Barack Obama the hypocrite

Barack Obama, the hypocrite, in action:

President Barack Obama traveled to California on Friday to highlight the state’s drought emergency at two events near Fresno, calling for shared sacrifice to help manage the state’s worst water shortage in decades. He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: desert golf courses.
Vacationing with DVDs of his favorite television shows and multiple golf outings with his buddies, the duffer in chief played at two of the most exclusive courses in the Palm Springs area. On Saturday, Obama played at the Sunnylands estate, built by the late billionaire Walter Annenberg, which features a nine-hole course that is played like 18 holes. The following day he golfed at billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s 19-hole Porcupine Creek. On Presidents’ Day, Obama hit the links at Sunnylands once again.
The 124 golf courses in the Coachella Valley consume roughly 17% of all water there, and one-quarter of the water pumped out of the region’s at-risk groundwater aquifer, according to the Coachella Valley Water District.

Schwarzenegger and Barroso congratulate themselves in Vienna

Arnold Schwarzenegger saves the world :
"I still drive my Hummers but now they are all on hydrogen and biofuel ..."

Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken his climate change/global warming road show to his former home country. On Thursday he opened the Regions of Climate Action (R-20) conference in Vienna: 

Arnold Schwarzenegger called Thursday for an end to "doom and gloom" environmentalism as he hosted the first conference of his new green movement fostering action by local governments and individuals.

"If we want to inspire the world, it is time for us to forget about the old way of talking about climate change, where we crush people, where we overwhelm people with data," the former California governor, bodybuilder and film star said.

"I mean I still drive my Hummers but now they are all on hydrogen and biofuel ... We need to send a message that we can live the same life, just with cleaner technology." Following his success implementing environmental legislation in California ahead of federal US action, Schwarzenegger's created the R20 Regions of Climate Action movement in 2010.

Reality check: 

California, once the most attractive business environment in the nation, is today caught in a downward economic spiral while Texas is on the upswing.

Between 1960 and 1990, more than four million people moved to California, attracted by the state’s beauty, weather and booming economy. However, a 2012 study by the Manhattan Institute found, that since 1990, California has lost most of that gain as millions moved out of the state.

Many of those who left were business owners driven out by California’s high income taxes, oppressive regulations, high energy costs, property taxes and labor costs. As employers relocated to Texas, Nevada and Arizona, workers followed, taking their money with them -- a total of $18.55 billion in lost wages from 2000-2010.

Once a magnet for job creators, California’s unemployment rate has been higher than the national average for the last 22 years.

In 2012, 650 business leaders surveyed by Chief Executive Magazine rated California the worst state in the nation for business -- for the eighth consecutive year. That same survey rated Texas #1 for the eighth year in a row.

The "keynote" speaker, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso was full of praise for the "succesful" European Union working method: 

"Regions20 is a shining example of this new mind-set in business and in government at the regional level, because it draws on so many stakeholders and their expertise. In many respects the work of R20 is similar to that of the European Union, as it connects different actors on all levels to cooperate on common challenges - to be stronger together.

Within the European Union this has been our successful working method of more than half a century"

Reality check:

Unemployment in the euro zone hit a record high of 11.8 percent in November, according to a new Eurostat report. In Spain, Greece, and Portugal, joblessness has never been higher during this crisis.

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Unemployment for workers under 25 is now closer to 60 percent than 50 percent in Spain and Greece, and youth joblessness is rising in France, Italy, and Portugal.

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Optimistically, Europe will grow about 0.0% this year. The last time Spanish growth was this weak was during the Spanish Civil War. Greece's GDP decline is the worst of any peaceful, non-communist post-WWII economy.

(image by wikipedia)

The true legacy of governor Schwarzenegger

The National Journal has published a fawning interview with former terminator and governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has no modest thoughts about his legacy for future generations:

Asked if he believes his role on spurring global warming action will ultimately stand as his legacy, Schwarzenegger invoked his career as a bodybuilding trailblazer.

"It's one of those things, when I got into bodybuilding, the last thing I ever thought of is that I would be out there leading the fitness movement, going around the world and talking about fitness and exercising," he said.

"I was just interested in winning as many bodybuilding championships as possible--Mr. World, Mr. Universe. But it just happened to be that there was a vacuum, and people looked at me as the guy who should carry the ball, and all of a sudden, there I was--it became my legacy. When I stepped into the governorship, this is the last thing I thought I would do--that I would be successful in this area. But the opportunity came up. You don't know ahead of time."

In other words, the retired terminator appears to believe that saving the world from human caused global warming will be his "legacy" to the world.

