WHY DEMOCRATS CALL YOU RACIST

http://www.truthrevolt.org/videos/andrew-klavan-why-democrats-call-you-racist


WHY DEMOCRATS CALL YOU RACIST
I’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth.

Many conservatives feel hurt and confused by the fact that Democrats keep calling them racist. If you think black Americans should be treated exactly the same as white Americans, they call you racist for opposing affirmative action. If you point out that the poverty rate for blacks has increased sharply under President Obama, they call you racist for criticizing a black President. And if you complain that Democrats treat black people like helpless children, they call you racist for calling black people helpless children...  which you didn’t but, too late, it’s already in all the headlines.  Which are written by Democrats.

As a conservative, sometimes you just want take a Democrat aside and ask him straight out, “How’d that feel?” after, you know, you’ve kicked him in the groin.

Now I’m in the center of the political spectrum, because I stand to the right on matters of personal liberty, limited government and free markets but I stand to the left in relation to the random picture of Gary Busey on my right.  So maybe I can explain to conservatives why Democrats are so quick to level this ugly charge.

You see, Democrats have a special insight into the mistreatment of African Americans because...  they committed most of it. Now, we don’t want to dwell on the distant past when Democrats defended slavery against Abe Lincoln and his Republicans...  or when they formed the Ku Klux Klan or passed oppressive Jim Crow laws... or when Democrats like Al Gore Sr. or Robert Byrd... or George Wallace or Lester Maddox... or Bill Clinton’s mentor J. William Fulbright... stood as staunch segregationists.

The modern Democratic party is much different.  Appalled by the way evil slavemasters once tore black families apart, Democrats fashioned welfare to subsidize unmarried motherhood so that free African Americans could tear their families apart themselves. After all, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle to support her and help raise her fish children so you don’t end up with prisons full of little fish who never had a bicycle.

But don’t worry about crime in black communities, because Democrats have insured that black criminals will be treated fairly and leniently so they can continue to prey at will on the vast majority of African Americans who are law abiding citizens.

And of course if all that Democrat sponsored illegitimacy and crime should mire blacks in poverty, Democrat entitlement programs will make that poverty as comfortable as possible so it will continue as long as possible.

And that’s why when you allude to the provably disastrous results of Democrat programs in poor black neighborhoods, Democrats call you racist. Because they feel bad.  Because you kicked them in the groin.

I’m Andrew Klavan with the revolting truth.

Peggy Noonan - The Trouble With Commom Core

• May 7, 2014, 1:55 PM ET

The Trouble With Common Core

George Will made an incisive and spirited case against the Common Core on Tuesday’s “Special Report With Bret Baier. Earlier in the broadcast Michelle Rhee, whose efforts in education have earned her deserved admiration, was invited on to make the case for Common Core. She reverted to the gobbledygook language that educators too often use, and failed to make a persuasive case that the Core is good for public-school students, and will help them, and our country, in the long run.
My conversations with several Core proponents over the past few weeks leave me with the sense they fell in love with an abstraction and gave barely a thought to implementation. But implementation—how a thing is done day by day in the real world—is everything. There is a problem, for instance, with a thing called “ObamaCare.” That law exists because the people who pushed for it fell in love with an abstract notion and gave not a thought to what the law would actually do and how it would work.
The educationalists wanted to impose (they don’t like that word; they prefer “offer” or “suggest”) more rigorous and realistic standards, and establish higher expectations as to what children can be expected to have learned by the time they leave the public schools. They seem to have thought they could wave a magic wand and make that happen. But life isn’t lived in some abstract universe; it’s lived on the ground, in this case with harried parents trying, to the degree they can or are willing, to help the kids with homework and study for tests. The test questions that have come out are nonsensical and impenetrable, promise to get worse, and for those reasons are demoralizing. Louis CK was right “Late Show With David Letterman,” when he spoofed the math problems offered on his daughters’ tests: “Bill has three goldfish. He buys two more. How many dogs live in London?”
There sure is a lot of money floating around. Who is watching how those who’ve contracted to do Common Core-related work are doing their jobs?
George Will focused on the higher, substantive meaning and implications of the Core, but the effort has also been psychologically and politically inept. Proponents are now talking about problems with the rollout. Well, yes, and where have we heard that before? One gets the impression they didn’t think this through, that they held symposia and declared the need, with charts and bullet points, for something to be done—and something must be done, because American public education is falling behind the world—and then left it to somebody, or 10,000 somebodies, to make it all work.
The people who developed and created Common Core need to look now at themselves. Who is responsible for the nonsensical test questions? Who oversees the test makers? Do the questions themselves reflect the guidance given to teachers—i.e., was the teaching itself nonsensical? How was implementation of the overall scheme supposed to work? Who decided the way to take on critics was to denigrate parents, who supposedly don’t want their little darlings to be revealed as non-geniuses, and children, who supposedly don’t want to learn anything? Who among these serious people chose sarcasm as a strategy? Who decided the high-class pushback against the pushback should be defensive and dismissive? Did anyone bother to get actual parents in on the planning and development? Were women there, and mothers? Maybe parents with kids in the public school system? Who even picked the ugly name—Common Core sounds common, except to the extent to which it sounds Soviet. Maybe it was the people who dreamed up the phrase “homeland security.”
The irony is that Core proponents’ overall objective—to get schools teaching more necessary and important things, and to encourage intellectual coherence in what is taught—is not bad, but good. Why they thought the answer was federal, I mean national, and not local is beyond me. Since patronizing people you disagree with is all the rage, I’ll have a go. The Common Core establishment appears to be largely led by people who are well-educated, well-meaning, accomplished and affluent, and who earnestly desire to help those in less fortunate circumstances, but who simply don’t know enough about normal people—how they live, how they think—to have made a success of it. Also they don’t seem to know that intelligent Americans, exactly the kind who quickly become aware of and respond to new federal schemes—sorry, I meant national ones—have become very, very wary of Washington, and the dreams of its eggheads. How they could have missed that is also beyond me.

