If All You See…

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is wood that comes from trees that save the world from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Tradition, with a post on Planned Parenthood dodges.

Read: If All You See… »

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Trump Looks To Do Away With “Social Cost Of Carbon” In Federal Government

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 10:30 am

As Trump is staffing EPA with lots of climate skeptics, including many aides to Senator Jim Inhofe, a longtime foe of the idiocy of the ‘climate change’ movement, he’s also, supposedly, looking to release orders to make changes to the government involvement in ‘climate change’

(Washington Post) President Trump could issue a sweeping executive order within days aimed at reversing his predecessor’s climate policies, a measure that energy industry officials and environmentalists have been anticipating for weeks.

The directive will instruct members of the Cabinet to rewrite regulation restricting carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants, lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing and revise the way climate change is factored into federal decision-making — all key elements of the Obama administration’s effort to address climate change. It will also reverse an executive order former president Obama issued that instructs agencies to incorporate climate change into the National Environmental Policy Act reviews it applies to federal actions, according to individuals briefed on the order.

This is about wacking the Clean Power Plan, and, even bigger, the social cost of carbon insanity

Separately, Trump will instruct federal officials in the directive to abandon Obama officials’ practice of factoring in the effect of climate change — what is dubbed “the social cost of carbon” — in their policymaking decisions. That calculus, which is set at $36 per ton of carbon dioxide, aims to capture the negative consequences of allowing greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise. But some conservatives — including both House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), who held a hearing on the issue last month, and senior members of Trump’s Energy Department and EPA transition teams — have criticized it as too sweeping.

That social cost idiocy has invaded almost all of the federal government, forcing all decisions to be based on junk science.

(Fortune) U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to release a wide-ranging executive order to reduce the role that climate change plays in policy decisions, according to a Trump administration official who reviewed a draft of the order.

The move could alter how U.S. agencies weigh regulations on a broad array of industries, from drilling, coal mining and auto manufacturing to refining.

The official on Tuesday confirmed a Bloomberg News report that the executive order will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies to overhaul their use of the “social cost of carbon,” an Obama-era policy that seeks to quantify potential economic damage from climate change for the purposes of drafting regulation.

It may or may not occur this week, but, it is coming. It would discount that $36 rate, which was scheduled to rise, way down to even zero, and even negative. This would be a great start, because, as Christopher Flavelle writes

President Donald Trump will find the job of reining in spending on climate initiatives made harder by an Obama-era policy of dispersing billions of dollars in programs across dozens of agencies — in part so they couldn’t easily be cut.

There is no single list of those programs or their cost, because President Barack Obama sought to integrate climate programs into everything the federal government did. The goal was to get all agencies to take climate into account, and also make those programs hard to disentangle, according to former members of the administration. In some cases, the idea was to make climate programs hard for Republicans in Congress to even find.

Finding all the programs and money is difficult, because they are not always named as climate change programs. Starting with the social cost of carbon target is a good start.

Read: Trump Looks To Do Away With “Social Cost Of Carbon” In Federal Government »

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Bummer: Trump’s Budget Could Shake Up The Uber Rich D.C. Area Economy

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 8:34 am

The Washington Post is Very Concerned over Donald Trump threatening to reduce the federal workforce

Washington region braces for budget that could shake up the historically stable local economy
President Trump’s budget, which is set to call for cuts of 10 to 20 percent to federal agencies headquartered in and around the nation’s capital, could threaten the prosperity that the D.C. region has built.

Washingtonians are beginning to worry that President Trump might do what wars, peace, recessions and government shutdowns could not: ­upend the historically stable regional economy.

Bolstered by the federal government, the metropolitan area has largely avoided the sharp ups and downs that have made life unpredictable for the rest of the nation. The Washington economy was barely nicked by the Great Recession, and it has roared ahead since then on the strength of steady job growth, booming home prices, a nascent technology sector and a huge influx of millennial workers.

But Trump is set to release a budget Thursday that threatens the prosperity Washington has built by suggesting cuts of 10 to 20 percent to federal agencies headquartered in and around the nation’s capital, while boosting defense spending. It’s a proposal that, if enacted, would shake up the local economy’s calculus, striking at government workers while possibly delivering new business to its contractors.

Is anyone outside the beltway really concerned over the plight of people who have a pretty cushy lifestyle on the backs of the taxpayers?

The federal bureaucracy has long shielded Washington from a bottoming out similar to the one automakers and other manufacturers experienced in parts of the Rust Belt — a stark contrast that Trump hammered on with his pledge to “drain the swamp.”

Unelected rulers making lots of money with little to no accountability while dictating the way Everyone Else must live.

