analysis policy in all the world

Chủ Nhật, 2 tháng 1, 2011

Nike, Best Buy, Target and Other Crony Capitalists back the EPA's Soviet-Style Control of Industrial Policy

I'm not a big fan of boycotts, but if you can avoid buying Nike, Best Buy, Levi Strauss and Target stuff, you might help stop their support of the global warming scam.

Crony capitalism is a stepping-stone to socialism. The term is used to describe the unholy, anti-citizen alliances between corporations and big government. These kinds of companies generally engage in massive lobbying efforts (read: backscratching) to coerce government into various taxpayer-funded schemes:

• by paying them directly through government purchases...
• by carving out market segments for them through regulation...
• and otherwise increasing profit margins by suppressing the free market.

With this as our context, let's examine The American Spectator's article entitled "What Do Nike, Best Buy, Levi Strauss and Target Have in Common?".

They all support EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, even though that circumvents the citizens' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws. More on the Obama Administration overreach and his crony corporatists support at the National Legal and Policy Center blog today.

Heading over to the NLPC, we can discover the sordid details.

Earlier this month corporate climateers including Nike and 3M were given awards -- supposedly "the equivalent of an Oscar for the climate change mitigation world" -- for their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions... Nike also co-signed a letter to President Obama that called for U.S. leadership in an initiative to create and finance the Global Climate Fund, which was established at the UN climate talks in Cancun in early December.

Other members of [this group include] Levi Strauss & Co., Starbucks, Timberland, Best Buy, Ben & Jerry's, eBay, Gap Inc., The North Face, and Target Corporation. Mark them down as corporations who favor the circumvention of the peoples' right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws.

Carbon dioxide is plant food. It can no more be a pollutant than water vapor or oxygen. The ~~Marxist Left~~ progressives believe, or want us to think they believe, that capping CO2 emissions can act as a thermostat on the climate.

The reality is quite different. Trying to control carbon dioxide is a money-making scam and it has been since the original IPCC reports that were issued by folks poised to make millions through inherent conflicts-of-interest.

Companies that feed this government-run monstrosity should be treated as the anti-free market pariahs they are.

Image: Fox News.

Larwyn's Linx: Top 10 Reasons We Won't Miss the 111th Congress

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

QOTD: Describing the highlights of March 2010: "Democratic congressional leaders, responding to polls showing that the health-care bill is increasingly unpopular with the public, manage, with a frantic, last-minute effort, to pass the health-care bill, or at least a giant mass of paper that is assumed to be the health-care bill. This leads to a triumphant White House signing ceremony, the highlight of which is Vice President Joe Biden dropping the f-bomb moments before being hustled off by aides to have an important meeting with somebody important.

...In international news: Greece asks the International Monetary Fund if it can borrow 17 billion euro for "cigarettes." And Somali pirates, becoming increasingly brazen, seize the Staten Island Ferry.

On a more hopeful note, on March 27 people in more than 4,000 cities around the world turn off their lights in observance of Earth Hour, saving an estimated 45 million megawatts of electricity -- enough to power one of Al Gore's houses for nearly three days." -- Dave Barry

Thứ Bảy, 1 tháng 1, 2011

Newsweek Magaxelrod: marketing the "centrist" GOP candidates that no one's heard of to grease the skids for Obama in 2012

Newsweek Magazine, with its total market capitalization of one dollar, is doing its level best to clear the runway for the 2012 Obama reelection campaign.

To do so, it's following the traditional legacy media game-plan: positioning some obscure GOP "centrist" as a legitimate candidate. Spoiler: he's not.

The moderate Republican [ex-Utah governor Jon Huntsman] had once been considered a rising star in the GOP and a likely 2012 contender, with David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign mastermind, even identifying Huntsman as the only Republican who made him “a wee bit queasy” about the next race...

...But speculation ended abruptly in 2009 when Obama tapped Huntsman for the ambassadorship. National pundits called the appointment a shrewd move by the White House to sideline a potential rival, and then promptly forgot about him...

