The Daily Gouge, Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

On October 22, 2012, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012….but before we begin, our initial thoughts on the 3rd debate.  Though at first we thought Mitt, despite having been tossed more hanging curve balls this evening than the Cards delivered the Giants in the bottom of the 3rd, had failed to hit one out of the infield, we eventually had to conclude he’d done what we’d earlier (See our Video of the Day at www.thedailygouge.com) set out as his task.  Namely, identifying America’s economy as the greatest threat to our national security and foreign policy goals.

On the minus side, sorry Mitt, but nobody cares about public school test scores while you were governor of Taxachusetts; and if you ask Obama another question, Tag’s gonna have to fight US!

But in the interests of fairness, we must note you’re wrong, Barry; the previous Administration’s policies didn’t bring us two wars.  THIS….

….brought us two wars!  Any more in the future will have resulted from YOUR inexcusably lame-ass policies.

And though we were somewhat tempted to believe Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer and Chris Wallace must have watched a different debate than we, the highly-valued opinions of Uncle Cliffy, G. Trevor and Daniel Francis led us to believe we were initially too tough on the Mittster.

As Danny said, we aren’t the voter Romney was trying to reach this evening; rather it was the citizens of The Buckeye State.  And those are the voters who will determine America’s course for generations to come.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, in the interests of public safety, we felt compelled to pass on this headline forwarded by Jeff Foutch:

Vote fraud alert: Obama scores big among North Carolina vampires

 

Like there was ever a question!

The defenders of vote fraud are always telling us that common-sense voter-ID measures are unnecessary, because vote fraud hardly ever happens.  That means Barack Obama must be huge among the vampire population of North Carolina, as Edward Cullen and his contemporaries have been mailing in their absentee ballots, producing at least 832 votes from people over 110 years old.

According to the Examiner, fully 70 percent of these immortals voted Democrat.  20 percent were Republican, while only 5 percent were independent.  That makes sense, actually.  Vampires are set in their ways.  Most of them were probably turned during the New Deal era.

The oldest living human being, who dwells in Japan, is 114 years old.  That venerable soul doesn’t travel much, but two of the 110+ votes in North Carolina were submitted from overseas.  Maybe they went to attend an audience with the Volturi.

An amazing 2,374 civic-minded seniors between the ages of 94 and 100 have already voted in North Carolina.  Apparently, some of them are so civic-minded that they voted more than once.  The Examiner relays a tip from a concerned voter:

I overheard a nice lady about 70 telling her friend the following: “Yes, I voted today.” “Going back tomorrow too. They took us to a place that don’t ask names and don’t write nothing down. They give $20 each time.” She then handed her friend a card I couldn’t see and told her friend to call the number.

Instead of $20 bills, they’re probably giving bags of O-positive to the vampires.

Voter fraud….what voter fraud?!?

Next up, Seth Mandel, writing at CommentaryMagazine.com, asks….

What Worried the White House About Iran Negotiation Leaks?

 

As Jonathan wrote, the New York Times caused a stir over the weekend with its report that the Obama administration agreed to one-on-one talks with Iran over its nuclear program. The story has been interpreted (and reinterpreted) with respect to its utility to the president before tonight’s foreign policy debate depending on the perceived nature of the leaks. So when the story first broke, it was assumed the Obama administration thought this would be politically beneficial on the eve of the debate. When the vigorous denials came—convincing enough to get the Times to change its story without alerting its readers—the public seemed to reconsider.

It is now, therefore, seen as a negative story for the administration—unhelpful, as Obama officials might say. But why? What is it about face-to-face negotiations with the Iranians that the White House might consider damaging? Certainly, as Jonathan suggested, the story has echoes of President Obama’s hot-mic moment with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in which Obama promised the Russians more “flexibility” if he is reelected. Did he make such promises to the Iranians, but try harder to keep them under wraps? That is one possibility. Another is that the president may not want such a stark reminder of one of the most famous moments of the 2007 Democratic primary debates, when Obama said he would grant the enemies of America their own presidential-level summits. Obama said:

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.

And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We’ve been talking about Iraq — one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses. (This reminds us of Godfather Part II….

….or his Kenyan messenger, B. Hussein Obama!)

