If All You See…

By William Teach January 16, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is hay used to feed evil moo cows which cause climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jihad Watch, with a post on why Christianity is become a hate crime in the West

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Say, How Would A Cap And Trade System Work In Oregon?

By William Teach January 16, 2018 – 10:30 am

The Democrats who run the state government in Oregon are hell bent on passing a carbon tax. Why? Most likely not because they Believe, but, because they want new revenue streams. Voters turned down a corporate tax measure in 2016, and the Leftists have been looking for some other way to hit companies up. So, how would it work

(Spokesman) Oregon lawmakers are considering a major change in how the state will go about reducing its contributions to climate change.

Right now, there’s nothing to stop a lot of Oregon businesses from pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The Clean Energy Jobs Bill introduced last week would launch a cap and trade system that would limit some of those emissions and charge businesses for the right to pollute.

The system would be similar to existing programs in California and some Canadian provinces.

How would Oregon’s cap and trade system work?

The state would set a cap on total greenhouse emissions, and about 100 companies in the state’s largest industries would be required to buy pollution permits to cover their emissions.

The bill requires permits for any business that emits more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That includes a variety of large manufacturers, paper mills, fuel distributors and utilities.

Over time, the cap on emissions will come down and there will be fewer pollution permits available. So companies will have to reduce their emissions, spend more on permits or buy credits to offset their emissions.

And what will they do with the money?

Creators of the bill call it a “cap and invest” program because the state could make an estimated $700 million a year from selling pollution permits. That money would then be invested in project that expand public transit, solar power, electric vehicles and home energy efficiency upgrades that will help reduce the state’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

So, how will it work in the real world? Well, the price of energy will go up. The cost of goods will go up. Companies will leave the state. Jobs will leave. Oregon Governor Kate Brown supposedly is requiring that any bill passed has to protect poor people from these price hikes. Well, this hasn’t worked any place it’s been tried, but, hey, they’ll give it another shot. And we’ll watch the resulting fallout.

Read: Say, How Would A Cap And Trade System Work In Oregon? »

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CNN: Winston Churchill Would Have Been A ‘Climate Change’ Believer Or Something

By William Teach January 16, 2018 – 7:15 am

CNN gives a platform to Sir Nicholas Soames, a Conservative (different from American conservatives) member of the British Parliament since 1983. Looks like he’s forgotten that the primary political ideology of Classical Conservatives is government staying 100% out of the economy. But, then, people who’ve been in government for that long like government power to keep their jobs. The piece starts out by comparing the government of England and the U.S., and makes the typical mistake of conflating Doing Something about ‘climate change’ with actual environmental issues, till we get to

Dear President Trump: Churchill would have been a climate leader

……

The logic of the Prime Minister’s argument would seem to be inescapable. Whether you appreciate nature by admiring its beauty or by using it for hunting — I happen to like both — nature’s survival is not something on which we can rely. As with a marriage, keeping it alive takes work.

Previous American presidents of the political right appreciated this. Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. Ronald Reagan ushered in the Marine Mammal Protection Act. George Bush signed a treaty known as the UN climate change convention.

All of these measures were perfectly in tune with the views of conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton that “there is no political cause more amenable to the conservative vision than that of the environment, for it touches on the three foundational ideas of our movement: trans-generational loyalty, the priority of the local and the search for home.”

But, the climate change scam is not the environment. Climate changes. Always has, always will. Nixon would certainly have heartburn over the way the EPA has been politically weaponized to control the lives and private property of U.S. citizens.

The key figure in starting all this was another Conservative figure for whom I hope the President would have some regard: Margaret Thatcher. And it has brought no threat to energy security, or to jobs.

Thatcher thought ‘climate change’, or anthropogenic global warming, as it was called back then, was a joke, and understood that this push was a far, far leftist attempt to create more control over citizens, economies, and nations.

My grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill, knew a thing or two about courage. President Trump is, I gather, a fan, having a bust of him in the Oval Office. Without Churchill’s determination, the Nazis would have won the war in Europe. But this is equally true of his respect for evidence. You cannot defeat an enemy of markedly superior forces unless you have better information and make better decisions.

