In the UK Guardian last month, a leading European energy executive warned that Europe’s carbon market was becoming a “new type of sub-prime tool.” More analysis from the article: The EU’s emissions trading scheme was set up as a market solution to cut greenhouse gas pollution from industry. Polluters were issued with permits that can be traded between companies and countries as a way of encouraging an overall reduction in carbon output. However, companies are now cashing them in. Up to €1bn-worth of permits are said to have been sold …
Imagine the following scenario: After work you and a couple of your co-workers gather at the local pizza joint for a few slices and a beer. They are buying! When you arrive, one of your co-workers puts a “sign in” sheet (see below) under your nose while you are choosing what pizza you want to order. Congratulations! Under the rules of the dishonestly named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), you’ve just voted to unionize your workplace. During Monday’s “Consequences of the Employee Free Choice Act” panel discussion at The Heritage …
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) took a lot of criticism last week for declaring his intention to turn down the unemployment insurance parts of the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus aid. Jindal noted that the legislation written by the leftist majorities in Congress required states to permanently expand their unemployment insurance programs which would raise taxes on struggling small businesses today. Jindal urged other governors to actually read the bill so they knew what they were getting into. Well Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-TN) has done just that. The Chattanooga Times Free Press …
Rhetorically there was much to like in President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress last night. None better than this early statement: The answers to our problems … exist in our laboratories and universities, in our fields and our factories, in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. We couldn’t agree more. America has been “the greatest force of progress and prosperity …
Washington – Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, railed against government spending and lack of transparency at the Conservative Bloggers’ Briefing today at the Heritage Foundation. “We think it’s time the Democrats put our money where their mouth is,” he said. We’re advocating that congress freeze all federal spending immediately.” The Congressman spent the last week at townhall meetings throughout Indiana, drawing hundreds more people than he usually gets wherever he went. “The American people get it,” he said. “House Republicans get it. Enough is …
So the man who oversaw a $60 billion global scam—also known as the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program—has been rightfully disgraced. In January 2007, the United States charged Benon Sevan with bribery and conspiracy to commit fraud. Sevan, a native Cypriot, continues to evade justice by hiding out on his home island—with which the U.S. has no extradition treaty. The U.N.’s reaction to the man at the center of a conspiracy involving prominent politicians, senior U.N. officials, and more than 2,000 companies in 66 countries? It intends to pay Sevan’s nearly $1 …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzZJoPu1OQ[/youtube] Some worried D.C. schoolchildren recently asked President Obama to continue the highly successful D.C . Opportunity Scholarship Program. The program, which allows parents the choice to to take their children out of failing public schools, is in danger of being scrapped completely after the 2010 school year. Ignoring the pleas of these children and others, a measure hidden in the omnibus spending bill effectively eliminates this program. It would make it so the funds have to be reauthorized by Congress as well as approved by the D.C. Council, providing a …
Politico reports today: It was a perfectly reasonable question, and on the surface it seemed like a perfectly reasonable answer. But when Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd went on Bloomberg TV Friday and mused about the possibility of bank nationalization, panicked investors sent the Dow plummeting a hundred points in the next hour. Whoops. Dodd’s casual remark and the not-so-casual consequences it caused were among the most vivid examples of a new Washington phenomenon. The city’s sudden status as the de facto world financial capital means that briefings and …
This Sunday climate czar Carol Browner said the Obama Administration will soon “make an endangerment finding” on carbon dioxide and said, “the next step is a notice of proposed rule making” for new regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. According to the Wall Street Journal, Browner claims that the Obama Administration “would limit regulation to facilities over a certain size” but as we have pointed out many times, the Clean Air Act does not for such selective enforcement. Chamber of Commerce vice president William Kovacs told WSJ: “Once carbon dioxide is regulated, …
The Constitution of the United States of America Congress Doesn’t Have the Authority: Congress lacks the constitutional authority to simply grant the District a voting representative, as the Constitution explicitly limits such representation to states alone. Members of Congress are bound by their oath to reject proposals that violate the Constitution. Article I, Section 2: “Representatives…shall be apportioned among the several States.” The District, as courts and Congress have long agreed, is not a state. Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power … To exercise exclusive legislation in …
