The American Spectator

Re: Stuart Smalley Thinks You're Doomed

Posted by Quin Hillyer on 9.3.10 @ 12:32PM

I concur with most of Chris Horner's take on the odd column by The Atlantic's Conor Friersdorf. Actually, I'm still not even sure what Friersdorf is saying.... other than that "reforming" conservatism must START WITH, but go well beyond, criticizing Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh, etc.
Well, I too am all for reforming conservatism. And most of the time that means that we start with LISTENING to Levin and Limbaugh. They're usually right.

'Nuff said.

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O'Donnell's Embarrassments

Posted by Quin Hillyer on 9.3.10 @ 11:44AM

Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, already under fire for a sketchy history with personal finances and a number of other odd actions (including suing the stalwart conservative publishing house, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute), now is really turning into an embarrassment. Her unnamed opponents are hiding in her bushes! And her close associates are making absolutely slanderous claims about her GOP opponent, U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, while O'Donnell herself can barely raise herself to denounce the slander -- only while repeating it numerous times.

Yet TEA Partiers, with whose causes I almost always gladly associate, are working hard to make O'Donnell the next Joe Miller, pulling an upset win over the GOP establishment.

I make no endorsement of Mike Castle's leftward drift over the years. I make no endorsement in the race. I love a lot of what O'Donnell says. I would still be at least tempted to vote for her if I lived in Delaware. But if I were a political consultant telling TEA Partiers and conservative leaders in general what their best purely political action would be, long term, what I would say is this: Go to Mike Castle and get pledges from him to move back rightward.

Politicians as experienced as Castle know the importance of honoring their word to other political actors. (Sort of like "honor among thieves," except that most politicians really are NOT thieves.) Conservative leaders can go to him, perfectly legally, and say, look, you saw what happened to Lisa Murkowski in Alaska and to Bob Bennett in Utah. You see the polls that have you just five points up on O'Donnell. You know you are at least at some risk of failing to win the nomination. But we can call off the dogs of war. We can stop ginning up the organizational fervor that could propel O'Donnell to victory. What we ask from you is that you keep your door open to us once you are in the Senate; that you sign at least a two-year version of Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge; that you agree in writing that you will not switch parties if elected and that you would resign rather than do so..... that sort of thing. The pledges don't even need to be public. They can't mention any specific legislation, and they can't be couched in terms of a quid pro quo. But they still can be binding on an honorable man, and Castle is an honorable man.

Here's why: Mike Castle would be a heavy favorite in a general election. O'Donnell -- unlike Miller in Alaska -- would be an almost unwinnable underdog. And the Senate majority could very well hang in the balance with this race. With the Senate majority comes subpoena power to keep the Obama administration in check, and all sorts of other advantages that make it worthwhile for conservatives to have even a liberal Republican like Castle in office rather than an even more liberal Democrat. If conservatives are practical, these are the sorts of considerations that would enter their minds and govern their actions.

After all, conservative leaders otherwise could be left wondering what else might be hiding in O'Donnell's bushes.

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After the "Recovery Summer"

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 9.3.10 @ 11:35AM

The Washington Post reported this morning that the White House is considering a payroll tax cut and an extension of the research and development tax credit, with the intention of aiding small businesses. 

It's a sign that the Obama economic team is worried enough about the sluggishness of the recovery and the possibility of a double-dip recession to act on Republicans' terms. The only fiscal stimulus bill the Democrats could pass would be one composed of tax cuts. Republicans would block any sizable spending measures, as they have been doing. 

The Post suggests that the bill would be introduced before the midterm elections. The article quotes William Galston of the Brookings Institution explaining that the timing proves that the decision wouldn't be motivated by fears about the midterms: "Substantively, there is nothing they could do between now and Election Day that would have any measurable effect on the economy. Nothing." 

