"Green energy" and crony capitalism

Cause of Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit group, investigated Obama's 'green energy' loan program found a 95% correlation with political contributions:

Cause of Action was able to determine, through publicly available data combined with a FOIA production[1], that for corporations[2] who have received a loan guarantee of any amount, the likelihood that it made campaign contributions increases significantly. Of the data available, 95% (.95) of DOE loan recipients with less than $1 billion in annual revenue documented political contributions by the organization or senior level staff. Comparatively, only 31% (.319489) of similarly sized organizations that did not receive loans made political contributions in one way or another.

Hat tip: Steven Hayward

PREVIOUSLY on "green energy" as a scam:
•Mafia profits off of "green energy" scams
•Environmentalists at war with environmentalists over green energy
•Surprise: EU's carbon trading riddled with fraud
•Obama declared that God has "commanded" us to fund green energy.

MediaMatters lives in its own fantasy world

While doing some research, I ran across this 2009 'fact check' from Media Matters for America:

And rest assured, you're not the only "firm believer" in the 2nd Amendment.  I found a video of President Obama promising "I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people's lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won't take your handgun away."

Watch it yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBHkMADXnOw
 
So, there you have it: . . . . Obama's not taking away our guns.

As the last couple months have made clear, Obama never meant a word of that campaign statement.  Like most progressives, he strongly opposes the right of self-defense.  MMfA's 'fact check' was  just an exercise in self-delusion.

How to buy the Secretary of the Treasury

Obama, Lew

You might think that buying a top cabinet official might require subtlety.  It doesn't.  Citigroup shows how it can be done right out in the open.   While companies often offer bonuses to retain their best employees, Citigroup did the opposite: when Citibank hired Jack Lew, it offered him almost a million dollar bonus on the condition that he leave Citigroup for a high level Federal job.  Wall Street on Parade reports:

At last we know how the grease is funneled to that revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. One only gets a $940,000 bonus from Wall Street’s Citigroup if you can land a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” It can’t be just a part-time job, mind you; and you can’t be rank and file. Citigroup’s dangling carrot will only pay $940,000 if the company can add a “high level” government mover and shaker to their gold-plated Rolodex.

This was the bombshell dropped by Senator Orrin Hatch yesterday in Jack Lew’s confirmation hearing for one of the highest offices in the land – Secretary of the U.S. Treasury who will also head the body that makes critical decisions impacting Citigroup – the Financial Stability Oversight Council. (Lew held an executive position with Citigroup at the time of its collapse.)

At Bloomberg,  Jonathan Weil has more details.

PREVIOUSLY on our for-profit government:
•How Congressmen get rich
•Kickbacks and the LA Coliseum
•How to buy a congressman
•How to buy a judge
•Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Feinstein: how their husbands benefit from government contracts

John Locke, Natural Law, and the 2nd Amendment

This US was founded on the notion of natural law.   When the founders wrote "we hold these truths to be self-evident," the truths they were talking about are natural law.  One such self-evident natural law is the right of self-defense.  John Locke explained it plainly as follows:

A Man with a Sword in his Hand demands my Purse in the High-way, when perhaps I have not 12 d. in my Pocket; This Man I may lawfully kill.

Natural law gives a man the right to self-defense, even if it means killing someone over a mere 12 pence.  Locke recognized sensible limits to this right: if the situation gives one opportunity to appeal to the rule of law, then one should.  Locke, for example, wrote about recovering a loan from another person:

To another [man] I deliver 100 l. to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his Sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this Man does me, is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more, than the other perhaps intended me, (whom I killed before he really did me any) and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The Reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my Life, I could not have time to appeal to the Law to secure it:

With natural law in mind, look at the full text of the Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Second Amendment does not grant people the right to bear arms.  As the founders understood natural law, the people already had that right.  The Amendment merely instructs the government not to infringe on the people's natural right.

Does the government really need all the money it spends?

The Flash Report discusses the spending priorities in the Los Angeles schools:

We all heard the commercials — without the passage of Prop. 30 and the income and sales taxes that came with it, education in California would be decimated.  And Californians responded, approving the higher tax burden.  Well, apparently it’s now Christmas over at the LAUSD Board of Trustees.  At their board meeting last week, in addition to revoking the pink slips of 208 employees, the board voted to commit taxpayers to a half-billion dollar investment to provide tablet computers to every student in the district.  Yeah, you read that right.  Given all of the other budget priorities that sit in front of that board (such as a massive unfunded pension liability), it’s time for iPads for everyone.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of education:
•Are public schools succeeding?
•Paradox: student test scores improve after school budgets are cut
•The great minds of the Ivy League
•Study: teacher's unions are bad for education
•Study: sexist women teachers stunt learning of girl students
•Black students, harassed for "acting white," get $150,000
•Teaching self-esteem backfires
•Education in Korea vs. the US: does "self-esteem" backfire?
•LA pays teachers not to teach
•What teachers learn in teacher's ed.
•Obama promises to throw money at schools
•How to get a job teaching in California even if you are illiterate
•Affirmative action backfire
•California offers student tutoring but only for students belonging to the right races
•High school implements race-based punishments for misbehavior

Why do people say that liberals think money grows on trees?

