Your Life Is Under Warranty Backed By The Obama Protection Plan

Obama's Ultimate Agenda, Charles Krauthammer, Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2009.

Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he'll have a pretty good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states, and you will leave him slack-jawed.

In fact, we are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside. The last Treasury secretary brought the nine largest banks into his office and informed them that henceforth he was their partner. His successor is seeking the power to seize any financial institution at his own discretion. Despite these astonishments, I remain more amused than alarmed. First, the notion of presidential car warranties strikes me as simply too bizarre, too comical, to mark the beginning of Yankee Peronism.

Second, there is every political incentive to make these interventions in the banks and autos temporary and circumscribed. For President Obama, autos and banks are sideshows. Enormous sideshows, to be sure, but had the financial meltdown and the looming auto bankruptcies not been handed to him, he would hardly have gone seeking to be the nation's car and credit czar.

Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax. Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.

Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. (Asked by Charlie Gibson during a campaign debate about his support for raising capital gains taxes -- even if they caused a net revenue loss to the government -- Obama stuck to the tax hike "for purposes of fairness.") The elements are highly progressive taxation, federalized health care and higher education, and revenue-producing energy controls. But first he must deal with the sideshows. They could sink the economy and poison his public support before he gets to enact his real agenda. The big sideshows, of course, are the credit crisis, which Obama has contracted out to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and the collapse of the U.S. automakers, which Obama seems to have taken on for himself. That was a tactical mistake. Better to have let the car companies go directly to Chapter 11 and have a judge mete out the bitter medicine to the workers and bondholders.

By sacking GM's CEO, packing the new board, and giving direction as to which brands to drop and what kind of cars to make, Obama takes ownership of General Motors. He may soon come to regret it. He has now gotten himself so entangled in the car business that he is personally guaranteeing your muffler. (Upon reflection, a job best left to the congenitally unmuffled Joe Biden.) Some find in this descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism. I have my doubts. These interventions are rather targeted. They involve global financial institutions that even the Bush administration decided had to be nationalized, and auto companies that themselves came begging to the government for money.

Bizarre and constitutionally suspect as these interventions may be, the transformation of the American system will come from elsewhere. The credit crisis will pass and the auto overcapacity will sort itself out one way or the other. The reordering of the American system will come not from these temporary interventions, into which Obama has reluctantly waded. It will come from Obama's real agenda: his holy trinity of health care, education and energy. Out of these will come a radical extension of the welfare state, social and economic leveling in the name of fairness, and a massive increase in the size, scope and reach of government.

If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: "fair," leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life.

Text Source: Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2009.

Image Source: French Airbus Crash--Full Throttle With The Brakes On

The Audacity of a $13 Trillion Debt

Obama's Domestic Agenda Gains Clarity: A certain grandiosity contrasts with his steady hand on foreign affairs, Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2008

Barack Obama was elected in part because of his singularity. There was no one like him. He was a break with the past, not only because of his youth and race but also his cerebral bent, his cool demeanor. He seemed free of the partisan muck. He was hard to categorize because we didn't have categories for him. This was part of his power. It denied his foes purchase; they didn't know how to get at him. It allowed others to project on his canvas. After the thickly drawn George W. Bush, he seemed something refreshing: a mystery.


APHe has been criticized in the past for not being philosophically clear, but Mr. Obama possesses the canny knowledge that in modern politics, clarity can sometimes get in your way. You don't always want to shoot arrows that pierce; sometimes it's better to be a great enveloping fog, something your enemies get lost in.

The big thing that has happened the past few weeks is that he's become more sharply defined. Actions and decisions clarify, and he's been quite the decider.

In foreign affairs he has shown the impulses of a moderate: watching (Iran), waiting (Iraq), beefing up (Afghanistan), standing down (the nomination of Charles Freeman as National Intelligence Council chairman, which brought more drama than he wanted). His attitude at this week's summit was one of welcome modesty, which might or might not have tipped into a mea culpa (he agreed that America bears great responsibility for the world economic meltdown, and that some previous U.S. foreign policy attitudes have been poor). Or perhaps that's a you-a culpa.

