NYFD, Radical Feminism & The Left's War On Standards

Some jobs have a physical component that requires certain standards of strength, stamina and resilience, period. Combat arms jobs are one, policing/security is another, and a third is firefighting. Yet the left, in a bow to radical feminists, wants to lower standards - or completely ignore them in some cases - to allow women into the same jobs. It is social engineering, applied radical feminism, a triumph of fantasy over reality, all in the name of toxic political correctness. It has gotten people killed in the past, and it will continue to get people killed in the future.

The latest example of this leftist insanity comes from New York, where, in an effort to allow more women into the fire department, New York's far left Mayor de Blasio has gutted the physical standards that are, in fact, directly related to the tasks firefighters are expected to perform on the job. This from Hot Air:

This promises to turn into a sticky wicket for the New York City Fire Department. One of their upcoming graduates is going to be accepted into the ranks and go to work as a firefighter despite having failed a grueling physical test multiple times. This comes as a result of recent changes to the city’s criteria for how graduates are scored. . . .

Under the new and improved criteria, a recruit can be considered to have passed if they do exceptionally good on the academic testing. The fact that firefighting is penultimately a physical activity and that this woman, Rebecca Wax, hasn't come close to meeting the minimum physical performance standards required of all firefighters is simply ignored in the push for hiring more women. It will of course matter tremendously when a fire starts and the firefighters need to act in concert to save lives and put out fires without getting themselves injured.

Let's be absolutely clear. This lowering of standards is not in service of the public or society; they / we are endangered by it. Moreover, it does a disservice to the women involved who will be expected to perform beyond their capabilities in an emergency situation. Likewise it does a disservice to the co-workers of such women who will be put in danger as they have to try and pick up her slack even as they perform their own duties. The only people who this benefits are those on the left who will now feel morally superior for advancing diversity and, equally, politicians like de Blasio who will be able to make a campaign ad out of this. I'm sure the ad won't mention the names of people who are injured or die because of this enlightened policy, but that is just my own prognostication.

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The Past Will Come Back To Haunt Us:

The iconic Halloween monster is undying - whether it be demons, vampires, Michael Myers or Freddy Kruger. They keep coming back to do us harm.

And so it is with the policy of the modern far left - horrifying and undying. In this instance, the same policies that gave us the financial meltdown of 2008 are not merely alive and well, but being strengthened under Obama.

In 2008, I composed a long post, Hurricane Subprime, taking an in depth look at the causes of our economic meltdown. The "but for" cause of the Great Recession was social engineering that eviscerated color-blind credit rating standards. And as I pointed out when Dodd Frank was proposed, the Obama administration, rather than correcting this insanity, actually doubled down on it. Now this from Power Line:

The Obama administration is pressing ahead with its plan to impose racial quotas on the financial industry via the Dood-Frank law. Dodd-Frank requires agencies with financial sector regulatory responsibilities to “establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion” that will develop diversity and inclusion standards for workplaces and contracting.

Accordingly, these agencies have published in the Federal Register a proposed “Policy Statement Establishing Joint Standards for Assessing the Diversity Policies and Practices of Entities Regulated by the Agencies.” As Roger Clegg reports, that Statement, which applies not only to the agencies themselves but also to all those regulated by it, insists on the use of “metrics” and “percentage[s]“ to ensure compliance with the diversity requirement.

In other words it imposes quotas — quotas that will apply to hiring, promotion, and contracting.

There’s plenty of irony here; for it was the imposition of race-conscious lending practices on the banking industry that led to the financial crisis, that led to Dodd-Frank. . . .

This is horrendous. But as bad as it is, it is not the only devastating policy that gave us the melt-down - and which remains ensconced in our financial system. As I pointed out in Hurricane Subprime, the only unknown at the time was how the Credit Rating Bureaus played into all of this. They were supposed to be the backstop which would have prevented the financial crisis. But these agencies were wholly complicit in giving AAA ratings to subprime mortgage backed securities so that they could be traded throughout our financial system - many institutions by law can only purchase AAA rated securities. Clearly these rating agencies did not function as they should have. The "why" was finally answered in a superb article in Rolling Stone, The Last Mystery Of The Financial Crisis:

Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash.

In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked.

