Radical Green – Page 13

A ridiculous waste of time

If this doesn’t show you how government works, I don’t know what will. I was tipped off on this by a release from Americans for Limited Government, which noted in part:

Governor Jindal was joined by local Louisiana officials in submitting the barrier island containment plan and discussing it directly with the President on May 2, gaining what seemed like Presidential approval for an expedited approval process to contain the oil. One month later, President’s man on the ground is taking an Internet survey.

The question is whether to build a set of barrier islands off the coast to protect the more delicate areas from the effects of the continuing oil spill. Who knows, had this been done a couple weeks back there may have been containment already in place.

There’s no doubt we are swimming in uncharted waters regarding the entire Deepwater Horizon incident since the safety record of these rigs was previously exemplary.

In the government’s defense, comments are only being accepted until 7:00 p.m. our time so if you have something to say do so quickly. I say, “be like Nike and just do it!”

A different opportunity to have input

Most of us have concerns about Maryland’s tax policy insofar as it affects jobs and businesses, but there are other sneaky ways the state impacts our local communities. You may recall the controversy regarding new stormwater regulations and whether existing developments would be grandfathered in or not – it threatened to put a lot of projects on hold as they returned to the drawing board for reworking.

We in our local area have an opportunity for input on new plans as the Maryland Department of Planning is touring the state on its “PlanMaryland” tour, with Salisbury the first stop Thursday. Think of it as their excuse to promote so-called “smart growth;” one of the goals is to, “do a better job of steering development toward areas that already have roads, schools and other public infrastructure.” Sure, that sounds admirable but we know that the real goal eventually is to drive all of us into European-style housing where we’re all crammed together. Never mind the Eastern Shore is nothing like downtown Baltimore (aside from the crime rate in Salisbury.)

They’ve played this game before around here, and generally it’s an excuse for environmentalist wackos to get together and commiserate with a group from the state who’s firmly in their pocket. But we can stand up to them and tell the state in no uncertain terms that they need to adopt more business-friendly policies all around.

Sounds like a job for the local AFP activists – I have other plans so I can’t make this event – thus I put out the bat-signal and encourage right-thinking individuals to attend.

Friday night videos – episode 31

Back to politics again after my foray into local music. Let’s see what I can dig up here, all right?

The other day it was Earth Day and needless to say I don’t go in for the hype – neither does Mario Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Three guys who were too much into Earth Day are Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman. They are a creative bunch, though, as they spin cap and tax. Again, from CEI:

Speaking of big government, the Environmental Protection Agency has a video contest going to explain why government regulations are a good thing. Needless to say, someone had to poke fun at it – why not the gang at Americans for Prosperity?

This spotlight is on a group which wants government regulation (in the form of higher taxes) to fatten their coffers.

Perhaps the Maryland GOP can borrow this from their California brethren?

Instead, our state is faced with too many voters like this group Bob McCarty found at an Illinois rally.

This is the same rally where TEA Partiers were greeted by a riot squad.

A protest of a different sort occurred right here in Maryland. Disaffected workers in the film industry aren’t too happy with our present governor – WBAL reports.

Newt Gingrich always has something to say as well. Here he talks about President Obama’s “secular socialist machine.”

I wrote about Daniel “The Whig Man” Vovak earlier this week as he proposed to legalize pot. Nick Gillespie of the Reason Foundation agrees.

But I didn’t forget local music! Here’s the hard-rocking Christian group Not My Own recorded live (not by me) at Circles in Milford, Delaware.

Until next time, that’s a wrap.

It’s not lucrative being green

Because my last column didn’t clear for publication last week and this one is more time-sensitive, you get two LFS op-eds today.

April presents both the onset of spring for most of a winter-ravaged nation and the odd calendar quirk of tax filing day being followed one week later by Earth Day. Both days affect one’s financial situation, but for different reasons.