Were he our Prime Minister today, it is pretty clear he would have said the same things on climate change as Theresa May has this week. Because, simply, she is right, and she is acting in the interests of her people.

That’s a nice thought, but, he would most likely have recognized that ‘climate change’ is a fascistic/socialist/progressive push. He would have seen the same type of big government control that he saw across the English Channel emanating from Germany and Italy. And a type rising to the east of Poland.

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Illegal Alien Workplace Raids Are “Causing A Lot Of Panic”

By William Teach January 16, 2018 – 6:46 am

Causing panic is a major point of raiding workplaces that employ illegal aliens

(NY Times) The Trump administration is taking its campaign against illegal immigration to the workplace.

The raids by federal agents on dozens of 7-Eleven convenience stores last week were the administration’s first big show of force meant to convey the consequences of employing undocumented people.

“We are taking work-site enforcement very hard,” said Thomas D. Homan, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in a speech in October. “Not only are we going to prosecute the employers who knowingly hire the illegal aliens, we are going to detain and remove the illegal alien workers.”

In reality, raiding workplaces is nothing new. It happened under Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, etc. The only difference here is that the Trump administration is making a slightly bigger deal in doing it.

When agents raid workplaces, they often demand to see employees’ immigration documents and make arrests. But after the agents leave, it is difficult for the government to meaningfully penalize businesses that hire unauthorized immigrants.

Instead, according to law enforcement officials and experts with differing views of the immigration debate, a primary goal of such raids is to dissuade those working illegally from showing up for their jobs — and to warn prospective migrants that even if they make it across the border, they may end up being captured at work.

And that right there is a big problem. Not the part about dissuading, but the part about not being able to penalize businesses. I have long stated that the law should be changed so that businesses can be slapped with civil and criminal penalties. Several sections of current law sort of applies, but not to a point of a serious deterrent.

Targeting 7-Eleven, a mainstay in working-class communities from North Carolina to California, seems to have conveyed the intended message.

“It’s causing a lot of panic,” said Oscar Renteria, the owner of Renteria Vineyard Management, which employs about 180 farmworkers who are now pruning grapevines in the Napa Valley.

When word of the raids spread, he received a frenzy of emails from his supervisors asking him what to do if immigration officers showed up at the fields. One sent a notice to farmhands warning them to stay away from 7-Eleven stores in the area.

“Our work force frequently visits 7-Elevens,” said Mr. Renteria. “They’re very nervous. It’s another form of reminding them that they’re not welcome.”

Well, if they’re lawfully present, they shouldn’t be nervous. If they aren’t legally present, well, Mr. Renteria should probably expect a visit from ICE at some point soon, because I bet at least one ICE worker read this article.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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There’s A Cow In The Climate Change (Scam) Room!

By William Teach January 15, 2018 – 3:30 pm

The NY Daily News’ uber hyper cray cray Warmist Pete Singer thinks he’s found a big angle that Comrade De Blasio missed with his Hotcoldwetdry proclamation for NYC

On climate change, a cow in the room

“NYC: Leading the Fight Against Climate Change.” That’s what a large sign behind Mayor de Blasio said when, on Wednesday, he announced two separate measures against fossil-fuel companies. One is to call on the boards of five city pension funds to withdraw their investments from Big Oil. The other is to sue five oil companies for billions of dollars that the city has to spend to cope with the effects of climate change, such as the damage inflicted by Superstorm Sandy. (snip)

So it is up to every other level of government, as well as corporations and individuals, to do what they can to make up for the lack of leadership shown by the Trump administration and by the Republican-controlled Congress.

Yet the initiatives announced by de Blasio and Cuomo are overlooking the elephant in the room — or rather, the cow in the room, or, more precisely still, the steak on the dinner plate.

And the solution?

In 2009, I argued, in these pages, for a tax on meat, so that the real costs of eating it — costs on the planet and on human health — would be priced into the product. Last year, the Danish Ethics Council, a government body, joined the call, and the Danish government said that it would consider the proposal. Then the UN’s International Resource Panel made a similar recommendation.

Funny how that keeps being proposed, eh?

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 15, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible gas fired grill cooking evil carbon polluting meat, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on the Dream being killed.

