Sheldon Whitehouse's Climate Inquisition Continues by Paul Driessen

Senator Torquemada wants to jail those who dissent from his alarmist views on climate

Paul Driessen

Five years ago, I said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) behaves like Torquemada, using Inquisition-like tactics to harass “manmade climate crisis” skeptics, and threatening to prosecute them for racketeering. Tomas de Torquemada was the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition that interrogated, tortured, imprisoned and executed thousands for religious heresy.

The senator took great umbrage, and denounced me in Senate chambers where I once worked. But he didn’t change his ways. If anything, he has become more intolerant and vindictive.

He recently said Democrat control of the Senate would enable him and his colleagues to launch investigations, haul climate realists before committees (for star-chamber show trials), and even employ grand juries and criminal prosecutions – to intimidate, silence and punish climate crisis nonbelievers.

People could certainly conclude that the thin-skinned senator would feel right at home in Inquisition Spain, Stalinist Russia, Red Guard and Xi Jinping China, or book-burning pre-Holocaust fascist Europe. Their history of silencing dissenters, erasing them from history, and sending them off to gulags and salt mines (or worse) is legendary. Their economic and governing ideology is classic fascism:

an extreme, intolerant system, under which an authoritarian government does not own businesses and industries outright, but does dictate what they can make, do, sell and say – while controlling citizens’ thoughts, speech and choices – through intimidation, silencing, arrest, prosecution, and fear of being fined, jailed, fired, sent to penal or reeducation colonies, and being beaten or executed.

These tactics are reprehensible and dictatorial. They are un-American and anti-science. Indeed, science achieves no progress without dissent, discussion and debate. It requires not just hypotheses, theories and computer models, but solid, empirical evidence to confirm or disprove hypotheses, models and predictions.

Discussion, debate, dissent and evidence are especially vital in addressing the assertion that humanity faces an unprecedented manmade climate crisis. That assertion is being used to justify demands that the United States, Europe and [the] developed world eliminate the fossil fuels that provide over 80% of our energy, petrochemical and pharmaceutical raw materials, fertilizers and countless other benefits.

It is being used to justify demands that we replace this reliable, affordable energy and raw material base with wind, solar, battery and biofuel power. Not only are these alternatives intermittent, weather-dependent and far more expensive. They involve extensive mining, land use, wildlife, pollution and other environmental impacts. They are not renewable, sustainable, environment-friendly or climate-safe.

In the United States alone, we would have to replace some 7.5 billion megawatt-hours of electricity and electricity-equivalent fossil fuel use per year; replace enormous amounts of oil and natural gas raw materials; and overhaul our transportation, home heating and other systems. That would require millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of 1000-pound battery modules, tens of millions of acres of corn, canola, soybean and other biofuel crops – and tens of trillions of dollars.

Democrat urban population and voter centers will likely oppose those industrial-scale installations in their backyards. They would have little objection to locating them in what many ruling, media and Hollywood elites imperiously and derisively refer to [as] “flyover country” – western, Midwestern and southern states.

This “transformation” – under the Paris climate treaty, a Green New Deal or a Biden-Harris regulatory program – would massively disrupt America’s economy, jobs, living standards, health and wellbeing, especially for poor, minority, blue-collar, fixed-income and flyover country families and communities.

Climate alarmists insist that any lost jobs would be replaced with “green” jobs. But those would be mostly minimum-wage positions: hauling, installing, maintaining, dismantling, removing and landfilling turbines, panels and batteries. Moreover, most of those green technologies would be manufactured overseas, especially in China, because environmentalists battle any mining in the USA, and a climate-focused energy system would provide insufficient reliable, affordable power for factories.

Those huge and unprecedented amounts of mining and manufacturing would require fossil fuels. So the only thing that would change is where the fossil fuel use and emissions occur.

It would be mostly in Asia and Africa, in countries that are not obligated under the Paris climate treaty to reduce their fossil fuel use or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; countries that will build as many hundreds or thousands of coal and gas-fired power plants as needed to lift their people out of poverty  ... and make “green energy” technologies they will happily sell to America, Australia, Canada and Europe.

That means, even if the US went cold-turkey on fossil fuels, it would make no difference to global GHG emissions or global atmospheric concentrations. And that means, even if carbon dioxide is the primary factor in climate change, destroying US and other modern economies would bring no climate benefits.

The EU’s and UK’s unwavering belief in human-caused climate cataclysms is already hammering its industries, workers and families, as numerous articles attest: here, here, here and here, for instance.  

Thankfully, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that assertions of Climate Armageddon have been miscalculated, exaggerated or fabricated. Average global temperatures are rising far less rapidly than predicted by climate models: by at least a half-degree F.

Violent (F4-F5) US tornadoes have actually declined in number the past 35 years (1985-2020) versus the previous 35 years (1950-1984); and in 2018 not one F5 tornado touched down in the United States. For a record twelve years, from Wilma in 2005 until Harvey and Irma in 2017, no Category 3 to 5 hurricane struck the US mainland. Overall, there is little or no trend in tropical cyclone activity or intensity.

All that is not surprising in light of new research by Drs. William Happer and Willem van Wijngaarden that strongly indicates even doubling carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) in Earth’s atmosphere would have minuscule effects on global temperatures and climate (but would benefit plant growth).

Indeed, it is impossible to distinguish human influences from natural factors, fluctuations and cycles regarding temperatures, polar ice, storms and droughts. Some scientists certainly claim otherwise – and generally just blame humans. But they have little or no actual, empirical evidence to support their claims, predictions and models. They simply say the science is settled, and we must ban fossil fuels, so shut up.

With so much at stake for America and the world, this is completely intolerable. At the very least, those claiming we face a climate calamity must be required to present solid empirical evidence to support their assertions – and engage in in robust, transparent debates with manmade climate change skeptics.

That is precisely what Senator Torquemada seems determined to prevent and punish, while transforming “the world’s greatest deliberative body” into a Russian Politburo or Chinese National People’s Congress – and an integral part of the $multi-trillion-per-year Climate Industrial Complex.

In that quest he would certainly be aided by the Big Media and Big Tech moguls who share his views on climate change, silencing scientists and evidence that contradicts climate cataclysm catechism, and blacklisting “climate heretics” in government, academic and corporate circles. 

People have been conditioned to kowtow to government lockdown edicts, to save humanity from Covid. Climate alarmists assume we will now be sufficiently compliant about banning fossil fuels to “save the planet,” when we’re trying to recover from Covid. Or their Torquemadas will make us compliant.

It’s time to reject politicized junk science, demand debate, and resist green climate and energy edicts. Perhaps most of all, the US Senate must assert its Advice and Consent responsibilities on the Paris climate treaty, the most far-reaching international agreement Americans were ever asked to ratify.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

My Comment:  

Actually Americans were never asked to ratify the Paris Climate Treaty.  It was never put before them in a national referendum.  The Paris Climate Treaty was never put through the treaty approval process of our Constitution, which requires that two-thirds of the Senators present concur with a treaty negotiated by the President.  Obama knew he could not get Senate approval so he pretended the Paris Climate Treaty was not a treaty, but somehow was still binding upon Americans.  This was literally the act of a dictator.

