The Daily Gouge, Monday, September 26th, 2011

On September 25, 2011, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Monday, September 26th, 2011….and here’s the Gouge!

First up on the last Monday in September, it’s now been, by our count, 878 days since the Dimocratic-controlled United States Senate passed a budget….and here we go again!

Senate Rejects House CR; Reid Puts Off Shut-Down Issue Until Monday

 

Were we to charge everyone wanting to smack the idiotic smile off Reid’s ugly mug $100, we could settle the national debt!
 

Congress heads into the weekend stuck in another game of government-shutdown chicken after the Democrat-controlled Senate voted to reject a House-passed continuing resolution and lawmakers put off further action until Monday. The Senate voted 59-36 to table the House Republican measure that would have provided $3.65 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster-relief funds. The Senate wants $6.9 billion provided, without offsetting cuts elsewhere in the budget.

After the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), filed cloture on an amended version of the House’s CR, setting up a vote on that at 5:30pm Monday. The amended bill would fund disaster aid at the level in the House bill, $3.65 billion. But it would not include the House bill’s offsets. Reid suggested leaders in both parties use the weekend to “just cool off a little bit” and work out a solution.

A continuing resolution agreed upon in April expires Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. Congress needs to pass a new CR by Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown. Both sides continue to expect resolution before that date, but brinkmanship and last-minute maneuvers have left the issue in question.

In a related item from the WSJ….

Dilbert’s Scott Adams on liberal criticisms of the GOP presidential candidates.

Is it my imagination, or has the liberal wing of the media’s attacks on conservatives turned into a bunch of cheap gotchas involving nitpicked analogies and quotes taken out of context? Perhaps it has always been this way and I never noticed until this year. Or maybe I’m spending too much time reading The Huffington Post. Maybe you can help me sort this out.

Before I continue, I should note that my own views don’t map closely to either the liberal or conservative camps. So I don’t have a poodle in the fight. I’m just observing a trend.

Consider Rick Perry. He called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” As analogies go, that’s a good one. I believe I have used it myself. It’s a colorful way of saying the math doesn’t work well when the population of retired people greatly increases and the number of workers funding Social Security does not. Literally no one on Earth disagrees with the central point of Perry’s analogy. But I keep seeing Perry’s Ponzi scheme quote reported as if it were some sort of idiot misunderstanding or conspiracy theory or foreshadowing of evil. . . .

Consider Mitt Romney’s quote in the context of taxes that corporations are people too. That quote was reported as if Romney is so out of touch with ordinary humans that he doesn’t know the difference between an artificial legal structure and a living person. Only a robot could say such a thing! But of course his point is one that 100% of real humans agree with: Corporate profits flow into the pockets of employees and shareholders. I remember a time when a gaffe meant you were wrong. (You know….like having visited 57 states!) But apparently being 100% right isn’t a defense if you’re also a conservative.

Truth be known, these days, when it comes to treatment by the MSM, there’s no defense if you’re a Republican, let alone a Conservative!

Turning to the Environmental Moment, Team Tick-Tock has evidently concluded it doesn’t need or can take the asthmatic vote for granted:

Obama’s EPA Set to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns

 

Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly?Well, it seems that the Obama administration would rather make people with asthma cough up more money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government’s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere. The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, an asthma sufferer, noted a while back that when consumers are forced to use environmentally friendly products they are almost always worse:

Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week.  They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice.  And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp.  They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag.  Etc.

Well, tough cookies asthma sufferers! You should have written bigger checks to the Democratic party while you had the chance.

But no worries; as the WSJ details in a related item, for those fortunate enough not to suffer the debilitating effects of asthma, the EPA continues to offer a myriad of methods through which you too can grossly overpay for life’s necessities so that Bleeding-Hearts across the country can pass their nights undisturbed:

Inside the EPA

Memos show that even other regulators worry about its rule-making.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency claims that the critics of its campaign to remake U.S. electricity are partisans, but it turns out that they include other regulators and even some in the Obama Administration. In particular, a trove of documents uncovered by Congressional investigators reveals that these internal critics think the EPA is undermining the security and reliability of the U.S. electric power supply.

With its unprecedented wave of rules, the EPA is abusing traditional air-quality laws to force a large share of the coal-fired fleet to shut down. Amid these sacrifices on the anticarbon altar, Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski and several House committees have been asking, well, what happens after as much as 8% of U.S. generating capacity is taken off the grid?

A special focus of their inquiry has been the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which since 2005 has been charged with ensuring that the (compact florescent) lights stay on. That 8% figure comes from FERC itself in a confidential 2010 assessment of the EPA’s regulatory bender—or about 81 gigawatts that FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability estimated is “very likely” or “likely” to enter involuntary retirement over the next several years. FERC disclosed the estimate in August in response to Senator Murkowski’s questions, along with a slew of memos and emails.

81 gigawatts?!?  81 GIGAwatts?!?

FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, a Democrat, has since disavowed the study as nothing more than back-of-the-envelope scribblings that are now “irrelevant,” as he told a recent House hearing. OK, but then could FERC come up with a relevant number? Since he made the study public, Mr. Wellinghoff has disowned responsibility for scrutinizing the EPA rules and now says that FERC will only protect electric reliability ex post facto once the rules are permanent, somehow.

This abdication is all the more striking because the documents show that EPA’s blandishments about reliability can’t be trusted. In its initial 2010 analysis—a rigorous document—FERC notes in a “next steps” section that the reliability office and industry must “assess the reliability and adequacy impacts of retirement of at risk units.” In part, this was because the office believed the EPA analyses to be deficient. One undated memo specifies multiple weaknesses in EPA reliability modelling.

However much power is lost, whether 81 gigawatts or something else, the electric grid is highly local. Even subtracting a small plant could have much larger effects for regions, such as blackouts. The older and less efficient coal plants that are slated for closure are often the crucial nodes that connect the hubs and spokes of the grid. If these “sensitive” interconnections are taken out, as the memo puts it, the power system becomes less stable, harder to manage and may not be able to meet peak-load demand or withstand unexpected disturbances.

When large swaths of Arizona, New Mexico and parts of southern California including San Diego went dark this month, preliminary reports blamed it on a Homer Simpson who flipped the wrong switch. But the incident shows that even minor mistakes or degraded systems can ramify throughout the grid. The EPA scanted these technical, regional issues when writing the rules, even though another “summary of interagency working comments” within the Administration explicitly told the EPA that reliability needed “more discussion.”

And according to the FERC minutes of a 2010 meeting between its reliability office and the EPA, EPA staffers waved off those concerns. “The EPA concluded the discussion by stating that it felt the Clean Air Transport Rule and Mercury MACT rule”—two of the most destructive new regulations—”were the highest priority given that these regulations were more finalized.” In other words, the agency’s green political goals are more important than the real-world outcomes, never mind the danger.

For our part, we’ve opposed this “highest priority” because the rules are written in a way that maximizes the economic costs, with terrible effects on growth, hiring, investment and consumer prices. And well, well: More than a few people in the Administration seem to agree.

The interagency memo explains that the EPA used its “discretion” to structure one rule so that it is more “stringent” than it needs to be. The agency could achieve the same environmental benefits with “substantial” cost-savings, which “would be far more preferable to the proposed approach,” says the memo. It sensibly adds that, “The current economic climate dictates a balancing of economic and environmental interests.”

Under pressure from Democrats and the EPA to disavow his own agency’s analysis, Mr. Wellinghoff now says that FERC favors only a “safety valve” that would give it the authority to overrule the EPA on a case-by-case basis if its regulations might lead to blackouts. But even this is a tacit admission of EPA’s overkill. You don’t need a safety valve if there isn’t a threat to safety.

The best option would be for the EPA to write less destructive rules that don’t jeopardize reliability in the first place. Failing that, we should at least know the risks before it is too late. In a letter to Mr. Wellingoff last week, Mrs. Murkowski simply asks that FERC undertake some kind of study of the EPA’s agenda in line with its statutory obligations and the warnings of its own experts. If FERC won’t do it, someone else should.

No….the BEST option would be to eliminate the EPA….completely….along with the Departments of Education, Energy and any number of other unnecessary, ineffective and/or redundant federal bureaucracies.  Or, at the very least, subject every single one of its regulations, existing or proposed, to independent cost-benefit analyses.  Clean air and water are great; but like anything else, only when taken in moderation!

As for the Departments of Education and Energy, it’s like we were telling the TLJ last night: well over 30 years and hundreds of billions of dollars since their inception under the….2nd….worst President in our nation’s history, are:

(1).  America’s public schools performing better….or worse?

(2).  Has our level of energy independence increased….or decreased?

Face it folks: were the continued existence of a single federal bureaucracy predicated upon performance, we cannot think of one….not ONE….that would last a year, fiscal or calendar!

And in today’s Muslim Minute, the latest expression of brotherly love from the Religion of Peace:

Suicide Bomber Attacks Packed Indonesian Church

Ahhh….must have been Indonesia’s support for Israel….or their military presence in the Middle East….or perhaps their failure to appreciate the unjust pain and suffering of the “Palestinian” people.  Then again, this latest act of Muhammadan terror, like so many others, might….JUST might….be inspired by an implacable, unreasoned hatred of any religion inspired by the most basic tenets of Islam.

And in International News, if you’re The Obamao, the hits keep coming so frequently he’s GOT to be feeling like a pinata!

Putin Return Complicates U.S. Policy

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204010604576593272645131088.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

No kidding; particularly when….

….Putin KNOWS the nature of that with which he’s dealing!

On the Lighter Side….

Carpe diem, baby….along with the rest of the week!

Magoo



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