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The Public Policy
Corporate Sellouts
Corporate America is giving Democrats cover to impose the Obama-Waxman-Markey national energy tax.
(Page 2 of 2)
In one of the more surreal developments, some corporations have been pressuring the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the lobby charged with defending their interests in Washington, to reverse its opposition to a cap-and-trade plan. In a letter to the chamber, Nike Inc. and Johnson & Johnson called for the group to support emissions cuts consistent with Waxman-Markey.
So far, the Chamber of Commerce is maintaining its opposition to a bill which it estimates will raise energy prices, shrink the economy, and reduce household spending.
Rep. Markey is citing the corporate defections to the cap-and-trade side as evidence to rebut accusations by congressional Republicans and free-market advocates that the legislation will harm the economy. “When Edison Electric Institute’s CEO endorsed the bill, when three of the largest oil companies support the bill, when the second-largest coal company supports the bill, when [General Electric] and dozens of Fortune 100 companies endorse the bill, that will be the answer to the critics who say it will hurt the economy,” said Markey.
Markey says that “CEOs are not about to preside over the destruction of their business” because they believe they can still make money in the “new clean-energy future.”
On the contrary, CEOs jumping on the cap-and-trade bandwagon are risking the existence of not only their companies, but the livelihoods of ordinary Americans and indeed the very future of the U.S. economy. That is the conclusion, not of some supposedly biased industry lobby, but of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
On May 7, the CBO released its analysis of the impact of a cap-and-trade plan on the U.S. economy. Its conclusions are stark. Since cap-and-trade would raise prices of fossil fuels for the express purpose of discouraging their use, the resulting lower energy consumption “would render capital and labor less productive, which would lower output directly and would also tend to discourage investment and work.” The higher prices created by cap-and-trade “would create losses for some current investors and workers in the sectors of the economy that produce energy and energy-intensive goods and services. Investors would see the value of their stocks decline, and workers would face higher risk of unemployment as jobs in those sectors were cut.” That is a prediction that should make any CEO and shareholder shudder with trepidation.
But it is the average consumer that should be most fearful of cap-and-trade. The study points out that energy-intensive industries naturally would face the most serious increases in business costs such as electricity producers, the steel industry, petroleum refiners, coal miners, and the air, truck and passenger transportation industries.
Under cap-and-trade, CBO says that “obtaining allowances — or taking steps to cut emissions to avoid the need for such allowances — would become a cost of doing business for firms that were subject to the [carbon] cap.”
Or more precisely, it is the consumers who will have to get used to paying for the products and services of the affected industries. “Those firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances. Instead, they would pass those costs along to their customers (and their customers’ customers) in the form of higher prices.”
CBO estimates that a 15 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions would cost the average household roughly $1,600 per year. The lowest one-fifth (quintile) of household earners would pay an additional $700 while the top one-fifth would pay $2,200. However, the price increases “would impose a larger burden, relative to income, on low-income households than on high-income households.” That is because the lowest-income households spend 21 percent of their income on utility and gasoline expenditures whereas the highest income households spend only 4 percent.
In addition, some regions of the country will pay a higher price under cap-and-trade because they may rely more on coal-fired plants for their electricity. As a result, CBO found that low-income households in the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic states will pay significantly more for energy than those in California and New York.
For example, power costs in Kentucky would sharply increase. According to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the average monthly bill could go up $27 to $68. Likewise in Indiana, estimates indicate that electricity bills would more than double.
President Obama cannot be accused of lying when he said that electricity bills “would skyrocket” under cap-and-trade.
The end result of the litany of corporate sellouts on the Waxman-Markey bill could be the imposition of an unprecedented and massive energy tax on the American people. Despite the short-term gains these companies believe they may reap, the long-term result will most certainly be dire for their own futures. Success, whether measured in corporate or individual terms, will be hard to come by in an economy hobbled by energy inflation, mandated use of untested and inefficient “clean” technologies, and a suffocating bureaucracy.
Fortunately, it is not at all clear that the Waxman-Markey bill will be enacted even if it manages to clear the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Major environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are opposing the bill for making too many compromises with industry. There could quite likely be many other changes both in the House and Senate that could make the legislation, intrinsically unacceptable to free market advocates, unpalatable for the environmental purists.
Whatever the outcome, it is profoundly disappointing to see a steady parade of corporations lend their support to a bill that is inimical to their existence. A lot has changed since Lenin made his dark prediction that capitalists will sell themselves out. One thing that hasn’t changed is the myopic stupidity of some members of that class.
