After the 2008 election, Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House. What happened? The Fed and government subsidized and loaned trillions of dollars to bail out selected crony Wall Street companies and “green” corporate cronies of Democrats, and provided almost no money to mainstreet Americans who lost 40% of their net worth since 2008.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform act was passed, but reforms were insufficient to prevent another financial crisis or additional “bail outs” of financial institutions. Too big to fail banks just got bigger. In fact, U.S. bank exposure to SWAPS and other derivatives – a major cause of the financial crash – today is $231 trillion or 40% more than the $176 trillion at the height of the debt crisis and before Dodd-Frank. Just four banks account for 85 percent of total credit exposure to derivatives at U.S. banks, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The answer to Matt is: elect Democrats.  Here’s how: certain corporations – and lawyers – and billionaires like Soros fill the campaign coffers of Democrats and elect Democrats, while demogouging corporations and Wall Street. http://www.economist.com/node/21547784

http://www.occ.treas.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivatives/dq411.pdf

One obvious question is whether there is anything systematically different about the way American liberals and conservatives support their words with personal giving.  Let’s take a look at the study which is referenced by blog articles and by the newspaper article by Nicholas Kristol.

According to the referenced author, Arthur Brooks, a self-acknowledged liberal, who is an economist at Baylor University, there are systematic differences.  Brooks says he “grew up in an intact, religious, politically liberal family where giving was important” (p. 12), seems not to be interested in bashing American liberals, though that is how his conclusions will inevitably be seen by some.  The research presented finds that American liberals are more selfish than American conservatives when measured by the share of their income given in charity and the amount of volunteering they do.  (from one review of Brooks’ book)

Brooks’ book, “Who Really Cares” (reference below)  has four main messages:

• The four forces in American life primarily responsible for making people charitable are “religion, skepticism about the government in economic life, strong families, and personal entrepreneurism” (p. 11).
• “Conservative principles are most congenial to the four forces of charity” (p. 12).
• “Liberals, who often claim to care more about others than conservatives do, are personally less charitable” (p. 70)
• “For many people, the desire to donate other people’s money displaces the act of giving one’s own” (p. 55).

Nicholas Kristol in “Bleeding Heart Tightwads” comments about liberals in the New York Times (link below), “Come on liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are.”

“The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.”

“Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.”

Here are additional comments on Brooks’ book from a conservative perspective, to contrast with liberal Nicholas Kristol.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/castingstones/2008/04/conservatives-give-more-to-cha.html

On the question in the blog article below “Who’s More Charitable:” (below) which David Coffey provided: How is giving related to wealth? here is one study:

‎”The richest Americans give a greater share of their income to charities than low- and middle-income Americans do, but the mix of beneficiaries is decidedly different, according to congressional testimony from Frank J. Sammartino, the assistant director for tax analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.”

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/which-americans-are-most-generous-and-to-whom/

“Continued dependence on [government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit” ~ President Franklin Roosevelt.

I arrive at the same conclusion Harris Hall has discussed many times in his email thread.  I put it this way:  bleeding heart liberals try to relieve their guilt by spending other people’s money by means of politics and the courts.

But, I don’t think this transference of guilt actually works, or at least I have never understood how it works.  I am not so cynical as to believe that these bleeding heart liberals actually want the result that Roosevelt describes.  That result would only make the bleeding heart liberal even more guilty, and if continued, eventually pathological.  Taking private property (wealth) from one group via government expropriation and distributing it to another group resulting in spiritual and moral disintegration is sinister, and does not relieve guilt until one loses contact with reality.

Who’s More Charitable – Liberals or Conservatives?

By adaptivecomplexity

Created Dec 21 2008 – 8:58pm

To be honest, I don’t really care about the answer to this question. But read this Kristof NY Times column, and see if you’re convinced of the answer. It’s time to practice your critical thinking skills – questions you should ask about the claims presented in this column are exactly the sorts of questions you should ask when you read a press report about any statistics-based study, especially medical research.

