What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

I know, I know. I'm going to send them scurrying back to the NRO.

You're wasting your time with these guys Mercury. They will always prefer to dismiss facts in favor of a narrative they wish to hear.

Yeah, sure you did.

You forget, we're from the Austrian School.
__________________
"The more consistently Austrian an economist is, the better a writer he will be."
Murray N. Rothbard

 

[busybody..]

You're wasting your time with these guys Mercury. They will always prefer to dismiss facts in favor of a narrative they wish to hear.

still PISSING in your GF's eyeball?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

As long as you bring up NRO, here's an analysis that's in line with what we've been saying since the inception:

Two years ago, in June 2009, the American economy emerged from recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. But as this week’s Economist noted, with typical British understatement, “The recovery has been a disappointment.”

And it may not be a recovery for long. Robert Shiller, the economist who first identified the housing bubble, said last week that we may be headed for recession again. “Whether we call it a double dip or not,” he told Reuters, “there is a risk.”

His Case-Shiller housing-price index indicated that home prices in March slumped to levels not seen since March 2003, and he says they may keep falling for 20 years.

As I look back on these years of economic tumult, I sometimes think of an off-the-record session arranged by National Review with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson back in the fall of 2007.

I asked Paulson when the government was going to change the SEC regulation under which the credit-rating agencies were paid by the sellers rather than the buyers of securities. That arrangement gave the credit agencies an incentive to give high ratings to the mortgage-backed securities that later turned sour.

Oh, we’ll get to that, Paulson said, when we get through the rough stuff we face right now. Of course, he had not yet gotten to the stuff that was so rough that, as he wrote in his memoir, he had to leave meetings to throw up.

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems that our leaders, in both the Bush and the Obama administrations, responded to crises and challenges all too often with measures that attempted to revive the old pre-financial-crisis economy rather than with policies that would allow a new economy to grow.

As in Paulson’s comment, the thinking seems to have been that if we can just get things back in place, then we can attack the underlying problems.

Such was the theory behind the now seemingly puny stimulus package agreed to by George W. Bush* and Democratic congressional leaders in early 2008. And behind the Federal Reserve’s rescue package for Bear Stearns in March 2008.

It was behind the argument that Paulson used to persuade Congress to pass the $700 billion TARP package in October 2008. He said he’d use the money to buy toxic mortgage-backed securities from the banks, but he then decided instead to lend the banks tranches of $25 billion.

The Obama Democrats’ February 2009 stimulus package doled out one-third of its $787 billion to state and local governments so that public-sector employees (and union members) would not lose their jobs, as so many private-sector employees were doing. That worked for a while but did not prevent painful cuts and layoffs later.

Then there were the various mortgage-forbearance programs, designed to prevent foreclosures. Precious few homeowners took advantage of them, and many who did ended up losing their houses anyway.

And of course there was Cash for Clunkers, which increased car sales in the summer of 2009, only to see them decline in the fall. Hundreds of millions were spent, but with no permanent effect except to increase used-car prices because clunkers traded in had to be junked.

Decision-makers have responded as if they were facing liquidity crises (we don’t have enough cash to pay off debts immediately) instead of solvency crises (we will never be able to pay off these debts). Too often pain has not been prevented, but just postponed — and prolonged.

In retrospect, much of the pain could not be avoided. As economist Tyler Cowen has put it, we were not as rich as we thought we were. Housing-bubble prices did not turn out to be real wealth, unless you sold out at the peak and moved to a cave.

Trying to put all the players back in the position they once thought they were in simply won’t work. But it does sound attractive politically. People can remember what life was like in the past.

We don’t, however, know what it will be like in the future. Republicans want less government spending and more leeway for entrepreneurs to create new businesses and jobs. No one knows what innovative products and services will emerge.

That’s the beauty of free enterprise, but it also makes it a hard sell politically — unless voters have figured out that no amount of government spending is going to restore the old status quo.

Michael Barone


* And to point out my consistency, I was openly hostile to that action; Part of Pelosi's new Brave New Congress...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

A snapshot of the present-day health of any nation can be ascertained by reviewing two factors: annual government budget deficits as a per cent of Gross Domestic Product and the unemployment rate. The accelerated level of deficit spending, except in times of a major war (such as World War II), is indicative of a lack of fiscal discipline and tax revenues sufficient to finance those expenditures. These revenues can only come about from a growing economy and near full employment. When high deficits are coupled with a dramatic increase in unemployment for more than two or three years in a row, that country has embarked on a dangerous road that will lead to insolvency if not addressed quickly.

