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The scene at CPAC was of a movement at a point of transition – the old Reagan coalition doing battle with a new more libertarian rising generation. Whenever great transitions come, the existing hierarchy does its best to preserve the existing order of things. In this case, that order is unlikely to be preserved for long, for a whole host of reasons out of the control of any faction.

Still, the problem remains: even accepting or adapting toward their views on marriage, immigration, foreign policy, national security, marijuana and more, are the challengers to the still-dominant viewpoints on the right likely to bring Republicans any closer to electoral viability?

The answer is almost certainly not. What is most troubling about the clashes on the right at the moment is not their ferocity or their insignificance, but rather how little they have to do with the issues Americans actually care about. The persistent inability of the right – conservatives, libertarians, and the Republican Party as a whole – to adapt a message that matches up with the shifting interests and focuses of huge swathes of the American people is a defect shared across all the warring factions.

During the coming wilderness years, the right needs to set aside their hopes for a common sense approach to tax reform, fiscal restraint, and entitlement reform – none of which are possible under the auspices of this White House, and few of which have popular support. Instead, they should apply real ingenuity to the challenge of presenting a message and a set of policies which rebut the dominant themes of the left. They should start by addressing the “War on Women”, the apotheosis of President Obama’s strategic approach: find and highlight as many wedge issues as possible that serve to naturally excite his base and pit factions of the right against itself. This is a strategy that will survive Obama, and that the right must mitigate or even turn to its benefit.

The economic decline of the past few years has led to a rising number of “1099 Moms” or “Etsy Earners” – women who’ve started home businesses or found contracting work to make ends meet and to stay engaged in their careers in the longterm, recognizing they’ll have to go back to full-time work as soon as they are able. The overall 1099 portion of the economy has grown dramatically – Houston alone has seen about a 12% increase since 2009. What are some ways conservatives could approach reaching these women and other work-from-home professionals?

Here are five general approaches to policy areas that can serve as a starting point for crafting an Etsy Earner agenda.

TAXES: Start with a push to end the massive tax penalties on self-employed work. Self-employed Etsy Earners pay 15.3% out of pocket on payroll taxes, and are penalized if they don’t cut a check every 3 months (rather than having it deducted out of your count, and your employer paying half of it). To add insult to injury, those who are married also suffer from a dramatic marriage penalty: they are taxed at their spouse’s marginal rate even if they’re making a fraction of what he earns.

HEALTH CARE: Consider the creation of a Health, Education & Retirement account or accounts that combines the functions of HSA, 529, and 401(k). A HER Account would streamline the process for saving toward key life needs and recognize that these costs are more persistent in the new economy. Republicans already talk about why individuals should get the same tax treatment for health care as their employer, ensuring portability. But they should reboot the issue by creating a carveout for the self-employed, framed as giving them the same benefits corporations get. The left’s use of birth control politics will continue to trouble the right, but they should begin posing Bobby Jindal’s question: Would you rather be able to buy your birth control over the counter, without having to go through an unnecessary doctor’s appointment, tax free through your HSA, just like (used to be able to, before Obamacare) with Aspirin?

EDUCATION AND CHILDCARE: School choice is the great white hope on the right, but they should expand their normal conversation about it to include the parent trigger and education savings accounts which can be used toward Pre-K or toward child care. The current deductibility limit for child care expenses comes nowhere near the annual cost for most families, which particularly hurts single moms, who have no option but to work and put their kids in homecare or daycare. It also creates a huge incentive to dump kids into Head Start, a failed program which drives up costs for every other type of child care. Either make every penny of childcare expenses deductible, or create a tax-free childcare/education savings account, perhaps framed more broadly as Childrearing Accounts. The right should look to the example of Arizona’s Empowerment Savings Account program, where in addition to school tuition, the money can also be used for home-schooling and other qualifying expenses.

HIGHER ED: The right has a grab bag of ideas when it comes to challenging the existing paradigm of public higher ed institutions—whether on the creation of a $10,000 degree, credentialing process, loan process reforms, or other areas. To address Etsy Earners, Republicans should advocate making all student loan interest deductible to offer some relief for people saddled with loans as a reward for the responsible: you get the expanded deduction if you’re current on all your payments. But they should also embrace the forward-looking proposal from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a college dropout himself, who has spearheaded the University of Wisconsin flex degree. In an era where a diploma is more about credentialing for work than a liberal arts experience, a system which tests for competency from home in a family friendly manner which equips you with a top tier degree from a state institution is extremely friendly to working moms.

GAS AND GROCERIES: Regardless what the Fed or the Bureau of Labor Statistics tries to tell you about the lack of inflation, costs are hitting the middle class hard in these key areas. Republicans need to have a gas and groceries agenda. Just looking at ads from late 2008 and early 2009 illustrate the hit to the wallet that the lower and middle classes are feeling when they feed their families. Instead of simply attacking food stamps, Republicans should combine a series of policies into a gas and groceries package – one which would include policies to slow inflation, eliminate incentives for energy companies to turn corn into gas, provide tax credits to families to help them cope with rising grocery bills, and generally target the government policies which drive the prices people see every day which impact family budgets the most.

The right mocked Julia when they met her – but she is the rising model for life, and that means the right needs a message for her, too. The left’s answer is particularly uninventive: the offer of more benefits, doubling down on 1970s-style employer requirements, without mention of cost. This leaves a wealth of opportunities for the right to turn the left’s strategy back on it. All it takes is recognizing these opportunities when they arise, and engaging in a proactive strategy to highlight the gap between the left’s stale solutions and ones adapted to the realities of the new economy.

Benjamin Domenech is editor of The Transom. Click here to subscribe.

[First published at RealClearPolitics.]

The scene at CPAC was of a movement at a point of transition – the old Reagan coalition doing battle with a new more libertarian rising generation. Whenever great transitions come, the existing hierarchy does its best to preserve the existing order of things. In this case, that order is unlikely to be preserved for long, for a whole host of reasons out of the control of any faction.

Still, the problem remains: even accepting or adapting toward their views on marriage, immigration, foreign policy, national security, marijuana and more, are the challengers to the still-dominant viewpoints on the right likely to bring Republicans any closer to electoral viability?

The answer is almost certainly not. What is most troubling about the clashes on the right at the moment is not their ferocity or their insignificance, but rather how little they have to do with the issues Americans actually care about. The persistent inability of the right – conservatives, libertarians, and the Republican Party as a whole – to adapt a message that matches up with the shifting interests and focuses of huge swathes of the American people is a defect shared across all the warring factions.

During the coming wilderness years, the right needs to set aside their hopes for a common sense approach to tax reform, fiscal restraint, and entitlement reform – none of which are possible under the auspices of this White House, and few of which have popular support. Instead, they should apply real ingenuity to the challenge of presenting a message and a set of policies which rebut the dominant themes of the left. They should start by addressing the “War on Women”, the apotheosis of President Obama’s strategic approach: find and highlight as many wedge issues as possible that serve to naturally excite his base and pit factions of the right against itself. This is a strategy that will survive Obama, and that the right must mitigate or even turn to its benefit.

The economic decline of the past few years has led to a rising number of “1099 Moms” or “Etsy Earners” – women who’ve started home businesses or found contracting work to make ends meet and to stay engaged in their careers in the longterm, recognizing they’ll have to go back to full-time work as soon as they are able. The overall 1099 portion of the economy has grown dramatically – Houston alone has seen about a 12% increase since 2009. What are some ways conservatives could approach reaching these women and other work-from-home professionals?

Here are five general approaches to policy areas that can serve as a starting point for crafting an Etsy Earner agenda.

TAXES: Start with a push to end the massive tax penalties on self-employed work. Self-employed Etsy Earners pay 15.3% out of pocket on payroll taxes, and are penalized if they don’t cut a check every 3 months (rather than having it deducted out of your count, and your employer paying half of it). To add insult to injury, those who are married also suffer from a dramatic marriage penalty: they are taxed at their spouse’s marginal rate even if they’re making a fraction of what he earns.

HEALTH CARE: Consider the creation of a Health, Education & Retirement account or accounts that combines the functions of HSA, 529, and 401(k). A HER Account would streamline the process for saving toward key life needs and recognize that these costs are more persistent in the new economy. Republicans already talk about why individuals should get the same tax treatment for health care as their employer, ensuring portability. But they should reboot the issue by creating a carveout for the self-employed, framed as giving them the same benefits corporations get. The left’s use of birth control politics will continue to trouble the right, but they should begin posing Bobby Jindal’s question: Would you rather be able to buy your birth control over the counter, without having to go through an unnecessary doctor’s appointment, tax free through your HSA, just like (used to be able to, before Obamacare) with Aspirin?

EDUCATION AND CHILDCARE: School choice is the great white hope on the right, but they should expand their normal conversation about it to include the parent trigger and education savings accounts which can be used toward Pre-K or toward child care. The current deductibility limit for child care expenses comes nowhere near the annual cost for most families, which particularly hurts single moms, who have no option but to work and put their kids in homecare or daycare. It also creates a huge incentive to dump kids into Head Start, a failed program which drives up costs for every other type of child care. Either make every penny of childcare expenses deductible, or create a tax-free childcare/education savings account, perhaps framed more broadly as Childrearing Accounts. The right should look to the example of Arizona’s Empowerment Savings Account program, where in addition to school tuition, the money can also be used for home-schooling and other qualifying expenses.