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The Left's Equivalent to the Kock Brothers - "Democracy Alliance"

EXCLUSIVE: Democracy Alliance Network Revealed

Funding ‘snapshot’ details nearly $40 million in Alliance support for 20 groups this year

BY: Lachlan Markay
May 19, 2014 1:00 pm

TheA secretive dark money group backed by George Soros and other liberal mega-donors is looking to steer nearly $40 million to left-wing groups in 2014 to support high-profile political and policy efforts, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The documents reveal for the first time the Democracy Alliance’s full portfolio of supported organizations, a large network of powerful liberal groups looking to win key electoral and legislative victories.

The Democracy Alliance connects major Democratic donors with some of the largest and most influential liberal activist groups in the country. Previous beneficiaries, such as the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, are set to get millions more in 2014.

The list also reveals DA support for newer organizations, such as Organizing for Action, the advocacy group that succeeded President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. That group has received official sanction from the White House, and operates websites and social media accounts branded with the president’s name.

In all, the document reveals, the Democracy Alliance hopes to provide $39.3 million to 20 organizations this year. If it meets those fundraising targets, it will likely be responsible for one out of every five dollars in those groups’ 2014 budgets.
Alliance-supported organizations will spend more than $175 million in 2014, according to budget projections contained in the document.

The Democracy Alliance is highly secretive in all of its operations. The donors it solicits and the organization to which it directs their financial support are prohibited from speaking publicly about its operations.
Security was tight at its recent conference in Chicago where reporters from the Free Beacon and Politico were rebuffed by attendees who would not answer questions about their involvement with the group.

The Free Beacon obtained and recently published a list of new Alliance “partners”—individuals and organizations that must pay $30,000 in dues and contribute at least $200,000 to DA-aligned groups each year—providing previously unreported details on its financial backing.

A document titled “Spring 2014 Democracy Alliance Portfolio Snapshot” offers details on the other side of the fundraising equation: the organizations to which the group’s partners will contribute millions this year.

The Democracy Alliance does not actually accept those contributions. Instead, it connects donors to a network of groups that it has vetted and strategically endorsed. The goal is to create a collaborative fundraising apparatus that maximizes the effectiveness of large contributions to left-wing groups.

Some of the groups that DA supports are established organizations with large budgets. The Center for American Progress, slated to get up to $5.5 million from DA donors this year, has a projected 2014 budget of more than $44 million, according to the funding snapshot. Media Matters will get up to $3 million, or more than a quarter of the group’s $11.67 million projected budget.

Other groups are set to receive an even larger portion of their revenue from Alliance donors. If the Alliance meets its fundraising targets, its partner contributions will be equal to 100 percent of the projected 2014 budget of New Media Ventures, 68 percent of the Youth Engagement Fund, 59 percent of Progressive Majority, and nearly half of the projected budgets of America Votes, the Black Civic Engagement Fund, and the Latino Engagement Fund.

Funding goals are broken down into “baseline” targets and “stretch” targets. They refer, respectively, to “the minimum level of continued support needed from the DA in order to maintain their current size” and “the level of meaningful support needed in order to enhance [recipients’] independent and [DA-]aligned efforts.”

Alliance-supported groups fall into two categories: “aligned network organizations” and “dynamic investments.”

The group did not respond to requests for additional information about how its support is broken down.

Total baseline funding for both aligned network organizations and dynamic investments in 2014 will be $27.1 million. Its cumulative stretch funding target for the year is $39.3 million.

Those funds will finance eleven “core functions” carried out by the various organizations the DA supports. They range from “fighting the right” to “perfecting data and tools” to “supporting progressive candidates.”