Total national debt as a percent of GDP, while important and meaningful, becomes critical only when a country cannot meet its current debt obligations as a result of declining revenues, which are a byproduct of high unemployment as well as continued over-spending. Some governments, for ideological reasons, and some who do not wish to confront reality choose to begin running extremely large annual deficits, which accelerates the growth of the national debt and also results in dramatically slower growth of the GDP. This is the start of a never-ending death spiral unless spending is dramatically curtailed and the GDP grows, creating more jobs and thus tax revenues.

If a nation wishes to maintain its solvency and continue to expand its economy, it should not experience deficits higher than 3% of its GDP and, in today's quasi-welfare societies, unemployment rate above 6 to 7%. On an aggregate basis a combination of these factors should always remain below 10. The higher the index above 10, the greater the problems that country is experiencing and viable solutions to solve these dilemmas will be increasingly difficult to enact.

When viewed on this basis an "insolvency index" (a combination of the current budget deficit as a per cent of GDP and the current unemployment rate) of various nations throughout the world would be as follows over the past three years (http://www.indexmundi.com):

[see charts]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/new_key_number_the_solvency_index.html

From 1947 through 2008, the U.S. experienced only three years with an index above 12.2. The average index of the 61 years prior to 2009 was 6.9 it was during this period that America experienced the greatest era of wealth creation in the history of mankind.

Barack Obama has nearly succeeded in remaking the country into the worst of European socialist states. With deficits in the trillions of dollars coupled with high unemployment over such a prolonged period, the United States, unless it makes massive cuts in spending, is facing insolvency -- a word that is being more frequently bandied about in various financial circles. Particularly as the Obama administration and the Democrats show no inclination in promoting policies to stimulate economic growth as a means of job creation and deficit reduction, and are obstinate in their refusal to initiate significant spending reductions.

Recently the President of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, Richard Fisher said: "If we continue down the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when." Bill Gross, President of the largest bond fund in the world, Pimco, has been outspoken in his belief that the U. S. is already insolvent as he divested Pimco of all their U.S. Treasuries. The International Monetary Fund on the 17th of June:

... cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are "playing with fire" unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits.

The United States must reverse the current "insolvency index." If it does not, then America will follow the path of Greece, Ireland, and others into insolvency and bankruptcy. The images on television of the riots and civil unrest in Greece -- due to the need to make drastic changes to the spending habits of the government and expectations of the people -- will be repeated on American streets.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

And to make sure this does not happen, we're going to see more Democrat commercials like the one showing Granny being shoved off a cliff..
__________________
Sideshow Barry Barker 2012 Says: "It's NOT the economy, Stupid!" It's the Birthers! The Tea Party! SARAH PALIN!
RACISM!
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

In a desolate, seemingly post-apocalyptic landscape, a Chinese peasant climbs over a rain-soaked mountain of electronic garbage. He is joined by hundreds of other peasants, scavenging through endless acres of discarded computers, junked telephones, and millions of scrapped consumer electronic devices. The peasant searches for any electronic components that look undamaged. Sifting through this vast graveyard of imported American e-waste, he stuffs printed circuit boards into a sack.

Communist China has graciously accepted our technological trash, made too expensive to dispose of in the US due to the onerous regulations imposed by the EPA (Economic Prevention Agency).

The peasant sits in a dusty clearing and starts a small fire. He holds a circuit board over the flame until the solder starts to melt. Quickly rapping the board against a rock, he watches as the precious harvest of integrated circuit (IC) components fall to the ground. The peasant gathers the ICs and takes them to a small ramshackle factory where he can sell them for a few pennies per dozen.

Within this makeshift workshop, the ICs are cleaned, and painted with a black epoxy to cover up the original markings. They are then silkscreened with false information including a consistent date code to make them appear to be from the same manufacturing lot. Of course, these ICs are severely weakened by the harsh environmental conditions and exposure to Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) through unprotected handling, which is devastating to active electronic components.

The reprocessed ICs are subsequently sold to independent electronic component brokers, who ship them back to the US and sell them at discount prices to largely unsuspecting electronics manufacturers.

Although this is a common method of counterfeiting, many other types of counterfeits are produced as well, primarily in China. Some ICs are reverse-engineered and manufactured with a copied internal die. Some of these have been known to include hidden, and occasionally malicious, functions not designed into the genuine component.

Other components, such as resistors and capacitors, are also re-harvested or faked. Over the past ten years billions of counterfeit ICs, microprocessors, and other components have been sold to private industry throughout the world, including medical equipment manufacturers. They have also been sold to America's aerospace industry and the US military.

This is a multi-billion-dollar illegal enterprise that has resulted in upwards of $1.2 trillion in lost sales, which has been either ignored or sanctioned by the Communist Chinese government. It is estimated that all commercial electronic devices such as televisions and cellphones contain more than 8% counterfeit components on average.
...

