The Terminal President

                                                The Terminal President

President Trump came to Washington with the best of intentions. The harsh reality he has confronted was not on the horizon when he set out to achieve the White House. Gridlock and obstruction have always been part of the liberal mantra. No one expected these impediments on the conservative end. Six months into Donald Trump’s historic term the left is falling all over itself attempting to finish Trump’s Presidency early. Utilizing Robert Mueller, as a special prosecutor to perform their dirty work, he is moving far outside the Russian probe for which he was engaged. In the event you cannot find ghost on your own hire a ghost hunter.

Media icons continue to push a theme that Trump’s legislative agenda is dead. Far from it. Mostly recently only three Republicans refrained from voting for a milder version of repeal and replace of Obamacare. Trump was able to corral the rest into his corner. Failure no, rejection no these three have a habit of voting in another direction. Nevertheless health care legislation has only been delayed.

Government operations now function more smoothly after Trump removed Obama era obstacles. Energy production is peaking after a cap placed on exploration was removed.  Military has been liberated from White House control leaving it to pursue its primary purpose, protecting American interests and people. One by one onerous Executive Orders from the past eight years are being nullified. Medias’ silence on these issues displays their imbued hatred for Trump and their left leaning bent.

Trump will triumph because the course he sets is focused, consistent with constitutional principles and is against those who want to see the nation fall. No matter how many roadblocks he encounters failure will not follow him.

Mark Davis MD

platomd@gmail.com

medicalboardusa.com

Donald Trump versus the Snake of Eden

With the artful movements of the snake in Eden former President Obama is bringing his venomous tones against Trump to whomever will listen. Charged with a single minded crusade to disrupt Trump, hence democracy, Obama’s deranged mind believes disorder and chaos work better in a world full of hate and religious intolerance. The inconvenience of order does not play well with someone who failed, in 8 years, to do little more than feed the coffers of his personal flock. Obama’s derangement does not stop at the frontiers of his mind it has infected many others. Slime never rises above the level in which it moves. Obama’s is exploiting his former position as he did when he held the presidency.  In neither case did it help the little girl with the lemonade stand on the corner or her father struggling to make the rent. When the political dust falls Trump will stand tall as history writes of a former President who was a shadow of the man who replaced him. God speed to Donald Trump for taking on the snake of Eden’s failures. Mark Davis MD. platomd@gmail.com speaker, media consultant, author and a true patriot.

Some good news for local economies battered by the War on Coal

Commentary by James Shott

It is a common idea among many Americans that coal as a major industrial fuel is dead, or at least dying, and cleaner fuels, like wind and solar energy, and natural gas, are taking over. There is some truth there; but there are other influences on coal’s recent decline.

Less costly natural gas has become the fuel of choice in power plants and for other industrial uses, not because of the natural relative price of the fuels, but because of the cost of regulatory demands on mining and burning coal that require enormous investments that have priced coal higher than natural gas. Remember former President Barack Obama’s prediction: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them.”

These regulations produced the closing of more than 400 coal-burning power plants, which dropped the demand for coal, and altogether put 63,000 people in the coal industry, electric production industry and related support industries out of work in just the last few years.

At just the right time hydraulic fracturing (fracking) became popular, after lying mostly dormant since its first commercial application in 1957, and that produced a boom in natural gas production at attractive prices to compete with coal.

Many think burning less coal is a great thing, because burning coal fouls the air and is dangerous to our health, a “truth” which loses importance when you know the actual infinitesimal improvement in air quality derived from burning less coal.

However, considering all those factors, and paraphrasing a famous quote attributed to Mark Twain, the rumors of coal’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Of course, coal will never regain its former dominance among industrial fuels; time and technological/industrial evolution would just as certainly, although much more gradually, have eaten into coal’s popularity without the help of the Obama War on Coal.

But the regulatory adjustments of the Trump administration, the growing acceptance of the idea that the climate change/global warming mania is dramatically overstated, the reality that coal is still the best fuel for many things, the fact that many countries that do not have domestic coal supplies depend upon it for fuel, and the improvement in coal-burning technology all point to a continued market for American coal.

And let’s not forget that fossil fuels made up 81 percent of the fuels used to produce electricity in 2016, and coal is still the primary fossil fuel in electricity production.

Industry insiders, like Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray, see a partial resurgence in coal. “Coal will grow back,” he told Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney. “But we’re in a decline right now.”

He went on to say that Trump “can bring back at least half of those [63,000 lost] jobs as the economy grows and as he ends the regulations on coal.” He noted that we have not had a level playing field in coal; “the government has been picking winners and losers.”

And he told Maria Bartiromo, also on Fox Business Network, former President Obama closed 411 coal-fired plants, and that the Clean Power Plan which Trump ended recently, would have closed 56 more plants. That, he said, would have caused a steep spike in electric rates.

“As [Trump] grows the economy [and] brings jobs back to America, coal will participate in that growth because we are one-sixth the cost of a windmill and one-fourth the cost of natural gas,” Murray said.

Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, said, “The coal industry knows and understands how to mine coal … and protect our environment. We don’t do it the way it was done 50, 60 years ago.”

Here are a few pieces of evidence:

* Reports from the Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia coalfield regions say that mines are cranking back up and miners are being rehired. Train yards are seeing cars filled with coal moving through them in greater numbers.

* Bluefield State College recently held a Job Fair to immediately fill 85 open coal positions at Wyoming and McDowell county mines that mine coal used in making steel.

* Fox News reports that in Wise County, Virginia, a “long-awaited revival is under way in this beleaguered Central Appalachia community where residents see coal as the once and future king. Trucks are running again. Miners working seven days a week cannot keep up with current demand.”

* Coal exports through Hampton Roads last month rose more than 50 percent from last year's level, led by a nearly five-fold increase at Newport News' Pier IX, according to the most recent Virginia Maritime Association statistics. "A lot of mines are open again," said Harry Childress, president of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance."

Few if any argue that the coal industry will return to its former greatness, but it will certainly endure for many years at a lower level if natural forces are allowed to work, free of politically correct environmental engineering.

When you replace regulations resulting from selfish ideological goals with a business regulatory level based upon common sense, good things can happen.

And for areas of the country like ours, that have suffered so greatly from Obama’s over-zealous EPA, this is good news.