According to the snapshot, DA backs five organizations that “support progressive candidates”: America Votes, Catalist, the Center for American Progress, the New Organizing Institute, and Progressive Majority. CAP and NOI, unlike the other three, are nonprofit groups (each has a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) arm), and hence cannot devote a majority of their resources to political activities.

ThinkProgress, the blog of CAP’s 501(c)(4) Action Fund, has written approvingly of efforts to “mitigat[e] the damage caused by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United ruling,” as the blog put it in an interview with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.).

The Center for American Progress has warned that laws protecting the anonymity of (c)(4) groups can obfuscate the sources of political influence, and has called for laws that “require information on the source of funding for independent spending so that citizens know whose money is influencing their elections.”

Democracy Alliance critics say that speaks to a larger disconnect among groups that it supports: many of those groups decry secretive political spending while benefitting from a fundraising apparatus that discloses nothing about the millions in political and nonprofit contributions it facilitates.

The Alliance hopes to raise $1.6 million in 2014 for a group called the Fund for the Republic, which is critical of the prevalence of political dark money. The Fund does not publicly post information about its financiers. It makes the names of its donors available to those who request them, but will not say how much money they have donated.

Other DA-supported groups have employed that style of partial donor disclosure and been criticized by transparency advocates who say they are paying lip service to good government while shielding as much financial information as possible from public scrutiny.

The Sunlight Foundation scoffed at Organizing for Action (OFA) in 2013 when it released the names of high-dollar donors but refused to disclose information about their professional affiliations, which could make it easier to spot attempts at influence-buying.

“If OFA’s structure were motivated by accountability, we’d see a coherent policy about campaign finance disclosure, empowering public oversight of [the] group’s finances and donors,” wrote Sunlight policy director John Wonderlich. “Instead, we see conflicting messages about what kind of access a $50K donor can expect, and a disclosure policy that exists only in proportion to public outrage about Obama’s dark money.”

Jim Messina, Obama’s former campaign manager, founded OFA after the president’s reelection to serve as a perpetual campaign apparatus promoting the president’s legislative agenda. It has been criticized since its inception as a vehicle to sell White House and administration access to high-dollar Democratic donors.

OFA is slated to get up to $1 million from Alliance donors in 2014, but a number of those donors are already top OFA supporters. Amy Goldman and Philip Munger, both heirs to billion-dollar fortunes, recently signed on as DA partners. They have already donated a combined $1 million to the group.

It is not clear whether OFA contributions from Munger and Goldman came by way of the Alliance, because the group does not disclose that information. It serves as a “pass through” for donations to supported groups, so there is no public documentation revealing DA’s role in the fundraising process.
Instead, donations from DA partners simply show up as individual (or institutional, as the case may be) contributions to the organizations it supports. Because 16 of the 20 groups the Alliance is supporting this year are 501(c)(4) groups or have a (c)(4) arm, few contributions made through the Alliance will be public.

As CAP complained in its paper on laws governing such groups, “citizens have to search elsewhere to find the ultimate source of money for independent spending.” Anonymity of donors to (c)(4) organizations means there are often no available means of revealing DA-facilitated donations to top left-wing groups.

It is just that sort of opacity that many DA-supported groups ostensibly exist to fight, said John Perazzo, managing editor of Discover the Networks, a site that tracks left-wing donors and political organizations.

“Its members justify this hypocrisy by maintaining that their own donations are intended to advance a selfless, high-minded, moral crusade to improve America as a country, whereas conservative donors are allegedly motivated only by a desire to enrich themselves by supporting groups that promote policies like tax cuts and reduced business regulations,” Perazzo said in an email.

However, some Alliance donors benefit from policies that its supported organizations advance.

Rick Segal is a new DA “partner,” according to the list recently published by the Free Beacon. Segal, who bundled between $250,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s reelection effort, runs a financial services firm, Seavest Inc., that is expected to benefit from Obamacare, the Washington Examiner recently reported.

Other new partners are top officials at major labor unions, including the Communications Workers of America and the American Federation of Teachers. Alliance-supported groups regularly advocate for policies that boost union membership and finances.

Two new DA partners are top officials at the union-owned Amalgamated Bank. The bank’s finances are deeply entwined with those of the Democratic National Committee, which still owes Amalgamated more than $8 million from loans taken out during the 2012 campaign season.

The Alliance funding snapshot also reveals 21 groups that received DA support over the past nine years. They include some of the left’s leading campaign finance reform voices, such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which frequently warns of the corrosive effect of secret money in the political process.

Other organizations previously backed by the Alliance include the radical environmentalist group the Sierra Club, the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, and the hard-left Hispanic advocacy group La Raza. A full list of supported groups in 2014 and prior is below.

