Sibby Online

The laughable green economy, if it wasn't so sad

From Ilana Mercer:

On the day of Obama's State of the Union sermon, Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., launched a magic mobile device called the "iPad." Perhaps Jillette thinks that the solution to America's economic inertia lies in visionary producers like Jobs, and not in vain, profligate politicians like the president.

Technology is certainly a task for which Obama and minions are singularly ill-equipped. But that has not stopped them from tinkering – and attempting to bend industry in "green" directions.

"We should put more Americans to work building clean-energy facilities," Barack boomed last night. "You can see the results of last year's investments in clean energy – in the North Carolina company that will create 1,200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries."

Not according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Against its politically correct instincts, the IEEE was forced to "cast stones at a wide selection of … poorly conceived technology projects." One of these was Government Motors' Chevrolet Volt, "a car known as a plug-in hybrid because it will get most of its power from the wall socket in a garage."

You see, unless the Big O issues a mandate compelling Americans to purchase the commie car, the Volt won't be making money.

"The first year's volume, by GM's own calculations, is 10,000 units, and you can't save a company with that. That's chicken feed." Or, as Johan de Nysschen, the president of Audi of America put it: "There are not enough idiots who will buy it." These vehicles, ventured de Nysschen, are "for the intellectual elite who want to show what enlightened souls they are."

Whether a vehicle is propelled by hydrogen-powered fuel cells or electricity, both electricity and hydrogen don't magically materialize in the vehicle. They must first be generated. Be it coal, natural gas, nuclear or a hydroelectric dam, these cars are only as clean as the original source of energy that generated the vim that powers them. Someone who doesn't understand this is hardly an intellectual.

According to yet another expert-IEEE assessment, "Lithium-ion batteries degrade substantially in just a few years. Owners will face decreasing range and, ultimately, the need to replace and recycle the car's giant, expensive battery." The verdict: "The Volt won't save enough on gas to cover the higher purchasing cost."

It was inevitable that the 2009 Guinness World Record for fuel economy was set by a non-hybrid: A 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI powered with Shell ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel.

The green-command economy is fraught with waste, mismanagement, misallocation of precious resources, and worse. Its commander, the man with the reverse-Midas touch, should leave it to the free market to make magic.

Another reason to reject government health care

Still think Obamacare will save us money:

A year ago, Indian Health Service gave its senior official in charge of property management a $13,000 bonus, despite the fact that millions in equipment has been lost or stolen within the agency since 2004.

In June 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that almost 5,000 items worth $15.8 million - from all-terrain vehicles and Jaws of Life equipment to laptops and computers - were missing or stolen within Indian Health Services from fiscal years 2004 through 2007.

Six months ago, the GAO issued a second report. From October 2007 to January of this year, it identified another 1,400 items with an acquisition value of $3.5 million that were lost or stolen agency wide. That included seven vital sign monitors valued at $731 each missing from an unidentified IHS hospital in South Dakota.

The GAO blamed weak management at the top of IHS and gross mismanagement for the losses, which it says have been going on since at least 1997. It also recommended updating and enforcing better policies and procedures for property management.

Those repercussions rippled through the Crow Creek reservation in the past few weeks, when IHS officials took back defibrillators, Jaws of Life equipment and other items from the tribal ambulance service as part of its new inventorying policy.

A stunned group of tribal residents staged a protest Dec. 1 in front of the IHS clinic at Fort Thompson, including overturning a car in front of the building. "We kind of felt dehumanized that IHS would take our only capabilities for extricating people away from us," Tommy Thompson, emergency manager for the tribe, said. "We wanted to let them know that we were hurt."

Government health care in South Dakota

Want to know where Obamacare will take us:

This past October, sick with the flu, Shirley Crane went to the Indian Health Service clinic in Lower Brule to see whether she might have H1N1.

No lab technicians were available to test her.

