Porkasaurus Summary

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here is still hope – students in Boulder, Colorado aggressively turned back a proposal to rename their high school Barack Obama High. But pore through the 1,000+ pages of the stimulus spending bill, and a sense of hopelessness becomes overwhelming.

As a small business owner, I see nothing in Obama’s largess to help me, even though we all know that small business s the primary job generator.   I don’t want a government handout, but …

The government’s economic stimulus plan doesn’t include many provisions that directly benefit small businesses, but economists say those companies are more likely to find a cure for their financial ills closer to home _ with their own customers.

The plan does extend two provisions of 2008′s economic stimulus bill that allow small businesses to take a bigger upfront deduction for the cost of new equipment. But companies whose sales are hurting may be reluctant to make big expenditures, putting those tax breaks out of reach. (source)

We’re trying to shed leased equipment; we’re hardly in the market to buy it.  So it’s a zero there.  Then let’s look into what a bill purportedly about economic stimulus does for that scandal-plagued friend of Obama, ACORN:

The total amount of money for which groups like ACORN would be eligible in the bill is $4.2 billion, under a provision for “neighborhood stabilization activities.”  According to the bill, the money can be utilized by state and local governments and also “nonprofit entities or consortia of nonprofit entities.”

ACORN can possibly collect more money under this legislation that it has over the past 15 years, and you can bet that ACORN is expert at accessing those funds. (source)

And as I’ve written previously, the spending bill is the official kick-off for universal health care, quoting Bloomberg:

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Gun owners are concerned that the health care provisions of the stimulus bill will be used against gun owners:

But of even greater concern to gun owners is the fact that a government-coordinated database (which government can freely access) will now contain all records of government-provided and private psychiatric treatment -– including, in particular, the drugs which were prescribed. (source)

The green industry – which employs relatively few and offers products that are not popular – loves the bill …

“I think what we’re seeing in the final bill is the best of the House bill combined with the best of the Senate bill (and) provides a strong boost for renewable energy, and solar in particular,” said SEIA President Rhone Resch. (source)

… but the housing and auto industries, which absolutely must get back on their feet if we are to get out of the recession, isn’t:

Instead of reducing the rampant non-stimulus spending in the bill, House-Senate negotiators …Cut $35.5 billion in tax incentives to boost the housing industry and encourage Americans to buy homes. The Senate bill included a provision to give Americans a $15,000 tax credit to purchase a new home, but negotiators reduced the credit to $8,000, only allowed it for first-time homeowners, and limited the relief to purchases made by this August.

[Negotiators also] cut $8.5 billion in tax incentives to boost auto sales and put Americans back to work. The Senate bill included a provision to allow Americans to deduct from their income taxes both the sales tax from a new car purchase and the interest on the auto loan. Negotiators eliminated the loan interest write-off – the bulk of the incentive – and instead allowed the sales tax deduction to remain. What was a $1,500 tax benefit was slashed to about a $300 benefit, not really enough to encourage someone to buy a new vehicle. (source)

And all this crazy, useless misspending is happening when the nation’s deficit in 2008 was a mind-numbing $455 billion.  No; check that – it was $5.1 trillion before Porkasaurus, because the budget should be figured on an accrual basis to compensate for known future payments, not on a cash basis, which ignores little things like future Social Security payments. Continue Reading »

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Sunday Scan items are published as each is completed; most recent at the top, so be sure to click through if you see the “continue reading” note at the bottom of the post. This note will be removed after the last item is posted, so if you’re reading this, please come back for more.

Palin Packs ‘Em In

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ere’s the report from Shawn Steele (fomrer Cal. GOP chair) from last night’s Sarah Palin event in SoCal:

Not since Ronald Reagan’s final campaign rally at Orange County’s Mile Square Park on the eve of the 1984 election, have thousands of Californian Republicans gathered. Neither Bush could do it. None of last year’s Republican presidential candidates could fill the Home Depot Tennis Center.

The Center has 13,000 court side seats. All those seats plus the suites were filled to capacity. Still thousands more were slowly streaming into the stadium quickly filled up the court yard. Thousands more found standing room around the rim of the stadium. Over 20,000 people were there to celebrate, shout and scream.

