Interesting Items: Aug 15, 2011 Come visit us at our new web site: www.interestingitems.org Leave your thoughts, comments and opinions. We look forward to hearing from you. Interesting Items Alex Gimarc [email protected] Monday Aug 15, 2011 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue:
1. Frac 2. Recall 3. London 4. Salazar 5. EPA 6. Landlord 1. Frac. Obama’s Department of (No)Energy released a report from their Secretary of Energy Advisory Report calling for a number of new and improved bureaucratic intrusions into the use of hydraulic fracturing in oil and natural gas wells. Regardless of the fact that this technique has been used for over a half century worldwide and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has told congress that she knows of no use of fracing befouling local water wells, Chu’s pack of greens are busily writing reports like this to provide ammunition to Big Green lawyers for anti-drilling lawsuits. One of the recommendations was complete disclosure of all components of fracing gels. The EPA is also traveling this path, going as far as trying to prohibit the use of diesel in frac jobs. Imagine that. The EPA is trying to prohibit the introduction of refined petroleum products (diesel) into underground petroleum formations via a frac job. The report was met with complaints from both sides of the political fence, with the greens complaining the advisory group was too industry friendly and pro drilling people claiming it was too green friendly. Normally, this means that DOE has the composition of the advisory group about right. Unfortunately in this administration, where all the executive agencies are busily writing and promulgating anti-development and anti-energy policies as fast as they can, it is difficult to see how more regulations on fracing will help get more energy out of the ground. Chu’s Department of (No)Energy is a boat anchor, keeping this nation from pursuing its goal of energy independence. Time to shut it down and put it out of our misery. 2. Recall. Phase 1 of the never ending Wisconsin recall elections took place last week, pitting 6 Republican state senators against the union mob. Four of them won, leaving Republicans a thin single vote majority in the state senate. Turnout was heavy. This is not enough to roll back any of Governor Walker’s successful budgetary reforms. It is close enough to give unions and their lackeys in the democrat party a vehicle to threaten or entice any weak-kneed Republican senator remaining to switch sides. Of the two Republicans that lost in close elections, one had jettisoned his wife and was living with his girlfriend; and the other was in a democrat-leaning district that had been redistricted into a stronger conservative majority. This means that these two seats are very winnable next year in the general election. Unions spent over $20 million in the recall. Conservatives spent around $10 million. That money is not going to be available to elect democrats in 2012. Next up, is a proposed recall of Governor Walker himself. Note to the unions: keep throwing money down the recall rathole. Keep rubbing the noses of Wisconsin voters in your losses. Eventually you will end up like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail – out of money, airspeed and ideas. Python fans can watch a clip of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno 3. London. London erupted in flames last week with rioters plundering, burning and looting a wide area of the town. Police, who are centrally controlled at the national level did not respond with appropriate force and the rioting continued for days. The rioters were mostly young people. As the population has been disarmed and defense of life and property all but legislated out of existence, there was no effective public response reported. Interestingly enough, there was a run on aluminum baseball bats. By weeks’ end, tweets from Middle Eastern Wahhabi pot stirrers encouraged Britain’s large Muslim community to join in the festivities. For the most part, it does not appear they did so. The rioters claimed to be justified at rioting and destroying things that did not belong to them because of the miniscule budget cuts by Cameron’s conservative government. Liberalism is terribly destructive. It destroys the economy. It destroys property. It destroys capital. But of all the things it destroys, the most damaging is widespread destruction of human capital. Great Britain has a generation (or more) of feral youth – orcs, if you will – that have been told they are entitled to everything that everybody else has worked for and earned. Liberalism on this side of the Atlantic is busily doing the same thing in the inner cities and blue states. We are seeing the initial outbreaks of rioting in flash mobs and the knockout game. It will not be long before property and liberty over here are defended from the mob with deadly force. 4. Salazar. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been at the forefront on Obama’s war on energy. Unlike his cohort in crime Lisa Jackson at the EPA, Salazar has been slapped down several times in federal court for his malfeasance. The most recent slapdown happened last Friday as an Obama judicial appointee threw out new Interior rules slowing down environmental review of oil and natural gas drilling on federal lands. The expedited review rules were put into place by the Bush administration. Salazar replaced them last year. A pro-drilling group called the Western Energy Alliance took Interior to court claiming economic injury. Interior claimed there was no demonstrable economic injury. The Obama appointed federal judge tossed Interior’s argument and reinstated the old rules. This episode demonstrates the danger to be faced by the next administration as it tries to undo the myriad of job and energy destroying rules and regulations being written and promulgated by Obama appointees and hires in the EPA, Interior, NLRB, and other Executive agencies. Undoing this will require the assistance of congress. They had better be up to the task, for it will be a messy one. 5. EPA. Alaska Governor Sean Parnell weighed in against an expansion of wetlands regulations by the EPA last week. The EPA is changing the definition of lands subject to clean water regulations. Current guidelines limit the scope of EPA regulatory authority to navigable waterways and tributaries that feed into them. The EPA is pushing the definition to wetlands adjacent to those tributaries, which would cover every single body of water or mud in the nation. Application of the Clean Water Act on this wide basis will remove property rights to all land owners with any sort of wet spot, low spot, creek, stream, cattle tank, or dry lake, river or stream bed nationwide. Land owners would have to go to the EPA and the Corps of Engineers for a permit to do anything to or on those lands. This expansion does provide an interesting problem for the EPA. If they propose to regulate all flowing or standing bodies of water because they are navigable, how navigable are lakes and rivers up here in Alaska when they are frozen 6-7 months of the year? How navigable are dry creek or lake beds in the desert Southwest when there is no water in them? For that matter, how navigable are they during a flash flood? The State of Alaska will fight this in court until the Obama administration is gone and we get a friendlier regulatory environment. 6. Landlord. Obama’s Federal Housing Finance Agency is seeking input on a proposal to turn hundreds of thousands of Fannie and Freddie owned foreclosed homes into rental properties, making the Obama administration the largest landlord in the nation. What could go wrong? Imagine what could happen if you were renting a foreclosed home and the Obama administration didn’t like your politics. Gives a whole new meaning to the old line from Sixteen Tons: “I owe my soul to the company store.” What should be done to the foreclosed homes? Simple. Hold an auction. Sell them off. Shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Get Uncle Sugar completely out of the housing business, as they have managed to destroy the market. Sooner would be better than later. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: Our Home Page http://interestingitems.org/ Archives can be found at http://home.gci.net/~agimarc The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/ MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com Subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/ Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/ -- To join RichsRants, send email to: [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/richsrants?hl=en
