There’s a lot of talk of “energy independence” coming from the Obama administration. It’s a perennial red herring. Of it, Holman Jenkins stated earlier this week it was “a favorite of Tojo and Hitler, was debunked by Churchill, who reasoned that true energy security came from a diversity of suppliers, not the foolish pursuit of self-sufficiency.”

Even so, note the hypocrisy here, in Obama’s tax plan:

$5.3 billion – excise tax on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas
$3.4 billion – repeal expensing of tangible drilling costs
$49 million – repeal passive loss exception for working interests in oil and natural gas properties
$13 billion – repeal manufacturing tax deduction for oil and natural gas companies

In other words, in order to promote energy independence Mr. Obama is going to make it more difficult, more expensive, and thus less likely that American energy companies can drill here, drill now.

The key word above, of course, is “American” — Obama has no power whatsoever on the biggest and most powerful global oil companies, to whom we will turn to get our energy even more than before. (Those pie-in-the-sky notions of “clean” and “green” alternative energies won’t help you power your car to work — only oil and gas will). For all our demonization of the Exxons and Chevrons, et. al., they are puny players in the global market — ranked at #17 and higher in terms of global energy conglomerates, the top spots belonging to the state-owned companies in Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Nigeria, etc. 94% of the worlds oil is already controlled by non-US companies.

Meanwhile, Max Schultz noted that Obama’s alternative energies are simply too expensive, and no bang for the buck:

The subsidies involved are considerable. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in early 2008 that the government subsidizes solar energy at $24.34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and wind power at $23.37 per MWh. Yet even with decades of these massive handouts, as well as numerous state-level mandates for utilities to use green power, wind and solar energy contribute less than 1% of our nation’s electricity.

Compare the subsidies to renewables with those extended to natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59). These are the energy sources (along with oil, which undergirds transportation) that do the heavy lifting in our energy economy.

No matter. In the guise of “saving” our environment from warming that (1) isn’t a problem, and (2) is not even man-made, the Democrats are going to shove a massive $646 billion that will cost every American consumer, not just those hated “richest 2%.” They may as well tax you for every breath you exhale.

Enjoy an ice cold tall glass of backtracking!

Continuing my posts about Guantanamo, Obama’s attorney general enters the fray:

AG Holder says closing Guantanamo won’t be easy
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 25, 6:15 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday the Guantanamo detention center is a well-run, professional facility that will be difficult to close — but he’s still going to do it. Holder visited the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday and spoke to reporters about his trip during a news conference Wednesday.

Closing Guantanamo, he said, “will not be an easy process. It’s one we will do in a way that ensures that people are treated fairly and that the American people are kept safe.”

Wow. Talk about your “No S**t, Sherlock” headlines. Once more, it’s harder to keep Americans safe as a president than while one was a candidate for president, criticizing those who did.

Given their turnabouts on Guantanamo in Afghanistan and harsh interrogation methods, one thinks they’re strategizing how to not close Gitmo too. We will see.

That headline is not hyperbole, folks. Barack Obama’s new taxation scheme, which he inaccurately promises will “only” hit Americans making a joint tax filing of $250,000, is in the words of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) , “A job killer, plain and simple.”

And we’re not just talking about a $338 billion Income Tax hike, either. There’s plans to raise $179 billion by eliminating itemized deductions and another $118 billion by increasing the capital gains tax. More than $600 billion dollars. Talk about killing jobs! Raising taxes during a recession? Herbert Hoover, anyone?

That’s not including all of the senseless taxes to come on energy consumption (post to come), or on any forced single-payer healthcare proposals.

Small and medium sized business must be quaking right now. They they plan on doing any hiring anytime soon? Think again.

[Wall Street Journal] But let’s not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let’s go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006.

Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he’s also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don’t matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation’s primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively “small business” is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income.

The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion [that only the top 2% of wage earners will see increased taxes]. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can’t possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.

Here’s Karl Rove, with some succinct points:

Mr. Obama also said that America’s economic difficulties resulted when “regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.” Who gutted which regulations?