"Lord help our fucking scam . . . this has to be the stupidest place I have worked at," writes one Standard & Poor's executive. "As you know, I had difficulties explaining 'HOW' we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it," confesses a high-ranking S&P analyst. "If we are just going to make it up in order to rate deals, then quants [quantitative analysts] are of precious little value," complains another senior S&P man. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters," ruminates one more. . . .

Do read the whole article - it will leave you wanting to grab the pitchforks and torches. It should also be noted that Obama has not put a single one of these people in jail. Sure, there have been a few civil suits that have amounted to hitting up organizations for a bit of their pocket change. But countless people who committed outright fraud, albeit almost forced to by Barney Frank and the left, have skated because, to hold them accountable would require that the whole house of cards created by left be exposed.

It should also be noted from the article that a simple fix to this utterly broken credit rating system was actually proposed by Sen. Al Franken. It died - I hate to say this - in the Republican controlled House. It is just beyond belief.

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The Military As A Left Wing Laboratory For Social Experiments

Our military has one mission - win on the battlefield.

But that mission has become secondary for the Obama administration. As Obama said the other day, we now have "peace in our time." Let us hope that line, with its historic connotations, is not prophetic.

For the Obama administration, the military, or at least what will remain of it in four years, has become the proving grounds for his favored political experiments. In the past four years, we have seen the Obama administration, without hearings or studies as to the impact on readiness, open up the military to openly gay soldiers and force the Navy to become our nation's largest consumer of green fuels at astronomical cost. And now, today:

Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military's ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta's decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.

A senior military official says the services will develop plans for allowing women to seek the combat positions. Some jobs may open as soon as this year. Assessments for others, such as special operations forces, including Navy SEALS and the Army's Delta Force, may take longer.

The official said the military chiefs must report back to Panetta with their initial implementation plans by May 15. The announcement on Panetta's decision is not expected until Thursday, so the official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Panetta's move expands the Pentagon's action nearly a year ago to open about 14,500 combat positions to women, nearly all of them in the Army. This decision could open more than 230,000 jobs, many in Army and Marine infantry units, to women.

As a preface to what I am about to say, let me note that my daughter joined the military and served in a combat support unit. I am immensely proud of her.

I have no problem with women in the military in a support or combat service support role, where their mission is to support those in active combat, not to engage in it. I have no problems with women in combat roles for which they are physically as capable as men - i.e., pilots, both fixed and rotary wing, perhaps in select field artillery units where physical strength and stamina are not required in large measure. I have no idea about tanks. I cannot see them every being allowed in infantry units, either conventional or special ops. Having served in the infantry and commanded a light infantry company, I can tell you without doubt that it is a physically grueling lifestyle beyond the imagining of most people. It is one that requires not merely strength and incredible stamina, but physical resilience to be able to maintain such rigors on a daily basis, month in and month out.

This from JD Johannes accurately captures my point:

Marine Officer Katie Petronio wrote abut the struggle of physical reslience during her deployment to Afghanistan commanding a Combat Engineering platoon in Afghanistan.

"By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines..."

Her rate of deterioration was faster because she only produced a fraction of the muscle repairing testosterone of the male Marines. Petronio, who was a varsity athlete in college and "benching 145 pounds when I graduated [college] in 2007" was falling apart at the fifth month of her deployment. Army units deployed for 12 months until recently.

Many elite female athletes can outperform male soldiers when the women have adequate rest, recovery time and nutrition--but rest, recovery and proper nutrition are in short supply at Combat Outpost Zerok. Combat is not like sports season where you only have one or two games a week for three months, or training for one or two big events a year. It is every day for 365 days, then a period of recovery before resuming pre-deployment training and then another 365 days.

This is not a decision being driven my military necessity. Nor is it a decision being driven with effectiveness of the military in mind. This is purely a political decision - one that will cost our nation in the long run, as we simultaneously defund our military and change it into a laboratory for left wing social experiments.

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So Did The Housing Crisis Cause Our Economic Meltdown & Our Continuing Malaise

Until we get this right - and by that I mean identify the causes of our economic meltdown - we will never fully right our economy, nor protect it from the harm done by the left's social engineering.