“It is a disgrace,” Obama said, that we were not having face-to-face meetings with Iran, Syria, and the rest. Of course, it was not a disgrace, and negotiations at a more appropriate level were going on long before Obama entered the scene. (Then again, American history really didn’t begin until January 20, 2009!) But it’s also a reminder of the stark difference between Obama and Mitt Romney—and not just on policy. The 2007 version of Obama was just ramping up the personality cult, the creepy and worshipful following he acquired that culminated in the ridiculous spectacle of accepting his nomination amid Greek columns while claiming that the people’s reward for nominating him would begin with him turning back the ocean tides. Last night, Dan McLaughlin tweeted:

Obama’s election represented the apex of presidential personality cults. Romney’s would be its nadir.

Obama believed he could charm the Iranian mullahs the way he charmed American editorial boards. Obama’s defenders say he’s come a long way since his election. And maybe so. But he’s struggling to come up with a reason for voters to support him a second time. He’s mostly running from his (unpopular) “accomplishments” in his first term, and hasn’t laid out much of a plan for a second besides raising taxes. The last thing the president needs is a reminder of his past naïveté in world politics coupled with any hint that he’s right back where he started: an off-putting and by now discredited belief in the power of his personality and the force of his presence(From what we saw of the 3rd debate, he needn’t worry about Mitt reminding him; but we now know Massachusetts public school test scores improved on Romney’s watch.  Can we get a refund on the $100 we sent him?!?)

So perhaps the White House doesn’t believe that face-to-face negotiations with Iran’s leaders is a bad idea in and of itself. But the walk-back shows that the president’s team either thinks their plan is too unpopular to go public with (if, indeed, it is their plan), or that they don’t believe the public would trust Obama to carry out those negotiations. Neither is a sign of confidence.

Perhaps any Offal Office concerns arise from what the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens terms:

Iran’s Unrequited War

The mullahs are at war with us. Maybe we should return the favor.

 

On Wednesday an Iranian-American named Manssor Arbabsiar pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with Iranian military officials to blow up a restaurant in Washington, D.C. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration and Iran had secretly agreed “in principle” to hold direct talks after the election, a disclosure to which the White House responded with a lawyerly denial.

And so it goes with U.S. policy toward Iran. They are at war with us. We seek bilateral negotiations and confidence-building measures with them.

That is a point that—as I write this column ahead of the final presidential debate—I hope to hear Mitt Romney hammer home when the subject of Iran inevitably comes up. Barack Obama told “60 Minutes” last month that “if Gov. Romney is suggesting we should start another war, he should say so.” Sorry, Mr. President: When it comes to Iran, the mullahs started that war a long time ago. Wishing facts away doesn’t change them.

Here’s a list of the American victims of Iranian aggression: The 17 Americans killed in April 1983 at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut by the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad Organization, later known as Hezbollah. The 241 U.S. servicemen killed by Islamic Jihad at the Marine barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983. Master Chief Robert Dean Stethem, beaten to death in June 1985 by a Hezbollah terrorist in Beirut aboard TWA flight 847. William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, tortured to death by Hezbollah that same month. Marine Col. William Higgins, taken hostage in 1988 while serving with U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and hanged by Hezbollah sometime later. The 19 U.S. Air Force personnel killed in June 1996 in the Khobar Towers bombing, for which several members of Saudi Hezbollah were indicted in U.S. federal court.

And then there are the thousands of U.S. troops killed by improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most lethal IEDs were manufactured in Iran for the purpose of killing Americans.

Let’s also not forget the 52 American diplomats held hostage in Tehran for 444 days; the hostaging in Lebanon of Americans such as Thomas Sutherland and Terry Anderson; the de facto hostaging of American backpackers Sarah Shourd for 14 months and of her companions Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer for more than two years; the capricious imprisonment of Iranian-Americans visiting Iran such as Kian Tajbakhsh, Haleh Esfandiari and Roxana Saberi; the mysterious disappearance and apparent hostaging in 2007 of former FBI agent Robert Levinson; and the current imprisonment—under a suspended death sentence—of former U.S. Marine and defense contractor Amir Hekmati.

This has been Iran’s record, which needs rehearsing because we tend so easily to forget it. What about the record of our responses?

