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Viewpoints
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Written by JR Damron
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 11:43 |
We have been told there are companies that are too big to fail, yet the federal government has invested billions of our precious tax dollars to prop up ailing giants of commerce to prove this theory. Two massive bailouts and a stimulus package have mortgaged our future in order to shore up those misguided beliefs.
While the jury may still be out regarding the soundness of those decisions on the business side, the jury of public opinion has already reached its verdict on the so-called “stimulus package.” It has not just failed, but failed miserably. It doesn’t take an economist with an MBA to see that spending $700,000 or more to create one job is a bad investment. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the biggest funnel ever created by the Feds to give states a blank check to balance their budgets. Talk about rewarding bad behavior!
These “formula grants” to the states are based on population levels and other criteria, and they have been used all over America to pay for questionable activities with little accountability.
It seems that we have forgotten that these grants were all about creating jobs, not balancing our budgets. Lately, we have even seen the numbers on the “progress” of this exercise in futility. It will take some massive spin to call three particular jobs created in Rhode Island a success. Some jobs have been created in districts that don’t even exist (New Mexico and Arizona for example).
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Written by Tom Wright, Voice from the Wilderness
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 11:42 |
At the end of the Cold War, collectivists began seeking cover under another cause which could be used to further their goal of world domination. The UN-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its first report in 1990 and Mikhail Gorbachev began his Green Cross project in 1993.
Since then, there has been much controversy as to the conclusion reached by the IPCC, Greenpeace and other organizations which were suddenly considered the foremost authorities on the environment. Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer comments that “Year after year, the evidence keeps mounting that most climate research now being funded is for the purpose of supporting the IPCC’s politics, not to find out how nature works. The ‘data spin’ is increasingly difficult to ignore or to explain away as just sloppy science.”
The IPCC does not conduct its own original research, but only reviews and publishes special reports relative to the interest of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is a UN treaty that considers the possibility of climate change being caused by man. This treaty produced the Kyoto Protocol.
Contributing to the IPCC data is the Hadley Climate Research Unit whose recently exposed e-mails have become the latest evidence of fraudulent science being used to further a political agenda.
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Written by Rick Lass
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 11:41 |
I read with interest your Nov. 18 stories dealing with how New Mexico’s energy policies. I was disappointed however, that in none of the five articles did the authors speak of the human health implications of carbon-based fuels (though one headline refers to “energy health”).
Carbon dioxide and other pollutants are known to cause widespread problems such as global warming and health problems, including asthma and other breathing problems.
Oddly, just after explaining the pit rule, which protects New Mexico’s water and soil from contamination — water and soil that we rely on to grow the food that keeps us all alive and healthy — your article quotes Bob Gallagher of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and Chris Fling of Tecton Energy decrying the ordinance.
Fling even implies that the New Mexico Legislature does not know what it is doing by protecting its residents. Funny, I thought the government’s role is to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its people, not act as a rubber stamp for faceless corporations who want to pillage our land and then leave the mess for us to clean up afterward.
The highlighted quote from Bob Gallagher that the Santa Fe ordinance requiring detailed environmental, fiscal, and other impact reports “has assured that Santa Fe County, its residents, hospitals, schools and governments will never see a penny of income from oil and gas” is simply not true. Mr. Gallagher has been around long enough to know that the revenues from the general and permanent funds are distributed to all New Mexico schools and other entities regrdless of where the oil and gas rigs are located.
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Written by Kim McMurray
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 11:40 |
Last month, the national unemployment rate reached a staggering 10.2 percent, the first time in 26 years that it has been over 10 percent. Today, Governor Bill Richardson released a draft of his furlough plan which will cut state worker’s salaries by 2 percent.
Within great challenges lie great opportunities, and our history of innovation and ingenuity is our greatest renewable resource. It’s time we tapped into that resource and created jobs here in New Mexico for New Mexicans — jobs that will rebuild our economy and protect our planet for future generations.
Innovation will never be more important than in the development of new ways to produce, use and save energy. By transitioning to a clean-energy economy, we are planting the seeds of progress and prosperity in this country.
Right now our economy is hurting, but the solution is right above our heads — the sun. More than ever, we need Congress to act to pass a clean energy jobs plan. The House of Representatives passed a plan in June that will benefit low-income Americans in particular. The clean energy jobs plan will fight poverty and help raise living standards right here in Albuquerque. One study estimates that energy efficiency alone will create more than 4,000 new jobs in New Mexico, slash the unemployment rate and reduce household living costs. This plan will help some of those hardest hit by the economic collapse, will slash pollution and start rebuilding our economy.
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Written by Cal Thomas
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Wednesday, 02 December 2009 11:39 |
Not all revolutions begin in the streets with tanks and guns. Some advance slowly, almost imperceptibly, until a nation is transformed and the public realizes too late that their freedoms are gone.
Such is the revolution now taking place in America. The ‘60s crowd has emerged from the ideological grave and is about to impose on this country a declaration of dependence in the form of government-run health insurance and treatment. It matters not what facts are known about this “coup,” because to those from the ‘60s — whether they lived in that decade or were born later and adopted its ideology — only feelings and intentions matter, not truth and results.
Why would anyone trust government — which has a difficult enough time winning wars — to properly administer health care? What track record does government have in living up to its economic forecasts and competence in running anything?
But this is about none of that. This is about liberal Democrats realizing their decades-old dream of complete control of our lives. Every move you make, every breath you take, they’ll be watching you. Except, of course, when it comes to terrorists who want to destroy America faster than the liberals do.
A different standard is applied to them.
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