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Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died today at the age of 87, and we here in the United States should take good note of her accomplishments. Thatcher’s life’s work is of immense relevance because today’s United States has more in common with the Great Britain that Thatcher took over in 1979 than with the United States of 1981 when Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency after the inept Jimmy Carter administration.

Today the United States is as far gone into statism as Britain was when Thatcher became Prime Minister—perhaps farther, in fact, when one considers the powerful surveillance tools today’s U.S. government has and its lack of scruples in using them. The contemporary U.S. entitlement crisis, government debt disaster, and power of government-employee unions are disturbingly similar to the woes Thatcher faced.

Undaunted by the huge challenge that faced her, Mrs. Thatcher transformed a socialized, backward, union-dominated British economy into a modern success story in just a few short years, through market-opening, individual-empowering policies. For this she was vilified as heartless and mean-spirited. But to those of us who really want the poor and underprivileged to have a chance to succeed and to benefit from a growing economy, she was and remains a true heroine.

Thatcher’s success shows that the state can be rolled back—even if only temporarily, as happened in Britain after Thatcher left office and the forces of big government returned to their arrogant, profligate, and reckless ways.

Margaret Thatcher achieved something very few politicians have ever done: She left her nation better off than she found it. In economic policy, fostering of social order, and national defense, Mrs. Thatcher was a true champion of liberty.

[First Published at The American Culture]

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The biggest political problem faced by so-called “liberals” and so-called “progressives” in President Obama’s second term is how to prevent voters from holding them politically responsible as the public comes to realize how badly they were lied to during the first Obama term to win passage of Obamacare.

Most supporters of Obamacare embraced it because of a principled belief that everyone should have access to essential healthcare.  But even the establishment, still Democrat dominated, CBO admits that after 10 years of implementation, Obamacare will still leave 30 million uninsured.

We will see below why that is a woeful underestimate.  Even worse, John Goodman and I explain how universal health care for all can be assured without Obamacare, with no coercive individual mandate, no job-killing employer mandate, and a savings to taxpayers of roughly $2 trillion over the next 10 years.  (Hint: true health care safety net, plus market incentives and competition.  See John C. Goodman and Peter Ferrara, Health Care for All Without the Affordable Care Act, Issue Brief No. 116, National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, Texas, October 17, 2012.  That has been explained in this column before.  But too many “progressives” see market incentives and competition as a fascist fraud against working people.)

Just wait until the broad realization dawns that the harsh reality of Obamacare is that tens of millions will lose their employer provided insurance because of the perverse incentives under the program.  Even the establishment CBO admits that at least 7 million, and as many as 20 million, will lose their employer coverage.  In February, CBO reported that “in 2019 [5 years after Obamacare is implemented], an estimated 12 million people who would have had an offer of employment-based coverage under prior law will lose their offer under current law [aka ‘Obamacare’].”

But that report is just the early breeze of the coming storm.  The Obamacare employer mandate requires all employers of 50 or more full time workers to purchase the expensive insurance for those employees that Kathleen Sebelius (“The Secretary shall determine”) specifies that they must buy.  But that mandate is enforced by a penalty of $2,000 per worker, which may be only 10% of the average cost of family coverage under the Sebelius requirements.

Moreover, workers who do not receive employer provided coverage are eligible to purchase their health insurance on the state Exchanges with extensive taxpayer subsidies to help cover the cost.  Indeed, in the Exchanges, low and moderate income workers can even get subsidies covering their out-of-pocket expenses.   Employers can terminate their employee coverage, give their workers a raise with part of the savings, and let the taxpayers bear the cost of subsidizing their coverage in the Exchanges.  Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimated in a study for the American Action Forum that more than 40 million workers would lose their employer coverage due to these perverse incentives.  It’s going to be even worse than that, when all of the cost increasing impacts of Obamacare are realized.

So much for President Obama’s oft repeated first term promise that “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.  No one is going to take that away from you.”

Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise that Obamacare would reduce the cost of health insurance by $2,500 for average families.  But since Obamacare passed, the cost of an average family policy has already increased by $3,000.  That reflects the philosophical problem that so many “progressives” have with math, which they are certain is a fascist conspiracy against working people.  (Why must 2 +2 always equal 4?  That is just fascist authoritarianism.  Why can’t we be flexible so it can sometimes equal 3, or 5?)

But this again is just an early breeze from the coming storm.  If you require coverage of more benefits, such as “free” check ups, “free” preventive care, “free” contraceptives, “free” preventive care, and everything Kathleen Sebelius says must be covered to satisfy the individual mandate and the employer mandate, then fascist math says that means there must be higher premiums, just so those fascist insurance companies can have enough money to pay all their promised benefits.

Then there is the benevolent Obamacare regulation called “guaranteed issue.”  That requires all insurers to cover everyone who applies, no matter how sick they are when they first apply, without having ever paid any premiums to the insurer before.  That concept applied to fire insurance would require fire insurers to cover applicants who waited until their home caught on fire to call for coverage.

That regulatory requirement is then paired under Obamacare with the further compassionate regulation called “community rating,” which requires insurers to charge all applicants the same price, no matter how sick when they first apply, except for sharply restricted variances for age, geographic location, and smoking.  Applied to fire insurance, that concept would require the insurer to charge no more for the applicant that calls with his house already on fire than for other applicants.

Naturally, all these regulatory requirements are going to cause health insurance premiums to soar, especially for younger and healthier individuals, who are not going to be happy with Obamacare as a result.  The March 22 Investors Business Daily cites Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini as saying that Obamacare “will likely cause premiums to double for some small businesses and individuals.”  But he just represents a fascist insurance company trying to protect its rapacious, outrageous, exploitive, 4% profit margin.  A study of 5 major cities by Holtz-Eakins’ American Action Forum estimated premiums to climb there under Obamacare by an average of 169%.

Not to worry though.  The young and the healthy have a strategy available to them under Obamacare to avoid these costs.  They can refuse to buy any insurance until they get sick with some costly illness such as cancer or heart disease (or even just need some costly dental work).  Then they can sign up for the full product coverage under Obamacare, taking advantage of the compassionate, benevolent, guaranteed issue and community rating.  Until they recover.

The individual mandate, not to mention the employer mandate, was supposed to prevent this.  But we discussed the employer mandate above.  And individuals as well could just skip the insurance and pay the penalty at a savings of at least 50% to 75% or more.  But while Justice Roberts wisely concluded that it is precisely the individual mandate penalty that makes this whole socialist mess constitutional, when our Congressional representatives were put to a vote as to whether the IRS could enforce this penalty by garnishment or seizure, they equally wisely said, “Hell No!”

So millions, including myself, will pursue this strategy next year to avert the costs of Obamacare, which will mean millions more uninsured.  And that will mean more costly, sicker and older folks left covered in the insurance pool, which will cause premiums to soar further, which will cause still more individuals and employers to drop coverage, which means still more uninsured, and the chaos of a financial death spiral for private insurers.

“Progressives” will cheer this demise of the fascist, private insurance market, which was their goal all along, leaving all health care to be paid for by the “single payer” government.  But “liberals” never before cheered monopolies, all of whom are the single payers for their industries, maybe for good reason.  Maybe they knew something back then that today’s wise guys don’t.  We will see in any event whether the voting public enjoys the ride as much as the “progressives.”  And so much again for if you like your health insurance you can keep it, and no one is going to take that away from you.

All of this health insurance cost chaos will just further feed the labor market chaos that is already starting as the darkening cloud of Obamacare approaches.  Already employers are replacing full time employment with part time employment paying lower wages and no benefits.  Already small businesses with less than 50 employees are freezing hiring, and those with just above 50 workers have begun layoffs.  Moreover, under the Obamacare law, the employer mandate does not require employers to cover the family dependents of their workers.  So the trend towards losing that coverage is already beginning as well.

All of this is preparation to avoid the employer mandate.  But it will mean still more uninsured.  And still more declining incomes for the middle class and working people, which is the mark of Obamanomics, President Obama’s rhetoric deluding his “progressive” cheerleaders to the contrary notwithstanding.  Soaring health insurance costs, and failing health insurers, will just accelerate this labor market chaos even more.

But Obamacare is going to be causing chaos for seniors as well.  As NCPA President John Goodman points out in his health policy blog on March 25, almost half of Obamacare is paid for over the next decade by draining $716 billion out of Medicare.  While Democrats have been so aggressive about accusing Republicans of wanting to slash Medicare, it is Obama and the Democrats who have actually done it.

That leaves Medicare growing at only about half the rate of health care in the rest of the country, which, Goodman explains, has “been the trend for the past 40 years, and [contrary to “progressive” rhetoric] the United States is not unique. Our health care spending growth rate is in the middle of the pack among developed countries.”

That means that spending in the rest of the health care system, and health care spending in the rest of the developed world, will be growing at twice the rate of Medicare.  Goodman adds, “The Medicare Office of the Actuaries has included two graphs in the latest Medicare Trustees report showing what this will mean. These graphs — which have never appeared in the mainstream media or even been referred to by the mainstream media — show Medicare doctors’ fees dropping below Medicaid fees in the near future and falling progressively behind Medicaid and private sector payments, indefinitely into the future.”

As a result, “One out of seven hospitals will leave Medicare in the next seven years, say the actuaries, and beyond that things just get worse and worse. Access to care will become a huge issue as waiting times to see doctors and enter hospitals grows…. From a financial point of view, seniors will be less attractive to doctors than welfare mothers.”

Yet, “Time and again, the president, the vice president and every leading Democrat in Congress have referred to the Medicare spending reductions as ‘savings’ that will not harm the elderly in any way.”

Goodman concludes, “This is not leadership. This is not making tough choices. This is bait and switch. And if the administration won’t own up to what it has done today — when there is no obvious pain — what do you think future politicians are going to do when real seniors can’t find a doctor who will see them?” They are going to repeal the Medicare cuts, just like they never allow the SGR cuts to Medicare fees for doctors and hospitals to become effective.

President Obama promised us over and over that Obamacare would not increase the deficit by a single dime.  That is literally true, haha, sucker.  But repealing the Obamacare Medicare cuts will leave a $716 billion deficit hole in Obamacare, for just the next 10 years.  Into the future, that is trillions and trillions.

Moreover, in its original cost estimates for Obamacare, CBO assumed that only 30 million workers will obtain their health insurance through the Exchanges, with 162 million still receiving employer provided coverage.  Of those 30 million, CBO estimated that 19 million would receive the Obamacare subsidies for the cost of that insurance, at a total cost of $450 billion over the first 10 years, or actually first 6 years of implementation under Obamacare.

But adding Holtz-Eakin’s more than 40 million losing their employer health insurance on top of those 19 million CBO assumed would be subsidized by Obamacare would triple the $450 billion in estimated costs for the health insurance subsidies of Obamacare under the first 6 full years, adding nearly a trillion dollars to the costs and deficits of Obamacare during that time alone.  In future years, that added cost contributing to still higher deficits would soar further.  Which brings the Obamacare chaos to the federal budget, deficits and debt.

So in the end, President Obama is right after all.  Obamacare would not add a single dime to the deficit.  It’s all good.

[First Published at Forbes]

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President Barack Obama has for five-plus years said and done two contradictory things regarding the United States’ economy.

1)  He has repeatedly said that he wants the private sector to recover – and indeed thrive.

2)  He has repeatedly, dramatically grown government – in terms of spending, laws, regulations and taxes.  And rigidly insists that he be allowed to continue to do all of it.

