Oh, Canada...

Here is an excellent video regarding Obama's desire to move the US towards a Canadian style healthcare system.

Earth Day Nonsense

Ah, Earth Day as come upon us again. The annual plague of "truth" will spread across the world as we "celebrate" our impending doom. I'm all for this wonderful world we live in and for taking better care of it. There is more we can do and I see progress. What I'm not for is the continued lies spread by the media and many other outlets. I'm sure even my young children's day will include some education on global warming brought to us by the horrible human race.

There will be many poor examples of articles aimed at showing us how we are hurting mother Earth. I will quote from the first one that I ran into - Climate Catastrophe? Here's What the U.S. Could Look Like in 2100.

You've been hearing about the negative impacts of global warming for years. Sometimes your friends nervously joke about it — "Could land in the Rocky Mountains become beachfront property?" Other times you read with worry the news about forest fires, hurricanes, droughts and heat waves. And you wonder, "Is climate disaster already upon us?"

Scientists say the answer is "yes." We are now experiencing the effects of human-caused climate change and, even if we drastically alter our polluting behavior today, we'll continue to see changes over the next two to three decades. This change is irreversible, and researchers predict it may be worse than the depressing situation Al Gore foretold in "An Inconvenient Truth."

By stating "scientists say...we are now experiencing the effects of human-caused climate change" there is more than one overstatement taking place. Sure some scientists will state such but there are others who will state that we are not a major contributing factor in the current climate change taking place. So, 1) not all scientists agree and 2) we are not experiencing human-caused climate change - there is no definitive proof of that.

It is all quite tiring to reiterate, but our contribution to the CO2 in the atmosphere is about 3.2% of total C02 "pumped" up there and less than 0.1 of one percent of the total greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor. Pretty natural stuff, water vapor. In all, nature generates 30 times more C02 than we humans.

The article states that if we reverse course now, we can get over the damage we have done in about 30-40 years. It doesn't say what exactly that means. A total cessation of human generated CO2? Imagine what that would do to our battered economy. It is crazy to think it could be done within that period of time alone. I even question, if we were to pretend we were the cause of global warming, whether or not such a cessation would change anything significantly in such a short period of time (in the grand scheme of things).

Be sure to go through the article and read of all the horrible things that will happen due to global warming. Of course, it would not make sense to note any of the positives of such changes as that would lessen the impact of the article. Some scientists continue to base their predictions on faulty climate models but I do not imagine that will end soon.

I hope everyone's Earth Day celebration is full of good cheer! For such a result, I recommend avoiding all media outlets, keeping your kids at home and maybe planting a tree/flowers, riding your bikes along a scenic trail and/or hiking among God's wonders.

One of the Most Idiotic Statements Ever

Janeane Garofalo made one of the most idiotic statements ever when she commented on the recent Tea Parties being held to protest growing government spending and bailouts -

This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.

When Obama was elected as President, I knew it would come to a point that when a person or group of persons disagreed with his policies some fool would come out and say it was because they were racist. The fact is, such a comment is simple minded and a cop out. When you have nothing intelligent to say, it is better to shut up than spew stupidity.

This is not about racism, this is about disagreement with Obama policies pure and simple. Calling those protesting such policies rednecks is more racist than what any of the tea party protestors are doing.

And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they'll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become -- it's like showing Frankenstein's monster fire.

She's got it all backwards. Who has to resort to petty name calling because she has nothing intelligent to say? Who is not willing to accept the truth here? Keith Olbermann can't, that's for sure -

Our number two story tonight, the sad reality behind the corporate sponsored Tea Parties, visual proof that this is not about spending, deficits, or taxes, but about some Americans getting riled up by the people who caused these things, and finally about some Americans who just hate the president of the United States.

While I did not participate in a Tea Party, those I know who did and who helped organize some were not corporate representatives. A large part of the blame for what we are going through now is because of the Democrats but they nor the media will ever admit that. They encouraged the lending to people who should never have received a mortgage loan. That is where the dominoes began to fall.

Hate is a strong word. I definitely feel the hate from those such as Olbermann and Garofalo who have no problem calling conservatives names and misrepresenting them. If they were on the receiving end of their own vitriol, there would be grand protests about the hate from themselves, the media and other liberals. It is hypocrisy at its grandest.

