Freedom Line Blog

Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been upping the ante for global warming hyperventilation for decades. After all, this is the man who said that global warming would leave parts of Manhattan underwater in 20 years — 22 years ago.

Yet Hansen, who enjoys mainstream respectability on the left, has trumped even his own debased standards for cluelessness with a recent round of remarks in China. Writing in the Washington Times, the Cato Institute’s Patrick J. Michaels has some of the gory details:

According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are “the barbarians” with a “fossil-money- ‘democracy’ that now rules the roost,” making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections.

…

Mr. Hansen has another idea to circumvent our democracy. Because Congress is not likely to pass any legislation making carbon-based energy prohibitively expensive, he proposed, in the South China Morning Post, that China lead a boycott of our economy:

“After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.

“The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction … or … accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being.”

It may not be necessary for climate change alarmists to make common cause with authoritarian statists the world over. But how many times does it have to happen before we can assume that it’s a feature, rather than an accessory, of the environmental left’s worldview?

For this year’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I’d like to suggest printing and reading King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  The work is part of the American literary and cultural canons, deserving rightful mention alongside other great statements of American principles like King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”

King’s public witness reminds Americans that ours is a nation of aspiration.  May his words inspire us to keep fighting for individual freedom…together.

H/T: University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center & MLKOnline

Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) have all joined the new Senate Tea Party caucus.  No word yet on movement favorite Marco Rubio (R-FL), or other stalwart fiscal conservatives like Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Politico notes that caucuses are more important in the House because of that chamber’s preference for majority rule.  In the Senate, one member can hold up or kill legislation if he’s willing to filibuster (or usually just threaten it).  Even so, it would be nice to see DeMint attract enough members to the Tea Party caucus so that the Senate has at least one institutional block against runaway spending.

Here’s more proof the Obama Administration is bent on destroying the sovereignty of states.  The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is threatening to sue South Dakota, Utah, South Carolina, and, of course, Arizona, unless their attorneys general say new state laws protecting secret ballots for union elections are unconstitutional.

The NLRB construes its enabling legislation to allow employees to unionize if a majority signs cards stating that desire.  That process is called “card check” and allows union organizers to bypass secret ballots that protect the identities of those who don’t want the union.  All four states passed laws last November 2^nd to guarantee workers in their borders of the right to a secret ballot.  Now, the NLRB says those laws conflict with current federal law, even though card check has not passed into legislation because it’s overwhelmingly opposed in Congress.

In effect, the pro-union forces running the NRLB are trying to do through administrative fiat what they can’t get passed through the legislative process.  Unless each state’s attorney general agrees with the NRLB in writing that the new law is unconstitutional, the NRLB will sue the states in federal court.  This is the same strategy the Obama Justice Department is using to challenge Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law Senate Bill 1070.

But tortured legal arguments can’t trump common sense:

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he believes the state is on solid ground. He plans to coordinate a response with the other three states.

“If they want to bring a lawsuit, then bring it,” Shurtleff said. “We believe that a secret ballot is as fundamental a right as any American has had since the beginning of this country. We want to protect the constitutional rights of our citizens.”

What’s next in Obamaland?  Test oaths?

H/T: Associated Press

Today, members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) chose Wisconsin GOP leader Reince Priebus to replace Michael Steele as chairman.  After a two-year tenure filled with allegations of mismanagement Steele needed to go.  With Priebus in charge, it would be an improvement if this is the last most people hear about the RNC chairman until the 2012 general election.

Love him or hate him, there is no denying that Newt Gingrich is the conservative movement’s best policy entrepreneur / political consultant / motivational speaker.  At today’s House Republican retreat, the former speaker laid down the gauntlet for restoring America’s greatness.

His speech before the new House majority framed the multiple crises facing the country in positive terms; calling for every full and sub-committee to designate 1/3 of their hearings to the theme of “Hope and Opportunity.”  The idea is to focus on solutions to America’s problems, such as inviting job creators to speak before committees on what they need government to do – or not do – to get America working again.

Most interesting to this writer is Gingrich’s call to redirect the 99 weeks of unemployment payments into a human capital program.  It would require recipients to enroll and complete job training programs, effectively turning welfare into workfare.  Moreover, the explosion of online education makes finding the right program easy to find and flexible to complete.  In today’s tech-heavy, certification-obsessed economy, tying the $133 billion spent on unemployment payments to job training is a great way to get out-of-work Americans on and off the welfare rolls as quickly as possible.