If the idea is to make it easier for companies to hire new workers in an attempt to revive the weak labor market, a payroll tax cut would be a good first step. The administration, however, is also toying with a few other policies that would undermine the effect of the payroll tax cut. For example, if the Democrats do allow the Bush tax cuts for top individual earners to expire, the burden will fall onto small business owners -- counteracting the effect of the payroll tax cuts mere months after they're implemented. 

Kevin Hassett and Alan Viard had a good explanation of this argument in today's Wall Street Journal: 

The numbers are clear. According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007....

It's clear that business income for large and small firms will be hit by the higher tax rates. And in point of fact, firms of all sizes contribute to the nation's prosperity. So it's a mistake to focus only on the impact of increased tax rates on small business. But will the higher rates actually cause a significant reduction in business activity?

Economic research supports a large impact. A pair of papers by economists Robert Carroll, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harvey Rosen and Mark Rider that were published in 1998 and 2000 by the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed tax return data and uncovered high responsiveness of sole proprietors' business activity to tax rates. Their estimates imply that increasing the top rate to 40.8% from 35% (an official rate of 39.6% plus another 1.2 percentage points from the restoration of a stealth provision that phases out deductions), as in Mr. Obama's plan, would reduce gross receipts by more than 7% for sole proprietors subject to the higher rate.

These results imply a similar effect on proprietors' investment expenditures. A paper published by R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University and William M. Gentry of Williams College in the American Economic Review in 2000 also found that increasing progressivity of the tax code discourages entrepreneurs from starting new businesses.

Because marginal tax rate increases impede long-run growth, they should be avoided in good times and bad. But now is a particularly inopportune time to raise rates, as small businesses are still struggling from the recession. 

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Stuart Smalley Thinks You're Doomed

Posted by Chris Horner on 9.3.10 @ 10:05AM

Channeling Pauline Kael, someone over at The Atlantic says movement conservatism -- a "deeply unserious and corrupt political coalition" -- is teetering at the precipice because he spoke to some other guy who says he no longer considers himself a conservative because he supported Obamacare.

While on this basis I tend to share the latter's self-assessment, we're to be very worried because you see that case-study is a natural recruit for conservatism being a married father who pays his bills and doesn't think Washington should tell everyone what to do (a rather amusing hat tip and inadvertent swipe at the Left).

Maybe. Or maybe not, what with that little factor like supporting Obamacare. Unlike even liberal Oregon Senator and "aye" vote Ron Wyden -- who by now has had a chance to read some of that bill and find out what's in it.

This persuasive anecdote rises to the level of what my Danish in-laws would call a prut in a hurricane; you might have encountered in your lives other, rather different tales of average, apolitical citizens stirring to awareness and activism in outrage over the health care and other Obama Power Grabs.

But, hey, he knows a guy... Then comes the claim made in closing and without even such an anecdote to explain it, that it's just so "strange" how "calling out" what the Left finds "the least acceptable" speech of Rush, Mark Levin and Glenn Beck is "so verbotten".

No. It isn't "verbotten". That's a bit like Tim Robbins carping at the Press Club that private citizens disagreeing with his moonbattery constitute a violation of his right to free speech. The words you were looking for were "so...MSNBC" and "so Air America". Or "unmeasured, often unhinged and extremely tough for married fathers who pay their bills to watch or listen to especially if their kids are around and therefore unpopular". I know because a guy told me...

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Aug. Unemployment Rate 9.6%, Economy Sheds 54K Jobs

Posted by Philip Klein on 9.3.10 @ 8:32AM

The economy lost 54,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate creeped back up to 9.6 percent, but the numbers were better than expected and the job losses could be attributed to the expiration of temporary Census jobs, according to a report released this morning by the Department of Labor.

During the month, there were 114,000 jobs lost because of the Census, while the private sector added 67,000 jobs. According to a Reuters survey, economists were expecting overall employment dropping by 100,000 and private sector hiring up 41,000.

There were also 1.1 million discouraged workers who are not reflected in the unemployment rate because they have stopped looking for work, believing that no jobs are available to them.

