Via Hot Air and Byron York, Barack Obama has crossed the constitutional Rubicon. The die is cast. He realizes as much, and is daring Congress to stop him in the pixels of the New York Times.
NYT: People questioned your legal and constitutional authority to do that unilaterally — to delay the employer mandate. Did you consult with your lawyer?He continues, delivering his usual boilerplate about how he’s the only one who cares about the three-letter word called “jobs” and the Republicans are just saying “no” to everything.
MR. OBAMA: Jackie, if you heard me on stage today, what I said was that I will seize any opportunity I can find to work with Congress to strengthen the middle class, improve their prospects, improve their security –
NYT: No, but specifically –
MR. OBAMA: — but where Congress is unwilling to act, I will take whatever administrative steps that I can in order to do right by the American people.
And if Congress thinks that what I’ve done is inappropriate or wrong in some fashion, they’re free to make that case…
Then he hits them on their credentials to criticize.
But ultimately, I’m not concerned about their opinions — very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.Nice, coming from a once part-time adjunct professor. One of his fiercest critics, by the way, is Sen. Ted Cruz, who was a state solicitor general and has argued and won cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Can President Jumpshot claim as much?
From there, the don of the Juicebox Mafia declares that he will do what he wants, so fuggedabout opposing him.
I am concerned about the folks who I spoke to today who are working really hard, are trying to figure out how they can send their kids to college, are trying to make sure that they can save for their retirement. And if I can take steps on their behalf, then I’m going to do so.Obama has built up a lengthy history of bypassing Congress and the Constitution and seizing power not granted to him in law. The kinetic action in Libya, 2012′s unilateral revision of immigration law, and now delaying the employer mandate in Obamacare are but three, and they all escalate the stakes incrementally. Where most in Congress aren’t inclined to try limiting a president’s ability to wage war or whatever Libya was, Congress’ role in passing laws has been cracked badly by the immigration change and the mandate delay. He does not have the authority to delay that part of the law. He knows it, Congress knows it. He doesn’t care.
As I’ve written before, Obama has effectively hacked the Constitution. Hackers exploit weaknesses in systems they attack; Obama has found a weakness in the U.S. government system and that weakness’ name is Harry Reid. As long as Reid holds the reins in the Senate, Congress cannot effectively stop Obama because the Senate is in charge of the ultimate penalty, impeachment, and Reid will block every attempt to exercise that option. President Part-Time Professor knows that, and is exploiting it.
The question is, what’s his next move? The 2014 mid-terms threaten to close off the backdoor he’s exploiting, if the GOP sweeps the Democrats out of power in the Senate. He is already getting away with delaying the employer mandate. Republicans want Obamacare repealed entirely and have tried strongarming the Democrats into helping them via the mandate delay, but they’re not biting. Harry Reid is standing pat like a good little monkey, just doing whatever Obama commands.
Does Obama wait until after the mid-terms next year to declare a sweeping amnesty? Does he announce that the 2nd Amendment is no longer in force? How about the First? Or the 22nd? The Agitating Adjunct may rule that the Because I Said So clause trumps all others.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/07/29/obama-i-suspended-the-employer-mandate-because-i-could-what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it/
Govt. pays millions in benefits to dead farmers
The federal
government is still paying out millions of dollars a year in subsidies
to dead farmers, according to a new government audit released Monday
that said the Agriculture Department doesn’t do routine checks required to make sure it is paying benefits to the right people.
The Government Accountability Office said that from 2008 to 2012 one agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, made $10.6 million payments on behalf of more than 1,100 people who’d been dead at least a year. Another branch, the Risk Management Agency, paid out $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who’d been dead at least two years.
Some of the payments may have been legal because they were for work done before the farmers died, but GAO said the problem is the two agencies don’t perform the routine checks — such as looking at the Social Security lists — to see.
“Until and unless NRCS and RMA develop and implement procedures to have their payment or subsidy data records matched against SSA’s complete death master file, either through coordination with FSA or on their own, these agencies cannot know if they are providing payments to, or subsidies on behalf of, deceased individuals; how often they are providing such payments or subsidies; or in what amounts,” the investigators wrote.
GAO said the Agriculture Department has shown some progress since a previous audit found hundreds payments to 172,801 dead people, totaling some $1.1 billion, between 1999 and 2005.
And the current rate of potentially bad payments is slim compared to the overall budget for subsidies, which runs to about $20 billion a year.
In its official response to the audit, the Agriculture Department said it does have some procedures in place to check to see if it is paying live beneficiaries.
But the department acknowledged their procedures “were not effectively and consistently implemented to identify deceased individuals.”
Near the end of the GAO’s yearlong audit, the Agriculture Department signed an agreement to begin to get the Social Security Administration’s death master file, so it can begin checking names of those it is paying.
The Government Accountability Office said that from 2008 to 2012 one agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, made $10.6 million payments on behalf of more than 1,100 people who’d been dead at least a year. Another branch, the Risk Management Agency, paid out $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who’d been dead at least two years.
Some of the payments may have been legal because they were for work done before the farmers died, but GAO said the problem is the two agencies don’t perform the routine checks — such as looking at the Social Security lists — to see.
“Until and unless NRCS and RMA develop and implement procedures to have their payment or subsidy data records matched against SSA’s complete death master file, either through coordination with FSA or on their own, these agencies cannot know if they are providing payments to, or subsidies on behalf of, deceased individuals; how often they are providing such payments or subsidies; or in what amounts,” the investigators wrote.
GAO said the Agriculture Department has shown some progress since a previous audit found hundreds payments to 172,801 dead people, totaling some $1.1 billion, between 1999 and 2005.
And the current rate of potentially bad payments is slim compared to the overall budget for subsidies, which runs to about $20 billion a year.
In its official response to the audit, the Agriculture Department said it does have some procedures in place to check to see if it is paying live beneficiaries.
But the department acknowledged their procedures “were not effectively and consistently implemented to identify deceased individuals.”
Near the end of the GAO’s yearlong audit, the Agriculture Department signed an agreement to begin to get the Social Security Administration’s death master file, so it can begin checking names of those it is paying.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/29/govt-pays-millions-benefits-dead-farmers/
Gov't Knows Best? White House creates 'nudge squad' to shape behavior
The federal government is hiring what it calls a "Behavioral Insights
Team" that will look for ways to subtly influence people's behavior,
according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies,
while supporters say the team could make government and society more
efficient.
While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.
"Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals," reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.
The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would "experiment" with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.
The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a "Behavioral Insights Team." One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.
"Sending letters to late taxpayers that indicated a social norm -- i.e., that '9 out of 10 people in Britain paid their taxes on time' -- resulted in a 15 percent increase in response rates over a three-month period, rolling out to £30 million of extra annual revenue," the document reads.
Another policy aimed to convince people to install attic insulation to conserve energy.
"Offering an attic-clearance service (at full cost) to people led to a five-fold increase in their subsequent adoption of attic-insulation."
[Read the full document here]
Such policies -- which encourage behavior subtly rather than outright require it -- have come to be known as "nudges," after an influential 2008 book titled "Nudge" by former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and Chicago Booth School of Business professor Richard Thaler popularized the term.
The term "nudge" has already been associated with the new program, as one professor who received Shankar's email forwarded it to others with the note: "Anyone interested in working for the White House in a 'nudge' squad? The UK has one and it's been extraordinarily successful."
Richard Thaler told FoxNews.com that the new program sounds good.
"I don't know who those people are who would not want such a program, but they must either be misinformed or misguided," he said.
"The goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government by using scientifically collected evidence to inform policy designs. What is the alternative? The only alternatives I know are hunches, tradition, and ideology (either left or right.)"