An anecdote from the Rush Limbaugh show:

RUSH: This is Pam in Cincinnati.  Hi, Pam.  Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program.  Hello.
CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH:  You bet.
CALLER:  I am a self-employed hairdresser, salon owner in Cincinnati. I've been self-employed for about 14 years.  Just after the 2008 elections, I had a client come in to the salon and she was born and raised in Italy and said that she had come to the United States in 1990s and how she loved the United States and that she was self-employed here, and I asked her, "Well, can you not be self-employed in Italy?" And she said, "Oh, no. No one is self-employed in Europe because the taxes are so high."  She had quickly become an American citizen.  Well, I asked her, "How do you like Barack Obama and all that he's doing?"  She said, "Well, I love Barack Obama.  I'm very, very liberal," and I knew right then that she truly did not understand how capitalism worked, because she didn't understand where the money came from.

Environmentalism killed 8 million children in the last 12 years

From Slate (hat tip: Instapundit):

Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called “golden rice” with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines. Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency. Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?

Golden rice is the most prominent example in the global controversy over GM foods, which pits a technology with some risks but incredible potential against the resistance of feel-good campaigning. Three billion people depend on rice as their staple food, with 10 percent at risk for vitamin A deficiency, which, according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year. A study from the British medical journal the Lancet estimates that, in total, vitamin A deficiency kills 668,000 children under the age of 5 each year.

Yet, despite the cost in human lives, anti-GM campaigners—from Greenpeace to Naomi Klein—have derided efforts to use golden rice to avoid vitamin A deficiency. [Emph. added]

Golden (GM) rice is impressively cost-effective:

Supplementation programs costs $4,300 for every life they save in India, whereas fortification programs cost about $2,700 for each life saved. Both are great deals. But golden rice would cost just $100 for every life saved from vitamin A deficiency.

Being an environmentalist means never having to take responsibility for the consequences of one's actions.

Greenpeace protest in Rotterdam

PREVIOUSLY on environmentalism:
•Mafia profits off of "green energy" scams
•Global warmism as anti-science
•More ethics problems among Global Warming "scientists"
•4.5 Billion to die this year, or maybe not
•Global warmists propose mass killing of animals
•Democrat: Global Warming will destroy Washington DC by the year 2000
•Earth Day: environmentalism and the test of science
•The collapse of the UN IPCC's credibility
•Yet another UN IPCC Glacier-gate scandal
•UN IPCC claims of melting Himalayan glaciers exposed as fraud
•Environmentalists at war with environmentalists over green energy
•EPA's new global warming rules, illustrated
•California global warming rules backfire
•France's carbon tax ruled unconstitutional
•UN IPCC responds to Climategate with wild accusations
•Surprise: EU's carbon trading riddled with fraud
•Global warming and the test of science, III
•Global warming and the test of science, II
•Global warming and the test of science, I
•141 scientists wrote letter to UN challenging global warming hysteria.
•Ma'am Sen. Boxer for and against climate whistleblowers.
•BBC propaganda on global warming
•Climate alarmist Phil Jones to step down pending review
•Why Penn State's investigation of its global warmist will go nowhere
•Former boss calls James Hansen call an embarrassment to NASA
•NASA's global warming scientists caught hyping false data
•The resemblance of global warming true-believers to Islamists
•James Hansen "muzzled" by Bush White House?

Engineers and geoscientists are overwhelmingly skeptical of IPCC and global warming alarmism

The APEGA is the Alberta Canada's regulatory body for the disciplines of engineering, geology, and geophysics. It commissioned two economics researchers, Lianne M. Lefsrud and Renate E. Meyer, to study the opinions of its members on global warming and the IPCC. Their results, published in Organization Studies (abstract here, and full text here, PDF) found that Alberta's engineers and geoscientists were overwhelmingly skeptical of the IPCC and its global warming alarmism. A mere 36% were classified as Kyoto supporters.  Lefsrud and Meyer break down their results as follows:

• 10% "point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy."  They say "the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable." They "disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life."  This group doubts that "the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate." This group emphasizes that ‘Conservation is always a good idea, but spending money without any real understanding of what the value you will be getting is always a bad idea.’
• 17% conclude that "climate change as both human- and naturally caused." This group consider "climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life." Like other groups, they "are sceptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling." 
• 5% believe that "climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life."  This group is "also sceptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate."
• 24% believe that "changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth."  They say, for example, that 'global warming is what brought us out of the Ice Age.’ This group "strongly disagree[s] that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives."
  
