The upheaval in the Mideast has brought gasoline prices front and center once again.  Traders are building a risk factor into forward purchase contracts and gasoline prices per gallon now hover around $4 a gallon with no end in sight.

Recent events have conspired to seriously complicate the search for safe alternative energy sources. The horrific earthquake in Japan and the catastrophic tsunami that followed 30 minutes later, caused untold death and destruction and the partial meltdown of some of Japan’s nuclear reactors, and triggered a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere with health ramifications that are, as of now, uncertain to say the least.

When the full extent of the damage at the reactors is finally known, the news will not be good.  Not only will Japan, which relies on nuclear reactors for a substantial portion of its energy needs have to find an alternative source of energy, but the U.S., which has not built a new reactor since the Three Mile Island incident in 1978, will surely have to reassess whether additional nuclear reactors can be built, given the understandable fear that has been engendered by events in Japan.  Anti‑nuclear advocates now can point to new dangers and, in fact, an enormous reassessment of prevailing safety assumptions will have to be immediately undertaken.  The need for caution and further study will delay any new nuclear reactors now on the drawing boards.

Environmentalists have thrown roadblocks in front of any efforts to recover oil from known sources within our control (e.g., Alaska or offshore.)  Instead they advocate pouring money into so‑called green energy – wind farms and solar panels.  While these alternatives may play a meaningful role as future sources of energy, they will not, for the foreseeable future, replace the fossil fuel needed to supply our current needs and provide for economic growth.

For solar or wind energy to be a meaningful alternative source of energy, storage technology would have to be vastly improved.  Wind power like solar power is available only intermittently thus requiring that the output produced be either stored or immediately transported over transmission lines.  Neither solar nor wind power can sufficiently provide the electricity needs of this nation without staggering investments in storage and transmission.  The NIMBY (not in my backyard) factor teaches us that environmentalists and others will fight tooth and nail about above or below ground lines.  Thus, even if wind and solar become viable as major sources of the U.S. energy supply, it will be decades before these sources play a meaningful role in the national energy picture.

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Although usual suspects are now saying that the chain of events leading to Japan’s nuclear crisis is simply proof that we need to now rule out the last energy source that works, in terms of providing the necessary, base-load power required to run a modern society, it actually proves the opposite. With nuclear for all intents and purposes frozen in amber — as if it wasn’t already, talk of a ‘renaissance’ notwithstanding — this, combined with the Left’s war on energy that works now places us on the precipice, as well.

Will Obama admit that he must immediately cease his war to kill coal, which is a stepping stone on their war to also strangle gas? (all of which was detailed here, ten months, early, I suppose)

Of course not. Will someone, possibly an aspiring president, call him out on it?

After all: his war on coal assumed an unprecedented binge of 100 new nuclear ractors here.

That was facially absurd at the time — “at this rate”, as the greens like to say, we’ll add 100 new reactors as the new millenium approaches — but it is inescapably reckless now. They must be forced to cop to it. And do the responsible thing.

That’s not exactly how things are playing out. Congress is moving to stop Obama’s EPA from the centerpiece of its ‘energy plan’, which is to regulate its war on coal-fired electricity that they were unable to legislate. And the administration reflexively joined the demagoguery of that responsible move, the necessity of which has now only proved more obvious.

But that EPA backdoor global warming scheme is, just like the failed cap-and-trade legislation, premised on a fantasy economic assumption (100 new reactors) to dumb-down the cost of regulating coal out of existence (‘bankrupting’ anyone who wanted to try and use it, in Obama’s own phrase to the SF Chronicle ed board). In fact, this was built in purely to have a piece of paper to wave around and say see this is completely different than the plan that candidate Obama said would cause your rates to necessarily skyrocket, and bankrupt anyone daring to use coal! Not honest.

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Some are now suggesting that President Obama get involved in the NFL strike talks. I was his college classmate at Columbia University and have studied his political career for years. My record of predicting where Obama will come down on the side of an issue and what lie he will tell to rationalize his decision is near perfect. Just call me “The Obama Whisperer.”