HIGHER ED: The right has a grab bag of ideas when it comes to challenging the existing paradigm of public higher ed institutions—whether on the creation of a $10,000 degree, credentialing process, loan process reforms, or other areas. To address Etsy Earners, Republicans should advocate making all student loan interest deductible to offer some relief for people saddled with loans as a reward for the responsible: you get the expanded deduction if you’re current on all your payments. But they should also embrace the forward-looking proposal from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a college dropout himself, who has spearheaded the University of Wisconsin flex degree. In an era where a diploma is more about credentialing for work than a liberal arts experience, a system which tests for competency from home in a family friendly manner which equips you with a top tier degree from a state institution is extremely friendly to working moms.

GAS AND GROCERIES: Regardless what the Fed or the Bureau of Labor Statistics tries to tell you about the lack of inflation, costs are hitting the middle class hard in these key areas. Republicans need to have a gas and groceries agenda. Just looking at ads from late 2008 and early 2009 illustrate the hit to the wallet that the lower and middle classes are feeling when they feed their families. Instead of simply attacking food stamps, Republicans should combine a series of policies into a gas and groceries package – one which would include policies to slow inflation, eliminate incentives for energy companies to turn corn into gas, provide tax credits to families to help them cope with rising grocery bills, and generally target the government policies which drive the prices people see every day which impact family budgets the most.

The right mocked Julia when they met her – but she is the rising model for life, and that means the right needs a message for her, too. The left’s answer is particularly uninventive: the offer of more benefits, doubling down on 1970s-style employer requirements, without mention of cost. This leaves a wealth of opportunities for the right to turn the left’s strategy back on it. All it takes is recognizing these opportunities when they arise, and engaging in a proactive strategy to highlight the gap between the left’s stale solutions and ones adapted to the realities of the new economy.

Benjamin Domenech is editor of The Transom. Click here to subscribe.

[First published at RealClearPolitics.]

The United States Navy has embraced climate change ideology. In an interview with the Boston Globe on March 9, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, the Navy’s top officer in the Pacific, stated that climate change was the biggest long-term threat in the Pacific region and “probably the most likely thing that is going to happen…that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

It’s troubling that the top officers of our Navy have accepted the misguided theory of man-made climate change.

Admiral Locklear continued: 

“Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”

Unfortunately, the admiral is only looking at part of the tropical storm picture. While 2012 was an active year for typhoons in the Pacific, global tropical storm activity continued to be at a low level for the seventh year in a row, according to storm expert Dr. Ryan Maue. Further, satellite data shows no increase in tropical storm frequency or strength over the last 30 years.

Not only is the Navy concerned about climate change, they are attempting to do something about it. Both the Navy and the Air Force have established goals to use a 50/50 blend of biofuel and petroleum-based fuel for planes and ships. Navy plans call for establishment of a “Green Strike Group” task force by 2016, fueled by the biofuel blend, and for alternative fuels to power half of all energy consumption by 2020.

In 2011, the Navy and the Departments of Energy and Agriculture publically committed to invest $510 million to create an “advanced biofuel industry” based on algae. Algae-based biofuel will be purchased for the “bargain price” of $26 per gallon, or more than six times the price of current petroleum-based fuel. But, according to a 2011 study by the Rand Corporation, “…the use of alternative, rather than petroleum derived, fuels offers no direct military benefits.”

So why does the Navy want to fly fighter jets on algae-based fuels? If domestic sourcing was the reason, fuel could be produced from US coal at much lower cost than from algae. It’s to reduce emissions of those nasty greenhouse gases, of course. US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus makes this clear:

“We’re gonna be using American produced, American energy that…will make us better environmental stewards because we will be contributing less to climate change and burning much cleaner fuel.”

Admiral Locklear is also concerned about sea level change, stating in the interview:

“You have real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level…If it goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.”

It is true that sea levels are rising. According to NASA, ocean levels have risen about 390 feet since that last ice age 20,000 years ago. Levels rose about 7‒8 inches during the last hundred years. But no scientist can tell when natural sea level rise ended and man-made sea level rise began. Nor is there any empirical evidence that sea level rise is accelerating. The 20-foot sea level rise predicted by some for the year 2100 is highly unlikely.

On March 5, Admiral Locklear told Congress that the automatic budget cuts from the sequester that went into effect on March 1 are already impacting his operations. He warned of cuts to aircraft flight hours, pay levels, and civilian jobs. He told the committee that the sequester cuts limit the ability of the Pacific Command to deter, assure, operate, and maintain its forces

But the admiral did not mention impacts to the Navy’s algae-based biofuel program during his testimony. Could it be that futile efforts to stop climate change are a higher priority than the readiness of the United States Navy?

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism:  Mankind and Climate Change Mania.

[First published in The Washington Times.]

On a recent work-related field trip to Washington D.C., I had the opportunity to pose some questions to EPA Senior Policy Advisor for Oil and Natural Gas, Bob Sussman.

The subject matter of his presentation and the ensuing discussion revolved largely around potential EPA actions regarding fracking, approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and LNG exports, but also included commentary on climate change regulation initiatives that were likely to proceed from the administration.

My question was as follows: 

Paul Crovo: “Despite claims by many such as Al Gore that the subject of man-made climate change is settled, there is a substantial and credible body of within the scientific community that has published hundreds of peer reviewed studies that bring such claims into question. Does the administration take dissenting views into account when it formulates its policy decisions on potential climate change regulations?”

Before we get on with it, let me say this: I was expecting the question to elicit a well-reasoned response from Mr. Sussman. But the answer that was given was, frankly, barren of facts and not very well supported. The advisor first took a few steps back by stating that he was not a climate change scientist, so as to apparently qualify his limited knowledge of the science.

He then proceeded to cite studies from the National Academy of Sciences as reasoning enough to support the idea that climate change was being driven by man-made actions. He then concluded by saying he believed that “the debate on the science was largely settled.” I followed up with a question on the president’s State of the Union speech in which he articulated some “facts” that he felt offered proof of anthropogenic global warming. Ok, on with it:

PC: “So you would concur with the President’s claims regarding climate change that he mentioned in his State of the Union Speech?”

Sussman: “What claims are you referring to?’

PC: “Record high temperatures and extreme weather events…”

Sussman: “Again, I am not a climate scientist, but….”

In short, I guess I came away a little surprised that a senior advisor to the EPA, even one who may not specialize in climate change, would be so reluctant to offer any of his own defense of the AGW argument and would be so quick to fall back on NAS studies. Frankly, as someone who is by no means an expert, but has done his share of reading on the subject over the last four years, I came away believing I knew more about the subject than Mr. Sussman.

This little experience actually made me wonder how many people at the EPA actually know that much about the science the agency claims as support for their regulatory efforts.

Central banks bought 534.6 tons of gold during 2012, the largest amount in 48 years. Interest is clearly growing in gold as an international monetary asset as more countries have participated. Many have specifically stated their intent is to diversify away from U.S. dollars.

China is the world’s largest gold producer, by far. It produces 40 percent more than second-place Australia. But since 2009, China’s central bank has not reported gold purchases even though it is known to be buying gold directly from its own mines—including from foreign companies mining gold in China—and also from international gold markets.

Though China’s doesn’t report its central bank purchases, the World Gold Council reports investment demand for gold in China was up 24 percent in the fourth quarter 2012, compared to the previous quarter, and jewelry consumption was steady at 137.0 tons. China is second only to India in consumption of gold for jewelry. (Every year India buys four times as much gold as all of North America.)

Countries are shifting away from the dollar because the massive increase in U.S. government spending has undermined confidence in its future. In his first term of office President Obama added more to the national debt than all prior presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush combined. Everyone knows Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going broke, but Obama has made no effort to address those problems. Instead, he tries to further increase spending. The Fed has been accommodative by “quantitative easing”—printing money. Now in the fourth round, QE4, the Fed creates $85 billion every month by simply writing checks for that amount to buy treasury bonds and mortgages. Over a year, that’s another $1 trillion.

The monetary expansion is being done in the name of stimulating the economy, but the results are very unsatisfactory. The recovery from the recession has been far slower than from previous recessions which had no such stimulus measures. The Obama administration claimed its original stimulus program (over $800 billion) would keep unemployment below 8 percent. Instead, it not only rose above 8 percent but remained there for more than 40 months. It rose even higher than the administration predicted would occur without the stimulus! The effect was the exact opposite of what the administration intended, despite adding QE2, QE3, and more than a year of QE4.

The recession triggered by the housing/banking bubble in the U.S. led to economic contractions in Europe compounded by revelations of financial weaknesses in certain euro-zone countries. The result was a series of bailouts and a flood of new money in the form of massive expansion of credit by the European Central Bank to hundreds of banks in the various countries.  This was to prevent an immediate liquidity crisis, but it was also intended to stimulate economic growth, which it failed to do. The euro-zone’s economy shrank last quarter at the fastest rate since the worst of the recession in 2009. It has now contracted for three straight quarters, and the European Commission expects it to worsen in 2013. Euro-zone unemployment at11.7 percent is now the highest in its history, and the rate is 26 percent in Greece and Spain.