• 36% think climate change is "a significant public risk and see an impact on their personal life." This group supports Kyoto.

The authors of this study, Lefsrud and Meyer, are clearly supporters of global warming alarmism: their use of the term "denier," for example, is a dead giveaway of this.  Also, the bias was apparently obviously enough that they reported that respondents called their survey "left wing/liberal."  The surveys results must have been particularly disappointing for them.

Even more embarrassing for the alarmists, it was found that Kyoto supporters were "significantly more likely to be lower in the organizational hierarchy, younger, female, and working in government."   In other words, the believers in the IPCC were primarily the young and inexperienced.  They also typically worked for the government.

They tried to blame the results on the biases of those employed in in Alberta's oil and gas industry.   But, even among government workers, global warmings strongest supporters, only 45% were in the "comply with Kyoto" group.

Global warmists claim widespread support but you rarely see detailed surveys like this.  These results are why.

Hat tip: WattsUpWithThat.

PREVIOUSLY on support for global warming:
•Study: those most knowledgable about science are least fooled by climate alarmists
•It is never too cold for a Climate Crisis Rally
•Science versus the UN: 125 scientists expose UN's fraudulent claims
•Global warming hypocrite of the day is Arnold

Paradox: those most knowledgeable about science are least fooled by climate alarmists

Science News Prime writes about a study done by law professors examining who believes what about science issues:

"The study also revealed something counterintuitive: The people most knowledgeable about science and who had the best grasp of math and numbers, were the ones least concerned about climate change."

Counterintuitive?

Hat tip: BotW

PREVIOUSLY on the paradoxes that vex the minds of (liberal) journalists:
•Paradox: Rather than work, people accept free money!
•Paradox: Higher taxes yield less revenue
•Paradox: price high despite shortage;  Also: despite homeowners protecting themselves, crime is down.
•Paradox: "Despite" having the most generous benefits for homelessness, homeless flock to San Francisco
•Paradox: gun sales up despite politicians' threats to ban gun sales
•Paradox: student test scores improve despite school funding decrease
•News report: Gun crime down "despite" increase in gun sales
•It's a paradox: Congress unpopular "despite record"
•"Ironically," conservatives and their children are happier
•It's a paradox!: Crime down when criminals are in jail.
•Paradox: crime is down despite criminals being in prison
•Paradox: few fraudulent voters if voters are required to have IDs

How important is it to do a background check?

Hmmm.

Hat tip: Kerry.

The human brain instinctively uses shortcuts to think and the shortcuts are often wrong

Persistent mendacity: excerpts from Obama's past State of the Union addresses

From the GOP House Conference:

Hat tip: GatewayPundit.

Southern Poverty Law Center website inspired a hate crime

The Clarion Ledger reports on the guilty plea

Floyd Corkins II, 28, acknowledged in a plea agreement that he intended to kill as many people as possible during the August shooting at the Family Research Council. [Emph. added]

How did he come to the idea of killing people at the Family Research Council?

In his plea agreement, Corkins acknowledged he identified the Council as "an anti-gay organization" by visiting Southern Poverty [Law Center]'s website.[Emph. added]

 The SPLC doesn't just attack supporters of traditional marriage.  It also has labeled the Tea Party movement as racist.  The SPLC writes:

Now, there is new evidence that race is playing a part in the Tea Party movement as well, even as it begins to claim some real political power.

The SPLC lent support to the absurd claim that opposition to nationalized health insurance was based on Obama's race.

The SPLC also brands those who believe that immigration laws should be obeyed as "nativist extremists."

The SPLC cannot be blamed for Corkins' homicidal intentions.  The hate that it indiscriminately spews does, however, encourage it.  It is not clear whether the SPLC was ever a legitimate civil rights organization.  It certainly isn't now.

Obama's Treasury nominee is yet another law-breaker?

The Washington Times reports:

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, has repeatedly demanded the Obama administration comply with the Medicare law.

He and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan wrote Mr. Obama in 2011 demanding he submit the plan required by law.
But budget and notification laws are routinely ignored.
Mr. Obama has missed this year’s legal deadline for submitting a budget, blaming the late passage of the tax increase deal early last month.