The Pickens Plan

I was surprised to recently see a TV advertisement featuring T. Boone Pickens and his plan. Having left Texas I did not believe Pickens would follow me to another state but there he was on the TV in living color. Of course, the first question that came to my mind was what is Pickens getting out of this? If Pickens has a plan, it is for himself to make more money no matter how he markets it. Who is getting the bad end of the stick while he has the good end?

I graduated from West Texas A & M University where I took classes from the T. Boone College of Business. T. Boone's name was dropped from the college in 2005 over questions of whether or not he completed his pledge of $1.5 million (the University's side of the story) or because T. Boone thought the college was not performing to his expectations (his side of the story). He basically was confronted with the issue and decided it was time for a name change for the college.

A former corporate raider, he shunned Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle for Dallas because the region was not willing to tote his line anymore. He was always about profits despite what he left in his wake. Of course, the Texas Panhandle couldn't get rid of him that easy, as he would show up again with a plan to sell water down state to San Antonio and/or the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.

The water plan is still in the works and he has been paving the way to make it possible by his influence in the Texas legislature. He now has obtained the ability to get right-of-way to build a pipeline and, along with it, is looking at putting in transmission lines for his wind generated power. Pickens plan to pipe a limited resource, water from the Ogallala Aquifer, pays little regard to what future impact it may have on the farmers and communities of the Texas Panhandle.

At this point, let me touch on the new Pickens Plan that has brought him out west and onto my TV as well as that of many others. He wants to see the US increase the amount of power generated by wind energy to 22% of our power needs and convert the existing 20% or so of power generated through the use of natural gas to our transporation needs. What a green thing for an oilman to want to do, right? That's what he would like you to believe, and to believe he is doing this out of the best interest of the country, too. But, that is not who and what Pickens is about.

Pickens wants to put into place the largest wind farm to date in the Texas Panhandle near the town of Pampa through his company Mesa Power. His problem is that he needs the transmission lines to get that power to where it is needed. By getting support for his plan, he would most likely get the financial support to put in his transmission lines and thus be able to profit from his new wind farm. To top it off, Pickens has natural gas interests through his hedge fund, BP Capital, and would profit from a move to natural gas for transportation needs.So, who has the most to gain from the Pickens Plan? T. Boone Pickens, of course.

Is it a good plan regardless of Pickens' profit motives? I don't think so. Wind energy is definitely a viable and growing source of energy. There is still much room for it to grow. Where Pickens plan falls apart is in converting some of our transportation energy needs to natural gas. Pickens intends for it to be a transitional fuel as we convert over to more hybrids and to electric vehicles. His plan does not seem to take into account the infrastructure costs and time involved in getting more natural gas fueling stations. He also needs the support of automobile manufacturers for such a conversion and those behemouths take a long time to turn. A conversion to more natural gas fueled vehicles is in no way going to happen soon so why waste the time in doing it when we could be closer to other modes of fueling our automobiles.

Hopefully, national legislators and the public will see what worth this Pickens Plan really is and not buy into it. It will be time, effort and money wasted if we sink any of it into a plan that does little for us in the near future and will mean little to us in the more distant future.

David M. Walker Information Roundup - Our Looming Fiscal Crisis

David M. Walker is the Comptroller General of the United States. I have blogged about him before but wanted to gather some links together regarding his attempt to warn Americans about our government's unfunded liabilities.

First, this article from the Washington Post - America's Red Ink. Here we are warned that the the Federal government has $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That's $440,000 per American household and was $20 trillion just 6 years ago.

Mr. Walker is involved in a Fiscal Wake-up Tour with the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation link provides links to various presentations and I will add this one - Time for the Federal Budget Process to Include Unfunded Entitlement Obligations. I recommend a viewing of one of Mr. Walker's Fiscal Wake-up Tour presentations like this one given to the Association of Advanced Life Underwriters (one of the more lengthy presentations given by him in the tour - this is in PDF format).

There is also an interview of Mr. Walker that was done on 60 Minutes - US Heading for Financial Trouble? From that interview:

The cancer, Walker says, are massive entitlement programs we can no longer afford, exacerbated by a demographic glitch that began more than 60 years ago, a dramatic spike in the fertility rate called the "baby boom."

David Walker believes this issue should be one of the top three in the coming presidential campaign but I doubt it will be given the attention it deserves.