Here’s a quick lesson in how he thinks:

First, Obama is a Socialist who believes in the redistribution of wealth. He hates those who have worked hard and earned money — unless they give him massive campaign contributions.

Second, he’s a union hack, who will do anything for unions, even break the law and violate the Constitution — at least for those unions that give him massive campaign contributions. Don’t believe me? Ask the shareholders and banks that loaned billions to GM and Chrysler, only to see their ownership and legal contracts erased by Obama in order to hand ownership to the unions that destroyed the automakers in the first place.

Third, like a true Socialist, Obama believes government has the solution to every problem, and that solution is more government and higher taxes, combined with a prescription of social justice and affirmative action.

Based on his lifetime body of work, here is how I predict Obama will settle the NFL labor crisis:

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It may just be wishful thinking but Politico’s ‘Morning Energy’ today was dropping heavy hints they expected President Obama to use this morning’s presser to defend against any culpability of his policies in ’skyrocketing’ gas prices.

Yeah, any such connection between Obama policies and energy prices is a pretty hard case to make, what with the Obama administration having immediately upon taking office canceled oil and gas leases, placed more areas off limits for domestic exploration and production, changing the Minerals Management Service to an offshore windmill permitting agency since all we need is some offshore windmills (not one but two senior administration officials have said this, including a cabinet secretary), then not letting the Gulf spill ‘go to waste’ by seizing it to strangle our biggest domestic source of oil.

Of course, there is also that long trail of aspirational comments, well beyond vowing to cause electricity prices to ’skyrocket’, indicating this steady gas price hike is their objective, even if overseas developments are causing problems for them [helping the rise advance too quickly such that people pay attention, with these developments adding to the price hikes the admin have built in, with much more obviously undone but hopefully on the way]. As I detailed with many more admissions ten months ago in Power Grab.

Obviously, this is one of the items worrying Team Obama, along with their foreign policy fecklessness. And — in lieu of gimmickry to redirect voters’ gazes from policies that contribute to this, such as by releasing Strategic [NB: not 'Political'] Petroleum Reserve crude — Obama cheerleaders (like Politico) note he could take the opportunity to push his “Clean Energy Standard”.

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When former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee ran for President in 2008, he did so in the guise of a conservative. But those of us who listened closely to his speeches heard a message that was far from compatible with the ideals of limited government and expanded liberty: two benchmarks of conservatism by any measure. Instead we heard Huckabee openly support a nationwide, federally mandated smoking ban, and expanding the powers of the federal government to mandate limits on carbon emissions via cap and trade.

Because of the exponential growth things like a national smoking ban and cap and trade legislation would cause in the size of government, Rush Limbaugh often warned that Huckabee was a “populist” rather than a conservative. In other words, Huckabee had a good grasp on how to give speeches in the vernacular of heartland America, but his solutions to the problems faced by those same people rested in an expansion of government for which the constitution made no provision. (Like Clinton, Huckabee could feel our pain, and like Obama, he could ease that pain via government intervention.)

And believe it or not, Huckabee’s record on taxes (and tax increases) is even more dismal than his record on smoking bans and cap and trade legislation. While Governor of Arkansas, he literally begged state legislators to support tax increases on the citizens of that state.

When Arkansas faced what FOX NEWS’ Carl Cameron described as “general revenue shortfall in the state budget,” a desperate Huckabee stood before the state legislature and told them he’d found a way to meet Arkansas’ near $100 million shortfall:

“There’s a lot of support for a tax at the wholesale level for tobacco, and that’s fine with me. I will be very happy to sign that, because it’s a revenue stream that will…help us meet that 90 to 100 million target.

Some have suggested [a tax on] the retail level of tobacco. If that ends up being your preference I will accept that. Others have suggested a surcharge on the income tax. That’s acceptable: I’m fine with that. Others have suggested perhaps a sales tax. That’s fine.

Yet others have suggested a hybrid [tax] that would collect some monies from any one or a combination of [these] various ideas. And if that’s the plan the House and Senate agree upon, you will have nothing but my profound thanks.”