In 2010 through 2011, during the time when the Medicare submission was required, the person in charge of the White House budget office was Jacob "Jack" Lew.   Pres. Obama has nominated Lew to be Secretary of the Treasury, replacing Timothy Geithner who, during his confirmation hearings, was caught owing $34,000 in back taxes.

Many of Obama's nominees have had problems with ethics, tax, or law (click here).  Many of Clinton's nominees, along with Democrat Senators, have violated tax law.

It is amazing that those who fail to comply with existing laws are also among the ones most eager to enact new laws.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

When a leader is powerful enough, he (she) thinks that even the laws of economics will bend to her will:

The Soviet Union tried price controls. Richard Nixon tried price controls. It doesn't end well.

Popular resistance

We've seen Occupy Wall Streeters throw rocks, smash cars, and break windows.  Their movement, however, merely represented the inchoate anger and frustrations of youth.  As such, it was be unlikely to develop any coherent leadership.  If it had been more organized, it might have resembled that the Baader Meinhof gang whose deadly attacks terrorized Germany in the 1970s.  Such a movement is more like a crime wave, though, that a serious political movement.

By contrast, consider this town hall (video below) in the sleepy town of Buffalo New York.  Gov. Cuomo's new gun law threatens prison for those who don't destroy or turn in their "assault" weapons.  It is quite clear from the comments at this meeting, however, that many Americans consider the right of self-defense every bit as important as a civil right as, say,  the right to free speech.  These citizens talk of noncompliance and one man went further, talking of armed insurrection:

When angry people get together, they form militias.  This country, this Western New York area, is prime for something like that.

Between Obamacare, bailouts, deficits, and attacks on the 2nd Amendment, the left is pushing a more divisive agenda now that at any time in at least the past seventy years.   It is hard to see this ending well.

Hat tip: Instapundit and No Lawyers

PREVIOUSLY:
•Thousands attend San Francisco rally in support of the 2nd Amendment

An example of Drudgtaposition: the meaning of Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State summarized

Is VW Ad is “like blackface with voices”?

The VW ad that features a happy white man with a Jamaican accent has the racial grievance industry is out in full force.  On CNN, columnist Charles Blow declared that the ad was “like blackface with voices. I don’t like that.”

"It's pretty horrific," says Ricki Fairley-Brown, president of the multicultural marketing agency Dove Marketing. "Why do they have a white guy from Minnesota faking a Jamaican accent?"

Even more troubled by the spot is Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, chief hispanic marketing strategist at Walton Isaacson, an African-American, Gay/Lesbian and Hispanic agency. "What happens in this ad is that the culture becomes a punch line, and that is offensive."

Pop cultural guru Barbara Lippert is not amused, either. "It made me uncomfortable to see all of those white people in an office setting doing this," she says. "I found it offensive." [Emph. added]

Before becoming outraged by the racism, none of the worthies quoted above seems to have asked the Jamaicans for their opinion.  USA Today did:

Wykeham McNeill [is] Jamaica's minister of tourism and entertainment. "We view it as a compliment," says McNeill. "People should get into their inner Jamaica and get happy." He's even negotiating with VW for some sort of co-branding. {Emph. added]

So, Jamaica likes it and the grievance mongers have beclowned themselves again.

Here is the ad so you can make your own mind:

Hat tip: BotW.

Democrat says Republicans use hateful language; Then she calls them "crazy crackers"

Karen Finney, former Director of Communications at the Democrat National Committee, was on MSNBC and, speaking of Republicans, declared:

“Those crazy crackers on the right, like if they start with their very hateful language…”

It must not have occurred to her that "crazy crackers" is itself hateful language and that she was the one using it.

Some say the phrase "crazy crackers" goes beyond hateful; they say "cracker" is racist.  For that, Ms. Finney apologized, as Fox News reports:

As long as hateful rhetoric is such a convenient substitute for rational argument, I don't expect politics ever to become more civil.

A more complete video of Ms. Finney's MSNBC appearance, showing the context of her remarks, is here. Ms. Finney is not a marginal figure. In addition to being a former Director of Communications for the DNC, Ms. Finney is columnist for The Hill and a commentator for Politico, MSNBC and The Huffington Post.

