Optimists 2, Malthusians 0

In August 2005, The New York Times Magazine published an article titled "The Breaking Point" in which Council on Foreign Relations member Matthew Simmons predicted that oil, then about $65 a barrel, would more than triple in price by 2010. New York Times journalist John Tierney read the article, called Simmons up, and eventually bet Simmons $5,000 that the average price of oil over the course of 2010 would be at least $200 a barrel in 2005 dollars. As of January 1st, Tierney will have won. Yesterday, he explained why he made the bet:

I took him up on it, not because I knew much about Saudi oil production or the other "peak oil" arguments that global production was headed downward. I was just following a rule learned from a mentor and a friend, the economist Julian L. Simon.

As the leader of the Cornucopians, the optimists who believed there would always be abundant supplies of energy and other resources, Julian figured that betting was the best way to make his argument. Optimism, he found, didn't make for cover stories and front-page headlines.

No matter how many cheery long-term statistics he produced, he couldn't get as much attention as the gloomy Malthusians like Paul Ehrlich, the best-selling ecologist. Their forecasts of energy crises and resource shortages seemed not only newsier but also more intuitively correct. In a finite world with a growing population, wasn't it logical to expect resources to become scarcer and more expensive?

As an alternative to arguing, Julian offered to bet that the price of any natural resource chosen by a Malthusian wouldn't rise in the future. Dr. Ehrlich accepted and formed a consortium with two colleagues at Berkeley, John P. Holdren and John Harte, who were supposed to be experts in natural resources. In 1980, they picked five metals and bet that the prices would rise during the next 10 years.

By 1990, the prices were lower, and the Malthusians paid up, although they didn't seem to suffer any professional consequences. Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Holdren both won MacArthur "genius awards" (Julian never did). Dr. Holdren went on to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and today he serves as President Obama's science adviser.

Julian, who died in 1998, never managed to persuade Dr. Ehrlich or Dr. Holdren or other prominent doomsayers to take his bets again.

Holdren's position as President Obama's top science adviser is completely consistent with this administration's energy policies. Cap and Trade, Renewable Electricity Standards, and EPA global warming regulations all are founded on Malthusian beliefs that government must raise energy prices in order to stop global warming, which Holdren believes will kill 1 billion people by 2020. This came after Holdren wrote a book in 1977, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment, predicting a global cooling.

Cooling, warming, whatever; for Malthusians the policy answers are all the same: more government control.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/28/optimists-2-malthusians-0/

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How the Value Added Tax Works

The spending pace of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress simply cannot be sustained. There will either have to be spending cuts or higher taxes. The left prefers higher taxes, including the imposition of a value-added tax (VAT). How would a VAT work. Heritage scholar Curtis Dubay explains:

The VAT is a consumption tax that taxes the value added by businesses at each point in the production chain. It can apply to both manufactured goods and services. This contrasts with the more familiar income tax, which taxes salaries, wages, and the returns to savings, but does not tax purchases. Because the VAT is a consumption tax, it would closely mirror the sales taxes that most Americans pay at the state and local levels. In fact, consumers would experience no difference between a national sales tax and a VAT. A sales tax and a VAT designed to raise equal amounts of revenue would raise the final price of purchases by roughly the same amount.

In the credit-invoice method, the most common form of the VAT, a business pays VAT on its purchase of inputs and collect it on its sales whether those sales are to another business or the final consumer. The business then submits the invoices that it receives from its suppliers to the government's revenue agency. The invoices detail the amount of VAT that the business paid to its suppliers. Once the revenue agency verifies that the business remitted the proper amount of tax on its sales and that the submitted invoices match the suppliers' filings, the agency refunds the business for VAT paid. The filings by businesses give the revenue agency a simple way to ensure that businesses pay the required amount of VAT.

As long as the business can pass the tax on to its customers, which is typically the case, the business ultimately pays no tax. It acts solely as a collection agent for the government, collecting VAT on its sales and remitting to the government the difference between the VAT it collects and the VAT it paid on inputs. The burden of the tax moves up the production chain until the consumer bears the full burden, just like under the sales tax.

You can read Dubay's whole paper here. He concludes:

Congress should ignore misguided siren calls for a VAT and instead immediately address its spending problems. Tax increases will never reduce the gap. Instead, Congress must cut spending to 20 percent of GDP or lower. This would reduce the annual budget deficit to a more manageable level. The national debt would stabilize as a percentage of GDP and the threat that credit markets will stop lending or raise interest rates would abate. None of these necessary steps requires a VAT.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/28/how-the-value-added-tax-works/

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The Horror!… Krauthammer Tells GOP: Don’t Defund Obamacare (Video)

Charles?… Why???

