It’s Monday, August 20th, 2012….but before we begin, a brief glimpse at the real face of mindless hatred and violence in the world, courtesy of the Drudge Report and Wonderful World of Islam:
Then there’s this oldie but goodie resurrected from the Glory Days of the Third Reich:
Saudi Cleric: Jews Consume Blood of Children
A prominent Saudi Arabian religious cleric declared that the Holocaust is an “exaggeration” and that Jewish people consume the blood of children during a wide-ranging interview with an Arabic television station.
Saudi cleric Salman Al-Odeh, a well-known scholar revered by millions globally, went on a lengthy tirade against the Jews during an interview Monday in which he stated that “the role of the Jews is to wreak destruction, to wage war, and to practice deception and extortion,” according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Al-Odeh ranted about the use of human blood in Jewish religious rituals, a notorious anti-Semitic smear commonly referred to as a “blood libel.” “It is well known that the Jews celebrate several holidays, one of which is the Passover, or the matzos holiday,” he said.
“I read once about a doctor who was working in a laboratory. This doctor lived with a Jewish family. One day, they said to him: ‘We want blood. Get us some human blood,’” Al-Odeh explained.“He was confused. He didn’t know what this was all about,” Al-Odeh says as the interviewer nods along. “He found that they were making matzos with human blood. They eat it, believing that this brings them close to their false god, Yahweh.” Jewish people “would lure a child in order to sacrifice him in the religious rite that they perform during that holiday,” Al-Odeh adds.
The prominent Saudi Cleric also believes that the Holocaust “has been turned into a myth of tremendous proportions.” Jewish people across the globe now use the Holocaust to extort governments, Al-Odeh claimed. “The Holocaust has become a source for extortion. Through this Holocaust, the Jews began to extort many governments worldwide—in Europe and in the U.S.,” he says before stating that Israelis are now waging a “Holocaust” against Palestinian people.
He “read” about it “once”; where….in the diary of the guy who told Harry Reid about Romney’s taxes?!?
At the same time, much closer to home, we encounter radical Islam’s domestic counterpart:
And what, inquiring minds want to know, do these two groups have in common? The quiet support of many, if not a significant majority of, the American Left, including Team Tick-Tock.
For anyone with even a passing understanding of the facts regarding Israel’s history, the choice between who’s right and wrong couldn’t be more obvious. Yet the Left seems institutionally incapable of differentiating between the forces of good and evil as personified by Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah….or the New Black Panther Party.
Then again, these are the same folks who will fight tooth and nail to permit the slaughter of the unborn while advocating just as determinedly for the life of convicted killers.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, as Jonah Goldberg relates at National Review Online, everything about Tick-Tock’s term in office has truly been…
A storied presidency
Obama always has more stories to tell the American people.
In 1995, Barack Obama released “Dreams from My Father,” a compelling memoir full of stories about his life that — though often not exactly true — persuaded many people that this young man had a great political future ahead of him.
Nearly a decade later, Obama introduced himself to the country with a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic convention in which he conceded, “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story … and that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.” “Even as we speak,” Obama declared as he strode the high road at takeoff velocity, “there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative-ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.”
“Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.” He insisted that we stop listening to the “pundits” who divide the country into red and blue states. “I’ve got news for them, too.” Obama thundered. “We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.”
Obama’s rhetoric soared high, despite the ballast of straw men clinging to his sentences like desperate souls clinging to the struts of an American helicopter leaving Saigon. (What federal agents, pray tell, poked around our libraries?)
Four years later, Obama ran for president as a “change” candidate championing the transformative power of words. In the Democratic primary, he announced that his true opponent was “cynicism” itself. Apparently, to oppose Obama’s candidacy for any reason was to give in to dark motivations. Later, he explained that Democratic voters who preferred Hillary Clinton were “clinging” to their bigotries and small-mindedness. As ever, his candidacy did not bear close inspection, but it’s hard to inspect something at such an altitude. Besides, as ever, he told a good story.
