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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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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The media continue to report dismal economic news, raising the specter that our teetering economy may fall back into a “double-dip recession.” Continuing high unemployment is the biggest worry for most Americans. The percentage of working-age people in the labor force last month fell to 64.7 percent—the lowest figure in a quarter century.

You would think that the administration’s top priority, then, would be to foster a pro-investment, pro-hiring business atmosphere. You’d certainly not expect them to pursue policies that could push any impending recovery, fragile at best, over the “tipping point” and down into another economic chasm.

That, however, appears to be just what they’re doing.

The administration’s entire agenda—from “stimulus” spending, to government-run healthcare, to takeovers of financial institutions, to higher taxes—has spread paralyzing uncertainty throughout the investment community. But that hasn’t caused them even to slow down, let alone change course.

Consider three job-killing measures imposed by this administration in a single area: environmental regulation.

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We will call the whole thing off.

Although the media altered the story line beginning in March 2001, the inescapable fact is that the Clinton administration doomed the Kyoto treaty by agreeing to something for which there was insufficient will in Congress. Clinton thereby put our name and political prestige on the line recklessly, hoping to pressure Congress, but leading to eight years of (largely either uninformed or simply disingenuous) harping about the wretchedness of George W. Bush refusing to follow through on Clinton’s political commitment.

By this and according to none other than candidate Barack Obama, our national name was tarnished. He vowed to restore it. He has not only failed but made things worse, though we should remain thankful for small favors such as this.

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From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama declared Friday a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been reached among the U.S., China and three other countries on a global effort to curb climate change but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty.

“It is going to be very hard, and it’s going to take some time,” he said near the conclusion of a 193-nation global warming summit. “We have come a long way, but we have much further to go.”

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So Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just made news by landing in Copenhagen and immediately announcing $100 billion through 2020 in additional new money to developing countries, in the name of “climate change”.

Climate changes. Always has. Always will. And so long as a country remains poor, its climate and weather will be among the greatest challenges to its people. Just like it was to us until we industrialized and got wealthy. All of the billions in foreign development aid have ostensibly been to help these countries deal with climate change (though it is not due to the weather that they remain poor). We know how wealth transfers to kleptocracies works out. We should expect nothing different here. It’s just waste and an invitation to fraud on a far grander scale.

For perspective, in 2008, total United States Overseas Development Aid was $26 billion. So you see we’re talking about a spectacular increase in foreign development aid in the name of something the case for which is collapsing all around us.

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A little cartoon to brighten your day, even as Senate Democrats seem Hell-bent on trying to hit the dimmer switch on our economy.

Read more here and here.