Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

25 March 2009

The Coming Fascist Human Cost-Benefit Analysis

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must consider whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant and if it was, then it must regulate its generation under the 1990 Clean Air Act. No one in Congress in 1990 would have conceived of CO2 as a pollutant. Now the EPA has ruled that CO2 is a pollutant and is proposing new rules under the Clean Air Act for reducing CO2 emissions, which means for reducing the use of energy. Now, bureaucrats in the EPA will rule our energy use without input from Congress. To be more exact, Congress can have input with new legislation, but if that should not happen, then the EPA will go it alone without any real Congressional authorization. This makes Obama King, since he controls the EPA bureaucrats.

It appears that some of the less socialist Democrats in the Senate are balking at some of Obama's proposed budget calls for expenditures and for a cap-and-trade form of carbon tax. He may remove some of the restrictions he had planned to have authorized by Congress from the budget. This is little cause for relief, since he will be able to do very nearly as much mischief through EPA mandates and rulings thanks to the Supreme Court's foolish ruling in 2007.

Obama is planning to proceed with huge further spending in the budget on alternative energy, which supplements the large spending on alternative energy already in the stimulus bill. This is a very curious business, since alternative energy:
  • addresses the fictional problem of man-made global warming due to CO2 emissions
  • is itself fictional as a route to energy independence
  • is, and likely will long remain, much more expensive energy than that from fossil fuel and nuclear power plants
  • is not environmentally friendly enough to suit many environmentalists
  • cannot be implemented due to the hugely obstructionist work of some environmentalists to use the courts and local permitting authorities to stop all work on new plants, facilities, and electric power lines
On the obstructionist tactics at the local level, see this article in The Wall Street Journal by Ian Talley called "Green Push Faces Resistance From Locals." Among many other examples, this article provides confirmation of my assessment in my prior blog entry of "Wind Power Delays and Limits" of 24 March 2009 that no large photovoltaic solar facilties will be really allowed to cover large acreage in the Southwest, or anywhere else. The relevant quote from The Wall Street Journal articles is
Earlier this month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) wrote to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pledging to fight against building a solar project on 600,000 acres of federal land between the Mojave desert preserve and the Joshua Tree National Park. The area lies in a California-designated renewable zone where companies have applied to establish hundreds of solar projects.
So, why does Obama (and a large following of other Democrats) want to follow through with huge spending plans on alternative energy research, development, and building projects? Surely he has enough contacts with rabid environmentalists to understand that they are not going to allow alternative energy projects to actually be built on the necessary scale to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power. His reasoning is this:
  • He is not doing it out of concern for the environment - that is just the excuse for defalcating the private sector of its taxes and its obedience.
  • He loves the power of waving huge sums of money in front of those who are willing to try to develop alternative power solutions or who are simply happy to take the money fraudulantly.
  • He knows that by cutting off fossil fuel and nuclear power use, he can control the entire economy and push it into a state of socialist dependency.
  • He knows the constant fights for local building permits and in the courts will provide huge incomes for many lawyers, who are the Democrats' largest campaign fund raisers.
  • He knows that the required environmental inpact statements will provide work for huge numbers of environmental "experts" and many lawyers, again funding key Democrat backers.
  • The power to make decisions on which "environmental" concerns are important enough to stop hugely funded capital investments gives government authorities huge power over large sums of non-tax money, forcing energy companies to make huge campaign contributions.
In sum, Obama is pursuing the alternative energy and anti-fossil fuel/nuclear power thrust in order to gain nearly unlimited power in the fulfillment of his dream of creating a socialist United States of America. He will cut down the wealthy and make them grovel at his feet in a greatly reduced status.

Ultimately, the Fascist Socialist State will decide if each human being is worthy of life. Is this human being worth his cost as a polluter, including his use of fossil fuels, the methane he produces by farting, and the CO2 he breathes out. Is this human being worth his medical costs? Is he worth the space his housing takes up? In Nazi Germany, the mentally incompetent, the old, the Jews, the Gypsies, many of the Slavs, and many of the German opposition were not worthy of life and were executed by the powers who made similar decisions. It was no mistake when Obama tried to appoint Chas Freeman as the Chairman of the National Security Council who said that China's leaders had failed to use the force they should have early to control the protests in Tiananmen Square. No, this choice was very revealing of Obama's plans for Americans.

As an outspoken individualist champion, I will be one of the early ones to be executed in this future Fascist State. But, they will come for many others, perhaps you, especially since you are the kind who has read some of my writings. We must stop them now. This is not a matter of protecting some comforts, it is really about protecting life itself, especially thinking life.

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