White House Rejects Claim It Skewed Expert Opinion to Justify Drilling Ban

June 11th, 2010 Posted By Pat Dollard.

Fox News:

White House energy adviser Carol Browner on Friday rejected accusations from a panel of experts who claim the administration misrepresented their views to justify a six-month ban on offshore drilling in response to the BP oil rig disaster.

The denial came after the experts alleged that the Interior Department modified a report in late May that was used as the basis for the sweeping moratorium on existing drilling and new permits.

Though the report claimed the analysts, picked by the National Academy of Engineering, “peer reviewed” the department’s recommendations, the experts say the two paragraphs that called for the moratorium were added only after they signed off on it.

To the contrary, the experts warn that such a moratorium could not only harm the economy but make the situation in the Gulf more dangerous. The April 20 oil rig explosion occurred while the Deepwater Horizon well was being shut down — a move that is much more dangerous than continuing ongoing drilling, they said.

“A blanket moratorium is not the answer,” they wrote in a letter claiming Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar’s report “misrepresents” their position. “A blanket moratorium will have the indirect effect of harming thousands of workers and further impact state and local economies suffering from the spill.”

That’s exactly the argument that Gulf Coast lawmakers and the families of oil rig workers have been making as they fight the administration’s moratorium decision.

“We do not believe that punishing the innocent is the right thing to do. We encourage the secretary of interior to overcome emotion with logic,” the experts wrote.

But while Salazar has acknowledged that the moratorium was his decision, not theirs, Browner argued that the administration did nothing wrong.

“No one’s been deceived or misrepresented,” Browner told Fox News, defending the moratorium as a safety measure. “These experts gave their expert advice, and then a determination was made looking at all of the information, including what these experts provided — that there should be a pause, and that’s exactly what there is. There’s a pause.”

The experts claimed the draft report that they looked at called for a six-month freeze on permits for new exploratory wells 1,000 feet or deeper and a “temporary pause” on current drilling.

Somehow, that was changed to call for a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs and an “immediate halt” to drilling operations on 33 permitted wells.

“None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report,” oil expert Ken Arnold told Fox News. “What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation.”

The experts also faxed a memo to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Louisiana Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter to clarify that they do not believe the report justifies the moratorium.

They also said that because the floating rigs are scarce and in high demand worldwide, they will not simply sit in the Gulf idle for six months. The rigs will go to the North Sea and West Africa, possibly preventing the U.S. from being able to resume drilling for years.

They said the best and most advanced rigs will be the first to go, leaving the U.S. with the older and potentially less safe rights operating in the nation’s coastal waters.

Fox News’ William LaJeunesse contributed to this report.

Economic Cluelessness

Economic Cluelessness

Posted By Larry Elder On June 11, 2010 @ 12:20 am In FrontPage | 14 Comments

While in high school, I was standing at a bus stop next to a gas station. A kid tossed a candy wrapper on the station lot. Somebody yelled, “Hey, pick that up.” The kid, with a straight face, defended himself. He said, “I just created a job.” Someone would be hired, he explained, to pick up the trash, and this would be good for the economy.

Don’t laugh. The kid probably works for the Obama administration.

Congress is now considering yet another “stimulus” package. But did the administration’s previous one work? Of the $787 billion stimulus package, President Obama said it would “save or create” 3.5 million new jobs. Has it?

The National Association for Business Economics polled 68 private-sector members. Seventy-three percent said the employment at their companies was neither higher nor lower as a result of the stimulus package.

What about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office? A February 2009 Washington Times article said:

“President Obama’s economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

“CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.”

What do normal, regular, real-world people think? In December 2009, a Rasmussen poll asked likely voters whether the “stimulus” helped, hurt or did nothing.

They agreed with the private-sector economists and the CBO — the stimulus did not work. And more felt it did damage than thought it helped: “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30 percent of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38 percent believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.”

Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and commentator Ed we-need-health-care-reform-and-I-don’t-care-how-much-it-costs Schultz think one way. Believers in the free market and limited government think another. As between these two camps, which one better understands how the real world works?

