From NRO:

50 things wrong with the Cap-and-Trade Bill:

SPECIAL-INTEREST SOPS

1. Free money for well-connected business interests.

2. A little something for Goldman Sachs. Again.

3. Alcoa and Dupont get their share. The utilities, too.

4. A tree grows in Botswana.

5. Selling indulgences.

6. Protecting refineries.

7. All carrot, no stick for the farm lobby.

8. Replacing the EPA with the USDA.

9. Ignoring ethanol’s impact.

10. Buying off electric cooperatives.

11. Monsanto rounds up favors.

12. Interfering with free trade.

13. Billions for “international clean technology.”

14. Inflating union wages.

NON-CAP MANDATES

15. Establishing “renewable” standards.

16. Trading “renewable” credits.

17. Excluding the clean sources.

18. Meet the “Carbon Storage Research Corporation.”

19. Carbon, dead and buried.

20. Restricting coal-fired plants.

21. The candelabra clause.

22. Everything, and the kitchen sink.

23. High-class refrigerators.

24. Your green house.

25. Commercial properties also pay to go green (twice!).

26. The EPA in the back seat.

27. Fuel-efficiency standards.

28. Greenhouse-gas registry.

29. Stopping states’ innovation.

GREEN DREAMS

30. Park-’n’-plug mandates.

31. Electrifying Detroit.

32. Biofuel mandates.

33. That ethanol pipeline, again.

34. Cash for clunky microwaves.

35. $15 billion for the wind industry.

36. Truckin’ money.

37. Winning the DOE lottery.

38. $1.5 billion for Hollings.

39. $65 million for gas turbines. You’re welcome, GE!

40. Promoting ethanol, again.

VARIOUS LEFT-WING WISH FULFILLMENT

41. Shunt money onto campus.

42. Community-organizers get their piece.

43. Tax-code income redistribution.

44. The new monthly welfare check.

45. Put ’em out of work, then pay them.

46. Dozens of new government offices and agencies.

47. Bambi’s payday.

48. The wrong kind of federalism.

49. Greening health-care spending.

50. Investing in “emerging” careers.

A 'coup' in Honduras? Nonsense.

"Under our Constitution, what happened in Honduras this past Sunday? Soldiers arrested and sent out of the country a Honduran citizen who, the day before, through his own actions had stripped himself of the presidency.

These are the facts: On June 26, President Zelaya issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the "Public Opinion Poll to convene a National Constitutional Assembly." In doing so, Zelaya triggered a constitutional provision that automatically removed him from office.

Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. When Zelaya published that decree to initiate an "opinion poll" about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he contravened the unchangeable articles of the Constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.

Our Constitution takes such intent seriously. According to Article 239: "No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediatelycease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years."

Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says "immediately" – as in "instant," as in "no trial required," as in "no impeachment needed."

Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America's authoritarian tradition. The Constitution's provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo.

The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya's arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible. This decision was taken by the 123 (of the 128) members of Congress present that day."

Read the whole thing.

Also, go read this article:

"The Honduran people, wise to the ways of Latin American politics, adopted a constitution that prohibits any president from serving more than one term. Presidents in Latin American countries, like herpes, have a habit of never going away. Further, the Honduran constitution requires that any referenda put to the voters must be approved by the Honduran Congress.

The Hondurans are so concerned about potential despots, that Article 239 of their constitution states that any president who proposes extending his term in office is automatically removed from office. Article 313 of the Honduran constitution allows its Supreme Court to deputize the Honduran military to carry out its orders, including removing politicians from office who seek to extend a president’s term.

Ignoring the constitution, President Manuel Zelaya, a man less popular in Honduras than George Bush was when he left office in this country, ordered a “non-binding” referendum be put to the voters on extending his stay in office.

Glenn Garvin wrote in the Miami Herald, “After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country’s congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. ... When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.”

The Honduran Supreme Court, congress, attorney general and members of Zelaya’s cabinet opposed his move as unconstitutional. The supreme court ordered the military to remove Zelaya from office. Honduras has no impeachment process as we know it."

Hope and Change:

 

You mean, we still have a reputation problem?

"Glenn Reynolds links to and excerpts an editorial from Der Spiegel that absolutely savages Barack Obama:

The occupant of the White House may have changed recently. But the amount of ill-advised ideology coming from Washington has remained constant. Obama's list of economic errors is long -- and continues to grow.... Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

But not, sadly, in ways that would delight most of our readers. The scorn from the traditionally anti-American magazine, this time aimed at the sainted Obama, is really quite something, and the comparison of Obama to Bush and Summers to Cheney is arresting.