...sources close to Huntsman (who requested anonymity to speak freely without his permission) say that during his December trip to the U.S., he met with several former political advisers in Washington and Salt Lake City to discuss a potential campaign. “I’m not saying he’s running,” says one supporter who has worked with him in the past. “But we’re a fire squad; if he says the word, we can get things going fast.” What’s more, Huntsman tells NEWSWEEK that when he accepted the ambassadorial appointment, he promised his family they would “come up for air” sometime in 2010 to decide how much longer they would stay in Beijing.

Cubachi accurately observes that the background of Huntsman (Gesundheit!) is distinctly problematic for conservatives.

There’s a reason why the Utah Tea Party booed Huntsman.

I couldn’t care less if he can speak Chinese or was governor of Utah... Huntsman is a progressive republican, and held liberal positions while in office. He is a liberal on social issues, an amnesty shill, and publicly endorsed cap and trade. After Obama’s election to the presidency, Huntsman even called for the republican party to move to the center to attract voters...

A wishy-washy Republican who is indistinguishable on core issues from Democrats can't win in a general election. November's thrashing of Democrats proves that Constitutional conservatism is on the ascendancy. And Huntsman is anything but a true conservative.

No offense to Mike Huckabee fans, but the media engaged in precisely this same form of information warfare in 2008. Huckabee was unelectable in the general election, as many of his prior positions were largely indistinguishable from those of Barack Obama, who was a far stronger campaigner.

Constitutional conservatives could and did take issue with many of Huckabee's prior positions including illegal immigration, global warming, higher taxes, crime and parole. In short, a weak, centrist GOP candidate had no chance against a Democrat without any track record and a distinct proclivity for lying.

If the Republican Party wants to win the presidential election, it had better nominate an articulate conservative who believes, first and foremost, in the United States Constitution. Huntsabee ain't it.

Linked by: Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum. Thanks!

The Gold Bullion Challenge to @KeithOlbermann -- Document a Single @FoxNews Lie and Win a $1,400 Krugerrand

Update 1/8/11 8:31AM PST: All Four Media Matters Attempts Completely Blown Apart.

The self-proclaimed "Queen of All Media" -- Perez Hilton -- points us to a blistering attack on Fox News by media superstar Keith Olbermann™.

Keith Olbermann has once again taken on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, after Twitter users lashed out at him for supporting a liberal-slanted website... He responded by writing:

FYI: in reply to "highly ironic that you support Daily Kos yet think Fox News is slanted" I said: Fox News is 100% bulls**t. And it is.

@mtovet you're right: I don't have as much hate or as many lies in me as O'Reilly

@tonyperry1 I did it because his network is full of bulls**t & O'Reilly is full of bulls**t. & if you believe them you're full of bulls**t.

@DailyRushbo let's clarify this. Fox News is 100% Bulls**t. Rush Limbaugh is 100% Pigeons**t.

Wow! He is certainly not holding back, is he?!

Isn't Perez' use of punctuation intoxicating? But I digress.

"Faux News." "Liars." "Not really a news organization." "A right-wing propaganda machine."

The progressive left and its ilk -- like the man with the golden strap-on -- have a lot of descriptions for the country's dominant cable news channel. They claim that Fox fabricates news stories.

I want them to prove it. And I've got a 1-ounce Krugerrand from my Y2K bunker* (today's spot price: $1,400) waiting for Keith Olbermann or any 'progressive' who can provide me with a documented lie repeated by Fox News reporters.

There are just four simple rules:

• Typos don't qualify ("ooh, the news ticker used a 'D' after his name, not an 'R'!").

• The lie must have been reported by at least two Fox News reporters (not analysts, reporters).

• The transcripts and/or video clips must be available on a suitably trustworthy site for verification.

• The real news story, refuting the Fox News lie, must have been correctly reported at around the same time by at least one news reporter from CNN or MSNBC (with similar links and/or transcripts from their sites).

