Economy languishes in the face of failed big government solutions

Last Friday’s GDP report was a splash of cold water in the face of those who keep hoping against hope that, as the President and Vice President keep telling us, the nation really, really is seeing economic recovery. Really.

The report adjusted downward last month’s preliminary 2nd quarter GDP estimate of plus 2.4 percent. Even that rate, however, was not great news, because it fits into the prophecy of those economists who believe the country is moving toward a double-dip recession, and the adjusted rate, 1.6 percent, is dramatically lower than the original projection.

GDP numbers have been moving downward since December’s robust 5.0 percent, which was only the second positive number in quite a while. But the last two quarters (3.7 percent and 1.6 percent respectively) show the country is economically unstable.

From 4Q 2009 to 1Q 2010, the GDP rate dropped by 26 percent, and from there to 2Q 2010 it dropped 66 percent. The only good news from this is that we are still in positive territory. But if the next quarter’s loss in GDP is even half the size of this one, we’ll be in negative territory once again, and on the edge of another technical recession.

Even staunch Obama supporters and others who subscribe to Keynesian big government solutions ought to be ready to acknowledge that the humongous stimulus has not worked. The economic policies in place since Mr. Obama took office 19 months ago have been successful in only one area: creating tremendous uncertainty among the nation’s businesses, crushing essential job creation.

A dizzying array of new taxes and increases in old taxes now face the American people, from provisions in the health care reform bill to energy taxes in cap and trade legislation and other measures. However, increasing taxes right now – particularly on the energy industry – is foolish, because doing so will have a broad negative effect on economic activity.

Responding to questions about how proposed energy taxes will affect economic activity, Andrew Moylan, Director of Government Affairs at the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union, provided the following answers.

Q: To what degree will tax hikes on the energy industry effect gasoline/natural gas prices and the price of energy produced by oil and gas?

A: “It's difficult to determine exactly how much the impact will be in dollars and cents, but with potential tax hikes of $20-30 billion, it certainly will not be zero. At the end of the day it is consumers that bear the burden of tax hikes, so heaping tens of billions worth in higher taxes on American energy companies just means tens of billions worth in higher energy prices for American consumers. That's never a good mix, but it's particularly worrisome given our extremely fragile economy.”

Q: What are the likely secondary effects on prices of other goods?

A: “Oil and gas are crucial inputs in the broader American economy, which is why price shocks tend to have a cascading effect into other areas of the economy. As an example, let's say we were to raise taxes by $30 billion on American cheese manufacturers. That would be a terrible idea, as it would harm farmers, grocers, and cheese consumers alike. But if you don't much care for cheese, this tax hike isn't likely to affect you too terribly much (with the exception of some minor changes in the prices of other goods).

“That's because cheese is not the lifeblood of much of our economy the way oil and gas are. Walk into any Wal-Mart store in America and virtually everything on the shelves was made or transported with oil. The semi-trucks that fill our highways to deliver those goods are dependent on affordable transportation fuels.”

Q: How will the tax increases affect the way oil and natural gas companies operate?

A: “There's an axiom of economics that says, ‘If you tax something, you get less of it.’ Stated simply: if you raise taxes on American energy production, you'll get less American energy production. If companies do not find it profitable to continue to search for much-needed oil and gas in the United States, it will have a number of effects. These tax hikes will likely lead to oil and gas companies employing fewer Americans to harness our domestic resources. That will harm growth and recovery across a wide swath of the economy. It will also likely lead to more importation of oil from foreign sources, such as Canada, Mexico, or Saudi Arabia, to meet America's ever-growing energy needs.”

Today, one of every 10 Americans wanting to work can’t find a job, and millions more are under-employed, or have simply given up looking for a job. This is nearly 25 percent worse than Mr. Obama said it would be if Congress passed the stimulus bill.

What is needed is to provide stability for the private sector so that it can move the economy forward. But Congress and the administration have instead created havoc in the private sector through big government economic policies that punish business. They don’t have much time left to transform their failed policies into a sensible plan to stabilize the economy and allow a true recovery to develop.

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Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics, Government, Liberalism

Must-See video: a Brit's view of the NYC mosque

Everyone should watch this video, whether you support the Ground Zero mosque, or whether you join with a majority of Americans who oppose it.

Pat Condell's perspective is worth your time. "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?"

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Technorati Tags: Islam, Politics, War on Terror, Political Correctness

We have turned our country into somethingits Founders would not recognize

Things are terribly off course in the United States, and have been moving in the wrong direction for so long that many Americans not only don’t really realize it, they have come to believe this condition is normal and proper.

Here are two examples demonstrating how absurd things have become, both involving Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, although she is by no means the only one who warrants being cited.

Back during the uproar over the proposed health care reform bill, when opponents were complaining that the 2,700-page bill was too large to be read and understood before it was voted on, and that it contained features whose results were poorly researched, Ms. Pelosi told us that we “have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it,” and did so with a smile on her face, without so much as a hint that she appreciated the absurdity of that comment.

A majority of Americans have expressed their opposition to the proposed Islamic center in New York, close enough to the Twin Towers that the building on the site where the mosque will be built was damaged badly enough to render it unfit for occupancy by wreckage from the planes hitting the World Trade Center. That is, in fact, the only reason that property was available for the mosque project in the first place.

The most valid of that opposition, of course, comes from the families and friends of the innocent people who were murdered in the attack, or whom we saw on TV jumping to their death to avoid being incinerated, and the police and fire fighters who died trying to save them. But there are others whose legitimate opposition to construction of the Cordoba House within the zone of 9-11 damage focuses on the fact that it is a painful reminder of the attack perpetrated by people worshiping the same god of Islam as the project’s proponents. Speaker Pelosi suggested that there ought to be an investigation to discover what sinister force is behind the opposition, and how “this [is] being ginned up.”

The founders of this once-great nation must be spinning in their graves as a high elected federal government servant seriously contends that the American people can’t know what’s in important legislation until it has been passed into law, and that bills before the Congress are routinely hundreds or thousands of pages long and often haven’t been read before being voted on, and that normal Americans expressing their thoughts about important events and issues would be the subject of a federal investigation for their actions.

