Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.
K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.
McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.
Exploring corporate lobbyists' central role in Obama's "green energy" push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business.
Second, it ought to heighten our skepticism that these "green" policies are really crafted with an eye to helping the environment -- they are more likely skewed toward the bottom line of lobbied-up Big Business.
McBee's clients include SolarCity and the Green Tech Action Fund as well as electric-car maker Better Place Inc., waste-to-power company Ze-gen, and solar-power developer BrightSource Energy. But the big guys -- Boeing, JP Morgan, and Google -- also hire McBee to lobby for green-energy subsidies.
Electric car company Tesla signed on with McBee days after Obama's election, and soon won a $465 million loan guarantee to aid in building a new all-electric car.
With McBee's former boss being a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, McBee Strategic used to be an earmark factory. After Obama's election, though, McBee pivoted to green energy and saw revenues soar in 2009.
"I attribute it to the bets we've made on clean energy and energy," he told Roll Call.
Late last year McBee hired Kathleen Frangione, described by Politico as "Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer." You see the play: advance green legislation, then lobby for the companies trying to make money off that legislation.
Hit the link up top to read the whole thing. The pictures of the Room Cleaner (a space heater with a feather duster taped to it) and the gasoline powered alarm clock, both of which were approved as "Energy Stars" by regulators, came from here.
Matt Damon, the guy who narrated last year's brilliant Academy Award winning documentary "Inside Job" on the origins of the housing bubble/crisis...
Matt Damon, who brilliantly plays Jason Bourne, the lead character in Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum series. My favorite spy thrillers EVER....
Matt Damon, who plays one of the angels in Dogma, my favorite theological comedy....
I just got a 3 per cent tax cut. Do you think I'm going to start a small business with that money? You're out of your mind if you think so. I'm going to put it in the bank. So is every other guy that makes the kind of money I make.
Yeah. Hit the links and you'll see that Matt Damon thinks he's undertaxed. Banks don't loan out his money to start small businesses, do they? Only the government has the wisdom and knowledge to loan out Matt Damon's money, via stimulus and kickbacks.
I have a bunch of pictures that I've saved on my laptop for future use. Some of them may have been posted before. I don't know. Don't remember.
I have no idea where most of these came from. Will give attribution if someone wants it.
That's all for now. If these get linked and Tweeted a lot, I'll post the rest later on.
This is from the ending of Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist", probably last year's best libertarian book. The ending is pure, undiluted greatness. Ridley argues that the world is NOT going to hell in a handbasket, as long as people are free to freely exchange goods and services, and most important - ideas. The item on the left, a primitive handaxe, is one of the oldest human artifacts. One person made it. The item on the right is approximately the same size and was made by hundreds, if not thousands of people, each one working on a small part of the project and reflecting "multiple strands of knowledge". The one on the left is the result of a system with cultural, geographic and trade barriers in place. The product on the right can only be efficiently manufactured when people are left alone to seek their own self-interest. Pick a side, pick a side.
Here's Matt Ridley:
Politicians are increasingly corks tossed on the waves of public opinion. Dictators are learning that their citizens can organise riots by text message. 'Here comes everybody' says the author Clay Shirky.
People will more and more freely find ways to exchange their specialised production for diversified consumption. This world can already be glimpsed on the web, in what John Barlow calls 'dot-com communism': a workforce of free agents bartering their ideas and efforts barely interested in whether the barter yields 'real' money. The explosion of interest in the free sharing of ideas that the internet has spawned has taken everybody by surprise. 'The online masses have an incredible willingness to share' says Kevin Kelly. Instead of money, 'peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and experience:. People are willing to share their photographs on Flickr, their thoughts on Twitter, their friends on Facebook, their knowledge on Wikipedia, their software patches on Linux, their donations on Globalgiving.com, their community news on Craigslist, their pedigrees on Ancestry.com, their genomes on 23andMe, even their medical records on PatientsLikeMe. Thanks to the internet, each is giving according to his ability to each according to his needs, to a degree that never happened in Marxism.
This catallaxy will not go smoothly, or without resistance. Natural and unnatural disasters will still happen. Governments will bail out big corporations and big bureaucracies, hand them special favours such as subsidies or carbon rations and regulate them in such a way as to create barriers to entry, slowing down creative destruction. Chiefs, priests, thieves, financiers, consultants and others will appear on all sides, feeding off the surplus generated by exchange and specialisation, diverting the life-blood of the catallaxy into their own reactionary lives. It happened in the past. Empires brought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the price of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers. The online world will attract parasites too: from regulators and cyber-criminals to hackers and plagiarists. Some of them may temporarily throttle their generous hosts.