Now, do not confuse me with somebody who cares very much what editorialists in Der Spiegel or other outposts of the European chattering classes think of any American president. I could not care less, in no small part because I believe that the interests of such people generally diverge from mine own. I note, however, that many of the cosmopolitan Americans who voted for Barack Obama did so because they were embarrassed by the Bush administration's reputation among foreigners, particularly European elites. They hated having to explain themselves over dinner in Paris, Brussels, and Frankfurt, and worried that most Europeans would not understand that we are not all unnuanced rubes. I therefore wonder how such people will react if anti-Obama sentiment in Europe grows to the point where they have to explain themselves all over again. Will they rise in Barack Obama's defense, agree with the foreign critique but deny that they voted for him, or explode from the cognitive dissonance? 

The possibilities for hilarity are not small.

MORE along the same lines from the Financial Times. The Obama administration may learn that the bond vigilantes were friendly little puppies compared to the currency vigilantes."

At the Volokh Conspiracy:

 

The End of Transparency (Before It Ever Began):

"Earlier this week, the White House officially abandoned President Obama's "Sunlight before Signing" pledge (which I discussed here and here). As the NYT reported:

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it.

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing,” Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable.

When he took office in January, his team added that in posting nonemergency bills, it would “allow the public to review and comment” before Mr. Obama signed them.

Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two. . . .

Now, in a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign pledge was easier to make than to fulfill, the White House is changing its terms. Instead of starting the five-day clock when Congress passes a bill, administration officials say they intend to start it earlier and post the bills sooner.

“In order to continue providing the American people more transparency in government, once it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the White House will post the bill online,” said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman. “This will give the American people a greater ability to review the bill, often many more than five days before the president signs it into law.”

The Administration also appears to be backing off its promises for greater access to government documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

One argument for modifying (abandoning) the "Sunlight before Signing" policy is that the public no longer has any meaningful opportunity to influence prospective laws once legislation has passed Congress. Yet this is only true if the White House does not intend to be responsive to public concerns. Further, the original pledge was about ensuring that the executive branch did its part to ensure transparency and accountability in government, and was never pitched as a substitute for actions Congressional leaders could take to increase legislative transparency.

The explanation of the policy change also presupposes that there is meaningful opportunity for public involvement while legislation is still pending and subject to revision. Yet as the debate over the Waxman-Markey climate change bill illustrates, this is not a fair assumption. As Jim notes below, the House is preparing to vote on an 1,000-plus-page bill that was subject to a 300-page amendment last night — an amendment that was not even available to many members of Congress until today. Most members of Congress have had no meaningful opportunity to read, let alone digest, the bill. The same is true for most legislative staff. Forget the public.

If legislation of this sort, which establishes the first-ever regulatory controls on the most ubiquitous byproduct of modern industrial society, imposes new efficiency requirements on all-manner of appliances and consumer products, could trigger the imposition of tariffs on foreign products (likely in violation of U.S. trade commitments), furthers the federal government's environmentally destructive love affair with corn-based ethanol, contains numerous provisions drafted or urged by various special interest groups, and (at least in one version) contained provisions designed to create a national housing code, can be adopted by a House of Congress within hours of being written (let alone becoming public), then any claim of transparency in government is a farce.

UPDATE: FWIW, the Waxman-Markey climate bill passed 219-212. Any guess how many of those 219 (or, for that matter, the 212) really know everything that is in the bill?"

The Albany-Trenton-Sacramento Disease

How three liberal states got into deep trouble with 'progressive' ideas.

President Obama has bet the economy on his program to grow the government and finance it with a more progressive tax system. It's hard to miss the irony that he's pitching this change in Washington even as the same governance model is imploding in three of the largest American states where it has been dominant for years -- California, New Jersey and New York.

A decade ago all three states were among America's most prosperous. California was the unrivaled technology center of the globe. New York was its financial capital. New Jersey is the third wealthiest state in the nation after Connecticut and Massachusetts. All three are now suffering from devastating budget deficits as the bills for years of tax-and-spend governance come due.

These states have been models of "progressive" policies that are supposed to create wealth: high tax rates on the rich, lots of government "investments," heavy unionization and a large government role in health care.

Here's a rundown on the results:

Government spending as economic stimulus. State-local spending per capita is $12,505 in New York (second highest after Alaska), $10,136 per person in California (fourth) and $9,574 in New Jersey (seventh).

Has all this public sector "investment" translated into jobs? Not quite. California had the nation's third highest jobless rate in May (11.5%). New Jersey and New York had below average unemployment rates in May compared to the national average of 9.4%, but one reason is that so many discouraged workers have left those states. From 1998-2007, which included two booms on Wall Street, New York and New Jersey ranked 36th and 31st in job creation. From 2000 to 2007, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association calculates that nine out of 10 new Garden State jobs were in the government.