Perhaps it was President Bill Clinton who, along with then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, removed restrictions on banks owning insurance companies in 1999. If so, were Mr. Clinton and Mr. Summers (now an Obama adviser) motivated by quick profit, or by the belief that the reform was necessary to modernize our financial industry?

Perhaps Mr. Obama was talking about George W. Bush. But Mr. Bush spent five years pushing to further regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was blocked by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank. Arriving in the Senate in 2005, Mr. Obama backed up Mr. Dodd’s threat to filibuster Mr. Bush’s needed reforms.

… During his news conference on Feb. 9, Mr. Obama decried an unnamed faction in the congressional stimulus debate as “a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing.”

Who were these sincere do-nothings? Every House Republican voted for an alternative stimulus plan, evidence that they wanted to do something. Every Senate Republican — with the exception of Judd Gregg, who’d just withdrawn his nomination to be Mr. Obama’s Commerce secretary and therefore voted “present” — voted for alternative stimulus proposals.

Then there’s Mr. Obama’s description of the Bush-era tax cuts. “A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy,” he explained in his Tuesday speech, after earlier saying, “tax cuts alone can’t solve all of our economic problems — especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few.”

The Bush tax cuts were not targeted to “the wealthiest few.” Everyone who paid federal income taxes received a tax cut, with the largest percentage of reductions going to those at the bottom. Last year, a family of four making $40,000 saved an average of $2,053 because of the Bush tax cuts. The tax code became more progressive as the share paid by the top 10% increased to 46.4% from 46% — and the nation experienced 52 straight months of job growth after the cuts took effect. And since when is giving back some of what people pay in taxes “transferring wealth?”

CF-18s intercepted Russian plane before Obama visit

CTV.ca News Staff
As security officials worked to secure Ottawa on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit, Canadian fighter jets were scrambling to intercept a Russian bomber plane in the Arctic skies.

That’s a huge story! I mean who knew that Canada had an air force! ; )

I swear it’s funny how themes just hit the internet. A few days ago I was harping on how Guantanamo was better than our civilian prison system and then I read this op-ed titled “Why Close Guantanamo,” by Andrew McCarthy (lead prosecutor of the 1993 WTC bombers).

A much-anticipated report laments that prisoners “live under conditions, rules, and policies designed” for “incorrigibly violent” detainees. The security controls were found to be “extraordinary,” employing “isolation and lack of in-cell as well as out-of-cell programs and activities.” Even allowing that these measures were in fact designed for some of the most savage of killers, the report nonetheless asserted that the strictures imposed were “pointlessly harsh and degrading.” They included “extreme” measures such as “lack of windows, denial of reading material, a maximum of three hours a week out-of-cell time, [and] lack of outdoor recreation.”

In sum, the report concluded, the detention conditions imposed by the United States government “can only be explained as reflecting an unwillingness to acknowledge the inmates’ basic humanity.”

In short, the federal penitentiary at Florence, Colo., is no Guantanamo Bay.

On the contrary, Gitmo — despite being repeatedly condemned as a blight on America’s reputation by the Obama campaign, congressional Democrats, alleged human-rights activists, European solons, and the legion of lawyers who’ve volunteered their services to al-Qaeda — is a model facility. According to a Pentagon investigation to be presented at the White House this week — a study ordered with great fanfare by Barack Obama in the first hours of his presidency — the detention camp, where about 245 alien enemy combatants are held, is in full compliance with the humane-treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions.

Yep, read the whole damn thing.

Next, make sure you read the latest by Jonah Goldberg, noting that when it comes to our War on Terror, President Obama is finding a little different than candidate Obama did.

The new president has ordered that his predecessor’s rendition policies remain largely intact, even to the point of using the “state secrets” privilege to block a rendition lawsuit. Obama may have stated categorically that America “will not torture,” but outsourcing it is still OK. And Leon Panetta, the new head of the CIA, has said there might be wiggle room on interrogation policy here at home.