SNL can continue to poke fun at Palin, but real people get her and want to get close to her. If you have any doubts what she’s done to the ticket, check out who introduced her:

Shelly Mandell, the current President of Los Angeles National Organization for Women [NOW] — in the Republican OC suite several of us were scratching our heads— introduced Sarah Palin. It was an awkward introduction. . Mandell, stated she didn’t agree with Sarah on everything, that she is a democrat, that she Mandell supported the failed Equal Rights Amendment campaign but the crowd exercised tolerance. Ms. Mandell will get a lot of angry calls from the hard left, but she embraced the moment and stood with Sarah Palin.

The OC Register also covered the event:

“Electrifying,” “genuine” and “inspiring” were a few of the adjectives that Orange County voters used to describe Sarah Palin after her rally at the Home Depot Center in Carson on Saturday.

The lead of the LA Times story was a bit different:

You can’t say she didn’t warn them.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced herself to the nation with a now-famous joke about lipstick being the only difference between a certain dog breed and a hockey mom. On Saturday, the Republican vice presidential nominee unleashed her inner pit bull, accusing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of being someone who would “pal around with terrorists.”

The reporter let us know that in her opinion (yes, yes, it was a news story, I know) Palin’s new tone was “abrasive.” That’s a fine alternative for “truthful,” isn’t it? Continue Reading »

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s there a rock the media and their friends in the Obama camp have not turned over since McCain named Sarah Palin to the ticket? Probably. But here’s one turned-over rock you may have missed.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, has urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto a fee on cargo containers going through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, setting off a wave of criticism from California environmentalists.

Palin’s letter to Schwarzenegger is dated Aug. 28 — one day before presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he had picked her as his running mate. The letter argues that both consumers and the economy in California and Alaska would suffer as a result of the fee.

Though the issue might otherwise be viewed as a relatively parochial port matter, Palin’s newfound status as a national political figure has raised the stakes in what state environmentalists consider to be their most important pollution reduction effort this year. They say Palin has no business getting involved in the California issue.

“Why should Gov. Schwarzenegger take into account what out-of-state interests are saying?” said Lisa Warshaw, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for Clean Air. “It’s unfortunate that she is using her popularity to push her agenda on this state.” (LA Times)

To those unfamiliar with governance and eager to find whole new ways to hate McCain/Palin, this all may make sense, but it is nonsensical. Governors of states comment routinely in the interest of their state on the matters of other states. These letters, drafted by staffers, legislative committees, special interest lobbyists – and almost never by governors themselves – flow like currents from capital to capital across the country.

It’s unlikely that Palin even read this particularly unimportant letter before signing it. She probably knows more about the current state of Uzbek-Azerbaijani relations than she knows about this issue. And “using her popularity to push her agenda?” The letter was signed before Palin had any popularity outside Alaska.

Air quality lawyers for the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, among others, have been focused on California’s shipping and trucking industries, in part because it does create a lot of air pollution, and in part because it generates good money for them and is another weapon in their battle against economic advancement. So having Palin to attack instead of some unknown face in the governor’s office in Juneau is a great benefit to them. They are shedding crocodile tears in their statement. In fact, the Greenies are disparate to save this bill from a likely Schwarzenegger veto, and are happy to have Palin to throw into the mix. Otherwise, it’s an anonymous, second-tier bill that’s getting no visibility, making it easy for Schwarzenegger to nix.

The two govs share common concerns: That the new fee, in effect, a new tax on shipping, will increase consumer costs with no proof provided that the money will be spent as effectively by government as it would be by the private sector. The tax is $60 per container, or about $400 million a year.

Palin said many Alaskan communities lack road access and depend entirely on goods shipped by container, something that has significantly increased in cost in recent years. Many of those containers pass through the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports before arriving in Alaska, and Palin argues that the fee will add even more to the cost of goods shipped to her state.

“This tax makes the situation worse,” Palin wrote. “Similarly, the tax may harm California by driving port business away from its ports.”

The letter concludes by requesting that “due consideration be given to our state and that you not sign Senate Bill 974.”

“Due consideration” is hardly Palin throwing the weight of national celebrity around.

Warring Arguments

The bill’s author, Cal. Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Natch -Long Beach), makes two points: That the $400 million raised can be used for pollution-reduction schemes like installing low-pollution engines in trucks and trains, or creating grade separations at railroad/roadway intersections, to reduce long lines of idling vehicles. And , second, he argues that air pollution kills 3,400 Californians a year.