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Pingback| 5.26.09 @ 7:10AM
The American Spectator : Corporate Sellouts | Money Blog : 10 Dollars : Money Article links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Bud| 5.26.09 @ 7:11AM
The core of the article is summed in one quote: "Markey says that 'CEOs are not about to preside over the destruction of their business' because they believe they can still make money in the 'new clean-energy future'."
This reads like a quote from novel about a mafia don, 'making someone an offer they can't refuse'. Thus the true face of today's U.S. government is revealed.
So the choice presented to business is (a) destruction or (b) live with paper profits made possible by government transfer payments in the form of tax credits, allowances, subsidies, etc.
One thing about those transfer payments - there is a presumption that there will be some folks around doing productive in the open economy that can be expropriated to provide the substance of the transfer payments.
Don't bet the rent on that proposition.
Bram| 5.26.09 @ 7:42AM
The executives don't really care about the horrendous effects of cap and trade. They are just working through their lobbyists to ensure they can pass on all the costs to their customers. Look for big rates hikes coming fast – and if you complain, you obviously want to destroy the Earth.
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 7:45AM
If 'Dave Mathews' really believes that carbon dioxide is 'pollution' as he would like us to think,then he needs to man up and set an example for the rest of us by doing the intellectually honest thing...sell his car and kill himself....at least we will all be spared any further 'pollution' from HIM.
JP| 5.26.09 @ 7:53AM
Of course nothing is free, and those promised subsidies must come from somewhere. But where? Two weeks ago OMB said that the US government now is borrowing 46 cents for every dollar its spends; the US is close to losing its triple A credit rating; and it appears the President intends to run trillin dollar defecits in prepituity.
Late last week there began a large sell-off of dollars in the foreign exchange markets.
Whether the EPA institutes a massive carbon tax, or if Congress imposes Cap and Trade; the end result will an ever increasing cut into the GDP, at a time when the GDP has lost some $2 trillion. That is, the GDP this year and next is forecasted to be around $11 trillion. The federal goverment will consume over $4 trillion of that.
Whether the money is collected by the IRS, state taxing authorities, or energy companies, a substantial amount of our national wealth will be confiscated, and we haven't even talked about Universal Health Care.
The damage done will be obvious. Private wealth will either go underground, go overseas, or seek safer harbours. The dollar will fall, inflation and interest rates go up, and after a brief stimulus provided surge in jobs, another recession will begin -probably around 2011-2012.
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 7:55AM
"Dave Mathews" is like that online post modern phrase generator...utterly incapable of saying anything constructive...only hate filled ad hominens again and again.....but if anybody is stupid here it is HE....not bright enough to recognize that he himself is a 'pollutor' by his very own standards....he wants to limit everyone's carbon dioxide output but his own.
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 8:02AM
You see?...Davey can't even address his own intellectual dishonesty vis a vis his own carbon dioxide production....all he can do is hurl invective at those who draw attention to the fact
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 8:07AM
Actually my fascination is not with suicide...it is with intellectual dishonesty....those who preach 'do as I say and not as I do'....just pointing out Davey's expectation that the rest of us should have to live under rules that Davey's ilk formulate while exempting themselves from those rules.
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 8:16AM
Actually I am pro life...which means that I believe I should continue breathing and exhaling carbon dixoide...to feed plants that require it to produce the oxygen I inhale..,Davey wouldn't recognize the truth if it pointed out his own dishonesty regarding his own 'pollution' every time he exhales...or at least that is what he professes to believe
Jamie| 5.26.09 @ 8:18AM
You can add the Fortune 500 company Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) to the list too. They claim its customers will not be greatly impacted by cap and trade because the company primarily uses nuclear energy and natural gas to power their generators; with only a minority utilizing coal.
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 8:23AM
What we notice is that Davey condemns 'pollution' but by his own definition,he keeps polluting the air himself....I guess he simply lacks the requisite self awareness to notice the inherent contradiction....too busy ginning up his next spew I guess
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 8:31AM
What Davey fails to notice is that my use of the term 'pollution' is based on his very own definition of it....carbon dioxide emission....now he can't even remember how he defines his own terms....they boy's cheese is beginning to slip right off his cracker
EA| 5.26.09 @ 8:39AM
It is bad manners and a waste of precious policy discussion time for certain posters to merely repeat attacks coupled with vapid and disproven partisan political talking points. So let's get to the actual science:
1) The planet temperature is flat to cooling; that's not a conservative opinion, it is a scientific fact.
2) Therefore the Gore/IPCC "global warming" models have been proven false, because they predicted skyrocketing temperatures and failed spectacularly to accurately predict the current climate.