What's happened to Sir Charles?
Last night on FOX News Special Report conservative icon Charles Krauthammer told the Republican Congress to scrap their plans to defund Obamacare. Krauthammer said it was a bad idea because democrats will play politics if Republicans go this route.

This may come as a shock to Sir Charles but democrats will play politics anyway. It's what they do. It doesn't matter if Republicans defund Obamacare or not.

Via The Right Scoop:
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

More… 60% of Americans reject the unconstitutional individual mandate in Obamacare.

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/12/the-horror-krauthammer-tells-gop-dont-defund-obamacare-video/

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Shock Audio: New Black Panther Leader & Farrakhan Colluded With Ahmadinejad to Overthrow America

On September 27, 2010, New Black Panther leader Malik Zulu Shabazz and Louis Farrakhan met with illegitimate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to build an alliance, secure raw materials and overthrow America.

The Blaze posted this shocking audio:

In September is was reported that Louis Farrakhan met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York City at the Warwick Hotel's banquet hall.

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/12/new-black-panther-obama-supporters-colluded-with-ahmadinejad-to-overthrow-america/

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Shocker: All 10 states losing House seats have Democrat registration advantage

That includes us up here in Michigan, the only state to lose population over the last 10 years. New York and Ohio will lose 2 each. From Ed Morrissey via Instapundit, memeorandum: All 10 states losing House seats have Democratic registration advantages

...Based on Gallup's surveys earlier in the year on party identification, they note that all of the ten states that lost representation in the House have overall Democratic affiliation advantages.  Five of the eight gainers have GOP affiliation advantages:

Over the years, relative changes in population across the states have resulted in extraordinary shifts in political power. The traditionally Democratic state of New York, for example, has gone from 45 congressional seats after the 1940 census to 27 seats after the 2010 census. On the other hand, Texas, in recent decades a reliably Republican state, has gone from 21 to 36 seats during the same time frame.

Nine of the 10 states that lost congressional seats as a result of this year's census are in the Northeast or Midwest. The exception is Louisiana, whose population loss at least partly as a result of Hurricane Katrina cost it a seat. Politically, all 10 of these "losing" states skew Democratic in political orientation, based on Gallup's latest state political identification data from January through June of this year. The two states that each lost two seats, Ohio and New York, have a net Democratic political identification of +7 and +19, respectively. The Democratic margin in the other eight losing states ranges from +20 in Massachusetts to +1 in Missouri.

There's one word for the shift me thinks: TAXES. Speaking of taxes and Texas, from the New York Post: Taxes trigger a Texodus in New York

The Lone Star State is scooping up more than just our congressional seats -- some $846 million in personal income shifted from New York to Texas in an eight-year period during the last decade, according to an analysis of IRS tax returns.

Texas, which has no state or local income taxes and an enviably low cost of living, has been steadily poaching New Yorkers since the '90s, according to data from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research organization based in Washington.

From 2000 to 2008, more than $846 million in personal income moved from New York to Texas -- with more than $212 million leaving in 2006 and '07.

New York lost an estimated $38.4 billion in personal income to other states in that same time period, while Texas gained roughly $12.2 billion from migration.

...Heavily taxed New Yorkers pay on average 11.7 percent of their income to state and local taxes, according to data from the Tax Foundation. By contrast, Texans pay only 8.4 percent of their income in local and state taxes.

The saying should no longer be "don't mess with Texas," it should be "don't mess around with taxes."

http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/12/shocker-all-10-states-losing-house.html

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Morning Examiner: Price-controls don't work in Bolivia, just like they don't work anywhere else

from Beltway Confidential by David Freddoso


Morning Examiner: Price-controls don't work in Bolivia, just like they don't work anywhere else: "Tell me again -- why did New Jersey create a Lieutenant Governor position?

Worst op-eds of 2010.

A lesson about price controls, and a sign of the future under carbon-rationing.

EPA, Texas go to war.

'The [Russian] authorities do not summarily imprison their critics as dissidents, as in Communist times. They instead often...

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Government Accountability Office Can’t Hold Government Accountable

from - Big Government by Publius

Government Accountability Office Can’t Hold Government Accountable: "

From Accounting Today:

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.

“Even though significant progress has been made since the enactment of key financial management reforms in the 1990s, our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statement illustrates that much work remains to be done to improve federal financial management,” Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said in a statement. “Shortcomings in three areas again prevented us from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based financial statements.”

The main obstacles to a GAO opinion were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.

In addition, the GAO said last week it was unable to render an opinion on the 2010 Statement of Social Insurance because of significant uncertainties, primarily related to the achievement of projected reductions in Medicare cost growth. The consolidated financial statements discuss these uncertainties, which relate to reductions in physician payment rates and to productivity improvements, and provide an illustrative alternative projection to illustrate the uncertainties.

