No Oil for Pacifists

On November 13th, an Eli Lake Washington Times story accused the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and various lobbying disclosure laws and rules. Essentially, the article claims NIAC was unlawfully lobbying for Iran. I take no position on whether those charges are true.

This post is about a (controversial) writer for NIAC's blog, Artin Afkhami. Or should I say former writer. He's not listed on NIAC's "staff" page. And, as Michael Rubin notes on The Corner, Afkhami's Linkedin profile now is fairly anodyne. However, the cached version lists Afkhami as:

• Research Associate at Princeton University


• Iran Analyst at The New York Times


• Iran Blogger at NIAC

Question: Why was the New York Times using an analyst from an organization whose admitted goals were "advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community"?

Michael Rubin asked that of the Times, which responded:

Since July, Artin Afkhami has worked for The Times part time, on a freelance basis, providing translations of articles and speeches and monitoring news reports from Iran. He does not write for The Times.

We are reviewing his other affiliations to determine whether any of them pose the possibility or the appearance of a conflict.

Expect reports on the results of this investigation to be delayed until the Times prints at least a half-dozen more articles slamming bias on FOX News.

Conclusion: Western media reports on Middle East issues are particularly slanted because of the press' predilection for employing locals with an anti-American or -Israeli agenda. They rarely disclose the fact--until they're caught. And they often ignore contrary views. So much for leftist media objectivity and ethics.

Earlier this week, I critiqued a provision of the House healthcare bill (HR 3962) that would incentivize states away from alternative dispute resolution procedures that cap malpractice liability or lawyer fees. Well there's another gift to trial lawyers buried in the bill.

Specifically, to achieve President Obama's claimed desire to reduce healthcare costs, the bill's government-run plan would fix doctor compensation based on what a committee of bureaucrats believes appropriate to treat a given illness. See Sections 323-24 starting on page 216. Yet, Section 261(a) on page 149 says:

The development, recognition, or implementation of any guideline or other standard under a provision described in [the payment provisions] shall not be construed to establish the standard of care or duty of care owed by health care providers to their patients in any medical malpractice action or claim.

Critical Condition's Joseph Nixon explains that this:

puts physicians in an impossible conundrum. Doctors will only be reimbursed that amount for which the health-care commissioner determines is the appropriate treatment for a particular set of symptoms. However, doctors may still be held legally liable for failing to give that care which they could or should have given if additional care is actually more appropriate for the patient's well being.

So doctors are left with a choice between providing care that they know will benefit the patient but for which they may not be reimbursed, or providing limited care for which they will be reimbursed but quite possibly also sued by the patient.

Advantage -- again -- to the trial lawyers' lobby: the sixth largest campaign contributor over the past two decades. As for doctors: prepare to be assimilated.

Brendan O’Neill on Planet Gore:

If a climate-change sceptic suggests that the Sun, rather than man, is responsible for climatic variations he is denounced as evil, a heretic, someone whose words are so foul and twisted that they will be "partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead." In other words, question the environmentalist consensus, and you are endangering life itself -- your words are literally poisonous.

Yet when a climate-change activist openly calls for calamitous events and the deaths of thousands of people as a way of focusing our leaders’ minds on the problem of climate change, no one bats an eye.

One central impetus for healthcare reform is extending insurance to those not now covered. But there's serious disagreement about just how many Americans can't afford health insurance: many of the uninsured have the money but choose to forgo coverage (especially the young and healthy) or opt-out of employer-sponsored health plans; some say they lack insurance though covered by Medicare or Medicaid already; others are illegal immigrants. Perhaps for those reasons, even President Obama dropped his estimate of the uninsured from 47 million to 30 million.

In last month's New York Post, Jeffrey Anderson says that figure still is too high:

The health-care-reform debate is plagued by different numbers on how many Americans lack health insurance, but we actually have excellent data on the question: Ninety percent of Americans are insured, according to the Census -- and even the president more or less concurs.