But some economists urge caution.
"I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies," Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told FoxNews.com.
"Ultimately, nudging ... assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them."
And sometimes, he added, government actually promotes the wrong thing.
"Trans-fats were considered better than saturated and unsaturated fats in the past. Now we know this is an error."
Every intervention would need to be tested to make sure it works well, said Harvard economics professor David Laibson, who studies behavioral economics and is in touch with the people in government setting up the program. He added that the exact way the team will function is currently unknown.
"We have to see the details to be sure, but this could work out very well," he said.
Asked about details, Dan Cruz, spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration (the department which the team will be a part of) told FoxNews.com: "As part of the Administration's ongoing efforts to promote efficiency and savings, GSA is considering adding some expertise from academia in the area of program efficiency and evaluation under its Performance Improvement Council."
Maya Shankar did not respond to questions.
Laibson added that he hoped the U.S. program would stay away from overly controversial subjects.
"Let's say we want people to engage in some healthy behavior like a weight loss program, and then start automatically enrolling overweight people in weight loss programs -- even though they could opt out, I'm guessing that would be viewed as offensive ... a lot of people would say, 'I didn't ask for this, this is judging who I am and who I should be."
But Laibson added that there are very real benefits to some "nudge" policies -- such as one that increases the number of people registered as organ donors by making people decide when they apply for a drivers' license.
Thaler, who is also an adviser to the British Behavioral Insights Team, said that his research
also supports automatically enrolling people in retirement savings plans.
"Many people have struggled to save enough to provide for an adequate retirement. ... Two simple design changes can dramatically improve the situation ... automatic enrollment (default people into the plan with the option to easily opt out) and automatic escalation, where workers can sign up to have their contributions increased annually," he said.
Jerry Ellig, an economist at the Mercatus Center, said that some "nudges" are reasonable, but warned about a slippery slope.
"If you can keep it to a 'nudge' maybe it can be beneficial," he added, "but nudges can turn into shoves pretty quickly."
While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.
"Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals," reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.
The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would "experiment" with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.
The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a "Behavioral Insights Team." One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.
"Sending letters to late taxpayers that indicated a social norm -- i.e., that '9 out of 10 people in Britain paid their taxes on time' -- resulted in a 15 percent increase in response rates over a three-month period, rolling out to £30 million of extra annual revenue," the document reads.
Another policy aimed to convince people to install attic insulation to conserve energy.
"Offering an attic-clearance service (at full cost) to people led to a five-fold increase in their subsequent adoption of attic-insulation."
[Read the full document here]
Such policies -- which encourage behavior subtly rather than outright require it -- have come to be known as "nudges," after an influential 2008 book titled "Nudge" by former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and Chicago Booth School of Business professor Richard Thaler popularized the term.
The term "nudge" has already been associated with the new program, as one professor who received Shankar's email forwarded it to others with the note: "Anyone interested in working for the White House in a 'nudge' squad? The UK has one and it's been extraordinarily successful."
Richard Thaler told FoxNews.com that the new program sounds good.
"I don't know who those people are who would not want such a program, but they must either be misinformed or misguided," he said.
"The goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government by using scientifically collected evidence to inform policy designs. What is the alternative? The only alternatives I know are hunches, tradition, and ideology (either left or right.)"
But some economists urge caution.
"I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies," Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told FoxNews.com.
"Ultimately, nudging ... assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them."
And sometimes, he added, government actually promotes the wrong thing.
"Trans-fats were considered better than saturated and unsaturated fats in the past. Now we know this is an error."
Every intervention would need to be tested to make sure it works well, said Harvard economics professor David Laibson, who studies behavioral economics and is in touch with the people in government setting up the program. He added that the exact way the team will function is currently unknown.
"We have to see the details to be sure, but this could work out very well," he said.
Asked about details, Dan Cruz, spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration (the department which the team will be a part of) told FoxNews.com: "As part of the Administration's ongoing efforts to promote efficiency and savings, GSA is considering adding some expertise from academia in the area of program efficiency and evaluation under its Performance Improvement Council."
Maya Shankar did not respond to questions.
Laibson added that he hoped the U.S. program would stay away from overly controversial subjects.
"Let's say we want people to engage in some healthy behavior like a weight loss program, and then start automatically enrolling overweight people in weight loss programs -- even though they could opt out, I'm guessing that would be viewed as offensive ... a lot of people would say, 'I didn't ask for this, this is judging who I am and who I should be."
But Laibson added that there are very real benefits to some "nudge" policies -- such as one that increases the number of people registered as organ donors by making people decide when they apply for a drivers' license.
Thaler, who is also an adviser to the British Behavioral Insights Team, said that his research
also supports automatically enrolling people in retirement savings plans. "Many people have struggled to save enough to provide for an adequate retirement. ... Two simple design changes can dramatically improve the situation ... automatic enrollment (default people into the plan with the option to easily opt out) and automatic escalation, where workers can sign up to have their contributions increased annually," he said.
Jerry Ellig, an economist at the Mercatus Center, said that some "nudges" are reasonable, but warned about a slippery slope.
"If you can keep it to a 'nudge' maybe it can be beneficial," he added, "but nudges can turn into shoves pretty quickly."
Brit Hume attacks Obama fixation on ‘wealth inequality’
On Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, senior network
political analyst Brit Hume editorialized on the ailing economy and
President Barack Obama’s newly launched PR campaign to promote his
policies to deal with the country’s economic woes.
According to Hume, a cause of the hostilities in politics stems from the economy.
“The poor condition of the economy is an important cause of the poor condition of our politics,” Hume said. “That’s because a surging economy means a surge in tax receipts. That takes pressure off the federal budget because there’s enough money to finance
both federal spending and other things while keeping tax rates low.
That’s how things were during economic recoveries of the 1980s and ’90s.
You could make a budget deal because there was enough money to go
around. But the booming recovery of those days have given way to the
feeble rebound we have seen since the so-called great recession that
ended more than four years ago.”
political analyst Brit Hume editorialized on the ailing economy and
President Barack Obama’s newly launched PR campaign to promote his
policies to deal with the country’s economic woes.According to Hume, a cause of the hostilities in politics stems from the economy.
“The poor condition of the economy is an important cause of the poor condition of our politics,” Hume said. “That’s because a surging economy means a surge in tax receipts. That takes pressure off the federal budget because there’s enough money to finance
both federal spending and other things while keeping tax rates low.
That’s how things were during economic recoveries of the 1980s and ’90s.
You could make a budget deal because there was enough money to go
around. But the booming recovery of those days have given way to the
feeble rebound we have seen since the so-called great recession that
ended more than four years ago.”
Hume argued that Democrats have an irrational fixation on wealth inequality.
“Yet President Obama is fixated on wealth inequality, as if that’s what’s holding back growth,” he added. “Indeed, Democrats at times seem almost to prefer everyone be equally poor than unequally rich. That’s an exaggeration of course,
but it holds a kernel of truth. Republicans tend to worry about the
health of the goose, Democrats about the distribution of the golden
eggs. Democrats seem to think spreading the wealth more equally will
create more of it. After four years of weakness, you may think it would
dawn on them that it simply doesn’t work that way. It’s fairly
uncomplicated. Before you can spread the wealth, you have to create it.
The government doesn’t create wealth. It absorbs it. The private sector
creates it. Policies that encourage that can make some people
outrageously rich. But they make a lot more people simply richer.”
