Own a house? Beware climate bill

If you will ever consider buying or selling a house, you need to beware of the Democrats' "cap and trade" bill that recently passed the House of Representatives. It could dramatically lower the value of your property and/or make it very difficult for you to sell it without very expensive and time-consuming upgrades. (Story linked here, with full text below.) They call it a national "retrofit" policy. If it becomes law, you will not be permitted to sell your property until it meets federal energy standards that Congress has not seen fit to define.

In this bill Congress asserts enormous additional (and unconstitutional) power for the federal government, but delegates the practical details to the environmental zealots and other bureaucrats in the EPA and in state governments. Thus nobody in particular can be held accountable for requiring building retrofits that could bankrupt many homeowners and businesses.

Congress is unleashing regulatory pit bulls on unsuspecting citizens while preserving its own ability to deny any wrongdoing. Politicians do know how to cover their posteriors while doing great damage.

If you have ever sold a house, you know how much stress is involved, especially in a weak housing market such as we already have. This bill is all we need to destroy the market and force us to visit Congress with torches and pitchforks.

If the Senate also passes this abomination, President Obama will sign it. But you still have a little time left to influence the Senate vote. I suggest you get to it pronto.

And be sure to remember this insanity in November, 2010.

CNSNews.com Democrats’ Cap-and-Trade Bill Creates ‘Retrofit’ Policy for Homes and Businesses Wednesday, July 01, 2009 By Matt Cover

(CNSNews.com) – The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.

This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal "green" guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.

The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to "facilitate" the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.

"The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences," the bill reads.

It continues: "The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States."

The bill leaves the definition of a retrofit and the details of the REEP program up to the EPA. However, states are responsible for ensuring that the government’s plans are carried out, whatever the final details may entail.

"States shall maintain responsibility for meeting the standards and requirements of the REEP program," the bill says.

Ag lobby blew it on climate bill

Maybe when climate-change regulators strangle the economy and carbon-counters turn gas, oil and electricity into expensive luxuries, farmers will recognize how our "friends" in Washington, D.C., sold us out in the name of political compromise. Capitol Hill's agriculture lobby had a choice: withhold support from the Waxman-Markey climate control bill or agree to a compromise that provides cover to rural-district Democrats who support it.

Without those rural votes, Waxman-Markey was bound for the shredder. With those votes, it barely garnered the minimum needed for passage.

Colorado's delegation illustrates the chasm between Democrats with a real-world understanding of agriculture and those whose concern is as sincere as that pair of jeans they bought for county fairs.

Rep. John Salazar, a San Luis Valley potato farmer, staked out his "no" vote early, recognizing that Waxman-Markey will drastically increase energy costs.

Meanwhile, freshman Rep. Betsy Markey, a former staffer to then-Sen. Ken Salazar, voted for the bill, claiming that "critical adjustments were made to protect the agriculture industry." At least that's what the agriculture lobby told her.

Markey is simply "dancing with the ones who brung her." Defenders of Wildlife spent $1.6 million to beat up her opponent last fall; those who think Markey isn't a hard-wired environmental extremist are kidding themselves.

However, the economic illiteracy of the agriculture lobby is embarrassing. Waxman-Markey's threat to farmers and ranchers isn't limited to the carbon emissions of trucks, tractors and flatulent livestock.

In March, a dozen ag lobbying organizations -- including National Association of Wheat Growers and National Farmers Union -- agreed on nine "Principles for Greenhouse Gas Legislation."

Not one of those principles addressed fuel or energy costs. Yet Waxman-Markey will increase electricity rates by an estimated 90 percent and fuel prices by 58 percent, according to Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis. The analysis projects cap-and-trade will reduce net farm income by 28 percent by 2012 and 94 percent by 2035, That's in addition to $1,241 per year that cap-and-tax will add to the average household's energy bill.

Farmers recognize those costs, but agriculture lobbyists seem just as clueless as lawmakers who think milk and bread come from the grocery store.

Worse still, these lobbyists seem more concerned about "being at the table" than whether the deal they strike will hold up. Simply put, agriculture lobbyists agreed to create a new bureaucracy in exchange for promises that bureaucrats won't regulate agriculture and might even pay farmers for carbon sequestration and tree planting.

