The Unsolicited Opinion April 12, 2012

http://theunsolicitedopinion.com/audio/USO-04-12-12.mp3

My radio commentary on Republic Broadcasting Network. I come on in the second hour.
Topics: European Union, Greece, Obamacare, food supply, ethanol.

Unfortunately Named the Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009

Chance brought across my path an old friend, Dr. March, whom I had not seen in four years. During the last conversation, he was trying to convince me that electing President Obama would be a positive turn in the history of our country, particularly after the “dreadful Republican Bush.”

I do not see people so much as belonging to the Republican or Democrat Party but as promoters and believers of a particular social and fiscal ideology. Occasionally, Congress members of either party share identical beliefs and vote the same way, regardless of the D or R after their names. They no longer represent the will of the people who elected them but the will of the corporate interests and the lobby groups.

 

Many uninformed and ordinary Americans vote on their perceived understanding of the issues after watching biased commercials and presentations. Some Americans vote on family traditions. Other Americans vote for the most telegenic of the candidates, or whoever promises most welfare.

As a medical doctor and an academician, Dr. March argued at the time that Obamacare could not possibly destroy our medical system and make it any worse because it was already in a mess with so many insurance companies, in dire need of tort reform, with so much bureaucracy, and daunting paperwork requiring full time staff to deal with insurance plans.

No to worry, this week we found out that 4,000 new IRS agents will be hired to handle Obamacare. A nagging question kept swirling in my head, what does health care have to do with tax collectors? Is health care a tax? Why would tax collectors be part of the decision to treat people medically or perform surgery on patients?

According to the Hill, “the Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president’s healthcare law. The money is only part of the IRS’s total implementation spending and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible for several key provisions of the new law, including the unpopular individual mandate.” (The Hill, April 9, 2012)

Dr. March told me what a hard time his medical students were having finding jobs after spending $50,000 each year for a degree and how we are not going to have many primary care providers left – nobody will be willing to go to medical school if jobs are hard to find and salaries are capped by The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. He was bemoaning the fact that a lot of our healthcare will be provided by nurses and will thus be inadequate and lacking.

His solution was rather perplexing – find a president who is fiscally conservative and socially progressive. The pronouncement struck me as illogical and impossible, as I see those two as polar opposites. You cannot be fiscally conservative and spend money on social programs lavishly without going bankrupt at some point.

I did not dare ask him what his presidential choice would be in November. It is impolite to ask such questions unless a person volunteers the information. He did mention that his wife voted for Ron Paul in the primaries. Both had voted cheerfully and eagerly for Obama in 2008.

When I told him how corrupt the socialized medical care system was in Romania, 23 years after the fall of communism, he agreed that most good doctors in the former iron curtain nations left for other places where they were paid based on merit and not on a central government salary decree. Only doctors who accepted bribes to supplement their salaries stayed behind to deliver care to the population.

There are not enough doctors and nurses left behind and people do not have enough money for bribes in countries where medical care is free but care and drugs must be rationed. At some point there is not enough “free everything” to go around.

Socialized medical care in Western Europe's nations fares slightly better. Doctors are still paid a government capped salary, there is rationing of care, long waiting lists for procedures, and gross negligence in hospitals. When patients have sniffles, everyone is treated, no problem. That is when free medical care works best. When more expensive procedures and long-term care become an issue, rationing ensues, depending on the patient’s age.

Dr. March was not aware that Muslims are exempt from the requirements of The Affordable Health Care Choice Act but will be full beneficiaries of free health care paid by the rest of us, a blatant form of dhimmitude.

Because health care has become so expensive in Germany and birth rates are going down, Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering an extra tax on young people in order to support the pensions and health care costs of the burgeoning older population. Could that become a future issue in the U.S.?

The cost of Obamacare has been purposefully misrepresented. A recent and more accurate report doubles the cost. This does not take into account the 1,500 plus exemptions offered to many crony capitalists for a year.