Cross-posted from Observations

DEMOCRATS TRY TO UNDERMINE TRUMP

Consistent in behavior as always the Democrats are demanding an inquiry into Russia-gate, there self-created scandal. I am still waiting for the results of the Democrat investigation into the IRS when this agency was used to hammer Republicans while Obama was still in office. This is one more open attempt by the Democrats to undermine Trump. It will not work. Trump solidified his presence as a World leader today by hosting Netanyahu of Israel. His predecessor made Netanyahu and entourage leave by the back door. Sadly Obama and his holdovers in various governmental agencies will make it tough to govern. I see mass firings in the near future.

WHY MANY WILL MISS BARACK OBAMA

WHY MANY WILL MISS BARACK OBAMA

Former President Barack Obama energized the media with his weekly scandals, blatantly confusing rhetoric and the devious nature in which he managed his office. Barack Obama’s passing into history is tantamount to a pin hitting the floor, it’s barely audible now. This article can only touch upon the myth created around an ineffectual leader. As we know myths become legends and legends become whispers of a past that never happened.

Egregious leaders are usually colorful, self-absorbed with egos that define who they are, no less for the former President. Many questions still surround Obama’s background that continues to haunt us today. Why was his school records kept from the public? How did he manage to obtain entrance to Harvard Law School? Who were his financial backers?  One can clearly state a cloak of secrecy enveloped him early on keeping inquisitive minds at a distance. During the hunt to identify who resided in the White House the hunters were stonewalled at every turn. The greater irony was the alphabet soup of media outlets were in the tank for him right or wrong. Those who took an antithetical view to Obama’s stated goals found themselves diminished and or out in the street because there was no tolerance for the truth under the then reigning monarch. The game was who would Obama harm next as he cheated the country out of a well-deserved treason trial.

Against all odds the country did not fall into a World War as Obama destroyed relationships with the few friends the United States had left on this planet. Israel was blatantly rebuffed. Russia was cast as the ultimate evil empire ready to tear into us without notice. China was given the keys to our country as they dumped commercial products on our shores creating massive trade imbalances measured in hundreds of billions. Incompetence cannot be measured. In the event it could Obama’s IQ would be beyond the ability to quantify. The former President’s actions eviscerated this country. Nobel Peace Prize was given to him yet no peace occurred. Trillions stolen from the treasury to reconstruct the country yet infrastructure is still decadent. Health care access and delivery are a mess after spending hundreds of billions on a program designed to lose.  Race relations are infinitely worse since Obama took office for deliberate reasons among them were his blatant hate for every tradition and institution which made this country strong. Ineptitude follows those who spread their wings but have no ability to fly. President Obama could not fly nor did he have the capability to perceive the detriment he caused the nation.  As the toxic cloud of Democrat rule diffuses the left will attempt to stifle the new President’s rule with a collection of measures designed to cause gridlock. President Trump will succeed, as the left, shocked by a loss to him, moves further into oblivion.  Yes, tens of millions will miss Obama for the day to day entertainment his incompetence provided. Now that he has moved on the level of Prozac intake has already gone down exponentially as we look forward to rational government once again. Give President Trump a chance you need him more than he needs you. Mark Davis MD manager of Best Book Reviews, platomd@gmail.com  onandoffthehill.com

World War Three One Step Away

Reported Iran has launched another missile today in defiance of Obama's "deal" with these theocratic rats. Iran now has the money which gives them the means to pursue technologies which eventually could initiate WWIII. Placating terrorists governments, as Obama did, is nothing different than the Hollywood left protesting Trump's rational effort to keep these scum at bay. Both are enabling tactics to move the Iranian agenda forward. In the event one of these terrorists gets through our borders I hope and pray he/she goes after the loudest mouth who is protesting Trump's temporary immigration ban. God bless this country. You know the rest. Mark Davis     platomd@gmail.com

Commentary by James Shott

Those who lived in or near the southern West Virginia and/or southwest Virginia coalfields during the peak of the coal business in the 50s and 60s know that state and local economies thrived because of the tens of thousands of people employed by mining companies and the dozens of companies that supported the industry.

Bluefield, WV’s Norfolk and Western Railway yard was always filled with coal cars, many of them full of the world’s most widely used fossil fuel, that were bound for Norfolk, VA’s port, or ready to be unloaded into trucks for delivery. The rest were empty, heading back into the coalfields to be refilled and brought back for distribution.

They remember the bustling downtown that was the financial, shopping and recreational center of the region’s coalfields, and Bluefield’s population of well over 20,000 residents during the time of peak coal. These are valued memories of the good times.

Today’s population is half that size, and the rail yard is often empty. To those who have seen first-hand the decline of the industry and its effects on local communities, the industry’s decline is a very real and painful thing.

The decline began with natural technological advances, as mechanization gradually began putting hundreds of miners out of work. Over time other forces developed, affecting the industry, including the very recent rise of cheap natural gas. Through all of that, there was always a market for coal.

But the federal government’s assault on coal through excessive environmental regulation, spurred by the hotly debated idea that burning coal pours too much carbon dioxide – a gas essential for life on Earth – into the atmosphere, is the greatest problem. President Barack Obama put this attack into high gear. However, today our air is cleaner than it’s been for 100 years, mostly through evolving technological improvements.

Cloistered away in their comfortable offices in Washington, DC, our public servants frequently have no idea what life is like for those toiling away to pay the taxes that fund their salaries. Perhaps if they got out of Washington more, they would understand the problems they create for the people they serve.

This may be the case with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who at the invitation of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., finally visited the state after many invitations over the eight painful years of the Obama administration. But while in the state last week, Moniz suggested there is no war on coal, arguing to the contrary that the Obama administration is working to keep coal as an important part of a low-carbon energy future. He also said that cheap natural gas prices are primarily responsible for coal’s downturn.

The absurd idea that there is no “War on Coal” today would be hilarious, if the reality wasn’t so tragic, and the suggestion that the very recent drop in natural gas prices is the principal reason for coal’s decline is simply false.

This general situation was foretold by Barack Obama back in the 2008 campaign: “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” Obama declared.

Assuming that Moniz has the capacity to recognize the misery the administration for which he works has caused for this region, or really cares about the people affected by its policies, visiting West Virginia much earlier in the administration’s tenure might have made some difference.