3) Even if Gore global warming theory were true, and the models accurate, imposing limits on America before imposing them on China would be totally counter-productive, because China produces more pollution per unit of production than the United States. Impose cap-and-trade on America and factories will close and move to China for a net INCREASE in total planetary pollution.
4) Over time, free-market economies drive down energy used per unit produced; this is a measurable scientific fact. They do this in order to reduce waste and fatten profits. Hence those greedy profits have actually performed a socially and environmentally useful function. If you really want to see what kind of economic system trashes the planet, merely take a map of the world and a red crayon and color in the world’s most polluted ecosystems. You will find you have colored in the countries that have historically had the strongest socialist systems (though some recently rejected socialism and are trying to clean up).
5) It is left as an exercise for the student to predict whether the crony capitalism of Obama’s national socialism (i.e. fascism) in which companies devote their energy to kissing political butt instead of greedily reducing production costs will actually result in more waste and pollution in the long run (as well wrecking the employment and financial lives of the working class).
Robbins Mitchell| 5.26.09 @ 8:40AM
Quod erat demonstrandum...Davey is now hoist on his own rhetorical petard...unable to be consistent about anything but regurgitating Alinskyesque pablum at those who point out his own faulty arguments.....now if you good people I need to go enlarge my carbon footprint....with the probable likelihood of reglaciation in our future,the biosphere is going to need all the carbon dioxide we can produce....and at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that by doing so, it may even cause Davey to stroke out from knowing I am doing so.
Neo| 5.26.09 @ 8:56AM
I always love to hear the "Flat-Earthers" go on and on about CO2 destroying the planet.
The science is not settled .. far from it. We now now that Al Gore and his VC buddies are in this for the money.
It's the "next big thing" that comes after the S&L rape, and the "subprime ripoff".
owyheewine| 5.26.09 @ 9:08AM
Face it folks. Corporate CEOs are not about political ideology. They are about making profit for (hopefully) their shareholders, and themselves. That's the way it should be in a capitalist country.
Consumers always get the ultimate bill for any government help for the economy. Just buck up and work to get conservatives elected.
Robert Rosencrans| 5.26.09 @ 9:44AM
Why should corporate America care about cap and trade? They won't pay the costs, at first. This is essentially a 20% or more tax on the entire American public. Soon after it's implemented, the economy will tank, leading the Washingtonians to proclaim, "We need more government." Someone might inform them the concept has already failed. In one clever strategy though, the implementation of the act is being postponed until 2012. It's a clever move designed to help Cobama secure a second term. Will the public be stupid enough to fall for it? Time will tell.
JimE| 5.26.09 @ 9:50AM
Thank you EA for the restoration of civility, fact, and open discussion.
In other (failed) National Socialist adventures, corporations were pressured into joining into the intrusion of government. Unfortunately it was the consumer that was damaged.
Ultimately, this (Cap & Trade) tax is passed on to the individual.
All of the impact analysis demonstrate the severe impact on that individual as well as on our country - and, eventually all economies.
The analysis on the environmental impact (Greenhouse Gas Emissions) also demonstrate that the effect from a single country (even adding in the Kyoto collaboration) is minimal at best.
Lastly, the question for all is WHY? Al Gore and his ilk are daily being beaten with scientific research that calls their conclusion to question.
Jack | 5.26.09 @ 9:54AM
The intellectual dishonesty here is Incredible!
1) There will be NO reduction in carbon outputs!-See Europe
2) Any tax revenues raised DO NOT go to protecting the planet! It goes to offer free healthcare to Democrat voting groups!
Markey and Waxman want to confiscate dollars from midwestern coal burning states so they can dole out dollars to illegal voters.
Also, to pay for all of the services they are now going bankrupt to provide. Instead of saying no to spectacular cost increases they are looking for other sources of revenue.
We in the midwest will pay higher energy bills so they can provide free healthcare to a new generation of voters. THIS IS A HORRIBLE LIE TOLD BY DEMOCRATIC SENATORS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Jack | 5.26.09 @ 10:08AM
With respect to DoorGunner, I take the liberty of reprinting his message in a more appropriate forum.
Doorgunner| 5.26.09 @ 8:23AM
Speaking of whacky extremism, David, what's this stuff?
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1/introwk.html
And how 'bout that crazy letter Sunnyside Church of Christ?
http://www.sunnysidechurchofchrist.com/email/Dave Mathews so-called missionary trip to Yellowstone.htm
David, who's billy? Did he/she forsake you also? Like God? Like the folks at The Oil Drum?
