EPA Energy Restrictions and Copenhagen

The Democrat Senate has put off carbon cap and trade legislation, according to Harry Reid, until the Spring.  This is too late for Obama to make a splash at Copenhagen.  So, he will have the EPA claim that CO2 is a pollutant and have the EPA put severe restrictions on the use of energy in the US.  This is the "operationally significant" energy use restriction Obama has been talking about.  He has made some kind of agreement with China, it appears to some, and he and China will announce some restrictions at Copenhagen.

Will we all have to prepare for rolling blackouts?  Or, will we be denied the use of our cars on Saturdays?  Or will we simply throw more people into the ranks of the unemployed as those businesses which Obama does not like are shutdown?  Don't you just love this change and the transformation of America, People?  It is coming.  If Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their cadres of comrades have their way, this will not be America for long.  After all, if CO2 is a pollutant, why should the sovereign rights of the individual be of any significance at all?

Of course, the socialists will push ahead with all of this despite the unraveling of the claimed scientific evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming.  This will only prove that the need for the mandate to control the People by controlling their energy use drove the so-called "science,", not the other way around.  How revealing!

Probable Massive Exposure of Global Warming Alarmist Fraud

A 62 megabytes zipped file which unpacks to yield about 156 megabytes of e-mail correspondence and computer code from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit in East Anglia, the UK, whose data was the primary basis for the UN IPCC reports, including the last one of 2007, has been made public by a hacker or a whistleblower.  This information appears to be shedding a lot of light on a conspiracy to mislead other scientists and the public into believing in man-made catastrophic global warming.  The e-mail correspondence discusses withholding the original data from review by skeptics and destroying it if need be to do so, control over editors at major scientific journals so only global warming alarmists would be published, cabal control over manuscript reviewers, celebration of the death of a global warming skeptic, and how to skew data to make the warming of the late 20th Century look more alarming and to minimize the lack of warming in this century.

This data is being discussed at Climate Audit and Watts Up With That and many other websites.  I have long claimed the science of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming was bad.  The mystery was always how had such bad science managed to hijack so many scientific journals, public policy, and the media.  The answer appeared to be that it was always mostly about meeting the socialist and internationalist agendas for power and broad control of all of the People of this Earth.  This correspondence seems to make it clear that these "scientists" really did have an agenda they held more important than science.

There are at least two major effects to be expected from this.  First, it should prove much more difficult for the Democrat Congress to pass the carbon cap and trade legislation in the Senate and for the two houses to come to agreement on a final bill.  It should be harder for the EPA to move forward with its stupid claim that CO2 is a pollutant and invoke the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to restrict its emission.  Corollary to these, it should be much harder for the US to submit to any treaty or agreement at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, though I expect Obama will try still to find every way he can to restrict fossil fuel use in America.  This will help tremendously in averting a disaster to our economy, many lost jobs, minimize the arguments for green energy subsidies, and the need to make major changes in our lifestyles.

The second major effect is that science itself will be given a very black eye, despite the heroic efforts of some scientists to combat this bad science and reveal it for the nonsense it was.  The People will be less likely to listen to scientists in the future and will not accept their authority so readily.  This is both good and bad.  I used to think it was principally bad, but now I am seeing this as much more of a mixed bag.  The scientific method is still as important as always and I want the People to understand that.  These scientists were evil because they subverted scientific thinking.  They are to be condemned because they claimed an unwarranted authority and argued from authority to browbeat the public into believing them and following them.  It is very important that the People understand that it is always dangerous to submit their minds to simply accepting the word of authorities.  There is no real option but to think and think very hard yourself, unless you wish always or more often than not, to be hoodwinked.

There is nothing really different about science than politics with respect to the unwary being hoodwinked if they do not use their own minds to critically evaluate for themselves the truth of everything they are told.  There is no substitute for thinking for yourself.  It may be more common for politicians to take advantage of those who do not think for themselves than it is for scientists to do so, but we should learn here that there are plenty of people in any profession who will argue from authority to scam the gullible.

Obama Creates Jobs and Congressional Districts

Obama's Recovery.gov website claims to document the number of jobs the Stimulus Bill has created or saved.  It reported that 640,329 jobs were created or saved and was helpful enough to break those jobs down by congressional district.  The Washington Examiner has now added up the numbers of as-yet known fictitious jobs saved or created and has reached a number of 76,779.

Just to refresh your memory, the $787 billion 2009 Stimulus Bill was said to have created or saved the 640,329 jobs at a cost of $1,229,056 in terms of the allocated money.  To adjust for the fact that the government has proven very slow in actually spending the money and will not spend much of it until after the actual recession is long gone, the government claimed to have created these jobs at a cost of $531,250 per job.  Now we can adjust this cost per job for the maximal number of jobs which may have been created, 563,550.  The cost per job is then $603,628 per job.  Wow, I am impressed.  The Obama government may be able to create one job with a sum of money that the private sector would create about 12 jobs with.  Of course as we discover that more of these created jobs are fictitious, the cost per job will go up and the private sector will look ever more efficient in creating jobs.  And we ought not forget that the biggest actual effect of the $787 billion Stimulus Bill was to discourage the private sector from hiring for fear that the heavy government deficit spending would decrease business profits over the longer run as it caused inflation, weakened the dollar, and was used by governments to cause mischief.

