Americans for Prosperity (AFP), in partnership with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), has just released a new report entitled: “New Jersey’s Long Road Ahead: Taxpayers vs. Politicians and Unions.”

The report opens with some sobering statistics:

“New Jersey residents pay the highest property taxes in the nation—averaging $7,300 per homeowner.2The state has the highest per-pupil spending at $17,600 per student. The unemployment rate is 9.1 percent and continues to exceed the national average. The state’s long-term debt is one of the highest in the country.”

A key culprit here is the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the power state affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA). While it has repeatedly cowed top elected officials in both major parties into supporting lavish taxpayer funded benefits, it would seem that the political climate has finally shifted in the direction of reform and fiscal renewal. NJEA demands did not sit well with the public.

That’s why Steve Lonegan, who heads up the NJ chapter of AFP, would like to see more done to scale back union power and prioritize taxpayer interests.

“The impact of unions continues,” Lonegan said at a press conference in Trenton yesterday as the report was released. “Governor Christie has not gone far enough. The influence of public sector unions makes New Jersey “a non-Right-to-Work state on steroids.”

Lonegan, who previously served as mayor of Bogota, was Christie’s primary opponent.

Vincent Vernuccio, who co-authored the report, said the tight relationship between public sector unions and the political figures they help elect has created “a climate of “higher taxes and regulation, which consistently puts taxpayers second.”

Vernuccio, works as a legal counsel for labor policy at CEI. His new WorkplaceChoice.org site ranks New Jersey near the bottom of its Big Labor versus Taxpayers Index, which would explain why so many residents feel compelled to leave.

The NJ Supreme Court also came in for criticism during the press conference. The state’s eroding economic position can be attributed in no small part to a series of court rulings that equate higher property taxes and higher spending with an effective education, Phil Kerpen, AFP’s vice-president of policy explained. He called on elected officials to push back against the court’s activist rulings and to reassert their authority in the legislative arena.

This latest report is part of an on-going series, which is available for download at AFP’s Liberty Library.

I thank Mayor Lonegan, AFP and CEI for involving me in this project.

Small wonder then that opinion polls now show that alarmist climate projections evoke greater cynicism. However, the regulatory agenda that aims to extend government control over the private sector remains very much in motion, even as the rationale has changed.

This pivot away from global warming alarmism as a sales pitch can be traced back to President Obama’s first State of the Union Address.

“I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy,” he said.  “I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.  But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.  And America must be that nation.”

Get that?

The government still needs to intervene so that industry is forced to convert over to alternative energy sources that will supposedly yield long-term dividends. This was largely the argument used in the campaign against Proposition 23 in Calif., which would have suspended implementation of the Global Warming Solutions Act (also known as Assembly Bill 32).

MapLight.org, a non-partisan group, that tracks campaign funding, found that opponents of the initiative had a three to one funding advantage. Environmental organizations, Hollywood activists and other individual donors funneled in almost $31 million to help defeat Proposition 23 in comparison to with roughly $10 million in donations from supporters. With anti-regulatory efforts gaining traction in other states that had previously succumbed to regional greenhouse gas restriction initiatives, a victory for Proposition 23 would have been devastating to energy rationing proponents.

A little history is in order now that AB-32 is the law of the land in California. The legislation seeks to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, through a program administered and enforced by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The same activists and journalists who now argue that coercive command and control policies are needed to force industry into adopting alternative energy sources were previously not so keen on the idea, Chris Horner, a senior fellow with The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), has noted.

“The green mantra to defeat Proposition 23, which threatened to delay California’s AB-32 ‘global warming’ law from going into effect until the state’s economy recovered, was that such government intrusion into its citizens’ energy choices was actually necessary to ensure development of new energy sources needed to satisfy our needs, and enable our future prosperity,” he said. “In fact, until some late-hour ads arguing that the measure was really, somehow, about whether asthmatic children could draw breath, this was the entire justification for the anti-Prop 23 campaign in the face of weakened public faith in the idea of man-made global warming. Restricting the availability of ‘fossil fuels’ and mandating politically deigned icons like windmills and solar panels was the spur needed to innovate our way to clean and affordable energy for all. Yet for years luminaries of the same green movement insisted on the disaster that would befall humanity were we to discover a source of clean, renewable, abundant and affordable energy.”