Dodaro also cited material weaknesses involving an estimated $125.4 billion in improper payments, information security across government, and tax collection activities. He noted that three major agencies — the DOD, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor — did not get clean opinions. Nineteen of 24 major agencies did get clean opinions on all their statements.

Read the whole thing here.

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Pamela Geller, American Thinker: Islamic Supremacists Envision a Takeover of the Interne

from Atlas Shrugs by Pamela Geller


Pamela Geller, American Thinker: Islamic Supremacists Envision a Takeover of the Interne: "

Islamic Supremacists Envision a Takeover of the Internet Pamela Geller, American Thinker

It was hardly noticed at the time, but its consequences could be catastrophic. Late last September, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns internet domain names, approved a huge change in the way it operates . Europe and North America will now have five seats on its Board of Directors, instead of ten, and a new "Arab States" region will have five seats as well.

How big a deal is this? ICANN at the same time took a reference to "terrorism" out of its Draft Applicant Guidebook. Why? Because Arab groups complained. And so now jihad terror websites can grow and prosper, as ICANN has removed its own ability to police them.

This has been a long time coming.

Back in October 2009 , I warned of a seismic transformation in internet regulation and free speech. Under the transnational-happy Obama administration, the U.S. relinquished control of the net at that time. ICANN ended its agreement with the U.S. government.

If not America, who? Now we know the answer to that. The new agreement gave other countries (including dictatorships and rogue nations) and the U.N. the ability to set internet use policies. At the time, I wrote, "[W]atch for Sharia law to find its way into this."

Well, that didn't take long. The ICANN action in September gave the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and other unfriendly nations a prominent internet role -- something they never could get during the administration of George W. Bush.

News analyst Daniel Greenfield explains:

The OIC has already effectively used the UN to push its censorship agenda. But the UN is virtually toothless when it comes to the United States. However if the Muslim world can dominate ICANN the way it dominates the UN General Assembly, then free speech on the internet is dead.

In practice, the new arrangement makes it much easier for Muslim countries to dictate what stays on the internet and what doesn't. The removal of the material about "terrorism" was just muscle-flexing; there is much more of that kind of censorship coming. If this stands, anti-jihad sites like my own site AtlasShrugs.com and the JihadWatch.org site run by my colleague Robert Spencer will likely lose their domain names. It will become harder and harder to find the truth about jihad activity, or any resistance to it, on the internet or anywhere else.

Why is this necessary at all? Why should the U.S. relinquish control of its own invention? The internet was our extraordinary gift to the world. We kept it free. And now, like some depraved drunk, we are tossing it away and relinquishing control to the vultures and destroyers.

The new "net neutrality" rules approved last week by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will just make that easier as well. Columnist Jonathan Gurwitz explains:

Net neutrality is anything but neutral. It takes the operation of the Internet away from the heterogeneous and diversified interests of the private sector that has created it and concentrates it in the hands of an unelected and unaccountable board of political appointees atop a federal bureaucracy.

"Few proposals in Washington have been sold employing such deceptive language - and that's saying something," observed James G. Lakely, the co-director of the Center on the Digital Economy for the Heartland Institute, a free-market think-tank. "But few public policy ideas can boast the unashamedly socialist pedigree of net neutrality."

Read the whole thing.

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Thanks to Big Government, Oil Prices Headed for the Sky

from Moonbattery by Van Helsing


Thanks to Big Government, Oil Prices Headed for the Sky: "

What might an irresponsible, authoritarian, hyper-intrusive government driven by a radical environmentalist agenda and hostile to American interests do to the energy sector? It might prevent the building of nuclear plants and oil refineries, squash drilling in the ANWR wasteland and the Gulf of Mexico, and declare drilling to be out of the question most anywhere else. What might happen then? This:

The former president of Shell oil is predicting that the United States will face 1970s-style energy shortages and rationing by the end of the decade, accusing the federal government of turning its back on the country's domestic oil supply.

The dire prediction comes as energy analysts toss out a string of frightening predictions about the rising price of oil in the short term. Oil has topped $90 a barrel, and JP Morgan Chase & Co. earlier this month predicted oil could hit $120 a barrel by the end of 2012. At the same time, the national average gasoline price is about $3 a gallon for the holiday season.

But former Shell executive John Hofmeister offered a more aggressive estimate, saying Americans could be paying $5 a gallon in two years. And he predicted that sometime between 2018 and 2020, supply and demand will become so out of balance that gas stations in several regions of the country will simply start to run out.

Meanwhile…

The Interior Department announced earlier this month that it would not pursue any new drilling off the East Coast or in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least seven years. Planned lease sales would be pushed off until late 2011 or early 2012.