And the National Journal's energy and environment correspondent Coral Davenport believes that Schwarzenegger "brings his global celebrity to the cause, but he also brings credibility, as the only American political leader to date who has succeeded in enacting a climate-change law":

It appears to be working. On Dec. 19, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented Schwarzenegger with the U.N. Correspondents Association's global advocate of the year award. The award recognized work he has done with Regions20, his U.N.-affiliated climate-change advocacy group. The group aims to push cities, states, provinces, and other regions to create a network of bottom-up climate policies that will eventually lead to broader action.

Yes, you could not ask for a better proof than the "U.N. Correspondents Association's global advocate of the year award" for Schwarzenegger's huge success!

Meanwhile back home in California, citizens and businesses have to face another legacy of the former (Republican!) governor:

California’s latest gift to the nation comes just in time for Christmas in the form of a newly-enacted carbon cap-and-trade (tax) program. That “climate change law” which will be accomplished through a web of new taxes and regulations mandates a 30 percent cut in carbon emissions from cars, trucks, utilities and other businesses by 2020. This legislation will add even higher burdens to businesses that already endure the fourth worst state regulatory burdens and among the highest corporate taxes…a state that consistently ranks at or near the bottom for business-friendliness…one with the nation’s highest state sales tax, and the third highest income tax for citizens.--

Disastrous energy policies, a stifling regulatory environment, reliance upon central planning, tax-supported subsidies and social entitlement programs are turning dreams of good lives into nightmares. As a result, companies, large and small, are leaving in hordes, taking much of the state’s tax base along with employment opportunities with them. According to census data, California lost one-half million people to other states between 2007 and 2010, while Texas gained 394,000. --

Despite substantial government spending programs, California has the highest poverty rate in the U.S., with a staggering 23.5% of its population counted as poor. The poverty rate in Texas is 16.5%. And according to a study by McKinsey & Co., “Texas outperforms California in terms of achievement despite similar demographics, lower GDP per capita, and lower per-pupil spending”. This includes math and reading, and also educating Latino, Black and poor students. California now ranks near the nation’s bottom in science skills, with eighth graders performing 47^th in terms of test scores.

Read the entire article here

What the new Schwarzenegger Institute should concentrate on

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has partnered with the University of Southern California to create a policy think tank:


The USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy will be funded with a Schwarzenegger commitment of $20 million, which will include a personal donation as well as money from fundraising. Schwarzenegger's personal donation was not disclosed.

The former bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-governor said the think tank will allow him, among other things, to pass along his experience from his seven years in Sacramento.

The Republican governor worked with Democrats to enact California's landmark 2006 global warming law, called AB32, which paved the way for the state's cap-and-trade system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions by the worst polluters.

"One of the great lessons I learned as governor of California was that the best solutions to common problems could only be found when each side was willing to engage thoughtfully and respectfully with each other," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.



The Schwarzenegger Institute could actually do a great service to Californians by concentrating on a case study trying find out why the ex-terminator was allowed to ruin the future of the great state in just seven years:  


Andrew Chang & Company, which conducted the latest fiscal and economic impact study on behalf of CMTA, found that the average California family will end up paying an additional $2,500 annually by 2020 when AB 32 (Schwarzenegger´s global warming law, NNoN) is fully implemented. In addition, the state is expected to lose an additional 262,000 jobs, 5.6 percent of the gross state product, and a whopping $7.4 billion through decreased annual state and local tax revenues as a result. Figures from the study were based on more conservative estimates, suggesting that expected costs could actually range much higher.


Read the entire article here

The Schwarzenegger legacy: San Bernardino third Californian city to file for bankruptcy

California (no) dreaming:

San Bernardino’s City Council voted to become the third California city this year to file for bankruptcy, as it struggles with declining tax revenue, growing employee costs and accounting discrepancies in its ledgers.

The council voted 4 to 2, with one abstention, last night to authorize a filing under Chapter 9 of U.S. bankruptcy law. The city of 209,000, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, is so broke it can’t make its Aug. 15 payroll, interim City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller said.

“If the employees are not paid on Aug. 15, on Aug. 16 there will be a mass exodus of city employees,” City Attorney James Penman told the council before the vote. “People are not going to work when they don’t get paid. Most of our employees will not show up to work. That would include police, fire, refuse, everybody. The city will virtually shut down.”

Read the entire article here

The question is, when will the entire state of California file for bankruptcy? It can´t take too long now, when one remembers how the Schwarzenegger global warming legacy is impacting  life in the Golden State.  