We seem to have traveled through a wormhole into an alternate universe, where black is white and common sense has been stood on its head, along with our country’s founding principles. It is the stuff of a Mel Brooks movie, just as absurd as High Anxiety or Blazing Saddles, though not at all funny.

Those brave men and women who mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to fight for and win freedom from the oppressive rule of the British Crown and establish a small and limited government focused on individual liberty would be bewildered by the gargantuan, intrusive, inefficient and wasteful bureaucracy that has evolved over the 230-plus years since their brave sacrifice.

Could they ever have intended a government that would tell farmers how much wheat they can grow; dictate that every American must purchase a particular sort of health insurance, whether they want it or not; regulate how much water pressure your shower can use and what kind of light bulbs you can buy; and require average Americans to work more than 25 percent of the year – 99 days – just to pay their taxes?

Would they condone the federal government abandoning one of its major responsibilities – preventing the illegal entry into the country by millions of people, and protecting its citizens from those illegals that have violent and criminal intentions? Would they agree with taking a state to court, when in the face of federal incompetence that state attempts to protect itself and its legal residents from this onslaught of illegal aliens?

How would they react to government officials and other Americans branding citizens who rise up in constitutionally protected opposition to an out-of-control federal bureaucracy and to events with which they strongly disagree as “Nazis,” and “homophobes,” and “racists?” Indeed, was it not this same sense of protest at government oppression that brought on the American Revolution?

Whatever happened to Jefferson’s dictum, “that government is best that governs least?”

Someone once said that the country is never in greater danger than when Congress is in session, and when the House, the Senate and the White House are under the control of the same political party, that danger is magnified immensely.

The elected servants in Washington are grossly out of touch with the people they were sent there to serve. They are not listening to us, they are dictating to us, and it’s time for a change.

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Technorati Tags: Government, Politics, Liberalism, Democrats

A mosque at Ground Zero: A healing idea, or a provocation?

The controversy over the proposed Muslim “Cordoba House” two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City has been heating up over the last few weeks. Cordoba House, described as a community center similar to a YMCA by its chief proponent, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is viewed as an affront by the families of 9-11 victims and others sensitive to the horrors of the September 11, 2001 attacks by radical Muslims who hijacked airliners and flew two of them into the World Trade Center, killing nearly 2,800 people.

In an announcement that caused political observers to scratch their heads, President Barack Obama told the nation last week that the mosque is a matter of religious freedom, which is guaranteed by our Constitution. Once again, Mr. Obama has inexplicably involved himself in an issue that didn’t require him to take a position, unnecessarily creating problems for himself, and further fueling the fire of the opposition.

His comment drew immediate and strong reaction from opponents, forcing a clarification. “My intention was simply to let people know what I thought, which was that in this country, we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion,” he said later.

Fair enough, Mr. President, but you’ve got it all wrong: the opposition does not contend that the Muslim group is not within its rights to build a mosque – there are at least 100 already in the city’s five boroughs. The building now occupying the proposed site, however, is close enough to have been damaged by debris from the explosion when the planes hit the towers, and a majority of both New Yorkers and Americans say the site – only 600 feet away from Ground Zero – is the wrong place to build Cordoba House.

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows that while 61 percent of Americans polled think the Muslim group has a right to build a mosque, 64 percent think the proposed site is the wrong place, and only 30 percent think this project is appropriate. A CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows 68 percent are opposed to it.

A Rasmussen Reports survey focused on New York state voters and found that only 20 percent favor building in the shadow of the WTC, while 58 percent were opposed. A Marist poll found that Manhattan residents oppose the mosque by a 53 to 31 percent margin.

And if there wasn’t enough controversy already, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said that the effort to stop the project is the work of “Islamophobes,” and the leader of the Hamas terror organization, Mahmoud al-Zahar, told the New York Post, we “have to build the mosque.”

Some opponents who are uneasy about the project have focused on elements such as its name – Cordoba House – and the history of Muslim conquerors to celebrate conquests by building mosques on the ashes of their vanquished enemies.

Abigail R. Esman, writing for Forbes.com, comments that “Cordoba, after all, was conquered in 711 by the Muslim Berber Gen. Tarik ibn Zayad, and by 756 became the capital of the Cordoba Caliphate, which covered most of Spain. Christian and Jewish civilians in that time were regularly murdered and enslaved. Among the first things the conquerors did under the new Caliphate was replace the Christian Church of Saint Vincent with the Great Mosque of Cordoba.”

“What emerges, then,” she continues, “is a potential symbol of victory at the site of one of Islam's most horrific acts in history. ‘We destroyed the World Trade Centers,’ the radical Islam world will say, ‘and replaced it with a mosque – there, in the financial hub of New York City, the capitalist center of the world.’ First Cordoba, then Cordoba.”

There are also questions as to the sources of funding for the $100 million project.

Imam Rauf, however, paints a very different picture. “American Muslims want to be both good Americans and good Muslims,” he wrote in the New York Daily News. “They can be the best assets the United States has in combatting (sic) radicalism,” he stated. “We believe that people of good faith can use the common core of their religions to find solutions to problems that will let them live together.”

But if all that is true, why persist in championing a project to which a majority of Americans are opposed, and which would bring immense pain to those very New Yorkers the imam and his fellow Muslims want to be one with?

If Imam Rauf and his colleagues are as he said, “the anti-terrorists … the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric,” can you not accomplish this noble goal a respectable distance from the scene of the worst radical Muslim murder in our nation’s history?

The best way to foster understanding between the different religions and to show the essential degree of sensitivity is to abandon the Islam-centric demand to build the mosque near Ground Zero, and build it somewhere farther away.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, War on Terror, Islam

New information about Deep Water Horizon disaster raises many questions

In the early days following the Deep Water Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and unleashed a gusher of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, one early reaction was to assess blame, and the logical targets for that blame were BP and the companies associated with it on that project, Transocean and Halliburton.

