Tag Archives: Indoctrination

How big business and enviro-charlatans benefit from Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax

Recently, I posted about the economic effects of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, including how it would impact individual families. I wrote about the true effects of Obama’s green jobs initiative, which will actually decrease employment instead of increasing it.

I also posted before about scientific dissent from global warming, the alleged melting polar ice caps, Obama’s planned tax hikes on oil and gas, deceptive alarmism to procure research funding, the alleged warming of the oceans, and the use of made-up crises in order to impose socialism. You can also read the testimony of a Princeton University physicist who is against global warming alarmism.

Who will pay for cap-and-trade?

ECM e-mailed me this story from PowerLine Blog, which explains how much each state will pay if cap and trade passes. John Hinderacker asks whether Obama things that the electorate is stupid enough to believe that the firms who must absorb this tax will just take it out of their profits and leave consumers untouched. He argues that Obama thinks we are stupid enough to believe that.

One commenter to the post writes:

No, he like many liberals actually believe corporations don’t pass on the tax to consumers but it is extracted from profits (lowering them). Remember, they have a very static, zero-sum view of the world.

This is also my view of Obama. He has been indoctrinated with socialist views and he has no freaking idea why they don’t work. He will be as shocked and surprised as any child is when they first learn that the Tooth Fairy is a myth. But that won’t stop him from nationalizing companies once he sees the mess that his interventions have made. Probably his handlers have this all planned out for him.

And where will that money be redistributed to?

But today I wanted to tell you about the people and corporations that are actively pushing for cap-and-trade, because if it passes they will suddenly become very, very rich.

The full story is posted at Steve Milloy’s Green Hell blog.

Big business meddling in government

Excerpt:

Although many businesses have been coerced into supporting Waxman-Markey, much of big business has actively pushed for the bill. Many Wall Street banks hope to profit from the trading of the $9 trillion in emissions allowances to be created under Waxman-Markey. Goldman Sachs would be the preeminent global warming bookie as it owns the exchanges where carbon allowances would be traded.

General Electric, whose CEO sits on Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, was instrumental in putting together the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a bizarre big business-environmental activist group lobbying consortium that is a primary driver of global warming legislation. USCAP has even taken credit for drafting parts of Waxman-Markey. GE, it seems, would like a federal law requiring electric utilities buy the wind turbines and other energy technologies manufactured by — guess who — GE.

Republican James Sensenbrenner recently asked the Department of Justice to investigate USCAP members General Motors and Chrysler for illegally using taxpayer bailout money to lobby for global warming legislation. AIG, the insurance giant that is now a ward of U.S. taxpayers, only dropped out of USCAP after Rep. Joe Barton pointed out the illegality of accepting federal money and then using it to lobby the federal government.

Enviro-charlatan greed

Excerpt:

And then there’s Al Gore, who stands to become the first “carbon billionaire” through his partnership in the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and the UK-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management. When Gore testified in favor of global warming legislation before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, he failed to disclose his personal financial interests and no Senator came close to asking him about them.

When he testified in April before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee in favor of Waxman-Markey, Gore again failed to disclose his conflicts-of-interest. When Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) probed into these matters, Gore feigned ignorance and pretended that he would not personally benefit from Waxman-Markey. Although Rep. Waxman made baseball players testify under oath to Congress about the comparatively petty issue of drug use in baseball, he did not subject Gore to penalty for perjury.

And more fascism, too

Competing for most-appalling character in the Waxman-Markey saga is Rep. Ed Markey. Immediately after the head of Warren Buffet’s electric utility unit testified against Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade provision, Markey fired off a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) specifically requesting that Buffet’s utility be investigated. After being rebuked by House Republicans for this blatant intimidation, Markey then asked FERC to expand the requested investigation to all investor-owned utilities, rather than appearing to single out Buffet’s. Now all utilities are under operating with a Markey-pointed gun to their heads.

They told lies about Bush’s “abuses of power” all through his presidency. Now that they are in control, and every new day brings to light more greed, bullying, corruption and fraud than we saw in Bush’s entire eight years in office. And that’s not even to mention that the average unemployment rate under Bush was about half of what it is today under Obama.

Kevin Boland reports on John Boehner’s blog that the bill is up for a floor vote in the House this week.

Which cable news network has the worst media bias?

Why I think that MSNBC is the most biased channel

Listen to Ed Schulz, who works for MSNBC, as he takes a call from a mildly critical caller to his radio show. (H/T NewsBusters)

See, an outburst like this is why I am not at all convinced that left-wingers would protect the rights to free speech of those who disagree with them. It seems to me that there is some fundamental disrespect for the human rights of others that is grounded by the secular-left’s worldview.