But a Big Economy and a Big Government are mutually exclusive.

The wasteful federal government creates zero wealth.  Every penny it spends is at the expense of the productive private sector.  The former can only spend what it first takes from the latter – via taxation, or borrowing.

The more government taxes and borrows, the more limited the private sector is in its attempts to grow.  And expand the economy, hire people – and pay more taxes.

And the more time businesses spend complying with laws and regulations – including learning new ones – the less time they have to try to grow, expand the economy, hire people – and ultimately pay more taxes.

The wasteful federal government is draining the productive private sector of operational capital – and drawing its time and attention away from more worthwhile activities.

Imagine a tick that – in addition to bleeding the deer – can tell its host where, when and how it can move.

And the concern for an activist state continuing its over-activity freezes the private sector in amber – afraid to move, in dread anticipation of the next government anvil to fall.

So does President Obama want a Big Economy – or a Big Government?  The answer is best embodied in what he has done to the Internet.

Existing law prior to the Obama Administration left the Internet pretty much alone.  As always happens when the government removes itself, the Web has rapidly grown into a free speech-free market Xanadu.

“Technology Sector Found to Be Growing Faster Than Rest of US Economy”

Then came President Obama.  Who – despite the legal proscriptions and without any Congressional authority to do so – unilaterally imposed a host of new Web regulations.

The biggest being Network Neutrality – which places the government in charge of the entire Internet backbone.

Net Neutrality could lead to the loss of 1.5 million private sector jobs.  It will raise the cost for each and every consumer by about $55 a month.  Because it will raise Internet Service Providers (ISPs)’s costs by $20 to $40 billion per year.

It is egregiously damaging to continued investment – meaning the Web will slowly decay and deteriorate, rather than continue to rapidly improve and grow.

Not satisfied with that destruction, the Administration also imposed data roaming regulations.  Which require the companies who spend the tens of billions of dollars necessary to build their wireless networks to rent them to those that don’t.

Which raises a question: Why would any company spend said tens of billions of dollars, when they can just wait around for someone else to do it and then have the government force them to share?

Which raises a problem: If everyone is sitting around waiting for everyone else to build said networks, there’s a whole lot of nothing going on.

The Administration has done even more to derail the Tech sector – but you get the gist.

So too do you get that President Obama much prefers a Big Government to a Big Economy.

Because with the Internet, he inherited the latter – and has time and again insisted on imposing upon it the former.

[First Published at Red State]

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With the exception of Lech Walesa, the last of the great Cold War heroes has died.

Former Prime Minister of Great Britain Lady Margaret Thatcher, age 87, passed away Monday, April 8, 2013, following a stroke.

Along with Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, the Iron Lady is one of a small cadre of individuals personally responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the former Soviet Union.  Like that of her American counterpart, former President Ronald Reagan, Lady Thatcher’s idea of Cold War strategy was simple:  “We win; they lose.”  She won, they lost.  And perhaps they knew they would:  it was the Soviets who dubbed Lady Thatcher “The Iron Lady.”

Her iron will, her steadfast vision, and her clear-headed sense of right and wrong not only proved her to be on the right side of history, but as former U. S. Secretary of State James Baker put it on the April 8, 2013, “PBS News Hour,” also helped to change the arc of history.  She was, as Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis characterized her in his tribute to her, “indomitable.”

Lady Thatcher’s biography is well-known, as is her late-in-life slide – like that of her hero Ronald Reagan – into dementia.  We write here not to repeat those details but solely to salute her life in the wake of her passing.

As another former Secretary of State, George Schultz, also put it, on the April 8, 2013, News Hour, the legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s, in one word, is “Freedom.”

Let us hope that she – and we – will achieve that for eternity.

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British Petroleum is still one of the world’s biggest oil companies. But as early as the late 1990s they didn’t want you think of them that way. CEO, Lord John Browne of Madingley, argued: “the transition to alternatives could be accelerated by changing industry practices today.” While other oil companies eschewed climate change alarmism, BP embraced it. In 2002, Lord Browne declared: “Climate change is an issue which raises fundamental questions about the relationship between companies and society as a whole, and between one generation and the next.”

As a result, in 2006, Mother Jones magazine reported: “BP vowed to cut its own CO2 emissions and invest heavily in solar, wind, and other alternative technologies; it even supported … the Kyoto climate treaty.”

BP jumped into renewables and the company’s moniker underwent an evolution from British Petroleum to BP, then to Beyond Petroleum. Between 2000 and 2005, BP invested $500 million into solar power and $30 million on wind and has invested more than $4 billion in alternative energy in the US since 2005. At the time, according to the Wall Street Journal, BP turned a profit on its solar business but not on wind. In 2005, Browne “decided that the energy giant should enter unknown territories of wind, solar and hydrogen power,” which began a “re-branding” designed to “capture public affection” by positioning “themselves as environmentally friendly enterprises.”

The switch seemed to be sound strategy. ExxonMobil didn’t agree.

Comments from a 2008 blog post on ExxonMobil’s position as “obstructive over climate change” included the following: “Given that oil isn’t going to last a whole heck of a lot longer, would not a good business strategy be to start investing in renewable energy?” and “Just from a corporate survival perspective, better start learning, and fast. Carbon is the low-hanging energy fruit and soon to become an economic dead end. What company wants to keep going down a dead end?” BP thought it was “prudent to start diversifying now as a kind of insurance policy.”

ExxonMobil took a different course. In 2005, then-CEO Lee Raymond, said: “What all these people are thinking about doing, we did 20 years ago—and spent $1 billion, in dollars of that day, to find out that none of these were economic.” “In the late 1970s, as oil prices skyrocketed, Exxon diversified into an array of fossil-fuel alternatives, including nuclear and solar energy.” “After several years, Exxon still couldn’t see prospects for renewable energy turning into a moneymaker, especially since oil prices were falling in the 1980s. In the mid-1980s, the company decided to get out of the business.”

Raymond had “an unabashed skepticism about the potential of alternative energy sources like wind and solar.” He saw “Spending shareholders’ money to diversify into businesses that aren’t yet profitable—and that aim to solve a problem his scientists believe may not be significant”—as “a sloppy way to run a company.”

Wall Street agreed. According to Mother Jones, in 2006, Wall Street “worried that even a small increase in investment in non-oil alternatives would distract BP’s focus from its core business—oil.” Commentators and analysts began mocking BP as being “Beyond Profits.”

Yet, critics of Exxon’s approach, in 2008, feared “that the company’s reluctance to explore alternative energy will prove to be bad business judgment in the long run.

Andrew Logan of Ceres, a Boston-based environmental group, sees two possible scenarios: “One is that all the scientists in the world are wrong, in which case there’s no climate change, in which case Exxon will do well.” He then says: “But if the scientists are correct and we have to find a way to transform the way we use energy, then Exxon is going to lag significantly behind its competitors.”

It is obvious now, nearly a decade later, which was the sound strategy. Global warming is not the manmade crisis it was sold to be in the mid-2000s, and we know that oil is “going to last a whole heck of a lot longer.” Today, innovation and imagination are producing record quantities of domestically produced oil and gas. Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry, reports: “we won’t hit peak oil until we hit peak imagination.” And, Exxon’s Raymond made the right choice to get out of renewable energy.

On April 3, BP announced that it was selling its US wind assets—estimated to be worth $1.5-3.1 billion. The announcement stated that BP has decided sell the US wind energy business “as a part of our continuing effort to … re-position the company for sustainable growth” and that it would “unlock more value for shareholders.”  BP ended its venture in solar energy in 2011.

In a speech in late 2012, BP’s general manager for global energy markets, Mark Finley, praised the rapid growth of renewable energy—claiming it had increased by 18% over last year, “the tenth year in a row for double-digit growth.” However, he acknowledged “renewables make up such a small slice of the world’s energy portfolio now—only about 2%—that even at such a blistering growth rate they are unlikely to significantly displace fossil fuels in the next two decades.”

Addressing renewables’ growth, Finley said it was happening “most typically in places where the governments can afford the subsidies needed to help these fuels compete. The key challenge going forward is: when things grow fast, subsidies get expensive fast. So can these forms of energy achieve economies of scale that will allow them to compete without subsidies?”

“That is the real question.”

Yes, that is “the real question,” and apparently, BP got the answer. Without subsidies, renewables cannot compete—BP is bailing. Addressing wind energy’s future, Amy Grace, a New York-based analyst at New Energy Finance, said: “There’s limited visibility beyond 2014 about what the assets will be worth as a tax credit supporting turbines is set to expire at the end of this year.”

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Patrick Jenevein, CEO of Tang Energy Group—whose website lists developing wind farms as one of its projects, agrees: “Without subsidies, the wind industry would be forced to take a hard fresh look at its product. Fewer wind farms would be built, eliminating the market-distorting glut. And if there is truly a need for wind energy, entrepreneurs who improve the business’s fundamentals will find a way to compete.”

Additionally, having now actually lived with the presence of industrial wind turbines, people no longer want them “imposed on their communities.” On April 4, the Falmouth, MA, Board of Selectmen and the Falmouth Finance Committee held a joint meeting and unanimously stood by the selectmen’s prior vote to remove the town’s wind turbines. Residents say: “they’re suffering headaches, dizziness and sleep deprivation and often seek to escape the property where they’ve lived for more than 20 years.” Across the pond, more than 100 Conservative Members of Parliament urged Prime Minister, David Cameron, to block further expansion of onshore wind. Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, called England’s onshore wind farms a “blight,” and while Minister of State at the Department for Energy and Climate Change (now the prime minister’s senior parliamentary advisor) John Hayes said: “We can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities. … It seems extraordinary to have allowed them to be peppered around the country without due regard for the interests of the local community and their best wishes.”

As result of diminishing public support in the US, the revelation of extreme green-energy crony-corruption, tightening budgets, and a slow economic recovery, government support for renewable energy is under fire. The Daily Caller reports: “States across the country are aiming to scale back or eliminate laws that require certain amounts of power be purchased from renewable energy sources, including wind.”

Yes, the winds, they are a-changing—and BP decided to get out while the getting is good.

Robert Bradley, CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research, said: “BP put form over substance and took their eye off the ball” and called “Beyond Petroleum” “a failed corporate strategy. … BP went after an environmental fad, basked in the glow of the Left environmental movement, and now may have destroyed itself in the process.”

Even the “Left environmental movement” is no fan. Mother Jones cites an “industry observer” addressing a post-Valdez-disaster ExxonMobil: “It ‘is a company that does everything in a gold-plated manner. It’s purely a commercial decision: You never put in anything that might fail’—not for ethical reasons, but because as BP has discovered, failure is expensive.”

Now that BP is “back to petroleum,” perhaps now its moniker should be “Beyond Puff-power.

[First Published at OurMoney.net]

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Ironically six of the original European colonial powers of yesteryear, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, have aligned to resist the new virtual-colonial-power — Google’s hegemony over online private data.

These six leading EU members, which comprise 75% of the EU economy, have jointly launched national investigations of Google’s privacy actions. That’s because Google has paternalistically rebuffed and ignored the EU belief that Google’s 2012 unification of its sixty privacy policies is a serious violation of European data protection law, because it does not allow any meaningful use transparency or user choice to opt-out of Google’s private data collection.

Just like the European colonial powers colonized and extended their power over weaker peoples and areas and established very unequal power relationships, in the virtual world of the Internet Google has effectively virtually colonized digitally-weaker Europe. Google has roughly 90% search market share among EU nations and commands about half of all European online advertising.