Not only was Huckabee’s support for any and every tax scheme imaginable antithetical to the conservative mind, but the way he groveled before the legislature was shameful: not at all indicative of a leader.

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Our last Republican to hold statewide office was Governor Pete Wilson who left the office in 1999. I’m not counting the last, failed action-star who just left the office and was about as Republican as Nancy Pelosi. Schwarzenegger supported both Cap and Trade, and Obamacare. The Republican brand has died in California. Many folks have been doing the post mortem. In the last election cycle, despite the Republican resurgence throughout the country, not a blip of hope was on the screen here.

How bad was it during the last election cycle? When the electorate chooses Barbara “general, call me senator” Boxer over a former HP chief Carly Fiorina, it’s bad. They chose an anti-death penalty Attorney General, Kamala Harris who even refused to apply a death penalty to cop killers. California chose Ms. Harris over Steve Cooley, a republican who was a successful DA from Los Angeles. Additionally, Ms. Harris had the lowest conviction rate of any big city district attorney.No Republican won any constitutional office in the state in 2010. It was a wipeout.

“There’s been a broad repudiation of traditional conservative Republicans in California,” said Tony Quinn, a former GOP analyst and co-editor of the California Target Book, which tracks state politics. “There are almost no areas in the state that can be considered safely Republican anymore.”

To add insult to injury, since 2004 GOP registration shrank by 317,000 at the same time Democrats picked up 563,000. That’s a whopping democrat advantage of over three quarters of a million voters.

Where’s our leadership? Here’s where -attending mock funerals for the party. There was one recently held for the GOP where Duf Sundheim, a former state GOP chair declared, “Republicans, as a brand, are dead.” Can we please resolve now not to elect GOP chairmen named; Duf, or Biff or Buff or any other caricature names of the idle white and rich?

Ok, we get it. It’s now time for our wake up call. We need to shift gears and get this beat up truck down the track. I haven’t heard much in the way of new or inspiring ideas from any of the state GOP party apparatchik.

Here are some positive ideas:
Focus on economic issues.
Face reality. As much as they’re important to many of us, social issues are a loser in California. Although the GOP won on the defense of marriage initiative; they just barely won. It’s not a winner issue for the GOP particularly if they want to attract new and younger voters going forward. That’s just the facts.

We need to focus in on putting statewide ballot propositions before the voters that are sponsored by Republicans working in coalitions and improve the GOP brand. Ideas that show we are the leaders.

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Thanks to Ronald Reagan’s legacy and a legal miscalculation by leftist environmentalists, this week a California judge stopped the implementation of California’s Cap and Trade law: better known as Cap and Tax. This is the same type of carbon trading that Al Gore has hawked for years, but failed to get through the most radical Democrat Congress in generations. That’s how bad it was. Of course, that didn’t stop whacked out California from passing a Draconian version of the same job killing scheme.

To add insult to injury, the so called “republican” Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law in 2006. It was opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and most sane taxpayers (admittedly, CA doesn’t have enough of those). The opponents claimed that the law would drive out business to other states and dramatically increase the cost of energy. Energy costs would, of course, be passed on, driving up the cost of everything else-in the midst of the nation’s worst recession.

The voters of California even had an opportunity last year to put the brakes on it at the ballot box with Proposition 23, but the environmental left spent millions fighting the proposition. It wouldn’t even have scrapped the whole law, but only would have suspended the Cap and Tax until state unemployment dropped below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. The proposition was defeated overwhelmingly. Considering our unemployment rate is well over 12% here, the California voters essentially supported assisted economic-suicide of their own state.

It took two forces working together to finally defeat Cap and Tax: a group of radical Lefties and Ronald Reagan to put the brakes on this law.

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I recently took a two-day trip down to Palm Springs to attend an event called “Uncloaking the Kochs” hosted by Common Cause. Accompanied by my dear friend, former assembly candidate Alvaro Day, I traveled as an independent investigative journalist, and not in any official capacity on behalf of Big Government or Breitbart.com (though I was pleasantly surprised to run into a familiar friend of mine on rollerblades jovially inviting everyone to Applebee’s).

