Global Warming Scam, Pt. 1
Environment minister Sammy Wilson: I still think man-made climate change is a con
Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases, Sammy Wilson said.
The DUP minister has been heavily criticised by environmentalists for claiming that ongoing climatic shifts are down to nature and not mankind.
But while acknowledging his views on global warming may not be popular, the East Antrim MP said he was not prepared to be bullied by eco fundamentalists.
“I’ll not be stopped saying what I believe needs to be said about climate change,” he said.
"Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it
“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well.
“I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to explain how they believe there’s a connection between CO2 emission and the effects which they claim there’s going to be, if you ask them to explain the thought process or the modelling that is required and the assumptions behind that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn’t have a clue.
“They simply get letters about it from all these lobby groups, it’s popular and therefore they go along with the flow — and that would be ok if there were no implications for it, but the implications are immense.”
He said while people in the western world were facing spiralling fuel bills as a result of efforts to cut CO2, the implications in poorer countries were graver.
“What are the problems that face us either locally and internationally. Are those not the things we should be concentrating on?” he asked.
“HIV, lack of clean water, which kills millions of people in third world countries, lack of education.
“A fraction of the money we are currently spending on climate change could actually eradicate those three problems alone, a fraction of it.
“I think as a society we sometimes need to get some of these things in perspective and when I listen to some of the rubbish that is spoken by some of my colleagues in the Assembly it amuses me at times and other times it angers me.”
Despite his views on CO2, Mr Wilson said he does not intend to backtrack on commitments made by his predecessor at the Department of the Environment, Arlene Foster, to make the Stormont estate carbon neutral.
He said while he wasn’t worried about reducing CO2 output, he said the policy would help to cut fuels bills.
“I don’t couch those actions in terms of reducing Co2 emissions,” he said. “I don’t care about Co2 emissions to be quite truthful because I don’t think it’s all that important but what I do believe is, and perhaps this is where there can be some convergence, as far as using fuel more efficiently that is good for our economy; that makes us more competitive. If we can save in schools hundreds of thousands on fuel that’s more money being put for books or classroom assistants.
“So yes there are things we can do. If you want to express it terms of carbon neutral, I just express it terms of making the place more efficient, less wasteful and hopefully that will release money to do the proper things that we should be doing.”
YOU WANT TO USE THE MILITARY FOR WHAT?
Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
I saw this article posted on The Drudge Report , and it got me to thinking; why on earth do we need this? Basically, it's going to have the military posted inside our own borders for internal affairs.
"All would be trained to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it."
Isn't this what FEMA is for? Wouldn't we do better to revamp/restructure FEMA? What kind of events do they honestly expect to be used for, that we don't already have an organization to deal with?
This seems eerily similar to the "Civilian Security Force" which Mr. Obama suggested a few months ago.
"'We need to be able to deploy teams that combine agricultural specialists and engineers and linguists and cultural specialists who are prepared to go into some of the most dangerous areas alongside our military,' he said."
What would either of these groups do, that is NOT ALREADY done after a natural or man-made catastrophe?
Bailout, My Foot!
I found this article in the NY Times Op-Ed by Mitt Romney. When talking to friends, I've made comments very similar to his (although not nearly as eloquent), regarding the supposed "bailout" of the auto industry. It's nice to see someone else, with more experience than myself, saying the same things.
Let Detroit Go Bankrupt
by Mitt Romney
IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.
First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.
Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.
The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”
You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.
The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.
Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.
Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.
It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.
But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.
The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.
In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.
Welcome to the Presidency
An article in the WSJ showing that President-elect Obama will have his hands full from the beginning.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a chilly reception to the incoming U.S. administration, threatening to station missiles deep inside Europe and lambasting the U.S. for "selfish" foreign-policy and economic blunders.
Mr. Medvedev also proposed extending the term of the Russian president to six years from four, a change that may benefit his predecessor and prime minister, Vladmir Putin, who may run for president again in 2012.
Without mentioning U.S. President-elect Barack Obama by name, Mr. Medvedev said he hoped the new administration in Washington will take steps to improve badly damaged U.S. ties with Russia. But he suggested it is up to Washington, not Moscow, to improve relations.
"We have no problem with the American people, no inborn anti-Americanism," he said.
Mr. Medvedev's speech, his first state-of-the-nation address since he became president in May, bore few signs of a hoped-for softening toward the West, or of the authoritarian political system established under Mr. Putin.
Germany's foreign ministry called Mr. Medvedev's plan to deploy missiles in response to U.S. plans for an antimissile system "a wrong signal at the wrong time."
The Kremlin has repeatedly called on Washington to abandon the planned missile system.
"The steps that the Russian government announced today are disappointing," said U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "But, again, this is not directed at them. Hopefully one day they'll realize that."
