Interior Secretary

Former VP Biden's nominee for interior secretary, Deb Haaland is a far left activist. And an idiot.

Now before you all go ballistic and start calling me a bigot and native hater, just shut the hell up. Just because she is an American Indian and her nomination and confirmation WILL be historic, this should not shield her from rightful criticism.

She admitted that shutting down pipelines cost jobs. But she doesn't care. I guess these unemployed workers could immigrate to China and build turbine blades and solar panels.

Obama Kills Keystone Pipeline

Our jobs killing president is at it again. I have seen a few projections around the Internet (not necessarily the best purveyor of facts) that put the Keystone pipeline jobs creation in the thousands with billions in revenue (taxes) and payroll.

The First Dude has no trouble throwing taxpayer money at companies that are destined to fail (Think Solyndra), but won’t approve a private venture that is sure to make money for the companies that build it, own it, and the people who build it and later work on it, plus the certain tax revenuw increase that would be sure to follow. But he has said that private business is the enemy.

Obama Costs US Even More Jobs

To call this anything but tragic would be wrong. Postponing the Keystone Pipeline decision until after the 2012 elections borders on lunacy with the fact that our economy still teeters. President Obama has thrown the American recovery under the bus (yet again). I wonder if the unions are starting to get the message that the only thing the Obama likes is the union money. He cares not a wit about the American worker. (Link via Doug Ross)

Comment Response

While clicking through my local newspapers this morning, I came across this linked article. In it the writer makes his case for how the federal budget crisis we are currently under had its roots in the spending practices of the previous administration, while barely casting any blame on the current administration. As I read through his column, I began to formulate a response that I was going to post in the comments section. However, the more I wrote, the longer the response. So I decided rather than post it where my readers might not be able to find it, I will put my response here.

Enjoy

OK, decent article that has obviously been researched. But Talton, as a journalist you should that numbers and figures are journalism 102 (101 being who, what, when, where, and why (or how)). The statistics did make the point that spending is out of control, and the wars didn’t help matters.

They have been fought on credit (Iraq and Afghanistan). Instead, President George W. Bush pushed through tax cuts, heavily weighted toward the rich, that added another $1.8 trillion in red ink – and this was before their extension under President Obama last year.

You kind of forget to mention that the tax cuts that favored the rich also coincided with a nice long run of economic prosperity after the recession brought on by the 9/11 attacks. Gross domestic product had an average rate of just under 4% (this includes 2009 which really screwed up the curve). Our unemployment rate hovered near 5%. In terms of strict numbers, it is quite possible the tax cuts did cost the US Treasury $1.7 trillion dollars.

But why don’t we look at this from another direction. Each state in the Union collects taxes for the state coffers. Some states collects taxes through sales taxes, other through income taxes, while others still collect taxes using a combination of both. While this might be comparing Red Delicious Apples to Granny Smith Apples, I think it is worth exploring. During the recent economic downturn the state of Washington has come up close to $7 billion dollars short in tax revenue because of unemployment and people pinching their pennies. ($5.5B actual, $1.5B projected). At 6.7 million people, The Evergreen State has just over 2% of the US population. If we were to project out this $7 billion and 2%, we can come up with a possible state level revenue shortfall of somewhere near $330 billion. Keep in mind this is only state level revenue generation, which is typically lower than the federal government (except for maybe California and we’ve seen how well they’ve done with all that tax revenue).

Has the Double-Dip Arrived?

Now that all the hand-wringing over the debt ceiling has finally ended with the sell-out, the attention now turns to how well the economy is (not) doing. Recently, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report an anemic 1.3% gain over the previous quarter, a sure sign that the double dip recession has arrived.

Remember when good ol’ Uncle Joe said 2010 was the recovery summer? Well, that pretty much fell completely flat when unemployment stubbornly remained at or near 9% and home sales and values continued to plummet. A nine percent unemployment rate does not a recovery make. The debt continued to grow at an astronomic rate, which brought us to the last few days. And the housing market remains in an utter funk.

