Government plans to manage the energy market will create more bureaucracy and fraud.

We know from geological history that the globe goes through warming and cooling cycles. Even if only because of Hollywood, and not from our dumbed-down educational system, most people are familiar with the term “Ice Age.” And those massive temperature variations and earth changes took place for eons before man appeared on the scene to contribute to “greenhouse gases.”

Even some of those who believe in the increasingly discredited theories of man-made “global warming” recognize the problems wuth government solutions. Michelle Chan, Senior Policy Analyst at the San Francisco-based advocacy group Friends of the Earth wrote in Ten Ways to Game the Carbon Market:

Remember how Wall Street traders crashed the economy in 2008 with their gambling on complex mortgage securities, and with “dark market” derivatives? Well, the mortgage bubble may have burst, but the creation of carbon markets — one approach for reducing harmful greenhouse gas pollution
– could create a whole new Wall Street casino. The U.S. needs to dramatically
reduce pollution to solve the climate crisis, but are carbon markets really the best way?

Carbon trading systems are complex, and the more complex they
are, the easier they are to manipulate.

Massive levels of corporate lobbying on climate change have produced convoluted cap-and-trade proposals that are filled with giveaways and concessions to various industries. The larger and more complex the carbon trading system is, the more difficult it will be to regulate and the easier it will be to game….

Her paper goes on to suggest ten strategies for gaming the system. Unfortunately, her solution would probably be even more complex government regulation, leading to more taxes and more government employees. But her initial analysis is worth reading.

Ten Ways to Game the Carbon Market

The Obama administration continues to increase governmental power and authoruity to regulate our daily lives. Czars Cass Sunstein and John Holdren — special advisors to the President — have especially bizarre ideas about limiting your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And most of this is happening through executive orders. Whatever happened to the legislative process and representative government?

The latest Obama power grab would restrict the coastal and inland waters of the United States according to the zoning model of the United Nations. The plan, titled Interim Framework for Effective Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning, was prepared quietly below the radar this past December. It creates new government regulatory agencies to control every drop of water — even your own private lake contained entirely on your property that you own. You can read it here.

Now view this new regulation in light of Sunstein’s animal rights agenda and you have a recipe for disaster in hunting and fishing:

Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school.

One of the expected outcomes is limiting the right to fish. This week’s featured article in Outdoor Wire explains (note that Outdoor Wire does not provide links to their individual articles so we’re including the whole piece which we normally don’t do):

Can’t Walk But Will Tread On Water
by Jim Shepherd

Public opinion polls demonstrate that absolutely no one believes the current administration can walk on water. In fact, it seems that many Americans believe the current administration has a track record of bad ideas.

It seems, however, our peerless leaders are forging forward with another bad idea. OK, it’s not as bad as health care or the economic stimulus plans- at least not yet – but bad enough to keep their streak of bad ideas intact.

The Obama administration’s now suggesting we use the United Nations principles of zoning of coastal and inland waters. Anything using a UN model almost instantly conjures up rules that bad guys ignore while they’re being used to curtail the rights of law-abiding citizens.

In this instance, the law-abiding citizens are anglers.

When I heard this administration speak of “fundamentally changing” water management in the United States, I heard “so long fishing”. There is more than a little evidence to indicate justification for those concerns.

And the $82-billion dollar fishing industry’s not exactly overjoyed at the idea of a management theory based on restriction of access.

In the United States, the right to fish is definitely one of those “unenumerated rights” we consider covered by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. Personally, I think it’s covered under “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” and I’m not too jacked-up at the idea of blue helmeted fishing patrol officers wagging their third-world fingers under my nose and telling me “sorry, off limits.” Especially when I’m hoping to wet a line in my own small pond.

That’s why the new Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force has the fishing industry and recreational anglers concerned. This group of policy wonks says they’re going to benefit the fishing public by “managing ecosystems in their entirety rather than by individual uses such as fishing, shipping or oil exploration.”

The “entirety” referred to here means all waters, fresh and salt, public and, yes, private.

Based on the Marine Life Protection Zones model in California, that sounds as suspect as PETA offering me a recipe for blackened catfish.

Whenever a governmental group gets together these days, you can bet it’s overloaded with people whose idea of conservation begins with “first, remove all human access….”.

The official line for this is “marine spatial planning.”

According to the United Nations, that means “a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process.”