Hillary Clinton is on that same path. While campaigning in Ohio earlier this year, she said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” Trying to make that sound better, she said she favored funding to retrain those put out of work, but she didn’t say what kind of jobs and how many of them are currently waiting for trained workers.

Not long thereafter, while campaigning in West Virginia, she was asked about that comment by a tearful out-of-work coal miner, to which she responded that what she meant was that coal job losses will continue, according to the Daily Caller. See the difference?

Obama’s energy policy is like putting a square peg in a round hole. If you want to put a square peg in a round hole, take some time and think it through: You should gradually and gently reshape the square peg so it will comfortably and appropriately fit into the round hole. Obama’s method is to place the peg on top of the hole and beat it with a hammer until enough of the corners are destroyed so that the peg will go into the hole. And even then, it is a poor fit.

Just as horse-drawn wagons and carriages gave way to motorized vehicles when they came to be, coal’s role as a primary fuel would have changed as better methods evolved. Such a process would have been not only more humane and less destructive, but infinitely smarter than what has transpired.

Through the centuries humans solved life’s problems and improved their lives through applied intelligence. Somehow, they managed to do this without Barack Obama and the EPA.

Cross-posted from Observations

The American immigration system, a la President Barack Obama

Commentary by James Shott

A common refrain about immigration is that the U.S. “is a nation of immigrants.” People coming to the colonies built what would become the United States of America, and since then millions have immigrated here.

“Most immigrant groups that had formerly come to America by choice seemed distinct, but in fact had many similarities,” as ushistory.org explains. “Most had come from Northern and Western Europe. Most had some experience with representative democracy. With the exception of the Irish, most were Protestant. Many were literate, and some possessed a fair degree of wealth.”

Most, but not all immigrants intended to become American citizens. Some, however, returned to their native land after earning money to send home. Not all were good people; some were criminals, mentally ill, anarchists, and alcoholics.

Furthermore, many Americans were not thrilled about immigration, and ushistory.org tells us, “In 1917, Congress required the passing of a literacy test to gain admission. Finally, in 1924, the door was shut to millions by placing an absolute cap on new immigrants based on ethnicity. That cap was based on the United States population of 1890 and was therefore designed to favor the previous immigrant groups.”

Throughout the decades and the problems and controversy that accompanied immigration, diversity came to the US, which had become a nation of primarily peaceful, self-reliant, hard-working people, qualities they generally passed on to the next generation.

However, the concept that America is a nation of immigrants is less and less valid. Today, the USA is a nation not so much of immigrants, but principally a nation of the descendants of people who were immigrants generations ago; a nation of Americans.

Our government has the duty to admit immigrants who want to become good American citizens, as demonstrated in the previously discussed examples of acts affecting immigration. No sensible person would allow people they cannot be virtually certain are good and honorable people into their homes; our government must be every bit as cautious.

But instead we find that the current immigration system is wholly dysfunctional, and the responsibility goes squarely on the shoulders of President Barack Obama and his administration. The idea held by many on the Left – that we are morally obligated to admit any and all who seek entry, legally or otherwise – is not just dumb, it is dangerous. And that concept has no basis in history or in the Constitution.

Nevertheless, that foolish idea has strong support, and it set the stage for what happened in a hearing of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee this past April, when Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, addressed comments to those testifying, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Sarah Soldana.

Chaffetz listed some startling facts:

** In a three-year period Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released more than 86,000 criminal aliens into the American public. These are people who were here illegally, got caught committing a crime, were convicted of that crime, and instead of deporting them, they were released back out into the United States of America. All told they had more than 231,000 crimes of which they were convicted.

** In 2015, 196 of these people were convicted of homicide, and ICE released them back into the public, rather than deporting them.

** One hundred and twenty-four of those who were released between 2010 and 2015 went on to commit homicide.

** In 2013 ICE released 36,007 criminal aliens who were unlawfully in the United States. As of September 2014, 5,700 of those individuals went on to commit additional crimes.

** In March of 2015, the director of ICE testified before this committee that during fiscal year 2014 ICE released another 30,558 individuals with a combined 79,059 criminal convictions, instead of deporting them. Of those 30,558 criminal aliens 1,895 were charged with another crime following their release, including sex offenses, assault, burglary, robbery, and driving under the influence.

“And ICE told us that in 2015 the agency released 19,723 criminal aliens with a combined 64,197 convictions,” Chaffetz said, “including: 934 sex offenses, 804 robberies, 216 kidnappings, and 196 homicide-related convictions. And that’s on your watch.” They were here illegally, committed crimes, were caught, tried and convicted, and then turned loose to prey on the American people again.

He then displayed an aerial photo of Notre Dame football stadium filled with game watchers, and said, “You released more people that were convicted of crimes and should have been deported than you can fit into that stadium. You’d still have people waiting outside in line. Those are the criminals that you released instead of deporting.”

Government’s job is to seal the borders from illegal entry, to thoroughly vet people before letting the acceptable ones in, and to prosecute and punish criminals. Put them in jail, or at the very least deport them and keep them out.

Do these colossal government failures rise to the level of criminal offenses? Should they? Or, is such dangerous and irresponsible behavior “merely” gross malfeasance? Is there no penalty for such wrongdoing, whether criminal or not?

Not in the administration of Barack Obama, where apparently the treacherous operation of this immigration system is a matter of celebration by his supporters.

Cross-posted from Observations

Lipstick on a pig: Administration putting a spin on the U.S. economy

Commentary by James Shott

It is natural for politicians to put things in the most favorable light, and the worse the general situation, the greater the need to do so. That serves as an appropriate introduction to the White House’s June economic analysis, which is summarized thusly: “The economy added 287,000 jobs in June, as labor force participation rose and the broadest measure of labor market slack fell.” As far as that statement goes, it is true.

That new jobs number is a decent number – the best jobs figure since October – and miles ahead of May’s revised number of only 11,000 new jobs. But it is not an outstanding number, and is only one of several really significant numbers.

Back in December 2009, six months after the end of the recession and 11 months into Barack Obama’s first term, economist Paul Krugman said that 300,000 new jobs each month were necessary to make up the job losses of the recession over the next five years, so the June figure falls short of that number. In the weak Obama recovery new job production has only met or exceeded 300,000 six times in 89 months. The last was in November of 2014 at 331,000.

