Obama's Coal Hypocrisy: America NO Africa YES

 

Africans can burn coal. Americans can’t.

That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the Obama administration’s most recent forays into energy policy.

On June 25, President Obama was at Georgetown University decrying “carbon pollution” and making it clear that he will prohibit any new coal-fired power plants from being built in the U.S. Five days later, while Obama was in Africa, the White House released a fact sheet on its “Power Africa” initiative that aims to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa by helping finance some 10,000 megawatts of new generation capacity in that region.

During his Georgetown speech, Obama used the phrase “carbon pollution” a whopping 30 times. In the document on Power Africa, that phrase doesn’t appear even once. 

The contrast between Obama’s Georgetown speech and his effort to make electricity more available in Africa goes to the crux of the entire climate-change debate. Talk about cutting carbon dioxide emissions may appeal to “green” voters in rich countries where energy is cheap and abundant. It doesn’t sell in Africa or other poverty-stricken regions where energy is scarce and expensive.

In his Georgetown speech, Obama announced a “new national climate action plan” to “protect our country from the impacts of climate change,” as well as a plan to “lead the world in a coordinated assault on a changing climate.” During his remarks, the president repeatedly implied that the U.S. could, on its own, make a major difference in global carbon dioxide emissions and, therefore, in climate change. He said that voters should reward politicians based on their green quotient: “Remind everyone who represents you that . . . sheltering future generations against the ravages of climate change is a prerequisite for your vote.” He went on to say that by limiting emissions from domestic power plants, Americans “will have the satisfaction of knowing that the world we leave to our children will be better off for what we did.”

It’s hard to imagine a bigger fib. And it’s a fib that relies on the public’s near-total ignorance of the realities of global energy use, such as the soaring amounts of carbon dioxide coming from developing countries. But given Obama’s desire to do something about energy poverty in Africa, a laudable goal, let’s look at what’s happening there.

Between 2002 and 2012, the U.S. reduced its “carbon pollution” — to use Obama’s inane phrase — by 8 percent. Meanwhile, in Africa, carbon dioxide emissions rose by nearly 35 percent. Over that same time frame, U.S. coal use dropped by nearly 21 percent. In Africa, coal use jumped by 15 percent. And despite Obama’s cheery talk about “clean energy” and renewables, Africa’s coal use — indeed, Africa’s use of all forms of energy — will continue to soar.

Read More: National Review

Study: Electric Cars No 'Greener' Than Gasoline Cars

 

According to a newly released study, electric cars are no more “environmentally friendly” than are gasoline-powered vehicles. In fact, with everything considered, they may even be worse on the environment. Confused?
In an article entitled “Unclean at Any Speed” in the journal IEEE Spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options. From UPI.com:

Electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another, he wrote, and “most electric-car assessments analyze only the charging of the car. This is an important factor indeed. But a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impact over the vehicle’s entire life cycle, from its construction through its operation and on to its eventual retirement at the junkyard.”
Political priorities and corporate influence have created a flawed impression that electric cars significantly reduce transportation impacts, he said.
“Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars starts to appear tantamount to shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another,” Zehner, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

This, of course, should come as no shock to anyone who has followed the similarly ridiculous (political) story of ethanol.
As is the case with the electric car, the idea of ethanol was (is – to politicians and environmentalists) appealing. We could reduce our dependence on oil – foreign oil in particular – and stop spewing megatons of carbon into the atmosphere. All by replacing oil with clean, home-grown, all-American corn! It all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? It is.
As reported in Popular Mechanics, corn farming isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s damn expensive.

It requires heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel fuel) and transportation (diesel fuel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy (gas, oil, diesel fuel). The ratio of how much energy is used to make ethanol versus how much it delivers is known as the energy balance, and calculating it is surprisingly complex.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol.

The pros and cons of both electric cars and ethanol will be debated for years. As will the pros and cons of wind and solar power. The question is, what should be the government’s role – if any – in the meantime?
Should the federal government mandate and support (prop up) specific technologies (See: Barack Obama: wind and solar energy) and spend (lose) billions of tax-payer dollars on those (politically-selected) technologies? Or, should it allow the free market to choose the best alternatives? (Let’s go with “B”, shall we?)
Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between.

