Category Archives: Economy
Poor Mouth
Hillary’s book tour got off to a poor start during an interview with Diane Sawyer. We learned that Bill and Hill came to the White House “with no money” and left “not only dead broke but in debt“. People used to call her Patches.
It wasn’t for lack of effort, though, or “dint of hard work” as Hillary put it.
The threadbare baggage the Clintons brought to Washington from Arkansas in 1993 included the Whitewater real estate scheme. They lost $40,000 on that one. According to prosecutors, dubious loans through a failed S&L didn’t profit them either. More hard work and nothing to show for it. Plucky Hillary did finally manage to shoo the wolf from the door by turning $1,000 into $100,000 on a cattle futures trade. She attributed her investing acumen to reading the Wall Street Journal.
All that hard work finally blossomed into a happy ending with $200,000 speaking fees, multi million dollar book advances, and a bankroll over $100,000,000.
As a candidate for the 2004 nomination Howard Dean said he led the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Poor Patches now leads the limousine liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Only in America.
Smart Money on Cantor
Eric Canter’s role as House Majority Leader is dead and buried. The smart money assumed Cantor was a sure thing. But he lost his seat in a primary challenge by David Brat, a college economics professor.
As Majority Leader Cantor couldn’t avoid the insider ways of Washington. That didn’t sit well with voters in his Richmond, Va district. He also moved toward comprehensive immigration reform which Ann Coulter insists only sits well with Washington Insiders.
Smart Money
Speaking of smart money, Brat only spent $122,793 on his campaign. Cantor spent that much on steak houses!
In the general election the conservative economics prof will face a sociology prof, Jack Trammell… from the same faculty lounge at Randolph-Macon college.
Carbon Cuts
President Obama made another end run around Congress in order to end the basis of all life on earth.
A 30% cut in carbon emissions from 2005 levels and must be achieved by 2030, or else.
Not a big deal says Robert Samuelson. Carbon emissions are already declining without EPA orders.
By 2012, CO2 emissions had already dropped to 2,023 million metric tons, a decline of 379 million metric tons. That’s 53 percent of the 2030 target. All of this has occurred without federal regulation of greenhouse gases.
The proposal’s real significance is that, if blessed by the courts, it would create a complex and costly regulatory apparatus that, in the future, might govern much of the U.S. economy.
China and India will more than make up for any U.S. cuts. But if you’re going to do it, Samuelson thinks the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to tax them.
If you want less of something, tax it… But there’s little public taste for this. Indeed, support for any anti-global warming legislation is weak. In 2009, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate, they could not pass a bill.
So Obama resorted to regulatory fiat: The EPA sets emission limits under the Clean Air Act. The proposal is hugely complex. Each state receives a target that can be met in many ways, subject to agency approval. This will be challenged in court and, if upheld, will strain the EPA’s administrative capacity. Winners and losers would be determined as much by political pressures as by market forces. It would be a bonanza for lawyers, lobbyists, economic consultants and public relations advisers. Whether it would affect the world’s climate is more questionable.
Krauthammer says the whole thing shows Obama is operating under his own constitution.
Coal Industry
Candidate Obama said he would bankrupt the coal industry in 2008. In 2014 President Obama said he has a pen and a phone and when Congress won’t act he will. Well, Congress wouldn’t act on carbon cap and trade so Obama’s EPA just did.
War on Birds
The Atlantic reported in late April that a huge solar power plant in the California desert is scorching birds with 800 degree heat.
The Ivanpah plant uses 300,000 mirrors to focus the sun on a water filled boiler. When birds fly through that beam the effect is the same as when you focused the sun through a magnifying glass to scorch an ant. Oh, you didn’t do that when you were a kid? Well, here’s what happens:
At times birds flew into the solar flux and ignited.
Not only that:
“It appears Ivanpah may act as a ‘mega-trap,’ attracting insects which in turn attract insect-eating birds, which are incapacitated by solar-flux injury, thus attracting predators and creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death,” concluded scientists with the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in a report that investigated 233 bird deathsrepresenting 71 species at three Southern California solar power plants.
War on Birds
Bird immolation’s not your style? Well, did you know windmills are licensed to behead bald eagles?:
A leading bird conservation organization—American Bird Conservancy (ABC)—has announced its intention to sue the Department of the Interior (DOI), charging DOI with multiple violations of federal law in connection with its December 9, 2013, final regulation that allows wind energy companies and others to obtain 30-year permits to kill eagles without prosecution by the federal government. The previous rule provided for a maximum duration of five years for each permit.
Hardly seems fair if you have malaria due to the ban on DDT in order to save bald eagles.
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