Here is the basic result Kristof is talking about:

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Rather than taking that at face value, several questions should immediately pop into your mind:

1. Is this because more conservatives go to church, and give moeny to their church? For example, Mormons (who tend to be conservative), give 10% of their income to one of the wealthiest churches on the face of the planet, and one which does considerably less humanitarian work around than many churches (liberal and conservative) with much less wealth. Most of us wouldn’t count everything you give to your church as “giving to charity,” so you should ask yourself if the studies Kristof talks about take church giving into account.

And in fact, Kristof notes that “According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do.”

But maybe that’s because conservatives are already giving a big chunk of change to their church (which may really go to substantial charitable work, and not just to the general operating expenses of the church), so there is less money left over to give to non-religious charities. Thus excluding “donations to all religious organizations” may not be a fair comparison either.

2. Are conservatives richer, and thus able to give more to charity? Kristof notes that “measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes,” but we’re given no information on how giving relates to wealth. When I’m spending 80% of my income on basics like food, housing, and transportation, I have less money to give as a percentage of my income. If I only spend 30% on the basics, I’m free to give a larger chunk to charity.

3. How much is related to say, issues of urban vs. rural environments, instead of liberal/conservative? One claim is “People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often.” Is that because there are more volunteer opportunities in smaller towns than in big cities? I grew up outside of the fairly small city of Ithaca, NY. I volunteered for the local fire department there, something I could never do now in St. Louis because the fire department is all professional.

There are obviously more questions to ask, and it’s not clear at all, at least from the newspaper story, what we should really believe. It may very well be that, once you control for all of the confounding factors, liberals really are stingier. At least as Americans we’re giving 11 times more of our GNP to charity than the French, as Kristof notes.

But wait – the French pay a lot more in taxes to provide many services which are provided by charities in the US. So who really is more generous?

I’m not taking a stand on what the right answer is to any of these comparisons.  The lesson here is, don’t just believe the headline for any study. Learn to ask the right questions.

• Science & Society

ION Publications LLC

Bleeding Heart Tightwads, by Nicholas Kristol.  New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html

Media Bias 101: “Surveys over the past 30 years have consistently found that journalists — especially those at the highest ranks of their profession — are much more liberal than rest of America. They are more likely to vote liberal, more likely to describe themselves as liberal, and more likely to agree with the liberal position on policy matters than members of the general public.”

http://archive.mrc.org/static/uploads/MediaBias101.pdf

In 1981, S. Robert Lichter, then with George Washington University, and Stanley Rothman of Smith College, released a groundbreaking survey of 240 journalists at top media outlets — including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS — on their political attitudes and voting patterns. The data showed journalists hold liberal positions on a wide range of social and political issues. Lichter and Rothman’s book, The Media Elite, became the most widely quoted media study of the 1980s.

Congress should simultaneously vote on contempt for both Holder and Napolitano. Napolitano (and by implication Obama) just poked both SCOTUS and Congress in the eye. SCOTUS should charge Janet Napolitano with contempt of court…but SCOTUS has no means of enforcement except through the Executive Branch. The SCOTUS ruling today assumed that the Executive Branch would behave reasonably and continue its 287 program with Arizona. The announcement by Napolitano at DHS proves otherwise and exposes the Obama administration’s vindictive and unreasonable agenda. But SCOTUS has no means of enforcement other than one of the many agencies of the Executive, that means that Congress would have to compel the Executive Branch to take action with a new law. Congress should also declare Napolitano in contempt of Congress, since Congress wrote and funded the law requiring cooperation between the federal agencies and state agencies, a law with which Napolitano today announced DHS would refuse to comply.

This is tangential research to the case against Holder and possibly Obama on Fast and Furious. It speaks to their probable motive in Fast and Furious… i.e. to shut down gun retailers and gun sales.

Summary: how federal intimidation of gun retailers works.