Indeed, as Obama told Newsweek reporter Richard Wolff, “You know, I actually believe my own bulls**t.”
No doubt he believed it, in April 2008, when he assured voters, “We’re not going to run around doing negative ads. We’re going to keep it positive, we’re going to talk about the issues.” By July 2008, Obama was saying that the $4 trillion increase in national debt during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency was “unpatriotic.”
And by September 2008, his campaign was running ads ridiculing his opponent, Senator John McCain, because he couldn’t send an e-mail. Never mind that McCain’s inability had nothing to do with technological ineptitude and everything to with the war hero having been so brutally beaten by the Viet Cong that he physically couldn’t use a keyboard. His wife would read his e-mails to him.
Of course, Obama won. People liked his story.
Some say President Obama has been a smashing success, achieving everything he promised to do. He himself told “60 Minutes” in December that his domestic and foreign-policy accomplishments exceeded those of any president “with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln.”
Others claim President Obama was stymied at every turn by an obstructionist Congress that wanted him to fail. Interestingly, both stories can be heard coming out of the president’s own mouth on any given day.
But last month he added a new twist to his tale. He told CBS News that “the mistake of my first term — couple of years — was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right.” What Obama forgot to do was “to tell a story to the American people.” What a curious thing to say, particularly for such a storyteller. It amounts to: “I did everything right, but the public can’t see it without a story.”
By the way, if amassing $4 trillion in debt over eight years is “unpatriotic,” how does racking up $5 trillion more in four years add up to “getting the policy right”?
And what was he focusing on? It’s an uncontroversial observation inside the Beltway that Obama farmed out the stimulus and health care to congressional Democrats. What was he doing if not telling stories about green-energy magic and invisible recovery summers?
Just in the last few weeks, the Obama campaign or its surrogates have accused (either directly or by insinuation) his opponent — I mean Mitt Romney, not “cynicism” — of hastening a cancer death, being a tax cheat and wanting to put black people in chains and give children E. coli.
But fear not. If you don’t like those stories, the president has more. He’s always got more stories. And he actually believes them, too.
He may well at that; fortunately, the issue this election cycle isn’t whether Barack still believes his own bullsh*t, but….
….whether a majority of Americans still do. As indicated by this latest Newsweek cover story, courtesy of Newbusters.org:
‘Hit the Road, Barack – Why We Need a New President’
Hey….if you’ve lost Newsweek, you’ve lost its readership of….what,….250?!?
In a related item, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel addresses the point of what Americans believe, offering her insight into….
Why Republicans Can Win
The only candidate gutting Medicare today is Obama. The only candidate who intends to preserve Medicare for future generations is Romney.
Memo to Americans: This presidential race is over. Turn off the TV, stow the voter ID, buy that Obama bumper sticker. Mitt Romney has lost.
Really, why go through 80 more days of the campaign, when the piercing conclusion of the Washington press corps, the Republican establishment and the Democratic Party is that Mr. Romney committed public suicide in choosing Paul Ryan? After all, these political pros know things.
They know Republican lose when they talk about entitlements. They know that’s because Americans will trust only Democrats with Medicare and Social Security. They know the left is crack-happy with the Ryan pick. They know all this because somebody told them so a long time ago, and their job is to keep repeating things they’ve been told.
So in thrall is the Beltway crowd to its received beliefs that it has missed this (minor) point: America looks nothing like it did even four years ago. The political landscape has been upended.And that is why Republicans can win this year.
As they have been winning.Those who insist the GOP loses when it talks entitlements have yet to explain Mr. Ryan. True fact: You can’t be the House Budget chairman without having won an election. That’s what Mr. Ryan has done, seven times, in a competitive Wisconsin district that contains senior citizens, independents and party moderates—and that voted Obama in 2008.