The European Commission expects Portugal’s unemployment rate to reach 17.3 percent in 2013. Countries are failing to meet their targets for deficit reduction; Spain has obtained a two-year extension, and Portugal says it, too, will need an extension. France lost its triple-A credit rating in November, and Moody’s stripped the United Kingdom of that prized rating in February. A Moody’s spokesman said, “We expect the country’s debt will continue to grow in coming years …[and not] stabilize until 2016.”

Printing more money lowers the value of a currency in relation to others. Therefore, a weak currency is seen as a way to improve the economy by increasing exports to other countries, who find them less expensive.  Of course, other countries may then retaliate and devalue their currencies in order to remain competitive in international markets.  If that happens, no country has an advantage; all the currencies will simply have gotten cheaper. That is what happened in the 1930s in a series of destructive devaluations that came to be known as “beggar thy neighbor” policies. It is happening again today as an expedient to evade unpopular but necessary reforms on fiscal and budgetary matters. At the same time, the uncertain and depreciating paper currencies have led to distrust of their value as monetary reserves, making gold look better and better as a monetary asset.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have led the way in printing money.  Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has stated he will continue to pursue easy money policies until the economy improves. ECB president Mario Draghji has said he will supply any amount of money that is necessary to save the euro. Like the Fed and the ECB, the Bank of England has also been pursuing quantitative easing as a remedy for past spending excesses and to stimulate the British economy. Lack of results has led to larger doses of the same failed medicine.

Now Japan, the world’s third largest economy, has joined in with larger doses of the same prescription for its stagnant economy. In the recent election, Shinzo Abe was elected prime minister in large measure because of campaigning for monetary easing through “unlimited” or “open ended” purchases of government debt by the Bank of Japan.  He said, “Countries around the world are printing more money to boost their export competitiveness. Japan must do so too.” He called for more aggressive action along the lines of the Fed and the ECB.

The idea that government spending would stimulate the economy can be traced to John Maynard Keynes.  He claimed government spending produced a multiplier effect, a chain reaction of additional spending in the economy.  But in my new book, The Impending Monetary Revolution, the Dollar and Gold, I point out that the Keynesian multiplier is always less than 1.0. That means the money that is spent over and over again in the private sector from the government spending is always less than the cost of the programs. If it weren’t, the U.S., Greece, and other spendthrift countries wouldn’t be going broke—they’d be getting richer the more they spent! My book supports this conclusion by citing impressive academic research as well as actual historical examples, including Japan’s own experience.

No nation has more completely and energetically put Keynesian policy into practice for longer than Japan, and the results have been disastrous. Two decades of economic stagnation. Japan had ten stimulus programs between 1992 and 2000. It spent massively on infrastructure, building bridges, roads, ports,airfields—even sidewalks—as well as supplying huge subsidies to the biotech and telecommunications industries.

Yet the 1990s are known as Japan’s “lost decade,” when it had the lowest productivity rate of any industrialized nation. Instead of boosting economic growth, government spending ballooned the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio to 235 percent, the highest in the world, compared to 65 percent in 1990. Japan now has an even worse national debt problem than the U.S. Oblivious to his nation’s last two decades of experience, Prime Minister Abe is embarking on a more aggressive application of the same policies that have brought trouble to both nations.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has long stored monetary gold for foreign central banks, not only for security but, in times past, as a convenience for some international operations. Following World War II and the onset of the Cold War, Germany stored a large quantity of its gold in the U.S. against the possibility of a Soviet invasion.

Now Germany says it will repatriate 300 metric tons of its gold from the New York Fed and all of the 374 tons stored at the Banque de France. Disappearance of a threat from the Soviet Union was given as the reason for the transfers, but many view them as defensive moves against collapse of the euro. While minimizing the issue, officials at the Bundesbank acknowledged that the moves are “preemptive” in case a “currency crisis” hits the European Monetary Union. Germany several years ago repatriated 940 tons of its gold from the Bank of England. It now has possession of 31 percent of it gold and wants to raise that to at least 50%.

Venezuela, Libya, and Iran have repatriated their gold holdings.  The question now is who will be next? It might be Switzerland. In March 2012 four members of the Swiss Parliament began an initiative to bring Switzerland physical possession of all of its 1,040 tons of gold. The measure now has 90,000 supporters. If 100,000 is reached, parliament must take up a referendum on the issue.

There is talk of the Netherlands repatriating its gold, and Azerbaijan is already doing so. The Netherlands has only about 10 percent of its 612.5 tons of gold at home. Azerbaijan began its repatriation of gold in January 2013 with one ton transferred from London to the new storage facility of the central bank in Baku. In the future all gold will be transferred there. The country expects to double its gold holding this year to 30 tons because of oil revenue. The State Oil Fund (SOFAZ) has been buying 10,000 ounces of gold every week since February 2012.

The repatriation movement is gaining momentum, along with the trend of increased gold buying by central banks. An increasing number of private institutions and individuals are thinking like the banks, especially in the East, where gold is soaring in popularity. Brinks tripled its precious metal storage capacity in Singapore in 2012 and is building a warehouse in Shanghai for precious metals and other high-value goods. Malca-Amit has gold storage sites in New York, Zurich, Hong Kong and Singapore. It’s facility in Singapore has a capacity of 600 tons of gold and is almost full.

Its recently opened vault in Hong Kong can hold 1,000 tons of gold. Joshua Rotbart, executive director of the company, said some Asian investors storing gold in the U.S. and Europe are keen to move it closer to home as more storage space becomes available.

[First published at American Liberty.]

In his first energy speech of his second term, “President Barack Obama tried to move past partisan fights over energy policy on Friday with a modest proposal to fund research into cars that run on anything but gasoline.” The “modest proposal” is what he introduced in the State of the Union Address: an Energy Security Trust (EST)—which is a central part of his economic strategy.

The idea for an EST was developed by a collaboration of high-volume oil consumers and military leaders concerned about US energy security—put forth through a report titled “A National Strategy for Energy Security: Harnessing American Resources and Innovation.” The unique backgrounds of the advocates garnered attention from both sides of the aisle. However, a key component of the Trust was omitted from the President’s Friday speech: increased domestic energy development—the piece that, according to one of the idea’s developers, was designed to win bipartisan support and “keep both sides engaged.”

In response to Obama’s presentation of an EST—which would set aside royalties from oil and gas extracted on federal lands and direct them toward research and development for transportation technologies that reduce our dependence on oil—House Speaker John Boehner’s office says: “For this proposal to even be plausible, oil and gas leasing on federal land would need to increase dramatically. Unfortunately, this administration has consistently slowed, delayed and blocked American energy production.”

Once again, Obama’s speech touted America’s growing “energy future:” “We produce more oil than we have in 15 years. We import less oil than we have in 20 years. …We’re producing more natural gas than we ever have before.” This is true, however Boehner is correct. A new report from the Congressional Research Service “confirms what many have known to be true.” Marc Humphries, the government specialist in energy policy who authored the “U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Production in Federal and Non-Federal Areas” report, says: “All of the increase (in oil and natural gas production) from FY2007 to FY2012 took place on non-federal lands, and the federal share of total U.S. crude oil production fell by about seven percentage points. … In general, the regulatory framework for developing resources on federal lands will likely remain more involved and time-consuming than that on private land.”

Increasing resource development on federal lands is one of the key features of the EST. In fact, the idea is that the funds set aside for the trust would come solely from new development. Yet, Friday’s speech never mentioned that—despite media reports stating: “the new program…would be paid for through royalties generated by offshore drilling of oil and gas development of the outer continental shelf.”

I had a post-speech conversation with Sam Ori, Director of Policy for Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE)—the organization responsible for the Energy Security Leadership Council (about which Obama spoke) and the idea for the EST. While SAFE is pleased that its policy proposal has been picked up by the Administration, Ori wouldn’t comment on the President’s cherry-picking approach to the plan. He did, however, say: “The speech is not the final place. If the EST doesn’t offer new oil and gas development on federal lands, the Republicans won’t sign on.” Ori emphasized that in order for the EST to be a success, it needs to have something that is “attractive to both sides.” The alternative energy research is the carrot for the left and the increased drilling is there for the Republicans. Ori also pointed out—as did Robbie Diamond, Founder, President and CEO of SAFE, during our December conversation—that the EST is for research and development of technologies that will lesson our dependence on oil, not deployment of said technologies.