Dr. Driessen said: "Thankfully, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that assertions of Climate Armageddon have been miscalculated, exaggerated or fabricated. Average global temperatures are rising far less rapidly than predicted by climate models: by at least a half-degree F."

The link is to the data Prof. John Christy presented to the Senate in December 2015 which showed that the computer models that claimed man-made global warming was a crisis were already predicting temperatures 0.5 K or °C higher than those actually measured.  0.5 K is 0.9 °F.  The alarmist computer models within just a few years are greatly exaggerating the temperature increase.  The exaggeration over several decades will be several times this amount.

There ought to be no tolerance for such fools as Senator Whitehouse who call for the suppression of the freedom of speech of Americans, including those who argue against catastrophic man-made global warming.  He is un-American in doing this and should be a massive embarrassment to the people of Rhode Island.  Unfortunately, the people of Rhode Island have long been inclined to vote for politicians approved by the Mafia and corrupt to their cores.  This, of course, means they vote for the corrupt undemocratic Democratic Socialist Party.

You Need to Elect Me to Find Out What I Will Do as President

There is a most interesting parallel between the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden and the passage of the infamous ObamaCare bill.  As Nancy Pelosi so famously said about the ObamaCare bill: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

The man who claims to be the Democratic Party cannot tell us whether he wants to pack the Supreme Court or not.  He would not answer the question in the first debate with Trump.  He will not tell us whether he will encourage the Democrats to end the filibuster in the Senate so a simple majority can dictate any law it wants to the American people. 

This is a critical issue.  The Senate filibuster has long required that 60% of the Senators had to agree to create a new law, if 40% of the Senators were adamantly opposed to the bill.  For those who lust for power over the people, this has been an irritating limit on their power.  Obama has said the filibuster limit on government power has to be eliminated.  Senator Coons of Delaware wants the filibuster rule changed too.  The Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will only say that if the Democrats get a majority in the Senate, then anything they want is on the table.  On this issue, AOC is at Schumer's side.

Just as many Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court, they also want to tip the scales among the states more in their favor by making the District of Columbia with its almost completely power-hungry government feed trough-eaters a state.  They also want to give the extreme welfare-dependent Puerto Ricans the federal vote that comes with statehood.  The more voters dependent upon a high-spending government for their very existence, the better for those of our betters who want to rule the unwashed, ignorant Deplorables.

Either Joe Biden wants to be a dictator who is not accountable to the American people as his claim of being the Democratic Party states and his refusal to answer basic questions about his use of power as President implies, or he is pawn of the extreme socialist wing of the Democratic Party trying to hide his role with a pretense of leadership over that party.  No sane person could want such a person to rule over them.

It is Not a Tax, But Oh It is a Tax -- It is Not a Treaty, but Oh It is a Treaty

Recall that when ObamaCare was passed by the House and Senate and signed by Obama against the preponderant opposition of the American people, ObamaCare was not a tax.  The American People were told this over and over by the Democrats trying to pass the bill.  But when the Supreme Court ruled on whether ObamaCare was constitutional or not, ObamaCare suddenly became a tax.  Of course its being a tax in no way actually made it constitutional in any case.  There was no way that Americans in 1789 approved a Constitution that would allow the federal government any power so long as the law enabling the power included a tax.

When it helps to create an obnoxious and freedom trampling law, it is not a tax, but when the law needs constitutional justification, that justification is based on its being a tax.  There is a parallel now with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose Paris Climate Treaty Secretary of State John Kerry signed on Earth Day without ratification by the U.S. Senate as is required by the Constitution for a treaty.  Obama insisted the UNFCCC was not a treaty, so it did not need to be ratified by the Senate.

Twenty-eight Senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Kerry pointing out that his signing the UNFCCC violated laws passed in 1994 and 1990 which did not allow the funding of an affiliated organization of the United Nations that provided Palestine with a state membership.  Palestine signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and crowed about its statehood status as a signatory.  This has not in the least deterred Obama's intention to fund the Green Climate Fund set up by the UNFCCC and controlled by its executive and a large staff funded with an annual budget of $60 million.

Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield wrote to Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.):

It is our view that neither the restriction referenced in your letter, section 410 of Public Law 103-236, nor the restriction contained in section 414 of Public Law 101-246, have been triggered by the Palestinians’ purported accession to the UNFCCC.  The UNFCCC is a treaty, and the Palestinians’ purported accession to it does not involve their becoming members of any UN specialized agency or, indeed any international organization.

How interesting.  The UNFCCC is not a UN affiliated organization, it is a Treaty.  The laws prohibiting Obama's funding of a UN affiliated organization treating Palestine as a nation do not apply because the UNFCCC, despite its large staff and its association with the U.N., is not an organization of the U.N.   No, it is a Treaty, and Palestine just happened to agree to the Treaty.

OK, so if it is a Treaty, why has Secretary of State John Kerry signed a Treaty under Obama's orders in clear violation of the constitutional requirement that a Treaty be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Senate?

Because as I have said of Obama since the early days of his first campaign for the presidency, his purpose is solely the advance of socialism.  When he took the Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Obama was lying.  He has consistently thumbed his nose at the Constitution.  He has, as he said when he was a state Senator in the Illinois legislature, viewed the Constitution as the enemy of socialism and therefore as his enemy.  It is Obama's pleasure to undermine the Constitution in every way he can and to eschew the Rule of Law in every way he can.  In funding a U.N. organization in violation of U.S. law and in signing a treaty in violation of the Constitution, he is, as usual, consistent with his personal creed that socialism is his ultimate political value.  There is nothing subtle about his subversion.  There will be nothing subtle about Hillary's subversion either if she becomes President.

Does a President Have the Constitutional Authority to Demand that Congress Pass a Bill of His Liking?

Tonight, Obama said he was issuing an Executive Order to change immigration law because Congress had not responded to his demand that it pass a comprehensive immigration bill to his liking.  He is posturing that this is within his constitutional authority.  In fact, he does not care whether he has such authority under the Constitution or not.  He has always regarded the Constitution as an impediment to his agenda, as he made very clear in a radio interview back when he served as a Senator in the Illinois state legislature.  Twice he took the presidential oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution when he was always determined to undermine it.  These were the most colossal of his many lies.

If a president were to have such a constitutional authority to demand bills from Congress that were to his liking, the federal government would be no more than a despotic regime.  There would be no check on the power of the president by the people short of impeachment.  In fact, it is not at all clear that a president with such powers would even feel any need to care whether he was impeached or not by a toothless Congress.  Yes, the People might so threaten rebellion that he would come to pay attention, but short of that, why would he care?  Neither would he care what the rulings of the federal courts might be.  The People would only have recourse by refusing to carry out his Executive Orders.

Obama has already shown dozens and dozens of times that he believes he has the power to unilaterally change laws passed by Congress.  ObamaCare, the PPACA, or more honestly the Patient Subjugation and Unaffordable Care Act, has already been changed unilaterally over and over by the health care insurance and tax Czar, namely Obama.  Obama, the Justice Department, the EPA, the IRS, the National Labor Relations Board, and many other Obama Regime agencies have already ignored court orders and violated numerous laws including the Freedom of Information Act.  He has long ignored his duties under the immigration laws.