Personally, that kind of language gives me the creeps. When I hear phrases like “one global sea” – I imagine Elton John starting to sing “Circle of Life” – followed shortly thereafter by signs that tell me the old fishing hole is now considered part of some government protection area.

Plainly stated, the idea of “one global sea” instead of managing each bit of water by the American user-funded conservation model seems a bit bass-ackwards to me. Our systems have preserved our waters, lands and wildlife considerably more effectively than our global brethren. Other models, to use the description used by Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs at Shimano are “the lowest common denominator.”

And President Obama’s assurances that he will follow the guidance of former presidents who have protected the rights of recreational fishermen don’t do much for my discomfort.

His ties to environmental groups with anti-use policies -and a proven propensity for taking “we’re smarter than you so we’re changing the game” actions regardless of the will of the majority, unfortunately, don’t do much to assuage concerns.

Neither do the nine proposed regional planning areas:

Alaska/Arctic Region (Impacting Alaska)

Caribbean Region (Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands)

Great Lakes Region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin

Gulf of Mexico Region (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas)

Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia)

Northeast Region (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont)

Pacific Islands Region (Hawaii, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and Guam)

South Atlantic Region (Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina)

West Coast Region (California, Oregon, and Washington)

Other than having the same basic molecular compound, the waters encompassed in these nine groups are as dissimilar as you could imagine.

For some reason, I’m not altogether comfortable with much of anything in the draft of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force. But that’s probably just me. -and individual tackle manufacturers and the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and a host of other recreational fishing-focused groups.

As is the custom in emotion-based legislation, there are overstated examples of conflicts, and it seems the study is determined to create solutions to problems that – like global warming – might not really exist.

The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation and U.S. Recreational Fishing and Boating Coalition have made their concerns known to the administration. Jeff Crane, CSF president said “some of the potential policy implications of this initial framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers.”

Those same anglers contribute billions of dollars annually that support fisheries conservation and, as Crane says “are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic.”

More than one million jobs are the result of recreational fishing, but there is little – if any- recognition of that fact in the draft plan. Not recognizing and evaluating recreational fishing’s impact on our overall economic engine is foolish. The idea that engine could be shut off by a bad recommendation and a single signature on an Executive Order should concern us all.

Seems it’s time for the silent majority to kick up another fuss – while there’s still time.

Related:

The Coffee Shop — Bad News

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters….

Wow………I have been right all along and the TSA IS incompetent!!!! I have seen other stories of people inadvertently getting something through security and then turning themselves in, only to be treated like a criminal. If a gun can make it through, what else???? It also proves the point that it isn’t objects that are dangerous, per se, it is people!

“Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.” ~~ Honore de Balzac

From the Missoulian — Man gets through Bozeman airport security with gun in carry-on bag:

BOZEMAN – The Transportation Security administration said Wednesday that screeners at Gallatin Field near Bozeman inadvertently allowed a passenger with a firearm in his carryon luggage through security last month.

The unidentified man realized he had the gun when he was in the boarding area Dec. 13 and turned himself into TSA officials.

Gallatin Field Board Chairman Dick Roehm said the TSA re-screened every passenger at the airport, including those on a Horizon Air flight that had left the gate but had not yet taken off – delaying three flights for more than an hour.

The gun was turned over to local law enforcement and the passenger was allowed to continue on the flight, TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird said in a written statement….

The new health-care bill will quickly enslave the American public. First, the infamous Page 1020 makes it illegal to abolish the “Death Panels.” Second, the bill abolishes the patient’s right to appeal decisions of the death panels.

From Investor’s Business Daily — Forever Gone:

Any law can be repealed, but the Democrats’ radical health bill contains unprecedented language that could wreck the U.S. health system permanently. It’s one of the dirtiest tricks yet.

“Page 1,020″ — it may soon be a mantra for one of the most disturbing abuses of legislative power in history. In setting up an Independent Medicare Advisory Board, that page of the Senate health overhaul bill passed in the dead of night early Monday says, “It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”

This enters the realm of “hyperlaw” or “laws on steroids.”….

Who ever heard of such a thing? Making a law that cannot be repealed is most likely unconstitutional. But then forcing the public to purchase a retail product like health insurance is also probably unconstitutional. It’s like forcing everybody to buy a coffeemaker whether or not they drink coffee.

