Obama’s Cap and Trade Bill and Light Bulbs

The passage of the new climate bill is a terrible thing as it is the largest tax placed on Americans.  While the concept might seem great, the cost of cap and trade is passed on to the consumer.  The purpose of the bill was to help us get away from  foreign oil.  It will actually do the opposite.

When oil producers have to pay a tax, it increases their costs.  Those costs get passed on to us.  Once the costs get too high, the only thing the domestic producers will be able to do is shut down refineries and reduce production.   This bill is going to raise the cost of oil so much that we’re going to start importing oil again.

Besides this effect, it doesn’t help that 300 pages were added to the bill at the very last minute.  How many of the democratic congress men actually read the bill?  To top it off, Obama’s “Energy Czar” hasn’t even read the bill.  Jimmie, from the Sundries Shack has a nice opinion on that.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy.

“I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.

And by “better” the administration means “whatever crappy expensive new lighting General Electric happens to be making that might possibly eke out an infinitesimal energy savings, damn the cost to you or your employer”.

Now Obama wants to regulate your lightbulb. I knew that we would have big government with Obama, but this is more than I would have thought.  If Obama would let capitalism run its course, we would have more efficient bulbs.  It is not government that is the creator of new ideas, it is the entrepreneur.  As Obama and his government get more mixed in with business, they will continue to stifle the economy.

Obama pointed out the following in the article.

He pointed to the state of California as an example of what stricter energy efficiency standards could achieve. In the late 1970’s, California enacted tougher energy policies, which the president said, helped create millions of jobs. Today, he said, Californians consume 40 percent less energy per person than the national average.

Ya, California is an example of all that is good. <Sarcasm>  Does that also include their $24 Billion in deficits this year?  Government should be small.  It should mind its own business and let the people take care of themselves.

Obama challenged on Healthcare

During Obama’s 75 minutes of primetime coverage, he was questioned by some doctors regarding a scenario on what he would do if his family became sick.  Would Obama make a pledge to use his own plan and go with the public option?  His response:

“…if it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

In otherwords, no.  He wouldn’t use his own plan.  Like everyone else, he wants the very best.  That means use of private insurers.  With a government regulated health plan, they’re going to cut cost by limiting what treatment can be done.

The GOP Senators also have a concern.

“At a time when major government programs like Medicare and Medicaid are already on a path to fiscal insolvency, creating a brand new government program will not only worsen our long-term financial outlook but also negatively impact American families who enjoy the private coverage of their choice,” the senators wrote.

“The end result would be a federal government takeover of our health care system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy.”

Obama responds by saying that they’re wrong.  Obama has no executive experience.  He has no business experience.  How can he say they are wrong?  Obama claims that the public option would have lower administrative costs.  That’s a bunch of horse pucky.  Since when has government ever had lower costs?  It never has.  Take Congress as an example.  Congress can’t even live within it’s means. Now Obama is promising that a public run health care system will cost us less?

Obama continues on to say that:

he didn’t understand those advocates of the free market who constantly say the private sector can do things better and are yet worried about this plan.

He also said:

that the private sector might not necessarily be better, point out that users of Medicare and Veterans Administration hospitals constantly rate “pretty high satisfaction.”

The reason that he doesn’t understand is because he is dumb.  He apparently doesn’t remember the VA hospital fiasco a couple years back.  The only reason Medicare and the VA have “pretty high satisfaction” is because they have unlimited money through tax dollars.  If the public plan is to compete and ofter the same great service, we will spend more than the promised “low administrative costs.”

And the only reason the administrative costs “might” be lower is because the costs is subsidized by the government.  Since the private sector uses the free market, that is how much the services are worth.  When government offers something for less, they have to subsidize it.  It ends up costing more.  How ever much we “save” on administrative costs are collected through taxes.

Obama’s so-called “transparency”

The June 20, 2009 Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff starts with the following:

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding “secret energy meetings” with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s “clean coal” policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged “presidential communications.” The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig’s office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a “new era” of openness, “nothing has changed,” says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. “For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies.”

According to the article, it’s the way the transparency memo was written, that allowed the president to not provide this information.  It’s politics as usual.  Clayton Cramer summarizes the problem in three short paragraphs, particularly the last one regarding Sarah Palin and her executive experience.

The Obama Administration told a bunch of whoppers: it was going to support gay rights; it was going to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; it was going to close Gitmo right away; it was going to pull our troops out of Iraq almost immediately; it was going to have no lobbyists working in the government; it was going to be transparent; it was going to have every bill visible in final form for five days before Obama signed it.