Somehow, in a time when deficits and government spending are front-page news stories, Obama wants to “divert” revenues already coming into the US treasury into “a dedicated slush fund for alternative energy.” In Friday’s speech, he pointed to SAFE’s proposal when he said: “let’s take some of our oil and gas revenues from public lands and put it towards research that will benefit the public so we can support American ingenuity without adding a dime to our deficit.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski disagrees. Robert Dillon, spokesperson for the Senator told me: “The president hit on a good idea when he called for a trust fund to promote energy innovation. But unlike Sen. Murkowski’s proposal, he would not enable new energy production to pay for it. The president says he wants to divert a share of the royalties from offshore production that has already been factored into the budget, which could mean either deficit spending or less funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. More likely, the president’s real plan is to raise taxes on oil and gas. There’s a better way that not only funds investment in research, but also addresses our need for affordable and abundant energy. It’s Sen. Murkowski’s plan. We hope the president will embrace it.”

Forbes writer, Christopher Helman, takes it one step further. He believes that “this Energy Security Trust could well serve as the tip of a wedge that could some day lever open a new carbon tax.” According to Helman, Connecticut Congressman John Larson, said “that the very purpose of the Energy Security Trust fund was to serve as a conduit for the collection of carbon taxes.” True, Larson does have a proposal from 2006 that is all about a carbon tax, and his proposal bears the same name—but the similarity of the plans stops there. SAFE has never advocated a carbon tax. Because Obama favors a carbon tax, connecting the two plans with the same name is a logical leap, but it misrepresents the current plan.

If Obama was truly “seeking to build some common ground on energy,” he should have included both sides of the equation; incorporating both increased drilling and R & D “investment.” Instead, in his “first energy speech of his second term,” he continued to put partisan considerations before the national interest.

The speech included some populist themes:

• “Our top priority as a nation” should be “reigniting the true engine of America’s economic growth.”
• “Few areas hold more economic promise for creating good jobs and growing our economy than how we use American energy.”
• “What most Americans feel first when it comes to energy prices—or energy issues are prices that they pay at the pump.” And,
• “We’ve worked with the auto companies to put in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history.”

Yet, he omitted any solutions that would help American’s today. The only mention of a pipeline was this: “as long as the pipeline for research is maintained…” No mention was made of the “good jobs” that could be created if he’d quickly approve the Keystone pipeline—something Dave Mallino of the Laborers’ International Union specifically chastised him about on the air with Neil Cavuto.

Regarding fuel economy standards, as we’ve seen with cellulosic ethanol, just because government mandates it, doesn’t make it so.

Friday’s speech didn’t address expanded access to America’s natural resources. It did, however, threaten that the “so-called sequester” would cut into the “muscle and the bone.” Obama claimed that “because of this sequester, we’re looking at two years where we don’t start new research.”

The speech, which was reportedly about freeing “our families and business from the painful spikes in gas prices,” did suggest “more solar power, more wind power”—neither of which do anything to touch “spikes in gas prices.”

SAFE’s EST, which aims to bring both sides together for “energy security,” is admirable, and Ori hopes “that we can be successful.” If shuttling some of the funds from new development—that the government already collects (not a new tax)—toward R & D will cause this administration to finally “stop being an obstacle,” I am all for it. However, I hate that we have to bribe them to do what they should have been doing all along. If this “first energy speech” is any indication, I can’t say I share Ori’s optimism.

I have to agree with Helman. He says we already have an EST. “It’s this: the hard work and innovation of the tens of thousands of engineers at American oil companies who have unlocked a plentiful supply of energy that will keep the nation moving and growing for decades. And all without taxpayer handouts.”

[First published at Townhall.]

For four out of the last seven years, the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund has been projected to have a shortfall should a major hurricane impact the state and cause the fund to pay out to its coverage limits.  This is one of those years. Currently, the Cat Fund is projected to experience a shortfall of $1.5 billion year should a sufficiently bad hurricane strike Florida this year.

What does this mean for the average Floridian?

Some background: The Cat Fund sells reinsurance to every property insurer selling coverage in the state of Florida.  Reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. Florida law requires property insurance companies to purchase a minimum amount of this coverage from the Cat Fund, and the rest they can purchase from the private reinsurance market. The purpose of requiring insurers to purchase some of their reinsurance coverage from the Cat Fund is to keep insurance prices relatively stable for consumers, as the price of private reinsurance can fluctuate from year-to-year.  As such, the Cat Fund is meant to stabilize the Florida insurance market.

However, a potential shortfall of the Cat Fund would be anything but stabilizing. Because every insurer in the state relies on the coverage they purchase from the Cat Fund to pay claims in the event of a storm, if the fund is unable to pay out what it has promised each company after a hurricane, then quite simply, consumers may not get their claims paid in full.  On a larger scale, the consequence would be that many of the state insurance companies would themselves become insolvent (aka: broke) or close enough to it that the Office of Insurance Regulation would have to take some type of action.

Needless to say, mass insurance company insolvencies after a hurricane and the resultant inability of storm-ravaged areas of the state to quickly rebuild would have a catastrophic impact on the state’s economy, not to mention the thousands of families reeling from the aftermath of a hurricane who expected their insurance companies to make good on their promises.

This week, a House committee is scheduled to consider legislation that would gradually decrease the amount of coverage the Cat Fund can sell to a level where it could be reasonably expected to pay.  Currently, the law requires the Cat Fund to sell $17 billion worth of coverage. It has roughly $8.5 billion in reserves and would have to go out into the bond market and sell another $8.5 billion in bonds to pay out the full $17 billion.  However, the Cat Fund’s internal managers and outside firms alike believe that it will only be able to sell roughly $7 billion in bonds, which would leave a $1.5 billion shortfall.

Legislation up for consideration would gradually decrease the fund’s capacity from $17 billion to $14 billion over three years. Similar legislation was filed last year, but was rejected by the Legislature because decreasing the Cat Fund by $3 billion would have required insurance companies to seek that coverage from the private reinsurance market, which is generally more expensive than the state-run Cat Fund.  As such, this would have driven-up insurance rates, albeit by just a little more than 1 percent per year.  Florida’s Insurance Consumer Advocate Robin Westcott also opposed the legislation on these grounds.

This year, however, private reinsurance rates are projected to continue declining (by a projected 7 percent), which would make it an ideal time to consider right-sizing the Cat Fund.  In fact, the aforementioned Ms. Westcott favors this year’s legislation.  After running the numbers with the projected decreases in private reinsurance, her office actuary projected that property insurance rates would either remain the same, but more than likely would decrease if these reforms were enacted by the Legislature.

As such, legislators in the House and Senate insurance committees no longer have last year’s hard choice to make between slightly higher rates and gambling with the state’s economic future. This year, the choice is a lot easier: they can secure the state’s economic future without raising rates; or do nothing and continue peddling false, phantom coverage at great risk to the state.

The choice would be a clear no-brainer… if this wasn’t Tallahassee.

Later this week, the Senate is likely to vote on a “deficit-neutral reserve fund” amendment regarding internet sales taxes, couched in terms of state sales and use tax laws. As is frequently the case with such resolutions, it will contain plain language that is sufficiently generic as to hide its true intention: to corner conservatives into a proxy vote on the “Marketplace Fairness Act,” a flawed bill opposed by most of the conservative movement. If a vaguely-worded resolution draws significant support, then sponsors like Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) will point to it as proof that his misguided legislation to dramatically expand state tax collection authority should get an immediate vote on the Senate floor. Supporters of limited government should oppose the Marketplace Fairness Act and any “reserve fund” scheme to aid its passage because it is bad policy for conservatives and even worse politics.

First, a brief reminder of why this bill is misguided. It would allow states to tax businesses beyond their borders for sales made online, setting a terrible precedent for other areas of tax policy and subjecting businesses to huge compliance burdens. It also imposes an “unlevel” playing field by allowing brick-and-mortar sales to collect tax based on the business’ location while forcing online sales to collect tax based on their customer’s location (a much more burdensome and complicated standard). Third, it creates real interstate commerce burdens of the kind that Congress should be actively avoiding.

But let’s focus on the politics. This is, after all, the United States Senate we’re talking about. Simply stated, the next Republican Senator to get in electoral trouble for being insufficiently supportive of expanding tax collection on businesses across state borders for internet sales will be the first. It’s true that there’s a lot of noise about this bill; that much is undeniable. Big box retailers have poured tens of millions of dollars into a high-powered lobbying and PR blitz to support the Marketplace Fairness Act because it would advantage them against their competition. But I haven’t heard much from what you could call “regular” folks without a business or lobbying interest in the bill saying, “Yes, please. Let’s give state revenue collectors the authority to target businesses outside their borders and levy their complicated taxes on my internet purchases.” In fact, polling on the matter pretty consistently shows that the public opposes the concept behind the bill, including upwards of 75% of conservatives.

A “no” vote on a “reserve fund” scheme might annoy lobbyists in gleaming penthouse offices on K Street, but so what? Regardless of one’s feelings on the underlying issue, a “no” vote is easier to defend back home because a failed reserve fund amendment does nothing to materially impact the fate of the Marketplace Fairness Act (it can always be brought up later) while a successful resolution helps to manufacture pressure to pass the bill ASAP, before committees can fully vet it and before the eyes of the world are truly set upon it. Any Senator with questions about the bill or who has yet to make up his or her mind on it should vote “no” by default, since there is no deadline that must be met and the bill has not been subjected to enough analysis on the Hill.