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Bernie Sanders, Who Got Rich On A Lawmaker’s Salary, Wants To Take Control Back From Rich People

By William Teach January 15, 2018 – 10:56 am

Bernie Sanders never worked in a high salary position since graduating from college. He’s been in politics in fashion or another since the early 1970’s. He was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, from 1980-1989. He was in the House of Representatives from 1990-2007, when he took one of Vermont’s Senate seats, and has been there ever since. He’s made a lot of money along the way, somehow, and has three homes. He takes lots and lots of fossil fueled travel, and taken lots and lots of money from lots of big money Democratic Party donors. Yet, here he is, in an opinion piece in the UK Guardian

Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe water or nutritious food. Moreover, while hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal conditions, the arms merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend trillions of dollars on weapons.

In the United States, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person – has a net worth of more than $100bn. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that weren’t enough, he is spending $42m on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.

Bernie forgets to mention his own houses. And avoids attacking most of the other Democratic Party donors, like, say, all those Hollywood celebs making millions per movie, or the people who run Google, and GM, and so forth.

In the midst of all of this economic disparity, the world is witnessing an alarming rise in authoritarianism and rightwing extremism – which feeds off, exploits and amplifies the resentments of those left behind, and fans the flames of ethnic and racial hatred.

Interestingly, the authoritarianism comes from Bernie’s side, which loves them some big government

Now, more than ever, those of us who believe in democracy and progressive government must bring low-income and working people all over the world together behind an agenda that reflects their needs. Instead of hate and divisiveness, we must offer a message of hope and solidarity. We must develop an international movement that takes on the greed and ideology of the billionaire class and leads us to a world of economic, social and environmental justice. Will this be an easy struggle? Certainly not. But it is a fight that we cannot avoid. The stakes are just too high.

And how do you do that? With Big Big Big Government. And, of course, massive taxation of That Guy. You know, the ones who create jobs? How many people made a lot of money building those mansions for Bezos, or selling the Rolls’ to the Sultan? Think any policies of Sanders’ will do anything that increase poverty and, surprise surprise! reliance on government? Just look at Democratic run cities like Detroit. We’ve seen this schtick already in a place called the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics. Bernie is just repackaging that garbage using modern language.

Read: Bernie Sanders, Who Got Rich On A Lawmaker’s Salary, Wants To Take Control Back From Rich People »

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We’re Saved: You Too Can Now Take A Fossil Fueled Trip To Visit A Permanent Climate Change Visitor Center

By William Teach January 15, 2018 – 8:26 am

This is super exciting news, you guys.

It’s great that Richard Branson showed up. I wonder what the carbon footprint was for the flight?

(Lonely Planet) The first ever permanent visitor centre dedicated to climate change has opened in County Wicklow, Ireland, featuring an interactive experience aimed at inspiring positive action.

Located on the picturesque grounds of Powerscourt House, Cool Planet Experience was officially opened on 10 January in a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Richard Branson. The centre is the brain child of entrepreneur Norman Crowley, who envisioned it as a place that would educate visitors in an engaging and dynamic way. Connecting science, engineering, gaming and drama, the centre is the first of ten that are planned to open around the world over the next three years, with plans already in place for centres in Dubai and Sydney.

Awesome. People can take fossil fueled trips to visit them. Anyway, their website isn’t too detailed on what actions they recommend people take, other than pledging to ride a bike to work and reducing their own carbon footprint. Which never seems to actually happen.

“Cool Planet is the first of its kind, it takes visitors on a journey through climate change that’s interactive and fact-based, but also fun, and aims for visitors to leave feeling informed but also inspired about what they can do themselves. Research has shown that people are frustrated and just don’t know what to do when it comes to climate change. Cool Planet aims to change the conversation on climate change by not only showing what the impacts are, but also the really cool solutions and technologies that already exist,” Vicky Brown, CEO of Cool Planet Experience told Lonely Planet Travel News.

It’s actually pretty simple: Warmists need to stop using fossil fuels and most trappings of a modern life. Live like it’s 1499.