Old Texican| 5.26.09 @ 10:20AM
Hi Guys
It seems to me that the large companies' brass are just scared to death to make waves in this particular political climate.
They have, and will, be villified for whatever they do.
Myy best guess is that they are quietly hoping and praying that the political "climate" will reverse itself very quickly as more and more Americans wake up to the trainwreck they have voted themselves.
Stop and think about it a moment, Mr. Carlisle, if a few dozen "fat-cats" squawk, they will either be laughed at or punished in the many available methods the government and media have ready for them.
Conversely, even un-informed...or ill-informed...or just plain stupid Americans WILL wake up as their energy and utility costs "skyrocket".
Then we have a hundred million very loud "oopsies" being spoken across the country.
Grzmlyk| 5.26.09 @ 10:58AM
Hey, Old Texican -
I agree. It's thuggery plain and simple and Obama is the bully in chief.
The "elites" of this country have determined that capitalism is bad. Not for them, of course; they're free to cheat on their taxes, make ridiculously lucrative book deals for plagiarized tomes and live just as large as they want.
But you and me, well, we'd better get back to picking that cotton before the overseer notices we're dawdling and not making money for this swine. The diaper of the nanny state is filled to the brim and it stinks of corruption.
bluecollarbytes| 5.26.09 @ 11:38AM
Gamble with the earth on half-baked theories & premises, guided by socialist ambitions to divide & control, and we may be 'doomed' anyway.
I'd rather take my chances with 'mother nature's {or God's} ability to rehabilitate what Man imagines he has the ability to destroy.
Science is a new religion, which is why 'it' feels no need to PROVE its assertions if those assertions can boost their industry financially. I used to think being a scientist required independent thinking. I think now that the club demands lockstep adherence to Anything that promotes its growth.
hoads| 5.26.09 @ 12:02PM
Let's face it-we have never been a true free market capitalist system. What was once a covert fascist system is now becoming overtly fascist. No one seems to be protecting the interests of the taxpayer/consumer. This will be ever more damaging within the healthcare sector as all "players" seek to line their pockets at the expense of the patients and doctors.
Once the government has control of our energy and healthcare--our freedoms will be forfeited. We will then erode into more of a caste system where the political class, intellectual and moneyed elites will see their wealth and power expand while the wealth and freedom of everyday Americans shrinks. The ivory towers will be smirking over the masses proud of their "economic and social justice" handiwork.
Pingback| 5.26.09 @ 12:35PM
Valuable Internet Information » The American Spectator : Corporate Sellouts links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Bram| 5.26.09 @ 12:47PM
hoads - I disagree. Americans were free from 1792 to 1914 or so. We lost some freedom during the Wilson administration - Harding and Coolidge got some of it back in the 20's.
1928 started a long slide to where we are now. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.
hoads| 5.26.09 @ 1:03PM
Bram, yes, I did misspeak and do believe there was a time when free market capitalism pervaded and you are correct, it has been within the last almost century that our economic system has devolved into what we see today.
Old Texican| 5.26.09 @ 1:16PM
OK Bram and Hoads (smile) Ya'll are great historians.
Let's get our thoughts in 2009 and 2010.
What the hell are we going to do to keep our country going forward?
Genuinely "free markets" do need an honest attempt by government to level the playing field, both domestically and internationally. (Think Chrysler under Iacoca).
John Navratil| 5.26.09 @ 2:00PM
Hey, Old Texican! I agree the CEOs are hiding behind whatever cover they can. However, as rent seekers, they do not feel the least bit bad about the right kind of big government.
The big problem is that the Federal Govt. is too damn big and there is simply no way 535 of the best and the brightest (they are, aren't they?) can manage an economy of over 300 million souls over vastly different geographic regions.
We have got to work within the states to starve this beast. Texas H.C.R. 50 is a start. Of course of the Supreme Court says the 10th Amendment no longer has any force, collapse is inevitable. As one who is more optimistic, I say look for the backlash. Of course, it would be very nice if the Republicans were counting on more than that to build the party.
The best government is local government. (Starting with the family.)
Becky| 5.26.09 @ 2:34PM
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em seems to be the prevailing tactic. CEO's of large corporations are confused with being self employed businessmen. They are not. They are more like congressmen and senators than the guy that owns the local pizza parlor.
Most did not start, nor own the assests of the companies they run.
The idea that man can own the planet, in the sense he is master of its actions, seems impossible to me. How can we change the long term temperature when we cannot stop a hurricane or volcano?