There is no question that BP bears much of the responsibility, however, in the weeks since the disaster a great deal of information has come to light that makes it evident that some of the blame belongs to parties other than BP.

The initial reactions were highly emotional, which is understandable, given that this disaster cost the loss of eleven workers. But emotion often clouds issues, and so it is with the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe.

A lot of damage has been done along the Gulf Coast, but the breathless forecasts of environmental calamity appear at this point to have been highly exaggerated. It is estimated, for example, that 75 percent of the approximately 200 million gallons of oil are “missing,” substantially lessening the potential damage to the environment.

Where did the oil go?

In my May 18 column was this: “Casting some needed light on the nature of oil spills, Merv Fingas, of McGill University and Environment Canada, wrote a piece published on the Minerals Management Service Web site, explaining that a lot of the spilled oil isn’t going to be a problem. ‘Evaporation is the most important change that most oil spills undergo. In a few days, light crudes can evaporate as much as 75 percent of the starting oil mass and medium crudes up to 40 percent.’ Some of the rest of the oil is absorbed by seabed sediment and never reaches the surface or shorelines. ” And some of it was collected; some was burned off; some was devoured by oil-eating bacteria.

Even so, a lot of oil did not evaporate, and wasn’t burned off, or collected, or eaten, and a lot of it made it to shore and caused a lot of damage. But we have learned that the damage from the oil spill could have been reduced, perhaps completely prevented, except that a party other than BP messed up.

The Washington Times addressed this issue recently, noting that, “Letting skimmers in early would have cleaned up much of the oil in Gulf waters at a relatively low cost before it fouled sensitive coastal marshes,” and that “BP isn't accountable for additional cleanup costs and damages that resulted from government's failure to give a green light to this process.”

“Delays and obstructions caused by the federal government are numerous,” The Times continued. “Countries such as Sweden and the United Arab Emirates offered skimmers in April, well before oil slicks hit coastal areas. Months later, they [were] still waiting for Washington's approval. When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal set up 16 barges to vacuum oil from his state's waterways … the Coast Guard ordered them to stop while bureaucrats checked to make sure the machinery was made in the USA. Mr. Jindal also had to wait for weeks while the federal bureaucracy took its time deciding whether barrier islands could be built off the coast to stop oil from drifting into marshes. Meanwhile, tar balls floated ashore.”

And this is possibly the most significant issue of all, except for what caused the explosion: The Center for Public Integrity asserts that the federal government may well bear responsibility for much more than the incompetent response to requests for help: “Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the service’s own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the half-dozen private boats that answered the Deepwater Horizon’s distress call to fight the blaze.”

“The question of what caused the platform to collapse into the Gulf two days later remains unanswered,” CPI said, a crucial point in accurately assessing responsibility, “because the riser pipe from which the majority of BP’s oil spewed did not start leaking until after the rig sank. Experts and some lawsuits have openly tied the sinking of the drilling vessel to the severity of the leak.”

When the rig tipped over and sank, did it strike and damage the riser pipe, unleashing the gusher of oil into the Gulf?

Could it be that in addition to failing to respond to requests to help Gulf Coast states prevent serious environmental and economic damage the federal government, because of the Coast Guard’s fire fighting error, is actually responsible for most of the oil spill, or all of it?

And what role did politics play in this crisis? Is it true that, as The Times suggested, the Swedish and UAR skimmers were kept out to protect American union workers? Was the incomprehensibly slow federal response a political move to improve the case against continued use of fossil fuels?

There are many questions to be answered, and possibly several villains in addition to BP, Transocean and Halliburton, and all must be held accountable.

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Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics, Government, Environment

Economic data and public opinion show Obama administration and Congress are abject failures

July job numbers contained only a speck of good news for the Obama administration. While the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5 percent, private payrolls rose by only 71,000, a disappointing number when compared to the approximately 200,000 that had been expected. While fewer jobs were created than expected, more jobs were lost – 131,000 – than expected, partly due to the end of the temporary employment of some 143,000 census workers. All told, the only good news was that the unemployment rate didn’t rise.

Other news, such as the President’s and Congress’ approval ratings, is worse.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls taken by seven different pollsters between July 13 and August 4 shows Mr. Obama's average approval rating at 44.9 percent and his average disapproval rating at 50 percent, a negative margin of 5.2 points.

The best rating for Mr. Obama was a tie of approval/disapproval at 48 percent, and the worst was a 41 percent approval rating and a 53 percent disapproval rating, for a negative margin of 12 points.

Congress fares no better. In five polls taken between June 9 and July 28, Congressional job approval is only 21.2 percent, while the disapproval rate is 72.2 percent, a margin of minus 51 points. In those polls, the best rating Congress produced was between July 9 and June 14 where the positive number was 24 percent, the negative number 73 percent, for a negative 49-point margin.

By a negative margin of 27.8 points, Americans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Only 33.5 percent in the four-poll average believe the country is going in the right direction, while 61.3 percent believe it is headed the wrong way.

The growth of the economy has slowed steadily since posting a 5 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter last year. In the first three months of 2010 the rate was 3.7 percent, but in the April-June period the rate dropped to 2.4 percent.

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Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics, Liberalism, Unemployment

Poor economic policies killing the business environment

So many people in this country do not understand the workings of business, including the vast majority of our elected leaders in Washington. Their anti-business policies proliferate and have formed giant roadblocks to a healthy economy, have delayed the recovery and kept millions of Americans on the unemployment line for far too long.

If you want to end a recession, leave as much money in the hands of the people as possible; the more money people have, the more they can spend. Create a stable environment so that businesses feel comfortable in hiring; make it easy for existing businesses to expand and for new businesses to start up. That environment will create jobs and new taxpayers, and more jobs and more taxpayers will fuel a recovery.

What government is doing now, however, is implementing policies that create uncertainty and dampen the entrepreneurial spirit; increasing taxes that rob needed capital from small businesses and punish the wealthiest consumers, who are the ones with the most to spend; crafting regulations that raise business costs and make it difficult to add workers and expand.