As my Iranian-born colleague Sohrab Ahmari notes in the current issue of Commentary magazine, successive U.S. administrations responded with a menu of make-nice gestures. Ronald Reagan refused to authorize a military strike on an Iranian military base in Lebanon in retaliation for the Beirut bombings: Instead, he sent the Ayatollah Khomeini a personally inscribed copy of the Bible. There was no retaliation for Khobar: Bill Clinton was trying to tease out “moderates” in the Iranian government by apologizing for the 1953 Mossadegh coup—which Islamist clerics of the day had supported. George W. Bush never took direct military action against Iranian munitions factories producing IEDs: Instead, in his second term he adopted a policy of de facto engagement with Iran that was all but the opposite of his first-term rhetoric.

Which brings us to Mr. Obama. It would be unfair to say that the president’s outreach to Tehran has been unprecedented. What’s depressing is that it is too-precedented. It would also be unfair not to acknowledge the “unprecedented” sanctions he has imposed on Iran. But again, the depressing fact is that they are more campaign prop than policy tool—which explains why he has been waiving their provisions at every opportunity.

And now we have the New York Times story, whose chief interest, assuming (as I do) that it is true, is that the administration remains wedded to the idea that Iran’s leaders want to bargain away the nuclear program they have sacrificed so much to develop and are now within sight of acquiring.

Maybe the president thinks decency obliges him to give diplomacy another chance. But it is from an excess of decency that 33 years of Iranian outrages have gone unavenged, and Iran now proceeds undeterred. Sensible policy on Iran begins not with the question of how to avoid a war—that war was foisted on us in 1979—but how to win it. Anything less invites further terror and dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.

Iran, Ahmadinejad and Obama; the Nazi Germany, Hitler and Chamberlain of our time….absent, of course, the peace!

Moving on, or in this case back, The Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes, writing at The Weekly Standard relates how the….

White House Tries to Write Al Qaeda Out of Libya Story

 

The Obama administration appears to be mounting yet another version of its campaign to push back on claims that it misled on the intelligence related to the attacks in Benghazi on 9/11/12. But the new offensive by the administration, which contradicts many of its earlier claims and simply disregards intelligence that complicates its case, is raising fresh questions in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill about the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.

The administration’s new line takes shape in two articles out Saturday, one in the Los Angeles Times and the other by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. The Times piece reports that there is no evidence of an al Qaeda role in the attack. The Ignatius column makes a directly political argument, claiming that “the Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attacks weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior intelligence official.”

If this is the best the Obama administration can offer in its defense, they’re in trouble. The Times story is almost certainly wrong and the central part of the Ignatius “scoop” isn’t a scoop at all. We’ll start there.

David Ignatius, a reporter’s columnist with excellent sources in the Obama administration and the intelligence community, reports: “Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept 11 attack on the U.S. consulate as a reaction to the Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US consulate and subsequently into its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

There are two problems with this. The CIA “talking points” don’t say what Ignatius claims and the supposedly exculpatory documents were first reported three weeks ago.

On October 1, Newsweek‘s Eli Lake reported: “For eight days after the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, government officials said the attacks were a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam film. Now that officials have acknowledged they were a premeditated act of terrorism, the question some members of Congress are trying to answer is why it took so long for the truth to come out. Unclassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency suggest the answer may have to do with so-called talking points written by the CIA and distributed to members of Congress and other government officials, including Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the United Nations. The documents, distributed three days after the attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, said the events were spontaneous.”

Lake continued, quoting directly from the CIA talking points, in language that may sound familiar to anyone who read the third paragraph above: “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the demonstrations.” Both the Ignatius and Lake versions of the talking points note that the “assessment may change as additional information is collected” and that the “investigation is on-going.”

Note that the “talking points” do not claim that the attackers in Benghazi were directly motivated by the film, something the Obama administration claimed for nearly two weeks after 9/11. The talking points only say that the “demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired” by Cairo.

We now know, of course, that there were no demonstrations in Benghazi. Those inside the compound heard gunfire at 9:40 p.m. local time and within minutes the compound was under siege. Surveillance photos and videos taken in the hours before the attack give no indication of a protest. And one CIA official tells Ignatius that it would have been better to substitute “opportunistic” for “spontaneous” since there was “some pre-coordination but minimal planning.”

