Carson on the homeless problem in California

I watched Fox's interview with Ben Carson about the federal government (my tax money) helping out the homeless disaster created by the Democrats with all their building red tape which only helps the wealthy and well-placed. He held up San Diego as a good example with wrap around services. California has one of the largest economies in the WORLD--they can solve this without Florida, Montana and Ohio money just by cleaning up their own local laws. It’s the same reasons their forests and neighborhoods burn.  Environmental wackos, aka climate change alarmists.

“The leadership in San Diego has a grasp of the homelessness situation, which stems in part from rising housing costs,” Carson said. “To reduce homelessness in San Diego, the city has developed a housing plan which takes the appropriate steps to alleviate some of the impediments to the production of affordable housing.”

"Impediments" my granny's bean soup--it's mismanagement and swallowing all those "green" regulations.

https://fox5sandiego.com/2019/09/19/mayor-meets-with-ben-carson-about-homeless-services-funding/

Just in time for the Green New Deal

"California’s new governor, the prim and grim Gavin Newsom, announced that the project [bullet train] would be taken off its $650-million-a-month life-support apparatus and euthanized. The end of the project leaves Californians with no way to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco except a 90-minute, $149 flight." Kevin Williamson, Feb. 13

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/california-bullet-train-boondoggle-central-planning/?

I care about the environment, but not a carbon tax or silly waste of money

Let me be very clear. God told us to take care of the earth, but spending $100 trillion over 100 years to reduce the climate temperature 3/10 of a degree is not part of God's plan. Let's at least clean up the water in Flint, first. Let's stop releasing balloons into the atmosphere. Stop dumping trash from your car to the roadways. Stop removing the fence rows around the fields so birds have no place to nest. When you walk your dog, the one you say is just like family, clean up the poop. Stop lobbyists from urging Congress to compile new regulations for "sustainable" this and that which put a burden on the middle class and keep minorities locked up in deteriorating neighborhoods because the newer areas are doubled in price with environmental regulations. Let's stop killing the unborn, some of whom just might have the solutions. Then for those that do make it through the birth canal and grow up to attend college, stop their professors from force feeding them nonsense about race and sex.

https://www.fws.gov/news/blog/index.cfm/2015/8/5/Balloons-and-Wildlife-Please-Dont-Release-Your-Balloons

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/06/01/the-epa-is-not-the-fourth-branch-of-government

http://www.newsmax.com/JonahGoldberg/xxxx/2016/11/16/id/759200/

http://time.com/4441471/flint-water-lead-poisoning-costs/

Have you ever wondered about Agenda 21?

I've been watching and listening and wading through obfuscating language on "sustainability" for about five years. It's not conservation, or saving Lake Erie, or saving some bird species. It's a whole lot bigger than what God commanded Adam to do in Genesis, and it's not one party either, and Obama didn't invent it. He was just a kid when it got rolling, which this guy dates to 1987, but I date to Earth Day, 1970. It's pantheistic, atheistic, and openingly anti-capitalist. It's just a new road to statism, then globalism.

According to its authors, the objective of sustainable development is to integrate economic, social and environmental policies in order to achieve reduced consumption, social equity, and the preservation and restoration of biodiversity. Sustainablists insist that every societal decision be based on environmental impact, focusing on three components; global land use, global education, and global population control and reduction.

Smart Growth, Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Visioning Projects, STAR Sustainable Communities, Green jobs, Green Building Codes, “Going Green,” Alternative Energy, Local Visioning, facilitators, regional planning, historic preservation, conservation easements, development rights, sustainable farming, comprehensive planning, growth management, consensus.

Who is behind it?

ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (formally, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives). Communities pay ICLEI dues to provide “local” community plans, software, training, etc. Addition groups include American Planning Council, The Renaissance Planning Group, International City/ County Management Group, aided by US Mayors Conference, National Governors Association, National League of Cities, National Association of County Administrators and many more private organizations and official government agencies. Foundation and government grants drive the process.
Tom DeWeese

Global warming scare is science used as a political tool to steal liberties

They are predicting snow for Chicago this week-end and they are already skiing out west. Temps haven’t changed in a decade. But politics is politics. And the lobbyists and CEOs are getting on the bandwagon. But don’t you just hate it when speakers say, “very unique.” Folks, something is either unique or it isn’t.