The White House also defends the Bush policy of imprisoning, without trial, enemy combatants captured abroad. Obama’s lawyers argued in a court case brought by Afghan prisoners at the U.S. Air Force base at Bagram, Afghanistan, that the “government adheres to its previously articulated position” — the one articulated by those evil Bush lawyers.

Meanwhile, a new Pentagon study commissioned by Obama has found that the prison at Guantanamo Bay meets the standards of the Geneva Conventions. One can only guess how the White House will make use of that finding. At the least, it should provide cover while the administration looks for alternatives to Gitmo that might not be all that alternative.

Oh, and speaking of Bagram airbase, wonder how all our Bush-bashing friends on the Left intend on giving Obama a free pass on that!

[Gitmo East, Investors Business Daily] After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that Guantanamo detainees had the legal right to challenge their detentions in American courts, four detainees held at Bagram thought they had a get out of jail free card. Following that ruling, petitions were filed on their behalf in a U.S. district court.

Apparently, in handling prisoners of war captured in the war on terror, the first law of real estate applies. The rights of detainees depend on location, location, location.

It is now the official opinion of the Obama administration that the detainees at Bagram have none while those at Gitmo, such as those who attacked the Navy destroyer Cole in a Yemeni harbor in 2000, have the same rights as any U.S. citizen.

Yes, we are confused too. In response to an inquiry by the judge regarding the habeas corpus rights of prisoners held in Afghanistan, acting Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz made a terse reply in papers filed before the court: “Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previous articulated position.”

The Obama administration position is that Bagram, where 600 jihadists are being held, differs from Gitmo in that it is in an active war zone and that Gitmo is technically U.S. territory, where the U.S. Constitution holds sway.

We’d argue that in the global war on terror, the entire United States, its possessions and its military bases are in a war zone and that this distinction is nonsense.

The Bush administration argued Guantanamo was constitutionally outside the U.S. The Supreme Court, after some legal gymnastics, concluded otherwise. The military tribunal system was designed to overcome such hairsplitting, but the Obama administration seems to think that is not a proper forum for even the likes of Abd al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri. Charges against the Cole attack architect were dismissed so he could be retried later in a civilian court.

Retired Navy Capt. Kirk Lippold, who was the Cole’s captain at the time of the attack, said in a statement, “It appears the Obama administration, without consideration for its immediate impact or long-term effects, will use a legal maneuver to prevent these detainees from being held accountable for their heinous acts.”

It’s hard to square these contradictory positions on Gitmo and Bagram unless we consider that closing Gitmo was essentially a political decision, the fulfillment of a campaign promise and a sop to the American left that had nothing to do with America’s security.

Yep, it’s a lot easier to criticize our national security from the sidelines than it is as a president, eh?

Here’s Holman Jenkins:

Put away the global warming panic. Mankind’s contribution to rising CO2 levels raises serious questions, but the tens of billions poured into climate science have, by now, added up only to a negative finding. We don’t really have the slightest idea how an increase in the atmosphere’s component of CO2 is impacting our climate, though the most plausible indication is that the impact is too small to untangle from natural variability.

In any case, has Mr. Obama taken a gander at collapsing industrial production numbers around the world? He’s going to get a big reduction in CO2 output whether he wants it or not. Nor will the public be moved to make costly, material changes in its energy habits, especially if the recent global cooling trend continues. What we’ll get instead is already depressingly clear: climate pork, or lucrative favors for lobbying interests in the name of global warming that have no impact on global warming.

Put away the “energy independence” conceit. This notion, a favorite of Tojo and Hitler, was debunked by Churchill, who reasoned that true energy security came from a diversity of suppliers, not the foolish pursuit of self-sufficiency.

Wow, that’s an especially important point above about the “green jobs” nonsense doing nothing more than creating just another special interest group. Indeed, Global Warming is the cure without a problem that economically-sensible scientists have been talking about for 10 years.