Schwarzenegger´s legacy in California: Like a Hollywood horror movie

Arnold Schwarzenegger´s legacy is slowly beginning to dawn on Californian companies and ordinary taxpayers. And it is more and more looking like a Hollywood horror movie: 

Andrew Chang & Company, which conducted the latest fiscal and economic impact study on behalf of CMTA, found that the average California family will end up paying an additional $2,500 annually by 2020 when AB 32 (Schwarzenegger´s global warming law, NNoN) is fully implemented. In addition, the state is expected to lose an additional 262,000 jobs, 5.6 percent of the gross state product, and a whopping $7.4 billion through decreased annual state and local tax revenues as a result. Figures from the study were based on more conservative estimates, suggesting that expected costs could actually range much higher.

This new information comes at a time when state government is already struggling to maintain funding for some of California’s most basic services, and economic recovery remains anemic- prompting calls for further consideration of the law.

“These policies will create a large but hidden tax on families and will add new burdens to a fragile state economy,” said Jack Stewart, President of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association (CMTA). “This new tax is not what we need while Californians struggle to find jobs, meet mortgage payments and maintain a reasonable quality of life.”

The consequences appear even more severe for California’s small business community.

According to John Kabateck, California Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business:

“This comprehensive report tells us that small business will get hit from all sides.  Consumers will have less money to buy our products, employers will be forced to purchase more affordable products outside of California, and our own energy costs will make it nearly impossible to stay in business.”

Read the entire article here

California collapses - and Obama follows its lead

 Jerry Brown in 2010: "I have defended California’s clean energy and climate laws that are spurring billions of dollars in new investment, new businesses and new jobs"

Flashback 2010: 


California gubernatorial hopeful Jerry Brown unveiled a green jobs plan today that he says will create a half a million green jobs and will appoint a “Renewable Energy Jobs Czar.”


Reality check April 2012:

Green jobs, broadly defined, make up only about 2 percent of jobs in the state—about the same proportion as in Texas. In Silicon Valley, the number of green jobs actually declined between 2003 and 2010. Meanwhile, California’s unemployment rate of 10.9 percent is the nation’s third highest, behind only Nevada and Rhode Island.

When Governor Jerry Brown predicted a half-million green jobs by the end of the decade, even The New York Times deemed it “a pipe dream.”

Reality check May 2012:

 California's budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion -- much larger than had been predicted just months ago -- and will force severe cuts to schools and public safety if voters fail to approve tax increases in November, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday.

Joel Kotkin, urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, and one of the leading US demographers, explains why California is failing under its "green" governor: 

Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.

The scruffy-looking urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., has been studying and writing on demographic and geographic trends for 30 years. Part of California's dysfunction, he says, stems from state and local government restrictions on development. These policies have artificially limited housing supply and put a premium on real estate in coastal regions.

"The new regime"—his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government—"wants to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles."

Housing is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
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In the governor's dreams, green jobs will replace all of the "tangible jobs" that the state's losing in agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing and construction. But "green energy doesn't create enough energy!" Mr. Kotkin exclaims. "And it drives up the price of energy, which then drives out other things." Notwithstanding all of the subsidies the state lavishes on renewables, green jobs only make up about 2% of California's private-sector work force—no more than they do in Texas.

Of course, there are plenty of jobs to be had in energy, just not the type the new California regime wants. An estimated 25 billion barrels of oil are sitting untapped in the vast Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits. "You see the great tragedy of California is that we have all this oil and gas, we won't use it," Mr. Kotkin says. "We have the richest farm land in the world, and we're trying to strangle it." He's referring to how water restrictions aimed at protecting the delta smelt fish are endangering Central Valley farmers.

Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."

What is particularly sad, is that "As California Collapses, Obama Follows Its Lead":


Barack Obama learned the rough sport of politics in Chicago, but his domestic policies have been shaped by California’s progressive creed. As the Golden State crumbles, its troubles point to those America may confront in a second Obama term.

From his first days in office, the president has held up California as a model state. In 2009, he praised its green-tinged energy policies as a blueprint for the nation. 

 

What you will not find in Schwarzenegger´s memoirs

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor turned enviro-loony, has got a lot of attention for his request on Facebook for people to tell him what to write about in his pending memoir book. Chris Reed comes with a good suggestion:

But the former governor’s upcoming book is unlikely to truthfully detail perhaps the most profound and far-reaching action of Schwarzenegger’s life: his decision to betray Californians and saddle their economy with a permanent burden because of his determination to be remembered as a green icon.

I refer to Schwarzenegger’s 2006 decision to embrace and sign AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 – a bill forcing California utilities to switch to cleaner but much costlier forms of energy and establishing a cap-and-trade pollution credits market for heavy industries.

