sheaf_stout

Nice article worth reading. The new communism of America is here and now. Link to article Bradley A. Smith Campaign Finance Reform’s War on Political Freedom An ongoing danger, despite two recent court victories 1 July 2007 In February 2006, Norm Feck learned that the city of Parker, Colorado was thinking about annexing his neighborhood, Parker North. Feck attended a meeting on the annexation, realized that it would mean more bureaucracy, and concluded that it wouldn’t be in Parker North residents’ interest. Together with five other Parker North locals, he wrote letters to the editor, handed out information sheets, formed an Internet discussion group, and printed up anti-annexation yard signs, which soon began sprouting throughout the neighborhood. That’s when annexation supporters took action—not with their own public campaign, but with a legal complaint against Feck and his friends for violating Colorado’s campaign finance laws. The suit also threatened anyone who had contacted Feck’s group about the annexation, or put up one of their yard signs, with “investigation, scrutinization, and sanctions for Campaign Finance violations.” Apparently the anti-annexation activists hadn’t registered with the state, or filled out the required paperwork disclosing their expenditures on time. Steep fines, increasing on a daily basis, were possible. The case remains in litigation. Should Americans care about what’s happening in Parker North? They certainly don’t seem to. A LexisNexis search finds just three stories, all in Colorado papers, that mention the dispute. That’s it: no commentary by columnists, no national network reports, not even coverage by a single major blogger on this application of campaign finance law to the most basic community political activity. The lack of interest is in a way understandable, since campaign finance reform, whether on the state or federal level, is at once forbiddingly complex and seemingly irrelevant to most citizens’ lives. People tend to see reform as affecting only the powerful—lobbyists, big corporations, “fat cats”—not ordinary Joes. With some notable exceptions, even conservatives, who overwhelmingly believe that the First Amendment protects one’s right to spend money on a candidate, don’t pay much attention. But as Norm Feck’s story shows, that’s a riskily blasé attitude. Campaign finance reform is creating an intrusive regulatory regime that’s steadily eroding Americans’ political freedoms. Making matters worse, it does little or nothing to combat corruption. Its proponents, mostly on the left, have chiefly used it to bolster their own political fortunes and to undermine limited, constitutional government. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first federal campaign finance law, the Tillman Act. Named for its sponsor, South Carolina Democratic senator Ben Tillman, the act banned corporate contributions to federal campaigns, and as such remains the backbone of federal campaign finance regulations. Tillman was a racist who advocated lynching black voters and almost single-handedly established Jim Crow in the South. The new law fit neatly with his segregationist agenda, since corporate “money power” primarily backed anti-segregationist Republican politicians. The modern era of campaign finance reform has an equally partisan origin. From the mid-1960s on, opinion polls showed steady erosion in public support for big government and liberalism. Republicans made substantial congressional gains in 1966, and two years later Richard Nixon won the presidency. By 1970, Democrats feared—with good reason—that their longstanding electoral majority was in jeopardy. There were three ways that they might turn things around, observes Cato Institute election-law expert John Samples: persuading the public to embrace their big-government philosophy, changing that increasingly unpopular philosophy, or “preventing or at least hobbling the translation of the shifting public mood into electoral losses and policy changes.” The Democrats chose Number Three, and looked to campaign finance reform as a way to achieve it. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), which Congress passed in 1971 (and amended three years later), would, Democrats hoped, strike at the heart of Republican political power—while leaving untouched their own sources of influence, such as union-organized volunteers. The law tightly limited both political contributions and any expenditure that might “influence” an election. It also mandated disclosure of political contributions as small as $10, established a system in which taxes financed part of presidential races, and set up a bureaucracy, the Federal Election Commission (FEC), to enforce the new rules. In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Supreme Court struck down the expenditure limits on First Amendment grounds, and held that the disclosure requirements, as well as limits on contributions to non-candidate political organizations (the National Rifle Association, say), would apply only when the group receiving the donations “explicitly advocated” the election or defeat of a candidate, through such phrases as “vote for Smith.” Still, even