Democracy Alliance Network, 2014 (baseline funding target/stretch funding target):

America Votes ($3.5 million / $4 million)
American Constitution Society ($1.2 million / $1.5 million)
Black Civic Engagement Fund ($1.5 million / $2 million)
Brennan Center ($2.4 million / $2.7 million)
Catalist ($500,000 / $750,000)
Center for American Progress ($3.23 million / $5.5 million)
Center for Community Change ($2.2 million / $3 million)
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities ($1.8 million / $2.5 million)
Common Purpose Project ($150,000 / N/A)
Fund for the Republic ($1.2 million / $1.6 million)
Latino Engagement Fund ($1.5 million / $2 million)
Media Matters for America ($2.4 million / $3 million)
New Media Ventures ($250,000 / $400,000)
New Organizing Institute ($750,000 / $1 million)
Organizing for Action ($600,000 / $1 million)
Progressive Majority ($650,000 / $800,000)
Progress Now ($1.6 million / $1.9 million)
State Voices ($1.4 million / $2 million)
Women’s Equality Center ($1.5 million / $2 million)
Youth Engagement Fund ($750,000 / $1.5 million)

Previously supported:

Advancement Project
Brave New Films
Campaign for America’s Future
Center for Social Inclusion
Citizen Engagement Laboratory
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Democracy Now
Economic Policies Institute
EMILY’s List
Free Press
Gamaliel Foundation
League of Young Voters
National Council of La Raza
National Security Network
Sierra Club
Sojourners
Third Way
USAction
Voter Participation Center
Young Democrats of America
Young People For (YP4) and Young Elected Officials (YEO) Network

My Abortion vs Reality - Matt Walsh Blog

http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/05/07/this-is-my-positive-abortion-story/

Remington vs Sen Schumer

America's Oldest Gun Maker Thumbs Its Nose At A Two-Faced Senator

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) lost his “assault weapons” jobs. Remington Outdoor Company (ROC) announced it’s moving its Bushmaster rifle and Remington Model 1911 pistol production lines from its nearly 200-year-old plant in Ilion, New York, to its new facility in much more gun-rights-friendly Huntsville, Alabama.

In March of 2011 Senator Schumer put a press release on his website boasting: “Today, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer joined

Remington officials and plant employees to announce that Bushmaster Firearms is relocating a manufacturing facility from Windham, Maine to Ilion, NY, bringing over forty new jobs to Central New York in the process. Schumer has been a long-time supporter of manufacturing at the Remington plant, urging top Army officials to open up competition for the Army’s small arms contracts to other U.S. manufacturers and domestic producers across the country like the Ilion, New York-based Remington. Today, Schumer applauded Remington’s decision to add new jobs to the productive and capable work force already making the factory an economic powerhouse in the Mohawk Valley.”

Bushmaster makes AR-15s. These are the same semiautomatic rifles Schumer calls “assault weapons” and wants to ban nationally. On CBS’ show “Face the Nation” on December 16, 2012, Schumer said we need to “reinstate the assault-weapons ban.” He said this knowing he’d never be challenged for hypocrisy by Bob Schieffer or any other mainstream news journalist. He knows such journalists mostly support him, but he also knows they don’t have a clue about this issue.

Remington’s plant in New York State has been on shaky ground ever since the state passed the SAFE Act, a massive gun-control bill that bans the sale of an expansive list of what it deems “assault weapons,” including the AR-15s made by ROC in Ilion.
ROC’s spokesperson, Teddy Novin, also announced ROC is in the process of consolidating “multiple company plants into our Huntsville, Alabama facility. This was a strategic business decision to concentrate our resources into fewer locations and improve manufacturing efficiency and quality. We are working hard to retain as many from the affected facilities as possible.” The companies being relocated are: Advanced Armament Corp, Lawrenceville, Georgia; Montana Rifleman, Kalispell, Montana; TAPCO, Kennesaw, Georgia; LAR Manufacturing, West Jordan, Utah; 
Para-Ordnance, Pineville, North Carolina; and DPMS, St. Cloud, Minnesota.

A lot of gun companies have been moving. Most of the moves are a result of anti-gun politics in states such as New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado and California. The catalyst for Remington’s moves is certainly in part New York’s ban on the sale of some of its most popular products, but it is also about staying viable economically. A lot of gun companies have been moving (mostly south) into more gun-friendly states, but they’ve also been moving into more modern facilities so they can better compete in America’s vibrant and growing gun market.

Grow the gun business has. The economic impact of the gun and ammo industry in the U.S. grew from $19.1 billion in 2008 to $37.7 billion in 2013—a 97 percent increase. During that same 5-year period the total number of full-time equivalent jobs in the gun industry went from about 166,000 to more than 245,000, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s trade association.