Among Common Cause’s, well, common causes, are campaign finance reform, net neutrality, outlawing the filibuster, promoting cap and trade, and in this particular case, herding a mass of protesters outside a nearby hotel to yell at Charles and David Koch for being conservative and rich.

Unfortunately several “haves” have missed the memo that you’re not to be both rich and conservative at the same time, and that bankrolling your pet causes is an extra no-no if you’re conservative—thus exempting left-wing billionaire philanthropists George Soros (from whom Common Cause has received $2 million over the past eight years) Peter Lewis, John Doerr, Julian Robertson, Nicolas Berggruen, and many others from being yelled at too. (more…)

Fashioning good legislative policy (so that laws that we enact garner maximum respect from the public) requires, as we have seen from its absence in the prior Congress, patience and compromise.  A party with electoral control over both chambers of Congress and the presidency can probably pass a bill into law, but you rarely can get everything you want if the goal is to maximize a national consensus.  Mr. Obama and his Democratic majority claim to have gotten much of their agenda through, but until the president was forced to engage in coalition building in the lame duck session, as a result of the November 2 “shellacking” taken by his party, most of the bills supported only by the far left are under attack by the new Congress and the courts.  And even if the GOP cannot either dismantle the monstrous health care and financial “reform” laws that were passed or be successful in court challenges, we will be left with years of anger, recrimination, and confusion arising out of multi‑thousand page laws that no member of Congress even read.

Instead our elected leaders have left it, largely, to unelected bureaucrats appointed by the current Administration to write detailed regulations to determine how to interpret and enforce the so‑called “will” of the same Congress that never read or understood what they passed.  We have seen alarming portents of this in recent pronouncements by regulatory agencies as to their intent when final regulations are promulgated.  The regulations, as we have seen from the  public pronouncements show no real effort to determine that intent but rather are designed to enact the agenda of the far left which the Democrats, even with their large congressional majority, could not pass.  The common thread is to transfer more control of the private sector to the government, to redistribute wealth and dismantle or exercise unprecedented control over the industries that are in their crosshairs.  This is not alarmist rhetoric; it is simply sad fact.  For them the ends justify the means.

Take this example.  Because of alarm that Sarah Palin’s so‑called “death panels” would scuttle the healthcare legislation; end-of-life counseling was dropped from the health care bill.  Frankly, we think the term “death panels” was overheated rhetoric and an allegorical stretch even for politicians, and that counseling terminally ill patients who are in pain about their right to refuse “heroic” but probably ineffective measures to prolong life a while longer, is totally appropriate.  However, in order to pass the law, Congress compromised and dropped the end-of-life counseling provision.  Before the end of 2010, however, Medicare issued a regulation restoring the provision.  Moreover the regulation was buried among hundreds of other Medicare regulations.  The original Congressional supporter of government payments for such counseling was so delighted by this action that he urged his supporters “not to crow about it” presumably so it wouldn’t get much attention.  Can anyone believe this wasn’t the Administration’s intent all along?  As Charles Krauthammer stated in his December 31 op‑ed in the Washington Post, “For an Obama bureaucrat, … the will of Congress is a mere speed bump.”

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I just had forwarded to me an email written by ThirdWay.org calling for more federal intervention in the energy markets, further supporting politically deigned winners from the pool of losers that must petition for aid in order to exist. Which of course doesn’t read all that differently than the old, First Way (post-FDR, that is). But it’s got a Blair-ite marketing panache that’s worth a try, anyway.

This was noteworthy for a couple of reasons, including its acknowledgment that the renewable energy mandate you will soon hear very much about, as the next ‘other way to skin the cat’ of energy rationing, is so far as your wallet is concerned the same as the very cap-and-trade scheme for which it is Plan B:

“China is about to [sic] put a price on carbon. The UK and EU are already there. So how can the U.S. begin to compete for the $2 trillion clean energy market? …We can help do that by establishing a national clean energy standard.”