China is a giant mosquito. Instead of sucking blood and replacing it with a toxin, it sinks its proboscis into America, sucks the jobs and wealth from the country and replaces them with toxic goods. We have suffered through poisoned Chinese dog food, toxic children's jewelry, and a sea of counterfeit drugs. Poisoned blood-thinner heparin made in China killed 81 Americans before it was detected.

Andrew Thomas
The American Thinker
__________________
We don’t prevent pollution, we export it (along with our jobs).
A_J, the Stupid

 

[rosco rathbone]

China is a giant mosquito. Instead of sucking blood and replacing it with a toxin, it sinks its proboscis into America, sucks the jobs and wealth from the country and replaces them with toxic goods. We have suffered through poisoned Chinese dog food, toxic children's jewelry, and a sea of counterfeit drugs. Poisoned blood-thinner heparin made in China killed 81 Americans before it was detected.

Interesting to read this in AmThink. They've got to be anti-EPA and regulation, so what's their solution to this problem?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Last week was another somewhat depressing chapter in a now long saga of living where I was born. I returned to the farm from leading a European military history tour, and experienced the following — mind you, after a number of thefts the month prior (barn, shop, etc.):

1) I left my chainsaw in the driveway to use the restroom inside the house. Someone driving buy saw it. He slammed on the brakes, stole it, and drove off. Neat, quick, easy. Mind you there was only a 5-minute hiatus in between my cutting. And the driver was a random passer-by. That suggests to me that a high number of rural Fresno County motorists can prove to be opportunistic thieves at any given moment. The saw was new; I liked it — an off-the-shelf $400 Echo that ran well. I assume it will be sold off at a rural intersection in these parts, or the nearby swap meet for about $60. I doubt the thief was a professional woodsman who needed a tool of the trade to survive.

2) On the next night, three 15-hp agriculture pumps on our farm were vandalized — all the copper wire was torn out of the electrical conduits. The repairs to each one might run $500; yet, the value of the wire could not be over $50. I was told by neighbors that reports and descriptions of the law-breakers focused on youthful thieves casing the countryside — in official parlance a “gang,” and in the neighborhood politically-incorrect patois “cholos” — like the fellow who recently drove in, in his new lowered shiny red pickup (hydraulic lifters are not cheap), inquiring about buying “scrap” and “just looking” before I ran him out.

3) A neighbor has a house for sale. It is unoccupied and rather isolated. I saw someone approach it on Friday, and drove over to ensure he was lawful. It was the owner’s assistant, who lamented that someone had just stolen all the new appliances out of the house — carting off the refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, and microwave. But why? Do these miscreants wish a civilization of the sort that all houses must seem occupied all the time, or are otherwise considered “communal property” for the taking? Don’t the appliance thieves have homes, and if so, do they have locks on the doors to protect their investments from the likes of themselves?

These days I sympathize with gloomy St. Augustine, writing after the sack of Rome in 410, and then again contemplating things lost when back home, near death, and besieged by the vandals at Hippo Regius. He died I think convinced that a millennium of culture was about to end. And despite a Belisarius to come, it did.

...

I conclude that most Americans would agree that chain-sawing a peach tree or pumping irrigation water enriches the nation, while cruising around looking to destroy such activity does not. The latter represents the sort of social parasitism that I read about each Saturday night in our environs (and, in terms of illegal immigration, once wrote about in Mexifornia — a book I seemed doomed to relive in Ground Hog fashion each day — nearly a decade ago): gangbanger A shoots up gangbanger B; B goes to emergency room for publicly funded $250,000 worth of surgery and post-op treatment by C, an MD, who otherwise would have been insulted and intimidated by A or B should he have met either earlier in the day. Indeed, C is more likely to be ridiculed or sued by B than thanked. And yet C does not need either A or B; both need the former in extremis.

Where does this all end — these open borders, unsustainable entitlements and public union benefits and salaries, these revolving door prisons and Al Gore-like energy fantasies?

We are left with a paradox. The taxpayer cannot indefinitely fund the emergency room treatment for the shooter and his victim on Saturday night if society cannot put a tool down for five minutes without a likely theft, or a farmer cannot turn on a 50-year old pump without expecting its electrical connections to have been ripped out. Civilization simply cannot function that way for either the productive citizen or the parasite, who still needs a live host.