Beyond the lobbying game, a Republican Party that sees itself as resurgent on thwarting government intrusion on technology policy (witness conservative engagement on cybersecurity, wireless spectrum, and copyright issues) would look awfully strange simultaneously supporting greater tax collection authority via the internet. Some conservatives have made real inroads into tech-focused communities by being consistent opponents of unwarranted government involvement, something quite at odds with the Marketplace Fairness Act.

A lot of Republican Senators have kept their powder dry on the Marketplace Fairness Act because it’s a complicated issue and there have been much more important battles being fought over the last year or so. This week’s vote seems poised to try to trick them into effectively supporting that bill by instead presenting them a generically-worded deficit-neutral reserve fund. Time will tell whether or not they make the right choice, but rest assured that conservatives will be watching very closely.

Joy Pullmann, education research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, has been all over the Common Core beat. Her research and reporting of this latest ham-fisted federal imposition on what should be a local matter is second to none.

Joy’s work drew the attention of nationally syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin. She cited Joy in her latest piece titled “Common Core as Trojan Horse: It’s time to opt out of the creepy federal data-mining racket.”

Malkin’s lead:

Last week, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme.

The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket. (Hello, Jeb Bush.)

The good news: A grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the group Truth in American Education.

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country.

Malkin quotes Joy’s piece in the March 11 Orange County Register op-ed titled “Data Mining Kids Crosses the Line” that outlines some of the more creepy aspects of the Common Core agenda — shocking features most parents, and Malkin, were unaware of until Joy exposed it:

Research fellow Joy Pullmann at the Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student-monitoring techniques such as “functional magnetic resonance imaging” and “using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

Read Malkin’s whole piece, and Joy’s as well. The federal government will take as many liberties with our liberty and privacy as possible … unless we get informed and put a stop to it.

Joy Pullmann, education research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, has been all over the Common Core beat. Her research and reporting of this latest ham-fisted federal imposition on what should be a local matter is second to none.

Joy’s work drew the attention of nationally syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin. She cited Joy in her latest piece titled “Common Core as Trojan Horse: It’s time to opt out of the creepy federal data-mining racket.”

Malkin’s lead:

Last week, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme.

The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket. (Hello, Jeb Bush.)

The good news: A grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the group Truth in American Education.

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country.

Malkin quotes Joy’s piece in the March 11 Orange County Register op-ed titled “Data Mining Kids Crosses the Line” that outlines some of the more creepy aspects of the Common Core agenda — shocking features most parents, and Malkin, were unaware of until Joy exposed it:

Research fellow Joy Pullmann at the Heartland Institute points to a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student-monitoring techniques such as “functional magnetic resonance imaging” and “using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids’ wrists.”

Read Malkin’s whole piece, and Joy’s as well. The federal government will take as many liberties with our liberty and privacy as possible … unless we get informed and put a stop to it.

The 2012 election featured the bottom feeding charge of a Republican War on Women.  The grounds for such a charge were less than zero.  But with the Democrat Party outright controlling so much of the national media, every Democrat talking point takes on added weight.

Is opposition to abortion indicative of a “war on women?”  That would overlook the fact that at least half of babies aborted are female.  Maybe it is a liberal war on women.

The most braindead allegation was that Republicans harbored a secret plan to ban contraceptives.  The effectiveness of that charge depends on the public being ignorant of the landmark 1965 Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which held that married couples (later expanded to everyone) have a constitutionally protected right to purchase contraceptives.

But did you ever see NBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Times, or the Washington Post, even mention Griswold v. Connecticut all year last year?  In the age of the low information voter, poll it and I doubt even 1% would recognize the case.

But numbers don’t lie.  And what the economic numbers show is that it is President Obama who has been conducting the war on women.

Compare how women have fared in the economy in Obama’s first term versus how they fared in Ronald Reagan’s first term.

Obama faced a recession when he entered office.  But it was already 13 months old at the time, and the longest recession since the Great Depression previously was 16 months.  In fact, Obama’s recession ended just 5 months after he entered office.  So for almost all of his first term was after the recession was over.

Reagan entered office facing double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, and soon double digit unemployment.  Real median family incomes had been falling for several years, poverty rates were rising.  Reagan and the Treasury’s support of the dollar that eventually broke the back of inflation also produced the worst recession since the Great Depression (to be fair, the ”recession was a function of capital being reallocated from inflation hedges to real ideas of the mind) up until that time, with the entire recession coming 6 months into Reagan’s first term, and lasting through almost his entire second year.

But still, real median weekly incomes for females rose 32.1% in Reagan’s first term, compared to 6.6% in Obama’s first term.  Employment of women rose by 4,460,000 in Reagan’s first term, while women suffered a net loss of 354,000 jobs during Obama’s first term.  Conversely, the number of women not in the work force rose by 4,458,000 in Obama’s first term, compared to 345,000 in Reagan’s first term.

More than 3 times as many jobs were created for African-American women in Reagan’s first term, compared to Obama’s first term, even though the population was much larger in Obama’s first term.  Jobs for African American women rose by 15.1% in Reagan’s first term, compared to 2.6% in Obama’s first term.

Teenage female African Americans employed fell by 19.1% in Obama’s first term, compared to a decline of just 1.5% in Reagan’s first term.  The unemployment rate for teenage female African-Americans rose by 5.7 percentage points in Obama’s first term, compared to just 1.1 percentage points in Reagan’s first term.  Yet, the labor force participation rate for teenage female African Americans rose by 2.5 percentage points in Reagan’s first term, while it fell by 2.6 percentage points in Obama’s first term.

The poverty rate has soared under President Obama, to 16.1%, higher than when the War on Poverty began, and that covers primarily women.  Child poverty has soared as well, to over 20%, with 8 million American children growing up in poverty.  The Census Bureau reports more Americans in poverty today than at any time in the more than 50 years that Census has been tracking poverty, at almost 50 million, and again that is mostly women, and their children.

Real median household income has declined by nearly 8% in Obama’s first term, which is the equivalent of the middle class losing one month’s pay each year.  Income for the bottom 20% of income earners has declined by a similar amount.  Income has been rising under President Obama only for the top 20%, which is why income inequality has perversely (given Obama’s rhetoric) been rising under President Obama as well.

In President Reagan’s first term, by contrast, the decline in average and low incomes, which had persisted for several years when he entered office, was reversed, and incomes for every income quintile, from the top 20% to the bottom 20%, turned around and rose for several years.

As George Washington University Professor Henry R. Nau summarized in the Wall Street Journal on January 26, 2012,

“the U.S. grew by more than 3% per year [in real terms] from 1980 to 2007, and created more than 50 million new jobs, massively expanding a middle class of working women, African-Americans and legal as well as illegal immigrants.  Per capita income increased by 65%, and household income went up substantially in all income categories.” (emphasis added).

Women under Reagan started their own small businesses in record numbers.  Small business under Obama has been assaulted in every way, with higher tax rates, and soaring regulatory burdens in particular.

Here again we see that President Obama following the exact opposite of every policy of Reagan in every detail has been getting the exact opposite results.  It is time to return women’s liberation to America.  If Obama and Congressional Democrats will not reverse course, then American women will have to restore their liberation at the ballot box in November next year.

[First published at Forbes.]

The Conservative Political Action Conference is clearly not as energized as last year, due largely to the intervening national election, which  many of these folks had thought would end the reign of terror for conservatives by restaffing the White House and executive branch.

There are two main classes of politically aware folks that predominate these days.  The first are people who believe that global warming and income inequality are the spinning out-of-control dangers that will eventually render civilization unrecognizable, and sleep-depriving in the meantime.  They don’t worry at all about the national debt or sovereignty, and are inclined to care more about our harmonization with other countries and universal precepts than protection against either intruders or radical Islam.

The people at CPAC are in large part the mirror image. Global warming doesn’t keep us up nights, but owing China a trillion dollars does. We stick with the observations and arithmetic to undergird our worries, and CPAC provides plenty of information about bad trends and unintended consequences.  (This morning’s pick – apparently increased use of ecologically correct cloth shopping bags instead of plastic bags for groceries has  increased the E. coli infection by 25% in some jurisdictions and precipitated some real life martyrs to the green cause.)

A heavy sense of resignation lies on the CPAC audience this year. Although the mainstream media hasn’t mentioned this, 2012 featured the first American president since every state started relying on popular vote to determine the Electoral College to be reelected with fewer votes than when he was first elected.  A president reelected after producing virtually no progress on the slowest recovery in the modern era and having presided over a nation with only 58.6% of its citizens working and the first credit downgrade  in history. A president who we now know chose not to ask the American military to defend our embassy in Libya while it was under attack for seven hours because of the optics of possible additional casualties just before the election.

The White House seems to be pursuing its agenda with increased intensity, and conservatives fear that the unthinkable might be possible in a world where John Kerry is secretary of state and Gina McCarthy runs the Environmental Protection Agency.  There is real concern that the United States might sign onto the Law of the Sea treaty, which is a mammoth wealth transfer to poorer countries, or that the administration might be able to arrange a deal to trade the Keystone pipeline in return for enhanced subsidies on alternative energy projects which mostly  brighten the futures of only the early investors.