No Farmer Left Behind

I can't link the Wall Street Journal article but if you have access check out The No Farmer Left Behind Act article from November 14. While produce prices are on the rise as well as the profit of those who produce it, Congress is working on another farm bill that will dole out $25 billion in direct crop payments and $10 billion in emergency assistance. The impact of subsidies can be illustrated by these quotes from the article:

In other industries, we celebrate the impact of trade and technology in reducing prices. But U.S. farm programs are expressly designed to make food prices higher for consumers. Economists estimate that Americans pay about $12 billion more a year for food as a consequence -- on top of the higher taxes to sustain the direct handouts...

About $4 of every $5 in the Senate bill go straight into the pockets of the growers of five commercial crops: corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat. The idea of subsidizing corn growers at today's prices makes about as much sense as government sending a check to every American who owns Google stock.

Now, immediately upon coming across this article I though about how the big benefactors of farm subsidies are the corporate farmers.

And though this is a Democratic Congress that claims to care about "inequality," the USDA says about two-thirds of this farm aid goes to the wealthiest 10% of farms. It is a direct transfer from taxpayers and poor consumers to mostly rich corporate farmers. President Bush has requested that subsidies only go to farmers with incomes below $200,000, but the Senate bill has no income caps for full-time farmers. One proposed amendment (by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar) would establish a cap of $750,000 in income, but that's still about 14 times the average family income in America, and the farm lobby is fighting even that. The House subsidy ceiling is $1 million a year, which after fancy accounting would exclude no corporate farms at all. Yet all of this is defended as a "safety net."

It would thus seem that the farm aid is going to the wrong farmers. The American consumer has enough to worry about with increasing fuel and energy costs without having to deal with spiking agriculture product prices that may be increasing in cost partly due to farm subsidies. It is just another burden placed on produce prices in addition to increased demand and increased production costs.

Teenage Pregnancy

The big topic here in Texas the last couple of days has been teenage pregnancy. Texas has the distinction of ranking first among states for the rate of teenage pregnancy among teenagers that are already mothers. You can read more about it in this Dallas Morning News article, Texas teens lead nation in birth rate. The figures are coming from Child Trends (here is a PDF copy of the study).

The focus of the discussion on this topic has been on sex education - abstinence and contraceptive approaches. Some are blaming the fact that Texas does not focus enough on teaching children about the availability of contraceptives. States like Vermont and New Hampshire are at the other end of the scale. You can read more about their success in this Burlington Free Press article, One ranking were last is best. In that article Sharon Moffatt, Vermont's Health Commissioner states the following:

Moffatt said the key to Vermont's success at holding down the number of repeat teen births has been a comprehensive strategy that includes health education programs in schools to try to prevent teen pregnancies, early prenatal health services for pregnant teenagers and supports such as child care after birth to allow teens to complete school.

I have a different take on this issue. Health education, including that of abstinence and contraceptives is a band aid approach to the true problem that is creating teenage pregnancy and repeat teenage pregnancy. The problem starts much earlier.

When I first moved to Texas from Idaho while in the fourth grade I was in for some culture shock. In Idaho I was kid having fun (well, except for school) and girls had cooties. When I got to Texas, many kids were pairing off as boyfriends and girlfriends kissing and going on dates (not dinner and movie dates but getting together doing things fourth graders did). Kids of that age should not be getting in such relationships, they are not mature enough for it. The problem was compounded by parents who thought it was cute. Some parents encouraged the behavior and many were complacent to it.

Relationships build over time. If you start kids off with boyfriend/girlfriend relationships in elementary school, they're going to develop to more involved relationships early as well. Is it a surprise that kids are starting to have sex as early as a middle school (with even some cases of elementary school age sex)? Those kids have moved from kissing and holding hands to oral and full sex (with steps in between) as a natural relationship trend too early.

Many of the girls I saw in boyfriend/girlfriend relationships in elementary school were the same ones I saw getting pregnant as teenagers in high school. Once you find it necessary to provide abstinence and contraceptive education the true root of the problem has already been missed. The relationships have already begun and pressure to move them through the steps of greater intimacy are already well underway. With so many kids starting these relationships early, by the time their "raging hormones" hit they are already at the edge of sexual intimacy.

Schools really can't teach relationship classes starting in elementary school. They are not equipped for that education and they really do not have the time. Parents should be building a foundation of what is right and wrong and give their kids an understanding of what is appropriate for their age. Sadly, I see the trend going the wrong way in this regard. So, we see band aid approaches to the issue with many concluding we are not going to keep kids from having sex so we need to stop them from getting pregnant by educating on contraceptives and making contraceptives more available. To me, the opportunity has been missed and kids suffer for it.