Global Climate change is not falsifiable, putting it in the category of psuedo science.
ccd| 5.26.09 @ 2:54PM
Anthropogenic global climate change is falsifiable and is therefore subject to scientific inquiry. There is a large difference between unfalsifiable and difficult to prove/disprove.
John Navratil| 5.26.09 @ 3:45PM
ccd,
You are quite correct that climate change is falsifiable. Take one earth as a control, then take another identical one and modify its atmospheric CO2 level. No rise in temperature, then CO2 is not the cause of warming. If it does rise, we now need to test the AGW hypothesis. Again, take two identical earths and remove all people from one. Observe for a few millions of years. No rise in temperature, the AGW hypotheses is false. Still a rise in temperature, we look for other causes.
Of course, the apparatus is a bit expensive and unavailable for such a simple experiment so we have to create much simpler systems to test which introduces the criticism that the simple system is not faithful to the larger one. How complex must the system be? Well so complex that computer simulation is required (it's one of the big reasons for super computers). This begs the question: Is the AGW hypotheses an assertion which is only theoretically falsifiable, but is not practically so? If so, how relevant is falsifiability to the argument?
As an observation, quite subject to refutation by others, I see many accept the AGW theory as settled science; some in this forum, in fact. Based on experimentation, this can come about because the hypothesis has been tested, reviewed and re-tested and no experiment has demonstrated the hypothesis to be false. But yet we see predictions made in the past (based on models designed to simplify the system, by the way) which have not seemed to come true.
At this point we get corrections to the theory (in this case, the model) as is required by the fact that observations do not agree with the experiment. We observe CO2 increases in the atmosphere, we do not observe the expected increase in atmospheric temperature. So colder oceans or higher cloud cover (water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2) are incorporated, all to explain why the earth has not warmed over the last ten years as expected. Nothing evil here. This is how science works when trying to develop a theory, but can anyone be blamed for thinking that it is the outcome and not the science to explain it that is paramount to some?
Add to that the tendency to attribute all manner of bad weather events to global warming (admittedly not always made by scientists in that field of study) and the argument of non-falsifiability gains acceptibility. This was a bad hurricane season, therefore it was because of global warming (we all heard it) is a "post hoc" argument and scientifically invalid. Ice sheets melting... global warming. More ice in the center of Greenland... that's global warming too. This is the nonfalsifiable argument.
I don't claim the earth isn't warming. I don't claim it isn't cooling either. While there are many who have a more informed view of this problem, I haven't been convinced.
You may then claim the I am a denier. That is also a non-falsifiable argument.
Old Texican| 5.26.09 @ 3:53PM
Hello, David
I have spent a lifetime smoking...a pipe for most of those years.
Fortunately, as CEO of not one but two Fortune 500 size companies...I can negotiate a super-duper exhaust fan in my office.
For many years, my best and brightest engineers, Superintendents, scientists, and business people have gathered in my office to smoke if they wanted, and brainstorm the issues of the day.
You may not consider Baylor University an education opportunity. Sad.
Heck, Baylor can't quite compete in the Big 12 in football. We don't have a major in basket weaving.
Heh!
As a graduate and post-graduate of an Ivy League school, you will of course put down Baylor University.
OK, that's fine, (but don't say that to your personal medical doctor).
You may find it difficult to get an appointment or referral.
My credentials are all over the internet. Where are yours?
Becky.....hi.
Kenneth Bean here.
Good post.
We CEOs ...especially of publicly traded companies, have stockowners from every stripe of Americans, politically.
Nevertheless, we feel a serious responsibility to maintain their investment in our companies...and grow it.
The Davids of the world can't get that.
Best regards
Roy| 5.26.09 @ 7:05PM
Yeah..an "ignore" button would be just great about now. The occasional liberal posting a serious argument is fine and in fact welcome, but this guy is pointless, and people waste even more space responding to him. This is the first and last time I have wasted such space.
As far as serious ideas - don't grant an inch to leftist terminology, starting with the attempt to label CO2 as "pollution". If CO2 is "pollution" a different word needs to be used for pollution like Chinese coal plants emit. Huge masses of soot and toxic gases that wreck the surrounding water and the lungs of the surrounding people. And it would help to highlight just how much of this could be avoided using the resources that the Left wants to spend on globodoom.
I realize the word "globodoom" is cutesy and I may need a more formal sounding word to encapsulate the fact that the issue is not whether the Earth is slightly warming, or even whether it is human-caused, but whether this is cause for such concern that we need to devote absolutely exorbitant amounts of resources to avoid it.