Whether the 287,000 number holds up after revision we won’t know until August. May’s preliminary number was revised down by more than two-thirds to a mere 11,000; therefore August may show a downward revision, an upward revision, or a number that is pretty close to the preliminary figure.

Other relevant numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data set for June include an increase in the U-3 unemployment rate, the one President Obama prefers to cite, from 4.7 to 4.9 percent. Despite the increase, the U-3 rate still looks good because it discounts all those marginally attached to the labor force that involuntarily work part-time instead of full-time, or have given up looking for work because they cannot find a job. Those workers are included in the U-6 rate, which more accurately represents reality, and stood at 9.6 percent in June, and improved one-tenth of a percent since May, as some of the previously disaffected workers started seeking employment again.

Even so, the Labor Force Participation rate was still at the late-70s level of 62.7 percent. From 66.0 percent in December of 2007 when the recession began, the trend in the participation rate has been steadily downward and has been below 63 percent since March of 2014. The labor force is made up of those age 16 and older that are working, looking for a job, and not in prison or in the military, and totaled 94,517,000 people last month. That means that 56,228,000 working age Americans are not working, and not in the military or in prison.

In June, 1.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force. These are individuals who wanted to work, were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Another 5.8 million individuals prefer full-time employment, but are working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they haven’t been able to find a full-time job.

The BLS reported, “Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates [U-3] for adult women (4.5 percent) and Whites (4.4 percent) rose in June. The rates for adult men (4.5 percent), teenagers (16.0 percent), Blacks (8.6 percent), Asians (3.5 percent), and Hispanics  (5.8 percent) showed little or no change.”

The 9.6 percent U-6 rate tells one part of the story, but the actual harm of the administration’s policies that keep the economy from cranking up are another story.

“Today’s jobs number can’t hide the ongoing struggles facing the country’s main jobs producers – small businesses – which are overwhelmed by over-taxation, over-regulation, and a lack of access to credit,” said Jobs Creators Network (JCN) president Alfredo Ortiz. “And it shouldn’t distract us from an underwhelming labor force participation rate—still the lowest figure since the 1970s.”

National Federation of Independent Business president and CEO Juanita Duggan commented, “Each month our survey shows that small business owners are trying to hire qualified workers,” and, “The job openings are there, but owners are not going to invest in new employment when labor costs are becoming insurmountable, and the political climate is wildly uncertain.”

All the way back in November of 2010 President Obama was already claiming a “new normal” for the economy: “What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high,” he said on CBS “60 Minutes.”

Today, with a real unemployment close to 10 percent, Obama may be viewed as a pretty good prophet. However, rather than seeing the future, he engineered it, and the term “new normal” is much less a reality than an excuse. As the JCN’s Ortiz noted, high taxes, rampant and intrusive regulation and limited credit do not a good recovery make.

America deserves better. November’s election provides the opportunity to elect as president someone who understands job creation.

Cross-posted from Observations

Obama’s failed record and legacy is Hillary’s campaign platform

Commentary by James Shott

Yes, it was a significant recession, deep enough to earn the title the “Great Recession.” But since the Great Depression there have been several recessions that, at the time they occurred, were called the “Great Recession.”

Since the Great Depression and including the latest incarnation of the Great Recession, none of them have come anywhere close to the horrible conditions during the 1930s. Thus, Barack Obama’s citing of the Great Recession falls short in excusing the dismal economy and the failed Obama recovery. The lousy economy is due to faulty policies since the end of the recession in June 2009.
 
As the end of Obama’s presidency nears the U.S. is more than $19 trillion in debt, and the debt nearly doubled during Obama’s presidency. At a seriously high $10.6 trillion when he began, Obama’s policies have added about a trillion dollars for each of his eight years in office.

During the Obama recovery, Gross Domestic Product has not once reached 3.0 percent. “Adding insult to injury,” The Daily Signal reports, “Obama coupled an incredibly weak economic recovery with a more than trillion-dollar tax hike.  By allegedly making the rich ‘pay their fair share’ through the $620 billion (2013-2022) fiscal cliff tax increase, the administration really pushed for everyday Americans to sacrifice lower take-home pay for more government spending and intervention in their lives.”

Obama has claimed the creation of millions of jobs. "We're in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history,” he said. “More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990s; an unemployment rate cut in half."

Well, sort of. When a recession produces job losses, the recovery – even a poor recovery like this one – produces some “new jobs.” And according to CNN Money, Obama created 9.3 million, not 14 million, new jobs.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that the U-6 unemployment rate reflects “total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.” At the end of the first quarter of 2016, the U-6 rate was 10.1 percent. 

These unemployed, discouraged workers who have stopped looking for a job, and underemployed workers are not counted in the unemployment figure the administration brags about, but are nonetheless part of the American workforce, which totals 243 million people, and currently more than 90 million of them are unemployed or underemployed, putting the workforce participation rate at a decades-low 62.6 percent.

In a May open-ended Gallop survey, participants noted general economic issues as the most important thing on their minds, but not far behind were issues with their government, such as immigration and race relations, two things Obama has made worse.

Potentially more serious, however, is the disintegrating U.S. influence across the globe and our severely weakened military, issues considered so serious that Congressional Republicans have developed a 23-page policy document to address them, under the leadership of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis).

“In the past seven years, our friendships have frayed, our rivalries have intensified. It’s not too much to say that our enemies no longer fear us and too many of our allies no long trust us. And I think this is the direct result of the president’s foreign policy,” Ryan said. “All he did was create … many voids around the world and now our enemies are stepping in to fill those voids. This is what happens when America does not lead.”

With Obama’s tenure ending we are faced with the prospect of Hillary Clinton being elected to what will essentially be Obama’s third term, continuing his disastrous policies, and adding her own signature disasters to the mix.

Among Clinton’s favorite issues are: gun control, climate change, and income inequality.

She says that 33,000 gun deaths every year is unacceptable. But considered in context, 33,000 deaths among our 320 million population is roughly one death for every 10,000 people. And not all gun deaths are murders. Some are killed by police; others by people defending themselves; some are suicides; some are accidents. To Obama and Clinton, the Orlando terrorist attack is a gun control issue.