Even though many of the elected champions like Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., are here, the only repeated standing ovations I’ve seen so far were for the executive director of the National Rifle Association and the last movie to feature the work of Andrew Breitbart.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was not invited, which I’m sad about, because it is hard to see how conservatives can win by riding any other horse than the GOP, and he appears likely to redefine Republican executive electoral success in one of the bluest states around. The 30 Republican governors have been mentioned several times as a hope for the party.   I think the hope of the nation as well may depend more and more on these men and women state executives engaging 21st century challenges in our state capitals.

Yesterday I wrote the following letter to Cristine Russell in response to her March 12 article in the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Attack of the climate-denial books: Conservative think tanks fuel publishing boom that spreads misinformation.” I have yet to get a reply, but will share it if it ever arrives.

Ms Russell,

Just a few questions arising out of your article yesterday which are what any open-minded journalist or fair-minded ordinary citizen might ask: 

- What specific “misinformation” do conservative think-tanks spread?

- How does it follow that such books are labeled “climate-denials” when they go to great length citing material, including peer-reviewed science journal-published papers, in telling how skeptic climate scientists claim the IPCC has not conclusively made its case that human-induced greenhouse gases are the primary driver of global warming? Why does that not merit the label “plausible skepticism”?

- Why would Riley Dunlap make the statement about “… authors, in turn, are often treated as ‘climate experts’ who may be interviewed on television and radio and quoted by sympathetic columnists…” in the face of no less than the same thing happening with people such as Al Gore, PR man James Hoggan, ex-reporter Ross Gelbspan, and activists Bill McKibben, John Passacantando, Kert Davies and Phil Radford?

- And, though I have many more questions, this last one: Although Dunlap’s work is said to be ” defining what he calls the ‘organized climate-denial machine’,” has he or any other sociologist or any investigative journalist, book author or anybody else ever actually proven the existence of it — namely through the showing of specific material (document scans, undercover video/audio transcripts, leaked emails, money-transfer receipts corresponding to instructions for skeptics to lie about specific science points, etc)?

As I suggested in the comment I placed at the end of your article, we have every appearance that people like Dunlap are “all show and no go” when it comes to the accusation of corruption lodged against skeptic climate scientists, which critically if not fatally impairs their analysis of why skeptics do what they do.

No need to trust me on my own viewpoint, what I urge you to do is exactly what I’ve done: Namely, corroborate the accusation that skeptic climate scientists are on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry to lie about the issue. To do that, you must look into its origins, peel back the layers of who repeats it from whom, and where the original people got their material from and whether the material meets standards you’d find in courtroom evidentiary hearings.

I’d offer you the proverbial $10,000 challenge that you cannot do so, if only I could raise that much money. However, imagine having to meet a much tougher challenge, accomplishing this task under an order from Columbia Journalism Review’s acting Dean (whoever that may be), Chairman Victor Navasky, Editor-in-Chief Cyndi Stivers, Science and Environmental Journalism Assistant Professor / Director Marguerite Holloway, Center for Investigative Journalism Director Sheila Coronel, or even Columbia University’s President Lee Bollinger.

What happens if you fail to meet that challenge?

The R Street Institute, a (small-l) libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. wants to hire a social media and marketing manager.

We’re looking for someone who not only knows the tricks to hoarding a bazillion Facebook likes and Twitter followers, and who can tell a Fark from a Reddit from a Newsvine, but most importantly, someone who can originate and implement innovative online marketing campaigns from start to finish. We need someone who can identify the right audiences, set the right goals and track the right metrics, all while integrating our marketing efforts with our content calendar and our social media strategies with those of our coalition partners.

Experience with basic video production and editing is also a major plus.

An ideal candidate should have an understanding of the free-market movement and demonstrated experience doing the things we want done. This job requires you to be a self-starter. While somebody antagonistic to free market goals couldn’t do this job, agreeing with all of our political views probably isn’t necessary. That’s a long way of saying that you don’t have to identify as a libertarian to work with us.

We’ll offer a chosen candidate tremendous freedom to figure out how to achieve goals like building our social media followers and getting more traffic for our website. We’re not micro-managers and a person who achieves goals can expect tremendous freedom to pursue them.  One of our major initial efforts associated with this position will be a social-media based campaign to educate conservatives and libertarians about wasteful, environmentally destructive spending related to agricultural subsidies.  If you know the farm subsidy landscape, that’s an advantage but, in the end, your social media skills—not your subject matter knowledge—are what really matter.

We think we offer a pretty good work environment. We have a strict rule against holding any standing internal meetings. (Honestly, we have NONE. Ever.) We try to pay more than any other free market non-profit and offer better benefits. Among other things, we pay 100 percent of all health insurance premiums, offer fully employer-paid disability insurance, a 401(k), and a bonus potential that’s unparalleled in the free market movement. There’s free soda and coffee in our office all the time. Our leave policies are also the most generous in the business and you’ll get a employer-paid iPhone as well as whatever laptop computer you want.

To apply, send us a resume, a cover letter, a writing sample to jobs@rstreet.org.

American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle spoke today at a press conference in Washington, D.C. declaring his opposition to a national carbon tax. Pyle was backed by a coalition of representatives from numerous free-market organizations, business groups, and elected officials.

The prepared text of Pyle’s remarks are as follows: 

Thank you, Chairman Scalise, for your invitation to speak today and your strong, principled leadership of the Republican Study Committee. The American people depend on affordable energy to power our economy and care for our families. Today’s announced resolution shows how a carbon tax on these energy sources would be harmful to American families. Proponents of a carbon tax suggest a ‘tax swap’ deal in order to offset income or payroll taxes. The Institute for Energy Research, AEA’s parent organization, recently published a study that demonstrates how a carbon tax would not only further confuse the tax code, but would be far more damaging to our economy than the existing tax system. The most glaring problem of a carbon tax, of course, is the negative effects it would have on the American people.

By its very nature, a carbon tax would put an unnecessary burden on American families and businesses by raising energy costs. This increase in costs would not only affect energy prices, such as electricity and gasoline, but will also increase the costs of food and manufactured items that we use in our everyday lives. Chairman Scalise recognizes these negative implications. He understands our need for policies that embrace America’s reliable energy sources and promote economic growth.  For all of these reasons, I am proud to stand here today in support of the Chairman Scalise’s carbon tax resolution. The American Energy Alliance will continue our fight on behalf of American families to oppose Washington’s attempts to limit access to our vast natural resources and increase the price of energy for everyone. With strong leaders like Chairman Scalise, this is a fight we can win.

The press conference was held by Republican Study Committee Chairman Steve Scalise (R-LA), who also introduced a House Resolution opposing efforts to implement a nationwide carbon tax. More than 85 other Congressmen signed the resolution.

 “A national carbon tax would devastate an already struggling American economy, force the cost of gas at the pump to jump even higher, and kill millions more jobs here at home.  We need to return common-sense back to Washington, and put an end to the liberal tax, regulate, and spend agenda that is destroying our middle class economy.  With more than 85 original cosponsors, I’m proud to introduce this important legislation.”

A compiled list of the organizations are behind AEA’s efforts can be found here. Of course, you will be able to find The Heartland Institute’s name on the list. As touched on above, little evidence supports the idea that a carbon tax will pay off in any way possible, including economically, environmentally, or even politically.

Click here for more information on carbon taxes, courtesy of Heartland’s Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

Earlier this month, the New York Times published and op-ed penned by Richard Daynard of Northeastern University titled “Stubbing out Cigarettes for Good.” Professor Daynard is president of Northeastern Law’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, and a prominent anti-tobacco crusader. I wrote the following response, and sent it to the Times, but they declined to print it.  I also shared copies with Daynard and Mark Gottlieb,  his colleague at the Public Health Advocacy Institute. 

In reply, Gottlieb shared some research findings relative to the “light” cigarettes, noting that they contained the same amount of nicotine as full-flavored cigarettes, but were designed to hide nicotine content from the then-prevalent “FTC method” machines used to measure tar and nicotine content. Smokers could access the additional nicotine by inhaling longer and more deeply. His proposal for a low-nicotine cigarette would, per their limited studies, result in minimal compensatory behavior by smokers since such compensatory behavior would not yield more nicotine.

He acknowledged the legitimacy of the other points I made, but disagreed that, if implemented, they would likely do more harm than good.  He also acknowledged the potential value of adding a tobacco harm reduction initiative to current tobacco control programming, and correctly noted that the initiatives Daynard recommended and tobacco harm reduction are not mutually exclusive.

****************

The first of his two proposals – reducing the nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels — ignores what we have learned over the past 30 years about light and low-tar cigarettes. These cigarettes dramatically lowered both tar and nicotine. Their message was so effective that such cigarettes now account for more than 99% of American cigarette sales. They have done nothing to reduce the prevalence of smoking in the United States and appear to present a risk of lung cancer greater than the full-flavor cigarettes they replaced. In order to securing the desired dose of nicotine, smokers appear to have inhaled the smoke deeper and held it longer within the lung.

