Friday, July 19, 2013

BloggeRhythms 7/19/2013

I often mention the travesty in D.C. calling itself an administration and the harm inflicted by their politicizing issues rather than employing even the most basic common sense. But yesterday was one, that even for them, was incredible regarding the magnitude of their wrongheadedness and stubborn denials of proven facts and truths.  
 
Item one concerns an article by George Russell on Fox News.com headed: "Billions spent in Obama climate plan may be virtually useless, study suggests.”
 
The text begins with: “As President Obama last month launched a sweeping new national program to combat "climate change," including tens of billions of dollars in likely new subsidies for solar and wind power and bio-energy, a separate, groundbreaking study by the National Research Council has warned that those kinds of subsidies are virtually useless at quelling greenhouse gases.”
  
Looking at subsidies and other incentives embedded in U.S. federal tax law after the past several years of climate change initiatives, the study concluded that “they  have done little or nothing so far to cut U.S. contributions to global carbon emissions, and are unlikely to do much more before 2035, the project's research horizon.”
 
Costing $2 million, the study was the first of its kind, conducted by a “12-member National Academy of Sciences panel of economists, energy experts, environmentalists, tax specialists and climate scientists backed by consultants wielding powerful computerized economic models and a sizeable number of staff.”
 
The study’s conclusion was, “their combined impact is less than 1 percent of total U.S. emissions over the next 25 years, and are a lousy bargain to boot, with very little, if any, GHG reductions  achieved at substantial cost with these provisions." Additionally, "Current tax expenditures and subsidies are a poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases and achieving climate-change objectives. [Producing only] small reductions in GHG emissions and are costly per unit of emissions reduction."
 
Although the full cost was something the study was unable to make entirely clear, “It estimated that the federal government had spent some $48 billion in just the past two years on "tax expenditures" -meaning subsidies, credits, and other incentives -- related to the energy sector, and also noted that few were specifically enacted to reduce greenhouse gases.”
 
Then, after the preceding disclosure of the waste of taxpayer’s billions, the Department of Energy told the Associated Press: "A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site."
 
According to geologist Richard Hammack, “After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water.”
 
So, here’s another case of the incumbent’s pandering to environmentalists, although there’s absolutely no validity to their claims whatsoever. But as usual, its cronyism that counts far overriding facts and scientific proofs.
 
And now, although today’s entry's is already quite long, as mentioned at the start, yesterday was a very bad day for the incumbent so there’s more to go.
 
Dems on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were very upset by Inspector General J. Russell George and his finding that the IRS was targeting conservative groups. In fact, they were so disturbed that yesterday in a hearing they came unglued, lost their cool and turned him into a “punching bag.” George responded by calling the treatment “unprecedented.” 
 
While there’s considerable detail to the confrontation, and certainly a cause for Dem panic, I think Peggy Noonan put it best in her column in  The Wall Street Journal on-line.
 
Here’s what she wrote: “That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn't say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan. 
 
Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency.”
 
And so the beat goes on, another day, another case, or two or three, of an accumulation of unqualified political patsies performing in positions miles over their heads. And basic logic says that things can only get worse for this administration and their Congressional supporters. Because no matter how much they talk, scream, prevaricate or attempt to cloud the truth, they simply can’t whereas they haven’t the talent, experience or smarts to plug the growing mass of holes they've dug all by themselves.
 
That’s it for today folks.
 
Adios

No comments:

Post a Comment