The Startling Inconsistency of Americans in Believing that Democrats are More Ethical in Government

Chuck Roger at Clear Thinking notes the weird inconsistency of Americans in believing that Republicans would perform a host of governmental policy tasks better than Democrats, except that Democrats would be more ethical.  It is mighty strange that the Democrats' linkages with Labor, Trial Lawyers, Teachers Unions, horrible inner city schools or holding pens, an affinity for unkept promises, an equal affinity for baldfaced lies ("You can keep your doctor and your medical insurance, if you want to."), the unethical spending of our children's and grandchildren's income forever, the call for 2 years of slavery, the medical bureaucratic death panels, the advocacy of Ginny Mae and Freddy Mac, Congressional leadership tax evasion, some highly political Wall Street firms, and a host of heavily subsidized alternative energy companies have not resulted in more ethical condemnation.

The process of waking up can take a remarkable long time for the People.  But, they have made big strides toward understanding compared to the sad lack of it in recent history.  Perhaps, given time, they will come around on government ethics as well.  I hope the Republicans will show they can refrain from small-minded mark-ups as their strength in Congress is increased by the 2010 election.  For those of them who talk up "family values", perhaps they could try hard to live up to their own professed values.  I would prefer they concentrate on limiting the power of government and allow individual families to enjoy their own idea of "family values," but they should at least not be hypocrites.

Obama Gives EPA Mission to Limit Plant Growth

On 30 September 2009, the Obama administration ordered that action be taken to impede and block large sources of highly beneficial plant food. Increased atmospheric CO2 is known scientifically to contribute very little to greenhouse gas warming, but it contributes greatly to plant growth, which in a cooling, highly populated Earth, is critical for our future food supply, as well as that for animals. CO2 increases also allow plants to grow better with less water, which in many areas of the world is in short supply for agricultural purposes. Increased atmospheric CO2 also helps to reduce the size of desert areas by encouraging the growth of cooling and earth-holding plants in arid regions. Increased plant growth also results in higher concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is beneficial to humans and animals.

Yet, despite the wonderful benefits of increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the EPA is moving under the foolhardy Obama's pressure to regulate green house gas (GHG) emissions from vehicles under the Clean Air Act by calling them pollutants. The finding that these so-called GHGs are pollutants will result in regulations in a few weeks for tailpipe emissions. The GHG classification as pollutants will require the regulation of stationary emitters, such as coal-fired power plants, gas-fired power plants, oil refineries, and manufacturing facilities. But, the Clean Air Act establishes the quantity of pollutants to be regulated as from 100 to 250 tons per year, depending on how bad the effects of the pollutant. The GHGs to be regulated now are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. If the EPA were to regulate all sites producing total emissions of the sum of these gases of 100 to 250 tons per year, then it has been estimated that the EPA would have to regulate 90% of the American economy. This is not politically feasible, so they are proposing to make the regulation limit 25,000 tons even though there is no provision for such a limit in the Clean Air Act. In other words, this limit actually violates the Clean Air Act.

Facilities emitting more than 25,000 tons per year of the GHGs are responsible for 70% of the GHG emissions, the greatest by far of which is the very wonderful CO2. A coal-fired power plant commonly emits millions of tons of CO2 per year. 250 tons of CO2 would be emitted by a mere 131 railroad cars of coal, or enough for the energy use of 2,200 homes in a year. Under the rule proposed on Wednesday, the EPA will be empowered to monitor 14,000 power plants, oil refineries, and large manufacturing and mining operations.

But, there is an interesting wrinkle here. The EPA has decided to use a provision of the Clean Air Act called the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD), which is a permitting program. Already existing facilities will not be prevented from operating and neither will new ones, provided that new or modernized facilities can get a permit to operate from their respective state agencies. Old facilities, which are often the larger emitters due to less advanced technology use, are grandfathered in. These agencies will have to require them to use the best available control technology, which will be determined on a case by case basis. The PSD provision was set up to protect wilderness areas, national monuments, and seashores. The permitting process now commonly takes 12 to 18 months on this limited basis. These state agencies will have to decide on huge additional numbers of permit cases, which will cause much longer delays.

The EPA will have to specify source categories, develop guidance to help the state agencies understand the GHG emissions for the chosen source types, develop methods to measure and monitor emissions, and develop and understand methods to control CO2 emissions. Once an emission source is classified as a major source of one pollutant, the Clean Air Act provides for a much tighter scrutiny of all emissions from the source.