Save for his first run, he’s never earned less than 63% of the vote. And he’s done that by taking the entitlement fight to his opponents.
Ah, say the pros, but even Mr. Ryan couldn’t win an oldster state like Florida. Senior citizens will flip out. So they said in 2010, when Marco Rubio, in a debate with opponent Charlie Crist, suggested raising the retirement age and altering benefits to preserve Social Security. “Rubio just lost Florida!” screamed the Twitterverse.
Well, Sen. Marco Rubio is still talking about entitlement reform today. As are Republican Sens. Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey and Rob Portman, who beat Mediscare in swing states in 2010. As are dozens of House freshmen who ran on Mr. Ryan’s budget.
They won because something fundamental has changed in the electorate. Our country has been through recessions before. What it has not experienced is an administration that used an economic slowdown to spend America into a debt crisis. The debt numbers are today so extreme ($16 trillion, 70% of GDP), the consequences so real (credit downgrades, default), that voters are scared.
Add to this the creeping nearness of an entitlement explosion. Social Security payouts already exceed revenue. Medicare could be bankrupt in eight years. In a 2011 Gallup poll, 67% of Americans agreed that Social Security and Medicare would create a financial crisis within a decade. Voters are willing to have this debate.
Then there’s the other dramatic political change, more recent: Voters for the first time have an honest entitlement choice. Democrats have for years claimed that the choice was between the status quo and GOP cuts. Then they passed ObamaCare. In doing so, they put themselves on record with their real plans for Medicare.
The president’s Affordable Care Act uses Medicare as a piggy bank, stripping today’s program of $716 billion. And the law’s way of dealing with the ensuing Medicare shortages is to empower a group of 15 individuals to make decisions on what medical services will need to be cut. So how does the Democratic Party intend to fix Medicare? Cut Medicare dollars, ration care.Now we know.
It is this Obama Medicare plan—not the status quo—that Republicans are running against. It is against this that they are contrasting Mr. Romney’s proposal to restore that $716 billion, to preserve existing benefits for those 55 and above, and to give younger Americans more options and continued quality care.
There is only one candidate gutting Medicare today: Mr. Obama. There is only one candidate who will preserve Medicare for future generations: Mr. Romney.That comparison is striking, and it blows up conventional wisdom.
In a Rasmussen survey this week, Florida voters were asked, “When it comes to the future of Medicare, which scares you more: President Obama’s health-care law or Paul Ryan’s proposal?” By 48% to 41%, Floridians were more scared of Mr. Obama’s $716 billion cut. And Floridians age 65 and up? By 54% to 34%—a 20 percentage-point difference—Florida seniors feared most an Obama future.
Democrats may not have good ideas, but they aren’t blind. They’ve felt the shifting landscape, lived through 2010, and they understand the threat of a bold reform politician. That’s why Mr. Obama has personally spent such time the past two years publicly working to isolate and discredit Mr. Ryan. He’s not thrilled by the Ryan pick, oh no.He fears it.
This fear, this fundamentally changed political landscape, does not guarantee a Republican victory. But what it does promise is that if the Romney-Ryan ticket stays on offense—if it can fight to a draw on entitlements and leverage the powerful economic argument—then it has every shot at the White House.
Next up, courtesy of George Lawlor, Jeffrey Anderson, writing at The Weekly Standard‘s The Magazine, agrees, detailing how the Anointed One’s crowning achievement could well have his audience running for the exits on November 7th:
Obamacare at Center Stage
In the summer of 2009, President Obama and congressional Democrats faced a dilemma. In the midst of a severe economic downturn, and less than a year after the national debt had reached the 14-figure mark for the first time in American history, they wanted to launch a brand-new federal health care entitlement—and they needed a way (at least on paper) to pay for it. They were only willing to fund about half of it with tax hikes, so they needed to come up with a lot of additional money. Their chosen funding source is now coming back to haunt them.