Obama’s manic compulsion for climate change has produced policies that have destroyed the lives of thousands of energy industry workers, and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars propping up failing green energy companies like Solyndra, based on a theory that is faulty and heavily disputed. Likewise, Clinton wants to install a half-billion solar panels by 2020, seven times what we have today. More bad policies on the horizon.

She favors making incomes more equal, not understanding that wages are based on economic principles, not fairy tale desires. She wants a $12 an hour minimum wage for everyone, trained or not, good at their job or not.

And we cannot ignore her failure to provide adequate security at the Benghazi consulate when evaluating her foreign policy credentials.

Clinton, like Obama, seeks to control and ignores logic and reasoning when seeking solutions. She shares his “big government as the solution to all problems” philosophy, and that is a recipe for continued trouble.

Cross-posted from Observations

The U.S. armed forces have been weakened by budget cuts and ideology

Commentary by James Shott

In recent years America’s military has experienced operational readiness issues. A good bit of this is due to budget cuts resulting from the 2013 sequestration, but some sources also blame philosophical ideas about the military within the Obama administration.

Sequestration, as explained by CNN at the time, is “a series of automatic, across-the-board cuts to government agencies, totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The cuts would be split 50-50 between defense and domestic discretionary spending. More than $500 billion will be cut from the Defense Department and other national security agencies, with the rest cut on the domestic side…”

The Pentagon, under then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, planned to reach its mandated cuts through furloughs of hundreds of thousands of civilian workers in combat readiness training and weapons maintenance. He said at the time that the $46 billion in cuts the first year would significantly affect military readiness, and the longer the sequestration lasts, the deeper cuts that will be required to achieve the mandated savings.

Just how badly this has affected military readiness is demonstrated in a Fox News story earlier this month. The U.S. Air Force, the smallest of the four major armed services, has cut staff to the degree that many military personnel now work extra shifts performing administrative jobs previously performed by civilians.

These cuts have put the Air Force in the position of being short 4,000 service personnel to maintain its aircraft and 700 pilots to fly them. Personnel are now cannibalizing parts from planes no longer in service and stored at a desert site called "The Boneyard" and from planes on display in museums to repair active aircraft.

Master Sgt. Bruce Pfrommer, who has worked on B-1 bombers for more than 20 years, told Fox that at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, where the 28th Bomber Wing is located, only nine of the 20 bombers there can fly. Those aircraft are closing in on 10,000 flight hours each, compared to about 1,000 when Pfrommer started working on them 20 years ago.

"Our retention rates are pretty low. Airmen are tired and burnt out,” Staff Sgt. Tyler Miller, of the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Ellsworth, told Fox. "When I first came in seven years ago, we had six people per aircraft — and the lowest man had six or seven years of experience," Miller said. "Today, you have three-man teams and each averages only three years of experience."

The Navy also has operational issues. A Government Accountability Office report issued earlier this month, titled “Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan” (OFRP) discusses problems facing our sea-going service. While the report does not specifically mention sequestration budget cuts, the symptoms support this as a least part of the problem.

An excerpt from the OFRP tells us that:
• Over the past decade, high operational tempo has reduced the predictability of ship deployments for sailors and for the industrial base that supports ship repair and maintenance. For example, carrier strike group deployment lengths have increased from an average of 6.4 months between 2008 – 2011 and 8.2 months between 2012 – 2014, to 9 months for three carrier strike groups in 2015.
• Increased deployment lengths have resulted in declining ship conditions and materiel readiness, and in a maintenance backlog that has not been fully identified or resourced, according to Navy officials.
• The declining condition of ships has increased the duration of time that ships spend undergoing maintenance in the shipyards, which in turn compresses the time available in the schedule for training and operations.

In its 2016 assessment of the four major military branches, the Heritage Foundation shows how true Panetta’s prediction was. The assessment rated the Army as “weak,” and the Navy, Marines and Air Force as “marginal,” rating the U.S. military overall as “marginal.”

In addition to budget cuts, reports of military brass being displeased with President Obama’s policies also pose questions.

Writing in Politico in 2013 Rosa Brooks noted, “In my interviews, however, many senior military leaders complained of feeling baffled and shut out by a White House National Security Staff.”

“The NSS wants to run the show, day to day and minute to minute,” laments a former military official, “so they have no time—they’re almost incapable of strategic thinking.” Another recently retired senior general said, “I don’t understand the process by which the White House is making strategic or foreign-policy decisions. … There’s an appearance of consultation, but you know you won’t be listened to.”

The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution provides that the federal government “provide for the common defense.” But in Article Four, Section Four, it states specifically that the “United States shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion.” No other power of the federal government shares that strong a requirement for performance.

No reasonable observer would contend that the federal government is obeying its Constitutional mandate to “provide for the common defense.”

How does the Commander in Chief plan to fix this?



Cross-posted from Observations

Democrat policies have a troubling past and promise a bad future

Commentary by James Shott
 
When Barack Obama took office in January of 2009 the U.S. was emerging from the recession that began in December of 2007. Running 18 months, this was a significant recession, with GDP reaching -8 percent in 2008 and unemployment peaking at 10.0 percent in October 2009, four months after the technical end of the recession.

In February 2009 President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an $830 billion spending plan that was supposed to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. It didn’t.

Truthfully, seven full years later the United States has not fully recovered from the recession, and Obama blamed the recession throughout most of his presidency to cover his tracks on the poor economic recovery. But the severity of the recession wasn’t to blame.

Gross Domestic Product growth has been inconsistent during Obama’s presidency, and averaged slightly above the 2.0 percent range. And while unemployment finally dropped to respectable territory at 4.9 percent in January, that must be considered in light of the fact that it’s only that low because more than 90 million Americans couldn’t find a job to replace the one they once had and left the workforce. When those people are included in the calculation, the unemployment rate at the end of April was 9.3 percent (U-6).

The labor force participation rate is the percentage of working-age persons in an economy who are employed, or are unemployed but looking for a job. Today, according to the Bureau of Labor Standards, the participation rate is 62.8 percent, the lowest since the 1970s.

