No Oil for Pacifists

Tom Smitheringale wanted to prove the world was warming. Now he's another alarmist with frostbite.

The 40-year-old from Perth planned to be the first Australian to trek unassisted to the North Pole, but announced he'd raise some consciousness along the way.

As he wrote on his website: "Part of the reason Tom's One Man Epic is taking place now is because of the effect that global warming is having on the polar ice caps."

Indeed, he wanted to see the North Pole while it was still there: "Some scientists have even estimated that the polar ice cap will have entirely melted away by 2014!"

But Antarctica isn't melting away, and Arctic ice has slowly increased since its big low in 1997.

But no one seems to have told Tom, who soon found his extremities freezing.

Two weeks ago he nearly called off his trek after suffering excruciating pain in his fingers and thumbs, forcing him to call in emergency help.

And last week he had to be rescued by Canadian soldiers after falling through the ice sheet.

"(I) came very close to the grave," he said, on being flown out.

This is actually now the fourth year running that warming alarmists have had to be rescued from expeditions to prove the Arctic is warmer than it actually is. It's a metaphor.

Last year it was British eco-explorer Pen Hadow and his two-person team who had to be flown out mid-stunt, after battling brutal sub-zero weather conditions that gave the team's photographer frostbite.

The year before, eco-adventurer Lewis Gordon Pugh was similarly thwarted.

He'd planned to kayak 1200km to the North Pole to raise awareness of how global warming had allegedly melted the ice sheet so badly that scientists warned the North Pole that summer could be ice-free.

No such luck. Pugh had to pull out, still 1000km from the finish, when a great barrier of sea ice blocked his route.

The year before gave even more farcical entertainment.

"Explorers and educators" Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen said they were off on what reporters described as "a historic 75-day expedition to the North Pole and beyond to raise awareness of global warming's impact on the fragile Arctic".

It turned out that what was fragile was not the Arctic but the alarmists, who had to call off their big trip not long after it started, when Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold drained their batteries.

Explained a spokesman: "They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming."

Like the globe, really.

Americans losing confidence in healthcare

Americans are steadily losing confidence in their ability to get healthcare and pay for it, despite the passage of healthcare reform legislation, according to a survey published on Wednesday.

Government subsidies for solar energy in Germany have reached absurd proportions, as ordinary consumers pay out billions to support solar power. Now plans to reduce the subsidies are encountering massive resistance from the industry and a number of German states, which benefit from the current arrangement. . .

[L]awmakers have overshot the mark by far, at least when it comes to subsidies for solar energy. Anyone who installs solar panels benefits from guaranteed feed-in tariffs for the next 20 years. That means that, over a 20-year period, Germany's electricity customers will pay a total of around €14 billion in subsidies -- just for the solar panels that were installed in 2009. And that cost is likely to rise in the future, because Germans are mounting more and more solar collectors on their roofs. Economists estimate that all the solar panels installed by 2013 will cost German consumers more than €70 billion. Thanks to the generous subsidy program, crops on some fields have been replaced with arrays of shimmering, bluish modules mounted on automated stands and tilted toward the sun. And all of this is being done for an amount of electricity that meets only 1.1 percent of German demand.

Overall, the health care bill increases the amount of income redistribution from high-income families. That is largely due to the bill's targeted Medicare tax hike on those earning more than $200,000 (singles) and $250,000 (couples). The Medicare tax hike would for the first time incorporate filing status into each person's Medicare tax liability, and also for the first time, the Medicare tax will not apply just to wages but also to investment income such as income from capital gains, dividends, interest and rental property. In its first year of application, 2013, the new Medicare tax will hit approximately the top-earning two percent of families. That percentage will grow as the years go by because the income thresholds are not indexed for inflation. On the other hand, we may see a repeat of the annual patch ritual that prevailed for several years for the AMT.

We estimate that the health reform law will take an additional $52,000 on average from the families in the top one percent of the income distribution. That is on top of the redistribution in fiscal year 2016 that was already expected to accrue to that family, which amounts to about $484,000.

Though nominally part of the Medicare tax, extra tax payments will not entitle the payers to any additional Medicare benefit. In fact, Medicare benefits (on net) are being cut in the health care bill. Overall, we estimate that as a result of the health care reform, the top 1 percent would go from earning 14.7 percent of post-redistribution income to around 14.35 percent of post-redistribution income.