It is doing so as Democrats try to ride to victory by demagoguing Paul Ryan’s (and Mitt Romney’s) proposed Medicare reforms—which would help keep Medicare (and the nation) solvent by giving future seniors more freedom, more choice, and more opportunity to pursue value. But raising the Medicare issue also brings to light this inconvenient fact: Medicare is where the Democrats decided to get the rest of the money to fund Obamacare.
There is of course no shortage of problems with Obama-care. Unless it is repealed, it will raise health costs and premiums, reduce the quality of care, and funnel unprecedented amounts of power and money to Washington at the expense of Americans’ liberty. It will, for the first time in American history, compel citizens to buy a product or service of the federal government’s choosing. It will make it illegal for Americans to choose most low-premium, high-deductible health plans, to choose plans that require -co-pays for contraception or sterilization, and to choose plans that don’t cover the abortion drug ella free of charge. It will cause millions of Americans to lose their employer-sponsored plans. It will be a medical and fiscal nightmare, and a disaster for our republic.But perhaps its biggest political vulnerability is one that a compliant press corps has so far largely kept under wraps: It is funded through a roughly even mix of tax increases and Medicare cuts.
Romney and Ryan are already capitalizing on this. The campaign has released a new ad:
Such simple, straightforward, factual messaging can cut through the Obama smokescreen. And what a smokescreen it is. Obama and his allies disingenuously claim that this $716 billion (over Obamacare’s first nine years—more like $850 billion over its first decade) will be used to fund Obamacare while also, simultaneously, being put back into Medicare. But as most everyone outside the Beltway knows, you can’t spend the same dollar twice.
No, every dollar that Obamacare siphons out of Medicare will be spent just once—on Obamacare. It won’t go to making Medicare, or the country, more solvent—or to extending the life of Medicare.Instead, Obama’s raid of Medicare will go to fund Obama’s favorite legislation.
The Medicare chief actuary has made this plain. He has also made plain that Obama’s Medicare cuts will cause Medicare providers to be paid even less than Medicaid providers by the end of this decade. In other words, Obama’s cuts will affect current seniors, for whom it will be increasingly hard to find health care professionals willing to see them. The proposed Romney-Ryan reforms, in contrast, wouldn’t affect anyone who’s 55 or older, let alone current seniors.
What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office notes that Obamacare’s Medicare cuts will cause millions of seniors to lose their Medicare Advantage plans. Obama knows this, which is why he recently initiated the $8.35 billion Senior Swindle—an unscrupulous and probably illegal use of taxpayer money to try to hide the effects of these Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until after November. As of yet, the mainstream press has shown little interest in covering this ploy, despite the Government Accountability Office’s published misgivings, but Romney and Ryan are free to highlight it.
They can also point out that no one really knows exactly how much Obamacare will cut from Medicare. Some cuts are left to the discretion of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a creation of Obamacare. The IPAB will be made up of 15 unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats whom the law empowers to cut payments to Medicare providers. Under Obamacare, even Congress cannot overrule the IPAB’s decisions with a simple majority vote, thereby making the IPAB constitutionally dubious as well.
Moreover, Obama has doubled-down on the IPAB. Not content with the largely unchecked powers that Obamacare grants it, he has called for “strengthening” it—for giving it more power to cut Medicare spending. He has referred to this as “further improving Medicare.”
Needless to say, there’s a great deal here for Romney and Ryan to expose. Every time Obama attacks them for the alleged evil of seeking to give future seniors more choice and letting them shop for value with premium support provided by the government, they can talk about the statist IPAB, Obama’s method of controlling costs. Every time Obama attacks them for their desire to reform Medicare, they can talk about how his health law raids it. Every time Obama attacks them for wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they can talk about how Obama already did that—and gave the loot to Obamacare.
These arguments aren’t novel. Ryan has been making them for two years.But he now has a bigger megaphone, and Romney has an even more powerful one.