Now he is making massive changes in the immigration laws simply because a bill he liked that was passed by a Democrat-controlled Senate was not taken up in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.  He insists that if it had been taken up in the House, it would have been passed.  Maybe, maybe not. He is not making a similar argument that the 370 or so bills passed by the House and sent to the Senate should have all been acted on by the Senate.  There are problems in the way the parties work the rules of both the House and the Senate due to the majority party leadership having excessive control of each body.  Yet, those houses have control of their rules and it is entirely unwise to give that control to a president, especially one who does not believe in principles and general rules, but instead changes those rules in any way he needs to get what he wants.  Obama has no principles by which he governs his actions, except his single-minded devotion to collectivism and the total control of the individual by a state with a Great Socialist Leader at its head.

I make these comments on what I believe the essential issues are here despite the fact that I want our immigration laws to allow more lawful immigrants, most especially more who are well-educated and who have great skills and ability.  Obama's rule to increase the number of H1B Visas and not to count spouses against the quota is something I would favor, were it voted by Congress.  Unlike Obama and the courts, I believe it is wrong that the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the US are given citizenship.  To compound that wrong with a ruling that all of their parents illegally in the US will be freed of deportation and allowed to apply for citizenship is wrong.  I would allow children born in the US and their parents a path to citizenship, but they would have to prove themselves worthy.  But what I think Congress should do to change the law is just my opinion.  It is Congress' power under the Constitution to either do so, or not to do so.

Of course, this whole matter is one in which Obama has a very vested interest.  Because his father was illegally in the US when he was born, he should not himself have been considered a citizen and should have had to apply for citizenship.  This is especially so because he was abroad so long and became a citizen of Indonesia.  Had Obama applied for citizenship, he could have had his own Social Security number!  His Executive Order is designed to keep many of his citizenship problems from happening for the many illegal immigrants in the USA.

Because of the classical liberal viewpoint that infused the Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution, and most of the nation's leaders until about 1912, the powers of the Executive Office in the federal government were tightly controlled by many checks and balances and by an ideology that tended to make individual freedom and the rights of the individual our highest political values.  Thus, our philosophy of government was guided by principles.  Then the Progressives came along, who had given up moral and political principles as they had adopted a philosophy of Pragmatism. 

Unfortunately, Pragmatism is highly impractical as a philosophy of life.  Without guiding principles for one's actions and one's value choices, excepting the choice of one's own life as one's highest value, it is entirely impractical to assess every choice one makes in a complex world.  This is like trying to do physics without ever using the general principle of the Conservation of Energy, or Newton's laws of motion, or the principles of thermodynamics.  Yes, with a huge effort one might do all the research needed to make one right decision, but this is the equivalent of placing oneself in time prior to Galileo and Newton and trying to figure out what the momentum, force, and kinetic energy of a stone dropped off a cliff will be when it falls on the head of an enemy below.  Rational decisions without principles are made so difficult that real people give up on trying to make rational decisions and they make their decisions based only on emotional grounds.  This is why the politics of Progressives is entirely based on passions and feelings.  Obama and his followers are such people.  They are stultified by the effort to reason, so they default to their feelings.

Our federal government was crafted as mandated by the Constitution with a great many checks and balances which were to check the power of the executive, each of the two houses of the Congress, the judiciary, the federal government versus the state governments, and the elected politicians generally with respect to the People.  There were also temporal checks, either against passing fads and the madness of crowds or against old men too long in power.  These checks and balances mean that there are built-in frictions against governmental actions.  Some rational policies may take considerable time to be chosen and then put in place.  Patience is usually needed.  But, the Framers of the Constitution had learned that democracy was unstable and unsustainable and strong executive leadership was despotic.  The American system of government was designed to prevent those extremes and because of that, it has proven unusually stable and sustainable.  Unfortunately, Obama and the Progressives have de-stabilized our federal government and created huge discord among the People as they diverted the purpose of government from protecting individual rights to providing favors for special interest constituencies.  To do this, they have found it increasingly expedient to claim greater and greater powers for the president, except when the president is not in alignment with their agenda.

Obama does not care about the welfare of illegal immigrants.  It is very clear that he only cares that they become voters for the Democratic Party.  The evidence is that he even wants them to vote before they become citizens.  But, if he really cared about them or his black supporters, he would not have pursued so many anti-business, anti-job, and anti-right-to-earn-a-living policies as he has.  Both groups have suffered terribly under the massive unemployment since he occupied the White House.  Actually, everyone has lost freedoms and their standard of living has decreased under his increasingly despotic regime.

The American People to an unusual degree rose up to oppose Obama's push for more and more despotic powers and controls in the election of 2014.  Obama is choosing to ignore this by and large.  Since he will not be able to control the actions of either the House or the Senate during the remainder of his administration, he has made it perfectly clear that he intends to by-pass their powers and ignore their constitutional authority.  He is ruling the USA with decrees and proclamations now.  This is a precedent which the American People must vociferously oppose, unless they wish a future as serfs without self-ownership or other individual rights.

Do the Democrat Senators in Close Elections Disagree with Obama or Each Other?

We are hearing constantly about how Democrat Senators up for re-election and other Democrats who are trying to move to the Senate from the House are distancing themselves from Obama and Harry Reid.  Some will not say that they voted for Obama and others try to claim that they have some significant differences with him.  Every Democrat Senator up for re-election voted for the PPACA or ObamaCare.  They all claimed the government owns every American's body and mind and gets to dictate how we will care for the government's property.  Without a clear title to self-ownership, all individual rights become a sham, which is why Saul Alinsky and every serious socialist wants government control of healthcare.

One of the most notable traits of Democrats in the Senate and House is that they all vote in very nearly lock-step with their leadership, however they may talk more independently when they visit their constituents in their home state.  What goes on in Washington, DC stays in DC.

The Club for Growth keeps a scorecard on how Senators and Representatives vote on issues affecting economic freedom, taxation, and spending.  A 100% rating would be held by someone who they believe voted correctly on all the votes they score.  Some of the Senators with high scores are:

Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican, Texas, 100% in 2013, 100% lifetime
Sen. Mike Lee, Republican, Utah, 100% in 2013, 100% lifetime
Sen. Rand Paul, Republican, Kentucky, 97% in 2013, 99% lifetime

In comparison, Senator Harry Reid's lifetime score is 5% and Rep. Nancy Pelosi's lifetime score is 7%.

So, let us examine the scores of the candidates running for the competitive Senate seats who have such voting records.

Alaska, Sen. Mark Begich, Democrat, 3% in 2013, 6% lifetime

Arkansas, Sen. Mark Pryor, Democrat, 12% in 2013, 16% lifetime
                 Rep. Tom Cotton, Republican,  92% in 2013, 92% lifetime

Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall, Democrat, N/A in 2013 (skipped too many votes), 8% lifetime
                 Rep. Cory Gardner, Republican, 69% in 2013, 75% lifetime

Iowa, Rep. Bruce Braley, Democrat, 6% in 2013, 1% lifetime, worst record of current Iowa Reps.