In any case, his freshness and persona probably contributed to the fact that the predictable riots, while anticapitalist and antiglobalist, were not in their focus anti-American. This was a welcome relief. It won't last forever, and let's enjoy it while we can. Michelle Obama enjoyed a well-deserved triumph, representing her country with grace and elegance. She continued to signal a secret conservatism by demonstrating support for the right to bare arms. I very much wish that were my joke and not that of the editor Jason Epstein.

In domestic affairs, however, in the economy, Mr. Obama's actions since February have left him not so much more deeply defined as tagged. They can arguably be understood not as a conglomeration of moderate impulses but an expression of a kind of grandiosity. He thinks big! His plans are all-encompassing! There is so much busyness, and so much spending, that journalists have been in an unofficial race to keep track of the flurry of numbers. From Bloomberg News this week: "The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent or lent or committed $12.8 trillion" in new pledges. This they note is almost the value of everything the United States produced last year. The price tag comes to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.

I happened to be rereading the economics section of Mr. Obama's second book, "The Audacity of Hope," when I read the Bloomberg story. He scores President Bush for contributing to a national debt that amounted to a $30,000 bill for each American. Those were the days!

The tagging was done, definitively, by an increasingly impressive (because unusually serious and sincere) member of the U.S. Senate, who happens also to be Mr. Obama's friend. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, has been close with the Illinois Democrat since their Senate orientation in 2004; he's the man the president hugged after his big joint sessions speech last month. Thursday, in a column on RealClearPolitics.com, Mr. Coburn wrote, "I believe President Obama has proposed the most significant shift toward collectivism and away from capitalism in the history of our republic. I believe his budget aspires to not merely promote economic recovery but to lay the groundwork for sweeping expansions of government authority in areas like health care, energy and even daily commerce. If handled poorly, I'm concerned this budget could turn our government into the world's largest health care provider, mortgage bank or car dealership, among other things."

To be defined in this way is not just a negative for Mr. Obama in terms of its criticism, it amounts to being robbed, by a friend, of the vagueness that was part of his power. Mr. Coburn was all the more deadly for being fair-minded: he was tough on both parties as operating in a crisis from "scripts," with Democrats saying everything is Bush's fault and Republicans decrying high spending and taxing while failing to abjure earmarks and admit what must be cut.

The great long-term question about Mr. Obama's economic program, the great political question, is: Is this what the people want? There are economists who believe, and who make a reasonable case, that more money is needed to get the credit system, now frozen like icebergs, flowing in warm streams again. But in terms of leaps in the size of government, including a new health-care system, and higher deficits, and increased borrowing, and debt—in terms of the sheer scope and size of what is being planned—one simply wonders: Is this what the people want?

Different pollsters offer different data. The Washington Post this week put the president's approval ratings at 60% or higher; the Washington Times had a Zogby poll saying Mr. Obama's popularity has dipped below 50%; in this paper, the pollsters Douglas Schoen and Scott Rasmussen said the American people "are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives," and placed the president's approval rating at 56%, "with substantial polarization."

That last qualification certainly sounds true. So does the assertion that there's a gulf between the president's popularity and the popularity of his programs. Messrs. Schoen and Rasmussen had 83% of respondents saying his programs will not work, 82% saying they're worried about the deficit, 78% worried about inflation, and 69% worried about the increasing role of the government in the economy.

