Gas prices have already hit $4 a gallon nationally with no relief in sight. Given the flooding in the Midwest and the federal mandate that ethanol must be blended with gasoline before sale to consumers, the pain at the pump could only get worse. The floods could create upward pressure on gas prices in two distinct ways: 1.) As Stephen Schork, editor of The Schork Report in Philadelphia, emphasizes, “If we have prolonged rail and barge delays of getting Midwest ethanol to all the coast, then it will have an …
Considering their recent fumbles, no one can rightly accuse House Republicans of being marketing geniuses. But the campaign they launched last month, the “Pelosi Premium,” highlighting how Democrat energy policy drives up the cost of gasoline, is dead on. Covering congressional energy policy, the Politico today dismissively writes of the GOP slogan: “as if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) personally sets the price of gas at every filling station across the land.” The Politico may have reporters with great Washington contacts, but the newspaper needs to send its reporters back …
Here’s a preview of what’s happening this week in Washington. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5soRqhJLnQ[/youtube] The Lieberman-Warner climate change bill may cost the sponsoring senator’s states dearly — Connecticut’s economy will lose $6.8 billion and Virginia’s economy will lose $12.2 billion in 2030. Presidential candidates’ home-state economies will also suffer — John McCain’s Arizona will suffer $7.7 billion and Obama’s Illinois will lose $19.6 billion in 2030. According to Heritage’s analysis, the cumulative gross domestic product losses are at least $1.7 trillion and could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030 using inflation adjusted dollars. Is …
The costs of Congress’ ethanol mandate have been well documented. It is diverting more and more corn away from food and into fuel (25% this year and 35% next year) causing the price of both go to up. Consumers here in the U.S. are paying for Congressional shortsightedness at the pump and in the grocery store, and world wide the mandates are contributing to deadly food riots. So what are Americans getting for all this pain here at home and abroad. National Review‘s David Freddoso investigates: What exactly do we …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Here’s a preview of the week ahead in Washington. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ySXAXT2vaI[/youtube] Congress will soon consider a $100 billion emergency war supplemental. Some want to load it up with non-military proposals that have nothing to do with the war. Special-interest projects include unemployment insurance, funding for national parks and money for local law enforcement program grants. This Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Heritage will host Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) for an event, “Why We Whisper: Restoring our Right to Say It’s Wrong.” DeMint will examine how government-imposed secularism and government-promoted destructive behavior have …