EU nations, including their citizens, businesses, and media, are for all practical purposes virtually-dependent on Google to an exceptional extent to find and monetize information online.  As effective digital colonies of Google, their exceptional online dependency on Google is in stark contrast to other nations with indigenous search engines like: the Czech Republic (Seznam has 45% share), South Korea (Naver has 72% share), China (Baidu has 76% share), and Russia (Yandex has 62% share).

In addition to believing that their citizens should not be the virtual vassals of a virtual sovereign Google – without any real rights to know, own or control their private data — the EU nations’ also believe that under EU law EU citizens’ private data only should be stored physically in the EU under their sovereign jurisdiction.

However, data is Google’s treasure. Google has already plundered most of the EU’s public and private information and shipped it back to their homeland datacenters.

Now EU countries are effectively saying we want our private data back, because it is ours, and Google has replied: “No.” Much like the European colonial powers have said “No” to many former colonies or conquests who have requested the return of national cultural antiquities that the colonial powers plundered in the past.

Apparently Google is maintaining the old adage here that “possession is nine tenths of the law.” Simply Google in proclaiming it’s “privacy policy respects European law,” is defiantly challenging the EU to prove otherwise, not only in court, but in the court of global public opinion, which Google is confident it can manipulate to take Google’s side.

Apparently, Google CEO Larry Page has adopted a virtual “realpolitik” approach to statesmanship based on power and not law or morality — much like Prussia’s Otto Von Bismarck’s “realpolitik” in the late 19th century.

Google understands this conflict’s outcome resides in the realm of power, specifically Internet power. Google has more Internet power than anyone, and the EU nations have very little.

Google practically has assessed the weaponry available to the virtual indigenous EU nations to fight back against Google and found that it is nothing to fear. Google smirks at the EU’s Lilliputian privacy fining authority, which looks like natives’ knives and fists next to Google’s virtual global navy; its state-of-the-art digital ship cannons and muskets of Internet dominance; and its hard-to-match regiments of the best privacy lawyers, lobbyists and media handlers that Euros can buy.

Moreover, Google has repeatedly challenged EU and European authorities over privacy and competition, and to date, they have always won decisively. When Google invaded EU nations with thousands of Street View cars and photographed and posted online most everybody’s home without homeowners’ or authorities’ knowledge or permission, many nations objected, but ultimately acquiesced giving EU citizens little opportunity or choice to opt out.

When a tenacious German regulator demanded to examine a Street View car in person, he discovered it was also collecting private WiFi data communications (emails, credit card numbers, etc.) emanating from people’s homes without users’ knowledge or choice to opt out. While many nations investigated this Google mass-invasion of EU citizens’ privacy, again there resulted no enforcement action of consequence to deter Google in the future.

Even after several authorities learned that Google did not destroy the private WiSpy data they recorded, when they promised to do so, once again Google suffered no sanction of consequence or of deterrence.

Last year, Google announced it was consolidating its sixty-odd privacy policies into one without meaningful transparency or opt-out choice, the EU authorities asked Google to halt. True to form, Google ignored them, while paternalistically informing the EU’s privacy authorities that they were in compliance with EU data protection law — implying that EU privacy authorities were not expert in their own privacy law.

As for EU antitrust enforcement, the evidence-to-date unfortunately suggests that the EU competition authority has been subordinated effectively by Google’s greater practical and political power.

No less than three times over the last year, the EU Competition authority has threatened publicly and firmly to enforce EU antitrust law against Google for four antitrust violations by issuing a Statement of Objections. Every time after the EU authorities have loudly threatened enforcement action against Google with a hard deadline, the EU has quietly backed down and given Google many months more to continue their illegal and anti-competitive behavior.

Once again, in Google’s world of realpolitik, Google has been taught by the EU authorities’ repeated actions that despite their bluster and threats, in the end, they are more bark than bite and no real match for Google’s greater practical and political power.

Interestingly there is also a “colonial era” power issue in competition policy in addition to privacy policy.

For the first few centuries of the European colonial period, the colonial powers were mercantilist, meaning the asymmetry of power between the colonial power and the colonies enabled them to enrich themselves at the colonies’ expense and to mandate that their products and services enjoy total supremacy over those of the colonies’ despite merit. They were mercantilists because they had the power to dictate terms. Might was right in that era.

Very interestingly, eleven European digital merchants in Google’s virtual colonies on the European continent recently issued an open letter to their authorities asking for an end to Google’s virtual mercantilist trade with Europe, where Google uses its virtual sovereign market power to regularly favor its own products and services over indigenous competitive European products and services — in order to enrich Google at the expense of the digitally-weaker European virtual colonies and their indigenous people. Apparently might is still right in this virtual era.

Just as the colonies increasingly demanded more free trade with their colonial powers over time, now these European digital merchants have a simple free trade expectation from the de facto virtual sovereign power of Google in search and search advertising in Europe — given Google’s ~90% market share in Europe and dominance of online advertising.

Simply, they petition their indigenous authorities: “Google must be even handed. It must hold all services, including its own, to exactly the same standards, using exactly the same crawling, indexing, ranking, display and penalty algorithms.” They only ask for the Golden Rule Ethic from Google: to be treated as Google wishes to be treated.

Google’s upcoming new challenge to the European privacy authorities will be Google’s promotion of Google Glass, Google’s cloud-tethered digital eyeglasses that can record and videotape everything in the wearers’ view without other people’s knowledge or permission by default.

This could be an exact repeat of Google Street View and Google Street View WiSpy privacy problems; where the virtual colonial power dictates another change in the privacy culture of Europe that everything everywhere is public for Google’s absorption and not private for EU citizens to control.

If Google is true to its consistent past privacy behavior, it will effectively operate in a stop-us-if-you-can mode, knowing that in the past the EU authorities always have backed down and submitted to their virtual colonial power’s realpolitik dictates.

(Interestingly, the homes of Google’s leadership are not available on Google Street View like most everyone else’s are, and one can expect that Google will not allow any outsider to wear Google Glass in Google’s offices. That’s because everyone that is permitted to enter the Google sanctum must sign a very strict confidentiality agreement that they will not disclose any private or confidential information that they may learn while visiting Google.)

In sum, this is all about Google as virtual colonial power establishing its virtual realpolitik power relationship over its weaker European digital colonies. EU practices and laws must bend to comport with Google  “law.” The EU’s digital “lingua franca” must change to lingua Google. And any form of EU Pax Romana must make way for Pax Google.

Simply this is a significant geo-political power struggle of the 21st century. The Czech Republic, South Korea, China and Russia are four different nations with very different approaches that have each maintained their digital sovereignty and independence in the virtual world by having a substantial indigenous search competitor to Google.

However, with no European indigenous competitor or counterweight to Google’s market and information power, will the EU surrender to full Digital-Colonialization, or will the EU assert their physical sovereignty and rule of law over the EU’s virtual world?

At bottom, this conflict is simple. Who is the digital sovereign in Europe – European authorities or Google?

[First published at The Precursor Blog, as part of the Google's Disrespect of Privacy Research Series]

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[This piece by Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College (and a former classmate of mine at the University of Pittsburgh), is used with permission. It was first published at the Center for Vision & Values.]

Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest leaders of the Cold War, of the 20th century, and of British history, has died at the age of 87.

I’ve referred to her as one of my Cold War seven: Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin, and Margaret Thatcher. They were the seven figures who dissolved an Evil Empire, and only Walesa and Gorbachev still remain with us.

The world dubbed her the Iron Lady, a title that duly fits. Many, however, mistake the Iron Lady moniker as referring solely to her strength in the Cold War. There was much more to it. Consider:

Margaret Thatcher is arguably the most complete British leader of the last 100 years, surpassing even Winston Churchill. Like Churchill, she was tough and successful in foreign policy, taking on and vanquishing totalitarian evil. Churchill warned the world as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe. Decades later, the world celebrated as the Iron Lady helped break the Iron Curtain.

But unlike Churchill, Margaret Thatcher had enormous domestic successes that Churchill couldn’t touch, and didn’t dare try to touch. When World War II closed, the British people booted Churchill from the prime ministership in preference of Labour leader Clement Attlee, who gave the British populace Keynesian socialism. The masses wanted their welfare state, and Attlee, equipped with promises of “change” and “forward,” gave them a fundamental transformation. In no time, Attlee’s party was spending money unlike anything Britain had ever seen, nationalizing everything under the sun, including with the progressive left’s coup de grace: government healthcare. It was a giant government binge that would bury Britain for decades.

This fundamental transformation to welfare-statism was so thorough, and so imbibed by the electorate, that when Churchill later returned to office for another term (1951-55) the World War II hero couldn’t stand up to the sacred cows of Britain’s new nanny state. By the late 1970s, the United Kingdom was smothered not only by massive government expenditures and debt but by the enormous and disastrous government unions that the Labour Party had built and nurtured.

All of this came to a crashing head in the late 1970s, and fittingly under the Labour Party, this time led by Prime Minister James Callaghan. The signature event was the Winter of Discontent (1978-79). The economy was an utter train wreck, debt-ridden and hampered by a prolonged un-recovering “recovery.” Things were made far worse by continual work stoppages by striking public-sector unions. Given that the government ran just about everything, thanks to decades of the British left nationalizing everything, there was garbage literally rotting in the streets and dead people not being buried because of striking government refuse workers and gravediggers.

Things got so bad that the British electorate was willing to elect a bona fide conservative to run their government: Margaret Thatcher. This was not some squishy moderate that we in the United States would have called a Rockefeller Republican or (today) a RINO. This was the real McCoy; the genuine article. Here was a new leader who actually understood and could articulate what was wrong with Britain — and had the courage to do something about it.

And so, Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first-ever female prime minister, embarked upon an extraordinary run from 1979-90 that featured three consecutive electoral victories, including the landslide that brought her to power. She then proceeded to take on not just the Soviets abroad, but, at home, the powerful government unions, the Keynesian spending, the bloated cradle-to-grave welfare state, the punitive taxes, the burdensome regulations, and decades of government nationalizations/seizures. As to the latter, Thatcher began a comprehensive campaign of privatization that returned freedom, solvency, and sanity to Britain.

It was an amazing performance. You can now expect a remarkable outpouring of emotion and appreciation in Britain, much like what America saw with the death of Ronald Reagan and what the world witnessed with the passing of John Paul II, her two Cold War partners and kindred souls. And like her two great Cold War allies, she fortunately lived to see the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Lady Thatcher outlived both Reagan and John Paul II. Her health, unfortunately, had been in decline for a long time. I recall that she recorded a video eulogy for Reagan’s funeral rather than address the audience live and directly. That was 2004, almost 10 years ago.

I also recall her parting words to Ronald Reagan: “Well done, thy faithful servant.”

And now, we can second that tribute. Well done, Lady Thatcher.

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values, and New York Times best-selling author of the book, “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor.” His other books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and“Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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I was reading the Chicago Tribune online this morning and came across a short Reuters article that should make us all tremble.

The article says the federal government has revoked the license of the gun store that sold a firearm to the mother of Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who shot up the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, last December. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will not say why the license was revoked just days after the shooting. The news has only just come out.

The article ends by noting the guns Lanza used “were all legally purchased and registered.” Does the government shut down car dealers who legally sell cars to people who later use them in drug dealing, murders, rapes, kidnappings, bank robberies, prostitution, and other crimes?

