From Forbes, seven months ago, we heard about climate-related changes in the wind for the USA. The measures being proposed at potentially insane costs by the Obama administration include reducing the sulphur content of petrol ($2.4 billion pa), impossible boiler operating standards (reduce GDP by $1.2 billion) and highly restrictive cement production standards (shortfall imported from China, 80,000 out of work, construction costs hiked by up to 36%).
A new report released by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Minority Committee enumerates a slew of planned EPA regulations that have been delayed or punted on until after the election that will destroy millions of American jobs and cause energy prices to skyrocket even more.
Titled “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2013: Numerous Obama EPA Rules Placed on Hold Until After the Election Spell Doom For Jobs and Economic Growth”, it lists and describes new rules concocted over the past year ranging from additional restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, tougher water guidelines and tightening of the ozone standard. Taken together, they will further drive up pump prices, impose construction bans on local communities, and cripple oil, natural gas and coal production.
via EPA’s Insanely Ambitious Agenda If Obama Is Reelected – Forbes.
It makes uncomfortable reading, but is perhaps “only the beginning”.
This could be feel-good stuff to help make the Greens comfortable voting for Obama. Perhaps it’ll all be watered down, delayed, or otherwise emasculated. Or it could be serious and spell the end for much of America’s industry and employment.
Let’s hope reason prevails.
Views: 386
Yippeeee…
What was that quote about sowing and reaping?
I predict (well, this is a cop-out) one of two things:
1. The Repubs will let the Dems stew in the consequences of the EPA’s madness,or
2. The Repbus (in House and Senate) will deny the EPA funding for all of its operations, thereby frustrating its intentions.
What was not good however, was the Messiah’s reference to catastrophic global warming in his acceptance speech to his faithful followers.
On the other hand, Tim Groser in the HoReps yesterday made an imporessive speech, and delivered a compelling case for the path that the Governmernt is now following (complete abolition would be better, but unrealistic given where we are at internationally, and with Kyoto due to expire.), on the ETS. Meanwhile the luddites in the House described the Bill as “ecocide”. Lordy…..
Last term Obama exercised the option of US$800 billion stimulus spending which increased Federal debt to its credit limit requiring an extension. Bush before him went for tax rebates expiring at the end of December this year. Both classic Keynesian stimulus policies, neither have worked, Reagan did similar. See:-
Why the Fed’s stimulus ‘didn’t work’
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/02/news/economy/fed-stimulus-john-taylor.moneymag/index.htm
Much of Obama’s stimulus spending was waste, ineffectual, work out-sourced overseas, corrupt, scammed off by dodgy “renewables” startups and so forth.
Obama does not have that option this term. Instead, he’s on the edge of the Dec 31 fiscal cliff, extended Fed credit expires Feb and he has belligerent Repubs in control of Congress to contend with.
Misty-eyed Obama cultists, mesmerized by Obama’s charisma and pandering to their PC morality haven’t got a clue about all this of course, but they’re ecstatic because their man’s back in. Whether Romney would have been any more effective and willing to make the hard decisions is now moot but he did indicate some nouse by saying his first action would have been to declare China a currency manipulator allowing USA to impose tariffs (a trade war) – that at least would have been a start and I can’t believe USA has not done that already.
So USA is already on the brink of deep doo doo. If an unrestrained EPA goes ahead with its agenda (I think they will and Obama is unlikely to rein them in unless there’s a tradeoff with the Repubs whereby EPA funding is stunted as Flipper alludes) it will exacerbate the situation unnecessarily and destructively with horrendous consequences for middle America (the poor are already stuffed). Too late, the Obamaites will realize their folly and they’ll be reaping what they’ve sown (as Flipper puts it).
No predictions from me but there are some undercurrents to watch that might have a bearing on the future scenario:-
1) The States Sovereignty movement already underway (at least 29 States have been working on this) – look for it consolidating in order to oppose Federal regulation at State level, EPA regulations in particular. In other words, States rights being exercised especially in coal-mining and coal-energy dependent States.
2) Some combination of Flipper’s 1) and 2).
3) A new business environment emerging by default of Govt and unavoidable anyway – austere, de-leveraged, not fueled by a credit boom, high unemployment, massive discontent to the extent of civil disorder where people see their livelihoods disappear especially when EPA “green” regulations kick in.
4) Capital flight (some hopefully to NZ) and fiat money being converted to stable stores of wealth e.g. a return to a defacto gold/silver standard.
All-in-all, interesting times ahead for USA (that is, assuming they stay “united” after reality sets in).
Richard C…
Good stuff. Well constructed, and better argued than my “off the cuff” piece.
