For many in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, up to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) must be removed to keep up with a slump in consumption that has knocked two-thirds off prices since July.
OPEC President Chakib Khelil agreed. "Everybody is supporting a cut -- I don't have any doubt about it."
Fill your gas tank and keep it filled while gasoline remains low.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/081215/business_us_opec.html?.v=1
Panic reigns again over persistent rumors of “Global Warming”
Despite testimony from many real scientists, panic continue regarding Al Gore’s pet issue.
No surprise that Obama says: "The time for delay is over; the time for denial is over," he said on Tuesday after meeting with Gore.
Gore won the once highly respected Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. The Nobel Prize has been compromised and revealed as a partisan political scam these days. “Warming” panic spreads even as New England struggles to dig out of ice and snow.
A new financial scandal for another Democrat governor?
Governor Richardson has just been appointed to Obama’s cabinet. Early evidence suggests this scandal runs deeply into financial dealings.
The grand jury in Albuquerque is looking into Beverly Hills, California-based CDR Financial Products Inc., which received almost $1.5 million in fees from the New Mexico Finance Authority in 2004 after donating $100,000 to Richardson’s efforts to register Hispanic and American Indian voters and pay for expenses at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, people familiar with the matter said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aL0GGUluJeT8&refer=worldwide
So many issues, so little time
The top blogs of the morning:
1.
Something Is Rotten ... in Hawaii
Posted by Diana West
In the spirit of continuing inquiry, a friend writes in with some common sense from the Northeast Intelligence Network blog, excerpted below:
Perhaps it is no coincidence that this article is being published on December 7th, 2008, the 67th anniversary of the attack on America by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on this day in 1941.
Barack Hussein OBAMA contends that he was born in Hawaii, a claim that despite countless erroneous media reports and reckless, poorly researched postings on numerous Internet Blogs to the contrary, has yet to be proven by Barack Hussein OBAMA or anyone else named as co-defendants.
Of the three aforementioned lawsuits, two raise questions about his actual location of birth (Berg, Keyes), while the third (Donofrio) focuses on his citizenship status. (While this might admittedly be an oversimplification, I believe it is a sufficient characterization for the purpose of this article).
Instead, Barack Hussein OBAMA, in conjunction with the co-defendants, has reportedly spent between $800,000 to close to $1,000,000 (one million dollars), using at least three different law firms to fight these civil actions. Now, consider that each and every one of the lawsuits filed against him could be immediately dismissed by the mere production of a single piece of paper that is available to him for the paltry sum of $12.50 at a recorder’s office in Hawaii....
To me, Barack Obama's choice of tactic--money-consuming, time-consuming, court-consuming, rumor-producing lawsuits in multiple states--is the most tantalizing fact of all. Why not pay Hawaii $12.50 to release his long-form original birth certificate? Back to the NEIN blog:
As an investigator and a rational American citizen, I have to ask myself why Barack Hussein OBAMA has chosen not to dispose of this very simple matter in the most logical and expeditious manner possible. Not only would that satisfy these pesky plaintiffs who happen to respect the rule of law as laid out in the Constitution of the United States, but it would also go a long way to brand them and their supporters as deluded conspiracy theorists who have way too much time on their hands.
Following that same line of logic, I then have to ask myself why this matter of such constitutional importance has not received the coverage by the corporate media that it deserves. More ink has been used, and more airtime has been provided to the civil and criminal legal issues of the likes of O.J. Simpson than the possible constitutional ramifications of the eligibility questions of the new leader of the free world. I would argue that questions surrounding the eligibility of a professional football, basketball or baseball player, NASCAR race driver, or Olympic athlete would garner more media attention and outrage of otherwise rational Americans than this matter, which has far more important ramifications for this country as well as the entire planet.
Equally troubling is the failure of those who have been labeled or otherwise accepted as the public ambassadors of American conservatives holding much coveted and very valuable platforms, opportunities and audiences to address this issue with the intellectual honesty it deserves. In this instance, I am specifically referring to the vocal gatekeepers of American conservatism such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly whose combined audience and consequential influence is staggering to the imagination.