as truncated by the Court, the new law left American politics more heavily regulated than at any time in history. Congressional Democrats also drove the next major extension of campaign-finance regulations, the 2002 McCain-Feingold law—though of course one of the bill’s cosponsors, Arizona senator John McCain, was a prominent, if unconventional, Republican. McCain-Feingold banned a kind of fund-raising in which the GOP had a growing advantage: “soft money” contributions to political parties that could fund party building and political-issue ads stopping short of express advocacy. It also restricted the ability of incorporated organizations—like the NRA—to broadcast ads that so much as named a candidate within 60 days of an election, and it raised the limit on direct, “hard money” donations to candidates. Democrats were by now a Congressional minority. But enough endangered Republicans—hating the ads that targeted them—joined the Dems and McCain to get the bill passed. The extent of the regulatory web now in place is evident even when advocates of free speech score an occasional victory. In June, the Supreme Court, by a narrow 5–4 margin, held in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life that the government may not prevent citizens’ organizations from broadcasting ads that discuss pending legislative issues within 60 days of an election. The decision usefully prunes back one tentacle of the McCain-Feingold law. But the bulk of over 400 pages of FEC regulations remains intact. The opinion has no effect on the law under which Norm Feck faces prosecution, or the regulations that frustrate other Norm Fecks across the country. Campaign finance reform neatly accomplishes Democrats’ goal of muffling political speech on the Right. Reformers seldom state that goal explicitly, of course; instead, they claim that reform gets rid of the political corruption that supposedly follows from large campaign contributions. Yet study after study shows that contributions play little or no role in how politicians vote. One of the most comprehensive, conducted by a group of MIT scholars in 2004, concluded that “indicators of party, ideology and district preferences account for most of the systematic variation in legislators’ roll call voting behavior.” The studies comport with common sense. Most politicians enter the public arena because they hold strong beliefs on public policy. Truly corrupt pols—the Duke Cunninghams of the world—want illegal bribes, not campaign donations. Reformers also often claim to seek something more radical than eradicating corruption: equalizing political influence. During the debate over McCain-Feingold, numerous members of Congress repeatedly picked up on the “equality” theme. “It is time to let all our citizens have an equal voice,” argued Georgia congressman John Lewis, a Democrat. Missouri senator Jean Carnahan, another Democrat, complained that “special interests have an advantage over average, hard-working citizens.” Susan Collins, the liberal Republican senator from Maine, wanted “all Americans [to] have an equal voice.” Yet political influence comes in many shapes, and campaign finance reformers have little interest in equalizing all of them. Take, for example, large foundations—a major source of political influence. The assets of liberal foundations such as Carnegie, Ford, and MacArthur dwarf those of their conservative counterparts: Ford’s assets top $10 billion, MacArthur’s $4 billion, while the Right’s giant, the Bradley Foundation, commands just $500 million. Campaign finance reform leaves foundations untouched. Other important sources of influence include academia and Hollywood, both tilting to the left—and both left alone by the reformers. Consider how the law applied to Michael Moore’s anti-Bush film Fahrenheit 9/11 and to competing conservative films released in the run-up to the 2004 election. A number of complaints filed with the FEC charged Moore and others with campaign finance violations; both the movie and the advertising surrounding it, the complaints asserted, amounted to illegal contributions to the Kerry campaign. Despite Moore’s public statements that he’d made his movie to help defeat Bush, the FEC dismissed all the complaints, noting, among other things, that the film was a commercial rather than a political effort. But when the conservative organization Citizens United tried to release a film responding to many of Fahrenheit 9/11’s anti-Bush assertions, the FEC advised it that any public broadcast or advertising close to the election would be subject to McCain-Feingold regulations. Similarly, when Second Amendment activist David Hardy sought to release a movie before the election favoring gun rights and portraying President Bush favorably, the FEC ruled that campaign finance restrictions applied. In both cases, the FEC based its conclusion on the fact that the conservative producers, unlike Moore, weren’t normally in the movie business. Then there’s the press—and who would deny that it has great political influence? Nevertheless, campaign finance reform leaves it unregulated thus far. More than that: as restrictions on private campaign spending grow, the free coverage