Old Texican| 5.26.09 @ 8:33PM
Hi Roy
Yeah...I'm a pilot. Every time we fly to california from Houston, I am amazed at the smoke and polution blowing across the border from Mexico.
...Zip controls there. No ability to solve here.
Jeff Nordlander| 5.27.09 @ 2:39AM
"A recent Heritage Foundation study estimated it would destroy over 1.1 million jobs, hike electricity rates 90 percent, and reduce the U.S. gross domestic product by nearly $10 trillion over the next 25 years." HAHAHA I would love to see get that backed up by any independent source. Have you all really decided that all the climate scientists and most people with some specific knowledge of Global Warming are just plain wrong. That they are simply making Climate Changes negative effects so they can impose these cap and trade taxes? How absurd of a proposition would that be? (Waits for someone to quip "ya its even more absurb cuz its true"). If anyone could present a sound argument as to why they do not believe in climate change it would be greatly appreciated. On an unrelated topic, why is it that the Europeans have repeatedly implemented much more onerous cap and trade systems without destroying over 1.1 million jobs, hiking electricity rates 90 percent, and reducing their gross domestic product by nearly $10 trillion dollars over 10 years? The fact is, American companies, with all their ingenuity, will adapt and innovate to the new regulations all the while creating a new green energy sector. Acknowledging that my last point is based solely on conjecture I will suspend debate 10 years upon which I will return and gloat.
John Navratil| 5.27.09 @ 8:24AM
Jeff,
"Cap and trade" is an imposition of cost onto carbon emissions, principally CO2. That cost must be born by someone. Whom? That cost will be paid to someone. Whom? It is a tax. It is principally a tax on energy.
What do you get when you tax something? Less of it. What do you get when you get less energy? Less production. Less transportation. Higher prices.
Who wins? He who gets the money. Who loses? Everyone, because the pie is smaller.
The only justification for this scheme is the AGW theory. You don't have to check your brain at the door to realize the Waxman and Markey have a vested interest in this theory! Are they climate scientists? No - but they play one on C-SPAN.
I am not a climate scientist. I am, however, a sceptic with an interest in the truth. I see hysterics. I remember the nuclear winter scare. The coming ice age in 1970. I read about the global warming alarm touted by the papers in the 1920s and the global cooling scare at the turn of the 20th century.
Now we have alarmists saying it's already too late. We WILL get a 2C rise and all we can do is our best to keep it from getting to 4C. I can't speak for anyone else but will tell you than I cannot tell you if all these climate scientists are "just plain wrong". A complex system is often hard to characterize in such simple terms. But, from my experience and the studies I have made, that is where I'd put my money. Why? Because their predictions have not panned out and they are making it up as fast as they can.
John Navratil| 5.27.09 @ 8:32AM
PS.
The Brits have employed the most onerous energy tax in Europe and their economy is in the tank. It was already there before the current economic problems hit. They are fed up with it. The consequences of this policy are real and observable.
Wake up before it's too late| 5.27.09 @ 7:12PM
Jewish Communism Russian Style is coming to you. They killed 65 Million Christian Russians.
You are next for the FEMA concentration CAMP compliments of the Jewish AIPAC.
"The only two non-Jews in the communist conspiracy were Chambers and Hiss...Every other one was a Jew and it raised hell with us."
Statement of President Richard Nixon in 1971, as recorded at the White House on tape and released by the National Archives in 1999. The reference is to Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss. (Sources: N.Y. Times, Oct. 7, 1999 and Newsweek, Oct. 18, 1999, p. 30)
"It is legitimate to adopt a critical attitude toward the relatively large number of Jews who particularly in the first decade after the Bolshevik revolution collaborated with the Soviet Government in the persecution of other peoples."
Statement of researcher Michael Mills, an official of the government of Australia at Canberra. (Source: Forward, March 10, 2000)
Judaic Professor Arno Mayer of Princeton in his important book, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? states that the German invasion of Russia was carried out with the intention to eradicate Bolshevik (Soviet Communist) ideology. The Germans were hardly the only ones in the West to believe that, "Soviet Russia is a dictatorship of Jewry."
On Feb. 8, 1920 a young British writer made a similar observation in the Illustrated Sunday Herald:
"There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews."
The writer was Winston Churchill. Though he would later sell his soul for considerably more than thirty pieces of silver, his analysis of the authentic nature of Soviet communism remains trenchant.
Churchill expressed the crucial insight that the crimes perpetrated by Jewish communists against Germans and Russians instilled in those people a desire for retribution:
"In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed, the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.
"The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people.
