RedStateEclectic

Global Liberty Watch: Is Europe's Green Plan Brilliant or a Blunder?

European Seeds of Tyranny

When discussing the European Union it is always important to remember that Europe was home to numerous brutal authoritarian regimes such as Hitler’s Germany, the USSR, the GDR, and fascist Italy. Rooted in feudal kingdoms, the authoritarian seeds have merely grown into a more mature form over the centuries. On the contrary, America’s libertarian principles are well-established and her authoritarian roots were long ago severed.

Concordantly, the European environmentalists have taken their agenda much further than Algore, Inc. has in America. The E.U.’s plan to eliminate gas and diesel vehicles from cities by 2050 is a case in point. The plan would ramrod Europe into a “Single European Transport Area (SETA)”. Where some people might see it as the equivalent to a modern Interstate Highway infrastructure investment, it may turn out to be more of a gigantic prison sentence for Europeans.

Proponents cite energy independence as the main benefit of their radical plan. The coming shortage of oil, they say, needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. By introducing draconian restrictions on travel and emissions they expect to greatly reduce the demand for oil. Freedom from oil-supply-related foreign entanglements and reduction of greenhouse emissions are additional benefits to such measures.

Proponents, Opposition Starkly Divided

E.U. Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas knows his plan is costly but is optimistic and confident about its overall benefit, "We are talking about the necessity of investment of 1.5 trillion euros ($2.1 trillion)… Curbing mobility is not an option; neither is business as usual. We can break the transport system's dependence on oil without sacrificing its efficiency and compromising mobility. It can be win-win."

The head of the Association of British Drivers summed up the opposition’s perspective, "If he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track. The man is off his rocker."

The opposition bases its position on a few fundamental beliefs. First, since the $2.1 trillion figure comes from a government source it should be assumed to be underestimated. Second, the one-size-fits-all approach to energy management may cause numerous economic inefficiencies at the micro-economic level, resulting in hardships on the poor (think Cash for Clunkers) and in difficulty keeping small businesses afloat. Third, since SETA would require a vast amount of borrowing, it puts Europe in the dangerous position of taking on even more debt. Fourth, the law of unintended consequences will certainly strike, as it has with ethanol subsidies, for example. Finally, any restriction of individuals’ ability to travel would be unacceptable.

Fear is Big Business

The need to reduce reliance on energy imported from volatile regimes is hard to argue with. America’s $4-6 trillion, decade-long war likely has more to do with oil than terrorism. Reliance on oil imports from the Middle East years ago led to military interventions and bases. The presence of American “boots on the ground” in Saudi Arabia was one of the top reasons for the attacks of 9-11 (“blowback” according to the CIA). Further expansion of the war into petro-state Libya (while oil-free countries are allowed to burn) confirms oil as the basis for war in the Middle East. In that light, Europe is wise to try to replace oil imports.

The other two deciding factors for the radical environmentalist policy are not as solid, though. First, the premise of climate change has been thoroughly challenged and largely dismissed. Second, doomsday predictions of the “drying up” of world oil supplies are questionable, especially considering a) improvements in efficiency, b) new drilling techniques, c) synthetic replacements for oil, and d) development of free market alternatives to oil.

Seizing the Opportunity

The $4-6 trillion running price tag of America’s War on Terror (to secure oil supplies) makes the $2.1 trillion Transport Area seem like a wise investment. SETA would be the mother of all bureaucratic pet projects at that price, yet even if all its scientific rationale were disproven it may be forced through (like Obamacare).

Why? Rahm Emanuel tipped us off to the (universal) big government mindset when he said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s (sic) an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Considering the big government Machiavellian mantra, “the end justifies the means”, SETA’s questionable outcome would outweigh its price and the loss of individual choice.

Not All Bad

Some parts of the SETA proposal are good, like goal #10: “Move towards full application of “user pays” and “polluter pays” principles and private sector engagement to eliminate distortions, including harmful subsidies, generate revenues and ensure financing for future transport investments.”

