Do you have "Real ID" for when you might actually need it?

When I got my new passport in 2016, I got a passport card too for an extra $30. It didn't seem necessary, but after reading this, I'm now glad I did:



Why You Want a Passport Card

Why You Want a Passport Card
My wife and I recently renewed our passports and we opted to get passport cards while we were at it. The Passport Card was originally intended as a convenient form of your passport to use when crossing land borders and ports-of-entry. But we don’t do that much. As in, pretty much never.

So why would we get a passport cards?

As identification for local flights
While a passport card can’t be used as identification for international flights, it can be used for local flights instead of your driver’s license. So why use the passport card instead of your drivers license?

First off, some state licenses are not Real ID compliant, but a passport card is. At some point the TSA will require Real ID compliant IDs. While most states will eventually comply, having a passport card removes any question concerning having a valid ID.

Secondly, when checking in at the airport you usually need to show an ID twice: first at the counter when you check your bags, then at security. That means two times digging into your wallet to get out your driver’s license. That means two opportunities to loose your license and two times you have to remember to put it back in your wallet. With a passport card you can leave it easily accessible in your carry-on (like you do with passports) and it can stay with your travel papers instead of your wallet.

Also, if you loose your license and want to rent a car — you’re pretty screwed. If you loose your passport card you’re just out $30. You still have your license for identification and driving.

To use for employment verification
A passport card is considered a “List A” document for I-9 employment verification just like a passport is. So you can leave your passport safe at home when doing employment verification.

To use as an international ID {...]

Read the whole thing, for embedded links, and several other useful purposes the Real ID compliant card can be useful for.

     

The Myth of Scandinavian Socialism

Here is the Myth exposed:

No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia

When Bernie Sanders was asked during CNN’s Democratic presidential debate how a self-proclaimed socialist could hope to be elected to the White House, he gave the answer he usually gives: Socialism has been wonderful for the countries of Scandinavia, and America should emulate their example.

“We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” Sanders said. When the moderator turned to Hillary Clinton, she agreed that America has to “save capitalism from itself” and that, yes, Scandinavia is great. “I love Denmark,” declared Clinton. It was the only time in the debate a candidate uttered the verb “love.”

Liberals have had a crush on Scandinavia for decades. “It is a country whose very name has become a synonym for a materialist paradise,” observed Time magazine in a 1976 story on Sweden. “Its citizens enjoy one of the world’s highest living standards. . . . Neither ill health, unemployment nor old age pose the terror of financial hardship. [Sweden’s] cradle-to-grave benefits are unmatched in any other free society outside Scandinavia.” In 2010, a National Public Radio story marveled at the way “Denmark Thrives Despite High Taxes.” The small Nordic nation, said NPR, “seems to violate the laws of the economic universe,” improbably balancing low poverty and unemployment rates with stratospheric taxes that were among the world’s highest.

Such paeans may inspire Clinton’s love and Sanders’ faith in America’s socialist future. As with most urban legends, however, the reality of Scandinavia’s welfare-state utopia doesn’t match the hype. [...]

The rest of the article goes into detail about how Scandinavian prospered in spite of socialism, not because of it. How socialism nearly destroyed their prosperity, and how they have spend years rolling back welfare and taxes, and re-introducing free market reforms. How much of the success of Scandinavian countries has to do with who they are:

[...] The real key to Scandinavia’s unique successes isn’t socialism, it’s culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law — these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries. In the region’s small and homogeneous countries (overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and native-born), those norms took deep root. The good outcomes and high living standards they produced antedated the socialist nostrums of the 1970s. Scandinavia’s quality of life didn’t spring from leftist policies. It survived them. [...]

Read the whole thing, it's short and it gets to the point, with many embedded links to back up what it says.

BTW, I've no objections to looking at Scandinavia as a model, so long as we look at everything, their successes and their failures. We could learn a lot from both of those. If some things they've done were successful and could be adopted by us, so be it. It's just the sweeping generalizations based on fantasy that I'm leary of. Read the whole article. Why adopt policies from the Scandinavians that they themselves have discarded as unworkable? Even policies that work for them in their largely homogenous culture, may not necessarily transplant to ours. When looking for role models, let's keep it REAL, shall we?
     

Both conservatives and liberals aren’t being straight about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Everybody's Lost Their Goddamn Mind Over Religious Freedom

You want to know the weirdest thing about the fight over Indiana’s state-level version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)? It’s totally at odds with the origins of that first federal law.

Indiana’s law is being championed by religious conservatives and opposed by secular liberals. In an intense press conference on Tuesday, embattled Republican Governor Mike Pence declared, “I believe religious liberty is our first freedom.” But the original RFRA was signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton in 1993 after the state of Oregon refused to pay unemployment insurance to a couple of Native Americans who got canned as drug-rehab counselors for using peyote in religious ceremonies. RFRA was passed to remedy such an obvious injustice and its main sponsor in the House was liberal congressman Charles Schumer, who’s expected to become the next Senate Minority Leader and is most famous for trying to ban every goddamned good-time substance known to mankind, from Four Loko to powdered caffeine to “delicious-looking detergent.”

Weirder still: Arch-conservative Jesse Helms, a hardcore Christian who was an unapologetic homophobe, was one of just three senators who voted against the law. Writing for the majority in Employment Division v. Smith, the drug warrior Antonin Scalia thundered that letting religion provide a loophole in such an instance “would open the prospect of constitutionally required exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.”