Why hasn’t the government shut down the car dealer who sold the car that Lanza used to drive to the school to commit his crime? It’s almost impossible to imagine Lanza would have been able to get to that school without a car. Almost surely he’d have been stopped if he had been walking down a sidewalk in broad daylight carrying an AR-15 rifle, two handguns, multiple magazines for the rifle and the handguns, and hundreds of rounds of ammo.

There is no indication the gun store did anything illegal. Does law protect us anymore? Or can government punish us if the right people in the right places want to punish us, even when we follow the law? Unless the ATF produces proof of illegal firearms transactions by the gun store, we must conclude the answer to the first question is “no” and to the second question is “yes.”

Here’s the Reuters story in its entirety:

(Reuters) – The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said on Friday it had revoked the federal license of a Connecticut gun retailer that sold a weapon to the mother of Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people at an elementary school in December.

The agency on December 20 revoked the license of Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor, Connecticut, ATF spokeswoman Debora Seifert said. The revocation was reported in The Journal News, of Westchester County, New York, on Friday.

“We did revoke their federal firearms license,” she said. The agency did not publicly disclose a reason for the closure.

A woman who answered the telephone at Riverview on Friday, and did not give her name, confirmed the store had sold a weapon to Lanza’s mother, Nancy, and that its license had been revoked. She declined further comment.

Nancy Lanza was her son’s first victim in the December 14 attack. He shot her in their family home before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, where he gunned down 20 young children and six adults before shooting himself dead.

The weapons Adam Lanza, 20, used in the attack were all legally purchased and registered.

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Ezra Klein has a lengthy piece taking apart my  post from last July concerning the media’s oft-repeated “Republicans Have No  Obamacare Replacement” myth.

I’m glad he’s engaged on this point, because I think it’s a sign of  seriousness and a positive development to have debates about what comes after Obamacare – because make no mistake, something will come after it – and the  discussion has been a long time coming.

The essential premise of Ezra’s piece is that Republicans have no plan for  replacing Obamacare because none of the Republican plans does the same things  Obamacare does, at least on paper. In other words, to qualify as an Obamacare replacement, your plan has to accomplish pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same methods. This strikes me as a bit of a game, especially given the  conflation of ends and means: if I replace my Ford with a Honda, do I still have  a car? Or my desktop with my laptop – do I have a computer? Or sugar with  Splenda… you get the idea. But then Ezra goes on to spend 2400+ words criticizing Republican plans. This itself is a welcome acknowledgement that  these Republican plans must in fact exist, which was the whole point of my  original post. Ezra’s real contention is not “You have no plan”, but “Your plan  is all wrong.” Good! Now, four years later, we can have a debate.

The eight points that I noted as principles shared by the overwhelming  majority of Republicans approach health care from a different perspective than  Ezra and the Democrats. The accusation on Ezra’s part is that Republicans think  we have too much insurance. He’s basically right – but there is a difference  between saying “we have too much insurance” and saying “we have too many people  insured”. It’s important to be careful here, because we’re judging how a  Republican plan would work against how Obamacare’s supporters claim it would  work, or ought to work. Democrats see getting insured as an end; but for  Republicans, more healthy people is the end.

What most of the conservative health policy experts on the Right want is  greater access to quality, affordable care. They understand health insurance  does not guarantee quality health care any more than car insurance guarantees  you a mechanic who fixes what’s actually wrong with your car without  overcharging you. They want people getting insured because insurance is more  affordable, competing in a marketplace to provide people with what they  want – and thus Republicans are focused on cost, while Democrats are focused on coverage.

Ezra argued recently that it’s okay that we’re seeing premium hikes, because people are  paying for better insurance. But that’s a bait and switch. Obama didn’t promise that Obamacare would have people paying more for a better product – he promised premiums would go down $2500 and that most people would keep the same insurance  and the same doctor they had before. Affordability was how he led with it – it’s right there in the title: the Affordable Care Act! Yeah, about that. And it’s an open question, I think, about whether these plans are really any better. For those getting regular email updates from their insurer about the subtle tightening of the reins on access to certain procedures, it looks more like insurance is getting more expensive while covering things Washington deems more important than what they covered before – which may or may  not be what you need at an individual level.

Republicans are in this cost-focused position in part for populist reasons: cost is what most Americans care about. According to a March 2009 report released by Health and Human Services, a majority of Americans identified cost  as their top concern with American health care – not coverage. See U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services, “America Speaks on Health Reform:  Report on Health Care Community Discussions,” page 101. It used to be online here, but HHS has taken it down for some odd reason.

Unfortunately, today we have an insurance system that doesn’t work like an  insurance system. Megan McArdle just had a great  post on this the other day, following up on Kathleen Sebelius’s criticism of  catastrophic coverage as “not real insurance”:

“It’s why high deductibles are a good idea—for  small expenses, it’s better to self insure. And it’s why “catastrophic” health  plans, which only cover the sort of extremely expensive events that most people would have difficulty financing, are a much better deal than the soup-to-nuts  plans that most people get through their employers. Those plans are expensive,  both because they’re paying for a higher percentage of your expenses, and because they drive up utilization–which means that they drive up next year’s  premiums even more. Imagine what your car insurance would cost if it covered  gasoline, routine maintenance, and those little air freshener trees you hang  from the rearview mirror. Then stop asking why health insurance costs so much…Sebelius’ response is apparently that catastrophic insurance isn’t really  insurance at all—which is exactly backwards. Catastrophic coverage is “true insurance”. Coverage of routine, predictable services is not insurance at all;  it’s a spectacularly inefficient prepayment plan.”

I typically use the example of your homeowner’s insurance policy being used every time a lightbulb busts. Imagine if you had to go to a housing clinic that  was in your plan, wait for an advisor to tell you the proper lightbulb which you already know you need, go to another hardware store to pick up the lightbulb, pay a copay for the lightbulb, etc. Who would do that? And yet we do it all the  time in the health care space. Most spending is on the broken lightbulb equivalent of chronic diseases, and that’s exactly where things like Ken  Thorpe’s work come in.

The point is that insurance is one way to pay for health care services, but it is not the only way, and very often not the best way. It adds massive administrative costs to every transaction. These are costs not solely born by  the insurance company (or the employer), but includes costs on providers imposed  by insurance companies. It is far more efficient to pay directly for a service received whenever it is possible to do so (and as consumer driven coverage evolves and expands, the optimal cut-off line will become more apparent). The  presence of third-party payment always leads to overutilization, mistrust, and  lack of accountability. Who is your doctor working for, you or the payer? Who  cares what something costs if someone else is paying for it?

[WARNING, WONK LANGUAGE:] What’s more, if you favor global budgets and  capitated payments to providers (as most on the left do), it really amounts to a defined contribution by another name. [/WONK] What’s the difference between  that, conceptually, and premium assistance? The level of who receives the  payment – be it government entities, providers, or the individual. Don’t we  trust Americans to act more in their self-interest than people farther away from  it?

Republicans calculate that most people would rather have less insurance plus more freedom, with prices driven down by market forces, over more insurance and government-run health care with its attendant access problems, rationing, care denials, higher taxes, regulatory burden, etc. Having access to affordable health care is not the same as having comprehensive health insurance, and in fact the latter has undermined the former. Price transparency is key here (why do most Democrats want to bully health plans on their rate increases but don’t seem to think hospitals should have to publish prices for services?). CMS’ national health expenditure data over the last 30 years illustrates this: premiums go up as out of pocket costs plummet. Quality is important too, and we ultimately need both. But we have to  start with something and everyone understands price.

In part, Ezra acknowledges this. He never really challenges the view that having patients share more of the cost of health care leads to lower costs (and higher coverage). He implicitly endorses it when he opines that a $10,000 deductible is sufficient. Great! Now we can just negotiate over the amount of  the appropriate deductible.

While Ezra’s right that there will be lower-cost options in the exchanges  that have high deductibles at first, these lower-cost options are almost  assuredly going to be eliminated over time. Since my original post was from  July, if I was writing it today I’d add a modifier that Republicans will likely  push hard to exempt HSAs/HDHPs from Obamacare – preserve them, expand them, and  make them available to everyone, including seniors. Obamacare’s regulations are  already wrecking the individual market, and I expect future regs to limit these plans even  further given the left’s natural dislike for them (despite their increasing  popularity, or perhaps because of it).

Now, for the safety net: Republicans acknowledge the poor will always need to  be subsidized. We can subsidize them inefficiently by buying first dollar coverage, or we can subsidize them more efficiently through funded HSAs or direct delivery of services. For the truly miserable – those functionally  illiterate, drug addicted, mentally ill, etc. – the obsession with universal  health insurance does absolutely nothing. They need direct delivery.

Medicaid is simply not a good program, as it currently functions. Its outcomes range from the subpar to the atrocious; it is rife with access problems  and there’s a reason why so many of the uninsured who are currently eligible for  it simply don’t enroll. Yes, Medicaid block grants as currently proposed will  reduce the number of people covered by the program…but Republicans think that’s  a good thing, because it would be a step toward returning Medicaid to the role it was intended to have from the beginning: a program for the poorest of the  poor and the sickest of the sick. Fewer people means fewer access problems. But again, we can negotiate here: just increase the amount of the block grant.  Structure is more important than the dollar figure here.

I disagree that Republicans think Medicare is the driver of all that’s bad in  our health system. They just believe that bureaucrats in Baltimore aren’t smart enough to run 1/6th of the economy – I mean, we are talking about a program that will pay for penis pumps but not eye glasses. Because commercial health plans benchmark payments for good and services to some percentage of Medicare, all the  price distortions get imported into the system, even if tweaked a bit. This leads to overpaying for some things, and underpaying for others. Because the  nature of this fee for service + third party payer system has the incentives all  wrong, we end up with incredible fragmentation, waste, and even worse problems.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Democrats also give every indication of  believing that Medicare is a problem. They always say that “Medicare can be the model” of the direction toward a utopia of lower costs and coordinated care. But wait: If they say Medicare will be the driver of future improvement, aren’t they  implying that it hasn’t been in the past – that Medicare has helped lead our  system to its current dysfunctional state. When then-CMS head Donald Berwick was  on C-SPAN’s Newsmakers a few years back, he was asked if Medicare was going to become so good at reducing costs, why hasn’t it done so over the past half century? Here was his  answer.

For my part, the tax subsidies for employer-based care are a bigger part of  the problem. Republicans are divided about how to deal with this issue: some want 100% deductibility of medical expenses, others are in favor of a refundable tax credit (either flat or based on need). Either way, this is one of the most regressive tax policies on the books, and reforming it has got to be one of the primary goals of post-Obamacare policy. No, there isn’t Republican unanimity on the best approach, but there is unanimity on it needing to be fixed – and of course there wasn’t Democrat unanimity on health reform in the 2008 primaries, either, or even during the 2009 process of passing the bill.

So what do we have, at the end of the day? We have the major points of a replacement for Obamacare which looks to solve different problems, using different mechanisms, and bending responsibility and authority toward the individual, not the state. These proposals have the advantage of working  piecemeal towards these goals, rather than being lashed together into a single unified Rube Goldberg machine that only works if you’ve properly balanced all  the pieces at once – an impossibility in a system this big, complex and  bureaucratic. Yes, these points aren’t aimed at accomplishing the same goals as Obamacare. So that is a difference. There is another one, I suspect: unlike Obamacare, I think a replacement built on these principles will actually  work.

[First published at Real Clear Politics]

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I’m scanning headlines on the Internet. I see President Obama has announced he’ll agree to cut Social Security and other benefit programs in exchange for higher taxes. I think, “Take more, give less. This is what government has done to me my whole life.”