Reducing nicotine to a level that will no longer satisfy current smokers seems more likely to drive these smokers to contraband cigarettes than to quit smoking or to switch to other tobacco/nicotine products. Contraband cigarettes are already a major problem in jurisdictions with high cigarette taxes. Making regulated cigarettes unpalatable to smokers would likely increase the demand for contraband products.

The second of Professor Daynard’s two proposals — to ban sales of cigarettes to persons born after the year 2000 — is and has been in place for many years throughout the United States. Every state now bans cigarette sales to persons under 18 years of age. This has not been effective in preventing 15% to 20% of teens from initiating cigarette use.

New thinking will be required within both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the larger tobacco control community if we are to substantially reduce tobacco-related illness and reduce nicotine addiction in the United States.

The first element of this new thinking should be to recognize that we have two separate tobacco-related problems. The first relates to current adult smokers. The second relates to teens at risk of initiating tobacco use.

The 8 million Americans likely to die of a tobacco-attributable illness in the United States over the next 20 years (400,000 per year x 20 years) are current adult cigarette smokers over 35 years of age. The smokeless products that have been on the American market since the 1980s — chewing tobacco, snus, and other snuff products — present a risk of potentially fatal tobacco-attributable illness less than 2% the risk posed by cigarettes. E-cigarettes, strips, sticks and orbs probably present even less risk. Simply informing current smokers of this difference in risk would likely induce large numbers of smokers to switch to one of these lower risk products.

This approach, known as tobacco harm reduction, is currently opposed by the tobacco control community. They refuse to consider use of any non-pharmaceutical tobacco/nicotine product in the context of a public health initiative. In addition, the FDA tobacco law imposes nearly insurmountable barriers to tobacco harm reduction and requires continuation of misleading and technically inaccurate warnings on American smokeless tobacco products: warnings based on hazards posed by tobacco products that are not available in the American market.

Tobacco harm reduction could be added to current tobacco control programming. It would rely on market forces to achieve reductions in tobacco-attributable illness and death not likely achievable in any other way. It would do so in a way that would not increase demand for contraband products.

Experience with e-cigarettes and other bits of scientific evidence suggest that these smokeless tobacco products may be less attractive to teens and easier to quit than cigarettes. This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom in the tobacco control community that informing the public that such products are lower in risk than cigarettes would dramatically increase the number of teens initiating tobacco/nicotine use.

The time has come to seriously consider tobacco harm reduction as a new addition to current tobacco control programming.

The worst epithet in America today probably remains to call someone a “racist.”

The “N-word” has rightly been banished from polite conversation (gansta rap falling outside the bounds of polite conversation), and with many states in a headlong rush to embrace gay marriage and the federal government refusing to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between one man and one woman the term “homophobe” has faded into irrelevance.

With the U. S. military having abolished its antiquated “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (an invention of the Clinton administration, by the way) and finally accepting women officially into combat positions, indeed, we can virtually safely say that we’re a certified non-sexist LGBT-friendly society.

Yet the sting of “racist” still persists, generally applied by a person of the left to a person of the right when the person of the left cannot conjure a coherent counter to an argument for smaller government, balancing the books, passing a budget, reducing the annual deficit or the national debt, or enforcing laws already on the books regarding, say, illegal immigration or voter identification.

Favor stiffer sentences for dealing crack cocaine?  Why, that’s racist, because it would reputedly have a disparate impact on Americans of African origin.  Want to enforce the laws against illegal immigration, as the States of Arizona and Alabama tried to do?  Well, that’s racist too, because it would have a disparate impact on residents of Mexican origin.

How about closing some public schools in Chicago, which has lost nearly 100,000 students out of its former 300,000 student base and 100 or so schools sit empty or near to it?  That’s also racist, because a majority of the schools no longer needed formerly served the children of African-Americans, some 200,000 of whom deserted the city between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

But the highest-handed race card is applied whenever anyone on the right dares to question the wisdom of any policy of the Obama administration, whether it’s pandering to the ayatollahs of Iran, showing more “flexibility” to Vladimir Putin’s Russia in arms talks, or spending the country into oblivion with annual trillion-dollar deficits.  No rational person could oppose such policies on purely political or philosophical grounds, in the view of the left, so conservatives must a fortiori hate the President because he’s black.

Among the latest to make this hoary charge is New York Times Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus in his article for the February 10, 2013, New Republic, “Original Sin: Why the GOP is and Will Continue to be the Party of White People.”  National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg do a thorough job of debunking Tanenhaus’s diatribe in “Sam’s Smear: Preposterous history from The New Republic” in the March 25, 2013 issue of their own magazine, but it remains worthwhile asking why people of the left are so quick to raise this smear against anyone who disagrees with their public policy views.

Is it because they so thoroughly embrace the tenets of consummate community organizer Saul Alinsky that they automatically apply his fifth and thirteenth rules, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” and “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”?  Is it because they really don’t think rationally themselves and have no other way of responding?  It is because of their own self-assurance that they are so indisputably correct in their views that anyone who disagrees with them must be evil?  Or is it because they project their own racist views on others?

Consider who it is, for example, who wishes to classify people by race and to allocate everything from corporate board seats to NFL head coaching positions to seats in Congress on the basis of “race.”  Consider who it was who ran for a U. S. Senate seat on the claim that she was “Native American” based on her high cheekbones and family folklore.

And consider still how hard it is even to determine what “race” someone is when young people today seem neither to notice nor care about the color of the skin or the height of the cheekbones of the beaus they date, marry, and have children with (not necessarily in that order), and scientists cannot even agree on what race means.

I had lunch recently with a friend of mine, a Democrat, a judge, and an Obama supporter.  “The President isn’t black,” he claimed.  “He was born of a white mother and raised by white grand-parents.  You can’t say this but I can, because I’m a liberal:  he’s an Oreo – black on the outside and white on the inside.”

If race still matters – and it shouldn’t – then it is not conservatives who are racist.

The debate over how to reform Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has been a years-long and arduous political battle. Despite its original mission to act as Florida’s insurer-of-last-resort, Citizens became former Gov. Charlie Crist’s instrument of populist politics du jour, and consequently grew to be the state’s largest insurer due to its artificially suppressed rates.  It has taken the Florida Legislature years to even begin to reverse those ill-conceived policies from the Crist era.

The main impediment to reform has been the loud opposition to increasing Citizens rates, which would organically address most of the problems the state-run entity faces. Whenever there is legislation up that would increase Citizens’ premiums even nominally–increases that would put them somewhat closer to their private market counterparts–telephone lines and email in-boxes are overwhelmed with opposition.  As such, legislators are hesitant (at best) to support such reforms.

One organization that has been on the forefront of promoting reforms to Citizens has been Associated Industries of Florida.  As one of the state’s leading pro-business organizations, it understands the risks the current system poses on Florida’s business community.  As such, they prefer gradual, methodical increases in rates over the enormous post-hurricane assessments that could likely come quickly and severely, and do great harm to the state’s economy.

So to address the concerns of many legislators, they recently released an interactive map that shows exactly the percentage of Floridians in each House and Senate district who are insured by Citizens.  This information has taken Tallahassee by storm, and even some legislators who have historically opposed Citizens reforms have realized they haven’t necessarily been representing a majority of their constituents on this issue.

The data affirms that 77 percent of Floridians are NOT enrolled in Citizens, but are on the hook for the 23 percent who are.

“This is the first time we’ve looked at the data this way, and it’s very telling.  More than two-thirds of residents in a majority of Senate and House districts don’t have Citizens as their property insurer.  Yet, these same homeowners who are dutifully paying their annual insurance premiums are expected to shoulder the financial burden for the other third not paying their fair share.  Many of these Citizens policy holders do not even live in Florida,” said Tom Feeney, the former congressman and Florida House speaker who now serves as AIF’s president and chief executive officer.

Florida bloggers and media outlets have covered the release of the interactive maps. A blogger at Johnson Strategies went a bit further and provided a deeper analysis of the data.  He found that:

• Of 40 total Senate districts, more than 2/3rds (27) have nearly 70% of the households subsidizing lower premiums for the remaining 30% insured in Citizens.
• Of a total 120 House districts, 86 (or 71%) have 30% or fewer households insured in Citizens and subsidized by the rest.
• Not one single Senate district has more than 54% of its households in Citizens.

These are definitely interesting data that should make some legislators reassess their position that has forced a majority of their constituents to cover those who don’t pay their fair share.

Legislation to break up North Carolina’s rate bureau cartel and bring the state’s auto insurance market into the 21st Century has now been introduced in both houses of the General Assembly. This past week, Rep. Jeff Collins, R-Nash, introduced H.B. 265, a companion to Senate legislation introduced late last month by Sen. Wesley Meredith, R-Fayetteville.

Both bills would allow auto insurers to opt out of the North Carolina Rate Bureau, a legally mandated, but privately run organization through which insurers currently set rates collectively. Companies who do opt out would be permitted to consider any rating and underwriting factors they deem appropriate, so long as rates are sufficient and not excessive or discriminatory. There would be a 12 percent “flex band” in which rate increases would be presumed to be appropriate, although even those could be challenged by the Department of Insurance, so long as they provide justification.

