budbromley

United States Senate

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Dear Senators,

Nominee Ernest Moniz’s stated positions on energy are in direct conflict with the mission of the Energy Department, which is to “ensure America’s security and prosperity.” He is an ideological appointee by President Obama and not aligned with current science or the needs of the nation.  He is not an appropriate nominee.

Last year President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of DOE, Ernest Moniz, told the Switch Energy Project that he supports a carbon price that would substantially increase (double or triple) energy costs due to the added cost for sequestration of carbon dioxide. However, scientific evidence for the need for sequestration of carbon dioxide is very weak and weakens more every day.  That evidence is based primarily on computer models which are failing to confirm that carbon dioxide is a trigger for significant warming.  On the contrary, real world evidence is confirming that carbon dioxide is not a controlling trigger for catastrophic warming.

“If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades, well, that could double; it could eventually triple…. I think inevitably if we squeeze down on carbon, we squeeze up on the cost, it brings along with it a push toward efficiency; it brings along with it a push towards clean technologies in a conventional pollution sense; it brings along with it a push towards security. Because after all, the security issues revolve around carbon-bearing fuels.” ~ Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz, MIT professor.  (Video here: http://www.switchenergyproject.com/experts/Ernie-Moniz#/moniz-energy-expert-on-carbon-price )

Carbon dioxide concentration is continuing its long term increasing trend, but the global temperature trend has not increased as the alarmists predicted.  Mr. Moniz’s view is technically in conflict with MIT’s atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology Professor Richard Lindzen, who has testified before multiple Congressional committees over many years that clouds and water vapor are the dominant greenhouse gas, not carbon dioxide.

Moniz is not an appropriate nominee to head DOE. Do not confirm this nominee.  The nation needs a Secretary who will direct resources to achieve lower cost energy and energy independence, as forecast by the National Intelligence Council (link below).  Carbon sequestration is a very expensive and unnecessary solution in search of a carbon dioxide problem that has not been shown to actually exist, though the federal government has spent billions of dollars on grants and programs attempting to show that carbon dioxide is a problem.  Moniz’s views align with those of outgoing Secretary Chu and President Obama’s, as well as the President’s nominee to head EPA, which have led to waste of billions of taxpayer dollars on bankrupt green energy technologies and companies.  Mr. Moniz’s views would support plunder of the public and treasury in support of regulations, taxes and schemes for trading carbon credits and derivatives which would enrich traders.      

The forecast “Global Trends 2030” by the US National Intelligence Council, predicts energy independence and surplus for the U.S.

“US Energy Independence:  With shale gas, the US will have sufficient natural gas to meet domestic needs and generate potential global exports for decades to come. Increased oil production from difficult-to-access oil deposits would result in a substantial reduction in the US net trade balance and faster economic expansion. Global spare capacity may exceed over 8 million barrels, at which point OPEC would lose price control and crude oil prices would collapse, causing a major negative impact on oil-export economies.” http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/GlobalTrends_2030.pdf

Instead of policies to enable the low energy costs we need to recover from our ongoing economic weakness, and energy independence we need for national security, Mr. Moniz’s policies would continue to suppress the hydrocarbon energy sector of our economy based on an unproven theory which requires new, expensive and unreliable green technologies which have not been able to show that they reduce global warming.  His policies would increase energy costs for Americans despite abundant U.S. hydrocarbon energy supplies and technologies which can be expected to reduce energy costs.     