I jump to another headline. It reads, “Fisker Automotive lays off most workers, struggles to find investor.” Fisker Automotive sounds familiar. Didn’t the federal government give that company a boatload of money? I start reading the story. I read this:

“Fisker has been working for months to raise $500 million so it could restart production of the Karma, its only model, which was built in Finland. Fisker stopped making the $110,000 plug-in hybrid last year after A123 Systems Inc., the maker of its lithium-ion battery, filed for bankruptcy.

“The company ran into a cash crunch after the federal government froze an Energy Department loan. Fisker is supposed to make the first payment on some of $192 million it borrowed from the government later this month.”

That’s right! The feds loaned Fisker money. I go back and read again. A $192 million loan to build a $110,000 hybrid sports car! This from an administration that stresses solidarity with the middle- and lower-income groups who could never afford such a car — an administration that constantly harps on its desire for the wealthiest Americans to pay more taxes and that’s demanding higher taxes in exchange for cutting Social Security, Medicare and other benefits.

It’s late in the day and I’m tired and can’t think of anything to say. Is there anything to say beyond the facts as already stated? A president who wants to raise taxes and lower benefits, and whose administration gave a $192 million loan to build $110,000 sports cars that probably won’t be repaid. Just another day in federal government.

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The North Carolina House Commerce and Job Development Subcommittee on Energy and Emerging Markets narrowly passed a bill Wednesday that would slowly reduce and ultimately end the state’s renewable portfolio standard. A law currently adopted in 29 states and the District of Columbia that requires utilities to obtain a specified percentage of their power from renewable sources by a certain date.

Below are the results of the vote, which passed 11-10:

YES

Hugh Blackwell (R)

Robert Brawley (R)

Mark Brody (R)

Rick Caitlin (R)

Jeff Collins (R)

Mike Hager (R)

Bryan Holloway (R)

Chris Millis (R)

Dennis Riddell (R)

Jacqueline Schaffer (R)

Mike Stone (R)

NO

Becky Carney (D)

Carla Cunningham (D)

Elmer Floyd (D)

Susi Hamilton (D)

Edward Hanes (D)

Rodney Moore (D)

Tom Murry (R)

Ruth Samuelson (R)

Evelyn Terry (D)

Michael Wray (D)

 

Did Not Vote

Jason Saine (R) [Chair]

 

During the testimony, the wind and solar lobby each took separate turns touting the number of “green” jobs they’ve  created. Until a representative from the Civitas Institute rightfully pointed out the opportunity cost that rising energy costs have on the state economy, and called into question what total economic value the “green jobs” brought compared to the jobs that would have been created with greater energy affordability.

Representatives from the solar industry were also enthusiastic about mentioning how fast the price of solar has fallen. This is true, but ultimately a red herring. By 2016, the U.S. EIA projects the levelized cost of electricity using solar photovoltaic technology will still cost 234% more than using the most affordable source, so it’s not going to be competitive on its own anytime soon.

Furthermore, while solar is improving, other renewables are not, despite them having all the same advantages solar has.

As the Raleigh News & Observer - a supporter of the mandate themselves – recently reported:

Meanwhile, electricity generated by wind as well as poultry and swine waste have made almost no progress here despite being eligible for the same subsidies that are available for solar power. Those renewables continue to face significant economic and technological obstacles.

So even with guaranteed business and a regulatory fence to protect from competition, most renewables are still having trouble competing with themselves.

The bill now moves onto the Environment Committee, where one of the two republicans who voted against the measure, Ruth Samuelson, is Vice Chairman.

It’ll be interesting to watch if anyone points out the damage renewable power has done to wildlife, or the additional air pollutants renewable power has caused by misusing fossil fuel generators as backup sources.

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President Obama likes to pose as a martyred man, because when he entered office, the economy was in a recession. But the recession soon ended, following the pattern of the American economy for the entire previous two-thirds of a century, and more.

During that time before Obama, America suffered 11 recessions since the Great Depression. The average length of those previous recessions was 10 months, with the longest being 16 months, as I have reported in this column before. When Obama entered office, the recession was in its 13th month. So based on the previous, long-term pattern of the American economy, the recession would soon be over.

And it soon was. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a collection of top economists recognized as the authoritative body as to when recessions start and when they end, the recession ended in June 2009. So the rest of Obama’s entire first term was the recovery from the recession.

That should have been very promising for Obama, because the long-term historical pattern of the American economy was also the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery. Economist John Lott, in his new book, At the Brink: Will Obama Push Us Over the Edge?, quotes Milton Friedman on this point as saying, “A large contraction in output tends to be followed on the average by a large business expansion; a mild contraction, by a mild expansion.”

That was true even during the Great Depression. From 1935 to 1937, the economy actually boomed, with real GDP growth peaking at an astounding 13.1% in 1936. Similarly, in 1946 to 1948, the economy also suffered a severe recession, as America powered down from the World War II economy. But the economy began a postwar boom in 1949, with real GDP growth reaching 8.7% in 1950.

The economy boomed over the 1950s and 1960s in further recovery from the Great Depression 1930s. And it boomed with the historic, 25-year Reagan boom from 1982 to 2007, in recovery from the disastrous 1970s, which suffered historic, double digit inflation, and four worsening recessions from 1969 to 1982.

But nothing like that happened during the Obama recovery from the Great Recession. Real GDP growth peaked at 2.4% in 2010, and has never again reached even that pitiful level for a recovery from a deep recession. All Obama had to do to be a hero was stay out of the way of the typical American recovery. But Obama couldn’t do it. He was too busy fundamentally transforming America, a goal that implies there was something fundamentally wrong with America before he came along.

But is Obama’s fundamental transformation making America better, or trashing it? Obama keeps trying to tell us what a great success he has been by comparing the recovery to the recession. But recoveries are always better than recessions, by definition, so that is no achievement.

The right measure and comparison for Obama’s record is to compare the recovery not to the recession, but to 11 previous recoveries since the Great Depression. In those recoveries, the economy recovered all jobs lost during the previous recession within 25 months after the prior jobs peak (or recession start). So the job effects of prior post-recessions have lasted an average of about two years. But under President Obama, at the end of his first term in January 2013, 61 months after the prior jobs peak, more than 5 years, we still had not recovered all of the recession’s job losses. In January 2013, there were an estimated 134.8 million American workers employed, still down more than 3.2 million jobs from the prior peak of 138 million in January, 2008.

That included the longest period since the Great Depression with unemployment above 8%, 43 months, from February 2009, when Obama’s so-called stimulus costing nearly $1 trillion was passed, until August 2012. It also included the longest period since the Great Depression with unemployment at 9.0% or above, 30 months, from April 2009, until September 2011. In fact, during the entire 65 years from January 1948 to January 2013, there were no previous months, before Obama’s reign of error, with unemployment over 8%, except for 26 months during the bitter 1981-1982 recession, which slew the historic inflation of the 1970s. That is how inconsistent with the prior history of the American economy President Obama’s extended unemployment has been. That is some fundamental transformation of America.

By this point in the Reagan recovery, 61 months after the recession started, jobs had grown 8.7% higher than where they were when the steep 1981-1982 recession started, representing an increase of about 10 million new jobs. By contrast, in January 2013, jobs in the Obama recovery from the 2008-2009 recession were still 2.3% below where they were when the recession started, at least 3 million less, or a shortfall of about 8 million jobs if you count population growth since the recession started.

Moreover, in the 11 post-Depression recessions before President Obama, the economy recovered the GDP lost during the recession within an average of 4.5 quarters after the recession’s start. It took Obama’s recovery 16 quarters, or 4 years, to reach that point. Today, 5 years, or 20 quarters, after the recession started, the economy (real GDP) has grown just 2.4% above where it was when the recession started. By sharp contrast, at this point in the Reagan recovery, the economy had boomed by 18.1%, almost one-fifth.

Worse Even Than Bush or Carter

Bush’s second term suffered the Great Recession for more than a full year, or more than 25% of Bush’s entire second term, while the recession covered only the first 5 months of Obama’s first term. Prior to Obama, Bush’s second term suffered the worst real GDP growth of any full Presidential term since the Depression, with an average of just 1.9%. But average annual real GDP growth during Obama’s entire first term was less than half as much at a pitiful 0.8%.

Indeed, not only was economic growth during Bush’s awful second term more than twice as high as during Obama’s entire first term. Even Jimmy Carter produced 4 times as much economic growth during his one term as Obama did during his entire first term. In fact, real GDP growth under Obama has been the worst of any President in the last 60 years, as observed by Jeffrey H. Anderson, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, in Investor’s Business Daily on January 13.

But it’s even worse than that. As Anderson further observes, Obama’s real GDP growth has actually been less than half as much as the worst of any President in the last 60 years. In other words, even if you doubled actual GDP growth under President Obama, it would still be the worst record of any President in the last 60 years!

By the fourth quarter of 2012, Obama’s economy basically stopped growing altogether. Even if the economy finally breaks out into some real growth this year, that is only because of the long overdue recovery that is still straining to break out inside this economy, as indicated by the data above for 1936, in the depths of the Depression, and the postwar boom that started in 1950. That and the startling Reagan recovery from the 1970s are the standard for Obamanomics. Don’t be fooled by some way overdue short-term growth spurt this year that just reflects the basic cycles of the economy. Unless the fundamentals of Obamanomics are changed, the result will be long-term stagnation compared to the historic, world-leading, booming economic growth of the American Dream, and probably another recession during Obama’s second term.

Where Obama Went Wrong

The real reason Obama’s recovery has been the worst since the Great Depression is that he went back to the Keynesian economics of the Great Depression, which didn’t work then and won’t work now, and has pursued exactly the opposite of every pro-growth policy illuminated by Reaganomics. Obama’s Keynesian economic policies have focused on increasing demand, particularly through increased government spending and deficits, and through easy monetary policy, as the key to restoring economic growth, rather than focusing on incentives to increase production, as in the new, modern, supply-side economics that Reagan adopted in 1981. Keynesian policies failed so thoroughly in the 1970s that it is puzzling as to why Obama returned to them, as if he were ignorant not only of what happened then, but of everything that happened after then, from 1980 on. That is why I have called Obama’s economic policies Rip Van Winkle economics, because Obama seems to have slept through the 25-year economic boom from 1982 to 2007, and to be totally unaware of everything that happened then, in his own country.

Keynesian economics first arose in the 1930s in response to the Depression. The doctrine holds that economic growth is stimulated by increased government spending, deficits and debt. That is supposed to increase aggregate demand, which is supposed to lead to increased production to satisfy that demand, restoring economic growth.

But if the government spends more, where does the money for that increased spending come from? Either from increased borrowing, or increased taxes, which both take an equal amount of resources and spending out of the private economy as they finance in increased government spending. So not only can there not be a net increase in aggregate demand from these policies. The result is a net drag on growth, as the private economy spends money more productively and efficiently than the government. That is why it never worked in the 1930s, as the recession of 1929 extended into the decade long Great Depression, and it hasn’t worked anywhere else since. This is also why Obama’s so-called “stimulus” from February 2009 failed thoroughly, just wasting nearly a trillion dollars, and adding that much more to the national debt.

But most fundamentally, economic growth is not driven by demand, which is insatiable, but by increased production or output (supply), which is driven by incentives for productive activity. In other words, just as an individual cannot spend himself rich, neither can a nation. Prosperity is determined by production, just as an individual increases his or her income by becoming more productive.