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/30/brit-hume-attacks-obama-fixation-on-wealth-inequality-video/#ixzz2aXaYcFWd
“Yet President Obama is fixated on wealth inequality, as if that’s what’s holding back growth,” he added. “Indeed, Democrats at times seem almost to prefer everyone be equally poor than unequally rich. That’s an exaggeration of course
,
but it holds a kernel of truth. Republicans tend to worry about the
health of the goose, Democrats about the distribution of the golden
eggs. Democrats seem to think spreading the wealth more equally will
create more of it. After four years of weakness, you may think it would
dawn on them that it simply doesn’t work that way. It’s fairly
uncomplicated. Before you can spread the wealth, you have to create it.
The government doesn’t create wealth. It absorbs it. The private sector
creates it. Policies that encourage that can make some people
outrageously rich. But they make a lot more people simply richer.”http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/30/brit-hume-attacks-obama-fixation-on-wealth-inequality-video/#ixzz2aXaYcFWd
Conservative groups already tax-exempt were also targeted by IRS
Rep.
Darrell Issa has announced that he is expanding his investigation into
IRS targeting of conservative groups to deal with alllegations that the
tax agency put groups already tax exempt under additional scrutiny.
The Hill:
So much for "equal opportunity bad judgment," eh Jack Lew?
ttp://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/conservative_groups_already_tax-exempt_were_also_targeted_by_irs.html#ixzz2aXkPCs2b
The Hill:
The IRS subjected conservative groups already granted tax-exempt status to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday.This scandal has not hit bottom yet. And it sounds like this latest revelation is pure intimidation on the part of the IRS. That $50 grand the Institute spent complying with IRS requests couldn't be spent on voter education. The same would hold true for any other conservative group that received such scrutiny.
Issa called on a Treasury watchdog already looking into the IRS to investigate the matter, and signaled he would expand his committee's probe into improper targeting of political groups given the new revelations.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member on Issa's panel, accused the chairman of pushing a "political narrative" by picking choice quotes and disregarding contrary evidence.
"It is unfortunate that you persist in this pattern of selectively releasing quotes instead of conducting a responsible investigation focused on implementing real reforms. I urge you to focus on obtaining the full set of facts rather than making unsubstantiated allegations," he said in a letter sent to Issa Monday.
He said the Virginia-based Leadership Institute was audited in 2011 and 2012 for activities it engaged in during the 2008 election year, even though it had functioned as a tax-exempt organization since 1979.
It faced "invasive questions" -- including about its interns and where they went on to work -- and ended up turning over to the IRS more than 23,000 pages of documents at a cost of roughly $50,000 to comply with the inquiry, Issa said.
"It has come to the attention of the committee that in addition to inappropriate treatment given to some applicants for tax-exempt status, existing organizations already recognized as tax-exempt by the IRS, appear to have faced questionable treatment by the IRS," Issa wrote Monday in a letter to the Treasury inspector general (IG) for tax administration.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), an Oversight subcommittee chairman, also signed on to the request that the Treasury watchdog do a second investigation.
Issa said the Institute was told by the IRS office conducting the audit that there would be follow-up document requests and questions. About two months later, in July 2012, the IRS concluded the audit, which is roughly the same time the Treasury IG determined the IRS changed its process for scrutinizing potential political groups applying for tax-exempt status.
So much for "equal opportunity bad judgment," eh Jack Lew?
ttp://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/conservative_groups_already_tax-exempt_were_also_targeted_by_irs.html#ixzz2aXkPCs2b
Private and Public Character & the Endurance of the Republic
By David Limbaugh
The sexting scandal of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and current New York mayoral candidate, puts into focus the importance of character to public service.
Weiner’s texts, tweets and photos show not just a tawdry person but a risk-taking, deceitful individual who continued his serial texting and lied about it even as he prepared to run again for office.
His wife, Huma Abedin, is standing by her man and expects the public to defer to her judgment as to his fitness for office.
It is Abedin’s personal business as to whether she will forgive and support Weiner, but it is presumptuous and wrongheaded for her or Weiner’s supporters to lecture voters about how they should exercise their prerogative in assessing his suitability.
This bizarre notion that we should separate our public officials’ private behavior from their public lives gained alarming credibility during the Clinton years, when the president’s enablers adamantly insisted that all of his improper behavior was private and of no concern to the public.
“It’s a private matter involving sex,” they chanted, attempting to immunize even Clinton’s felonious perjury from investigation because the underlying facts about which he testified and lied “concerned a private matter about sex.”
They used the same mantra to paint as private, irrelevant and innocuous his episodes of oral sex in the Oval Office with a young intern — a textbook example of sexual harassment because of the power disparities between those involved.
In this postmodern age, many — especially secular liberals and partisan Democrats — are all too eager to demand that private and public character be separated. All that should matter is whether a public official’s policies, especially economic policies, are successful.
Common sense, experience and fundamental ethics tell us it’s folly to believe we can separate a politician’s private character from his public performance — that the success of an official’s policies is all that should matter.
Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias observed: “We know that the premise of privatization is flawed because who we are in public is determined by what we have learned and cherished in private. … One cannot help but wonder what would have happened to the United States if a man of Lincoln’s character had not been president at her most painful time of internal strife as brother fought against brother. … It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one’s private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation’s moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? One of the most dangerous and terrifying trends in America today is the disregard for character as a central necessity in a leader’s credentials. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil.”
Indeed, the Framers understood the vital importance of our leaders’ virtue and character to the success of the Constitution and the very endurance of the republic. John Adams famously said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Author Joseph Ellis, in his book “Founding Brothers,” makes the same point poignantly in discussing Alexander Hamilton’s relationship with Aaron Burr: “The problem … was that the putative barrier between personal and political criticism, or private and public behavior, kept getting overwhelmed by real choices. Personal character was essential in order to resist public temptations.” And: “Character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive. Eventually, the United States might develop into a nation of laws and established institutions capable of surviving corrupt or incompetent public officials. But it was not there yet. It still required honorable and virtuous leaders to endure.”
Ellis’ observations are profound, except that he seems to fail to understand what the Framers grasped: that no matter how brilliant the Constitution, no matter how developed we become as “a nation of laws and established institutions,” we could not permanently survive a ruling class that is bereft of respect for its founding principles and the rule of law or is of consistently dubious character.
The private behavior of our public officials matters because it is a reflection of their character, and their character will strongly influence their public actions. And their obedience to the Constitution and rule of law matters; indeed, it is essential for the endurance of the republic.
Anthony Weiner aside, when we have a president of the United States who daily demonstrates his disrespect for our founding principles and routinely flouts the rule of law, it is devastating to our liberties.
When Barack Obama acts unilaterally outside the scope of his constitutional authority to issue executive orders to implement provisions of the DREAM Act or environmental rules over Congress’ objection or to delay implementation of Obamacare and then scoffs dismissively when asked whether he consulted lawyers on his authority to do so, he is out of control.
If we care about the republic, we have to care about the character of its public officials.
Do not get lost in the sordid aspects of the Weiner affair and allow them to obscure your focus on the larger issues of character and respect threatening our republic today.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/07/30/private-and-public-character-and-the-endurance-of-the-republic/
Liberalism Makes It Easier
There are many liberals who lead thoroughly decent lives. And there are conservatives who do not.
But that is not the whole issue.
There is something about liberalism that is not nearly as true about conservatism. The further left one goes, the more one finds that the ideology provides moral cover for a life that is not moral. While many people left of center lead fine personal lives, many do not. And left-wing ideals enable a person to do that much more than conservative ideals do.
There is an easy way to demonstrate this.
If a married — or even unmarried — conservative congressman had texted sexual images of himself to young women he did not even know, he would have been called something Anthony Wiener has not been called — a hypocrite.