The Census is the source for the much-cited figure of 46 million uninsured. Yet the very same table plainly indicates that 9 million of those are not US citizens. That leaves 37 million uninsured who are Americans.

But there's more. In the same document, the Census also plainly states that "health-insurance coverage is underreported" in its survey. When it cross-checked its survey results with the official Medicaid rolls, it found that 16.9 percent of those on Medicaid had claimed on their Census forms that they were uninsured. That 16.9 percent amounts to 9 million people.

So the actual tally, according to the most authoritative source we have, is just 28 million uninsured citizens (46 million minus 9 million non-citizens, minus 9 million on Medicaid who were falsely recorded as uninsured).

To be more exact, it leaves 28,157,000 uninsured out of a total of 280,209,000. That leaves us with 90 percent of American citizens covered by insurance, according to the Census.

Remind me why we're seeking to increase inefficient government intervention into a system that works pretty well?

(via Critical Condition)

UPDATE: below

A new study by Georgia Tech Professor Brian Stone in the Environmental Science & Technology journal concludes that "Mitigating climate change could be better achieved by regulating land use change than emissions reductions alone":


source: Stone, Land Use as Climate Change Mitigation

caption (first sentence only): Urban and rural temperature anomalies (5 year means) for 50 large U.S. metropolitan regions over the period of 1957-2006.

The study's press release quotes the author:

"Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases," said Stone. "Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming."

No kidding--this is old news:


source: NASA's Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program

Except to Congressmen Waxman and Markey.

MORE:

Warming skeptic Princeton physics prof Freeman Dyson agrees at about 3:35 into this video.

(via Watts Up With That?, reader Marc D.)

Victor Davis Hanson on The Corner:

George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).

In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.

At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India.

The fact that in the Bush years we were increasingly disliked by Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chávez, Kim Jong Il, Morales, Ortega, and Putin, may in retrospect seem logical, just as their current warming to the U.S. may prove to be cause for alarm, given the repugnant nature of these strongmen.

Agreed.

Remember how the Obama Administration first announced that the $787 billion stimulus package had saved or created a whopping 30 thousand jobs? Embarrassed by the absurdly low figures -- which the Associated Press said were overstated -- the Federal bean counters quickly upped the official number to 640 thousand jobs. According to Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to Vice President Biden, that meant the cost per job saved/created was an amazing $92,000! (Amusingly, CNN published a chart implying that jobs were created by money not yet spent.)

My first reaction was to chortle over the fact that the cost per job is twice the mean annual personal income--it would have been cheaper just to give the money away. Or that the figures fail to account for jobs foregone when government spending crowded-out private sector wealth creation.

But before shuffling off to the spreadsheets, I realized that the Administration's math still is wrong. According to the AP:

Despite White House promises that errors would be corrected, the latest stimulus job count still includes mistakes such as the ones discovered in the AP's earlier sampling of contracts. For example, the Palm Beach County, Fla., water department reported 57 meter readers, customer service representatives and other positions as part of two water projects. That got incorrectly doubled to 114. Some agencies that received stimulus money continue to report saving jobs, despite using the money for employee pay raises. And the new data appeared to include at least dozens of entries in which contractors listed the same number of jobs as created or saved on different projects, which suggested double- or triple-counting of the same workers used on all projects.

The AP follow-up a few days later was even more dismissive:

An Associated Press review of the latest stimulus reports -- which the White House promised would undergo extensive reviews to ensure accuracy -- found that more than two-thirds of 14,506 jobs credited to the recovery act under spending by just one federal office were overstated because they counted pay increases for existing workers as jobs saved.

The inflated job count is at least partly the product of the administration instructing local community agencies that received money to count the raises as jobs saved.

"That's more than ridiculous," said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Most of the inflated figures were like those cited in the 935 saved jobs reported by the Southwest Georgia Community Action in Moultrie, Ga. The agency, like hundreds of others collecting Head Start money, claimed all its existing employees' jobs were saved because they received a pay raise with the stimulus cash.