Here’s another left-winger, Tamarin Hall, from MSNBC. (H/T Hot Air)

Here’s another MSNBC left-winger, Rachel Maddow. (H/T American Power Blog via Blazing Cat Fur)

News Busters has more detail on Maddow’s reaction to Obama’s Cairo speech here.

The best one of all is here at Hot Air, in which Newsweek’s Evan Thomas is interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC! Thomas says, “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”.

Check out this interview by Keith Olbermann, also of MSNBC, with Steven Crowder.

Well, it’s not really Keith. So this video is fake, but accurate.

Contrast MSNBC with FoxNews

Contrast the fawning over Obama you see on MSNBC, with Charles Krauthammer on Fox News. (H/T Hot Air)

Krauthammer is too moderate for me, but at least he’s a journalist, not a sycophant.

The Western Experience

Here is a more even-handed reaction to Obama’s Cairo speech from Jason at the Western Extern Experience. He has a round-up of stories from Lebanon, Palestine and Iran that shows what is really at stake.

Here are a few of the more disturbing headlines:

This is what Obama should have talked about, but didn’t. Appeasement didn’t work for Chamberlain or Carter, and it won’t work for Obama.

What’s at stake?

The Washington Post reports that drug cartels use submarines to move massive amounts of drugs into the United States. The write that “U.S. officials fear that the rogue vessels could be used by terrorists intent on reaching the United States with deadly cargos”. Maybe Obama should be focused on defending the United States instead of apologizing on our behalf in order to send tingles up the legs of MSNBC talking heads.

Will Obama’s speeches deter aggression of this sort? Or will they be viewed as evidence that no reprisals would follow such an attack?

UPDATE: Muddling Toward Maturity links to a substantive refutation of Obama’s Cairo speech by Caroline Glick writing in the Jerusalem Post.

Are things beginning to turn around in Alberta?

Political Map of Canada
Political Map of Canada

I blogged before about the California school district that is indoctrinating 5-year olds with homosexual propaganda in kindergarten. Well, Canada had a similar problem in the province of British Columbia, where the entire curriculum was going to be designed by gay activists. Now, you might think that the Canadians would be a lot more leftist on such issues, you’d be wrong.

Alberta has a bill in the works to give rights to parents to opt out of programs like this.

Check out this story from the Globe and Mail. (H/T My friend Andrew)

Bill 44, which proposes amendments to Alberta’s Human Rights, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Act, contains two significant changes. The first adds sexual orientation to proscribed grounds of discrimination. This would bring Alberta’s human rights legislation into conformity with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that “read in” sexual orientation after it had been deliberately omitted three times by the Legislative Assembly in Edmonton. The amendment has been widely praised.

Section 11 of the new act is more controversial. It requires that parents be notified whenever instructional materials are taught dealing “explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation.” If parents object in writing, the student can be excused from class.

According to Rob Anderson, Conservative MLA from Airdrie-Chestermere, a riding just north of Calgary, Bill 44 “is one of the most positive and meaningful advances for human rights that this province and this country has seen for many years.” Specifically, he explained, the “parental rights clause” enshrines Article 26 (3) of the United Nations universal declaration of human rights: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Premier Ed Stelmach added that his government “supports a very, very fundamental right and that is parental rights with respect to education.”

This article was written by a political science professor at the University of Calgary, which is the school where their prime minister Stephen Harper got both his degrees in economics. They are known for their conservative views. They even have a special name: the “Calgary School” of economics, just like you might talk about the “Chicago School” and the “Austrian School”. Awesome!

Here’s a letter to the editor from a University of Lethbridge (Alberta) professor that I found in the National Post, (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Bill 44 is a response to a B. C. Human Rights Tribunal decision mandating two gay activists to commandeer the Ministry of Education in that province to impose a “social justice” course into the curriculum. Parents’ rights, never mind those of local school boards, were overridden.

The B. C. example and Alberta’s Bill 44 indicate how HRCs have poisoned politics in those two provinces.

Now everyone, not just Christian preachers, has to worry about getting dragged before an HRC. A former chairman of the Calgary School Board once proclaimed the state “owns” children who must be liberated from the supposedly claustrophobic viewpoints of their parents. This goes to show how little this debate has to do with promoting critical thinking or cosmopolitanism, as the Post’s article suggests.

If there is an upside to this, perhaps now there will be sufficient support across the political spectrum to dismantle the HRCs.

Go Canada, eh?