Demand can never be inadequate in a market economy. If the demand for any product or service is not strong enough, the price of the good or service will fall, until demand equals supply. The people can never spend more than they produce, increasing aggregate demand. And they will never spend less, leaving demand inadequate, for they will either consume or save every dime that they earn or produce. The consumption goes into consumer spending, and the savings goes into capital spending (which is actually what makes us richer and more prosperous over the long run).

Keynesian economics has survived so long in Western thinking not because it works, or even makes any sense, but because it justifies what liberal politicians already want to do – spend with reckless abandon, run bigger and bigger deficits so they don’t have to explicitly pay for the spending with higher taxes today, and run up the national debt, which will be someone else’s problem later.

Obama was sold to us as a progressive, forward-looking thinker. But he is actually taking America back to the thoroughly failed economics policies of the 1970s, and even the 1930s, and so ultimately to the same results. Obama should have known better, given the uniformly bad experience with Keynesian economics worldwide, and its fundamental, transparent illogic. Indeed, Obama had a responsibility to the American people to know better. This latest experience with Keynesian Obamanomics in producing the worst recovery since the Great Depression should be taken as the final failure of the transparently foolish Keynesian doctrine, which now needs to be put to bed, in American colleges and universities, and throughout the councils of government.

[First published at The American Spectator]

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Contrary to the suggestion of Kathleen Porter-Magee and Sol Stern at National Review Online the other day, you do not have to sport a tinfoil tricorn to believe Common Core curriculum and testing requirements are not only low-quality, but yet another threat to the American tradition of individual liberty and limited government.

The duo, one of whom I’ve heard out, paste unsubstantiated dreams onto a project prefacing national control over education, from teacher training to hiring and firing to classroom worksheets, by outlining what schools in 46 states must teach and test in every grade in math and English. Porter-Magee should know this, since she serves on a federal panel to review the actual questions for national tests currently under development.

Why on earth do the feds need to review these tests if the entire project is, as the two insist, state-instigated and -controlled? Ah, right, because the federal government provided all thefunds for these national tests, and major grants to the nonprofits who wrote Common Core. They and progressive outfits such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation bankrolled this entire effort, and big businesses with significant financial stakes in national education markets helped sponsor the project and efforts to promote it to lawmakers and fellow business leaders.

The pair deceptively wrote that the Obama administration “has stated that adoption of ‘college and career readiness standards’ doesn’t necessarily mean adoption of Common Core,” but failed to mention that no standards but Common Core fit the administration’s definition of such standards. If the president has his way, states will lose federal money for setting their own standards, as they already were refused access to “Race to the Top” stimulus dollars if they refused Common Core. In January’s State of the Union address, President Obama said these federal grants “convinced almost every state” to adopt Common Core. Despite these realities, Stern and Porter-Magee fatuously assert, states can definitely set their own education standards — just as states can set their own drinking ages.

They also claim, inconsistently, that Common Core is “not a curriculum” and that it will promulgate “an academic curriculum based on great works of Western civilization and the American republic.” The standards essentially define the table of contents for all U.S. K–12 math and English texts. This may not constitute a curriculum, but it certainly defines what kids will and will not learn, especially when paired with two sets of national tests. And why should a centrally controlled, taxpayer-funded, unaccountable-to-the-public set of committees have the power to define what nearly every U.S. school child will learn?

Porter-Magee and Stern project their wishes for better U.S. curriculum onto Common Core. Works they acclaim, such as Common Sense, the Gettysburg Address, and To Kill a Mockingbird appear not on the actual standards, but on accompanying lists of book suggestions — such as California’s — that also include piles of trash schools can teach instead. I compared Common Core’s early math and literacy requirements with grade-level recommendations from Porter-Magee and Stern’s revered E. D. Hirsch, and made essentially the same finding one of Common Core’s content-level experts explained to two state legislatures, which led her to refuse to sign off on the project for obvious lack of quality and research. Calling Common Core rigorous is like calling an average high-school soccer team “world-class.” Porter-Magee and Stern’s purportedly conservative arguments essentially constitute doublespeak on every point.

There is no evidence Common Core will improve education. It’s never been field-tested, and research suggests education standards have no effect on student learning: Many states with high standards have low achievement, and vice versa. So why this horrific waste of time? Is it for the national student databases of test scores, hobbies, family income, voting status, health records, and more?

And how are all of these arrangements conducive to individual rights and limited government?

[First published at National Review Online.]

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Here’s what most people do not realize: major oil pipelines extending 2,151 miles from the Canadian Tar Sands already have been completed and are in operation from Hardisty, Alberta, east through Saskatchewan and Manitoba and south through eastern North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas and then on to refineries in southern Illinois and central Oklahoma, carrying 590,000 barrels of oil each day.

If they knew that, they would certainly wonder why there is an uproar about adding capacity for an additional 830,000 barrels a day through new pipelines from Hardisty through eastern Montana and southwestern North Dakota, where it would pick up U.S. oil from the now famous Bakken Fields and then move further east through South Dakota and Nebraska to Steele City, Nebraska, where the existing pipeline travels on to Cushing, Oklahoma, and then continue it about 500 more miles to the Gulf Coast of Texas, where so many refineries are located.

Canadian oil is cleaner than most of what we get from Venezuela and the Persian Gulf. And our rejection of the Canadian oil will not slow development of the tar sands, a supposed goal of the environmental activists. Canada will simply build a pipeline to Vancouver and sell the oil to Asian countries.

According to Marita Noon, executive director of Energy Makes America Great, The Heritage Foundation has concluded “the project will create some 179,000 jobs on American soil and continue good trade relations with a close ally.” What’s not to like? Plenty, for some people.

The late environmental activist Paul Ehrlich once said that having cheap energy is the equivalent of putting a machine gun in the hands of an idiot child. That, I am afraid, is exactly what our alphabet soup of environmental activist groups evidently believe, which is why they support wind and solar energy with all their might: because they know it will never be cheap. In fact, they know it will never even be economically feasible.

Now they are panicked over the oil industry’s game-changing ability to develop heretofore uneconomical shale gas and oil with the advent of horizontal drilling and hydro-fracking, the latter technology having been used for 60 years in conventional oil drilling without any environmental damage whatsoever.

For years now, our government has ordered up environmental impact studies on the Keystone XL Pipeline, and when each study concluded there were no serious problems, they ordered up a new study. There have been four in all, the latest from the State Department, of all agencies, which again concluded there would be no major environmental impact. Now the State Department is calling for public feedback even though there have been tens of thousands of public comments already.

The drumbeat has failed so far. In mid-March, 17 Democrats voted with 45 Republicans in the Senate for a budget amendment supporting the pipeline, up from 11 Democrats voting for a similar amendment last year. That is good news, as is a recent Fox News poll reported in the Wall Street Journal on March 27, in which 70 percent of registered voters expressed support for construction of the pipeline.

Meanwhile, the labor unions, longtime Democrat supporters, are four-square in favor of the pipeline for the jobs it will bring. So how can the pipeline lose? Easily.

Recently the environmental activists staged a demonstration in Washington urging President Obama to stand his ground. Few showed up and some were arrested, but they made their point. Environment expert Daryl Hannah, best known for her movie role as a mermaid, said the State Department report was “totally wrong, flat out totally wrong.” Can the president resist that siren’s call? I doubt it. His office is a wholly owned subsidiary of both Hollywood and the green movement, with the administration having already spent billions and billions of dollars on failed green projects.

But there still could be a happy ending for most of us: the railroad. After nearly going bankrupt in the 1970s, U.S. railroads are back stronger than ever. They have saved North Dakota from overflowing with a glut of oil, by filling miles and miles of tank cars on Obama supporter Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Line with 500,000 barrels of oil each day and carrying it to refineries on the west coast of the United States. (Hmm, could that be another reason Obama opposes the pipeline?) By year’s end their capacity will rise to 700,000 barrels a day.

The railroads are fully capable of building new track connecting the Dakotas with our Gulf Coast-unless Obama and his Hollywood friends decide this, too, would be an environmental hazard. Stay tuned.

[First published at Human Events.]

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This has not been a good 2013 so far for those who peddle climate alarmism for fame and profit.

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin looks at an April 2 Pew poll and concludes “The public’s interest in climate change is waning.”

A new Pew poll shows the percentage who say that global warming is a “very serious” problem has slipped six points since October.

Our friend Matt Vespa at NewsBusters wondered why Eilperin’s post didn’t pull out the numbers to prove her point.

Maybe she omitted the hard numbers for the simple reason that Americans have NEVER viewed this as a high priority issue.  Let’s go back to January when President Obama – and the media – were pushing hardest for gun control policies. Aa Washington Post/ABC Poll found that 18 percent of all adults viewed addressing global warming as a high priority.  Concerning the partisan breakdown, only 26% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans thought that stopping the polar ice caps was of the highest national urgency.

You read that right, only slightly more than a quarter of Democrats thought global warming was our most urgent issue at a time when hardly anyone was talking about it. In other words, it doesn’t have a natural base of support when no one is paying any concerted attention to the issue. . . .

It doesn’t matter if people believe in manmade global warming, if the intensity isn’t there, there’s no interest for politicians to act.   Also, these were the same people who predicted a rapidly cooling earth in the 1970s and massive food shortages.  They were wrong, and it’s not the time to gambling hundreds of billions – if not trillions – of dollars on something that is a natural occurrence.

Yup. And that’s something Eilperin and others in the MSM would know about if they reported on the substance of Heartland’s eight international conferences on climate change rather than the “controversy” that they are held at all.

But about that Pew poll: Eilperin buried the lead. The most remarkable part of that poll is that it shows overwhelming support for the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Obama is still dragging his feet about approving.

As the Obama administration approaches a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, a national survey finds broad public support for the project. Two-thirds of Americans (66%) favor building the pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada’s oil sands region through the Midwest to refineries in Texas. Just 23% oppose construction of the pipeline. As you can see from the breakdown below, the only group that opposes the Keystone XL pipeline construction are “liberals” and that opposition clocks in at just 42 percent. A majority of Democrats (54 percent) and even stronger majorities of independents (70 percent) and Republicans (82 percent) support the pipline.

If Obama rejects the pipeline, he will be alone with the hard left on this issue, and far away from the mainstream of America.

In other bad news for climate alarmists, James Hansen — who recently quit his job at NASA to dedicate his life to full-time Chicken Little advocacy — nonetheless had to admit in a new paper that his many years of predicting uncontrollable global warming has not come to pass.

Prominent global warming activist James Hansen admits in a new paper that world temperatures are not warming as fast as predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions have shot up in the past decade at about 3% [per] yr, double the rate of the prior three decades. The growth rate falls above the range of the IPCC (2001) ‘Marker’ scenarios,” Hansen reports.

Nevertheless, “the rate of global warming seems to be less this decade than it has been during the prior quarter century,” Hansen admits. The slower pace of warming contradicts IPCC computer models projecting accelerating global warming.

Ouch. Guess Hansen had better hit the lecture circuit telling the world that the sky is falling. If his hypothesis is to be ever proven right, making a giant carbon footprint might be the way to go.

Meanwhile . . .

• the new alarmist “hockey stick” graph by Shaun Marcott, Jeremy Shakun, Peter Clark and Alan Mix turned out to be groundless;

• a prominent columnist at Britain’s Daily Mail made the sobering observation that “It’s the cold, not global warming, that we should be worried about” (25 times more Brtis, mostly the elderly, die in winter because it’s getting harder to afford ever-rising energy prices to keep a home properly heated);

• The Weather Channel reports that 3 in 8 Americans believe that global warming is a “hoax”;

• The Australian newspaper notices a “Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled“;

• and the Arkansas legislature rejected a renewable power mandate — on the day Heartland’s James M. Taylor informed them of the high-costs-for-no-public-benefit nature of requiring the state to get 5 percent of its energy from “renewable” sources such as solar, wind, and biomass.