EPA's analysis sees little upside for agriculture, anticipating declining crop production due to higher input costs and fewer acres for livestock grazing if landowners are paid to plant trees instead.

The agriculture compromise resulted in a 300-page amendment released at 3 a.m. on the day of the vote. How many congressmen (or lobbyists) read the amendment or the 1,200-page bill? Now ag lobby compromisers want the Senate to hold hearings to examine how these special provisions will work and "the effects of the complete bill on the industry."

It's a little late for that now, boys and girls.

These "principles" were naïve from the get-go. Avoiding regulation that doesn't exist is much easier than expecting special treatment from regulators when the agriculture vote no longer matters.

Agriculture is "a major polluter," according to those who believe trading trillions in higher taxes, higher energy costs, and lost jobs for a minuscule possible reduction in temperatures is a good deal. Once the carbon caps are enforced, will climate-change zealots and non-exempt industries continue to give a pass to agriculture?

For that matter, does anyone believe that China, India or Russia will restrict their carbon emissions once the U.S. unilaterally imposes this burden on our economy? In military or trade matters, giving away everything you have to trade would be recognized as foolishness.

All of this adds up to a rotten deal for agriculture and for everyone who consumes what we produce. Maybe these agriculture lobbyists will understand that when they're out of a job, too.

Mark Hillman is a wheat farmer who also served as senate majority leader and state treasurer. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com

“Born Yesterday” years out of date

TCM, the Turner Classic Movie channel, offers a steady stream of yesterday’s movies. Sometimes it offers a classic that provides more than nostalgia, with a window into the past that contrasts sharply with the present. "Born Yesterday (1950)," a popular comedy about both the virtues and the dangers of a little learning, ran this week, and made me lament the passing of the sort of education that can no longer be taken from granted. All I knew as a seven-year-old, besides the fact that bright theatre marquees displayed the movie’s title and stars in vivid letters, was that a beautiful but dumb woman, Emma "Billie" Dawn (played by Judy Holliday) was getting a lot of laughs for the ignorant, if not stupid things she consistently said. I heard something about the story being somewhat more complicated than that, but that’s about as far as my comprehension went. Now I know–and know of–many people who have been formally educated far beyond what Billie learned but possess far less understanding than she acquired.

Emma is the seven-year girl friend of Harry Brock (played by Broderick Crawford), a millionaire tycoon who thinks and acts more like a hoodlum than a businessman. (Unfortunately, this is the perennial Hollywood caricature of people in other businesses, or is it a self portrait?) He wants to get some results for his congressional bribes, so he must make the Washington D.C. scene. Unfortunately, he is burdened by a woman lacking in the social graces and incredibly ignorant, or so he thinks. In due course, he comes into contact with a polished journalist named Paul Verrall (played by William Holden) who, it occurs to Brock, can educate his "dumb broad" and not embarrass him around all the important people he must meet and/or win over. His scheme is to get a bill passed that, in ways that are not particularly clear, give him the edge over his domestic and foreign competitors in the junk business.

In any case, Brock thinks he is pretty smart to hit upon this idea, but events, to put it mildly, take a different turn. Billie, who goes blank when her tutor makes a reference to the Supreme Court, soon gets a pretty thorough tour of the nation’s capital and picks up a dizzying vocabulary along with a lot of pertinent information. Her life is transformed, not only by the accumulation of books, most notably a huge dictionary, but by her attraction to the polished, polite and attentive Paul, with whom she quickly falls in love. But as inevitable and even just as their pairing is, it is overshadowed by the education she receives in the nation’s founding (with a qualification to be explained below).

Billie visits the capitol building and becomes acquainted with the immortals commemorated there. She also goes to art museums, attends concerts and browses through multiple historic sites, but the most impressive turns out to be the Jefferson Memorial. There she finds written the third President’s powerful words: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Billie’s first gaze is mostly blank, but after she comes to know, through her education, that the man she’s been living with (and living comfortably) for so long is not merely annoying or difficult to deal with or understand, but is in fact a tyrant, Jefferson’s words take on considerably more meaning.

