Carol Swain: "The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party"

Carbon Tax smoke and mirrors

Raving Canuck’s Guide to the Trudeau Government’s Carbon Tax Smoke and Mirrors
by Graeme Gordon

"Naturally the Liberals won’t admit that this thing is meant to pump money into their coffers, so they’ve employed other methods of convincing the public that it’s a good thing."

An excellent guide.

As usual B.C.'s carbon tax, being the first in North America, is cited by various "experts" (proponents of carbon taxes) to be a fine example of the effectiveness of such taxes in reducing carbon emissions.  This has always struck me as a highly dubious claim for a number reasons:

1. StatsCan multi-year data show no significant differences in the pattern of fossil fuel consumption between BC and provinces without a carbon tax (the other nine). 

2. Fuel prices are notoriously inelastic.  Demand is relatively impervious to price changes. People use what they gotta use. 

3. BC's carbon tax (2.4 c/L in 2008 - 7.78 c/L in 2018) is utterly swamped by market price fluctuations. So, even ignoring point 2, trying to attribute consumer demand changes to the carbon tax is extremely difficult. From GasBuddy:

The "Trust Gap", "social licence" and the rule of law

Giant PR firm, Edelman, does a global annual survey to gauge of the "trust" the public has in its institutions: 1) Government 2) Business 3) Media, and 4) NGOs.

The people surveyed are categorized into three groups:
1) Informed Public 2) General On-line Population, and 3) Mass Population (all population excluding Informed Public)

The results are published in the "Edelman Trust Baraometer".

2016 Edelman Trust Barometer  Widening Trust Gap
2017 Edelman Trust Barometer   An Implosion in Trust! (Brexit, Trump, immigration/refugee crisis?)

Interesting, considering recent events but one does wonder about the validity of the results as a measure of "trust". If it isn't trust that's actually being measured, what is it? It's worth reading this bit of skepticism: "Can You Trust The Data On Trust?"

The surveys show that the "Informed Public", which includes the elites that control the four institutions, have much higher "trust" in those institution than the general public (ie the definition of the "trust gap"). Hardly a surprising result.

With the advent of Internet, the general public is in a position to be better informed and less subject to control of the message by the elites (especially the legacy MSM).  A widening "trust gap" might be a natural consequence of this.  However, a potentially serious downside is a diminishing respect for the rule of law and the constitution.  For example, certain of the elites (Justin Trudeau for one) have been pushing the fuzzy notion of "social license" ("governments issue permits, communities grant permission").  In the case of pipeline approvals this suggests that decisions by lawfully appointed and mandated regulatory bodies (like the NEB) are subject to being overruled by vocal interest groups ("communities") who have no legal status. Mob rule is "permitted" to supplant the rule of law.  Not good!

The science, politics and morality of climate change "action"

Professor John Christy, Alabama state climatologist speaks on science, politics and morality as they relate to climate change "action":




[via]

Laws are for the little people

Mark Steyn:

... As I've said for years - on radio, TV and in print - for me the overriding issue in American politics is the corruption. In the Obama era, we have seen the remorseless merging of the party and the state - in the IRS, in the Justice Department and elsewhere. Whatever one feels about, say, Scandinavia, they at least come to their statism and socialism more or less honestly. Not so the United States. ...  

... The left is serious about power, and they don't waste time. The idea that the most personally corrupt candidate in modern American history will govern as some sort of benign moderate centrist placeholder until the wankers who thought Jeb Bush was a superstar shoo-in come up with their next inspiration is utterly preposterous.

R.I.P. Jim Prentice

Sad news. Jim Prentice died in a plane crash last night:

Prentice, 60, was among four people on board a twin-engine Cessna Citation that took off from Kelowna bound for Springbank Airport near Calgary late Thursday evening. All four passengers died. One of them was Ken Gellatly, the father-in-law of one of Prentice’s daughters.

... The Progressive Conservatives lost the 2015 provincial election to Notley’s New Democrats and Prentice subsequently resigned as party leader, taking a job with the Washington-based Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in February 2016, where he worked as a visiting fellow.  

According to the Center, Prentice was working on a book about energy and environmental issues that was set to be published in late 2016. In June 2016 he joined the private equity firm Warburg Pincus as an energy analyst. 

R.I.P. Jim Prentice.

Climate change and the Big Debate

Will climate change come up as an issue in tonight's big Trump v. Hillary debate?

Take the poll.

BREXIT!

In Summary:



Doom, gloom and scare-mongering continue 

The Economist:
CBC:
Globe and Mail: Richard Nesbitt 
National Post: Andrew Coyne, John Ivison 

Realism and optimism

National Post: Rex Murphy, Conrad Black,  Terence Corcoran
PJ Media: Roger L. Simon, Roger Kimball

Marco Rubio on climate change: "it's always changing"

There isn't a single Canadian politician with the moxie to be this honest about climate change:



Bravo, Marco!