that politicians get from the press becomes more and more important. And that coverage, especially coverage by the national press corps, regularly demonstrates a leftward bias, as many studies have shown. During the 2004 presidential race, the press didn’t remind Americans about John Kerry’s harsh criticisms of his fellow soldiers in Vietnam, or pose questions about the nature of his military service; neither did it dwell on President Bush’s strong post-9/11 leadership. Those tasks, it’s worth noting, were left to two conservative political organizations, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Progress for America, whose highly effective campaign ads engaged in the kind of political speech that campaign finance reform chokes. Which sources of influence are regulated and which are not is a choice deeply entangled with tacit assumptions about who benefits from each of those sources. Despite their noble-sounding claims, reformers aren’t really trying to equalize political influence: in fact, they’re doing exactly the opposite, regulating only those sources of influence that they disagree with. Democrats don’t back campaign finance reform strictly for partisan reasons. They also like it for ideological reasons, realizing that private campaign funding is a major obstacle to regulating the private sector and to expanding government. The writings of J. Skelly Wright, one of the Seventies’ most prominent reform advocates, are among the clearest expressions of the ideological values underlying campaign finance reform. As a federal appellate judge, Wright upheld all of FECA’s provisions, including spending limits, only to have Buckley reverse him. After that defeat Wright continued to back campaign finance reform, arguing (incoherently) that it was politically “neutral” but also necessary if Congress was to enact a host of liberal policy goals: increased regulation of auto dealerships, a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies, hospital price controls, creation of a superfund for victims of toxic chemicals, and “any other legislation that affects powerful, organized interests.” To prove his point, Wright cited ballot initiatives in California and Colorado that proposed regulating certain private industries. In both cases, the initiatives began with leads in opinion polls, but suffered defeat after the targeted industries launched ads opposing the proposed regulation. Such private spending, Wright believed, “distort[ed] the expressed will of the people.” His elitist assumption was that the “expressed will of the people” was not the will that they in fact expressed at the ballot box, but rather the pro-regulation stance that he himself embraced. Wright’s belief that potential targets of regulation shouldn’t be able to communicate directly with voters—since that could “distort” their true opinions—has remained a staple of reform thinking ever since. Here’s the former president of the liberal advocacy group Common Cause: “At the same time there are efforts to regulate them, [you] have oil and gas companies, [you] have trial lawyers, [you] have all the major interests that have an outcome in this election and an outcome in policy being able to pour this money in . . . they want access to influence the political process. It’s corrupting!” We’ve moved, in this astonishing formulation, from the revolutionary battle cry of “No taxation without representation” to something like: “Because of possible taxation or regulation, no representation.” The same pro-regulation mindset occupied the reform advocates who, in early 2007, sought to include in Congress’s lobbying reform bill a provision that would heavily regulate “grassroots lobbying”—that is, corporate appeals to citizens to voice their opinions on particular issues to members of Congress. (The classic example: the “Harry and Louise” ad that helped torpedo Hillarycare back in 1993.) The Senate stripped the anti-grassroots-lobbying provision from the bill, to the dismay of Meredith McGehee, policy director of the pro-reform Campaign Legal Center, who decried the practice of “Astroturf lobbying.” Apparently when productive businesses, worried about excessive government regulation, try to get voters on their side, that’s Astroturf lobbying—fake and unworthy of protection. But when a foundation-funded organization with no public accountability, such as the Campaign Legal Center, speaks out in Washington, well, those are the authentic grassroots. Campaign finance regulation, far from improving our democratic processes, has already begun to undermine them in a number of ways. One is the way that it entrenches incumbents in office. Dissenting in McConnell v. FEC, the case that upheld the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold, Justice Antonin Scalia went to the core of the issue: “Is it accidental, do you think, that incumbents raise about three times as much ‘hard money’—the sort of funding generally not restricted by this legislation—as do their challengers?” he scoffed. Scalia also pointed out that McCain-Feingold allowed higher contributions to candidates running against self-financed millionaires—who tend to be incumbents, since self-financed