WHITE HOUSE MASTER TO SLASH EXEC PAY

“He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. He has vowed to improve government efficiency but does not have the chief performance officer he promised.

‘If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,’ said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, which tracks appointments.”

Unlike pretty much every other Hopenchange economic policy, not only did this one work, it worked better than expected. And yet, I can’t help thinking there’s a lesson in the fact that a centrally planned program budgeted to run through the end of October went bust in, er, seven days. That’s some miscalculation — not unlike the miscalculation that promised unemployment no higher than eight percent once we pinched that $787 billion loaf known as the stimulus. And naturally, the program came buried in so much bureaucracy and paperwork that some dealers gave up on it despite the amazing business it drummed up.

Ah well. I’m sure none of that will happen with national health care.

President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his stimulus package to building a new green-based economy rich in renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon. But despite the price tag, not one green job yet exists. It comes down to a problem of etymology. No one can yet agree on what a green job actually is.

The World's First LED Interior-Lighted Treehouse

That is, if you believe the human-caused Global Warming hypothesis. But in any case, with electrical rates soaring and expected to continue going up, anything that saves more than two thirds of energy use is good.  Located In California, the treehouse pictured above was completed in May 2009 and is, I believe, the world’s first treehouse with interior Light-Emitting Diode (LED) lighting. There is a UK-based company that sells treehouse kits, some of which have outside decks. Their deck kits have LED lights you can mount in the decks to light the house exterior, but they have no internal LED lighting. I claim the above as the world’s first. The LED light engine is mounted in the center, on the ceiling, and provides excellent white interior light equivalent to a 100-Watt incandescent light bulb, but uses only ~13W.

What does this have to do do with politics? Once again, it is the Conservative who actually goes out and implements energy-saving technology in a practical way, at their own expense. Even in a small way like this  it is action. Frauds such as AlGore  just talk about it while using it to get rich and dupe others into supporting them.

This saves 87% of the electrical energy that would have been used with incandescent lighting.  Plus NO toxics: No Lead, no Mercury!

Night Photo with LED Light Engine Visible

On Friday, as I drove back from my southern California office north on I-5, I witnessed it firsthand seeing for myself what many are now calling the Congress-created Dust Bowl.

Of course, global warming obsessed media, when they bother to report this dire situation, typically blame the problem on California’s drought.

Fortunately, Fox News viewers know the truth, as on Friday, for the second time in two months (see Brad Wilmouth’s “FNC: Drought-Stricken Farmers Lose Fight for Water to Endangered Fish“), Sean Hannity informed the nation what the real cause is — the Endangered Species Act and a federal judge’s decision in August 2007 to save a little-known fish called the Delta smelt

Tax on international air travel could fund 'climate change' fight...

Unemployment Rate Gallops Ahead of Expectations...

Big government spending programs -- having opposite desired effect...

Obama's global warming bill 'patently absurd'; 'How do you control the weather?'

Canadian cities angered over 'Buy American' rule...

Confusion...

Canada passes 'Buy Canada' resolution...

Kennedy bill would make employers provide care...

Obama to take more active role...

Obamacare plan finally released; Update: Goodbye, 4th Amendment

Rep. Jason Chaffetz is seeking original cosponsors for the Cap-and-Trade Tax Disclosure Act which will require utility companies to disclose and separately itemize the impact of cap-and-trade taxes on each customer’s utility bill. Sound tax policy requires that taxes should be visible to taxpayers and not buried in the cost of items we purchase. With this legislation, every utility customer – residential and business — will be able to identify the cost of cap-and-trade emissions that the utility is passing on to the customer. As regulated entities, utilities pass taxes on to customers, unlike unregulated companies that can also pass taxes on to shareholders and employees. The cap-and-trade tax is potentially the largest tax increase ever imposed. According to the Administration’s own budget document, the cost will be at least $646 billion over an eight-year period. No matter where you stand on the issue of cap and trade, both sides can agree that full disclosure and transparency are good public policy.

Call your rep and ask them to sign on (and make a special effort to contact the Democrats who have publicly criticized the national eco-tax): 202-224-3121.

Pssst, President Obama: This is what transparency looks like.

***

And this is what transparency looks like, thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint:

The US Senate has finally reversed its longstanding policy of restricting public access to raw data about how Senators vote, and is now posting XML of votes on Senate.gov.

This move follows a recent initiative, led by Senator DeMint, to request the Senate Rules Committee post the votes data.

While this issue may seem to be arising out of the blue, with recent coverage in the Politico, Senate votes XML have been brooched as a perennial roadblock. It would seem, however, that the number of people affected by the restriction grew to the point where they could no longer be ignored, and common sense prevailed.

Just as the recent rewriting of Web use restrictions has led to creative Internet use among Members of Congress, the new votes data should help fuel a renaissance of vote analysis and visualization. XML encourages advanced processing and analysis, making votes legible to both humans and computers, and giving us a new view on how Senators vote.

When $27 billion is at stake, some companies would pay big bucks to win a PR battle, but one side of an environmental lawsuit doesn’t have to, since CBS is pushing its position for free.

On CBS’s May 3 “60 Minutes,” correspondent Scott Pelley, who once compared global-warming skepticism to Holocaust denial, gave the plaintiff of a $27-billion frivolous lawsuit against Chevron a public relations victory with his report.