Why? Because conservatives — secular conservatives, not only religious conservatives — are identified with moral values in the personal sphere, and liberals are not. Liberals rarely called Bill Clinton a hypocrite for his extramarital affair while president. George W. Bush would have been pilloried as such.
Simply put, we do not generally judge personal conduct the same when it comes to liberals and conservatives.
Both liberals and conservatives know this. As a result, as noted, liberal social positions can provide moral cover for immoral behavior in a way that conservative positions cannot.
Though there are many sincere liberals, it is likely that this ability to provide moral cover for a less than moral life is one source of liberalism’s appeal.
I first thought about this when I saw how the left-wing students at my graduate school, Columbia University, behaved. Aside from their closing down classes, taking over office buildings, and ransacking professors’ offices, I saw the way in which many of them conducted themselves in their personal lives. Most of them had little sense of personal decency, and lived lives of narcissistic hedonism. Women who were involved with leftist groups have told of how poorly they were treated. And one suspects that they would have been treated far better by conservative, let alone religious, men on campus.
My sense was that the radicals’ commitment to “humanity,” to “peace,” and to “love” gave them license to feel good about themselves without having to lead a good life. Their vocal opposition to war and to racism provided them with all the moral self-esteem they wanted.
Consider the example of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He had been expelled from college for paying someone to take his exams. His role in the death of a woman with whom he spent an evening would have sent almost anyone without his family name to prison — or would have at least resulted in prosecution for negligent homicide. And he spent decades using so many women in so public a way that stories about his sex life were routinely told in Washington. Read the 9,000-word 1990 article in GQ by Michael Kelly, who a few years later became the editor of the New Republic.
When this unimpressive man started espousing liberal positions, speaking passionately about the downtrodden in society, it recalled the unimpressive students who marched on behalf of civil rights, peace and love.
It is quite likely that Ted Kennedy came to believe in the positions that he took. But I also suspect that he found espousing those positions invaluable to his self-image and to his public image: “Look at what a moral man I am after all.” And liberal positions were all that mattered to the left and to the liberal media that largely ignored such lecherous behavior as the “waitress sandwich” he made in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with another prominent liberal, former Senator Chris Dodd.
In addition to knowing that liberal positions provide moral cover for immoral personal behavior, liberals know that their immoral behavior will be given more of pass than exactly the same behavior would if done by a conservative.
Women’s groups provided Bill Clinton with enormous moral capital because he supported their feminist agenda. One leading feminist famously said she would be happy to get on her knees and pleasure Clinton thanks to his pro-choice position on abortion.
Conservative politicians have the same sex drive as liberal politicians, the same marital problems and the same ubiquitous temptations and opportunities. And some will therefore engage in extramarital sex. But every conservative politician knows that should he be caught, his positions on issues not only do not provide moral cover for his conduct, those very positions condemn it. There is no benefit to the conservative sinner in being a conservative. There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/07/30/liberalism-makes-it-easier-to-be-bad/
Now FERC has deputized itself as a Wall Street regulator. This month the commission squeezed Barclays BARC.LN -5.74% for $435 million for alleged energy-market manipulation, the largest penalty in FERC's history and more than all of its previous fines combined. Another $410 million fine will soon hit J.P. Morgan, according to a Journal scoop.
Yet that will seem minor if the next FERC chairman is Ron Binz—the most important and radical Obama nominee you've never heard of. An electric regulator in Colorado from 2007 to 2011, Mr. Binz is the latest Presidential nominee who doesn't understand the difference between making laws and enforcing them.
No, that's unfair. Mr. Binz doesn't care about the difference. In a recent interview with the Association for the Demand Response and Smart Grid trade group, reflecting on the lessons of his Colorado job, he nodded at the "judicial role" of regulators. But then he mused about their "legislative role" too: "I saw the commission not simply as an umpire calling balls and strikes, but also as a leader on policy implementation."
This philosophy is especially troubling for a commission like FERC, which is supposed to be an even-handed arbitrator independent of the executive branch. FERC's narrow legal obligations include protecting the affordability and reliability of the U.S. power supply and electric grid—goals that are in more than a little tension with Mr. Obama's anticarbon program. The law is a nuisance when you think you're saving the planet.
Mr. Binz
was supposed to fill a similarly neutral role in Colorado when then
Democratic Governor Bill Ritter appointed him chairman of the public
utility commission. Prior to his tenure, that job consisted of consumer
protection and ensuring that electricity was low-cost. But Mr. Ritter
wanted to do something about climate change, and Mr. Binz told the
Denver Post in 2007 (using the third person) that "There's an
expectation that the chair will carry a banner for the new
administration."
Mr. Binz became the point man for legislation that would all but force several Denver-area coal plants to convert to natural gas though they weren't slated for retirement. He even negotiated terms directly with the Colorado power company that it was his responsibility to regulate, Xcel Energy XEL +1.18% .
Mr. Binz assured Xcel that it could pass on to rate payers, with a guaranteed return, whatever capital investment was necessary to replace the working coal assets. Documents obtained by the Colorado Mining Association under a state open records law show that Mr. Binz promised "extraordinary cost recovery." In a March 2010 email, he wrote that "I think it's more nearly a self-fulfilling prophecy—the larger (and faster) the cost burden in the Company's approved plan, the stronger the basis for the Commission to adopt extraordinary regulatory measures to assure the Company's financial health."
In other words, the more Xcel spent in the name of the Ritter-Binz political agenda, the more Mr. Binz would use the discretion he gave himself in the law he wrote to give Xcel favorable treatment. When Stockholm syndrome set in with Xcel and the company took the deal, Mr. Binz exulted that "the eagle has landed." It was great for everyone except the consumers involuntarily funding it.
Mr. Binz would almost certainly commandeer the same extralegal powers at FERC to perpetrate similar abuses, regardless of congressional intent. "Regulation needs to shift from its backward-looking focus on costs, to a forward-looking emphasis on value and desired societal outcomes," he says. In a 2012 report for the consultant Ceres subtitled "What Every State Regulator Needs to Know," Mr. Binz added that "Both regulators and utilities need to evolve beyond historical practice," and he encouraged utility commissioners to expand their mandates to include his subjective conception of the "broad societal benefits" of low- or no-carbon power.
FERC was a sleepy regulator until the Obama Presidency, but it has statutory powers that could be turned into anticarbon weapons, such as the authority to impose fines of up $1 million per day for what it claims are violations. They also include the power to block energy mergers and the construction of terminals, pipelines and transmission.
You can bet that Mr. Binz will be creative and political, and don't be so sure his only target is coal. At an Edison Foundation panel this March, he called natural gas a "dead end" technology because "on the carbon basis, you hit the wall in 2035 or so." He added that "We have to do better on carbon than even natural gas will allow us to do." This is unusual in that the greens usually pretend to support gas to make outlawing coal seem more reasonable. Mr. Binz let the mask slip.
Mr. Binz is part of the White House's damn-the-voters strategy of imposing through regulation what Congress won't pass, and now he wants to glide into FERC without protest. But the Senate's advice-and-consent role is especially important because a FERC chairman has broad powers, much like a CEO's, even if other commissioners dissent—and the chairman is not supposed to carry Mr. Obama's banner. Mr. Binz's record and methods deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829104578621993851688734.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
This column really is a bad idea. I should have counted to 100, had a drink, hit the treadmill for 45 minutes... something before I sat down and started writing after a segment yesterday on Neil Cavuto’s show. But I didn’t cool down. I headed straight for the computer and clicked twice on the “Word” icon – and here we go. Intemperate thoughts, sure to be considered offensive by some (like I care), are about to come your way.
