Conservative Donnybrook

45 miles off the coast of Florida a group of foreign nations hostile to the United States prepare to expand their influence in an economic zone surrendered by the Americans.  The stakes are high and America has the most to lose.  While she has the largest reserve of chips, she makes the minimum bet and allows restricted offshore drilling to resume in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Eastern seaboard. 

This is not a John Grisham novel but the real situation the Obama administration finds itself confronted with.  The Russians secured an agreement with the communist Cuban government in mid 2009 to begin drilling in Cuba’s economic zone (which Jimmy Carter ceded to them).  Estimates put the available amount of oil around 5 billion barrels in this area.  While not a windfall like Alaska’s discovery in Prudhoe Bay of 25 billion barrels, the field is comparable to Brazil’s deep water discovery in 2007.  Russia stands to expand its influence in the western hemisphere at the expense of the United States.  Russia’s agreement with Cuba could significantly lessen the burden of the Cuban government by allowing Cuba to import far less oil than it currently does today.  Most significantly, it strikes an economic blow to American interests in our backyard.

Pundits like Sarah Palin  and others have speculated that the Obama administration’s new endorsement of off shore drilling is a nothing more than an attempt to curry favor for his carbon cap and trade scheme.  But this seems unlikely.  Palin’s position is like assuming that untying a captive’s right hand will allow him to accept cutting off his left.  It simply makes no sense.  Instead, it appears that the President fears the growing Russian presence in our hemisphere. He is right to.  Permitting offshore drilling in and around areas where the Russians are present sends a message that while the president generally disapproves of offshore drilling, he is unwilling to sit back and let Russia expand its petro-carbon empire in to the Gulf without a response.  It is subtle, but it won’t go unnoticed by the Russians, the Chinese or even the Brazilians.  Sure, they can drill in Cuban waters, but if the U.S. wanted to, it could make that ultimately unprofitable by sucking much of that oil up itself.

If Obama was serious about currying favor for his carbon cap and trade legislation or about energy independence he would have opened the door for slant drilling from existing platforms off the coast of California.  But he didn’t because the Russians’ energy empire poses no encroaching threat there.  Obama’s move provides very little benefit to the United States and does little more than put a slightly larger U.S. presence in and around the Russian platforms.  But this, I posit, is his point.  Look at us, we are here and if we desire, we can have it all.  Don’t be fooled, Sarah et al.  While the president will move forward with his cap and trade agenda, this move is simply more weak finger-wagging foreign policy from B-rock.

Ordinarily, I would take a good deal of time to point out that many here at the site have repeatedly pointed out the nakedness of the emperor. I would rehash the times Patriot-Act statists in conservative wool have been called on their leftism, secularism, and big-government authoritarianism. I would also bewail the unmitigated gall of such a character having the chutzpah to call his critics allies of Michael Moore, George Soros, and Nancy Pelosi.  I would loudly and often decry the shameless and unguarded honesty of those who reduce their philosophy to “kill” to the exclusion of sound economic policy, the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of our country, and a host of other issues. Normally. Not this time. This time I’ll let the argument you presented dismantle itself and show the readership of this blog how one-note, indefensible, and breathtakingly destructive your side is.

The article to which you linked, when read through the lenses of one conversant with history (which one would expect a self-described historian to do), demonstrated far better than I could of the bankruptcy of your side. Kagan starts out by mentioning the Great Depression. He failed to note any of the actual causes of that depression. He failed to take into consideration the “adventurism,” to borrow one of your words from a recent comment, of the United States leading up to that crisis. The economic decisions in the midst and wake of the Civil War (National banking acts of 1863 and 1864 which consolidated currency to fund the Union’s war; Federal Reserve creation in 1913; Aldrich-Vreeland in 1908, etc.) and the domestic and foreign policy decisions in the wake of the war (Reconstruction; almost immediate attempts at imperialism in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Liberia – all of which came about due to slavery and its end; westward expansion, Indian wars, Alaskan purchase; Roosevelt’s splitting of the Republicans, his appointments to the Supreme Court, etc.; financial, monetary, and fiscal management and mismanagement), not to mention World War I, all contributed directly to the spreading thin of the American military and building resentment throughout the world.