"...The fact that in many cases Jewish interests and Jewish places of worship are excepted by the Bolsheviks from their universal hostility has tended more and more to associate the Jewish race in Russia with villainies which are now being perpetrated...Needless to say, the most intense passions of revenge have been excited in the breasts of the Russian people." (End quote from Churchill).
"...a letter sent to the Vatican by Pius XII in 1919, when he was Bishop Eugenio Pacelli and papal nuncio in Munich...reports on his deputy's unpleasant encounter with Bolshevik revolutionaries who were then terrorizing Catholic priests and the German bourgeoisie. The letter describes the leader, Max Lieven as a '... Russian and a Jew.' The letter also describes Mr. Lieven's companions, '...Jews like the rest of them.'...Bishop Pacelli's description of Jewish Communists...was hardly uncommon 80 years ago." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 3, 1999).
Chaim Bermant, writing in the Jewish Chronicle (Aug. 30, 1991), says: "It was Communism which toppled the hated Czars, Communism which removed Jewish disabilities and proscribed anti-Semitism and Communism which, in its early days at least, opened the doors to Jewish advancement."
Lenin, whose maternal grandfather, Israel Blank, was Judaic, said that Judaics made the best revolutionaries: "The clever Russian is almost always a Jew or has Jewish blood in him." (Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography, p. 112). Lenin was both clever and a revolutionary. He was surely referring to himself.
Researcher Wayne McGuire of Harvard University writes: "Lenin was a Jew by the standards of Israel's Law of Return: he possessed a Jewish grandparent. It would seem that not only was Lenin a Jew, but that he was a Jewish racist and chauvinist, although he kept his ideas on this volatile subject far in the background, probably because they were in radical conflict with the supposed universalism of Marxism. ...Lenin was a Jewish racist who deliberately gave Jews especially, the most 'intellectually demanding tasks.' He admitted that 50% of the communist terrorist vanguard in the south and west of Russia was comprised of Jews."
Lenin declared, "We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class." His partner in crime, Apfelbaum (Zinoviev) stated: "The interests of the revolution require the physical annihilation of the bourgeoisie class." Who were these bourgeoisie? Certainly not Jews. Trotsky gave a clue to their identity in a 1937 interview in the New York Jewish newspaper, Daily Forward: "The longer the rotten bourgeoisie society lives, the more and more barbaric will anti-Semitism become everywhere."
Bourgeoisie was a Bolshevik code-word for Gentile. The first law passed after the Communists seized power in Russia made anti-semitism a crime punishable by death. (Izvestia, July 27, 1918).
The top Communist Judaic official Zinoviev stated: "Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritzky, Zinoviev and Vólodarsky, let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeoisie--more blood! As much as possible!" (Krasnaya Gazeta, Sept. 1, 1918).
The Judaic Bolsheviks regarded politics as a branch of Gentile pest control. Hatred of Christians, especially the peasant "bourgeoisie" was their prime motivation. The systematic destruction of the Christian peasantry of Russia as so many vermin, beginning with Lenin's attack on them in the summer of 1918 and his forced starvation in 1921, has been almost completely ignored in Western history.
According to the London, England "Jewish Chronicle" (Literary Supplement, Sept. 3, 1999, pp. iv and v) Jewish Communist writer Isaac Babel was present at a Soviet Communist gathering, "A meeting of...Jews...is being addressed by Commissar Vinogradov who is enthusiastically telling the...Jews: 'You are in power. Everything is yours." Babel also wrote of the "unbounded" Jewish "contempt for the Polish gentry."
According to the "Jewish Chronicle," Babel wrote for the Communist publication "Red Trooper" and a Soviet commissar related to him how they intended to deal with Cossacks: "The revolutionary curve has thrown into the first rank the free Cossacks soaked in many prejudices, but the Central Committee's maneuvering will rub them down with a brush of iron.' Babel expresses no opinion on the chances of successfully rubbing out the Cossacks' 'soaked-in prejudices,' a euphemistic term for vicious anti-Semitism..." ("Jewish Chronicle," Ibid.)
"In the last years of the '20s and the early '30s, Babel was regarded as one of the most notable talents in Soviet literature. Speaking at the first writers' congress in 1934...he made the expected avowals of loyalty and devotion to the revolution, the government and the state. He even praised Stalin's literary style." ("Jewish Chronicle," Ibid.)
In his story, "The Rabbi's Son," Babel places the portraits of Lenin and Rabbi Moses Maimonides side by side. He notes that the margins of Communist leaflets are crowded with "Hebrew verse."