Analyst George Perkovich said the speech recalled the threats delivered in 1961 by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to another newly elected U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, at a summit in Vienna.
"It looked like a clumsy effort to test the new president's mettle," said Mr. Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "It's a psychological ploy the U.S. should not fall prey to."
Mr. Medvedev repeated earlier assertions of Mr. Putin that a realignment was needed in international politics, with a demotion of U.S. influence.
"Mechanisms must be created to block mistaken, egoistical and sometimes simply dangerous decisions of certain members of the international community," he said shortly after starting the 85-minute speech.
Mr. Medvedev said a "selfish" U.S. foreign policy set off the war in Georgia. He said the U.S. used the war as a pretext to send North Atlantic Treaty Organization warships into the Black Sea, and speed up its plan to deploy antimissile systems in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Medvedev said the Kremlin would deploy ground-to-ground missiles in its westernmost territory in Europe, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, bordering on European Union members Poland and Lithuania.
He said Russia would also electronically jam the U.S. system, parts of which are due to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic, and scrap plans to stand down three Cold War-era nuclear missile regiments.
He peppered the address with references to freedom and democracy but proffered only minor changes to an electoral system that has shunted aside opposition parties and turned parliament into a Kremlin-controlled body that rubber-stamps its decisions.
Mr. Medvedev announced plans to lengthen legislators' terms by a year to five years and make it easier for small parties to win parliamentary representation.
Sergei Mitrokhin, head of the Yabloko political party, said Mr. Medvedev's proposal to prolong the presidential term to six years "is a signal of the continuing bureaucratization of the country and that the government is heading toward stagnation and will be even more isolated from the people."
Mr. Medvedev, who came to power promising to curtail the encroachment of government on business, said his government will continue economic liberalization. So far, however, the Kremlin's economic bailouts in response to the global financial crisis have led to greater state control over industry and banks.
The "S" Word
An Obama 'Rescue' Plan That Doesn't
An editorial posted on Investor's Business Daily - Monday, October 13, 2008
Election '08: On the eve of a final debate, Barack Obama unveiled an emergency "rescue" of the middle class from capitalism. The details show it to be all hype and no help.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's announcement in Toledo, Ohio, of a "middle-class rescue plan" is reminiscent of Groucho Marx's means of rescuing the drowning damsel who double-crossed him in the film "Horse Feathers."
"Throw me a lifesaver!" she shouted.
Groucho's character, buffoonish college president Quincy Adams Wagstaff, promptly produced from his pocket a roll of peppermint Lifesavers and tossed her one.
Obama's idea of letting people deplete 15% of their 401(k) investment holdings is indicative of the candidate we have come to know, who wants ordinary people to look to the government for money — and not, as has been the trend in recent years, to their investment portfolios. Encourage novice investors to get out and stay out of the stock market right after a historic decline? Only a socialist mind-set would exploit the financial crisis in such a way.
Obama's campaign likes to call the middle class "the economic engine of America." But that engine's fuel is private-sector investment, most of which, naturally, comes from those with higher incomes. This community organizer from Chicago's South Side, whose career was launched with the help of unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, will not accept that.
The Illinois senator might be one of the shrewdest presidential candidates ever, but he does slip. For instance, he promises to end capital gains taxes on investments for small businesses and start-ups.
But on a campaign stop in Toledo, he couldn't assure self-employed 34-year-old plumber Joe Wurzelbacher to his face that he would get a tax cut. Poised to buy a $250,000-a-year firm, the working-class plumber of 15 years confronted Obama.
"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" he asked.
Obama responded with the promise of a 50% tax credit for health care, but the senator conceded that Wurzelbacher's income taxes would indeed rise.
"It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama told him. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you — that they've got a chance at success too."
Wurzelbacher, who would shoulder all the responsibility and risk of such an investment, did not look impressed. Obama then let the cat out of the bag, saying:
"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
He certainly does, and his unguarded statement to a voter in a key swing state is socialist economics distilled to its simplest terms.
Eliminating small business capital gains taxes — whatever the details would be (and you can bet it would be a fraction of total private investment) — will not rescue the middle class from the job losses of a high-tax Obama administration planning to spend an extra $293 billion annually. It does, however, cunningly deaden charges that Obama is camouflaging a socialist agenda.
The other components of his so-called rescue, lovingly described by the New York Times as "proposals to spur new jobs, to give Americans penalty-free access to retirement savings to help them through the downturn, to urge a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and to lend money to strapped local and state governments" are worded to sound equally innocuous. But a close look tells another story.
His $3,000 income-tax credit for each new full-time employee hired by businesses is an obvious anti-outsourcing incentive likely to increase business costs, of which we can expect plenty more — of a directly punitive nature — in an Obama administration. He would replace the judgment of banks with that of the federal government regarding when or if to foreclose. And he wants the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to bail out spendthrift state and local governments.