millionaires are usually mavericks challenging established politicians. Moreover, McCain-Feingold severely limited funding for national parties—which, Scalia wrote, are “more likely to assist cash-strapped challengers than flush-with-hard-money incumbents.” “Those who have power will create election rules that maximize the likelihood that they will win reelection,” the Cato Institute’s Samples says. “Campaign finance laws might be, in other words, a form of corruption.” A still more insidious problem than incumbents’ self-dealing is the way that campaign finance regulation discourages true grassroots political activity. Longtime Washington campaign finance attorney Jan Baran jokes that McCain-Feingold’s official acronym, “BCRA,” stands not for “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” but for “Before Campaigning, Retain Attorney.” Samples adds, more seriously: “Today no one should exercise his First Amendment rights without advice from counsel, preferably one schooled in the intricacies of campaign finance regulation.” Consider two examples. During the 2000 presidential race, four men placed a homemade sign, reading VOTE REPUBLICAN: NOT AL GORE SOCIALISM, on a cotton trailer along a Texas highway. The FEC spent nearly 18 months investigating the incident, because the sign lacked the legally required information about who had paid for it. And in 2004, NASCAR driver Kirk Shelmerdine spent $50 to affix a BUSH-CHENEY ’04 decal to an unsold spot on his car’s advertising space. The FEC admonished him for making an unreported campaign expenditure. Such cases are not merely examples of bureaucratic excess, points out campaign finance lawyer Bob Bauer, a lonely anti-reform voice in Democratic circles: under today’s intrusive laws, Shelmerdine’s activities ought to have set off an FEC inquiry. Nor are such cases rare. While serving on the FEC from 2000 to 2005, I kept a file of letters from political amateurs caught in the maw of campaign finance laws. Many of these people had no lawyers; none had the least intent to corrupt any officeholder; all thought that they were fulfilling their civic duty by their involvement in campaigns. A Texas dentist wrote: “It is 5:30 PM on Good Friday. Today, like many days previous, I have taken time away from my business and my family to respond to the Commission. . . . I am being pursued by the Commission to pay over $30,000 from my personal funds.” A CPA who had served as a volunteer campaign treasurer, and who was facing over $7,000 in fines for improper reporting, wrote: “No job I have ever undertaken caused me more stress than this one. I was frightened and concerned every day that I would do something wrong.” Another volunteer treasurer asked the Commission to waive its fines: “We were just honest, hard working, tax paying Americans who wanted to make a difference . . . at this point, we are so disillusioned with the [legal] difficulty of running for office that we wonder why anyone other than a professional would attempt to do so.” A retired high school teacher wrote: “I taught, and believe, that we have the best government in the world. I was happy to be part of the process. . . . I made every attempt to comply and am now being fined $600 for a misunderstanding.” The letters flowed in—from lawyers, teachers, doctors, retirees, all facing investigations and fines for their volunteer political activity. One summed up: “I will NEVER be involved with a political campaign again.” Though they claim to speak for average citizens, reformers don’t care much about the way their reforms hurt those citizens. Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a McCain adviser, has dismissed complaints by arguing that campaign-finance laws are no more complex than antitrust or patent laws. “They are worth the inconvenience and lawyers’ fees they generate,” says Potter—who also heads the campaign finance practice at the upscale law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, where partner billing rates can range upward of $750 per hour. Despite the labyrinthine complexity of campaign finance law, the reform community is busily expanding regulation even further. For example, the FEC’s regulations implementing McCain-Feingold specifically exempted much Web activity from regulation. So the law’s lead House sponsors, Democrat Marty Meehan of Massachusetts and Republican Chris Shays of Connecticut, sued successfully in federal court to force the FEC to regulate more Web activity, and then defeated a congressional effort to codify an Internet exemption to the law. The ensuing FEC rules took a light hand, but the troubling fact remains that individual online activity is now subject to regulation. (See “The Plot to Shush Rush and O’Reilly,” Winter 2006.) Another disturbing regulatory trend is to go beyond regulating the money that funds speech to regulating the speech itself. For example, in the Shelmerdine case, the FEC valued the driver’s “contribution” not at the $50 that it cost him to place a decal on his car, but at several thousand dollars—what the FEC determined to be the advertising spot’s monetary value. Similarly, if an executive instructs his secretary to type a fund-raising