“It should be evident that the ecological crisis cannot be viewed in isolation from other related questions, since it is closely linked to the notion of development…. [It] is a moral issue, one that requires immediate action.”

We all, okay most of us, know that the Pope is infallible on doctrines of faith but no where else. The Pope, in spite of the climate emails scandal, has chosen to side with what appears to be false information. He continues:

environmental degradation is often due to the lack of far-sighted official policies or to the pursuit of myopic economic interests, which then, tragically, become a serious threat to creation….. [T]he causes of the present ecological crisis is the historical responsibility of the industrialized countries.

Let this be a lesson to all Catholics: The Pope is not always right and disagreeing with the Pope on matters not related to a Doctrine of Faith is not in any way sinful or even necessarily incorrect. Your Holiness, I respectfully dissent.

More links:

The FACTS

The Humor

Like KSM, al-Gore should have his day in 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.

Meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder. ARE THEY INSANE? Haven’t we been hearing about the bad financial straits that the automakers have been suffering through recently? Why in the world would anyone do anything to increase the cost of their products when they are having a hard time selling their products as it is? One estimate is that the new standard will add $4,000 to $10,000 to the cost of each new vehicle. It seems the administration and his admirers have set out to destroy the automakers even as they lavish untold amounts of taxpayer monies upon them.

The model is not new. It seems that Obama is following a model in which you take a formerly productive member of society, promise to pay him money seized from other taxpayers, and meanwhile create roadblocks to allowing that member of society becoming productive again. This way, one can create a dependent constituency who, even if he realizes that he has become a slave and is being hurt by the “kindness” being shown him by his master, nonetheless can see no option but to vote to keep the checks coming. Obama seems to be offering the carrot to the automakers at the same time he is making more carrots more necessary.

The rational thing to do at this point when the automakers are struggling to survive would be to lighten the regulatory burden that Big Government has placed on them. Instead, it appears the federal government will be increasing the regulatory burden of 49 states, by exporting California’s repressive auto emission standards to the rest of the nation, further increasing the costs associated with the automakers’ products for the other 49.

None of this will be good for the automakers and it certainly will hurt the consumer on Main Street.

If I know anything about rodents, they are notoriously easy to breed. I remember we had two gerbils when I was a wee lad. Both of them were “females.” The next thing we knew, we were being run out of house and home by a profusion of gerbils. I remember my mother drving down some country road with a boxful of gerbils and stopping every quarter mile or so and lobbing out handfuls of gerbils into the ditch. I often wonder if Streamwood, Illinois (which was pretty much a wilderness in those days) is overrun with wild gerbils today.

We should pick any two pikas, place them in an aquarium with plenty of cardboard to chew on, and by the end of the month, we are likely to have 40 or fifty to release into the wild. If 100 or 200 people did this, we could put these sorts of tactics to force “global warming” scare tactics to rest for a time. They started it; but this is easily a fight we can win. I say we make them look stupid.

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?”

The Targeted Priority Investments

The “Targeted Priority Investments” fall into seven broad areas.
[Please do not call them earmarks]

The first is “Clean, Efficient, American Energy.” The overall goal of this spending is the “doubling of renewable energy production and renovate buildings to make them more energy efficient.” To that end, Obama proposes to spend $32 billion on upgrading the energy delivery system (“The Grid”), $16 billion to repair public housing, and $6.2 billion to weatherize “modest income homes.”

Until very recently, I haven’t paid a ton of attention to Obama’s rhetoric about this package, but what I have heard seemed to focus on this area of spending as its main selling point. Kermit’s lament notwithstanding, Obama wants America to be green. And yet, it seems that this plan allocates only 6.5% of its budget to that end. What gives? I thought that was the focus of the plan.

A more specific beef, however, is that last line item. The government is proposing to spend $6.2 billion to weatherize poor peoples’ houses. I thought it was the fat cats that used all the energy. Why in the world would we focus our expenditures on making those who use the least energy, the most efficient? Of course, it makes no sense, but as you will see, there is a theme running through this package. It seems the package overall purpose is to give poor people as many goodies as can be packed into one bill – all while wrapping it in rhetoric that favors the “middle class.” I’m beginning to think that the part of the middle class to which I belong is being seen as the obscenely wealthy. Orwell again, I suppose.