I will make a wild leap and suggest that a vast majority of Americans are reaching the point where they accept that the blue statist paradigm is reaching its logical end and simply cannot go on any more, given that it is antithetical to human nature itself. There is not always a Germany for every Greece. Let me offer a few examples:

In the American Southwest, open borders, unassimilated illegal immigrants, ethnic and tribal chauvinism predicated on racial solidarity (after all, La Raza, Inc. is not complaining about the deportation of the Korean or Ugandan who overstays his visa or agitating for an open immigration policy with Kenya), a culture of grievance and complaint, all embedded in a contempt for federal law — all that leads to enclaves that resemble more the country abandoned than sought out. In other words the entire therapeutic vision of illegal immigration would lead to a society to which illegal immigrants would not wish to flock. Only assimilation, intermarriage, integration, legality, mastery of English, and acceptance of American culture would ensure the continuance of the sort of society which future illegal aliens would wish to cross into.

The same is true of unions, pensions, and compensation. Highly paid and pensioned California teachers and professors are resembling bishops, knights, or rooks surrounded by a host of part-time, temporary, one-year-contract pawns, lacking the salary, security, and benefits of the kingpins. Yet the liberal establishment in education cannot continue in such an apartheid world of unionized winners and exploited subordinate losers, or public fiefdoms propped up by private toilers. It is a contradiction in terms, and there is no money to pay for it, despite the fiscal logic of its exploitation. The logical conclusion to the blue state would be a handful of six-figured union grandees surrounded by a sea of part-time lackeys (sort of like the CSU system with its blue-chip administrators and tenured faculty propped up by legions of part-time lecturers). Note the surrealism of the European unrest: who are the “they” who “stole” the money that is now no longer there to fund socialism? Did not the socialists at last get what they wanted? The “they” who used to fund it by expanding the economy disappeared a long time ago and now are in the graveyards of Europe.

I went to the warehouse local food store the other day, soaked it all in, and wondered: if everyone is on food stamps (actually computerized government plastic credit cards designed to avoid the old stigma of pulling out a coupon), are there still food stamps? We are nearing 50 million recipients. So what will come next? Food stamp A; food stamp category B? Super food stamps? Can 100 million receive them? 150?

Our California prison system is said to be letting out 30,000-40,000 criminals. If all the court rulings mandating libraries, counseling, second medical opinions, legal help, etc., coupled with the cost of a unionized, highly compensated guild of guards, make prison too expensive, then will we be left with virtual prisons in which trials and sentencing are followed by freedom? If it is cheaper each year to send the felon to UCLA or even Stanford, why then have a prison — a new metaphor for almost everything gone wrong with contemporary American society?

This liberal notion of being careful of what you wish for extends to energy. If Obama promised “skyrocketing” energy prices, and to “bankrupt” coal, and has discouraged almost all new fossil fuel production (a great wonder of the age is how private enterprise keeps finding new gas and oil reserves despite the discouragement of the government), why then he is worried about $4 a gallon gas? Is not $4 or $5 gas the point?

It is near $10 in Europe. So why not soon here the same? If the university president cannot afford to drive his Lexus to campus, if the trial lawyer cannot take his Mercedes to Yosemite, if the professor’s Volvo is too expensive to drive to the postmodern lit conference, have we reached nirvana or chaos?

Watching the tastes, the behavior, the rhetoric, the appointments, and the policy of this administration suggests to me that it is not really serious in radically altering the existing order, which it counts on despite itself. Its real goal is a sort of parasitism that assumes the survivability of the enfeebled host. That does not mean it has not done a lot of damage and will not do even more in the next two years; only that it never quite wanted to see cap and trade legislation enacted, blanket amnesty, Guantamo shut down, or Predators ended; these were simply crude slurs by which to demonize Bush, ways of acquiring power and influence, but not a workable plan of living. Note that Obama is now zealous on just those issues which he could have easily rammed through his Democratically controlled congress in 2009-10 when he had large majorities, such as amnesty and cap and trade.

You cannot fly to Costa del Sol on solar panels. The light switches might not go on at Vail without coal burning somewhere. The Holder or Obama children might not be safe in the Stockton or Parlier city schools. Some right-wing nut in the Dakotas is still necessary to pump the oil to refine the gas for Air Force One; there is no golf without an irrigation system and a supply of either ground or surface water.

In short, the currently insulted class is necessary and Obama knows it.

Victor Davis Hanson
Pajamas Media

 

[rosco rathbone]

VDH styles himself a Cato The Elder type farmer-scholar-citizen, but surely such a prat would never have been tolerated in ancient Rome.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Interesting to read this in AmThink. They've got to be anti-EPA and regulation, so what's their solution to this problem?

The EPA is simply out of control and is going to get worse until business is impossible, this is the result of subjective law by bureaucracy.

You know my vies well on the matter, I don't believe in protecting through regulation but by punishing the violators so hard legally that no others wish to be made an example of.