I've been beating my chest on this one since October 2008.  The left's social engineering - put into law by the left through the Community Reinvestment Act and forced down the throats of lenders by community organizers - led to the massive housing bubble based on a complete degradation of lending standards.  The bond rating agencies - which have yet to be criminally investigated - were utterly and criminally complicit with Fannie and Freddie in giving AAA ratings to equities based on subprime loans.  These toxic loans created by Fannie spread throughout the world's financial markets.  Wall St. created Credit Default Swaps were insurance policies against default.  They were not the demon the left has made them out to be.  They failed not because of lack of regulation, but because mark to market accounting rules meant that when the bubble burst, the equities based on subprime loans could not be sold and thus had to be accorded a wholly unrealistic value of zero dollars on the bank books.  All of this is what caused the economic meltdown.

It should be noted that in Dodd-Frank, the exact same social engineering that led to the economic meltdown in the first place is not only retained, but strengthened.  It virtually insures that we will again face the same economic issues that led to the melt-down in the first place.    

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Our Post Racial President, The Recession & The Financial Sector

So what caused our financial crisis?

According to Obama, it was Wall Street greed and the lack of financial regulation. Indeed, to prove the point, he had DOJ and SEC initiate criminal investigations of one of the biggest of derivatives traders, AIG's Joseph Cassano. Further, Obama established a commission under Phil Angelides to lay blame - then promptly pushed for vast new financial regulations several months prior to the completion of the commission's report. No need to worry about that though, as the Commission's scope of investigation does not include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This would be the same as commissioning an investigation into the causes of the civil war, yet excluding slavery from the scope of the investigation. The bottom line, even if the useless commission report were of any value, even if its recommendations were valid, and assuming all recommendations were followed completely, given the limited investigatory scope, the reality is that, the chances of the recommendations actually and effectively sorting out our financial sector would be minimal.

Further, it would seem today that the claim that derivatives were at the heart of our financial mess took a major knock over the past month. The WSJ reports that "both SEC and Justice Department investigations, which many had expected to expose the ultimate subprime malefactor, recently evaporated overnight, apparently clearing (AIG's derivatives trader) Mr. Cassano of wrongdoing." Color me not surprised. Derivatives played an important role in spreading risk. They fell apart not because of "Wall St. greed," (nor "white folk's greed," for that matter) but largely because of mark to market accounting rules and an incredibly anomalous turn of events where the market for mortgage backed securities dropped to zero for a period of time.

At any rate, the proximate cause of the sub-prime meltdown, and thus our current fiscal crisis, was the left's social engineering to force erosion of lending standards and downpayment minimums based on what amounts to racial quotas - no finding of any actual racism need be identified. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were then used to create massive demand in this degraded market.

The single most important correction Obama could make to insure a financial melt-down of this ilk never again occurs would be to reinstitute reasonable, colorblind lending standards by simpling striking the provisions of the Community Reinvestment Act that, today, punish lending institutions for failing to meet racial quotas without respect to whether any single act of racial discrimination every occurred. Obama would of course retain authority to punish severely any cases of actual racial discrimination in lending. Obama has chosen the opposite tack. He is significantly expanding government enforcement of current CRA provisions as part of his financial "reform."

And now we learn today that Obama, as part of his financial regulations, plans to introduce race and gender quotas into our financial sector itself. This from Real Clear Politics:

. . . Section 342 [of the Senate & House financial regulation bill] declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry.

In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors.

Is it just me who is getting the old Soviet political officer vibe?

What would be the mission of this new corps of Federal monitors? The Dodd-Frank bill sets it forth succinctly and simply - all too simply. The mission, it says, is to assure "to the maximum extent possible the fair inclusion" of women and minorities, individually and through businesses they own, in the activities of the agencies, including contracting.

How to define "fair" has bedeviled government administrators, university admissions officers, private employers, union shop stewards and all other supervisors since time immemorial - or at least since Congress first undertook to prohibit discrimination in employment.

Sometimes, "fair" has been defined in relation to population numbers, . . .

Lest there be any narrow interpretation of Congress's intent, either by agencies or eventually by the courts, the bill specifies that the "fair" employment test shall apply to "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services." That last would appear to rope in law firms working for financial entities.

Contracts are defined expansively as "all contracts for business and activities of an agency, at all levels, including contracts for the issuance or guarantee of any debt, equity, or security, the sale of assets, the management of the assets of the agency, the making of equity investments by the agency, and the implementation by the agency of programs to address economic recovery."

This latest attempt by Congress to dictate what "fair" employment means is likely to encourage administrators and managers, in government and in the private sector, to hire women and minorities for the sake of appearances, even if some new hires are less qualified than other applicants. The result is likely to be redundant hiring and a wasteful expansion of payroll overhead.