Kansas, Sen. Pat Roberts, Republican, 84% in 2013, 74% lifetime

Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican, 87% in 2013, 85% lifetime

Louisiana, Sen. Mary Landrieu, Democrat, 8% in 2013, 15% lifetime
                  Rep. Bill Cassidy, Republican, 64% in 2013, 76% lifetime

Michigan, Rep. Gary Peters, Democrat, 3% in 2013, 8% lifetime

Minnesota, Sen. Al Franken, Democrat, N/A in 2013 (skipped too many votes), 2% lifetime

New Hampshire,  Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat, 3% in 2013, 7% lifetime
                             Sen. Scott Brown, Republican, 62% in 2010, 49% in 2011 (Massachusetts)

North Carolina, Sen. Kay Hagan, 3% in 2013, 8% lifetime

The best of any of the Democrat scores in this list is Sen. Mark Pryor's lifetime score of 16%.  The worst score of any Republican in the list is Sen. Scott Brown's 2011 score of 49%.  So the worst single year score of a Republican was still more than three times better than the best of the Democrat lifetime or 2013 scores.

It is a popular belief among libertarians that both parties are equally bad.  While the Republican Party is often disappointing, at least on issues of economic freedom there is a significant difference between it and the Democrat Party.  Senators Lee, Cruz, and Paul do make a difference and every Democrat is almost their polar opposite, right along side Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.

ObamaCare Premium Changes Vary Hugely by State - How Does this Affect Control of Senate?

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research has an interactive map of the US with the percentage change in health insurance premiums by gender and for ages 27, 40, and 64 years of age.  It is remarkable how much variance there is in health insurance costs by state, by gender, and by age.  The differences with respect to gender and age are clearly on very different bases from state to state.  In a few states, the rates actually fall.  In most states they increase substantially.  Sometimes they rise greatly for one demographic, while falling for another in the same state.  In some states the large increases are only for young men, in others for both young men and women, while in still others they rise most for young men and for older women.  The campaigns for the Senate need to be aware of where their candidate has advantages or disadvantages with various demographics due to the health insurance premium changes.

I have prepared a table with the Senate races of 2014 and the ObamaCare health insurance premium changes below.  Those increases which exceed 10.0% should allow Republicans to pick up votes, provided their campaigns make sure that the demographic suffering those large increases know what is hitting them.  Males 27 years old in Arkansas, where Democrat Mark Pryor is vulnerable, are facing premium increases of 250.1%, while women of that age will see increases of 110.0%.  Men aged 40 will pay 186.5% more, while women aged 64 will pay 105.4% more.  With increases as large as these, it is very hard to imagine that an informed electorate will view the Democrat Pryor as less than a monster.  But this message has to be driven home by Tom Cotton.  There are very big increases in many states, which the Republican candidate should take great care to inform the voters about.

All increases greater than 10% are in red in the table since they favor the Republicans.  Those of 5% or less are in blue since they favor the Democrats.  The party favored is not a prediction of the election outcome.  It is only to indicate which party has the advantage based on the ObamaCare premium changes.

Of course other factors are also significant, but the Republicans in many cases should and must make a big deal out of the increases in many of the contested states if they are to take over control of the Senate.  The now Democrat Senate seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, and South Dakota all have very large ObamaCare premium increases which a decent Republican candidate should be able to use to win those 7 Senate seats.  In Kentucky the increases are also large, which should protect the Republican Senate seat there.  Very large increases in Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Oregon should make it possible for a wily Republican candidate to become competitive even in those states where the Senate seat is now a Democrat seat.  Even in those states with no overall advantage to one party, a successful effort to inform a demographic hurt by premium cost increases will be a useful tool for a Republican candidate.

Proposed Constitutional Amendments

I am proposing the following constitutional amendments.  Many would not have been necessary had Americans understood and lived by the principles of the Framers of the Constitution.  Given decades of ignoring the Constitution and a huge excess of laws, regulations, and government spending, I think these amendments would go far in correcting the many problems we have with excessive, tyrannical government.

Good law requires that the welfare of every individual is increased by the law.  For this reason, it a super-majority of individuals do not approve of a law or a regulation, it should not become law or it presently law, it should be repealed.

My amendments are:

1) Amend the 16th Amendment authorizing an income tax to state that one and only one marginal tax rate will be applied to incomes equal to 75 percent of the median taxable household income and all higher taxable household incomes.

2) Repeal the 17th Amendment requiring the popular election of Senators.  Return to the original election of Senators by state legislatures.

3) Every adult owns his own mind, body, and labor and may use them, maintain them, and dispose of them as he pleases, so long as he does not initiate the use of force upon others.    Individuals have the right to protect their minds, body, and labor from violence.

4) Every adult has the right to the results of his labor or thought and to his property.  The goods he has made, the land he has improved, and the ideas he has originated and put into the form of a product or process are to be protected from theft by government.  No government taking of property is permitted except with just and reasonable compensation or because that property was used by the owner in the commission of a crime as determined by trial.  No government taking of property not used in the commission of a crime is allowed except for necessary and proper government use.

5) Every adult individual has the right to associate with others for the purposes of his choosing in voluntary relationships, contracts, and trading.  Adult individuals have the right to exercise their own judgment in their associations, contracts, and relationships with others.  Government will protect individuals from violence and fraud which has actually happened or is in the process of happening, but will not limit the freedom of association out of fear of potential future violence or fraud.

6) The government does not control or manipulate the economy or trade and commerce.  It provides a constant value supply of currency for government functions and general use, but does not prevent the circulation of other distinctive currencies.  It forbids state and local governments from interfering with trade, commerce, and travel by the People across state boundaries.

7) Individuals have the right of privacy so long as they are not engaged in acts of violence or fraud.  Information not available to the general public will not be collected and saved about any individual without a court order attesting to the reasonable likelihood that the individual is engaged in violent acts or fraud.  No means of obtaining private information on individuals will be used without due process.

8) Any law or act of Congress may be repealed by a vote of 40% or more of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  The President may not veto such repeal votes.

9) Any law or act of Congress requires a vote of 60% or more of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  The President may use his veto power on such acts of Congress.  The same 60% approval is required for all Executive Branch appointments reviewed and consented upon by the Senate.

10) Any member of Congress who has voted for a bill must attest in a written document that the member has read the bill and believes it to be in the interest of the general welfare, necessary, proper, and constitutional.

11) Any federal law may be repealed by act of 40% or more of the state legislatures.

12) Any regulatory rule by an executive branch agency of the federal government may be nullified by votes of 40% or more of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by 40% or more of the state legislatures.  Any new regulation produced by a government agency which will impose costs of $25 million or more must be specifically approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate with votes of 60% or more.  Any legislative attempt by Congress members to review any regulatory ruling which has the support of 40% of the members of that house cannot be kept from a vote in that house.

13) No federal law shall exempt members of Congress or federal government employees from its application to them, except by an explicit and recorded vote in favor of such an exemption by at least 80% of the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

14) No member of Congress shall serve in Congress more than 12 years continuously and no more than 20 years in a lifetime.  After 12 years of service, there must be at least a ten-year period of non-service in the federal government before further service commences.

15) Senators and their staffs will be paid by the state they represent.  Senators will not receive any payment or benefits for services, nor will they receive any payments or benefits after the termination of their service, from the federal government.

16) Members of the House of Representatives will not receive any payments or benefits from the federal government after the end of their service in the House of Representatives.