Good question.
The same applies to conservative political pundits such as Michelle Malkin, Michael Medved and David Horowitz, the latter who, in an article published today, described Alan Keyes, one of the plaintiffs of the lawsuits, “an unhinged demagogue on the political fringe” for his role in wanting to insure that we are adhering to the rule of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution. This, by the way, is a key tactic employed by those who cannot fight the argument with facts; they attack the messenger.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/643/Default.aspx
2.
Welcome To ACORN General Hospital
By Carol Peracchio
I've been a registered nurse for 30 years, so the future of American health care is one of my greatest concerns. Now that Mr. Obama has won the election, I decided to investigate what may be facing patients and health care workers.
I started my research at Barack Obama's website and his Plan for a Healthy America. What a waste of time. It read like a treatise from a beauty pageant contestant.
What kind of medical expertise does Barack have? Remember this youtube where his teleprompter malfunctioned? He stumbled through an excruciatingly inept explanation of how health care costs can be lowered if kids with asthma could just be provided "breathalyzers," or "inhalators" instead of cluttering up emergency rooms.
This brilliant (as we're told ad nauseam) Ivy League lawyer-savant wants to run our health care but apparently is ignorant of the word inhaler. (There must have been more than one nurse in that crowd shaking her head and thinking, "Great. Another dunce.")
Certainly Obama is not the first politician who clumsily attempts to feign a molecule of medical knowledge in order to sway voters who know even less. Obviously, he is not capable of writing (or possibly even reading) any health care legislation. I decided I'd need to find out the views of his advisors. Since his wife Michelle had actually worked for a hospital, I began with her.
Let's start with her resume. Michelle came to the University of Chicago Medical Center from The University of Chicago, where she ran something called the University of Chicago Community Service Center: which offered new opportunities to student, staff, and faculty for service learning, volunteerism and civic engagement. This was a first step for the University to engage students in community service activities.
Looks like Community Organizing was an Obama family affair!
In 2002 Michelle was recruited by the Medical Center, where she first was hired as the Executive Director of Community Affairs. After three years, she was promoted to Vice President for Community and External Relations and her salary was tripled to over $300,000.00 a year. It is entirely coincidental, we are assured, that her husband was elected to the US Senate the year of her promotion.
When she was promoted, Michelle said:
My goal in this position is to continue to broaden the Hospitals' relationships with our neighborhood and with our city. We have an obligation to ensure that we use our resources on behalf of our neighborhood and our city. In this new role, my goal is to better integrate community engagement into the culture of this institution and to expand our partnerships with local organizations and institutions.
Nowhere in this mishmash of goalspeak is there any hint of taking care of sick people. It looks like Michelle's view is that the hospital has "an obligation to ensure we use our resources on behalf of our neighborhood and our city." Community organizing meets health care.
And what did Michelle accomplish as a hospital Vice President? According to her resume:
She grew a staff of two into a diverse, 23-person team that carries out a threefold mission of improving community-based health care, increasing business opportunity of South Side businesses and enhancing the Medical Center's considerable service to the surrounding community.
So her first accomplishment was increasing the size of her own department eleven-fold! Forget the use of the word "diverse". The sheer amount of expenditure involved in a 23 person department with a Director earning over 300K is breathtaking! I can just imagine the response to clinical department heads submitting budget requests in the Era of Michelle: "Sorry, there's no money for (write your request here). Vice Presidents married to US Senators don't come cheap!"
Michelle declared she had a threefold mission for her position at the hospital. First, "improving community-based health care." At least this claim involves health care. However, I doubt it took a very expensive Senator's wife to do it. I've known social workers who accomplish this every day with much less support and no fanfare.
Her second mission was "increasing business opportunity of South Side businesses."
Increasing business opportunity? Call me crazy, but for 30 years I've been under the impression that hospitals exist to take care of sick people. The patient comes first! (At least that's what they always told us during those interminable new employee orientation days.) Sometimes the hospital hires area businesses in order to improve the delivery of care. But the businesses aren't the focus. The patient is.