It was a failure of the federal government and the Federal Reserve following the 1929 stock market crash that led to a 15-year depression, and that is what is happening now.

Testimony from someone who has as good a set of credentials as one could expect, Las Vegas casino resort and real-estate developer Steve Wynn, sees exactly this view. He is credited with much of the dramatic resurgence and expansion of Vegas, and he is splitting up his headquarters in Las Vegas and putting half of it in Macau, China. Why? In a May interview with CNBC, Mr. Wynn said: “The opportunities I see are far superior abroad than in America.”

Asked by the CNBC interviewer, “What about the regulation, the [communist] government oversight and working there, as opposed to here?” he replied, “Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington. That’s where we get surprises every day; that’s where taxes are changed every five minutes; that’s where you don’t know what to expect tomorrow. To compare political stability and … predictability in China to Washington is like comparing Mt. Everest to an ant hill. Macao, in China, is stable. Washington is not.”

From Steve Winn’s point of view, the actions of our elected representatives have created a situation in this country that not only discourages the very activities needed to turn the economy around, they have created a business environment that is less stable, and therefore is less appealing, than a communist economy. That is remarkable, and more than a little unsettling.

The Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress think that the way to turn the economy around is for the government to spend money it doesn’t have and to raise taxes on virtually everyone, and especially on “the rich.” This method is deeply flawed, as evidenced by what happened in the 30s, because it not only takes money from those at the bottom of the economic scale who need as much of their money as possible to survive, but it takes even more money from those at the top of the scale who are the ones in the best position to positively affect the economy by buying additional goods and services, and investing money in new and existing businesses.

Government cannot exist without the money it takes from the private sector. Why, then, since government cannot exist without a vibrant private sector, would anyone think that government can fix a downturn in the economy without supporting activity in the private sector?

President Obama wants to raise taxes on “the rich” by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and that is a horrible idea.

George W. Bush took office in January 2001 and inherited a recession that was substantially complicated by the September 11 terrorist attacks. The 2001 Economic Growth and Recovery Tax Act and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 together ended the recession, and did so not with spending and tax increases, but with tax cuts for everyone. And, according to the (begin ital) Wall Street Journal,(end ital) contrary to the “tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery, the Bush tax cuts resulted in the richest five percent paying 60 percent of all income taxes in 2005.

This is the kind of stimulus that we need today, but is the opposite of the steps that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have taken.

And a CNN/Opinion Research poll taken last month shows that the country disapproves of the way the economy is being handled by 57 to 42 percent, and by 62 to 36 percent Americans say the federal budget deficit is a serious problem.

Deficits result when government spends more than it takes in. Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders want to keep spending at record levels and increase revenue by raising taxes, which will thwart private sector productivity by transferring money to the government that would be better spent by the people who earned it.

The way to cure a deficit caused by too much spending is to spend less.

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Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics, Recession, Democrats

Democrat's reckless energy policies are damaging the country

There seems to be no vision of the results of the Democrats’ fatally flawed energy policy horrible enough to dissuade them from continuing down the path that will wreck the current energy system.

Congress and the President are determined to put into effect policies and regulations that will have a substantial negative impact on our current means of producing the energy the American people and their economy require without fully considering the consequences of their actions. The six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico stands as grim testimony to the damage caused by these ill-considered policies.

A study of the effects of moratorium in the Gulf, which ends in late November, shows it will cost more than 8,000 jobs in the Gulf states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas; nearly $500 million in wages will be lost because of the ban; and $2.1 billion dollars in economic activity and approximately $100 million dollars in state and local tax revenues will be lost. Louisiana State University finance professor Joseph Mason’s study also shows that at a minimum 12,000 jobs may be lost nationwide, and that will cost the federal government around $200 million dollars in tax revenues.

Summing up the damage caused by the moratorium, John Young, chair of Jefferson Parish Council in Louisiana, has called the moratorium "a death blow to Louisiana."

"The decision appears to have been made in an uninformed manner that borders on recklessness. It has increased our risk to the environment, it has increased our national security risk and it has increased the risks to job security. It must be reversed now," said Louisiana Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu.

“The moratorium was imposed without proper economic analysis and I think the administration will be shocked when they understand how many people this action has put out of work and how many thousands of small businesses are being jeopardized by this action," Sen. Landrieu said.

If these are the results of only six months of no drilling in the Gulf, how much worse will it be to extend the ban or to put crippling policies into effect?

American Petroleum Institute (API) President Jack Gerard predicts a measure being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “will cost American jobs, slow economic growth and will place our energy security at risk.”

A serious element of the bill is a requirement for an extremely high level of insurance coverage on projects on the Outer Continental Shelf, so large as to be unattainable, and insurers say that will force many American companies out of U.S. waters, costing thousands of jobs and millions in economic activity that the country cannot afford to lose. While large companies may be able to self-insure, they will see costs increase precipitously, and will likely look elsewhere to invest their money in drilling projects.

API estimates that continuing down this path will cost more than 175,000 jobs and billions of dollars in federal oil and natural gas revenues.

Mr. Gerard said, “Legislation that raises the cost of production to uneconomic levels; that renders deepwater oil and natural gas areas off limits to production; drives small- and mid-sized firms out of business; shuts down access to domestic energy resources; or singles out our industry for punitive tax increases—all of which have been part of various bills in the House and Senate—will have significant impacts on jobs and economic growth.”

When 53 percent of American voters pulled the lever for Barack Obama in November of 2008, do you suppose they understood that this is what he meant when he promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”?

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Technorati Tags: Energy, Politics, Liberalism, Economy

Media dishonesty and complicity are in the news once again

Not too long ago the light of truth shined on climate scientists who cheated in trying to persuade the world that its end is near when a series of emails were made public revealing their fraud and deceit.

Now, a series of online discussions between journalists, academics and others of a similar mind have been discovered in which the dialogue centered on how to manipulate the voting public, and other matters equally out of bounds. The journalists represent several media outlets, including The Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Guardian (Britain), National Public Radio, The Nation, The New Republic, Bloomberg News, Salon, and Harper’s. The emails were posted at an online meeting place, a list-serve called “JournoList.”