Why liberals can never be "unbiased" reporters

An "unbiased" reporter should be able to represent both sides or, better yet, all sides fairly. The legacy news media vociferously claims to be "unbiased" but their product shows otherwise. Consider, for example, this AP News story:

[Texas Gov. Scott Perry] has for weeks called on the Legislature to cut taxes and continue to hold down government spending -- even though Texas' economy is booming. [Emph. added]

To non-liberals, the AP's twisted logic is jarring.  The Texas economy is "booming" very likely because of, not despite, Perry's efforts to keep taxes low and government limited.  Liberals, such as the reporter who wrote this unsigned story, are so steeped in their government-centered Keynesian viewpoint that they likely have no clue that what they write inspires laughter.

Along the same line, consider this headline from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Chick-fil-A Keeps Growing Despite Uproar

Or, consider this lead paragraph from a New York Times story written by Reed Abelson:

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. [Emph. added]

Free market economists would instantly recognize the health insurance costs are raising in part because of not despite the regulations and mandates in Obamacare.  Reporters at the New York Times, imbued with liberalism, don't recognize the bias in what they write even when it is so obvious as to provoke laughter.

Their claims to the contrary notwithstanding, reporters simply cannot report both sides fairly if they don't understand what the other side is.

It's a paradox!

Here are two more of the paradoxes that seem to vex the minds of journalists.  First, in USA Today, there appears this headline:

Prices are up, but homes are in short supply [Emph. added]

That should be 'prices are up because homes are in short supply.'

Second, in The New Yorker, Alex Koppelman writes:

And, of course, [the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre] offered what he said was the “only” solution: “a good guy with a gun.”

This attitude has played a large role in the surge in popularity of military-style weapons marketed specifically for home defense, and brought companies like Weatherby into that niche. And it has persisted even as the crime rate in the U.S. has plummeted. [Emph. added]

The relationship between criminals and armed citizens that seems to escape Mr. Koppelman is well illustrated by Henry Christensen:

Hat tip: James Taranto.

A hundred turn out to support Drakes Bay Oyster Farm against th Obama shutdown threat

People from all across the political spectrum gathered at the Oakland Courthouse last Friday to support Drakes Bay Oyster Farm in it battle against U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar:

(Src: Facebook)

(Src: Facebook)

Based on allegedly faulty science, Salazar has ordered Drakes Bay to close.  Such a closure will cause 31 employees, many of whom are Hispanic, to lose their jobs.  It would also cause Point Reyes to lose one of its popular tourist destinations.  Further, many environmentalist claim that oysters are good for the environment, and that Drakes Bay is run in a "sustainable" and environmentally-friendly manner.

In the hearing, Drakes Bay asked U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to temporarily halt Salazar's closure order while the legal questions are resolved.  Appearing to side with the Obama Administration, the judge, an Obama nominee, asked at one point: "How can the court overturn a discretionary decision of the secretary not to act?"  The decision is expected in a matter of weeks.

In the national scene, Drakes Bay Oyster Company may seem like a small issue.  In the midst of one of the country's longest running economic slowdowns, however, it is emblematic of the Obama administrations wanton destruction of jobs.

In lawsuit against TSA, free speech wins one round

Aaron Tobey

In 2010, Aaron Tobey was standing in the security line at the Richmond Airport, when, in a somewhat bizarre protest, he stripped to his shorts displaying on his chest text from the Fourth Amendment about the prohibition against unreasonable searches.  Despite posing no security risk, Tobey was promptly arrested, handcuffed, questioned for 90 minutes, and cited for disorderly conduct.  The citation was dropped but he, with help from the Rutherford Institute, sued the TSA, claiming violation of his First Amendment free speech rights.

Today, in a small step forward, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the TSA's request to dismiss the suit (full text here, PDF).

We used to say "it's a free country."  We don't anymore.

Liberals and religion hypocrisy

Since we are used to liberals demanding that government subsidize the mocking or defilement of religion, it is jarring to hear them invoke the name of God when it suits them.  For example:

1. Today at their gun-grabbing press conference Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) invited Dean of the National Cathedral Rev. Canon Gary Hall to offer a prayer.
2. On Monday, Obama declared that God has "commanded" us to fund green energy.  Even the liberal media has noted that Barack Obama invokes Jesus more than George W. Bush. 

If it weren't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all.

Does the left support free speech?

Two recent news items:

• 7th Year Human Rights Major and Gay Activist Rips Down Campus Free Speech Wall …It Was Offensive
• Radical Leftists Trash Pro-Life Display at DePaul University

Liberals talk support freedom of speech when it is their speech. When someone else is speaking, they are likely instead to support its opposite: freedom from offense.