Zogby International asked questions about economics of nearly 5,000 people. George Mason University economist Dan Klein co-authored a report on the responses given to eight basic economic questions.

(Correct answers and “not sure” responses were ignored — only flatly incorrect responses were counted.) Do housing restrictions increase the price of housing? The answer is yes. Whether the restrictions are good or bad is a separate issue. But restrictions on any good increase the price of that good — whether houses or horseshoes. Do minimum wages increase unemployment? The answer is yes. Whether one accepts this as a worthy trade-off is a separate question. Is our standard of living higher than it was 30 years ago? It is. Whether we are “addicted” to oil or facing cataclysmic “global warming” is a separate issue. The other questions involved licensing, rent control, the definition of a monopoly, the definition of exploitation, and whether free trade leads to unemployment.

Respondents self-identified as progressive/very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, or libertarian. Who did better?

“On every question,” wrote Klein, “the left did much worse. On the monopoly question, the portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (31 percent) was more than twice that of conservatives (13 percent) and more than four times that of libertarians (7 percent). On the question about living standards, the portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (61 percent) was more than four times that of conservatives (13 percent) and almost three times that of libertarians (21 percent).”

Maybe those with more education performed better? No, the report said. “We work with three levels of schooling: (1) high school or less; (2) some college (but not a degree); (3) a college degree or more. In our data, economic enlightenment is not correlated with going to college.”

The left blames the financial collapse on “greed,” ignoring the role played by government involvement — Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing Administration, the Community Reinvestment Act and elsewhere. Leftists point to “insufficient regulation” on Wall Street for reckless behavior, rather than to the players’ assumption that too-big-to-fail would protect them.

On the BP Gulf oil spill, Obama wants to find “whose ass to kick.” He’s called for a moratorium on new offshore drilling. But why do we drill offshore for oil more than a mile deep? Is it that on-land and safer, shallow water areas are off-limits — thus pushing companies to extract oil from more dangerous places? Have the restrictions on clean nuclear power altered how and where we obtain energy?

Republicans, in the eight-question economics poll, averaged 1.61 incorrect answers. Democrats averaged 4.59 wrong answers. So in the President’s search for “ass to kick,” start here.

Larry Elder is a syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author. His latest book, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?” is available now. To find out more about Larry Elder, visit his Web page at http://www.WeveGotACountryToSave.com.

A Shrink Asks: What’s Wrong with Obama?

June 12th, 2010

By Robin of Berkeley

Obama needs a Shrink 

So what is the matter with Obama? Conservatives have been asking this question for some time. I’ve written a number of articles trying to solve the mystery.
Even some liberals are starting to wonder. James Carville railed about Obama’s blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd revamped Obama’s “Yes We Can” motto into “Will We Ever?”
The liberal women of the TV show “The View” have expressed sympathy for Michelle Obama’s living with a man so out of touch. Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe, recently pronounced him disconnected.
Obama’s odd mannerisms intrigue a psychotherapist like me. He also…

Read More

Obama to Tea Partiers: See! The Gulf Disaster is What Smaller Government Will Get You

By Doug Powers  •  June 12, 2010 11:29 AM

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

When you’re stuck in quicksand, the first pointer in the survival manual is not to flail — President Obama hasn’t read that manual:

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”

Is the president saying that he didn’t react quickly because he was trying to placate Tea Party activists, thus blaming them for the slow response? Obama almost makes it sound like he let the Gulf die to make a point against those who are for smaller, more responsible government, doesn’t he?

Besides, the whole argument is bogus, desperate, and perhaps eventually counterproductive for Obama.

Dan Riehl:

Patently false. If the Tea Party mentality held sway, we’d be drilling in ANWR and closer to the shore in shallower water, so this disaster would never have happened. He’s opening the door for even more attacks over how government overreach creates problem like this.

On top of that, it was Obama who was talking about more drilling just before the rig explosion. Is he now saying that was a bad idea, he simply pushed for pure politics? Americans are smart enough to know there’s a big difference between how the government reacts in a major disaster, or a war, versus how it encroaches into their lives more and more on any given day.