Dr. March was not incensed by the fact that faith-based hospitals will be forced to provide abortion on demand or that contraceptives are considered health rights.

Obamacare is not about providing affordable healthcare choices, it is about government control by unelected bureaucrats with no medical degrees or training over hospital admissions, payments to doctors, medical devices, and forcing private insurance companies out of business. It is about the most massive transfer of power to the executive branch of the government.

The law rations care to seniors and other classes of citizens and gives free health care to illegal immigrants.  Free abortion services under Obamacare forces participation in abortions by members of the medical profession who find the procedure highly objectionable.

Dr. March concluded with an interesting observation, that, in the D.C. area, Republicans who live in Virginia and Democrats who live in Maryland are two distinct groups at odds in the fight over Obamacare while the rest of the country supports Obamacare. Perhaps a biased poll gave credence to his belief but the polls I read show the majority of the U.S. legal population against Obamacare.

It is a moot point if you are for or against Obamacare. It is already the law, the bureaucracy is already in place to completely overhaul and destroy the best care in the world, and we are waiting on the Supreme Court to weigh in with their opinion in June, which is likely to determine that the law is constitutional. We, the “units,” will see each other in line at the IRS office begging for healthcare, surgery, and pain pills or petitioning the 15-member non-medical “death panel” for mercy.

Subsidized and Expensive Solar Energy Bites the Dust Again

Solar Trust of America, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware courts, the ninth solar energy company to bite the dust, adding to the previous list of BrightSource, Beacon Power, Ener1, Evergreen Solar, Fiskar, Solyndra, Sunpower, and Spectrawatt.

Solar Trust of America, which listed assets between $1 to $10 million and liabilities between $10 and $50 million, was unable to meet the Department of Energy loan guarantee deadline. The $2.1 billion loan guarantee was “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project.” (The Washington Examiner)

“Despite the posturing and finger pointing, the American solar energy industry is alive and well.” He continued, “One company’s bankruptcy [Solyndra’s] has cast doubt on the credibility of a government program that is otherwise being administered with incredible efficiency,” said Uwe Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Solar Trust, in an op-ed in the Huffington Post.

Spiegel Online reported that even Q-Cells, the biggest solar cell manufacturer in Germany and the world has filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday, April 3, 2012, with a record loss of $1.1 billion in 2011. In Bitterfeld-Wolfen, 2,200 workers have lost their jobs. Q-Cell’s share price was 9 cents.

Q-Cell blamed competition from China, management issues, and solar energy subsidies. When the government subsidies dried up, Q-Cell was not able to compete in a real market as their product was expensive to make. Production prices have fallen in China by 30 to 40 percent, much faster than other companies could scale down their costs, especially when relying on government subsidies.

“Solar subsidies had been a highly effective political means of promoting the environmentally friendly technology.” (Stefan Schultz)

Scheuten Solar from Freiburg declared bankruptcy in March 2012. Solarhybrid and Odersun from Frankfurt-an-der Oder filed the same month. Berlin-based Solon and Erlangen-based Solar Millennium filed for bankruptcy in December 2011.

The reality is that there is no cheaper substitute right now for fossil fuels as a source of energy, no matter how the administration and its proponents spin it. Solar power is expensive, windmills are expensive, noisy, and unsightly, hydropower does not provide enough energy for our large economy, and nuclear power requires more plants to be built. Two reactors are in the works in Georgia.

Using crops to produce bio-fuels has caused a shortage of key grains such as corn in many countries and caused the price of food to spike. “Energy prices affect the production of fertilizers as well as costs related to food distribution and farm machinery use.” Grain futures spiked when the U.S. government reported that grain stocks were lower than estimated, and soybean and wheat plantings fell. (Reuters)

According to the Heritage Foundation, a Senate bill, rejected 51-47, and encouraged by President Obama, “attempted to impose higher taxes on the oil industry as punishment for their profits.”