Just one lie! That's all I'm asking for. This should be the easiest $1,400 you've ever made, Keith. You've got to have a whole database of Fox lies, right? Just post your correctly documented answer in the comments section before January 15, 2011. That's two freaking weeks!

And given the devaluation of our currency by President Training Wheels, the Krugerrand could easily be worth $1,500 by then.

Ready? Get set... go!

* Since converted to a super-secret 2038 Bunker.

Update: Media Matters submits its response. This ought to be good.

Hat tip: Ame.

Some edumucation for young progressives
Whom Despots Fear	What really happened	To the Congress:

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) doing the work Democrats won't do: sounding the public pension crisis alarm and protecting taxpayers

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is focusing much-needed attention on the public sector pension programs that Democrats have driven off a cliff.

The country's public pension system is grossly underfunded and needs an overhaul, Rep. Devin Nunes said this week... [He] s promoting legislation designed to gauge the extent of the problem, while also establishing a ban on federal bailouts of public pension programs.

How bad is the underfunding problem?

Nationwide, the country's pension programs for public employees had roughly $1.9 trillion set aside in 2008 to pay promised retirement benefits, according to Nunes...

...Yet those same programs have liabilities totaling $5.2 trillion — a gap of more than $3.2 trillion.

Introduced earlier this month, Nunes' Public Pension Transparency Act would force state and local pension programs to report their liabilities to the federal government using a uniform accounting standard. It would also create a federal ban on any future public pension bailouts by Washington.

The bill has picked up the support of several leading Republicans, including Reps. Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Darrell Issa (Calif.).

Last week The Washington Examiner's Mark Hemingway also hit the alarm, describing the fatal default of Pritchard, Alabama on its pension obligations. Hemingway's question is a troubling one: "If the busted public pensions in small-town Alabama make for a particularly tragic tale, what kind of misery is going to unfold when some of the largest towns and states in the country run out of money?"

The public sector pension crisis is here. The nefarious alliance of corrupt Democrat politicians and their public sector union bosses have left pensioners and taxpayers high and dry. Rep. Nunes' efforts are a brave and utterly necessary start at addressing this impending catastrophe.

Linked by: Michelle Malkin and Memeorandum. Thanks!

Open Thread: Obama's Talent, iPhone Defections and the Warmists' Ice Core Dilemma

• The Hill reports that the President will convene a talent show to celebrate the new year.

President Obama is ringing in 2011 by hosting a talent show on his Hawaii vacation, according to the White House... Burton said that the president had also spent time reading "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime" by Lou Cannon, "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell, and "Our Kind of Traitor" by John le Carre... The president spent Friday morning working out and then went to play golf.

Any guesses as to the President's talent? And the First Lady's?

• CNet relays a prediction that AT&T could lose up to 6 million subscribers with the introduction of the Verizon iPhone.

...Apple will "probably" introduce of a Verizon iPhone after next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas [and] analysts are already predicting the number of AT&T customers who will defect to Verizon for its new iPhone... The estimates range from 1 to 6 million moving from AT&T to Verizon, although the bulk of sales of a potential Verizon iPhone would still come from current Verizon customers updating their existing phones...

...The Bloomberg article quotes John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS AG in New York, who comes in "somewhere in the middle" with his projections, saying 2.3 million would switch from AT&T to pick up a Verizon iPhone. Hodulik expects AT&T would sell 8.8 million iPhones in 2011 (down from 15.6 million in 2010) and that Verizon would sell 13.3 million iPhones in 2011. Of those 13.3 million, 10 million would already be Verizon subscribers and the rest would come from other carriers.

CNet lists a humorous mitigating factor: the performance of AT&T's network may improve with a large bloc of defections, so some subscribers may end up staying.

• The Lid notes new evidence that the global warming bunko scam is even more fictional than we had thought.

By examining ice core samples for the past 10,500 years we learn that approximately 9,100 of the past 10,500 years were warmer than 2010... Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list.

Which is why the Warming Grifters will have to go back to basics in 2011.