‘Nuff said.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Obama’s Treachery

By Geoffrey P. Hunt

Obama’s White  House stands accused of tampering with U.S. Senate primary elections involving Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Andrew Romanoff in Colorado. Both Democratic primary challengers apparently were urged to drop out of their races by White House operatives in exchange for a job. The details remain murky as storylines from White House officials, along with Sestak and Romanoff  themselves, are both evasive and implausible. But this much is clear: Election tampering by Obama treads upon the very foundation of American exceptionalism — free elections in a representative democracy. 

Cynics and apologists alike brush aside this scandal. It’s business as usual, both political parties do it, you have to be naïve to believe this kind of electioneering is rare. In fact, Ed Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania, on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace, had the gall to assert that this kind of election manipulation shows presidential leadership in getting things done.

Well, election tampering and transparent corruption are not business as usual unless you’re a Democrat. Whether it be suppression of the black vote in the south for a hundred years after the Civil War, Tammany Hall politics at the turn of the 20^th century in New York, machine politics in Chicago, or bribes and payoffs for votes on health care and stimulus funding, the failure to prosecute polling place intimidation by the Black Panthers in Philadelphia or Acorn voter registration fraud, this is the Democratic Party Way, the Obama Way.

In a quote attributed to Robert Gibbs, Obama’s mouthpiece, “The White House has a legitimate interest in avoiding messy Democratic Party primaries. … Presidents, as leaders of their parties, have long had an interest in ensuring that supporters didn’t run against each other in contested elections.” Oh really? Should presidents bribe rivals to get them out of the way?

Indeed, free elections are messy. President Obama himself said so in his commencement address this year at the University of Michigan: “U.S. politics long has been noisy and messy, contentious, complicated” — a repeat of lines in his 2010 State of the Union, “Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.” 

Apparently it’s too messy, excessively contentious, and inconveniently complicated for Obama and his operatives to honor the bedrock principle in American governance.

The Founders, especially James Madison, had great difficulty with direct democracy for good reason. Representative democracy instead offered stability and a check against mob rule. And a greater number of representatives would be an inoculation against corruption by the cabal of too few. But a reliance on representative democracy placed a heavy burden on the process of electing those representatives. “[S]uffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters” (From the Federalist No. 10).

The symbolism of free elections in a representative democracy is best depicted in the 1851 painting The County Election by Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham, now owned by and displayed in the St. Louis Art Museum.

 

Bingham, who painted a series of mid-19^th-century political scenes, shows a typical small-town election somewhere in rural America. This painting evokes the characteristic ritual of American representative democracy, free exercise of suffrage. Of course, in 1851, universal suffrage was not yet the norm. Yet the scene evokes a “noisy, messy, contentious, and complicated process,” as Obama would say. Simultaneously subtle and athletic — with suasion and vote-prodding from a snort of hard cider, heated words, raised voices, muscular posturing, and even a newspaper editor’s rant. 

And despite the sweaty, dusty, and strong breath elements of electioneering, the sacred ritual of a fully accessible process — even Election Day mischief-making and influence-peddling, but all in the open, where voters can actually cast a ballot for their choices — is at the heart of the American system of governance.

Obama, riding the wave of a popular coronation, has been imposing governance through the raw power of an unbridled majority and has little patience for this sort of pluralism, especially when it interferes with his agenda. It’s hard to imagine Obama endorsing Bingham’s brand of representative democracy.

Obama’s hollow complaints against assaults on democracy, notably his condemnation of the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United vs FEC during his State of the Union address, are hailed by his Democratic Party bedfellows. Yet how easy it is for these same party hacks and shameless partisans to either ignore or rationalize Obama’s own assault on democracy when he manipulates federal election primaries.

Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed — and, by the way, was enabled by a far greater proportion of Republican than Democrat U.S. senators — Democrats and liberals have been grandstanding self-promoters decrying voter disenfranchisement. But where is this purity of process when it comes to arriving at the actual names on the ballot?

And who are now the champions of suppressing free speech through revival of the Fairness Doctrine and eliminating the U.S. Senate rules on the filibuster and cloture? The Democrats. Who are now advocating the regulation of journalism through the Federal Trade Commission? The Democrats.