Our Republic has survived a great deal. We’ve managed to get through a war with states determined to secede from the union (misnamed the “Civil War”). We survived two World Wars and a Cold War. None of those events have threatened this country nearly so much as the combined affect of millions of abysmally ignorant Americans, products of 100 years of a hideous government education and are now walking around with voter registration cards. More Americans can name Kim Kardashian’s new tricycle motor than can name our vice-president. More Americans could write a paragraph on last season’s American Idol competition than could write a single sentence on the IRS campaign against the Tea Parties. If you were offered one penny for every American who makes it a habit to watch Entertainment Tonight or a dollar for every person who reads the front section of their local newspaper, you would be an idiot to go for the newspaper readers. There are simply not enough newspaper readers to pay your next power bill, let alone wisely shepherd our country through perilous times. Bloody wars are easier to survive than idiots with ballots.
The issue on Cavuto yesterday was a few select members of the Dumb Masses protesting in New York City for something they call a “living wage.” Apparently these stupefyingly ignorant protestors thought that McDonalds should be paying burger flippers and French fry cookers $15.00 an hour, whether they’re worth it or not.
Where DO mindless people like this come from? Oh yeah. Government schools. Almost forgot.
Two of the people who showed up on Cavuto yesterday caught my jaundiced eye: a guy standing next to a young woman carrying a baby in some sort of a sling. The young woman was a McDonalds worker and she just wasn’t making enough to “provide” for her family – of two, I presume. The guy standing next to her was (a) apparently one of the organizers of this demonstration, and (b) had met this young woman during repeated – and I do mean repeated – trips to McDonalds for a bag full of Big Macs and fries, plus milk shakes .. probably every day. Maybe twice a day. Dude loved to eat.
As for the organizer --- or “activist” as the media likes to call people like this --- he just spouted on and on about “corporations” and what they owe the poor beleaguered workers. How I would have loved to ask this rocket surgeon to give me a one-sentence definition of a “corporation.” I love watching brainy people vapor lock. But in retrospect, that might not have been a good idea. You don’t want to see a head explode on TV.
Mr. Activist guy had the idea that if McDonalds would just pay these workers $15.00 an hour plus health insurance and all of the other benefits then the world would be a better place and the workers would not have to rely on the government for all of these welfare services and everyone would be better off. Nobody asked him how much a Big Meal would cost if the people preparing that culinary delight were paid $15.00 an hour plus benefits. Right now you can get a Big Meal for about $7.25 The person preparing that meal is probably making minimum wage. Boost the wage by about $6.00 per hour and what is the new cost for a Big Meal? $8.50? $10.00? More? Can all of the McDonald’s customers afford this price increase? Or do they go to other, cheaper fast food restaurants? Can McDonalds maintain their profit margin and employment level with lost sales? If not, how many $15 an hour workers do they lay off? Perhaps they would just close some stores in low-income areas altogether.
How about this question for the organizer: “Hey, sport. Tell me something. What obligation does McDonalds have to pay a worker more than that worker is worth? Are you telling me that an employer should hire someone just to pay them more than the wealth they can produce for the company out of some sense of social obligation? How long do you stay in business doing that?” Organizer dude probably would have come across with some statement about “social responsibility.” Well, guess what? If employers start to determine wages on what the employee wants instead of what that employee produces we will see a lot of boarded businesses and many more unemployed government-educated functionally illiterate Democrat voters. Wait! …… What?
And Ms. Baby-in-a-Sling protestor, you told Cavuto all about McDonalds’ responsibility to pay you your living wage. You made a point of saying that McDonalds should pay you enough to support your family. Fine. Then answer MY question. What about YOUR responsibilities? Did you not understand that you lacked the skills, job history and education necessary to make more than a minimum wage and that; therefore, you might not be in a position to shoulder the cost of an additional member of your household? Or is it your belief that all you have to do is download a child and it automatically becomes someone else’s responsibility to cover the costs? I think a valid case can be made for the proposition that one of the greatest social wrongs a person can commit is to have a baby they simply cannot afford to raise.
Personal accountability and responsibility is dying. Long live the Democrat welfare state.
The bigger tragedy here, of course, is that this Cavuto segment exposed the viewers to the citizen and voter mentality that can lead to someone like Obama in the White House “leading” our nation ….. from behind, of course.
http://townhall.com/columnists/nealboortz/2013/07/30/entitled-fast-food-strikers-demand-to-be-paid-more-than-theyre-worth-n1652027/page/full
Distortion and deception are accentuated by hyperbole. Television news and documentaries frequently report normal weather as “extreme weather,” implying it is abnormal and caused by human activity. But while a hurricane, for example, may inflict serious damage to our structures and cause major loss of life, it is a normal event in hurricane-prone regions, where it is foolish to live without preparing for the weather patterns of the area.
The problem is accentuated when supposedly prestigious newspapers like the New York Times present provably false information. “Summer’s Beast is Loose,” published in the Times on July 16, was an obvious attempt to sensationalize warm, but normal, summer temperatures:
Figure 1. Source NOAA National Climate Data Center
Before expressing their opinion that today’s weather is unusual, you would think that the Times’ editors would have also looked at some basic research, an example being weather expert Dr. David Ludlum’s fascinating works: Early American Tornadoes, 1586-1870 and Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870.
The Times clearly knew of Dr. Ludlum, praising him as “the nation’s foremost historian of American weather” in his obituary published by the newspaper in 1996. But they pay no attention to what Dr. Ludlum actually wrote.
Here is a challenge for New York Times editors – identify the year from which the following statistics are derived:
Most readers would naturally assume that actual air temperatures are being shown, but they are being tricked. Instead, a contrived measure called the “heat index” is displayed. Heat index, a statistic Sosnowski refers as the “RealFeel” temperature, is created by combining air temperature and relative humidity. It presumably reflects the capability of sweat to cool the body — but it ignores wind speed, which is a critical cooling agent that makes it seem less hot than it actually is. Of course, in the winter, media meteorologists always cite the “wind chill,” since that makes low temperatures seem even lower. Both heat index and wind chill are simply propaganda tools designed to make viewers think conditions are more extreme than they really are.
The following sensational and misleading illustration also appears in Sosnowski’s article:
It is completely inappropriate to title the figure “Heat is more lethal.” In reality, more people die from the cold each year than do from the heat.
It may very well be true that there was a higher “percent of increase of death rates” due to heat waves than due to cold periods in whatever time period Sosnowski is speaking of (he does not define the time frame). But this has nothing to do with the actual numbers of deaths. For example, in the warming period from 1980 to 1997, the percentage of heat wave deaths would logically increase more than cold wave deaths, even though cold weather deaths still vastly exceeded deaths due to hot weather.
National energy policies based on deceptions such as this have devastating consequences. Because of President Barack Obama’s dangerously misguided “war on coal,” America’s least expensive and most important source of electric power, electricity costs are rising — making the poor less able to afford air conditioning. This is especially true of those living in poverty in inner city areas where temperatures are already higher because of the urban heat island effect. This situation will only worsen as Obama implements his plan to eliminate coal stations and power costs consequently soar.
The distortion and outright lying in the media’s coverage of weather and climate change have increased dramatically in the past year. This is because the global warming narrative has been exposed as false, making it harder to sell without resorting to hyperbole and cherry-picking data that supports the alarmist agenda. So, publications such as the New York Times are not reporting news any more when it comes to weather and climate. Instead, they are spinning a false narrative to create their version of the news, much like the state-controlled media of communist China.