....There is even a new reason for such pessimism: the integrated nature of the world means that it may soon be possible to capture the entire world on behalf of a foolish idea, where before you could only capture a country, or perhaps if you were lucky an empire.
....Imagine if the globalised world of the twenty-first century allows a globalised retreat from reason. It is a worrying thought. The wrong kind of chiefs, priests and thieves could yet snuff out future prosperity on earth. Already lords don boiler suits to destroy genetically modified crops, presidents scheme to prevent stem-cell research, prime ministers trample on habeas corpus using the excuse of terrorism, metastasising bureacracies interfere with innovation on behalf of reactionary pressure groups, superstitious creationists stop the teaching of good science, air-headed celebrities rail against free trade, mullahs inveigh against the empowerment of women, earnest princes lament the loss of old ways and pious bishops regret the coarsening effects of commerce. So far they are all sufficiently localised in their effects to achieve no more than limited pauses in the happy progress of the species, but could one of them go global?
I doubt it....Said Lord Macaulay, 'We see in almost every part of the annals of mankind how the industry of individuals, struggling up against wars, taxes, famines, conflagrations, mischievous prohibitions, and more mischievous protections, creates faster than governments can squander, and repairs whatever invaders can destroy.'
....The twenty-first century will be a magnificent time to be alive.
Dare to be an optimist.
I hope you'll check out this book when it's released in paperback. It's greatness.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex, has made a career out of being the contrarian in Congress, and with uprisings sweeping across the Middle East he took the opportunity today to point out one of the inconvenient truths of American foreign policy: its support across successive administrations for key Middle East leaders who ally themselves with the United States in a difficult region, yet do not respect basic human rights and democracy in their own countries.
“A lot of people in this country have come to the conclusion that our policy overhaul has been inconsistent; that sometimes we support the bad guys and the bad guys become our enemies,” Paul told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Rep. Paul pointed to America’s support for Osama bin Laden when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, its collaboration with Saddam Hussein against Iran in the 1980s, and its propping up the Shah in Iran for decades before that.
“But we keep supporting Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, all these dictators, and yet we pretend that as soon as, well, it looks like the dictator might fall, we're all for democracy and we're for freedom and we're against these dictators,” he said.
Here's the money quote from She Whose Name Is Not Spoken:
“Congressman, you make a very passionate argument, and my response is that, you know, the United States, over the course of its entire diplomatic history, has had to make some very difficult decisions,” she said.
“We try to balance what we believe to be in our interests. Sometimes, and I would argue most times, we get it right. Sometimes we don't,” America’s top diplomat conceded.
Precisely. That's why James Monroe came up with something eventually known as The Monroe Doctrine. We're going to stay out of everyone else's business, because we "sometimes don't" get it right. In fact, I'm going through a mental list of dictators, trying to think of one we've supported and got it right by doing so.
Can anyone out there help me out? How many of these guys were instances where we got it right? I've swiped a list of dictators supported by the U.S. from this dude.Lord have mercy, I wish that the Congressman had done a roll call through the list, asking when we "got it right".
{Update from 3-3-2011, to eliminate any confusion....If you follow all of the links back to the originator of this list, his basis for inclusion is"rulers who received aid (economic/military), training of military/intelligence/security forces, and/or political support from the US". It's freakin' terrifying. See the comment field below about Pol Pot.}
Please respond with the names that give you that warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting a great cause.
Africa
MOBUTU SESE SEKO
Dictator of Zaire 1965-1997
MOHAMMED SIAD BARRE
President/Dictator of Somalia 1969-1991
GEN. IBRAHIM BABANGIDA
Military Dictator/President of Nigeria 1985-1993
GEN. SANI ABACHA
Dictator of Nigeria 1993-1998
HASTINGS KAMUZU BANDA
Dictator of Malawi 1966-1994
LAURENT-DÉSIRÉ KABILA
President/Dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo 1997-2001
GNASSINGBE ETIENNE EYADEMA
Dictator of Togo 1967-2005
FELIX HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY
Dictator/President of the Ivory Coast 1960-1993
HASSAN II
King of Morocco 1961-1999
TEODORO OBIANG NGUEMA MBASOGO
President/Dictator of Equatorial Guinea 1979-present
ZINE EL ABIDINE BEN ALI
President-Prime Minister/Dictator of Tunisia 1987-2011
ANWAR EL-SADAT
President/Dictator of Egypt 1970-1981
HOSNI MUBARAK
President/Dictator of Egypt 1981-present
IAN SMITH
Prime Minister of Rhodesia (white minority regime) 1965-1979
PIETER WILLEM BOTHA
Prime Minister of South Africa (white minority regime) 1978-1984, President 1984-1989
DANIEL ARAP MOI
President/Dictator of Kenya 1978-2002
HAILE SELASSIE (RAS TAFARI)
Emperor of Ethiopia 1928-1974
WILLIAM J. S. TUBMAN
President/Dictator of Liberia 1944-1971
SAMUEL KANYON DOE
Dictator of Liberia 1980-1990
Asia
MOHAMED SUHARTO
Dictator of Indonesia 1966-1998
NGO DINH DIEM
President/Dictator of South Vietnam 1955-1963
GEN. NGUYEN KHANH
Dictator of South Vietnam 1964-1965
NGUYEN CAO KY
Dictator of South Vietnam 1965-1967
GEN. NGUYEN VAN THIEU
President/Dictator of South Vietnam 1967-1975
TRAN THIEM KHIEM
Prime Minister of South Vietnam 1969-75
BAO DAI
Emperor of Vietnam 1926-1945, chief of state 1949-1955
LEE KUAN YEW
Prime Minister/Dictator of Singapore 1959-1990; behind-the scenes ruler since then.