This income will be redistributed, not mostly to the lowest income group, but to the lower-middle income groups. The lowest income group gains little because most of the families already receive Medicaid and/or Medicare benefits. Families in those second and third deciles (10th percentile through 30th percentile) will see an average increase in their income redistribution of around $2,000.


source: Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact No. 222

School officials across New Jersey said on Wednesday that they would most likely have to lay off hundreds of teachers, increase class sizes, eliminate sports teams and Advanced Placement classes, cut kindergarten hours and take other radical steps to reduce spending after 58 percent of districts' budgets were rejected by voters on Tuesday, the most in at least 35 years.

Residents went to the polls in record numbers for the normally low-profile school-budget elections, and rejected 316 of the 541 budgets on the ballot. They were angered by higher property taxes that were sought to make up for unusually large state aid reductions proposed by Gov. Christopher J. Christie, along with resentment toward teachers' unions for not agreeing to wage freezes or concessions.

No one in the Middle East takes seriously that the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflicts are the primary, secondary, tertiary or lesser cause of MidEast instability or its threats to the West.

Outside the Middle East, however, we have the core delusion among many of those raised on the puerile pap created by the Left that the modernity and successes of Western civilization somehow oppress the natural decency and advancement of Third World countries.

President Obama is the poster boy. But he is not the cause. He is merely the product. He and those who follow him, thus, fall back on the false premise that Israel is the problem.

No, the problem is their core delusion that we can escape history by denying it, even reversing it, though that still would leave the real root cause of MidEast instability, regional petty satraps, backward hatefulness, and those outside powers -- from the EU to Russia to China -- who benefit from retaining rule or access to oil. . .

Weakening Israel is not a strategy for peace in the Middle East but another abdication of what could reduce the dangers of the Middle East. The US administration and apologists are blaming the "salamis" for the failure to ice the botulism.

Lost in all this reset-button diplomacy is introspection on why past American presidents sought to support Israel in the first place. We seem to forget why no-nonsense Harry Truman, against worldwide opposition, ensured the original creation of the Jewish state - or why more than 60 percent of Americans in most polls continue to side with Israel in its struggle to survive.

In contrast, most of the rest of the world does the math and concludes Israel is a bad investment. It has no oil; its enemies possess nearly half the world's reserves.

There is no downside in criticizing Israel, but censuring some of its radical Arab neighbors might prompt anything from an oil embargo to a terrorist response.

There are about 7 million Israelis; the Muslim and Arab population in the Middle East numbers in the hundreds of millions.

According to the academic cult of multiculturalism, it is fashionable to see pro-American, democratic and capitalist Israel as a symbol of a pernicious Western culture of oppression; its enemies are seen as underdog liberationists.

No wonder that in the ongoing dispute, most of the world adds up the pluses and minuses and concludes that it is wiser to side with Israel's foes than to become its friend. But why, until now, has America always bucked the tide?

The reason is not the so-called "Jewish lobby" here in the U.S., but because a clear majority of non-Jews supported Israel. They saw that in a sea of autocracy, Israel is a democracy and a free and open society, one quite different from its neighbors.

51,675 "martyred victims," or civilians who have died and been identified, and 34,019 "bodies found," or civilians who have died but who were not identified, for a total of 85,694 civilian deaths from 2004 through 2008. This total includes only those deaths due to terrorist attacks, defined as "direct bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and forced displacement of the population." In other words, the Iraq Ministry of Human Rights does not include in its total any civilian deaths that may have been due to coalition occupation or fighting between militias within Iraq.

In order to cover low-income uninsured citizens, Obamacare expands eligibility for Medicaid to include all Americans that fall under 133 percent of the federal poverty level. However, Medicaid is a low-performing, low-quality federal program that fails to meet the needs of its beneficiaries. For example, Medicaid’s failure to cover the cost to providers of seeing Medicaid patients has greatly reduced the number of doctors who will see Medicaid patients.

As a result, Medicaid beneficiaries have become even more reliant on emergency care than the uninsured. According to the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics, Medicaid patients comprised 25.5 percent of all emergency room visits in 2006, while the uninsured made up only 17.4 percent. What is more, the emergency room visit rate among Medicaid patients was higher than that of the uninsured: Medicaid’s emergency room visit rate was 82 per 100 Medicaid patients, while that of the uninsured was 48 per 100 uninsured patients.