Similar claims led to overstating by more than 9,300 the number of jobs saved with more than $323 million in stimulus money distributed by the Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the AP's review found.

More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, pay for training and continuing education, extend employee work hours or buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

The Georgia program inflated the numbers even further by claiming the recovery money saved more jobs than the number of people it actually employs. The agency employs 508 people but claimed 935 jobs were saved because of confusion over government reports.

Tallying the various press investigations into the 640,000 jobs figure, the Washington Examiner concluded, "[m]ore than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were 'created or saved' by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary." Surf over to the Examiner's interactive map of bogus jobs, many with hyperlinked sources. One example is Fayettville, Arkansas where, according to the New York Times, a $1,000 grant to purchase a single lawn mower improbably was credited with saving 50 jobs. Or try North Chicago, Illinois, where $4.7 million was given to local schools supposedly saving the jobs of 473 teachers--except that the Chicago Tribune says the school district employs only 290 teachers. They also showed job growth in non-existent Congressional districts.

No wonder Congressional Democrats want to pass a second jobs bill. And they want similar bureaucrats to run healthcare.

(via Washington Examiner, The Problem With Kevin, Don McKee)

From a November 11th AP story:

Statistically, CNN's audience is far from nonpartisan.

Of people who say their main source of news is CNN, 46 percent identify themselves as Democrats and 13 percent as Republicans, according to a July survey by the Pew Research Center (the rest say they're independent or don't identify themselves politically). The same study found that Fox's main source audience was 38 percent Republican and 18 percent Democratic.

I think Lou Dobbs recently discovered the consequences of the slant in CNN's audience.

(via Don Surber)

Several posts starting in August detailed the Obama Administration's attempt to hijack the National Endowment for the Arts for political purposes. In what I thought the final chapter, the NEA admitted error and fired its communications director, Yosi Sergant--but NEA's chairman claimed Sergant had acted without authority or approval. In other words, they fingered Sergant as a rogue staffer. Even if accurate, that didn't explain the role of White House staffers participating in the process.

Never mind--it's not true anyway. The conservative foundation Judicial Watch used the Freedom of Information Act to get NEA emails, including some between Sergant and White House and The Corporation for National and Community Service staffers. These documents make clear that the notion of soliciting artists to proselytize the President's position's wasn't Sergant's but originated with an unnamed Obama campaign activist. Thereafter, there were numerous emails between Sergant and an employee of the federal program United We Serve where the latter appears to be organizing the campaign. Some of those emails were copied to a second NEA employee, Elizabeth Stark. And, following that, Sergant himself sent a conference call invitation saying:

A call has come in to our generation. A call from the top. A call from a house that is White. A call that we must answer. And to answer it, we need you. . .

United We Serve is President Obama's call to service challenging all Americans to engage in sustained, meaningful community service. With the knowledge that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things when given the proper tools, President Obama is asking us to come together to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda -- health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.

Now is the time for us to answer this call. It is time for us as a group of artists, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, tastemakers, leaders or just plain, cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!

In sum, the documents demonstrate that the idea originated not with Sergant but with an outside Obama partisan; that White House and other Federal employees were intimately involved; that others in the NEA knew of the plan; and that Sergant himself said the idea came from the White House. This is no more a rouge staffer than the Cuban burglars were the brains behind the Watergate break-in.

Conclusion: Yosi Sergant was the fall-guy for an extensive effort to twist tax-supported arts funding to advance Obama's political agenda. All Federal employees named in the documents should be the subject of an immediate investigation, whose outcome should be disclosed publicly. After all, didn't the President promise:

an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Or, like NEA's last fable, is that statement also "inoperative"?

Jed Graham in Investor's Business Daily:

From 2008 to 2019, federal revenues are projected to grow by $1.45 trillion, but extra interest payments on the public debt of $550 billion will soak up nearly 40% of those extra tax dollars.