SETA includes standardization of transportation and commerce laws throughout the E.U., generally a net gain for the macro-economy and for individuals. However, by implementing changes at the highest level of government instead of local/state governments, Europe invites the risk of runaway big government (death by regulation).

 Questions Left Unanswered and Unasked

But what if the E.U. were to simply leave the people alone and let individuals (and investors) in the free market determine what is best for them? History shows that individuals will make better financial decisions when allowed to, so what is different about energy and transportation? Wouldn’t individuals foresee volatile gas prices as a threat and diversify their energy needs? Are there no private investors or local/state governments willing to take the lead instead of the E.U. federal government?

This Side of the Pond

The U.S. House passed the American Clean Energy and Security bill in 2009 but it failed in the Senate. Like the Single European Transport Area, it was designed to counteract decreasing oil supplies and dependence on volatile foreign oil sources. It died partially due to its cost, like SETA, but concern about federal over reach also contributed.

Being a non-resident of Europe, I say go ahead and implement SETA. If it works, good for them. If not, that’s too bad, but at least America won’t be tied down by Europe’s change of policy. Hopefully it won’t turn into a disaster like past European social engineering blunders.

It will be interesting to watch Europe’s transformation as it implements this radical policy. Meanwhile, America’s energy economy will be better served by private sector investment and innovation. As for that $4-6 trillion dollar war…

Do You Like This House?

I have asked a friend of mine to show me the type of house she might want to live in. Below is one of her candidates:

At first glance, I do not find the outside view that arresting. Plus, wooden cladding for external walls is not one of my favourites; often it tends to have something "cheap" about it, in my biased view, and quickly acquires a touch of being weather-worn. The cement terrace is a disgrace, from the perspective we are given, but it certainly can be turned into something nice.

Mind you, first architectural impressions are not very reliable with me. It is not rare that I come to consider as aesthetically pleasing what at first I had rejected as ugly - click for an example.

At any rate the interior of the house does appeal to me very strongly.

Being part of a farmstead adds a wonderful quality to the house.

An appealingly plain structure that could also accommodate any level of crowded plush domesticity.

All in all, there is a clear similarity to my dream house.

Spring Cleaning…

Tomorrow, the trash collectors come.  Of course a family of four typically has a fair amount of refuse each week, but I think they’ll get to take a bit more away tomorrow…

Yesterday was a “wasted” day, of sorts, for me.  For some reason, I was exceedingly tired for most of the day (maybe the antihistamines I’ve started taking for spring allergies?), I laid down to take a “brief” nap (it’s not unusual for me to try and grab 20-30 minute catnaps once during the day—those always seem to reinvigorate me), and ended up sleeping almost 2 hours (even with an alarm set, I just kept hitting snooze, I guess).

This morning, I looked at the huge pile of laundry waiting for, at the very time my son was in desperate need of a clean pair of pants for school—I luckily found one pair that not only was clean, but also fits—but found 3 pairs of jeans, on the floor of his closet, which were in a sad state of repair.  What is it about boys?—I’ve had 2 girls, and have never had one of them have huge holes in the knees, but the pants on Isaac’s closet floor, while still theoretically fitting him, had all 6 of the knees ripped out—split horizontally from seam to seam.  I asked my son what he does to his jeans to cause those holes.  His answer: “I just wear them.”

Anyway, the big black bags for trash are coming out soon. I’ve got many days worth of clearing out to do, and will probably try to take it in little bites rather than kill myself trying to get it all done in a couple of days (which never really works for me, and usually ends up in me spending on really intense day, getting the job half done, and then leaving the rest hanging).

Other things on my “to do” list:

• Help develop content for our webmaster for the Heartland LibertyFest. (You can sign up there for updates, if you want—especially if you might be interested in coming to the August event).
• Communicating with speakers and/or entertainers for the above mentioned LibertyFest.
• Trying to find underwriters for the above mentioned LibertyFest (are you getting a sense of pattern of obsession, yet?)
• Planning Girl Scout camp for mid-June.
• Putting together a fundraising campaign for the local youth cabin/camp that I serve as President of the Board for.  I already got the website launched.
• Yard work will be coming soon—we’re going to try a vegetable garden again (first time in about 10-12 years), so we’re going to need to start working on tilling the soil…

Today is still cool (30s), damp, and cloudy, but tomorrow is supposed to hit 60s, and the 10 day forecast (with the exception of next Monday which is supposed to be in the upper 40s), is calling for 60 and 70 degree days for a while. 