The state media’s amazingly incompetent and biased coverage of AB 32 treats it as an open question whether forcing California businesses to pay much higher costs for energy than firms in rival states and nations will help them or hurt them. Reporters covering energy and the environment also never mention the very related fact that one of the main rationales for AB 32 — that it would inspire the rest of America and the rest of the world to copy the Golden State in fighting global warming — never came to pass.

The result is that as AB 32 is phased in, California products will have an increasingly large competitive disadvantage because of  the de facto green energy surcharge their price includes.


Read the entire article here


Neither will Schwarzenegger include anything in his memoirs about the campaign against suburbia his Global Warming Solutions Act started:

It's no secret that California's regulatory and tax climate is driving business investment to other states. California's high cost of living also is driving people away. Since 2000 more than 1.6 million people have fled, and my own research as well as that of others points to high housing prices as the principal factor.

The exodus is likely to accelerate. California has declared war on the most popular housing choice, the single family, detached home—all in the name of saving the planet.

Metropolitan area governments are adopting plans that would require most new housing to be built at 20 or more to the acre, which is at least five times the traditional quarter acre per house. State and regional planners also seek to radically restructure urban areas, forcing much of the new hyperdensity development into narrowly confined corridors.

The campaign against suburbia is the result of laws passed in 2006 (the Global Warming Solutions Act) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and in 2008 (the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act) on urban planning. The latter law, as the Los Angeles Times aptly characterized it, was intended to "control suburban sprawl, build homes closer to downtown and reduce commuter driving, thus decreasing climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions." In short, to discourage automobile use.

If the planners have their way, the state's famously unaffordable housing could become even more unaffordable.

Read the entire article here

Warmist Schwarzenegger misinforming Indians about U.S. energy imports

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzegger gave an interview to India´s NDTV television company during his recent visit to Delhi. The transcript of the interview shows that the warmist ex governor seriously thinks that India is going to achieve energy independence by installing solar panels developed by the former railway engineer R.K. Pachauri! Schwarzenegger also had some interesting things to say about the US dependence on foreign fuel.

This is what Indians should do according to the great energy and security "expert" Schwarzenegger:

 We are going to go and create energy independence. We are not going to do this like the developed countries, where everyone has to beg for the grid to work, for electricity to arrive or for some power company to say, alright six weeks maybe we will install some energy in your part. No, I am going to go and develop a solar panel like Dr Pachauri is, where he took out a whole idea where to light a billion lives. That whole programme where he wants to go get people off kerosene lamps and have a solar panel, so they can have a light, they can have a stove and refrigerator etc. That's a whole new way of going that gives you energy independence, which other people don't have. They have to be slaves to the power companies now. And also India has a way of looking at the rest of the world and saying, why is for instance, America is relying 60 percent on fuel to come from outside? That makes the United States very vulnerable. So the national security goes down, as you rely more and more on this outside power.

The Terminator has probably been busy with too many greenie cocktail parties lately, because otherwise it is difficult to understand where he got his information about the "very vulnerable" US "relying 60 percent on fuel to come from outside".

A fact check could have spared Schwarzenegger from misinforming Indian television viewers. (But maybe the truth would have spoiled his environmentalist message?):

U.S. Energy Information Administration:

The United States imported about 49% of the petroleum, which includes crude oil and refined petroleum products, that we consumed during 2010. About half of these imports came from the Western Hemisphere. Our dependence on foreign petroleum has declined since peaking in 2005.

And some more facts:

The U.S. has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the last six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the U.S. Department of Energy. That would be the highest level since 1992.
“For 40 years, only politicians and the occasional author in Popular Mechanics magazine talked about achieving energy independence,” said Adam Sieminski, who has been nominated by President Barack Obama to head the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Now it doesn’t seem such an outlandish idea.”
The transformation, which could see the country become the world’s top energy producer by 2020, has implications for the economy and national security -- boosting household incomes, jobs and government revenue; cutting the trade deficit; enhancing manufacturers’ competitiveness; and allowing greater flexibility in dealing with unrest in the Middle East.

U.S. energy self-sufficiency has been steadily rising since 2005, when it hit a low of 70 percent, the data compiled by Bloomberg show

PS

Schwarzenegger´s description of R.K. Pachauri´s appearance in California some years ago is also interesting:

But I have seen him in California. He is like a rock star over there. People were listening to him like this, leaning forward, kind of inhaling and taking in every word that he said, because he is an extra ordinary human being, that has taken it upon himself, that I am going to lead an environment crusade, and go around the world and make sure we are going in the right direction, that is going to protect us from an international disaster.

It is of course possible that some of Pachauri´s most ecstatic followers in California were "kind of inhaling".