Here is another: Consider that in 2008, Washington spent about half as much on interest payments ($253 billion) as it did on the nondefense programs that it budgets on an annual basis ($508 billion).

Those nondefense outlays cover homeland security, education, job training, housing assistance, veterans’ health, science, workplace safety, transportation, the environment and foreign aid.

But by 2019, interest costs would reach $800 billion under the Obama budget compared with $720 billion in spending on nondefense discretionary programs.

Agreed--be very afraid. Unless you take comfort from the fact that President Obama plans to focus on deficit reduction in his State of the Union address two months from now.

(via Ed Morrissey)

UPDATE: on Federalism, below

On November 7th, the House passed HR 3962, the healthcare "reform" bill. At 1990 pages -- half again as big as it was last summer -- it's longer than War and Peace. So stray sections screwing the ordinary Natasha and Pierre are easy to hide.

One such is Section 2531 beginning on page 1431. It provides "incentive payments" to states that enact qualifying "alternative medical liability law[s]" that would parallel the current system. Sounds vaguely like tort reform, doesn't it?

Uh, no. Subsection (a)(4) (page 1432) reads:

The contents of an alternative liability law are in accordance with this paragraph if--

(A) the litigation alternatives contained in the law consist of certificate of merit, early offer, or both; and
(B) the law does not limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.

So future state alternative malpractice resolution efforts could take on the trial lawyers only by forgoing Federal funding.

Contrary to some conservative claims, the proposed legislation wouldn't alter existing state malpractice reform laws, such as Texas's damage caps, which have drawn doctors to that state. But, as the November 12th Wall Street Journal editorialized:

The House bill is intended to discourage other states from doing the same. . . The Pelosi bill also provides these incentives only if states adopt watered-down alternatives to existing malpractice caps. Those alternatives include certificate-of-merit rules, which in theory require lawyers to get medical proof before suing but in practice mean that lawyers recruit and finance "expert" witnesses.

Progressive lefties and plaintiffs' lawyers are an odd couple. But each is committed to preserving out-of-control medical malpractice liability. And together they own the Democrat party.

On some level, there's little new here. Malpractice limits always were a long shot in this Administration. Still, if adopted, HR 3962 bribes the states to block further tort reform. So, more broadly, the bill is another example of the European-like centralization current lefties favor (except in banking). As the WSJ concludes:

The hidden Pelosi tort bomb is one more example of the stealth radicalism that defines ObamaCare. If it passes in anything like its current form, we are going to be cleaning up the mess for decades to come.

In healthcare and the rest of our economy.

MORE:

Gene Healy in the November 17th Washington Examiner:

Not yet a year into his administration, Obama's record on 10th Amendment issues is already clear: He'll let the states have their way when their policies please blue team sensibilities and he'll call in the feds when they don't. Thus, he'll grant California a waiver to allow it to raise auto emissions standards, but he'll bring the hammer down when the state tries to cut payments to unionized health care workers.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

(via Doug Ross)

From the October 28th Wall Street Journal:


source: WSJ

The Journal explains:

[T]he 2010 House budget bills would permanently raise annual outlays for discretionary programs by about $75 billion a year from now until, well, forever.

These spending hikes do not include the so-called mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which exploded by 9.8% and 24.7%, respectively, in the just-ended 2009 fiscal year. All of this largesse is also on top of the stimulus funding that agencies received in 2009. The budget for the Environmental Protection Agency rose 126%, the Department of Education budget 209% and energy programs 146%.

House Republicans on the Budget Committee added up the 2009 appropriations, the stimulus funding and 2010 budgets and found that federal agencies will, on average, receive a 57% increase in appropriated funds from 2008-2010. By contrast, real family incomes fell by 3.6% last year. There's no recession in Washington.

More broadly, the White House and the 111th Congress have already enacted or proposed $3.4 trillion of new spending through 2019 for things like the health-care plan, cap and tax, and the children's health bill passed earlier this year. Very little of this has been financed with offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

(via WILLisms)

According to the November 8th New York Times:

[I]t costs the United Nations an average of $2,473 per page to create every single document in its six official languages, while outside contractors complete the same work for around $450.