While the numbers may have been better than expected, they still aren't great. Politically speaking, they won't do anything to change voter perceptions that the economy is weak and that the Democrats' spending measures have been a failure. Keep in mind, too, that there is only one more jobs report due out before the election, so Democrats are running out of opportunities to demonstrate sufficient progress.

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Gearing Up For Quds Day

Posted by John Tabin on 9.2.10 @ 6:26PM

Quds Day, the last Friday of Ramadan, is a holiday invented by Ayatollah Khomeini to protest the existence of Israel. Funny thing, though: While the Islamic Republic is ostensibly preparing for the usual anti-Zionist festivities, they seem to be awfully worried about what kind of protest might erupt tomorrow. Green Movement leader Mehdi Karroubi finds his house under siege. Encrypted internet transmissions are being blocked (as are Gmail and Yahoo). Riot police are out in force in Tehran. The Iranian people have a bigger problem with the thugs running the country than they do with Israel, and the thugs know it.

And as the conflict simmers between the Iranian government and its own people, President Obama remains shamefully silent, refusing to voice support for the opposition that represents the biggest threat to a regime that is a serious threat to American interests.

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More on Just War and Preventive War

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 9.2.10 @ 5:38PM

As Jim argues, preventive wars don't fit neatly into the traditional understanding of just wars. The complication, though, that right-wing preventative war supporters would bring up is that the traditional understanding of wars doesn't necessarily apply to today's conflicts. 

Specifically, in the times when just war theory was developed, wars were generally fought by nations that declared war on each other and sent conventional armies into the field against declared combatants. Today the combatants are "terrorists" and "insurgents" who aren't necessarily associated with a nation and don't have a unified command. Also, they don't have a centralized location and could launch a devastating stealth attack anywhere -- so we "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." 

Clearly the concept of a just war has to be updated to accommodate the reality of terrorism. For instance, it seems to be settled that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified under a modern just war theory, even though the nation of Afghanistan itself posed almost no threat to the U.S., because that's where the terrorists were. 

But stretching just war theory to fit today's warfare is not easy. The evidence that it's been stretched too far, as Jim mentions, is that, in hindsight at least, our ability to speculate about the threats posed by terrorists and their sponsors is limited. And, when an updated just war theory is invoked to justify tactics that were deplorable under the old just war definitions, it should be cause for concern. 

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Another Federal Giveaway to Unions

Posted by Greg Scandlen on 9.2.10 @ 4:24PM

HHS announced this week that 2,000 “groups” are eligible to receive money for “reinsuring” their retiree health programs. Only a third (32%) are private businesses, the rest are state and local governments (26%), unions (22%), “education” (I guess public universities) (14%), and non-profits  (5%).

For years these organizations have been giving in to union demands for generous retirement benefits, but they haven’t been funding their promises. Hmmmm. What to do? What to do? I KNOW! We’ll have the Feds bail us out. They’ve got plenty of money!

So, ObamaCare appropriated $5 billion to offset some of the costs for a few selected organizations. The Feds will pay 80% of the claims costs for expenses between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees between the ages of 55 and 65. But only if the groups “have in place programs and procedures that generate or have the potential to generate cost savings for participants with chronic and high-cost conditions.” In other words, only if the group is pleasing to the Administration.

In explaining the program, HHS noted that –

“The percentage of large firms providing workers with retiree health coverage dropped from 66 percent in 1988 to 29 percent in 2009. Many Americans who retire before they are eligible for Medicare without employer-sponsored health coverage see their life savings disappear because of medical bills and exorbitant rates in the individual health insurance market. Health insurance premiums for older Americans are over four times more expensive than those for young adults, and the deductible these enrollees pay is, on average, almost four times that in a typical employer-sponsored insurance plan.”

Of course, this program does absolutely nothing for any of those folks. Instead it gives extra money to the fat cat unions and giant employers that are currently enjoying very rich benefits.