Off to one of the bedrooms (I think my 7 1/2 year old son’s is the most ripe for picking) to start the sorting process…..

Wal-Mart CEO Expects Inflation

Remember when Bernanke said that he wasn't monetizing the debt, and that all the money he was printing wouldn't make it into circulation? I do.  It was June 3, 2009.

Same day we all pulled a Joe Wilson and shouted "You lie!"

Oddly enough, sometimes it sucks to be right all the time, and this is one of those times:

From USA Today:

"....inflation is "going to be serious," Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon said during a meeting with USA TODAY's editorial board. "We're seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate."

 

 

More On The Tom Woods / Mark Levin Feud

Sorry if this is overkill, but my inbox has more mail on this than any topic I've seen for a while, so I'm totally milking it. I don't have any new info, but I do want to quash a rumor. (Yeah, like that's gonna work.)

Jeff Poor at The Daily Caller wrote a piece about Levin's anti-Paul fans radio rant. The audio is contained in his article if you want to hear it.

Over at The Conservative Times, Red Phillips wrote,

Curiously, nowhere does the (The Daily Caller) story mention the brutal intellectual beatdown Woods administered to Levin that prompted the Ron Paul supporters to comment on Levin’s posts to begin with.

I must confess that I had the same initial reaction when I read that piece. But when I read it again, I thought the piece was a fair summation of Levin's rant, so I emailed Jeff Poor and asked him why he didn't ask Tom Woods for a comment?

Here's what he said:

I was really just listening for (Levin's) reaction to Obama's speech and he opened up by calling Paul folks "a-holes," so I wrote it up.  Just not familiar with the politics of his Facebook page.

Now, if history is any indicator, a lot of readers will immediately cry "Conspiracy!" and about half of those will not ever be convinced otherwise. But for the rest of you, here's the thing: my husband listened to the Levin rant and also did not have a clue that Tom Woods was involved.

Yep. My husband actually listens to Levin during drive time. He came home and amusedly asked me what had inspired the profanity-laced anti-Ron Paul tirade from Levin.

(Remember, Ron Paul had nothing to do with the Woods position. Levin just threw his name out there cash in on the divisive, hateful animosity he's nurtured for the past 4 years.)

So, as much as I love Phillips, I think he over reacted here.  Poor was reporting without investigating. Maybe that makes him lazy, but it hardly makes him a conspirator in some subversive new world order media control plot. (Really. It doesn't.)

PS: When I filled Dear Husband in, he laughed and said

"Oh, so Levin couldn't win one war so he decided to start another? Like Bush deciding since he couldn't win a war in Afghanistan, he start one in Iraq?"

Yeah, he's quick like that.

Dan Riehl: "Pelosi Is My Goddess"

OK, he didn't really say that, but he might as well have. Since cordiality, much less intelligence, isn't on the agenda, I might as well just make stuff up, right?  As always, a little background:

RiehlWorldView is a name I recognize only because I read TheOtherMcCain.  I don't remember what he's written, or what common bonds he and Stacy share. I don't know where he lives, what he does for a living....nothing except that he writes a blog I occasionally click through to read.  So, dId he manage to come up with a legitimate criticism of Woods' assertions?

Uh, no. And as the running gag goes, I know I'm as shocked as you are. 

Sadly, I had honestly a brief glimmer of hope that perhaps somebody could mediate this thing. Be a voice of reason. Unite the party, etc etc. Boy, do I feel stupid.  Apparently that would again require too much thought and effort. Instead of facts,  Riehl settled for quick series of logical fallacies. (I had to ask - did they not require logic in that junior college he claims to have made it out of?) 

For the life of me, I don't get it.  Why would any sane person be so anxious to be perceived as a smarmy jerk over something that didn't even involve him?  Have we really devolved this far politically - where our scholars are smeared as the sinners while the thugs are hailed as saints?