(via Volokh Conspiracy)

Representative Martin Heinrich (D. N.M.), who supported the House healthcare bill, explaining his reasoning in the New York Times healthcare blog:

"This is an opportunity to do something as big as Social Security," he added. "And me, personally, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history."

Because we know how well Social Security is doing.

(via Maggie's Farm)

Three items from NOAA's October 2009 "State of the Climate" report:

• The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.



• For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.



• For the year-to-date (January - October) period, the contiguous U.S. temperature ranked 43rd warmest.

Just don't tell the Associated Press's Seth Borestein.

(via Don Surber, who asks "How did the computer model miss this?")

Last Thursday, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann held a healthcare-protest town hall on the Capitol's west lawn Here's how a New York Times blog post covered the event:

Jerry Hershberger, a market representative for an automotive company from Flower Mound, Tex., said he flew up just to protest the health care bill. "A little expense now compared to a lot of expense later," he said, explaining why the cost of the trip was worth it to him.

Mr. Hershberger, like many of the demonstrators, repeated some of the most common conservative and Republican talking points heard repeatedly on Fox News. "It’s not bipartisan," he said, standing outside the Capitol wearing a Texas Longhorns baseball cap. . .

Many of the demonstrators, like Judith Garloch of Newark, Ohio, said they were opposed to an increasing government role in the health care. . .

Ms. Garloch, who has a combination of Medicare and private coverage, said insurance should be sold across state lines to increase competition.

But Ms. Garloch, like many in the crowd who while visibly angry, could not articulate the main problems in the health care system or how they should be solved.

Which is it--aping FOX or lacking logic? Both--because the Times labels rather than reports. Either way, conservatives are stupid. That's all the news the Times ever prints.

(via TimesWatch)

Martin Feldstein in the November 6th Washington Post:

Obamacare could have the unintended consequence of raising health insurance premiums and causing a decline in the number of people with insurance.

Here's why: A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions. The new coverage would start immediately, and the premium could not reflect the individual's health condition.

This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs. After all, if serious illness hit this person or a family member, he could immediately obtain coverage. As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums. (Separate accident policies might develop to deal with the risk of high-cost care after accidents when there is insufficient time to buy insurance.)

The higher premium level would cause others who are currently insured to drop coverage, pushing premiums even higher. The result would be a spiral of rising premiums and shrinking numbers of insured.

In an attempt to prevent this, the draft legislation provides penalties for individuals who choose not to buy insurance and for employers that do not offer health insurance. But the levels of these fines are generally too low to cause a rational individual to insure. . .

To simplify, let's look at a family in which one adult earns $50,000 and receives the family plan that costs $13,375. Employees typically pay about 25 percent of the premium cost, or $3,340. The $10,035 remaining cost is deductible by the employer and not taxable to the employee. So the total net cost to the employer of this employee's compensation (taking into account the payroll tax and the corporate tax deduction) is $41,509. The employee would receive the $50,000 minus his part of the health insurance premium, or $46,660 as pretax income.

If that employer stopped providing insurance, he could be subject to a fine of 8 percent of payroll, or about $4,000 for this individual. But even with this fine, he could pay a cash wage to the individual of $53,605 and still have the same net cost of $41,509 (because the cash wage would be subject to the 7.65 percent payroll tax and the combined amount would be deductible at the 35 percent corporate tax rate.) The employee's pay would therefore rise from $46,660 to $53,605, an increase of $6,945. That would be subject to income and payroll taxes, leaving a net increase of $4,677. Even after paying the 2.5 percent personal fine on his cash income of $53,605, he would have additional net income of $3,337, a substantial rise for someone who started with pretax income of $46,660.

In short, for those who are now privately insured through employers or by direct purchase, there would be substantial incentives to become uninsured until they become sick. The resulting rise in the cost to insurance companies as the insured population becomes sicker would raise the average premium, strengthening that incentive.