Contrast Obama’s dreary results with the last recession that lasted at least 16 months. During Ronald Reagan’s first term, the recession began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982. Under Reagan’s policies the unemployment rate fell from a high of 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.2 percent in November of 1984 – that’s a 3.6 point improvement in 23 months, a striking difference from the 2007 recession, where unemployment peaked at 10.0 percent and never fell below 8.0 percent in the first 43 months afterward.

During the Reagan recovery the economy posted a robust 4.8 percent annualized growth over 23 quarters, according to economist Stephen Moore in The Daily Signal, and that was more than double the rate during Obama’s tenure.

Where Obama responded to an economic recession with $2 trillion worth of government expansion (more than $1 trillion on health care and $830 million in economic stimulus), Reagan cut marginal income tax rates across the board permanently through the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981: Different approach; different results. Reagan’s results were far better.

When your country is in trouble the president is supposed to put political and ideological goals aside and take actions that help the country recover. Instead Obama, not one to let a crisis go to waste, pursued his manic pledge to “fundamentally transform” the country, doubling down on reckless environmental policies that since September of 2014 have cost 191,000 people in mining industries their jobs, about 30 percent of them in the coal industry, according to CNS News, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That trend will continue if, through some great misfortune, Hillary Clinton gets elected. Recently, Clinton said, “I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

She then visited West Virginia coal country on the campaign trail and faced an out-of-work coal miner who is having trouble taking care of his family because of the Obama administration’s punishing policies on mining and burning coal. She answered his complaint about killing the coal industry by saying that her comment was out of context and that she had a plan to help families and individuals who have been put out of work.

The Huffington Post described that plan: “Hillary Clinton has a $30 billion, 4,300-word plan to retrain coal workers ...”

But there are two problems. First, in her initial statement she clearly promised to kill coal jobs. For a candidate for president to advocate a policy of deliberately targeting a group of jobs that are legal ought to be disqualifying. Furthermore, Clinton said the focus would be retraining those out of work for new jobs. And just what sort of new jobs would there be in this situation and in a state so terribly wracked by Obama-caused economic woes?

Of Clinton’s plan, West Virginia Coal Association Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton told The Huffington Post, “Hillary’s plan is akin to somebody running you over, then offering to pick you up,” he said. “It’s not a plan. It’s a care package.”

Obama’s policies have inflicted great pain on the nation, and Hillary Clinton gives every indication of continuing along a similar line. So much of what liberal Democrats have done and will do is to shove their ideas down our throats, instead of allowing change to evolve naturally. People who live in coal producing states understand quite well the damage such policies cause.

Cross-posted from Observations

Commentary by James Shott

The 2016 Index of Economic Freedom shows that the United States has climbed one notch from 12^th place to 11^th among the 186 nations of the world that were surveyed and rated.

The Index is an annual guide published by The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, and rates nations for labor freedom, business freedom, and fiscal freedom. There are 10 different measures inside those three major groupings. Data used is from 2014, and was compiled and analyzed last September.

The nations with more economic freedom than the U.S. are, starting with first place: Hong Kong; Singapore; New Zealand; Switzerland; Australia; Canada; Chile; Ireland; Estonia; and the United Kingdom.

Ranking 11^th over all and 2^nd among the three North American nations, the U.S. “remains mired in the ranks of the ‘mostly free,’ the second-tier economic freedom status into which it dropped in 2010,” the introduction to the report states. In seven of the past eight years Americans have seen their economic freedoms decline, and this year’s score equals their country’s worst score ever in the Index. At 75.4 out of 100 points, the U.S. has seen its score drop 0.9 since 2012, and from 80.7 since 2009.

“America’s historically vibrant entrepreneurial growth is significantly hampered by intrusive, expensive, and often ineffective government policies in areas ranging from health care to energy to education,” the report states. “Government favoritism toward entrenched interests has hurt innovation and contributed to a lackluster recovery and stagnant income growth,” even though a private sector energy boom has put the U.S. at the top of the world’s producers of oil and gas.

While America’s 6.2 percent unemployment rate in 2014 has improved, GDP growth was an unimpressive 2.2 percent over five years from 2009 to 2014. Our public debt then was nearly 105 percent of national GDP, which means that if every dollar of production – the value of all final goods and services produced in a year – went to pay down the debt, we still would have debt.

One small piece of good news is that in the Rule of Law category the “Freedom From Corruption” rating rose from 72 to 74 from the prior year, but the “Property Rights” rating dropped 10 points from 90 to 80, and this year produced the lowest ranking of the American people’s trust in government in the last 10 years, based on polls taken in 2015, where 75 percent of respondents said they believe corruption is widespread in the government and in government regulation of business.

Taxation continues to bedevil America’s freedom standing, with more than one of every four dollars of domestic income being taken by taxes, the U.S. having one of the highest corporate tax rates on the planet at a punishing 35 percent, and the top individual income tax rate of 39.6 percent. Government spending runs just short of 40 percent of GDP, and the size and scope of the government remains too big and too intrusive. The “Government Spending” and “Fiscal Freedom” ratings each fell, 59.6 to 54.7 and 67.5 to 65.6 respectively.

The nation saw substantial declines in the Regulatory Efficiency category, where each sub-category saw declines: Business Freedom - 91.9 to 84.7; Labor Freedom – 95.1 to 91.4; Monetary Freedom – 84 to 77. The report notes that “180 new major federal regulations have been imposed on business operations since early 2009 with estimated costs of nearly $80 billion,” explaining that the regulations themselves are not rigid, but that policies, such as excessive occupational licensing, restrict employment opportunities, and “damaging monetary policies, tangled webs of corporate welfare, and various subsidies” have affected the economy negatively.

The U.S. was heavily affected in two of the three sub-categories of Open Markets, where “Trade Freedom” remained essentially flat at 87 points, but “Investment Freedom” and “Financial Freedom” each took a 10-point hit, falling from 80 points to 70. The report notes that while “domestic regulations have been emerging only gradually, the financial reforms adopted in 2010 have increased both costs and uncertainty.”

Even though the U.S. moved up one position among the 186 nations, being 11^th instead of 12^th does not provide enough for even Donald Trump to brag about, especially in view of the fact that the overall score fell nearly one point and that the U.S. lost ground in 8 of the 10 sub-categories contained in the Index. And its position in the second tier may prompt a drive to change our “land of the free” motto to “land of the mostly free.”

