No Oil for Pacifists

From a new report on the risks of power blackouts by insurer Allianz and the Chief Risk Officer Forum (at 6):

A downside of renewable energy particularly, wind and solar technologies, is the volatile supply of power. Not only may a scarcity of electricity result in a power blackout, but an oversupply can also lead to grid instabilities as they alter the frequency within the network. For example wind energy in East Germany during strong wind conditions can provide up to 12 GW, which is more than all German coal and gas fired power plants considered together. This is not critical as long as there is enough electricity demand, but may lead to grid instabilities in cases of insufficient demand as there is not enough electricity storage capacity available. To get rid of excess electricity, transmission system operators (TSOs) often have to pay an extra fee to the electricity market (EEX -- European Energy Exchange, Leipzig). Otherwise wind park operators have to be convinced to stop the wind turbines immediately in order to prevent grid instabilities and blackouts. Conversely wind turbines must be stopped due to safety reasons if the wind speed exceeds 30 m/sec. This scenario may cause, within one hour, power gaps equal to the performance of two nuclear power plants. In such cases conventional reserve power plants are required to step in instantly.

In addition, the location of e.g. windfarms (onshore and offshore) is often far away from the centres of demand. Electricity has to be transported from sparsely populated regions to large electricity consumers in metropolitan areas. Therefore, new energy infrastructure (new high voltage transmission lines, transformers and energy storage capacities such as pumped-storage hydropower plants or thermal storage facilities) are needed.

Agreed, as to solar, wind and the limitations on hydro storage.

Renewables still account for only a tiny share of energy consumption, because of the expense--and that won't change any time soon. Heck, after promising a major commitment, even Google's abandoning renewable energy production.

(via The Telegraph (U.K.))

President Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009:

We'll restore science to its rightful place.

President Obama, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, April 9, 2009:

The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Memorandum to EPA Employees, April 23, 2009:

The success of our environmental efforts depends on earning and maintaining the trust of the public we serve. The American people will not trust us to protect their health or their environment if they do not trust us to be transparent and inclusive in our decision-making. To earn this trust, we must conduct business with the public openly and fairly. . .

I believe this will enhance the credibility of the Agency, boost public trust in our actions and improve the quality of our decisions.

John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Memorandum on Scientific Integrity, December 17, 2010:

[I]t is important that policymakers involve science and technology experts where appropriate and that the scientific and technological information and processes relied upon in policymaking be of the highest integrity. Successful application of science in public policy depends on the integrity of the scientific process both to ensure the validity of the information itself and to engender public trust in Government [including] ensuring that data and research used to support policy decisions undergo independent peer review by qualified experts.

EPA, Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, December 15, 2009:

The Administrator finds that six greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations. . .

EPA’s approach to evaluating the evidence before it was entirely reasonable, and did not require a formal hearing. EPA relied primarily on robust synthesis reports that have undergone peer review and comment. The Agency also carefully considered the comments received on the Proposed Findings and TSD [Technical Support Document], including review of attached studies and documents. The public has had ample opportunity to provide its views on the science, and the record supporting these final findings indicates that EPA carefully considered and responded to significant public comments.

EPA, Office of the Inspector General, Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes, September 26, 2011:

EPA’s peer review did not meet all OMB requirements for such documents. EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. However, the panel’s findings and EPA’s disposition of the findings were not made available to the public as would be required for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments. Also, this panel did not fully meet the independence requirements for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments because one of the panelists was an EPA employee. Further, in developing its endangerment finding, we found that OAR did not: Include language in its proposed action, final action, or internal memoranda that identified whether the Agency used influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments to support the action. OAR also did not certify that the supporting technical information was peer reviewed in accordance with EPA’s peer review policy. (at 13)

Additionally, EPA’s Peer Review Handbook directs the Agency to include a statement in its action memorandum that the Agency followed its peer review policy with respect to the influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments supporting the action. (at 19)

In our opinion, the endangerment finding TSD is a highly influential scientific assessment that should have been peer reviewed as outlined in Section III of OMB’s Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review. OAR never formally designated the document as either influential scientific information or as a highly influential scientific assessment in the preamble to the proposed and final endangerment findings or in its internal documentation. EPA did not consider the TSD to be a highly influential scientific assessment. Additionally, OAR did not adhere to some of its internal processes established to guide Tier 1 actions. We noted that OAR had completed many of the processes and steps outlined in its guidance to ensure the quality of the information the Administrator used in making her determination. Those processes are intended to help ensure EPA develops quality actions and to provide assurance on data quality. We concluded that the Agency did not complete some of these key requirements and recommended actions. We did not analyze the quality of the scientific information and data used to support the Administrator’s decision. (at 22)

We found that EPA did not contemporaneously document how it applied and considered the assessment factors in determining whether the IPCC and other assessment reports were of sufficient quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity. EPA described the IPCC review procedures and how they met EPA data quality requirements in the proposed and final rulemakings. However, the Agency did not conduct any independent evaluations of IPCC’s compliance with IPCC procedures, nor did EPA document any specific processes it employed to evaluate the scientific and technical information included in IPCC’s AR4 prior to EPA disseminating that information. (at 27)

Because EPA used information from other organizations to support its findings, EPA, in evaluating whether to disseminate that information, should have determined whether the assessments referenced in the TSD (e.g., IPCC’s AR4) complied with EPA’s information quality guidelines, and whether the peer reviews of these assessments met OMB’s requirements for peer review of scientific assessments. U.S. government acceptance of the documents did not relieve EPA of its responsibility to determine whether the data met EPA’s information quality guidelines before disseminating the information. (at 28)

Conclusion: As the Wall Street Journal editorializes:

Here's one good way to consider the vote in 2012: It's about whether to re-elect President Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which these days runs most the U.S. economy.

That is to say, she's trying to kill most of the economy.

Iain Murray in the Washington Examiner:

America's Constitution begins, "We the people of the United States." By contrast, the Treaty of Maastricht that established the European Union begins, "His Majesty the King of the Belgians."

The treaty does say that its member states should have governments "founded on the principles of democracy." Yet last week, two EU nations ceased to be democracies in any meaningful sense -- and the EU orchestrated this outrage.

On Nov. 11, 2011, two EU countries, Greece and Italy, installed new prime ministers. Neither has ever held elected office. And neither holds a democratic mandate.

In Greece, the former academic and EU central banker Lucas Papademos was appointed after a deal was reached between the fractious parties of Greece's parliament, which had rejected calls for early elections.

In Italy, the former academic and EU commissioner Mario Monti was appointed only two days after being made senator for life by the country's president.

Both gentlemen can be best described as technocrats. They are part of a new European elite -- clever, progressive, and with careers paid for by the taxpayer.

However, unlike traditional politicians, members of this new class need never suffer the indignity of campaigning for office. . .

the EU's leadership has effectively repudiated the core EU value of democracy. The old core value of a market economy has already been changed to a "social market economy." One wonders which one will be dismissed next as inconvenient to the EU's leadership.