Of course, that is a lesson for us all, for tyrants are not merely ghastly men who rule countries outside our borders, but rise up among us, but restrained, for the most part, by laws, institutions and public opinion, and especially by the United States Constitution. Harry reasons with or otherwise deals politely with other people so long as they tell him or give him what he wants but flies into a rage at the slightest sign of disagreement or difficulty. Because Billie has (supposedly) read the works of Thomas Paine (but not of Abraham Lincoln), she has a pretty good idea of what a tyrant is, and her man fills the bill.

After years of complaisantly signing documents as if she were his wife, Billie decides she wants to read what they say. Harry’s shrewd advisor, Jim Devery (played by Howard St. John), pleads with Billie to sign but is unable to prevent the explosion that occurs when his boss finds out that the complaisance might be over. True to form, Harry beats Billie until she signs, although it is no surprise that she forms the intention then and there to leave him and never to sign onto any more of his opaque dealings.

When Billie finally resolves to bail out altogether, Harry can’t make up his mind whether he likes the idea or not, although it seems clear enough that he loves her, albeit in his own way, and would rather she stayed. But she is too educated for him now, for we learn as the movie progresses that Harry’s smarts are more often not pure bluster, which fools only those who are as ignorant as he is. The wise Paul hits upon a plan to thwart Harry once and for all.

"Born Yesterday," based on a Broadway play of the same name which opened in 1945, oversimplifies education, to be sure, in its own version of the Pygmalion story. (Compare "Never on Sunday" and "My Fair Lady.") But at least it is wholesome in holding out the prospect that an educated person can appreciate the virtues of our democratic form of government and the men who designed and implemented it. Yet not long after this, our university professors began to teach the opposite lesson, namely, that democracy is a sham and a delusion that enables the Harry Brocks of this world to rule in their own interest at the expense of a multitude of oppressed classes that run from the poor, to racial minorities, to women, to children, to homosexuals and lesbians, foreigners, and all of the "other" ad infinitum.

Education is no longer a source of hope and renewal but of cynicism and despair. Imagine if "Born Yesterday" had been produced with the assumptions of the professorial elite in our time. Billie would have learned that the problem is not Harry Brock so much as the United States of America. Rather than celebrating our form of government, the "educated" person concludes that it is rotten to the core and ought to be "transformed" into something entirely different.

There is a link, only somewhat tenuous, between Hollywood’s political thinking of 1945 and 2009. The enemy is fascism, then and now. There is no "enemy to the Left." Harry is labeled a fascist, not a communist, at least partly justified since the United States and its allies recently prevailed over the fascist dictators in Germany, Italy and Japan with the aid of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (never mind its complicity in starting the war). The evil of Josef Stalin and his totalitarian regime was not apparent to many, even if it should have been. In the glow of victory, this is an excusable error.

Too, liberals had convinced themselves, by virtue of their devotion to democracy, that they were the progeny of the founding fathers, also democrats. A clue to the film’s partisanship is in the very reliance on Thomas Jefferson who, unlike Lincoln, is remembered at the Democratic Party’s annual dinners. The Republicans completed the Lincoln Memorial in the 1920s and the Democrats countered with the Jefferson Memorial in the 1930s. Surely both will do for educating about tyrants, but the film’s choice of Jefferson puts it firmly in the Democratic camp.

Our problem today is that it is not so clear that liberals are as firmly in the democratic camp as they were at the close of the Second World War. Between leftist professors teaching students to scorn their country, their civilization and their religion, and Democrat politicians scoffing at any distinction between democratic and undemocratic regimes abroad, public opinion is being dumbed down at least as much as Billie was, if not more so. For if Billie did not appreciate her country’s virtues, at least she did not despise them. On the other hand, those "educated" people who openly malign the freest country on earth might just as well have been born yesterday.