Instead of easing regulations and allowing for domestic drilling, liberals stage votes to punish the evil oil companies at a time when average oil prices in the country passed the $4 mark and the crude oil is $105 per barrel. No mention is made of the fact that oil prices are quoted in dollars and that crude supplies are getting short. A currently weak dollar causes a higher price for crude. Further complicating the problem, “High crude oil prices have fueled the upward pressure on inflation since the start of the year.” (Reuters)

David Kreutzer, a Heritage expert, describes the manufacturing tax credits that disadvantage the oil and gas industry:

“The unfair tax break that makes up nearly half of what Obama calls ‘subsidies’ is the manufacturing tax credit. All manufacturers except the oil and gas industry get to deduct 9 percent of their revenues before calculating their tax bills… Though oil and gas producers get the deduction, they are singled out for a lower 6 percent deduction. The oil and gas industry gets a deduction that is only two-thirds as generous for all other manufacturers…yet the deduction is called a subsidy to oil and gas. The President’s proposal does not eliminate the deduction for any other industry.”

The crony capitalist green alternative energy has not worked so far, it has sunk billions of taxpayer dollars at a time when we can ill-afford it. Obama’s FY 2013 budget contains more billions to fund the Department of Energy research that is not commercially viable. (Nick Loris)

As we are witnessing a very slow and painful economic recovery at an average rate of 2.4 percent economic growth, at least one percent below of what the period 1947-2007 has experienced, our government is pursuing alternative energy sources at all costs, hampering economic growth and real job creation while pushing non-existent green jobs.

As liberals keep saying, “we are not paying our fair share,” the U.S. corporate tax rate of 39.2 percent is now the largest in the world as of April 1, 2012. The average tax rate for other developed nations is 25 percent. (Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation)

It would be nice if our government would stop spending so much money borrowed from China, and multi-national corporations like GE would pay some taxes instead of filing 57,000-page tax return to shelter them from paying. Was it not Congress that passed legislation enabling large corporations to move their headquarters, manufacturing, jobs, and investment to other countries?

Nobody stops liberals, who love to capture sound bites about “paying a fair share,” from writing a large check to the IRS simply because they are so rich and “we must spread the wealth to the poor.” They can start by giving the rest of us an example of the “communist generosity” they so admire and advocate.

In the meantime, I hope liberals of all stripes stop the alternative energy talking points and start drilling domestically for oil. They cannot put windmills on a car and cannot power electric cars without electricity produced cheaply by the coal industry.

The Unsolicited Opinion - The Anthropocene

http://theunsolicitedopinion.com/audio/USO-04-05-12.mp3

My radio discussion and commentary on Republic Broadcasting Network on Anthropocene, Planet Under Pressure with Maggie Roddin.

Cantotalk - Friday radio chat with Silvio Canto of Dallas, TX

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2012/04/06/our-friday-chat-with-dr-ileana-johnson-paugh

My radio talk with Silvio Canto of Dallas, Blogtalk Radio on Friday, April 6, 2012.
Topic: EU crisis, Italy, Spain, Demographics, Food Inflation, Anthropocene, "nitrogen foot print," and United Nations conference Planet under Pressure

Rain

Thunder claps in the darkness. The soft blanket envelopes me like a cocoon. I feel safe next to my husband who snores softly, oblivious to the raging storm outside.

I love rain. The thirsty ground is soaking up every drop of life-giving water. My little green tree frog is confused; she has not left the deck. She took refuge from the deluge under the white railing, glued to the underside. I can barely spot her when I shine the flashlight.

My rose bushes are happy – the moisture makes them more fragrant and vivid in color. The wet dirt smells intoxicatingly alive.

Intense lighting casts ghostly shadows in the forest behind our house. Bogart must be trembling in his basket – he is always frightened by loud noise, especially thunder.