If the EU were to true to its professed values, it would take a very different approach. It would recognize that democracy and national sovereignty are incompatible with a stateless common currency and a set of overweening supranational regulations, and get rid of the latter.

The EU would become more like the United States, with jurisdictions engaging in competitive federalism, using their comparative advantages to maximize the wealth and welfare of their citizens, and thereby of the EU as a whole.

That, however, would inconvenience the unelected elite who rule Europe today, jeopardizing the jobs of future Montis and Papademoses. The European Union is now unabashedly a technocracy. Could it happen here?

President Obama's former budget director, Peter Orszag, said in September that "less democracy" and more "depoliticized commissions" were needed to tackle our problems.

As Obama seeks to further Europeanize America, We the People should take note of what is happening in Europe, and repudiate these shameful coups d'etat.

Agreed--technocratic government is worse than democracy and ineffective anyway (think Supercommittee).

As previously discussed, a key element of the global warming hypothesis is "climate sensitivity," the warming "that can eventually be expected to follow a doubling in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide." The last IPCC report (AR4) gave a range of estimates that included a "fat tail"--"the possibility that very large climate sensitivities are a realistic possibility."

Not so fast. According to a new paper in Science (PDF here), the reality may not be so dire:

Specifically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are to double from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm to 560 ppm, the researchers say Earth’s average temperature is likely to rise from 1.7 to 2.6 Celsius degrees, a decrease from the previous, accepted range of 2 to 4.5 degrees.

source: Schmittner et al at 14

Oregon State's Andreas Schmittner, the paper's lead author, says

Many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate date, especially on a global scale. When you reconstruct sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago -- which is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum -- and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, you get a much different picture.

If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought.

No wonder Canada and Europe are cooling on global warming.

(via Watts Up With That?)

Jeffrey Anderson in the Weekly Standard:

What should Republicans do? If Republicans want to show that they’re remotely as committed to eliminating Obamacare as Obama was in imposing it, there are plenty of actions they can take. Congressional Republicans can pass bills to repeal Obamacare’s CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) Act and its grisly IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board)--and then follow that by once again passing full repeal legislation, this time in the midst of a presidential campaign. In addition, they can pass the replacement legislation for Obamacare that they promised voters they would deliver.

Republican presidential candidates can emphasize that repealing Obamacare is by far the most important thing the next administration and Congress can do. They can detail why Obamacare is probably the worst piece of legislation in American history, while unveiling plans to replace it-plans that would lower health costs, end the tax code’s discrimination against the uninsured, and fund state-run community pools to help provide access to coverage for those with prohibitively expensive preexisting conditions.

Beyond that, Republican presidential, congressional, and senatorial candidates would do well to reflect on, and perhaps reconsider, what the coming election is really all about. If Obamacare is one of the worst--maybe the worst--and most unpopular major pieces of legislation ever passed on these shores, and if its fate will likely be decided by the upcoming election (as it will), then why would Republicans say that the upcoming election is mostly about the economy?

Obama knows he cannot win a referendum on Obamacare. His best hope is that Republicans will continue to join him in pretending that this will be a run-of-the-mill election centered around the economy, rather than a historic election in which the citizenry’s verdict will largely determine the future course of the nation.

UPDATE: British Foreign Office: "Prepare for riots in euro collapse"


Cyrus Sanati in Fortune:

France's problem is that it simply has been living beyond its means for way too long. While not as bad as Italy, France has a very high debt compared to its economic output. Its total government debt of around 1.3 trillion euros equates to a debt-to-GDP ratio of around 83%. That is relatively low in comparison to the likes of Greece, which is at 140%, and Italy, which is at 120%, but it is high for a country that has a perfect triple-A credit rating -- much higher than the United States, which lost its triple-A rating earlier this summer.

If France's economic growth prospects were strong, then its debt-to-GDP ratio wouldn't be an issue, but the country is facing some serious challenges on that front. France's once strong manufacturing sector has decayed in recent years causing it to import increasingly more goods. Where once the country ran large trade surpluses, it now runs large deficits. In the first six months of this year France had a trade deficit of 37.5 billion euros. While that's a large number, what's really troubling is how fast it has grown, up 36% compared to the same time last year.

France's high labor costs seem to be behind the drop off in exports. The Germans have trounced the French in both internal and external eurozone trade. France is actually helping the Germans win in two ways. First, it has allowed its workforce to become less competitive. In 2000, French workers were paid 8% less than German workers. Now, French workers are paid 10% more than German workers. Second, France runs a trade deficit with Germany of around 1 billion euros a month. That is a complete reversal from 2004 when it was Germany that was running the billion-euro-a-month trade deficit with France.

What has happened to the French economy? The 35-hour government mandated work week surely hasn't helped matters much, but it goes deeper. France has the highest level of government spending in the eurozone at around 54% of GDP. That high level of spending goes to support the generous French welfare state, which is funded through borrowing and high taxes. Those taxes are passed through businesses, making French goods very expensive and ultimately uncompetitive on the world market. Today, around half of the gross labor costs in France go to prop up the French welfare state, while it is just 28% in neighboring Germany, according to MEDEF, France's largest union of employers.

The market was looking for France to finally announce plans to reduce its spending and force through meaningful cuts in its social safety net. Instead, it got a plan where France would try to tax its way out of its problems. Meaningful cuts in government spending, followed by liberalization of the nation's labor laws, will go a long way to solving France's fiscal dilemma. That would require a showdown with the country's powerful unions, something that not even conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have the stomach for at this point.

But if not, France's failure could take much of the Eurozone down with it.

Another day off: "Woo hoo! A four-day weekend."

Ezra Levant in the Toronto Sun:

For 34 years, Canada has had a disgraceful censorship law that violates our human rights.

In 1977, Pierre Trudeau rammed through the Canadian Human Rights Act -- an Orwellian name for a law that actually destroys real rights.

The entire law is a corruption of justice -- it creates a kangaroo court, run by non-judges, that does not follow the same rules and procedures of real courts, but has massive powers to punish and fine people who aren’t politically correct.

But the worst part of the law is Section 13, the censorship provision. Section 13 creates a word crime -- the crime of publishing or broadcasting anything that can cause hurt feelings.

Back in 1977, that law was focused on telephone lines and answering machines. But 10 years ago, it was expanded to include the Internet.

So it even covers things like whatever you post to your Facebook page. Section 13 says "it is a discriminatory practice ... to cause to be ... communicated ... any matter that is likely to expose a person ... to hatred or contempt."

So if you publish anything on Facebook, or on your cellphone voice message, that might make one person feel bad about another, you’ve just broken the law.