Sadly, most of the public has been taken in by mainstream media’s climate propaganda. The latest Rasmussen polls show the highest level of support for global warming alarmism since 2008. We can therefore expect Obama to take advantage of the public’s misunderstanding to bring in even more draconian controls on conventional energy sources to “stop extreme weather and climate change.”
If the U.S. eventually collapses into energy poverty, broad sweeping unemployment, and bankruptcy, we will know who to blame.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-age-of-hyperbole/?singlepage=true
The sexting scandal of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and current New York mayoral candidate, puts into focus the importance of character to public service.
Weiner’s texts, tweets and photos show not just a tawdry person but a risk-taking, deceitful individual who continued his serial texting and lied about it even as he prepared to run again for office.
His wife, Huma Abedin, is standing by her man and expects the public to defer to her judgment as to his fitness for office.
It is Abedin’s personal business as to whether she will forgive and support Weiner, but it is presumptuous and wrongheaded for her or Weiner’s supporters to lecture voters about how they should exercise their prerogative in assessing his suitability.
This bizarre notion that we should separate our public officials’ private behavior from their public lives gained alarming credibility during the Clinton years, when the president’s enablers adamantly insisted that all of his improper behavior was private and of no concern to the public.
“It’s a private matter involving sex,” they chanted, attempting to immunize even Clinton’s felonious perjury from investigation because the underlying facts about which he testified and lied “concerned a private matter about sex.”
They used the same mantra to paint as private, irrelevant and innocuous his episodes of oral sex in the Oval Office with a young intern — a textbook example of sexual harassment because of the power disparities between those involved.
In this postmodern age, many — especially secular liberals and partisan Democrats — are all too eager to demand that private and public character be separated. All that should matter is whether a public official’s policies, especially economic policies, are successful.
Common sense, experience and fundamental ethics tell us it’s folly to believe we can separate a politician’s private character from his public performance — that the success of an official’s policies is all that should matter.
Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias observed: “We know that the premise of privatization is flawed because who we are in public is determined by what we have learned and cherished in private. … One cannot help but wonder what would have happened to the United States if a man of Lincoln’s character had not been president at her most painful time of internal strife as brother fought against brother. … It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one’s private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation’s moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? One of the most dangerous and terrifying trends in America today is the disregard for character as a central necessity in a leader’s credentials. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil.”
Indeed, the Framers understood the vital importance of our leaders’ virtue and character to the success of the Constitution and the very endurance of the republic. John Adams famously said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Author Joseph Ellis, in his book “Founding Brothers,” makes the same point poignantly in discussing Alexander Hamilton’s relationship with Aaron Burr: “The problem … was that the putative barrier between personal and political criticism, or private and public behavior, kept getting overwhelmed by real choices. Personal character was essential in order to resist public temptations.” And: “Character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive. Eventually, the United States might develop into a nation of laws and established institutions capable of surviving corrupt or incompetent public officials. But it was not there yet. It still required honorable and virtuous leaders to endure.”
Ellis’ observations are profound, except that he seems to fail to understand what the Framers grasped: that no matter how brilliant the Constitution, no matter how developed we become as “a nation of laws and established institutions,” we could not permanently survive a ruling class that is bereft of respect for its founding principles and the rule of law or is of consistently dubious character.
The private behavior of our public officials matters because it is a reflection of their character, and their character will strongly influence their public actions. And their obedience to the Constitution and rule of law matters; indeed, it is essential for the endurance of the republic.
Anthony Weiner aside, when we have a president of the United States who daily demonstrates his disrespect for our founding principles and routinely flouts the rule of law, it is devastating to our liberties.
When Barack Obama acts unilaterally outside the scope of his constitutional authority to issue executive orders to implement provisions of the DREAM Act or environmental rules over Congress’ objection or to delay implementation of Obamacare and then scoffs dismissively when asked whether he consulted lawyers on his authority to do so, he is out of control.
If we care about the republic, we have to care about the character of its public officials.
Do not get lost in the sordid aspects of the Weiner affair and allow them to obscure your focus on the larger issues of character and respect threatening our republic today.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/07/30/private-and-public-character-and-the-endurance-of-the-republic/
Liberalism Makes It Easier
to be Bad
There are many liberals who lead thoroughly decent lives. And there are conservatives who do not.But that is not the whole issue.
There is something about liberalism that is not nearly as true about conservatism. The further left one goes, the more one finds that the ideology provides moral cover for a life that is not moral. While many people left of center lead fine personal lives, many do not. And left-wing ideals enable a person to do that much more than conservative ideals do.
There is an easy way to demonstrate this.
If a married — or even unmarried — conservative congressman had texted sexual images of himself to young women he did not even know, he would have been called something Anthony Wiener has not been called — a hypocrite.
Why? Because conservatives — secular conservatives, not only religious conservatives — are identified with moral values in the personal sphere, and liberals are not. Liberals rarely called Bill Clinton a hypocrite for his extramarital affair while president. George W. Bush would have been pilloried as such.
Simply put, we do not generally judge personal conduct the same when it comes to liberals and conservatives.
Both liberals and conservatives know this. As a result, as noted, liberal social positions can provide moral cover for immoral behavior in a way that conservative positions cannot.
Though there are many sincere liberals, it is likely that this ability to provide moral cover for a less than moral life is one source of liberalism’s appeal.
I first thought about this when I saw how the left-wing students at my graduate school, Columbia University, behaved. Aside from their closing down classes, taking over office buildings, and ransacking professors’ offices, I saw the way in which many of them conducted themselves in their personal lives. Most of them had little sense of personal decency, and lived lives of narcissistic hedonism. Women who were involved with leftist groups have told of how poorly they were treated. And one suspects that they would have been treated far better by conservative, let alone religious, men on campus.
My sense was that the radicals’ commitment to “humanity,” to “peace,” and to “love” gave them license to feel good about themselves without having to lead a good life. Their vocal opposition to war and to racism provided them with all the moral self-esteem they wanted.
Consider the example of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He had been expelled from college for paying someone to take his exams. His role in the death of a woman with whom he spent an evening would have sent almost anyone without his family name to prison — or would have at least resulted in prosecution for negligent homicide. And he spent decades using so many women in so public a way that stories about his sex life were routinely told in Washington. Read the 9,000-word 1990 article in GQ by Michael Kelly, who a few years later became the editor of the New Republic.
When this unimpressive man started espousing liberal positions, speaking passionately about the downtrodden in society, it recalled the unimpressive students who marched on behalf of civil rights, peace and love.
It is quite likely that Ted Kennedy came to believe in the positions that he took. But I also suspect that he found espousing those positions invaluable to his self-image and to his public image: “Look at what a moral man I am after all.” And liberal positions were all that mattered to the left and to the liberal media that largely ignored such lecherous behavior as the “waitress sandwich” he made in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with another prominent liberal, former Senator Chris Dodd.
In addition to knowing that liberal positions provide moral cover for immoral personal behavior, liberals know that their immoral behavior will be given more of pass than exactly the same behavior would if done by a conservative.
Women’s groups provided Bill Clinton with enormous moral capital because he supported their feminist agenda. One leading feminist famously said she would be happy to get on her knees and pleasure Clinton thanks to his pro-choice position on abortion.
Conservative politicians have the same sex drive as liberal politicians, the same marital problems and the same ubiquitous temptations and opportunities. And some will therefore engage in extramarital sex. But every conservative politician knows that should he be caught, his positions on issues not only do not provide moral cover for his conduct, those very positions condemn it. There is no benefit to the conservative sinner in being a conservative. There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/07/30/liberalism-makes-it-easier-to-be-bad/
Ron Binz's Rules for Radicals
An Obama appointee with an agenda to bypass Congress.