letter, the FEC values the contribution not at the cost of typing the letter, but at the amount of money that the letter raises. This move dramatically expands the reach of campaign finance laws: not only can the FEC limit funds that can be used for speech, but it can limit speech itself by assigning it a monetary value. And it opens the door to all kinds of mischief: for instance, the FEC could determine that a posting on a popular blog was worth thousands of dollars. If that sounds farfetched, consider that in Washington State a trial court ordered that radio disc jockeys John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur report their on-air talk as campaign contributions. The Washington State Supreme Court reversed the case this April, but the court didn’t base its decision on the First Amendment, instead ruling that the statute in question didn’t cover radio talk. In a footnote, the court specifically noted that “nothing in our decision today forecloses the legislature, or the people via the initiative process, from limiting the statutory media exemption.” Such an intrusive regulatory regime is but a logical step toward the holy grail of campaign finance reform: a fully regulated, taxpayer-funded system of political speech. Richard Hasen, an oft-quoted expert on campaign finance whom the media regularly portray as a moderate voice for reform, has proposed limiting citizens’ financial participation in politics to a government-provided voucher, and prohibiting any other private funding of political speech. Edward Foley, a former Ohio state solicitor and director of Ohio State University’s influential election-law program, has made a similar proposal. Both experts would extend their regulations even to newspaper editorial pages. Hasen explains that he’s trying to solve the “Rupert Murdoch problem”—just in case you had any doubt about whom he’s got in his sights. Conservatives, historically uninterested in mobilizing against “reform,” have tended to depend on the courts to strike down the worst laws. Indeed, many believe that President Bush signed McCain-Feingold because his legal advisers assured him that the courts would never tolerate the law’s new restrictions. But the Supreme Court has been erratic in protecting political speech. In McConnell v. FEC, the case that upheld McCain-Feingold, the Court gave political speech less protection than Internet pornography, simulated child pornography, topless dancing, tobacco advertising, and the dissemination of illegally acquired information. Last term, the Supreme Court did step back from the abyss. In Randall v. Sorrell, it struck down expenditure limits and very low contribution limits (including limits on volunteer time) in Vermont, while in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, it held that there might be constitutionally necessitated exceptions to McCain-Feingold’s limits on broadcast ads mentioning a candidate within 60 days of an election. (The latter case will be back before the Court this term, since a lower court has held that Wisconsin Right to Life’s ad indeed merited such an exception.) These are encouraging developments, but free-speech advocates shouldn’t count too heavily on the Supremes to do the heavy lifting. The main reason that the Court decided last term’s cases differently from McConnell is that Justice Alito had replaced Justice O’Connor, giving the Court a 5–4 majority in favor of a more robust interpretation of the First Amendment. But two members of that majority are over age 70. It is unlikely that President Bush will get another judicial appointment; it is equally unlikely that a Democratic president, or a President McCain, would appoint pro-speech judges to the Court. It also seems doubtful that the Court will ever take a stand against campaign finance regulation in toto. Justice Kennedy, part of the 5–4 pro-speech majority, is a staunch supporter of free speech in individual cases, but unlike Justices Scalia and Thomas, he has been unwilling to hold that all contribution limits are unconstitutional. Absent a clear constitutional bar to regulation, a future Court may remove whatever restraints this Court places on the legislature—much as the McConnell Court did to Buckley’s curbs on FECA. “I have come to doubt that the masses of the people have sense enough to govern themselves,” wrote Ben Tillman, the founder of federal campaign finance reform, in 1916. Eighty years later, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt famously described the battle over campaign finance reform as “two important values in direct conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy. You can’t have both.” Many a tax- and regulation-prone politician, stymied by real political debate, would agree with both men. But Norm Feck and his Parker North neighbors, Washington deejays Carlson and Wilbur, the Texas dentist facing $30,000 in fines, and tens of thousands of NASCAR fans realize that free speech is not a bar to healthy democracy but a cornerstone of it. It’s imperative that we speak up to defend freedom of speech—before that very speaking up becomes impossible.

Bully tactics and name calling are your forte. It's pretty clear.