Now, you may wonder why the Obama administration is choosing this route into a deep and tortuous quagmire to address a non-problem, at least with respect to CO2 emissions. There seem to be many reasons:

• Obama wants to go to the Copenhagen for the U.N. talks on CO2 emissions controls and look like a world leader on the issue.
• The Senate bill introduced by Senators Kerry and Boxer on 30 September may not be passed.
• The EPA regulation of CO2 as a pollutant, may force companies to line up behind a carbon cap and trade bill as the lesser evil.

I am not, however, at all certain of the last bullet. We have to remember that Obama, his cadre, and the Democrat Congressional leadership all think like shakedown artists. This permitting program on a case by case basis is heaven for shakedown purposes. Think of the consequences for them:

• The EPA bureaucracy will grow 100-fold to help the many state agencies perform their jobs on a case by case basis.
• The state agencies will grow by a factor of 10 and provide local politicians with huge numbers of new patronage jobs.
• The regulated facilities will have to spend huge sums on technologies chosen as winners by the many different state agencies, creating many companies dependent for their business upon these state agencies.
• The regulated facilities will have to hire many, many environmental "experts", most of whom are Democrat allies.
• The regulated facilities will hire flocks and flocks of trial lawyers and other lawyers, most of whom are Democrats.
• The permitting process will be very expensive and can be delayed almost indefinitely, creating such uncertainty that no company can attempt it without greasing some politician's and many lobbyist's hands first.
  

In short, this is an ideal mechanism for the ruthless shakedown politicians. This is surely the vast majority of the Obama cohorts and even of the Congressional Democrats. They can count on at least a fair number of Republicans jumping in to share the spoils as well, though perhaps with a somewhat higher degree of decorum. Corruption and special interests will rule our future more than ever.

Massive Socialist Government Gang Extortion

The gang of brutal socialists who have taken over control of the Presidency and Congress have escalated their extortion racket to much the worst levels ever. Have you ever wondered why many very wealthy businessmen and companies have for years donated more money to the Democrats who dislike business from an ideological perspective than they give to Republicans who are commonly thought to be the champions of the fat cats? Heck, have you ever wondered by the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are always wealthier than those to the Republican National Convention?

The answer is in two parts. First, many of these businessmen give more to the Democrats because they are trying to buy them off to keep them from doing as much harm to the businessmen. This is like Chamberlain buying Hitler off by giving him Czechoslovakia. Appeasement is always a popular strategy when the cowardly are faced with an especially vicious bully. The second part of the answer is that by allying themselves with the socialists they actually get a payment from those in power with legislation favoring them in a variety of ways. For instance, complex and intrusive laws will always create great opportunities for trial lawyers, who are massive donors to the major socialist party, the Democrats. Regulations such as the bureaucratically massive requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley bookkeeping procedures will hold back small and smaller mid-sized companies more than really big companies, so the big companies are protected from competition.

Cumbersome Federal contracting laws make it hard for small companies to go after Federal contracts, with their 10 pages of fine print references to many laws imposing obligations and mandates on the company taking the Federal contract or simply bidding for it. Generally regulations putting insurance, pollution, recycling, safety, family leave time, anti-discrimination, the display of tens of posters to employees, and many other mandates fall more heavily upon small and the smaller mid-sized companies than the large companies. The result is that it is common for the largest companies and the wealthiest investors to ally themselves with the Democrat mob than with the Republicans who pretend to stand up for small business interests. Yes, this is more pretense than substance on the part of the Republicans, but they really are a bit less active in doing harm to small businesses.

So, what is our small-time community rabble-rouser up to now that he has his hands on the big-time power of the Presidency? Well, he is unabashedly putting the extortion techniques the socialist Democrat Party has spent a long time perfecting to work. Let us examine how he is doing this.

According to a 9 April report by Eric Dash in the New York Times called "Banks Holding Up in Tests, but May Still Need Help," the 19 largest American banks are being given stress tests led by the Federal Reserve. Testers say there is a wide range of results on the tested banks. Those that fall short will have six months to raise capital from private investors, but if they cannot do this, the Treasury Dept. will make them take taxpayer money. Timothy Geithner says he will take a tough stance. He claims that many banks believe the value of investments and loans on their books is higher than the government does. He says the government will make some banks sell off the assets the government thinks are overvalued on their books at whatever private investors are willing to pay. What an extortion tool? If the bank does not give enough to socialist politicians campaign funds, the government in control of the socialists, declares that some of the banks assets are worth less than the bank thinks they are worth and forces the bank to sell them in a fire sale. Meanwhile, we can be sure that generous Democrat campaign contributors are likely standing in the wings willing to buy up assets at bargain prices offered at the coming fire sales.