Sincerely,

Clare Livingston Bromley, III

“It is important to emphasize that the lesson the students are drawing from their studies [in the last 3 decades] is simply untrue. History and the study of cultures do not teach or prove that values or cultures are relative. All to the contrary, that is a philosophical premise that we now bring to our study of them. This premise is unproven and dogmatically asserted for what are largely political reasons. History and culture are interpreted in the light of it, and then are said to prove the premise. Yet the fact that there have been different opinions about good and bad in different times and places in no way proves that none is true or superior to others. To say that it does so prove is as absurd as to say that the diversity of points of view expressed in a college bull session proves there is no truth. On the face of it, the difference of opinion would seem to raise the question as to which is true or right rather than to banish it. The natural reaction is to try to resolve the difference, to examine the claims and reasons for each opinion…Herodotus was at least as aware as we are of the rich diversity of cultures. But he took that observation to be an invitation to investigate all of them to see what was good and bad about each and find out what he could learn about good and bad from them. Modern relativists take that same observation as proof that such investigation is impossible and that we must be respectful of them all…History and anthropology cannot provide the answers, but they can provide the material on which judgment can work…Historicism and cultural relativism actually are a means to avoid testing our own prejudices and asking, for example, whether men are really equal or whether that opinion is merely a democratic prejudice…One has to have the experience of really believing before one can have the thrill of liberation…Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment. The mind that has no prejudices at the outset is empty…Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy? …Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason’s power…Cultural relativism destroys both one’s own [relativism] and the good… Nature should be the standard by which we judge our own lives and the lives of peoples. That is why philosophy, not history or anthropology, is the most important human science…History and anthropology were understood by the Greeks to be useful only in discovering what the past and other peoples had to contribute to the discovery of nature.” ~ Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind.http://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-ebook/dp/B003719GL8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1365383024&sr=1-1&keywords=Closing+of+the+American+Mind

If you have money in a bank, then you are an unsecured creditor…you have loaned your money to the bank.

“Under the strategies currently being developed by the U.S. and the U.K., the resolution authority could intervene at the top of the group. Culpable senior management of the parent and operating businesses would be removed, and losses would be apportioned to shareholders and unsecured creditors. In all likelihood, shareholders would lose all value and unsecured creditors should thus expect that their claims would be written down to reflect any losses that shareholders did not cover. Under both the U.S. and U.K. approaches, legal safeguards ensure that creditors recover no less than they would under insolvency.”

Click to access gsifi.pdf

An analysis prepared for the Federal Reserve of the U.S. federal debt problem and possible solutions DOES NOT INCLUDE REDUCTION IN THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT.  The solutions include “confiscation of all physical assets,” “Slash Social Security and Medicare by over half”  (benefits for which most citizens and their employers have paid for in advance during their entire careers), and “68% immediate and forever increase in income taxes” and “Increase the combined employer-employee payroll tax from 15.3% to over 32%.” In other words, the government will do anything except shrink the government, their jobs, their budgets and their power.

“Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated Dec. 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making…” Full Story: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1306931?source=iphoneappmail

Social Security and Medicare: Scaling the Problem and Proposed Solutions.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve, December 2, 2005. Kent Smetters, The Wharton School & NBER.

Two Main Problems with the Traditional Federal Budget
(1) Substantially underestimates unfunded liabilities by ignoring long-term liabilities
(2) Is biased against reforms that would reduce these unfunded liabilities

Re: (1) Underestimates Liabilities
*Budget does not track many unfunded obligations
They’re “off balance sheet”
*Examples
Social Security and Medicare
Medicaid
Federal Employee / Military pensions
* Instead, the budget focuses on a particular unfunded obligation: public debt
* Debt Held by Public Misses almost $60 Trillion in Liabilities
* Public debt is only one component of government’s true Fiscal Imbalance (FI)
* FI = debt held by public + PV of all future outlays – PV of all future revenue = $63 trillion
* On 19 March 2013, debt held by the public was approximately $11.888 trillion or about 75% of GDP. Intra-governmental holdings stood at $4.861 trillion, giving a combined total public debt of $16.749 trillion. As of July 2012, $5.3 trillion or approximately 48% of the debt held by the public was owned by foreign investors, the largest of which were the People’s Republic of China and Japan at just over $1.1 trillion each.

*But are these obligations “real”?
*Yes: the only difference between these obligations and regular debt is the policy options available for dealing with them.
*Options for reducing explicit debt:
Monetize it (except TIPS)
Increase taxes
Declare bankruptcy
*Options for reducing implicit debt:
Hard to monetize (since inflation protected)
Control outlays, increase taxes

Easy Fix / Hard Fix
* Social Security: The “Easy Fix”
Smaller problem
Nature of problem is also easier since it is cash payment (e.g., “just” price index)
* Medicare: The “Hard Fix”
7 times large (new Rx plan imbalance alone is larger than Social Security’s imbalance)
Nature of problem is also harder since in-kind payment and driven by tech change

Why Haven’t Fixed Income Markets Reacted with higher interest rates?