I peer outside the front door to make sure Old Glory is still bathed in light. It hangs wet and straight which rarely happens as the winds seldom die around our house. We live in the crosshairs of the Aeolian winds. They howl in wintertime with a painfully frigid bite and frightening pitch and soothingly hot in summertime.

The pond is almost overflowing. I hear gurgling sounds as the excess water is rushing down the drain. The wet grass is soaked, making squishy noises under my bare feet. A street light flickers and the power goes off for a second. We seldom lose power since lines are buried everywhere.

I circle the house to inspect the back yard. The French drain is working well. I hear creaking in the forest as if the trees are moaning under the heavy weight of wet leaves. Lightning casts a nanno-second of brilliance, illuminating the ink darkness.

The rain is making my cherry tree shed white petals slowly, dancing in the darkness with crystalline raindrops like a flutter of white butterflies. I hope there will be some flowers left on the tree tomorrow. Birds and insects get so excited, chirping and buzzing around the pistils.

Back inside, I check on Bogart, he is sound asleep, snoring and twitching. My feet leave wet marks on the wooden floor.

When Is Global Warming Enough?

It depends who you ask. Professor Kari Norgaard from Oregon University thinks, “If you don’t believe in climate change you must be sick.” If you are a skeptic of global warming, you are a racist. Overcoming this challenge, she continued in a paper presented at the Planet under Pressure Conference in London, March 24-29, 2012, is similar to overcoming “racism or slavery in the south.”

Yale University Professor Karen Seto, who also attended the conference, told MSNBC: “We certainly don’t want them [humans] strolling about the entire countryside. We want them to save land for nature by living closely [together.] In her view, humans are foreign to nature, we pollute it, we corrupt it, and eventually destroy it.

The scientists attending the Planet under Pressure conference in London “put out a statement calling for humans to be packed into denser cities so that the rest of the planet can be surrendered to Mother Nature.” (UK Daily Mail)

“Cultural resistance to accepting humans as being responsible for climate change must be recognized and treated as an aberrant sociological behavior.” (UK Daily Mail)

Even Rush Limbaugh spent a segment on his April 2 show, talking about “environmentalist wackos” who teach “impressionable young skulls full of mush,” and, “they’re coming out of Oregon University believing this. And if they are not challenged anywhere the rest of their life they’re going to believe this anywhere they go, and some of these students end up at the EPA or end up in a Democrat administration either at the statehouse level or at the presidential level. This is what passed for science education for over ten years now, and it is not science. It’s pure politics. It’s pure politics disguised as science.”

Rush continued, “I looked at this woman’s bio. I wanted to find out a little about her. ‘I enjoy being outdoors, especially hiking, whitewater rafting, kayaking, skiing, both telemark and cross-country. Pretty much any excuse I can get to sleep on the ground.’ So it’s okay for her to go out and enjoy nature, but not the rest of us. It’s fine for her because she’s sensitive and understands, and she knows not to trample on the twigs or whatever it is she knows not to damage when she’s out there. Anyway, it all adds up to centralized command-and-control power, federal government getting bigger. This woman would support that to deny people the right to go into whatever she thinks is nature. Look, it’s lunacy. But she’s teaching students. They’re a dime a dozen, these people.  They’re all over the place.”

It would be nice if it were just about the federal government getting bigger. It is the one world government plan headed by the United Nations with its Agenda 21 and the Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development. It is about spreading the wealth of developed nations to developing nations, including technology, with stated disregard for patent rights and private property.

Case in point, Professor Richard Norgaard of the University of Berkeley presented a paper at the Planet under Pressure Conference on “Reducing Economic Disparity.” It is about “Planetary Stewardship,” “Sustainable Development,” and “Anthropocene,” all concepts developed by a group of academicians.

David Norgaard, Professor of Energy and Resources at the University of California discussed justice for poor countries and “massive ecological debt” that industrialized countries had incurred.