Schwarzenegger and Palin argue that it’s just another tax, and that it’s been proven over and over again that taxing money to government to solve problems doesn’t work as efficiently as incentivizing – positively or negatively – the private sector to do the work itself. As a free marketeer, I think the govs prevail over the Senator on this score.

As for the 3,400 (not 3,412 or 3,371?) dead Californians, show me one who died of air pollution. Just one. The statistic is so bogus it makes me hack violently and cough up phlegm. Air pollution can be a complicating factor in someone who’s already dying of something else – say lung disease brought on by years of smoking – but it’s quite impossible to scientifically nail down 3,400 Californians killed by pollution.

So it’s all nonsense, except that the Greenies went to the LA Times with their little, inconsequential story. And being all cuddled up under the covers with the Greenies the way the LA Times is, they actually put this nasty thing on their front page yesterday.

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Putting The Freak In Eco-Freak

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‘m crying,” emailed Incredible Daughter #2, “because I’m laughing so hard.”I laughed too, but I also was more than a little troubled by the clip she attached to her email:

(If link is broken, click here)

This wailing and flailing over fallen trees is terrifically funny because they all seem so foolish, so out of whack with normal priorities and sensibilities, so ignorant of the cruel ways of nature.

But these people are the reality of the hardcore environmental movement, and watching them you look into the soul of the movement and discover how sick and extreme it really is.

So watch, laugh … and ponder. Continue Reading »

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‘m all for John McCain’s proposal to unleash the Treasury in support of nuclear power, but anyone in the development business knows it may fall flat unless he unleashes the Department of Justice as well. If you haven’t been keeping up on your Waste News reading (registration required – DRAT!), you may not know the latest in the nuke-building wars. Here’s the story:

Alternative Energy Holdings Inc., which has proposed to build a nuclear power plant in southwestern Idaho, is suing an environmental group for making defamatory remarks.

The Boise, Idaho-based company filed the lawsuit in Idaho’s 4th District Court after the Snake River Alliance called the company “scammers.” The comments, broadcast Aug. 11, defame the company and its stockholders, said Donald Gillispie, president and CEO of AEHI. The company has passesd two independent financial audits, which have found nothing amiss, he said.

“These radical groups are allowed to make almost any claim they wish, regardless of the facts, and the media rarely questions [sic] them,” Gillispie said. “Someone has to hold them accountable.”

Indeed, someone should hold them accountable, with one of those Indonesian canes, if possible. But if litigation’s the preferred approach, just don’t do it in California. Suing a lie-spewing whacko in California can get you in big trouble because of legislation prohibiting or limiting SLAPP lawsuits (that’s Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation for the unitiated). A stupid-a$$ law if ever there was one, it’s used by Greenies, NIMBYs and other loud-mouthed fact-fabricators to keep those they abuse from using the courts against them.

In other words, in the eyes of California’s crazy, liberal legislature, some people have more First Amendment freedoms than others. The key word is “liberal.”

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Life In A Liberal Democracy

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h, liberal democracies, where political discord is honored, debate is civil, where respect for opposing views is understood as the foundation of compromise, and where compromise is seen as the glue that binds together the republic.

Someone apparently forgot to teach this to the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist group poised to disrupt this week’s GOP convention. Police raids at several of the groups’ domiciles resulted in the confiscation of:

Materials to create “sleeping dragons” (PVC pipe, chicken wire, duct tape), which is when protesters lock themselves together
Large amounts of urine, including three to five gallon buckets of urine
Wrist rockets (high-powered
slingshots)
A machete, hatchet and several throwing knives
a gas mask and filter
Empty glass bottles
Rags
Flammable liquids
Homemade caltrops (devises used to disable buses in roads)
Metal pipes
Axes
Bolt cutters
Sledge hammers
Repelling equipment
Kryptonite locks
Empty plastic buckets cut and made into shields
Material for protective padding
An Army helmet.

Read more about the raids here.

That’s not the stuff of peaceful protest, so we can thank the investigators at the St. Paul police who uncovered what the RNC Welcoming Committee was up to and pulled off a successful raid. The Left, however, does not share my view:

Members of various protest groups targeted in last night’s raid held a press conference today to express their anger and frustration.

The raid was an effort to “derail RNC protest organizing efforts and to intimidate and terrorize individuals and groups converging in the Twin Cities to exercise what are supposed to be their basic civil rights,” RNC Welcoming Committee member Tony Jones read from a statement.

“We will not be intimidated,” Jones exclaimed.