Unintended, yes, but entirely predictable. In fact, it's what happened in New Jersey (page 16), home of the second-highest average health insurance premiums.

See also Greg Mankiw in the November 1st New York Times.

(via Carpe Diem)

Also from the November 6th Times (London):

All hope is lost for Copenhagen climate treaty, British officials say

From the November 6th Times (London):

Experts say that fears surrounding climate change are overblown

Alarming predictions that climate change will lead to the extinction of hundreds of species may be exaggerated, according to Oxford scientists.

They say that many biodiversity forecasts have not taken into account the complexities of the landscape and frequently underestimate the ability of plants and animals to adapt to changes in their environment.

"The evidence of climate change-driven extinctions have really been overplayed," said Professor Kathy Willis, a long-term ecologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the article.

Professor Willis warned that alarmist reports were leading to ill-founded biodiversity policies in government and some major conservation groups. She said that climate change has become a "buzz word" that is taking priority while, in practice, changes in human use of land have a greater impact on the survival of species. "I’m certainly not a climate change denier, far from it, but we have to have sound policies for managing our ecosystems," she said.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature backed the article, saying that climate change is "far from the number-one threat" to the survival of most species. "There are so many other immediate threats that, by the time climate change really kicks in, many species will not exist any more," said Jean Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN species program, which is responsible for compiling the international Redlist of endangered species.

Agreed.

(via Watts Up With That?)

UPDATE: below

The House passed the Waxman-Markey climate change bill (HR 2454); the Democrats' proposal now is pending in the Senate. Section 705(e)(2) of the draft (page 692) directs the EPA to attempt to avoid "atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations above 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent." This prescription is clothed in terms of "the latest scientific information." Similar numbers have been mentioned in discussions on the mooted Copenhagen climate treaty--though Dr. Hansen and other radicals argue for an even lower concentration of 350 ppm carbon equivalents.

Of course, U.S. carbon emissions have declined of late, though global emissions are up. That's because "non-Kyoto countries" (mostly the developing world) produce the majority of atmospheric carbon. China and India, for two, will not except any binding emission limits--and they account for 26 percent of emissions. (Any new Copenhagen agreement may not even be legally binding.) So U.S. cuts likely won't accomplish much--even if man-generated carbon is at fault. But never mind that science.

Further, the draft legislation's metric is bogus, as Luboš Motl explains:

The very basic features of the notion of the "carbon dioxide equivalent" are pseudoscientific in character because the linear formula that is implicitly assumed contradicts basic physical properties of the gases -- overlapping spectral lines as well as the nonlinear dependence of the greenhouse effect for each individual gas.

For that reason, even the EPA says that employing carbon dioxide equivalents "is declining." But, this Frankenstein may soon become law, so never mind that science as well.

Assuming "450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent" remains the trigger, where are we now? The current CO₂ concentration is 386 ppm. And "the current value of the combined concentration is around 448 ppm and it could reach 450 ppm in 2010." So, were the legislation passed, we'd start off over the limit.

Why is this important? Because of Section 707 of the draft legislation (page 698), the first part of which reads:

Not later than July 1, 2015, and every 4 years thereafter--
(1) the President shall direct relevant Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions identified in the reports submitted under sections 705 and 706 and to address any shortfalls identified in such reports.

Such a statutory directive represents an unprecedented delegation of power to a future President. As Christopher Horner says on Big Government:

The provision is quite clearly installed for green pressure groups to sue to force the chief executives’ hands to seize all manner of power otherwise unavailable to him under our system but desired by the greens and whatever they can convince the federal court’s 9th Circuit is in our interests. That is, the bill actually does mandate that a "climate emergency" be declared by the federal government when global greenhouse gas concentrations - which are not something which the bill or the United States can control and over which we have a decreasing influence each day - reach 450 parts per million. Which the bill’s authors knew would already be the case by the time the bill was adopted. . .