This is a hard time to be president. The questions and issues that arise, their depth, complexity and implications, amount to an almost daily parade of horribles. There is considerable goodwill for the president, and all the polls show considerable support—half the nation in a time of sustained crisis is not a small thing—but one wonders for the first time if Mr. Obama's support isn't becoming, in the old phrase, a mile wide and an inch deep. Something has been lost in terms of fervor when one talks to Obama supporters. There is little of the spirit that led FDR's supporters, for instance, in another great economic crisis, to put signs in their front windows supporting the National Recovery Act. We were a younger country then, and the two crises are not completely comparable, but there's a lot of wait-and-see out there. There's also a growing divide observable between the American establishment—of both parties—and the rank and file of Americans living normal, non-politically-obsessed lives. The latter seem more patient, more forgiving toward the president. The former, the establishment—again, in both parties—now commonly voice grave doubts as to his domestic ambitions.

Mr. Obama had a strong closing news conference in Europe, and it looks to have been a successful trip, marked at the end by an air of relative and surprising G-20 unity. The president will get some bounce from it, as they say, and it may be considerable. But then the Europe trip speaks of the part of his administration, foreign affairs, that is marked by an air of moderation, not the part involving ambitions that are grand to the point of grandiosity.

Text Source: Wall Street Journal April 3, 2009

Cartoon Source: Cagle, MSNBC

How Long Did 'Open, Transparent' Last?

Stop Hiding the Stimulus Bill, Paul Blumenthal, Sunlight Foundation, February 14, 2009.

While the House and Senate conferees have agreed on what the stimulus bill will look like in final form, the public may very well have to wait for President Obama to sign it to get a chance to read it. The House rules require that all conference reports (which is how the bill will be reported to the floor) be made publicly available for 48 hours before consideration. Yesterday, the House Rules Committee waived that requirement to allow the House leadership to bring the bill to floor immediately. And we still have not seen the bill, and “we” includes many, many members of Congress.

Elana Schor at TPMDC explains that reporters and congressmen are being denied access to the text of the bill:

Who was excluded from the process? Everyone outside the private negotiating table, regardless of their party. One senior Democratic senator, when I asked him at 6pm last night whether one of his proposals was retained in the final stimulus, replied without blinking that no one knew what was in it yet. This was hours after Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had announced the “deal” before TV cameras.

Reporters who asked for a summary of the agreed-upon deal last night were told to wait, because “policy staff … are drafting final bill language tonight,” according to a House Democratic memo. Aside from a top-line number of $789 billion and a battle over school construction, the nitty-gritty details of the stimulus were publicly unavailable.

The House expects to vote on the stimulus bill today! Well, expected is now the more appropriate word. According to CongressDaily Breaking News, House Republicans just claimed on the floor that they have not been allowed to see the bill, to which some Democrats replied that they don’t need to see the bill since the Republicans will vote against it anyway. The Speaker postponed consideration of the bill after this outburst.

But it is not just Republicans who are being denied access to the bill. Reporters, bloggers, and the general public are being denied an opportunity to review one of the most important pieces of legislation sent through Congress in a long time. Anyone who wants should express that, whatever the partisan reasons for denying access to the bill, the American people deserve a right to review this legislation. Slamming it through without letting anyone see, save for 7 or 8 congressmen and some staff, is not fair to the public or the legislative process.

This is a dangerous practice that the Democrats ran against in 2006 and now, in the majority, are unfortunately using to block their opposition’s attacks. The majority Democrats should maintain their previous position on running the most open and honest government by allowing the public to review this legislation. Anything less is unacceptable.

Text Source: Sunlight Foundation

Image Source: Stunned

At The First Press Conference Was Obama Less Than An Artful Dodger?

Obama Came Off As Likeable But Didn't Tell The American People The Whole Sad Truth,Ed Rollins, CNN Politics.com, February 14, 2009.

President Obama had his first prime-time news conference Monday, and 60 million viewers tuned in. They wanted to hear him and see him in action and hope that things weren't as bad as they were hearing every day from the media and in their hometowns.

He was glib, rambling, a little long-winded and very defensive. But he is a talent and very likeable even when he is being serious. And he had plenty to be serious about. On numerous occasions, he made sure reporters and the millions tuning in knew that he had inherited a mess, the Republicans weren't helping him at all, and things were tough.