Truth is not a defence to being charged with "hate" under Section 13. Fair comment is not a defence. Religious belief is not a defence. Telling a joke is not a defence. The law has nothing to do with truth or the right to have an opinion. It’s about whether or not you’ve offended someone or hurt their feelings.

Section 13 is an insane law. So un-Canadian, so contrary to our traditions of liberty that go back centuries, inherited from the United Kingdom. . .

Last week, the federal justice minister, Rob Nicholson, stood up in the House of Commons and answered a question about Section 13.

The question was about a private member’s bill, put by Brian Storseth, an MP from northern Alberta. Storseth has introduced a private member’s bill, C-304, to repeal Section 13. But private member’s bills have little chance of passing without the endorsement of the government.

But Nicholson did endorse it. He called on all MPs to support it, too. Bill C-304, Storseth’s bill, is now effectively a government bill. And with a Tory majority in both the House and Senate, this bill is as good as done.

No more witch hunts by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. No more persecuting their political and religious enemies.

This is the best thing the Harper government has done in five years. Freedom is on the march.

Finally.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are threatening to stop paying student loan debt. They blame the 1 percent, when the fault is theirs:


source: Marginal Revolution


source: Chronicle of Higher Education

The Wall Street Journal has a nifty interactive gizmo allowing comparison of the popularity of college majors with the graduate's resulting earnings and employment. The five majors whose graduates were most likely to be unemployed:

Clinical Psychology
Miscellaneous Fine Arts
United States History
Library Science
Educational Psychology

Similar charts here.

Based on the WSJ data, Gabriel Rossman at Code and Culture plotted "unemployment by rank popularity. Because low rank means popular, the funnel is backwards":


source: Code and Culture

All of which suggests that the OWS protesters should major in something other than liberal arts so they don't go deep in debt without being able to "get a job".

Alas, OWS hasn't realized that. Nor do they seem to know that federally guaranteed student loans normally are not dischargable in bankruptcy. Although were there mass defaults, American taxpayers might be more willing to downsize the guaranteed student loan program.

But that's not the way OWS protesters see it:

[Dylan] Bozlee dropped out of college at the University of Hawaii to join Occupy, and says he’d rather travel across America than get a job. "Do I want to work? Only if I wanted a home, wife, kids and a dog. If not, I think you’re ruining your life," he said.

In other words, not only did OWS choose to become slackers, they insist taxpayers fund it. Call the soap opera "The Young and the Lazy."

Richard Grenell on "Obama's Failing Iran Diplomacy" in the November 21st Wall Street Journal:

The simple fact is that the world is less unified on Iran now than it was under President George W. Bush. True enough, Mr. Obama may hear fewer complaints about hard-charging U.S. foreign policies than his predecessor. But silence is not cooperation.

The Bush administration got five Security Council resolutions passed on Iran starting in 2006. Three were sanctions resolutions. The Security Council was unanimous on two of the votes and lost only one country's support (Indonesia) in the third vote in 2008. In total, the Bush team lost the support of one country in its three sanctions resolutions while the Obama team lost the support of three countries in one resolution.

Two views are emerging in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report on Iran's nuclear weapons. While one camp believes the Iranians are close to obtaining nuclear weapons, the other side believes they haven't mastered the technology and that time still remains to work out a diplomatic, non-military solution.

The Obama team falls in the second camp. It is calling for more diplomacy and more international pressure--as if U.S. diplomats haven't tried to convince Iran or its neighbors that its pursuit of a nuclear weapon is not a good idea.

And that's what's so dangerous about the president's spin. His administration professes that the world is unified in pressuring Iran, but what the international community is really unified about is doing nothing.

The pronouncements from the White House that unity from the international community is its priority are naïve and treacherous excuse-making. And if consensus is the mandate, then the Obama team has already failed that test with the divided-support for their only resolution. More importantly, the Russians and the Chinese, with their complaints about another round of sanctions, have scared off the Obama team from calling for a vote on another resolution.

Mr. Obama's gamble that we have time before Iran gets a nuclear weapon is perilous. Those calling for more pressure on Russia and China to comply with current sanctions miss the reality of Iran's pursuit and the weakness of the Obama team. If Russia and China can vote for multiple Iran sanctions resolutions but ignore them--and then resist subsequent demands to comply with previous resolutions or produce new ones--then giving them more time to realize the errors of their ways is foolish.

The strategy to increase pressure on Iran through international sanctions had a chance to work. But the president released that pressure and ignored the previous U.S. work to try his personal diplomacy. The Obama team has succeeded in stopping countries from grumbling about U.S. policy, but that's only because they haven't called for an Iran vote in almost 18 months.

The Obama Administration's Iran strategy manifestly has failed. Ed Lasky affirms that "the problem is Obama":

Where is the logic, then, of the administration periodically trotting out the statement that "all options are on the table"? This is a codephrase for a military option. It is also used to try to garner support among supporters of Israel in America. It is a campaign slogan and political strategy; it is not a real threat, and the Iranians know this fact. Why some Americans are gullible enough to believe Obama's latest campaign slogan is the topic of another column.

Then there are those rooting for failure, such as the liberal Guardian (U.K.), which thinks Iran's nuke program is fully justified as a deterrent. Guess the Guardian got confused about which Mid-East country vowed to wipe a neighboring country "off the map."

UPDATE: The Washington Post's Charles Lane says "GM should buy back U.S. taxpayers’ shares"


Shikha Dalmia in Reason last week:

The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price. GM’s Sept. 30 closing price, on which the new estimate is based, was $20.18, about $13 less than its December IPO price and $35 less than what is needed for taxpayers to break even.

The $23.6 billion represents a 25 percent loss on the feds $60 billion direct "investment" in GM. But that’s not all that taxpayers are on the hook for. As I explained previously, Uncle Sam’s special GM bankruptcy package allowed the company to write off $45 billion in previous losses going forward. This could work out to as much as $15 billion in tax savings that GM wouldn’t have had had it gone through a normal bankruptcy. Why? Because after bankruptcy, the tax liabilities of companies increase since they have no more losses to write off.

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. That’s even more that the $34 billion on the outside I had predicted in May.

I told you.

To the Washington Post's George Will for his list of Thanksgiving turkeys, including:

A week after Barack Obama cited an Ohio restaurant as a beneficiary of the Chrysler bailout, the restaurant closed. . .

No one saw the possible problem with the word "despite" in this headline: "Gun crime continues to decrease, despite increase in gun sales." . . .

Anticipating a theme from America’s economist in chief, who would soon suggest that ATMs and ticket kiosks at airports aggravate unemployment, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said the iPad is "responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs," such as "all of the jobs associated with paper."

(via reader Doug)

Happy Thanksgiving--enjoy your turkey and football.

Randall Palmer and Louise Egan provide "Insight: Lessons for U.S. from Canada's "basket case" moment" (alternate link) (emphasis added):

Canada's shift from pariah to fiscal darling provides lessons for Washington as lawmakers find few easy answers to the huge U.S. deficit and debt burden, and for European countries staggering under their own massive budget problems.