The conflict in this U-turn from the greenies is apparent, but the motivations require some explanation. In an effort drive home how hypocritical and deceptive the anti-Propostiion 23  campaign was in retrospect, Horner has collected a series of quotes that could be highly instructive to the public going forward.

• “If  you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.” – Green Energy guru Amory Lovins
• “If super-cheap solar power is achieved, will humanity grow too much?” –NYT reporter Andy Revkin

Similarly, there are the green energy advocates who don’t really mean it, on threat of emission-free energy

• “Like giving a machine gun to an idiot child” – Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich
• “It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.” – Eco-writer Jeremy Rifkin

“This brings grave suspicion on the advocacy of the anti-Prop. 23 campaign, even before the shameless if by now ritual images of children, struggling to breathe,” Horner continued. “Was the defense of state-level Kyoto-style regulation, which is indisputably climatically meaningless, really that we need to ensure future energy needs, and that this agenda does so. How do we reconcile this with the robust record of years of green activists making plain their belief in the opposite as the agreed goal, that we must avoid access to abundant energy as discovering it would actually be their worst case scenario. Voters can now see how duplicitous those pushing the green agenda have been, and consider this is in the coming debate over ‘green energy’ mandates just now unfolding in Washington. As the recent ’warming really means more cooling’ argument indicates, they are willing to say anything, even that they share your aspirations which they are in fact dedicated to defeat. But what they’ve said the loudest and the longest period of time seems to be what they really believe. And this is that the government must adopt policies to ensure Americans no longer have access to abundant, affordable and reliable energy supplies. And they know the ‘renewables’ agenda is the best way to impose that energy poverty. Even if it requires saying the opposite of what they believe, in order to fool people into accepting that which they reject when presented in a more straightforward fashion.”

Those Americans who reside in the more industrialized areas of the country, which are reliant upon affordable energy sources, have good cause to be concerned about how other states might react to AB-32. For starters, they should encourage state level policymakers to acquaint themselves with a study released last year by Robert Michaels of California State University, Fullerton. His paper explains in great detail the many ways in which CARB’s economic modeling of AB 32 is fatally flawed and how CARB threatens California’s economic welfare. Here are a few of the key findings:

• “There are no world climate benefits from AB 32. California’s greenhouse gas emissions are only 2 percent of global emissions, and its share is falling as those from China and the developing world rapidly rise.”
• “CARB’s results come from a computer model that is by its own admission unreal. In the model, it is mathematically impossible to have unemployment as high as prevails today, and the model does not allow climate policy to change the rate at which unprofitable businesses close or leave the state.”
• “ To create benefits from costly command-and-control regulations, CARB assumes that Californians do not know best what works for their own lives, but that CARB’s choices are economically superior—a heroic and unsupportable assumption.”

“AB 32 started as `feel good’ legislation that would set an example for other states and nations, few of which have actively followed it,” Michaels concludes. “Since its passage, California’s unemployment has risen to 12 percent, and CARB’s claim that its policies will improve our lives becomes less credible by the day. An unelected Air Resources Board has chosen to bet the well-being of millions of Californians on computer models that cannot even give an accurate picture of today’s economy.”

Our suit, CEI vs. NASA (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia), followed on the heels of ClimateGate, and a December 2009 Notice of Intent to Sue if NASA did not turn over certain records withheld since CEI sought them in August 2007 and January 2008 requests. That Notice was eleven months ago and, despite NASA offering some documents and admitting — temporarily — that certain others relating to the advocacy site used by NASA scientists, RealClimate.org were “agency records”, NASA then ceased its brief steps to comply with the transparency statute FOIA.

Despite NASA stonewalling CEI has already learned, for example, that NASA does not, contrary to widespread media and pressure group claims, have an independent temperature data set. Instead, as NASA told USA Today in an email, despite its serial, breathless press releases trumpeting some new temperature high, it actually is just a modeling office, which also (for unknown reasons, possibly extra attention and importance, or mere advocacy)  cobbles together some US data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) with that of the Climatic Research Unit’s temperature history. You may recall how CRU withdrew its claim to a temperature history data set after ClimateGate led to an admission it actually lost its data.