As a former radio spot writer for Gingrich Communications, I’ll admit I’m partial to Newt’s way of thinking.  The former speaker’s speech to the House GOP shows why.  With conservatives unlikely to move any major legislation due to Democratic control of the White House and Senate, Gingrich is proposing – I believe – the next best thing: changing the discussion from “the party of no” to “the party that restores American Exceptionalism.”

Let’s get to it.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  Can’t Blame Sarah Palin? Just “Blame the Guns”
Senik:  The Menace Abroad: Foreign Policy Threats to Watch in 2011
Ellis:  Chinese-North Korean Axis Heightening Need for U.S. Missile Defense Shield
Ellis:  California Redevelopment Agencies on Budget Chopping Block

Freedom Minute Video:  Liberals’ End Run Around the Consent of the Governed
Podcast:  Interview with Sara Carter, The Washington Examiner’s National Security Correspondent
Jester’s Courtroom:  Thieves Downfall: Snow Tracks

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

The election of a Republican majority in the House was supposed to stop the power grabs that were so frequent in the last Congress. But instead, all they have done is moved them out of reach of the voters. In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how liberals are now trying to advance their agenda through the unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

This week, the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal released the 2011 edition of their Index of Economic Freedom.

Once again, the facts speak for themselves:  Economic freedom means not only more prosperity, but also greater overall wellbeing.  In calculating economic freedom and ranking the world’s economies, the Index examines 10 criteria:  business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labor freedom.  The correlation between economic freedom and living standards is once again made clear:

Despite varying degrees of economic freedom across the regions, the relationship between economic freedom and prosperity remains constant within the regions.  Per capita incomes are much higher in countries that are economically free.  Not surprisingly, overall human development also thrives in an environment that is economically free…  Higher economic freedom induces greater overall human development as measured by the United Nations Human Development Index, which assesses the combined progress of life expectancy, literacy, education, and the standard of living.”

The good news is that 117 of the world’s economies improved over the past year, whereas only 58 declined.  For Americans, the bad news is that we fell from 8th to 9th.  On that front, note the Index’s comments about the  importance of reducing government spending:

Countries that reduced government spending had economic growth rates almost two percentage points higher in 2009 than countries whose government spending scores worsened, and countries with the highest rates of government spending had gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates 4.5 percentage points lower on average than countries where government spending was best contained.”

Will the new 112th Congress help reverse that decline?  As we approach the 2012 elections, that will prove a critical question.

Sara Carter, national security correspondent at The Washington Examiner, discusses WikiLeaks, North Korea and her time on the front-line in Afghanistan.

Listen to the interview here.

Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) delivered his State of the State Address on Tuesday night to a joint session of the state legislature.  Among several terrific proposals to make government leaner and more efficient, Daniels suggested the following fiscal policy:

And, to hasten the return of an even stronger fiscal position, I again ask you to vote for lasting spending discipline by enacting an automatic taxpayer refund. When the day comes again when state reserves exceed 10 percent of annual needs, it will be time to stop collecting taxes and leave them with the people they belong to. Remember what the Hoosier philosopher said: “It’s tainted money. ‘Taint yours, and ‘taint mine.” Beyond some point, it is far better to leave dollars in the pockets of those who earned them than to let them burn a hole, as they always do, in the pockets of government.

Republicans in Washington, D.C. and around the country should be listening to the Hoosier State governor who just might be the right man for the presidency in 2012.  Check out the entirety of Daniels’ speech here.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is finding a much more favorable response from Japan than China about how to get tougher with North Korea.  On the Tokyo leg of Gates’ weeklong Asian tour, the Pentagon chief “discussed the potential export to allies of missile defense capabilities both countries are developing,” according to reporting by Reuters.

CFIF recently profiled missile defense expert Brian Kennedy about the rationale for implementing a broad-based system of missile defense to deter not just a North Korean nuclear strike, but also one from China.  You can read the entire article here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos survey released today:

The U.S. public overwhelmingly opposes raising the country’s debt limit even though failure to do so could hurt America’s international standing and push up borrowing costs…

Some 71 percent of those surveyed oppose increasing the borrowing authority, the focus of a brewing political battle over federal spending. Only 18 percent support an increase.

But other than curtailing foreign aid and tax collection, which is supported by 73 percent and 65 percent of respondents respectively, the public is split on exactly what federal spending to cut.  And on the issue of entitlements (Social Security and Medicare specifically), which are by far the greatest contributors to the nation’s mounting debt, a large majority of Americans are seemingly saying “hands off,” according to the survey.

The U.S. National Debt is fast approaching the nation’s $14.3 trillion statutory borrowing  limit set by Congress back in February.