"Everyone wants to know how we did it," said political economist Brian Lee Crowley, head of the Ottawa-based thinktank Macdonald-Laurier Institute, who has examined the lessons of the 1990s.

But to win its budget wars, Canada first had to realize how dire its situation was and then dramatically shrink the size of government rather than just limit the pace of spending growth.

It would eventually oversee the biggest reduction in Canadian government spending since demobilization after World War Two. The big cuts, and relatively small tax increases, brought a budget surplus within four years. . .

The Liberals thought their first, rushed budget -- delivered in February 1994, three months after taking office, was tough.

It reformed unemployment insurance entitlements, and cut defense and foreign aid, as well as closing some business tax loopholes and ending a C$100,000 lifetime capital gains exemption. The savings totaled C$10 billion over two years.

The government said it would review all programs and predicted a deficit of 3 percent of GDP in 1996. But program spending was still budgeted to rise slightly, and the budget was widely seen as a failure.

Pete DeVries, who headed the fiscal policy division, remembers overhearing chatter from economists' and others as he waited for a flight to Toronto just after the budget.

"The mood was so depressed on that plane that I thought we're never going to get off the ground and if we did get off the ground we'd crash, because it was just doom and gloom," he said. "Everywhere you heard the words, 'They don't get it. They just don't get it.'"

Voters certainly didn't get it. People who had canceled vacations or taken a second job to make ends meet in the recession couldn't understand why Ottawa thought it could live beyond its means. . .

At one 1994 cabinet meeting, Martin announced a spending freeze. A minister put forward a project that needed funding but [Prime Minister] Chretien cut him off, reminding him of Martin's freeze.

A second minister raised his hand to ask for funding, and a testy Chretien told the cabinet that the next minister to ask for new money would see his whole budget cut by 20 percent.

Chretien's scrappiness, which was one result of his upbringing in a working class family in rural Quebec, had already earned him the nickname of "Dr. No" when he was finance minister in the 1970s.

"The prime minister was the man with the steel rod up his spine. He was inflexible," Manley said.

For ministers it was brutal. Manley lost half his budget as industry minister in the 1994 budget and went from 54 programs down to 11.

"Everyone knew they had to face the music, and they did it," Chretien said in the interview in his law offices. "They had no choice. There was no great debate. I had made my view very clear."

The ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes was seven-to-one. Asked why, Chretien said simply: "There was more need on one side than the other."

That contrasts with proposals this year by President Barack Obama and the Democrats to have a much higher proportion of revenue increases in the deficit-tackling mix.

Canadian ministers were told how much they had to cut and then told to come back with a plan on how to do it. Cuts ranged from five percent to 65 percent of departmental budgets and included controversial cuts in transfers that help provinces pay for health and education, decisions that lengthened medical waiting lists for years to come.

Chretien exempted just a few areas from the cuts, including the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. He also blocked big changes to benefits for the elderly and made sure tax collectors had enough resources.

In the end, program spending (everything except interest payments on the debt) fell by about 12 percent, or C$14 billion, between 1994-95 and 1998-99. The percentage fall was substantially more after adjusting for inflation.

The gloomy Canadian reaction to the 1994 budget changed to applause in 1995. "People came up to me to say, 'You guys got it,'" DeVries said.

The deficit disappeared by 1997 and the debt-to-GDP ratio began a rapid decline -- it is now at about 34 percent.

"The entire political class decided to stop treating this as a matter of political contention and started treating it as a matter of national interest," said Crowley, the political economist.

See also Dan Mitchell's chart of the effect of Canadian spending cuts on the budget deficit:

As noted recently and consistently, the case for action on climate change depends on several unproven assumptions. Two of the most crucial are that warming is caused by man-made CO₂ emissions, for which the industrialized world largely is responsible. (I note that although China now is the largest greenhouse gas emitter, most of the developing world still want wealthier nations to pay for carbon reduction.)

Were the developed world-created greenhouse gas model true, one would expect the West to be net CO₂ emitters, and the lesser developed world to be net CO₂ absorbers. Oops:

The results from from Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) show that Industrialized nations appear to be absorbing the carbon dioxide emissions from the Third World. (Can we get carbon credits for that?) The satellite shows that levels of CO2 are typically lower in developed countries than in air over developing countries.



source: JAXA

There are similar results for methane emissions. And a U.S. satellite measured similar global average emissions and sinks between 2001 and 2009 (though claiming not to count "fossil fuel emissions").

Chiefio (E.M Smith) says:

This isn’t that much of a surprise to me. I’d figured out some time ago that trees and bamboo could consume far more CO2 than I "produce" via burning oil and gas. I’ve also pointed out that The West is largely letting trees grow, while mowing our lawns and having the clippings "sequestered" in land fills (along with an untold tonnage of phone books and junk mail. . .) while the 3rd world is busy burning and cutting down their forests. The simple fact is that "jungle rot" will beat out my "gallon a day" of Diesel any time. Basically, we in the west grow far more wheat, corn, soybeans, wood, lawns, shrubs, etc. than we burn oil. In the 3rd world, they burn their sequestering plants. (And it takes one heck of a lot more wood to cook a meal than it does coal via a highly efficient furnace / electric generator / microwave oven.) But it’s nice to see it documented in aggregate in the "facts in the air".

Chiefio also has created a neat animated GIF of global emissions between 2009 and early 2011.

As Dr. Tim Ball concludes,

The oceans are the main control of atmospheric CO2 as one of the atmospheric gases in constant flux between the water and the atmosphere. The ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 is a function of its temperature -- cold water absorbs more CO2 than warm water. The boundary between the warm polar water and warm tropical water is very clearly defined in most parts of the world and the map generally reflects this pattern. The map is only surprising if you believe that humans are the primary source of CO2.

Man-made emissions are dwarfed by natural atmospheric carbon in influencing planetary temperatures. The sound you hear is the man-made greenhouse gas balloon deflating.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin agrees. As does Charles Krauthammer. Plus, here's the Republican view.


Unsurprisingly, the "Supercommittee" on deficit reduction collapsed without an agreement yesterday. Washington Post editorial writer Eugene Robinson says "Republicans on the congressional supercommittee didn’t offer meaningful concessions on raising new tax revenue." His fellow WaPo economics correspondent Robert Samuelson tells the real story:

Contrary to much press coverage, the committee’s Republicans opened the door to compromise by abandoning -- as they should have -- opposition to tax increases. Sen. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania proposed a tax "reform" that would raise income taxes by $250 billion over a decade. First, he would impose across-the-board reductions of most itemized deductions and use the resulting revenue gains to cut all tax rates. Next, he would adjust the rates for the top two brackets so that they’d be high enough to produce the $250 billion. All the tax increase would fall on people in the top brackets.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin called Toomey’s proposal a "breakthrough." With good reason: It came from a "no new taxes, over my dead body" Republican who had signed Grover Norquist’s pledge against any tax increases. But the details of Toomey’s plan are murky, and many Democrats claim that it would cut taxes for the rich. Democrats also didn’t respond with an equal concession: a willingness to deal with Social Security and Medicare.