Increasing the number of Americans reliant on Medicaid will further compound its current shortfalls. States are currently facing serious budget cuts due to decreasing revenues, a trend that is expected to continue in the years to come. Though under new law, the federal government will cover the cost of expanding benefits in the initial years, states will have to pay the additional administrative costs of the expansion. And after 2017, the states will begin to pay a portion of the benefits expansion as well.

This increasing financial burden will force state legislators to make budget cuts, either to other state programs or to Medicaid itself, which would mean reduced benefits or even further reduced physician reimbursement rates. Both of these outcomes would be disastrous for Medicaid beneficiaries’ access to quality care. Under new law, the federal government will pay to increase primary care physician reimbursement rates to equal those paid by Medicare--but only for two years, leaving Medicaid in the same lurch it started in.

The most important thing we've done for the country and the world is health care.

Energy Efficiency and Green Jobs:

Recommendation 1: Form an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and assign Faith- and Community-Based Liaisons to EPA regional offices.

Recommendation 2: The Administration should provide guidance to State and local governments on how to partner with faith-based and nonprofit organizations to retrofit and green buildings.

Recommendation 3: Encourage the Department of Labor, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other Federal agencies to work cooperatively with faith-based and neighborhood organizations to ensure that low-income communities and workers with barriers to employment are targeted when creating green job training programs.

Environmental Education and Communications:

Recommendation 4: The Administration should sponsor a public educational campaign on the environment, utilizing a centralized Website, such as Environment.gov.

Recommendation 5: The White House should sponsor regional conferences to mobilize faith- and community-based organizations to promote environment sustainability and energy efficiency.

Sustainable, Community Gardening and Small-Scale Agriculture:

Recommendation 6: Support partnerships and collaboration for sustainable, community gardening and small-scale agriculture.

Perhaps it’s only reasonable that global-warming activists would turn to God for help as the scientific case for their position collapses. As if Climategate had never happened, the council report asserts [page viii] with blind faith: "Adequately addressing global climate change--through better and more extensive partnerships with nonprofits and other efforts--will result, for example, in less migration, fewer refugee crises, and greater food security." The swollen Red Sea will part, the waters of Noah’s greenhouse-gas-fueled flood will recede, and the meek shall inherit the earth. All it takes is a little federal infiltration of America’s houses of worship.

Given that it is all on the basis of peer-reviewed literature. I'm not sure there is any better process that anyone could have followed.

IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.

A team of 43 volunteers from 12 countries examined the list of references at the end of each chapter. We sorted these references into two groups -- articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals and other references. (Non-peer-reviewed material is often called "grey literature".) Then we calculated the percentage of references that do, indeed, appear to be peer-reviewed. . .

21 out of 44 chapters contain so few peer-reviewed references that the IPCC received an F. The IPCC relied on peer-reviewed literature less than 60 percent of the time in these chapters.

5,587 references in the IPCC report were not peer-reviewed. Among these documents are press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, discussion papers, MA and PhD theses, working papers, and advocacy literature published by environmental groups.

A Spanish trade group called on authorities to investigate possible fraud among solar-power generators after a news report said that some were getting paid for producing power at night.

ASIF wants the "identification, charges and rigorous application of the law" applied to any power producer guilty of such practices, the Madrid-based association for Spain’s photovoltaic-panel industry said today in a statement.

An audit of solar-power generation from November 2009 to January 2010 found that some panel operators were paid for doing the "impossible" -- producing electricity from sunlight during the night, El Mundo reported today, citing a letter from Secretary of State for Energy Pedro Marin. . .

Preliminary evidence shows some solar stations may have run diesel-burning generators and sold the output as solar power, which earns several times more than electricity from fossil fuels, El Mundo said, citing unidentified people from the energy industry. The power grid received 4,500 megawatt-hours of power from midnight to 7 a.m. in the months audited, El Mundo said.

It turns out there really is growing inequality in America. It's the 45% premium in pay and benefits that government workers receive over the poor saps who create wealth in the private economy.


source: Wall Street Journal

Regulators Lack Expertise on the Subjective Benefits of Risky Activities.

Regulators may have greater knowledge than consumers about the health or safety dangers of risky activities. But they lack comparable knowledge of the benefits that consumers derive from those activities. A public health expert probably knows more than I do about the risks of drinking or smoking. But only I know how much enjoyment I derive from having a beer or puffing on a cigarette. This is especially true when we remember that preferences about such things vary widely. . .

Limitations of Regulators’ Analysis of Risk.