Catching up with California

That's what Lisa Jackson, EPA, wants the rest of the country to do. From her speech analysis at The Foundry, Heritage Society.

"According to Jackson, climate change regulations have their “roots” in California, and much of what the President is trying to accomplish is guided by what California has already achieved. She touts that the United States is finally “catching up with what’s happening [in California]”

But what do we want to catch up to? A report by the American Lung Association from May 17, 2009 shows that Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Visalia, and Hanford all rank in the top ten of one or all three categories of pollution: short-term particle pollution, ozone pollution and year-round particle pollution. Maybe the results will come in the future but it’s highly unlikely the economic pain will be worth the negligible environmental benefits.

California’s unemployment rate for August 2009 was 12.2 percent, nearly 5 percentage points higher than a year ago and tied for fourth highest in the country. While supporters argue that thousands of green jobs will be created, David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation warns that green job growth is “grossly overstated because they don’t take into account the jobs lost elsewhere.”

The irony of mainstream environmentalists praising one of the most polluted states as a model to follow in one of the most polluted cities in America has not been lost on critics. It has become very clear that the concern is not so much for the pollution itself: mainstream environmentalists offer effulgent praise to California, calling it a “green state” not because it is clean but because it has installed stringent greenhouse gas regulations. The California energy plan should be used as a lessons learned model rather than hailed as a success.

In April she spoke to Black Enterprise, praising Van Jones, who is the unvetted, avowed Communist with a prison record, who resigned in the middle of the night when the president's closed circle of marxist appointees decided he was expendable (moved over to Podesta's think tank).

"We’re already seeing political and local leaders be very thoughtful about ways to really be transformative [with her share of $7 billion in ARRA]. Obviously the job part of it we touch, but we’re not leading. The White House has hired Van Jones from Green for All to be the special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the Council on Environmental Quality." Lisa Jackson, EPA

Cap and Trade--what a nice gift for workers--lost jobs

"The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that, for the average year over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses will be 1.1 million greater than without a cap and trade bill. By 2035, there is a projected 2.5 million fewer jobs below the baseline. Some of these jobs will be destroyed completely. Others will move overseas where carbon capping isn’t in their country’s agenda and therefore the cost of production is cheaper.

We’re not the only ones who project unemployment from cap and trade. The Brookings Institute, for instance, projects that cap-and-trade will increase unemployment by 0.5% in the first decade below the baseline. Using U.S. Census population projection estimates, that’s equivalent to about 1.7 million fewer jobs than without cap-and-trade. A study done by Charles River Associates prepared for the National Black Chamber of Congress projects increases in unemployment by 2.3-2.7 million jobs in each year of the policy through 2030–after accounting for “green job” creation."

Clunker schools?

Now that we're getting all those "clunker" cars off the road (destroying their engines so that the young, poor and entrepreneurial will not be able to use them, many of them newer than what I and millions of Americans drive everyday), to meet a specific social agenda of the Obama administration, what else can be declared a "clunker" so that we tax payers can bail out a specific industry, class, union, lobbyist group, or academic field and sink deeper in debt? How about schools?

"In February, the AIA [American Institute of Architects] led a coalition of more than 80 organizations and companies to press Congress to include funding for green, high-performance schools in the stimulus bill, and the AIA has advocated for legislation that passed the U.S. House to invest in school facilities." The Angle, July 30, 2009

Go Green to Get the Green

Here's the February issue of the International Masonry Institute blog--I see the first article is about terrazzo floors, and its advantage for "green" building. I was roller skating at the White Pines on terrazzo floors 60 years ago. Who knew we were so ahead of the times back then.



Until the recent building meltdown caused by our inept government regulations, a mason probably made more than a teacher or professor. The BLS describes the job here. But, you'd have to pay through the nose and join the union. "Only about 2 percent of cement masons, concrete finishers, segmental pavers, and terrazzo workers were self-employed, a smaller proportion than in other building trades. Most self-employed masons specialized in small jobs, such as driveways, sidewalks, and patios."