The second area is “Transform our Economy with Science and Technology.” This is Obama’s version of faith-based initiatives, I think. All told, $16 billion is earmarked er, targeted to this spending area. To this end, Obama is proposing spending $6 billion to deliver broadband and wireless services to rural areas. (Maybe he thinks he can turn these Red areas into Blue areas with this pandering?). According to the House summary, for every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment. Even if that is true, I would guess that is largely because the market has focused on investing in high-population areas where the investment is much smaller relative to the benefit. This proposal is almost certain to lessen that ratio as each dollar will return much less benefit. It fails to occur to those in government that if there were such a clear return for providing broadband to the hinterlands, some enterprising private concern would have already done so.

There are couple other items in this category that warrant a word or two. First there is this: “$400 million to put more scientists to work doing climate change research.” This represents two-thirds of the money that is earmarked er, targeted for NASA. One hopes that the government money does not come with strings attached as to the nature of the results they expect from their money. Along those same lines, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is to be given $600 million for satellite development and acquisitions, including censors and climate modeling. They’d better hurry because the space shuttle flights are coming to an end. They’ll probably have to purchase space on French rockets in order to do anything other than have some nice shiny satellite to put in their corporate lobbies. Between these two line items, it looks like we are firmly committed to furthering the narrative about the coming devastation of global warming, er, cooling, er, climate-change-that-could-go-either-way-but-in-the-end-will-be-catastrophic-to-life-on-earth.

Thrown into the middle, and fitting under no category, is a line item for spending $650 million to continue the coupon program to enable American households to convert from analog television transmission to digital transmission. On a spending for spending basis, this ranks in priority as more than four time more important than funding the improvement of our air traffic control system (“$150 million for research, development, and demonstration to improve aviation safety and Next Generation air traffic control”).

The third spending area is “Modernize Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways.” This is the other big selling point I have been hearing for Obama’s stimulus package – Green Jobs and Good Roads. All told, $90 billion dollars have been set aside for this category. This is a traditional area of federal government expenditure, and inasmuch as that is so, I really have little problem with this section. I would quibble with the government’s continuing folly with the funding of Amtrak ($1.1 billion) to make them faster and higher capacity (so there will be more empty seats – at least the ride will be roomy for Amtrak’s few customers), but overall the government should be spending money on maintaining the channels of interstate commerce. However, $9 billion is devoted to transit systems which all tend to be intrastate in nature. It seems these expenses should be borne by the States which will benefit from them and not by the federal government.

Lumped under this category, however, are several items that have little to do with roads, bridges, transit, waterways, channels of interstate commerce or instrumentalities of interstate commerce. For instance, $245 million are targeted for “critical IT improvements to systems that have been unable to handle workload increases” in the Farm Service Agency. Of course, the other way to solve that problem would be to shut down that program and sell whatever equipment they have at auction. Seems to me that would be a net gain going forward.

It seems that the Veterans Administration has identified a $5 billion backlog in needed repairs to its medical facilities. To address this need, the plan includes $950 million for veterans’ facilities. Does this seem to be a metaphor of this president’s views of our troops to anyone besides me? Stay tuned for Walter Reed II: the sequel.

The fourth spending area is “Education for the 21st Century.” This is the largest of the “targeted priority investments” representing more than 17% of the entire package with an outlay of $141.6 billion. It seems the days of hoping that a president would eliminate the Department of Education and restore the traditional roles of local government vis federal government are firmly behind us. We can thank George W. Bush, I think, for this with his Head Start program. Its passage has green-lighted every liberal federal intervention into our communities that they can dream up and connect to the children.

One particularly galling item is this: $13 billion devoted to IDEA special education. Keep in mind that the stimulus package states that the spending on education is to “help our kids compete with any worker in the world.” I know this is going to sound callous, but how much money will it take to make a special education student the equal of any worker in the world? Will any amount? Why do we persist in flushing our tax monies down the toilet like this? No matter what we spend on educating these students, they will still be capable of only the most menial tasks. We should teach them to tie their shoes, be continent, and maybe make sandwiches for themselves. (“No, son, the baloney goes on the inside and the bread on the outside. Not the other way around”). Beyond that, it seems we are wasting our money on attempting to “educate” special education children.