Expert regulators are also vulnerable to interest group pressure. The more complex and technical the regulations they administer, the greater will be the opportunities for interest group lobbying and "capture" of the regulatory process, since rationally ignorant voters will have great difficulty in monitoring the experts performance. Ironically, expert regulators will be least likely to function as truly disinterested experts on precisely those issues where expertise is most needed. . .

The Advantages of Relying on Private Sector Experts.

None of this proves that we don’t need experts. To the contrary, there are many decisions where we can benefit from expert advice. However, the private sector offers a wide range of opportunities to avail ourselves of such advice without incurring the risks posed by government coercion.

VATs were sold in Europe as a way to tax consumption, which in principle does less economic harm than taxing income, savings or investment. This sounds good, but in practice the VAT has rarely replaced the income tax, or even resulted in a lower income-tax rate. The top individual income tax rate remains very high in Europe despite the VAT, with an average on the continent of about 46%. . .

One trait of European VATs is that while their rates often start low, they rarely stay that way. Of the 10 major OECD nations with VATs or national sales taxes, only Canada has lowered its rate. Denmark has gone to 25% from 9%, Germany to 19% from 10%, and Italy to 20% from 12%. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation recently calculated that to balance the U.S. federal budget with a VAT would require a rate of at least 18%.


source: April 15th WSJ

And one more point: In Europe, this heavier spending and tax burden has also meant lower levels of income growth and job creation. From 1982 to 2007, the U.S. created 45 million new jobs, compared to fewer than 10 million in Europe, and U.S. economic growth was more than one-third faster over the last two decades, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For the past 5 1/2 months, the initial unemployment claims data have not really changed. Here’s what I mean:


source: Uncommon Misconceptions

The data are oscillating about a slowly increasing value, indicating that, if anything, unemployment claims are increasing. That means that for the past 5 1/2 months, every time the administration has told us that the unemployment situation is slowly recovering, and that the data show "the right trend," they have been absolutely mistaken.

Some of Britain's most beautiful landscapes have been blighted by wind farms for only small returns in energy, research shows.

The analysis of power output found that more than 20 wind farms are operating at less than one-fifth of their full capacity.

Experts say many turbines are going up on sites that are simply not breezy enough.

They also accuse developers of 'grossly exaggerating' the amount of energy they will generate in order to get their hands on subsidies designed to boost the production of green power. . .

The analysis was carried out by Michael Jefferson, an environmental consultant and a professor of international business and sustainability.

He believes that financial incentives designed to help Britain meet is green energy targets are encouraging firms to site their wind farms badly.

Under the controversial 'Renewable Obligation' scheme, British consumers pay £1billion a year in their fuel bills to subsidise the drive towards renewable energy.

The professor told the Sunday Times: 'Too many developments are under-performing.

'It's because the developers grossly exaggerate potential.

'The subsidies make it viable for developers to put turbines on sites they would not touch if the money was not available.'

transferred long-range Scud missiles to the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Israeli and U.S. officials alleged, in a move that threatens to alter the Middle East's military balance and sets back a major diplomatic outreach effort to Damascus by the Obama administration. . .

The Scuds are believed to have a range of more than 435 miles--placing Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israel's nuclear installations all within range of Hezbollah's military forces. During a monthlong war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah used rockets with ranges of 20 to 60 miles.

Israeli officials called Scud missiles "game-changing" armaments that mark a new escalation in the Mideast conflict. They alleged that Mr. Assad is increasingly linking Syria's military command with those of Hezbollah and Iran.

Remember how critics of the Bush administration always said that the neocon cowboys in the White House clung stubbornly to failed policies out of ideological conviction? Here’s the final paragraph of the WSJ story:

U.S. officials stressed, however, that the White House wasn’t second-guessing its engagement strategy and was pushing forward with Mr. Ford’s nomination. "Sending an Ambassador to Syria who can press the Syrian government in a firm and coordinated fashion . . . is part of our strategy to achieve comprehensive peace in the region," the White House said in a statement.

I’m sure Mr. Ford is a talented diplomat, but is there any chance that his presence in Damascus would have stopped the transfer of long-range missiles to Hezbollah?

In years to come -- assuming, for the purposes of argument, there are any years to come -- scholars will look back at President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit and marvel. For once, the cheap comparisons with 1930s appeasement barely suffice: To be sure, in 1933, the great powers were meeting in Geneva and holding utopian arms-control talks even as Hitler was taking office in Berlin. But it's difficult to imagine Neville Chamberlain in 1938 hosting a conference on the dangers of rearmament, and inviting America, France, Brazil, Liberia and Thailand . . . but not even mentioning Germany.