Demand for ammunition has been so robust there have been prolonged shortages over the past few years. Some guns have become so popular manufacturers have been chronically backordered. It isn’t just the gun and ammo companies that have been expanding. Companies that make gun grips, sights and many other add-ons and accessories have also been growing.  

I’ve had several tours of Remington’s historic plant in Ilion, New York. They’ve been making guns there since 1816 when Eliphalet Remington began the company as E. Remington and Sons. Located near Utica in Upstate New York, the soot-soiled factory is the beating heart of Ilion and nearby Mohawk. It’s America’s oldest factory that still makes its original product—guns. In October of 2013 about 1,400 employees were making 4,900 guns per day in the factory. In the future, it seems, as the towns around the Remington Arms plant dry up its remaining retired residents will look back on 2013 as their last hoorah before the weight of government smothered their jobs from the state.

Over the last two years I’ve been working on a book that’ll be out this summer titled The Future of the Gun. Finding the truth about the gun business, about America’s age-old link to the gun and what really can reduce gun violence has taken me from the factories still making guns in New England and New York to new plants vibrant with humming CNC machines and busy R&D departments in the South and elsewhere. I’ve spent time with inner-city gang members, police officers, politicians and lobbyists. The truth about guns and America, about freedom combine with all the real people I’ve met who’ve spent their lives making quality American-made products for police departments, hunters, competitive shooters and the millions of citizens who want to protect themselves. This full and real picture leaves me lamenting not just the downsizing and perhaps slow death of another historic factory—casualties from competition are overall a healthy thing—but makes me sick that the cause isn’t competition but is dishonest and political. The means being used to push those workers out of communities they’ve grown up in and are raising their children in is disturbing when you see and understand the whole picture, a fabric of deeply American stories many in the media don’t comprehend enough to articulate even if they cared to do so.

Hillary Slams O's Economy: It Begins

Hillary Clinton slams Obama economy: 'Dream feels further and further out of reach'

By Byron York | MAY 16, 2014 AT 3:30 PM

In a speech in Washington on Friday, Hillary Clinton repeatedly criticized economic and social conditions under President Obama, barely mentioning the accomplishments of the man who appointed her secretary of State. Clinton's address, at the New America
Foundation, was a broad indictment of the country's current leadership, with exactly one -- one -- note of praise for the Democratic president Clinton has called her partner and friend.

Clinton, never known for self-effacement, began by noting her lifelong desire to make the world a better place and the "driving force" toward public service instilled in her by her mother. From there, Clinton went on to describe the United States today as a very troubled place.

In remarks focused almost exclusively on domestic economic concerns, Clinton began by noting what she called "the basic bargain of America." "No matter who you are or where you come from," she said, echoing her husband's campaigns from the 1990s, "if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have an opportunity to build a good life."

But: "For too many families in America today, that isn't the way it works. Instead of getting ahead, they're finding it harder and harder than ever to get their footing in our changing economy. The dream of upward mobility that made this country a model for the world feels further and further out of reach."

Millions of Americans are "frustrated, even angry" about today's economy, Clinton said. Falling into poverty is a constant threat, and upward mobility is almost impossible. "Forget about getting rich," Clinton told the audience, "I'm talking about getting into the middle class and staying there."

While productivity is up, Clinton noted, "wages have stagnated." "Americans are working harder, contributing more than ever … and yet many are still barely getting by."

Amid the "daily struggles of millions and millions of Americans," women face particular difficulties, Clinton continued. A woman struggling to achieve "doesn't just face ceilings on her aspirations; sometimes it feels as if the floor has collapsed beneath her."

"What can we do about it?" Clinton asked. "Of course, a lot depends on our leadership, here in Washington and around the country."

One might assume that Clinton would take that opportunity to praise the current president. But no. Instead, Clinton focused on another

Democratic administration. "The 1990s taught us," she said, harkening back to the days Bill Clinton was in the White House, "that even in the face of difficult long-term economic trends, its possible through smart policies and sound investments to enjoy broad-based growth and shared prosperity." At that point, Clinton took a few moments to recount her husband's economic record.

After an obligatory critique of George W. Bush's time in the White House, Clinton made her only reference to Obama. "It took years of painstaking work and strong leadership from President Obama to get our economy growing again," she said.

And then it was back to criticizing. To get the country out of its current hole, Clinton said, "We'll need some big ideas, like evidence-based decision making — an old idea that I hope can be restored." The Democratic Party line would, of course, hold that Obama has restored "evidence-based decision making," but Clinton spoke as if that never happened.

From there, still more problems. Too many children are not getting a healthy start in life. Millions of young people are both out of school and out of work. Minorities face even worse odds. The economy is still not generating enough demand to create jobs.

When Clinton mentioned that too many Americans are without health care, she added, "although, thankfully, we're beginning to resolve that." It was the faintest possible praise of Obamacare, with no mention of its namesake.