EMOMALI RAHMONOV
President/Dictator of Tajikistan 1992-present
NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV
President of Kazakhstan 1990-present
ISLAM A. KARIMOV
President/Dictator of Uzbekistan 1990-present
SAPARMURAD ATAYEVICH NIYAZOV
President/Dictator of Turkmenistan 1990-2006
MARSHAL LUANG PIBUL SONGGRAM
Dictator of Thailand 1948-1957
FIELD MARSHAL THANOM KITTIKACHORN
Prime Minister/Dictator of Thailand 1957-58, 1963-1973
CHIANG KAI-SHEK
President/Dictator (Nationalist) of China 1928-1949
President/Dictator of Taiwan 1949-1975
CHIANG CHING-KUO
President/Dicator of Taiwan 1978-1988; Prime Minister 1972-1978
DENG XIAOPING
De facto ruler of China from circa 1978 to the early 1990s
FERDINAND MARCOS
President/Dictator of the Philippines 1965-1986
SYNGMAN RHEE
President/Dictator of South Korea 1948-1960
GEN. PARK CHUNG HEE
President/Dictator of South Korea 1962-1979
GEN. CHUN DOO HWAN
President/Dictator of South Korea 1980-1988
SIR MUDA HASSANAL BOLKIAH
Sultan of Brunei 1967-present
GEN. LON NOL
Prime Minister/Dictator of Cambodia 1970-1975
POL POT
Dictator of Cambodia 1975-1979
MAJ. GEN. SITIVENI RABUKA
Dictator of Fiji 1987-1999
ASKAR AKAYEV
President of Kyrgyzstan 10/27/1990-2005
Europe
FRANCISCO FRANCO
Dictator of Spain 1939-1975
ANTONIO SALAZAR DE OLIVEIRA
Dictator of Portugal 1928-1968
COL. GEORGIOS PAPADOPOULOS
Prime Minister/President/Dictator of Greece 1967-1973
Latin America
ANASTASIO SOMOZA GARCIA
Dictator of Nicaragua 1937-1947, 1950-1956
ANASTASIO "TACHITO" SOMOZA DEBAYLE
Dictator of Nicaragua 1967-1972, 1974-1979
MANUEL ESTRADA CABRERA
Dictator of Guatemala 1898-1920
GEN. JORGE UBICO CASTANEDA
Dictator of Guatemala 1931-1944
COL. CARLOS ENRIQUE CASTILLO ARMAS
Dictator of Guatemala 1954-1957
GEN. JOSE MIGUEL YDIGORAS FUENTES
President/Dictator of Guatemala 1958-1963
COL. ENRIQUE PERALTA AZURDIA
Military Junta, Guatemala 1963-1966
COL.CARLOS ARANA OSORIO
Dictator of Guatemala 1970-1974
GEN. FERNANDO ROMEO LUCAS GARCIA
Dictator of Guatemala 1978-1982
GEN. JOSE EFRAIN RIOS MONTT
Dictator of Guatemala 1982-1983
MARCO VINICIO CEREZO ARÉVALO
President/Dictator of Guatemala 1986-1991
MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ MARTINEZ
Dictator of El Salvador 1931-1944
COL. OSMIN AGUIRRE Y SALINAS
Dictator of El Salvador 1944-1945
CIVILIAN-MILITARY JUNTA, EL SALVADOR
1961-1962
COL. ARTURO ARMANDO MOLINA BARRAZA
Dictator of El Salvador 1972-1977
JUNTA, EL SALVADOR
1979-1982
ALFREDO FÉLIX CRISTIANI BUKARD
President/Dictator of El Salvador 1989-1994
TIBURCIO CARIAS ANDINO
Dictator of Honduras 1932-1948
COL. OSWALDO LOPEZ ARELLANO
Dictator of Honduras 1963-1975
ROBERTO SUAZO CORDOVA
President/Dictator of Honduras 1982-1986
GEN. OMAR HERRERA-TORRIJOS
Dictator of Panama 1969-1981
GEN. MANUEL ANTONIO MORENA NORIEGA
Dictator of Panama 1982-1989
AUGUSTO PINOCHET UGARTE
Dictator of Chile 1973-1990
GEN. JORGE RAFAEL VIDELA
Dictator of Argentina 1976-1981
COL. MARCOS PEREZ JIMENEZ
Dictator of Venezuela 1950-1958
GEN. ALFREDO STROESSNER
Dictator of Paraguay 1954-1989
ALBERTO FUJIMORI
Dictator of Peru 1990-2000
FRANCOIS "PAPA DOC" DUVALIER
Dictator of Haiti 1957-1971
JEAN-CLAUDE "BABY DOC" DUVALIER