Next, Michelle enhanced "the Medical Center's considerable service to the surrounding community." So how did Michelle enhance the hospital's community service? Here's a partial list from her resume:
Service Learning Initiatives, Day of Service and Reflection, Adopt-A-School programs, Principal for a Day and Real Men Cook celebrations.
Sounds like a $300,000.00 agenda to me! Seriously, most of these "accomplishments" sound exactly like the Eagle Scout projects completed by my son's Boy Scout Troop! The difference being my son and his friends didn't charge the local hospital.
For all the glowing praise heaped upon Michelle for her External Relations work, I can see that she did seem to have one problem. Her day of Service and Reflection drew less than 300 volunteers. (I'm sure that's including the diverse staff of 23). Out of a workforce of 9,500 Medical Center employees, this is a dismal turnout.
But it's predictable when a country has a free market health care system. It works like this: The nurse goes to the hospital that hires her for, let's say, 1/6th the pay of an External Relations Director. The nurse agrees to practice nursing for 40 hours a week, more if the floor is short-staffed. At the end of her 8 or 12-hour day the nurse goes home.
The last thing 9,200 Medical Center employees want to do after a tough week is to spend a day "reflecting" with Michelle and her diverse staff. And because, at the moment, the nurse works for the hospital and not for Barack's federal government, she has the freedom to say "No thanks."
But this free market setup was all wrong for Michelle's goal: to mine the rich resources of money and hospital personnel for the necessary work of community organizing. The money wasn't too difficult -- just divert those resources that have been set aside for raises, or equipment, or education. Then tell the staff how broke the hospital is because "reimbursements aren't keeping up with expenditures."
The problem is that health care workers aren't college students. Forced "service learning hours" aren't part of the job description, and if one hospital tells me that taking part in Michelle's "Adopt-A-School" program is part of my contract, I'll head over to the hospital down the road. And I'll deck the first limousine liberal who tells me that health care workers need to be forced to help their communities.
Drop by any health fair, Relay for Life, blood drive, or free clinic. All staffed by volunteers, many of them health care workers. Think back to 9/11. I knew of so many nurses, paramedics, and other health professionals who jumped in their cars and just drove to New York and DC to serve.
But try to imagine health care in the world of Obama. All of us will be enlisted in the Community Service army, where patient care is merely ancillary to your job. Now we will leave work to go staff the after school program at the new community center. Next weekend it's over to the mall where we will work the voter registration table. It's all part of "enhancing the hospital service to the community." Because in Barack and Michelle's world, there's no individual patient. Only a vast, nebulous "community." Welcome to ACORN General.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/welcome_to_acorn_general_hospi.html
3.
GOP on the Comeback Trail
A victory in (The US Senate), a victory in a Louisiana Congressional race — it's amazing how quickly a party's fortunes can turn around.
by Jennifer Rubin
The Republicans are on a winning streak. They captured Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, pulled off an upset in Louisiana by defeating William (Frozen Cash) Jefferson, and are enjoying the sight of the Democrats caught in the “culture of corruption” – with embattled House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as featured players. Then they stopped (at least in the short run) the Democrats’ car bailout bill in its tracks, exposing the UAW as intransigent by refusing to immediately modify wages in order to save the Big Three, which employs its members.
All in all not bad for a political party which only a few weeks ago was supposed to be dead and irrelevant. What happened?
Pundits and prognosticators forget that politics isn’t played in the abstract. Columnists can debate the future of conservatism all they like but back in the real world actual bills (e.g., the car bailout) and real politicians (e.g., Blago) test how skilled and effective each side is in getting its narrative before the public.
In the car bailout Sen. Bob Corker did a masterful job in hearings exposing the huge gap between the UAW and wages being paid to non-union auto workers elsewhere in the U.S. while pressing his colleagues to force meaningful reform of the Big Three. He didn’t say simply “no bailout.” Instead, he explained that taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize losing propositions that will continue to lose money without real restructuring. He offered his alternative, which would demand that the Big Three match its competitors’ wage structure. When the Democrats’ bailout went down to defeat, the New York Times explained: “The collapse came after bipartisan talks on the auto rescue broke down over GOP demands that the United Auto Workers union agree to steep wage cuts by 2009 to bring their pay into line with Japanese carmakers.” Round #1 to the Republicans. (President Bush seems intent on handing back the hard-earned victory, but Republicans nevertheless should be pleased by their effort, which is the first step toward proving they aren’t Bush Republicans.)