From the WSJ Opinion Journal — What Doctors and Patients Have to Lose Under ObamaCare:

The Senate health-care bill … exempts Medicare’s actions from judicial review, taking away the right of patients to sue the government. Unlike existing Medicare coverage laws, patients won’t have the ability to appeal any of the decisions of this new Medicare Commission….

That dictatorial triumvirate — Obama, Reid, Pelosi — wants to enslave us without our having any recourse. But even in the face of the most ruthless dictatorships, a population always has one remedy. That is why they are working so diligently to disarm us.

ACORN co-founder Wade Rathke discussed the role of ACORN and SEIU in the government takeover of healthcare during a book signing in New Orleans.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have a symbiotic relationship. Rathke called SEIU “one of the pillars of the ACORN family of organizations.”

While serving as ACORN’s Chief Organizer, Rathke created SEIU Locals 100 (Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas) and 880 (Illinois, Indiana and Kansas). After establishing SEIU, Rathke held executive positions in labor unions while working as ACORN’s Chief Organizer.

ACORN whistle-blowers swore SEIU and a coalition of labor unions gave ACORN $1,729,462 for political activities and union organizing in 2008, mixing together taxpayer money and union funding. It would seem that the American taxpayer has been picking up the tab to promote Rathke’s political agenda and advance his unionizing activities.

While governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining, which helped SEIU unionize health-care workers. The mega-union had been Blagojevich’s biggest supporter, donating more than $1.8 million over two campaigns for governor.

Now SEIU is in the process of building an empire to handle America’s healthcare needs, which explains its unrelenting fight for a public option. Obviously, the mega-union envisions greater demand for its services and plans to mine the mother load of new dues-paying members.

The candidacy of Dede Scozzafava has divided the GOP between its Reagan conservatives and the party establishment. 

Leftist progressive Republicans might not raise the eyebrow of your average Snowe-blind Maineiac, but the thought of adding another DIABLO (Democrat In All But Label Only) statist-minded representative to Washington has GOP conservatives and libertarians apoplectic.

Scozzafava is in a three-way race with Democrat candidate Bill Owens and Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman to fill the seat of departing Republican John McHugh in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

Scozzafava, who has been lauded by Newt Gingrich, supports abortion, homosexual marriage, Brother O’s stimulus spending, cap-and-trade, and Card Check; and is endorsed by Markos Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos; NYSUT (New York State United Teachers), the largest labor union in New York and affiliate of the National Education Association, and ACORN’s (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s) Working Families Party.

Hoffman, the Reagan conservative in the race, is supported by former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, former vice chairman of the 2008 Republican National Committee Platform Committee, Ken Blackwell, former Majority leader Dick Armey, Minnesota congresswomen Michele Bachmann, former Republican Senator and Republican presidential candidate, Fred Thompson, founder of the Campaign for Working Families, Gary Bauer; the Wall Street Journal and the conservative Club for Growth in Washington, D.C.

Right now Democrat Bill Owens is leading Hoffman Scozzafava, but Hoffman’s poll numbers have been steadily rising and have surpassed Scozzafava, which means that Scozzafava is now just a spoiler and could keep Republicans from holding  the seat that McHugh routinely won by 2-to-1 margins.

Hoffman is running as the Conservative Party’s candidate because New York’s local GOP establishment entered their “smoke-filled room” and chose Scozzafava behind closed doors, bypassing a primary and the party’s grass-roots voters.

Scozzafava’s leftist politics aren’t the only embarrassment for the Republican Party. She called the police on John McCormack, a Weekly Standard blogger, who questioned her about support for Card Check and then used the propagandist media to smear the journalist.

The call has gone out for Scozzafava to withdraw or be dumped from the race. More than a dozen conservative bloggers and organizations have called for her resignation and for the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC) to withdraw their support and put their resources behind the real Republican in the race.

If Hoffman wins the big one, his campaign will become the template for grassroots conservative campaigns nationwide next year. The special election for New York’s 23rd Congressional District just might be the spark that ignites an internal revolution to regain the soul of the GOP and bring common sense and sanity back to the party of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.

The Supreme Court has taken up the case of an 8-foot white cross atop Sunrise Rock memorializing U.S. soldiers who fought in the First World War.