Kagan goes on to insinuate that, because the United States seemed to somehow ignore foreign policy, Japan militarized and Germany fell under Hitler’s sway. This is howlingly funny. What we are required to do if we are to accept Kagan’s hypothesis is to absolutely and unequivocally deny that black is black, that water is wet, or that fire is hot. Aside from the fact that it was American “adventurism” (e.g., with the Great White Fleet, which further fueled a zealous desire to militarize in newly-nationalist Japan) which thrust Japan on its path toward imperialism (read about Perry’s Black Ships and the cracking of isolationist Japan, the Meiji Restoration, the Manchurian, Korean, and Russian campaigns of Japan), we can hardly be faulted for “ignoring” Germany: we had shipped thousands of American boys there to fight, bleed, die, and kill, and had established a new world-political body to deal with the German problem only 20 years before the 1933 Nazification. One could be excused for refusing to read any of the rest of Kagan’s ludicrous bombast after realizing this, but, intrepid soul that I am, I trudged on.

Kagan engaged in your least-favorite pasttime. He had the balls to criticize Ronald Reagan (gasp! the horror!) in practically the same breath as he criticized Jimmy Carter. Calling Reagan’s policy decisions about Lebanon “failed” and asserting that these policies led to the bombing of the Marine barracks is hardly what one would expect to hear you lauding. Implicit in this is the recognition that we should not have been there to get bombed. Reagan quickly and wisely realized this and did exactly the right thing: he got out and left Israel to what it was perfectly, demonstrably capable of doing: defending itself and letting Beirut and the Lebanese tend to their own damned affairs. No more Marines were killed there after that. No Al-Aqsa,  ”Quds Force,” or Hezbollah started trouble by killing Americans there. What a concept.  What were “Reagan’s failed policies” in Lebanon? Assisting a “multinational force” along with French troops and others to “keep the peace” in a sectarian civil war. What spawned the Muslim hatred and subsequent suicide bombings? Perceived American preference for Maronite Catholics and the shelling of Druze areas which inadvertantly killed civilians.

Kagan touches tangentially and seemingly accidentally upon one truth: things now are probably more dangerous for the U.S., but because of our huge overseas presence and constant “spreading of democracy” or “war on terror” or “search for WNDs” (we really do need to find those nasty World Net Dailies) or whatever they’re calling it these days, not because we are letting our guard down.

People are growing weary of the wars, growing weary of the constant misequation of the United States of America with Israel by the radical Zionists, and people are growing weary of the stubborn economic hardships put upon them by constant imperialism. Bring Americans home to defend America. Root out radical Islam here and deport it. If the resistance starts here, put it down swiftly and with no remorse. But there is no way we need to be defending South Korea from a tinpot near-dead in charge of a run-down non-entity. There is no justification for making all those “security guarantees” to states in the Russian sphere of influence. There is no way you could possibly believe that Kagan essay if you know and understand history. There is no way you can continue to call yourself a conservative and defend such Wilsonianism. It is definitionally schizophrenic, or alternatively simply mendacious, to claim to be conservative and yet espouse this baseless, historically-illiterate, radical Ledeenishness while at the same time believing it makes us safer. Your apologists split their time between appealing to how much safer we are and how dangerous it’s getting. Your side constantly purports to support “democracy” and “freedom” while working overtime - often in cahoots with outright radical socialist would-be totalitarians – to quash them through Patriot Acts, occupations of foreign countries, propped-up banking cartels and outdated unionized auto companies (remember which President started those great things?). Your side is trying to cling desperately to relevance, which is understandable. But for whom are you striving?

On the same day that Michael Jackson beat it for the great beyond, Pelosi and her cohort passed the largest tax increase in the history of history. Perhaps you missed it; the news tended to focus only on the passing of a pop singer of doubtful moral character to the exclusion of a number of other stories. Can anybody tell me what ever happened with that North Korean freighter that the U.S. Navy was bird-dogging? Anybody hear about the AMA revolting against Obama’s healthcare scheme? You might have heard that we won the war in Iraq. Maybe not. Did anyone hear that an American soldier was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan this week? How about that Barack Obama’s nominee for the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy was overturned this week by that same Court?