Rick Reese, his wife Terri and two sons are long time gun retailers in New Mexico. These retailers have been in jail without bail for almost a year and all their money and possessions confiscated after a massive federal SWAT “sting” team assault. In the pre-trial hearing in June, 2012, the federal prosecuting attorneys Aaron O. Jordan, Nathan Lichvarcik and Michael Nammer, (employees of Eric Holder’s DOJ) admitted that all of the Reese gun sales had been properly logged and all transactions appeared to have been legal. The federal prosecutor also admitted that the Reese’s have paid all of their taxes and that there was no evidence of any under the table transactions and that all banking and financial evidence indicated that all members of the family never received any money other than their normal paychecks. The federal prosecutor admitted that the Reese’s employed off duty police and deputy sheriffs, but called them “dirty.” ATF and Homeland Security’s HIS received a tip about the Reese’s from a woman Penny Torres who had previously been arrested and convicted for gun running; Torres probably ‘cooperated’ in exchange for leniency in her sentencing.  Prior to tipping the feds about the Reese’s, the Penny Torres’ had attempted to buy guns for running to Mexico but she was reported to legal authorities by Terri Reese.  The “sting” on the Reese’s resulted from Torres’s tip. As the feds progressed “ investigation against the Reese family, they [the feds] were briefing and receiving guidance from Phoenix ATF Bureau Chief Bill Newell – the man responsible for directly overseeing Operation Fast and Furious” and previously responsible for Wide Receiver.  The Reese’s trial is scheduled for July, 2012. Judge is Robert C. Brack. Defense attorneys are Pete Domenici (son of retired Senator), Paul Rubino and a few others representing the four Reese family members.

The court docket is at the link below. Be sure to scroll down and look at the many pages of legal events that have occurred and keep in mind that the Reese’s are in jail and assets are confiscated by the feds. Mrs. Terri Reese was recently released on bail. The Reese’s legal defense would be VERY expensive. http://www.elpasotimes.com/newmexico/ci_20851983/lawyers-attack-governments-conspiracy-theory-deming-gun-sales

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97958288/Reese-Docket-11cr2284

Transcripts are here for Grand Jury Indictment and the pretrial hearings:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nm/pr/2011/2011-08-30_new_deal_indictment.pdf

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97965604/Reese-11cr2294-Doc74

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97965606/Reese-11cr2294-Doc104

http://www.scribd.com/doc/97965608/Reese-11cr2294-Doc126

http://mobile.wnd.com/2012/06/family-jailed-for-holders-gun-crimes/

Energy Rocks Our World

June 17, 2012 at 9:27 am

Affordable, reliable energy – a big reason most children now make it to adulthood.

Back in 1990, green activist David Suzuki had this to say about human beings:  there are too many of us; we consume too much; we pollute too much…civilization on this planet can last only another 10 years, etc.

Similarly, the head of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, declared that we can’t continue to consume our way to prosperity.  He could not be more mistaken.  

For these dark souls, humans are a plague on the planet. A pack of coyotes killing a horse – by lunging at its throat, according to a recent story in my local newspaper – is perfectly natural. But human consumption is apparently greedy and stupid.

Well on this lovely morning in June I’d like to suggest an alternative way of looking at things. A gent in the UK named Ralph Tittley has produced a fabulous one-minute video titled Work. Rest. Play. It’s an entry in a contest, the details of which are intriguing in themselves and may be seen here.

Here’s the winning video from that contest, “Energy means everything.”  Watch this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnCJgsHyI2g&feature=player_embedded

I wish every child who has, in recent years, been subjected to multiple viewings of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had also been shown this short video. Because, for the vast majority of every 24 hours, we humans are not greedy and stupid. We are dedicated, smart, and creative. We build schools and hospitals. We write plays and music and poetry.  On the other hand, Al Gore’s movie won an Oscar and a partial Nobel Peace Prize and put millions of dollars in Al Gore’s wallet, but it does nothing whatsoever for the development of mankind or the planet.  In fact, a UK court requires that a rebuttal film be shown whenever An Inconvenient Truth is shown.  Because of the number of false and misleading claims made by Gore in his movie, the court decided the film was propaganda and false advertising.   

Humans have tried  for decades and centuries to liberate ourselves – and our children – from drudgery. That journey would not have been possible without ready access to reliable energy. It runs the factories that manufacture affordable housing, clothing, and medicine. It is essential to growing and transporting adequate amounts of food.

