Tuesday, July 29, 2008
America's Energy Held Hostage
Enter now a properly scientific study by Dr Bob Shipp, professor at the Marine Sciences department of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama, and currently, the vice-chair of the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council. “The Red snapper catch changed radically in the 1950s, (when the first offshore oil platforms went up off Louisiana). More recently, the red snapper catch from the northwestern Gulf (Louisiana, with it's oil platforms) is currently estimated 6 to 7 times greater than the catch from the eastern Gulf (Florida, without oil platforms.)"
It gets better: “oil platforms as artificial reefs....support fish densities 10 to 1000 times that of adjacent sand and mud bottom, and almost always exceed fish densities found at adjacent natural hard bottom. Evidence indicates that massive areas of the northwestern Gulf of Mexico were essentially empty of snapper stocks for the first hundred years of the fishery. Subsequently, areas in the western Gulf have become the major source of red snapper, concurrent with the appearance of thousands of petroleum platforms”... [snip]
A recent CNN poll showed more than 73 percent of Americans in favor of offshore drilling. But the House Speaker can keep the issue from even reaching a vote, and Pelosi seems bent on just that...
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An Energy Sarbox
The political class needed to blame somebody for the run-up in energy prices, and settled on "speculators" as the designated villains.(Snip) While some kind of crackdown on the U.S. oil futures market is inevitable after so much political agitation, Congress has begun to believe its own demagoguery. The Senate may vote on a bill this week that will drive commodities trading overseas and decrease oversight and market transparency. Call it a Sarbanes-Oxley for energy...
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U.S. and Canada split over Lake Erie drilling
Washington - Offshore drilling has become one of the hot political issues in a new era of $4-a-gallon gasoline. But no one is pushing for drilling off the north shore of the United States — except the Canadians. As it has for many years, a Canadian oil and gas company is pumping natural gas out of 480 wells in Lake Erie, most of them toward the eastern end of the lake...
[everyone but us]
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Kicking the Tires of T. Boone's Natural-Gas Car
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman Sunday pines for billionaire-friendly central planning on energy so that his green dreams might be forced down our collective throats:
“If only we had a Congress and president who. . . just sat down with Boone (Pickens). . . and asked one question: 'What laws do we need to enact to foster 1,000 more like you?' Then just do it, and get out of the way.”
Laws mandating “green” schemes? Just do it. Market economics? Get out of the way.
[consumer choice? forgetaboutit][snip]
Automakers have been trying to get the public to buy natural gas vehicles since the 1970s. Yet, despite millions in tax subsidies, today there is only one — count them: one — -compressed-natural-gas (CNG) product in America’s showrooms. It’s the Honda Civic GX and it ain’t exactly flying off the shelves.
No wonder. The CNG-powered Civic GX sells at a whopping $8,780 over the price of a comparable gas-powered Civic DX, yet has 24 percent less horsepower, has half the trunk size (due to the huge CNG tank behind the back seats), and only goes 250 miles on a tank of natural gas vs. 400 for its petrol-powered sister...
[all for only 9000$ more - what's not to like?]
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Developing oil shale is best choice
Democrats control Congress, so Americans ought to be asking about their plan to lower gas prices. Let's hope their plan doesn't rest on solar, wind and geothermal, because planes, trains and automobiles don't run on electricity. They run on oil — mostly foreign oil — 97 percent of the time. Let's also hope the Democrats' plan doesn't rest on ethanol to break our dependence on foreign oil, because it can't. More on that later.
Americans ship about $700 billion - annually - to foreign oil traffickers, and Democrats respond by shutting down America's own energy supplies. Now at the mercy of foreign governments smart enough to produce their own energy, we are selling away our nation's place in the world and funding our aggressive competitors — and even our enemies. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah have more oil in oil shale than OPEC. Everyone seems to know that by now, but here are four things you probably did not know about oil shale...
1. Oil shale has a smaller carbon footprint than ethanol...[snip]
2. Oil shale uses less water than ethanol and no more than gasoline...[snip]
3. Oil shale uses much less land than either ethanol or gasoline...[snip]
4. Oil shale has been commercially produced in Estonia for 80 years
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Don’t panic: the economy is still growing
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke pulled no punches when he gave his semi-annual report to Congress. “Sizeable losses at financial institutions . . . inflation has remained elevated . . . declining house prices... There’s more, but you get the idea. [snip]
Not that we will soon see the boom times that investors remember so fondly, or that homeowners can soon look forward to double-digit annual increases in the value of their homes - but it is possible that the woes that have beset the housing and financial sectors are about to be contained and mitigated...