Fuller tends to be an optimist when it comes to Washington’s growth and has watched as four Washington suburbs have climbed the rankings to join the list of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States.

The area mostly avoided the recession because of government money. Perhaps it’s time that the federal government was reduced, along with the reliance on suckling at the government teet.

Read: Bummer: Trump’s Budget Could Shake Up The Uber Rich D.C. Area Economy »

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Maddow’s Big Trump Taxes Scoops Is A Big Nothingburger

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 8:12 am

In case you missed it, this is what Rachel Maddow stated before her show

Well, for those who tuned in, they kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Till, finally, we got this

Trump made $150 million in 2005 and paid $38 million in federal taxes

The White House said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes in 2005 — on $150 million in earnings — offering a small glimpse at the president’s personal finances, which Trump has so far kept almost entirely private.

The administration offered those details in a statement after journalist David Cay Johnston published two pages of tax information about the president, apparently from Trump’s 2005 return. The revelations were simultaneously broadcast on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow” show, which included an interview with Johnston. Based on the information on the two pages, Trump paid an effective tax rate of about 25 percent.

So, that’s it? There were no details, just the overview. He took a $100 million loss, he itemized, he used the tax deductions that Democrats and Republicans wrote into law. The Trump admin released the tax forms prior to Maddow’s “big release”, along with a statement

Chris Cillizza, no big Trump fan, has seemed to get tired of the Democrat apoplexy over nothingburgers as of late, and called this a total nothingburger

In short: We didn’t learn anything we don’t already know about Trump. Yes, he is very wealthy. Yes, he — like virtually all very wealthy people — looks for holes in the tax code to lower his overall taxable income. (Sidebar: As a non-wealthy person, I do the same thing.)

For all the hoopla surrounding the unearthing of these documents, there simply was no smoking gun — or anything close to it — here. A brief scan of Trump’s financial status a decade ago shows, roughly, what you would expect it to show. Nothing nefarious, nothing untoward.

In fact, President Obama typically paid a lower net effective tax rate. For his 2015 return, he and Michelle paid an 18.7% rate. Then yammered on about people needing to pay their fair share, after taking all the deductions embedded in law. The Bidens paid 23.3%, still less than Trump.

And that pattern continued for all Obama’s returns during his time in office, and his returns released as he was running for office.

Doug Powers notes that even Bernie Sanders paid a lower effective rate.

Perhaps Rachel Maddow could share her 1040, and let us see her effective rate. She reportedly is paid $7 million a year.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Maddow’s Big Trump Taxes Scoops Is A Big Nothingburger »

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Providing Treatment To Let Deaf People Hear Is “Cultural Genocide”

By William Teach March 14, 2017 – 6:22 pm

The Social Justice Warrior community, you know, bat guano shit crazy people, has now chimed in on curing deafness

(Daily Caller)  The professor, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke of the philosophy and religion faculty at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., espoused her theory of “cultural genocide” earlier this month at Impact Ethics, a website covering bioethical issues.

“Members of the signing Deaf community argue that research which aims to eliminate or cure deafness is a form of cultural genocide,” Burke explains. “The argument goes like this: the use of gene therapy to cure hereditary deafness would result in smaller numbers of deaf children. This, in turn, would reduce the critical mass of signing Deaf people needed for a flourishing community, ultimately resulting in the demise of the community.”

It can’t get worse than that, can it?

“This bias of Hearing culture can be seen in the normative claim that it is better to be a member of the dominant, mainstream Hearing cultural community than to be a member of the non-dominant Deaf cultural community,” Burke writes.

Suffering from hereditary deafness “confers on deaf children a Deaf way of being in the world” with “advantages” that “are not always obvious to members of the Hearing community.”

Certainly, the burning stupid won’t continue, right? RIGHT?

“Deaf children who receive gene therapy to treat their deafness lose this choice permanently, most likely without having had any input into the decision to change their genetic identity — a procedure that fundamentally changes their potential life experiences from those of deaf persons,” Burke laments. “This different identity is directly linked to their altered genetic make-up.”

I wonder if she considered asking deaf people what their opinions are?

Of course, these are the same wackjobs who think it’s OK to give hormones and stuff to allow children to transition to the other sex.

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 14, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is an inland sea created by carbon pollution rising seas, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post noting that the new Michael Brown video doesn’t exonerate Brown.

Read: If All You See… »

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Defunding Planned Parenthood Would Lead To More Births Or Something

By William Teach March 14, 2017 – 7:19 am

Apparently, the primary things Planned Parenthood does is provide abortions and contraception to people who refuse to pay for their own in order to have irresponsible sex

Defunding Planned Parenthood could lead to thousands more births, CBO projects

A congressional plan to make Planned Parenthood ineligible for federal funding would leave many women without services to help them avoid pregnancy, resulting in thousands of additional births, according to a new federal budget analysis.