Under the banner of “signs of the times” is this one: $2 billion to provide day care for an additional 300,000 children in low-income families while their parents go to work. We truly are the nanny state, quite literally.

The fifth area of spending is “Lower Healthcare Costs.” This area represents $26.7 billion of spending. Most of that spending will be on computerizing health records ($20 billion).

Another $1.1 billion is set aside for “Healthcare Research and Quality” wherein will we conduct a study to “compare the effectiveness of different medical treatments funded by Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP” in order to find out what works best. While I cringe that this will cost us $1.1 billion, I welcome the inevitable outcome of such a study that reveals that none of it works because there is too much government involvement. But, of course, who am I kidding? They’re paying for the study. We all know how that one ends. The problem, I foresee, is that we haven’t been spending enough money on those programs.

The House summary contains the following enlightening nugget, “$600 million to address shortages [of primary care providers] and prepare our country for universal health care. (See? They already know the answer to the $1.1 billion study – I say we dispense with the charade of a study and at least save ourselves $1.1 billion).

Does anyone besides me feel like they are living through one of those scenes in the movies (wasn’t there one in one of the Indiana Jones movies) where you’re in a coal bucket careening out of control into the depths of an ancient mine toward a yawning chasm where the tracks suddenly leave off?

The sixth area of spending is “Help Workers Hurt by the Economy.” Before you get all excited thinking that maybe here there is some sort of program that addresses the credit crunch, think again. The government proposes to spend $102 billion in this area. The larger programs are $4 billion for training and employment services; $27 billion to extend unemployment benefits an additional 33 weeks; $9 billion to increase the unemployment benefit by $25 per week; $30.3 billion to help unemployed pay for COBRA; $1.5 billion “to help local communities to build and rehabilitate low-income housing using green technologies;” and $5 billion for building repair and modernization of public housing.

On this last item, the House summary states that for every dollar spent on the Public Housing Capital Fund, there is a $2.12 economic return. This begs the question of why we don’t just spend $68 trillion on the project, reap the $144 trillion economic return and everyone can go home happy secure in the knowledge that the economy is humming blithely along.

This section contains a group of programs that seem like more of the same. First is a neighborhood stabilization program, costing $4.2 billion, to help communities purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed, vacant properties in order to create more affordable housing. Second, is a program, costing $1.5 billion, which would provide “temporary” rental assistance, housing relocation, and stabilization services (whatever those are) for families during crisis. Third, is a program, costing “$500 million, to support $22 billion in direct loans and loan guarantees to help rural families and individuals to buy homes during the credit crunch.” It seems out leaders don’t get that putting people who can’t afford homes in homes is a recipe for disaster. It seems the government will continue to perpetuate the same errors repeatedly of either forcing lenders to provide loans to people who can’t afford them, or by making the loans itself. We’re screwed.

There’s also a one-time welfare payment to disabled and elderly folks which will cost $4.2 billion; a $1 billion block grant for community development; $1 billion to help low-income families pay for home heating and cooling; and $1 billion to provide federal incentive funds to collect support owed to families.

The final area of spending is “Save Public Sector Jobs and Protect Vital Services.” This area is projected to cost $91 billion. This is comprised of $87 billion in Medicaid Aid to states; $2.5 billion in block grants to states to help alleviate the needs of families “and to prevent them from cutting work programs;” $4 billion to support state and local law enforcement with $1 billion of that set aside to pay for an additional 13,000 police for three years [and after that, the States are on their own, presumably]; and $1 billion for work necessary to ensure a successful 2010 census, with a special emphasis ($150 million) to ensure that minorities are not undercounted. I wonder if that is provided a la Acorn as direct bribes to overcount certain desirable demographics.

A few thoughtsAs you can see, there appears to be very little in the way of alleviating the credit crunch. Indeed, it would appear that Obama has taken advantage of a bad economy to advance a raft of new spending that will erect an unprecedented increase in bureaucracy since the New Deal. This is grossly irresponsible given the shape of the economy. He would have done better to provide an equivalent list of programs the federal government intended to discontinue.