[...]

From a libertarian perspective, there’s an easy enough way to resolve the current conflict between demands for religious freedom and equality. It doesn’t fully satisfy either side but it has the virtue of preserving a pluralistic society and minimizing intervention into everyday life.

The starting point should be to focus on discrimination by the government, which was the impetus behind the original federal RFRA—Oregon refused to pay out unemployment based on religiously based drug use. Conservatives typically say they believe in limited government and individual rights and that the government shouldn’t play favorites or accord certain people or classes of people special treatment (this is their argument against affirmative action). If they mean what they say in other contexts, conservatives should be in the forefront of pushing for marriage equality, as the state has no case for treating individuals differently under the law.

For their part, liberals should recognize the limits to and wisdom of injecting state power into every possible relationship in the country. As wrong and stupid as I think it is for a particular individual or business to discriminate against a customer or neighbor based on sexual orientation (or race, gender, and class for that matter), that should be the business’s decision, especially if the business is only one service provider among many.

Nobody should be forced to do something they don’t want to do, whether it’s bake cakes for gay weddings or decorate cakes with anti-gay slurs. To me, whether a person’s or a business’s decision is based in religion is immaterial.

Whatever you may think of Jack Phillips’s refusal to bake a wedding cake for gay customers, there’s something as or more disturbing about the court ruling against the owner of Lakewood, Colorado’s Masterpiece Cakeshop. Not only was the baker forced to change his store policy, he and his staff were required to attend sensitivity training. That sounds like something out of China during the Cultural Revolution. It doesn’t help that Phillips offered to make the original complainants any sort of item but a wedding cake.

Most Americans don’t agree with Phillips’s beliefs in this case, but such disagreements are one of the prices we pay for living in a free society, in which we seriously recognize and respect that different people have different value systems. It’s worth noting that in the segregated South, very different rules applied. It was common, for instance, that local and state governments and laws actively prevented businesses from treating customers equally. When laws were not openly racist, “citizen’s councils” and terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan enforced a de facto standard against businesses that treated all customers equally. This is not the case today with regards to gays and lesbians.

By the same token, any individuals or businesses that exclude certain sorts of business can’t exactly bitch and moan when people decide to publicize such policies and organize boycotts, as is happening to the entire state of Indiana now.

Supporters of state-level RFRAs should own the fact that, as Apple’s Cook says, such laws absolutely do allow discrimination (more precisely, they allow defendants to use religious beliefs as a defense in certain court proceedings). Indiana Governor Mike Pence now says he hopes to fix the law with more legislation. “The issue here is still is tolerance a two-way street,” he told ABC News over the weekend. Of course it is, and the same right that allows a business to opt out of serving some customers also allows others to respond by taking their business elsewhere. Last year, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a RFRA-style bill precisely because of possible economic fallout. [...]

Read the whole thing for embedded links and more. I think the ideas presented in this article make a lot of sense, but I doubt many supporters on either side of the conflict will embrace them. And the history of this law... so much irony!

     

The most sensible thing I've heard lately

About the rancher conflict in Nevada, from Idaho Congressman Raul Labrador:

Idaho's Labrador: Nevada rancher battling BLM should have paid his bills

In another example of his keen political instincts, Idaho GOP Congressman Raul Labrador distanced himself from Sen. Rand Paul and others championing Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

Labrador is a tea party favorite and friend of the Kentucky senator eying a 2016 Republican presidential run. At Labrador's invitation, Paul will speak to the Idaho Republican convention in June. Bundy has been celebrated by other politicians and conservative media, most notably Sean Hannity on Fox News.

But Labrador told Ada County Republicans he has trouble lionizing Bundy because he's ignoring the rule of law in failing to pay over $1 million in grazing fees to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for running his cattle on public property since 1993.

Labrador stepped away from a chance to laud Bundy Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported on Bundy's comments about "the Negro" and his suggesting slavery wasn't so bad after all. Paul initially was unavailable for comment Wednesday but on Thursday issued a statement, saying, “His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him."

Apparently smelling a rat, Labrador didn't fall into such a trap when asked about the Bundy case at a candidate forum hosted by the Ada County Republican Central Committee. Otherwise he'd be joining Paul and others in damage control.

"One of the concerns I have in the Bundy case is that you have a person who appears to have been violating the law," Labrador began. "And that really concerns me because it makes it very difficult for somebody like me to speak up against what the BLM is doing.

"Because the federal courts, again and again and again, have told this gentleman that he owes money in federal grazing rights, in federal grazing permits," said Labrador, who graduated from high school in Las Vegas, about 80 miles from Bundy's ranch. "Now, he claims that he doesn't owe that money but the courts have disagreed with him."

Labrador went on to college at BYU and earned his law degree at the University of Washington.

Labrador cited the case of another Nevada rancher, Wayne Hage, who battled the BLM in court but continued to pay his bills. Late in life Hage married then-Idaho Congressman Helen Chenoweth, a predecessor of Labrador's in Idaho's 1st District. Both Wayne and Helen Chenoweth-Hage are now deceased.

"The BLM did the same things to (Hage) and when they did it to him he was actually paying his grazing permits and he was doing all the things that he needed to do," Labrador said.

Setting aside the fame enjoyed by Bundy, Labrador continued with a critique of BLM policy and mixed in a shout-out for gun rights.