Junk politics, backed by junk science

So the House of Representatives, that august body led by union-backed leftists and intellectual dwarfs, has managed to narrowly pass a Climate change bill that will put a major burden on our fragile economy by taxing every source of energy at our disposal. Its unfathomable to me how we can spend billions of taxpayer dollars in bailouts and then make it even more difficult for the economy to recover. Worse, we are unilaterally disarming -- as other nations that have attempted "cap and trade" schemes are abandoning them left and right. As Kim Strassel at the WSJ shows today, the "climate" around climate change is, well, changing: Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

So it turns out that the whole climate change movement is based on science that is far from certain. In fact, the science may be junk: the earth has been cooling for the past decade, and it turns out that the hottest year on record was in the 1930s -- not the recent result of all the greenhouse gasses we've been polluting the atmosphere with. As Strassel shows, much of the world is wising up to the farce.

But not the U.S., which appears to be lagging behind the rest of the world, intent on repeating the mistakes of others. The truth, of course, is that the science has never mattered -- it was only a pretext to get people on a bandwagon that is really about social engineering.  The left wants us to live differently, and the only way that they can enforce their social agenda is to play fast and loose with the facts to convince people we are on a slippery slope to self destruction. The goal is deprivation, driven by a "consumption guilt" that regrets the plenty we have because others have so little. Never mind that the most egregious offenders of CO2 emissions are the less developed nations that are clear cutting forests with reckless abandon with no limits on carbon output. But that's another inconvenient truth that Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore and the other true believers don't want to talk about.

The madness of all this is that this is bad policy -- even if it is good politics for a public that has been brainwashed into believing that "green jobs" can save the world. We will figure this out eventually -- as Australia and others have. But it won't be before we take a costly trip down a path paved with good intentions.

Another one bites the dust

It's just a shame that a song by that title was actually more popular than Tuesday’s announcement from Senator Arlen Specter. This man just recently proclaimed he would not switch parties because it would upset the balance of power. A couple of years ago he got up in front of the Senate to announce he would sponsor a bill that would not allow Senators to switch parties during their term. So what does all this mean? Here are a few thoughts:

Once again another politician disappoints and outright lies to the public; One more reason not to trust them.

Our GOP has shown it has another member who can’t be trusted to do what he promises. All of us know without his support, the all-important 787 Billion “Economic Recovery” bill would not have been possible, and the world would be a different place today.

Let us be honest, Specter did this purely to save his own career. He most likely would have lost in the Republican primary and this was his only choice if he wanted to stay in the Senate.

Is this good or bad for the GOP?

I think it all depends on your point of view. If you are a tried and true Republican, you think they do no wrong and you will support them at all cost…..well then you probably are deeply distressed.

I happen to think it is both. If the party truly digs deep, atones for its sins, and finally stands up for itself, there is a great opportunity. What do I mean by “stands up for itself?” Well, it seems that every time the Democrats call us on the carpet about something, we just sit back and take it. We do not loudly defend our positions or even go after them when we do not like their policies. They play dirty politics, and folks, it is not our style. Sometimes you just cannot beat them if you do not have a straightforward and rational policy. It is rather obvious we need to get back to our roots, listen to Americans, stand up for what we believe, make some promises and LIVE by them. A message that is TRUE and really CONNECTS with America would be a good start.

Now for the BAD, or maybe the good. I fear if we do not get our act together quickly, our party will disintegrate. The history of political change is violent and quick. If you don’t believe me, read up on the transition from the Whigs to the Republican party before the Civil War. Or, how about how fast the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. It could happen if we are not careful. If we don’t clearly shape our positions, folks, I think it could happen before the next election in 2012.

Here is what I’d like to see us concentrate on:

** A Clear, Strong and Real Energy Policy that actually recognizes we need oil before we switch to another energy source. How about let’s go for a “Manhattan Project” to solve this problem.

** How about some REAL financial sanity.

** How about something to force our legislators to really live up to their promises. How about they have to sign a “warranty” that they actually read the bills they vote for.

** I’d go for a real and enforceable “None of the Above” on the ballot. If NOTA gets more votes, then both parties candidates are out and we have another election. Maybe they would actually do what they say!!!!

** And how about we change Election Day to April 15th. Nothing like having to vote on tax day!!! Maybe WE will actually think about what is really going on in Washington.

Bottom line: Time is running short for our party.

I do not want to see us go down into the junk heap of history as a failed experiment. I hope we can get our act together. If not we may be have to vote for the Democrats or the Common Sense party. It is important we speak to our leaders and plead with them for sanity and Common Sense.