After spending hundreds of millions of dollars and traveling thousands of miles over the past two years running for this office, did he think he was going to get the big plane, the big house, the box at the Kennedy Center and Camp David without the heavy lifting? Well, maybe not this heavy a load. This is a president who has promised transparency. He promised that we as a nation will know what our government is doing and what we are spending. Just go to the Internet, and it will be there. But not quite yet. The president gave us a lot of rhetoric on Monday night.


Four million jobs will be created or saved, with 90 percent of them in the private sector. He didn't tell us how. Just trust me, and we will get you out of these tough times. I know a president needs to be a cheerleader sometimes, but right now, I want a truth-teller.

He said, "at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back to life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs." I ask, what resources does the federal government have? We are broke, too!

Real transparency would have been walking to the podium and saying, "Friends: This thing is a lot worse then I thought. Just like many of you, we are way over our budget. Some of you bought houses you couldn't afford. Many of you spent more money than you made and put the stuff you couldn't afford on your credit cards. The banks were irresponsible, and Wall Street was greedy, but I have to admit to you, the guys and gals over in the Congress have been spending at record rates, too. And they still have a bunch of pet projects they want to spend on, too. That's why this bill got bloated.

"And, oh, by the way, the $800 billion that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want to spend is money we don't have. The U.S. is broke just like you are, and the banks that I have to borrow from are thousands of miles away in China. We are going to spend $1 trillion-plus more than we take in this year in revenue, and next year it will be $2 trillion. That's on top of the $10.8 trillion that we owe in national debt. "And if you don't think the banks have any money, the Federal Reserve is loaning them trillions."

But he could have closed out that depressing little litany by saying, "Together, we are going to get out of this thing!" Obviously, our new president is still a stranger to us. We like him. Many trust him. We all hope he will succeed. But we don't know a lot about his management style or the people he picked as his team (except that a few of them didn't pay all their taxes.) But in the world of politics, you seldom get a second chance to make a good impression. The president's news conference was the beginning of the selling process. It was a fair performance, and by the end, the stimulus bill designed by Speaker Pelosi and Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey was owned by him.

The new Treasury secretary was the man who was supposed to lay out the plan to rescue the banks the next days. Secretary Tim Geithner's performance Tuesday was a disaster, and his plan was nonexistent. And the market tanked. The Democrats will get their bill, and the president will sign it quickly. More money will have been committed in a shorter period of time than ever in our history. It will be declared a great victory for the new team. And we and our kids will be paying for it for a long time. I hope it works, because there is no money to try again! We will quickly learn whether social engineering really works and whether all these Keynesians are right.

Text Source: Ed Rollins, who was political director for President Reagan, is a Republican strategist who was national chairman of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's 2008 presidential campaign.

Image Source: Barry Obama in 1980

Off Topic Demogoguega---And Al Gore Got A Nobel Peace Prize For This?

China Dams Reveal Flaws In Climate-Change Weapon, Joe McDonald and Chalres J. Hanley., Associated Press, Sunday January 25, 2009

The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate — while putting lucrative "carbon credits" into the pockets of Chinese developers. But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised. And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. "Nobody asked if we wanted to move," said a 38-year-old man whose family lost a small brick house. "The government just posted a notice that said, 'Your home will be demolished.'"

The dam will shortchange German consumers, Chinese villagers and the climate itself, if critics are right. And Xiaoxi is not alone. Similar stories are repeated across China and elsewhere around the world, as hundreds of hydro projects line up for carbon credits, at a potential cost of billions to Europeans, Japanese and soon perhaps Americans, in a trading system a new U.S. government review concludes has "uncertain effects" on greenhouse-gas emissions.One American expert is more blunt.

"The CDM" — the 4-year-old, U.N.-managed Clean Development Mechanism — "is an excessive subsidy that represents a massive waste of developed world resources," says Stanford University's Michael Wara.