17) Authorizations for the existence of each and every executive branch agency or department must be renewed by an individual, specific act of Congress every four years for that executive entity.  The budget for every such agency or department must be individually reviewed and approved at the same time.  Congress will also at that time review and evaluate the actions of that agency or department over the last four years and make that review available to the public, with only national security exceptions upon the vote of 60% or more of the members of each house of Congress.  If Congress does not authorize the agency or department and its budget individually on this four-year cycle, all operations of that agency or department must cease at that time.

18) No appropriations may be made by any Congress which are binding upon any future Congress.

19) Decisions of the federal courts may be overturned by a vote in both houses of Congress of two-thirds of the members of each house.  Federal court decisions may be overruled by two-thirds of the states by acts of their legislatures.

20) Annual federal government spending may not exceed a fixed percentage of the annual national gross domestic product except in times of declared war and then by no more than half the annual cost of that war unless both houses of Congress approve such additional spending with a vote of 80% or more.  The upper limit fixed percentage will initially be 18% and will be decreased by 0.5% with each new Congress, until it reaches 8% of gross domestic product. 

21)  Annual federal government spending may not exceed government revenues by more than 3% except in times of declared war and then by no more than half the annual cost of that war unless both houses of Congress approve such additional spending with a vote of 80% or more.

22) Total government debt may not exceed the annual national gross domestic product except by the vote of 80% or more of the members of each house of Congress.

23) No one may vote in a federal election unless they present a valid picture identification at the time of voting.  Only federal employees on duty outside the United States of America may cast their vote more than 2 weeks prior to the day of the election.  They may not vote earlier than 6 weeks prior to the election.

I plan to revisit these proposed amendments to discuss them in more detail.  I am sure that some of them need to be tuned up and I will welcome comments with suggestions on how to do that.

Why the Democrat Senate Will Not End the Slimdown of the Government

Why is the slight slimdown of the government, wrongly called a shutdown, continuing?

First the Republican House authorized all spending except that small part of the funding for ObamaCare which is in the so-called discretionary budget.

Then the Republican House authorized all spending, but required a one-year delay of the ObamaCare fiasco.

Then the Republican House authorized all spending including that for ObamaCare but with the proviso that the House and Senate and their staffs had be subject to ObamaCare just as everyone else was.

So, as Ann Coulter has pointed out, the only reason that the government slimdown, incorrectly called the government shutdown, continues is because the Democrat Senate recognizes ObamaCare to be so awful that they refuse to obey the law they passed over everyone else' objections.  Obama gave them an exemption, which is surely illegal anyway.  We are to be subjected to rationing, high expense requirements, and its capricious will and they are not.  After all, the Rulers of the People must have their special privileges.  They deserve them because they are the Progressive Elitists caring for we the mere sheep.

You can see why they hate the Constitution so much.  That document is the People's mandate to the government and makes it clear that government is to serve the People.  The People do not serve the Government or its politicians and bureaucrats.  But, this mandate of government service is inherently unsustainable with a big government model.  That model insists upon rulers with prerogatives and peons who do as they are told.

13% Spending Reduction Is Called a Shutdown?

The media, even Fox News, is generally calling the 13% reduction in government spending a SHUTDOWN of the GOVERNMENT.  This is surely an exaggeration.  Perhaps in a society whose government-run and funded schools have long exaggerated student achievement with grade inflation, this is to be expected.  A society that has long inflated the ability of government to solve problems and do it much better than individuals can by managing their own lives, is bound to be terrified by a mere 13% reduction in government spending.

Of course life continues despite the Obama Regime paying federal employees to put up barriers and to wire those barriers together to keep veterans from approaching the WWII Memorial, which is not even attended by federal employees in routine times.  It is amazing to watch the pathetic efforts of this administration to convince the People that they should be terrified by a 13% reduction in government spending and the subsequent furloughs of some non-essential government employees.  Except, of course, those employees so essential for barricading the various facilities such as the WWII Memorial and the Grand Canyon which do not even require the attendance of federal employees.

It is even more pathetic that many people buy into these scare tactics by the power lusters who rule the USA.

The failure of the Senate to agree to a spending authorization coming from the House of Representatives to fund so-called discretionary funding, means only that the small part of government activities which are both discretionary and designated non-essential by the administration will not be available.  Discretionary spending is only 20% of actual government spending!  Weirdly, the constitutionally required provision of defense is classified by our insane government as discretionary spending, while all of the transfers of money from taxpayers to individuals is called mandatory spending.  Since defense spending and other security spending and Veterans Affairs spending are hardly being reduced despite the Democrat refusal to authorize it and the willingness of the House to so authorize it, the actual spending reduction is only about 13%.

Meanwhile, despite all of the scare mongering, the government continues to spend $2.5 trillion in the new fiscal year on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability payments, unemployment insurance, and the interest on the national debt.

The government is not shutdown.  The monster has not even been slimmed down.  This is like making the monster wait at most 45 minutes longer before dinner is served.  It is no big deal however angry the monster may get about not being able to fully indulge its all-devouring appetite.

It is the Job of the House of Representatives to Stop Excessive Spending and ObamaCare

The federal government is wholeheartedly engaged in excessive spending.  Most of its spending is for purposes that are not consistent with the powers of the federal government as enumerated in the Constitution.  It is the responsibility of the House of Representatives to stop such spending.  One of the most egregious examples of the government violating its enumerated power limits is ObamaCare.

The federal government has no enumerated power to either provide healthcare to Americans or to impose limits on the healthcare they are allowed to choose for themselves.  This is so clear that the the only way that it could survive review by the big government Supreme Court was by five Justices pretending it was justified as a tax, despite the claims at the time of passage by its supporters that it was not a tax.  As I have argued before, such passage of legislation on a fraudulent basis should be sufficient by itself to have a law nullified by the Court.

But most fundamentally, ObamaCare's primary premise is that the government owns every individual's body and mind.  If it did not, it would not be in a position to dictate how individuals care for their bodies and minds.  There are almost innumerable other grounds for rejecting ObamaCare as a tyrannical violation of individual rights as well.

The House of Representatives is required by the Constitution to originate tax or revenue bills.  The passage of ObamaCare itself made a mockery of this requirement since that bill really originated in the Senate.  This was a severe violation of the separation of powers.  The House was chosen as the critical point of revenue bill origination because the power to tax was much feared by the Framers of the Constitution and they knew it to be feared by the People.  They wanted the House which had the most rapid turn-over and could be most quickly punished for its misdeeds by the People to play the primary role in taxation.

Because the House must originate taxation bills, it should be especially concerned to limit spending.  This is the only way, aside from running up the nation's debts, that it can avoid taxing the People at levels which will harm them and slow the growth of the economy.  To avoid the onus of heavy taxation or irresponsible debt, the House must control spending.  ObamaCare is a huge spending bill and it is also a bill which is substantially reducing the strength of the economy and increasing the burden of spending on households, thereby reducing their ability to pay taxes.

Yet despite these natural functions and responsibilities of the House of Representatives, we are being told by people such as Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove, and Obama supporters that should the House of Representatives defund the ObamaCare train-wreck and should the Senate and the President then refuse to approve the spending bill sent to them by the House, that it is the House that has shutdown the government.  According to them, it is the responsibility of the House to bow to the Senate and the President on spending and presumably on taxation no matter how irresponsible their spending is.  These opponents of defunding ObamaCare are actually depriving the House of Representatives of its constitutional mandate to be the close guardian of government taxation and spending in the interests of the People.

