Saturday, April 28, 2012

The Smartest People in the Room

One of the fundamental failures of liberalism is the way liberal policies conflict with each other and nowhere is that conflict more apparent than when discussing energy.  Liberals worship the Earth as a god, they love clean, renewable energy like wind and solar and pond scum (Priest-King's latest favorite) because they want to avoid offending their god and there's a certain internal logic there, but it all falls apart when you start connecting one position to another.  Any third-grader will tell you that trying to force like magnetic poles together is an exercise in futility, but try telling that to a liberal: They can overcome Nature, don't you know.

For example, liberals love clean, inoffensive energy but they also say they want a prosperous economy, at least in the way they define prosperous:  Wealth is distributed equally from top to bottom, nobody has any more than anyone else and employment is concentrated in manufacturing and building trades, fields historically dominated by the Democrat Party but which also require abundant, reliable and relatively inexpensive sources of energy which from the Industrial Revolution onward have been drawn from oil and coal, the two greatest demons in the tree hugger's philosophy.  So the liberal attacks oil and coal, forbids drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaska ANHWR (Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner were condemned by Federal courts in June and July 2012 for publishing a report that purposely distorted the views of a White House-appointed panel that opposed the Administration's moratorium on offshore drilling), forbids fracking that would extract more oil from existing wells (EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, in a speech in 2010, asserted that his enforcement policy toward oil and natural gas companies was comparable to the Romans' practice of crucifixion), stops construction of the Keystone pipeline (forcing the Canadians to sell their oil the Chinese, boosting their economy and not ours), imposes draconian fuel mileage standards on the automakers to kill production of the trucks, minivans and SUV's that Americans prefer, issues drastic clean air regulations designed to close coal-fired power plants that provide 40% of our electricity, presses for cap-in-trade legislation that would kill the coal industry entirely, and imposes stiff sales taxes on gasoline to discourage consumption (U.S. oil consumption has fallen over 1.6 million barrels per day from 2004-2010 but still not enough to satisfy the socialist one-worlders).  As if that were not enough, the liberals provide billions of dollars in Federal loan guarantees to the solar power industry, fully aware the American public has largely rejected solar power and that individual businesses are on shaky financial ground, then stand aside as Solyndra, Solar Trust and other companies go bankrupt.  They mandate the total replacement of incandescent light bulbs that have been the norm for over 125 years in favor of fluorescent bulbs that are more expensive and are the very devil to dispose of (the EPA recommends evacuating a room in which a CFL bulb breaks, airing it for 5-10 minutes, shutting off the home's central air system to avoid circulating poisoned air and removing any debris outside).  Still not finished, the liberals pour billions into electric cars, hoping that the love that the white, affluent, environmentally-conscious elite have for their toys transfers to the general public, then scratch their heads when the Chevy Volt, Fisker Tesla and Nissan Leaf either fail to sell or are so prone to mechanical failure that production is halted.  (The Tesla apparently turns into a "brick" if the battery drains, such that it must be returned to the factory for a total overhaul.)  The net effect is an economy that struggles to grow, deprived of the energy it needs, and the strangling of the very industries that the liberals claim to champion, and this paradox never occurs to the liberals nor to the unions who traditionally throw their support behind them, proof that liberal energy policies can never succeed because they literally cancel each other out.

What about gasoline prices?  Liberals always complain that the rising price of gasoline unfairly affects the poor and middle class and that the oil companies are gouging the public, but they never offer to reduce or eliminate the heavy taxes they attach to the sale of gasoline, or reduce the heavy regulations that throttle the construction of new refineries, or remove restrictions on new drilling, or do anything that would increase supply, lower demand and therefore prices.  Priest-King blocked the Keystone Pipeline that would have increased trade with a friendly country and reduced our dependency on Middle East oil while he flatly stated that "we can't simply drill our way out of this problem, " when in fact we could if he would only get out of the way.  In ten years' time, we would have tapped enough of our own reserves (and Canada's) that we could indeed reduce gasoline prices, create new jobs, boost our economy, cut our foreign oil imports and bolster our national security, but these benefits are all secondary to the desire to revert to a horse-drawn, agrarian, pre-industrial economy that would be at one with Nature and which, of course, would be completely inadequate to sustain a nation of 310 million people.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/15/despite-stimulus-funding-solyndra-and-4-other-companies-have-hit-rock-bottom/
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8310ZV20120402
Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297070/epa-expands-its-mission-crucifixion-charles-c-w-cooke
Source: http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

Thursday, April 12, 2012

If You Ain't Cheatin' You Ain't Tryin'



Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent comments about the supposed nonexistence of voter fraud in the United States and his opposition to voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina are the latest proof that he is just another liberal hack and an embarrassment to his office, with apologies to Janet Reno. After refusing to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia during the 2008 election, after calling America "a nation of cowards" for supposed reluctance to discuss racial issues, after instituting a policy at Department of Justice that there would be no investigations against minorities for civil rights violations in the Obama Administration, after announcing that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other Gitmo terrorists would be tried in New York City in civilian courts (and then renegeing after a groundswell of protest), and after overseeing Operation Fast and Furious, in which Mexican drug lords were allowed to purchase guns in the United States and take them to perpetrate murder, including the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and lying to Congress about his knowledge thereof, Mr. Holder now stubbornly refuses to approve voter identification laws passed by the Texas and South Carolina legislatures because they would unfairly impact minorities, the poor and the elderly, at least in his distorted view. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that states in the Old South submit their election laws to the AG for review and approval in order to prevent Jim Crow-style voter suppression, Holder sees himself as a champion of the disadvantaged in this case, ensuring that every voter has the chance to cast their ballot.