[T]his agenda transparently is not about GHG concentrations, or the climate.

It’s about what this provision would bring: almost limitless power over private economic activity and individual liberty for the activist president and, for the reluctant leader, litigious greens.

The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott wonders:

Would the president be empowered to do things like nationalize whole sectors of industry, ban coal use, restrict private automobile use, or anything else the "emergency" requires?

Well, yes, that's the point. Waxman-Markey is less about climate change than radical environmentalists experimenting with the economy so they can tax Western Civ.--to the detriment of ordinary Americans. No wonder Fidel Castro favors the bill.

Conclusion: Talk of a climate tipping point seems to inspire all sorts of totalitarians. So I agree with Luboš Motl:

It's extremely bad to design laws and treaties resembling the global warming communism. But it's even worse to give people additional powers "activated" as soon as some ill-defined, scientifically meaningless quantities exceed some arbitrary thresholds. It's hard to believe that a responsible politician could ever support such a bill. . .

Isn't it cleaner to clarify the situation by saying that the police state begins in January 2011, rather than to encode this plan into convoluted verbal constructions using ad hoc definitions that are detached from the scientific content? . . .

Everyone who is supporting legislation of this kind is an irresponsible lunatic.

For those of you keeping score at home, there's 219 of them in the House of Representatives.

MORE:

Planet Gore's Chris Horner:

It says use all existing authority -- the Clean Water Act, NEPA, Endangered Species Act, and any federal law requiring a permit for any economic activity that does or could lead to GHG production -- in a way that is not at all clear is consistent with the legislative intent, design, or otherwise feasible use (before this bill). This asserts on Congress’s behalf that these laws are now legislatively intended to serve as GHG-suppression regimes -- after establishing in an earlier provision causation by and harm from each and every existing or new increment of economic activity that uses or produces resources.

That’s new. That’s big. Both on its face and taken in context. All laws intended for purposes A, B, and C are now also expressly intended to be used -- mandated -- to chase an elusive global GHG concentration downward by emission avoidance. This is not the IRS getting Capone on tax evasion because the Feds couldn’t nail him for his racketeering, murder, etc. Tax evasion laws were intended to be used against tax evaders no matter what else those people did, and were employed for the purpose of prosecuting tax evasion. Not every law on the books was intended to keep CO2 from being emitted. Now, everything in an enormous suite of laws intended to manage interstate commerce in the name of ensuring free-flow of goods, services, and other economic activity is turned into an environmental law seeking the rationing of permitted interstate commerce in the name of the atmosphere.

(via reader OBH via Melissa Clouthier, Heritage Foundation)

UPDATE: below

In a recent water-cooler debate about the Middle East, a leftist claimed (among other things) that President Bush invaded Iraq under instructions from god. Prodded for a source, she produced a link to this two-year old post on Candide's Notebook blog.

The page purports to list quotes about god from President Bush. All but the first are unsourced (or, at best, sourced to another unsourced site). This is a waste of hyperlink technology, and seriously diminishes the authority and usefulness of the post. And, in any event, these quotes--if accurate--mostly have the President saying that freedom is every man's God given right. I'm not sure why that would be objectionable, even to atheists.

The first quote, however, is different. It is hyperlinked to a 2005 Guardian (U.K.) story, and reads:

I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it.

If true, this would support my opponent's claim. A few minutes of research revealed that it's bogus--Bush never said it.

The language comes from Nabil Shaath, Palestinian foreign minister at the time of a 2003 Israeli-Palestinian summit -- which Bush attended -- at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. No other delegate heard it, and Shaath didn't report it until two years after the summit, which itself is suspicious.

More importantly, President Bush's spokesman denied saying it. Shaath's then-boss, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, called the supposed quote "completely false." And Shaath himself backed down, saying he "did not believe Mr Bush thought God had given him a personal message."