ObamaCare supporters imply that a bill passed by some previous Congress is binding on future Congresses and all of its spending is also binding on those future Congresses until such time as a future Congress may repeal the entire law.  This is nonsense.  The American Principle is that government should be minimal and devoted to the protection of individual rights.  If the house of Congress closest to the People, the House of Representatives, is taken out of the control of the Democrats and comes to be controlled by the Republicans in large part due to the People's anger over the passage of ObamaCare, it is the responsibility of that House to limit the damage of the rights-violating, spendthrift, and health care degrading bill.  This is the process intended by the Framers of the Constitution.  The natural and responsible way to do this is by reducing its funding or better yet by defunding it altogether.

The Senate and Obama are simply obstructionist when they require that every program they want be fully funded or they will shut down the entire government.  They are failing their responsibility to provide those few functions of the government which are actually constitutionally required of it.  ObamaCare is not actually even allowed by the Constitution, let alone required by it.  Yet the media will insist that the House must bow to the power of the Senate and Obama to spend as much as they wish, no matter what the cost is to the People.

It is time for the People to insist upon the responsible use of their hard-earned tax dollars and upon limits on future debt increases.  It is also time for them to insist in no uncertain terms that ObamaCare is damaging their ability to manage their own medical care and hence is a fundamental violation of the very right to live and of the right to pursue their own happiness.

The Lawless NRLB and Obama

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia just decided that Obama's three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board on 4 January 2012 were illegal because they were not approved by the Senate which had started a new session on 3 January.  Obama had claimed he was making recess appointments, which the Constitution allows when the Senate is in recess.  Obama claimed the right to determine when the Senate was in recess or not, despite the fact that Congress traditionally declares itself to be in session or recess.

In 2010, the Supreme Court had ruled that the NLRB could not make case rulings or undertake rule-making activities without a quorum of three of its usual five members.  One of the illegally added members, the sole Republican, had resigned long ago because of the very one-sided pro-Labor Union decisions against business owners.  One of these cases was the Boeing ruling in which they were trying to set up a production facility in South Carolina, a Right to Work state.  The NRLB had ruled that Boeing had to do more of that work than it wanted to in Washington, a Union Shop state.  With two of the remaining four NRLB members illegally appointed, hundreds of rulings should be considered to have no authority.  The NRLB Chairman, Mark Gaston Pearce, claims that only the single case actually decided upon by the Appeals Court is tossed out and that all of its other decisions remain in force despite a lack of quorum.  In addition, he claims that the NRLB will continue making rulings and rules with its current members, including those just ruled to have been illegally and unconstitutionally appointed by Obama in direct violation of the 2010 Supreme Court decision.

The initial appointments were a lawless act by Obama.  The determination of the NRLB, with only pro-labor union members, to continue with rulings and rule making without a legal quorum is stunningly lawless.  The fact that Obama has not ordered the NRLB to stop proceeding without a quorum is a renewal of his claim to be above the law.  Note that the claim that a violation of the quorum requirement only overturns one out of hundreds of rulings is absurd.  This means that a lawless federal agency can continue to abuse the People in every case in which the People do not have the money and the time to pursue their own case in the federal courts to at least the Appeals Court level!  It makes a mockery of justice and of individual rights and clearly mocks the idea that government is a servant of the people.

Obama also made a similar "recess appointment" of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, which was set up by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.  That bill was really an attempt to divert public attention from the fact that the 2008 financial crisis was primarily caused by the government.  Obama has just asked to have Cordray appointed again to be director of this CFPB.  Its activities under this illegally appointed director have also been challenged in the courts.

Obama's failure to order the Justice Department to produce the public documents they are required to produce on the Fast and Furious investigation and to require the EPA to produce documents it was required to produce on Lisa Jackson's hidden e-mail activities are other examples of his common lawlessness.  His providing billions of dollars of funding to his campaign contributors who set up flimsy green energy companies, while not providing federal funding to more sound green energy companies is another instance of his lawlessness.  Then what could beat his awarding exemptions from the requirements of ObamaCare to his union friends and to his contributors and those of other top Democrat leaders, when no such exemptions are a part of the law?  He has made similar unauthorized exemptions to the law through the programs of the Department of Education.

Obama is a very shady, lawless man and he likes to gather similar people around himself and put them in positions of power.  American federal government institutions have been rapidly degraded by this man and his regime of outlaws.

Creating a Republican Senate

As a libertarian, albeit one often in disagreement with the defense policy of the Libertarian Party, I am well aware that the best check on the growth of the federal government has been to have a Republican President and a Congress with one house in the control of each party.  In the upcoming election, the House of Representatives will remain solidly Republican.  My prediction that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will replace Obama and Biden because the American people would finally get over the celebrity status of Obama and see him and Biden as the empty socialist suits they are is finally clearly happening.  In ordinary times, it might be best that the Democrats retain a narrow control of the Senate, but this is not an ordinary time.

It is absolutely essential that ObamaCare, really the ObamaUncaringTax, be repealed.  It is also very important to repeal the Dodd-Frank Too-Big-to-Fail Crony Mercantilism Act.  It is essential to reform and control the EPA and finally kill the myth of catastrophic man-made global warming.  We must free business to develop our huge oil and gas deposits and to make use of our rich supply of coal.  We must end the waste of taxpayer dollars fed into uneconomic green energy companies with no viable markets and the electricity mandates for green energy that are driving up our electric bills and making our electricity supply unreliable.  We also need to push back the government employee unions, the abuses of the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NRLB), and try to provide national Right to Work legislation.  We need the opportunity to replace one or more of the five Supreme Court Justices who so falsely read the Constitution that they could vote to uphold ObamaCare.  To accomplish this critical mission, we have to have a Republican Senate for the next two years.

According to the present Rasmussen Reports on the state of the Senate contests in the November 2012 election, the situation is:

Held by Republicans, not up for re-election, 37
Safe Republicans, up for election, 6
Leaning Republican, 4
Toss-ups, 5
Leaning Democrat, 6
Safe Democrat, 12
Held by Democrats, not up for re-election, 30

If all of the safe and leaning Senate races go as Rasmussen predicts, then the Republicans will have 47 seats and the Democrats will have 48 seats in the Senate.  Consequently, the Republicans have to win 3 of the 5 toss-up seats for there to be a 50-50 split of the Senate, with tie votes to be decided by Paul Ryan.  Of course, it would be much better for the Republicans to win at least four of the five toss-up races.  These toss-up races are:

Massachusetts, Scott Brown (R) v. Elizabeth Warren (D)

Montana, Denny Rehberg (R) v. Jon Tester (D)

Ohio, Josh Mandel (R) v. Sherrod Brown (D)

Virginia, George Allen (R) v. Tim Kaine (D)

Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson (R) v. Tammy Baldwin (D)

Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D) have generally been running a very close race for the Massachusetts Senate seat for a long time.  She is an ultra-socialist who likes to say to small business owners that they did not create and build their businesses, the government and maybe the community did.  She is mad to redistribute as much income as she can.  Of course, she is determined to keep Americans from developing the new riches in oil and gas deposits that fracking has opened up.  She is also aligned with Obama in determination to kill the coal industry.  If she wins, she will be developed as a likely 2016 presidential candidate.  So, though Scott Brown is a moderate Republican who is often a friend of big government, she is a much greater danger as a friend of huge government.  This is an election contest which the Republicans can win.  Please support Scott Brown with a strategic contribution.