This world, lest we forget, is a perilous place. Click here to jump to a listing on Amazon.com for Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, which appeared in 1762. Type “die before their eighth year” into the search box, including the quotes, and you’ll be taken to a passage that reads:

“One half of the children who are born die before their eighth year…This is nature’s law; why contradict it?”

The reason this so-called natural law no longer applies is because affordable energy now rocks our world. Children born today have a better chance than ever of living a rewarding, fulfilling life – of becoming surgeons or scientists or musicians.

That is something to celebrate.

In 1798 Thomas Malthus wrote about overpopulation by humans and predicted that humans would starve and deplete the earth of resources.  Successive generations of intellectuals picked up and followed his concept to the present day.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s the book The Population Bomb updated Malthus and enlightened all the flower children, but like Malthus none of the predictions have happened.   We now have The Club of Rome, Al Gore, the entire Obama administration and 192 nations and the United Nations spending more than $100 billion just since 2008 to achieve what they claim to be sustainable development which includes for them population control, climate change, UN control of the oceans, cities and all land organized and planned by global treaties (UN Agenda 21) and more.  But Malthus and his followers have been proven wrong over and over again for centuries by human ability to innovate and optimize.

Obama’s Secretary of Department Energy Dr. Steven Chu is one of those neo-Malthusians.  A Nobel Prize winner and green energy proponent, he supports the idea that gasoline in in the U.S. should be as expensive as Europe’s.  But Europe has almost no oil and America has the world’s largest known reserves of oil and gas.  To make the neo-Malthusian predictions self-fulfilling, Chu, Obama and his administration have prohibited development of most of the energy containing lands in the U.S.  meanwhile preaching energy and climate nonsense…1984 doublespeak.

Here is a quote by a writer attempting to bring Joe six pack common sense into the issue…

“Incorporating a comprehensive energy policy is a non-partisan no-brainer which most Americans would wholeheartedly embrace, given they were allowed to embrace it — voluntarily. Instead, the administration is bent on assuming a parental role in our lives, and Dr. Chu seems to take this role quite seriously. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Chu likened the American public to teenagers when he said, “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act” and must “really understand in their core how important this issue is.”

“All this coming from the green energy zealot who gave us the Solyndra debacle. Americans are not the senseless teenagers Dr. Chu implies. We may not have as many degrees hanging on our walls, but we are steeped in common sense, and understand that raising gas prices “to the levels of Europe” is not a smart move.”  http://townhall.com/columnists/susanbrown/2012/03/05/energy_secretary_chu_should_resign/page/full/

The policies of the Obama administration, the DOE, the DOI, EPA et al are without doubt reducing the supply of energy in the U.S.  Taxes on energy and energy companies compound the problem by increasing the price to consumers.  Subsidies and regulations requiring ethanol in gasoline and use of biofuels further increase costs while reducing mileage and increasing pollution.  Obama has openly stated that his policies will cause energy prices to “skyrocket,”which also means that economic growth and productivity will crash.  That is the modeAmerica and the world is in today.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency of the Obama administration, predicts essentially flat employment out to 2035 where the forecast ended; they are being optimistic unless there is a significant regime change.

Obama is not in a political position to evolve a reversed course on energy, as he has on the deficit spending, gay marriage, indefinite detention of Americans by the military without trial, and just last week permitting 800,000 illegal alien children to obtain work visas in America.  Obama is fully committed to his environmental/energy ideology with no way to reverse course.

Government (national and supranational) and big oil collude and collaborate to reduce supply (amidst plentiful reserves) so that oil prices move ever higher.  When oil company profits are higher, governments take in more tax revenue.  Higher nominal prices are the source of political power.  More tax revenue means more money to distribute to cronies.  Obama bows to the Saudi King and George Bush kisses his ring…not because the Saudi have the most oil, but because the Saudis will push up or down supplies and prices based on political expediency.  Saudi royalty is grateful for the market share and profits they achieve because U.S. politicians keep U.S. oil and gas off the market.  If there were a free market in oil, gas and coal, prices would be much lower and supply and demand would be determined by the market.  Politics determines the energy market today.