And this makes us different from the left how, exactly?

Don't misunderstand me - I don't doubt that RIehl's an intelligent man. And I absolutely respect anybody who can churn out that many words every day, especially without the benefit of an editor to clean it all up before it posts. What I don't understand why he chooses not fall back on that intelligence, opting instead of settling for the cheap shots, like being flat out openly nasty to a man who has probably never even heard of him. (Of course, that might be my answer.)

No, I can't ever play that "Google the opponent" game, because I don't get the point.  I honestly don't care if a blogger is a 2 foot tran-sexual dwarf blogging from his stepfather's basement any more than I care if he's a blond Adonis figure with a future White House career.  All I care about is the logic (or lack of) that he chose to put on the screen to represent his opinion, or in this case, himself. There's a cure for stupidity, but not when it's overtly intentional.

And right now, Riehl is representing himself as nothing more than a shallow, belligerent bully who can't refrain from speaking even when he has absolutely nothing important to say.  It should repulse any reader who respects him and what he does. But sadly, it won't.

LIke it or not (and "not" seems to be duh - winning!), Woods has clearly made his point based on historical evidence. At the outset, this seemed to be an awesome chance for the TEA Party types to learn a little history, and perhaps more importantly, a chance for the Libertarians and the GOP to join together and publicly berate the Democrats over yet another constitutional transgression.

But that's not what happened. Since it's been a while since the neocons were in control, I sort of forgot that when intellectually lazy, ethically bankrupt people have no real counter argument to history, and their big government tendencies opo up to the surface, they get downright ugly. And they opt to support Obama's creative interpretation of supreme executive power, lashing out at other members of their own party who innocently corrected the intentionally twisted theory that Levin put forth.

As I said before, apparently the political science is settled, making Queen Nancy the bi-partisan goddess - who knew?

Of course, now that Dan Riehl and The Daily Caller have entered the fray, they'll soon be 100 other bloggers not blogging about the issue, but yammering about the personalities. Ron Paul's a nut, his supporters are rude, Lew Rockwell's a miscreant, blah blah blah - but not a word about the fact that Woods has proven his point with documentation, while Levin's position is bluntly that he is right because he said so.

And let us not forget - Ron Paul had nothing to do with this! But Levin knows how to work his listeners up into a frenzy, and insisting that "Ron Paul's supporters are a bunch of foul mouthed a** h****" is certainly much more likely to get listeners than "Tom Woods is wrong."

Make no mistake - Ron Paul supporters are indeed their own worst enemies.  Levin has made it clear that he's not going to admit Woods has a point, so it would be best just to leave him and his Facebook page alone. But that's not what they do.

And because they "swarm," bloggers like Riehl use them to score traffic. Can't blame him for that. I just dont understand the necessity of using mindless, mean spirited drivel instead of actual conversation.

After seeing this happen over and over and over, you'd think I'd be used to it, but I'm not. I know I'm naive, but I honestly keep expecting better from people on my side of the aisle, and I just can't ever seem to get past being irate when they fail to live up to my concept of what a Republican should be. 

Why do these type of people insist on attacking people instead of attacking messages or ideas?  That is straight from the Democratic playbook - identify a target, isolate it, then attack  - like a pack of wild dogs.  We're supposed to be the party of the smart, not the party of the brutes.

Sadly, the only answer that I can think of is that there's just something seriously wrong with them.  The Kristol wing of the party seems to have come with goon squads to run things when they wandered over from the left.  They simply have no interest in embracing honesty, history, or even simple truth.

Actually, I do have one more guess, and it's even less complicated - if they can score a blog hit by pandering to an ignorant audience that I will simply never seek to know, they'll do it in a heartbeat.

I have no doubt I could dig through Riehl's site and find some things that I enthusiastically agree with,and I would also undoubtedly find things that I find despicable. But I would never discount anything he wrote based off of something somebody else wrote. But logical fallacies reign supreme (and probably pay the bills, too) in the Riehl World.