The prediction came Monday as part of a much-awaited analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which assesses the fiscal impact of major legislative bills. It was part of a more sweeping look at a congressional health care bill that would repeal and replace the law known as Obamacare.

The analysts estimated that excluding the women’s health organization from the Medicaid program for one year, as congressional Republicans have proposed, would particularly affect low-income areas and communities without many health care options, leaving 15 percent of those people “without services that help women avert pregnancy.”

If only there was somewhere else someone could purchase contraceptives other than Planned Parenthood. Perhaps the bill should change the law so that places like pharmacies would be allowed to provide contraception. Maybe the new legislation would allow condoms to be sold in bathrooms and handed out in schools. Too early for that amount of sarcasm?

As for the plan overall

(Washington Post) House Republicans’ proposal to rewrite federal health-care law would more than reverse the gains the Affordable Care Act has made in the number of Americans with health insurance, while curbing the federal deficit, according to a widely anticipated forecast by congressional analysts.

The analysis, released late Monday afternoon by the Congressional Budget Office, predicts that 24 million fewer people would have coverage a decade from now than if the Affordable Care Act remains intact, nearly doubling the share of Americans who are uninsured from 10 percent to 19 percent. The office projects the number of uninsured people would jump 14 million after the first year.

But the GOP legislation, which has been speeding through House committees since it was introduced a week ago, would lower the deficit by $337 billion during that time, primarily by lessening spending on Medicaid and government aid for people buying health plans on their own.

The report predicted that premiums would be 15 percent to 20 percent higher in the first year compared with those under the Affordable Care Act but 10 percent lower on average after 2026. By and large, older Americans would pay “substantially” more and younger Americans less.

The problem with this repeal and “replace” bill is that it doesn’t include any of the follow up measures people like President Trump and Rep. Paul Ryan have promised. It was crafted in a manner that would allow it to be passed through budget reconciliation. Apparently, for some reason, it is impossible to repeal Obamacare in the same manner it was passed, through reconciliation. And a full repeal is what we were promised. It’s what the GOP ran on since 2010.

Any follow up bill would (hopefully) create a pathway where it was easier and less expensive to purchase health insurance. But, that can’t be scored, because those bills have not been released.

Personally, I’m not real sad that this bill is looking bad. Go back to the drawing board, find a way to do full repeal, and have a replacement plan that works. There are plenty floating around.

Read: Defunding Planned Parenthood Would Lead To More Births Or Something »

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Unshockingly, Winter Storm Stella Is Man-Caused Global Warming

By William Teach March 14, 2017 – 6:57 am

With any type of event, especially weather, what you end up with is a few smatterings, a few rumbles, linking the event to Hotcoldwetdry. There were a few tweets, many which screeched curse words at Donald Trump for not being a Warmist, and then boom! Tons of them starting Monday. And, then we get the articles fables

(Daily Caller) Winter Storm Stella hasn’t even struck the northeastern U.S., but that hasn’t stopped at least one media pundit from linking the storm to man-made global warming.

Stella is expected to bring up to 2 feet of snow to New York City and Boston through Tuesday. Washington, D.C., and Baltimore are expected to get between 8 and 10 inches of snow, no doubt sending the region into “Mad Max”-style anarchy.

By any measure, Stella looks like a big storm, but the only certainty about the storm is it, like pretty much every other extreme weather event, will be linked to global warming.

Climatologist and environmental writer Eric Holthaus couldn’t help himself. He had to link the storm to man-made global warming in a Daily Beast article. Holthaus wrote that “[t]wo studies published last year argue that climate change may be making the ingredients for big East Coast snowstorms more likely.” (snip)

Holthaus didn’t stop with one article on the subject. He wrote a second post for the blog Grist, arguing: “We’re not just getting freak weather anymore. We’re getting freak seasons.”

Of course he did. A nice guy, from my interactions with him on Twitter, but, deluded. Both those fables are repeated, as I’m finding, around the news media, such as here. He’s not the only one, as you may well know

Winter Storm Stella’s ‘ingredients’ linked to global warming, says climate change expert

“Extreme weather is the new normal,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday while making emergency announcements ahead of the storm.

While March snow is not unheard of, aspects of this storm are suggestive of erratic weather patterns that have arisen in recent years, said NASA climate scientist and Columbia University researcher Justin Mankin.

“One of our expectations of global warming is an average decrease in snow, but also an increase in snowfall extremes,” he said.