SOURCE:

HHS Fact Sheet with links to the list of benefiting organizations

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Just War and Preventive War

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 9.2.10 @ 3:42PM

Mark Tooley and John Keown have had an interesting exchange about whether the American Revolution was a just war. Tooley correctly argues that many people, especially on the religious left, employ Just War theory to effectively oppose any war. Some wars are definitely just (I would argue Afghanistan was such a war). But Just War theory is properly intended to restrain the use of force rather than to come up with elaborate justifications for its use.

That's what those of us who subscribe to Just War theory find so troubling about the right's recent embrace of preventive war. While preemptive wars can be just, it is difficult if not impossible for preventive wars to satisfy the criteria of Just War theory. Why? Because they tend to deal with speculative and hypothetical evils rather than actual, verifiable evils. In addition to muddying the concept of who is the aggressor, preventive wars cannot establish that the damage inflicted by the target is lasting, grave, and certain; it also becomes hard to establish that the evils resolved by the use of arms are in fact greater than those unleashed by the use of force.

Consider David Frum's recent defense of the Iraq war in hindsight. Nearly every argument he makes for it is speculative. While some of his speculation is perfectly plausible and reasonable, the fact is we don't know if he is right about all the evils he believes the war prevented or eliminated. We do know for sure what evils the war unleashed -- massive sectarian violence in Iraq, ethnic cleansing, the persecution of Iraqi Christians, an increase in the Iranian government's regional influence, not to mention the lives of thousands of brave Americans. Not everybody on the right believes Just War theory is adequate to deal with today's security threats in an age of terrorism. But when the logic of preventive war seems to counsel more war, it might be worth revisiting.

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The Warmabomber Was An Aberration

Posted by Paul Chesser on 9.2.10 @ 3:30PM

He was just an outlier in the environmental movement, you see:

Copenhagen - Four Greenpeace activists who had clung to an oil rig off western Greenland with rock-climbing gear were arrested on Thursday after an Arctic storm forced them to abandon their environmental protest.

Police spokesperson Morten Nielsen said the four men - from the US, Finland, Poland and Germany - faced preliminary charges of violating a 500m security perimeter around the Stena Don rig and trespassing by climbing onto the installation.

The activists had been suspended under the rig since Tuesday to protest Scottish company Cairn Energy PLC's deepwater drilling in the area, saying it could spark an oil rush in sensitive Arctic waters....

"We stopped this rig drilling for oil for two days but the campaign is far from over," Greenpeace spokesperson Jon Burgwald said by telephone from the ship Esperanza, which is anchored off Greenland.

"Our activists hung there for more than 40 hours but last night, a freezing storm and high waves made them decide it was too risky. So we contacted the police to say we were stopping the action," he said.

Just another rational action to rally the masses to their cause. At least they didn't strap on bombs!

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topics: Oil, Environmentalism

Reaping What the Greens Sow

Posted by Chris Horner on 9.2.10 @ 12:36PM

My former colleague Richard Morrison articulates matters very well elsewhere on AmSpec, here, but in the wake of yesterday's terrorism outside Washington, DC by Discovery-network hostage-taker James J. Lee, let's consider the position articulated by, say, radio host Glenn Beck to not attribute responsibility to Al Gore's eco-ranting. The latter is of course larded with assurances of a certain eco-catastrophe brought about by dark forces impeding salvation, and disturbing utterances like "the tide in this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join in an all-out effort." (Earth in the Balance, p. 269)

Any sane person knows that such exhortations for an all-out effort to stop urgent danger are merely calls to get involved, say with direct mail campaigns and bake sales.

Now, both Fox News and CNN have reported that Lee attributed his radicalism to the writings of two men -- Daniel Quinn and Al Gore. The Washington Post carried a fairly lengthy article exploring the former, who dismisses any connection. That piece and the main news feature are both silent on the deceased's giving equal credit to Gore (although a pop-up ad for China's solar industry does accompany one of them). This is true of the Wall Street Journal's coverage, among others.