"We have gained our position by hurting others." We need to make the economy work for us. The invisible hand (of the market) needs to be told where to go. Once it's told where to go the invisible hand will work very well - and so it's not a critique of markets, it's a critique of markets that tell us how we live rather than setting markets up to help us live the way we want to live.”

I think Adam Smith would be rolling in his grave at the bastardization of his “invisible hand,” the hallmark of successful capitalism, unimpeded by centralized government control. Adam Smith did not include any part of socialism, communism, or spreading the wealth to non-producers in his 1776 book, “The Wealth of Nations.”

Elizabeth Thompson, Executive Coordinator of Rio+20 in June 2012, and former Minister of Energy and Environment of Barbados, was asked if decision-makers were ready to act:

 “The level of dialogue is broadening, because all over the world people have marched in relation to current conditions, because people have occupied Wall Street and other locations, because there has been an Arab Spring. And all of it has been saying: let us have sustainable development - we want development but we want it to be sustainable; we want a larger share in democracy and how we are governed.”

I am not sure Americans want democracy and chaos, we saw how well that worked in Greece and the Middle East, especially the ginned up takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood. We are a Constitutional Republic and we certainly do not want UN Agenda 21 with its Sustainable Development and Smart Growth plans that rob citizens of their proprietary rights, self-determination, and sovereignty.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, delivered a video message at the Planet under Pressure conference on the new initiative Future Earth, the contract between science and society. He said, “Scientific advice is sometimes unclear or even contradictory. Scientists themselves often work in silos, ignoring broader factors.” But, “I am also ready to work with the scientific community on the launch of a large-scale scientific initiative.” I am scratching my head when I read these contradictory statements.

The conference introduced a new scientific term, “nitrogen footprint.” Will Steffen informed the conference attendees on the first day, “the nitrogen cycle has been even more disturbed than the carbon cycle.” Sybil Seitzinger, Executive Director of International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, announced in her summary of the proceedings, “The nitrogen footprint of the conference had been reduced by 30 percent through actions taken by the organizers to lower the meat content of the catering facilities and to promote waste efficiency by the use of food bags.” Nitrogen occurs in all living organisms, primarily in amino acids. “The human body contains about 3 percent by weight of nitrogen, the fourth most abundant element after oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Nitrogen resides in the chemical structure of almost all neurotransmitters, and is a defining component of alkaloids, biological molecules produced as secondary metabolites by many organisms.” (Encyclopedia)

Aside from the fact that liberals are ignoring the truth that water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and sunlight are the building blocks of life, where will the food come from if we are all moved into high-rise, high-density cities in order to give land back to wilderness. Where and how will we grow enough food? Perhaps that is one of the desired consequences, culling the herd through starvation.

December 2011, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change released its report on global food security and published recommendations for the Durban climate conference. The title of the report was “Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change.”

The climate change/global warming hoax must now be closely associated and connected with the planning, growing, and distribution of food under the United Nations guidance and supervision.

“Consensus is growing we have driven the planet into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which many Earth system processes are now dominated by human activities.” (State of the Planet) Whose “consensus” might that be, the academic ruling elite of the United Nations?

“Politician, public servant, scientist or citizen, community or company, we are the shareholders of Earth Incorporated.” (Elizabeth Thompson) Who formed this one-world-company, Earth Incorporated? Was it third world nations at the United Nation with its 3,000 “experts” in climate change, environmental geo-engineering, international governance, the future of oceans and biodiversity, global trade, development, poverty alleviation, and food security?

Dr. Mark Stafford Smith, conference co-chair of Planet under Pressure said, “But we need to provide more open access to knowledge, we need to move away from Gross Domestic Product as the only measure of progress, and we need a new way of working internationally that is fit for the 21^st century.”

Translating his statement, we must adopt UN Agenda 21 goal of creating a UN Sustainable Development Council to integrate social, economic, and environmental policy at the global level (one world government), steal intellectual property, private property, one set of rules for global sustainability for all nations, regardless of national boundaries, and the taking of wealth in the form of property, land use and water use.