Al Gore Equates Global Warming with World War II and Civil Rights Movement, While Europe Announces Cap-and-Trade Failure

On the same week in which the European Union (EU) admitted that its carbon cap-and-trade system is failing miserably, Al Gore shamelessly equated his latest global warming project with fighting Nazism in World War II, the Civil Rights Movement and the moon landing.

Talk about “inconvenient truths” for the man behind the discredited film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

This week, Gore announced the kickoff of his three-year, $300 million advertising and online lobbying campaign with a group calling itself the Alliance for Climate Protection. Apparently abandoning any remaining sense of shame or restraint, Gore will reportedly equate his latest climate-change pet project with our efforts during World War II, the fight against vicious racial segregation and successfully landing a man on the moon. According to reports, the campaign will in turn demand that the United States join other nations in adopting ineffective, but economically-destructive, emissions cap schemes.

As one might expect, Gore’s proposed solution lies in even more big-government bureaucratic mandates from Washington, D.C. As he told the Washington Post, “the path to recovery runs right through Washington.”

Only one problem: the EU inconveniently acknowledged this week that its own Kyoto-style emission caps are a miserable failure.

According to the EU’s website, its greenhouse gas emissions actually rose some 1.1% last year, despite the fact that it has enacted the very type of economically damaging cap-and-trade mandates advocated by Gore and climate alarmists. Under the EU’s cap-and-trade system, businesses receive a predetermined allotment of emissions credits from government planners, and those businesses that exceed their limits must purchase spare credits from other businesses.

From the start, however, the EU’s cap-and-trade scheme was marred by inherent flaws. Most fundamentally, bureaucratic busybodies were unable to accurately estimate the number of emissions permits to issue. Consequently, they were forced to recalibrate emissions limits and the number of credits, and the program proved a miserable failure. Instead of the intended decline in emissions, they have risen approximately 1% each year since the program’s inception.

Lest Al Gore’s devotees dismiss the EU’s miserable failure as an anomaly, Japan’s climate-change scheme has failed just as badly. The home country of Kyoto was itself supposed to reduce its emissions by 6% below 1990 levels, but its emission levels have actually risen steadily as well.

Although these Kyoto-style programs have utterly failed to achieve their intended goals, they have had an impact, albeit a negative one. Namely, they have inflicted great economic harm upon the nations that have implemented them, with no benefit to the environment.

Across the EU, energy-intensive businesses are relocating their operations and employment overseas, and the European economies trail the United States economy, which has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol during both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Conditions in the EU have deteriorated so badly that the European Roundtable of Industrialists has written the EU to warn that the EU’s Kyoto mandates are eroding businesses’ ability to compete in the world economy.

Further, European businesses are bracing themselves for additional increases in cap-and-trade costs, as EU bureaucrats respond to the increase in European emissions by tightening limits. In turn, this will increase businesses’ cost of complying with the EU’s cap-and-trade scheme, further eroding EU economic competitiveness.

Ignoring these inconvenient truths, climate change alarmists nevertheless insist that the United States dive into the same self-destructive schemes.

But any such scheme inflicted upon the United States is doomed to failure, just as similar mandates have failed across the world. Cap-and-trade laws will fail to curtail emissions, let alone affect the vast global climatic environment. Instead, they will merely inflict great damage on our economic and employment climate precisely when America faces an increasingly-competitive world economy. The American Council for Capital Formation, as one example, estimates that a cap-and-trade law would cost 3.7 million American jobs, reduce gross national product by 2.6%, increase fuel costs even more and punish the average American household some $1,760 each year.

Hopefully, Americans will prove unwilling to pay this economic price for a scheme that fails to reduce emissions or benefit the environment.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is no stranger to controversy.  Indeed, its aggressive political activities at both the state and federal levels have garnered significant media attention.   

According to the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a rift between SEIU and its California affiliate is widening and likely could come to a head at the SEIU's annual convention later this spring.  What that means for SEIU's 1.9 million dues-paying members, and those who rely on the use of these compulsory union dues for political purposes, remains to be seen.

Recently, NLPC co-founder and Chairman Kenneth Boehm joined CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino to discuss the power struggle between SEIU and its affiliates, and to shine some light on the practices of America's most corrupt and aggressive unions.

What follows is the interview originally heard on "Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense" on WEBY 1330 AM, Northwest Florida's talk radio...[Listen to the interview here.]

-John Marshall 

The Wall Street Journal
August 13, 2007

In a sign of just how deeply entrenched Congress's pork barrel culture has become, Democrats on Capitol Hill are delaying sending President Bush an ethics bill they've already passed that purports to reform lobbyist reporting and earmarks. The reason? They're afraid Mr. Bush will veto the bill, which makes only cosmetic changes on the earmark process, gutting the reforms Congress voted earlier this year. The White House has called what remains "worthless."