Beck's (somewhat backhanded, I understand) rationale for exculpating Gore of partial responsibility is that the terrorist was sick. Yep. But the two -- culpability by Gore and other radical green imams, and acting out by mentally unstable members of their targeted demographic -- aren't mutually exclusive. We know that individuals bear responsibility for reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions, both the instigator and the instigated.

One might not like the connection, what with environmentalism being as chic as a Che Guevara handbag, but you can't deny it. Take the quiz, "Did Al Gore say it? Or was it the Unabomber?". I dare you to score better than 50%. That should make you uncomfortable. Then read Lee's manifesto, and really squirm at the similarities.

This isn't Jody Foster somehow recklessly taunting John Hinkley. Al Gore dressed up quite nicely to stand on a stage and...show a near-term swamping of much of America, with massive loss of life, unless people are stopped. He vows there is no disagreement of this "truth" except for a few crazies and those in the pay of the oil industry causing the planetary crisis, what Gore calls "the most serious threat that we have ever faced,"[ (EITB, p. 40). Gosh. What could possibly go wrong?

I made the connection on Washington, DC's WMAL morning radio show this morning, to the distress of one of the hosts who responded with the obvious counter that, erm, the Tea Party used the word "target" in their rhetoric accompanied by a scope-sight in graphics showing targeted races. Ah. I suppose that reasonable minds can differ whether assassination is a logical or reasonably foreseeable consequence of this repetition of the long-standing use of "target" in the political context. No rash of actions has borne this out, however.

But yesterday's hostage-taking is just the latest "isolated incident" of eco-nuts engaging in "all-out efforts" that "we must make the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." (Gore, EITB) And it is the logical, foreseeable consequence of the green movement's perspective and rhetoric.

In my first book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism)", I serially lay out quotes by establishment greens reflecting Lee's eco-driven revulsion at population (as always, the peril of this mostly white, middle class movement is other people being born, other people building homes, other people getting wealthy, etc.), and a whatever-means-necessary attitude.

These remarks are too numerous to cherry-pick one or two. In short, environmentalists think people are pollution. And they must be stopped. Just like Lee writes in his manifesto.

Also difficult to ignore are the examples cited backing up the title of my second book, "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed": attempts and threats on the lives of those who...dare disagree, and oppose the eco-agenda.

There is a reason an astrophysicist who oddly suggested the sun might have a somewhat larger  influence on the Earth's climate than Man should be subjected to having her picture circulated with the accompanying charge "Mass Murderer". Again, what could possibly go wrong? Possibly the same thing in mind -- or, negligently not considered -- when Greenpeace widely posted a picture of me, with bold letters convicting me for their followers' knowledge as "Climate Criminal". Why they want people to know what I look like, I can only speculate. But it did lead to them even finding and staking out my house, taking my trash on a weekly basis while they were there. I got off lucky.

Environmental rhetoric regularly consists of gross exaggeration, claiming certainty about looming catastrophe, calling for radical campaigns to stop those dark forces assuring our destruction. As I write in RHL:

"But as global warming alarmism continues not merely to spin further into the land of the rabid it is actually encouraged in its mania by the establishment media and politicians. Barbara Boxer, senator and chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, employed on the Senate floor employed a variant on Al Gore's protect-the-baby metaphor at about the same time as [a murder in Australia by a man angered over another's thoughtless eco-waste: watering his lawn], 'We would never leave a child alone in a hot, locked car, and I believe the [committee] will not leave this issue of global warming burning for another generation to address.'  As one commenter noted, 'When the notion takes hold that humans are little more than scavengers and parasites on Mother Earth, we shouldn't be surprised when a fanatic weighs the life an old man against a little water, and finds the former to be of less value.'" (citations omitted).

Sound familiar? If not, read yesterday's terrorist's manifesto.