Windmill mandate equals cap-and-trade. According to its champions. Got it.

More eye-catching was the whole $2 trillion thing. Because also today per Greenwire (subscription required) Sen. John Kerry continued his silly (very silly) advocacy of this agenda — if in less humorous fashion, seeking to take advantage of tragedy for political aims: “Infrastructure, clean energy can unite Congress after Tucson tragedy — Kerry” (noting that, hey, Cong. Giffords was really big on renewable energy supports, so…).

He “call[ed] for renewed support for investment in the energy economy — especially ‘green energy’ — where the United States, he said, is losing its competitive edge in a $6 trillion market to the rest of the world and China in particular “.

Is Sen. Kerry saying, as this reporter implies, that the renewable energy market is $6 trillion? Exaggeration in support of the green agenda? Quelle horreur, Sen. Kerry! (more…)

This week, National Journal asked a rather interesting question this that implied it head has been fully tucked in the sand when it comes to recognizing the long term implications of Obama’s environmental policy.

As the EPA readies itself to enforce a handful of rules limiting carbon emissions – a backdoor Cap and Trade policy known as the “Tailoring Rule,” which severely and arbitrarily limits the amount of greenhouse gas emissions many industries are now allowed to produce – the National Journal sleepily wonders what the effect these rules will have on the affected industries.

There are a few responses that take a theoretical approach to the question, but National Journal and it’s guests don’t have to go far to look for a real answer, supported by research. According to a study published recently by the National Alliance of Forest Owners, the Tailoring Rules will have a definite – and immediately felt – negative impact on the economy.

A newly released economic impact study finds that the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule” jeopardizes over 130 renewable energy projects, between 11,000 and 26,000 green jobs, and $18 billion in capital investment across the country. The risk of reduced capacity also could prevent as many as 30 states from meeting national renewable energy targets.

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The Hill has a month-by-month recap of 2010:

The grassroots conservative political movement made its clout felt the entire year, from the healthcare reform debate to GOP primaries and the general election last month.

Senior Democrats, ranging from Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.), aggressively attacked the Tea Party in the lead-up to the midterms, hoping that doing so would soften losses to the GOP. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans embraced the movement, believing its energy would benefit their party at the polls.

In the end, the Tea Party was in many ways a net asset for the GOP as Republicans grabbed control of the House and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.

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Buried beneath the avalanche of press coverage about the lame-duck Congress, I found a story about President Obama’s mid-December meeting with twenty corporate CEOs. The purpose of this Blair House get-together was to discuss how to jump-start our still-ailing economy. Among other aims, Mr. Obama reiterated his goals to increase employment, end the recession, and double U.S. exports over the next five years.

These are lofty and laudable ambitions. But it seems that Mr. Obama’s regulatory bureaucrats haven’t gotten the memo. For example, consider the counter-productive impact of their efforts on agriculture.

As any shopper knows, food prices this past year have been rising faster than the overall rate of inflation. “Fears of a global food crisis swept the world’s commodity markets as prices for staples such as corn, rice and wheat spiraled after the U.S. government warned of ‘dramatically’ lower supplies,” the Financial Times reported in early October. “There is growing concern among countries about continuing volatility and uncertainty in food markets,” said World Bank president Robert Zoellick later that month. “These concerns have been compounded by recent increases in grain prices.”

Confronting this looming food-supply crisis is the American farmer. His productivity is such that the United States is the world’s largest agricultural exporter, with $108.7 billion in farm products shipped abroad in 2010. Helping him increase the supply of agricultural products is the key to addressing both rising food prices and global shortages. His productivity is also critical to our country’s broader economic recovery.

So, you would think that the administration’s apparatchiks would be doing whatever they can to remove the regulatory impediments that farmers face. But you would be wrong. Consider several ways in which federal regulators are threatening agricultural productivity, both directly and indirectly.