Yep

Maybe they want to raise taxes too? It's all the big bad oil companies' faults. It smells like them trying to regulate housing costs. What an utter failure... Climate ethics on Capitol Hill By Paul Driessen Saturday, June 30, 2007 Sarbanes-Oxley and the 2006 elections supposedly inaugurated a new congressional commitment to ethics, transparency, accountability and consumer protection. Something has been lost in translation. The “energy” bill now wending its way through the legislative labyrinth dedicates $6 billion to goodies like more energy-efficient snowmobiles for ski resorts, outlaws “price gouging” at the gas pump, and sets new mileage standards that will likely make cars and light trucks less safe and cost more lives. It also provides subsidies and mandates for politically correct “alternative” energy projects that probably wouldn’t survive without such aid. But the bill doesn’t increase the nation’s energy supply by one drop of gasoline or one watt of electricity, says Congressman Jim McCrery (R-LA). It lifts no bans on oil and gas drilling, and does nothing to ease regulatory impediments to pipelines, transmission lines, refineries, or coal and nuclear generating plants. The only power it generates is expanded bureaucratic power over energy and economic decisions. Its ethanol mandates will result in more land converted from wildlife habitat to corn fields, and in greater use of water, fertilizer, pesticides, and tractor and truck fuel. Corn prices will continue to rise, along with the cost of meat, candy, soft drinks and other products that use corn for feed or corn syrup as a sweetener. The biofuel itself will cost more, but provide less mileage per tank. Expanded wind power will mean more 300-foot-tall “cuisinarts” killing birds and bats, marring once-scenic vistas, and feeding into hundred-mile transmission lines – to provide expensive, intermittent electricity that has to be backed up by natural-gas-fired generators. It may even take more energy to mine and process the ores and manufacture the turbines and transmission lines and towers, than is generated during the productive lifetime of wind turbines, which only work about 30% of the time. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has proposed to make Congress “carbon neutral” in its electricity use. How this is possible without building separate transmission lines and condemning private property for rights-of-way, to get electricity from wind and solar farms to Capitol Hill, she doesn’t say. Even less ethical is the rush to “do something” about global warming. Assorted climate change bills propose to slash US carbon dioxide emissions by varying amounts, under different timetables, to prevent speculative catastrophes conjured up by computer models that do not reflect complex atmospheric processes and cannot predict temperature or climate one year in the future, much less 40 or 90. The worst of the lot (Sanders-Boxer) would compel the United States to go even further than the Kyoto Protocol requires. It would compel CO2 emission cuts of 15% below 2006 levels by 2020, and 83% below 2006 levels by 2050 – presumably without increasing nuclear power. Such mandates might help special interests – which are lining up to proclaim “consensus” on climate change and claim their share of any entitlements. But they would severely impact US energy production, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, workers and families. An MIT analysis concludes that Sanders-Boxer would cost the US up to $403 billion in foregone Gross Domestic Product, corresponding to a loss of some 4.5 million jobs and an impact of $5370 per family of four. The Sanders-Boxer, Feinstein and Waxman bills would result in carbon offset allowances priced at $210 per ton of CO2, adding a truly price-gouging $95 to the cost of a barrel of oil, $2 to a gallon of gasoline, $143 to a ton of coal, and 50% to the price of electricity, by 2020. Domestic production of goods and services would plummet, and families with low incomes or living in regions with high heating or air-conditioning needs would be disproportionately affected, as they would have to spend much higher portions of their incomes on energy, food and consumer products. MIT’s evaluation presumes developing countries would match our emission cutbacks. It’s more likely that they would prefer to reap the benefits of more energy at lower prices, to fuel economies, create jobs and improve living standards. Few of them perceive a need to address climate disasters that they view as largely hypothetical or due to wealthy Western countries. The US Energy Information Administration calculated that Kyoto mandates (CO2 emission reductions to 5% below 1990 levels) could cost up to 2.5 million jobs and reduce our GDP by up to $525 billion annually – equivalent to a tax of $7,000 on every family of four. Wharton’s Business School of Economics determined that Kyoto would cost 2.3% of America’s GDP. At $12 trillion in 2006, that translates into $275 billion a year or $3700 per family. Management Information Services concluded that Kyoto could eliminate 1.3 million black and Hispanic jobs, force nearly 100,000 minority businesses to close, and cause average minority family incomes to plunge by more than $2,000 a year. States with large minority populations would lose $10-40 billion a year in economic output, and over $2 billion annually in tax revenues. At this price, Congress should be 100% certain about these alleged climate change cataclysms. But the case for immediate drastic action is getting progressively weaker, and none of these measures would bring any detectable environmental benefits. In fact, Congress is telling American families it is prepared to impose enormous costs to achieve minuscule reductions in global CO2 emissions and avert speculative impacts 90 years from now – on the assumption that carbon dioxide causes climate change, and any change will be catastrophic. The Kyoto Protocol, if adhered to by every signatory nation, would prevent a mere 0.2 degrees F of warming by 2050. To stabilize atmospheric CO2 and prevent theoretical climate catastrophe, we would need 30 such treaties, each one more restrictive and expensive than the last. The various congressional bills would accomplish far less than that. Moreover, increasing numbers of scientists doubt that carbon dioxide is the culprit. They point out that there has been no rise in average global atmospheric temperatures since 1998, despite a 4% increase in CO2. Ice core and other data indicate that, over the past 650,000 years, temperatures usually rose first and CO2 levels increased several centuries later. Timothy Patterson, Henrik Svensmark and other climate scientists have found growing evidence that our sun is the dominant cause of climate change. As its energy output varies, so does the solar wind that determines how many galactic cosmic rays reach the Earth. More solar energy warms Earth directly and generates stronger solar winds, deflecting cosmic rays, reducing cloud cover and warming us still more. Less solar energy results in reduced solar wind, more cosmic rays and thus more clouds – further cooling the planet. Solar scientists now predict that, by 2020, the sun will begin its weakest cycle in two centuries. That could bring on global cooling that would harm agriculture in northern latitudes, raise heating bills, and make the clamor about manmade global warming look like wasted hot air. Will Rogers once said, every time Congress makes a joke it’s a law, and every time it makes a law it’s a joke. The energy and climate bills are perfect examples. Luckily for Congress, it routinely exempts itself from ethics, accountability and price-gouging laws.

