Posted on June 19, 2013 by Steven Hayward in Energy Policy

Energy Geek Week (2): Greens Need to Take Their Brown Lumps

I sometimes wonder what would happen to Hollywood if their political inclinations were actually put into practice.  Not many people would be able to drive to the theater to take in their latest films.  How would that work out for them?  This speculation was prompted by our pal Tom Pyle at the Institute for Energy Research, who writes this morning at RealClearEnergy about the colossally dishonest Gasland II, Josh Fox’s new film attacking natural gas production:

According to Fox’s narrative, shale gas drilling stands accused of methane contamination. But in April, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection concluded that naturally occurring shallow gas was responsible for contaminating well water of the three private homes in question. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for poor Josh.

In addition, another recent study from Duke University’s highly regarded Nicholas School of Environmental Studies concluded there was no groundwater contamination to be found from gas fracking in Arkansas.  I thought we were supposed to follow “science” on these matters? Meanwhile, in today’s Energy Geek Week installment, let’s have a little fun with the greenie enthusiasm for renewable energy, which, we’re endlessly told, is growing by leaps and bounds.  According to the latest data from the just released BP Statistical Review of World Energy, non-hydro renewables (the environmentally correct kind, since dams are yucky, which means solar, wind, and biomass chiefly) experienced 180 percent growth in total output from 2005 – 2012. (It helps to have all those subsidies.)  Coal output only grew 27 percent during this time.

But this is of course fun with numbers and bases.  If you ask the question: which source of energy saw the most absolute growth in energy output from 2005 – 2012, the answer is: coal.  The figure below shows the increase in absolute energy output (measured in the common unit of Million Tons of Oil Equivalent, or MTOE) of non-hydro renewables and coal, and you can see how coal trounced renewables by a factor of four.  (Oil and gas are growing, too; tomorrow I’ll look at those figures.)

Click to Embiggen

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in Afghanistan, Obama Foreign Policy

Negotiating the terms of America’s humiliation

The U.S. has commenced negotiations with the Taliban. The Afghan government is excluded from the talks, which I consider a disgrace.

The U.S. has proved to be a worse than feckless partner. Why any state or group would ever again cast its lot with America, where there are other options, is beyond me.

Quite apart from the exclusion of the Afghan government, the negotiations strike me as a classic case of “lose-lose” as far as the United States is concerned. The Taliban has no good reason to negotiate seriously with us. It knows that most of our troops will be going home soon and that, therefore, its prospects for winning a military victory are good.

Under these circumstances, the Taliban cannot be expected to make concessions. Thus, the likely outcome is “no deal.” This is a loss for the U.S. because we will have gone to the Taliban, hat-in-hand and over the objections of our partner in the fight, and received nothing in return.

But because our negotiating position is so weak, a deal would be even worse. God only knows what concessions we need to make to obtain a deal from such a position. And whatever those concessions are, a deal would describe the terms of our defeat for all the world to ridicule.

I’m not cynical enough to believe that this is what President Obama wants, but the thought has crossed my mind.

Having determined that the U.S. shall lose this war, Obama’s best option is to have America go home as quietly as possible.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in Iran

The Iranian election — the foreign policy establishment’s take

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs (Subcommittee on the Middle East and Northern Africa) held a hearing yesterday on the Iranian elections. Wanting to know more about the subject, and to see our friend Tom Cotton in action, I attended.

Tom delivered a strong opening statement in which he made it clear that in order to justify any change in U.S. policy toward Iran, the regime must do more than hold seriously flawed elections. The good news was that the Democrats on the Subcommittee took basically the same position, at least in their public remarks. No one on the subcommittee appeared to believe that the Iranian election should engender optimism.

However, the three witnesses before the Subcommittee found reason to view the election results as a sign that Iran may be about to change course. These witnesses, I take it, represent the view of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. The witnesses were Alireza Nader of the RAND Corporation, Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, and Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

I tend to agree with the pessimistic position expressed by Tom and other subcommittee members. But having previously presented (in “eight takeaways”) a case for strong skepticism about the elections I thought that, in the interest of balance, I would present the takeaways from the more optimistic view expressed at yesterday’s hearing.

1. Sanctions are working in the sense that they are having an enormous negative impact on the Iranian economy.

2. The mandate for the newly elected Rouhani is to turn the economy around. This is his mandate from both the people who voted for him and from the “Supreme Leader” who permitted his election. The latter fears instability if the economy isn’t fixed.

3. The economy cannot be fixed if current sanctions remain in place.

4. Rouhani’s mandate, therefore, is to cause a lifting of these sanctions.

5. Rouhani can only accomplish this if Iran steps back from its drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

6. The regime might well have permitted Rouhani’s election because it’s looking for him to obtain a deal with the West on its nuclear program as a way out of the box Iran is in. In this sense, the regime views Rouhani, with his experience as a nuclear negotiator, as “a fixer.”