The “spontaneous” talking point came from an intercepted telephone call between jihadists, in which one of the attackers notes that his group had attacked after seeing the demonstrations in Cairo. U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence on Benghazi tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD there are two schools of thought on what that means. The first view is reflected in the administration’s “spontaneous” line. It holds that jihadists in Benghazi saw the demonstration in Egypt and decided, almost on a whim, to assault the compound. But the nature of the attack—the weapons, the sequencing, the coordination—suggests more planning. The attackers flushed Americans from the compound toward an “annex” two kilometers away. As the Americans fled, they encountered (and avoided) an attempted ambush on the route.

The second view is that the demonstrations in Cairo, which followed the release of a video from al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri on September 10, were seen as something of a “go signal.” As we first reported on September 12, the film, in this view, was merely the pretext for an al Qaeda “information operation,” and the Zawahiri video, which called directly for renewed jihad and for al Qaeda sympathizers to avenge the death of Abu Yaya al Libi, was intended to trigger protests and assaults throughout the region. Many of those with prominent roles in the protests and assaults—in Egypt, Tunisia, and perhaps Libya—had strong ties to al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.

Not surprisingly, this view is not popular with an administration that has built its case for reelection in part on the notion that “bin Laden is dead” and “al Qaeda is on its heels.” Which leads us to the claims in the Los Angeles Times article that ran under the heading: “No evidence found of al Qaeda role in Libya attack.” That story begins: “The assault on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by al Qaeda, according to US officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.”

The claim in the headline is not the same as the claim in the article, of course. It’s possible for there to have been “an Qaeda role” in the attack without it having been directly ordered by al Qaeda central. And there is, in fact, evidence of some al Qaeda role in the attack.

The same phone call that the administration had used to pin its argument that the attack was “spontaneous” also provides evidence of such al Qaeda involvement. Indeed, as Eli Lake reported three weeks ago: “In the hours following the 9/11 anniversary attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, US intelligence agencies monitored communications from jihadists affiliated with the group that led the attack and members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s north African affiliate.”

Several of the local jihadists were affiliated Ansar al Sharia, which has its own ties to al Qaeda. An August report from the Pentagon’s “Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office,” reported that Ansar al Sharia “has increasingly embodied al Qaeda’s presence in Libya, as indicated by its active propaganda, extremist discourse, and hatred of the West, especially the United States.” One of the leaders of AAS, a former Guantanamo detainee named Sufyan ben Qumu, has ties to senior al Qaeda leaders. As Tom Joscelyn first reported, Qumu’s alias was found on the laptop of Mustafa al Hawsawi, an al Qaeda financier who helped fund the original 9/11 attacks. Qumu is described “as an al Qaeda member receiving family support.”

The other group, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has a more direct relationship with al Qaeda central. As Joscelyn reported last month, AQIM entered into a “formal alliance” with al Qaeda in 2006, according to a United Nations report on the group. The Pentagon’s Combating Terrorism study reported: “Al Qaeda affiliates such as AQIM are also benefiting from the situation in Libya. AQIM will likely join hands with the al Qaeda clandestine network in Libya to secure a supply of arms for its areas of operations in northern Mali and Algeria.” The report also notes: “Although no information in open sources was found regarding the whereabouts of al Qaeda’s leadership in Libya, it is likely that at this point al Qaeda’s clandestine network is run directly by al Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan.”

One thing that has troubled both intelligence officials and those on Capitol Hill as they have evaluated the administration’s early response to the attacks is what appears to be an effort to write al Qaeda out of the story. For example, the talking points first reported by Lake, include this sentence: “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” But according to several officials familiar with the original assessment from which the talking points were derived, the U.S. intelligence community had reported the fact that these were extremists with ties to al Qaeda. That key part was omitted.

Why was that language dropped from the talking points distributed to Congress and Obama administration officials? Did anyone at the White House or on the National Security Council have any role in drafting them?

In addition to the intercepts between Ansar al Sharia jihadists and AQIM, the Associated Press reported Friday that “the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within hours of last month’s deadly attack on the US consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.”

As further evidence of the ever-shifting Obama administration narrative, the AP article, which ran some 24 hours before this latest public relations push, also reported: “The White House now says the attack was probably carried out by an al Qaeda-linked group, with no public demonstration beforehand.”