…instead of ensuring that every legitimate voter has the chance to cast their ballot as these voter ID laws attempt to do. Free and fair elections lie at the heart of our democracy. The people have a right to expect that elections are conducted lawfully, that cheating, rigging and fraud are vigorously prosecuted, and that the results of every election are genuine. Since the presentation of photo ID is required throughout our society (I can’t check into a hotel without identifying myself) and since photo ID’s are free of charge to registered voters in the states in question, Mr. Holder has no reason for his obstinacy other than a desire to facilitate fraud such that the greatest number of liberal-leaning, pro-big government, entitlement program-consuming people reach the polls on Election Day, legal or not. And as for Holder’s comment that voter fraud in the U.S. is "nonexistent," a view echoed by The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN and the George Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice, that view is based on the deliberately misleading reference to the relatively low number of voter fraud convictions reported nationwide. It’s a vicious circle: Minus photo ID’s, voter fraud is easier to commit and harder to prove; the harder voter fraud is to prove, the fewer voter fraud convictions are obtained; the fewer voter fraud convictions are obtained, the greater the perception among liberals that voter fraud is "nonexistent." The fraud can continue, Democrats get elected and Republicans’ efforts to stop it are frustrated.

But voter fraud convictions are not the only indicator that voter fraud is actually occurring. Take for example last week’s incident during the Washington, DC city election in which an associate of James O’Keefe, the filmmaker who exposed ACORN’s voter fraud operations in 2008, approached a poll worker at Eric Holder’s own polling place and could’ve cast a ballot for the Attorney General without any identification (he didn’t). This incident has caused some embarrassment and anger on the Left, liberal commentators have simultaneously dismissed it as a harmless prank that proves nothing and attacked Mr. O’Keefe as a right-wing muckraker (“It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones"), but the point is that committing voter fraud in the nation’s capital in the Attorney General’s name was ridiculously easy and nobody was arrested or charged, let alone convicted.

And what about ACORN? In 2009, the left-wing activist group was investigated for various forms of voter and election fraud in fifteen states during the 2008 general election that included the following:

- Nevada officials charged ACORN, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, said he believes 48% of ACORN's forms "are clearly fraudulent."

- Prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven ACORN employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before the 2008 general election.

- Fred Voight, deputy election commissioner in Philadelphia, protested after ACORN (according to the registrar of voters and his own investigation) submitted at least 1,500 fraudulent registrations in 2008. "This has been going on for a number of years," he told CNN.

- Washington state prosecutors fined ACORN $25,000 after several employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2007. The group signed a consent decree with King County (Seattle), requiring it to beef up its oversight or face criminal prosecution.

In September 2009, Mr. O’Keefe and a female associate, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, videotaped employees at ACORN’s Brooklyn, New York, office helping them obtain public funding for a brothel to be staffed by underage girls who were also illegal immigrants. ACORN subsequently lost its Congressional funding – a fact that is by itself embarrassing – and was shut down, but apparently Mr. Holder doesn’t consider widespread and systematic voter fraud committed by one of Priest-King’s favorite groups (community organizer Obama started working with ACORN as early in 1992 and has sat on its Board of Directors) as actual fraud, a strange position for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to hold.

What if we go back further, to say, 2004? In 2008, the Milwaukee Police Department released a report of its 18-month investigation into voter fraud in the city in the 2004 general election and concluded that there had been an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of an election in the state of Wisconsin." This organized attempt included the following examples:

- Twenty-nine voters were registered at a county office building that featured no residential living.

- Between 4600-5300 more ballots were cast than voters that could be accounted for.

- The ballots of 540 people who registered on-site and then voted (allowed under Wisconsin law) were not counted.

- Eighteen convicted felons were hired as elections inspectors, eight of whom had been hired by ACORN.

- Out-of-state people were allowed to vote (and their votes allowed to stand).

- One hundred twenty-eight voters used a homeless shelter as their address of record.

- Over 2600 students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who were registered to vote in Milwaukee, living at one residence hall, were also eligible to vote in another jurisdiction.

- Dead people voted, people voted multiple times and addresses used to register to vote did not exist.

Given that John Kerry won Wisconsin by a grand total of 11,000 votes out of 2.9 million cast, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the full-court press put on in the City of Milwaukee put him over the top, hardly a "nonexistent" example of voter fraud.

Same-day registration on Election Day facilitates voter fraud and the lack of photo ID makes it worse. That Eric Holder embraces the former and opposes the latter is a stark indicator that he’ll do anything to help his boss win: After all, if you’re not willing to cheat, you must not want it bad enough.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285771/if-fraudulent-vote-falls-woods-christian-schneider
Source: http://media2.620wtmj.com/breakingnews/ElectionResults_2004_VoterFraudInvestigation_MPD-SIU-A2474926.pdf
Source: http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2010/04/voter-intimidation-black-panther-style?query=Voter+Intimidation+New+Black+Panther+Style