7. The West should therefore embrace the opportunity presented by Rouhani’s election and seriously attempt to negotiate a deal.

8. The test will be whether Rouhani comes up with a serious negotiating position, as he did ten years ago. Applying this test, we should be able quickly to tell whether negotiations hold promise.

9. Fears expressed by subcommittee members from both political parties that Rouhani’s election will cause a weakening of the sanctions coalition’s resolve are unfounded.

10. Rouhani’s election won’t change Iran’s hard line toward Israel or its policy in Syria. These will continue to be dictated by the regime and, in any case, there’s little reason to think that Rouhani dissents.

This appears to be the conventional wisdom in Washington right now. Whether it constitutes actual wisdom is another matter.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Obamacare

Open enrollment

In its second term the Obama administration continues to do great harm to the land of the free and the home of the brave, nowhere more so than in the preservation of Obamacare. The preservation of Obamacare appears to be its sole purpose. We really ought to be paying more attention to the subject.

Open enrollment for Obamacare begins on October 1 for full implementation on January 1, 2014. The program is designed to capture millions of new clients for the welfare state by setting benefits so high. Subsidies to purchase insurance are available for those making incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level. Congratulations are clearly in order. I don’t believe in predictions, but I will hazard a guess. Obamacare is here to stay.

McClatchy’s Tony Pugh deems the “big question” of Obamacare to be “What’s it going to cost me?” Wrong! The big question is “How can you be so clueless?”

Holman Jenkins takes up one of the issues related to the selling of Obamacare in his Wall Street Journal column “The young won’t buy Obamacare.” Jenkins doesn’t devote much of his column to answering the question because the answer is so obvious.

Glenn Thrush and David Nather take up the political marketing of Obamcare in the Politico story “Launching the Obamcare campaign.” Thrush and Nather don’t provide the context necessary to understand this element of their story — Jenkins does — but it is of interest:

On Monday, Organizing for Action, the entity that replaced Obama’s 2012 campaign apparatus, announced plans to embark on a “seven-figure” ad campaign to entice young, healthy uninsured necessary for the law to succeed. Much of that campaign will be centered in three states that together are home to a third of the nation’s uninsured — California, Texas and Florida, Obama’s 2013 battlegrounds.

“It’s important for the intensity of the effort to pick up in September, October and November,” said an official involved in the planning. “That’s part of what we learned in campaigns… To break through, you’ve got to hit people from all angles, all at once, urging them to take action… You don’t do that in June.”

But POLITICO interviews with front-line organizers in the state-based groups that are bearing the responsibility of enrolling millions of people who have never paid for health care in their lives revealed optimism tempered with a fair dose of confusion, skepticism and anxiety about how the effort will fare in the Obamacare battlegrounds.

What would it mean if Obamacare does not “succeed,” to use the Thrush and Nather’s term. They don’t say. They seem to think that failure means “a new Republican backlash against the law heading into another midterm election year.” I think it means that health care premiums go up, although Obamacare contains price controls that limit potential increases. The “failure” of Obamacare does not mean it goes away.

If you think “war is the health of the state,” to borrow Randolph Bourne’s famous adage, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Obamacare is all about health, alright — Obamacare is the health of the state!

Thrush and Nather return to the subject of the young and the restless one more time: “For the system to work, [OFA] must convince healthy 18-to-35 year-olds who have paid nothing for health care in the past to pony up hundreds of dollars for coverage that could still leave them on the hook for thousands of dollars in expenses — all for the greater good and Obama’s legacy.” I’m pretty sure that won’t be the pitch.

The IRS is of course a key role in the implementation of Obamacare with respect to enforcement of its penalties, but also with respect to distribution of its benefits. Orrin Hatch gives us a taste of things to come in the Wall Street Journal column “Think the IRS is bad now? Just wait.” You won’t have to wait long.

The Wall Street Journal describes Andy Purdzer as “the man who revived Carl’s Jr.” Purdzer has a few pointed things to say about the unintended consequences of Obamacare in the Journal’s Weekend interview column “Of burgers, bikinis and Obamacare.”

One can infer from Purdzer’s comments the billions of dollars that have already been poured into unproductive uses down the Obamacare rathole. Obamacare has contributed greatly to the economic stagnation that characterizes the Age of Obama.

More to the point, however, are Lincoln’s words: “Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form.” McClatchy to the contrary notwithstanding, that is the big question.

There is so much ground to cover as Obamacare makes its formal appearance on the scene. I intend to make this the first of a continuing series.

Posted on June 18, 2013 by John Hinderaker in Immigration, Republicans

Are Republican Politicians Really Stupid?

I have never thought so. On the contrary, the Republican politicians I know well are far smarter and much more hard-working than the public gives them credit for. Still, there are times when you wonder: are Republican politicians–not voters, but politicians–pathologically unable to learn from experience?