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton says she won't move to Canada when Trump wins the White House.  Of course not, she'll be in jail!

Not-so-settled climate science

Judith Curry:



Curry's testimony before the Senate Climate Inquiry:



Mark Steyn's statement to the Senate Climate Inquiry.

Update: For the record -
              - here is the full Senate hearing, and
              - here are Mark Steyn's impressions of the proceedings (he wasn't impressed).

The left's "dog-whistles"

Father Raymond de Souza: "Who, exactly, are the dogs in Mayor Nenshi’s imagination?"

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi doesn’t like the dog whistles in the federal election campaign. Who is whistling and who are the dogs?

“Dog-whistle politics” is what they call it, and it is not a lovely term. It comes from the world of campaign consultants, and that is not a lovely world. ...

... I object to the characterization of those who do not see the world in the same way as Nenshi cast in the role of the dogs.  ...

Nenshi and his ilk don't seem to realize that the term "dog-whistle" (likely an MSNBC host's brain-f*rt) is itself the left's dog-whistle signal to its bigoted dog-packs to attack their opponents with accusations of racism.

Buy the F-35!

It's still Canada's best bet as a replacement for the F-18:

... a competition would be a costly and largely pointless process.

... it is clear that cancelling the F-35 procurement will not result in tens of billions of dollars saved, nor serve any of Canada’s longstanding interests. The men and women who will operate Canada’s future fighter deserve better.

The above conclusions are based on the current fly-away cost per aircraft (using the F/A-18E Super Hornet as a comparison).  This is in contrast with  this partisan analysis which uses scary looking full life-cycle costing.

Fly-away cost is the simplest and most realistic basis for comparison.  Any aircraft of roughly similar capability will incur similar life cycle (operation, maintenance, supply and upgrade) costs.  The most important differences will be seen in the bang for fly-away buck. It's the way we all make decisions for big ticket purchases.

Unfortunately, politics, not cost or capability, will be the biggest factor in the decision, with Trudeau's promise to scrap the F-35 procurement sounding like Chretien's costly scrapping of the Sea King replacement in 1993 (we're still waiting for the replacement to be completed).

Hillary comes out against Keystone XL

But does so under cover of the Pope's visit:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has come out against the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. It's something she has spent months avoiding taking a position on — and her announcement coincided with the mass media event of Pope Francis' landing at Andrews Air Force Base.

 [Via PJ Media]

The great and not-so-great debates

The not-so-great debate
Last night's Macleans/Rogers leaders' debate was painful to watch. It was a heavily sloped (one against four) playing field with a lone Stephen Harper facing off against three opposition party leaders and a Media Party Trudeau cheerleader, Paul Wells, who "moderated".

Predictably, the Media Party's National Post front page opinion column by another Trudeau cheer leader was headlined: "Billed as a gaffe-prone bumbler, Trudeau surprises with solid performance".
 
Well, at least the "gaffe prone bumbler" part of that sentence is accurate.  Justin has no record to defend, except for his ultra-thin resume, his bumbling, his gaffes, his broken promises, his shameless collection of speaking fees from charities and schools while still an MP.  However, none of that was challenged last night.  If this had been a debate run by, say, Fox News professionals he would have had to answer for all of it.  But, like the NP and Michael Den Tandt, Paul Wells has been a Trudeau cheerleader from day one.  Neither Den Tandt nor Wells has ever exposed any of Trudeau's bumbling and contradictions to daylight for the public to see and assess.  They have instead, to their discredit, consciously covered for him and they continue to do so.

In spite of having to deal with four opponents, Stephen Harper still came out ahead.

"Mad Tom" Mulcair
Oh, and one thing about Tom Mulcair - his smile looked like it had been botox'd in place (though it faded towards the end of the evening).  Together with his wide-eyed stare this gave him a bit of a crazed appearance.  So, he's managed to change his demeanor from "angry Tom" to "mad Tom".

The great debate
After getting tired of wincing during the Canadian leaders' debate, I switched to the Fox News hosted Republican top-ten candidates' debate in Cleveland, Ohio.  Now that was something to behold.  Ten contenders for the Republican nomination on one stage in a two-hour debate, tightly moderated by three exceptionally talented TV journalists.  The moderators pulled no punches in grilling the candidates who in turn gave frank, concise and sometimes funny answers.  Unlike the Canadian debate, there was suspense, there was drama, there was action and there was comedy - it was absolutely fabulous.

Trump isn't the problem, he's just a symptom

Rex Murphy - Don’t blame Trump … blame America:

... he is an illustration of a problem and not its cause. Trump is not the swamp: he is the creature emerging from it. For however ridiculous and appalling his candidacy may be, it is no worse and no more ridiculous and appalling than the whole pattern of American politics at this time.

... Is his candidacy more lunatic than the idea of a third President Bush or a second President Clinton?