Yet that's what Obama just did: He held a nuclear gabfest in 2010, the biggest meeting of world leaders on American soil since the founding of the United Nations 65 years ago -- and Iran wasn't on the agenda.

UN process in danger unless world agrees on climate change

House GOP aides and the non-partisan Congressional Research Service believe health care legislation passed this week requires lawmakers to enroll in government-run insurance programs -- while exempting leadership staffers, many of whom were instrumental in crafting the bill.

Top staffers buzzed yesterday on an off-the-record Capitol Hill list-serv, citing the part of the mammoth legislation that deals with members of Congress. The federal government can only make available to members and their official staffs health plans created by the bill or offered through an exchange.

But a member's staff, in a subsection of the bill, is defined as "full-time and part-time employees employed by the official office of a Member of Congress, whether in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC." CRS has interpreted that clause to mean the bill applies only to a personal office, not to committee staff or leadership staff.

The father of a teenage sex assault victim in New South Wales who punched one of his daughter's attackers has been given a longer good behaviour bond than two of her alleged rapists.

The Daily Telegraph reports that under a controversial plea deal that reduced the charges from rape to aggravated indecent assault, two young country footballers were given 18-month bonds for their part in the horrifying attack of the then 15-year-old girl.

They walked free from court. Two other accused are awaiting sentencing. . .

Now 17, the victim has clear memories of a night that will forever haunt her.

"I couldn't move," she said of the horrifying sexual assault by four teenage boys in 2008 after a football awards ceremony in a NSW country town.

"When I started crying, (one of the attackers) said, 'What are you crying for, you sook?', or, 'Why are you crying, you sook?'"

Remarkably, her father is on a two-year bond for common assault after punching one of the accused. . .

The 17-year-old's four attackers each pleaded guilty to aggravated indecent assault after prosecutors drew up the statement.

Part of the assault on the then 15-year-old, who was almost passed out drunk, was recorded by video on a mobile phone.

Ambulance service gets £38 for every patient they don't take to hospital

The Ambulance service is being paid bonuses for not taking patients to hospital in a bid to help the NHS hit controversial targets.

Patients' groups expressed horror at the "sick experiment" in which NHS managers have agreed to pay £38 for every casualty that ambulance staff "keep out of Accident and Emergency" (A&E) departments after a 999 call has been made.

The tactic is part of an attempt to manage increasing demand for emergency care amid failings in the GP out-of-hours system.

Documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph disclose that staff at Britain's largest ambulance service have been encouraged to maximise the organisation's income, by securing payments for diverting patients to telephone helplines.

The bonuses are among dozens of schemes being tried out by ambulance trusts across the country as they attempt to improve their emergency response times and help A&E departments meet controversial targets to treat all patients within four hours of arrival. . .

The Sunday Telegraph has discovered that dozens of Primary Care Trusts in London are now paying the capital's ambulance service a £38 bonus for each patient crews do not send to hospital.

While the maximum amount of money the ambulance service can make from the scheme is "capped," board papers suggest increasing the number of patients diverted from hospital by 20 per cent a year "in order to reach the maximum level of funding available".

In the current financial year, London Ambulance Service has made £850,000 through the scheme.

Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.

In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state’s largest private insurer provided the Globe.

The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company’s data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions. . .

Insurers want rules that would restrict enrollment for individuals buying on the open market to a designated month each year, unless they have had a major life change, such as a divorce -- similar to the practice used by most employers. They say this would curb the practice of buying coverage just before an expensive elective procedure that can be planned ahead, such as knee or hip replacements or fertility treatments. Imposing waiting periods for coverage on this group, which was effectively disallowed by the 2006 law, would also deter this practice, insurers say.

"I raised these concerns with the Patrick administration, but I didn’t make much progress. And I even sent them my data," said Charles D. Baker, a Republican candidate for governor and former chief executive of the state’s second largest insurer, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. He blogged about these issues last June, when he was still at the company.

Baker’s data showed that about 40 percent of the consumers who purchased insurance from Harvard Pilgrim on the open market kept the insurance fewer than five months, and they incurred, on average, $2,400 a month in medical expenses -- about six times higher than the monthly spending of other consumers.