Perhaps most important, the flexible American economy so far — and the “so far” is important — seems to be doing better than the troubled housing and financial sectors.
“The economy has continued to expand . . . Growth is expected to pick up gradually over the next two years..."[Recommended > ]
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MSNBC Taps Nation of Whiners
Earlier this month, former senator and John McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm was widely excoriated for his remarks about America being a "nation of whiners," -- discouraged by negative media reports fueling fears of recession.
As my colleague Nathan Burchfiel noted, the context of Gramm's remarks were the media's role in accentuating the negative in economic news and hence ginning up the public's economic fears and complaints. Of course, the media has done little to prove Gramm wrong.
Take, for instance MSNBC.com's "My Miserable Summer" series, which, among other things, takes tales of woe from readers and publishes them on the Web site ...
[complete with series logo and everything...
Where do people get their pessimism]
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AS ARIZONA GOES, SO GOES THE NATION: HOW MEDICAID RUINED THE STATES' FISCAL HEALTH
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a bleak report on the long-term financial prospects of state and local governments. Their fiscal balances, GAO's simulations show, will rapidly deteriorate in less than a decade. GAO identifies Medicaid as the primary culprit for these bleak trends, In some states, the crisis has already arrived.
Arizona provides an early and stark illustration of Medicaid's ruinous effects. Arizona's fiscal crisis is due chiefly to the state's expansion of its Medicaid programs. Unsurprisingly, Medicaid expenditures constitute an ever-growing share of state expenditures:
• In 1987, that share amounted to slightly more than 10 percent.No state can avoid the choice between more debt or rip-roaring tax hikes, combined in some way. However, genuine reform of Medicaid must take place in Washington and so is an unlikely scenario.
• By 1992, the number was 17.8 percent; in 2006, it was 22.2 percent.
• Arizona general fund spending on Medicaid was $463 million in 2000.
• That figure is projected to grow to $1.5 billion in FY 2009, representing a threefold increase in less than a decade.
Medicaid is designed to be fiscally unsustainable -- but politically self-sustaining.
[scary? just wait until our health care system is Nationalized]
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THE REAL COST OF IMMIGRATION
A new study by Edwin S. Rubenstein, a Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow, looks at the myriad ways immigration increases the cost of government and how government policies increase immigration.
For example:
• Rubenstein found that each immigrant costs taxpayers more than $9,000, while every immigrant household of four costs $36,000 in taxes.
• That's far more than the $3,408 in 2007 dollars the National Research Council's 1997 "New Americans" study of federal, state and local government expenditures found immigrants to cost.
Looking at education alone, Rubenstein found:
• Rand Corp. researchers discovered back in 1981 that added costs for language assistance instruction ranged from $100 to $500 per pupil.
• The total cost of providing English Language Learning instruction to the 3.8 million students enrolled in those programs is about $3.9 billion.
Turning to the Department of Justice, Rubenstein found criminal aliens to be an increasing burden on U.S. prison systems:
• In 1980, federal and state facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens, but at the end of 2004, about 267,000 noncitizens were incarcerated in U.S. correctional facilities.According to a 2003 Government Accountability Office (GAO) survey, the average criminal alien was arrested for 13 prior offenses, 12 percent of which were cases of murder, robbery, assault and sexually related crimes...
• Of all prisoners in federal prisons, 27 percent are criminal aliens, he found, with a total cost of $1.5 billion.
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The Anti-Smoking Tag Team
... Gates would contribute $125 million to the effort from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Bloomberg would chip in $375 million. What they want to do is “pressure” governments to hike tobacco taxes, prohibit smoking in public areas and curtail tobacco advertising...
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[I.e., the assault on choice continues. Don't care? ok.]
Cell phones—The new cigarettes
There has been a raging debate over whether cell phones—or more specifically electromagnetic radiation that they emit—up a person's cancer risk. The latest chapter: Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, this week warned consumers to limit exposure to cell phone radiation—and alerted parents to beware of possible effects on their kids...
[sound familiar?]
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Wikipedia Disallows Any Mention of Alleged John Edwards Scandal
[HT:JF]
Wikipedia, which allowed verb tenses for their Tim Russert entry to be changed from present to past tense about a half hour before the official announcement of his death, is suddenly going ultra legal in its refusal to allow their John Edwards entry to be updated with mention of the alleged scandal which was reported in the National Enquirer with many of the details confirmed by Fox News.