"Clearly the federal government is overreaching. What I find sad — even if you agree that Mr. Bundy should have paid his grazing permits — it's really scary to think that the federal government can come in to collect on a debt at the point of a gun," Labrador said.

"That should never happen. They should have put a lien on his property; they should have put a lien on the cows; they should have put a lien on a bunch of different things. But they should never be coming in at the point of a gun and trying to take you off a property.

"And that's why — this is the difference between people who believe in the Second Amendment and who don't believe in the Second Amendment: The Second Amendment isn't there so we can hunt. The Second Amendment is there so we can protect ourselves from the government."

Labrador's answer brought hearty applause, once again demonstrating his deftness in appealing to a very conservative base without compromising his oaths to uphold the law as an attorney and a congressman.

He's long brushed off as a distraction questions about President Obama's birthplace, saying he believes the president was born in Hawaii and should be opposed on policy grounds. He's attempted to convince supporters hostile to immigration reform that a compromise would be healthy for humanitarian and economic reasons and essential for the future of the Republican Party. Labrador was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Nevada with his mother while in junior high school.[...]

The government didn't NEED to turn this into an armed confrontation; they had other options. They didn't have to point guns at fellow Americans. So why did they choose to, instead of the other options available to them? That seems to be the most important point to me. But the media cirrus seems to focus on everything else but that.

The Republican Party could use more sane voices like Raul Labrador's.

And it's worth noting, that in the Wayne Hage case that Labrador referred to, Mr. Hage's estate eventually won the case against the BLM. But read the details; it's chilling. It was a long, hard and ugly battle. The judge in the case accused the federal bureaucrats of racketeering under the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations) statute, and accused them as well of extortion, mail fraud, and fraud, in an effort “to kill the business of Mr. Hage.”

Mr. Hage married a congress women as his second wife, before he died. You have to wonder if he would have prevailed, without her help? Officials of the federal government wield tremendous power; they have to be kept in check, as this case shows all too clearly.


This was interesting too:

Conservative racial math can’t cancel out Cliven Bundy

[...] On Fox News, my colleague Charles Krauthammer goes further, making the point that romanticizing a rejection of federal authority often ends in embarrassment. “This is a man who said that he doesn’t recognize the authority of the United States of America. That makes him a patriot?” Krauthammer asked. Anti-government language has been a powerful rhetorical tool, but it is difficult to sever those sentiments from the neo-Confederate sentiments that trail stubbornly behind it. Maybe it is time to try to elevate a different path to conservative stardom.

That such routes might be tough to walk given the Republican Party’s recent history does not mean they do not exist. The libertarian writer Jonathan Blanks, who is a friend and a powerful influence on my own thinking, is a powerful advocate for two ideas that could be made in concert more frequently: that defenses of secession are obscene on libertarian grounds and that African-Americans have plenty of reasons to seek limits on government power. [...]

     

The Grace Commission: Good Advice Ignored

I've often heard the Grace Commission mentioned in various articles, so decided to look it up. From Wikipedia:

The Grace Commission

The Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC), commonly referred to as The Grace Commission, was an investigation requested by United States President Ronald Reagan, in 1982. The focus of it was waste and inefficiency in the US Federal government. Its head, businessman J. Peter Grace,[1] asked the members of that commission to "be bold" and "work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency."[2]

The report
The Grace Commission Report[3] was presented to Congress in January 1984. The report claimed that if its recommendations were followed, $424 billion could be saved in three years, rising to $1.9 trillion per year by the year 2000. It estimated that the national debt, without these reforms, would rise to $13 trillion by the year 2000, while with the reforms they projected it would rise to only $2.5 trillion.[4] Congress ignored the commission's report. The debt reached $5.8 trillion in the year 2000.[5][6] The national debt reached 13 trillion after the subprime mortgage-collateralized debt obligation crisis in 2008.

The report said that one-third of all income taxes are consumed by waste and inefficiency in the federal government, and another one-third escapes collection owing to the underground economy. “With two thirds of everyone’s personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the federal debt and by federal government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services [that] taxpayers expect from their government."[4]

Congress was warned. They had the chance to do something about it, and did nothing. We The People, let them do it. Now we are living the consequences.

Mr. Grace, a Democrat Businessman, was an interesting fellow:

J. Peter Grace

[...] In the Kennedy administration, J. Peter Grace was head of the Commerce Department Committee on the Alliance for Progress.[5] President Reagan, in announcing the selection of J. Peter Grace to lead The Grace Commission on waste and inefficiency in the Federal government, said:

We have a problem that's been 40 years in the making, and we have to find ways to solve it. And I didn't want to ruin your appetites, so I waited till now to tell you this, but during the hour we're together here eating and talking, the Government has spent $83 million. And by the way, that includes the price of your lunch. [Laughter] Milton Friedman is right. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. The interest on our debt for the last hour was about $10 million of that.

In selecting your Committee, we didn't care whether you were Democrats or Republicans. Starting with Peter Grace, we just wanted to get the very best people we could find, and I think we were successful.

I'll repeat to you today what I said a week ago when I announced Peter's appointment: Be bold. We want your team to work like tireless bloodhounds. Don't leave any stone unturned in your search to root out inefficiency.[6]

Mr. Grace, a Democrat, was asked what he would say to the campaign theme of Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic Presidential candidate, that higher taxes would be required to ease the deficit regardless of who wins the November election.

"I'd tell him he's nuts," Grace said. "He's wrong. He's wrong."[7] [...]