Forced relocations have become common in China as people in hundreds of communities are moved to clear land for factories and other projects, provoking anger and occasionally violent protests. But what happened here is unusual in highlighting not just the human costs, but also the awkward fit between China's authoritarian system, in which complaints of official abuse abound, and Western environmental ideals. Those ideals produced the Clean Development Mechanism as a market-based tool under the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement to combat climate change. The CDM allows industrial nations, required by Kyoto to reduce emissions of gases blamed for global warming, to comply by paying developing nations to cut their emissions instead.

Companies thousands of miles away, such as Germany's coal-burning, carbon dioxide-spewing RWE electric utility, accomplish this by buying carbon credits the U.N. issues to clean-energy projects like Xiaoxi's. The proceeds are meant to make such projects more financially feasible. As critics point out, however, if those projects were going to be built anyway, the climate doesn't gain, but loses. Such projects "may allow covered entities" — such as RWE — "to increase their emissions without a corresponding reduction in a developing country," the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its December review.



The system's defenders call it essential for hard-pressed industrialized nations to meet their Kyoto quotas, and say the CDM's standards are being tightened. "It's not as if we're printing money in a garage," Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, said of the credits. "Lots of legitimate questions are being asked," he acknowledged to The Associated Press, but "that's why I'm happy we have a transparent process."

That transparency — online project documents and a U.N. database — allowed the AP to analyze in detail this exploding market, which attracts projects ranging from small solar-power efforts in Africa, to emissions controls on giant chemical plants in India and China. The AP has found that hydroelectric projects, whose climate impact is most widely questioned, have quickly become the No. 1 technology in the CDM, and China in particular is rushing in to capitalize.

The Chinese now have at least 763 hydro projects in the CDM approval pipeline and are adding an average of 25 a month. By 2012, those projects alone are expected to generate more than 300 million "certified emission reductions," each supposedly representing reduction of one ton of carbon dioxide. Even at recent depressed market prices, those credits would be worth $4 billion.If the United States enters the Kyoto system, as proposed by President-elect Barack Obama, it would be the biggest player in a market expected to be worth hundreds of billions a year by 2030.

Here in central China's mist-shrouded Zishui River valley, evicted farmers worry not about carbon-market billions, but about the thousands of Chinese yuan doled out to compensate them for lost homes and farmland. Xiaoxi residents said that when they were evicted in 2005 to make way for the dam and its 4-square-mile reservoir, officials paid too little for condemned homes and forcibly removed owners who held out for more. They said payments for losing their rights to state-owned land, where they grew beans and squash, were far below China's legally required minimum, which they said requires payment of the value of at least five years' harvests.

Residents spoke with the AP on condition their names not be used, to avoid trouble with authorities. The dam's state-owned builder, Hunan Xinshao Xiaoxi Hydropower Development Co., defended its dealings with the people of Xiaoxi. "The compensation standard we adopted was relatively high compared with similar projects and was in accord with government regulations," said Wang Yi, assistant to the company's general manager. For their homes, people said they were paid government-set prices of $4.60 to $5.70 per square foot. But such payments didn't go far, even in this remote town surrounded by small tin mines and steep, wooded hills.



"What I got certainly was not enough to buy a new place. We had to borrow more," said a man who stood holding his 1-year-old grandson in a street lined with new apartment buildings where some relocated families have moved. He said officials refused to discuss compensation for thousands of yuan he had spent to fix up his family's house. "I refused their offer, but they forced us out and demolished it," he said. The dam company says local surveys found overwhelming support for the project, with 97 percent of 212 respondents saying they were satisfied with their compensation. But people interviewed in Xiaoxi said they were not contacted for such surveys.

The CDM money has spawned an industry of consultants who help Chinese companies assemble bids for emissions credits, and of U.N.-certified "validators," firms that then attest that projects meet U.N. standards. For Xiaoxi, the developer hired Germany's TUEV-SUED as validator, and then commissioned it again later to confirm that the project complied with European Union and German government requirements on "stakeholder consultation" — that local people approve of the project beforehand. The TUEV-SUED report acknowledged that "the concerned villagers and their leaders were not involved in the decision process." But it contended the guidelines' "essence" was fulfilled because those affected "have improved their living environment."