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DOCKING PAYCHECKS FOR POLITICS
The mighty Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to spend some $150 million in this year's election, most of it to get Barack Obama and other Democrats elected. Where'd they get that much money?
That's a question the Departments of Labor and Justice are being asked to investigate by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Specifically, the labor watchdog group wants Justice to query a new SEIU policy that appears to coerce local workers into funding the parent union's national political priorities:
- The union adopted a new amendment to its constitution at last month's SEIU convention, requiring that every local contribute an amount equal to $6 per member per year to the union's national political action committee; this is in addition to regular union dues.
- Unions that fail to meet the requirement must contribute an amount in "local union funds" equal to the "deficiency," plus a 50 percent penalty.
It's hard to see that an SEIU mandate enforced by financial penalties of 50 percent isn't a "threat" or would qualify under any definition of "voluntary,"
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Will Republicans Tap a Gusher of Support Off the California Coast
California's 's senior Senator Dianne Feinstein has joined the battle by writing an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times opposing efforts to increase offshore oil production. The Senator, unfortunately, promotes a myth that offshore drilling and production will not help our economy in either the short run or the long run.
Both suppositions are wrong, and dangerous to boot. Sanford Bernstein (one of the most respected research groups) has produced an analysis noting how quickly the offshore resources off the coast of California - to quote the Wall Street Journal:
"California could actually start producing new oil within a year if the moratorium were lifted," the Sanford C. Bernstein report said, because the oil is under shallow water, has been explored and drilling platforms have been there since before the moratoria.
This would also send a message to the world's petrocrats that America has begun to realize that we are tiring of our fate resting in the hands of nations that wish us harm. The fate of our economy should not be controlled by the whims of the very nations that sponsor terrorism and hate around the world.
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Islam to become Russia’s predominant religion by 2050?
Islam is likely to become the primary religion in the Russian Federation by 2050 due to the high birth rate in Muslim republics. The current Chinese-led conquest of Russia’s Far East already seems to be a matter of immediate concern for the Kremlin. The ethnic birth rate disproportion in different regions of the country is another problem. The Muslim community may become the largest community by the middle of the current century.
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Detroit Mayor Allegedly Commits Assault; What Party?
The Associated Press's Ed White used almost 700 words in his story (link is dynamic; story in form found at 5:04 p.m. is also here) about the latest developments relating to Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of Detroit, and failed to name his party affiliation even once.
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The problem of Obama's moral relativism
... But the crux of the problem is that Barack Obama has blinders on. He doesn't comment on the failure of the Palestinians to prepare themselves and their children for peace and for compromise. He fails to express concern -- or even recognition -- about the rife and rank anti-Semitism that is pervasive in the West Bank, in schools, mosques, in the media, and from the mouths of its leaders.
This is a core problem which Obama completely ignores (notably, his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton was in the forefront of efforts begun years ago to cleanse Palestinian textbooks of anti-Semitism). Anti-Israel lessons and terminology is force-fed to Palestinian children. Mosques have become breeding grounds for hate. Does Barack Obama care about this form of prejudice?
There is one other little noticed problem with Obama's statement: His view that terrorism make the Israelis want
"to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what's going on beyond their borders. "How can this be interpreted?
[Recommended > ]
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Democrat Senate Passed 94% of Bills without Debate or Roll Call Vote
Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) dismissed Democratic claims of obstructionism and expressed outrage last week over a government report that shows the majority of bills that have passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate of the 110th Congress have done so without any debate or even a vote.
“This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears. Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery,”
Coburn was referring to a non-partisan study released on June 10 by the government’s Congressional Research Service (CRS), which indicates that 855 of the 911 bills passed by the Senate of the 110th Congress have been streamlined by Democratic Party leadership with a procedural tactic known as Unanimous Consent (UC), which requires no debate or vote...
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California Legislature: More Uninsured, Please
ACTION
California has imposed so many regulations on the group market that its premiums are often twice as expensive as those of individual plans. For families, group plans now average nearly $12,000 per year, compared with about $3,900 for families buying coverage on the individual market.
In contrast, individual plans in California are far less regulated and -not surprisingly- far more affordable. As of March 2008, individual health plans in California are among the least expensive in the U.S.
That difference in affordability may be disappearing.
AB 1962 would impose a mandate for every individual health insurance policy to cover maternity benefits regardless of whether the person needs, wants or can afford this coverage...
[this is how government involvement bankrupts systems: group premiums should be lower than individual premiums - until you add regulation...]
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AB1962, De La Torre.Maternity services.
CA Assembly members email >> http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
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