With these factors dragging on that supposed recovery summer, it was only a matter of time before the roof started to collapse. Here are ten reasons why the double dip recession is here. Condensed from and courtesy of 247WallSt.com. Read the report at the link, then read my commentary. Or you could do it the other way; no matter.

Oil In Israel

I have heard talk about oil in Israel for several years, but I always took it with a small grain of salt.  Sure, there existed the possibility of oil in Israel, heck, they are surrounded by oil producers. But all of the sources I saw seemed like hucksters, the take your money and run type of reports.  But it looks like those possibilities are now coming true.

Sister Toldjah touched on the economic possibilities if these oil fields are able to produce oil in significant quantities. But being the pessimist that I am I am seeing troubles to go along with those wonderful economic possibilities. Can you image how the jihadists will react if Israel is able to become an economic power? The knot in their knickers is going to be huge. Not only will Israel be a thorn in their sides just due to Israel’s existence, but now they will be a player on the world stage because of this oil.

No longer will the world view Israel as that country that displaced the Palestinians due to United Nations actions, but as a source of oil. How long do you think it will be before China comes knocking at Israel’s door, looking for a piece of the action? How long do you think it will be before other nations of the world suddenly stop seeing Israel as the “bad guy” and begin to tell Hamas and the other groups to go pound sand?  When that first drop of oil hits the barrel, Israel is going to be everybody’s best friend.

Weekend Links

Sorry about missing the last couple of weeks. No real excuses because they all sound lame.  I attempt to do better in the future. Of course, like many of the weekend links I have posted in the past, this one is getting posted Monday night.

LOCAL:

1. The struggles within the Settle Public Schools continues. Over the past couple of years, a vacant school building has been for sale. A private school made an offer of $9.7 million but was turned down in favor of an offer from the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was millions less and taxpayer subsidized.

HR 909, Seems Like a Good Plan

A bill currently under discussion in the House is HR909 titled A Roadmap for America’s Energy Future .  This contains provisions for expanding oil exploration offshore and in areas previously denied to oil drilling such as ANWR. Also part of this bill is continued development of the Nuclear Industry and development of alternatives forms of energy production.

The following are issues that are currently under discussion:

1. The potential for increased domestic oil production

2. The role of the federal government in the development of oil shale and coal to liquids

A Leftist View of Oil Subsidies

Warning: Long Post

Over at the Huffington Post Erich Pica has posted a column titled “People or Polluters: Ending Oil Subsidies” which is a must read if you are interested in the how the left views the oil industry in general and the oil subsidies in particular. Throughout his article he uses the same well-worn progressive strategies of false comparisons, omitting salient and relevant points, and attempting to tug at your emotions.

NOTE: For a more partical look at what exactly is an oil subsidy take a look here.

False Comparisons:

He hits this one right from the start. He compares the four bucks a gallon we are now paying at the pump to the profits made last quarter by the oil companies.

The numbers on every driver’s mind right now is $4.

Gas prices are hovering around $4, and well above that in some areas. However, there are other, much bigger numbers that also merit attention.

$10.7 billion. $7.2 billion. $6.3 billion. $6.2 billion. $3 billion.

Did He Mean $4.00 A Gallon Gasoline?

During his campaign, then Senator Obama said that energy prices would necessarily have to skyrocket in response to his energy policies.  Well, it looks like he is true to his word. When Obama took office, gas was below $2.00 a gallon. Two years later, it is now approaching $4.00 a gallon.  What makes this scariest is that his skyrocketing energy prices would be in response to his cap and trade program he had hoped to pass through Congress.  Cap and trade is dead, yet gas prices have nearly doubled in his first two years. Imagine what would have happened if he had been able to pass cap and trade.

I realize that when Bush was President, gas topped out above $4.00 a gallon.  That had nothing to do with policies, but rather speculators messing with the system, there was no shortage of oil at anytime during the price climb of 2007. Once the speculators were encouraged to cease and desist, gas prices plummeted.  If you look at the trend during Bush’s Presidency, prices fluctuated, often in a predictable manner (normally over the summer), but the trend remained fairly steady. Not so much with Obama. It has been a steady climb for two years with very little seasonal fluctuation.