That’s a rough few weeks, but it’s early yet — and finally warming up here in Chicago. I imagine the green shoots of even more bad news for climate alarmists will start coming up soon. A good place to see those shoots is via a free subscription to The Heartland Institute’s Climate Change Weekly email newsletter.

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Will the new FCC Chair’s mindset and instincts be forward-looking, toward  more Internet innovation and progress, or nostalgic for the FCC’s telephone regulatory heydays of yesteryear?

Already Public Knowledge is calling for a nostalgist FCC Chair who would  reclassify broadband as a telephone-regulated-service to claw back the FCC’s waning regulatory power in a competitive market. Others want support for net neutrality regulation to be a litmus test for the new FCC Chair.

Whoever the president nominates to be the new FCC Chair would be wise to not get boxed in on these issues until she/he learns whether or not the FCC actually enjoys the legal authority to do what these advocates want.

Importantly, the Supreme Court currently is considering whether or not to  continue to grant legal deference to federal regulatory entities like the FCC  when they are deciding matters that effectively self-arbitrate the boundaries of  their own legal authority.

Equally important to determining the actual boundaries of the FCC’s authority going forward is a D.C. Court of Appeals decision, on Verizon’s challenge of the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet Order mandating net neutrality regulation of broadband  Internet service. Both of these court decisions could largely delineate how much  policymaking power the FCC enjoys in the Internet Age.

In the absence of any significant net neutrality problems in the broadband industry, and until the Supreme Court and D.C. Court of Appeals rule, the new FCC Chair would be wise to maintain a forward-looking FCC mindset.

What’s the biggest risk to the new FCC Chair’s tenure? It would be falling into the nostalgia trap that the FCC must restore its past glory and power by  applying its original and now obsolete 1934 monopoly telephone regulatory  authority to the modern unregulated Internet.

If the courts eventually rule that the FCC in fact does not have the  expansive regulatory authority over the Internet that it used to enjoy over the  legacy telephone monopoly of the past, the FCC need not take the law into its own hands by trying to reclassify broadband as a telephone-regulated  service.

If the FCC determines it needs additional legal authority for the Internet Age, it can ask Congress for it formally and publicly justify why it is  necessary.

If the D.C. Court of Appeals does indeed rule against the FCC (as many  expect, including Public Knowledge), the nostalgists’ recommendation to thwart the potential will of the court by reclassifying broadband as a  telephone-regulated service, presents great peril for the new FCC Chair.

First, it could put the new FCC Chair at serious odds with the Court,  Congress, the rule of law, and the Constitution. If the D.C. Court of Appeals  rules the FCC does not have authority to regulate unregulated broadband Internet services, it simply does not have the authority it wants until it either  convinces the Supreme Court to rule that it has the authority or it persuades Congress to legislatively grant it new authority.

Given that any FCC Chair must swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution,  advising the FCC Chair to ignore and thwart the D.C. Court of Appeals would unnecessarily and irresponsibly put the FCC institutionally at risk.  Potentially  disobeying or trying to game a seminal Federal Appeals Court decision would be  no trifling matter.

Second, it is a publicly untenable position.  On one hand the FCC cannot argue that it is moving the nation forward by promoting competition, investment,  innovation and progress, while on the other hand arguing that the best way to  move forward is to go backward decades in time.

How would it be progress or pro-competition/innovation, to apply 1887 common-carrier railroad regulation to the modern Internet when we haven’t  regulated railroads that way since 1976, Bus-lines or trucking that way since 1980, or airlines that way since 1984?  As the public switched telephone network (PSTN) becomes obsolescent, telephone common carrier regulation becomes obsolescent along with it.

How is it pro-innovation or progress for the FCC to go back and apply monopoly telephone price regulation to unregulated competitive broadband  providers?

How soon we forget that rigid telephone monopoly regulation led to little  innovation in telephone service for ~50 years; and it delayed the  commercialization of cell-phones for ~33 years, Internet packet-switching and PC  modems for ~25 years, and broadband service for ~17 years.

Third, it would require the FCC to contort itself beyond credulity.  To reclassify unregulated broadband information services as a regulated telephone service, would require the FCC to admit and argue that most everything it has done and decided over the last decade was dead wrong and must be done over.

In other words, the FCC would have to explain why over a decade of its facts,  reasoned arguments, and legal precedents were all wrong, and why the FCC should  be trusted now to adopt a diametrically opposite legal position when nothing  material has changed in the marketplace to warrant it, and when the only thing  that has really changed would be the legal boundaries of FCC’s authority.

It would be exceedingly difficult for the FCC to argue that such an obviously  self-serving ruling would not be legally arbitrary or capricious.

Fourth, applying telephone interconnection price regulation to Internet routing would break the Internet.  Telephone and Internet are opposite technologies.  Telephone technology is circuit-switched, continuous, predictable, centralized and  regulated, while Internet technology is packet-switched, discontinuous, unpredictable, decentralized and unregulated.

Ramming a square peg into a round hole would break both.

Lastly, reclassification of broadband as a telephone service would be a 180 degree reversal from the near unanimous bipartisan consensus of the last several months to not let the UN’s ITU regulate the Internet like a telephone service.  How could the new FCC Chair be able to convince anyone that the only the FCC  should be able to regulate the Internet, but not any other country or the ITU?  Such a radical and self-serving flip-flop would make the FCC and the U.S. a laughing stock in communications circles.

In sum, FCC Chair could not face a starker strategic choice between a nostalgic FCC-centric mindset and a modern Internet-centric mindset.

The nostalgic strategic trajectory would be one fraught with exceptional legal, technological, political, investment, and business conflict, risk and  uncertainty.  The modern strategic trajectory is one of continued investment, innovation, collaboration, growth and progress.

May the new FCC Chair choose wisely.

[First Published at The Daily Caller]

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Steve Stanek is featured in an excellent piece from Monday night on Chicago’s NBC affiliate WMAQ. It a story about the “essential air service” program, a legacy boondoggle from the airline deregulation of the 1970s.

As the piece by Stefan Holt notes, this 40-year-old “temporary” program makes sure the small airline Air Choice One flies 12 nine-seat flights a day from Decatur to Chicago and St. Louis. Cost to travelers for a ticket to O’Hare: $44. The federal government chips in $90 per flight. Cost to taxpayers: $2.4 million a year. Oftentimes, these flights are empty.

I watched Holt (who is destined for the Big Network one day) interview Steve in Heartland’s library. Holt asked the excellent “TV news” question: “How essential is ‘essential air service’?” Steve didn’t miss a beat: “It’s not essential at all.” I told Steve afterward that Channel 5 News would definitely use that quote, because it was just perfect for the use of a TV journalist.

Steve does a great job hammering home the free-market perspective in a (rare) piece that, as was clear from the interview, was going to be sympathetic to our point of view. Steve comes in at the 1:53 mark in a 3:15 story, and is featured off-and-on for about 40 seconds. Steve also brought up the ADM crony capitalism angle, which I don’t think Holt had thought of before. Holt ended up using more of that angle in the piece.

Steve did an outstanding job – put on a clinic, really, on how to handle a TV interview: Have your facts at hand, answer questions directly and in short sound bites, be passionate. Watch it below.

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

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President Barack Obama is currently contemplating a replacement for Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski – who has announced his intention to step down.

Genachowski has been a good Leftist foot soldier, willfully ignoring the amazing free market successes of the Internet to implement large swaths of President Obama’s uber-regulatory agenda.

Arguably the largest swath is Network Neutrality.  Net Neutrality remains a major problem for a free speech-free market Internet – and a source of great anxiety for its Leftist backers.

Genachowski’s FCC in December 2010 imposed it – bereft of any legislative authority to do so.  The Chairman and everyone else knew there was no such authority – because the D.C. Circuit Court said so just eight months prior to his again jamming it down on us.

Après Genachowski le déluge – of lawsuits.  Verizon, Metro PCS wireless and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli all sued to undo the Net Neutrality power grab.  The very same D.C. Circuit will in the fall begin hearing these arguments.

There does the Left’s tension begin.  They don’t want to just maintain the Internet turf they’ve usurped – they want to expand upon it.  These lawsuits could roll back much of their takings.

The naming of Genachowski’s replacement gives the Left an opportunity to demand the Obama Administration protect the over-reached status quo – and ratchet up the regulatory count.

Markey: Backing Net Neutrality is Prerequisite for FCC Chief

On a conference call with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal advocacy group,…Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who is running for the Senate, said…that any new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission must support net-neutrality regulations.

But wait – they want more.

Why the New Boss at the FCC Should Be Nothing Like the Old Boss

Genachowski’s failure to re-establish the FCC’s authority over broadband was his most significant policy blunder — and the defining moment of his tenure. When a federal court ruling exposed the shortsighted folly of the Bush administration’s decision to change how the FCC regulates broadband, Genachowski should have moved immediately to “reclassify” broadband under the law. But he retreated under a predictable but fact-free industry backlash.

What does it mean to “reclassify” broadband?

(W)hat does President Obama have waiting in the wings for when his Net Neutrality power grab is thrown out? 

FCC Boss…May Push for Title II ISP Reclassification if Rules Overturned

Meaning – again, without any legal authority whatsoever – President Obama will move the Internet from Title I to Title II.  Title II is how the FCC over-regulates landline telephone lines – you know, that bastion of innovation lo these last seventy-plus years. Title II opens up the Pandora’s Box of uber-regulation of the Internet.  But wait – there’s more. 

Under Title II, President Obama can also begin to tax the Internet – just as the Feds tax landlines,  just as they already tax the living daylights out of your wireless Internet – checked your cell phone bill lately? It’s 17.4% – and climbing, an $8 billion total take in 2010 – and hurtling ever upward. 

Of course the Left wants more regulation in all directions.  They disguise that desire by demanding that the next FCC Chairman push harder for the “public interest.”

Obama Must Nominate FCC Chairman Who Will Promote Public Interest

The Next FCC Chair: Decisive Protector of the Public Interest

“Public interest?”

Leftists Don’t Form ‘Public Interest’ Groups–They Form Government Interest Groups

The “public interest” is in fact a legislative term which the FCC is charged with taking into consideration when enforcing said policy.  A term so nebulous it can mean virtually anything.

For the Media Marxists, its abased meaning is – much more government injected into every form of media and communication, and the demonization and silencing of those who oppose the more government agenda….

The underlying theme throughout is the advancement of as much government as possible – all the while as much as possible disrupting the free market and destroying or silencing those opposed.

All under the fraudulent guise of advancing the “public interest.” By which they of course mean government interest.

After all, Media Marxists are… Marxists. And growing the government interest is what they do.

As bad as the FCC’s Old Boss was, the Left wants the New Boss to be much, much worse.

President Obama’s second-term Cabinet choices have been much further to the Left than their predecessors.

• Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton to John Kerry.
• Secretary of Defense: Leon Panetta to Chuck Hagel.
• Secretary of Labor: Hilda Solis to Thomas Perez.

So, sadly, Leftists will likely get their wish at the FCC.