   

The Affordable Care Act. IS it? What IS it?

It's an honest question. Nancy Pelosi said we'd have to pass the Act, to find out what was in it. Now we find out:

Deep Inside The Hot Mess Called Obamacare: It's Time For Honesty.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,” wrote Walter Scott in Marmion. It begins to appear that the Obama White House, right up to the president, cut class the day that Marmion was being taught. The ensuing breakdown in America’s health insurance system, and the political backlash, shows what happens when integrity is drained from politics.

[...]

“[P]oliticians made a series of short-term fixes that all but guaranteed long-term problems.” Politicians, elected officials, and career civil servants are guided by different incentives than businesses. And follow them. And then are, or act, incredulous when this time officious meddling yet again degrades the quality of goods and services in whose markets they have intervened.

Who would have guessed that tampering with the free market will end, as it always seems to, in tears. Who would have guessed? Not Pyongyang. Not Nation For Change. And, apparently, not freshman Senator turned president Barack Obama. As Abraham Lincoln noted, you can fool all of the people some of the time….

Under the rapidly unraveling deceit what’s really going on?

Is Obamacare really stealth capitalism? Or is it really stealth socialism?

Or is it really something far older and more pitiful? The one thing all seem to agree upon is that it, whatever it is, is stealthy. Is Obamacare simply a badly designed system tangled in a web of lies woven to mask the hubris and the incompetence of those who are, as former U.S. Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest once wittily described herself, “often wrong, but never in doubt”?

In this case progressives have given the American people the hot mess called Obamacare. Who — other than the Republicans, libertarians, conservatives, supply siders, and Tea Partiers vilified by the mainstream media — as well as most Forbes.com columnists — could have guessed that the Affordable Care Act might actually serve to make health care less available and less affordable?

At a certain point spin becomes deception. The promotion of Obamacare crossed that line.

The American people do not appreciate being hoodwinked.

Stealth capitalism? Stealth socialism?

Nobody knows which.

But we mere voters know stealth. And don’t like it. [...]

A shit brick, by any other name...

It's such a mess, I have to wonder if it was ever intended to work, or if it was intended to merely destroy the healthcare system we had, so the government could then try to fix the problem they created by shoving a single payer system down our throats, which is what so many of them wanted right from the start?

I don't think every element of the Affordable Care Act is bad. But as a whole, it is a mess. Republicans should have taken the initiative for healthcare reform when they had the chance. They didn't, so the Democrats did, they did it all THEIR way, and now we have The Shit Brick.

We are just a few days away from January 1st, and I still don't know if we will have insurance by then. Our group policy was cancelled. We were steered toward the state health exchange. We made a choice from there. Half of it went through, half was botched up, and we're still trying to sort it out.

Meanwhile, our old insurance policy was suddenly resurrected for another year and offered to us, with only six days to decide, but by then we'd already committed to the new plan, yet headlines are NOW screaming that the State Exchange is on the verge of running out of money, and our registration with the new plan seems in limbo at the moment.

And what will it do to our taxes? The cost of our previous health insurance was a deduction. The new plan comes with tax credits. Deductions are subtracted from what you owe. Credits are subtracted from what you pay. So our income tax is going to go up as well. So then, how much will we actually save? I guess it's the Nancy Pelosi method: "You have to pay more taxes before you can see how much you will get back".

I want to be optimistic and believe it will all come right in the end. And perhaps it will. But this sure is not encouraging. And it is NOT the way to do business.
     

Can the IRS create powers for itself?

Powers based on the "Horse Act of 1884"? So far, the judge says "no":

IRS Beats A Dead Horse, Argues For Regulations At Appeals Court

Does the Internal Revenue Service have the right to regulate tax preparers?

[...]

The crux of the plaintiffs’ argument is this: Congress never gave the IRS the authority to license tax preparers, and the IRS can’t give itself that power.

U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg agreed. In January 2013, he issued an opinion that would bar the IRS from regulating tax preparers, days before the new tax season officially opened for business. You can read the opinion here (downloads as a pdf).

The IRS appealed that decision and here we are, eight months later, back in court.

Oral arguments in the case were colorful, often punctuated by queries from the judges and occasionally, a joke or two. During arguments, the judges appeared skeptical of the IRS’ reliance on an 1884 statute, the “Enabling Act of 1884,” also referred to as the “Horse Act of 1884″ as sufficient authority to regulate tax preparers. The statute was the result of a post-Civil War concern about the abuse of the claim process for the value of dead horses and lost property during the war. To stem the tide of abuse, Congress granted the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to regulate the admission of agents representing claimants before the Treasury Department (the rise of the modern day Enrolled Agents), and to penalize those who failed to comply with the regulations. The Treasury published guidance for those agents – and that guidance is what eventually evolved into Circular 230. If that name rings a bell, you might have seen “Circular 230 language” at the bottom of attorney and tax professional emails.

The IRS argues that the law still allows for regulation of tax preparers. The statute predates the modern income Tax Code which was codified in 1913. Much has changed since – including Congress’ apparent reluctance to pass any laws granting the IRS specific authority to regulate preparers.

The amount of time that passed from the 1884 case and now didn’t go without notice in front of the panel. Consider this brief exchange between Justice Department Tax Division lawyer Gilbert Rothenberg and the panel:

Panel: That’s how many years?
Rothenberg: That’s about a century.
Judge: And then after a century, Treasury suddenly decides these words empower us to do this…?