2012 cannot come soon enough.

More Deepwater Drilling Permits to be Approved

The day THIS is no longer worthy of a news conference or a write up in the Wall Street Journal will be the day when things get back to normal.  And Ken Salazar can stop hurting his arm while patting himself on the back.

$200 for Oil is a Recipe for Disaster

Over at Big Peace Peter Schweizer writes about the possibility of $200 a barrel for oil due to the unrest in the Middle East. This is down right scary when you think about it.  Three years ago, oil hit $145 dollars and some might consider it was part of the economic downturn that we are still facing today.  Could you imagine what would happen if oil hits $200?  We would dream of the good old days of 10% unemployment.

I have no doubt that Obama and his group of environmental wackos are dancing with joy over the prospects of $200 for oil. This would achieve two things for the "dear leader". First, it would cause the cost of energy to necessarily skyrocket, which has been one of his goals all along. Obama is one of the most liberal, left wing Presidents we have ever had (hopefully the last one of this kind), with ties to every radical environmental group out there. The goal of many of these environ-wacko groups is for us to be forced into alternative energy solutions.  $200 a barrel would be that wind that forces us in that direction.

Obama Lifts Deepwater Drilling Ban, Er, Issues Deepwater Drilling Permits

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster last year the environmental nutjob-in-chief and his partner in grime at the Interior Dept have held deepwater drilling hostage. Twice they attempted to ban deepwater drilling and twice it was overturned by the courts. So rather than issue another ban, they did what this administration has done every time it has run into a legal stonewall: they found a way around it. After the last ban was overturned and, if I am not mistaken, was threatened with contempt of court, they just stopped issuing deepwater permits on the basis that oil companies could not show they could respond to another oil disaster.

Now it seems that with the Middle East in turmoil and gas prices skyrocketing at the pumps, the current administration has found a way to overcome their misgivings and concerns about drilling for oil way offshore. I could be wrong about this. Maybe the oil companies were able to convince Obama and his crew of environmental wackos that oil could be drilled offshore in a safe manner. But then again, maybe with $4.00 a gallon gas staring at them in the face and an election less than two years away, Obama’s political survival mode kicked in and thought maybe the ban isn’t such a great idea after all.

In a perfect world this would also mean the opposition to getting the oil out of the ground up in ANWR will be muffled and we can start working our way towards energy independence. I wouldn’t hold your breath though.

Oil Prices Surge on Middle East Unrest

If there ever was an argument for opening up our own shores and land for development of the oil resources waiting for us, this article should be on every democrats and President Obama desk. I’m sure Sarah Palin knows these numbers. I have touched on this subject before.  We have the ability to be self sufficient, not with just opening areas closed to drilling and exploration, but using our technology such as nuclear power and clean coal.  And yes, even a small portion of our power generation could come from the so-called green sources such as wind and solar (but only if the greenies get out of there own way).

Oil has risen above $100 a barrel for the second time in history and it is due to the jitters being felt in the market due to the violence in the Middle East. No oil is being shipped out of Libya, the recent unrest in Egypt has folks concerned about shipping through the Suez Canal, and the unsettled across the entire region is causing speculation to drive up the price of a barrel of oil.

Oil Boom in the West

A week or so back I blogged about the high-speed rail and peak oil, pointing out that peak oil has been a moving target ever since the term appeared back about 35 years ago.  Well, new drilling techniques just might push the peak oil further to the right yet again.

The new technique, which forces oil to be released from shale, has made possible the extraction of oil in North Dakota and South Texas.  Further discoveries in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and California have looked very promising. (source: Yahoo Finance via TigerHawk)

The oil extraction has brought a bustling economy to North Dakota, which has an unemployment rate of 3.8%.