PREVIOUSLY on liberal opposition to free speech:
•Justice Breyer looking to overturn the First Amendment
•Obama administration: free speech does not include the right to criticize Obamacare
•Obama sells out free speech
•Physicians' group to sue Obama administration over suppression of dissent
•Canada's liberals oppose free speech
•Free speech and its enemies
•University upset at free speech
•The Right of Free Speech, Selectively Applied
•Tolerating free speech, IV
•Tolerating free speech, III
•More on tolerating free speech
•Those who cannot tolerate free speech

Environmentalism, profit, and crime

Is "green energy" just a scam? Apparently, yes.  The Italian police have uncovered close links between organized crime and the wind and solar energy sector. The Washington Post reports:

In an unfolding plot that is part “The Sopranos,” part “An Inconvenient Truth,” authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable energy sector by Italy’s rapidly modernizing crime families.

The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow so-called “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

How extensive was mafia involvement with "green energy"?

Roughly a third of the island’s 30 wind farms — along with several solar power plants — have been seized by authorities. Officials have frozen more than $2 billion in assets and arrested a dozen alleged crime bosses; corrupt local councilors and mafia-linked entrepreneurs.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

 PREVIOUSLY on "green energy":
•Stimulus bill-funded 'green' disaster
•Wind turbines pose threat to songbirds
•Victims say clean energy is making life "unbearable" and destroying their property values
•Alternative energy meets reality in NYC
•Environmentalists and corporate welfare

San Francisco's Gun Appreciation Day

In defense of a basic constitutional right, San Francisco's KSFO-560 organized a "gun appreciation day" rally.  Over a thousand people showed up today in support (click on any picture to enlarge):

America is unique as a nation because it was founded on the idea of natural law. Natural law gives us the rights to free speech and fair trials. Every bit as basic as those two rights is the right to self-defense.  This large crowd is testament to the fact that people instinctively understand that a citizen has the right to defend himself, his family, and his possessions:

This man sees through Eric Holder's shenanigans:

The crowd was filled with unapologetic American patriots:

An organization called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) produced the sign below which reads "all in favor of 'gun control' raise your right hand":

The woman in the red jacket below lost her son.  He was 15 at the time and working in a gas station when robbers brutally killed him with a knife.  She was sure that if her son had had access to a gun then, he would be alive today.

About 20 people showed up for a counter rally:

One counter-protester held a sign that read "mothers are grieving everywhere."   He had no interest in talking to the actual grieving mother who spoke at the rally.

The legacy news media were out in force and, naturally, focused their attention on the few pro-gun-control protesters:

The newsman in the foreground above, shown interviewing a gun-control advocate, is from the local CBS News team at KPIX.  In contrast to the friendly treatment that the left received, Bay Area Patriots leader Sally Zelikovsky reported on her encounter with the same news team:

Had one cameraman from Channel 5 who was not interested in the answers to his questions and whenever I said what he didn't like he'd pull the mic away from me and start to leave.

Typical.

Below is a woman holding a sign that reads "ban assault weapons":

When an attendee asked her what an assault weapon was, she said "you tell me."   Since she was the one who wanted to ban them, the attendee asked, shouldn't she know what they are?  She had no answer beyond stating that she supported President Obama's proposals, whatever they were.  In other words, she seemed to bring the JPFO sign to life.

The KSFO Morning Show hosts, Brian Sussman,  Melanie Morgan, and Katie Green were masters of ceremonies.  This rally had the support of many local tea party groups including the Bay Area Patriots and MyLiberty.

WELCOME to readers of BookwormRoom.

It is never too cold for a Climate Crisis Rally

You think that you had a bad day? It could have been worse. You could have been freezing your rear end off at a `global warming' rally like these people on the steps of the Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia, Washington:

The Bellingham Herald reported on the freezing-cold weather which greeted the "Climate Crisis Rally":

Freezing weather with light snow flurries greeted about 200 climate activists gathered on the steps of the state Capitol noon Monday to demand the state Legislature get serious about climate change.

The above photos of the shivering crowd were captured from this video taken at the event.  More about the rally can be found here and here.

Third party payer systems are expensive

The Atlantic provides this chart (hat tip: Instapundit) comparing inflation of college textbooks, medical care, and new homes with the general consumer price index:

While professors are responsible for selecting college textbooks, they are not responsible for paying for them.  The students are.  Under normal circumstances, a professor will never even see the price tag on the book he selects.  The result is rapid inflation.

Medical care is similar.  Physicians and patients may select treatments or tests but, under the current system, neither pays for them.  The insurance company does.  The result is rapid inflation.

In other words, incentives matter.

This is a fact that seems to be obvious to everyone except liberals.

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Paradox: Rather than work, people accept free money!