The changes would bring North Carolina in line with the competitive markets that are found in most states today, in which insurers have incentive to develop new products and offer competitive discounts to attract business. Predictably, vested interests in the Tar Heel state – both economic and political – are pushing back hard against reform, and it unfortunately appears some of the state’s leading newspapers have taken to regurgitating the old guard’s talking points.

Perhaps the biggest misconception – repeated in recent editorials in both The Charlotte Observer and The Pilot (from rural Moore County) – has to do with the insurance reform record of neighboring South Carolina. Both papers (presumably repeating a “fact” slipped to them by the opposition, which includes the insurance commissioner and the insurer with the largest market share) allege that following passage of reform legislation in 1999, auto insurance rates in South Carolina rose by 25 percent.

Neither paper cites a source for this claim, nor a time frame over which this purported rate hike was observed.  Which is unfortunate, because the claim is flatly untrue.

As this chart from the Insurance Research Council shows, while it is true that average auto insurance premiums have risen in South Carolina in the decade since the state passed reform legislation, that’s because they rose everywhere else too. From 1998 to 2008, South Carolina saw auto insurance expenditures grow by 14.7 percent (not 25 percent), which was slightly higher than the 12.4 percent national average, but still notably lower than 18.4 percent average across all the South Atlantic states.

More importantly, what the North Carolina papers do not note is that in the eight years before reform passed, South Carolina’s rates spiked by a whopping 30.6 percent, compared to 21.9 percent nationally and 20.4 percent in the region. Reform clearly slowed, not accelerated, the rate increases. The IRC estimates South Carolina’s rates today are 4.8 percent lower than they would have been if reform hadn’t been adopted.

The Observer’s editorial adds:

The bill is supported by at least 14 insurers, including State Farm, Allstate, Geico and Progressive.  They argue that a free-market approach would force companies to compete aggressively on price, letting drivers shop around for the best deal. But insurers already compete on price. The rate bureau method sets a ceiling, not a floor; insurers are free to charge less to attract customers, and often do.

This is wrong on at least two counts.

For one, it sets a remarkably low bar on what counts as “competition.” Imagine if the market for autos worked the way North Carolina’s market for auto insurance does.  Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, along with Toyota, Volkswagen, and the whole panoply of foreign car makers, would get together and define what their product – a “car” – should be. They would determine how big it can be, how fast it can go, what color it should be, even how many cup-holders it can have. They’d then come up with a joint recommendation for how much it should cost and send that off to the auto commissioner, who would either give a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

And with that, the market’s terms would be set.  Now, how many folks would define that market as “competitive,” simply because the manufacturers would have the option, if they wanted, to knock a few dollars off the MSRP sticker price every now and again?

It’s almost time for March Madness, an event that brings joy to millions of North Carolinians every year. As this year’s games are played, it’d be useful to take notice of all the auto insurance products that are hawked during breaks in the action – policies with deductibles that drop the longer you avoid an accident, policies that offer discounts for drivers with good credit, policies that give regular rebate checks, policies that offer deep discounts to those who provide real-time driving data to their insurer – all of which remain unavailable in North Carolina because they just simply don’t fit the state’s one-size-fits-all auto insurance system.

But the Observer’s observation gets it wrong in an even more fundamental sense. The rate bureau’s recommendation actually does not represent a ceiling on what insurers can charge for auto insurance. It instead represents a ceiling on what can be charged for a standard liability policy. But many people want more than just a liability policy — they want to insure their car for collision, theft and other damage.

Higher risk drivers who want collision and comprehensive physical damage coverage will generally find in the mail a letter from their carrier containing a “Consent to Rate Form.” This is, essentially, a request by the insurer to charge rates that exceed those recommended by the Rate Bureau. It is relatively common for consumers to consent to these requests, and in those cases, the ceiling doesn’t apply at all. In some ways, the flex band system proposed by the Meredith/Collins bills would be actually be more restrictive than the prices insurers can charge for CTR policies today.

For liability coverage, high risk drivers dumped into the North Carolina Reinsurance Facility, which does not offer physical damage coverage. The rest of the state’s auto insurance consumers get dinged by this system as well, as they are charged surcharges to support these so-called “clean risk” policies.

This is not a small problem. More than a fifth of all North Carolina drivers – some 1.54 million in total – cannot get a standard auto insurance policy. Indeed, while large residual markets used to be fairly common in the days before the use of credit information and advanced computerized underwriting allowed insurers a way to segment and price these higher risks, today, North Carolina drivers represent 81 percent of the 1.9 million residual market auto insurance policies written in the whole United States.

Returning to the South Carolina example, the rapid decline in the size of the residual market – which accounted for more than 30 percent of the policies in 1998, but are now less than 1 percent of the market – is the most remarkable outcome of reform. As the accompanying IRC chart shows, other states that have opened their auto insurance markets to competition, like New Jersey and Massachusetts, have likewise seen steady reductions in residual market policies.

The bottom line is this: Auto insurance is now a highly competitive business in virtually every state but North Carolina. North Carolina drivers have been fortunate that, for a variety of reasons, the underlying costs of that drive auto insurance claims are relatively low. These include caps on tort damages, reasonably tight enforcement of vehicle safety standards, demographics, and relatively low traffic density.  All of these factors combine to make auto insurance premiums relatively affordable.

But the fact that rates aren’t especially high doesn’t make the market competitive. The fact that a reasonably large number of insurers do business in the state, likewise, doesn’t automatically make the market competitive. Indeed, given that state law requires that the insurance commissioner guarantee that insurers earn a “reasonable rate of return,” why wouldn’t they want to do business there? Guaranteed profits are hard to turn down, in any industry.

When prices and terms of coverage are set collectively, when companies have no incentive to innovative or introduce new products, that is, by definition, an uncompetitive market. It is a cartel, and it is time for that cartel to come to an end.

Quoting from another movie review:

 ”… there’s a lot to be angry about. And though Rosebraugh shines a light on plenty of jaw-dropping corruption, it plays out like a shrill rallying cry without catharsis for the already initiated.”

The reviewer is basically talking about enviro-activists — and likely herself — already initiated to the certainty of global warming induced by human activity, and the notion that the only opponents to it are people who deny or lie about reality in the pursuit of their own corrupt personal gain.

But, her concluding remarks about catharsis were specifically about filmmaker Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s failure to extract any enlightening statement out of an undercover effort to confront Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, and generally about Rosebraugh’s failure to say anything really satisfying about the issue in general.

However, that is only one of the film’s major problems. Its other problem is far more serious: To be truly effective in reaching the otherwise disinterested public and prompting action from them, nobody must question the assertions and insinuations within the film. Start asking questions about the following points, and the movie’s effectiveness begins to crumble.

• The first few seconds show an epic dust storm engulfing the Phoenix metro area in Arizona. But how does it follow that these occurrences happening every summer are the result of global warming-caused drought when they result from thunderstorm downdrafts?
• A dryland farmer laments the death of his lawn as he shows full force water from an open garden hose going down a crack in the grass. But how does it follow that global warming is causing the dry earth to crack, when we see a huge field of dark, green, healthy, very tall corn in the background topped with irrigation machinery? And who in their right mind waters a big lawn with a single open hose rather then with a sprinkler system?
• PR man James Hoggan claims sheer repetition of fossil fuel industry-funded talking points is winning the hearts and minds of the public. But how many times does some variant of the word “deny” occur from this point onward in the film? And regarding his point that skeptics are given free rein in the media, what would his explanation be regarding the utter lack of such skeptics appearing on news outlets like the PBS NewsHour giving their unrestrained viewpoints for the last 17+ years?
• When we are presented with what appears to be a damaging scene where Rep. Jay Inslee humiliates Lord Christopher Monckton over not being an actual Lord, what are viewers to think when they discover that the video ends before Monckton explains to Inslee how he inherited the title from his father?
• In the case of skeptic scientist Fred Singer, we are told that, among other things, he denied the connection of cigarette smoking to cancer. But what happens if we are unable to find any actual transcript or video where he made that assertion?
• The movie claims scientists involved in the ClimateGate scandal were absolved of any wrongdoing in no less than six investigations. But what happens if we viewers are able to find mind-blowing levels of detail about how the investigations were instead poorly handled whitewashes? And regarding Michael Mann’s complaints that reports about his statements were taken out-of-context, what happens when readers read his emails in their full context? And why wasn’t he given just a few minutes to illustrate how his sentences take on a proper meaning in their full context?

I could go on, and likely other people on the skeptic side will offer their insight about the movie. The basic point being that a movie which intends to definitively put the nails in the coffin of those standing in the way of solving man-caused global warming are obligated to do it convincingly — as in demonstrating it has actual proof at its disposal of skeptic climate scientists receiving direct payments from industry executives with corresponding instructions to lie about the issue, while not leaving any doors open for viewers to doubt what is being presented.

When such a movie makes elemental errors which invite viewers to go looking for more, rather than take action on what it advocates, it has lost the ball in epic fashion.

Russell Cook’s collection of writings on this issue can be seen at “The ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists.” You may also follow him at Twitter via @questionAGW  at his corresponding Facebook page.