On another front, the socialists are launching still another attack on start-up companies in Silicon Valley. They want to regulate venture capital firms to prevent systemic risks. Geithner wants to force these VCs to register with SEC and file reports with them on their investors and their investments, so that investors will be protected from schemes such as Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This is odd. The SEC did not save anyone from Madoff though his firm was long registered with the SEC as an investment advisor and for decades as a broker-dealer. Very odd, indeed, it is. The Wall Street Journal Opinion piece by James Freeman linked to explains:

The entire venture capital industry is smaller than the Madoff fraud. VCs invest a total of $30 billion each year, far less than one-tenth of 1% of U.S. financial transactions. Venture investors -- affluent individuals and institutions -- are putting up equity and know that they can lose it all. SEC regulation could have the same negative impact on them that it had on Madoff's investors: creating an illusion of safety in what is an inherently risky endeavor. Or the regulation could become so severe that it actually does eliminate risk from venture investing, killing the innovative ideas that can only be funded by risk-takers.

The VCs use very little debt. The banks dealing with them are well-secured by the assets of the companies for the small amounts they loan to them. There is no reason for Washington to poke its nosey nose into the VC business. There is a strong downside.

Attempts to limit risk pose a systemic threat to American technology. Venture capitalists, mainly veterans of the tech industry, are deeply involved in the companies they back, often helping to recruit each of the key employees at a start-up. This hands-on feature of venture investing means that innovative companies and their backers tend to cluster in areas like Silicon Valley. If the VCs move offshore, that's probably where the next generation of companies will be born.

Cypress Semiconductor CEO T. J. Rodgers points out that the Democrats have already heavily burdened America's technology industry. Sarbanes-Oxley has imposed multimillion-dollar compliance costs since 2002. The SEC then forced companies to count stock options twice, once as dilution of stock and then as an expense. The result is already a disaster. Only one Silicon Valley company had an initial public offering of stock in all of 2008! Are the socialists purposely destroying the growth of Silicon Valley firms because Silicon Valley has had something of a reputation for being somewhat libertarian? I believe that this is a big factor in this attack on these rather independent-minded and innovative businessmen. The socialists hate business and they hate independence, rationality, and innovation even more.

Of course, we have already observed the socialists taking control of the banking and financial industries and not wanting to let go. We have seen them dictate who will manage GM and seen them micromanage which vehicles will be produced by American automakers, while dictating minimal changes for the United Auto Workers Union. They continue to encourage high risk home and auto loans for new purchases, while using the risk of defaults on prior risky loans as a club to gain control of banks and other financial institutions.

The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring." [See the Washington Times, 10-11 April 2009 edition.] Thus, any environmentalist person, imagining that he may one day suffer harm from global warming, will be able to sue the U.S. government to take drastic action to prevent global warming. If they find a sympathetic court, the U.S. may be held responsible for the harm of what may well be results caused by natural forces, and forced to take drastic action against fossil fuel users whether they have in fact caused harm or not. It also rewards the massive contributors to socialism among the trial lawyers, once again.

The mandated extent of the replacement of dependable coal-fired electric power plant capacity with undependable wind and solar alternative energy sources will be certain to result in widespread electric blackouts. The governments will undoubtedly then play a role in further rationing energy, giving more to favored users and less to the politically unfavored. No doubt, unionized industries will be allowed more access to energy than will un-unionized businesses. Large companies with sufficient political pull (givers of large campaign contributions) will get energy, while small businesses will not get it.

The tax system is also to be skewed to give the socialists much more power. They tried to take the influence of wealthy people over charities away by greatly reducing the tax deduction for charitable giving by the wealthy. This was checked, for now. They use taxes as never before to put the wealthy under the feet of the mass of less wealthy voters. They are using the tax system to bind college graduates to their cause, which reinforces the tendency of young college graduates to spout the propaganda of socialism which they were infected with while in public high school and college. They will then be enrolled in government service agencies, which will complete their indoctrination. The tax system also favors selected industries such as the alternative energy industry, so that they become dependent clients of the socialists.

Rules favoring the easy unionization of small businesses will also favor the socialist-oriented unions and hurt an enemy of the socialist cause. The broadening of the Clean Air Act to cover carbon dioxide emissions will give government another tool to control our lives, which they will also use to pick winners and losers based on political pull. Tariffs, created under the guise of discriminating against polluters, low-paid workers, and non-union labor users abroad, will give the socialists still another tool to use to pick winners and losers in American industry.

Make no mistake, the Obama socialist gang wants control of every aspect of your life. It is a massive extortion ring. They are seizing power rapidly and with a breadth of attack which is mind-boggling. This assault on the rights of the individual has been long dreamed of and long planned. The worst thing is that it was very clear that Obama was the Messianic leader of just such a gang during the election process, but most Americans refused to see what was almost immediately before their eyes. He still has most Americans hypnotized even as most are now beginning to criticize his various programs.