As is known, these "entitlements" are the central cause of long-term budget deficits. From 2005 to 2035, their cost will nearly double as a share of national income, projects the Congressional Budget Office. How big a government do we want? What’s the balance of fairness between young and old? How much should other programs be reduced or taxes raised? Many Democrats duck the fundamental policy questions and reject any benefit cuts.

Only President Obama can start such a debate. He has the bully pulpit, but he hasn’t used it. Here’s an exchange between ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper and the president, at a July 15 news conference, that captures Obama’s calculated obscurity.

Tapper: "In the interest of transparency, leadership and also showing the American people that you have been negotiating (with Republicans) in good faith, can you tell us one structural reform that you are willing to make to one of these entitlement programs that would have a major effect on the deficit? Would you be willing to raise the retirement age? Would you be willing to means test Social Security or Medicare?"

Obama: "We’ve said that we are willing to look at all these approaches. I’ve laid out some criteria in terms of what would be acceptable. So, for example, I’ve said very clearly that we should make sure that current beneficiaries as much as possible are not affected. But we should look at what can we do in the out-years, so that over time some of these programs are more sustainable. I’ve said that means testing on Medicare, meaning people like myself, if -- I’m going to be turning 50 in a week. So I’m starting to think a little bit more about Medicare eligibility. (Laughter.) Yes, I’m going to get my AARP card soon -- and the discounts. But you can envision a situation where for somebody in my position, me having to pay a little bit more on premiums or co-pays or things like that would be appropriate."

Noncommittal gibberish. There is no leadership from the nation’s "leader." Space precludes running all his rambling response; the excerpt above was about half. Tapper followed up.

Tapper: "And the retirement age?"

Obama: "I’m not going to get into specifics."

Well, there you have it. The president won’t talk specifics, but government consists of specifics. The reason we cannot have a large budget deal is that Americans haven’t been prepared for one. The president hasn’t educated them, and so they can’t support what they don’t understand. Left or right, there are no comfortable positions. No one relishes curbing Social Security or Medicare benefits. But without changes, taxes will go way up, the rest of government will shrink dramatically or huge deficits will persist.

Even the Germans are irked. So the optimal solution is electing someone who doesn't duck leadership to the White House. Because mere sequestration won't close the budget gap (or address entitlements)

THIS IS A GUEST POST BY READER WARREN

"Benford's law" is a statistical observation that:

predicts the frequency of the first digits of a collection of numbers. For example, measure the lengths of the world’s rivers, and see how many of the digits begin with "one" (184 miles; 1,543 miles) versus "three" (3,022 miles) or "nine" (985 miles). Newcomb and Benford discovered that the first digit is usually a "one" -- fully 30 per cent of the time, over six times more common than an initial "nine". And the result is true whether one counts the numbers on the front page of The New York Times or leafs through baseball statistics.

As an example of how Benford's Law works, here's a chart from Wikipedia showing first-digit distribution in population statistics of 237 countries:


source: Wikipedia

The red bars are the distribution in %. The black dots, predictions by Benford's Law.

Benford's law has become:

a useful test of the plausibility of data. In the early 1970s, Hal Varian, now chief economist at Google, argued that if economic data satisfied Benford’s Law on the way into an economic model but not on the way out, it was worth taking a second look at the model itself.

And Mark Nigrini, an accountancy professor, found fame in the 1990s by using Benford’s Law to discover accounting scams, frauds and tax dodges, such as inventing invoices that were just under some threshold for managerial approval.

Earlier this year, four German economists examined eleven years of EU official statistics -- and found that Benford's Law suggested that Greece submitted bogus numbers in its bid to be admitted into the Eurozone. Belgium may have played similar tricks.

After reading about Benford's law and the book-cooking Europeans, I thought, "If only there were a mathematical formula to show when Obama's lying."

Of course, we have the numbers and facts on Obamacare and on the mounting debt. It’s obvious that he isn’t telling the truth. Trouble is, the media mostly ignores the numbers. What we need is a quick and simple way to reveal his deceit that doesn't depend on the media, bar grafts or scatterplots.

It dawned on me that the answer is right in front of us. More specifically, it's right in front of him.

How can you tell our president is lying? His teleprompter's moving.

Earlier today, I said climate change is "all about the cash." That turns out to be true for both countries and those supposedly-selfless scientists praised just last Saturday by a Washington Post editorial writer who plainly doesn't read NOfP.

There is no more famous climate alarmist than NASA's Dr. James Hansen, long lionized as a truth-seeking whistle-blower. He's won awards, medals and media accolades by the truck load. Hansen, seemingly, has been everywhere, doing everything to advance the socialist alarmist agenda. All on a government salary.

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (amended by the Ethics Reform Act of 1989) requires bureaucrats "to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain." 5 C.F.R. § 2635.101(a). The Act places limits on outside income (including honoraria), paid-for travel, and gifts over nominal value. Importantly, the law requires government employees to disclose any such payments periodically. The disclosures are reviewed by the Agency's designated officer (often in the office of the Inspector General). Similar rules apply to NASA in particular.

Early this year, the

American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request (PDF) with NASA, seeking records detailing whether and how ‘global warming’ activist Dr. James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has complied with applicable federal ethics and financial disclosure laws and regulations, and NASA Rules of Behavior.

After getting slow-rolled, this fall, NASA finally released some data. For 2010 those data show that NASA's Dr. James Hansen might be the first millionaire bureaucrat.

As Christopher Horner summarizes on What's Up With That?:

NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to -- and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for -- his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties -- including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well -- to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.

Ethics laws require that such payments or gifts be reported on an SF278 public financial disclosure form. As detailed, below, Hansen nonetheless regularly refused to report this income.

Also, he seems to have inappropriately taken between $10,000 and $26,000 for speeches unlawfully promoting him as a NASA employee. This is despite NASA ordering him to return at least some of the money, with the rest apparently unnoticed by NASA. This raises troubling issues about Hansen’s, and NASA’s, compliance with ethics rules, the general prohibition on not privately benefitting from public service, and even the criminal code prohibition on not having one’s public employment income supplemented. All of this lucrative activity followed Hansen ratcheting up his global warming alarmism and activism to be more political which, now to his possible detriment, he has insisted is part of his job. As he cannot receive outside income for doing his job, he has placed himself in peril, assuming the Department of Justice can find a way to be interested in these revelations.

The following summarizes records produced by the Department of Justice to resolve litigation against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for refusing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding the required financial disclosures Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

These records are his applications for outside employment or other activity (form 17-60), approvals and accompanying documents, and public financial disclosure (form SF 278).