After the war, several veterans moved to the Californian desert as a respite for their emotional and physical wounds. In 1934, they erected the white cross memorial to honor their fallen comrades who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

They chose the memorial site because the sun casts a shadow on Sunrise Rock at a certain time of day that resembles a WWI doughboy.  The memorial stood serene for more than 75 years until the Park Service was asked and refused to build a Buddhist sanctuary nearby. See video below:

That’s when Frank Buono, a retired National Park Service employee and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) board member, got his knickers in a knot and decided the government had violated the Constitution’s Establishment Clause by favoring one religion over another.
 
Having firmly affixed his Catholic faith to his sleeve, the PEER zealot smartly marched over to the ACLU (American Communist Lawyer’s Union), and they joined together in a lawsuit to tear down the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial. 

After the U.S. Government acquired the land on which the memorial sits as part of the Mojave Desert Federal Preserve, Congress designated Sunrise Rock a national memorial and barred its dismantling. A year later, Congress voted to trade the acre of land containing the memorial to the veterans, who had maintained it for decades, for five acres.

Even though public military memorials and cemeteries have been adorned for decades with crosses and religious symbols and the one-for-five acre deal satisfied both the government and the veterans, the ire of the Park Service pantywaist and surrogate remained. They declared the deal intolerable, and persisted in filing motions to tear down the memorial and overturn the land transfer.

In 2000, the Southern California ACLU announced the cross would be down within the next few months, but Congress voted not to allocate federal funds to remove it, an action that drew a lawsuit from the ACLU.

In 2002, a federal district court ruled that the memorial violated the “wall of separation” that the Constitution maintains between church and state; consequently, Congress attempted to transfer the land underneath the cross to a local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars by using a clause in the Department of Defense budget, but the district court ruled against it.

In 2004, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling to remove the cross in spite of numerous appeals from the U.S. Justice Department.

As if to commemorate an ACLU victory, a federal judge ordered the cross covered and hidden from view while the case is on appeal. A curious-looking plywood box, resembling a condemned building, now sits atop a desolate rock symbolizing the triumph of one man’s intolerance over the sacrifices of those who inspired the memorial. 

Currently, the Supreme Court’s nine justices are divided on the issue along progressive and conservative lines. Progressive justices view the Constitution as a living, breathing document emanating meanings from ethereal penumbras of the actual text, which often contradict the plain understanding of the words themselves; and conservative justices focus on a strict interpretation of the text of the Constitution based on the originally intended meaning of the text.

When it comes to the Establishment Clause, progressive justices have interpreted the emanations from the clause to mean government hostility toward religion in general and Christianity in particular; whereas conservative justices have interpreted the clause to mean government neutrality toward religion and accommodation for Christianity in particular.

However, the final battle won’t be won until the Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and that could take weeks. It’s also quite possible the high court will ignore the broader question of whether the presence of the cross on a federal preserve establishes a religion, and will address the narrower question of whether Congress was right to transfer the land on which the cross sits to private ownership.

Clearly, the PEER gent and the ACLU know the military’s long history of using a cross as marker for the war dead of all faiths and as a symbol to represent honor, courage, and sacrifice. They have not employed such a Herculean effort for nearly ten years just to tear down an unadorned cross in some remote area of the Mojave Desert; theirs is a sinister purpose, to put an end to the principles of religious liberty as grounded in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

Voltaire’s words combined with those of the Preamble to the California Constitution, “We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom,” serve as a sad reminder for the cosmic irony in this a petty, mean-spirited lawsuit.

Now that it’s been discovered that Medicare’s denial rate is roughly 1.7 times that of the top private carriers combined, will the AMA and Brother O’s “cherry picked” medical practitioners continue to sacrifice what’s left of their professional integrity and creditability to promote a government-run health care system that is more likely to deny patient care than administer it?

Supporters of ObamaCare’s public option parrot bromides damning private insurance companies for denying claims and canceling coverage.

“We are held hostage at any given moment by health insurance companies that deny coverage or drop coverage or charge fees that people can’t afford,” Brother O said in August.

Brother O neglected to mention that the worst offender is the oft touted government model, Medicare. The American Medical Association (AMA) and Brother O’s cherry-picked medical professionals endorse the public option because, like Medicare, it would be a better provider for patients when it comes to decision-making autonomy and the ability to get patients the care they need.