Options for Paying for $63 Trillion
* Confiscate all physical capital assets in the U.S. (actually does not go far enough!)
* Increase federal income taxes by 68% immediately and forever, assuming no reduction in labor supply or savings
* Increase the combined employer-employee payroll tax from 15.3% to over 32% and remove the payroll tax ceiling (but don’t credit benefits)
* Slash Social Security and Medicare by over half

Reference: Social Security and Medicare: Scaling the Problem and Proposed Solutions.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve, December 2, 2005. Kent Smetters, The Wharton School & NBER.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government’s auditor, argues that the United States is on a fiscally “unsustainable” path and that politicians and the electorate have been unwilling to change this path. Further, the subprime mortgage crisis has significantly increased the financial burden on the U.S. government, with over $10 trillion in commitments or guarantees and $2.6 trillion in investments or expenditures as of May 2009, only some of which are included in the public debt computation. However, these concerns are not universally shared.[93 link below]

Converting fractional reserve to full reserve banking

The International Monetary Fund published a working paper entitled The Chicago Plan Revisited suggesting that the debt could be eliminated by raising bank reserve requirements, converting from fractional reserve banking to full reserve banking.[50][51] Economists at the Paris School of Economics have commented on the plan, stating that it is already the status quo for coinage currency,[52] and a Norges Bank economist has examined the proposal in the context of considering the finance industry as part of the real economy.[53] A Centre for Economic Policy Research paper agrees with the conclusion that, “no real liability is created by new fiat money creation, and therefore public debt does not rise as a result.”[54] [Links below]

http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States

http://www.pgpf.org/Special-Topics/Download-the-Citizens-Guide.aspx

[50] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (October 21, 2012) “IMF’s epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers” The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/9623863/IMFs-epic-plan-to-conjure-away-debt-and-dethrone-bankers.html
[51] Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof (August 2012) “The Chicago Plan Revisited” International Monetary Fund working paper WP/12/202 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12202.pdf
[52] “Debt-Deflation versus the Liquidity Trap: the Dilemma of Nonconventional Monetary Policy” CNRS, CES, Paris School of Economics, ESCP-Europe, October 23, 2012 http://hal.cirad.fr/docs/00/74/79/04/PDF/12064.pdf
[53 “Credit and debt in Economic Theory: Which Way forward?” “Economics of Credit and Debt workshop, November 2012 http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=thorvaldgrung_moe
[54] “The economic crisis: How to stimulate economies without increasing public debt”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, August 2012 http://www.cepr.org/pubs/PolicyInsights/PolicyInsight62.pdf
[93] Lynch, David J. (Mar 21, 2013). “Economists See No Crisis With U.S. Debt as Economy Gains”. Bloomberg. Retrieved 25 March 2013. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-22/economists-see-no-crisis-with-u-s-debt-as-economy-gains.html

The US is a nation of laws, a republic to be specific.  We should not be a nation of men acting out our emotions and populist whims. The various states of our republic and the communities within those states are well within their rights to make such laws which they believe will sustain and preserve their communities.  Our republic protects some minorities but is not required to condone, agree or support them, and in fact, our republic and our various states can and do reject many behaviors which some people wish to be rights.  

States and communities frequently decide that they prefer certain behaviors and they prohibit certain behaviors.  For example, in the US the states have decided that they do not want a man or woman to have several spouses (polygamy) and the states have decided that sexual activity with minor children is prohibited. On the other hand, in Muslim countries both of these example behaviors are commonly allowed and no doubt some Muslim Americans wish these behaviors were allowed in the US.  Similarly, in the US the states and communities within the states are well within their rights to prefer families with the traditional structure of one man and one woman, a structure that has been preferred by civilizations for hundreds of thousands of years.  

The DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) was passed by a majority of US Congress and signed into law by the President.  Similar laws exist in most but not all US states. President Obama and his Attorney General (who set a new precedent, is already charged with contempt of Congress) are derelict in their sworn duties to enforce US law.  The people of California passed an Amendment to California’s Constitution which defined marriage in California as between one man and one woman.  California also provides equal legal rights to civil unions of same sex couples.  Jerry Brown, previously as California’s elected Attorney General and now as California’s Governor, is clearly derelict of duty by refusing to enforce  California law and refusing to defend California’s law before the California and US Supreme Courts.  Jerry Brown and Barack Obama are refusing to do their duty as elected public servants.  These are impeachable offenses. Their actions and inactions favor the desires of a minority against laws which have been duly passed by the representatives of the majority, and also in California’s case against a direct referendum (Prop 8) of the people of California which was necessary to change the state’s Constitution after a judge ruled against the defense of marriage law duly passed by California’s legislature.  The President and the Governor of California, acting out their anti-social behavior, stand in contempt of the very people and the Constitutions they are sworn to serve and protect.  