At least we have the advantage that since all our significant problems are created by the government, the government is always right there to fix them.

While clamping down on domestic energy production, the Obama administration has [squandered] billions in renewable energy sources via last year's stimulus bill and has pushed improved energy efficiency for a range of products in a bid to at least keep demand a bit lower in the long term.

If you're out of a job, do you (a) look for work, or (b) try not to spend as much? Government imposes (b), while forbidding (a). As for the "renewable energy sources" — moonbat ideology can make lawyers rich, but it cannot make your car run or lights come on, at least not at a price low enough to be economically feasible.

You can't say Comrade Obama isn't keeping any of his campaign promises. Here he is again assuring us that he would deliberately cause energy prices to 'skyrocket':

Add to the drilling restrictions the latest federal power grab, with Obama imposing Cap & Trade lunacy via the unelected and unaccountable EPA, and you can see that energy costs will be heading for the stratosphere.

As they rise, so will unemployment and inflation. But on the positive side, the New York Times tells us that when we use less energy, it won't be so cold out, because it won't be so warm. I'm sure the sacred polar bears are grateful.

Also thanking us are oil-exporting, terror-supporting Islamic regimes swimming in the last of our money.

On a tip from Wyatt's Torch.

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Bloomberg Has Worked Behind the Scenes With Islamists to Get Ground Zero Mosque Built

from Moonbattery by Van Helsing


Bloomberg Has Worked Behind the Scenes With Islamists to Get Ground Zero Mosque Built: "

The "Muslim–moonbat alliance" is more than a figure of speech. Progressives have been sympathetic to expansionist Islam since 9/11, possibly hoping it might succeed where Soviet communism failed. Sometimes this goes beyond sympathy, to the point where the liberal elitists who govern us actually coordinate campaigns with jihadists.

An appalling example is 9/11 itself, an ongoing terror operation that will not be complete until a mosque has been constructed at the site of the Islamic victory, in keeping with the time-honored tradition of Muslim conquest. This is as crucial as flying the planes into the buildings. If we had rebuilt the towers, Muslims still would have struck a painful blow, but they couldn't have counted it as a victory. But if instead a mosque is built, that means that we 'feel ourselves to be subdued,' as the Koran defines dhimmis.

This is where the liberal fifth column comes in — not just by spewing sickening propaganda and demonizing anyone who puts up resistance, but by actually working in the trenches to advance the al Qaeda agenda. From the American Center for Law and Justice:

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which has filed a lawsuit to stop the Ground Zero Mosque, says that Mayor Bloomberg's newly released response to its Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests validates the substance of its suit and reveals an inappropriate involvement between the Mayor's Office and developers of the mosque.

"The documents released underscore what we've believed all along - that the Mayor was working behind the scenes — in a secretive manner — to promote and advance a project that offends most New Yorkers and most Americans," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. "The fact that the Mayor's Office waited four-and-a-half months to respond to our FOIL request and then released only a portion of the documents right before Christmas validates the substance of our claim and clearly indicates that the Mayor continues to hide the full nature of his involvement in this process. … We intend to seek a full disclosure from the Mayor in court shortly after the New Year."

Getting full disclosure from liberal pols in the age of Obamunist transparency won't be easy — but it will be worth the effort to learn just how far Bloomberg has gone out of his way to get the mosque built.

The ACLJ's lawsuit on behalf of Tim Brown, a firefighter and first responder who survived the Twin Towers' collapse, alleges that New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) acted arbitrarily, abused its discretion, and violated administrative law by allowing political pressures to influence its decision not to landmark a building where the proposed Mosque would be built. The suit was then amended to add Mayor Bloomberg's Office for failing to respond to the ACLJ's FOIL request from July 30.

Landmarking the building would have been an easy way of showing the decency to prevent the construction of the obscene victory mosque.

The 21 pages of disclosures released by the Mayor's Office reveal that City Hall had direct communications with the Mosque's developers, explicitly tried to assist with the political process, and was involved with discussions between the developers and the Community Board 1. An email from the developers' attorney, Shelly Friedman, also acknowledged that Robert Tierney, the Chairman of the LPC, was seeking 'political cover' from politicians in order not to landmark the building.

The disclosures, however, are perhaps most significant for what they did not provide. The Mayor's Office claimed two exemptions under the Public Officer's Law, including one for intra-agency and inter-agency communications.

Whatever Bloomberg is trying to hide, it's shocking to think it could be worse than what we already know. In sane times, he would already be acknowledged as a traitor. But if these were sane times, this Islamophile nanny state totalitarian would never have been allowed to set himself up as New York's Mayor for Life.

New York's answer to Vidkun Quisling.

On a tip from BURNING HOT. Hat tip: Yid With Lid.

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