I hope Romney is different, but so far the evidence appears otherwise.  Romney says he is ready to re-build the military to defend “American interests” in the middle east … meaning the oil supply routes and the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea.  The U.S. federal government holds more than 90% of U.S.lands are off-limits for oil and gas development.  America does not need middle eastern oil and its OPEC cartel price/supply controls and we certainly do not need to spend money and lives defending it.  The best thing American could do for national defense and for our economy is to develop gas, oil, coal, nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power in America.  But that would reduce the power of and political donations to American politicians and the global cabal between bankers, governments and supranational entities like the UN, and oil.

More on this subject:

https://budbromley.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/effect-of-an-energy-price-increase-on-real-economic-growth/

https://budbromley.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/208/

In just 12 months between 2007 and 2008, Washington tripled the federal deficit from $161 billion to $459 billion, and the Bush administration, Congress and the Fed all swore that this was a one time event.  They lied.  Washington tripled the deficit again to $1.4 trillion in 2009, and solemnly promised that this too was a one time event. They lied.  In 2010 the deficit was again $1.3 trillion. In 2011 the deficit was again more that $1.3 trillion and the running rate now for 2012 is $1.6 trillion.  Now the Democrats and Republicans in Washington, and president Obama and presidential candidate Romney can’t agree on a mere 8% across the board cut in federal programs that will occur automatically in January, 2013, it is already law on the books, calling it a “fiscal cliff” as if the world was coming to an end.

On September 14, Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke announced a new round of hundreds of billions of dollars more in new money printing, QE3, supposedly to help the economy grow.   This is more bank and Wall Street bailout as we have seen with the previous bailouts/stimulus.   More fiat money is not needed by the economy, but rather it is a managed real time wind down to smaller and less intrusive government, simplified regulations and less uncertainty and only then lower taxes managed in line with lower federal expenses.

The official debt of the federal government is over $16 trillion, the largest government debt in the history of civilization, but that number does not include the debt the government took over from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or the money owed to seniors for Social Security and Medicare, or the pensions owed to veterans and government employees, or another unauthorized, secret (according to GAO’s audit) $16 trillion in loans by the Federal Reserve to a laundry list of U.S. and international banks considered “too big to fail.”  Added together the debt of the U.S. federal government is over $120 trillion… ten times larger than the entire U.S. economy.  Government (federal + state + local) is growing 4 X faster than the national income, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The federal government is growing its debt at a rate of more that $1 trillion per year.  .  There have been 4 straight years of federal deficits over $1 trillion and 4 straight years when a Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a budget… the federal government has had no budget.  Washington’s policies are failing. Americans are suffering.  Nearly 23 million are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work.  Median household income has declined by $4,300.  CNN reports that the average net worth of Americans has “plummeted nearly 40%.”  http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/11/news/economy/fed-family-net-worth/

Virtually none of those trillions of dollars has ended up in the accounts of American families, nor has it created new jobs.  But American taxpayers must pay back those trillions in principle plus interest.   Since 1993 when Bill Clinton reversed Reagan’s bill and put the Social Security/Medicare Trust Fund “on budget” in order to claim that he balanced the budget, Americans have been paying interest on their own lifetime contributions to the Social Security/Medicare Trust Fund.  The government has been using these funds and letting the taxpayer pay interest on their own money.  And, there are many more examples.

According to the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. banks held $176 trillion in derivatives at the height of the debt crisis in 2008.  Signed by Obama in July 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ203/content-detail.html) is subtitled

“An act to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end “too big to fail”, to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.” “The Act implements financial regulatory reform sponsored by the Democratically controlled 111th United States Congress and the Obama administration.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act

However today, U.S. banks have received multiple bailout infusions and now hold more than $231 trillion in derivatives – 40% more than at the worst point of  the 2008/2009 financial crisis when we were told that the economy could collapse.  We were told The Dodd-Frank Act would fix such problems – it’s right there in the subtitle – yet now the problem is 40% worse.  This derivatives risk alone places the U.S. in greater danger than any other country past or present.  Federal money is being gambled by banks in high risk derivatives and taxpayers are on the hook.