Beverly Gossage, Research Fellow for Show-Me Institute and founder of HSA Benefits Consulting, discovered in the AMA’s 2008 National Health Insurer Report Card that Medicare is most likely to reject a claim, denying 6.85 percent or 475,566 claims, which is more than the seven top commercial health insurers and is double their average.

Gossage’s findings mean the AMA, the cherry-picked medical professionals, and the ObamaCare supporters have endorsed a plan “whose closest existing example is the most frequent denier of claims.”

In television ads and news releases, supporters of ObamaCare have shamelessly portrayed insurance companies as insensitive greedy louts with itchy fingers on hair triggers willingly to deny claims for wealth. 

Will the shameless supporters of ObamaCare now portray the government-run insurer Medicare as a cold-blooded bunch of bookkeepers and bureaucrats? The cows will be home long before such a portrayal happens.

Health care workers must be immunized against H1N1 by November 30 or lose their jobs, said New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines. Health Department officials approved the regulation in August, making New York the only state in the country to mandate seasonal and swine flu immunizations for all health care providers, including doctors.

Some nurses and health care providers say the regulation not only violates their personal freedom but also puts them at risk for severe neurological disorders such as Guillain Barre syndrome and death without legal redress. The federal government has extended “liability immunity against tort claims” for its five swine H1N1 flu vaccine contractors should their vaccines be linked to sickness, nerve-damage, or death.

Opponents’ concerns regarding the H1N1 vaccine are not unfounded. The last federal government swine-flu vaccination program in 1976 was a debacle. Outbreaks of Guillain Barre syndrome were linked to the flu shot, and the national immunization campaign was shut down after just 10 weeks.

Even though the Public Employees Federation has urged union members to comply with the regulation, many health care providers are angry that they are being compelled to take H1N1 flu shots. “No one wants to be forced to take a vaccine that’s been hurried through the approval process,” said Helena Kosorek, spokeswoman for the New York Healthcare Concerned Citizens Group.

Nurse Kristi Tramposch said she is reluctant to take the shot because of the “toxic substances that go into vaccines” and prefers to wait until enough people have taken it before she even considers it.
 
Typically, only 40 to 50 percent of New York’s health care workers are vaccinated yearly against influenza, but Daines predicts opponents will ultimately comply with the directive and roll up their sleeves.

Hundreds of health care workers opposed to the mandatory H1N1 flu shot are expected to rally today at the State Capitol Building in Albany.

Two MSNBC commentators accuse conservative talk hosts of inciting Americans to assassinate political leaders. The media meme suggests that the Tea Party and Town Hall protesters’ placards and rhetoric likening Brother O to Hitler is an implicit or a coded call to incite violence against him.

The anti-government, anti-Brother O sentiment expressed by some of the white protesters has caused two political propagandists to demonstrate their overt hypocrisy. Jolly old Chris “Tingle” Matthews notified TV and talk radio hosts that they would be held accountable for any violence that happens to Brother O.

In Rachel “Mad Mad Mad” Maddow’s world the right-wing media and the corporate-funded anti-reform movement are invoking political assassination by deliberately and systematically using Hitler as a rhetorical weapon against Brother O and the progressive Democrats in Congress. Mad Maddow says she’s afraid that the right-wingers don’t understand the implications of their actions and is even more afraid that they do. 

If MSNBC’s Chris Tingle and the stark raving mad Maddow are really concerned for Brother O’s well being, why didn’t they alert Americans to the dangers of the Nazi slogans, Hitler placards, and vituperative language when members of leftist groups used them to demonize George W. Bush and his administration?

Better yet, how would the two peas account for their anti-Bush rhetoric had a leftist “looneytune” “fruitloop” committed a violent act against Bush? Would political commentators have held them responsible for complicity and for unleashing anti-democratic, anti-American forces in this country?

Paul Williams has pieced together a video montage exposing the blatant hypocrisy of leftists Chris Tingle and mad Maddow. Williams uses the audio portion of a mad Maddow interview, in which she asks Frank Schaeffer whether or not calling Brother O Hitler is an implicit call for politically motivated violence.

Williams overlays the audio portion with video snippets of demonstrations that occurred when George W. Bush was president; the end result is quite revealing.

The hypocrisy of Chris Tingle, mad Maddow, and Frank Schaeffer is rivaled only by Seth Pecksniff, a character Charles Dickens likened to a sign post, “which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.”