Read More: Independent Journal

North Carolina turns down Federal Long Term Unemplotment funds and loans.

 

North Carolina became the first state in the country to forfeit federal long-term unemployment benefits.

As her state budgets continued to balloon and unemployment remains uncomfortably high, the Republican controlled legislature ended the state’s war on prudent fiscal policy by exempting herself from receiving further federal assistance for people unemployed longer than 26 weeks, as well as lowering the maximum potential benefit.
If you listen to Paul Krugman of The New York Times, you’d believe the GOP was doing this to upset President Obama and purposefully hurt the poor.

Is life too easy for the unemployed? You may not think so, and I certainly don’t think so. But that, remarkably, is what many and perhaps most Republicans believe. And they’re acting on that belief: there’s a nationwide movement under way to punish the unemployed, based on the proposition that we can cure unemployment by making the jobless even more miserable.

But it’s not only elitist policy wonks from New York that believe the human cost shows a lack of compassion. The Charlotte Observer quotes resident Eddrena Morris, unemployed since February 2012, who asks, “What do they expect people to do? How are people going to feed their families?”

It’s a legitimate concern for someone looking to put food on their table but the difficult truth is that extended benefits play an unfortunate role in the stubborn 8.8 percent unemployment rate North Carolina currently lives with.
As of today, jobless benefits cap out at a pretax rate $350 per week (down from $535 prior to Sunday’s cuts). As Krugman notes, “some hammock,” in response to Paul Ryan referring to welfare’s changing role from safety net to entitlement hammock.

And he’s right, it’s not much money. Speaking personally, $1,500 per month would barely cover the cost of feeding my family of 6, much less cover electricity or water or any other of life’s essentials.

But the question remains: does receiving up to $1,500 per month purely as a matter of benefit for searching for a job hurt the economy as a whole? Or help it?

Read More: Red State

Obama Administration to allow Foreign Security Troops in United States?

 

As part of a deal signed in Wash DC between the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and FEMA, Russian officials will provide “security at mass events” in the United States, a scenario that won’t sit well with Americans wary of foreign assets operating on US soil.

According to a press release by the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense and Emergencies, US and Russian officials met on June 25 at the 17th Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations.

In addition to agreeing with FEMA to “exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters,” the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will also be providing “security at mass events” in the United States.

This suggests that events designated as “National Special Security Events” by the Department of Homeland Security, which include the Super Bowl, international summits such as the G8 and presidential inaugurations, will now rely partly on Russian authorities to provide security.

The meeting last week also agreed on the conclusion that US and Russian emergency authorities will increase their co-operation, “in order to respond efficiently to all kinds of disasters.”

The use of foreign troops or other officials in a law enforcement capacity providing “security” inside the United States is illegal under Posse Comitatus. Capt. William Geddes of the U.S. Army Reserve acknowledged last year that it is against federal law to use US troops to conduct police patrols, despite the fact that such occurrences are becoming increasingly common. The use of foreign troops is an even more clear cut violation of Posse Comitatus.

Read More: INFOWARS

NFL says NYET to ObamaCare Propaganda

 

The NFL indicated that the league had no desire to help the Obama administration sell and implement Obamacare this fall.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy emailed the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein to say the NFL had no plans to help promote Obamacare: 

We have responded to the letters we received from members of Congress to inform them we currently have no plans to engage in this area and have had no substantive contact with the administration about PPACA’s implementation.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello emailed the Washington Post the same statement.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had said this week the Obama administration was looking to partner with professional sports leagues to market Obamacare exchanges this fall to sell the unpopular healthcare law to the public. 

The NFL's statement comes hours after the two top ranking Republicans in the Senate--Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-TX)--wrote a letter to six major professional sports leagues urging them not to feel threatened or pressured into supporting Obamacare. 

Hat Tip: Breitbart Sports