Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a plan to tackle climate change by cutting greenhouse gases by one-fifth over the next decade, a faster clip than urged by President Barack Obama.
The proposal, seen as the first step toward Congress enacting climate legislation this year, was crafted to attract broader support among centrist Democrats. The plan includes measures to spur energy efficiency and to support technology to capture carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, from coal burning power plants.
The 600-page "discussion draft" will be the basis for climate debates in the coming weeks as the House Energy and Commerce Committee works to craft a bill by mid-May.
Not a good idea IMHO
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/31/2009 18:13 ||
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Link ||
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#1
I'm all for it. Send the jobs to non Dem controlled states like mine. We may even export some electricity back your way. For $1000/MWHour.
Posted by: ed ||
03/31/2009 20:21 Comments ||
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#2
This bill also allows the gov to 'tax' imports for their carbon content and allows Congress and the DOE to issue 'exemptions' to key industries.
#3
I guess Congress will be ok with 70% unemployment - one of the results of their little commerce-destroyer of a bill. What's even worse, it's all for nothing. The real cause of 'global warming' is fluctuation in solar output, magnetic field, sunspots, and the effects of those on the planets, most especially Earth.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/31/2009 23:17 Comments ||
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JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.
Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.
President Obama has nominated Koh until last week the dean of Yale Law School to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.
It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish.
What would this look like in a practical sense? Well, California voters have overruled their courts, which had imposed same-sex marriage on the state. Koh would like to see such matters go up the chain through federal courts which, in turn, should look to the rest of the world. If Canada, the European Human Rights Commission and the United Nations all say gay marriage should be legal well, then, it should be legal in California too, regardless of what the state's voters and elected representatives might say.
He even believes judges should use this "logic" to strike down the death penalty, which is clearly permitted in the US Constitution.
The primacy of international legal "norms" applies even to treaties we reject. For example, Koh believes that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child a problematic document that we haven't ratified should dictate the age at which individual US states can execute criminals. Got that? On issues ranging from affirmative action to the interrogation of terrorists, what the rest of the world says, goes.
Including, apparently, the world of radical imams. A New York lawyer, Steven Stein, says that, in addressing the Yale Club of Greenwich in 2007, Koh claimed that "in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States." There's more frightening info on this guy at the link
via Drudge
But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck has already shown he's a rating success and is leaving a mark in cable news. However, he may have pulled one of his most successful performances yet. His blurb, before his show actually started, was "Americans! We've got to trust one another!" My thought in response was: "What if the other's a crook?"
Beck interviewed Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on his March 30 broadcast. But, the radio and TV host took the opportunity to tell Blumenthal what he thought of his investigation into the bonuses received by American International Group (AIG) executives - whose company received federal bailout money. "Look, you know what you have done, know what you have done?" Beck said. "You have - you are an insult to George Washington, sir. George Washington made it very clear that we are a respecter of laws, not of men. For your own political gain, you have decided to go after these people at AIG because it is a popular thing." I saw this, and Beck did in fact nail that sucker.
Beck pressed on, demanding to know what law the AIG executives broke that warranted Blumenthal's involvement. "And while I may agree with you that it is obscene, I would like to know, is not what's right as a rule of thumb - not what makes us feel good," Beck continued. "You, sir, are to protect people and, and to stand for the law in Connecticut, so, again, I ask you, sir - what law gave you the right to go after them? What law did they break?" Blumenthal actually couldn't come up with oen.
Blumenthal claimed the AIG executives were "undeserving" of the bonuses. Blumenthal also pointed out the bonuses paid out were to increase next year. However, Beck pressed Blumenthal on the legality of that and Blumenthal came up blank in this exchange:
BECK: Is that against the law?
BLUMENTHAL: Well, it is against public policy. And it is unsanctioned by law.
BECK: Is that against the law?
BLUMENTHAL: It should be against the law.
BECK: Is it against the law?
BLUMENTHAL: It's against the public policy and against the taxpayer...In my view it is unrequired by law.
BECK: It is a yes or no question. Counselor, it is a yes or no question. Is it against the law?
BLUMENTHAL: It is not against the law and I have never said that it is against the law, and I have never said that we would bring an action.
BECK: Then you know what you should do? You should enforce the law. You shouldn't use your bully pulpit to gain popularity.
After another exchange over Blumenthal's behavior, Beck likened Blumenthal and New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to a "vampire," accusing him of capitalizes on a populist sentiment. "You are twisting it," Beck said. "It has everything to do with the excuse that AIG used to say we had to do that. And you're exactly right - it has nothing to do with that. But that has nothing to do with the little vampire fangs that you all of a sudden sprouted and tried to grab on to - to make yourself, you and Andrew Cuomo, tried to make yourselves the king of the world, and look at me - I'm the savior here. I'm going to help everybody, the little people. All you're doing is trying to make yourself look good in a populist move. I think it's wrong."
#1
Beck gets a little dramatically worked up, but his outrage yesterday hit the mark. Blumenthal and (Cuomo) are sleazy publicity seeking self-promoters, and should NOT be allowed political or prosecutorial power. This POS couldn't say what if any laws (real ones, not "policy") were broken. He looked like a stammering fool. Today Beck has on the menu the first of many terrible judicial picks, Koh, for SOS legal adviser. He's a real loser as well.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/31/2009 10:44 Comments ||
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#2
Dang! I wish I had seen that. The point comes across in the article, but Beck delivers with a dramatic punch.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
03/31/2009 14:20 Comments ||
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#3
Blumenthal and Cuomo watched and learned from Elliott Spitzer.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/31/2009 15:44 Comments ||
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#4
Let's hope they end up the same way Spitzer ended up. Before they get to be governor this time.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
03/31/2009 19:01 Comments ||
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#5
Yet no one spared a vowel over freddie mac's bonanza. Whats up with that bonus money?
According to election fraud lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh, The New York Times decided suddenly to drop all efforts last October to publish stories about the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) because it came to light that ACORN was a big donor to then presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign. The Times is said to have told ACORN insider Anita Moncrief that they were dropping the story because it was a "game changer" for the election and might hurt Obama's campaign.
Heidelbaugh, who worked for the Penn. Republican State Committee in a vote fraud lawsuit against ACORN, told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 that she had found a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign through the inside information from former ACORN worker Anita Moncrief.
Moncrief told Heidelbaugh that she had been involved as an insider informant to The New York Times for several months until she informed Times reporter Stephanie Strom that the Obama campaign was closely linked to ACORN. Once that connection was made, Strom told Moncrief that no more stories would be done by the NYT about ACORN.
#1
Party organs [mouthpieces] ratting on their own? Only when they fall out of favor of the inner party. The surprise meter can't register that low. Remember, its not about truth or justice, its about power.
#3
As NYT gets weaker, I expect that more and worse examples of their abuse of the truth will come out, going back several decades. On many of those, we've had our suspicions, but the time for the tuth to come out is getting closer.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
03/31/2009 14:15 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
