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December 16, 2009

The Wednesday Update

December 16, 2009  Volume 3, Number 47  IN THIS ISSUE:  Harry Reid's Christmas Turkey, Meet the Flinstones!

Dec. 16, 2009 Vol 3, Number 47	Wednesday Update
In This Issue: 1. Harry Reid's      Christmas Turkey 2. Meet the      Flintstones 3. Green (Snow) Jobs	Harry Reid’s Christmas Turkey God bless Madison’s Capital Times. Its view of the world is wacky, but unlike most of its competitors it deserves respect for not pretending to be anything but the left-wing newsletter it is. Last week the Times editorialized about Harry Reid’s latest national health care ploy, pointing out even Wisconsin’s own Russ Feingold doesn't think it will bring enough patients into the warm glow of federal benevolence. Feingold was quoted in the editorial, saying he won’t support “proposals that would replace the public option in the bill with a purely private approach.” Not to worry, Russ. Senator Reid’s proposal would lower the Medicare eligibility age to 55, enrolling millions more people in a program that even without them is headed for bankruptcy seven years from now. Oh, and according to Senator Reid, this will reduce the federal deficit. Applying its customary rigorous logic, the Times describes this massive expansion of government as “the loss of the public option” and “a bitter pill.” Meanwhile, the polling numbers on ObamaCare keep sliding lower, with fewer than 40 percent of voters in support and more than 40 percent “strongly disapproving” of the president’s performance in office. HillaryCare, a big factor in Democrats losing control of Congress 15 years ago, polled far more favorably. Watch for a frantic attempt to jam something—anything—through the Senate before Christmas. If Senators come home on recess and get face-to-face with actual constituents before voting on this mess, socialist health care might go down the tube again. Meet the Flintstones! If you thought Congress and the EPA were the only ones who might wreck the economy on the pretext of fighting global warming, we have bad news: The Wisconsin Legislature may yet get into the game. Madison Democrats Spencer Black and Mark Miller are preparing a bill implementing recommendations of Governor Doyle’s Task Force on Global Warming. Nestled among the familiar bad ideas are subtler plans to drive Wisconsin back to a kind of energy Stone Age. For instance, the “zero net energy building” standard. The bill says “it is the goal of the state”—disposing of any foolish notion that other people’s goals might matter—that by 2030 all new residential and commercial buildings will use no more energy than is produced on the premises from renewable sources. Some will see this as a push toward “energy independence.” Others will see it, correctly, as a restriction on energy use and a mandate that they pay more for it. Still others will recall images of Fred Flintstone shaving with a clamshell that buzzes until he opens it up and a bee flies out. Other provisions aim at forcing utilities to buy the most expensive, least reliable electricity instead of sources that actually work, but none is more troublesome than the creation of a “Climate Change Coordinating Council” within the DNR. The Coordinating Council (Is it coincidence that this sounds like one of those fronts for political—and actual—vandalism cooked up in the 1960s by campus leftists?) is assigned to create “training programs” on climate change, and “shall give priority…to promoting and coordinating programs for students in kindergarten through 12th grade and to undergraduate and graduate students and their teachers.” Translation: Instill fear. Indoctrinate anyone who’s exposed to public education at any level, to make global warming the permanent excuse for whatever government wants to do. Life in the Stone Age undoubtedly had its drawbacks, but at least things like this weren’t among them. Green (Snow) jobs With temperatures falling, hurricanes not happening and polar ice caps getting bigger, the rationale for dismantling the global economy eventually boils down to the millions of “green jobs” supposedly to be had by putting everyone to work producing less energy than we now have in abundance through more expensive, less efficient, laughably unreliable means. Right. And while you’re at it, send us another sack of those magic beans. The cold, hard fact is that absent government coercion and transfer payments, practically nobody would be participating in the grand energy makeover. As Energy Central’s Renewablesbiz.com reported earlier this month, leading wind energy advocates are expecting little or no change in employment numbers for their industry for 2009. Even more revealing, Renewablesbiz reported that Liz Salerno of the American Wind Energy Association, "shudders at what the jobs picture would look like without the Treasury Department cash grants from the stimulus bill that jump-started stalled projects this year.” The thing to remember is it’s always that way, recession or no recession, stimulus or no stimulus. Renewable energy projects grind to a halt whenever a current round of tax subsidies expires. Repetitions of the subsidy-driven boom-and-bust cycle make it obvious people have concluded these things aren’t worth doing unless government is handing over piles of other people’s money. Renewablesbiz cites layoffs at every level of the turbine-manufacturing industry, but volunteers this odd combination of blind faith with facts the renewable industry probably hopes no one will think about very hard: “The current market will be soft well into 2010, but may turn around as projects face the end-of-2010 deadline to qualify for cash grants under the Treasury program that defrays 30 percent of development costs.” Exactly.