I’ve said before, I’m not an economist, but I do have a calculator. It doesn’t take an economist to know that when a family experiences a shortfall in income, it is time to tighten the belt, not go on a spending spree. The government is no different. The country must cut its expenses and that starts with the federal government cutting spending. Putting our fiscal house in order will strengthen our economy by making investors more eager to invest in it. If we spend profligately, what incentive do we give to outside sources of income to invest in our economy? The more we piss away our money, the less enticing we look as anything other than a risky investment that someone might take on a flier.

This plan in no way addresses the underlying problem of the availability of credit or the tenuousness of the housing market (which is related). The longer the credit problem is allowed to persist, the worse the housing market will become due to illiquidity of assets and the resulting downward pressure on the value of those assets. If anything, this plan will make credit more expensive by making the investment of new money only possible by promise of a higher return on that investment (junk returns). On the other hand, fiscal restraint would make that inflow of money cheaper and more plentiful.

I think. Of course, I’m just a guy with a calculator.

As for me, I welcome global warming and its salutory effect it will have on my home. Indeed, it might forestall my wife’s insistent calls for me to take another bar exam in a warmer climate. For that reason alone, I am trading in my Mazda for a Hummer and switching to aerosol cans wherever possible.

UPDATE: Eek! Now that I look (a couple hours later it is 10° F! Global warming is true. Look what has happened in the last few hours! (Indeed, it is scary, but it feels downright balmy out there now after the last two days).

According to researchers in Tibet, it might have been the gladiola who dealt it. It turns out that according to the estimates of one researcher, plants may contribute up to 236 million tonnes of methane gas to the atmosphere. Considering that methane has been implicated as a greenhouse gas which contributes to the looming global warming catastrophe, I wonder if we will next be directed to Round-up our yards and assiduously guard against weeds.

Maybe we should consider dissolving some Beano into water when we water our flower beds.

Both McCain and Obama favor the implementation of a cap-and-trade system similar to Europe’s. Yet, as our somehow-not-full-of-crap Canadian reporter notes:

It’s not just that carbon taxes and cap-and-trade don’t remove one molecule of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It’s that our politicians are ignoring evidence they’re ineffective, impractical, outdated and punitive.

Look at Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest cap-and-trade carbon market.

Among its other fiascoes (windfall profits for energy companies and speculators, skyrocketing electricity prices for consumers) emissions are going up.

In other words, it’s not just Canadian politicians, they’re all guzzling the Kool-Aid about as fast as it can be mixed up and poured over ice. The worst part is that cap-and-trade will result in higher energy prices precisely when the energy market is shoving prices into the rude end of the spectrum. These proposals would put an even harsher pinch on American families than would doing nothing. And would accomplish nothing respect to climate change (assuming that it is caused by humans, and that carbon usage is the culprit, and that we can effect the climate by reducing carbon usage, etc.).

While I am on the topic of so-called global climate change, I happened upon a completely unrelated article that may call into question whether human activity can be blamed for climate change at all. These stories (here, here, and here) cast doubt on the assertion that anything humans are doing (or could refrain from doing) would have any effect on the climate. A key point to keep in mind while perusing those stories: there are no (and never have been) humans on Mars, no SUVs, no industry.

From man-made climate change (which appears to be no more than a myth) to devastating wars (we are currently in an unparallel period of a global lull in wars); ABC seeks to convince YOU that the sky is falling.  Unless we convert to solar power, eat wheat grass and make our clothes out of renewable hemp the world is doomed.

This sort of Chicken Little mentality does nothing to help the true problem; humanity has lost its way.  We have little left to conquer of this planet; we are convinced we know everything there is to know about life on Earth.  This, not the fallacy of certain doom, is our problem.  The false pretense of absolute knowledge is public and personal enemy number one.  Overcome the belief that Man is the end-all be-all of the entire universe and we will find that mysteries and knowledge we have yet to imagine await our species for eternity. 

Or, if you believe ABC, wear hemp, eat all organic, drink wheat grass and only use solar power and MAYBE you will survive for the next 90 years.  I say smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em