Video: Sen. Boxer chastised for playing black groups off each other in hearing

Watch Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) get chastised for trying to pit the NAACP and another black-led business group against the National Black Chamber of Commerce in a racially-charged Senate hearing on climate.

Sen. Boxer’s seems to insist that the view of the NBCoC is offset by the NAACP’s view simply because both are black groups.

Sharkholm syndrome: Empathy for sharks… from victims?

Shark attack victims testified on Capitol Hill yesterday in favor of a nationwide ban on shark-finning — the practice of cutting-off a shark’s dorsal fin and throwing back the rest, reports Energy & Environment Daily.

Recruited to testify by the Pew Environment Group, Al Brennika was attacked in 1976 while surfing by a 7-foot lemon shark. He testified that,

“I was limbed. They get finned. It gives me … empathy for their situation.”

Brennika was one of several shark-attack victims at the hearing apparently suffering from Jaws-version of Stockholm syndrome.

That’s today’s insight into the mind of an environmentalist and the nutty way environmental policy is made in Washington, DC.

Chemical industry sells out America? (Pt.2)

On July 10, this blog criticized the American Chemistry Council for trying to ameliorate rather than to kill Waxman-Markey.

Unhappy with that characterization of its efforts, an ACC spokesperson e-mailed us requesting a correction:

We have specifically expressed concerns and noted that the bill needs work. ACC is not supporting nor opposing the House climate bill (that has moved to the Senate). We are neutral on the bill as a whole and have specific, pointed concerns that we have expressed about the bill.

But unless ACC means that the “work” that the bill “needs” is its utter destruction, then no correction is warranted.

There is no upside to making energy more expensive and handing over control of our economy to Marxist-socialist greens. Even if ACC succeeded in its effort to enact a Waxman-Markey lite, such a bill would still establish a mechanism for the future ratcheting-down of its provisions.

ACC’s claim of “neutrality” on Waxman-Markey is embarrassing. It doesn’t know what side its on? It doesn’t care?

To its ever-lasting infamy, Sweden claimed neutrality during World War II. Is that the sort of legacy the chemical industry wants?

Chemical industry meatballs
Chemical industry meatballs

De-desalination: Greens oppose Calif. plans

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Early next year, the Southern California town of Carlsbad will break ground on a plant that each day will turn 50 million gallons of seawater into fresh drinking water…

Government agencies have opposed desalination because of the process’s energy consumption. The desalination plant would use nearly twice as much energy as a wastewater-treatment plant available in Orange County. Environmental groups also object because fish and other organisms are likely to be sucked into the facility.

Eventually, people will have to realize, it’s either fish or children,” Mr. Lewis said…

Officials in Carlsbad began discussing desalination in 1998 and planned to open the plant this year. But opposition was fierce.

The Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper — two local environmental groups — argue the plant would be disastrous for marine life, “killing everything that floats” near the plant’s intake, said Surfrider’s Joe Geever.

The permitting process continued for six years, and included 14 public hearings that ran a total of 170 hours and included five revisions to the plan…

Is Obama laundering federal money to GE through Michigan?

General Electric is getting yet more taxpayer money, possibly laundered federal money, to subsidize its business.

A GE press release announced that the state of Michigan will provide GE with $60 million to build a $100 million “technology & software center” — what used to be known as an “office building.”

While the source of the Michigan subsidy could be Michigan taxpayers, given how strapped the state is from auto industry losses, it’s quite possible that the Obama administration is funneling U.S. taxpayer stimulus money through Michigan to GE.

Michigan’s budget problems are so severe, after all,  that the state has offered to house prisoners from California’s burgeoning prisons.

We reported in May that GE received $55 million in taxpayer subsidies to build a hybrid locomotive battery plant in New York.

You can almost hear GE CEO Jeff Immelt, who sits on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, chanting to the President, “Give me the money.” In return, Immelt, the new corporate welfare queen, is helping Presdient Obama advance his global warming and health care agendas.

309 NEW pages added Waxman-Markey…

Rep. Joe Barton just said during House debate that 400 NEW pages (actually 309 pages) to Waxman-Markey were printed at 2am this morning! Waxman-Markey is now 1,500-pages in length.

Barton added that the House has spent more time debating ceremonial resolutions than the 3 hours it will spend debating Waxman-Markey.