Yet another point….

….we wish Mitt had made greater effort to drive home.  Instead, we heard our emphasis should be on Muslim outreach.  Sorta like,….what?  The Obamao’s replacement for the space shuttle program?!?

Seriously….not even the bluest Buckeye (excepting of course Dennis Kucinich!) believes Muslims are capable of being “reached”.

And in the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment, courtesy today of George Lawlor, Phil Koch and Breitbart.com, we learn….

Stimulus-Funded Workers Paid To Play Cards

 

This is now….

….and this was then:

But hey, it’s not like The Obamao was “investing” HIS money!

In a related item, we turn to today’s Environmental Moment, where, courtesy of Jeff Foutch and Steve Boss, Heritage.org offers a complete list of The Obamao’s dreadful “investment” record:

President Obama’s Taxpayer-Backed Green Energy Failures

 

It is no secret that President Obama’s and green-energy supporters’ (from both parties) foray into venture capitalism has not gone well. But the extent of its failure has been largely ignored by the press. Sure, single instances garner attention as they happen, but they ignore past failures in order to make it seem like a rare case.

The truth is that the problem is widespread. The government’s picking winners and losers in the energy market has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and the rate of failure, cronyism, and corruption at the companies receiving the subsidies is substantial. The fact that some companies are not under financial duress does not make the policy a success. It simply means that our taxpayer dollars subsidized companies that would’ve found the financial support in the private market.

So far, 36 companies that were offered federal support from taxpayers are faltering — either having gone bankrupt or laying off workers or heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy and other agencies. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher.

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

  1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
  2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
  3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
  4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
  5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
  6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
  7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
  8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
  9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
  10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
  11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
  12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
  13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
  14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
  15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
  16. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
  17. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
  18. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
  19. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
  20. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
  21. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
  22. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
  23. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
  24. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
  25. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
  26. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
  27. GreenVolts ($500,000)
  28. Vestas ($50 million)
  29. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
  30. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
  31. Navistar ($39 million)
  32. Satcon ($3 million)*
  33. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
  34. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

The problem begins with the issue of government picking winners and losers in the first place. Venture capitalist firms exist for this very reason, and they choose what to invest in by looking at companies’ business models and deciding if they are worthy. When the government plays venture capitalist, it tends to reward companies that are connected to the policymakers themselves or because it sounds nice to “invest” in green energy.

The 2009 stimulus set aside $80 billion to subsidize politically preferred energy projects. Since that time, 1,900 investigations have been opened to look into stimulus waste, fraud, and abuse (although not all are linked to the green-energy funds), and nearly 600 convictions have been made. Of that $80 billion in clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, at least 10 percent has gone to companies that have since either gone bankrupt or are circling the drain.

And let’s not forget the latest shakedown from Lisa Jackson and the EPA, courtesy of the WSJ:

The Obama Storm Tax

The EPA turns its unsubtle charms on cities. Get ready to pay.

 

Whatever you ask me better include what I want for lunch.

Behold the Obama Administration’s new public works plan. Sue cities for polluting waterways and then as part of a settlement require them to spend, er, “invest” billions in extraneous sewer improvements. The White House doesn’t even need legislation to pour this money down the drain.

The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency have taken enforcement actions against 25 cities over the last four years for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act, and there are another 772 on their list. In addition to imposing millions of dollars in penalties, the feds have forced these cities into consent decrees that will cost their local taxpayers $21 billion. The decrees spell out in detail what capital upgrades they must undertake—everything down to the size of their pipes.

The EPA says this extraordinary intrusion on local sovereignty is justified because cities are discharging waste into waterways during heavy rains. Many older wastewater systems include a safety valve that releases untreated stormwater and sewage into lakes and rivers when underground tunnels are flooded. This is to prevent waste from backing up in basements. The EPA has ordered cities to limit such wet weather overflows to four per year, regardless of how much rain they receive or how little muck they discharge.

Along with everything else not part of the Environazi agenda!