Some people defend the activities of JournoListers as nothing unusual. Mike Hoyt, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, asserts that the communications are normal interaction between associates. To him there is nothing unusual or improper about journalists discussing how to distract the American public from the negatives of one candidate in a presidential election. Boys will be boys, you know.

But journalism professor Jim Campbell of the State University of New York at Buffalo finds the JournoList troubling. “At one level it could be thought of as just colleagues throwing ideas out to one another, but from another standpoint it almost looks like collusion … where virtual talking points are shared and solidified in a group.” “That can’t be healthy for the country – or for the media, for that matter,” he added.

Bingo.

One useful tactic of the JournoListers was to distract attention from negative Obama news with some sensational charge against a prominent conservative. Someone named Spencer Ackerman, at the time on the staff of the Washington Independent, suggested to participants that to distract attention from Barack Obama’s racist and anti-America minister Jeremiah Wright, pick a conservative like “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists.”

Manipulating information for political and ideological gain wasn’t the only topic these folks discussed in this virtual smoke-filled back-room. They also thought freedom of the press should be done away with, because it allows Fox News to exist. Daniel Davies, a columnist at the Guardian, commented that “I am genuinely scared” of Fox because it “cannot be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation.” Imagine that: a news outlet that can’t be “controlled.” He continues: “In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.”

We need a “legal framework” to control Fox News, while the media outlets where the JournoListers work continue to operate unfettered? That sounds both fair and constitutional, doesn’t it?

Jumping on the anti-Fox News bandwagon was Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, who suggested a more strong-arm solution to the Fox News dilemma: “[I]s there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?” This man is a law professor?

Journalists are supposed to be in competition with one another, not in collusion, formulating “talking points” with each other. It is, obviously, a glaring conflict of interest when journalists pick a side and conspire to support one candidate or one side of an issue over the others. Such conflicts are scrupulously avoided by ethical professionals.

And what a horrid concoction of arrogance and insecurity these media people have. They are so arrogant as to think their ideas are more important than those of their fellow Americans, and yet are so insecure about their ideas that they believe they have to fool the American people into supporting them.

This perverse exercise has revealed such curious creatures as journalists who want freedom of the press for some but not others, and who conspire to manage information, and a law professor who believes Fox News has an FCC “permit” that can be revoked at will.

Good grief!

We are witnessing another once-honorable profession abandoning its integrity and hawking a personal agenda as it takes its place in the Hall of Shame alongside climate science.

At its best, news journalism is a noble and vital profession that adequately informs the public by objectively supplying accurate information so people can be well informed in order to make good decisions. It makes a point of covering controversial issues fully, because controversial issues are the ones most in need of public discussion. It does not favor one side over another, and leaves the picking of winners and losers to the American people, where it belongs.

At its worst, it is a corrupt and dishonorable perversion that controls information on events and issues to fit an ideological agenda. It ignores stories that will damage its chosen beneficiaries and over-emphasizes its point of view on important issues and its chosen candidates. It focuses extra attention toward its opponent’s negatives and ignores the positives. All to the detriment of the country and the citizens it is ethically bound to serve. Such integrity-challenged “journalists” throw ethics on the trash heap, and reduce themselves to partisan players in the political game.

Today, it seems there is much more “journalism at its worst” than ever before.

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Technorati Tags: Journalism, Politics, Liberalism, Democrats

Have you noticed how many more racists there are these days?

The word “racist” describes someone with an irrational dislike for people of a different race. In its worst forms racism involves unfair treatment of members of that race and sometimes violence against them.

Most Americans probably believe that racism has been in decline for several decades. However, news reports indicate that racism is not only alive and well in the United States, but has experienced a strong resurgence. In fact, if those making racism charges are correct, there are racists lurking behind every tree.

Examples abound: During the presidential primary campaign of 2008 we learned that anyone who opposed Democrat contender Barack Obama opposed him because he is black. By extension those who supported his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, and presumably even Mrs. Clinton, herself, are also racists. Since his election we are informed that those who do not support Mr. Obama’s policies are racists, too.

We have also learned that people who think America’s borders need to be secured to prevent illegal entry by drug dealers, kidnappers and others who sneak into our country, and think laws to prevent such entry should be enforced, are racists, as well.

We’ve been told that the people associated with the tea party movement are racists. These evil people object to what they see as government running amok, spending and taxing with abandon and exceeding its constitutional bounds. The Tea Party Patriots brazenly claim they want to “attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.” That is a radical concept, to be sure, and these grandfathers, grandmothers, plumbers, doctors, electricians, soccer moms and scout leader dads, and other normal American tea partiers are clearly racists.

And you, dear reader, are likely a racist, too, unless you voted for Barack Obama AND support Cap and Trade AND want another stimulus program AND want socialized medicine and the rationing of care AND favor government taking over industries one at a time AND don’t care who comes into our country, even kidnappers and murderers AND support every tenet of the radical leftist agenda. Presumably, if you don’t like tacos, Gen. Tso’s chicken and/or chocolate ice cream, you are a racist.

Leftists are intolerant of opposing ideas; are incapable of accepting that some people simply disagree with them; are impotent to mount serious intellectual arguments against opposing points of view, and are therefore condemned to defeat political enemies by debasing them, rather than debating them. Thus they stoop to name calling. Being a racist is one of the most damnable, despicable, loathsome, contemptible and vile things that one can be, so that is naturally the insult of choice.

After all, labeling your enemies as racists is easy, requires no thought, calls up awful visions of detestable behavior, and is effective. At least until you stop to examine the charge and realize it is usually devoid of substance. In other words, when leftists call their political enemies “racists” it is an empty, intellectually vapid charge.

In every large faction of people there likely are some jerks, some geeks, some crooks, and even some racists. An example of this truism is Mark Williams, leader of the Tea Party Express, who wrote a blog post that was at best offensive, and at worst racist. Leaders of the National Tea Party Federation, an organization seeking to represent the tea party political movement, responded by expelling Mr. Williams and the Tea Party Express from their organization.