[First published at RedState]

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On Good Friday, a day fewer people would be paying attention to the headlines than on most other days, the Obama administration released news about its plans to raise the price of gasoline. Gasoline prices for the first quarter of 2013 are higher than the same time in 2012. Intentionally pushing prices up would seem stupid in the midst of a struggling economy—that is, if your goal is to help those most impacted by higher fuel and food prices, rather than boosting the bottom line for your billionaire donors.

The plans, announced Friday, call for stricter limits for sulfur in gasoline—from the current 30 parts per million to 10. (Sulfur is an important element that is found naturally in crude oil has many industrial uses.) The EPA estimates that the low-sulfur gasoline will raise the price of a gallon of gas by “less than a penny,” while industry sources say it will be closer to ten cents a gallon.

Energy analyst Robert Rapier, told me that the new regulations “will certainly make gasoline more expensive.” He said; “Note that diesel was historically less expensive than gasoline until the ultra-low sulfur diesel standard was passed. Since then, diesel has often been more expensive than gasoline. I am not saying whether or not those standards were needed, maybe they were. But the impact on cost is undeniable. I worked in a refinery when those standards were passed, and we spent a lot of capital making sure we could comply.”

Though air pollution is a worthy consideration, it is low on the public’s list of priorities, while gas prices are of utmost importance. If the public doesn’t see air pollution as a problem, and the President’s popularity has peaked, why would he put out policy that would hit the middle class the hardest? Because, despite his campaign rhetoric, he’s not “a warrior for the middle class.”

One year ago, Christine Lakatos launched her blog— “The Green Corruption Files”—through which she set out to prove that “green corruption is the largest, most expensive and deceptive case of crony capitalism in American history. Stay tuned as we expose one piece of this scandal at a time.”  Last summer, Lakatos and I partnered to draw more attention to Obama’s Green-Energy Crony-Corruption Scandal. To date, I’ve written fifteen columns based on her research—this is the sixteenth.

A week ago, she posted her expose on George Soros and his profiting from his, apparent, insider information on green-energy investments. Within her post, Lakatos says: “be prepared for regulations and legislation that will, in some form or another, resemble cap-and-trade and demand additional funds to bank roll Obama’s efforts to save our planet.” Exactly one week later, the new EPA standards on gasoline were released. The standards will raise the cost of fuel—which has been the underlying goal of the Obama energy agenda: make what works more expensive so people will accept the high cost of “green energy” in the name of saving the planet. (Remember outgoing Energy Secretary Chu’s 2008 statement: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”)

But, as the Soros story shows, it’s not about the planet, it’s about the profit. Soros’ investment portfolio shows he invests where he can make money—both traditional and green energy (though, as you’ll see, through Obama’s green energy emphasis, he has more control over green energy investments). In a 1998, 60 Minutes interview, Soros said: “I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.”

Soros’ relationship with Obama goes back almost as far as his manipulation of money and markets.

It is reported that back before, Obama became a Senator, or announced his presidential bid, and before the founding of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), Morton Halperin, (the director of Soros’ Open Society Institute), John Podesta (the former Clinton White House chief of staff), Jeremy Rosner (a former speech writer for Bill Clinton), Robert Boorstin (a Democrat strategist and also a former speech writer for Clinton) and Carl Pope (a Democrat strategist and environmentalist) met in 2002 at Soros’ Long Island Southampton beach house to draft a plan to defeat President Bush in the presidential election of 2004. Without that meeting, Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, says: “Barack Obama would be … an unremarkable and unheard of state senator. Instead, Barack Obama is the President of the United States.”

Soros was an early donor to Obama’s senatorial race. “Soros and his family gave Barack Obama $60,000. This does not include money that Soros was able to funnel to so-called 527 groups (Moveon.org, for example) that have also been politically active; nor does it include money that Soros was able to raise from tapping a network of friends, business associates, and employees.”

Once Obama was running for president, Soros was there again with support to the tune of $5 million—which put him on the Forbes’ 2008 list of Obama’s Billionaire Buddies. But the king of contributions wasn’t done there, and in September 2012, Soros pledged $1.5 million in donations to a trio of super PACs backing Obama and congressional Democrats. Soros’ political contributions are widely known, as is his funding of left-leaning organizations such as CAP, The Tides Center and the Apollo Alliance—which all play a part in his ability to cash in on green.

Soros was instrumental at the least, integral at the most, in writing Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Bill that put nearly $100 billion into various green energy companies and projects. Additionally, there is a little-publicized connection between Soros, green energy advocacy, and the White House.

Since buying access, Soros has been a frequent White House visitor and met with Obama’s, then, top economist Larry Summers—exerting his influence.

The Soros-funded Apollo Alliance brags about its role in writing the 2009 Stimulus Bill. In an interview, the best-selling author of Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer, states: “Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called ‘stimulus’ money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.”

Schweizer, then, reveals, “In the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock-buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.” He continues: “It is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’ “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.” The majority of those investments were in green energy ventures that gained from the stimulus and/or government regulation such as BioFuel Energy that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol.

Shortly after the 2009 Stimulus, more to secure his investments than because of any core belief, Soros launched several new groups to help propagate the manmade climate change narrative that is the foundation for green energy investments—without belief in manmade climate change, we don’t need renewables as there is no energy shortage.

Some of the little-publicized connections include Cathy Zoi, former CEO of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, and who, while at the Department of Energy, oversaw the disbursement of more than $30 billion in green-energy stimulus funds. In early 2011, she resigned to work for a Soros fund: Silver Lake Kraftwerk. Another is Denis McDonough who has replaced Jack Lew as Obama’s Chief of Staff. McDonough was a Senior Fellow at Soros-funded CAP, which Bloomberg News called: “an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals.” Other CAP/Obama advisors central to the green-energy scheme include Carol Browner, Van Jones, and Steve Spinner.

So, what return has Soros gotten on his stimulus-inspired stock buying spree plus investments in companies like First Solar and Solar City? Lakatos’ thorough research discovered that Soros’ green tab exceeds $11 billion of stimulus money (dwarfing Citibank’s)  –– and we, the taxpayers, footed the bill. Keep in mind, this tally doesn’t factor in any profit Soros has made off these investments—or will continue to make as a result of Obama’s climate change agenda being pushed by EPA regulation.

As save-the-planet regulations and legislation come out of the Obama administration, which raise costs for the middle class and hurt America’s struggling economy, remember the Soros story. It illustrates that Obama is not the “warrior for the middle class” he campaigned as, but he’s most concerned about creating wealth for his “green cronies”—of which Soros is just one. This new EPA low-sulfur gasoline proposal is just the latest in a series of green regulations. We don’t know for whom it creates wealth, but we know it isn’t the middle class.

[First Published at Townhall]

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President Obama’s alternative energy “stimulus,” administered through his Department of Energy by previous Secretary Steven Chu, had already become a joke because of the failures and foibles of so many recipients of Recovery Act funds. But now – as though officially commemorating the absurdity of this historically bad U.S. government program – one of its bankrupt beneficiaries has changed its name from one of simplicity to one of mockery.

Electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems has changed its name to B456 Systems. Incorporated.

Reporting the development, headline writers across the nation rubbed their eyes, double-checked the wire information, and then – especially realizing how close they were to April Fool’s Day – had to add extra assurance to the breaking news.

For the Boston Herald, where A123 was headquartered near MIT, it was this:

“A123 Systems changes name to B456 (seriously)”

The Milwaukee Business Journal reported it this way:

“No joke: A123 Systems now B456 Systems”

And a Wall Street Journal reporter Tom Gara built up the suspense with:

“And The Award For History’s Least Creative Rebranding Goes To…”

According to the reports, A123 – now under ownership by Chinese-owned Wanxiang America – was required to change its name as a part of a bankruptcy agreement. The company released a statement Friday explaining that the name A123 will still exist, “operating successfully under Wanxiang’s ownership,” as a limited liability corporation. B456 represents the parts of the company “still in the bankruptcy process.” I guess they don’t understand the entire enterprise was a failure.

And in an additional element of stooge-ery, as Kai Petainen of Forbes noticed, a B456 is a fire extinguisher – as in dousing the flames from your lithium ion battery. Autoblog observes that Amerex model “happens to be good for ‘energized electrical equipment.’”

The double meaning fits, as A123’s (former) top customer is Fisker Automotive, which appears to be near bankruptcy itself. The manufacturer of the $102,000 Karma suffered two recalls – one in December 2011 and another in mid-2012 – because of A123 battery defects that could cause fires. Fisker did suffer fires in Texas and California last year, and Hurricane Sandy’s flooding ignited several of them in New Jersey – and while none were attributed to their batteries (Texas remains unsolved), an A123 battery did cause an explosion at a General Motors alternative energy research facility in Warren, Mich. last April.

Funny, isn’t it? Not “ha-ha” funny, but ridiculous funny – unbelievably stupid funny. Funny in an “I can’t believe our tax money is paying for these comically bad businesses and technologies” way. And it applies to President Obama’s abject failure to invigorate the economy by creating “green jobs” in the alternative energy and electric transportation sectors, which have been around for over a century and the free market still hasn’t made economical or viable. The examples were plentiful:

• With a visit by the president, the administration had just boasted how many thousands of green jobs were created by Solyndra, and how environmentally friendly its technology was, thanks to the Energy Department’s $535 million loan guarantee. But months later, with plenty of forewarning to the White House, Solyndra went bankrupt, and left behind a big toxic mess when it shut down. What a rib-tickler!
• Fellow stimulus loan recipient Abound Solar, not to be outdone, also went bankrupt and had accumulated a hazardous waste site of its own as it liquidated. But it was later discovered that the company sold defective or underperforming products, and even caught fire. Evidence showed Abound officials knew it, before they received taxpayer dollars. Yet as the Colorado company crashed, the Department of Energy still praised the company’s work as “innovative” and cost competitive – a gut buster!
• Employees of battery maker LG Chem, recipient of $151 million from a DOE Recovery Act grant, were discovered on the clock playing games, reading magazines, watching movies or helping charities like Habitat for Humanity – that is, when they weren’t ‘off-duty’ on their cyclical furloughs. Why? They had no real work to do, and as of late October had “yet to ship out a single battery,” according to a local news report. Stop it – you’re killing me!!

And there are so many more jokes where those came from: The Tesla Model S that was panned by the New York Times after it had to be towed away; the Fisker Karma that broke down for Consumer Reports, which then called it the “worst luxury sedan;” A123 executives expecting their bonuses while going through the bankruptcy process; a Nissan Leaf trip that took six hours because of recharging needs, when it should have taken only three hours; Leaf batteries that can’t tolerate extremely hot climates; First Solar panels that couldn’t tolerate desert heat…etc….

Meanwhile the Obama administration repeatedly touted: how clean the energy was; how the future for the American economy was in “green jobs” and the alternative energy sector; how necessary it was to keep up with China in wind and solar (until it became a disaster for the Communists too); and what a great economic investment it was (tell that to the attendees at the “ECO:nomics—Creating Environmental Capital” conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal not too long ago, who are losing their shirts).

And to this day DOE refuses to update its Loan Program Office Web site with new information about any of its projects. Anyone who isn’t aware of the bankruptcies and other project failures that visits the LPO pages would still think Solyndra and Abound are still in business and still created their projected jobs, and that Fisker is still a smashing success, that a $5.9 billion loan guarantee to Ford Motor Company really did convert 33,000 employees to “green jobs,” etc.

There’s enough material to keep Jay Leno’s monologues stoked for a month. Unfortunately those are not tears of laughter streaming down taxpayers’ faces.

[First published at National Legal and Policy Center]