John McCain is reportedly considering a broad, simple capital gains tax cut. An across-the-board cut would be a real middle-class rescue, focused on generating new private sector employment — the proven way of "spreading the wealth around," a concept which Obama, with his deftly disguised socialism, cannot grasp.
Log
I thought a little break from the political scene might be welcome. A co-worker of mine showed me this, and because I enjoy random things, it made me laugh. Hope you enjoy it, too.
The 411 - Part 1
First there was Jeremiah Write. Then William Ayers. Who else from Mr. Obama's history do we need to know about?
Friends of Obama
Coming tomorrow: What you need to know about McCain.
A Humorous Lesson in Taxes
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar everyday and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.'
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.
But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $20,' declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!
'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man.
'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'
'That's true!' shouted the seventh man.
'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two?
The wealthy get all the breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison.
'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him.
But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works.
The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.
Mickey Mouse Registers to Vote
Please note that the following articles are NOT sponsored by the McCain campaign.
ACORN Registers Mickey Mouse to Vote - tampabay.com
Obama and Acorn - wsj.com
Seven-year-old Registered to Vote - nypost.com
Bonus Video: Obama Says he Wants to "Spread the Wealth" - foxnews.com
Nothing is Not the Worst Thing...
"The worst thing you can do is nothing," BlackRock investment strategist Bob Doll said earlier in the day.
Well sir, I disagree. The worst thing you can do, is the wrong thing. We would have done better to wait and get the right legislation on the table, than to rush the wrong legislation to the table. See the current market status .
The Bailout That Should Have Been
The below plan is, of course, not original to me. I'm not nearly clever enough to think of such a thing; however, I think it would have worked wonders for our economy (and still could), if it were implemented.
This idea is original to Dave Ramsey, and can be found here .
The Common Sense Fix
Years of bad decisions and stupid mistakes have created an economic nightmare in this country,
but $700 billion in new debt is not the answer. As a tax-paying American citizen, I will not support any congressperson who votes to implement such a policy. Instead, I submit the following three-step Common Sense Plan.
- INSURANCE
- Insure the subprime bonds/mortgages with an underlying FHA-type insurance. Government-insured and backed loans would have an instant market all over the world, creating immediate and needed liquidity.
- In order for a company to accept the government-backed insurance, they must do two things:
- Rewrite any mortgage that is more than three months delinquent to a 6% fixed-rate mortgage.
- Roll all back payments with no late fees or legal costs into the balance. This brings homeowners current and allows them a chance to keep their homes.
- Cancel all prepayment penalties to encourage refinancing or the sale of the property to pay off the bad loan. In the event of foreclosure or short sale, the borrower will not be held liable for any deficit balance. FHA does this now, and that encourages mortgage companies to go the extra mile while working with the borrower—again limiting foreclosures and ruined lives.
- Cancel ALL golden parachutes of EXISTING and FUTURE CEOs and executive team members as long as the company holds these government-insured bonds/mortgages. This keeps underperforming executives from being paid when they don’t do their jobs.
- This backstop will cost less than $50 billion—a small fraction of the current proposal.
- MARK TO MARKET
- Remove mark to market accounting rules for two years on only subprime Tier III
bonds/mortgages. This keeps companies from being forced to artificially mark down
bonds/mortgages below the value of the underlying mortgages and real estate. - This move creates patience in the market and has an immediate stabilizing effect on failing and ailing banks—and it costs the taxpayer nothing.
- CAPITAL GAINS TAX
- Remove the capital gains tax completely. Investors will flood the real estate and stock market in search of tax-free profits, creating tremendous—and immediate—liquidity in the markets. Again, this costs the taxpayer nothing.
- This move will be seen as a lightning rod politically because many will say it is helping the rich. The truth is the rich will benefit, but it will be their money that stimulates the economy. This will enable all Americans to have more stable jobs and retirement investments that go up instead of down.
This is not a time for envy, and it’s not a time for politics. It’s time for all of us, as Americans, to stand up, speak out, and fix this mess.
Charter Post
So to answer the obvious question - what do I mean by "what the cow"?!
Really, this started as a saying that I picked up from a friend, and has now become common in the vernacular used with my closer friends. It's used kind of as a reactionary statement, and has a similar connotation to, "what gives?!"
I'd like to make this site into a discussion ground for quite a broad range of topics; covering anything from electronics and cars, to finances and cooking. While I'll focus quite a bit on the political environment, I'll also post about anything else that piques my interest. Hopefully we'll have enough variation to keep away the boredom bugs.
The outlook on the discussion will come from a Christian worldview, and will seek to be God-honoring.
I hope you enjoy your time here! Please let me know if you have any suggestions for layout, discussion topics, widgets, etc.