The importance of this report is not so much the U.S. ranking, but the continued commitment of its government to policies contrary to the values that made America exceptional and free. This perspective is not merely the view of conservatives and libertarians, but also of someone who has seen this same scenario up close and personal.

Filmmaker and American citizen Agustin Blazquez saw this same theme play out in his native Cuba, and warns, “Wake up, America!” Blazquez sees the same radical shift happening in America that turned Cuba into a communist country.

This ought to be a call to action, but thus far all of those have failed.

Cross-posted from Observations

Obama's last State of the Union: Just another campaign speech

Commentary by James Shott

President Barack Obama gave his eighth and final State of the Union (SOTU) message last Tuesday night, to a mixed set of reviews. Commentators had noted that a president’s last SOTU generally is predictable and boring. Obama’s final flourish was both predictable in its petulance and arrogance, and boring, because most of it has been said before. And often.

Pledging near the beginning that this one would be short perhaps gave false hope. Going back to Lynden Johnson’s presidency from 1963 to 1969, our presidents’ addresses have averaged right at 50 minutes, and Obama’s speeches have averaged 63 minutes. Only in comparison to Bill Clinton’s average of 75 minutes does this one qualify as short, running just under 59 minutes. At 29 minutes, Richard Nixon’s 1972 address holds the record for the shortest.

Perhaps it is due to his 12-year stint as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School that the address was an hour-long lecture, one part of which dealt with the tone of current political discourse and contained an uncommon admission of failure. “It's one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” he said. “I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide...” That is no doubt true, as it is a commonly and broadly held opinion that Obama is the most divisive president in recent memory, or perhaps ever, and he has done nothing to calm the raging political waters in seven years.

Complaining that there has been precious little progress in Congress, he noted: “Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise…” But compromise depends upon the details of the issue. Sometimes, compromise is simply not possible if it means one side abandoning fundamental principles. If one party demands the other party sacrifice their right hand, for example, the other party cannot be blamed for refusing to compromise by giving up two or three fingers. This is the nature of the compromise Obama and the Democrats slam Republicans for not indulging in, as they routinely demand things that even acquiescent Republicans cannot accept.

Burnishing his accomplishments, Obama said we have “a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry and booming energy production.” He also said that the U.S. is in the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. Typically, this is the most non-specific and favorable part of the story, and there is much there deserving of clarification. Many jobs have, indeed, been created and the unemployment rate (U-3) is in good territory, but that is due to millions of Americans having stopped looking for work because they couldn’t find a job in the Obama economy. The Workforce Participation rate is at its lowest point in 35 years.

Wages have stagnated during Obama’s tenure, personal debt has increased by about $1 trillion, and fewer Americans are buying homes. And then there is the national debt, which has increased substantially under Obama. He took office in January of fiscal year 2009, with a national debt of nearly $12 trillion. In fiscal 2015 that figure stood at more than $18 trillion. Fiscal 2016 will end September 30 of this year, and it is likely that by that time the national debt will be $20 trillion.

All the while GDP limps along at rates ranging from a low of minus 2.8 percent in 2009 to 2.4 percent in 2014, never rising above 2.5 percent. GDP finally began approaching respectable levels in 2015, fully six years after Obama took office. Not much to brag about there.

Obama said it is a hallmark of his economy that today more Americans work in the solar industry than in the coal industry. But at what cost? He gave well over a billion dollars of taxpayer money in subsidies to a few solar firms that not long thereafter went bankrupt, and the administration’s harsh and unwarranted attacks on the coal industry put tens of thousands out of work and closed several coal-fired electric generation plants well before natural changes in energy production would have more gradually and less chaotically replaced coal with other methods.

In West Virginia, the loss of income from the Coal Severance Tax and Income Tax collections from out-of-work coal miners and workers in support industries have seriously damaged the state’s economy, and Kentucky and Virginia also have suffered job losses and economic harm, all without a sympathetic tear from the president.

Each year as the State of the Union address grows near there is talk of doing away with it, because it no longer has a valid purpose. “What’s tiresome is the hoopla about a speech that hardly anybody watches, and that, as a general rule, contains nothing new,” stated Yale law professor Stephen Carter. The SOTU originally was intended for the president to report to Congress on the condition of the nation, but also allowed the President to outline his legislative agenda.

Ah, but those were the good old days. More recently it has devolved into a grand political opportunity, as Obama so well demonstrated.


Cross-posted from Observations

RULES FOR TYRANTS

Rules for Tyrants
1) Confiscate all guns from the general population based on a fabricated premise.
2) Control all media output.
3) Revise history
4) Treat the treasury as your own bank
5) Hire the most ignorant people to do your bidding
6) Expand government to control the lives of the population who placed you in power
7) Encourage people to spy on each other
8) Devalue education to train a generation of idiots
9) Manipulate the military and police so they do your bidding not the population as a whole
10) Mingle with celebrities and the super rich because they generally control the masses.
Do these rules sound familiar? They should. Obama and his minions follow these rules as though they are the Ten Commandments. These are the basic ten. Please add to this list.
Please share this list. Thanks.

Obama brought to tears talking about gun violence in America

In his comments last Tuesday prior to signing an Executive Order expanding background checks for gun purchases, President Barack Obama became uncharacteristically emotional and shed tears as he discussed children killed in mass shootings. His emotional reaction gave weight to his message, but some doubted the sincerity of his tears, seeing them as a device to increase support for his proposal. The Executive Order issued days later expands background checks for firearms purchasers, but is an action that would not have prevented the shooting that brought the tears, or other recent horrific shooting events.

This rare show of emotion calls attention to Obama’s lack of tears for other tragedies – such as the death of an innocent young woman at the hands of an illegal alien in California, or the San Bernardino murders by radical Muslims – as further evidence of his selective use of emotion for political purposes.

Emotion is the driver of liberal initiatives, which are highlighted by the generous use of false information and/or exaggeration, and the twisting of truth. Demagoguery and shaming are always close at hand, as well. If someone opposes abortion, they don’t really want to protect life, they just want to deny women control of their bodies. If someone opposes stronger gun control measures, it isn’t because they value and want to defend Constitutional liberties, it is because they don’t care that children and other innocents are being murdered daily. Although this tactic sounds like it was developed on an elementary school playground, a lot of people rely on it and fall for it.