Insurers compete to charge people rates that reflect the cost of their care. If you can reasonably be expected to need 50% more care, they'll be happy to sell it to you for 50% more. Take a look at life insurance. They don't "deny coverage" to anyone over the age of 40. But they do charge higher premiums. Why is that the end of the world?

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and the study's lead author, says that the results suggest that the annual number of hurricanes will continue to increase as a result of global warming.

Previous research has shown that warm sea surface temperatures could encourage hurricanes to form. The historical peak in hurricane activity coincided with periods of high sea surface temperatures, says Mann.

"This tells us that the relationship between sea surface temperatures and cyclone activity seems to be robust and gives support to the debate that we are likely to see an increase in tropical cyclone activity in response to global warming," he says.

Among the propositions that remain unsettled, according to Mann:

* That without a reduction in man-made CO2 emissions, large sections of coastal cities will be under water by the end of this century.
* That global warming is causing more frequent hurricanes.
* That 1998 was the warmest year of the 1,000 years from 1000 to 1999.
* That current warmth of the planet is reducing the polar bear population.

Burdened by falling gasoline consumption and excess production capacity, ethanol producers appealed to the government on Friday to raise the 10 percent limit on ethanol in most gasoline blends to as high as 15 percent.

Ethanol plants are closing across the country and some ethanol producers are declaring bankruptcy. The appeal will require the Obama administration to decide whether to increase federal support for the industry, which has already benefited from an array of subsidies, tax credits and Congressional production mandates.

"Approving the use of ethanol blends up to 15 percent is a necessary and positive step," said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry lobbying group, "to ensure the full potential of a robust domestic ethanol industry."

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department have been testing higher ethanol blends. The E.P.A. has nine months to review the request, but it could decide before that to increase the blend cap slightly, to 12 or 13 percent. . .

Food producers are also lobbying against raising the blend limit. They say any increase in domestic production of ethanol will divert corn from use as food and animal feed, raising food prices for consumers.

At the end of 2007, Congress mandated the doubling of corn ethanol use, to 15 billion gallons, by 2015. At the time, gasoline demand was increasing, but now it is declining because of the slowing economy.

Should current gasoline consumption levels persist and the blend level remain at 10 percent, demand at the nation’s gas pumps would be inadequate to absorb the 15 billion gallons of ethanol that refiners are required to blend.

Ethanol producers also argue that without higher blend levels, there will be no room for the development of advanced biofuels, like ethanol made from wood chips or biological waste. Congress has set a target of using 21 billion gallons of that type of ethanol and other biofuels by the year 2022.

The industry has a capacity of 12.5 billion gallons a year, but so many plants have been idled that production is expected to reach only about 10 billion gallons this year.

The benefits are overstated. According to the EPA, reduction in foreign imports will result in $3.7 billion in "energy security benefits" at the expense of $18 billion in increased fuel costs by 2022.

Last month, in a speech from the Elysée Palace, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his intention to enact a ban on the full Muslim veil. The decision--which was preceded by an extended public debate but was likely occasioned by recent regional elections in which the Socialist-led opposition delivered a drubbing to Mr. Sarkozy's party--would expand the scope of France's 2004 law that prohibits the wearing of headscarves and other conspicuous religious symbols at state schools.

Mr. Sarkozy's ban on the full veil represents a draconian measure for a free society. Arguably, it is necessary and proper. But it won't prevail without a fight. A few days after Mr. Sarkozy's speech, the Council of State, France's highest administrative body, declared that an outright ban would be hard to enforce, might be unconstitutional, and should be rejected. Meanwhile, a similar ban was unanimously approved by Belgium's home affairs committee last week and will be voted on by the lower house of parliament later this month.

Restrictions on liberty in a free society are always suspect and in need of justification. The best justification is the protection and promotion of freedom.. . .

A ban on the full veil in the United States would be unthinkable. This is in significant part owing to America's relatively small Muslim population, and its history of successfully assimilating generations of immigrants who have come to her shores determined to learn English and succeed on America's terms. But it is also because a ban would represent an unprecedented infringement of religious freedom. In America, the separation of church and state is designed to protect the state from religious interference and to protect religion, which always has a public component, from government interference.

France is different. It is home to approximately six million Muslims. That's more than in any other European state and represents almost 10% of France's population. Significant numbers of these relatively new immigrants are poor, confined to low-income and violence-prone neighborhoods on the outskirts of Paris, inclined to anti-Semitism, sympathetic to political Islam, and alienated from French social and political life.