We are about to childproof ourselves into a primitive crib and when that happens, we get dirtier, not cleaner as people burn whatever is at hand to stay warm...
__________________
We don’t prevent pollution, we export it (along with our jobs).
A_J, the Stupid

I understand your lament, the law cannot be trusted to protectively punish, for it can be bribed and thus we look to government to protect us from business. But the bribing of the court is a criminal activity and the bribing of the government is a legal, protected activity called politics. In one you have an opportunity to actionable remedy, in the other you have only the calamity of the calculating and corrupt.
A_J, the Stupid
(the obligatory response to :kbate

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

VDH styles himself a Cato The Elder type farmer-scholar-citizen, but surely such a prat would never have been tolerated in ancient Rome.

And what ever became of Rome?

 

[rosco rathbone]

And what ever became of Rome?

Overrun by the illegal immigrants of the day!

 

[rosco rathbone]

I understand your lament, the law cannot be trusted to protectively punish, for it can be bribed and thus we look to government to protect us from business. But the bribing of the court is a criminal activity and the bribing of the government is a legal, protected activity called politics. In one you have an opportunity to actionable remedy, in the other you have only the calamity of the calculating and corrupt.
A_J, the Stupid
(the obligatory response to :kbate

Seems like you're just drawing the line in a different place. "Good government" requires us to get agitated when politicians and executives become corrupt, as they will. "Objective Law"....requires us to get agitated when judges become corrupt. That's all well and good, but it's just a matter of degree. Men are men, there's nothing special about judges.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The necessary precondition for Texas’s unique economic success – a beacon in a deep recession – is energy. And the EPA is closing in for the kill.

This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner. And in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion (e.g., sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide). Its emissions of NOx and SO2 are substantially lower than the national average; Texas is ranked the 11th lowest in NOx emissions (.098 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .159 lb/mmBtu), and 24th in SO2 (.309 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .458 lb/mmBtu).

But the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.

...

There are three principal facets to the power grab. One began with an EPA decision in January 2010 that the Texas air-permit program was invalid, and that every facility operating under such a permit in the state would have to be re-permitted. The argument was not that Texas plants were emitting too much. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, the Texas “air-permit program … caps emissions of air pollutants from an entire facility, but the EPA wants to scrutinize and restrict emissions from every polluting unit of a plant.” Texas, along with a number of other states, is concerned that regulating on the EPA’s basis will cost considerably more, without improving air quality.

Neither of the two approaches can claim to be the obvious intent of the Clean Air Act. In default of a clear intent in written law, the point at issue is whose judgment ought to prevail in this matter. Texas argues that federalism was a key component of the Clean Air Act, and properly so; that’s how things work in the United States. The EPA is supposed to set air quality standards, and then the states choose their methods to meet them. Other states agree.

The EPA has made no philosophical arguments to justify its regulatory ukase – but, of course, it doesn’t have to. It is currently operating under a chief executive who endorses its approach and doesn’t require it to justify what it wants to do. Reining it in would require concerted action from Congress, and/or a favorable ruling for the states in a lawsuit.

Keep in mind that throughout the 16 years in which Texas issued its industrial air permits, air quality in Texas improved – a lot. The Texas system wasn’t failing to produce a compliant outcome. And it took the EPA 16 years to decide, in spite of that record of success, to invalidate all the existing state-issued permits. The motivation was clearly political.

...

The permit invalidation was just the beginning, however. The second facet of the power grab, the Obama EPA’s war on coal, will have at least as damaging an effect on Texas as on other states, and in some ways perhaps more. The war on coal is part of a larger regulatory assault on emissions and industrial byproducts of all kinds, which will, if implemented as intended, ensure life as we know it cannot continue in the United States. The impact on Texas is discussed in the testimony submitted to Congress by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) in March.

The findings include the likelihood that the new regulations adopted by the Obama EPA will shut down more than 5700 MW of electrical generating capacity in Texas, or about one-twelfth of the peak demand levied by state users in the last couple of years. Meanwhile, based on economic trends, Texas expects to need as much as 25% more capacity by 2020. TPPF cites industry and independent think-tank estimates that the cost of compliance with the new EPA standards will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and will thus drive utility costs – and therefore the cost of living – up significantly, while at the same time eliminating thousands of jobs in many industries.

From regulating the naturally-occurring fine dust in the countryside, to treating the byproducts of coal combustion as hazardous waste, and preventing them from being sold for use in cement, the EPA’s proposals would shut down one aspect of human economic life after another.

...

But what about natural gas? The EPA is way ahead of us, with the third facet of its power grab. Ben Voth wrote a piece for American Thinker in January calling out the new EPA assault on the production of natural gas in Texas. And if you think the EPA’s particular beef is with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) chemicals, think again. The basis for the EPA’s abrupt move against a Texas natural gas driller in December 2010 was methane and benzene found in local water.