Another exchange revolved around two simple conjunctions: “and” and “or.” Under the law, there are four criteria to be considered an agent. The statute uses the word “and” to connect the four but, as argued by Rothenberger, the IRS believes that “and” could also mean “or.” The panel didn’t seem convinced.

[...]

Shortly after the amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs was filed, I called up one of the parties, Joe Kristan, to ask him about his participation. Kristan is a CPA and authors the informative and entertaining Tax Update Blog. He doesn’t have an actual dog in this fight: CPAs are exempt from most of the regulations. So why, I asked, was he involved? He offered a laundry list of reasons: it’s bad law, bad policy and bad for the consumer.

In addition to the arguments cited by the plaintiffs that the IRS doesn’t have the authority to regulate tax preparers – and Congress has never stepped in to give them that power – Kristan has concerns about handing over even more power to the agency. Using an analogy from my profession, Kristan compared the law to giving the prosecutors the right to regulate defense attorneys.

During our call, we both agreed that there are bad tax preparers out there but Kristan used that fact to seize upon one of the main criticisms of the IRS scheme: there are ways of dealing with bad acts and these regulations won’t keep the bad preparers honest. It doesn’t, for example, deal with the issue of fraud in the industry. And, he says, those who can manipulate the system will now have the equivalent of a “seal of approval” from IRS, giving consumers a false sense of security.

But what about those education requirements and the competency exams? Kristan shrugs off the notion that some testing keeps taxpayers safe, saying that the test is a “literacy test, not a competency test.” He does believe that tax professionals should keep their credentials up and their skills sharp but feels that should be voluntary. The real problem with tax compliance issues, he says, simply won’t be resolved through more regulation. [...]

I believe the appeal by the IRS is still pending. But if it should fail (and IMO, that seems likely), congress is poised to give the increase in powers to the IRS: House bill would give IRS authority to regulate tax pros.

This link about the Horse Act of 1884 is interesting. It explains how it eventually lead to the creation of the designation of "Enrolled Agent".

Also see:

IRS' 'dead horse' tax preparer regulation argument doesn't appear to move federal appeals court

     

USA, the world's largest oil producer?

Yep. That's where we are heading:

U.S. to become world's largest oil producer before 2020, IEA says

The U.S. will become the world’s top producer of oil within five years, a net exporter of the fuel around 2030 and nearly self-sufficient in energy by 2035, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

It’s a bold set of predictions for a nation that currently imports some 20% of its energy needs.

Recently, however, an “energy renaissance” in the U.S. has caused a boost in oil, shale gas and bio-energy production due to new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fuel efficiency has improved in the transportation sector. The clean energy industry has seen an influx of solar and wind efforts.

By 2015, U.S. oil production is expected to rise to 10 million barrels per day before increasing to 11.1 million bpd by 2020, overtaking second-place Russia and front-runner Saudi Arabia. The U.S. will export more oil than it brings into the country in 2030.

Around the same time, however, Saudi Arabia will be producing some 11.4 million bpd of oil, outpacing the 10.2 million from the U.S. In 2035, U.S. production will slip to 9.2 million bpd, far behind the Middle Eastern nation’s 12.3 million bpd. Iraq will exceed Russia to become the world’s second largest oil exporter.

At that point, real oil prices will reach $125 a barrel. By then, however, the U.S. won’t be relying much on foreign energy, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook.

Globally, the energy economy will undergo a “sea change,” according to the report, with nearly 90% of Middle Eastern oil exports redirecting toward Asia. [...]

This report also confirms the claims made by Porter Stansberry, that I referred to in an earlier post about President Obama capitalizing on an oil boom, like Teddy Roosevelt and FDR did. And with the same corrupting influences.

   

Liberalism's long and winding road

How the Western world went from genuine Classical Liberalism to the corrupt Big Government Thugery that oppresses us today:

The Decline of Liberalism

AMERICAN LIBERALISM, synonymous today with big government, the exact opposite of the liberalism of Edmund Burke and other British champions of individual liberty, arose essentially from the use of the state to alleviate the most severe economic inequalities in society. In Great Britain this began in the competition between the Liberal and Conservative leaders, William Ewart Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, between 1865 and 1880, and among major European powers with the quest for an unthreatening working class with the founder and first chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck. Britain had a great battle over pensions under the chancellor of the exchequer just before the First World War, David Lloyd George. [...]

It goes on for quite a bit, detailing the history of Classical Liberalism, as it goes through many twists and turns, and eventually becomes something else altogether. History buffs will find it interesting. It explains a lot. It concludes:

[...] Liberalism saved America and led it to its greatest days under Roosevelt and Truman. And it essentially continued under Eisenhower, a nonpartisan war hero who pretended to be above politics. Under Kennedy and Johnson and their inept Democratic successors, liberalism ceased to be perceived as helping the deserving and instead became taking money from those who had earned it and giving it to those who hadn't in exchange for their votes. Nixon saved the country from the Kennedy-Johnson failure to redefine liberalism successfully, but freakishly squandered the political credit for doing so. Reagan won the battle for the conservatives against the liberals, and the Democrats have only won since when they ran an ostensibly moderate candidate against a very weak Republican. (Bob Dole and John McCain, whatever their merits as senators, were hopeless blunderbusses as presidential nominees.)