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A newly released economic impact study finds that the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Tailoring Rule” – a back-door Cap-and-Trade style regulation scheme that limits the greenhouse gases industries can emit – jeopardizes over 130 renewable energy projects, between 11,000 and 26,000 green jobs, and $18 billion in capital investment across the country.

Worse, that is just the Tailoring Rule’s effect on a single industry, biomass. Although biomass is generally considered a carbon neutral and renewable energy resource, the EPA included in it’s list of “most wanted” industries. The economies and renewable energy goals of nearly 30 states could be jeopardized.

The study is neatly summarized here on the National Alliance of Forest Owners’ website, along with comments from people central to the industry. The full study is posted below.

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Enron, joined by BP, invented the global warming industry. I know because I was in the room. This was during my storied three-week or so stint as Director of Federal Government Relations for Enron in the Spring of 1997, back when Enron was everyone’s darling in Washington. It proved to be an eye-opening experience that didn’t last much beyond my expressing concern about this agenda of using the state to rob Peter, paying Paul, drawing Paul’s enthusiastic support.

In fact, this case was not entirely uncommon in that the entire enterprise was Paul’s idea to begin with. Which left me as the guy on the street corner muttering about this evil company cooking up money-making charades, to nothing but rolled eyes until the, ah, unpleasantness and the opportunity it afforded to take a few gratuitous swings at George W. Bush. Buy me a beer and I will regale you with tales of reporters from Newsweek and the Washington Post desperately seeking assistance to spin, respectively, Enron as having urged Bush away from the Kyoto agenda as opposed to having crafted it, and Enron’s global warming activism as its one redeeming feature.

The basic truth is that Enron, joined by other ‘rent-seeking’ industries — making one’s fortune from policy favors from buddies in government, the cultivation of whom was a key business strategy — cobbled their business plan around ‘global warming’. Enron bought, on the cheap of course, the world’s largest windmill company (now GE Wind), the world’s second-largest solar panel interest (now BP), to join their world’s second-largest natural gas pipeline network. The former two will only make money under a system of massive mandates and subsidies (and taxes to pay for them); the latter would prosper spectacularly if this war on coal succeeded.

It then engaged green groups to scare people toward accepting those policies. That is what is known as a Baptist and Bootlegger coalition. I sat in on such meetings. Disgraceful.

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Last week I was down in Cancun, Mexico reporting on the U.N. Climate Change Summit (officially called COP16/CMP6) with Americans for Prosperity and Andrew Breitbart. It was several days of sun, surf, and U.N. conmen. I am back in the saddle here at home, traveling from the warm white sands of Cancun back to the cold white snow of Chicago. Where’s all that global warming when you need it?

At least I have the modern conveniences of natural gas to keep my house warm and coal and nuclear-fired electric to power my electronic entertainment and work devices. Unfortunately, if the con in Cancun is successful we may no longer have such luxuries.

One of the last places I visited in Cancun was the Villa de Cambio Climatico — or in English the climate change village. The exhibit was sponsored by the Mexican federal government and was set up in order to indoctrinate Mexico’s school children in the ways of environmental hokum.

At the exhibit we found what was presented as the ideal eco-friendly house. Of course, it was suitably small as the enviro-Nazis most certainly don’t want anyone enjoying a bit of elbowroom in their homes though it did have space for a few modern niceties. It had a tiny computer area, an actual flush toilet, and a four-foot-tall refrigerator that looks like it might be able to store enough food for two or three days.

But it was the laundry-room that took the cake.

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With the dust largely settled from the November 2010 elections, it is resoundingly clear that the majority of Americans are fed up with a government that has grown drunk on its own power and fat on their tax dollars. Tired of waiting for those in office to do the right thing, they took action and chose a different kind of leader to represent them.

The sentiment that drove voters is the heartbeat of my book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. In addition to pointing out where and how government has overflowed its boundaries, it explains how liberty is maximized by a limited government set closest to the people.

As a life-long conservative, I was more than pleased at the outcome of the 2010 elections, because I sense people reconnecting with the fundamental precepts of our republic, enunciated so clearly in the U.S. Constitution. As a governor, I’m particularly fond of the Tenth Amendment, and the narrow role it casts for the federal government.

