Forget about a candid national conversation on energy. As John McCain and Barack Obama campaigned last week, that much seemed clear. To lower oil prices (which were already dropping), Obama proposed releasing 10 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is an atrocious idea. The SPR was intended as insurance against a catastrophic loss of oil from wars, embargoes, terrorism or natural disasters. It should not be manipulated cynically for political advantage. Earlier, McCain suggested suspending the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax; that was another bad and expedient idea.
2008
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZbiCAXMWOA 285 234]
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
One of the proud proclamations the Center for Climate Strategies makes whenever they start managing a new climate commission for a state is that their "process is fully transparent." That can be challenged on a few different points, and none more so than the issue of how much they get paid to do their work (that is, advance their agenda) for each state and how much the alarmist foundations (like Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Energy Foundation) are paying them.
Exhibit A is with the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP), created and populated by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (pictured). If you read the "Process Memo" (PDF) posted at the KEEP site (which lays out the ground rules for the group and its process) you will notice that under the "Project Budget" section there is only this statement: "The estimated CCS budget for completion of startup and completion of the KEEP process covers the core facilitation process and quantification of approximately 50 policy recommendations. Changes in the number of meetings, number of policy options, or type of analysis may reduce or expand the level of budget support needed."
As you can see, no budget numbers there for the public to easily access (as is the case in all states where CCS works).
But take a look at this version (PDF) of the document that I obtained via a public records request from the governor's office. Voila — budget numbers (PDF single page) appear! And CCS will get nearly $554,000 out of the deal, thanks to their global warming alarmist sugar daddies.
So, will a curious Topeka press corps inquire about why there's such secrecy? Will they ask how much the enviro-foundations are each pitching in? Will KEEP leaders demand that CCS (who runs the KEEP Web site) live up to their promise of transparency? Stay tuned.
When cocaine prices shot up last year, White House Drug Czar John Walters touted it as "the best evidence" that the War on Drugs was working.
House Republicans kicked off the third week of their energy protest on Monday, sticking to the familiar script of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not calling Congress back in session to have votes on domestic oil drilling.
The Cold War competition between the United States and Russia — played out in Europe with the threat of mutual nuclear destruction — ended with the collapse of the Soviet empire nearly two decades ago.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
A few of my John Locke Foundation colleagues have noticed an AP story about the final day of the annual meeting of the Southern Governor's Association, in which members "are working on a comprehensive plan to reduce the South's carbon footprint and create jobs." More:
"This is a real opportunity for us," Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (pictured) said Monday during the closing day of the Southern Governors Association conference at the Greenbrier.…
Many of the region's universities, including the University of Kentucky and Duke University in North Carolina, are eager to assist with research, officials representing both institutions told the governors.
As my friend Jon Sanders wrote, "RENT SEEKERS!"
Meanwhile JLF vice president for research Roy Cordato addresses the John McCain/Elizabeth Dole approach on offshore drilling for oil, calling it "ignorant at best and dishonest at worst," saying also:
Combined with the position that they hold on global warming policy, that is, they favor a federally enforced cap on CO2 emissions, the implication is that they are in favor of finding new oil but against using it. The cap and trade program that they both favor would put a limit on the amount of oil that Americans are allowed to use, and then force us to ration that amount through a government devised and enforced trading scheme. At the present time we have a government created scarcity of oil due to legal restrictions on oil drilling and exploration. Dole and McCain would eliminate those restrictions but continue the government contrived scarcity by limiting the amount of oil we can use.
Roy adds that while Barack Obama's position is no better, he at least is consistent.
Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch
A few days have passed since I discussed in this space my dispute with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science over an alarm-sounding global warming report that was leaked to the sympathetic Baltimore Sun but is not available to anyone else. The report is supposed to be released later this month by (or to, not sure which) Gov. Martin O'Malley as part of the findings from the Maryland Commission on Climate Change Dog-and-Pony Show to Kill the Economy and Diminish Freedom. Or something like that.
Since last Tuesday the Washington Examiner has joined in the fray with both an op-ed and an editorial criticizing the report's expected findings (based upon the Sun's story) and demanding the datasets that fed the report. Like me, the Examiner was also denied a copy of the report.
Yesterday Red Maryland blogger Mark Newgent opined for the Examiner:
The report’s editor, Donald Boesch (pictured), runs the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and, not coincidentally, chairs the MCCC Scientific and Technical Working Group.
The MCCC itself is a kangaroo court conceived and controlled by the Center for Climate Strategies, a subsidiary of an avowed alarmist advocacy group posing as a disinterested technical consultant. If you want a sneak peek at what is in store for Maryland, just look at CCS’ other state reports; the recommendations are all nearly identical.
Clearly, this report is nothing more than a push poll designed to produce predetermined conclusions. The conclusions, of course, are outrageous predictions of doom in order to sway support for draconian restrictions on greenhouse gases.
And the Examiner editorialists followed up today:
With these positions of prominence and political influence, it is no surprise that Boesch and UMCES have received more than $65 million in federal grants and contracts since 2000, as well as an unknown amount of state money. Judging by the secrecy surrounding a critically important report Boesch edited for Maryland officials, however, taxpayers should start demanding some answers about what they are getting from Boesch in return for their hard-earned money….
The Baltimore Sun reported last week that Boesch edited a report prepared for the MCCC that will be used to submit 42 policy recommendations to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley on the effects of global warming on Maryland. It’s not clear whether O’Malley’s pet daily got a leaked copy of the draft or final version of the report. When Paul Chesser, director of Climate Strategies Watch, requested a copy of the report from a Boesch spokesman, he was refused. A similar request by this newspaper was also denied.
Very curious that the Sun could easily obtain the report while others, including the third-largest newspaper in the nation's capital, could not. Sun reporters Timothy Wheeler and Frank Roylance also appear more-than-willing to bend journalistic principles in order to advance the environmental advocacy football another ten yards. For example, they don't explain how they obtained the report — why? Is this such a sensitive story with horrible implications if the leaker's name is disclosed? And of course, no counter-commentary from global warming skeptics, as per usual.
And why aren't the two environmental groups, who the reporters said contributed to the report's findings, identified? You could be certain that if this was a report on school choice that supports vouchers from former Gov. Ehrlich's administration, co-written by a couple of conservative think tanks, that the Sun would have named the groups and conducted a full rectal exam of who they are and how they are funded.
Correction, 2:55 p.m.: Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott says "We reach about three times as many households as the (Washington) Times. Not sure about the web site traffic, think they may be a little bigger." I stand corrected and my apologies.
Republicans are extending their energy vote revolt to a second week this morning in the House of Representatives. Buttressed on Friday by burgeoning crowds attending the protest and glowing praise coming into their offices from voters across the country who are demanding relief from staggering gasoline prices, Republican leaders reiterated their demand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi come off of her book tour to re-convene Congress and bring to a vote the comprehensive “drill and” bill that would authorize as a supply solution drilling into American energy resources.
We are the nation of Velcro, the light-bulb, the microwave, the Ford Model-T, and the Wright Brothers. We fought and defeated tyranny and fascism. We’ve walked on the moon. Where others see impossibility, our nation sees a challenge. Pessimism and hopelessness are not American characteristics. As the price of gas climbs higher and higher, doomsday scenarios are playing out in the media. Americans aren’t buying it, they’re demanding a solution. But our can-do nation is suffering at the hands of “can’t-do” congressional leadership. After months of prohibiting a vote on increased domestic oil production, House Democrats have gone on summer vacation — a luxury many Americans can no longer afford.
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