I've informed my opponent, and urged the host of that blog to delete the first paragraph. Both forget Layne's law: the Internet means "we can fact-check your ass."

As a reminder, President Bush and his Administration repeatedly cited three reasons for toppling Saddam, one of which was (PM Tony Blair said it too) to free the Iraqi people. One may disagree with Bush's rationale. But don't distort it.

MORE:

The blog owner declined to correct his error, calling me a "clown."

UPDATE: below

A British Judge has upheld a previous administrative ruling that belief in climate change is akin to a religion:

An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.

In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change . . . is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".

The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.

The decision regards Tim Nicholson, former head of sustainability at property firm Grainger plc, who claims he was made redundant [fired] in July 2008 due to his "philosophical belief about climate change and the environment".

Nicholson still must prove his claim; his former employer denies his beliefs were the reason for the firing.

Interestingly, the court rejected the employer's defense that environmentalism was "based on science, as opposed to religious or philosophical in nature." Because, at most, warming alarmism is political, not hard, science.

So, perhaps the judge has done us a favor: were the ruling repeated in America, would it make global warming a religion, and climate change legislation an unconstitutional "establishment of a religion"? Even if not unlawful, warming worries are a particularly illiberal belief, as Cox & Forkum depicted two-and-a-half years ago:


source: Cox & Forkum

Conclusion: In California, Catholic charities must subsidize birth control in employee health plans. In the U.K., employers can be sued for "failing to account for their [employees'] green lifestyles." The logic is incompatible; the constant is the outcome--liberals win.

MORE:

From a November 12th AFP story:

The World Council of Churches on Thursday called on churches around the world to ring their bells 350 times during the Copenhagen climate change summit on December 13 as a call to action on global warming.

The leading council of Christian and Orthodox churches also invited places of worship for other faiths to join a symbolic "chain of chimes and prayers" stretching around the world from the international date line in the South Pacific.

"On that Sunday, midway through the UN summit, the WCC invites churches around the world to use their bells, drums, gongs or whatever their tradition offers to call people to prayer and action in the face of climate change," the council said in a statement.

(via Watts Up With That?, Buy The Truth, Planet Gore)

A "Graphic history of newspaper circulation over the last two decades," from the AWL


source: the AWL via
the Audit Bureau of Circulations

(via reader Marc D.)

Assistant Village Idiot on healthcare reform advocates:

They are convinced that good people who mean well all support Obama’s health care reform. This is as obvious to them as the fact that the sun rises in the East. They don’t actually know much about the details (jaw-dropping stupidity at times), but they know this emphatically by history. Good people who want everyone to be as secure as possible in getting health care are for this. The people who aren’t don’t care about suffering. They can prove it, too. They have actually met mean, selfish people, and they have heard anecdotes about others. Want to hear another example of what a jerk this conservative person I once met was?

They have heard this is going to turn out to be really, really expensive. A few are even worried about this, wondering whether it will divert resources from the economy and hurt jobs. (Duh.) But the general consensus is that there is a lot of money out there that evil cheating people get away with not paying taxes on - and there’s something vulgar about people having too much loose money around anyway. It’s not only better for the rest of us, it’s better for the rich people, too, if we take a lot of their money and put it to better uses. Because it was all made in this society, so it belongs to society. There is plenty of money if we want to do this, it’s just in the wrong places. And they waste resources and pollute, too. . .

It is dramatically circular. The good people want X. Then who is against X? Why, it must be bad people. In fact, I have stories about how bad they are. Okay, anyone can be bad and no one’s perfect, but we’ve told them and told them that this is wrong and they still don’t get it. Maybe they’re stupid instead of bad. So what, ultimately, should good people do about bad stupid people? Oppose them, of course. And we oppose them. Which proves we’re good.

I agree--lefties often both presume to know conservatives' motives and assume such opponents are evil. As AVI previously said, "The attributions of motive that people make about their political opponents is an unsafe game to play from any side."

From xkcd:


source: xkcd 657

(via reader Michael Y.)