President Obama's rule-makers have amped up major regulators like the Environmental Protection Agency and now they're turning to more obscure outposts. Take the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees electric transmission and interstate pipelines. Or used to.Now FERC has deputized itself as a Wall Street regulator. This month the commission squeezed Barclays BARC.LN -5.74% for $435 million for alleged energy-market manipulation, the largest penalty in FERC's history and more than all of its previous fines combined. Another $410 million fine will soon hit J.P. Morgan, according to a Journal scoop.
Yet that will seem minor if the next FERC chairman is Ron Binz—the most important and radical Obama nominee you've never heard of. An electric regulator in Colorado from 2007 to 2011, Mr. Binz is the latest Presidential nominee who doesn't understand the difference between making laws and enforcing them.
No, that's unfair. Mr. Binz doesn't care about the difference. In a recent interview with the Association for the Demand Response and Smart Grid trade group, reflecting on the lessons of his Colorado job, he nodded at the "judicial role" of regulators. But then he mused about their "legislative role" too: "I saw the commission not simply as an umpire calling balls and strikes, but also as a leader on policy implementation."
This philosophy is especially troubling for a commission like FERC, which is supposed to be an even-handed arbitrator independent of the executive branch. FERC's narrow legal obligations include protecting the affordability and reliability of the U.S. power supply and electric grid—goals that are in more than a little tension with Mr. Obama's anticarbon program. The law is a nuisance when you think you're saving the planet.
Mr. Binz became the point man for legislation that would all but force several Denver-area coal plants to convert to natural gas though they weren't slated for retirement. He even negotiated terms directly with the Colorado power company that it was his responsibility to regulate, Xcel Energy XEL +1.18% .
Mr. Binz assured Xcel that it could pass on to rate payers, with a guaranteed return, whatever capital investment was necessary to replace the working coal assets. Documents obtained by the Colorado Mining Association under a state open records law show that Mr. Binz promised "extraordinary cost recovery." In a March 2010 email, he wrote that "I think it's more nearly a self-fulfilling prophecy—the larger (and faster) the cost burden in the Company's approved plan, the stronger the basis for the Commission to adopt extraordinary regulatory measures to assure the Company's financial health."
In other words, the more Xcel spent in the name of the Ritter-Binz political agenda, the more Mr. Binz would use the discretion he gave himself in the law he wrote to give Xcel favorable treatment. When Stockholm syndrome set in with Xcel and the company took the deal, Mr. Binz exulted that "the eagle has landed." It was great for everyone except the consumers involuntarily funding it.
Mr. Binz would almost certainly commandeer the same extralegal powers at FERC to perpetrate similar abuses, regardless of congressional intent. "Regulation needs to shift from its backward-looking focus on costs, to a forward-looking emphasis on value and desired societal outcomes," he says. In a 2012 report for the consultant Ceres subtitled "What Every State Regulator Needs to Know," Mr. Binz added that "Both regulators and utilities need to evolve beyond historical practice," and he encouraged utility commissioners to expand their mandates to include his subjective conception of the "broad societal benefits" of low- or no-carbon power.
FERC was a sleepy regulator until the Obama Presidency, but it has statutory powers that could be turned into anticarbon weapons, such as the authority to impose fines of up $1 million per day for what it claims are violations. They also include the power to block energy mergers and the construction of terminals, pipelines and transmission.
You can bet that Mr. Binz will be creative and political, and don't be so sure his only target is coal. At an Edison Foundation panel this March, he called natural gas a "dead end" technology because "on the carbon basis, you hit the wall in 2035 or so." He added that "We have to do better on carbon than even natural gas will allow us to do." This is unusual in that the greens usually pretend to support gas to make outlawing coal seem more reasonable. Mr. Binz let the mask slip.
Mr. Binz is part of the White House's damn-the-voters strategy of imposing through regulation what Congress won't pass, and now he wants to glide into FERC without protest. But the Senate's advice-and-consent role is especially important because a FERC chairman has broad powers, much like a CEO's, even if other commissioners dissent—and the chairman is not supposed to carry Mr. Obama's banner. Mr. Binz's record and methods deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829104578621993851688734.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Entitled Fast Food Strikers Demand to Be Paid More Than They're Worth
By Neal BoortzThis column really is a bad idea. I should have counted to 100, had a drink, hit the treadmill for 45 minutes... something before I sat down and started writing after a segment yesterday on Neil Cavuto’s show. But I didn’t cool down. I headed straight for the computer and clicked twice on the “Word” icon – and here we go. Intemperate thoughts, sure to be considered offensive by some (like I care), are about to come your way.
Our Republic has survived a great deal. We’ve managed to get through a war with states determined to secede from the union (misnamed the “Civil War”). We survived two World Wars and a Cold War. None of those events have threatened this country nearly so much as the combined affect of millions of abysmally ignorant Americans, products of 100 years of a hideous government education and are now walking around with voter registration cards. More Americans can name Kim Kardashian’s new tricycle motor than can name our vice-president. More Americans could write a paragraph on last season’s American Idol competition than could write a single sentence on the IRS campaign against the Tea Parties. If you were offered one penny for every American who makes it a habit to watch Entertainment Tonight or a dollar for every person who reads the front section of their local newspaper, you would be an idiot to go for the newspaper readers. There are simply not enough newspaper readers to pay your next power bill, let alone wisely shepherd our country through perilous times. Bloody wars are easier to survive than idiots with ballots.
The issue on Cavuto yesterday was a few select members of the Dumb Masses protesting in New York City for something they call a “living wage.” Apparently these stupefyingly ignorant protestors thought that McDonalds should be paying burger flippers and French fry cookers $15.00 an hour, whether they’re worth it or not.
Where DO mindless people like this come from? Oh yeah. Government schools. Almost forgot.
Two of the people who showed up on Cavuto yesterday caught my jaundiced eye: a guy standing next to a young woman carrying a baby in some sort of a sling. The young woman was a McDonalds worker and she just wasn’t making enough to “provide” for her family – of two, I presume. The guy standing next to her was (a) apparently one of the organizers of this demonstration, and (b) had met this young woman during repeated – and I do mean repeated – trips to McDonalds for a bag full of Big Macs and fries, plus milk shakes .. probably every day. Maybe twice a day. Dude loved to eat.
As for the organizer --- or “activist” as the media likes to call people like this --- he just spouted on and on about “corporations” and what they owe the poor beleaguered workers. How I would have loved to ask this rocket surgeon to give me a one-sentence definition of a “corporation.” I love watching brainy people vapor lock. But in retrospect, that might not have been a good idea. You don’t want to see a head explode on TV.
Mr. Activist guy had the idea that if McDonalds would just pay these workers $15.00 an hour plus health insurance and all of the other benefits then the world would be a better place and the workers would not have to rely on the government for all of these welfare services and everyone would be better off. Nobody asked him how much a Big Meal would cost if the people preparing that culinary delight were paid $15.00 an hour plus benefits. Right now you can get a Big Meal for about $7.25 The person preparing that meal is probably making minimum wage. Boost the wage by about $6.00 per hour and what is the new cost for a Big Meal? $8.50? $10.00? More? Can all of the McDonald’s customers afford this price increase? Or do they go to other, cheaper fast food restaurants? Can McDonalds maintain their profit margin and employment level with lost sales? If not, how many $15 an hour workers do they lay off? Perhaps they would just close some stores in low-income areas altogether.