If the director decides that a contractor has not made a good-faith effort to include women and minorities in its workforce, he is required to contact the agency administrator and recommend that the contractor be terminated.

Section 342's provisions are broad and vague, and are certain to increase inefficiency in federal agencies. To comply, federal agencies are likely to find it easier to employ and contract with less-qualified women and minorities, merely in order to avoid regulatory trouble. This would in turn decrease the agencies' efficiency, productivity and output, while increasing their costs.

Setting up these Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion is a troubling indictment of current law. Women and minorities have an ample range of legal avenues already to ensure that businesses engage in nondiscriminatory practices. By creating these new offices, Congress does not believe that existing law is sufficient.

Cabinet-level departments already have individual Offices of Civil Rights and Diversity. In addition, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance are charged with enforcing racial and gender discrimination laws.

With the new financial regulation law, the federal government is moving from outlawing discrimination to setting up a system of quotas. Ultimately, the only way that financial firms doing business with the government would be able to comply with the law is by showing that a certain percentage of their workforce is female or minority.

The new Offices of Women and Minorities represent a major change in employment law by imposing gender and racial quotas on the financial industry. The issue deserves careful debate - rather than a few pages slipped into the financial regulation bill.

And Obama campaigned on a promise of healing America's racial divide? Between this and the reverse racism pervading the DOJ, it would seem that, like seemingly all of Obama's promises, the gulf between what he promised and the reality he has brought are night and day.

Update: It would appear that Obama is not merely going to force race front and center of our lending industry, but that his administration has actually resuscitated the very riskiest of loans - no doc's. This from Hot Air (links omitted):

Remember how angry America got in the wake of the housing market collapse about the no-document mortgages bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The so-called “liar loans,” also known as “NINJAs” (no income, no job or assets) frequently allowed people who shouldn’t have qualified for mortgages to get loans by simply not disclosing their financial position, and then speculate that the equity would increase fast enough to either flip the house on a resale or refinance under better terms. ABC News and Forbes reports that just two years after the collapse, “liar loans” are making a comeback. . . .

In the height of the housing boom in 2006 and 2007, low-doc loans accounted for roughly 40% of newly issued mortgages in the U.S., according to mortgage-data firm FirstAmerican CoreLogic. University of Chicago assistant professor Amit Seru says that for subprime loans, the portion exceeded 50%.

Then came the housing collapse, with subprime loan defaults playing a leading role, particularly the low-doc “liar” variety. The delinquency rate for subprime loans reached 39% in early 2009, seven times the rate in 2005, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

. . . [T]he federal government has jumped feet first back into risky lending, this time through FHA . . .:

. . . the Federal Housing Administration is making 95% LTV [Loan To Value] loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit and little savings, he argues.

Say what?

Well, the fact that the federal government has shifted its social engineering to FHA after all but destroying Freddie and Fannie should come as no surprise. Nor should it come as a surprise that they’re using the same mortgage-backed securities mechanism that created the global financial collapse to shed the cost of guaranteeing those loans. But one might have thought that the collapse of the housing bubble from overspeculation and irrational supply of credit would have taught Washington a lesson about interfering with the lending markets.

If FHA is guaranteeing loans for 5% down to people with bad credit and no liquidity, then be prepared for the next collapse and bailout, this time at FHA. . . .

The only way that Obama and the far left can lead us down this road to hell again is because they have successfully hidden the actual causes of our current economic crisis. When Obama was elected, the chance that Congress would actually investigate the causes of the crisis dropped to zero. And indeed, it would seem that our Post Racial President is actually going to increase the degree of racial / social engineering in our financial sector. God help us but we are in a race - will Obama destroy our country before we can throw he and the far left out of office?

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Cap, Trade & Calculations

To repeat that which bears repeating ad infinitum, cap and trade is the single most ill advised piece of legislation quite likely ever in our nation's history. Cap and trade is not a "green" bill. It will do nothing to reduce global temperatures - though the sun has taken care of that for us these past seven years. Cap and trade is a massive regressive tax, it is an attack on business, and it is a vehicle for a massive power grab by the left side of our government.

Today, Robert Zubrin at Roll Call does some 'back of the envelope' calculations on the real costs of the cap and trade bill. It is a must read. As he notes, the cap and trade bill portends to be "a massive and highly regressive tax on the U.S. economy, and could potentially cause not only extensive business failures, unemployment and privation within our borders, but starvation among poorer populations elsewhere."