The current immigration controversy is a case in point. Who could possibly consider it a good idea to bring in one-quarter to one-third of the population of Mexico to compete for low-wage jobs with native Americans? Hey, they will now be legal, so it must be OK! Is it possible that anyone–not to mention a Republican office-holder–could be that stupid?

Unfortunately, it may be. Michael Ramirez reminds us that we have been down this path before, although in a far more benign form:

It seems inconceivable that today’s Republican officeholders are dumb enough to be fooled again. Doesn’t it?

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Obama Administration Scandals

Two Stories About Privacy: A Journalist and a Quisling

There is lots of talk, these days, about privacy: about cyber surveillance; about intrusive government; about whether we can feel secure on the telephone and on line. Amid all the noise, it is sometimes hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. But one story that definitely deserves our attention is the hacking of CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s home and work computers. This is precisely the kind of totalitarian scenario that people wring their hands over: Attkisson had reported on several stories that were unfavorable to the Obama administration, including Fast and Furious, the “Green Energy” scandals, and Benghazi. We know for sure that someone illegally accessed her computers. The only question is, Who? The obvious answer is, the Obama administration or one of its surrogates. But to be fair, there are other possibilities.

Which is what makes Ms. Attkisson’s interview with Bill O’Reilly so intriguing:

O’REILLY: So what were you working on that might have interested somebody to try to intrude on your computer? What were you working on?

ATTKISSON: Well you know the first thing I thought some time ago were my personal accounts, my finances, my passwords and so on. But nobody has intruded upon my finances although they had access to that material. So nobody stole my identity or got into my bank accounts which they could have. So I assume the reason they were in the CBS computer was something related to what I was working on.

O’REILLY: Which was what? What big stories were you working on?

ATTKISSON: Well, at the time I was doing Fast and Furious of course, some green energy debacle sort of stimulus spending stories, and then later on the Benghazi story. …

O’REILLY: And so all your counsel is saying don’t say anything. Do you have the same counsel that the Attorney General has and that Mueller has? No, it’s a joke. Bad joke. Sorry. So all of your counsel is saying don’t accuse anybody right now.

ATTKISSON: Well, they’re just telling us what we can say more than anything right now which is, you know, which you basically heard that there has been an intrusion of the computer. This is not phishing. This is not malware. This is not an ordinary as someone asked me old boyfriend trying to look through my files.

O’REILLY: Okay, this is big?

ATTKISSON: Yeah.

O’REILLY: And, but in order to go after somebody, you’ve got to have a suspicion, and I assume you have a suspicion. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t want to get your lawyers mad but I assume you have a suspicion.

ATTKISSON: Well, I think I know, but I, I’m just not prepared to go into that. So, we’re continuing our investigation. There are multi-faceted, you know, looks at what to do next.

“I think I know.” Those words must strike fear into the hearts of the Obama administration. Is it possible to trace back an electronic trail and determine who has illegally accessed your computer? I would have doubted it, but Attkisson’s comment suggests that CBS’s technical consultants–Attkisson obviously couldn’t do this herself–may have accomplished that feat. If the Obama administration or one of its many proxies did, indeed, illegally access a reporter’s computers to spy on her and determine what stories she was developing, who her sources were, and so on, it is the ultimate privacy nightmare. It would make Watergate look like a parking ticket. Of course, we are not there yet. Stay tuned, as they say.

So that is the most legitimate privacy/cyber security story now in the news. At the other extreme, we have the increasingly sordid saga of Edward Snowden. If you want a good read on Snowden’s character, check with his ex-girlfriend. The questions about Snowden are becoming more insistent: given his absurdly brief term with Booz Allen–three months!–did he really have access to the information he claims? Did he join Booz Allen specifically for the purpose of disclosing secrets, as he has? And where do his loyalties lie? Not to the United States, obviously.

Max Boot sums up the Snowden case very well. Pardon me for quoting at length, but it is well worth reading in its entirety:

Notwithstanding his egregious violations of the security classifications that protect our most important secrets, Snowden had initially won some public sympathy, at least among libertarians of both the left and the right, for exposing U.S. government programs that, he claimed, spy on Americans.

In reality the programs he disclosed are focused primarily on foreigners and operate under strict safeguards to avoid violations of Americans’ privacy. But never mind–at least to the casual observer Snowden may have come across initially as a simply a concerned citizen, a whistleblower who had the country’s best interests at heart. Certainly that was how he tried to present himself.

That pretense has not survived Snowden’s second round of revelations, which is focused not on how the NSA spies on Americans but how it spies on foreigners abroad–which is precisely what it is supposed to do.