The German Emissions Trading Authority approved Xiaoxi credits early last year, but that government agency's Wolfgang Seidel now tells the AP it is investigating questions newly raised about Xiaoxi. Julia Scharlemann, spokeswoman for beneficiary utility RWE, said it also was "making our own inquiries" regarding Xiaoxi. A key question from environmentalists, led by the U.S.-based group International Rivers, is whether projects meet the CDM test of "additionality" — that they contribute to making real reductions of greenhouses gases rather than be business-as-usual projects capitalizing belatedly on the CDM bonanza. At Xiaoxi, where the dam should be operating by 2010, construction began in 2004, two years before the developers applied for CDM credits, suggesting it would have been built without CDM money.

Company official Wang counters that CDM money will help pay retroactively for expensive Italian technology needed to cope with the site's complex geology. "Without the money from trading emissions credits, the project would be unprofitable," he said. Environmentalists also point out that hydro power has long been a national priority in China. Since the 1990s — long before the CDM — the Chinese have added an average 7.7 gigawatts a year of hydro power, equivalent to six Hoover Dams annually, International Rivers reports. In other words, Chinese planners aren't suddenly replacing emissions-heavy coal-fired power plants with emissions-free dams.

The Xiaoxi project design document, in fact, says Chinese regulations would block the building of such a relatively low-output coal plant here. But that's how planners determined the "emissions reductions" from the $183-million, 135-megawatt dam — by calculating how much carbon dioxide a 135-megawatt conventional power plant would produce instead. That bottom line — some 450,000 tons of global-warming gases each year — would be added to RWE's permitted emissions if it buys the Xiaoxi credits, at a current annual cost of $8 million. And such calculations will be repeated at 37 other Chinese hydro projects where RWE will buy credits. All told, the 38 are expected to produce more than 16 million CDM credits by 2012, legitimizing 16 million tons of emissions in Germany, equivalent to more than 1 percent of annual German emissions.

At today's low market prices, those credits would be worth some $300 million, paid to Chinese developers and presumably billed to German electricity customers, who by 2007 were already paying more than double the U.S. average rate per kilowatt-hour. Utilities from Italy's Edison to Tokyo Electric are making similar deals for hydro-project credits in a dozen other countries, from Peru to India to Vietnam. Rather than reduce their own emissions, "firms in developed countries are buying offsets that don't represent real behavioral change, real reductions in emissions," said Wara, the environmental law professor.

The U.S. GAO investigators said they learned that middlemen sometimes manipulate project paperwork to show a need for CDM financing, and they believe "a substantial number" of projects have undeservedly received credits. The CDM system "can be 'gamed' fairly easily," said German expert Axel Michaelowa, both a critic and a CDM insider, as a member of the U.N. team that registers CDM projects. But Michaelowa said the CDM remains "a crucial bridge between industrialized and developing countries." It has problems but they can be solved, he said.



Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican ex-member of the board overseeing the CDM, echoed Michaelowa's view. She said it's crucial to encourage China in particular, whose coal power plants make it the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, to build clean-energy facilities. And she counters critics who oppose dams in general because of their environmental impact.

"We cannot continue to demonize hydro," Figueres told the AP. he and R.K. Sethi, the CDM Executive Board's Indian chairman, both pointed to reforms since 2007: A reinforced U.N. oversight staff, a validators' manual with stringent standards, and a growing number of board reappraisals of validator findings. In two recent dramatic steps, the board suspended the CDM's most active validator, the Norwegian firm DNV, questioning its project assessments, and it rejected its first Chinese hydro project — after registering 139 others for credits. The project wasn't "additional," the board said, rejecting DNV's validation that it was.