It all fit nicely with the emotional appeal of the “documentary” Gasland, which did for the natural gas industry what Michael Moore did for 9/11. The problem is that not only was Gasland full of errors and misrepresentations, the EPA case against Range Resources in Texas was full of holes as well. Based on analysis of their nitrogen content, the methane and benzene in the afflicted water came not from the natural-gas drilling by Range Resources, but through natural seepage from a shallower nearby gas formation – one that is not being drilled. In other words, there’s nothing humans could have done to prevent the seepage.

(The Energy in Depth write-ups point out also that methane is a naturally occurring gas and the hazards of its presence in drinking water depend, as with so many things, on concentration. They also cite a study by the Texas health authorities which demonstrated that benzene exposure in the gas-drilling areas of Texas is no higher than it is in the rest of the US, and that the only residents who have elevated levels of benzene are smokers.)

But subsequent testimony from EPA staffers, part of a reconstruction of the December 2010 decision to shut down the Range Resources drilling operation, showed that the EPA did not even consider the possibility that the methane and benzene appeared naturally in the water in question. This failure fit well with other patterns in the EPA action; the reconstruction (see the second EID link) indicates that it was an instance of activists and the EPA working together to jump the gun.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/19/the-epa-assault-on-texas/

Looks like we're going to need to do some SERIOUS wind-farm building, until, of course, the Environmental Movement gets to protecting birds...

This is the willing destruction of our economy.
__________________
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States...,
John P. Holdren
White House Office of Science and Technology Director

"We know that the moment of greatest danger to a society is when it comes near realizing its most cherished dreams."
Eric Hoffer

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Seems like you're just drawing the line in a different place. "Good government" requires us to get agitated when politicians and executives become corrupt, as they will. "Objective Law"....requires us to get agitated when judges become corrupt. That's all well and good, but it's just a matter of degree. Men are men, there's nothing special about judges.

But there is an appeals process.

As we see with Obamacare and the EPA, once the government does it, putting the Genie back in the bottle is a lot like cat-herding...

In the former, government gets, as we can clearly see, too big and too powerful to control, check or rein in. In the latter, it is far easier to impeach a judge(s) than it is to use an election to undue a bureaucracy that has become powerful. It is easy to see when a decision has been corrupted, but very hard to put a finger on the corruption of something like the EPA for it becomes systemic, hiring only those who agree with the corporate.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Overrun by the illegal immigrants of the day!

Aye, hang on to yer copper and chainsaw!

 

[rosco rathbone]

Aye, hang on to yer copper and chainsaw!

My mom's retirement farm way out in the sticks was broken into recently. "Local youths" say the deputies. So much for leaving the door unlocked and the alarm system off in the idyllic countryside. Fortunately, the hopped up tweakers lacked taste, and stole an old laptop while leaving original Audubon prints on the walls.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

My mom's retirement farm way out in the sticks was broken into recently. "Local youths" say the deputies. So much for leaving the door unlocked and the alarm system off in the idyllic countryside. Fortunately, the hopped up tweakers lacked taste, and stole an old laptop while leaving original Audubon prints on the walls.

And people wonder why we're stocking up on gun's and ammo...





They left the copper???

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

A good first step to fiscal sanity:

Last week, the Senate finally overcame the entrenched and powerful ethanol special interest group to eliminate $6 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies. This historic vote just might signal that a new era of fiscal responsibility is possible and give hope to a worried nation that Washington can confront national problems.

After the first, early Allied success during WWII, Winston Churchill famously declared that "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end--But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning". Could the Senate vote on killing of one of the most expensive and irresponsible taxpayer subsides signal the "beginning of the end" of stupid and wasteful government programs that cost too much, reward only a special few, and rarely deliver the promised benefits? Let us hope so.

...

Unfortunately, key Senators such as Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) had fully embraced the program as a way to divert more of the nation's wealth to a select few in his home state of Iowa. Year after year, the studies showed that the ethanol subsidy was a colossal waste. Yet, more and more resources poured into the market-distorting ethanol program which now consumes nearly 40% of the entire US corn crop, driving up costs on nearly all food stuffs and major feed additives throughout the economy.

Year after year, experts would publish a fact-based report on the harm and expense of the great ethanol swindle. Meanwhile Senator Grassley, powered by a huge ethanol lobby desperate to continue subsidies, moved the nation in the opposite direction. Each year taxpayers were asked to pony up even more for the ethanol industry, while high tariffs were erected to preclude any imports from Brazil.

