Bill Whittle Throws Down the Gauntlet

This is his finest Afterburner yet and that’s saying something.

In ‘Merchants of Despair’ he catalogs all of the major misdeeds and malevolence of the Obama administration and at the end he speaks to you conservatives that sit on the couch on election day.

How do we find these bellyaching nonpartisipants, register them to vote and get them to the polls this November? That is the challenge and the only solution to our national despair.

And of course, as I always do when I post a new Whittle video, I urge you to go to PJTV and become a subscriber.

 

Obama’s Energy Policy? BANANAs.

Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything

The face of evil

The latest?  Conoco Phillips wants to extract petroleum and natural gas from the Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve, an 23 million acre oil field established in 1923, but to move the product out and get supplies in they need to build a bridge.

Obama, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are blocking it.

More obstruction.  Higher energy prices.  More unemployment.

Obama says he’s not stopping the oil companies from getting new supplies. But when he doesn’t allow oil to be taken out of something called the National Petroleum Reserve, you know he’s lying.

Go read the whole thing.  It is a thorough description of yet another example of the purposeful destruction of this once great nation.

 

The main ill that besets us

During a recent Senate hearing, Justice Antonin Scalia cited Alexander Hamilton when writing about a separate Senate in The Federalist, Scalia paraphrased Hamilton’s sentiment this way, “Yes, it seems inconvenient but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us is the excess of legislation, it won’t be so bad.” The Supreme Court Justice points out that the contradicting power between the two houses of congress and the president is not a design flaw in our constitution, but rather an intentional design feature of the framers to protect the minority.

This has served us fairly well over our history but is now threatened by an imperial president determined to bypass what he has called “an increasingly dysfunctional congress” and to govern by executive fiat. As Phil Kerpen has brilliantly outlined in his new book Democracy Denied, whether it be cap-and-trade, net neutrality, or advancing his pro-union agenda, there is more than one way to skin a cat and if he is denied in the legislature (as our founders intended) he will simply attempt to do it through regulatory fiat or executive order.

What justice Scalia referred to as the real key to the distinctiveness of America, this contradicting power between the two houses of congress and the executive, will be lost forever if this president is allowed to move forward with his “We can’t wait” rule by executive decree. If Barack Obama is allowed a free rein to bypass congress, the excess of legislation that Hamilton feared will seem pale in comparison and our democracy will indeed be denied.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

 

Stand with Gibson event protesters know what they are protesting

Several hundred protesters gathered in Nashville at a “Stand with Gibson” event to protest the federal governments raids on the legendary guitar manufacturer. The folks at Tin Ship Productions posted this video on youtube which captured the atmosphere of the event. Take notice of the civility of the group, no law enforcement, pepper spray, or sanitation crew needed here.

 

The Obama Adminstration’s efforts are killing the American economy and Americans

What criteria does the Obama administration use to craft new regulations? The answer is unclear. When developing regulations effecting coal and oil-fired electric generating units they seem to maintain
their motivation is our health and welfare with a sensitivity to economic impact.  In March of this year EPA
Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the EPA’s proposed new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and stated, “At the EPA, we are eager to work with the American people through the coming public comment period, so that we can craft safeguards that best protect our health and strengthen our economy.”

Furthermore EPA estimates that reducing emissions would save 17,000 lives every year beginning
in 2015, to say nothing of preventing thousands of illnesses, emergency room
visits, and missed work days. Preventing those human casualties will save
millions in health-care costs and prevent millions more in economic losses from
illness and absenteeism.

Industry experts claim that standards cannot be met by 2015 as a result, plants that
can’t be upgraded in time must be taken off-line in 2015. With less power available on the grid, electricity prices are forecast to spike by 11.5 percent nationwide in 2016, causing hundreds of thousands of job losses across the economy, according to National Economic Research Associates.

According to Bernstein Research, the EPA’s rules will slash reserve capacity—i.e., the availability of electricity generating capacity to meet peak demand and plug power interruptions—resulting in increased power
outages of longer duration. In a hot summer like this one, that means rolling blackouts, loss of air conditioning, and potentially heat-related deaths.

Add to that the recently announced new federal regulations that would raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, hitting an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025—a 40 percent reduction in fuel consumption compared to today.

Senator Boxer said: “The first-ever federal standards for trucks and buses that the Obama Administration announced today will significantly cut fuel costs for truck owners, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. It is also a historic step forward in our nation’s efforts to reduce dangerous air pollution, which will benefit families in California and across the nation.”

While that sounds great on the surface, the truth is these new standards will actually result in the maiming or death of countless Americans. Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explained the MPG standard “has been killing people for the last 30 years, It forces cars to be…made smaller and lighter….They are simply worse in just about every type of auto collision.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration actually
backs Kazman up. It estimates that smaller cars are responsible for an additional 2,000 deaths each year. As Reason reports, “a 2002 National Academy of Sciences study concluded that CAFE’s downsizing affect contributed to between 1,300 and 2,600 deaths in a single representative year, and to 10 times that many serious injuries.”

These new regulations will also harm our already beleaguered economy. The Center for Automotive Research
says the new standard will raise the price of cars by about $7,000. Nicolas Loris explains
how those higher costs can lead to job loss: Higher prices reduce demand and force people to hold onto their older vehicles longer. Reduced demand means fewer cars produced, which means automakers have to shed jobs. The Michigan-based consulting firm Defour Group projected that a 56 mpg standard would destroy 220,000 jobs.

It is likely that Obama’s aggressive new fuel efficiency standards will result in an escalation of casualties and a
negative impact on our economy. So whether it is fuel efficiency standards or Air Toxics Standards,
this administration is not concerned with crafting safeguards that best protect our health and strengthen our economy at all.