But environmentalists say a total overhaul is needed, shifting from project-by-project assessments that invite "gaming," to a negotiated regime whereby the developed world, through aid funds, subsidizes emissions cuts in the developing world more broadly, industrial sector by sector. As atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to reach record levels, threatening disruptive warming this century, the CDM pipeline continues to swell, with 4,364 projects worldwide approved or awaiting approval, one-quarter of them hydroelectric.

Here in Xiaoxi, meanwhile, where project credits await U.N. approval, dam construction jobs have produced an economic boomlet, but it's only temporary and people's grievances are not. One group, hopeful still for a hearing, has written to authorities with their plea for more yuan for farmers' lost way of life. "We strongly request that they give us an explanation and a satisfactory resolution," they wrote.

Text and Image Source: Associated Press, January 25, 2009

Are Obama's Policies Hidden In Plain Site?

Beware of Obama's Trojan Horse, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, DickMorris.com, January 22, 2009

Now that Obama is the president, fasten your seat belts. During his first year in office, and particularly during his first hundred days, we are about to witness the most prodigious output of legislation since 1981-2 (under Reagan), 1964-5 (under Johnson), and 1933-36 (under Roosevelt). The combination of top heavy Democratic majorities in Congress and a mood of public fear bordering on panic over the financial crisis and the looming depression will speed his legislation through a compliant Senate and House.

We will enter his Administration as the United States, buoyed by an aggressive free market economy. We will exit his first year - and even the first hundred days - as France, burdened with massive government regulation, a vast public sector, and permanent middle class entitlements. And Obama will take care to arrange things so that massive and permanent political change accompanies his and protects his legislative achievements in the future.

He will call this radical change a stimulus package. He will dress up a generation of liberal priorities as necessary steps to fight the economic crisis. His programs and policies won't do much to end the depression. It will end only after the massive burden of debt is lifted from the shoulders of American and foreign households and companies, a process which will take years. At most, his stimulus will act as methadone while we withdraw from our debt addiction, mitigating the pain, smoothing over the trauma, and soothing our system.

But Obama's strategy is to hide inside the Trojan Horse of stimulus an army of radical measures to change America permanently.

The most pernicious of his proposals will be the massive Make Work Pay refundable tax credit. Dressed up as a tax cut, it will be a national welfare program, guaranteeing a majority of American households an annual check to "refund" taxes they never paid. And it will eliminate the need for about 20% of American households to pay income taxes, lifting the proportion that need not do so to a majority of the voting population. Unlike the Bush stimulus checks, this new program will be a permanent entitlement, a part of our budget that can only go up and never down. Politically, it will transform a majority of Americans from taxpayers, anxious to hold down government spending, into tax eaters, eager to reap new benefits.

The huge spending in his stimulus package will create a budget deficit topping one trillion dollars. Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come. If the proportion of our $14 trillion GDP absorbed by the public sector increases by $1 trillion dollars, it will mean that government's share will rise from its current 33% to about 40%, bringing us close to the United Kingdom's ratio. If Obama adds a major expansion of health care to the mix, the proportion could reach into the mid-forties, French and German territory.

And Obama will likely use the Trojan Horse of stimulus to make a down payment on health care reform, expanding public coverage of those now uninsured dramatically. Likely, he will initially use the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) as his vehicle. He will ask the same pool of doctors and nurses and the same amount of medical equipment to take on the care of almost 50 million more people, necessitating rationing of medical services. Those too old, too sick, or with bad habits like smoking, may find themselves fenced off from good medical care, even if they can pay for it themselves.

While he is making these major changes, Obama will permanently alter our politics by taking three steps designed to alter the political balance:

a) He will set illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship

b) He'll pass the card check voting system for unionization, raising the unionized share of our economy

c) He will crack down on talk radio through requirements either for equal time or for local ownership and control - or both.