If you can’t beat ‘em, I suppose, you join ‘em. So, I will show how even the the Michael Jackson estate would be affected by the Cap and Trade bill that the House of Representatives passed last week. But first, a little about the bill itself. The bill itself states that its purpose is ”[t]o create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.” Some of that may need to be explained. For instance, global warming pollution is carbon dioxide – the same stuff you exhale. Indeed, each respirating organism on earth is now categorized as a polluter. For an idea of what “transitioning to a clean energy economy” looks like, take a look at Spain. Apparently, if we look at Spain, it is possible to create clean energy jobs, but each one will cost between $750,000 and $1.4 million and will cost 2.2 jobs in other areas per job created. On other hand, we will be saving the planet, right?

But, how do they propose to do it? The bill is designed to increase the price of energy in order to drive down consumption.

During the campaign, Obama also pledged that he would never raise taxes in any form on Americans making less than $250,000 per year. But his cap and trade tax is estimated to cost American families almost $2,000 a year when it becomes effective, growing to almost $7,000 a year for a family of four by 2035. That will be paid through higher prices for electricity, oil, gasoline, natural gas, home heating oil, coal, food, and every product that is produced or transported using energy.

In short the Cap and Trade proposal passed out of the House last week is a “Tax on Everything” – everything that uses energy. An interesting exercise is to try to think of anything that you purchase that requires no energy to produce, deliver, sell, or consume. The increased costs associated with that energy usage will be embedded in the price of every consumer good and service that Americans utilize. As a result, Americans will purchase fewer goods and services. If Americans purchase fewer goods and services, then companies who provide those goods and services will be forced to cut production (read: jobs). But, hey, we’re saving the planet.

One of my “favorite” provisions of the bill is in sections 201-203, which requires every State to adopt the building codes of California. (See ACES Sec. 201(c)(3) which reads “COMPLIANT CODE — For the purposes of meeting the target described in subsection (a)(1)(A) [which required that State's become compliant within one year of enactment] for residential buildings, a State that adopts the code represented in California’s Title 24-2009 by the date two years after the enactment of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 shall be considered to have met the requirements of this subsection for the applicable period.”) The code then goes on to dictate to State legislatures the legislation it is required to pass and the timeline on which it is required to pass it.  The States are to be denied federal funding from the Act if they are found to be noncompliant. Indeed, if  the State fails to enforce compliant building codes within 2 years, the Secretary of Energy shall enforce the codes within that State.

The bill requires not only new buildings to satisfy whatever arbitrary standard the Secretary chooses, but it also places the burden on homeowners of existing houses to “retrofit” their property before they are allowed to sell them. This provision alone will place an incredible economic burden on homeowners whether they earn $250,000 or not.  Their mobility, their choice of where to live, their ability to change jobs will be affected by this single onerous provision. But, we will gladly sacrifice our freedom because it’s saving the planet, right? I hope MJ installed new windows and an EnergyStar compliant furnace before he died, otherwise his estate’s going to get hit with a gigantic bill to retrofit Neverland Ranch before they can sell it and distribute the proceeds to his heirs.

There is plenty more where that came from in the bill that has nothing to do with the actual Cap and Trade bits and which are sure to raise the eyebrows (or ire) of anyone who loves his freedom. For instance, there is an entire section regulating outdoor lightbulbs to be brighter and last longer. There’s even a provision regulating the type of bulb one can use to illuminate their artwork, including mandating its color spectrum and power factor.

As mentioned earlier, outrageously, this bill passed the House of Representatives 219-212. Now the bill goes to the Senate. If the Senate passes the bill, it will become law. If the Senate passes any kind of compromise bill, it will go to conference and will become law in some form. The only hope now is that the Senate stops this bill dead. “Obi Wan Senati, you’re our only hope!”