So while I'm less popular, get less traffic, am probably less educated, and almost certainly less charming, I'll settle for being perceived as intellectually honest.

(And the worst part about this is that I will have forgotten all about it in a month or so.  But they never will.)

(By the way, Tom Woods has 5 amazingly beautiful goddesses in his castle. But lets not go there.)

 

The American City in Germany

I shot the below pics, just this morning. To make sure, I have not caught pneumonia, my general practitioner send me to a radiologist for an x-ray of my chest. It turns out, I am fine. I don't know how my radiologist felt after my lecture to him on the prevailing linear no-threshold (LNT) theory of radiation carcinogenesis and radiation levels at Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Chernobyl. He seemed a wee bit paler in the face, when I left for the sun drenched farmer's market (see images) just below his practice. An ante-meridian affair, the market was just beginning to shut down for the day.

In the meantime, courtesy of the American-German Business Club, I just received this booklet on Kaiserslautern: The American City in Germany.

http://ktownusa.org/

While K-Town is far from being an American city, it does have the largest American community of all German cities. However, no American or German inhabitant of Kaiserslautern would ever feel tempted to call their city an American city.

As prickly as they often are, Germans can get childishly generous when eager to flatter someone. They like things that are total - total wars, total friendship and so on. I suppose this is the background to the misnomer: some marketing guy was overly eager in a German way to signal to American readers two points, actually facts in my view: Americans are very important for Kaiserslautern, and we are happy to accommodate their presence as a distinct and welcome feature of our mutual town.

In everyday life, with no need of kowtowing or patronising, Germans and Americans simply get on well with each other, see for yourself: 

      

Oopsy!

When Senators Forget the Mute Button

Moments before a conference call with reporters and "apparently unaware that many of the reporters were already on the line," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) "began to instruct fellow senators on how to talk to reporters about the contentious budget process," the New York Times reports.

Schumer told them to portray House Speaker John Boehner (D-OH) "as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme."

Said Schumer: "I always use the word extreme. That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week."

"A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell."

via politicalwire.com

I love it when politicians get caught with open mics.

Justin Amash on Presidential War Powers

Congressman Amash is one of the good ones—we need many more like him.  I look forward to watching him in the future.

 

Woods v Levin - The Final Chapter

Heh - unless it isn't, of course.  These internet feuds seem to have more lives (and sharper claws) than Freddy Kruegar.

When we last left off, Woods had issued a relatively simple challenge to Levin:

.....find me one Federalist, during the entire period in which the Constitution was pending, who argued that the president could launch non-defensive wars without consulting Congress. To make it easy on you, you may cite any Federalist speaking in any of the ratification conventions in any of the states, or in a public lecture, or in a newspaper article – whatever. One Federalist who took your position. I want his name and the exact quotation.

Although Levin claimed he didn't have time to actually rise to the challenge, he sure didn't waste any taking the discussion down a few notches. Name any random logical fallacy, and I can show you Levin using an example of it in this reaction.

Yep, he was too busy to prove his point because he was digging around the internet, finding all sorts of things that Woods didn't even write, and some obscure opinions of a book he did. Sadly, the only thing he couldn't do was to produce that single bit of evidence to support his position. So, he did what all wimps do when the going gets tough. He threw a hissy fit and quit.

That left Woods with only one obvious course of action: he  openly mocked him. (He could he not?)

Seemingly out of the blue, Redstate.com's Erick Erickson suddenly declared that the political science was settled, Levin was officially the man, and he did so without even bothering to acknowledge there was a debate, much less an open challenge in the air.  As Woods put it, it suddenly became quite Orwellian.

And of course, because they're not known for standing idly by  when there's snarking that needs to be done, people who can actually read the constitution began posting statements from the founders that supported Woods' position on Levin's Facebook wall. Of course, I'd love to link to some of those here, but they were all summarily deleted. 

(Actually, the one I'd really like to link to was the Levin fan who proudly proclaimed that he knew Levin to be absolutely right because that's what he was taught in the 8th grade. You just can't argue with logic like that.)

We may have come a long way, but this whole episode shows we still have miles to go.