Most likely, Obama's inability to tame the depression will erode his popularity during his first two years in office. But, by then, his proposals will be statutes. The fiscal parameters, the middle class' expectations of no taxes and government handouts, and the demographics of our electorate will be changed forever.

Text Source: Dick Morris.com

Image Source: Photo Bucket.com

What Lessons Did Obama Take Away From Chicago and Illinois Politics?

Blago Tries to Box In Reid, Dennis Byrne, Real Clear Politics, December 31, 2008.

Anyone willing to accept Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment as Illinois' U.S. senator should be considered too stupid to hold the job. Incredibly, the besieged governor actually found someone crazy enough to agree to fill President-elect Barack Obama's vacated senate seat. That person is Roland Burris, a lifelong creature of smarmy state and local Democratic politics, a former one-term state attorney general and three-term state comptroller.

Although Burris was elected to those offices several times by comfortable majorities, he had failed in recent attempts at higher office, as governor (running unsuccessfully in a three-way primary against Blagojevich) and as mayor of Chicago. (Yes, in Illinois, mayor of Chicago is considered the highest of all offices, save the presidency.) Burris had been fading into obscurity, running a consultancy that certified minority contractors and handled government bond issues, plums much more cherished and traditional for party loyalists here than the standard gold watch. Burris was no longer considered a player and had not been on the governor's list of possible appointees prior to his arrest.

Only a man with deep personal cravings could have blinded himself to ridiculousness of the course he has chosen. Senate President Harry Reid, in an unusual statement issued even before the governor announced the appointment, flatly said the body would not confirm anyone appointed by Blagojevich, and mentioned Burris by name. Also, before the appointment was announced, Illinois Sec. of State Jessie White also issued a statement saying that he would not certify the Burris appointment. A few have questioned whether Reid and White had the legal authority to exclude Burris from the Senate, but the cloud hanging over the entire affair is dark and heavy, whatever the legal implications.

Blagojevich and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who showed up at the announcement press conference, praised Burris' "fine record of public service," although my own view is that just getting through a political career here without the usual political taint qualifies as the finest of records. Burris accepted the accolades without seeming to understand the irony. But Rush aptly demonstrated the cynicism of Blagojevich's action by brandishing the blunt weapon of racism. Rush, an African American, warned that a senate that refused to seat Burris, an African American, would be engaging in a "hanging" and "lynching." Even by Chicago political standards, the deployment of those inflammatory words was an extraordinarily slimy racist play.

But that's Chicago for you. By appointing a black man, Blagojevich figured that he would put Reid in the hot seat by forcing him to shut out the only African American in the Senate. And it was a challenge to White, also an African American and a quite popular one at that, who would find himself explaining why he was blocking the Senate's only black member. Blagojevich, as is his habit, might have miscalculated. Reid's letter to the governor was remarkably strong, and all Senate Democrats signed an earlier one warning him not to appoint anyone. Whatever becomes of it, however, Blagojevich's gambit should produce some interesting results, especially if Democrats are willing to stand up to one of their main constituencies by "denying" the seat to Burris. I can just hear Blagojevich telling Reid, "Threaten me, will you? How do you like the box that I'm putting you in."

Now, if you think this whole affair had been scripted for the theater of the absurd, you'd be right. Absurd is how Illinois and Chicago politics works. And we have one of the worst governed, most financially troubled states in the nation to prove it--a state, it should be noted--run entirely by Democrats. You can be forgiven if you think that what we witnessed with the appointment is the result of one man's pathology, and surely not every pol in the state could be that stupid, insane or destructive. But you'd be wrong. What unfolded on Tuesday is characteristic of how politics here is played. Anyone, including David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, who are among Obama's top advisors, are capable of the same kind of goofiness and hardball.

By now, is there a single Obama supporter anywhere who fails to understand why some of us here were so concerned about him in the White House with his Chicago outfit?

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist. dennis@dennisbyrne.net.

Text Source: Real Clear Politics

Image Source: Obama and Mayor Daley, Los Angles Times