Copenhagen Shock: Greens Given US Government Badges to Gain Access

P.J. O’Rourke attended the World Environment Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992, the confab that gave us the first “global warming” treaty, a document which Kyoto amended and the ongoing Copenhagen meeting is also to amend to get Kyoto II. There, he wrote, in the scrum caused by typical UN ineptitude an earnest lass cried out something along the lines of “this is what life would be like in an overpopulated world!” To which O’Rourke replied, no, dear, this is what life would be like in a world run by the United Nations.

Well, similarly, you may by now have heard that Copenhagen is proceeding in even worse than normal fashion, thanks to 45,00 attendees — either Party, Observer or Media — having been accredited. The hall being used holds 15,000. The spillover is not so much from the welfare-seeking countries and their delegates but delegates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These include mostly green pressure groups but also groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Chamber of Commerce.

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: Al Gore, climate change, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Copenhagen blizzard, Copenhagen conference
Posted Dec 18th 2009 at 11:53 am in Environment, News, Obama | 4919420 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/12/18/copenhagen-shock-greens-given-us-government-badges-to-gain-access/Copenhagen+Shock%3A+Greens+Given+US+Government+Badges+to+Gain+Access2009-12-18+19%3A53%3A26Christopher+C.+Horner

ClimateGate Denial

There have been numerous ostentatiously pathetic efforts to distract from what ClimateGate has not “revealed”, but affirmed, in the principals’ own words, and this mewling is getting more pathetic by the attempt.

Sitting in the chair waiting to participate in a CNN program Monday night largely dedicated to the issue — or, rather, what proved to be an embarrassingly slanted effort at to diminishing it, in its language and approach though to the channel’s credit they at least let me and Steve McIntyre on — I listened to the program’s lead-in. It entailed childish language like that the program will have “scientists and skeptics” (good grief), but also a remarkably insistent emphasis — with nothing whatsoever to back the claim up — on the exposed material being “hacked emails” (with no mention of computer code, annotations, other documentation and the like contained in the exposed trove; now that’s some serious bias).

There also is nothing in the record to suggest a hacking. Indeed,  there is tremendous reason to suspect a whistleblower, tracing back the evolution of the demands for the information, the denials, and the information’s path into the public realm. Yet whichever it was changes nothing about the substance, all of which is found in documents subject to the UK’s freedom of information act.

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: carbon emissions cap and trade, climate change, climategate, Competitive Enterprise Institute, data fraud
Posted Dec 9th 2009 at 12:59 pm in Environment, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 4367461 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/chorner/2009/12/09/climategate-denial/ClimateGate+Denial2009-12-09+19%3A59%3A52Christopher+C.+Horner

Baucus Bill Is a Cure Worse than the Disease

With Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever.  Opponents had their summer of protests.  But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform effort.

As I explain in a new Competitive Enterprise Institute paper, “A Cure Worse than the Disease: Obama Care Won’t Cut Costs, But May Cut Quality,” most of the alleged cost-cutting measures in the Baucus bill merely shift costs from the federal government onto the states or private payers, without affecting long-term health care inflation.  The only measures that could reduce the annual rate of growth in health care costs would erect government barriers between patients and their doctors, while jeopardizing long-term medical innovation.

Skeptics have made hay arguing that the so-called Sustainable Growth Rate can’t be counted on to cut $245-billion in Medicare spending. But Senate Finance Committee negotiators have designed a Medicare Commission—what the White House previously called an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission—to make similar cuts in physician and hospital payment rates in a more opaque way.

In an April New York Times interview, President Obama suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost…the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives.”  That’s not exactly a death panel roving the country to pull the plug on innocent grandmas who’ve survived past their sell-by dates, but the effects could be equally pernicious.

(more…)

Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | Tweet this |

Tags: Barack Obama, Charles Grassley, Competitive Enterprise Institute, death panels, evidence based medicine
Posted Oct 26th 2009 at 11:00 am in Healthcare, Politics | 2014224 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/gconko/2009/10/26/baucus-bill-is-a-cure-worse-than-the-disease/Baucus+Bill+Is+a+Cure+Worse+than+the+Disease2009-10-26+18%3A00%3A20Gregory++Conko