Update: I was wrong about the salary. See here for terrazzo floor installers. The median annual is about the same as school teachers, and the hourly is much lower.

Obama's people create jobs

"Washington trash trucks hauled away at least 130 tons of garbage after the inauguration of President Obama, with more to go. National Park Service workers picked up almost 100 tons on the Mall and near the White House. "

Yes, right on the heels of that inspiring rhetoric on the 20th, Obama's followers were busy creating jobs . . . for sanitary engineers. No volunteers, please. Pros (i.e., union jobs and civil service) were needed for this massive clean up on the mall after the inauguration. I don't know what happened to all the global goodness-me people who could have handed out canvas tote bags with the Obama logo in order for his fans to take their trash home to their own neighborhoods--or at least to the nearest trash container. One hundred and thirty tons!

Today's Obama Prayer
Father God, in the name
of your Son Jesus,
I pray for President Obama.
Increase his faith,
Help him remember his charge
and his heritage.
Pull him into Your Word
where he will find truth and righteousness.
Amen

Our purple and green bureaucracy

As the New Yorker cartoon by Frank Cotham says, “It’s always cozy in here. We’re insulated by layers of bureaucracy.”

Red state or blue, green bureaucrats are pure gold for large companies--Goldman Sachs and General Electric, for instance--they help regulate the little guy out of competition. Even back when I was a liberal writing about supermarket coupons and sweepstakes (1983), I noted that the best and biggest offers came from the largest food companies, and eventually through the cooperation of the penny pinching consumer, would put the small companies out of business and then raise prices.

Forward looking green businessmen like Henry Paulson (our Bush Secretary of Treasury who helped design our current bailouts) and his partner Al Gore (our Clinton vice president) in GIM will get rich from imaginary carbon footprints and cap and trade points. Both will lead a lifestyle of wealth and privilege the rest of us can only imagine, with you and me footing the bill, and Joe Biden leading cheers assuring us he‘s looking out for the middle class tax payer.

But the poor will pay the most. The US poor are rich by the rest of the world’s standards, but even they will be hurt by the green quicksand that drags down the economy. It’s only when you’ve got the basics of life taken care of that you can turn your attention to taking care of the environment. It doesn’t make sense to spend billions of resources fantasizing about miniscule amounts of this or that in our food, water and air when millions around the world go to bed hungry or are unable to work, weakened by malaria through the hyper-vigilant actions of environmentalists fearing the death of a bird egg. There are thousands of non-profits, religious groups and think-tanks dependent on keeping us terrified and anxious about all the products, foods, building materials, and vehicles in our lives. They "earn" their salaries and research funding with government grants. Technically, they aren't on the government payroll, but they might as well be.

Our green bureaucrats will eventually destroy American auto manufacturers, those three companies they first built by reducing competition (did you ever wonder where the rest of them went?) or taxing them out of the industrial Midwest. First the jobs building automobiles went south, and then to overseas workers, to be shipped back to us. The newer angle is to force on us cars no one wants, built in plants that could only please a large union work force, supporting the medical bills of millions of UAW retirees for a few more years.

Dear readers, the men and women we’ve sent to Washington aren’t stupid; but at their deep purple heart of heart on the fringes, they are socialists. They may reach to extol Reagan, but they stand on the back of FDR. Government will own it all--and 2008 will be the watershed year. And for those officials of either party--staff, appointees or elected--it’s a paid-in-full ride to the end. When they retire, or are voted out, they hang around in Washington think tanks or their branches and become lobbyists, researchers, writers or conference organizers, but nothing changes.

Other than being larger, with a bigger budget, do you see anything different between the Clinton bureaucracy of 1998 and the Bush bureaucracy of 2008? And they’re all back through the revolving door, along with a few newer Chicagoans funded by the sheiks from the middle east who banrolled the Clinton.

When the deep purple falls
over green regulatory walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in DC—
In the mist of a memory
you wander back to me
Taking my taxes with a grin...