As detailed in the American Tradition Institute’s lawsuit which yielded these records, Hansen suddenly became the recipient of many, often lucrative offers of outside employment and awards after he escalated his political activism -- using his NASA position as a platform, and springboard. This began with a strident "60 Minutes" interview in early 2006, alleging political interference by the Bush administration in climate science.

Hansen acknowledged this timing on his website, noting that first he was offered an award of "a moderate amount of cash--$10,000″ by an outside activist group. He claims to have turned this down because of the nominating process (without elaborating what that meant), and because of the impropriety of appearing to be financially rewarded for his outspokenness ("I was concerned that it may create the appearance that I had spoken out about government censorship [sic] for the sake of the $").

Given that Hansen makes no bones about his (often outrageous) outspokenness and activism being, in his view, part of his job, this surely is also another way of saying it would look as if he were having his NASA salary supplemented by appreciative activists and others. That would violate the criminal code, 18 U.S.C. § 209.

Yet, as the offers soon became larger, Hansen changed his mind.

The records reveal that NASA initially was very direct in warning Hansen of his responsibilities and prohibitions relating to these activities, which covered the subject of his public employment. Later, after Hansen gained much media attention and condemnation of his NASA superiors for (falsely) claiming he had been "muzzled" (the second president named Bush he claimed had muzzled him), certain clear restatements of the law were dropped from the approval letters responding to his applications for outside employment.

NASA oversight of Hansen’s compliance with ethics-related reporting requirements similarly waned. At no point did they seek reconciliation of his serially conflicting attestations detailed here.

Improper Receipt of Outside Income Without Obtaining Advance Permission

Hansen’s 2009 speech at Dartmouth University for a $5,000 honorarium and up to $1,000 in expenses came in violation of the clear rule against promoting his appearances as, or emphasizing his job with, NASA. It also had not been approved. NASA’s Deputy Chief Counsel Laura Giza, after admonishing these violations, demanded he return the improperly obtained money:

[Y]ou may not accept the offered honorarium and travel expenses. If you’ve already received this money, you need to return it to Dartmouth.

Also, in the future, if you have not received word that one of your outside activity requests has been approved, or at least that the legal office has concurred in the request, you should contact the Goddard legal office about the request before engaging in that activity. NASA regulations require that you obtain approval for certain outside activities . . prior to engaging in that activity. 5 CFR § 6901.103(d).

If there were further correspondence about this demand it would be in NASA’s document production, but there are no such records. The only lawful scenario, therefore, is that Hansen quietly agreed to the demand, but did not inform NASA whether he complied. Otherwise, NASA, Hansen, or both have violated the ethics and/or transparency statutes and regulation.

Yet subsequent financial disclosure forms show Hansen attesting to accepting even more money, between $5,001 and $15,000, for a 2008 speech at Illinois Wesleyan University for which his file, according to NASA, contains no request for permission to engage in this outside employment, or approval to do so (each a condition precedent to lawfully engage in the activity, and to accepting the money).

There is no correspondence about these two glaring discrepancies in his filings reflecting more apparently improperly accepted outside income than most federal employees will ever see in their careers.

Crucially, while Dr Hansen was opposed to (and arrested for protesting) the Keystone Pipeline, he may have been paid for the position:

A January 20, 2009, document shows that the Canadian law firm Ackroyd LLP retained Hansen to prepare a report "regarding the anticipated greenhouse gas emissions from the Joslyn Oil Sand Mine."

Ackroyd represents the Oil Sand Environmental Coalition (OSEC), a group fighting to stop oil sand development. Federal government employees are not allowed to accept money for expert testimony in proceedings before a court or agency of the United States. But Hansen was testifying before a Canadian court, so as long as he disclosed the payments, the agreement should have been legal.

It is still unclear how much money Hansen received from Ackroyd, however, since his 2010 financial disclosure form did not list them as a source of income. Neither does his 2009 form. There is also no record of his disclosing any travel expenses related to his 2010 oil sands testimony in Canada.

Conclusion: Where's the Occupy Wall Street crowd when you need them? Hansen's precisely the sort of crony capitalist (with twisted ethics) OWS purports to protest (in the course of its crime spree).

Will OWS apply those standards to an environmental hero? So far, OWS seems to confine its rage to those with jobs--who also happen to be conservative.

UPDATE: below


The conventional wisdom asserts that climate change increases the frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events. It's entirely unproven. And, it's possible that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself may be backing-off the claim, according to the BBC's Richard Black, who has a leaked copy of the forthcoming IPCC "extremes" report [note: full report released]:

The draft, which has found its way into my possession, contains a lot more unknowns than knowns.

On the one hand, it says it is "very likely" that the incidence of cold days and nights has gone down and the incidence of warm days and nights has risen globally.

And the human and financial toll of extreme weather events has risen.

But when you get down to specifics, the academic consensus is far less certain.

There is "low confidence" that tropical cyclones have become more frequent, "limited-to-medium evidence available" to assess whether climatic factors have changed the frequency of floods, and "low confidence" on a global scale even on whether the frequency has risen or fallen.

In terms of attribution of trends to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the uncertainties continue.

While it is "likely" that anthropogenic influences are behind the changes in cold days and warm days, there is only "medium confidence" that they are behind changes in extreme rainfall events, and "low confidence" in attributing any changes in tropical cyclone activity to greenhouse gas emissions or anything else humanity has done.

(These terms have specific meanings in IPCC-speak, with "very likely" meaning 90-100% and "likely" 66-100%, for example.)

And for the future, the draft gives even less succour to those seeking here a new mandate for urgent action on greenhouse gas emissions, declaring: "Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability".

Of course, other journalists read the draft exactly opposite. Despite the fact that the death rate from extreme weather had dropped dramatically.

So what's the timeline for climate change action? Earlier this month, a different UN agency said climate change would be irreversible within five years. Back in 2006, we had 30 years. Just two years ago, alarmists gave the planet 10 years. Yet global surface temperature measurements flatlined since 2000. (And, of course, a general warming trend likely would increase agricultural production in some regions.)

Does that mean we have until 2016? Or 2021? Or 2051? As David Whitehouse says:

Even making the questionable assumption that our computer models are good enough to predict what will happen in the future, for projected changes by the end of the 21st century, the uncertainties in those computer models, and the range of natural climatic variability, are far larger than any predicted human-influenced effects.

In the real world, there won't be global consensus on extending the Kyoto emissions limits. In any event -- as I've always said -- climate change is all about the cash: an attempt to mandate transfer payments from the developed to the developing world.

MORE:

The Australian agrees. And, according to the humanitarian charity DARA, only eight percent of the finance for climate change actions in developing countries has been disbursed. Whether this reflects inefficiency or corruption, the point is that mere wealth transfers aren't the answer.