In addition, the doctrine of laïcité--which is inscribed in Article 1 of the French Constitution and proclaims France a secular republic--separates church and state differently than in America. For many French, laïcité, roughly translated as national secularism, has acquired a militant meaning, according to which government must confine religion to the private sphere.

About 45 percent of households will owe no federal income tax in 2010, according to our estimates. Half of them earn too little, while the other half -- mostly middle- and lower-income households -- will take advantage of tax credits such as the earned income credit, the child and child-care credits, the American Opportunity and Lifetime Learning credits, which help pay for college, and the saver's credit, which subsidizes retirement saving. . .

Washington spends more than it takes in through tax revenues, resulting in a projected budget deficit of almost $1.35 trillion in 2010, or 9 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Couldn't we get rid of the deficit by raising taxes?

No. A study we conducted at the Tax Policy Center found that Washington would have to raise taxes by almost 40 percent to reduce -- not eliminate, just reduce -- the deficit to 3 percent of our GDP, the 2015 goal the Obama administration set in its 2011 budget. That tax boost would mean the lowest income tax rate would jump from 10 to nearly 14 percent, and the top rate from 35 to 48 percent.

What if we raised taxes only on families with couples making more than $250,000 a year and on individuals making more than $200,000? The top two income tax rates would have to more than double, with the top rate hitting almost 77 percent, to get the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP. Such dramatic tax increases are politically untenable and still wouldn't come close to eliminating the deficit.

Posters advertising my speech have been officially banned, while posters denouncing me are plastered all over the University of Ottawa campus. Elected officials have been prohibited from attending my speeches. Also, the local clothing stores are fresh out of brown shirts.

Welcome to Canada!

The provost of the University of Ottawa, average student IQ: 0, wrote to me--widely disseminating his letter to at least a half-dozen intermediaries before it reached me--in advance of my visit in order to recommend that I familiarize myself with Canada's criminal laws regarding hate speech.

This marks the first time I've ever gotten hate mail for something I might do in the future.

Apparently Canadian law forbids "promoting hatred against any identifiable group," which the provost, Francois A. Houle advised me, "would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges."

I was given no specific examples of what words and phrases I couldn't use, but I take it I'm not supposed to say, "F----you, Francois."

While it was a relief to know that it is still permissible in Canada to promote hatred against unidentifiable groups, upon reading Francois' letter, I suddenly realized that I had just been the victim of a hate crime! And it was committed by Francois A. Houle (French for "Frank A. Hole").

What other speakers get a warning not to promote hatred? Did Francois A. Houle send a similarly worded letter to Israel-hater Omar Barghouti before he spoke last year at U of Ottawa? ("Ottawa": Indian for "Land of the Bed-Wetters."). . .

How about sending a letter to all Muslim speakers advising them to please bathe once a week while in Canada? Would that constitute a hate crime?

I'm sure Canada's Human Rights Commission will get to the bottom of Francois' strange warning to me, inasmuch as I will be filing a complaint with that august body, so I expect they will be reviewing every letter the university has sent to other speakers prior to their speeches to see if any of them were threatened with criminal prosecution.

Both writer Mark Steyn and editor Ezra Levant have been investigated by the Human Rights Commission for promoting hatred toward Muslims.

Levant's alleged crime was to reprint the cartoons of Mohammed originally published in a Danish newspaper, leading practitioners of the Religion of Peace to engage in murderous violence across the globe. Steyn's alleged crime was to publish an excerpt of his book, America Alone in Maclean's magazine, in which he jauntily described Muslims as "hot for jihad."

Both of them also flew jet airliners full of passengers into skyscrapers in lower Manhattan, resulting in thousands of deaths. No, wait--that was somebody else.

Pop quiz--What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?

If your answer is (b) it means you probably have a grasp of the historical roots of modern jihadism. If, however, you answered (a), then congratulations: You are perfectly in synch with the new Beltway conventional wisdom, now jointly defined by Pat Buchanan and his strange bedfellows within the Obama administration.

What is that wisdom? In a March 26 column in Human Events, Mr. Buchanan put the case with his usual subtlety:

"Each new report of settlement expansion," he wrote, "each new seizure of Palestinian property, each new West Bank clash between Palestinians and Israeli troops inflames the Arab street, humiliates our Arab allies, exposes America as a weakling that cannot stand up to Israel, and imperils our troops and their mission in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Mr. Buchanan was playing off a story in the Israeli press that Vice President Joe Biden had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "what you're doing here [in the West Bank] undermines the security of our troops." . . . If you're of the view that Israel is the root cause of everything that ails the Middle East--think of it as global warming in Hebrew form--then nothing so powerfully makes the case against the Jewish state as a flag-draped American coffin.