The Montana Senate seat race has incumbent Jon Tester (D) against Denny Rehberg (R), with the momentum in Rehberg's favor.  Rehberg is a rancher and small businessman who has long served as Montana's soul member of the House of Representatives.  In the 2011 Club for Growth Ratings of the financial responsibility of House members, Rehberg's rating was a rather low one for Republicans at 58%.  However, almost no Democrats scored more than 20% and not one came close to getting a 58% rating.  In the Club for Growth Senate Ratings, Jon Tester had a 17% score.  Denny Rehberg would be a decided upgrade and he is needed badly to repeal ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and to reset the EPA and the NRLB.  A donation to his campaign would be a wise and strategic investment in America.

The Ohio Senate race features Josh Mandel (R)  running against incumbent Sherrod Brown (D), who is commonly called the most socialist Senator, now that Obama is no longer the most socialist Senator.  Supporting Josh Mandel has the effect of also adding to ads and get out the vote efforts that will help push Romney over the top in this critical swing state.  Josh is all about good government.  Please read his bio, which is a hard-nosed description of what he has done as Treasurer of the state of Ohio and when he was in the Ohio House.  This is not a fluff politician.  He won his election as Treasurer as the biggest vote-getter in the state, winning 80 of 88 counties in Ohio.  Standard and Poor rated his $4 billion government investment fund with its highest rating.  His General Obligation bond fund has Fitch's highest rating.  He expanded the Ohio liquidity portfolio by $2.3 billion since he took office.  Josh is pro-free enterprise and a strong supporter of the Constitution.  He has the strongest possible endorsement from the Club for Growth.  Josh Mandel will be a super good Senator.  In comparison, Sherrod Brown had a 2011 Senate Club for Growth rating of 0%.  Donating to the campaign of Josh Mandel is a super strategic investment in good government!

In Virginia, George Allen (R) is pitted against Tim Kaine (D), a former spend-thrift governor who left the finances of the state of Virginia in disarray.  Virginia is a swing state, so supporting Allen will tend to also support Romney.  George Allen is not the strongest Republican candidate, but the election is starting to swing in his direction.  The people of the state of Virginia are beginning to wake up to the sad state of the Obama economy, though their very highly populated northern Virginia Washington suburbs have benefited greatly from the mindless federal government spending under Obama.  They are beginning to also learn that the Defense sequestration of budgeted funds to run DoD and the armed forces looming to take effect in January is going to shatter defense contractors and leave DoD employees without pay for about two months.  Government spending reductions by all other government agencies are being spread out over a period of time to minimize the impact of the upcoming spending reductions, but DoD has been told by Obama that it has to continue spending its allocations of funding at the originally specified rate and take all of the hit in January on the sequestration.  In other words, DoD is to take a nose-dive over the cliff onto the rocks below at Obama's command.  Since deployed armed forces cannot be stood down, this means that incredibly drastic cuts in money going out to contractors and to civilian DoD employees has to occur.  This will shatter the economies of Northern Virginia, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Hampton Roads.  In addition, Obama has ordered the defense contractors, who are required by law to notify employees 60 days prior to termination, to ignore the law.  The termination notices are due the week before the election.  The government has promised to pay the fines that the companies will be subjected to for ignoring the law.  This is completely lawless behavior by Obama to help his re-election chances.  Tim Kaine is very supportive of Obama in this dastardly and destructive plan.  George Allen, for all his limitations, will be much the better Senator and he is critically needed to repeal ObamaCare and the other accumulated mischief of the Democrats over the four years from 2007 through 2010 when they controlled both houses of Congress.  Again, please make a strategic donation to George Allen.

The Wisconsin Senate race features Tommy Thompson (R) against Tammy Baldwin (D).  Tommy Thompson was a former Wisconsin governor and cut income and property taxes and eliminated the inheritance tax.  Tammy Baldwin is a Madison liberal who serves in the House of Representatives.  Her Club for Growth rating in 2011 was a miserable 9%.  Giving Tammy Baldwin one of the contested Senate seats would be an unmitigated disaster.  Making a donation to Tommy Thompson is another strategic investment toward turning the ship of state enough to avoid an imminent crash upon the socialist rocks.

Despite my materials analysis laboratory small business being in the fourth year of greatly reduced company earnings due to the never-ending Great Socialist Recession, I have just made donations to each of the Republican Senate candidates above in these toss-up races.  I hope that the recent rise in the polls of Romney and the rise of a number of these Republican candidates in their states, will result in the combination of Senate control with a Republican President needed to undo most of the damage done by a Democrat Congress for four years, followed by a Democrat Senate with four years of a Democrat President.  May the healing begin.

Obama: I will go through the budget line by line

Do you recall when Obama said he would go through the budget line by line and cut wasteful programs?  Do we call this a failed promise?

On the one hand, perhaps he could not keep this promise because his Democrat Senate has never produced the budget they are required by law to produce.  Not one single budget in the entire Obama presidency has ever emerged from the Democrat Senate.

On the other hand, what kind of President cannot show even enough leadership to get the Senate well-controlled by his own party to produce a budget as required by law.  Recall that the President is supposed to execute the laws, which among other things means he should surely be putting unrelenting pressure on the Senate to produce a budget.  Besides, he should be eager to keep his promise to go through that budget line by line to eliminate wasteful spending.  But not this man.  He is more a celebrity than a leader.

Obama Cruelly Threatens to Withhold Social Security Payments

There is no cruelty to match that of a frustrated socialist yearning for control over the People.  Obama has told tens of millions of very frightened seniors on Social Security that if the Republicans do not cave-in and give him a blank check to continue spending massive amounts of taxpayer money and then add much more to the national debt, he may not send out Social Security checks in August.  This is probably an empty threat, but that does not diminish the brutality of it.

By any rational analysis, it is also an absurd threat.  In 2010, Social Security income was $677.1 billion according to the Social Security Fund Trustee's Report.  Social Security outgo was $584.9 billion, which means it had a surplus of income over outgo of $92.2 billion.  That surplus was used to help fund the massive deficit spending on all other government programs, as the Social Security surplus has been used for decades.  Because of this, of the $677.1 billion of income, $108.2 billion is interest on government bonds the Social Security Trust Fund bought to help the government finance its deficits in the general fund for decades.

The Obama administration wants to keep spending money it does not have on such things as

• the expenses of setting up the bureaucracy and rules for ObamaCare, 
• setting up the bureaucracy and rules for the Dodd-Frank finance "reform", 
• paying ethanol, windmill, electric vehicle, solar, and other "green" energy subsidies, 
• paying higher electric and gasoline bills because it is foolishly convinced by its own propaganda that man is causing a catastrophic global warming, 
• paying hordes of scientists to prove this false catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis,
• persecuting business with reinvigorated threats of anti-trust actions, 
• putting more people on Medicaid and Medicare,
• paying bloated union wages on federal contracts,
• using the Labor Department to provide site requirements to companies for their expansions while considering only Union Shop states,
• using the Justice Department to promulgate injustice against the states and the people and discrimination against those not in government-favored minorities,
• funding universities that long ago became bloated with government money and stopped educating students,
• promulgating tens of thousands of new regulations which serve no useful purpose but to increase the power of bureaucrats over the People who do not have the time to read the regulations,
• and providing funding to the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and many other international institutions that do not like the U.S. and hate our Constitution and concept of individual rights.