Oh how the true colors come out. Mouthy Maxine Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, reportedly had former Los Angeles mayoral candidate and homeless activist Ted Hayes arrested for disorderly conduct outside her Capitol Hill office several days ago, then requested he remain quiet about his apprehension. "[T]o have a citizen arrested because they disagree is beyond the pale and begs the question, why do they care more about illegal aliens than they dotheir own constituents?" Washington columnist Nina May wrote this week on the Renaissance Women Web site. Mrs. May was to have met with Mr. Hayes on June 19 when he was on Capitol Hill meeting with a lawmaker about illegal immigration. She later learned of his arrest when he couldn't keep the appointment. "Ted's concern with the [proposed immigration] bill is that, as a black man who has worked with the homeless and disadvantaged for years, he sees anamnesty bill as one more obstacle for poor blacks to overcome," Mrs. May wrote."He sees the illegal aliens in his home area of Los Angeles putting aninsurmountable burden on the social welfare and education system, and sees jobs that would ordinarily go to his people ... going to the illegals. "And when he speaks out about it, he is castigated as a racist, called names, slandered and threatened." Mr. Hayes had stopped in to see Mrs. Waters, who he has known for more than 20 years, only to have her walk past him and into the hallway. "Ted got up to follow her asking why ... ? To this query she spun around and responded, 'You are full of [expletive], You are full of [expletive], Ted Hayes,' " Mrs. May wrote. At that point, a U.S. Capitol Police officer responded and placed Mr. Hayes in handcuffs. He was charged with disorderly conduct, a police spokesman confirmed yesterday. According to the columnist, Mrs. Waters' office later called Mr. Hayes and expressed concern "that this story of his arrest not be leaked to the press,and not get back to her district." Mrs. Waters declined to speak to Inside the Beltway yesterday.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1095200

http://www.qubetv.tv/videos/detail/880

Don't worry the government will save us They want to control everything. They're doing real good on social security and public education. Let's give em health care and gas prices now. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/05/what_do_they_mean_by_obscene_p.html'>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/05/what_do_they_mean_by_obscene_p.html

Picture says it all.

The border security is not an issue to be concerned with. Even though http://www.nmsu.edu/~bec/tbontheborder.pdf http://www.ajc.com/health/content/health/stories/2007/05/29/0530meshtb.html Oh wait - now msnbc finally figures out there are border flaws http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18945879 Let all the unscreened illegals in. Even though the largest part of the Mexican born TB infected persons seem to be coming from that direction. All cops are screened for background checks and identity so we can trust them with guns but not your average citizen. We have border security. http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=612927

The article and speach says it all. Hillary will say whatever and do whatever it takes to get a vote. Including embracing extreme socialist ways. Of course if she truly believed in everything she preached she would let her wealth trickle down to some poor people instead. The utopian dream has a foul Marxist odor. On another note - It seems as if Fred Thompson might be making a bonafide Presidential run. That would be good to challenge career politicians like Romney, Guiliani, and McCain who are garbage in my eyes.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/phillip_morris/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1179218274175560.xml&coll=2&thispage=1 Long time anti-gun politician finally sees the light. Unrelated but also interesting - Illegal alien crooks bitten by gun toting pre-teen. http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=185167

Instead of reporting stories like the one below... Most main stream media companies would rather castrate a bunch of innocent lacrosse players based on hearsay, make the world think that America is infested with millions of gun toting and angry killers waiting to go off, and talk about Bush as if he was the creator of all the worlds' problems past and present. http://www.volunteertv.com/special/headlines/7549962.html Christian-Newsom Murders: Trials Scheduled; Police, Pastors Prepare Posted: 5:08 AM May 17, 2007 Last Updated: 4:45 PM May 18, 2007 Reporter: Gordon Boyd Christian-Newsom Murders: Trials Scheduled; Police, Pastors Prepare Christian-Newsom Murders: Trials Scheduled; Police, Pastors Prepare Knoxville (WVLT) - We now know when four accused killers could go to trial. But not whether they'll be on trial for their lives. Volunteer TV’s Gordon Boyd has new developments coming out