Soak the rich. Mr. Obama plans to pay for his government investments through higher tax rates on the top 1% and 2% of taxpayers. Our troika of liberal states are champions at soaking the rich. The state-local income tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation, is the highest in the nation in New York, second highest in California and sixth in New Jersey. New York City boasts the highest business tax rate, 17.6%, according to a study by the American Legislative Exchange Council. Seven of the 10 highest property tax counties in America are located in New Jersey.

Instead of balanced budgets, these high taxes have produced record red ink. California's deficit for 2010 is projected at $33.9 billion, New Jersey's $7 billion and New York's $17.9 billion, despite multiple tax increases this decade. The Manhattan Institute finds that three-quarters of the loss in revenues this year in Albany is a result of reduced income tax payments by rich people even though the state keeps raising taxes on high earners.

California's debt burden has multiplied so fast that it now has the worst bond rating of any state, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators are pleading with Washington to command the other 49 states to pay off its IOUs. The interest rates on Golden State bonds have nearly tripled in the last two years.

Read the whole thing here.

Mickey Kaus: 

The U.A.W., now a major GM shareholder, has delivered its final punishment to those auto workers who dared move to Spring Hill, Tennessee and show up the rest of the union by building reliable car without Wagner-style work rules.  GM's new small car will be made in Michigan, and the Spring Hill plant will close. .... P.S.: Nikke Finke has a better chance of making money producing this car than GM does.

Politicians will, almost by definition, be deeply weird.

By Mark Steyn

In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor’s press conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media’s pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on — or, at any rate, one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford’s. Not that the governor didn’t do his best to keep his end up on the pop-culture allusions: “I’ve spent the last five days crying in Argentina,” he revealed, in presumably unconscious hommage to Evita.

The plot owed less to Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber than to one of those Fox movies of the early Forties in which some wholesome all-American type escapes the stress and strain of modern life by taking off for a quiet weekend in Latin America, and the next thing you know they’re doing the rhumba on the floor of a Rio nightclub surrounded by Carmen Miranda and 200 gay caballeros prancing around waving giant bananas. In this case, the gentlemen of the South Carolina press were the befuddled caballeros and Governor Sanford was bananas.

There is a rather large point to all this. As my National Review colleague Kathryn Jean Lopez observed, a sex scandal a week from the Republicans will guarantee us government health care by the fall — in the same way that the British Tories’ boundlessly versatile sexual predilections helped deliver the Blair landslide of 1997. And once government health care’s in place the game’s over: Socialized medicine redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in all the wrong ways, and, if you cross that bridge, it’s all but impossible to go back. So, if ever there were a season for GOP philanderers not to unpeel their bananas, this summer is it.

At the press conference, the governor rationalized his unfaithfulness to Mrs. Sanford by saying that he needed to get out of “the bubble.” Tina Brown, proprietrix of The Daily Beast, hooted in derision: “The bubble’s where you’re s’posed to be, Mark. That’s what all the rubber-chicken fundraisers you put her through were for.” But a more basic question is: Why does the minimally empowered executive of a mid-sized state with no particular national prominence need to be in “the bubble” in the first place?

Evidently he is. Much of the charade involved in the scandal arose from the need to throw off his “security detail”: The Chevy Suburban pulling up outside the governor’s mansion; Sanford casually tossing his running shoes, a pair of green shorts, and a sleeping bag in the back; turning off the GPS locator . . . Although staffers kept up his ghostwritten tweet of the day on Twitter, by Monday state senators were revealing that they hadn’t heard from the governor since Thursday.

And we can’t have that, can we?

Even Charles Krauthammer on Fox News professed to be concerned at a governor wandering off incommunicado. What would happen if there was a hurricane or a terrorist attack on South Carolina? Well, I’d imagine that state agencies would muddle through to one degree of competence or another, and that the physical presence of the governor would make absolutely zero difference — any more than, on the day, George Pataki made a difference to New York’s response to 9/11 (good) or Kathleen Blanco to Louisiana’s response to Katrina (abysmal and embarrassing, but deriving from the state’s broader political culture rather than anything Governor Blanco did or didn’t do on the big day). In a republic of limited government, the governor, two-thirds of the state legislature, and the heads of every regulatory agency should be able to go “hiking the Appalachian Trail” for a lot longer than five days, and nobody would notice.

Read the whole thing.

Demonizing Energy Producers

In a statement intended to help justify the proposed “cap and trade” energy tax, Barack Obama said:

At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.