Liberalism will revive, as conservatism did, when it redefines itself as something that is new, looks likely to succeed, favors economic growth, and is no longer tainted by envy, hypocrisy, and the mere bribery of voting blocs. This will take a leader of the stature of a Roosevelt or Reagan. No such person is now visible, in either party, but neither were they seen in that light before they were elected and became candidates for Mount Rushmore.

Amen.
     

Does gridlock mean bigger government?

It would, by default. What could make a difference? Perhaps the Toomey bill:

Debt-Limit Remedy Gives Fiscal Hawks Leverage

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? House Republicans can pass all sorts of legislation to reduce the burden of government spending, but they don't control the Senate and they can't override a presidential veto. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, lacks the power to compel Congress to approve Democratic goals, including higher taxes.

This is a recipe for gridlock. And gridlock means bigger government: Democratic proponents of the status quo are in much stronger position to prevail because there are few ways for budget cutters to exert their will.

But there is some hope because of a "must-pass" piece of legislation. The president wants Congress to increase the statutory debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion so that government operations remain unaffected. Republicans oppose this business- as-usual approach and are insisting on real fiscal reforms in exchange for a higher ceiling.

[...]

Quite simply, Toomey's bill would require the federal government to fulfill obligations to bondholders before making any other disbursements.

To the extent that investors actually are worried, Toomey's legislation would remove ambiguity and, to borrow from the title of the bill, make clear that the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government would be preserved.

Toomey's proposal has generated a lot of angst among Beltway insiders because it would change the political dynamics of the budget fight. Politicians love to pontificate about the dangers of debt, but many of them are MIA when it comes to putting real limits on the growth of government spending.

It's much easier to put the budget on auto-pilot and delay tough choices, which is usually what happens with closed-door budget compromises in Washington.

Powerful Weapon
If the Toomey legislation is adopted, fiscal reformers will have a powerful weapon at their disposal. Secure in the knowledge that default no longer is a possibility, they can be much tougher in their negotiations with the politicians who favor the status quo. [...]

THAT would be change I could believe in.
     

Unified Quest 2011 and the Council of Governors

What do these two things have in common. What's going on, and why should we care?

Let's look at each of them separately. First, "Unified Quest 2011":

U.S. Military Prepares for Economic Collapse

Skeptics who continue to assert that the economic plight of the United States has been overstated need not look further than the Pentagon to find out just how wrong they are. CNBC has learned that the Pentagon is currently playing out “war games” pertinent to an American economic meltdown.

According to CNBC, “The Pentagon is planning for real economic threats to America.”

CNBC’s Business News analyst Eamon Javers explains:

Ever since the crash of 2008, the Defense Intelligence establishment has really been paying a lot of attention to global markets and how they could serve as a threat to U.S. National security interests. At one upcoming seminar that we’re going to see here next month, they’re going to be taking a look at a lot of the issues … [including] the use of sovereign wealth funds to manipulate markets, currencies; nation state economic collapse, sovereign default, nation state instability; U.S. Allies’ budgets, deficits, national security infrastructures.

Similarly, the Army has launched an operation called “Unified Quest 2011” in which it studies the “implications of ‘large scale economic breakdown’ inside the United States that would force the Army to keep ‘domestic order amid civil unrest.’” The Quest also trains the Army in how to “deal with fragmented global power and drastically lower budgets.”

[...]

However, the 2011 Unified Quest lends truth to assertions that the United States is indeed not witnessing an upward economic recovery, as so many in our federal government have asserted. Soldiers are being trained in evacuation and detainment as a response to rioting, revealing the possibility that the United States military may resort to martial law in order to maintain order.

[...]

Blacklisted News explains that the Pentagon’s war games are just one of many examples that show the direction in which the world is headed. Others include the decentralization of FEMA from a single distribution facility in Washington to 15 regional facilities across the nation. Blacklisted News also claims, “Anecdotal evidence indicates that the U.S. government has been the leading buyer of freeze dried foods for the last couple of years, and private emergency shelter contractors have reported a shortage in equipment and supplies for building personal-sized bunkers.”

The actual video from the CNBC broadcast sounds less conspiratorial:



It's the military's job to plan for various scenarios. They would be remiss in their duties if they didn't. Yet, if they knew a collapse was imminent, they would also be preparing for it. So which is it: precaution or preparation?

The politicians are telling us there is an economic recovery happening, but there is no denying that the military is practicing for a collapse. Not only that, they've been working on this for the past two years:

Pentagon Has Been ‘War Gaming’ for Economic Disaster Since Early ‘09

Follow both links for more information and links. It can be interpreted either way.

OK, so the military is preparing. It's good to be cautious, right? I've posted previously about What a U.S. currency collapse might look like. The Pentagon says they are looking at it as something triggered by terrorist actions. But many say that terrorism may not enter into it; a collapse could also result from fiscal mismanagement by our own government. Either way, the end result would likely look the same.

And if there is an economic collapse and ensuing chaos, we will need the military to maintain law and order, right? But consider this also:

The Council of Governors--an endrun around state sovereignty

[...] Well what’s wrong with that? A nice partnership between the state and federal governments so they can coordinate things and keep us all safe! We’ve gotten so used to this government speak. We should scream just hearing that statist jargon “partnership between the Federal Govt and state governments”. Our founding fathers did not see it that way. The states were sovereign. They gave certain enumerated powers (Art1. sec8) to the federal government, they delegated certain responsibilities to the federal government, but they did NOT make them partners. We were the united (with a small u as written in the Declaration of Independence) States of America.