High-Speed Rail and Peak Oil

5. Drastically reduces our oil addiction and lowers our risk from the coming oil peak crises.

In light of President Obama’s mention of high speed rail in his SOTU speech earlier this week, I thought I’d bring back my series on High Speed Rail.  Here is what Obama had to say about high speed rail in his SOTU speech:

“Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.”

Over the course of the last few months, I have made arguments against throwing all of our tax dollars into these projects. Click here to review my other posts. In this post I will argue against what has been called the “peak oil” crises or theory.

  --Would this be the oil peak crises predicted to occur in 1978? Or the oil peak crises predicted to occur in 2000? Or the one that is supposed to happen next year? While the dates are random, the hysteria surrounding the “oil peak crises” is not random.  Every time there is a spike in the oil prices, somebody comes along to say we have reached “peak oil” and the end is neigh.  Peak Oil production is a continuously moving and nearly impossible target to pin down. As more discoveries are made, technology is improved to extracted oil from fields previously diminished fields, shale and oil sands become cheaper to extract, and alternative energy production methods are developed, oil peak will move further to the right.

SOTU, The Environment and Green Technology (sort of)

I am really waiting to see what is going to happen once these clean/green energy initiatives get underway. A year or so back Sen Feinstein (D-CA) lead a fight to get a solar project in the Mojave Desert cancelled. It seems to me the Mojave would be a great place for a solar (and wind) project on a large scale. Several years ago the late Sen Kennedy (D-MA) put up a fight against a proposed wind farm near Cape Cod. Sen Harry Reid (D-NV) forced the end of the Yucca Mountain project that would have been the central depository of spent nuclear fuel. All three of these bubbas are are from the democrat Party, the favorite of the Greenies.  Other green energy projects have and are being fought against by the very people who you would think would embrace these projects with open arms. These folks don’t want oil, and gas. They don’t want wind turbines killing birds. They don’t want solar panels blocking the sun from reaching the endangered desert tortoise. Nuclear power doesn’t cut it for them because of the potential spent fuel issues. Clean coal doesn’t cut it either, although technology that exists today has cleaned up the air in the Northeast to the point where "acid rain" is no longer part of the conversation. Even if we went back to the Stone Age like some of the more extreme environmentalist seem bent on achieving, they’d pitch a fit if someone started a wood fire to keep warm and cook the food. I think groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club need to be ignored into extinction, then maybe more practical (and less doomsday) thinking could happen and these issues would be resolved.

Obama and His Elitist Czars

Over the course of the last two years there has been an increasingly louder din coming from the conservative movement about how President Obama and his inner circle of czars are increasing their power base through unilateral actions that have a significant impact on everyone. There have been warning early on from bloggers and conservative writers about how these power grabs would all play out. Over the next couple of days I will highlight some of these actions. I would like to say that I would provide a direction or contacts to reach out to stop all of this, but considering the Obama Administration has pretty much tuned out the American people the only advice that I think would work is to throws the bums out come election time. 2010 was a good start, keep it up in 2012.

Ken Salazar, Pres Obama, and the Department of the Interior (et al):  I have already posted once about my feelings towards this unprecedented land grab by the Department of the interior. But this goes considerably deeper once you really get to connecting all the dots. There are many moving parts, a lot of them interrelated to each other, that will further restrict the average American from using lands, whether for recreation or resource development.

 One large item on the lefty agenda is a program initiated by Obama called “America’s Great Outdoor Initiative”. As I read the Presidential Memo that got this whole thing kicked off, it is quite clear that we are dealing with a President and staff that know how to tug at the heartstrings of Americans. With lines like, “Children, especially, are spending less time outside running and playing, fishing and hunting, and connecting to the outdoors just down the street”. (emphasis mine). I find it amusing that an administration supported deeply by the anti-hunter, -fishing, -gun crowd would put this in the memo. I’m sure the lefties reading probably needed a shot of 100 proof just to get their heart restarted. That was put in there for one reason and that was to attract the knuckle-dragging redneck groups without whom this whole initiative would probably fall apart. With other programs in the works that would restrict fishing in many locations, hunting bans that would happen under THIS initiative, I think that support will most likely dry up in a hurry once folks dig into the actual goals of this initiative, which is to essentially ban activities in America’s lands that a lot of people enjoy such as ATV use, horseback riding, and other activities deemed by the greenies as not nice to the environment.