Obama is an unpopular president. Any Democratic candidate for president, especially one who served under Obama, will have to strike a tone that both calls for change and pays tribute to his achievements. Friday's speech shows that Clinton is more inclined to call for change.

Big CO2 Crackdown - Coming down from King Barrack

President Obama’s big carbon crackdown readies for launch By: Erica Martinson May 16, 2014 07:20 PM EDT

The EPA will launch the most dramatic anti-pollution regulation in a generation early next month, a sweeping crackdown on carbon that offers President Barack Obama his last real shot at a legacy on climate change — while causing significant political peril for red-state Democrats. The move could produce a dramatic makeover of the power industry, shifting it away from coal-burning plants toward natural gas, solar and wind. While this is the big move environmentalists have been yearning for, it also has major political implications in November for a president already under fire for what the GOP is branding a job-killing “War on Coal,” and promises to be an election issue in energy-producing states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana. The EPA’s proposed rule is aimed at scaling back carbon emissions from existing power plants, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases. It’s scheduled for a public rollout June 2, after months of efforts by the administration to publicize the mounting scientific evidence that rising seas, melting glaciers and worsening storms pose a danger to human society. “This rule is the most significant climate action this administration will take,” said Kyle Aarons at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, one of a host of groups awaiting the rule’s release. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has urged the EPA to “go ahead boldly” with the rule, saying the agency must step in where Congress has refused to act. But for coal country, the rule is yet another indignity for an industry already facing a wave of power plant shutdowns amid hostile market forces and a series of separate EPA air regulations. Coal-state Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have joined the criticism, echoing industry warnings that the fossil fuel was crucial to keeping the lights on in much of the U.S. during this past brutal winter. “You have another polar vortex next year, how many people will lose their lives?” Manchin asked at a POLITICO energy policy forum Tuesday. Other red-state Democrats like Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s Senate race, have disavowed Obama’s EPA proposals — she denounced an earlier agency power plant rule as an “out-of-touch Washington regulation.” West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in November, complained last year that “this callous, ideologically driven agency continues to be numb to the economic pain that their reckless regulations cause.” And Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a top Republican target this year, has voted with Republicans to hobble the agency’s rules. (Also on POLITICO: Landrieu paints target on Republicans after Keystone vote failure) But supporters say that whatever the political dynamics, the need for acting on climate change is dire. Next month’s debut comes after a series of scientific reports warning about the rising seas, worsening storms and other havoc that global warming will bring to people around the world, including effects that have already started to appear in the U.S. The White House has spent months in a steady effort to call attention to those findings, as part of an outreach that included having Obama give one-on-one interviews with television meteorologists this month. “This is a problem that is affecting Americans right now, whether it means increased flooding, greater vulnerability to drought, more severe wildfires,” Obama told one of the forecasters. “And people’s lives are at risk.” ‘We can’t sit by silently’ It’s not just the coal industry that’s losing sleep over the rule. Manufacturers and industries like oil refining have been eyeing the power plant regulations as the starting gun for a process that will eventually lead to greenhouse gas limits for a wide variety of businesses. “These regulations could reduce the diversity of our energy supply, increase electricity and compliance costs for American businesses and shrink our competitiveness,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “We can’t sit by silently while that happens.” Despite opponents’ warnings that the rule will be a death sentence for coal-fired power, EPA leaders have been adamant that they’ll offer states ample “flexibility” to devise their own ways to cut carbon. Some states may join regional cap-and-trade networks, similar to an existing Northeastern compact that has co-existed with coal plants for years. Others could push for investments in wind and solar power, or in energy efficiency programs that help homeowners and businesses reduce their demand for electricity. The rule, set to become final in mid-2015, would apply to the nation’s thousands of coal and natural gas-fired power plants. But coal — the cheapest, dirtiest and most abundant fossil fuel — would bear the heaviest burden. That means its impact could be greatest in states like Kentucky, a major coal producer that gets as much as 90 percent of its power from the fuel — and which as recently as 2010 had the country’s lowest electricity prices. It’s also a crucial state in the 2014 Senate electoral calendar. Republicans have said they also intend to use Obama’s climate policies as a wedge in states such as Alaska, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Iowa — all places where the GOP has a chance to pick up a Senate seat now held by Democrats. Outside the fence Obama commanded the EPA to write the rule last summer, when he announced his climate strategy at Georgetown University. Its fate will be crucial to Obama’s legacy, and it may give the U.S. added leverage at major climate negotiations next year in Paris. The rule’s legal fine print will be crucial, since the EPA is relying on a section of the Clean Air Act that has never been used for such a sweeping program. But a string of recent court victories has left the agency confident that the rule will withstand the inevitable legal challenges. People who follow the agency have long expected the EPA to take on existing power plants, and the broad contours of its likely approach have been a topic of conversation among observers for years. Contrary to many rumors and misconceptions, the rule will not require individual coal plants to capture and store their carbon emissions. That is a key feature of a separate rule that the EPA proposed last year for future power plants. Instead, Obama is expected to endorse a strategy that seeks creative ways to achieve big carbon cuts — one that could lead some utilities to help their residential and business customers reduce their demand for electricity. Insiders refer to that as going outside the power plants’ “fence line.” A less ambitious approach would require only the kinds of modest energy-efficiency improvements that the power plants themselves could achieve, but that would bring only negligible reductions in carbon output. That’s OK if “you want to settle for some chump change,” Natural Resources Defense Council attorney David Doniger said this month. Still, opponents will launch a major legal fight against the broad approach, saying the EPA can’t legally require steeper pollution cuts than a power plant could make on its own. “The reason why EPA has never before obligated a source to reduce emissions beyond its control is because it’s beyond its control,” industry attorney Robert Wyman said. The new rule also won’t set up a single way for power companies to meet its requirements. Instead, it will set an emissions goal that states must meet, then give them guidelines for how they can comply. States must write their own compliance plans — subject to EPA approval — or the agency will step in with its own requirements. Broad, state-level pollution targets would mean greater cuts and more flexibility for states, while viewing power plants as part of a collective system. Several environmental groups have offered model plans to the EPA in which some states would encourage utilities to switch from coal to gas and generate more wind or solar power. Another option is reducing the demand for electricity — cutting both carbon pollution and, advocates say, customers’ power bills. Such efforts could include installing “smart” thermostats that help residents use less power when demand is highest, or perhaps offer them a discount in return for allowing their homes to be a few degrees warmer in the summer. And the rule could give a lift to regional carbon-credit trading programs, similar to the nationwide cap-and-trade system that the unsuccessful 2010 climate bill would have set up across the entire U.S. economy. One existing compact, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, already includes nine Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states. The price tag But no matter how much flexibility the EPA’s rule offers, somebody will have to pay for complying with it — and again, coal customers would feel the biggest hit. Utilities heavy on coal-fired power would be the ones paying for credits in any carbon-trading scheme, while utilities with lots of gas, nuclear and wind power would have credits to sell. One environmental group, the Clean Air Task Force, estimated that utility bills would go up an average of 2 percent under the rule, while greenhouse gases would go down 27 percent below 2005 levels. In the nine-state Northeastern cap-and-trade program, utility bills have risen only about 1 cent per kilowatt hour in some areas, and not at all in others, said the group’s Maryland commissioner, Kelly Speakes-Backman. Some states may have an easier time than others meeting the rule’s requirements. At least 30 states already have laws requiring some portion of their power to come from renewable sources like wind, solar and hydropower, and they might be allowed to count those programs toward compliance with the rule. Some states might also be allowed to count the shutdowns of coal plants that utilities were already planning to close. That could amount to a big portion of the required cuts, since coal plants account for 75 percent of the power sector’s carbon emissions. The rule’s effects could be profound and long-lasting, said Tim Profeta, director of Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, noting that it comes at a time when utilities are putting a lot of investment into new power sources. An aggressive rule, he said, could “lock the trajectory in for cleaner and cleaner power generation.”

