Sen. Barack Obama’s only legislative accomplishment in Washington so far is the passage of “the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate,” which was designed to “to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” Well the lobbyists didn’t get the message. Since liberals took over Congress, profits for the top lobbying firms in Washington have soared. The reason is simple: liberals want to increase government control over the economy through mandates and regulation to achieve their social engineering goals. This market intervention inevitably …
Around the world people are starving due to higher food prices and Congress is just now beginning to realize the connection between their global warming policies and misery around the world. Heritage scholar Ben Lieberman explains the link: America’s first mandatory policy to reduce global warming emissions is its biofuels mandate. … At the beginning of the decade, Al Gore said that “by tripling U.S. use of bioenergy and bioproducts by 2010, we can keep millions of tons of greenhouse gases out of the air….” … Thanks to the 2007 …
Echoing the sentiments of conservatives, Jay Leno last night on “The Tonight Show” chided Democrats for their repeated opposition to oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Leno’s punchline: Democrats say drilling in ANWR wouldn’t produce any oil for 10 years — the same point they’ve been making for more than 10 years now. President Bill Clinton vetoed legislation in 1995 that would have opened ANWR to oil exploration. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjfssrKGsBU[/youtube]
Environmentalists are in their normal state of righteous frenzy over the Department of Interior’s continued deliberations on whether or not to list the polar bear as “endangered” pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. Responding to a California judge’s decision ordering Interior to make their decision by May 15, Natural Resources Defense Council’s Andrew Wetzler said, “The science is absolutely unambiguous that the polar bear deserves protection.” The Center for Biological Diversity’s Kassie Siegel added: “The science is perfectly clear. There’s no dispute. The polar bear is an endangered species.” This …
Food riots have forced the collapse of the government in Haiti. People are dying in food lines in Egypt. The U.N. warns that food stocks for 450,000 Cambodian children is set to tun out in 30 days. Rising hunger is contributing to instability in Afghanistan. In India, even the gods are going hungry. After more than 30 years of declining hunger, suddenly, this year soaring commodity prices are causing hunger worldwide. The poor are are suffering the most. Some are blaming the food crisis on droughts in Australia and growing …
Recently our leaders have told us: The New York Times, April 15, 2008: Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he had come to realize that Congress made a mistake in backing biofuels, not anticipating the impact on food costs. He said Congress needed to reconsider its policy, though he acknowledged that would be difficult. “If there was a secret vote, there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess what we are doing,” he said. The Hill, April 28, 2008: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin …
Last week Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent a letter to President Bush on Earth Day identifying three pieces of energy legislation that she claims will “save Americans money.” One bill is actually a decent idea, but has no hope of lowering energy prices anytime soon. Another bill could marginally increase gas prices by creating vague legal standards that will drive up litigation costs. But the only major legislation identified would be a complete disaster for American consumers. First the good: Speaker Pelosi urges action on the No Oil Producing and …
We don’t know exactly when it happened, but at some point The Washington Post dropped all pretense of being an objective news source and became a full fledged advocate for government control of the energy sector. Before Democrats recently enacted strict new ethanol mandates, conservatives and libertarians warned that proposed the market intervention would raise prices, not just for energy, but for other products as well. Now it is becoming clear that those predictions were dead on. Gas and food prices are soaring here at home, and millions are suffering …
Are you tired yet of NBC’s extension of “Earth Day” into “Earth Week”? Washington Examiner columnist Timothy Carney exposes the very convenient truth behind parent company General Electric’s environmentalist cheerleading: NBC Universal is owned by General Electric, which plays a regular role in this column because of how aggressively the company has hitched its profits to its lobbying successes. GE spends more than any other corporation in America on lobbying the federal government — more than $20 million annually over the past three years — and Green Week and Earth …
ATLANTA — Hundreds of conservative activists gathered here in Hotlanta this week to advance free market principles as The Heritage Foundation hosts our annual Resource Bank meeting. Resource Bank again attracted more than 500 think tank executives, public interest lawyers, policy experts and elected officials from around the world to discuss issues and strategies. At an opening luncheon yesterday, author and commentator Jonah Goldberg spoke about his New York Times bestseller, Liberal Fascism. Jonah has explained many, many times already why he chose to write the book. His message to conservatives and …
