Monthly Archives: June 2012

Coal and CO2

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We get over half our national electricity supply from coal.  Nevertheless, President Obama is intent on shutting down our coal-based electricity through his EPA regulations.  This has been commented on by lots of folks.

The Obama fantasy driving this is that by killing off the US’ capacity to use coal in energy production, he’ll put a serious dent in the production of CO2.

Never mind that CO2 is not a harbinger of disastrous warming (its atmospheric warming capacity is quite trivial, especially compared to, oh, say, methane, or to the atmospheric cooling capacity of water vapor through its reflection of sunlight back into space), but a confirmation of the health of the planet.  The record, for instance, from ice cores as widely disparately collected as Greenland and Antarctica demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 increases lag global warming, not precede it.  And of course the increases would lag.  The planet warms, as from a major Ice Age, or the Maunder Minimum, or…, and life flourishes.  That life exhales carbon dioxide, and as the life spreads in the warming climes, CO2 in the atmosphere increases.

But nor the Obama administration nor the pseudo-scientists of the Global Warming Funding Project want to talk about that.  Except the latter, to change their group name to the Climate Change Funding Project.

Democracy and the Senate

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Here are some interesting statistics and behaviors, courtesy of Brian Reardon and Eric Ueland in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.  They quote a Politico article:

[S]ince Democrats seized power in fall 2006, Republicans have turned to the filibuster far more frequently. The majority has averaged about 140 cloture motions in both the 110th and 111th Congress. And Democrats are on pace to repeat that feat again this Congress.

Then they look behind those numbers.

Consider this example.

On March 19, Robert Menendez (D, NJ) introduced legislation (S2204) to promote renewable energy with the cost offset by a tax hike on large oil producers.  The normal process would have been for this legislation to be referred to committee for action.

Majority Leader Harry Reid bypassed the committee process, however, and using something called Rule 14 had the bill placed directly on the Senate calendar.  Two days later, he started the process to call up the bill by moving to “proceed to it” and immediately filed a cloture petition to end debate on that motion.

The following Monday, the Senate then voted 92-4 to curtail debate on the motion to proceed to the bill.  The next day, as soon as the bill was before the Senate, Mr Reid offered five consecutive amendments and one motion in order to effectively block the consideration of any competing amendments or motions.

He then filed a cloture motion to close out debate on the bill.  Two days later, the Senate rejected cloture on a party-line vote and moved on to other business, leaving the Menendez bill adrift.

They continued:

The very first bill considered by the Senate after the election of President Obama and a filibuster-proof Democratic majority was adopted under exactly the same truncated process used for S2204—Rule 14, cloture, block out any competing amendments, cloture.  Since that time, the Senate has voted on cloture repeatedly, yet has very little to show for it:  by some measures, 2011 was the least productive session in modern congressional history.

And 2012 is shaping up the same way.  Meanwhile, there are 27, or so, jobs-related bills passed by the House that Reid won’t even let his cloture system bring to the floor to be voted down by his fellow Democrats.

Hmm….

The Economy

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Two purchasing managers indexes for China fell in May, and Indonesia had its first trade deficit in nearly two years, while the Republic of Korea’s exports fell for a third straight month.  Nomura Securities’ chief Asia economist, Rob Subbaraman, attributed this in part to “The crisis in Europe.”  The debt crisis is having two effects in Asia: European banks are husbanding their resources for domestic and European commitment, and so they are only able to extend less credit  in Asia—including for trade finance.  Moreover, the crisis is reducing European demand for Asian goods and services directly.

Within Europe, the debt crisis is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Heineken NV, for instance, worried about its euro holdings in a Greece that might leave the euro zone (and convert those euros to drachmas of sometime value), is taking its cash out of Greece and the euro zone altogether, which creates liquidity problems for Greece and the euro zone.  Of course, Heineken isn’t that big, but their move is typical of a whole lot of businesses that, in their aggregate, approach being big enough.  Additionally, Greek companies are starting to max out their existing credit lines and then expatriating the cash.  Other businesses, in both the non-financial and the financial arenas, are making similar moves in anticipation of a Greek departure.  This caution by everyone is part of the pathway through which the debt crisis is contributing to a slowing European economy—and to a reduced demand for Chinese and US exports.  That slowing European economy is evidenced by sustained unemployment of 11% and a falling purchasing managers index (to 45.1—a level that means actual shrinking) in May.