Yeah, well neither will we, punk. Continue Reading »

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o listen to Nancy Pelosi, the GOP is fixated on drilling and drilling only, while the Dems want a healthy smörgåsbord (oxymoron alert!) of energy options. I’ll translate: She’s fabricating the GOP policy and the Dem smörgåsbord is all kinds of oil, as long as it’s grossly over-regulated and negatively incentivized, and all kinds of alternative fuels – except nuclear – as long as they have zero environmental impact and don’t raise the price of arugula.

For all the hoopla on wind – which overlooks the Dem constituencies that fight wind installations – it will never be ready for prime time, says Dr. Robert Zubrin of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

Simply to replace the 18% of our natural gas we currently import would require multiplying the nation’s current total wind power tenfold; to free up enough domestic natural gas to replace half our gasoline would require a thirty-fold wind power increase. The feasibility of doing this is very doubtful, not merely because of the size of the project but because wind power is intrinsically unreliable. When the wind speed drops in half, power output drops by a factor of eight, so wind simply cannot provide the baseload power.

And remember: Enviros will sue to stop the windmill farms (can you say “Kennedy?”) and the construction of new transmission lines to carry solar- and wind-generated electricity from the deserts and plains to the cities (Why, it’s the Sierra Club!) .

To solve the energy crisis America needs to get real. Aggressive responses will require environmental impacts, but those impacts will be regulated and excesses will be penalized by laws already in place. And the Enviros will have to forfeit their desire to save every bunny and bush from any contact with evil humans.

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Hey Greenies, Stop The War On The Poor!

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t was a small demonstration by DC standards – a dozen speakers and a few dozen marchers perhaps – but the demonstrators represented the working poor and minority communities dear to the Dems’ political patter, and they were mad about Dem stalling on energy solutions.

Leaders from the civil rights, African American, evangelical, agriculture and consumer advocacy communities have launched a national campaign to publicly unmask more than 100 politicians and 50 environmental extremist groups that are waging an immoral “war on the poor” by pushing policies that limit America’s ability to produce more America energy and drive energy prices skyward. …

“Environmental extremists, and the politicians who do their bidding, are strangling consumers, minorities and the working poor by restricting our ability to produce enough American energy and forcing energy prices to go through the roof,” said Niger Innis, National Spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a key organizer of the Capitol Hill protest and co-chairman of the national “Stop The War On The Poor” campaign.

Will the politicians listen? Let’s see … environmental groups represent an affluent constituency and therefore have a lot of money to throw around. The poor, well, let’s all feel sorry for the poor, but really, they can’t contribute much to campaigns, can they, Nancy? Continue Reading »

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he Center for Biological Depravity Diversity doesn’t pretend to be your run of the mill, down in the mouth Greenie group, rummaging for financial scraps to keep itself going:

As our range grew, and first tens, then hundreds of species gained protection as a result of our groundbreaking petitions, lawsuits, policy advocacy, and outreach to media, we went from living and working on a shoestring to having offices around the country — from relying on donated time from pro bono attorneys at large firms to building a full-time staff of 15 prominent environmental lawyers and eight scientists who work exclusively on our campaigns to save species and the places they need to survive. (source)

Fifteen full-time attorneys can wreak a lot of havoc, and the Center’s have, attacking water systems, forest management plans and real estate developments – and that’s just the small picture. Big picture: Going after the American economy with its recent polar bear listing that threatens to drive the nation over the regulatory cliff.

That’s why news like this is so refreshing:

A federal judge’s 2006 order to stop a 133- condominium development in Fawnskin on the north shore of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains was thrown out in its entirety Wednesday by an appellate court.

A three-judge U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals [the NINTH Circuit!] panel said the case lacked federal jurisdiction because a series of Clean Water Act violation notices filed against Marina Point Development Co. were insufficient to bring the matter to court.

“It should have been dismissed at the outset,” the judges ruled. They lifted a permanent injunction imposed by U.S. District Judge Manuel Real. …

Attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity, which brought the 2004 lawsuit along with the activist group Friends of Fawnskin, said they were weighing their appeal options. …

The appellate justices additionally denied an almost $1.7 million attorney-fee award for the Center for Biological Diversity. (emphasis added)

Imagine that! The Center was set to rake in $1.7 million bucks – enough to hire more attorneys, open more offices, take on more actions, but no more. And it was the notoriously green Ninth Circuit that took away their booty. What a glorious victory for sanity and common sense!