Undoubtedly there’s an entire industry which profits from the annual taxation ritual, but the arrival of Earth Day always gives its own set of groups and industries their opportunity to seize the spotlight in an attempt to burnish their “green” bonafides – one of the most prominent and in-your-face examples being the NBC-Universal family of television networks (which includes the Weather Channel) going wall-to-wall with specifically themed episodes and constant reminders to reduce, reuse, and recycle for the good of Mother Earth. The Earth Day celebration has surely blossomed since the first one in 1970.

Despite what those on the Left seem to believe, in that forty year period we’ve come a long way in reducing the impact of pollution. Yet all this has come at great cost, and it’s a toll which is borne by those very people they were trying to help.

For example, the price at the pump or to heat your home is impacted by the $12 billion or so energy companies spend to conform with environmental regulations. On a larger scale, compliance with the byzantine layers of red tape in the environmental arena cost Americans over $220 billion annually according to a 2004 study by the Small Business Administration, and these numbers are sure to increase with legislation like the so-called “cap and trade” bill pending in Congress.

These hidden taxes add up, but rarely get mentioned when politicians tout a bill to clean the air or address global warming by adding a few thousand more pages of regulations to the volumes already in place.

At times these products of bureaucracy can produce ironic results. One would think that BP Solar of Frederick, Maryland would be well-positioned to profit from the push toward more renewable energy. Instead, the manufacturing plant and its 320 jobs are being phased out because solar panels can be made more cheaply overseas. Similarly, do-gooders promoting the creation of green jobs through building wind farms are surprised when they find a large percentage of wind turbines are produced abroad as well.

Environmental advocates may argue all the overseas manufacturing is because those markets are more mature than ours, and they have a point. Europe in particular is bedeviled by a lack of oil and natural gas resources for their population, a shortage which forced them to find other means of energy production sooner. While Europe has a reasonably decent standard of living, it’s clear that having a larger percentage of their energy consumption come from clean sources hasn’t advanced their status beyond that which we enjoy here in the United States.

For an economy to thrive while maintaining a decent quality of life there needs to be a balance. Certainly we’ve learned over the years that our planet doesn’t have infinite resources and we can’t be wasteful with that we’ve been blessed with.

But there’s a danger with shifting the balance too far the other way; it’s a cost measured in the loss of freedom. Being too restrictive can have the same harmful effects on us as unfettered polluting once did. Before the pendulum swings too far in the wrong direction, we need to consider what the Earth Day zealots are doing to our wallets before we give in to their demands.

Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer. This article came online at LFS on April 19, and I put it up today as we mull over our recent Earth Day celebration. Me? I went to a ballgame!

Smelling out the green

Tomorrow is Earth Day, the day we need to make unnecessary trips in our Hummer, fire up the charcoal grill for eating various tasty animals, and otherwise poke a finger in the eye of those fringe environmentalists who would tell us what we can do and eat.

Freedom Action points out the hypocricy:

Freedom Action, a new political advocacy group, has launched a new ad campaign blasting environmental groups like World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and the National Wildlife Federation for “spending big bucks to promote global warming as a crisis and to advocate energy-rationing policies.”

In addition, “major corporations such as General Electric, Duke Energy, Dow, Shell, General Motors, and Exelon stand to reap windfall profits from cap-and-trade,” the ad points out.

What’s more, the CEOs of such companies won’t feel the pinch from the rise in energy prices resulting from government mandates and taxes on energy use. “People like Jeffrey Immelt of GE, James Rogers of Duke, Frederic Krupp of EDF, and Frances Beinecke of NRDC can afford paying $7 for gas and twice as much for electricity. On the other hand, average working Americans and unemployed Americans are going to have to suffer so that these fat cats can get fatter.”

I can’t argue with that. One contention I’ve had with these companies is their compulsion to use rentseeking policies at the highest levels to ace out any potential competition. Granted, these companies are seeking a course to maximize profits for their shareholders but it’s obvious they got along well before under the old rules. General Electric can build its products to the market just fine without government help, but they would love to have even more of a stranglehold by gaming the system and that’s where I cry foul.