The Siberian novelist Valentin Rasputin wrote in 1990: "I think today the Jews here in Russia should feel responsible for the sin of having carried out the revolution and for the shape it took. They should feel responsible for the terror--for the terror that existed during the revolution and especially after the revolution...their guilt is great. They perpetrated the relentless campaign against the peasant class whose land was brutally expropriated by the state and who themselves were ruthlessly murdered."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's biographer recounts what it was like to grow up as a Russian Christian child among the children of the Jewish communist elite: "By the age of ten he had the cross ripped from his neck by jeering Pioneers and for over a year was held up to ridicule... Solzhenitsyn was, as a boy, exposed to students whose parents had an officially superior status. Most of the members of the Young Pioneers and Komsomol movements, at least in Rostov, were Jewish children..." (Michael Scammell, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, p. 64).
According to the internationally-syndicated RNS wire service (reprinted in "The Christian News," Jan. 8, 1996, p. 2), "Some 200,000 (Christian) clergy, many crucified, scalped and otherwise tortured, were killed during the approximately 60 years of communist rule in the former Soviet Union, a Russian commission reported Monday (Nov. 27, 1995)...40,000 churches (were) destroyed in the period from 1922 to 1980..."
Here is the most genocidal political movement in world history, which created the largest concentration camps and the most horrendous slave labor system of the 20th century, in which millions of gentiles and Christians were slaughtered (on the size of the Gulag concentration camp system cf. C. Andrew and O. Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story and N.Y. Times, Oct. 22, 1990, p. 82. None of these camps are being preserved for posterity. Most were destroyed long ago by special military brigades; cf. Michael Specter, "Cold Reminder," N.Y. Times, Dec. 3, 1994).
This was a movement staffed in its upper echelons by Judaic Communists and yet the world is comparatively silent about the holocaust and war crimes this thoroughly kosher system inflicted and the identity of the persons who were its architects.
Auschwitz is on the tip of every tongue but who has heard of Kolyma, Magadan, the Solovetsky islands and the other infernal Soviet centers of human destruction in eastern Siberia? Who has seen films and books about the millions of human beings worked, frozen and starved to death in the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, over which stood a triumphant, colossal statue of the Judaic Communist mass murderer Genrikh Yagoda?
The Judaic Communist epoch of mass murder has disappeared into history in one of the great vanishing acts of all time. Only practiced deceivers, with all the sleight of hand of the most accomplished stage magicians, could pull off such a coup against the rest of humanity. To trick mankind into focusing nearly all expiatory sentiment, monuments and commemoration on Judaic victims and brand the Mark of Cain--the very words war crime and holocaust itself--on Germany and upon Germans alone as their proprietary trademark, must be regarded as one of the most masterful achievements of psychological warfare in the annals of illusion.
Israeli power has expanded commensurate with the expansion of "Holocaust" propaganda, as noted by the Israeli author Moshe Leshem: "Israelis and American Jews fully agree that the memory of the Holocaust is an indispensable weapon--one that must be used relentlessly against their common enemy...Jewish organizations and individuals thus labor continuously to remind the world of it. In America, the perpetuation of the Holocaust memory is now a $100-million-a-year enterprise, part of which is government-funded." ( Balaam's Curse, p. 228)
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Don't speak about us, we will take away your free speech. This is why, the jewish lie is a mulitmillion dollar a year business to fool you and eventually kill you.
Perpetrators of the holocaust against Christian Russia transform themselves into "survivors" of "the Holocaust"
The portraits above are of the same man but in two different incarnations. On the left we see Martin "Gray" in retirement after a successful career peddling fake antiques to gullible collectors. He is holding his mass market paperback, For Those I Loved, which is filled with his exploits as a saintly "Holocaust Survivor" who was supposedly forced to help clear bodies out of the Treblinka "gas chamber." The earlier portrait on the right is of the youthful Gray as a decorated officer in the Soviet NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB), responsible for the murder of millions of Christians and gentiles in Russia and Eastern Europe. Even Establishment researchers have had to admit that Gray's book is as phony as the antiques he peddled. But Gray's scam is symbolic of countless other Communist ghouls who have managed to land on their feet in the West, disguised as poor, persecuted "Survivors of the Holocaust" and feted as the saints and martyrs of the universe. Meanwhile the holocaust they perpetrated against millions of Christians slips further down the dark environs of Orwell's memory hole.
In chapter 13 of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Dickens notes that Fagin has an inexhaustible supply of props and disguises.
Judaic Communists: The Documentary Record
by Michael A. Hoffman II
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great comments