Apparently, Obama is now telling us that he is so unwilling to stop such foolish spending that he is going to transfer more than the surplus in the Social Security Fund income out to cover these other expenses.  It is his decision to do this which will prevent him from sending out the August Social Security checks!  Actually, I do not think the law will even allow him to do this, but then he is accustomed to ignoring the law, so that does not mean he will not do it.

Let us suppose that he chooses not to use the federal income from income taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, tariffs, gasoline and cigarette taxes, and many other taxes to pay the $108 billion owed the Social Security Fund in current interest payments.  In other words, he might make payments on interest to the Chinese and to investors, but not to the Social Security Fund.  The Social Security surplus of $92.2 billion would then be turned into a small deficit of $16.0 billion.  If he then did not send out that $16.0 billion, but did send out the remaining $568.9 billion of checks, this would mean that 2.8% of Social Security payments would not go out.  But, there is no way that $16 billion shortfall due to the default on the interest payment would not be made up by any President not grasping at power as a lust-driven would-be dictator.

Obama's threat really has struck terror into the hearts of many Americans on Social Security.  This was a totally irresponsible and pernicious act on the part of this cruel and evil man.  It seems to take such people to be the strongest advocates of socialism.  Despite its pretenses of caring for the needs of some of the People, those who pursue this so-called ideal as a career are never actually caring people.

This entire fuss about the debt ceiling is due to the failure of the Senate to produce a budget for over two years.  The House would not produce one either until the Republicans took it over.  But, the Senate and the President have ignored their budget.  Since no agreement has been reached on what the government will spend in 2012, there is no basis for an agreement on what spending cuts will be made to reduce the deficit to some manageable proportion of our GDP.  All we know is that the record over the last three years was for the government to spend an average of more than 24% of GDP, while before 2008, the spending was below 20% of GDP.  Obama and the Democrats appear to want to continue spending much more than 20% of GDP even though that will mean huge on-going deficits.  Apparently, they intend that this funding will be the result of many more continuing resolutions on spending, so they will never have to recognize that the welfare and crony mercantilist government they want is not sustainable.  They can ignore the failure of big government socialism as long as they do not have to produce an actual budget.  Unless, of course, we collapse as Greece is and Italy may be on the verge of doing.

A 4% of GDP reduction in government spending is more than a $600 billion reduction per year.  It is clearly easy for the government to function at its 2007 spending levels, so there is no excuse for spending cuts that are not in the $600 to $700 billion per year range relative to the spending of this year and the two previous years.

Deficit Pushes Senate to End Ethanol Thieving of Taxpayers

The monumental deficit has pushed the Senate to repeal the $5 billion of tax credits and subsidies per year for corn growers, ethanol refiners, and gasoline blenders.  A tariff of $0.54 per gallon on imported ethanol would also be eliminated.  38 Democrats, 2 independents, and 33 Republicans voted to end these pointless subsidies which had wrongly been sold as a path to cleaner skies, energy independence, and a means to reduce CO2 emissions.  I have long pointed at these subsidies, along with the mandate for ethanol production still required by the insane Renewable Fuel Standard law, as a clear sign of Congressional and Presidential perfidy and a determination to rob the taxpayers blind for naked political power.  For more than 30 years, the attitude was clearly let the General Welfare be damned as the votes of special interest groups were bought. 

The repeal bill was sponsored by Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Dianne Feinstein of California.  14 Republicans and 13 Democrats opposed the 73-27 vote repeal action.  Obama and his Sec. of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, still oppose the end of these deleterious subsidies, claiming they are needed to reach Obama's imagined plan to reduce oil imports by one-third by 2025. The House has not yet voted on ending these ethanol subsidies and will reject the Senate bill because tax bills are constitutionally required to be initiated in the House of Representatives.  Fortunately, the ethanol subsidies will expire at the end of this year unless the House and Senate renew them.  This Senate vote makes it unlikely that it will renew this special interest travesty.

The ethanol subsidy is a $0.45/gallon of ethanol tax credit given against the excise tax of $0.184 per gallon of gasoline paid by gasoline blenders such as Valero and Marathon Oil.  This allows the blenders to pay more for corn ethanol made by such companies as Archer-Daniels-Midland and to compete for corn used as food or as livestock feed. 

The overall effect of a repeal of the subsidies upon food and feed prices will be minimal, since the mandate for ethanol use in fuel by the Renewable Fuel Standard law passed by the last Democrat Congress requires 12.6 billion gallons of ethanol use in fuel this year and up to 15 billion gallons in 2015.  By 2022, 36 billion gallons of so-called renewable fuel must be blended into gasoline, though only 15 billion gallons of that can be conventional corn-derived ethanol.  The remainder is somehow magically supposed to come from other low-carbon biofuels, such as switchgrass, which as yet produce a negligible 3 to 4 million gallons a year of ethanol or fuel in expensive pilot plants.

This mandate and the subsidies have caused the price of corn to be over $7/bushel all spring, which is twice the price of a year ago.  The subsidy and the high price of oil has caused blenders to use a billion gallons more corn ethanol than they were required to use.  This put still more pressure on corn, corn products, and meat products.  On Friday, buyers bought corn in the Toledo, Ohio grain trading hub at $7.35 per bushel.  A desperate turkey grower even offered $8.37/bushel of corn and got few offers of corn at that price.  Corn supplies are expected to be at a 15-year low in late August.  This may force some makers of corn-derived ethanol to shut down their plants.

The impact of ethanol from corn on the market and on some states can be judged from the graphic below from the 17 June Wall Street Journal:

Note that the food, seed, and industrial use of corn has grown very little since 2000 and the use in feed and residual use has shrunk since 2005 due to the increased cost of corn brought on by the huge increase in ethanol production since about 1998.  Iowa, the first major event for presidential candidates produces 21% of all U.S. ethanol, which is more than twice the production of any other state.  It is no accident that so much of the Iowa corn production is bought for the purpose of ethanol production.  The subsidy takers know how to put the political pressure on.  About 5 billion bushels of corn, or 40% of all corn production, is used to produce ethanol.  The great growth in corn production that has resulted has displaced other food crops and led to price increases severe enough that the World Bank and other international institutions have called for an end to corn ethanol subsidies.

The end effect due to the continuing ethanol in fuel mandate will be continued very high corn prices.  The income tax taxpayer will be relieved of a burden, but that burden will be shifted to the consumer.  It is better that the burden be on the consumer, which is a much broader base of people than the minority who pay federal income taxes.  It would be better yet if we removed the renewable fuel mandate and simply allowed the free market to figure out which fuel resources will be used.  Obama's centrally-planned economy will be a disaster just as all prior central planning has historically led to catastrophe.  The last place a catastrophe will come from will be man-made global warming due to CO2 emissions.