of court hearings on the case that already is drawing national attention, but some claim not enough. That’s what has everybody from police to pastors concerned. The three men and a woman accused of carjacking, raping, robbing and killing Channon Christian, and Christopher Newsom won't start going to trial until next May. Letalvis Cobbins is set to be tried first, on May 12, 2008. Lemaricus Davidson a week later on May 19th. Vanessa Coleman, Cobbins' former girlfriend, faces trial three weeks after that on June 16, 2008. Sitting silently through her hearing, Coleman mouthed the words, “I love you” as she was led out. George Thomas, the man accused of shooting Christopher Newsom and burning his body, will be tried last. His trial is scheduled to begin on August 11, 2008. All four suspects face more than 40 charges, including first degree murder, kidnapping and rape. It’s frustrating for families, opportunities for others. There are no ifs, ands or buts about that. We definitely feel the pain and sorrow of a family that has lost their children. From the moment police found Chris Newsom's body, burned, down by the railroad tracks to finding Channon Christian stuffed in garbage bags in a house on Chapman, friends and strangers have poured tears and anger. Both flowing again, as the accused killers find out when they'll be going to trial. The Christians and Newsoms sitting silently, Channon's father's body language speaking volumes. He was visibly angry, rocking in his seat, gripping the back of a spectator pew, fixing cold stares on Lemaricus Davidson and his brother, Letalvis Cobbins. “You cannot view what has taken place and not feel remorse for the family, At the same time, you cannot cast judgment as to who did it, who did not do it,” says Reverend Ezra Maize, head of the Knox County NAACP. The Head of Knox County's NAACP says he's come to court to help keep the peace. For every blog or website honoring the victims, another paints their murders as race motivated. “We have no evidence to support the fact that this crime was a race crime,” says Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen, IV. “It appears to have been a random violent act.” “The protests, the marches that have been rumored to come to town, that has been a major concern,” says Rev. Maize. Groups wondering why prosecutors haven't demanded the death penalty yet. “We've had some discussions of course, we're still putting evidence together,” says Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols. It's not time, but Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam says it is time to make sure, “that when the trial comes we can have a fair trial.” “Don't want something to happen here that might turn into a basis for transferring the trial,” says Chief Owen. The Reverend Maize maintains, the NAACP trusts city leaders and police to handle what ever the trials or the case itself, might bring. “We don't have any counter marches or counter protests lined up. We don't want to ad fuel, to the fire, if they choose to come to town. We'll allow them to do what they're going to do.” Neither the Newsom nor Christian families spoke after court Thursday, but through their lawyers, Channon’s parents told WVLT they don't believe race was a factor in their daughter's or Chris's murders. Nevertheless, at least one group, white supremacist or racially focused, depending on your prospective has vowed to rally here in several weeks. Later this month, though Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale will ask commissioners to pass a resolution requesting that group not come.

And while an overwhelming majority of left wing idiot dems continue to support illegal immigration and unchecked borders, we come to find out not surprisingly that the illegal immigrants are here to wage war. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270892,00.html They're baaack. Amnesty is not the answer. Bush is also an idiot for giving in and supporting the agenda to support a path to citizenship. Auslanders are not citizens and have to right the make their own country better.

wrong thred hunny... this one is about fucked up people who kill others on PURPOSE. we have a different thred for accidents. How convenient. Well you're starting to get the picture. You see there is no regulation of climbing and there is no standard except when it comes to guiding. Even those can be questioned in some regards. Are you officially "ready" and "licensed" to climb that mountain? You'll have to go through a government sanctioned course first; courtesy of the Mountaineers with instructor Bob who's going to discuss a bunch of theories which he has never personally tested. You see, climbers are generally viewed on the outskirts of society who are often perceived as dope smokers and losers that have a lower ranking than gun owners because they don't have any money to back their cause besides the outdoor industry. Many people consider them grossly irresponsible nuisances as well.