Hypocrisy alert! Most environmental groups OPPOSE Washington state’s carbon tax initiative
Well, well, well. Even though pretty much every economist agrees that the most effective and efficient way to reduce carbon emissions is by placing a tax on each ton of carbon emissions, most environmental groups are actually against such a proposal in Washington state because the revenue from the tax would be used to lower other taxes.
In other words, protecting the environment is not the primary goal of these environmentalists.
Instead, their primary goal is to make the government bigger.
And this proves it:
Most environmental groups oppose Washington state’s carbon tax initiative
August 19, 2016
Many environmental groups have come out against an initiative in Washington state that would impose the first carbon tax in the nation because it is revenue neutral.
Environmental activists in Washington State running a campaign called “Carbon Washington“ successfully obtained the required number of signatures to get ballot initiative 732 (I-732) on the November ballot.
I-732 would impose a carbon-dioxide tax of $25 per metric ton on fossil fuels consumed in Washington State. If the voters approve the initiative, Washington would become the first state in the nation to impose a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.
The initiative aims to be revenue neutral, reducing the state sales tax a full percentage point and providing up to $1,500 per year for 400,000 low-income working households. In addition, in a nod to the fact the carbon-dioxide tax will increase the cost of manufacturing in Washington State, relative to competing states, the initiative effectively eliminates the state’s Business and Occupation tax for manufacturers.
Most environmental groups—including the Sierra Club, the Washington Environmental Council, Climate Solutions, and the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy—say they oppose I-732. They say rather than using the revenues generated by the tax to fund programs they support, the referendum returns the money to taxpayers.
“Revenues from its carbon tax would not be invested in ramping up jobs in clean fuels infrastructure or energy efficiency,” says the Sierra Club on its website.
Fox News reports the Audubon Society is nearly alone among national and state environmental organizations in supporting the measure. Speaking with Fox News, Gail Gatton, executive director of Audubon Society-Washington State, said, “I think for us, I-732 isn’t about money. It really is about what are the market-based incentives that will drive people to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Gatton also told Fox News, it’s the first time that she can remember in which the Audubon Society was at odds with the Sierra Club and other green groups in the state.
Battle Is for Revenue, Not Carbon Cuts
Some believe the rift exposes a secret about the environmental movement: Many regulations and green programs are about money, not protecting people or the environment.
“Are left-wing environmental activists more afraid of climate change or tax cuts?” said Todd Myers, environmental director at the Washington Policy Center. “Their opposition to this initiative makes it clear they fear tax cuts more.
“The same people who say ‘we can’t wait’ to fight climate change are willing to wait if the policy doesn’t increase taxes and expand government,” said Myers. “It is the type of hypocrisy we see again and again from the Seattle environmental community.
Robert Bradley Jr., CEO of the Institute for Energy Research, says the fact environmental groups are fighting the I-732 in Washington State shows they are against consumer choice.
“The anti-fossil-fuel Left is playing some strange new cards,” said Bradley. “Some now want nuclear no matter what the cost, and the latest is any carbon tax must add to existing taxes for new tax-and-spend programs.
“A clearer example of anti-consumerism could not be given,” Bradley said.
Hillary Clinton refers to Ku Klux Klan leader as “my friend and mentor”
In 2005, the Washington Post reported:
… a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the “Grand Dragon” for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter.
In 2010, Clinton referred to Byrd as
“my friend and mentor”
You can hear her saying it at the beginning of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryweuBVJMEA
The first debate should confirm or debunk the claim that Hillary Clinton is seriously ill
There have been claims by Hillary Clinton opponents that she has at least one serious medical condition that could impact her ability to serve as President. Clinton says the claims are false.
I currently do not take sides on this issue. However, once the first debate airs, I will pick a side, based on what she does or does not do at the debate.
This writer seems sure that she has a major illness. If he is correct, it should show up at the first debate:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/08/hillarys_coughing_and_the_debates.html
Hillary’s Coughing and the Debates
August 25, 2016
Hillary’s flacks maintain that she has no serious health problems, but there is an increasingly public amount of evidence that they are lying. Her coughing fits, for example, have gone on for minutes during interviews and speeches and debates. The leftist establishment media has totally ignored this running story, but there is one venue in which her uncontrollable coughing and hacking cannot be hidden from the American people: the presidential debates.