On poor, rural reservations such as Lower Brule, the lack of doctors, physician's assistants, nurses, dentists - even lab technicians - is a constant irritant, Crane, Lower Brule's community health director, said.

"We can't get a permanent doctor or doctors," she said. "We have a high turnover of physician's assistants. It's frustrating."

Vacancy rates are problematic throughout Indian Health Service's Aberdeen Area region. Almost one-third of its 103 available physician slots are empty. One-quarter of its 51 dentist slots are unfilled. And there are 44 openings within its contingent of 345 nursing positions.

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe is supposed to have 23 doctors, nurses and physician's assistants at its IHS facility, tribal council member Claudette Arcoren said. It has 10, so a lot of money is spent on on contract health care providers who come in for a few days, a few weeks, and move on, she said.

Geithner must go

From Craig R. Smith:

This week a new era of bipartisan politics was ushered in during the congressional hearings addressing the AIG bailout. Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner failed with both Democrats and Republicans to pass any reasonable stink test. In fact one of his own, Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), said with an edge in his voice, "It just stinks to high heaven what happened here."

I watched the hearings for several hours. Little belief was to be found among the members that Mr. Geithner or Paulson did anything other than panic during the potential meltdown that occurred in Sept. of 2008. Regardless of how many times Geithner demanded Congress acknowledge his brilliance in saving the world, nobody was buying it.

Good grief! So much for voters telling Obama to slow down and move toward the center.

The lack of fully answered questions and the abundance of arrogant, angry and condescending behavior from Geithner was appalling. He acted as if the U.S. Congress had no right to ask him such questions. How dare they challenge his genius in getting us past the "worst crisis since the Great Depression." He basically said, I saved your ass and this is how you treat me?

In the many hearings I have watched over the last 30 years I have never witnessed this level of slithering, spinning and tortured answering in an attempt to avoid the truth. Mr. Paulson was somewhat humble, at least in comparison. And while his unsupportable assertions, such as unemployment going to 25 percent if they had not acted, were laughable, at least they weren't offered with the snotty Ivy league arrogance spewed from Geithner.

I would be shocked if Tim Geithner is able to maintain the confidence of President Obama after his performance this week. On the off chance he does, we need to really question the competence of the president.

Kool Aid drinkers react to Massachusetts

Larry Elder goes after the Progressive Kool Aid drinkers;

The Massachusetts "Miracle on Ice" hit Democrats like an avalanche crashing in on a downhill skier. Gone is their 60-vote, filibuster-proof Senate supermajority. Likely dead is the Senate version of health-care "reform," if not Obamacare altogether. Stunned and confused, Democrats now scramble around trying to decipher "what it means."

President Barack Obama's hard-left base calls the loss of Teddy Kennedy's seat a wake-up call – for bigger spending. They see the defeat as a referendum for broader and bolder "health-care reform" that includes a so-called public option, higher taxes and an expansion of the number of insured through Medicare. Their argument goes like this: People are unhappy, not about reckless spending, but because Obama has governed like a "centrist." He's "caved in to special interests," hasn't gone far enough and hasn't increased government fast enough. He abandoned his "progressive agenda," and voters punished him. Voters, wanting more government, elected a guy who promised less.

A Hofstra University professor represents this view in his analysis of "what it means": "The obvious solution, of course, would be a sharp turn to the left. Go where the real solutions are. Fight the good fight. Call liars 'liars' and thieves 'thieves.' Do the people's business. Become their advocate against the monsters bleeding them dry. Create jobs. Build infrastructure. Do real national health care. End the wars. Dramatically slash military spending. Produce actual educational reform. Launch a massive green energy/jobs program. Get serious about global warming. Kick a-- on campaign finance reform. Fight for gay rights. Restore the New Deal-era regulatory framework and expand it. Restore a fair taxation structure. Rewrite trade agreements that undermine American jobs. Rebuild unions. Fill the spate of vacancies in the federal judiciary, and load those seats up with progressives. Rally the public to demand that Congress act on your agenda. Humiliate the regressives in and out of the GOP for their abysmal sell-out policies."