Obama and his operatives cannot escape the stench from their wholesale corruption of American governance. And their amateurish bungling is neither amusing nor defensible. Tampering with federal elections is only the latest in long line of brazen, cynical manipulations. Only a few among today’s political class, notably Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), have the courage to call out such treachery by demanding an independent inquiry. How long will their courage hold out?

Obama’s Israel Doctrine

By E.W. Jackson Sr.

When people say “I hate to say I told you so,” they rarely mean it. What they really mean is, “I was right, and I am glad to tell you so.” A year ago, I wrote,

“Obama apparently sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. Those who think clearly about these issues must conclude that President Obama is influenced by a quiet strain of anti-Semitism picked up from elements of the black community, leftist colleagues, Muslim associations and Jeremiah Wright. For the first time in her history, Israel may find the President of the United States openly siding with her enemies. Those who believe that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight.”

I really do hate to say, “I told you so.” I did not vote for Barack Obama, but I hoped he would surprise me and not be the kind of President that his background portended. Most Americans, even those who didn’t vote for him, wanted to believe that he would transcend the negative forces which might have influenced his thinking. Perhaps the anti-Semitism to which he had been exposed had not gotten into his intellectual DNA. He attempted to reassure us.

During his Presidential campaign, he declared in a speech to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel. Within days of that speech he reversed his position and said that what happens to Jerusalem is a matter of negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians. When Israel permitted the building of housing — i.e., “settlements” — in east Jerusalem, he condemned the activity and made a “settlement freeze” the prerequisite to resuming peace talks. When Netanyahu visited the White House after the “settlement” flap, Obama treated him like a child, leaving him in the White House basement. His positions and policies have turned out to mirror and in some cases be more anti-Israel than the Palestinians.

In his much-hyped speech in Cairo, reaching out to the “Muslim World,” Obama drew a moral equivalence between the “suffering” of the Palestinians and the Holocaust against the Jewish people. He said, “Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.” But he went on to say, “On the other hand it is also undeniable that Palestinians…have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.”

To equate these two vastly different historical realities borders on the delusional. There is no equivalence between a systematic effort to annihilate the entire Jewish people and the problem of “dislocation” — as Obama refers to it — of the Palestinians. If there is any similarity at all, it is that many Palestinians, like the Nazis, want to kill all Jews.

Article 7 of the Hamas Charter — purported to be a quote from Mohammed — says, “The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews). When the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say, O Moslems, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” It is Palestinians who want to commit a holocaust against Israel. There is no such threat or desire on the part of Israel against the Palestinians. The Jewish nation simply wants to live in peace.

Helen Thomas, an Obama devotee, recently said, the Jews need to “get the hell out of Palestine.” Obama is silent. For years Jews in Israel could hardly sleep for fear that Hamas rockets would land in their homes. Yet when Israel takes reasonable action to search ships to prevent weapons from entering Gaza, she is condemned. Obama is silent. Reuters doctored the pictures of the recent blockade confrontation — editing out weapons in the hands of the ship’s crew — so as to perpetuate the narrative of Israeli aggression. Obama is silent. Perhaps if he had not spent twenty years in the church of a rabid anti-Semite, President Obama’s muteness would not speak so loudly. However, given his close association with Islam and with one of Louis Farrakhan’s best friends, his silence must be interpreted as consent. I wish I were wrong about this President, but facts are stubborn things.

Since I sounded the first warning a year ago, Iran is on the brink of having nuclear weapons, and enemies of the Jews have gotten the message that if they attack Israel, this President will do nothing about it. Relations between Israel and the U.S. are the most strained they’ve ever been, and they will remain tense until Obama is voted out of office. His foreign policy doctrine toward Israel boils down to four words: he doesn’t like them. Therefore, things are going to get worse before they get better. Nonetheless, Israel is not alone and never will be. Her defenders will stay in the fight until every Jew sits under his own vine and his own fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.

E.W. Jackson Sr. is the President of STAND – Staying True To America’s National Destiny and Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries. Email him at stand@standamerica.us