There’s a crazed gunman at the Discovery Channel building only several blocks from me. It must be a wingnut teabagger, right? They’re all angry, hate science and are prone to violence, according to the news/leftwing chatosphere. Or maybe it’s one of those crazy flatearther global warming deniers.
Sorry, it’s neither of those. Nor is it Grant Imahara demanding a raise.
It’s actually a radical environmentalist who thinks that humans need to be sterilized because we are parasites to the planet.
So what has this stunt accomplished for the environment? Well, it’s caused significant traffic jams as police have been forced to close down many of the main roads through downtown Silver Spring, thus increasing driving time and pollution. Well done, comrade!
Saving the planet, one traffic jammed intersection at a time.
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Paul Ryan schools Chris Matthews on spending cuts:
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“Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement,” says Climate Depot.
They released the following interview with the liberal Dr. Rancourt, who says that the AGW movement is a “corrupt social phenomenon.”
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Fox News reports that a boat has struck an oil rig, sparking another spill in the Gulf. T-minus how long until Obama blames Bush?
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Iain Murray writes at the Washington Examiner that advocacy groups Change.org and the Alliance for Climate Protection are arguing – in an email entitled, “Don’t Let BP Win!” – that “Stalling climate and energy legislation would be a big win for oil companies like BP, but a huge loss for the rest of us.” Someone must have forgot to tell the lobbyists at BP, because as I previously noted, they have endorsed the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill. BP and other big corporations understand what the statists that routinely push for government intervention in the market do not: big government policy ultimately benefits big business the most.
The first responsibility of a corporation is to their shareholders, and contrary to popular belief, they are not dependable advocates of capitalism. Given half a chance, they will gladly use the power of government to their own benefit by restricting competition. They always have the greater means and motivation to capture federal regulator agencies, and deploy the force of government to benefit their special interest, than do the high-minded reform groups that often called for intervention in the first place. If Change.org really wanted to ensure that BP does not “win,” they would fight against big government interventionism, thus denying BP and other corporations the ability to manipulate government force for their own benefit.
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Florida Senator Bill Nelson is seizing on the BP oil spill as an excuse to pass federal “price-gouging” legislation. It’s certainly nothing new to see anti-market politicians stirring up populist rage with these so-called “price gouging” laws. Many states already have them on the books, and politicians are quick to warn greedy capitalists against “exploiting” disasters by raising prices. But these laws are really nothing more than price controls and, like all price controls, they distort markets and harm consumers.
“Price-gouging” laws generally prohibit “excessive” or “unconscionable” prices – both unconstitutionally vague concepts – immediately following disaster declarations. Prosecutions typically follow hurricanes, floods or other major events that knock out power and stress the availability of goods like ice and power generators.
Under normal circumstances, sudden increases in demand result in similarly sudden spikes in prices. As prices go up, entrepreneurs in nearby areas are motivated to buy goods at their cheaper local prices, transport them into the disaster area, and then sell them for a handsome profit. This is how price signals work to indicate where goods are most needed. The entrepreneurs make enough money to justify their efforts, and people in the disaster area are able to get the extra supplies they need. Yet despite the fact that everyone wins, many politicians have criminalized this behavior. Rather than cheering the entrepreneurs for bringing relief supplies that would not otherwise arrive to post-disaster areas, state government officials often prosecute, fine and even jail them.
Not satisfied with the fact that a majority of states already have these misguided price controls on the books, federal politicians have repeatedly tried to have them enacted nationally. A bill that would have criminalized charging market prices for needed goods passed the House in 2007, but failed to get the 2/3rd votes necessary to override President Bush’s threatened veto. Now, with a more sympathetic President Obama in office, such legislation could potentially return, and pass.
Bill Nelson’s state of Florida already unnecessarily perpetuates shortages after hurricanes and other disasters with misguided price controls. He shouldn’t force similar pain on the 20 or so states without price gouging laws.
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I take a look at Obama’s Oval Office speech on the Market Center blog:
Leave a commentPresident Obama used his first televised speech from the Oval Office, ostensibly on the topic of the BP oil spill, to run through his usual speech-making checklist, which includes blaming Bush and beating up on idealogical straw-men, like his long ago debunked contention that there was significant “deregulation” during the previous decade. He also continued his pattern of declaring every problem to be unprecedented, though he’s also undermined that same argument by making a bizarre comparison between the spill and 9/11.
The heart of his speech, however, was no doubt inspired by Rahm Emanual’s famous, or infamous, exhortation to let no good crisis go to waste. As such, Obama thinks the oil spill is a perfect time to revive his job killing, economy destroying cap-and-trade bill, though he dared not call it that…
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No big surprise here, just more evidence of the massive fraud the warm-mongers attempted to pull on the world:
Leave a commentThe UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.
“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”
Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia – the university of Climategate fame — is the founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and one of the UK’s most prominent climate scientists. Among his many roles in the climate change establishment, Hulme was the IPCC’s co-ordinating Lead Author for its chapter on ‘Climate scenario development’ for its Third Assessment Report and a contributing author of several other chapters.
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I’ll give you a hint: the answer isn’t government regulation and fines.
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The left has one solution for everything: government control. Whatever the problem, simply call for government to takeover and it will magically be solved. That’s their thinking, as demonstrated in this case by Robert Reich:
It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge.
Let’s consider the benefits he sees to government control.
1) It’s the only way the public knows what is going on. Last time I checked, government was a hotbed of secrecy, spin and misinformation. Despite running on a campaign of transparency, Obama has run one of the most opaque administration’s in history. The idea that government control will help the public know better what is going on is laughable.
2) The public will be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the leak. Perhaps Robert Reich missed the memo, but confidence in government is at historic lows, and for good reason. While it’s technically true that the government has more resources than BP, there is no indication that BP’s problem up to this point is a lack of resources. Even if it was, they can be made available without a government takeover.
3) Government will ensure BP is using the correct strategy, and force them to change if they are not. What, exactly, gives government the expertise to determine what the “correct” strategy is? How many wells does government operate, again? How many similar leaks have they solved? Let’s put aside the kindergardenish notion that being in government makes one an expert in everything. It doesn’t. This is, after all, the same government that is turning to James Cameron for “expert” advice. The best and brightest oil men aren’t in government, they’re in the oil industry. Let’s leave the clean-up to the professionals, and not a bunch of hacks trying to exploit it for political gain.
4) We can be sure the President is ultimately in charge. Again, what is the thinking here? What the hell does Barack Obama know about stopping oil leaks? He’s a two-bit Chicago thug whose career consists of nothing more than agitating “community organizing” and campaigning. What fool will be comforted by having him in charge of the operation? Robert Reich, that’s who.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