"We've been waiting for whether or not they would veto the bill before we sent it out," Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told Politico.com. "We want a better handle on what the White House plans to do. We'll send it when we're ready."

Why the game of chicken? Earmarks are now a major industry on Capitol Hill, accounting, for example, for nearly 10% of the last transportation bill. As Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma points out, they also serve as a "gateway drug" used to buy votes for much bigger-ticket spending bills like the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug entitlement.

Pretending that the earmark process will be made transparent and accountable as a result of a phony ethics bill is vital to Congress's effort to convince voters they've sobered up on spending. Among other travesties, the new ethics bill strips out previously agreed-upon language barring members from trading earmarks for votes, and in the Senate vests none other than Majority Leader Reid with the power to determine if an item is subject to earmark-disclosure rules.

Concealing just how the pork-barrel culture works is important to congressmen in both parties, because the process can't really be defended on the merits. Nothing illustrates that better than the exchange that took place just before Congress broke for its August recess between Democratic Rep. John Murtha, the overlord of spending on the House Appropriations Committee, and GOP Rep. John Campbell, a antipork reformer from California.

Mr. Campbell, a certified accountant, rose to challenge a $2 million earmark for a "paint shield" being developed by the Sherwin-Williams Co. in Cleveland. Since the actual sponsor of the earmark, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, chose not to defend her handiwork, Mr. Murtha took up the cudgel on her behalf. Mr. Campbell simply wanted to know if the Pentagon had asked for the paint shield, since the rationale for the spending was that it would "protect people against microbial threats."

Mr. Murtha imperiously assured Mr. Campbell that the shield was "a very worthwhile project," and that "I'm sure the military is interested in this kind of research."

Mr. Campbell persisted and asked if, "in fact, the military has asked for this kind of technology?" When Mr. Murtha was silent, Mr. Campbell said, "I guess the answer to that is no."

He then proceeded to ask if any research had been done to show that the "paint shield" would actually be effective. An impatient Mr. Murtha replied that "we look at every [earmark]. We ask the members to vet them. Our staff vets them. We go over every single earmark." But he could offer no evidence of the effectiveness of the shield beyond saying that Sherwin-Williams was "a very qualified contractor."

When asked if other paint companies working on a similar product had been given the opportunity to bid on the research,

Mr. Murtha claimed in exasperation that "every one of these earmarks [is] competitively granted under the regulations of the Defense Department," and that for their $2 million outlay, the taxpayers would own the fruits of whatever Sherwin-Williams came up with in its lab.

Mr. Campbell explained that the whole point of an earmark is that it bypasses normal competitive bidding and guarantees the recipient doesn't have to compete for federal money. In addition, taxpayers are rarely, if ever, given ownership of any part of the research they pay for, since companies and universities routinely seek earmarks so they can get the government to foot the bill for their basic research.

The Campbell-Murtha exchange vividly illustrates why many Americans would be upset if the earmark process were ever opened up to serious scrutiny. Members of both parties are complicit in keeping the game going and trying to foist a fake reform bill off on President Bush. Only 17 senators tried to block passage of the bill. Mr. Campbell won only 91 votes, less than a quarter of the House, for his amendment to strike the paint shield.

The Club for Growth has just issued a "RePORK card" grading every House member on 50 amendments to kill outrageous pork projects this year. The results are illuminating. The Pork Hall of Shame--those who voted against all 50 reform amendments--totaled 105--81 Democrats and 24 Republicans. The average GOP score was 43%, the average Democratic score only 2%. Only one Democrat voted against pork more than a fifth of the time--Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, who racked up a 98% antipork score and is unlikely to be invited to dinner with any Appropriations Committee chairmen anytime soon.

The best way to change Congress's culture would be for Mr. Bush to reject the faux reform bill. Nothing would more anger the spending barons of Congress or highlight just how the budget process has become perverted. Even if Congress were to override Mr. Bush's veto, the debate would be tremendously educational for voters.

Already, a knowledge of the excesses of earmarks is starting to seep into the popular culture. GOP Sen. Ted Stevens, the so-called King of Pork, recently suffered the humiliation of seeing FBI agents raid his Alaskan home in search of evidence in an earmark-corruption scandal. He has become semi-famous as the defender of such earmark outrages as the "Bridge to Nowhere."

Last week comedian Drew Carey took a jab at Mr. Stevens while he explained his new duties as the host of the game show "The Price is Right." Mr. Carey told NBC's "Today" show that he had warmed to the idea of hosting the show: "You're giving away prizes all day and making everybody happy. . . . You couldn't do better." But then he explained the best part of the job: "And it's not even your money. You're giving away money and getting credit for it. I feel like a congressman. I'm like the junior Ted Stevens."

Members of Congress like to think of themselves in pursuing the national interest in a dignified manner. Exposing how earmarks really work would make maintaining that image all the more difficult. Members would much prefer to keep the game show going and keep the details of who foots the bill hidden behind the curtain.

Harry S. Truman