Because her health seems to getting worse all the time and because she has never appeared in a nationally televised presidential debate (indeed, even her few debates with Bernie Sanders were scheduled to avoid large audiences) the stress of standing before 100 million or so Americans watching her live should make the chances of her descending into minutes of coughing, gagging, and hacking while the world watches very real.
What happens then? Well, consider if she keeps coughing for two or three minutes, as she has several times. It will interrupt whatever point she has been trying to make and focus instead on her inability to speak. A debater affects audiences as much by his demeanor and voice as by what he actually says.
Images matter, as the haggard-looking Nixon proved in the 1960 presidential debates. He looked tired. He looked old. He had five o’clock shadow. Those who heard Nixon and Kennedy on the radio actually thought Nixon won the debate, but those who watched them on television thought Kennedy won.
The sound and sight of an old, fat, sick coughing woman beside a healthy and vigorous man speaking confidently and clearly can only hurt Hillary and help Trump. Whether this is “fair” or not we can leave to leftists obsessed with “fairness,” but most Americans, who want a strong and robust leader, eschew these silly notions.
Hillary’s uncontrolled coughing will be the story coming out of the debate, no matter what the candidates actually said, and that will make her health an issue that may not go away until Election Day. If voters go into the ballot booth really wondering if she is healthy enough to be president, that negates all the arguments her campaign is making that Trump is temperamentally unsuited to be president.
The greater danger for her is if the coughing jags show up in the first debate, then reappear in the second debate and the last debate. If Hillary starts coughing in the first debate, then she will be quite conscious of that problem in the second debate, which will actually make it more likely that anxiety will bring on another attack. If she has an uncontrollable coughing fit in the second or third debate, that may well be the biggest story of the campaign – except, of course, for another story.
If Hillary clearly appears to have serious health problems, then that means she and her staffers have been lying through their teeth to the American people. That is not news, but this would be the sort of lie that everyone can see with his own eyes and can understand with no help. Moreover, denying that she is really sick will compound the lying because ordinary Americans will think she is treating them like idiots.
So what could she do? Hillary could say that she really is sick and was hiding the extent of her problems but is still fit to be president. There are two problems with that. First, Clintons thrive by lying with a straight face and never coming clean. Admitting that she had been lying about that would grant new focus on all the other lies Hillary has told us. Second, who will believe that she really is healthy enough to be president, no matter what she says?
There is only one way this could fail to shift enough votes to win the White House for Trump. If Hillary starts coughing and it is clear that this is going on for a few minutes, Donald Trump needs to say nothing at all in words or body language except, perhaps, to ask sympathetically if she needs help or would like a short break.
Even the next day, the Trump campaign ought to say nothing more than “we hope Mrs. Clinton is doing better today, and we hope that she is able to well for the next debate.” Nothing snide, nothing editorial, and nothing more.
Shame on CNN for deceptively editing footage from Milwaukee!
CNN has deceptively edited footage to make it falsely seem like someone said the exact opposite of what they actually said.
Sherelle Smith, the sister of the armed man who was recently shot and killed by police in Milwaukee, said: (the bolding is mine)
“Burnin’ down shit ain’t going to help nothin! Y’all burnin’ down shit we need in our community. Take that shit to the suburbs. Burn that shit down! We need our shit! We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it.”
However, CNN edited out the bolded part.
In addition, CNN reporter Ana Cabrera falsely said that Ms. Smith was “calling for peace,” which is the exact opposite of what she was actually doing, which is that she was calling for people to commit arson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-8Cn6boqcA
How sad. This guy from Milwaukee doesn’t seem familiar with the concept of earning money.
A guy who has lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin his entire life complains that rich people aren’t giving money to poor people.
I feel so sad for this guy. Apparently, it never occurred to him that a person could obtain money by obtaining education and job skills and earning the money.