The Next Climate Change Scandal

 

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Steven Hayward in Climate

The Next Climate Scandal?

The lead story in The Times of London today declares “Scientists in Cover Up of ‘Damaging’ Climate View.”  The Times thinks the story, concerning peer reviewers suppressing a scientific paper purely for political reasons, may amount to the next “Climategate,” on par with the scandal of the leaked emails back in 2009.  This may be media hype, but at the very least it is another clear signal of the kind of enforced climate conformism we noted here on Wednesday, especially since it involves Lennart Bengtsson. The complete story is behind a paywall, but we’ve managed to get more of the copy of Ben Webster’s story from Benny Peiser:

Research which heaped doubt on the rate of global warming was deliberately suppressed by scientists because it was “less than helpful” to their cause, it was claimed last night.

In an echo of the infamous “Climategate” scandal at the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s top academic journals rejected the work of five experts after a reviewer privately denounced it as “harmful”.

Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of the authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published. “The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,” he added.

Professor Bengtsson’s paper challenged the finding of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global average temperature would rise by up to 4.5C if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were allowed to double. It suggested that the climate might be much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than had been claimed by the IPCC in its report last September, and recommended that more work be carried out “to reduce the underlying uncertainty”.

The five contributing scientists, from America and Sweden, submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters, one of the most highly regarded journals, at the end of last year but were told in February that it had been rejected.
A scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process wrote that he strongly advised against publishing it because it was “less than helpful”. The unnamed scientist concluded: “Actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate sceptics media side.”