If the tea party movement is as racist as the leftists would have us believe, why would it police itself and cast out bad apples?

It is a cheap political trick to accuse the entire tea party movement of being racist. That charge fails both the laugh test and the smell test and, more to the point, it is unsupportable.

The reckless use of the term “racism” has now entered the mainstream of American politics. Unable to defend the ineffective, irrational and dangerous policies of President Barack Obama and the Congressional leadership, leftists resort to attacking virtually anyone who disagrees with any of their positions, and labeling them “racists.” Saul Alinsky would be proud.

However, this gutter tactic has a downside, a very substantial downside: When you carelessly throw around the term, when you call everybody a racist, you render the term meaningless. and real racism, the target we all should want to eliminate, gets lost in the demagoguery.

And there’s a high degree of hypocrisy here; all incidents of racism are not equal, it seems. The NAACP recently attacked the tea party movement for its supposed racism, but ignored the overt racism by the New Black Panthers whose members have advocated killing “crackers” and white babies. We’ve seen that the tea party people oppose racism on the right; what about the NAACP? Isn’t all racism bad, or just racism by white people?

We can’t gain ground against racism by condemning some instances and ignoring others, or by degrading the term through misapplying it to political enemies.

Which begs the question: Does the left really want to fight racism, or just score cheap political points?

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Racism, Leftists

Americans are poorly prepared for citizenship

Pathetic. That’s the word for it. A huge number of Americans don’t have the faintest idea what their country is all about. Most know that the 4th of July is also known as “Independence Day,” but too many have no idea of its significance.

Tonight Show host Jay Leno did a “Jaywalking” feature in which he posed questions about July 4th to random Americans on New York streets. The degree of ignorance about their country’s origins was nothing less than astonishing.

Susan, a woman of about 30, thought we won our independence from America. Asked what country King George ruled, Susan struggled to find an answer and finally said … “Greece.”

A younger woman named Molly thought Martha Washington sewed the first American flag, and when prompted by Jay with the first name “Betsy,” Molly supplied the last name: Ford. When asked, “And what did Paul Revere say when the British were coming?” Molly didn’t know.

An unidentified young man thought the general who led the colonial soldiers was named “Churchill.”

“Why did Washington cross the Delaware?” Jay asked a bearded fellow. After some thought, he ventured, “To get to the other side?”

Jennifer identified herself as an instructor of college business, general education and computer courses. When asked what was celebrated on July 4th, she answered, “The 4th of July,” and thought we achieved our independence in, “oh … 1922?” She wisely declined to identify her employer.

A middle-aged fellow said the number of original colonies “right now, I guess, thirty?” His wife was called in to help. Jay asked if she helps her teenage son with his homework, and she said she did. He asked what happened on the 4th of July. “I have no clue,” she replied. The son was called in, and answered the question “What happened on Independence Day?” with, “Independence broke out.” The three stumped family members then summoned grandpa, a man probably in his 60s. He knew the answer to every question, including where the Statue of Liberty came from (France), and what bird appears on the Great Seal (bald eagle), all without stopping to think.

If you think these are isolated examples that were edited for effect and do not represent how little Americans know about their country’s history, you would be wrong.

In 2005 The Washington Post published an article by Naomi Wolf that said, “…only 47 percent of high school seniors have mastered a minimum level of U.S. history and civics, while only 14 percent performed at or above the ‘proficient’ level…” She added that middle school students in most states are not required to take classes in civics and government. More recent statistics are not much better.

Every American over age 15 ought to know the answer to those basic questions, like that grandfather did. What do these dismal performances say about our culture; our education system; our future?

Once upon a time there were year-long civics and US history classes in junior high or high school, and students learned about their country’s foundations, how the government works and their role as citizens. Are these subjects no longer taught in public schools, and if not, why not? If they are, why are so many people ignorant about civics and US history?

Americans also don’t know much about basic economics. They don’t understand how business works; what happens to the money that people spend and how it circulates through the economy creating jobs, paying salaries, buying more products to sell or raw materials with which to produce new products, and producing profits that make it worthwhile for the owners to keep businesses operating.

They don’t understand that when government is too big and spends too much, it undermines economic growth by transferring resources needed by the productive private sector to drive the economy to the unproductive, inefficient public sector. Government cannot exist without a strong, vibrant private sector, which suffers when excessive taxation is imposed to support unnecessary and unauthorized bureaucracy.

Economist Henry Hazlitt explained the problem of economic ignorance in his brilliant book Economics in One Lesson: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy … tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

It is serious enough that millions of Americans are poorly educated about their country’s founding principles and basic economics, but when that ignorance infects those running our government – as it does today – our future and our liberty are in danger, as we now see. Elected public servants have failed to follow Mr. Hazlitt’s rule.

Recent economic policies and those favored by the Congress and the Obama administration demonstrate that ignorance of economic principles is pervasive among most Democrats and more than a few Republicans. Some of them also don’t know their history and civics.

A prime example of excessive government is the federal Department of Education that controls public education, which has failed miserably in the critical need to teach civics, history and economics.

A good step toward restoring government to sensible and proper levels would be to shut down the DOE.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Education, Government

Bones: NASA's first "feel good" trading card

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Polls: Americans don't like what Obama is doing

New polling data shows President Barack Obama’s Job Approval continues to slide.

The Real Clear Politics average of seven polls taken from June 17 through July 8 shows that the president garnered 46.4 percent favorable and 47.9 unfavorable, for a -1.5 deficit in job approval. However, the two most recent polls show larger margins of disapproval.

A Gallop poll taken from July 6 through 8 shows only 45 percent approve of what Mr. Obama is doing, while 48 percent disapprove.

But a Rasmussen poll taken over the same three-day period shows a 7.0-point margin, with 46 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval.

Support for the Democrat’s health care reform plan has dropped to 42.3 in the RCP Average for the period May 19 through July 1, while 50.7 percent disapproved. And the new Rasmussen poll taken on July 1 shows Americans don’t like the plan by a 60 to 36 margin, a spread of -24 points.