MORE & MORE:

In early 2009, NASA's Dr James Hansen said we had only four years to save the earth from climate change. Of course, he may have been paid to say that.

Still feel rotten. My various doctors have eliminated almost everything on the diagnostic decision tree--and yet, I'm still dizzy, can't drive, barely walk, or think straight for more than four hours a day.

Thankfully, there's been college football. Only thing more chaotic than my health is the BCS. That's some comfort.

I'm always amazed by the conventional wisdom that today's politics are more polarized than ever. Anyone thinking that must not have been watching during Vietnam and Watergate. And the polls don't support increased polarization. But, liberals like Chris Matthews respond, wasn't everything better back in the days when a Republican President Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill could share lunch and a beer?

Reagan biographer Steven Hayward sets the record straight in the October 2011 Commentary:

The evocation of the supposedly reasonable Reagan who governed in relative harmony with liberals requires the opening of a memory hole the size of the Grand Canyon.

Liberals hated Reagan in the 1980s. Pure and simple. They used language that would make the most fervid anti-Obama rhetoric of the Tea Party seem like, well, a tea party. Democratic Rep. William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf." The Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad drew a panel depicting Reagan plotting a fascist putsch in a darkened Munich beer hall. Harry Stein (later a conservative convert) wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported Reagan were like the "good Germans" in "Hitler’s Germany."

There was ample academic support for this theme. John Roth, a Holocaust scholar at Claremont College, wrote:

I could not help remembering how 40 years ago economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism--all intensified by Germany’s defeat in World War I​--to send the world reeling into catastrophe. . . . It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our postelection state with fear and trembling.

As for the supposed sweetness and light between Reagan and Tip O’Neill, it was mostly blarney. The two had numerous tense phone calls and meetings. In private they called each other’s views "crap" on more than one occasion; as the budget talks in 1982 headed to a climax, Reagan told O’Neill, "you can get me to crap a pineapple, but you can’t get me to crap a cactus." O’Neill publicly called Reagan "callous . . . a real Ebenezer Scrooge," whose program was "for the selfish, the greedy, and the affluent." In his diary, Reagan wrote: "Tip O’Neil [sic] is getting rough; saw him on TV telling the United Steelworkers U. that I am going to destroy the nation." He also told his diary that "Tip is a true pol. He can really like you personally & be a friend while politically trying to beat your head in." That was Reagan at his most charitable. He noted once that in a White House meeting where O’Neill "sounded off in a very partisan manner," "I almost let go the controls but I didn’t," and on another occasion he described one of O’Neill’s public claims as "the most vicious pack of lies I’ve ever seen."

Reagan had in mind such O’Neill gems as his remarks in 1981 on ABC that Reagan "has no concern, no regard, no care for the little man in America. And I understand that. Because of his lifestyle, he never meets those people." This was a mere warm-up for O’Neill’s blast at Reagan during the 1984 campaign:

The evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.

Geraldine Ferraro, Mondale’s running mate, felt free to challenge Reagan’s religious bona fides: "The President walks around calling himself a good Christian, but I don’t for one minute believe it because the policies are so terribly unfair." Jesse Jackson, who routinely referred to Reagan’s administration as a "repressive regime," said, "Reagan is closer to Herod than he would be to the family of Jesus." . . .

That was Reagan’s Washington. Obama’s is tame by comparison

UPDATE: below

Ann Coulter on Newt vs. Mitt:

So now, apparently, we have to go through the cycle of the media pushing Newt Gingrich​. This is going to be fantastic.

In addition to having an affair in the middle of Clinton's impeachment; apologizing to Jesse Jackson​ on behalf of J.C. Watts -- one of two black Republicans then in Congress -- for having criticized "poverty pimps," and then inviting Jackson to a State of the Union address; cutting a global warming commercial with Nancy Pelosi​; supporting George Soros​' candidate Dede Scozzafava in a congressional special election; appearing in public with the Rev. Al Sharpton​ to promote nonspecific education reform; and calling Paul Ryan​'s plan to save Social Security "right-wing social engineering," we found out this week that Gingrich was a recipient of Freddie Mac political money. . .

The mainstream media keep pushing alternatives to Mitt Romney​ not only because they are terrified of running against him, but also because they want to keep Republicans fighting, allowing Democrats to get a four-month jump on us.

Meanwhile, everyone knows the nominee is going to be Romney.

That's not so bad if you think the most important issues in this election are defeating Obama and repealing Obamacare.

There may be better ways to stop Obamacare than Romney, but, unfortunately, they're not available right now. (And, by the way, where were you conservative purists when Republicans were nominating Waterboarding-Is-Torture-Jerry-Falwell-Is-an-Agent-of-Intolerance-My-Good-Friend-Teddy-Kennedy-Amnesty-for-Illegals John McCain​-Feingold for president?)

Among Romney's positives is the fact that he has a demonstrated ability to trick liberals into voting for him. He was elected governor of Massachusetts -- one of the most liberal states in the union -- by appealing to Democrats, independents and suburban women.

He came close to stopping the greatest calamity to befall this nation since Pearl Harbor by nearly beating Teddy Kennedy in a Senate race. (That is when he said a lot of the things about which he's since "changed his mind.") If he had won, we'd be carving his image on Mount Rushmore​.

Contrary view by Legal Insurrection's William Jacobson. Much as I respect Newt's intellect and ideas, I think Jacobson downplays Newt's history of poor decisionmaking.

MORE:

DC Caller's Jamie Weinstein: "The Republican presidential field is truly unimpressive"

MORE & MORE:

Even the Washington Post admits -- grudgingly -- that the story about Gingrich's first divorce is slander.

President Obama said electric vehicles would be popular--the Administration predicted over 1 million of them would be on the road by 2015, including 120,000 Chevy Volts sold in 2012. Well, how's that working out? Mickey Kaus answers:

General Motors is sticking by its prediction that it will sell 10,000 electric/hybrid Chevy Volts by the end of the year. Only 5,000 had been through October, meaning GM has to double that amount in just the final two months of the year. Until now, Volt production seems to have been wildly outstripping actual sales. But GM CEO Dan Akerson says sales are "starting to hit the pace," some reporters claim the Volt is "hot," and the company has made a big show of allowing dealers to sell off their demo models, allegedly to supply the now-insatiable "customer demand."

So where will all these Volts actually go? There seem to be three possibilities:

1) Akerson is right. The Volt is a "home run" and they’ll all soon be in the hands of satisfied customers!

2) They’ll be recorded as "sold" even though they’re sitting unwanted on dealer lots. "Sold" in GM parlance means sold to a dealer, who then may or may not succeed in reselling the car to an actual paying customer.

3) They’ll be pushed out to corporate fleets, as big businesses seek to please the Obama administration by doing their part to help bailed-out GM unload this overpriced showpiece pioneer our nations’ green future. Call this the corporatist solution.