Coincident with Europe’s reduced demand, our own economy, whose cyclic business recovery is being held back, has suppressed our business’ health and thereby reduced American demand for Asian exports.  The poor US economy, not helped by our reduced exports, is indicated by the recent job creation number—69,000—for May that is the third straight month of falling job creation rate, and by an unemployment rate holding above 8%—8.2% in May.

Our economy is at the core of the global economy, and so much of the rest of world depends on an economically healthy US for their own prosperity.  Yet our health depends on their economic health, too.  It’s not quite a chicken and egg thing, though; we really are the engine, and so we really do need to right ourselves rather than wait on Europe, for instance, to right itself.  The foregoing just shows the integration of the global economy; it is not an excuse for our own government’s policy failures.  The buck stops—and starts—with this administration.

Our path is amazingly simple, too, except that politicians are artificially complexifying things.  Our government needs to get out of our business’ way.  It needs to stop spending—and borrowing—at its current profligate rate.  It needs to reduce spending and tax rates in real terms, not just with accounting gimmicks and a promise to pay us Tuesday for that hamburger today (which, if Mayor Bloomberg were to have his way, won’t be for sale soon, anyway [/snark]).

Marco Rubio’s Immigration Reform

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Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) has an idea for immigration, one that focuses on the children of illegal aliens:

The first step I’m trying to make is to deal with children basically that were brought here at a very young age through no fault of their own, find themselves here undocumented.… All I’m trying to do is to help these kids do right what their parents did wrong.

and it looks like this.  The time durations, at this point, are vague as Senator Rubio says these still are being developed as he works toward enough Senate sponsorship to bring it to the floor for debate.  If these general criteria are met,

  • high school graduate
  • no criminal record
  • been in the US for a certain period of time and came here before a certain age
  • invested in our society

then these children, now high school graduates, would be eligible to apply for a non-immigrant visa.  This visa would enable the holder to obtain a driver’s license but not to vote.  This visa also would enable the holder to stay in the US legally to complete his education—e.g., go to college.

The “certain age” requirement is intended to include young teenagers and children but exclude older teenagers and adults—i.e., those in a position to exercise a choice about whether to enter the US illegally would be ineligible, but those who were ” brought here by their parents or by circumstances” would be eligible.

Senator Rubio discriminates this from amnesty in a couple of ways.

There’s a difference that we’ve long recognized in this country, for example, in the case of refugees, between the people who have chosen to break the law and be here illegally and those who were either brought here by their parents or by circumstances[.]

Moreover, unlike amnesty, a green card would not automatically be awarded to a non-immigrant visa holder.  Only after the non-immigrant visa holder has been in the US, acting as a productive member of his community, for a number of years after obtaining this visa, would the holder would be eligible to apply for a green card, if he wished.  He would have to do so, though, through then-existing channels; there would be no special pathway either for the green card or for citizenship.

This is an outline of a plan, and as he notes, it’s a first step.  It doesn’t address the question of the adult illegal aliens, nor does it address the other two legs of proper immigration reform: securing our borders and making it far easier for immigrants to enter our country legally.  However, this is a good start, and it’s well worth supporting.

Two Kinds of Politics

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We have two kinds of politics that seem to be coming to a head in this presidential campaign season: the politics of class warfare and envy and the politics of respect for individuals and for the collective wisdom of American citizens.

On the one side, we have, as one pundit puts it

…to a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear.

And of jealousy.

This campaign is aimed at those John Agresto described, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about a related matter, who

…wish to have what others have worked for, those who think there should be “preferential options” for their kind and those they favor, those who believe that they are entitled to have their desires satisfied, [who] only see other people as means to their ends and not as ends in themselves.

They can only see that others have what they do not, that others possess what they want, and they command the redistribution of these things to themselves.

This is a campaign of class warfare, of redistribution for no other reason than that some have and others want it, and of increasing the dependency of Americans on government; and votes are to be had here.

On the other side, we have a campaign of real hope and change, a campaign of a return to a government that fosters individual responsibility and individual opportunity for themselves and their families.  Their campaign centers on a return to a small government that does not presume to do for Americans what we can do for ourselves: these campaigners, these candidates, trust Americans, individually and collectively, to make the right choices for themselves far more often than government can for them.

This is a campaign in favor of lower taxes all around, less government spending all around, less government regulatory interference in the affairs of private citizens and our businesses—all to leave more money in the hands of those who’ve earned it.  And thereby make everyone better off.

As one campaigner has put it,

Dependency is death to initiative, to risk-taking and opportunity.  It’s time to stop the spread of government dependency and fight it like the poison it is.