Politics hates uncertainty, and the "global warming" agenda in particular demands so many privations and sacrifices of liberty that it cannot withstand scrutiny. So it, and its proponents, relies upon wild exaggeration of knowledge and catastrophe as a means to avoid debate. It's past time we recognize this and shame those who shriek of catastrophe to advance a political agenda. At minimum, you are taking advantage of and encouraging those of sensitive, tenuous dispositions, with proven dangerous consequences. As I also detail in RHL, they are particularly terrorizing children, leading even to psychiatric commitment.

Eco-terrorism is terrorism. Stop waving it away as a different kind of terrorism, each incident in the pattern of behavior merely an isolated one. Willful or not, these incidents are the logical consequence of the doomsday rhetoric.

Environmental radicalism has been mainstreamed, the latest poisonous "radical chic". But there are consequences to this indulgence. Stop Gang Green before they harm again.

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Wind Power Could Result in Higher Workplace Fatalities, Heritage Study Shows

Posted by Kevin Mooney on 9.2.10 @ 10:44AM

We know it is expensive and unreliable.

But a new study from the Heritage Foundation also shows that wind power could be more dangerous to worker safety than traditional energy sources. The tragic explosions in Massey's Upper Big Branch coal mine and the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig have very appropriately focused attention on workplace hazards. But it would be a mistake to presume that switching away from fossil fuels to renewable energy would reduce fatalities, David Kreutzer, a senior policy analyst in energy economics and climate change explains.

It is important to understand that the current low number of total deaths in the wind-power industry is largely a result of the very low amount of power generated by wind, Kreutzer points out in his study. To properly project the potential consequences of switching to wind from coal, it is necessary to calculate the mortality rate per megawatt-hour.

"On a million-megawatt-hour basis, the wind-energy industry has averaged 0.0220 deaths compared with 0.0147 for coal over the years 2003-2008," the study says.  "Even adding coal's share of fatalities in the power-generation industry, which brings the rate up to 0.0164, still leaves wind power with a 34 percent higher mortality rate.  For the record, the workplace fatality rate for wind also exceeds that for oil and gas on an equivalent-energy basis."

The 20 percent renewable energy standard included as part of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill would require swapping about 800 million megawatt-hours of coal generated with current with 800 million megawatt-hours of wind power, Kreutzer notes. The end result here gives good reason for pause.

"Using the recent mortality rates as a guide, we would expect there to be 4-5 more workplace fatalities per year than if there were no wind power at all," he wrote.  "Even this comparison ignores the fatalities we could expect from the additional power lines needed for so much remote wind power."

Kreutzer's study calls attention to an unexplored dimension of the energy debate. The Obama Administration's pursuit of so-called renewable energy could have unexpected and highly damaging consequences over time.

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Obama Labor Board Could Overturn Secret Ballot Case

Posted by Kevin Mooney on 9.2.10 @ 10:27AM

(This post clarifies some earlier points)

President Obama's labor board is now positioned to overturn the landmark 2007 Dana Corp. decision that allows workers to vote out via secret ballot a union that was recognized through the card check process.

This week the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced it has merged two cases, which involve union lawyers with the USW and UFCW who are seeking to overturn Dana ruling that allowed for employees to demand a secret ballot election within 45 days after a union obtained monopoly bargaining status through a card check campaign.

In the USW case, the same Foundation attorneys who originally won the landmark Dana  case are providing free legal assistance to Mike Lopez, an employee of Lamons Gasket Company in Houston, Texas, who filed the decertification petition when at least 30 percent of employees in the bargaining unit support the election. Consequently, there is good reason to doubt that the card check vote accurately reflected workers' support of the union.

Workers have already used the Dana precedent to demand secret ballot votes and kicked out unwanted unions.  Here's a video report about some Dana Corp. employees in Albion, Indiana who did just that.

Many of the workers say they only signed the cards in response to union organizers visiting their homes not out of a genuine sense of conviction.