There are so many things wrong with this that one scarcely knows where to begin.

Obama demonizes those who emit “dangerous carbon emissions” (ie, CO2–the same substance you breathe out with every breath, not some exotic poison)…a category which encompasses virtually every electrical utility facility in America, and a high percentage of industrial facilities. Most of these plants were using the best available technology at the time they were constructed. Does Obama really think that a coal- or gas-fired power plant, built in, say, 1985, should have been built instead as a solar plant? Does Obama know what solar cells cost in 1985? Even today, solar and wind power are considerably more expensive than conventional sources, and in 1985, the gap was much, much larger.

The statement “this legislation is paid for by the polluters” is clearly fraudulent. The investors in power utilities include many pension funds, as well as individual 401(k) and other investment portfolios: to the extent that the tax is paid by shareholders and bondholders, it would be felt by individuals in the form of lower investment returns and/or jeopardy to their pension payouts. But in reality, most of the tax would necessarily be passed through to utility bills and manufactured product prices. Obama knows this: during the campaign, he admitted that his energy proposals would cause utility bills to rise. The legislation would also make U.S.-manufactured products, especially those that are energy-intensive in their production, less competitive with those in other countries, and would lay additional heavy burdens on American manufacturing.

Read the whole thing here.

15 Reasons to Oppose Climate Bill

National Energy Tax: This is a tax that will affect constituents in every aspect of their lives. From transportation, to food, to electricity, to income - this is the ultimate regressive consumption tax to the tune of nearly $3,000 per year according to the Heritage Foundation. The costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are estimated to be $71,493.

Exacerbates the Economic Crisis: Studies from numerous independent research groups, including MIT, the Heritage Foundation, and CRA International, all agree that implementing a massive cap and tax scheme will cost millions of jobs, reduce earnings for the average U.S. worker, and devastate GDP.

Massive Job Losses: According to the Heritage Foundation, employment will be lower by 1,105,000 jobs per year. In some years, the national energy tax will reduce employment by nearly 2.5 million jobs.

Winners & Losers: The bill transfers wealth from rural areas to cities. States like California, Washington, and New Jersey would receive more emission credits than they need, enabling them to sell surplus credits to smaller facilities in states like Ohio that receive maybe half of the credits they need - making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer.

Little Environmental Impact: The bill will cost consumers trillions of dollars, while reducing, by a very small amount the carbon dioxide that is contained in our atmosphere. World-wide emission reductions would be negligible without the full participation of all nations. Additionally, just because the government requires a certain decrease in emissions within a certain timeframe, does not mean such decreases can occur in that time period.

Green Jobs Are a Proven Failure: According to a recent study (PDF) that reviewed the impact of "green jobs" in Spain, the U.S. can expect 2.2 jobs to be destroyed for every 1 renewable job financed by the government. Only 1 in 10 of the jobs actually created through green investment is permanent, and since 2000, Spain has spent 753,778 U.S dollars to create each "green job," including subsidies of more than $1,319,783 per wind industry job.

Free Money to Select Corporate Titans: Government-run "cap and trade" is, by definition, a central economic planning scheme in which the government decides which industries and companies deserve more or fewer credits and what business factors and economic outputs are "necessary." Small business and rural interests never had a seat at the table when discussions occurred on how to craft H.R. 2454.

Creates a Derivatives Market for Companies like AIG: Companies like AIG and ENRON will be participating in a new derivatives market that is much more volatile than housing or natural gas. This new unregulated derivates market will be more perilous for companies like these than the traditional ones that got them into trouble in the first place. In addition, since the created artificial market contains no transparency, it is more likely to attract traders intent on imposing Ponzi schemes in the same spirit of Bernie Madoff and swindle thousands of Americans.

Devastates Rural America: According to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the monthly residential electricity bills in 25 states will increase 15 to 28 percent for every $20/ton of carbon dioxide allowances. Rural households spend 58% more on fuel than urban residents as a percentage of their income. The Heritage foundation estimates farm income will drop by $50 billion by 2035.

Concedes to the Competition: Currently, China accounts for 85% of global growth in coal each year and is the world's largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases. China's energy usage rose by 7.2% last year and they are building approximately two coal fired power plants per week to keep up with demand. Recently, at a U.N. conference, the Chinese government's advisory panel on climate change asserted that the cap and tax targets were too low bystating Given that, it is natural for China to have some increase in its emissions, so it is not possible for China in that context to accept a binding or compulsory target. In addition, India will not agree to any cap on their total energy production, and many believe India will double their coal-fired-capacity by 2030.

Read the rest here.