This executive order does an end run around state sovereignty, creating 10 regions of the country (in line with the regions FEMA and the UN have established) and essentially erasing state lines in the event of the council taking any action. The president having the power to appoint the governors who are then partnered with him and have charge of “the synchronization and integrations of state and federal military ACTIVITIES in the U.S.” becomes the supreme commander and in charge of state militias and ALL the armed forces (county police, state militia and national guard and federal troops, AND removing any checks and balances thereof)--he in effect becomes a dictator.

The approval of the legislative branch of government isn’t even needed if he wants to squash a domestic insurrection. This makes us the United State (SINGULAR!) of America under the control of 1 person who is advised by the elite he has chosen--clearly no longer a republic, no longer united sovereign states. It should give us pause that Hitler did something similar in 1934 when he transferred the sovereign rights of the states--Germany had states similar to ours-- to the Reich central govt and put the state administrations under the control of the Reich administration.

It certainly looks like the executive branch of the govt is conspiring to get all of the military power and all of the forces under its control.

Let me quote from "Martial Law in America: No Longer Just a Possibility!" by Gary D. Barnett, “This executive order was issued for one purpose only, and that is to build a “legal” partnership between the federal government’s national military force and the domestic police state so that they become one and the same. But in reality, this “partnership” would be controlled by the executive branch of the federal government; this being the most dangerous kind of fascism. Nothing could be more treacherous or more of a threat to liberty than for one man, the president of this now “United State,” to have the power to control and use in domestic matters the entire federal military, the National Guard, the Reserves, the Coast Guard and all state police organizations. This would effectively give the president the power to establish Martial Law over the entire country at any given time of his choosing.” [...]

The article goes on to describe how this directly conflicts with the sovereign rights of states. This was done in February of 2010. Nobody seems to be talking about it.

States already had agreements of cooperation between state and federal powers in disaster and times of strife. I don't see the need for this, other than as a power grab to erode and destroy states rights. George Bush opened the door for this, and now the Democrats have walked in and are exploiting it to the max. But in the end, insofar as we allow it, we're to blame. And it will be up to us to reverse it.


Additional information:


What would a U.S. currency collapse look like?

What happens when Tax Cuts Expire in 2011?

Our true national debt: $130,000,000,000,000.

Argentina's Example: Are we heading there?

Glenn Beck – 15 Days of Economic Collapse

Has US Currency already "collapsed"?


     

The FCC's Net Neutrality: How "Neutral" is it?

Is it just more heavy-handed government interference? Many say yes:



Internet access is not a “civil right”

When bureaucrats talk about increasing your “access” to X, Y, or Z, what they’re really talking about is increasing their control over your lives exponentially. As it is with the government health care takeover, so it is with the newly-approved government plan to “increase” Internet “access.” Call it Webcare.

By a vote of 3-2, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday adopted a controversial scheme to ensure “net neutrality” by turning unaccountable Democrat appointees into meddling online traffic cops. The panel will devise convoluted rules governing Internet service providers, bandwidth use, content, prices, and even disclosure details on Internet speeds. The “neutrality” is brazenly undermined by preferential treatment toward wireless broadband networks. Moreover, the FCC’s scheme is widely opposed by Congress – and has already been rejected once in the courts. Demonized industry critics have warned that the regulations will stifle innovation and result in less access, not more.

Sound familiar?

The parallels with health care are striking. The architects of Obamacare promised to provide Americans more access to health insurance – and cast their agenda as a fundamental universal entitlement. In fact, it was a pretext for creating a gargantuan federal bureaucracy with the power to tax, redistribute, and regulate the private health insurance market to death – and replace it with a centrally-planned government system overseen by politically-driven code enforcers dictating everything from annual coverage limits, to administrative expenditures, to the make-up of the medical workforce. The costly, onerous, and selectively-applied law has resulted in less access, not more. [...]

From the Washington Post:

Net Neutrality: Reactions to FCC ruling and analysis

[...] Everyone's weighing in on the Federal Communications Commission's vote to approve net neutrality rules on Tuesday. While President Obama and others hailed the move as an important step in preserving open access, the criticism started flowing almost as soon as the vote was announced.

In the Wall Street Journal, columnist John Fund says the vote is a coup by left-leaning lobbyists. He says he counted the citations from the FCC's National Broadband plan and noted there were far fewer nods from "respected think tanks" such as the Brookings Institution, as opposed to "liberal groups" such as Free Press, Public Knowledge, Pew and the New America Foundation.

Heavy-handed government "solutions" often end up creating more problems than they solve, or achieving the exact opposite of what they claim they are trying to do. This may be a case in point. It has a lot of opposition already, from the both the Left and Right. Some of the arguments in it's favor sound compelling, but from what I've been reading, it seems that it's over-reaching, trying to do too much. In short, too much government interference.

We'll see what happens.
     

Where to make the spending cuts?

There has already been lots of research on the topic:

What Spending Should the GOP Cut?

[...] Out of the starting gate next year, fiscal reformers in Congress should push for an across-the-board cut to discretionary spending for the rest of the current fiscal year. One approach would be for House leaders to propose a continuing resolution that extends spending at last year’s levels, less some substantial percentage cut applied to every program.

For the upcoming fiscal year of 2012, reformers need to carefully target some major program cuts and eliminations. The president and the Democrats in the Senate will likely resist proposed cuts, but the point is to further the national debate that has begun about the proper size and scope of the federal government.