Who taught him to think the way he does? Was it his parents? Was it his teachers? Whoever it was that taught him to think like this, they were wrong.
I hope for this young man’s sake that he will eventually come to realize that what these people taught him was wrong.
Venezuelans make 36 hour round trip to Brazil just to go grocery shopping
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-venezuela-brazil-idUKKCN10L1KE
Venezuelans flood Brazil border in 36-hour grocery run
August 10, 2016
Government employee Jose Lara this month used some vacation days to take a long scenic bus ride through the verdant plateaus and sweeping savannas of southern Venezuela, but the trip was anything but a holiday.
It was a 36-hour grocery run.
Lara took an overnight bus and then a pick-up truck to get across the border to neighboring Brazil to buy food staples that have gone scarce in Venezuela’s crisis-stricken economy.
“Workers can’t even enjoy vacation anymore. Look where I am! Buying food for my children,” said Lara, 40, who was preparing to load 30-kilo (66-pound) packages of rice and flour onto a bus to complete a journey that takes close to 36 hours.
Venezuelans seeking to escape their socialist economy’s dysfunction are flooding into the remote Brazilian town of Pacaraima in search of basic goods that are prohibitively expensive or only available after hours in line.
Shoppers have been coming for months, primarily from the industrial city of Puerto Ordaz – already a 12-hour bus ride – but lately they’re also arriving from even more far flung regions across the country.
Venezuelans spend hours in supermarket lines. Many increasingly complain that they cannot get enough food to eat three meals per day.
Low oil prices and massive debt-servicing costs have left the country without foreign exchange to import goods, while price and currency controls have crippled domestic companies’ capacity to produce locally.
President Nicolas Maduro says the government is the victim of an “economic war” led by the United States.
‘THE LINE’
Under pressure from local residents after Maduro shut the western border with Colombian border in 2015, Venezuelan authorities allowed several temporary openings for similar shopping excursions in July. Colombia last month halted those trips after more than 100,000 people crossed in a single weekend.
The more remote Brazilian border was never closed.
In the Pacaraima, known to Venezuelans as “La Linea” or “The Line” because it is immediately across the border, cramped shops are now piled high with sacks of rice, sugar, and flour.
Products piled to waist height stand at the entrance of convenience stores, auto parts shops and even a farm supply store.
“It’s good business, but the price of everything is going up in Boa Vista,” said Mauricio Macedo, 26, who works at a family business that sells artisanal decorations such as clay figurines but for three months has been primarily focused on food items.
Venezuelan regulations require that staple products be sold for a pittance – a kilo of rice is set at the equivalent of $0.12. But obtaining goods at those prices requires waiting in long lines that are increasingly the site of robberies or lootings. That leaves Venezuelans reliant on the black market, where the same bag of rice fetches the equivalent of $2.20.
In Pacaraima, sugar and rice sell for about 40 percent to 45 percent less than what they would cost on Venezuela’s black market. The discount is worth it despite the cost of the trip.
Shoppers usually take a 12-hour overnight bus ride from Puerto Ordaz to the town of Santa Elena de Uairen. They then travel roughly 15 minutes by van or pick-up truck to La Linea. They spend the morning and much of the afternoon shopping, then head back across the border to catch another overnight bus.
“We’re in an economic crisis and I have to come to another country to buy food,” said Juan Sansonetti, 31, standing under the sun with a large sack of flour on his shoulder. “There isn’t much more to say, is there?”
Hypocrite Barack Obama gives his own daughter an exemption from the laws against marijuana which he has prosecuted so many other people for
All of the people cited below were prosecuted by President Obama for smoking medial marijuana, despite that fact that it was legal in the states where they lived.
On the other hand, President Obama refuses to prosecute his own daughter, Malia Obama, for smoking recreational marijuana.
The below image comes from http://radaronline.com/photos/malia-obama-smoking-pot-claims-lollapalooza-twerking-video/photo/1329712/
There’s also this video from YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm4PszxLSQ8
In May 2008, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt said that Obama would end DEA raids on medical marijuana in states where it’s legal. Also in 2008, Obama said that he supported the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs” and that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws.”