Good grief! So much for voters telling Obama to slow down and move toward the center.

SB 89, will South Dakota stand up to federalism & the Progressive Movement

Yesterday the Argus Leader put SB 89 on their front page:

More than half of South Dakota's state lawmakers are sponsoring a bill that would exempt domestic manufacturers of firearms and ammunition from federal regulations.

South Dakota is one of about 20 states nationwide considering such legislation. The genesis for the idea comes from Montana, which passed an identical bill last year, setting the stage for a legal battle with the federal government.

"I think every state that passes something like this will add another rock to the pile and momentum to the legal case," said Sen. Larry Rhoden, a Union Center Republican who is the prime sponsor in the Senate.

Rhoden said he's pleased by the number of sponsors - a group that includes Republican and Democratic, urban and rural lawmakers.

Firearms, firearm accessories and ammunition manufactured here would not be subject to federal regulations if those items remain within the borders of South Dakota. Any firearms produced here would need to be stamped "Made in South Dakota," and the provision applies to firearms, accessories and ammunition produced and retained within the state after July 1.

The measure doesn't apply to automatic weapons, crew-served weapons or exploding ammunition. Even so, it's a direct challenge to federal authority over firearms. Congress regulates interstate commerce under the Constitution's Commerce Clause - an avenue that allows for federal regulation of firearms and ammunition.

And here is more on the Commerce Clause:

A 1942 Supreme Court decision - Wickard v. Filburn - expanded Congress' ability to regulate economic activity via the Commerce Clause, Van Patten said.

1942 is after FDR's constitutional revolution of 1937 that created a Supreme Court designed to undo the constitution. Here is a link to the details. And there is a movement to reverse the Progressive Movement's agenda to turn America into a centrallyh controlled administrative welfare state:

"It is part of the populist state-sovereignty movement, the sense there is so much power in Washington," says Stephen P. Halbrook, a Virginia attorney who has argued several important Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court, including, most recently, a successful case overturning the Washington, D.C., gun ban. Halbrook says the Montana initiative had been simmering long before President Obama's election, which led to reports of a run on gun and ammunition across the country because of fear of new federal curtailment or taxation of gun ownership. "It is a grass-roots thing," Halbrook says, "not an NRA [National Rifle Association] initiative." The NRA, however, has expressed its support for the measure.

So this legislation is much broader than a gun rights issue. It will be interesting to see which Progressives will come out in opposition. This may be the hottest piece of legislation in this year's South Dakota legislature. And note the large number of sponsors, but does not include the two party leaders of the Senate who are running for governor...Knudson and Heidepriem. Both are on the Senate State Affairs committee that may be hearing this bill as early as Wednesday. Will they stand for South Dakota or not?

Do they really care about America?

Erik Rush asks and answers:

Will the Democratic leadership in Washington now heed the message of Scott Brown's election and "get with the program" as far as what Americans really want?

Some regular readers of this column (and, I would surmise, some who are not) will have already recognized that this question assumes a flawed premise – this being, that the Democratic leadership in Washington is concerned with what Americans want to any degree at all.

Progressives versus the facts

Here are some facts in regard to Obama's State of the Union attack directed at the Supreme Court ruling on corporations role in financing campaign ads:

The president has assailed the Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing, and tonight said, "The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign companies -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities."

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site from the St. Petersburg Times, did some research when Obama first made the claim in his weekly radio address last weekend and found that it was barely true. Obama's statements on whether foreign companies can spend money in U.S. political campaigns "overstated the ruling's immediate impact."

Current federal law prevents "a partnership, association, corporation, organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign country" from making, "directly or indirectly," a donation or expenditure "in connection with a federal, state, or local election," to a political party committee or "for an electioneering communication."