Once again, Thomas Sowell is on target in his article about Obama, “Socialist or Fascist?” (1)   The Obama administration is almost text book fascist, and only the exceptions are socialist.  Obama has signed 900 Executive Orders, an indication of his fascism.  If Congress and the courts don’t do what he wants, Obama just does it by Executive Order.   Fascism means that government controls corporations, but does not own them, whereas a socialist government owns corporations.   Fascist control is done with the purse strings and regulations.  In a communist government, there are no corporations and no private property; products and services are supplied by the government itself.  The fascist system gives politicians control without the nuisance of responsibility.  Examples of the socialist exceptions in the Obama administration are the government’s acquisition bailouts of GM, AIG, Fannie Mae, and some banks.  The problem for Americans is much bigger than Obama’s fascist administration.

Bottom Line:  This is not about Democrats vs Republicans, or liberals versus conservatives, or fascist versus socialists.  This is about Americans versus their government.  Our government is out of control.

“What Washington needs is adult supervision.” ~ Barack Obama, fundraising letter, Oct. 2006

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies…Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Sen. Obama, Congressional Record, S.2237-8, 3/16/06

This essay borrows heavily from: American Apocalypse, by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

(1)  http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/06/12/socialist_or_fascist/page/full/

Re: http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/half-germany-was-powered-solar.html

And the U.S. is waiting for….what?  The quick answer is that solar costs too much and pollutes too much.  Be very careful what you ask for.  In any case, that treehugger headline is very deceptive.  It was a one day spike in solar output and only midday in a very good German day.

According to figures released by a German water and energy trade association, solar photovoltaic systems produced 10 percent of Germany’s total electricity consumption for the month of May. “Every single one of our [German Environmental Ministry] brochures mentions that we intend to obtain 35 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.”

But the cost of this “success”, to taxpayers and electricity users alike, has risen to astronomical levels. “An average family will then have to pay some €50 more for electricity every year, not to mention the additional costs for the power networks.” “The German government was quick to approve a phase-out of nuclear power in the country after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Now the costs of moving toward renewable energy are just being realized, and low-income consumers are paying the price.”

“Electricity prices in Germany have risen by more than 10 percent…Approximately every tenth household currently has problems paying for rising energy costs,” says Holger Krawinkel at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. “About 200,000 recipients of Hartz IV, Germany’s benefits program for the long-term unemployed, had their power cut off last year because of unpaid bills…” Some 56% of green-energy subsidies in Germany goes to solar even though solar plants produce only 21% of all subsidized energy. The cost to German consumers of all solar subsidy commitments already tops €100 billion.

And you thought Solyndra was expensive.

Not only is it expensive, it is also ineffective.  Fritz Vaherenholt, a founder of Germany’s environmental movement who headed the renewable energy division of the country’s second largest utility company, has recently coauthored a new book titled “The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Disaster Won’t Happen.” He charges the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with gross incompetence and dishonesty, most particularly regarding fear-mongering exaggeration of known climate influence of human CO2 emissions.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-nuclear-phase-out-brings-unexpected-costs-to-consumers-a-837007.html…

Furthermore…solar power as the technology exists today is now recognized to produce more real pollution and more greenhouse effect that CO2…more than 10,000 times more.

“Just as labor is an important input in the production of goods and services, so is energy. An increase in the price of energy reflects a relative shortage of energy from what previously was the case. Just as the price of labor can increase from an increase in demand or a decrease in supply, so, too, can the price of energy.  Assume that before an increase in the price of energy, the economy was set to accelerate from 3% growth to 4% growth.

Liberal/progressive dogma and main stream media all too frequently claim that an increasing gap between rich and poor is somehow unfair, or socially unjust.  This gap conflicts somehow with their “so-called liberal” notions of fairness and social justice.  I say “so-called liberal” because there is absolutely nothing liberal or progressive about enslaving people economically or otherwise to their government, yet that is precisely the result produced by people who claim the moniker of liberal and progressive today caused by the policies and candidates they support.   “Class warfare has always been a mainstay of liberal politics. Politicians frequently depict the United States as a nation starkly divided between the rich and poor.”(1)  I think you will find the work of Robert Rector et al at Heritage instructive.  A review with an open mind of demographic data and a few studies easily refutes this “so-called liberal” dogma.