Some initial targets for GOP reformers, with rough annual savings, could include: community development subsidies ($15 billion), public housing subsidies ($9 billion), urban transit subsidies ($9 billion), and foreign development aid ($18 billion). On the entitlement side, initial cuts could include raising the retirement age for Social Security and introducing progressive price indexing to reduce the growth rate of future benefits. [...]

The article has many links to think-tanks and groups who have been studying the topic, and have many suggestions.

Europe has recognized the global economic threat and is reacting accordingly. They've been urging us to do the same. How long will it take us to change course before the collapse of our currency is imminent?

Spending cuts may be tough, but it will be nothing, compared to world-wide ecomomic collapse. See the links below for details.


Additional information:


What would a U.S. currency collapse look like?

What happens when Tax Cuts Expire in 2011?

Our true national debt: $130,000,000,000,000.

Argentina's Example: Are we heading there?

Glenn Beck – 15 Days of Economic Collapse

Has US Currency already "collapsed"?

     

The Government's Mill Stone for Our Necks

Don't let them tie it onto us:

ObamaCare: A Tangled Knot Around America's Throat

Bureaucratic Web: Those who wondered what was in the health care overhaul bill now have a chance to look inside. What they see is a snarl of lines, arrows and geometric shapes that will do nothing to improve medical care.

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, GOP Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas and the minority staff of the Joint Economic Committee have provided a priceless public service by creating a flow chart (below) of the federal health care system that is being created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.


The chart displays, in words we can't improve, "a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates."

At the center of the new federal health care universe is the secretary of Health and Human Services, who has been granted supernational powers. Radiating from that hub are the lesser celestial objects, such as Congress in the upper right corner, the president in the upper left, and doctors in the lower left.

Patients can be found near the bottom right corner. Remember them? They were supposed to be what the health care overhaul was all about. But they've been nudged, as almost an afterthought, to the fringe of this expanding universe.

Between patients and the secretary of Health and Human Services sit galaxies of red tape, taxes, regulations, federal programs, state agencies, mandates — and thousands of bureaucrats.

But the HHS secretary does not treat patients. Doctors do. And the expanse between them, according to this chart, is vast. They are separated by a government that is growing deeper, wider and more labyrinthine, an administrative state that will ration, dilute and ineffectively manage health care. [...]

Read the rest; it's even worse than the chart!

Remember in November, so we can REPEAL and REPLACE this garbage.


Also see:

Why Obamacare is a "healthcare bridge to nowhere" that can't be "tweaked"     

From California's Stark Raving Mad Pete Stark

Has power gone to his head? Sounds like it:

No, Congressman, government does have limits

When Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., was told during a July 24 town hall meeting with constituents that he and public officials like him were "destroying this nation," he smirkingly replied, "And I guess you're here to save it. And that makes me very uncomfortable." This derision of a constituent was particularly poignant, considering that the questioner had only asked what limits would remain on the federal government if Congress could get away with passing a bill as destructive of individual rights as Obamacare. Stark responded that "I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life." He was roundly booed, but then given another opportunity to respond. He observed that "the federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country."

Unfortunately, Stark's extreme views are common among the current congressional majority. Still, we have no doubt that those who wrote the Constitution would be astounded to hear such monarchical attitudes today since they were exactly what the American Revolution was fought to overcome.

Sadly, it probably comes as no surprise to most Americans that Washington politicians like Stark hold such a self-serving view of the Constitution. It's still shocking to hear it put in such stark terms. But Americans have been hearing this theme from their leaders throughout the current economic crisis: Those in power are mainstream agents of change, whereas those who, like Tea Partiers, protest bailouts, deficits, tax hikes and exploding national debt are disreputable radicals and even racists. This is the incumbent- protection narrative that seeks to discredit the middle-American rebellion sparked in 2009 when President Obama proposed an $862 billion economic stimulus program that most knew would mostly line the pockets of his political allies. [...]

Read the rest of it. It's time to vote these jerks out in November, while we still have a vote.


Also see:

American politics has caught the British disease

Pampered Populists

THE RULING CLASS
     

Why is D.C. broken? Could it be, because of the ambitions of America's "Ruling" class?

From Neal Boortz:

THE RULING CLASS

Barack Obama's chief dogwasher Valerie Jarrett said that Barack Obama would be ready to "rule" by day one. At the time, one would hope that this was a slip-of-the-tongue. Turns out that it wasn't. This should have been a huge red flag, a warning sign that we were about to anoint a ruling class in Washington, rather than elected representative officials. We should have known then that Jarrett was serving a ruler, not a leader. These people would have little concept of what it is like to function in the private sector and an inherent disdain for free enterprise. Their love of government and ultimately their role within that government would be the driving force behind every decision and every policy. It is purely based on survival - these rulers know that their success is based on their ability to manipulate the government educated into believing that they need them in order to survive. Angelo Codevilla of the American Spectator can pick up where I've left off ...

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

You could argue - I think accurately -- that the Tea Party movement is a visceral reaction to this elitism, this ruling class. These politicians currently in Washington are synonymous with "big government" because they lived, eaten and breathed nothing but government since they were begat. They believe that we exist for the purpose of serving out government. Actually ... I think that I found the perfect way to describe these people, and their ruler, several years ago: They believe that America's greatness is centered on Washington DC and flows from government, not from the dynamic of a free people working and cooperating together in a system based on freedom, economic liberty and the rule of law.

Also see:

The clash between the ruling class and the "country class"