The Obama Recovery.gov website has also shown us that this $18 million construct creates fictitious Congressional Districts.  It has created 440 such fictitious Congressional Districts.  In reality, there are 435 legitimate Congressional Districts.  Now as I recall, Obama campaigned at one point in 57 states and thought he had one more state to get to in order to have campaigned in all of the states.  That makes 58 states.  Now, of course, my readers all know there are 50 states, so Obama inflated the number of states by only a factor of 1.16.  The number of Congressional Districts has been Obama-inflated by 2.01, so Obama is gaining skills in inflationary power as he gains presidential experience!

Just to look at the case for Virginia, which has 11 Representatives and therefore has Congressional Districts numbering from 1 to 11, Recovery.gov lists the following fictitious Virginia districts:

00, 12, 13, 17, 21, 25, 36, 51, 79, 98

This is actually a below average degree of Congressional District inflation!  But I really get a kick out of District 00 and the fact that District 98 implies that Virginia is much the most populous state in the Union!  This takes us right back to the earliest days of the Union, when the Commonwealth of Virginia was just that.

The 12th and 13th Congressional Districts of Virginia were lost after the 1860 Census, and the 17th and 21st Districts were lost after the 1840 Census!  Democrats always have been very good at getting the votes of the dead, so it should be no surprise that they are also able to resurrect dead Congressional Districts when it suits their purposes.  Interesting thought.  Does this mean that we have underestimated Obama's powers as the Messiah?  What if he is creating jobs in Virginia prior to 1860 and 1840?!!!!!  This would mean he was aiding the cause of slavery in Antebellum Virginia.

Remember that for Obama and socialists of his ilk, the truth is that which furthers the cause of socialism.  It has nothing whatever to do with reality.

Medicare and the Public Option

Robert Romano, the Americans for Limited Government Senior Editor, has written a good article on Medicare and the Public Option and on taxes and health care rationing.  It is called Washington's Degenerate Elite.  It tells a story of complete fiscal irresponsibility and of upcoming drastic health care rationing necessitated by biting off more than the government can chew on top of already legislated massive revenue shortfalls.  Even so, Romano does not make a critical part of the problem clear because he allows the government to get away with one of its most irresponsible ruses.  Let's follow his argument and his tale of the numbers and I will point out where the situation gets still more awful and to use his term, still more degenerate.

The Medicare Board of Trustees says Medicare has $2.5 trillion of assets in 2009.  Under a worst case scenario, its assets reach a maximum in 2012 of $2.712 trillion.  The program starts operating at a deficit thereafter.  In 2019, assets will be down to $2.279 trillion after accumulated losses of $433 billion.  Every year after 2012, losses will average about $169 billion per year.  In 2028, Medicare assets will be zero.

Now this is bad, but it is actually much worse than this.  What are these assets?  Well, they are just IOUs written to the program by the government.  To make these IOUs good, the government has to increase taxes or greatly decrease its expenditures elsewhere.  Obama and the Democrat Congress have no intention of generally decreasing spending by enough elsewhere, so taxes will have to go up greatly.  The above paragraph makes it seem as though the increased taxes to continue to fund Medicare must go up when the Medicare assets are gone in 2028.  This is not at all the case.  They will have to go up in 2013 and thereafter in order to cover the average shortfall in Medicare taxes of $169 billion per year!  This is the same year that ObamaCare is supposed to start.  So, the degenerates Obama, Pelosi, and Reid plan to add a new huge spending program the same year that the Medicare program starts operating at a loss.  Brilliant!!!!  These wily, sly socialists are counting on few of the People recognizing this in 2009, which is another of many reasons why they wish to pass this legislation through the Senate this year.

Romano continues with the story.  The Public Option of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid will initially cover about 36 to 45 million people.  The number of covered people is expected to increase with time.  According to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the cost of the Public Option will be an additional $935 billion by 2019.  How do our degenerate socialists plan to pay for this?  Well, they plan to ration care under Medicare to the extent that they will reduce its costs by $427 billion by 2019.  Note that with no changes of law, we were going to have a deficit of $433 billion by 2019 in Medicare, so these cuts in Medicare, if made, would leave a net deficit of $6 billion in Medicare without the Public Option added expense.  With the Public Option added expense, new taxes are required and Obama and his socialist cadres propose new taxes of $574 billion to be collected by 2019.  This leaves a combined Public Option and Medicare deficit of $367 billion in 2019.  Actually, the deficit will be greater since tax increases do not bring in as much revenue as projected and government plans to cut expenses never reach their goals.