Bloomberg reports on a "puzzle":

The steady rise in disability claims presents something of a puzzle. Medicine has improved substantially. Far fewer of us labor in dangerous industrial jobs like the ones that originally motivated disability insurance. The rate of deaths due to injuries has plummeted. Behavior that can cause disability, such as alcohol use and smoking, has declined substantially. American age-adjusted mortality rates are far lower than in the past. [Emph. added]

The government gives away free money and people take it.  What a puzzle! 
Later on in the article, it is explained that the government no longer requires disability recipients to have any "easily verifiable ailment."

The economists say the most important cause of the increasing number of recipients is the loosening of eligibility criteria. In 1984, Congress “shifted the criteria for DI eligibility from a list of specific impairments to a more general consideration of a person’s medical condition and ability to work.” As a result, the typical disability recipient today is far less likely to have an easily verifiable ailment.

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Obama in deep denial: claims US does not have a spending problem

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore reports on Boehner's take on his negotiations with the President:

The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"—he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."

Below is a graph showing how Federal spending skyrocketed after Obama's "stimulus" bill in January 2009:

Obama's crony capitalism

In the Washington Examiner, Timothy P. Carney explains how Pres. Obama's gun control initiative may boil down to favored treatment for big corporations:

The gun-control debate gives us Obamanomics in a nutshell.

Government regulation of commerce is often expanded to the benefit of – and with the cooperation of – the biggest business in the industry being regulation.

The Washington Post reports on Obama’s efforts to regulate the sale of guns:

One potential strategy would be to win support for specific measures from interest groups that are normally aligned with the NRA, according to one person who works closely with the administration on gun-related issues and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

For instance, this person suggested, Wal-Mart and other major gun retailers may have an incentive to support closing a loophole that allows people to bypass background checks if they purchase firearms at gun shows or through other types of private sales. That could result in more people buying guns in retail stores.

If you make it harder for people to buy guns in private-party sales, you drive more business to Wal-Mart.

For Democrats, it is all about corruption.

How does the DoJ wins cases? By abuse of power.

Writing in Forbes, Harvey Silvergate, a lawyer and author, explains (hat tip: Instapundit) how the Feds win cases:

In order to prevent a defendant from retaining a defense team of his choice, federal prosecutors will first freeze his assets, even though a jury has yet to find them to have been illegally obtained. They then bring prosecutions of almost unimaginable complexity, assuring that the financially hobbled defendant’s diminished legal team (or, as is often the case, his court-appointed lawyer) will be too overwhelmed to mount an adequate defense.

When corporate executives are involved, the DoJ took an additional step: they forbid the corporation from helping with its employee's defense even though legally obligated to help:

When corporate executives are investigated and charged, the Department of Justice has been known to pressure their employer corporations to refuse to live up to contractual agreements to pay attorneys’ fees for indicted executives. This practice was immortalized in a series of Department of Justice directives, one of which, signed June 16, 1999, is known as the “Holder Memorandum” in honor of its drafter, the current attorney general, at that time the deputy attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division at the DOJ.

The Supreme Court has since declared Holder's tactic unconstitutional.  Court cases are pending on other DoJ tactics for depriving well-heeled clients of an effective defense.  None of these cases, however, will help the less-than-wealthy targets charged with cases of "almost unimaginable complexity" by money-no-object Federal lawyers.

A lesson in economics: Latvia succeeds where Greece and Obama have failed

Like the rest of the world, Latvia suffered under the economic collapse of 2008. Unlike much of the world, however, it responded by cutting back on the dead weight of government. The Latvian government, for example, "laid off a third of its civil servants."   The result was an economic boom. The NY Times reports:

Hardship has long been common here — and still is. But in just four years, the country has gone from the European Union’s worst economic disaster zone to a model of what the International Monetary Fund hails as the healing properties of deep budget cuts. Latvia’s economy, after shriveling by more than 20 percent from its peak, grew by about 5 percent last year, making it the best performer in the 27-nation European Union. Its budget deficit is down sharply and exports are soaring. 

“We are here to celebrate your achievements,” Christine Lagarde, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, told a conference in Riga, the capital, this past summer.

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Does Boehner has more backbone than we give him credit for?

Reid, Boehner

CNN reports:

A Democratic source familiar with one particular exchange told CNN that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were sitting on a sofa in the White House.

House Speaker John Boehner breezed in and his first words to Reid were "Go f*** yourself."

Boehner's comment came after Reid took to the Senate floor on Thursday and characterized the House speaker's handling of his chamber as a "dictatorship."

Reid responded to Boehner's confrontational tone by laughing, the Democratic source said, though a GOP source who was there said he didn't think Reid was all that happy.