By a two-to-one margin (62.3 vs. 30.2), Americans strongly disapprove of the direction the country is heading, as reflected by the RCP average from June 10 through June 27.

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Technorati Tags: America, Politics, Job Approval, Democrats

The Latest from Bones

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Liberals use the courts to change the rules

A story in The Washington Post informed readers that “The Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment provides Americans a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments.” This issue should never have had to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which is a specific articulation of what many of the Founders regarded as fundamental principles of human liberty – “unalienable Rights,” according to the Declaration of Independence – that must be guaranteed, and not left in doubt, so those rights were specifically guaranteed in the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution in 1791.

They include the right of free speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble and to petition the government, freedom of religion, the right to due process and trial by jury, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and the right to keep and bear arms, among others, which the Founders recognized as essential for a free people in a free society, and which Justice Samuel Alito confirmed in his majority opinion: "It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."

The 5-4 ruling came in response to a challenge to a Chicago law banning handgun possession. Such blanket bans are in response to the illegal use of handguns, but are poorly thought out and fraught with flaws and unintended consequences, the most obvious of which is that law abiding Chicagoans who have sold their handguns to comply with the law, or have not purchased a handgun because of the law, have had their most effective means of self-defense outlawed by the City of Chicago, leaving them vulnerable to criminals who still have their guns.

It is ludicrous to suggest that the Framers ever intended for such a preposterous situation to be created.

Gun control is another of the many areas where good intentions fall victim to reality: In the real world gun control laws do not control guns. What they do most effectively is to disarm potential victims.

The populace has nothing to fear from law abiding citizens with guns. In fact, studies show that law abiding citizens who are armed provide an effective deterrent to crime. In an article titled “Can Gun Control Reduce Crime? Part 1,” historian and writer Benedict D. LaRosa noted that “Vermont has the least restrictive gun-control law. It recognizes the right of any Vermonter who has not otherwise been prohibited from owning a firearm to carry concealed weapons without a permit or license. Yet Vermont has one of the lowest crime rates in America, ranking 49 out of 50 in all crimes and 47th in murders.”

He also said that states which have passed concealed-carry laws have seen their violent crime rates fall by from three to seven percent, which makes perfect sense: If a criminal believes his intended victim may shoot him, he might think twice before robbing attacking him or her.

All of the gun control laws in the universe cannot keep criminals from having guns. That’s sort of what the term “criminal” implies, you know? Does it make any sense to prohibit law abiding citizens from owning guns to protect themselves from criminals who ignore the law and arm themselves? That’s a no-brainer.

Still – and this is truly troubling – four of the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court voted in this case to maintain Chicago’s prohibition against handgun ownership, which is a de facto vote against the concept of law abiding citizens owning handguns for self-defense. That defies both common sense and the intent of the Second Amendment. But more importantly, it is a serious threat to our freedom that those four Justices – Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, and Sonia Sotomayor – either do not understand the intent or the plain language of the US Constitution, which they are duty bound to uphold, or they have substituted their own ideology for the intent of the Constitution. Neither is acceptable

This behavior is referred to as “judicial activism,” a theory that judges can and should creatively reinterpret the Constitution and laws in order to serve the judges' own ideas of the needs of contemporary society.

But what is the point of having a constitution if it can be reinterpreted by judges? What is the point of enacting laws if judges can interpret them according to their own personal views? And why should any of us obey existing laws, if their meaning changes from judge to judge?

For centuries people have used anchors to keep their boats from being moved around by winds and tides. Our Founders realized that the Republic also needed an anchor to keep it from being swept around by changing social and political ideas, and they created the United States Constitution for that purpose, and to establish a nation with maximum personal freedom. It has served us well for more than 200 years, making America the most exceptional nation in history.

We must be smart enough to follow it and not screw things up.

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Technorati Tags: Rule of Law, Politics, Liberalism, Democrats

Your government at work: Getting it wrong, with amazing consistency

Right now America desperately needs a competent government like the one our Founders gave us. What we have instead is one that is too big, too powerful and painfully dysfunctional.

The border with Mexico is poorly guarded and allows anybody to come into the United States unimpeded, which causes states along the border to waste millions of dollars dealing with illegal aliens, and puts American citizens at risk of physical violence and even death. The criminal element has turned Phoenix, Arizona into the city with the second most kidnappings in the entire world.

Obviously, a competent government would not allow this situation to have arisen, let alone to continue. But our government has done nothing to return security to the taxpaying citizens of Arizona who expect and deserve much better.

Faced with federal negligence on the border the state of Arizona passed a less strict version of the federal law that addresses illegal aliens in an effort to protect its citizens. And how did the federal government respond to that? It bad-mouthed the people of Arizona and threatened to sue the state.

In addition to government dysfunction, some of our citizens are badly confused on this issue, as well, and advocate boycotting Arizona businesses and call Arizonans “racists” for wanting to protect themselves from criminals. But what’s worse, there is evidence that the federal government may be participating in boycotting Arizona.

Arizona Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords issued a statement saying, “It is very troubling when the federal government becomes involved in a boycott against our state.” … “Although I personally disagree with the immigration law, it came about because of growing frustration over the federal government’s unwillingness to secure the border. The federal government’s participation in this boycott only adds to that frustration.”…

The government, predictably, has denied Congresswoman Giffords’ charge, however it cannot deny that the Department of Education moved its North American Mobility program convention scheduled for October in Tucson to Minnesota.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently met with President Barack Obama about the ridiculous border situation, and she said he told her the administration would provide some help soon. And sure enough, the president kept his word, having the feds post signs warning Arizonans to stay out of some areas of their own state because it is not safe to go there. No doubt Gov. Brewer feels much better now. These signs are 80 miles from the Mexican border, and 30 miles from the state capitol.

A monumental ecological disaster unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico when an oil rig explodes, killing 11 workers and unleashing a flow of oil into the waters of the Gulf, putting at risk wild life in the water and marshes, the jobs of thousands of Americans, and the beaches of the Gulf Coast. How does the federal government respond to this tragedy?