Dictator of Haiti 1971-1986
MILITARY JUNTA / LT. GEN. RAOUL CEDRAS, GEN. PHILIPPE BIAMBY and LT. COL. MICHEL-JOSEPH FRANCO
Haiti 1991-1994
GEN. RENE BARRIENTOS ORTUNO
President/Dictator of Bolivia 1964-1969
GEN. HUGO BANZER SUAREZ
Dictator of Bolivia 1971-1978
DR. GETULIO VARGAS
Dictator of Brazil 1930-1945, 1951-1954
GEN. HUMBERTO DE ALENCAR CASTELLO BRANCO
Dictator of Brazil 1964-1967
CARLOS PRIO SOCARRAS
Dictator of Cuba 1948-1952
FULGENCIO BATISTA
Dictator of Cuba 1933-44, 1952-1959
GERARDO MACHADO MORALES
Dictator of Cuba 1925-1933
RAFAEL LEONIDAS TRUJILLO
Dictator of the Dominican Republic 1930-1961
Middle East
MOHAMMED REZA PAHLAVI
Shah of Iran 1941-1979
SADDAM HUSSEIN
Dictator of Iraq 1969 (1979)-2003
GEN. MOHAMMED AYUB KHAN
President/Dictator of Pakistan 1958-1969
GEN. AGHA MUHAMMAD YAHYA KHAN
President/Dictator of Pakistan 1969-1971
GEN. MOHAMMAD ZIA UL-HAQ
President/Dictator of Pakistan 1977-1988
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
Dictator of Pakistan 1999-2008
ABDUL IBN HUSSEIN I
King of Jordan 1952-1999
TURGUT ÖZAL
Prime Minister of Turkey 1983-1989, President 1989-1993
SHEIK JABIR AL-AHMAD AL SABAH
Emir of Kuwait 1977-2006
Prime Minister of Kuwait 1962-1963, 1965-1978
FAHD IBN ABDUL-AZIZ AL SAUD
King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia 1982-2005
The Business Insider website recently published this as "The only chart you need".
They were mistaken.
This is only the first of two charts that you need. This one explains that we are screwed.
Here is the second one, from The Department Of Numbers website. It shows tax revenue as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product.
You can tax people at 20% of their income, and you might get lucky and take in around 20% of the GDP.
Or you can tax the rich at a 75% rate, you can punish the greedy corporations, you can end the evil Bush tax cuts, and you'll still take in around 20% of the GDP, which will be much smaller than its potential as a result.
People alter their behavior as a result of higher taxes. How much risk would you have taken in the 1950's, back when there was a 70% confiscation rate on earnings?
So why in the hell would people call for a higher tax rate? What could possibly motivate an economic idiot to lobby for a higher and higher tax rate on productive investments?
Taxes on capital gains and dividends should be higher, for "fairness," even if this results in less investment, lower growth, more joblessness, smaller revenues for the government and more federal debt, according to Obama, as revealed during a presidential debate in his exchange with moderator Charlie Gibson regarding his proposal to increase the tax on capital gains from 15 percent to 28 percent.
"In each instance when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased -- the government took in more money," said Gibson. "And in the 1980s when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
Replied Obama, "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
Yeah. He really said that. God help us all.
So there are your two charts. We're spending far more than 20%. We can only collect 20%.
That's all.
All other debate and discussion is just noise.