The beauty of these counterattacks is that they will focus this election on Obamacare, the symbol and centerpiece of this presidency. Like his congressional Democratic cohorts in 2010, Obama can’t survive an election that’s focused on his signature legislation. Yet by attacking Romney and Ryan on Medicare, he has unwittingly helped bring Obamacare back to center stage. All Romney and Ryan need to do is keep it there.
Why, you might ask, would The Obamao look to rob Medicare to feed his pet project? Simple, under Obamascare, all roads lead to single-payer healthcare….under the total absolute control of an expanded government bureaucracy which will beggar the imagination….as well as the country.
Oh….and Sarah Palin’s death panels dismissed so nonchalantly by the Left and their MSM shills? Make no mistake about it; they will all-too-soon be Obamascare’s ONLY “cost-cutting” vehicle.
Moving on, in today’s installment of Tales From the Darkside, we learn….
Symphony says Cobb high school choruses are not diverse enough
Two Cobb County high school choruses will not be performing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra this year, because the symphony said their groups are not racially diverse enough. Video of the Walton and Lassiter High School choruses performing can be found all over YouTube, but they will not be found on stage with Atlanta’s professionals this fall.
“This year, the schools were informed by symphony officials that their choruses are not diverse enough, and that the symphony would be inviting a third, more diverse chorus,” said Cobb County Schools spokesman Jay Dillon.Some Marietta residents told Channel 2’s Carl Willis the decision smacked of discrimination. “I think it’s sad,” said Marietta resident Shar Nicholson. “I think if they have the talent and the desire they should be given the opportunity.”
Willis sat down with the ASO president and CEO to get an explanation. “We want the stages of the Atlanta Symphony, whether here, Verizon (Wireless Amphitheatre), or Chastain Park to reflect the diversity of Atlanta,” said ASO President Stanley Romanstein.
Not everyone agrees. “It’s not necessarily fair to the students at all,” said Vashon Ramsey, an African-American Cobb County resident. “They should be allowed to perform regardless.”
Romanstein said he was surprised by the reaction. “It’s an interesting misunderstanding,” he said. Romanstein told Willis that he told the chorus directors about the decision two years ago and said they were understanding at the time. “There are at least 12 very talented high school choirs in Atlanta,” Romanstein said. “We gave Lassiter and Walton choirs an opportunity to perform for four consecutive years, and they were marvelous. We think it’s time to give other Atlanta high school choirs, who are very skilled and deserving, their chance to perform with the ASO as well.”
Lassiter and Walton did have a chance to bring a smaller portion of their choruses to perform but decided not to take part. “Because the full choruses would not be able to perform with the symphony, both Lassiter and Walton have declined to participate this year,” said Dillon.
Grady High School’s chorus has been invited to perform. The ASO president said they will also get a multi-year run.
An “interesting misunderstanding” indeed; but from where we sit, the confusion is all on Stan Romanstein’s side.
Were we Channel 2’s Carl Willis, we’d have asked Stan which of his statements were true: “We want the stages of the Atlanta Symphony, whether here, Verizon (Wireless Amphitheatre), or Chastain Park to reflect the diversity of Atlanta”, or, “We think it’s time to give other Atlanta high school choirs, who are very skilled and deserving, their chance to perform with the ASO as well“.Seriously, wWas the reason for dropping the Walton and Lassiter choruses their perceived lack of diversity, or Romanstein’s desire to give “other Atlanta high school choirs”, predominantly Black high school choirs at that, “their chance to perform with the ASO as well”? And when did you stop beating your wife?!?
And in the Follow-up segment, this highly misleading headline from FOX News:
Agencies tamp down speculation over hollow-point ammo purchases
Obscure federal agencies triggered a firestorm of conspiracy theories this week after they put out orders for thousands of rounds of deadly hollow-point bullets. But the agencies, most recently the Social Security Administration, are trying to put a damper on the speculation — noting the ammunition is “standard issue” and simply used for mandatory federal training sessions.