First the renegade NSA contractor provided the South China Morning Post with details about how the NSA monitors Internet activity in China. The Hong Kong-based newspaper reported: “The detailed records – which cannot be independently verified – show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by the National Security Agency over a four-year period. They also include information indicating whether an attack on a computer was ongoing or had been completed, along with an amount of additional operational information.”

This is the kind of sensitive, operational detail that can only aid the Chinese secret police in protecting Chinese computer networks from American hacking–which is designed, in no small part, one suspects, to keep an eye on how the Chinese are penetrating U.S. computer networks. Note that Snowden revealed nothing about extensive Chinese attempts to penetrate American computers or to limit its own citizens’ access to the Internet with suffocating censorship.

Now, the Guardian has published two more stories based on information provided by Snowden detailing how the NSA, working hand-in-glove with its British partner, GCHQ, intercepted communications from diplomats attending G20 summits in London in 2009–and specifically their success in accessing communications from then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

Such intercepts are standard operating procedure among all of the major intelligence services of the world; there is no doubt that Russia, China, and even friendly states such as France and Israel try to intercept communications among American leaders, and we return the favor. There is nothing scandalous here.

But Snowden’s revelations could well tip off the Russians or others to holes in their electronic security and thereby make such operations harder in the future. Snowden’s leaks also provide propaganda points for Beijing and Moscow–two illiberal regimes that operate two of the biggest Internet hacking operations in the world. Now they can deflect attention away from their own activities and paint the U.S. as the bad guy when, in fact, Internet operations in the U.S. are among the freest in the world.

These are not the actions of a whistleblower concerned about American liberties. They are the actions of a traitor–now, quite possibly, a defector to China–who is trying to do as much harm as he can to American national security.

So not all privacy concerns are equal. If the government is assembling a data base of metadata about telephone calls, so that it can draw connections between known terrorists overseas and people embedded within the United States, that is one thing–an issue worth discussing, perhaps, but hardly an invasion of your privacy or mine, and nothing new: the Supreme Court held decades ago that the federal government can access telephone companies’ records without a search warrant because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in such third-party data. But hacking into a reporter’s computer at work or, even more sensationally, at home, because that reporter is not consistently toeing the administration’s line, is exactly the sort of abuse that privacy experts have fretted about for decades.

So let’s keep our eyes on the ball as the Obama administration’s many scandals unfold in the weeks to come. NSA access to phone metadata? Not a scandal. Political hacks hacking into a reporter’s computers because she dares to question the administration’s line? Definitely a scandal.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Immigration

CBO Analysis Confirms: Gang of Eight Bill Is a Disaster

The Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal today, and spinning is in full swing. The fact is, however, that the basic facts can’t be spun: the bill is a disaster.

As with Obamacare, the Gang structured its bill to make it “score” artificially well from a budget perspective. They did this by delaying the newly legalized immigrants’ eligibility for most federal welfare benefits for ten years, which takes those benefits outside of the ten-year window that is scored by the CBO. But that cosmetic shift did little to conceal the plan’s baleful effects. Here are the main points of the CBO analysis:

The CBO confirms that the bill provides for a vast influx of new, legal immigration. The Senate Budget Committee says:

CBO projects 16 million new immigrants will be added by 2033 on top of the current law projected flow of 22 million and that 8 million illegal immigrants will be granted permanent status – for a total of 46 million legal immigrants, including a doubling of guest workers to 1.6 million in a single year.

Contrary to the claims of the bill’s sponsors, this influx will be overwhelmingly low-skilled. The CBO says:

[T]he new workers would be less skilled and have lower wages, on average, than the labor force under current law.

The result is that unemployment will increase, and wages will be driven down, for America’s existing blue collar work force:

Taking into account all of those flows of new immigrants, CBO and JCT expect that a greater number of immigrants with lower skills than with higher skills would be added to the workforce, slightly pushing down the average wage for the labor force as a whole… However, CBO and JCT expect that currently unauthorized workers who would obtain legal status under S. 744 would see an increase in their average wages.

Terrific: the only ones who would gain would be those who came here illegally, while native born workers would suffer. The CBO report continues:

[T]he average wage would be lower than under current law over the first dozen years. … CBO estimates that S. 744 would cause the unemployment rate to increase slightly between 2014 and 2020.

Behind these rather antiseptic observations lies a human tragedy: falling wages and rising unemployment for the very segment of American society that has struggled the most in recent years. On top of that, the nation’s welfare system will be severely strained. While newly-legalized immigrants will not immediately be eligible for federal welfare benefits, that does not apply at the state and local levels. Those welfare systems will be overwhelmed with millions of new claimants–the cost to be borne, of course, by the taxpayers.

I don’t doubt that the CBO’s report understates the extent of the devastation that will be wrought by the Gang’s legislation, but the picture it paints is clear enough. Why, one wonders, would anyone support such a destructive proposal? Anyone, that is, other than a Democratic politician who is salivating at the thought of millions of new Democrat voters?