Specifically, CEI’s FOIA suit seeks documents and emails relating to NASA’s temperature record, which NASA was forced to correct in response to criticism from a leading climate watchdog, Steve McIntyre.  Those corrections destroyed NASA’s stance that U.S. temperatures have been steadily rising in recent years and returned 1934, not 1998, to being the warmest year on record. NASA refuses to give CEI the computer file they used to make these changes, whose title includes “Steve” and “alternate cleaning.”

CEI also seeks emails from NASA scientists using Real Climate.org on official time using official resources, often to advance what NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (its climate activist office) has decided is appropriate public advocacy.

In addition to uncovering the “Steve”/”cleaning” file, a few of the more interesting pieces of evidence expounded upon in CEI’s brief include:

* After CEI filed the FOIA seeking RealClimate emails, administrators at Real Climate deleted all timestamps on all of their postings, making it impossible to show they were made during work hours.  But we kept color copies of the original posts.

* NASA admits that it discovered 3,500 emails on Dr. Schmidt’s NASA computer related to his work on RealClimate but won’t produce them.

* NASA did not ask Dr. Schmidt to look for responsive records until 22 months after we sent them the FOIA and threatened to sue.  It is highly likely relevant emails were destroyed during this period.

* NASA’s delay in responding to CEI’s FOIA requests was extraordinary, far outside its normal or even most egregious examples of delay or non-compliance. For instance:

o   NASA took more than 900 days to produce documents pursuant to CEI’s two 2007 requests.  The agency took more than 700 days to produce records in response to CEI’s 2008 request.  NASA does not explain these delays. FOIA requires that an agency produce responsive records within 20 days. Although agencies rarely meet that deadline, even for “complex” FOIA requests, NASA’s average processing time is under 100 days. In 2008, NASA processed complex requests in 82 days, on average. In 2009, it processed such requests in 89 days, on average.

o   Prompted by congressional inquiries, the NASA Inspector General investigated the delay associated with these FOIA Requests. The Inspector General determined that the delays were caused by “inadequate direction” as to what documents were requested; “inadequate communication between NASA personnel; and “inadequate staffing” at the Goddard FOIA office.  In reality, one of the primary reasons for the delay was that NASA did not inform GISS officials about one of the requests and inexplicably held documents for years instead of producing them on a rolling basis, as requested.

We should argue this within the month. CEI requests the court allow it to proceed to the discovery stage next, examining records and deposing relevant witnesses.

A new study focusing on what one organization feels is an abuse of power was released Wednesday, naming the 10 worst state attorneys general in recent history.

Hans Bader, Counsel for Special Projects at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote the report, which names Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal as the worst.

“The nation’s worst state attorney general is Richard Blumenthal, a tireless crusader for growing the power of his own office and spreading largesse to his cronies,” Bader wrote.

Bader focused largely on Blumenthal’s role in litigation against tobacco companies, starting with the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

“Wealthy trial lawyers across the nation received $14 billion nationally in attorneys’ fees under a $246 billion-plus settlement paid for primarily by smokers — the alleged victims of the very fraud that begat the settlement,” Bader said.

The report says Blumenthal steered $65 million in fees to his own allies and the associates of former Gov. John Rowland, later convicted of corruption in an unrelated matter.

It adds that Blumenthal went “through the motions” of soliciting letters from firms interested in representing the state in the lawsuit. Of the four he selected, one was his former firm, another’s partner was married to a partner in the first firm and a managing partner in the third served as counsel to Rowland.

Blumenthal is also bashed for a lawsuit he filed on behalf of several other states against out-of-state utilities for allegedly contributing to global warming.

“Blumenthal himself admitted that his goal was to ’shake up and reshape the way an industry does business’ across the nation,” Bader wrote. “Since when is that the role of a state official?”

During an interview, Bader said that Blumenthal’s recent aggressiveness against insurance companies did not contribute to his ranking, but it may in future lists.

“That’s something that did not factor, but it may strengthen the case in the future,” Bader said. “In a sense, that’s the icing on the cake.”

Blumenthal did not return a message seeking comment.

Read the whole thing here.

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.

So thousands are forced to stand for as long as eight hours waiting to gain access to the convention hall in the freezing and now snowing weather more wintry than Copenhagen is used to (what did you expect, Gore showed up). And a world where some would be more equal than others, particularly our environmentalist betters, is on display, but in an utterly impermissible way.