After all that, I apologize, but I don’t really care how this bill will affect the Jackson estate. I can assure you it would be bad. But, thanks for all the MJ Googlers for stopping in.

As a service to the hordes of readers of Conservative Donnybrook, I have read the House version of Obama’s $825 billion economic stimulus package so you don’t have to.

General Attributes of the Plan

As mentioned above the current overall price tag (before amendments and the inevitable earmark add-ons) is $825 billion. That is split into two general categories of spending.

The first category is $275 billion in “economic recovery tax cuts.” Presumably this is the “tax cuts for 95% of Americans” that Obama continuously talked about on the campaign trail. If there are 305 million Americans and they split the tax cut evenly, each would enjoy a lessened tax burden of $949.09 each. I’ll take it gladly; indeed, they owe us more of our own money back. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be offset by the sun-setting of the Bush tax cuts, which there is little doubt Congress and the President will allow to expire.

The second category is $550 billion in “targeted priority investments.” According to the summary from the Committee on Appropriations, “[t]his package is the crucial first step in a concerted effort to create and save 3 to 4 million jobs, jumpstart our economy, and being the process of transforming it for the 21^st century.” The committee summary goes on to state that, “with the passage of this package, unemployment rates are expected to rise to between eight and nine percent this year. Without this package, we are warned that unemployment could explode to near twelve percent.” As such, assuming these numbers are correct and this package would prevent the unemployment rate from experiencing an additional 3% rise, the package will prevent the loss of 3.93 million jobs* through new unemployment claims. This means that by their own numbers, this package will not create any new jobs, as Obama has been touting, but rather would prevent the anticipated loss of 4 million jobs.

* In case anyone is interested, I came up with this number by looking at the increase in unemployment as reported on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (http://www.bls.gov/ces/) for the December report. That report said unemployment rose from 6.8% to 7.2% or by +0.4%. That increase corresponded with a decrease in the number of jobs of 524,000. If 0.4% is equivalent to 524,000 jobs, then 4% would equal 3.93 million jobs.

The summary acknowledges that the plan will result in “a large deficit for years to come.” But, justifies its passage by playing on the fears of not passing it: “Without it, those deficits will be devastating [as though the deficits we invite will not be] and we will face the risk of economic chaos.”

Since 2001, as worker productivity went up, 96% of the income growth in this country went to the wealthiest 10% of society [I assume they are not referring to the government]. While they were benefiting from record high worker productivity, the remaining 90% of Americans were struggling to sustain their standard [sic] of living. They sustained it by borrowing…and borrowing…and borrowing, and when they couldn’t borrow anymore, the bottom fell out. This plan will strengthen the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs and special interests in Washington [who have already received government welfare in the form of bailouts which took priority over taxpayer relief].

Finally, before getting into the specifics of the “targeted priority investments,” it should be noted that “[t]here are no earmarks in this package.” I guess I don’t really know what an earmark, because I thought it was an appropriation that was targeted to a particular project, or “priority investment,” if you prefer. Oh well. Orwell lives.

One last note before we dive into an examination of the specific spending proposals. We should probably keep in mind that, according to most of the economists I’ve heard speak about the crisis, the overriding problem is that credit is unavailable to consumers and businesses. It is probably helpful to hold this in the forefront of one’s thoughts as he approaches each of these broad spending categories. A thoughtful person would probably ask, “Does this spending help to free up credit to consumers and businesses?” Continue Reading »

It turns out all we needed was a global economic depression to ease oil prices. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that earlier. So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.

Oil man, T. Boone Pickens has a plan.  His plan is to supplant natural gas with wind farms to produce 22% of this nation’s energy.  In turn, the natural gas would be used to power vehicles.  This is not where his plan ends but rather where it begins.  Coal, nuclear power, solar, etc… all have their place in The Pickens Plan.

I believe this plan is worth some more thought.  I would like to see industry and the private sector take up this challenge instead of asking the Fed to foot the bill.  I too believe this can be achieved.  I simply believe that the government’s role should be limited to incentivize the plan through the tax code and cutting red tape.

So, what do you think? Slim Pickens or the Man with the Plan?