Max Schultz adds:

Americans use coal for half of their electricity, and natural gas for another 20 percent, precisely because these fuels produce power at a third to a fifth the cost that such celebrated green sources as wind and solar can. Think of cap-and-trade as a price-protection racket for inefficient technologies. It’s the same logic behind the renewable portfolio standard the Obama administration is pushing: A nationwide RPS would simply force energy companies to generate more power from renewable sources. Naturally, the inefficiencies get passed along to consumers, raising prices not just for electricity, but for everything.

Don’t take my word for it. Take the president’s. A year ago, during a meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, Obama proved to be an unusually candid candidate. “Under my plan of a cap and trade system,” he said, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Skyrocketing prices. That’s the point. (Inexplicably, the Chronicle straight-news reporters who wrote about the meeting didn’t find those eye-popping words sufficiently newsworthy to merit their publication. The comment only was discovered in the final days of the presidential campaign, by which point Obama’s victory was in the bag.)

Here’s John L. Chapman:

This spending-leads-to-growth concept is a perennial failure that can actually harm an economy. Its advocates suffer from a crucial error in their understanding of economics: for in fact, consumption is an effect, and not a cause, of economic growth. Stated simply, more spending without the greater output of goods and services that results from increased saving and investment – and concomitant higher real incomes — can only lead to higher prices and inflation. Alternatively, if government spending programs engender uncertainty and loss of confidence, while at the same time excluding incentives to invest (such as through tax cuts on profits or capital gains), the demand for money holding can increase dramatically, choking off recovery. The former scenario played out in the U.S. stagflation of the 1970s, while the latter occurred in the U.S. in the 1930s and Japan in the 1990s.

Mr. Obama is an admirer of FDR’s New Deal, but the explosion in public works spending still left unemployment at 17% in 1940, eight years into his administration; so much uncertainty was created by all the New Deal programs that private investment did not recover until after 1943. And Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s is a particularly tragic example of spending waste, because at least eight separate stimulus measures pursued by Tokyo between 1992 and 1999 totaled over $100 trillion yen (more than $1 trillion at current exchange rates), yet unemployment grew throughout the decade (to almost 5% from 1%), and GDP growth averaged an anemic 1% for over 10 years (and close to zero between 1996-2002). Meanwhile Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio has tripled since 1990, burdening future growth.

Seriously, folks, you can’t make this stuff up…

[Government Grant Solutions] Money To Buy Christmas Presents!*

When applying for the grant I wasn’t sure what to expect but to my delight and surprise a check came in the mail in a few weeks! I was able to bless a divorced mother of three with funds to pay her monthly bills in order to free up some of her cash to purchase a few Christmas presents for her children. These are truly great kids who’s dad is on death row. It’s very sad that the children of inmates, are more often than not, left with the many hardships.

– Joyce Joseph

Thank you taxpayer! When Barack Obama raises taxes “only” on those making more than $250,000, also known as small business owners, and they in turn lay off a bunch of employees to pay for that tax hike, you’ll all be able to go to the Free Christmas Presents From The Government website — what’s that web site number, Mr. Biden? — and get even more free Christmas presents! At least until the anti-religion extremists determine that it’s a violation of the separation of church and state…

Remember, too, that charity isn’t when you donate presents to the mother of three, it’s when the government takes money from others and gives it to that mother.

Here’s Andrew Roth:

I’m glad Greg Mankiw caught this. Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner told Congress last month that China should stop manipulating their currency (by buying dollars). Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Chinese to keep buying U.S. dollars.

So which is it??

This blunder, along with the “Buy American” fiasco, the empty cabinet seats at Commerce and the USTR, and the failure to pass the pending free trade agreements with Korea, Panama, and Colombia, prove that Obama is slow to grasp the importance of global commerce, especially as it relates to our current economic crisis.

Remember folks, Geithner was the financial “genius” who was supposedly so indispensable we needed to just overlook his failure to pay income tax. Indispensable? More like indefensible. All he’s done so far is make as many gaffes as Joe “Web Site Number” Biden.

By the way, is it Geithner or Geitner, because apparently Google News has both…