(The bitter irony is that on the one hand they engage in rentseeking activity which will enrich them and grow government while on the other playing up their onetime association with Ronald Reagan as the 100th anniversary of his birth arrives next year. How about putting that imagination to work on innovation to corner the market instead of lobbying and regulation?)

As for me, I think I’ll celebrate Earth Day by eating some meat then going to a place where thousands of watts of electricity will be spent in lighting a diamond for the enjoyment of several thousand patrons. Sounds like a good celebration to me.

Just as disclosure for those interested: Freedom Action is allied with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, making them a definite ally of monoblogue.

Friday night videos episode 29

Back after a one week hiatus, the focus shifts to fiscal responsibility and TEA Parties.

Obviously the GOP is critical of Barack Obama’s policies, and this video explains why.

The same goes for Reason.tv, which reminds us how California got into its financial mess.

Two filmmakers for Americans for Limited Government bring the green jobs fallacy home by looking at the closing of the BP Solar plant in Frederick, Maryland.

Now it’s time for a little bit of tea. But first, it’s interesting to note the tenor of counterprotests, as an alert reader sent me a video from another March 20 rally in Washington D.C. that had little to do with health care.

To echo one commenter, I bet you didn’t see this on the nightly news.

Fellow blogger and patriot Bob McCarty does yeoman’s work covering the TEA Party scene in the St. Louis area. Here I have two videos, one from their weekly (!) rally last weekend and one from their TEA Party Express 3 stop a week or so back.

Finally, here’s local TEA Party organizer Chris Lewis from yesterday’s Salisbury rally as I excerpted the conclusion of his speech. Good background music, too.

Speaking of music, there’s no local music to wrap up this week, but that’s intentional. Next Friday I’m doing another all-music edition of FNV and plan on making it a regular event every 10 episodes (along with placing a music video or two in most other editions.) I look forward to putting it together so hopefully you’ll enjoy watching!

Celebrating achievement

I’ve blogged about this a couple times before, but tonight Americans who have no life and still believe in the discredited radical environmental movement will sit in the darkness and gloom to “celebrate” the so-called “Earth Hour.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute poked fun at this last year by creating Human Achievement Hour and putting out this video.

As has been tradition around this time, I engaged in the enjoyment of being there last night while thousands of watts of amplification and lighting was expended to boost the local economy of Ocean City and the personal fortunes of dozens of starving artists who are better known as musicians. (Most people call this Skip Dixxon’s Spring Luau.) My point is that it takes energy to grow an economy, but apparently those who want to curtail our usage and bring us back to a 20th or even 19th century lifestyle consider that offensive to their earth goddess.

Needless to say, I stand foursquare against those who would use the force of the state to infringe upon our freedom. Granted, Earth Hour is voluntary (for now) but even exhibiting the mindset of following like lemmings gives them the illusion of popular support and the desire to make what are now suggestions into laws.

In Maryland, this sort of thinking is leading us into even more restrictive stormwater regulations, which only curtails the production of jobs and ironically may reduce the urban development so-called “Smart Growth” advocates desire. At one point there was a compromise reached by the General Assembly which would allow existing projects to continue under the old regulations but that is now out the window – much to the displeasure of those who help to provide private-sector economic growth.

Instead, developers may have to go back to the drawing boards, instituting needless and unnecessary delays and the costs associated with them; yet the benefits are dubious and difficult to measure. Let’s face it – is Chesapeake Bay ever truly going to be clean enough for the radical environmentalists without depopulating the entire watershed? I doubt it, because solving the problem of Bay pollution would put them out of business and the lobbyists and lawyers who depend on their patronage would have to find more honest work.

So I’m going to do my part and celebrate Human Achievement Hour in some way – it may be as simple as leaving a couple extra lights on around our place – and I encourage all of you to do the same. Yes, it’s a little wasteful but the point made is that with progress comes energy demand, and that’s a fact we can’t avoid.