Now consider Lady Gaga--or, if you prefer, Madonna, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Josephine Baker or any other American woman who has, at one time or another, personified what the Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb once called "the American Temptress."

Qutb, for those unfamiliar with the name, is widely considered the intellectual godfather of al Qaeda; his 30-volume exegesis "In the Shade of the Quran" is canonical in jihadist circles. But Qutb, who spent time as a student in Colorado in the late 1940s, also decisively shaped jihadist views about the U.S.

In his 1951 essay "The America I Have Seen," Qutb gave his account of the U.S. "in the scale of human values." "I fear," he wrote, "that a balance may not exist between America's material greatness and the quality of her people." Qutb was particularly exercised by what he saw as the "primitiveness" of American values, not least in matters of sex.

"The American girl," he noted, "knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it." Nor did he approve of Jazz--"this music the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires"--or of American films, or clothes, or haircuts, or food. It was all, in his eyes, equally wretched. . .

Which brings me back to the settlements. There may well be good reasons for Israel to dismantle many of them, assuming that such an act is met with reciprocal and credible Palestinian commitments to suppress terrorism and religious incitement, and accept Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. But to imagine that the settlements account for even a fraction of the rage that has inhabited the radical Muslim mind since the days of Qutb is fantasy: The settlements are merely the latest politically convenient cover behind which lies a universe of hatred. If the administration's aim is to appease our enemies, it will get more mileage out of banning Lady Gaga than by applying the screws on Israel. It should go without saying that it ought to do neither.

I like my wine French, my beer German, my vodka Russian, and my judicial system American.

The problem is that President Obama appears to view everything through the lens of diplomacy; reality is secondary. The National Security Strategy should not be about diplomacy or pleasing adversaries; it should be about calibrating U.S. national security to reality.

This is indeed astonishing. The President of the United States -- whose most important duty is to protect the citizens of this country -- is publicly abjuring the use of nuclear weapons if we are attacked by chemical or biological weapons -- both of which are known to all of us as Weapons of Mass Destruction, the dreaded WMDs.

What are we to make of this and the man who is adopting this policy? Does he hate us? Does he hate this country? What would he do if there was, for example, a massive small pox attack on the U.S.? Send in the infantry? Call in the Marines? Try to reason with whoever did it and recommend they negotiate as the fatal disease spreads to millions of people?

Now I detest nuclear weapons as much as the next person, but this approach seems -- I hate to repeat myself, but I will -- deranged. It also has very little to do with actually reducing nuclear weapons in the world. Again, it seems like the act of an extreme narcissist, someone who wants to parade himself as anti-nuke while ignoring the checks and balances that have, in fact, kept nuclear weapons in their silos for decades.

Let’s be clear: Wars prevented are wars not fought. And when faced with hostile adversaries, the best prevention is peace through strength. There is little room for banking on tulips and tea. . .

The clearly understood fear of being smote in a nuclear response is unmistakable and effective.

Yet that is precisely what President Obama is taking off the table in deference to muddled nuance in the form of "a series of graded options." Why a series when one formidable option deters quite well? Because "a new posture" is the primary goal goal, not absolute deterrence.

Technically, it’s called the Nuclear Posture Review. In plain language, it’s fraught with unicorns and the forceful projection of weakness.

By responsibly expanding conventional energy development and exploration here at home we can strengthen our energy security, create jobs, and help rebuild our economy. Our strategy calls for developing new areas offshore, exploring frontier areas, and protecting places that are too special to drill. By providing order and certainty to offshore exploration and development and ensuring we are drilling in the right ways and the right places, we are opening a new chapter for balanced and responsible oil and gas development here at home.

In fact, what Obama giveth with one hand, he taketh away with another. Some leases already in motion have been canceled while potentially huge deposits of oil and natural gas are still off-limits, including the entire Pacific coastline of the United States from the Mexican border to Canada. In addition, in order to expand drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the president must get the authorization of Congress. This would have been a snap when gas was $4 a gallon, but is much less a certainty today.

Other leases that had been approved in Alaska have also been canceled for further environmental study.