However, in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana grower in Highlands Ranch in Colorado, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Also in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City in California, a state where medical marijuana is legal. In July 2010, the DEA raided at least four medical marijuana growers in San Diego, California. Also in July 2010, the DEA raided a medical marijuana facility in Covelo, California. Then in September 2010, the DEA conducted raids on at least five medical marijuana dispensaries in Las Vegas, Nevada, where medical marijuana is legal. In 2011, the DEA conducted raids on medical marijuana in Seattle, Washington, West Hollywood, California, and Helena, Montana, all places where it is legal. In April 2012, the DEA carried out several raids on medical marijuana in Oakland, California.
In February 2012, Rolling Stone magazine wrote that Obama’s war against medical marijuana went “far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush.” In April 2012, Mother Jones magazine wrote: “The president campaigned on the promise that he’d stop federal raids on medical marijuana operations that were in compliance with state laws, a vow that Attorney General Eric Holder repeated after the election. But then the Obama administration raided more than 100 dispensaries in its first three years and is now poised to outpace the Bush administration’s crackdown record.” In May 2012, the Washington Post wrote: “Obama has become more hostile to medical marijuana patients than any president in U.S. history.” In May 2012, U.S. Congressperson Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said she had “strong concerns” about Obama’s forced closure of five medical marijuana facilities in Pelosi’s congressional district. In April 2012, commenting on Obama’s crackdown on medical marijuana, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) said, “I’m very disappointed… They look more like the Bush administration than the Clinton administration.”
In July 2012, federal prosecutors filed civil forfeiture actions against Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland, CA, which claims to be the world’s largest, and which claims to serve more than 100,000 medical marijuana patients. In April 2012, federal agents raided Oaksterdam University, an educational institution in Oakland, CA, which teaches people about medical marijuana. In April 2012, federal agents raided a medical marijuana facility which had been serving 1,500 patients near Lake Elsinore, CA. In June 2012, the Obama administration filed asset-forfeiture lawsuits against two landlords who rented their buildings to medical marijuana stores in Santa Fe Springs, CA. The Obama administration also sent warning letters which threatened similar legal action to dozens of other, nearby landlords. During the first seven months of 2012, the DEA shut down 40 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado, all of which had been operating in compliance with state and local law.
In April 2013, the DEA raided four medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, California. Also in April 2013, the DEA raided a medical marijuana dispensary in San Diego, California. In July 2013, the DEA conducted multiple medical marijuana raids in Washington state, including the cities of Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle. In August 2013, the DEA raided People’s Choice Alternative Medicine, a medical marijuana facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In October 2013, the DEA raided 28 medical marijuana facilities in Michigan. In November 2013, the DEA raided 12 medical marijuana facilities in Denver, Colorado.
In April 2014, the DEA raided four medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver, Colorado. In June 2014, DEA agents visited the homes and offices of doctors in Massachusetts who had written prescriptions for medical marijuana, and threatened to confiscate their federal licenses to prescribe certain medications if they did not stop writing prescriptions for medical marijuana. In October 2014, the DEA raided two medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, California.
In May 2012, ABC News reported that during Obama’s youth, he often smoked large quantities of recreational marijuana. Obama’s marijuana smoking wasn’t even medical – it was recreational. And yet now, he is taking large scale, widespread action to prevent people with AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, and other illnesses, who have prescriptions from their doctors, from using their prescription medicine – how cold hearted can a person be?
Venezuelan police threaten to put BBC reporter in jail if he doesn’t delete video footage of customers waiting in line for 12 hours at a supermarket
The BBC reports:
Thrown out of a Venezuelan supermarket by police
July 28, 2016
Shortages and the failure of systems to distribute goods make shopping for the essentials of daily life a huge challenge for many Venezuelans.
In one supermarket, where shoppers have been queuing for up to 12 hours to buy food, BBC reporter Vladimir Hernandez is surrounded by police and told to leave.
The crowd of shoppers shouts, “Let them film!” but the police threaten to hold the crew overnight in a police cell unless they delete their footage.
Here is the video footage in question:
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 