Professor Bengtsson resigned from the advisory board of Lord Lawson of Blaby’s climate sceptic think-tank this week after being subjected to what he described as McCarthy-style pressure from fellow academics. . .

Professor Bengtsson, the former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, said he accepted that emissions would increase the global average temperature but the key question was how quickly.

He added that it was “utterly unacceptable” to advise against publishing a paper on the ground that the findings might be used by climate sceptics to advance their arguments. “It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn’t been keeping up with the [computer] models. Therefore, if people are proposing to do major changes to the world’s economic system we must have much more solid information.”

The issue of climate sensitivity is one of the keys to this entire matter, and the Climatistas are very sensitive about the subject.  The paper in question here, which will surely see the light of day somewhere, would be only the latest of several recent papers, some of them published in the peer-reviewed literature, that call into serious question the more extreme forecasts of climate response to greenhouse gases.

VA Scandal

Veterans scandal risks engulfing Obama

By Geoff Dyer in Washington

 

Amid contrived outrage over Benghazi and the improving fortunes of its healthcare reform, the Obama administration could be facing a genuine scandal about its treatment of military veterans that has the potential to attract broad political condemnation of its competence.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing mounting evidence that some of the hospitals it runs have been keeping two sets of books to make it look as if they were reducing waiting times to see a doctor.

More damning, the department is investigating the claims of a whistleblower doctor in Arizona that dozens of patients at one hospital died while they were languishing on a hidden waiting list without ever being given an appointment.

Richard Griffin, the department’s acting inspector general, admitted on Thursday that its review could lead to criminal charges. In the first political casualty of the scandal, Robert Petzel, the department’s undersecretary for heath, resigned on Friday.

If the evidence of mismanagement continues to accumulate, the Obama administration will find itself not in another partisan knife-fight, but under fire from both parties in a Congress where the uniformed military is venerated.

The veterans’ healthcare scandal is, in part, one of the unintended consequences of the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq, which have created “our 9/11 generation who have served with honour in more than a decade of war,” as President Barack Obama described them on Thursday.

More than 970,000 veterans from those wars have filed disability claims, taking the total enrolled in the VA system to 8.57m by the end of 2012.

At the same time, the healthcare system is dealing with the fact that many of the 6m veterans from the Vietnam era are now reaching the age when they start to require a lot of medical services. In 2010, the administration expanded coverage to exposure from Agent Orange, the chemical used during the war in Vietnam, prompting another surge of claimants.

The result has been a constant struggle to meet new demands, despite big spending increases. The budget for the VA has risen from $73.1bn in 2006 to $153.8bn this year. However, the number of outpatient visits at its facilities has increased from 46.5m in 2002 to 83.6m in 2012. “I am amazed this is still happening, given the big increase in resources that the department has received,” said Phillip Carter, a former army officer who researches veterans’ issues at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

 

I am amazed this is still happening, given the big increase in resources that the department has received - Phillip Carter, Center for a New American Security

The VA, which runs 152 hospitals and 817 outpatient clinics, has long suffered from delays and a dysfunctional bureaucracy. In 2010, it introduced a new appointments system which promised a 14-day wait for an appointment with a primary care doctor or a specialist.

While there have been reports for several years that the new waiting line system was being abused, the subject really began to gather steam three weeks ago when CNN interviewed Sam Foote, who had recently retired as a doctor after working for 24 years for VA hospitals in Phoenix, Arizona.

He said that as many as 40 patients had died after being placed on a hidden waiting list that could last for up to a year, while officials at the hospital shredded documents and faked evidence to make it seem as if waiting times were under control.

Three officials in Phoenix have been put on leave, although Mr Griffin said there was no evidence yet that patients had died because of delayed appointments.

Since then, whistleblowers have alleged similar practices at least seven other VA hospitals around the country and claimed that officials at the hospitals were sometimes paid bonuses for reducing declared waiting times.

The political impact of the scandal has been somewhat muted so far, in part because of the respect still enjoyed by the veterans affairs secretary, retired four-star general Eric Shinseki who was himself wounded twice in Vietnam. Appearing before a Senate hearing on Thursday, Mr Shinseki received pointed questioning, but in a tone more respectful than almost any other cabinet member would have encountered. “I am mad as hell,” he told the committee.

However, if Congress concludes that efforts to manipulate waiting lists have become systemic – or if the allegations that patients died
while waiting for phantom appointments are proved – Mr Shinseki will face huge pressure from both parties to resign.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, said there was “solid evidence of wrongdoing within the VA system”, while his colleague from Washington Patty Murray told Mr Shinseki: “The standard practice at the VA seems to be to hide the truth.”

In a sign of how serious the White House believes the political fallout could become, the president’s deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors has been dispatched to the VA to help manage the fallout.