The government can’t fix the oil leak, of course, but when the president finally did something, he chose to threaten legal action against the company operating the oil rig instead of acting to help contain the oil. He then banned all drilling in the Gulf, putting thousands more jobs at risk.

Fortunately, a federal judge properly recognized that the ban was unwarranted and illegal and overturned the moratorium. And how did the administration react to the ruling? It threatened to issue another drilling moratorium.

When the federal government ignored offers of assistance at home and from abroad, and ignored desperate requests for help from states threatened by the oil flow, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took matters into his own hands and began constructing sand bars to block the oil approaching his shores. And the US Coast Guard responded by shutting down the barges constructing the sand bars because it was unable to ascertain that the barges had the required fire extinguishers and life preservers on board.

These are the most recent examples of government ineptitude, but it goes back decades.

The current financial crisis is a nightmare scenario of government bungling that began in 1977 with the reckless Community Reinvestment Act to help people who couldn’t afford one to buy a home. Congressional meddling made that worse along the way, and then Congress changed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 to allow commercial banks to merge with investment banks. Capping off this litany of ineptness is the behavior of House Ways and Means Chairman Barney Frank, who in 2002 and 2003 fought off efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which collapsed not long thereafter.

After creating the environment that allowed financial institutions to run wild and bring on the financial crisis, Congress now thinks it needs to fix things with a financial reform bill. But the bill ignores two of the most needed reforms: fixing “too big to fail,” and once again separating banking functions from investment functions.

Despite these magnificent failures in housing, banking, border security and oil clean-up activities, Congress and the administration go merrily along inserting government where it doesn’t belong and cannot function without creating chaos.

As President Ronald Reagan famously said, government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.

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Technorati Tags: Government, Politics, America, Democrats

Going Rogue, Part II: the EPA forsakes rationality

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took a rare step against a planned ‘mountaintop’ coal mine in West Virginia,” The Washington Post reported in March, “proposing to block the mine, despite the fact that it has a federal permit.” The story outlined the EPA’s authority to take such action, noting that “it has used that power only 12 times since 1972. It has never used the power in a case such as this, where the mine has a permit.”

Those concerned about water quality might think it is good that the government is looking out for the quality of streams affected by coal mining. However, for the EPA to protect streams from contamination it must compare the level of contaminants against realistic thresholds. That is not what the EPA does.

The agency’s recent guidance on water quality requirements relies completely on measuring conductivity – which is the ability of water to carry an electric current – to determine whether water is contaminated.

Stream biologist Ben Faulkner explains in a video produced by FACES of Coal that pure water does not conduct electricity; conductance requires solid material dissolved in water to do that. He also said that low conductivity is not a guarantee that water is safe.

The EPA has set 300 – 500 microSiemens per centimeter as the threshold for water purity; water with greater than 500 is contaminated, according to the EPA. But Mr. Faulkner notes that Evian bottled water has 558 microSiemens, Perrier has 712, apple juice has 1,919, and Gatorade has 2,580. By EPA standards, all of these products are harmful.

Iron, zinc, selenium and copper are common components in streams affected by mining, Mr. Faulkner said, and in combination over 500 microSiemens render a stream contaminated under the EPA standard. But he points out that these substances are vitamins, not toxic chemicals. Their presence in water is not automatically a problem. It’s the concentration of substances that is important, and when these metals or other contaminants are present in streams at elevated levels, mining processes are modified to control them. Even so, critics say the EPA threshold is too low; FACES of coal asserts that it is not achievable; and Mr. Faulkner says that conductivity is “a poor way to evaluate whether the stream is healthy or not.”

Yet conductivity at that level is how the EPA determines stream contamination. Is water quality the objective of the EPA, or is this a way to accomplish a political goal of the Obama administration?

The minority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee issued a report last month that answers that question: “Our investigation found that the Obama Administration is using the Clean Water Act Section 404 permitting process to dismantle the coal industry in the Appalachian region.”

The EPA also has the power – and according to the US Supreme Court, the duty – to regulate “greenhouse gases” under the Clean Air Act, and its December endangerment finding formalized its conclusion that these gases threaten the environment.

This finding sets the stage for the agency to act to reduce the emission of the six gases that are allegedly responsible for global warming /climate change, “allegedly” because manipulation of scientific data and outright fraud in the climate science arena have destroyed the credibility of evidence of manmade global warming/climate change. Furthermore, a sizeable body of climate scientists argues that human activities do not cause changes to Earth’s climate.

Despite this raging controversy over an unproved and vigorously debated theory, the EPA stampedes merrily ahead to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, with particular emphasis on carbon dioxide.

But industry sources say the Clean Air Act was designed to regulate localized air pollution, and is a clumsy tool for broader application. The US Chamber of Commerce, among others, thinks the endangerment declaration could lead to litigation that will harm the economy.

Carbon dioxide, like the vitamins dissolved in streams, is vital to the ecosphere; CO2 exhaled by humans and other animals is essential for plant life; the oxygen plants emit is essential for animal life, and a significant faction of scientists believe more CO2 is good, not bad.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change says on its Web site, CO2 Science, “Clearly, the panic-evoking extinction-predicting paradigms of the past are rapidly giving way to the realization they bear little resemblance to reality. Earth's plant and animal species are not slip-sliding away” to extinction. And the Center’s Dr. Craig Idso concludes that "Clearly, there is no way that these real-world observations can be construed to even hint at the possibility that a significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will necessarily lead to any global warming."

A resolution in the US Senate to stop unelected government officials at the EPA from micromanaging the economy was defeated 53-47 last week with just six Democrats joining Republicans in trying to protect us from runaway bureaucratic malfeasance, precisely what this column warned of in December in the first “Going rogue.”

The EPA has become nothing more than a political tool of leftist ideology that is taking aim at American industries, and may well be a key element in unraveling the US economy.

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Technorati Tags: Environment, Politics, Government, Leftists