For all of the good that came out of the 2010 midterm elections, the biggest disappointment had to be the fact that Peter Schiff — CEO of Europe Pacific Capital and a devout student of Austrian economics — lost in the Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut.

For a taste of Schiff’s particular brand of straight talk (which would make John McCain soil himself) one need look no further than a piece he authored in today’s Washington Times, wherein he excoriates the entire Beltway establishment and uses political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg as a metaphor for everything that’s wrong with the political class. The piece begs to read in its entirety, but here’s one particularly fine excerpt:

This is how the game works in big-time politics: A potential candidate hires a polling firm to create a strategically written and scientifically executed poll to discover the buzzwords and simple campaign themes that “resonate” among voters. Consultants then boil down the poll results to a few “winning” message points and strategies. At that point, the modern candidate simply hammers away again and again at those sound bites. Winners are those who stay “on message” while knocking their opponents “off message.” It is of little consequence to the professionals that this process produces the kind of vacuous, unprincipled leaders who have brought our country to the doorstep of economic ruin.

If the American people are really tired of business as usual, they could do a lot worse than to summon Peter Schiff to Capitol Hill. Here’s to hoping he gives the Senate another look in 2012.

In the world of punditry, the difference between an ideological hack and a graceful partisan can be granular. On a daily or weekly basis, it may be nearly impossible to discriminate between the two. After all, even the most vapid political mercenary can summon reasonable talking points through a Google search and even the most discriminating scribes can at times fall prey to intellectual tribalism.

The acid test usually comes in moments that require grace and restraint. The tragic shootings in Tucson over the weekend presented such a moment. And Princeton economist, New York Times columnist, and liberal paragon Paul Krugman failed the test.

Krugman immediately took to his blog at the Times to decry the environment of hate created by conservatives, despite the fact that no tangible aspect of the Arizona story supported his thesis. It was an utterly revolting spectacle that revealed a man whose optic for all of life is partisan politics. But don’t just take my word for it. The Economist, a magazine which prides itself as the publication of note amongst the brandy and cigars class, comes down as follows:

In a blog item on Saturday, before any significant details about Mr Loughner’s motivations had come to light, Paul Krugman wrote:

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

This struck me as irresponsibly premature, and one might have thought that, given a little more time and information, Mr Krugman would change his tune, or at least turn down the volume. Nope. In today’s column on America’s alleged “climate of hate”, Mr Krugman reports that he’s been “expecting something like this atrocity to happen” since 2008, conjures in his fevered imagination a “rising tide of violence”, and spots his hated political foes behind it all:

[I]t’s the saturation of our political discourse—and especially our airwaves—with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.

What’s more, unless the ranting right reins in the kind of talk that leaves Mr Krugman “with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach”, “Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.” Welcome to crazytown, my friends, where it does not seem crazy to disgorge toxic, entirely evidence-free rhetoric about the mortal threat of toxic rhetoric. Does the man honestly think he’s helping?

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

That’s the question Reason’s Nick Gillespie puts to the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards, as they look at which governors have been the best friends of lower taxes and lower spending in the past two years:

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her show “Your Turn.”  Today’s star guest lineup includes:

4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:    Santa Rosa County Superintendent of Schools Tim Wyrosdick – State of Education

4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:    Brett Haley, Director of Indie Film “The New Year”

5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:    Quin Hillyer, senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator – The New Order (or Same Disorder) in Washington

5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST:    Dr. Bobby Eberle, GOPUSA – From Tragedy to Left Wing Attacks in Arizona

Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here.  You won’t want to miss it today!

Believe it.  In an op-ed for BusinessWeek, the scourge of concentrated wealth and power sees a lot to love in the new, Tea Party-infused legislators walking around Capitol Hill.  Specifically, Nader isolates five issues that could bring the movement’s limited government mantra into conflict with establishment Republicans.

(1)   Ron Paul’s fight to curb the power of the Federal Reserve

(2)   Heightened criticism for corporate welfare programs (e.g. everything from ethanol subsidies for biofuel to “green” initiatives designed to get federal tax dollars)

(3)   Trimming the military budget (Apparently, Defense Secretary Robert Gates already got the memo; sort of)

(4)   Renewal and expansion of the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, etc.

(5)   Whistleblower protection for bureaucrats and corporate workers

The limited government foundations of the Tea Party movement will make predicting voting outcomes this session iffier than when Republicans could be assumed to oppose any Democrat plan.  If necessary, we’ll see how many of the new Constitutionalists in Congress are ready to buck convention and vote their principles instead of their party.