Many cities have already taken concrete steps to reduce such overflows by developing “green infrastructure” (i.e., permeable pavements, rain gardens, catch-basins) that soaks up and diverts stormwater. Such solutions are easier and less expensive to implement than reconstructing their underground systems as the EPA wants them to do.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors says the EPA’s heavy-handed management can’t be justified by the supposed environmental or economic benefits. George Hawkins, the general manager for Washington D.C.’s Water and Sewer Authority, told Congress in July about “the growing cost of additional regulatory requirements in order to achieve ever-decreasing water quality gains” and that “communities are being forced to invest more but are increasingly getting less return on these investments.” Fossil fuel CEOs couldn’t have said it better.

Cities are spending twice as much on water treatment as they did in 1995 and have reduced the contaminants they discharge into waterways during dry weather by 85%. Even so, the EPA says they need to spend at least $300 billion more on maintenance and upgrades to meet the agency’s ever-stricter standards. (That’s because….

Since cities don’t have that much spare change, they’ve been making improvements incrementally. But the EPA is demanding that they accelerate their work, which means they’ll have to issue bonds as well as raise residents’ water and sewer rates. David Berger, the Democratic mayor of Lima, Ohio—which has a median household income of $26,000—told Congress this summer that the EPA’s consent decree could raise the average resident’s $333 annual sewer bill by $539. Call the surcharge the Obama storm tax.

By the way, that was a month after the EPA announced it would try to offer cities more flexibility. Mr. Berger noted in his testimony that the detente “remains, at this point, a promise, not a reality.” He told us last week that cities continue to have difficulty dealing with the EPA’s regional offices, which is putting it nicely.

New York City’s deputy mayor for operations Cas Holloway is less charitable. The EPA, he wrote in “The Environmental Forum” journal this month, is “treating cities as it might have treated Standard Oil early last century.” The agency is “imposing billions of dollars of unfunded mandates without a clear scientific and public health basis for doing so.”

Perhaps by targeting cities the EPA is merely trying to show that it’s an equal opportunity harassing regulator. To adapt one of the President’s favorite phrases, everyone deserves a fair shakedown.

And here we thought urban centers were the paragon of environmentally-sensitive virtue.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this made-in-America photo from Bill Magruder….

….as well as this one from Balls Cotton which succinctly summarizes each candidate’s essential ethos:

Next up, another abject account ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter, courtesy of George Lawlor, the New York Post and a Long Island girl just out looking for a good time:

‘Drunk driving’ mom — with 3 kids in car — crashes on LI, then flees on foot: cops

 

A Long Island mom was busted for drunk driving with three kids in her car late Saturday night after she crashed into another vehicle and fled the scene, Suffolk cops said. Zona Taylor, 43, of Bellport, was driving a 2005 Dodge Neon at 11 p.m. in Patchogue along with another adult, her own 8-year-old son and two grandchildren aged 4 and 6 when she smashed into a 2003 Ford, police said.

With her car disabled, Taylor grabbed the children and fled the accident scene on foot before being arrested nearby in Blue Point. All of the children suffered minor injuries in the crash and were eventually released to relatives after being treated at a local hospital. The driver of the Ford and Taylor’s passenger were both taken to Brookhaven Memorial Hospital with minor injuries.

Taylor, who was uninjured, was charged with DWI, aggravated DWI with a child 15 years or younger, leaving the scene of an accident with an injury, and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. The aggravated DWI rap — also known as Leandra’s law — could put Taylor behind bars for up to four years as an automatic felony.

Finally, we’ll call it a day with a story which we had difficulty categorizing; sort of a cross between News of the Bizarre and the Crime Blotter:

Girl in costume at Halloween party shot after being mistaken for skunk

 

Police say a costumed 9-year-old girl was accidentally shot outside a western Pennsylvania home during a Halloween party by a relative who thought she was a skunk. New Sewickley Township police say the girl was over a hillside and wearing a black costume and a black hat with a white tassel. Chief Ronald Leindecker says a male relative mistook her for a skunk and fired a shotgun, hitting her in the shoulder Saturday night.

Leindecker tells the Beaver County Times that the girl was alert and talking when she was flown to a hospital in Pittsburgh, about 30 miles away. Her condition was unavailable. Leindecker says the man hadn’t been drinking and he doesn’t know whether charges will be filed.

Two thoughts come to mind; while we’re elated the young lady is doing well, we’re left wondering….seriously….how many 3-1/2 foot skunks walking erect are there in New Sewickley?!?

Magoo



Archives