And unfortunately, the mainstream media bought all this garbage, asking no questions, never challenging candidate Obama about how all this was going to happen. And they are now just barely starting to challenge President Obama when they discover that he either lied to them, or didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into as President.

I had some concerns that Sarah Palin wasn’t qualified to be President, in the event that McCain didn’t last the first term. But I’m guessing that being governor of a state–even a small population state like Alaska–means that she has had at least a few hints about what is involved in running the executive branch of a government. It’s clear that Obama did not have a clue, and even McCain’s knowledge was necessarily limited to what he learned from being in Congress.

We’ve already identified as a Flip-Flop.  Eventually, everyone will know Obama’s true nature.  Hopefully it’s not too late by then.

A Kid-Gloves Approach to Iran Still Stumbles

President Obama has opted to take a very delicate, non-committal stance toward Iran and its elections, saying that he doesn’t want to alienate whichever section of the government comes into power in the face of some of the large diplomatic issues facing the region.  He has not stood in support of the protesters looking for a fair election, but has seemed to step back to await the outcome.  Even some of the main members of the Obama administration would like to see a stronger stance, including Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton.  Here is an account of the position he has taken:

Senior members of the administration, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would like to strike a stronger tone in support of the protesters, administration officials said.

Other White House officials have counseled a more cautious approach, saying harsh criticism of the government or endorsement of the protests could have the paradoxical effect of discrediting the protesters and making them seem as if they were led by Americans. So far, Mr. Obama has largely followed that script, criticizing violence against the protesters, but saying that he does not want to be seen as meddling in Iranian domestic politics…

But several administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama might run the risk of coming across on the wrong side of history at a potentially transformative moment in Iran.

The administration’s concern over how to calibrate the response to the protests in Iran reflects the competing goals Mr. Obama is trying to balance: keeping faith with democracy advocates in Iran while not staking out a position that is so tough that it kills any chance of engagement with the Iranian government on America’s national security interests, including the Iranian nuclear program and Iran’s support for militant Islamist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.

For all President’s Obama’s tiptoeing around the issue of Iran’s elections, he has also made the mistake of a comment that almost seems to disregard the election’s importance, and could crucially affect the relationship between the United States and Iran later on:

[President Obama] said in an interview on Tuesday with The New York Times and CNBC that from an American national security perspective, there was not much difference between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hussein Moussavi, his closest competitor in the election.

“Either way,” Mr. Obama said, the United States is “going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons.”

The remark struck critics as off key and dismissive toward Mr. Moussavi, when he has become a symbol of freedom and democracy in Iran. “Obama’s posture has been very equivocal, without a clear message,” said Representative Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican who is the House minority whip. “Now is the time for us to show our support with the Iranian people. I would like to see a strong statement from him that has moral clarity.”

President Obama’s policy toward Iran seems to be weak, with some critical missteps and errors throughout.  If the New York Times is right when it says, “the United States is in a more delicate position than other countries because of its enormous symbolism in Iran, where ‘Death to the United States’ is still chanted at Friday Prayer,” one might think the best foreign policy would be one of strength, rather than weakness.

Obama provides weak response to N. Korea and Iran

There has been a lot of global happenings this past week.  Iran recently had an election where the current president received the popular vote.  But with that popular vote, there are calls of corruption and that the vote was tainted.  Currently, Iran is trying to define itself and figure out how to handle the problem.  How does Obama respond?  He doesn’t want the US to appear as meddling in the affairs of Iran. The problem is that was not the appropriate response.  As stated by the writer at www.stoptheaclu.com

From yesterday

But at the same time, Obama said it would not be helpful if the United States was seen by the world as “meddling” in the issue.

Today

Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of “intolerable” meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter postelection dispute. Opposition supporters marched in Tehran’s streets for a third straight day to protest the outcome of the balloting.

Looks like President Neophyte is getting school (yet again) on how foreign affairs works. Maybe now he will step up and call for freedom, openness, fairness, etc? Oh, sorry, that was me just dreaming a bit.

Obama is new and he’s learning on the job.  This is what we don’t want or need as president.  He is a disgrace.  Now this morning we hear that North Korea has plans to fire a missle in the the direction of Hawaii.  While the missile has a range of 4000 miles and Hawaii is 4500 miles away, that is not acceptable.    Obama doesn’t make any comment.  He can only “hope” that North Korea will return to the “talks”.

What would another country do?  Let’s take Israel.  They wouldn’t put up with it.  They’d launch their F-16’s to take out the launch site and anything else that threatened them.  How about the US?  We stay quiet and hope that we one day will grow a back bone.  Obama is the leader of the United States and he has done nothing with regard to North Korea.  He has done noting in regard to Iran.  He is sitting there hoping things will get better on their own.

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