The situation gets worse with time.  The Public Option is initially funded by taxes that go up before the program starts, but which will actually be used to pay the government deficits already in place (Stimulus Bill and other expensive programs).  Consequently, when the Public Option starts spending money, it will also have to convert IOUs into spendable money, which in practice means that either the deficits will be larger at an earlier time than projected or taxes will have to go up still more.  But in the government's ruse, IOUs are gold in the bank and the Public Option debt is only $32 billion in 2017, $59 billion in 2018, and $108 billion in 2019.  By 2030, the deficit from this one program would be more than $1 trillion.  This is based on a number of people covered which many reviewers think is lower than will actually be the case.

The combined costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Public Option will soon be greater than $1 trillion per year.  The costs will be increasing every year, which will require severe cuts in health care coupled with severe increases in taxes.  The rich will not be able to bear the cost of these taxes, so Obama's pledge to not raise taxes on the middle class will be meaningless, though that has already become very clear in other contexts.

All of the projections on expenses above were made on older June estimates and on very favorable assumptions.  The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services now says those June estimates are much too low.  The cost of health care will increase fast enough that the deficit in the Pelosi House Public Option plan will be $289 billion greater than the numbers discussed above by 2019.  How much greater will they be in the outlying years?  Based on past government health care programs, one has to assume they will be many times higher than the costs now projected.

As Romano points out, things get still worse.  PriceWaterhouseCooper says the cost of private insurance will be driven upward sharply by ObamaCare.  An insurance plan that now costs $4,700 will cost $9,917 by 2019 or 2.1 times more than now.  The cost increases for the young will be even larger factors.  Many individuals who are now privately insured will be driven onto the Public Option, raising its costs many times.  When the Public Option is the last resort, it will also be bankrupt!

This Public Option plan simply makes the already intractable problems with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security much worse.  It is utter insanity to add to this existing problem with the Public Option.

Of course, as I have said repeatedly, Obama made his insanity very clear when he long ago said that he intended to bankrupt the coal-fired electric power plants which produce half of American electricity.  Apparently, being merely insane is no reason for the American people not to pick a man to be President.  In fact, it almost seems that they thought it was a requirement of the job.  This man is so wrongheaded on so many things that it is not possible to believe that he perceives reality at all.  And he has much company in Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Waxman, Markey, Baucus (perhaps slightly less insane than the others), Franks, Hoyer, and many others in the Democrat Congress leadership.  All of them are bonkers.  All of them are Looney Tunes.

Muslims and Gays in the Military

It has been pointed out that the military has no problem with Muslims in the military.  Indeed, it works hard to encourage them to join and stay in the military.  It is very politically incorrect to point out that one is unstable or strongly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  On the other hand, if there are any gay or bisexual people in the military, the military leadership does not want to know about it.  If they do come to know about it, they want them out quickly.

Interesting.  At least a couple of Muslims in the military have killed a number of other serving members of the military in the name of Allah in what can only be called terrorist rampages.  Have there been any gay or bisexual terrorist rampages?  Inquiring minds want to know.

The Jarrett-Obama Gangster Government

Robert Romano, of Americans for Limited Government, has written an excellent article on Valeria Jarrett's role with Obama in providing us with Chicago-style gangster government.  Socialism provides government with arbitrary power, which is so easily turned to pure, vicious gangsterism.  See Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Chavez for other examples.

Suppose an Injured Patient Lives in Canada

Suppose an injured patient lives in Canada.  The patient needs a CT scan to assess the damage and to schedule an operation, if necessary.  The time the patient will have to wait for the CT scan is either the next day or more than a month.  If an operation is needed, the further wait is a day or more than 3 months.

If the patient waits for 4 months rather than a couple of days to have the injury operated on, is the patient human or not?

By the logic of socialism, if the patient has to wait 4 months for medical help, it is human.  For those patients fortunate enough to receive medical treatment under the private enterprise system in Canada, the medical service is great.  As John Stossel notes, you just have to bark or meow.  Talking is not allowed.  Talkers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if they go to a veterinarian for faster and higher tech treatment.

Socialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India

This entry summarizes an interesting report by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, a research fellow at Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, who was the editor of the two biggest financial daily newspapers in India, the Economic Times and Financial Express.

India isolated itself from the rest of the world in trade terms and attempted to become economically self-sufficient for the first three decades after its independence in 1947.  During that period, India became more and more socialistic under the influence of the Soviet Union and was more and more managed and controlled by the government.  India's share of the international export market fell from 2.2% upon independence to 0.45% in 1985.  India, being very backward, did grow at at rate of 3.5% per year, but this was slow growth compared to other once backward Asian nations who were more export-oriented.  Since India's population was growing rapidly, it per capita growth in this period was only 1.49% per year per person.  The reforms which started in 1981 started freeing the economy and growth rates increased.  These reforms were undertaken more certainly after the balance of payments crisis in 1991.  In the relatively free period from 2000 to 2008, the growth rate was 6.78% and social indicators were much improved.

But what did a decade of economic development delay cost India?  As is always the case with socialism, the results are ugly.  One decade of delay in economic freedom killed 14.5 million children, kept 261 million Indians illiterate, and kept 109 million Indians unnecessarily in poverty.