I'll go with door number three. Unless, combining the worst features of crony capitalist automotive bailouts and uneconomic green subsidies, the Obama Administration buys them. Or -- though unlikely -- all Chevy Volts are recalled as a fire hazard.

(via reader Warren)

Mark Steyn on National Review:

I had cynically assumed that the Superfriends would address America’s imminent debt catastrophe with some radical reform -- such as, say, slowing the increase in spending by raising the age for lowering the age of Medicare eligibility from 47 to 49 by the year 2137, after which triumph we could all go back to sleep until total societal collapse.

But I underestimated the genius of the Superfriends’ Supercommittee. It turns out that a committee created to reduce the deficit is instead going to increase it. As The Hill reported:

Democrats on the supercommittee have proposed that the savings from the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be used to pay for a new stimulus package, according to a summary of the $2.3 trillion plan obtained by The Hill.

Do you follow that? Let the Congressional Budget Office explain it to you:

The budget savings from ending the wars are estimated to total around $1 trillion over a decade, according to an estimate in July from the Congressional Budget Office.

Let us note in passing that, according to the official CBO estimates, a whole decade’s worth of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan adds up to little more than Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill. But, aside from that, in what sense are these "savings"? The Iraq War is ended -- or, at any rate, "ended," at least as far as U.S. participation in it is concerned. How then can congressional accountants claim to be able to measure "savings" in 2021 from a war that ended a decade earlier? And why stop there? Why not estimate around $2 trillion in savings by 2031? After all, that would free up even more money for a bigger stimulus package, wouldn’t it? And it wouldn’t cost us anything because it would all be "savings."

Come to think of it, didn’t the Second World War end in 1945? Could we have the CBO score the estimated two-thirds of a century of "budget savings" we’ve saved since ending that war? We could use the money to fund free master’s degrees in Complacency and Self-Esteem Studies for everyone, and that would totally stimulate the economy. The Spanish-American War ended 103 years ago, so imagine how much cash has already piled up! Like they say at Publishers Clearing House, you may already have won!

Of course, the Committee probably will avoid tackling the source of our core long-term fiscal imbalance: Social Security, Medicare (some hope there), and Medicaid. Remind me why we created a non-transparent technocratic committee in the first place.

(via reader Warren)

UPDATE: below

Conn Carroll in the November 10th Washington Examiner observes the Occupy Wall Street protesters don't know history, as demonstrated by (hyperlinks added):

the uproar New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg caused last week when he criticized Occupy Wall Street's view of the financial crisis.

Bloomberg said:

it was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress, who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. ... They were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will.

The usual suspects on the left went crazy. The New York Times Paul Krugman called Bloomberg an "ignoramous," citing liberal blogger Mike Konczal's Fannie defense:

"The first thing to point out is that the both the subprime mortgage boom and the subsequent crash are very much concentrated in the private market ... [Fannie and Freddie] were not behind them," Konczal said.

Is Konczal right? Are Fannie and Freddie innocent of causing the mortgage crisis?

This we do know: Thanks to the widespread belief that the federal government would bail them out, Fannie and Freddie were able to borrow money at below-market interest rates.

This gave them a significant competitive advantage over private-sector firms which, by 1992, the two government-backed corporate entities had turned into an almost 70 percent share in the mortgage securitization market. [NOfP note: in the summer of 2010, more than nine of every ten new mortgages were backed by Fannie, Freddie or other GSEs.]

That same year, at the direction of the Congress, the Department of Housing and Urban Development began setting "affordable" mortgage goals for the agencies. . .

From 1992 through the height of the housing bubble, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used their monopoly position in the mortgage securitization industry to reward firms like Countrywide for making bad bets in the housing market. Countrywide's success was a signal to other market participants to lower their standards as well.

Wall Street banks are not blameless for the financial crisis. But they were only responding to the incentives set up by the federal government. Ignoring this history will help no one.

Agreed--if anywhere, the OWS crowd should be hectoring Capitol Hill.

MORE:

The Wall Street Journal says "The Housing Lobby Strikes Again":

It took a $142 billion taxpayer bailout to convince the Obama Administration to pledge in February to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, rein in the Federal Housing Administration and encourage the revival of a private mortgage market. So it's distressing to see Congress move in exactly the opposite direction less than a year later, with the quiet approval of the White House.

While cable TV is chasing the trivia of Fannie and Freddie bonuses, the real news is that late Monday a bipartisan Congressional committee announced an agreement to increase FHA's maximum mortgage limits to $729,750 from $625,500 through Dec. 31, 2013. The bill is linked to a continuing resolution to fund Congress past Saturday, increasing the likelihood that this backroom deal will become law. The House is scheduled to vote on the bill today without debating these changes, in what ought to be an embarrassment to Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

The National Association of Realtors is lauding this idea as great for housing "stability," by which it means that the taxpayer subsidies for its industry will keep coming, even for fancy homes.

See also Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee report (Executive Summary at 1):

When the bubble burst in 2007, Fannie and Freddie began to lose billions of dollars of investments in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) guarantees. In September 2008, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) took Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship as a result of mounting losses stemming from the financial crisis.The Enterprises became de facto government entities, funded by preferred stock purchase agreements from the Department of the Treasury (Treasury). Today, the Enterprises remain a multi-billion-dollar drag on the federal government’s finances. Since they entered conservatorship, Treasury has provided $169 billion to Fannie and Freddie - and the payouts are scheduled to continue with no end in sight. According to recent FHFA projections, by the end of 2014, Treasury assistance to the Enterprises will total $220 billion to $311 billion.

MORE & MORE:

Peter Wallison in the November 23rd USA Today:

In 1992, Congress adopted legislation that imposed "affordable housing" requirements on the GSEs. These required that 30% of all mortgages they bought from lenders had to be made to low- and moderate-income home buyers — borrowers who were at or below the median income in their communities.

Over the next 15 years, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development -- pushed by Congress -- tightened and expanded this quota so that, by 2007, 55% of all mortgages the GSEs acquired had to be made to low- and moderate-income borrowers, including 27% to those below 80%.

The GSEs could find good mortgages at the 30% quota, but when it went higher they had to reduce their underwriting standards. By 2002, to meet the quotas, they had bought at least $1.2 trillion in subprime and other weak loans.

By 2008, just before they became insolvent, they and other government-controlled institutions held or had guaranteed 19.2 million loans, over 70% of the 27 million outstanding. In other words, the government's housing policies created the demand for these destructive loans.

What was banks' role? It wasn't until 2002 that Wall Street issued over $100 billion in securities backed by subprime or other weak loans. Recall that by this date, the GSEs had bought over a $1 trillion. The banks' number grew so that, by 2008, there were 7.8 million low quality mortgages backing bank-issued securities — less than 30% of the 27 million.

Given these numbers, it's obvious that blaming the banks for the financial crisis is simply a way to cover up a huge government error.