“There is a robust expectation of increased extreme weather events. Increasingly the climate science community has been able to attribute the risk of occurrence of those weather extremes to global warming.”

Writer Amanda Mikelberg never bothered doing that whole Journalism thing and ask other scientists, because that wouldn’t serve the Narrative.

Then we have Anna Swartz telling us that snow not only doesn’t disprove AGW, but is caused by AGW. Slate says it’s not necessarily caused or linked to ‘climate change’, but, then goes on to say it’s ‘climate change.’ And plenty more. As Roy Spencer writes

The Nor’easter and cold temperatures will be blamed on the same climate change that caused the unusual warmth over the eastern U.S. over the past couple months.

Global warming theory is in fact so malleable that it predicts anything. More cold, less cold. More snow, less snow.

What a powerful theory.

And what’s even more amazing is that climate change can be averted by just increasing your taxes.

He should have used my terminology, as in “can be averted with Everyone Else’s taxes.”

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Unshockingly, Winter Storm Stella Is Man-Caused Global Warming »

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North Carolina Lawmaker Looks To Investigate NCAA, ACC Over HB2

By William Teach March 13, 2017 – 4:30 pm

Hmm, now, this is an interesting turn of events. Let’s not forget that the NCAA, like many, many companies, held tournaments in Houston, Tx, which has a similar bill for the city when it comes to the gender confused. Let’s also not forget that the NCAA, ACC, and all sorts of companies, for all their caterwauling, refused to have their own policies which would allow the gender confused to use whichever bathroom they want at venues and offices. Consider, if you were at the ACC finals, and went into the opposite gender bathroom and got caught, you could be arrested and fined. This goes for every NCAA venue to be used during March Madness. If they cared so much, why not use cities like San Francisco and New York City, which have ordinances about letting the gender confused legally invade the privacy of the opposite biological gender? Anyhow

(WNCN) On Selection Sunday, a North Carolina lawmaker announced his plans to file a bill aimed at the NCAA and the ACC.

Representative Mark Brody (R-Monroe) wants to investigate if the two organizations violated their tax-exempt status by engaging in political or lobbying activities. This bill comes after the two organizations moved championship games from North Carolina because of House Bill 2.

In a Facebook post he wrote

There comes a time when the citizens of North Carolina need to stand up and say “Enough of this foolishness”!
Monday I will file the Athletic Association Accountability Act. It is an act to determine whether the NCAA and the ACC have violated their Tax-Exempt status by engaging in political or lobbying activities.
Specifically, the NCAA and the ACC have allegedly engaged in excessive lobbying activities that exceeded their respective charters by using economic retaliation against NC for the purpose of forcing the General Assembly to adopt social legislation that is not connected to their core mission.
I believe the NCAA and the ACC have stepped out of bounds and, to the best of my ability, will never allow the General Assembly to relinquish its legislative authority over the internal affairs of the State or succumb to economic extortion to and from either the NCAA or the ACC.

Get the popcorn!

Read: North Carolina Lawmaker Looks To Investigate NCAA, ACC Over HB2 »

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Trump Should Be Afraid Of These Climate Change Kids Or Something

By William Teach March 13, 2017 – 2:43 pm

A recent meme among Warmists over the past week is the notion that Donald Trump is going to have to deal with a lawsuit filed by a bunch of kids (meaning, of course, by interest groups using the kids as props) on Hotcoldwetdry, and it is a loopy lawsuit, proving that schools are unable to teach our founding documents properly

The Trump administration really doesn’t want to face these kids on climate change

A showdown is brewing in the U.S. courts, one that pits young Americans against President Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry.

Central to the fight is a lawsuit that accuses the federal government and energy companies of failing to adequately address human-caused global warming. A group of 21 citizens, ages 9 to 20, claim that failure violates their “constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.”

Now Trump and fossil fuel defendants want the case to go away.

Can someone please show me that right in the Constitution? And, they aren’t even getting the Declaration of Independence correct. Are these kids suddenly worried about property rights? Strange. Liberals are usually against that.

Anyhow, of course Team Trump wants this to go away. They see no merit in the case.

The lawsuit initially targeted former President Barack Obama who, for all his efforts to tackle climate change, still couldn’t shake the nation’s dependence on oil, coal and natural gas. Now Trump has inherited the lawsuit. But unlike Obama, Trump says he doesn’t believe climate change is a threat. His EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, is working to dismantle the climate policies that Obama put in place.

Not mentioned is that Team Obama attempted to have the case dismissed, as well.

Say, I wonder how much fossil fuel has been used to get this suit going and keep it going?

Read: Trump Should Be Afraid Of These Climate Change Kids Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL
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