Homosexuality, polygamy, pedophilia and other such behaviors existed when the founders and framers designed our republic of laws, and the US Constitution is silent about these behaviors, which means according to the US Constitution, these matters are left to the various states to decide.  Do not forget that the states came together and created the Constitution and the federal government.  Today, the minority gay community is attempting to force acceptance of its statistically non-normal and non-self-sustaining sexual behavior onto the community at large.  They are openly criticizing the traditional family values practiced by the majority of Americans and practiced for hundreds of thousands of years as well as challenging and creating laws and propaganda designed to persuade the majority that their sexual behaviors should be accepted by the majority as normal.  Already in California teachers and individuals may be taken to court for hate crimes for merely directing a child to the sexually appropriate bathroom.

IMHO, the DOMA is unconstitutional under the US Constitution and California’s Prop 8 should be upheld as an Amendment to the California Constitution.  If the gay community wishes to be tolerated in this republic, then it should respect the will of the communities within which they reside instead of attempting to demonize their communities.       

Sending in the drones is kicking a nest of hornets. Let them bite themselves. Do not forget that WE have killed many of their innocents…shooting down their airliner, feeding WMD to Saddam, etc. That does not excuse the 200+ millions THEY have killed in the name of Allah, or the obvious fact that the preeminent goal of THEIR culture/government/religion is world domination. Let them fight among themselves. Time to circle the wagons and steel the defense, and that must include getting our own so-called intellectuals and media on our side…otherwise the ideas of freedom die.

If you imagine that you are informed, please watch this 1.3 hour video report by National Geographic.  Please.

Secretary of State John Kerry in his first major foreign policy speech at the University of Virginia discussed tackling climate change by collective action and more investment which he says are needed to stop it.

Kerry is attempting to support Obama’s recent proposal for taxes on carbon. The Obama administration has already wasted $80 billion on climate change initiatives since 2009, billions going to “green” companies which donated to Democrats and which have already gone bankrupt and billions to grants and projects which have tried unsuccessfully to connect human activity to climate change. These investments will have no perceivable effect on climate. Indeed, collective action is necessary: only WE together can stop this theft of America’s future.

“We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate,” said Kerry.

“And let’s face it – we are all in this one together. No nation can stand alone. We share nothing so completely as our planet. When we work with others – large and small – to develop and deploy the clean technologies that will power a new world, we’re also helping create new markets and new opportunities for America’s second-to-none innovators and entrepreneurs to succeed in the next great revolution.”

Kerry called for collective action to deal with this problem. “So let’s commit ourselves to doing the smart thing and the right thing and truly commit to tackling this challenge,” he said. “Because if we don’t rise to meet it, rising temperatures and rising sea levels will surely lead to rising costs down the road. If we waste this opportunity, it may be the only thing our generations are remembered for. We need to find the courage to leave a far different legacy.”

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/130220_SECRETARY%20KERRY.pdf

Obama’s carbon tax is blasted in Investors Business Daily:

“A nonexistent crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and in justifying his proposal for a cap-and-tax scheme, President Obama claimed in his State Of The Union that “the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15.” He was lying.”

“The fact is, according to new data released quietly last October by Britain’s Met Office, the world’s natural post-Ice Age warming trend stopped about 16 years ago. From the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.”

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021313-644355-obama-unveils-job-killing-cap-and-tax-plan.htm?p=full

Scientists in Belgium have shown that more CO2 is better for the planet.