Progressives, Corporations and the First Amendment

I too wonder about what the proper role of corporations. I understand concerns when they get really huge. John Stossel explains the latest from the Supreme Court:

The media were upset because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that forbidding corporations and labor unions to spend money on political speech before elections is unconstitutional. A horrendous section of the abomination known as McCain-Feingold campaign-finance "reform" had bitten the dust. It was long overdue.

The case grew out of a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton that Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, planned to show on cable television during the 2008 presidential primary season. The law said that was illegal.

The 5-4 majority consisted of the four conservative justices and the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the main opinion. He couldn't have been more clear: "When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. ... The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves."

He also said, "Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy – it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people – political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it."

And, "We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers."

Of course, the "progressive media" condemned the majority for its judicial activism because the ruling overturned two precedents. I thought progressives favored judicial activism and dumping bad precedents. I also thought they favored free speech. Wrong.

Stossel goes after the personhood argument that Cory Heidelberger used on this issue:

In condemning the decision, the offended progressives engaged in amazing mental contortions. It "was wrong because nothing in the First Amendment dictates that corporations must be treated identically to people," the Post editorialist wrote.

I guess the writer is unfamiliar with the obscure opening phrase of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law." And apparently the outraged progressives don't realize that corporations and unions are associations of individuals who have rights. Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens didn't get it, either.

The media outrage is almost funny. Under McCain-Feingold, media corporations were exempt from the prohibition – which suits the Washington Post and New York Times just fine. But people with common sense already knew what Justice Kennedy found it necessary to say: "This differential treatment (between media and nonmedia corporations) cannot be squared with the First Amendment."

So now we are being served dire warnings that "corporate money ... may now overwhelm both the contributions of individuals and the faith they may harbor in their democracy." (Are similarly freed wealthy labor unions potted plants?) But the same Post editorial conceded that corporate money was "never lacking in the American political process." So what's the difference?

Besides, as John Samples and Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute write: "Before McCain-Feingold, both (corporations and unions) could spend freely on advertising about candidates for federal office. Such spending made up a relatively small part of election-related speech, and no one group dominated ... the political arena."

One need not be a fan of big corporations – which in today's interventionist economy benefit from many government privileges – to see that restrictions on anyone's speech are dangerous. A government lawyer last year said that even corporate-funded books favoring or opposing candidates could be prohibited under McCain-Feingold. That should scare progressives – especially since the Federal Election Commission once had an anti-Bush book written by George Soros under scrutiny.

It is shameful that progressives are willing to throw free speech under the bus in their devotion to big government.

There is a simple way to get corporate money out of politics: Get the government out of our lives and economic affairs. If government has no favors to sell, no one will spend money trying to win them.

I have been trying to explain that to Cory and his Progressive friends, but they still can't grasp it.

American economy is not a free-market system

Vox Day points out that what Progressives call capitalism is not "free-market" capitalism:

The American economy is not a zero-sum game. It is also not anything that can be reasonably considered a free-market economy. The reason that more than one percent of U.S. GDP went to pay Wall Street's bankers in 2009 is that the Republican and Democratic politicians have utilized the power of government to significantly distort the system for their benefit. While bank executives are reporting record profits for the zombie banks that appear to justify their enormous compensation, these reports are fraudulent and the profits are non-existent. Both are based upon false asset valuations and crazy derivative gambles disguised as financial investments. Banking executives are using the additional time given to them by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve at the expense of American workers and U.S. taxpayers to recklessly loot the system before it breaks down again.

American businesses and taxpayers are not only being devoured by financial zombies, corrupt and foolish federal policies are forcing them to involuntarily pay for the privilege.

There is no doubt that the system is going to break down. This is not because it's based on fraud and pretense – although it is – but because it happens to be completely unsustainable. That $145 billion in banking industry salaries and bonuses is not only equal to one percent of GDP; it is also equal to 14 percent of all the post-tax corporate profits in America, according to the BEA's most recent report.