“Our special agents need to be armed and trained appropriately,” said a message on the official blog for Social Security’s inspector general office explaining the purchases.
The bullet purchases drew widespread attention as the website Infowars.com published several stories on them that were linked off the widely read Drudge Report and other sites. Infowars.com catalogued a string of recent purchases — first by the Department of Homeland Security, then by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and then the Social Security Administration.
The Social Security Administration solicitation, posted Aug. 7, called for 174,000 rounds of “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition.” Infowars.com speculated that the purchases were being made in preparation for “civil unrest,” imagining a scenario of economic collapse where seniors could cause “disorder” if denied their Social Security benefits.
But the Social Security Administration statement, posted Thursday, noted that their agents need firearms and ammo in the course of training, investigations and responding to threats against offices and employees. “As we said in a recent post, our office has criminal investigators, or special agents, who are responsible for investigating violations of the laws that govern SSA’s programs,” the office said.
The agency said it has 295 special agents across 66 offices in the country. “These investigators have full law enforcement authority, including executing search warrants and making arrests,” the statement said.
As for concern about the type of bullets — hollow points, which expand upon impact — the statement said the type is “standard issue” and is used during “mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, found itself scrambling to respond to a similar report this week about an order for 46,000 rounds of ammo. Though the agency initially indicated it was for the National Weather Service — leading to questions about why the National Weather Service could possibly need so many bullets — a spokesman clarified the bullets are actually meant for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement. A “clerical error” resulted in the order saying the ammo was for the weather service.
Spokesman Scott Smullen said the error’s been fixed in the bidding system. He, too, said the ammo is “standard issue” and will be used by 63 enforcement personnel at NOAA during qualifications and training sessions. “NOAA officers and agents enforce the nation’s ocean and fishing laws to ensure a level playing field for fishermen and to protect marine species like whales, dolphins and turtles,” he said. (Fishermen in general being a desperate lot!)
According to NOAA, the specialized agents are supposed to have 200 rounds in their “duty bag,” and qualification and training requires another 500-600 rounds per agent.
Two quick observations; first, we’d love both the Social Security Administration and NOAA to detail how many of their agents in….oh,….the last twenty years have ever had occasion to discharge their weapons in the line of duty.
Second, for the benefit of those relatively unschooled in the finer points of firearms, the only difference in hollow-point (HP) and full-metal-jacket (FMJ) ammo is the price, with HP rounds costing on average almost 50% more the FMJ equivalent.
More importantly, there’s no discernible difference in how the rounds fire. Assuming identical powder loads, the recoil and action of the weapon would be identical, regardless of the type of slug being fired. Which means this is either (a) yet another blatant example of government waste, or (b), another cover-up….and there’s far more to this story than the government’s willing to admit.
Speaking of fraud, waste and abuse, Becket Adams writing at TheBlaze.com asks….
Would it surprise anyone?But it’s not the prospect of GM going under again that piques our interest; after all, prior to assuming the helm at GM, what did Dan Akerson know about the car business….
….other than having a driver’s license?
No, what has us intrigued about this situation is a quote from 2008 when GM was first staring down the barrel of Chapter 11:
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for on Tuesday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
[…]
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check. …
The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs.
Who said it? Not George W. Bush….not B. Hussein Obamao….and certainly not the president of the UAW; it was one Willard Mitt Romney….and in an editorial offering in the New York Times no less. Were truer words ever written?
And in the Environmental Moment, the WSJ adds up….
The Energy Subsidy Tally
Wind and solar get the most taxpayer help for the least production. Wind and solar get the most taxpayer help for the least production.
President Obama traveled to Iowa Tuesday and touted wind energy subsidies as the path to economic recovery. Then he attacked Mitt Romney as a tool of the oil and gas industry. “So my attitude is let’s stop giving taxpayer subsidies to oil companies that don’t need them, and let’s invest in clean energy that will put people back to work right here in Iowa,” he said. “That’s a choice in this election.”