The EPA, under the Obama Administration, encouraged Americans to buy a product that they did not want, by forcing gasoline producers to blend ethanol into each gallon of gas and increasing the percentage to 15%. Put simply, with the help of the EPA, the ethanol industry and Senator Charles Grassley had perfected one of the most expensive scams in American history.

Many Americans watched in amazement as Grassley, who was chiefly responsible for one of the most wasteful and misguided frauds on American taxpayers, professed himself to be a fiscal hawk and a champion in the fight on waste, fraud and abuse. But his posturing was a masquerade, for one cannot simply declare intent to illuminate waste fraud and abuse, while advancing such a wasteful boondoggle to American taxpayers. Eventually, the costs and waste must be explained.

Little wonder then why so many honest Americans are distrustful of politician's motivations and have gown cynical of the budget debates. Little wonder, too, why so many fiscally responsible Republicans are increasingly resentful and mistrustful of entrenched Senators, such as Grassley, who are unable to confront the core problems.

...

Unfortunately, the Senate's effort at voting down corn subsidies is does not solve the problem. First, while the subsidies may be ending, the EPA regulation still requires that gasoline sold in U.S. have a15% ethanol content.* Gas prices might very well jump as Americans finally come to grips with the true market costs of EPA’s mandates on ethanol. Americans may have to insist that lawmakers reduce or eliminate the inclusion of ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply.

Second, the ethanol lobby, championed by Senator Grassley, is not going to disappear quietly. This industry is dependent upon government subsidies and relies on the government to force Americans to purchase ethanol. Americans should not be surprised to see middle-of-the-night legislative riders attached to complicated bills in an effort to keep the scam alive.

For now, let us rejoice. The Senate has, at long last, overcome powerful special interests and worked in a bi-partisan way to put an end to the costly ethanol boondoggle. Senate buffoons, such as Grassley, who helped to push the nation to financial insolvency have been exposed and defeated.

It's a start.

http://townhall.com/columnists/luri...pending_the_senate_vote_on_ethanol/page/full/



* EPA to the rescue. Obama says, Drill baby Drill and the EPA says, OH NO YOU DON'T!
__________________
Barry 2012 Says (to the rest of the World): "Drill, baby, Drill!"
Oh No! We Didn't!
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

And then you take an economic step back...

“Aging coal-fired power plants across the West could be forced to install costly pollution control equipment,” reports the AP “under an agreement between federal regulators and environmentalists aimed at jump-starting a delayed clean air initiative.”

The agreement entered into by the Obama administration with the environmental whack-jobs WildEarth Guardians will cost utilities at least $1.5 billion and put at risk the operation of 18 coal-fired electric plants in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming by next year.

This is how energy policy in the mostly-clueless Obama administration is made, in case you were wondering why joblessness was so high in the U.S.

As the Washington Times writes: “Less than 24 hours earlier, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley heard heated complaints from business leaders about burdensome government regulations at a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington. As Mr. Daley listened to tales of the administration’s interference in industry, he replied, ‘Sometimes, you can’t defend the indefensible.’”

Sure, but you can let environmental extremists write energy laws.

So who is WildEarth Guardians?

Oh, just your average, everyday anti-capitalist working with the Obama administration on the issue de jour.

Here’s what WildEarth’s founder, Sam Hitt, blogged last year under “Revolutionary Rant #8”:

“Here’s [h]ow a revolution could happen. First, a general disillusionment with the power structure, like the distrust of capitalism and corporations that is widespread in America today. Then a mismanaged crisis, such as the global financial meltdown that fundamentally delegitimizes the system….But to overcome the gravitational pull of the old capitalist paradigm, there must be a critical threshold of steadfast citizens willing to risk the new, not reform the old.”

http://finance.townhall.com/columni..._whack-jobs_whack_more_energy_jobs/page/full/
__________________
A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States...,
John P. Holdren
White House Office of Science and Technology Director

“I’m just going to be honest with you. There’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now... If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know [laughingly], you might want to think about a trade-in.”
Barack Hussein Obama, the Green Pres__ent (with no id, uh)
April 2011

http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/04/obama-wide-grin80.jpg

When I was asked earlier about, uh, the issue of coal. Uhhh, y'know, under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket....
We would put a cap-and-trade system in place, eh, that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're gonna be charged a huge sum for all that, uh, greenhouse gas that's being emitted.
Barack Hussein Obama
Editorial board meeting, San Francisco Chronicle
January 2008

"How about just tracking down every single person who said drill baby drill and putting them all in prison. Why don’t we do that?"
Alan Grayson

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
Eric Hoffer

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

The proof is in the economic analysis of nonpartisan sources. These figures are from 19 months ago, so the true figures are higher, as 30% of the stimulus wasn't yet spent in Jan of 2010.