"While President Obama  and members of Congress continue to push for a federal bill that would end the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, an obscure federal agency stacked with union lawyers is poised to eliminate the private vote for workers who have been subjected to unreliable and coercive card check campaigns," Foundation President Mark Mix said.

One of the lawyers who agreed to review Dana is Craig Becker, a controversial recess appointee who is also former legal counsel to the SEIU and AFL-CIO. As a lawyer with the AFL-CIO, Becker cosigned a joint AFL-CIO/UAW brief in the original Dana case; yet he is now in a position on the quasi-judicial agency to overturn that very decision.

A similar challenge by union lawyers to Dana that has NOT been consolidated into this review involves Service Workers United, an SEIU affiliate. Earlier this year, Foundation attorneys asked Becker to recuse himself from cases involving SEIU local affiliate unions.  Becker responded that he must only recuse himself from cases involving the national union.  The Foundation's vice president and legal director Raymond LaJeunesse, Jr. sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in August asking him to investigate whether Becker is in violation of his Obama Administration ethics pledge for participating in cases involving SEIU affiliates.

While that question remains unsettled, it appears Becker and the two other former union lawyers currently comprising a majority on Obama's labor board designed the review of Dana to exclude the pending SEIU case so Becker could avoid the ethics problem and still rule to overturn Dana.

It's also worth noting that it would be quite rare  for the Board to decide important cases like this without at least three votes in the majority.  If Becker were to actually recuse himself from the Dana review, the vote to overturn Dana would likely be 2-1 . This would explain why it's  important for the union lawyer majority on the Board to keep Becker on the case.

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Sources of the Warmabomber's Bright Ideas

Posted by Paul Chesser on 9.2.10 @ 10:20AM

Where in the world would James Jay Lee, the Global Warmabomber, have gotten the radical idea that the number of humans must be reduced, if not eradicated, to accomplish environmental goals? Richard Morrison provides some answers at the main site today. Here are some other deep-pocketed promoters who link population control (aka abortion or "reproductive" rights) and saving the environment (aka "sustainability"):

• The United Nations
• United Nations Foundation (population, environment)
• George Soros (population, environment)
• Center for American Progress (population, environment)
• Ford Foundation (population, environment)
• Tides Foundation (population, environment)
• The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (population, environment)
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (population, environment)
• The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (population, environment)
• The (Ted) Turner Foundation
• The George Gund Foundation (population, environment)
• Compton Foundation (population, environment)
• WestWind Foundation (population, environment)
• The Overbrook Foundation (population, environment)
• The Summit Foundation (population, environment)
• The Educational Foundation of America
• Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation
• Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
• Weeden Foundation

That's billions of dollars to spread the humans-are-pollution message around, and only the few found with a couple of basic Google searches. Feel free to add your discoveries in the comments (I'm sure I'm missing obvious ones).

And then there are the talk radio hatemongers on the Left and the alarmists who wish harm or death on global warming realists...

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topics: Abortion, Global Warming, Environmentalism, George Soros, Climate Change

O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck Trounce in Ratings

Posted by Jeffrey Lord on 9.2.10 @ 8:30AM

The Drudge Report has the ratings out for cable news. In 1,2, 3 order the winners are Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. No wonder MSNBC hates these people.

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,977,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,645,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,600,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,097,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,858,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,856,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,078,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,027,000
MSNBC SHULTZ 699,000
CNN SANCHEZ 676,000
CNN KING 620,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 620,000
CNNHN GRACE 586,000
CNN COOPER 581,000

If there was ever an indication of the political hurricane that's about to hit America in November, this is certainly a real-time look at what's coming.

Imagine this. Almost 4 million for O'Reilly, over 2.6 million for Hannity, 2.6 even for Beck and so on.  These people are clobbering the competition. Wiping the floor with them. 

There are political tea leaves to be seen here, and not just those of the Tea Party.

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