"The exchange continued, and it didn't get any better for Reid," the GOP source said.

Sen. McConnell also tried to negotiate with Reid.  He gave up and asked VP Biden to step in on the Democrat side.  Reid might benefit from reading some Dale Carnegie books.

It is too bad Sharron Angle was not a stronger candidate.

It's a paradox! Higher taxes yield less revenue

Regarding Portugal's current economic crisis, the Financial Times reports:

Income from value added tax, the government’s biggest source of tax revenue representing about 36 per cent of the total, has been falling since 2008, despite a sharp increase in the rate

Income from the tax "has been falling ... despite[!] a sharp increase in the rate"?  Those familiar with the Laffer Curve know that, at high rates of taxation, that should be "because" not "despite."

Daniel J. Mitchell (Ph.D in Economics from Geo. Mason University) has helpfully collected examples of Laffer Curve effects from Europe, including Portugal, Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, France, Italy, the United Kingdom.

In the US, Pres. Obama is trying the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

PREVIOUSLY on the paradoxes that vex liberal minds:
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•News report: Gun crime down "despite" increase in gun sales
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•Paradox: crime is down (again)
•Paradox: few fraudulent voters if voters are required to have IDs

Occupy Wall Street activist arrested for weapons, explosives

Morgan Gliedman

The New York Post reports:

The privileged daughter of a prominent city doctor, and her boyfriend — a Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street activist — have been busted for allegedly having a cache of weapons and a bombmaking explosive in their Greenwich Village apartment.

Morgan Gliedman — who is nine-months pregnant — and her baby daddy, Aaron Greene, 31, also had instructions on making bombs, including a stack of papers with a cover sheet titled, “The Terrorist Encyclopedia,’’ sources told The Post yesterday.

People who know Greene say his political views are “extreme,” the sources said.

In addition to being an Occupy Wall Street activist, Aaron Greene is reported to have had "five prior run-ins with the police, with the charges including, assault, and weapons possession."  The weapons found in their apartment allegedly include "a commercial replica of a grenade launcher; a modified 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun; ammo; and nine high-capacity rifle magazines."  The explosives found include HMTD which is sufficiently powerful that it led police to evacuate several buildings.

The reason for the police visit to the Greene and Gliedman apartment was that Gliedman, daughter of privilege and graduate of exclusive schools, was wanted for "alleged credit-card theft."

Greene is not the only would-be Occupy bomber.  Last April, the FBI arrested five Occupy Cleveland members involved in a plot that included a plan to blow up a bridge. 

Hat tip: Instapundit.

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The Absurdity of the Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times has a lengthy article, written by Richard A. Serrano,  on the resignation of Lisa Jackson as EPA Administrator.   It includes lots of fluff, such as "Jackson said in her statement that 'I leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction.'"  The article, however, is most notable for what it omits.

One thing not mentioned is the recent exposure of Jackson's possibly criminal use of secret email accounts to hide her EPA correspondence from FOIA and her consequent need to get out of Washington before a serious investigation can begin.  As this appears to be why she is resigning, the omission of it from the LA Times article is astonishing.

Also omitted is her suppression of science that disagreed with her  political advocacy of global warming and the imposition of CO2 regulations which is widely touted as her signature achievement. 

Some news articles contain outright falsehoods.  Others, like this one, mislead by omission of the key facts.  In either case, the legacy news media is not to be trusted.

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ASPCA paid circus $9.3 million to settle lawsuit

Back in 2000, animal rights groups, including the ASPCA, sued the producer of the Ringling Brothers Circus for cruelty to elephants.  The only problem was that the circus, as far as the court could tell, treated its elephants well.  The ASPCA's case was based on the eyewitness testimony of Tom Rider.  The case collapsed when it was exposed that the ASPCA has paid Rider for his testimony.  CNN provides more details on why the activists were forced to pay such a large settlement:

A circus producer said Friday that an animal rights group has paid it $9.3 million to settle two federal court cases claiming elephant abuse.

Feld Entertainment, Inc., trumpeted the settlement with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) as a victory for its Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

"These defendants attempted to destroy our family-owned business with a hired plaintiff who made statements that the court did not believe," said Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, in a statement.

"Animal activists have been attacking our family, our company, and our employees for decades because they oppose animals in circuses," Feld said. "This settlement is a vindication not just for the company but also for the dedicated men and women who spend their lives working and caring for all the animals with Ringling Brothers in the face of such targeted, malicious rhetoric."

The ASPCA was one of several animal rights groups that sued Feld Entertainment in 2000, alleging that circus elephants were abused.