There certainly is a subsidy choice in the election, but the facts are a lot different than Mr. Obama portrays them. What he isn’t telling voters is how many tax dollars his Administration has already steered to wind and solar power, and how much more subsidized they are than other forms of electricity generation.
The facts come in a 2011 report from Mr. Obama’s own Department of Energy. The report—”Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010″—identifies $37.16 billion in federal subsidies. These include special tax breaks, loans and loan guarantees, research and development, home heating assistance, conservation programs, and so on.
The nearby chart shows the assistance that each form of energy for electricity production received in 2010. The natural gas and oil industry received $2.8 billion in total subsidies, not the $4 billion Mr. Obama claims on the campaign trail, and $654 million for electric power. The biggest winner was wind, with $5 billion.Between 2007 and 2010, total energy subsidies rose 108%,but solar’s subsidies increased six-fold and wind’s were up 10-fold.
The best way to compare subsidy levels is by the amount of energy produced.But the Energy report conspicuously left out this analysis, though Congress specifically requested it.
Energy said that “caution” should be used in calculating the taxpayer handouts “relative to their share of total electricity generation,” because many wind and solar subsidies are for “facilities that are still under construction.” It also warned that “Focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years” for other energy sources.
This sounds suspiciously like a political dodge, because subsidies for renewable energy date to at least the 1970s. The problem is that wind and solar still can’t make a go of it without subsidies. Solyndra is merely the most famous of the solar-power failures. Earlier this month United Technologies sold its more than $300 million investment in wind power, with CFO Greg Hayes telling investors, according to press reports that: “We all make mistakes.” He added that the market for renewables like wind “as everyone knows, is stagnating.” Someone alert the White House.
The folks at the Institute for Energy Research used the Energy Department data to calculate a subsidy per unit of electricity produced. Per megawatt hour, natural gas, oil and coal received 64 cents, hydropower 82 cents, nuclear $3.14, wind $56.29 and solar a whopping $775.64.
So for every tax dollar that goes to coal, oil and natural gas, wind gets $88 and solar $1,212.After all the hype and dollars, in 2010 wind and solar combined for 2.3% of electric generation—2.3% for wind and 0% and a rounding error for solar. Renewables contributed 10.3% overall, though 6.2% is hydro. Some “investment.”
Zooming out for all energy, the Congressional Research Service did its own analysis of tax incentives last year. It found that in 2009 fossil fuels accounted for 78% of U.S. energy production but received only 12.6% of tax incentives. Renewables accounted for 11% of energy production but received 77% of the tax subsidies—and that understates the figure because it leaves out direct spending.
By the way, these subsidy comparisons don’t consider that the coal, oil, and natural gas industries paid more than $10 billion of taxes in 2009. Wind and solar are net drains on the Treasury.
All of this suggests a radical idea. Why not eliminate all federal energy subsidies? This would get the government out of the business of picking winners and losers—mostly losers. Mr. Obama’s plan to eliminate oil and gas subsidies would lower the budget deficit by less than $3 billion a year, but creating a true level playing field in energy, and allowing markets to determine which energy sources are used, would save $37 billion. That’s an energy plan that makes sense.
Which means, of course, it will NEVER be adopted by the Dims.
On the Lighter Side….
Finally, in the Science Section, new evidence reveals the terrible truth behind one of the tragic tales of polar exploration:
Legendary expedition ship in search for South Pole found offGreenland
A U.S.-based oceanographic institute says it has found the wreckage of a ship that was manned by a crew of doomed Antarctic explorers more than a century ago. The Schmidt Ocean Institute says that in July its researchers discovered the S.S. Terra Nova using echo sounders off the southern coast of Greenland….
….Scott and several of his men froze to death in 1912during their march to the earth’s southernmost point.
Ship sinks off Greenland….they’re heading for the South Pole; no wonder they never made it.
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