I have received an email from someone attending the Conference of the Parties (having been to six such absurdities, I actually finally learned a few years ago not to bother). And he informs me that the greens were not having any of this system whereby they lose a lottery and don’t get to be inside hectoring negotiators, or otherwise dealing with things the way everyone else has to.

The Obama administration agreed. My observer source writes:

“Lack of space has led to reduction in number of observers allowed access to Bella Center.

ENGOs complained to US Delegation that not enough of them were allowed in.

US Delegation rides to rescue and supplies 10 “PARTY” badges (not “observer” badges, but “Party” badges) with the understanding that they not abuse them, that is, pretend like they are observer badges (eg, don’t go to delegate meetings or other meetings observers would not normally be allowed in to).

David Doniger [NB: of pressure group Natural Resources Defense Council, a group that used to work closely with Enron to get cap-and-trade, incidentally] is running around with his badge tucked beneath his sweater–a no-no. Badges are supposed to be worn in full view.

Business groups, also with people cooling their heels outside the Bella Center, caught wind of this. Someone approached [US "climate envoy"] Todd Stern. He seemed in the dark.

US delegation said it would provide 10 badges to business groups. (Not sure if they’ve been delivered yet).”

As indicated, in addition to granting the greens disproportionate access and more than had been decided through allocations and actually a recent lottery for Thursday and Friday passes, “Party” badges also allow access to rooms and negotiators that Observer badges do not.

Would it be ok for State Department employees to hand over their identification badges to green lobbyists to wander around the building as if they were employees? Why not? Do take note of the too-close-for-comfort relationship exposed by the impropriety.

Now, about how those cap-and-trade “allowances” are politically allocated…

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.

Which raises the second, ultra-whiny complaint sniffing about “private emails”. Actually, in looking into this I have yet to see one private email. So far I have only found more than a thousand emails subject to the UK’s freedom of information act, discussing taxpayer funded projects and professional advocacy. Someone might volunteer some of these private emails. And computer code, annotations, etc.

Then comes the substance-free hand-wringing that the pre-Copenhagen timing of this involuntary compliance with the transparency laws — which could have been accomplished years earlier if only the hucksters weren’t hiding and destroying the evidence — gives cause to probably better just ignore it all because the wrong kind of people must be behind getting it out into the open. Oh.

Besides, the BBC  has admitted it had the material six weeks before others stumbled onto it, which, given the history of how UK whistleblowers work, also informs a conclusion that a whistleblower sought to get the material out in response to Phil Jones’s latest effort to avoid providing the raw data. That was to claim that he lost it (which doesn’t pass the red face test for several reasons not least of which is there are no “oh, snap!” emails indicating concern among these alarmists that they did look only to see they actually had lost the raw data they had been refusing access to for years on ever-changing bases).

But the most revealing tantrum comes to me today in an email explaining that the fraudster-funded DeSmogBlog wants to take the discussion in the following direction: the skeptics, and particularly the Competitive Enterprise Institute, had the information before saying anything about it. If so that would somehow indicate we have some involvement in whatever process it was — hacking, whistleblowing — that forced at least partial compliance with long-obstructed requests under the UK’s freedom of information act. Because apparently that would impact the importance of what the information affirms. Their evidence is that we were able to see right away what this material signified. It is that self-evident. but nothing is easy for the alarmists. Just as with climate that’s always changing, they are able to see nefariousness behind the simplest observation.

But they are confusing us with the BBC, having the information as of October 12 but also to having sat on it until after others had let the nasty kitten out of the bag, at which point the guy who had received it in early October said he was buys and would figure out what to say about it soon.

This is somewhat similar to CEI, if for about six weeks longer than we waited. Indeed, I’ve checked with my colleagues, and their experience was like mine. I received an email notifying me that the materials were posted on an obscure site, on Wednesday November 18. Then I received another the next day, and posted an item here saying to keep an eye on what develops.

All of which I really think is to say that the alarmists recognize full-well what threat these affirmations pose. The substance terrifies them. It is so damning that they’re flailing about to assign some miscreance to its emergence to tar it. Although as a matter of, well, substance, that would not do so. And they want to do everything they can to avoid addressing the substance. Because the substance dooms them.