... Is he more manipulative than President “you can keep you doctor, you can keep you plan” Obama? Is he less venal or arrogant than Hillary  ...?

... Is he less repellent than false and theatrical rape hoaxes that have beleaguered American campuses from Duke to Columbia?

... Is anything Trump has said more staggering or depressing than the idea that in egalitarian America, a couple of small-time business owners can get fined $135,000 for not baking a cake? ...

... it is not Trump who should bear the responsibility for his success. It is the practice of politics itself and the political class (which includes, more and more, the news media) that has for so long abandoned honest representation of ideas, facing difficult issues with real language, which has so professionalized campaigns and elections that the sound of a human voice saying something it actually means is so rare.

...

Are Canadian politics any less dysfunctional than America's?  Would Trump be any worse for America than Trudeau or Mulcair for Canada? 

Who "created" ISIS? The Republican candidates' dumb "debate"

Mark Steyn with Hugh Hewitt:

...  Hugh was interested in various Republican candidates sniping at each other over which American president is responsible for "creating" ISIS: Was it Obama? Was it Bush? I responded:

... MS: ... in keeping Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leadership holed up in Abbottabad and various other places, what emerged free from al Qaeda control was next generation al Qaeda. And there will eventually be a next generation ISIS that will even be more barbaric and evil  ... even if we did nothing, even if we just behaved like Sweden, it would still be there. And to blame it on Obama or Bush or Coolidge or Chester Arthur is completely a waste of time.

... HH: [Sayyid] Qutb [Muslim Brotherhood leader and inspiration for al Qaeda] was radicalized by his time in America ... I'm not declaiming against Western culture. It simply is, if you're going to be provoked by people's lifestyles that are different than yours, you're going to be at war with the West regardless of whether or not we do anything with you.

... even when we weren't decadent, Qutb and his pals thought we were - and hated us anyway. I think the Rand Paul view - that Bush interventionism is responsible for the metastasizing of ISIS - will gain some traction with Republican voters ...

And aren't liberals perpetually blaming America and the West for provoking Islamist terror? You'd think they might stop and consider that for Qutb, al Qaeda and now ISIS it's Western "decadence" that inspires their hate - and the biggest world-wide purveyor of Western, especially American, cultural imagery is uber-liberal Hollywood with its non-stop, big-screen caricatures of American crime, sex, violence and "capitalist greed". Hollywood didn't "create" ISIS but it's sure doing more than its share to keeping the hate going.  And it's these same liberals who have the chutzpa to rant against Pamella Geller, accusing her of provoking Muslims with her relatively miniscule anti-Islamist campaigns.

What climate skeptics really think

Scottish Sceptic issues A personal apology to Obama and Cameron:

 Any Democrat, Tory or any other politicians who are still extolling the virtues of  Global ... will now know that they have been very mistaken: the public are no longer swallowing the
global warming lies!

... What a shame you didn’t listen to us sceptics

... Did it never occur to you that you were being led to attack vast constituencies of your own voters?

... This is what real sceptics, those real flesh sceptics who vote actually think:

... So, sorry Obama, sorry Cameron, sorry to the hate-mongers like Kerry, sorry to the gullible idiots like Milliband. Sorry Jo Swinson my own MP. Sorry … to every politician who were so keen to jump on the bandwagon of hate directed against vast swathes or your own electorates.
...

Google Chairman vilifies climate skeptics

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt confirms that Google is off the climate deep end:

In a recent interview with National Public Radio, .... Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said his company “has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts. And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. We should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.”

It's not surprising that an Obama advisor+bank-roller and green philanthropist would take a leftist climate hysterical position.  But it is disturbing that a company that has such huge propaganda power at its disposal has openly declared such blatant political bias.

New York State to ban fracking

The anti-fracking scaremongers score another win.  And it's all political:

... Fracking, as it is known, was heavily promoted as a source of economic revival for depressed communities along New York’s border with Pennsylvania, and Mr. Cuomo had once been poised to embrace it.

... For Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, the decision on fracking — which was immediately hailed by environmental and liberal groups — seemed likely to help repair his ties to his party’s left wing.

...  the acting state health commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, said the examination had found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking.  “We cannot afford to make a mistake,” he said. “The potential risks are too great. In fact, they are not even fully known.” [Risks too great? Not fully known? In spite of a million plus fracked wells across the country, over 60 years, with no significant adverse environmental effects?]

... As he traveled around the state, Mr. Cuomo was hounded by protesters opposed to fracking, who showed up at his events and pressed him to impose a statewide ban. Opponents were also aided by celebrities who drew attention to their cause. ...

CIA "torture" report's "pathological sanctimony"

Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz:

... [The Senate report] is "as good as any expression of pathological sanctimoniousness that has characterized every attitude towards every effort America has taken to defend itself.

... [It is] rooted to the hostility of the idea that America is anything but a flawed, deeply immoral nation.  You cannot go on the campuses of the United States without hearing this as the general opinion." ...