H A N W. :
🙂
Hello Obama second term; bye bye Western Civilization
By James Delingpole
……..it seems to me that the victory the Obamaphiles have won is entirely Pyrrhic. In what way, I would like to ask them, is a second term for a proven failure a good thing? On the evidence of Obama’s four years in power so far, what exactly have they seen that augurs so well for the next four years of the American presidency?
[….] was it his truly heartwarming eagerness to reward his friends at Solyndra by handing them $500 million of taxpayers’ money for a business that was essentially worthless?
[…] The US today is almost unrecognisable from the land of opportunity I fell in love with on my first visit nearly 30 years ago. And the reason for this is really very simple (and especially obvious in basket cases like the People’s Republic of California): Big Government has continued to grow and grow; regulations have accumulated; private wealth has been confiscated and squandered, on welfare, on bail-outs for companies like GM which would have been better left to fail, on Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing spree, on stringent measures to deal with the so-far unproven threat of “climate change”….
And this hasn’t just been an Obama-related problem. It’s been an every-US-president-since-at-least-Calvin-Coolidge problem. Even under Ronald Reagan the size of government grew.
To be honest, I think it would probably have continued to grow under a Mitt Romney presidency too. Romney would certainly not have been my first choice of GOP candidate. (Or indeed my second, third or fourth…..) He always struck me as being part of the same corporatist problem rather than the authentic, red-meat, free market solution. It wasn’t so much that I was rooting for Romney, last night. More that I was rooting desperately, passionately against Obama whose statist tendencies – and autocratic instincts – are just a great deal more extreme and dangerous.
One thing I noticed on Twitter today: the quantity of bile being spewed out seemed to increase from very late morning onwards. And I wondered whether, maybe, this was symptomatic of the attitudes and lifestyles and career status of that whole class of person which blindly roots for Obama. I don’t mean the welfare class: though of course that rooted for Obama too. I was thinking more of the entitlement class, the bureaucratic and technocratic elite – or trainee members thereof …]
Perhaps they’re studying “climate science” or “sustainability” at uni; maybe they work in the public sector […]
What this entitlement class has in common, both in Britain and in the US – and indeed throughout our tottering Western civilisation – is an unshakable conviction that a) the state is a force for good and b) that it owes them a living. So fiercely do they cleave to this faith that they have never stopped to think where this benign and bounteous state actually gets its money from or what might happen when the money runs out. […think Greece, one in three govt employed….]
Problem is, the money has run out. It happened quite a while back and all our governments and their corporatist and bankster allies have been doing these last few years is finding ever more ingenious ways of disguising the fact. […]
Buy gold. After last night’s spectacularly dumb result, it may be the only hope that’s left.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100188419/hello-obama-second-term-bye-bye-western-civilization/
Pyrrhic victory
n
a victory in which the victor’s losses are as great as those of the defeated Also called Cadmean victory
[named after Pyrrhus (319-272 bc), king of Epirus (306-272), who defeated the Romans at Asculum in 279 bc but suffered heavy losses]
# # #
“Buy gold”? Silver is the buy until the gold/silver ratio comes down from around 54 to 16. Perhaps not a consideration in AU and NZ where govt debt-to-GDP is a lot better than the basket cases: NZ 37%, UK 87%, US 103%, Ireland 123%. Greece 158%, Japan 233%:-
Comparing Debt Ratios
Track Standard & Poor’s credit rating and outlook among advanced economies and emerging economies, as well each nation’s [govt] debt-to-GDP ratio, starting in 2006 and projected through 2016.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703789104576272891515344726.html
Dealing with debt [Reserve Bank New Zealand]
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/speeches/4886900.html
NZ’s public+private credit is 160 – 170% of GDP (Figure 6 Public and private sector credit). That’s just a little over the historical 150% level. 375% in the US in 2008 when the GFC hit. It is now around 350% in the US – in Europe it’s even worse, around 450%
If you think Delingpole’s rhetoric is over the top, try Melanie Phillips
—————————
The greatest satisfaction today over the re-election of Obama is not being felt in the Democratic Party. It is not being felt among the media, who are no longer objective observers but have turned instead into corrupt partisans who ruthlessly censored the truth about Obama and helped peddle his demonising propaganda about his opponent. It is not being felt among the gloating, drooling decadents of the western left who now scent a great blood-letting of all who dare defy their secular inquisition. No, the greatest satisfaction is surely being felt in Iran.
With four more years of Obama in the White House, Iran can now be sure that it will be able to complete its infernal construction of a genocide bomb to use against the Jews and the west. World War Three has now come a lot closer.
http://melaniephillips.com/america-goes-into-the-darkness
Cicero’s take on the situation (or it might have been another situation):-
———————————————————————————————-
“Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions.
Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new, wonderful, good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean: more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”
— Marcus Tulles Cicero
Some things I have been made to clearly understand during the past seven decades:
1 that repeating something that turned out badly the first time is the essence of stupidity
2 that half of every population must be under average by any measure
3 that any politician who understands 1 & 2 is rare indeed.
I don’t understand the American political system but most of the Americans I have worked with were good blokes, intelligent and good ambassadors for their country; they didn’t seem to understand the American political systems either!
Finally, Obama scares the bejesus out of me!
.
Alexander, I read Obama’s first term campaign and Berlin speeches written in the main by his speech writer Jon Favreau. His 2012 victory speech was different and I suspect written by himself. He emphasized a “journey forward” at the end of the full speech transcript quoted here (my emphasis) but first the vision:-
Now the concluding remark:-
You could just about throw the rest of the speech away. The concluding remark was to reinforce the “vision” introduced in the body of the speech to ensure it would stick in the minds of his delirious supporters (a subtle manipulation of the minds of the sheeple) but what underlies the journey analogy and the “vision”?
“Forward” — a word associated with Marxism and socialism was the Obama campaign slogan and has been used extensively:-
The sad aspect is that as you say Alexander “…most of the Americans I have worked with were good blokes, intelligent and good ambassadors for their country”. Unfortunately, the young, Latino and black – all “good blokes” – just don’t know that that they’ve voted in a wolf in sheep’s clothing to preside over a fools paradise (their own delusion).
On the other hand, the hard core socialist acolytes know EXACTLY who they’ve lifted to power.
Hello again….
Not in Dellingpole or Phillips class, but this pithy ermail received by me this morning from a retired teacher of algebra who liuves in Portland, Oregon, says a lot:
” Bonnie and I believe the USA is in decay. We hope that you are surviving. We are letting too many non-contributors floood into the USA
All the best for you & your family
John ”
:
Maybe he is a bit too pessimistic, but it does not look good.
DRIESSEN: The coming environmental battlegrounds
Green agenda threatens economic future
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/8/the-next-environmental-battlegrounds/?page=all#pagebreak
Will President Obama, Democrats and executive branch agencies be receptive to bipartisan approaches — to institutionalizing all-of-the-above energy decisions that make scientific, economic, environmental and technological sense? Or will they be even more entrenched, knowing the White House can act via executive decree if Congress does nothing?
The answer will determine whether the United States becomes an economic powerhouse once again or an enormous Greece. Blessed with more oil, gas and coal than almost any other nation on earth, we must not refuse to develop these resources.
# # #
“an enormous Greece” scenario in USA would probably involve guns in preference to fire bombs.
Hmmm…….
Obama Won More Than 99 Percent Of The Vote In More Than 100 Ohio Precincts
by Michael Snyder
[…]
Posted below are voting results from the presidential election from various precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. If you wish to verify these numbers, you can do so right here. In each case, the specific precinct is identified first, followed by the number of votes for Obama and then the number of votes for Romney.
In this first set of Cuyahoga County precincts, Mitt Romney received exactly zero votes in each instance…
0154 CLEVELAND -02-Q: 542 – 00192 CLEVELAND -04-L: 388 – 0
0204 CLEVELAND -05-E: 597 – 0
0205 CLEVELAND -05-F: 483 – 0
0206 CLEVELAND -05-G: 257 – 0
0219 CLEVELAND -05-T: 386 – 0
0228 CLEVELAND -06-H: 405 – 0
0232 CLEVELAND -06-L: 70 – 0
0233 CLEVELAND -06-M: 419 – 0
0241 CLEVELAND -06-U: 118 – 0
0248 CLEVELAND -07-F: 361 – 0
0273 CLEVELAND -08-J: 472 – 00280 CLEVELAND -08-Q: 49 – 0
0285 CLEVELAND -09-B: 414 – 0
0288 CLEVELAND -09-E: 478 – 0
0523 EAST CLEVELAND -04-C: 486 – 0
Are we actually supposed to believe that not a single person wanted to vote for Mitt Romney in any of those precincts?
But wait, there’s more.
In this next set of results we get to see many of the precincts where Mitt Romney received exactly one vote…
>>>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=10565
“I don’t know if it happened to anybody else or not, but this is the first time in all the years that we voted that this has ever happened to me,” said Marion, Ohio, voter Joan Stevens.
Stevens said that when she voted, it took her three tries before the machine accepted her choice to vote for Romney.
“I went to vote and I got right in the middle of Romney’s name,” Stevens told Fox News, saying that she was certain to put her finger directly on her choice for the White House.
She said that the first time she pushed “Romney,” the machine marked “Obama.”
So she pushed Romney again. Obama came up again. Then it happened a third time.
“Maybe you make a mistake once, but not three times,” she told Fox News.