Western Land Grab

Ken Salazar and his group are planning on locking up even more of the West, banning drilling, mining, oil exploration, logging, and roads. The idea of the federal government taking over even more of our lands and making it wilderness and limited access bothers me a great deal.

  Do I think we need more? NO!  Even today, if someone wants to get "lost" in the wilderness and not see anyone for days, they can do it.  No cars, no TV, no radios or cell phones.  Why do we need to lock up more?

The more land we lock up, the less there is available for the multitudes. At my age I can no longer spend the time or effort getting into the back-country. If more lands are made wilderness, the fewer people that will be able to actually use it. And if my tax money is going to be used for any sort of wilderness up-keep (trail maint., Ranger salaries) then I should have the ability to get to at least some of it. I don’t suggest building a road to the China Wall in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. But locking up more land has a way of excluding a lot of people. I remember years ago being able to get nearly to the Trinity Alps in northern California by using the network of logging roads. No longer with all of the other areas around the wilderness locked up via road-less designations.  People could at least get near enough to really enjoy the views, but no longer. Now only the youngest and hardiest can get there. It is getting to the point where the only way most of us can see much of the wild areas of our country is from the pictures that some intrepid environmental photographer brings back. Somehow I think this might actually be what the goal is for the enviro-wackos. Lock up lots of USA land so as to reduce the usage to nearly nothing and the elite can wander about and dream of what it was like when the American Indians roamed the land. All of this enjoyment of vast tracts of our western lands for a few elites, all on the taxpayer dime. Somehow, I don’t think that is fair.

Some will point out that we need to protect these areas form development by the resource extraction companies. Why would we want to do that when we are in need of these resources? While no resource extraction is completely benign to the environment, we have evolved to a point where we can minimize the damage to a localize issue. Gov’t regulations can keep the companies reined in enough to minimize the damages while at the same time making us more energy independent. If we begin to run out of resources do you really think that the federal gov’t will keep those areas locked up forever, never touching them when there is oil, gas and other resources available? If we are still an oil based economy (and we mostly likely will be to some degree), the feds will open up those lands. And if we are desperate for these resources, will we care what condition the resources extractors leave the land once they are finished? Wouldn’t it be better to get to those resources under strict rules and regulations well before those are thrown out in a last minute grab of those resources? Now is the time to make the companies act like good stewards of the land. Make them impact the area a little as possible that technology allows. Make them clean up once they are done. Because if we need those resources at a time when we are desperate, the extractors won’t do it on their own and the gov’t won’t require it.

It is kind of like danged if you do and danged if you don’t. But if we allow it now, then the enviro-wackos can control how it is accomplished and they won’t be afforded that opportunity later on.

High Speed Rail Saving the World

4. A Major step toward solving global warming by reducing our oil consumption and emissions

  --OK, first of all, one has to actually believe that global warming/climate change/whatever term is fashionable today is really occurring. We have to actually believe the changes that are occurring are not the natural cycle of the planet. Then we have to really believe that building and riding a train will save the world. Train travel is heavily used in China and they are the world’s largest producer of CO2 emissions. India is also a heavy user of trains and they produce CO2 in VAST quantities. And before you say “just because they have issues doesn’t mean we can’t do our part”, try a different tact with me. I don’t believe in man-made global warming and most Americans don’t believe it either (you shouldn’t of had that snake oil salesman, OwlGore, as your spokesman). But if you say it will save resources without all the preaching, I’m down with that. I like saving money as much as the next guy and I like doing my part to make things better.  Heck, I recycle like the dickens. Train travel does save resources, if it is used near capacity.  A train traveling 200MPH to LA sucks down the gas, so to make it efficiently; it needs to have passengers to bring the cost per energy unit used below a car traveling the same distance.  An empty train doesn’t save resources.