Meanwhile, poor Marina Point Development could have had its condos built and sold by now, were it not for the Center, and the Earth would be no worse for it because every step of the construction process would have been regulated and monitored up the wazoo.

But my how the market has changed since 2004 when the Center sued. Now the company says it wants to finally move forward with its project, but is worried about its viability in the burst bubble of the U.S. housing market.

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ake an environmental group (please!) … any environmental group … and ask what it thinks about global warming. Here’s what the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity has to say about it:

The Earth is heating up, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activity is at the heart of the matter. Fossil fuel combustion — which drives most cars and power plants — is producing a critical mass of greenhouse gases that has already shifted the planet’s climate system into new and dangerous territory.

The Center has built an aggressive and highly successful litigation and lobbying campaign to address global warming. First and foremost, we take direct legal action to protect species and places across the globe that are in the vanguard of climate-change extinction.

Well, that’s sure nice. Here in California, the Center is using the unproven excuse of global warming to file lawsuits that have succeeded in stopping development and water supply projects. But the Center’s global warming initiatives, like all Greenie initiatives, are smashing headlong into their forest initiatives, leaving them stuck in a serious policy conundrum.

Here’s the Center’s statement on its forest initiatives:

Ancient forests are the lungs of the planet, absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen for life. They’re also our richest repository of biodiversity, home to more than half of all known species worldwide.

But these forests are disappearing fast. Logging, mining, livestock grazing, recreation, urbanization, and other threats have destroyed 80 percent of the world’s ancient forests in the past few centuries. Deforestation is now the number-one cause of species extinction. And in the United States, ancient forests on public lands continue to be liquidated by timber corporations.

To save our country’s most species-rich habitat, the Center seeks to protect and restore forest ecosystems throughout the Southwest, southern California, the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast, and southeastern Alaska. We bring a potent combination of litigation, policy advocacy, and collaboration to protect forest-dependent species, challenge misguided logging proposals, and restore forests degraded by a century of mismanagement.

To “save the forests” the Center routinely sues the U.S. Forest Service challenging any program to actively manage forests through thinning to reduce fire risks. By its own accounting, the Center wins 50 percent of the appeals and 40 percent of the lawsuits against these projects, for a total success rate of 70 percent.

The result is pretty simple to see: Forest fires have become more intense. Greenies blame this on global warming, but they really have their litigation to blame – and now it’s become obvious that their lawsuits have led to massive spikes in greenhouse gas emissions. Thomas Bonnicksen, PhD, has just completed a study for The Forest Foundation that evaluated the emissions from four California wildfires. It has the snappy name, Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Four California Wildfires: Opportunities to Prevent and Prevers Environmental and Climate Impacts.

The study uses a “forest carbon and emissions model” to study the supposed climate impact of four fires that together burned 144,825 acres of forestland. Litigation against forest thinning made the average tree density in these forests 350 trees per acre, while Bonnicksen says 50 to 60 trees per acre better represents a forest in its natural state. This greater density lead to bigger, hotter fires, and more greenhouse gases.

Consequently, when the massive amounts of fuel in these forests burned, they released an estimated 9.5 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere just from combustion. That is an average of about 63 tons per acre. However, combustion is only part of the story because dead trees also gradually release CO2 as they decay. CO2 emissions from decay are generally three times greater than emissions from combustion because large quantities of wood and other plant material remain unburned after a forest fire.

Combining combustion and decay emissions, FCEM estimates that these four fires will emit a staggering 38 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The fires released one fourth of the gases during combustion, and post-fire decay will release the remainder during the next 100 years, most of it during the next 50 years.

To put these emissions from combustion and decay into perspective, they are equivalent to adding an estimated 7 million more cars onto California’s highways for one year, each spewing tons of greenhouse gases out the tailpipe. Stated another way, this means 50 percent of all cars in California would have to be locked in a garage for one year to make up for the global warming impact of these four wildfires.

Yet Greenie groups with forest programs continue to litigate to stop any thinning program that would reduce these massive carbon impacts. They can’t help themselves. Cutting trees is no different – worse, actually – than cutting down people in their theology, so they continue to fight thinning programs even while they fret about global warming.

On the other hand, they’re good at raising money for both programs, so they get to stuff their coffers full of contributions from their easily manipulated members.

hat-tip: Jim

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