Its key phrase reads…“powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Bill of Rights’ authors had seen the oppressive effect of a distant, centralized government, while the rugged vitality of the American colonies showed that government closest to the people truly governs best. In short, free people work harder, live better and take better care of one another.

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This week the EPA celebrates its 40th birthday. In honor of the occasion, they’ve launched a dedicated website called EPA@40, and it’s head, Lisa Jackson, will take off on a week-long party circuit designed to “highlight the impact of [the EPA's] efforts to clean up the air Americans breathe and the water they drink and the communities they live in” as well as her agency’s crusade to attend to “the unfinished business of the environmental movement.”

What started as a way to help the government respond to environmental disasters and spread conservation awareness, however, has metastasized into a bloated, over-reaching disaster of it’s own, championing extensive governmental intervention, curbing freedoms and, most recently, costing hard-working Americans their jobs, all in the name of preserving the environment.

In the midst of an economic downturn, the EPA will once again retool it’s famous, founding Clean Air Act, rewriting the historical legislation to suit Obama’s own bureaucratic needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. Sounds fantastic, right? Well, it’ll have a devastating effect on the private sector:

Achieving that level of reduction in greenhouse gases won’t be easy or cheap. This immense new burden on the private sector comes at precisely the wrong time for an economy still struggling to create new jobs and reduce near double-digit unemployment…The cost estimates are indeed staggering, according to an econometric study by the Manufacturers Alliance that projects more than 7.3 million lost jobs by 2020. The hardest-hit states include Texas, which would lose 1.7 million jobs, and Louisiana, with 938,000 positions lost. Others include California (846,000), Illinois (396,000) and Pennsylvania (351,000). Total losses would reduce the nation’s gross domestic product by $1.7 trillion, according to the Manufacturers Alliance.”

Of course, these new standards wouldn’t just affect isolated industries or particular states.

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The Democrats just don’t get America and the clear message that voter’s sent via a GOP firebomb at DC in the mid-terms.  So what’s the rationalization du jour?  The Hill reports that influential  liberals progressives in Congress are putting pressure on Pelosi causing clashes with Obama.  However, when you dissect the article and what the Democrats are saying, it’s quite the rationalization.  And believe me, I love a good rationalization, but come on already.

The pressure is for Pelosi to be more hardline with the White House.  But, you would think this would mean a move to the center.  Not so.  From the article:

As Obama decides whether and how much to compromise with the new Republican majority in the House, Pelosi is facing pressure from empowered liberals in her caucus to take a harder line with the administration.

Those liberals, led by a group of four lawmakers who tried unsuccessfully to delay caucus leadership elections last week, say House Democrats were led astray by their allegiance to a flawed White House political strategy during the 111th Congress.

“We’re going to have to really push the White House and the Senate,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said. “I think the greatest failing in this Congress was that the House … enabled the White House, and the White House was not always right. emphasis mine

You really start to think that the Democrats are beginning to get it; however, they don’t.  Look at the messenger–liberals.  Let’s read further through the article and you will see my point:

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When it comes to defining the meaning of the Republican victory last Tuesday, Marco Rubio got it exactly right: “This is our second chance.” Just four years ago, Republicans were turned out of the majority because they had forgotten the spirit of 1994 that brought them there — succumbing to corruption scandals and accepting runaway spending and bailouts of the financial and automotive sectors. John Boehner has smartly echoed this humble tone both in his Election Night speech and post-election interviews.

The first key test of whether Republicans have learned their lesson will come in the decision on whether to weaken a crucial 1994 reform limiting the terms of Republican committee heads by waiving term limits for Rep. Joe Barton so that he can run for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The term limits rule, by the incoming Republican majority in 1994 and enshrined in the Contract with America, was designed to break down the imperial fiefdoms at all important committees built up during 40 years of Democratic rule. When Democrats retook the House, they continued to allow their committee chairmen unlimited rein. The result: unchecked power on committee chairs like Charlie Rangel.

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