• CBO: Between 800,000 jobs (low estimate) and 2.4 million jobs (high estimate) saved or created.

• IHS/Global Insight: 1.25 million jobs saved or created.

• Macroeconomic Advisers: 1.06 million jobs saved or created.

Remember, I just cited a source saying that the CBO shifted their high-end estimate to 3.3 million jobs. Not sure what IHS/MacroAd shifted their figures to but I could probably find out.

Here's a segment of the abstract of the Moody's report on the recovery, which is more current:

When we divide these effects into two components—one attributable to the fiscal stimulus and the other at-
tributable to financial-market policies such as the TARP, the bank stress tests and the Fed’s quantitative eas-
ing—we estimate that the latter was substantially more powerful than the former. Nonetheless, the effects
of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising 2010 real GDP by about 3.4%, holding the unem-
ployment rate about 11⁄2 percentage points lower, and adding almost 2.7 million jobs to U.S. payrolls. These
estimates of the fiscal impact are broadly consistent with those made by the CBO and the Obama administra-
tion.2

Source: http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/End-of-Great-Recession.pdf


Rightfield, your flaw is that you ignore professional independent analysis. You're rightfully suspicious of figures from the administration because yes, they're sometimes partisan and spun (even though in this case they're relatively accurate). But then you just go and get partisan, spun numbers from the other side of the spectrum, making you just as guilty as lefty spinners. You settle for arguing over who has the superior spin when you could just look at professional nonpartisan analysis. And before you accuse Zandi and Moody's of being left-wing, Mark Zandi has worked for a number of Republicans and was John McCain's chief economic advisor.

Anything else you'd like me to show you?

A year-old analysis.

Since then Moody's (the co-writer) has been threatening us with a downgrade.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

And no matter how many jobs that you want to tout as "created" the truth is that they are nowhere near replacement or growth pointing at stagnation at best, a possible double-dip, and in the worst case the actual Depression your pdf claims we were saved from...


I can imagine there were a lot of writings such as this during the opening phases of the Great Depression.

 

[RightField]

The proof is in the economic analysis of nonpartisan sources. These figures are from 19 months ago, so the true figures are higher, as 30% of the stimulus wasn't yet spent in Jan of 2010.

• CBO: Between 800,000 jobs (low estimate) and 2.4 million jobs (high estimate) saved or created.

• IHS/Global Insight: 1.25 million jobs saved or created.

• Macroeconomic Advisers: 1.06 million jobs saved or created.

Remember, I just cited a source saying that the CBO shifted their high-end estimate to 3.3 million jobs. Not sure what IHS/MacroAd shifted their figures to but I could probably find out.

Here's a segment of the abstract of the Moody's report on the recovery, which is more current:

When we divide these effects into two components—one attributable to the fiscal stimulus and the other at-
tributable to financial-market policies such as the TARP, the bank stress tests and the Fed’s quantitative eas-
ing—we estimate that the latter was substantially more powerful than the former. Nonetheless, the effects
of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising 2010 real GDP by about 3.4%, holding the unem-
ployment rate about 11⁄2 percentage points lower, and adding almost 2.7 million jobs to U.S. payrolls. These
estimates of the fiscal impact are broadly consistent with those made by the CBO and the Obama administra-
tion.2

Source: http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/End-of-Great-Recession.pdf


Rightfield, your flaw is that you ignore professional independent analysis. You're rightfully suspicious of figures from the administration because yes, they're sometimes partisan and spun (even though in this case they're relatively accurate). But then you just go and get partisan, spun numbers from the other side of the spectrum, making you just as guilty as lefty spinners. You settle for arguing over who has the superior spin when you could just look at professional nonpartisan analysis. And before you accuse Zandi and Moody's of being left-wing, Mark Zandi has worked for a number of Republicans and was John McCain's chief economic advisor.

Anything else you'd like me to show you?

Under questioning from Congress the CBO already admitted that their figures were based on unsubstantiated estimates and they had no proof. You can tell by the broad range that they used...800,000 to 2.4M...lol...Come up with something that's real.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Under questioning from Congress the CBO already admitted that their figures were based on unsubstantiated estimates and they had no proof. You can tell by the broad range that they used...800,000 to 2.4M...lol...Come up with something that's real.

OH SO YOU'RE ATTACKING THE SOURCE!!!!






It's so easy to determine the response...

 

[jeniferlogan]

Under questioning from Congress the CBO already admitted that their figures were based on unsubstantiated estimates and they had no proof. You can tell by the broad range that they used...800,000 to 2.4M...lol...Come up with something that's real.

attacking...