In the Blago affair, once again, the Democrats fumbled the ball. First, the president-elect gave parsed responses, denying flatly that he hadn’t spoken to Blago about his Senate seat. Then, as the media vultures swarmed, he offered to collect information on his transition team’s contacts. But not even liberal columnists were satisfied. As the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson put it:
In handling questions about the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — for allegedly trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder — Obama has gone strictly by the book. His statements have been cautious and precise, careful not to get ahead of the facts or make declarations that might later have to be retracted.
For most politicians, that would be good enough. For Obama, who inspired the nation with a promise of “change we can believe in,” it’s not.
Ed Rendell then opened fire on Obama, according to this report:
“They have never been in an executive position before,” Rendell said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
“The rule of thumb is whatever you did, say it and get it over with and make it a one-day story as opposed to a three-day story. Politicians are always misjudging the intelligence of the American people.”
Known for his blunt critiques of fellow Democrats, Rendell did not hold back during the interview.
The public, said Rendell, understands Obama and his aides would have an interest in who fills the Senate seat, and some contact with the governor’s office — and that Obama should have said as much at the outset.
“Did Rahm Emanuel who took Rod Blagojevich’s seat in Congress have contact with Rod Blagojevich? Of course he did,” Rendell said. “They may have thought he was the craziest S.O.B. in the world. But you still have to have contact with him.”
Meanwhile, the Republicans pressed the Obama team to be more forthcoming and to reveal its connections not just to Blago, but the SEIU, which, according to the criminal complaint, was sought out by Blagojevich as an intermediary in his quest to get something valuable in exchange for Obama’s open Senate seat. And that was all before it came to light that the next chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had discussions with Blago and provided him with a handy list of Obama-approved Senate candidates.
We saw over the last week that it is often easier to go on the attack from the vantage point of the opposition. Republicans are now freed from the burden of defending President Bush and their own bad actors (e.g., Sen. Ted Stevens). Instead, they can go on offense. Even the New York Times recognized the change of fortunes:
Congressional Republicans learned the hard way in 2006 that ethics transgressions and outright corruption could be molded into a potent campaign message. Now they are trying to turn the tables on Democrats who pressed a good-government theme in their successful drive to recapture Congress.
Spurred by a surprise election victory against an indicted House Democrat, the expanding ethics inquiry involving a powerful Democratic chairman, and now the scandal over the Illinois Senate seat, Republicans are emphasizing that the majority party should be held to its pledge to clean up Washington.
Similarly, Gerald Seib noted the sticky problem with Rangel:
For Mr. Obama, the Blagojevich investigation and prosecution soon will be something going on back home. The Rangel drama will play out right in the president-elect’s new front yard. And while Gov. Blagojevich has little to say about the fate of the Obama legislative agenda, Rep. Rangel has a lot to say about that as long as he runs the Ways and Means Committee, wellspring of both tax and health legislation.
“A huge amount of the high-priority agenda of the Obama administration will work its way through the Ways and Means Committee,” says Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. “Not having a strong chairman is clearly a liability.”
So before the Republicans engage in more intra-party squabbling and reinvent the party, they might recall that much of politics is capitalizing on the other guy’s errors, finding decent candidates, and just saying “no” when the other side comes up with bad legislation. In the last couple of weeks Republicans have made the most of their openings. And the conservative base once again has a spring in their collective step.
Who knew the Republicans’ mood and fortunes would rebound this quickly? That’s politics — nothing lasts.
Pages: Prev12
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/author/jenniferrubin/
4.
