
Well, we are finding out exactly what happened. I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.
Apparently we will just keep investigating exactly what happened until well after the election, and a month and a half after the attack, it’s still all just a mystery. But we will identify those who carried out those terrible attacks one of these days, and send a drone after them.
The President of the United States has some clear Constitutional duties, none of which involve deciding which kind of fuel is the energy of the future, nor health care overhauls, nor reforming the schools, nor picking winners and losers from America’s businesses. The Constitution stipulates that the president will defend and uphold the Constitution and its guarantees of American freedoms. So this is not just about refusing to defend our ambassador, but goes to the oath of office, and a simple matter of ethics and character.
Fox News is continuing to follow-up on this story, and they are adding to and expanding on their earlier and excellent video timeline tomorrow at 1 pm Eastern, and again on Sunday. Look for it.
Filed under: Capitalism, Conservatism, Economy, Election 2012, Energy, Freedom, Heartwarming | Tags: A Growing Economy, Creating Real Jobs, Twelve Million New Jobs
On Wednesday, Paul Ryan delivered an entire speech at Cleveland State University on income mobility and poverty. Poverty rates are rising, food stamp use is way up. A Romney Ryan administration would offer real reform. Not by increasing the amounts that government spends on poverty programs, but by creating good jobs and a growing economy. Getting the nation’s spending and debt under control to avoid a financial crisis are vital because the poor and the vulnerable are always the hardest hit.
It was an impressive speech, advancing a positive social vision. I am unable to embed the videos here, There are two, that can be found here. Very worth every minute of your time. Paul Ryan is a very impressive young man, and he’s talking about solid ideas for returning America to the income mobility we have always known. “One is six Americans are in poverty today — the highest rate in a generation. In this war on poverty, poverty is winning. We need a better approach.”
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Politics | Tags: Navy Wanted 500 Ships, Seventh Grade Math, Sixteen Trillion Dollars
There was a moment in the Foreign Policy debate in Boca Raton when Obama said indignantly:
Look, Governor Romney’s called for $5 trillion of tax cuts that he says he’s going to pay for by closing deductions. Now the math doesn’t work, but he continues to claim that he’s going to do it. He then wants to spend another $2 trillion on military spending the our military is not asking for.
Well I almost spewed my coffee all over my keyboard. Barack Obama who has run up a trillion dollars more debt every year, who sent a budget to Congress that even his own Democrats rejected unanimously, who double counts the same numbers, and who has dreamed up a health care plan so noxious that Secretary Sebelius has to issue waivers to practically every participant. That Barack Obama is going to challenge Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on math? Really? To quote Barack Obama on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno:
“The math stuff was fine up until about 7th grade,” Obama said. After that “I’m pretty lost.”
That is possibly why he never mentions that 16 trillion number. He does have trouble with numbers, he simply can’t seem to get them right.
— Obama has a new ad out in which he claims to have added 5.2 million new jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy has eked out a net gain of 325,000 new jobs since January 2009, when Obama first took office.
President Obama claimed that the idea of using deep, automatic, across-the-board domestic and defense spending cuts to force Congress to address the nation’s growing federal deficit originated with Congress, not the White House.
“What the president said is not correct,” Woodward said Tuesday. “He’s mistaken and it’s refuted by the people who work for him.”
— Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show. The Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia asserted responsibility for the attacks. The man who made the video supposedly to blame for everything, remains in solitary confinement until “after the election.”
— Now that there’s only about two weeks until the election, the Obama campaign has issued a leaflet that “describes” Obama’s agenda for the next four years. Lots of pictures of Obama, and it trumpets “green energy” as an avenue of economic growth. Not very likely. The list of bankrupt solar and battery companies continues to grow. There is no second term agenda, only more of the first.
China began a state-led bailout of solar companies to save them from the crashing price of solar panels. Their attempt to save the industry is projected to cost about $11 billion. Siemens and GE’s energy division are souring on green energy. In the third quarter, wind-turbine sales fell 69 percent, reducing the energy division’s profits by 20 percent. DuPont sees a flat market for solar panels in 2013. Germany is facing 800,000 people in dire fuel poverty. With the EPA’s radical power-grab for after the election, we may be facing fuel poverty as well.
— Coal remains the nation’s principal source of electric power generation because it’s cheap. In terms of real dollars per unit of energy, the cost of generating electricity from coal is a fraction of the cost of any other energy source. The recent boom in shale gas production has led to an over-supply of natural gas and lower prices. But for natural gas to become the dominant feedstock for power generation, there are problems of infrastructure, transmission to storage and pipeline capacity. President Obama touts his “All of the Above” energy policy, but like so much of the Obama agenda, it’s only words.
Plentiful cheap energy means that America can be a world leader in manufacturing, plentiful energy means plentiful jobs. Nationally 175 coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be shut down from 2012 to 2016. The EPA has advanced a series of major environmental regulations totaling billions in new operating costs and compliance costs, unprecedented in scope and cost.
The National Economic Research Associates reported that only two of the proposed EPA regulations could lead to a net employment loss of 60,000 jobs just in Pennsylvania between now and 2020. The EPA wants to shut down coal production and power generation. They also want to shut down Hydraulic Fracturing. If we shut down these annoying sources of power, then people will be forced to turn to the energy sources of the future. Except they aren’t. Solar energy is too diffuse, and cannot exist without vast government subsidies; Wind is too intermittent.
— Perhaps it’s time to turn the “math stuff” over to a couple of men who thoroughly understand balance sheets, budgets, how to cut spending, and the intricacies of why so many businesses are not hiring under the Obama economy. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney have demonstrated expertise, and they got a long way past 7th grade.
American Elephants 