Obama quotes the statistic that there are more than 30,000 gun deaths each year, and Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton breaks that down to an average of 90 gun deaths a day. Those large numbers surely catch one’s attention, but throwing out large numbers cheats the public of both perspective and true understanding of gun deaths. For example, roughly 19,000 gun deaths are suicides. How many of those severely troubled individuals would decide to go on living because they could not lay their hands on a gun?

About 1,800 are gang related, and 900 others are accidents. A majority – 80 percent – of the remaining gun-related deaths is attributed to urban problems. And, of course, some gun deaths are justified, as in cases of self-defense. The CDC reports that there are 3.5 gun deaths in the U.S. per 100,000 people while the number of all deaths is 821.5 per 100,000 people.

The self-defense aspect receives far too little discussion. In 2013, Obama ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assess the existing research on gun violence, and a report prepared by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council stated, in part: “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
Commentary by James Shott

Some suggest that three million is likely an unrealistically high number, but if guns are used defensively a half-million or more times a year, that is compelling. Given the record of people using guns to defend themselves from criminal activity and even death, wouldn’t it be appropriate for tears to be shed because so many have died in “gun-free zones,” where they were denied the ability for self-defense or protection from other people who were in the line of fire who were armed? There is a better than average chance that mass shooters would make a point to avoid places where they knew guns were being carried by their potential victims.

Americans are a rebellious lot; they don’t like to be controlled. Thus, in order to persuade them to go along with ideas like gun control, they have to be made to believe that existing laws are being enforced but that existing laws just aren’t enough, and we need more regulation. This is accomplished through various techniques, including heavy propaganda based upon myths.

Some examples: Background checks are not required for purchases on the Internet. Law enforcement is not present at gun shows, which are a free-for-all for prohibited individuals to obtain firearms. Obama has made firearms enforcement a priority, and his executive action on gun control will thwart criminals’ ability to obtain firearms. There is a general consensus in America that greater gun control is needed to prevent mass shootings in the United States.

Those statements are all false, and have been shown to be so by Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who wrote a commentary published on The Daily Caller online, listing and disproving 10 myths about guns, including those above.

Neither gun violence nor climate change is a critical problem for the United States. The threat of Islamic terrorism, a government too weak on the world stage, but grown too large and too controlling here at home, and a president who thinks he is an emperor, however, are critical problems. And that is why restoring conservative government is so important in the next election.

Cross-posted from Observations

The Paris climate conference focused on fear, not climate reality

Commentary by James Shott

The Paris climate conference is now over. The Christian Science Monitor reported on Saturday that the rap of the chairman’s gavel “signaled unanimous – if not unanimously enthusiastic – support from all parties engaged in this year's UN climate talks. It comes at the end of a year scientists say will likely be the hottest ever on record.”

After all the time involved and the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced getting the hundreds of representatives from 196 nations all in the same place, and then back home again, the agreement does not put the world on a path toward what scientists regard as a safe level of global warming, but the agreement sets forth a clear path for countries to identify their own targets for CO2 reduction. Ultimately, participants want a global carbon-free environment by 2060, at the latest, meaning that every car, building, plane, ship, train, and power plant would have to operate without burning any fossil fuels.

Days prior to the closing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the ministerial session, “The clock is ticking toward climate disaster,” and former Vice-President Al Gore compared the need to combat climate change to the abolition of slavery, giving women the right to vote and the civil rights battle. Gore said, “The right choice is to safeguard the future for the next generation and for the generations to come.”

There were scary stories of rising sea levels, causing residents of low-lying areas like the Marshall Islands to lobby strenuously for the agreement, while droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather events were predicted to increase elsewhere on the planet if CO2 emissions aren’t reigned in. And to make sure to attract the attention of enough third world countries, billions of dollars in support for affected economies is on the table, supposedly to be paid by the rich countries, like the United States.

The whole world is concerned because of the idea that too much CO2 in the atmosphere will cause catastrophes sometime in the distant future. Carbon dioxide is what plants that produce oxygen for us to breath live on.

All of this scare mongering tended to overshadow the dismal record of climate predictions and data manipulations from the not-so-distant past that casts doubt on the need for turning the energy universe upside-down. Here are some of the scary predictions of global warming catastrophes that did not come true:

* By 1980 all of the important animal life in the sea will be extinct.
* By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.
* The world will be eleven degrees colder by the year 2000.
* By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by half.
* A general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.
* Within a few years children just aren't going to know what snow is.

Add to those failed prognostications a global warming hiatus for at least16 years, according to the British Met Office, and energetic disagreement about man-caused climate change among climate scientists, and the agreement looks like a gigantic global shakedown.

As an example, while Barack Obama is busy regulating America’s coal-fired electricity generating plants out of existence, China is constructing new plants. According to the Heritage Foundation’s Nicolas Loris, we should be wary of China’s commitment to reduce emissions. China is by far the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and is currently constructing 350 coal-fired power plants and has plans to build another 800.

The Wall Street Journal notes, “In 2013 China burned 3.9 billion tons of coal, almost as much as the rest of the world.” Obama seems to think that harming the U.S. economy by shutting down U.S. fossil fuel-burning facilities will negate China’s feverish coal-burning economy. Loris asks pointedly, “This is the country that we’re going to trust to peak emissions 15 years from now?” 

And trust is the operative word: all countries are on scouts honor to do what they have said they will do, without official oversight or penalties.

According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2013 “Historical Data Workbook,” 87 percent of the energy mankind uses every second comes from burning fossil fuels.

People who live in cold climates use them to warm their homes, and people who live in warm climates use them to cool their homes. Fossil fuels are used to plant and harvest crops that feed people, and are used to transport food from places where food is produced to places where it is needed and wanted. They are used to light the darkness, to entertain us, transport us, diagnose disease, communicate with each other, mass-produce products we need and want, and to provide security in our homes and for the nation.

Fossil fuel use has improved the lives of millions of people worldwide, and millions more can benefit from it. There are no replacement technologies that even approach filling the void Obama and the other climate change advocates are creating. We are on course for a disaster.

Cross-posted from Observations