For the record, the state of Maryland is participating in this idiocy, along with the cities of Baltimore, Frederick, Gaithersburg, and Greenbelt; as well, Baltimore and Frederick counties. Governor O’Malley noted in a statement on the Earth Hour website:

“Maryland is an official Earth Hour state, and Katie and I will be turning off our own lights in support of this global movement. By joining us, our fellow citizens will save energy, reduce their carbon footprint and demonstrate to the nation and the world the commitment and leadership of Marylanders on this critical issue.”

So I encourage all right-thinking residents of those areas to instead participate in Human Achievement Hour, and demostrate a call for economic leadership through progress, not regressing back to the Dark Ages.

A tax increase may be in the bag

As of the first of the year, shoppers in Washington, D.C. were forced to drop an extra nickel into the till for each paper or plastic bag they used when going to the store. Store owners collected a share of the tax, but the true intent of the proceeds was a fund to help clean up the Anacostia River.

While the ban has caused some confusion among District shoppers, what truly matters to their local government is the estimated $3.5 million in revenue created by the new tax. With dollar signs in their eyes, some Maryland legislators in both the House of Delegates and the Senate want to get in on the taxation action with proceeds going (of course) to the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays 2010 Trust Fund. The fiscal note with these bills posits a possible windfall to the state of $7.8 million based on a number of assumptions – very tempting when this is a fee easily buried within the overall cost of grocery shopping.

(continued on my Examiner.com page…)

Art imitating life – or vice versa?

When a company devotes millions of dollars to the production and airing of a Super Bowl ad, they are at the mercy of several factors – one of those being an exciting game if you happen to have a spot airing in the fourth quarter.

We all know that the game itself came down to a late interception returned for a touchdown to secure the New Orleans Saints’ victory; fortunately for Audi this occurred after their commercial aired. For all the pregame talk about the pro-life ad sponsored by Focus on the Family and featuring the mother of Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, the “green police” commercial sponsored by Audi may have the most lasting impact.

The ad opens with an innocuous transaction at a grocery store where the cashier cheerfully asks, “Will that be paper or plastic?” When the hapless customer answers “plastic” he’s rudely greeted by an officer from the “green police” who advises the customer, “you picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy!” From there, numerous people run afoul of the law for having batteries in the trash, throwing away an orange rind (a “compost infraction”), possession of incandescent light bulbs and plastic water bottles, and having the temperature of their hot tub too high. The only escapee is the one driving the sponsor’s diesel-powered car at the “eco checkpoint.” Even the classic rock band Cheap Trick redid their 1970’s song “Dream Police” into “Green Police” for the spot.

Great humor works because it has an element of truth in it, and this commercial reflects a number of moves already made by government. Indeed, traditional incandescent light bulbs will be going away after next year due to government edict and several regions of the globe ban the use of plastic grocery bags. Nanny staters constantly proclaim society needs to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

So far, though, America hasn’t gotten to the point where we have the government snooping through our garbage for contraband non-recyclable material or uniformed officers breaking into our backyards to check the temperature of the hot tub. But the spot is believable because we now can’t dismiss the possibility given the cap and trade legislation slowly seeping its way through Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency’s willingness to take advantage of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling allowing them to regulate carbon dioxide to promulgate new restrictions on commerce and daily life, all in the name of combating so-called manmade climate change.

It’s this climate fear that Audi plays to with their ad, on both sides. For those who believe they should do more to save the planet, the car is sold as an eco-friendly mode of transportation. On the other hand, those who are skeptical about our impact on the climate but believe the way of the future may well be reflected in the commercial might be persuaded to buy one simply to be left alone.

Obviously Audi is attempting to sell cars with this Super Bowl ad just as other sponsors pushed online services, beer, or snack food. While the vast majority of these ads were written and produced to be humorous in some sly way or another, the Audi spot will have a longer-lasting impact for its product because this humor made the consumer think.

Many found it funny only because it stretched what we believe into something of a tall tale. It’s when the tall tale becomes reality that the spot loses its humor, and in the coming decade we may see the Audi ad as prophetic of how society evolved.

Michael Swartz, an architect and writer who lives in rural Maryland, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

My latest LFS column to be released cleared on February 12.