From the abstract, “Overall, crops benefit from elevated [CO2] by improving water productivity (+23% for biomass production and +27% for yield production), which is achieved through production increases in biomass (+15% for aboveground biomass) and yield (+16%), in combination with a decrease in seasonal evapotranspiration (–5%).”

http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c054p035.pdf

Death from the Skies—Targeted International Assassinations via U.S. Drones

by ANN SPECKHARD, PH.D. February 20, 2013

With John Breenan-considered by many to be the mastermind behind U.S. drone policy-nominated to be the next head of the CIA, we are hearing a lot about drones. And unlike those upon who drones reign down terror-it’s not the high pitch of an overhead motor that we are hearing. Instead the discussion is all about kill rates, kill versus capture, terrorizing innocents and an absence of transparency about policy-particularly when Americans and minors are considered eligible targets.

Surgically precise and effective-drone strikes are argued by many to be useful in decapitating known terrorist leadership. However the truth is that noncombatants are also being effected and the human toll of that fact may be causing as much threat to our national security as live terrorist leaders also pose.

Much of the damage caused by U.S. drone strikes is clouded in secrecy and the U.S. government rarely acknowledges the full extent of civilian casualties.  And how civilians are categorized is also arguable-for instance all adult males in the strike vicinity are often named as militants.  Data reported by the New American Foundation, informs that in Pakistan alone drones have killed between 1,953 to 3,279 persons since 2004-with between eighteen and twenty-three percent of these being civilians.  (In 2012, the hit rate on militants got better and the civilian kill rate went down to ten percent.)  The New American Foundation also estimates that of the 646 to 928 people killed in Yemen (in a combination of air and drone strikes) four to eight percent were civilians.

In addition to the civilian kills, researchers are finding that armed drones hovering over Pakistani communities day and night and suddenly striking homes, vehicles and public spaces without warning also causes considerable anxiety and psychological trauma in the daily lives of ordinary civilians-most notably children.  When families fear gathering for funerals; tribal leaders shun gathering in groups-even for tribal dispute resolution; children are kept indoors and community members dread public assemblies, a breakdown in society occurs and anti-American sentiment is greatly fostered.  Likewise when the U.S. becomes known for striking an area multiple times killing those who gather around the first strike-a behavior that unfortunately mirrors al Qaeda type strikes-and rescue and even humanitarian workers fear aiding injured victims-both societies-theirs and ours is gravely injured  in multiple ways (see the Stanford/NYU Living Under Drones Report http://livingunderdrones.org for more on this).

Indeed as the arguments of today are made in behalf of drone strikes we forget that it was not long ago-only twelve years back, in July, 2001-just before 9-11, that Martin Indyk our then American Ambassador to Israel, denounced Israel’s use of targeted killing against Palestinian terrorists stating, “The United States government is very clearly on record as against targeted assassinations. . . . They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”  Likewise, George Tenet, the then CIA’s agency director argued the week before 9-11 that it would be “a terrible mistake” for “the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.”

Times appear to have changed.

That we are winning the so-called “war on terror” by heavy reliance on drone strikes is not necessarily true.  For one thing killing militants versus capturing them means that valuable Intel that might have been collected from prisoners is never gathered.  And as YouTube videos of burnt drone victims-including pictures of child victims-circulate over the Internet and ideologues cry out for more recruits to protect the innocent Muslim ummah against “death from the skies” we may be unwittingly contributing more to global militant jihadi terrorism recruitment than we are gaining by terrorist decapitation. Researchers have long known that when a feeling of personal threat from an outside force increases, so to does social support and endorsement for terrorism among the civilian population thereby increasing the pool of potential recruits.

Moreover when there is a lack of public transparency over U.S. drone strike policies, failure to follow international laws regarding who can and cannot be targeted by lethal force-especially force administered by CIA operatives versus our uniformed military-and repeat strikes kill rescue workers aiding the victims of the first strike-we may be playing with real fire.  Soon other nations will also have drones and all will likely deem whatever practices we follow justifiable.  If all of these concerns are not addressed thoughtfully in the coming months they may conspire to create circumstance in which our government’s moral stance is considered so questionable that in relying on drone strikes we may be doing more-rather than less-to increase the dangers from terrorism.

Anne Speckhard, Ph.D. is author of Talking to Terrorists: Understanding the Psycho-Social Motivations of Militant Jihadi Terrorists, Mass Hostage Takers, Suicide Bombers & “Martyrs.”

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/death-from-the-skiestargeted-international-assassinations-via-us-drones#ixzz2LTZvp6PO
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