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Washington Post: You Know All Those Bonuses And Wage Hikes Weren’t Really Caused By The Tax Bill Or Something

By William Teach January 15, 2018 – 7:49 am

Despite many companies specifically stating that the bonuses and wage increases they’re offering being a direct result of the GOP tax law, the Washington Post doesn’t want to believe it, because they’re too wrapped up in their Trump Derangement Syndrome and #Resist to give credit where credit is due. Really, the only thing missing from this editorial is them giving Obama credit

Big companies are hiking up wages. The tax bill probably isn’t to thank.

ALL OVER America, it seems, giant companies are passing out benefits, crediting the newly enacted tax law for enabling their largesse. Southwest Airlines awarded $1,000 bonuses to its employees; three competitors followed. Fiat Chrysler offered 60,000 hourly workers $2,000 bonuses and announced plans to move some production from Mexico to Michigan. Several utilities have plans to pass on their tax savings in the form of lower rates for electricity. And Walmart, employer of 1 million, announced a new $11- per-hour minimum wage, up from $9, and bonuses ranging from $200 to $1,000; it’s a total of $700 million, or about a third of the tax cut the company expects in 2018.

The Trump administration and the Republican lawmakers say this disproves critics who said their bill lavished a big helping of tax relief on corporations and the rich, with only meager gains for everyone else. “I do not think that is crumbs,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said.

They forget to mention that the “crumbs” thing is in direct response to Queen Nancy Pelosi, who is so out of touch with the middle class that she thinks $2,000 is a crumb. Of course, she, and the Washington Post, were super thrilled with Obama’s Stimulus, which gave people $40 a week, equivalent to $2,080. But was intended to expire after two years. Anyway, here we go

How to think about this? It’s unlikely that the announcements of wage hikes, or one-shot bonuses, represent anything more than a public-relations consequence of the tax bill. To the extent companies are paying people more and offering better working conditions, such as family leave, it more reflects the overall tightness of the labor market, and the resulting enhanced bargaining power for workers, than the prod of the tax cut.

And there it is: they just can’t give credit where credit is due. Certainly, the tightness in the job market is there, and so much of what’s in that link is the result of Trump’s policies, and, yes, we can also give Obama with a GOP congress some credit. We can also blame Obama for telling everyone to go to college to get a degree that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on rather than getting actual real world skills, as mentioned in the article.

But these bonuses and pay hikes are the direct result of the tax law. The companies said it.

There may indeed be growth in jobs and wages as a result of the new law, but despite the hype over the latest corporate moves, it’s far too early to tell how much. What’s also crucial to keep in mind is that, whatever the bill’s benefits, it has costs, too: Specifically, it adds $1.5 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years, most of which goes to the most well-off people in our society, and which eventually will have to be paid for in higher taxes or reduced services for everyone else. That’s not crumbs, either.

Just a bunch of sore losers. They weren’t too concerned with Obama adding $9.3 trillion to the debt in eight years.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Washington Post: You Know All Those Bonuses And Wage Hikes Weren’t Really Caused By The Tax Bill Or Something »

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Climoji Can Totally Save Us From Climate Fear Or Something

By William Teach January 14, 2018 – 4:34 pm

It’s like dealing with slow children, and this actually appears in what used to be one of the premiere news magazines of the nation, Newsweek

Feel Like the World Is Ending? Climate Change Emoji Are Here to Help

There’s a new way to convey all of your lingering fears about the fate of the planet and humanity. A team of artists created a set of climate change emoji—dubbed Climoji.

The climate change emoji depict dying animals, methane-emitting cows, food waste, plastic-filled fish, forest fires and even people drowning. It is a grim picture, but a picture that is largely described in scientific literature of what the future holds if humans don’t make concerted efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions (among other efforts) to halt or at least slow climate change.

Marina Zurkow, media artist and professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunication Program, said the focus on the negative aspects of climate change was intentional, even down to skin tone, as Earther pointed out. A solutions-based set may be developed in the future, but after the app launched late last year, Zurkow and her team are keeping their focus on starting a conversation about climate change.

Seriously, these people have been trying to start a conversation for decades. What they don’t do is practice what they preach, as we all know. Seriously, people who need to use emojis to alleviate their fears need to go live in their parents basements, because they aren’t emotionally mature or stable enough to be outside.

These people are miserable, negative, and anti-science. And hypocrites.

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