How about this question for the organizer: “Hey, sport. Tell me something. What obligation does McDonalds have to pay a worker more than that worker is worth? Are you telling me that an employer should hire someone just to pay them more than the wealth they can produce for the company out of some sense of social obligation? How long do you stay in business doing that?” Organizer dude probably would have come across with some statement about “social responsibility.” Well, guess what? If employers start to determine wages on what the employee wants instead of what that employee produces we will see a lot of boarded businesses and many more unemployed government-educated functionally illiterate Democrat voters. Wait! …… What?
And Ms. Baby-in-a-Sling protestor, you told Cavuto all about McDonalds’ responsibility to pay you your living wage. You made a point of saying that McDonalds should pay you enough to support your family. Fine. Then answer MY question. What about YOUR responsibilities? Did you not understand that you lacked the skills, job history and education necessary to make more than a minimum wage and that; therefore, you might not be in a position to shoulder the cost of an additional member of your household? Or is it your belief that all you have to do is download a child and it automatically becomes someone else’s responsibility to cover the costs? I think a valid case can be made for the proposition that one of the greatest social wrongs a person can commit is to have a baby they simply cannot afford to raise.
Personal accountability and responsibility is dying. Long live the Democrat welfare state.
The bigger tragedy here, of course, is that this Cavuto segment exposed the viewers to the citizen and voter mentality that can lead to someone like Obama in the White House “leading” our nation ….. from behind, of course.
http://townhall.com/columnists/nealboortz/2013/07/30/entitled-fast-food-strikers-demand-to-be-paid-more-than-theyre-worth-n1652027/page/full
The Age of Hyperbole: How Normal Weather Became ‘Extreme’
Said Thomas Jefferson: “The man who reads nothing at all is better
educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Jefferson’s
comment may be expanded to include most of today’s mass media; this is
especially true of television. As American linguist Samuel Ichiye
Hayakawa said: “In the age of television, image becomes more important
than substance.” It is effectively visual lying, dictated by Marshall
McLuhan’s observation: “The medium is the message.” For example,
TV news programs often illustrate air pollution with a smoke stack
emitting water vapor, implying it is pollution when it is anything but.A media without shame drives us towards energy poverty.
Distortion and deception are accentuated by hyperbole. Television news and documentaries frequently report normal weather as “extreme weather,” implying it is abnormal and caused by human activity. But while a hurricane, for example, may inflict serious damage to our structures and cause major loss of life, it is a normal event in hurricane-prone regions, where it is foolish to live without preparing for the weather patterns of the area.
The problem is accentuated when supposedly prestigious newspapers like the New York Times present provably false information. “Summer’s Beast is Loose,” published in the Times on July 16, was an obvious attempt to sensationalize warm, but normal, summer temperatures:
Humans have always been used to the normal fluctuations in weather — including the anomalies that seem to confirm the norm. But now, to the routine, cyclic variations of weather, there has been added a more or less steady, more or less linear change, the result of the way we are altering our climate.It appears that the Times editorial board didn’t bother to look at the historic climate record — or hoped none of their readers would. Aside from a slight year-to-year increase in temperature variation, the graph of temperatures for July for New York State shows no meaningful overall trend, warming or cooling, since 1900:
Figure 1. Source NOAA National Climate Data Center
Before expressing their opinion that today’s weather is unusual, you would think that the Times’ editors would have also looked at some basic research, an example being weather expert Dr. David Ludlum’s fascinating works: Early American Tornadoes, 1586-1870 and Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870.
The Times clearly knew of Dr. Ludlum, praising him as “the nation’s foremost historian of American weather” in his obituary published by the newspaper in 1996. But they pay no attention to what Dr. Ludlum actually wrote.
Here is a challenge for New York Times editors – identify the year from which the following statistics are derived:
In the U.S. 254 people died in tornadoes: 30 in Marquette Kansas; 87 in Snyder Oklahoma; 97 in Southwest Oklahoma; and 40 in Montague Texas. In addition, 40 people died in a November storm in Minnesota.
Globally, typhoons struck the Philippines in July, August, and September; a June typhoon in the Marshall Islands with 500 reported deaths; a storm killed 33 in the Republic of Salvador; severe storms and flooding in Ireland.
Record low temperatures occurred as follows: February 13, -33°C at Pond, Arkansas, -40°C at Lebanon, Kansas, and –40°C at Warsaw, Missouri. In Sydney, Australia lowest monthly averages in September and October joined the lowest spring minimums.
Record high temperatures: An estimated 91 people died of a July heat wave in New York City. On July 7th Parker, Arizona recorded 53°C. Rivadivia, Argentina recorded 49°C on 11th December. The heat caused an outbreak of the tropical disease Yellow Fever in New Orleans that spread north to Indiana.
Precipitation: Flooding in Ireland; Taylor Texas, received 2.4 inches in fifteen minutes on April 29th; on July 29th 11 inches of rain in southwest Connecticut resulted in extensive flooding that caused a dam to burst.
Arctic ice retreated dramatically allowing an explorer to be the first to enter waters previously inaccessible.
The year was 1905. Note that 254 people died from tornadoes, when the population density was much less than today.
Besides categorizing normal weather events as extreme,
terms were created to increase the impression of abnormality. For
example, the below map used by
Alex Sosnowski, the so-called “expert senior meteorologist” at
Accuweather, shows very high temperatures. But it is pure deception:
Most readers would naturally assume that actual air temperatures are being shown, but they are being tricked. Instead, a contrived measure called the “heat index” is displayed. Heat index, a statistic Sosnowski refers as the “RealFeel” temperature, is created by combining air temperature and relative humidity. It presumably reflects the capability of sweat to cool the body — but it ignores wind speed, which is a critical cooling agent that makes it seem less hot than it actually is. Of course, in the winter, media meteorologists always cite the “wind chill,” since that makes low temperatures seem even lower. Both heat index and wind chill are simply propaganda tools designed to make viewers think conditions are more extreme than they really are.
The following sensational and misleading illustration also appears in Sosnowski’s article:
It is completely inappropriate to title the figure “Heat is more lethal.” In reality, more people die from the cold each year than do from the heat.
It may very well be true that there was a higher “percent of increase of death rates” due to heat waves than due to cold periods in whatever time period Sosnowski is speaking of (he does not define the time frame). But this has nothing to do with the actual numbers of deaths. For example, in the warming period from 1980 to 1997, the percentage of heat wave deaths would logically increase more than cold wave deaths, even though cold weather deaths still vastly exceeded deaths due to hot weather.
National energy policies based on deceptions such as this have devastating consequences. Because of President Barack Obama’s dangerously misguided “war on coal,” America’s least expensive and most important source of electric power, electricity costs are rising — making the poor less able to afford air conditioning. This is especially true of those living in poverty in inner city areas where temperatures are already higher because of the urban heat island effect. This situation will only worsen as Obama implements his plan to eliminate coal stations and power costs consequently soar.
The distortion and outright lying in the media’s coverage of weather and climate change have increased dramatically in the past year. This is because the global warming narrative has been exposed as false, making it harder to sell without resorting to hyperbole and cherry-picking data that supports the alarmist agenda. So, publications such as the New York Times are not reporting news any more when it comes to weather and climate. Instead, they are spinning a false narrative to create their version of the news, much like the state-controlled media of communist China.
Sadly, most of the public has been taken in by mainstream media’s climate propaganda. The latest Rasmussen polls show the highest level of support for global warming alarmism since 2008. We can therefore expect Obama to take advantage of the public’s misunderstanding to bring in even more draconian controls on conventional energy sources to “stop extreme weather and climate change.”
If the U.S. eventually collapses into energy poverty, broad sweeping unemployment, and bankruptcy, we will know who to blame.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-age-of-hyperbole/?singlepage=true
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