The Back Door to Socialism
Chris Brown
Barack Obama plans to initiate public-private partnerships (PPPs) on a grand scale. While the media focuses on Obama's First Dog or his left-handed jump shot, behind the scenes he is planning how to become president of the world. Therefore, it is worth enumerating many of his proposed partnerships so as to expose his actual policies, and then offer an Austro-libertarian analysis of these partnerships. As we will see, a mix of public and private ownership is a socialist arrangement, and a sly tactic employed by those looking for increased power, albeit under a different name: the public-private partnership.
PPPs are essentially contracts between a public agency and a private company where assets, risks, and rewards are shared in providing a good or service to the public. The rationale is typically that private enterprise provides greater efficiency and quality of service, while the government agency furnishes additional capital. They are claimed to (potentially) lead to "happy employees," better educational opportunities, and better public safety. Government agencies reportedly realize cost savings of 20 to 50 percent by using PPPs.
Of course, PPPs, dating back to at least 1652 when the Water Works Company of Boston began providing drinking water to Massachusetts colonists, are nothing new in the United States (or any country), and most government agencies and offices are engaged in using them. From the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships website we read the following:
Public-Private Partnerships [are] used for water/wastewater, transportation, urban development, and delivery of social services, to name only a few areas of application. Today, the average American city works with private partners to perform 23 out of 65 basic municipal services. The use of partnerships is increasing because it provides an effective tool in meeting public needs, improving the quality of services, and [is] more cost effective.
The treatment of so-called "public goods" in neoclassical economics is partly responsible for offering a justification for government intervention in providing for these goods and services. A large part of Obama's economic agenda is to encourage more PPPs —well beyond what neoclassical economists mean by "public goods" (e.g., defense services, streetlights).
Obama claims these partnerships will promote innovation at a local level through federal funding. Before we can engage in an analysis of PPPs, we must provide an overview (lengthy, but I believe worth exposing) of the various partnerships Obama proposes. PPPs will be used in the following ways under an Obama administration:
1. Deliver real broadband to communities that currently lack it. Encourage PPPs to "get low-income communities and residents connected [through] best practices among those that have deployed citywide free wireless broadband networks and how those lessons learned can be applied in other communities."
2. Modernize public safety networks and establish a PPP to "facilitate the development of a next generation network for use by public safety agencies on a priority basis."
3. Award public contracts to companies committed to American workers and end tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.
4. Create a national network of public-private business incubators by "investing $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in disadvantaged communities throughout the country."
5. Expand PPPs to advance "leading edge technologies" in space and aeronautics research to spur economic growth and innovation.
6. Provide funding for "Early Learning Challenge Grants" where states will have to, among other requirements, develop strong public-private partnerships.
7. Establish a Presidential Early Learning Council to expand public/private investments in the "youngest children."
8. Issue competitive grants to PPPs for evidence-based models to help students graduate.
9. Mandate public service and require American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. At the community level, PPPs will be used so "students can serve more outside the classroom."
10. Develop and deploy clean coal technology by using the Department of Energy to enter into PPPs to develop five new commercial scale "coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology."
11. Expand PPPs between schools and arts organizations by increasing resources for the US Department of Education's Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grants.
12. Improve and expand PPPs to increase cultural and arts exchanges throughout the world and promote "cultural diplomacy."
13. Interact with the private sector from "electronic health records to the general supply chain."
PPPs: An Economic Analysis
Obama uses PPPs to justify government involvement and intervention, and he typically associates PPPs with innovation, which seems like an oxymoron. Fortunately, the Austrian economist can point out the many likely effects and unintended consequences of government intervention in the form of PPPs, including the (tragic) effects on entrepreneurship. We will discuss a few of these, using as our guide Mises's excellent and insightful book, Bureaucracy. Two topics often associated with entrepreneurship, innovation and risk, are perhaps the most pertinent in our discussion.
Innovation
One of the reasons Obama gives as a justification for these partnerships is to "spur innovation." There are many reasons why this will prove difficult, if not impossible. Private businesses that have a government-granted monopoly from a PPP will have less (or no) competition, decreasing any incentive to increase efficiency and provide better quality services and products at lower prices. With a government guarantee of revenue, either through the company (or government) charging a fee to customers for its services, or through government subsidy, there is less incentive to cut costs.
More of this story can be found at:
http://mises.org/story/3240
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