This from Mr. Zubrin:

. . . According to a report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in April, by 2015 the price of carbon emission indulgences required by the bill for industries to operate could be expected to run between $13 and $17 per ton of CO2 emitted. . . . That said, let’s stipulate the $15/ton midrange of the EPA estimate, and see what it implies.

The United States emits about 9 billion tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, at a rate of $15/ton fee for emission indulgences, the bill would impose a tax of $135 billion per year on the nation. Divided by the U.S. population of 300 million, that works out to a cost of $450 per year levied on every American man, woman or child, or $1,800 for a family of four. While for wealthy individuals like Al Gore such an impost might represent a mere pittance, for working families struggling hard to make ends meet it would be a very significant burden.

But that is not even the worst part of it. As a result of the markup of carbon costs, a lot of those working families will be out of work and unable to pay their existing bills, let alone new ones. Consider: Burning one ton of coal produces about three tons of CO2. So a tax of $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is equivalent to a tax of $45/ton on coal. The price of Eastern anthracite coal runs in the neighborhood of $45/ton, so under the proposed system, such coal would be taxed at a rate of about 100 percent. The price of Western bituminous coal is currently about $12/ton. This coal would therefore be taxed at a rate of almost 400 percent. Coal provides half of America’s electricity, so such extraordinary imposts could easily double the electric bills paid by consumers and businesses across half the nation. In addition, many businesses, such as the metals and chemical industries, use a great deal of coal directly. By doubling or potentially even quadrupling the cost of their most basic feedstock, the cap-and-trade system’s indulgence fees could make many such businesses uncompetitive and ultimately throw millions of working men and women onto the unemployment lines.

A gallon of petroleum-derived liquid fuel produces about 20 pounds, or 1 percent of a ton, of CO2 when burned. But it takes about 1.5 gallons of oil to produce one gallon of refined liquid fuel. So a $15/ton tax on CO2 emissions will also cause an increase in the price of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel on the order of $0.22/gallon. This will not only hit consumers’ pockets, but increase transport costs throughout the economy, thereby disabling businesses and increasing unemployment levels still more. While harming the economy, such a gas tax will do nothing material toward the truly essential goal of decreasing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Indeed, the bill’s dramatic hikes in electricity costs will have the opposite effect, since only 3 percent of America’s electricity is derived from oil, and by forcefully increasing electric power costs, the bill will actually discourage adoption of electric means of transport, . . .

But all these bad aspects of the Waxman-Markey bill pale before its potential impact on the world’s food supply. America’s agricultural sector is one of the greatest success stories in human history. In 1930, hunger still stalked the entire globe. Not just in Africa, India and China, but even in Europe and America, the struggle to simply get enough food to live on still preoccupied billions of people. Since 1930, the world population has tripled. But instead of going hungrier, people nearly everywhere are now eating much better. This miracle is the work of American farmers, who have not only produced huge surpluses to feed the world, but used the income gained from such good work to pioneer ever more advanced techniques that have enabled farmers everywhere to grow more. . . . But this miracle depends upon the availability of cheap fertilizer and pesticides, which in turn require carbon-based process energy to produce. If you tax carbon, you tax fertilizer and pesticides. If you tax these things, you tax food, and by no small amount. A $15/ton CO2 tax would increase fertilizer production costs directly by about $60/ton, with the cap-and-trade bill’s increased transport costs inflating the burden still more. That’s enough to make many farmers use less fertilizer, and less fertilizer means less food.

To get a sense of what it would mean for farmers to abandon fertilizer, it is only necessary to go to the supermarket and compare the price of the “organic” produce, grown without chemical fertilizer, to the regular produce, which, while just as nutritious, typically costs less than half as much. . . .

In the 220 years of our republic, there may have been worse pieces of legislation enacted by Congress than the Waxman-Markey bill, but none readily comes to mind. The Senate needs to take a stand and stop this disastrous act from passing into law.

Read the entire article. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

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Update: See also this from Forbes, Waxman-Markey Flunks Math:

In the U.S., electricity is produced from . . .:

48.9% -- Coal
20% -- Natural Gas
19.3% -- Nuclear
1.6% -- Petroleum

Got that? A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources: coal, gas and nuclear. Petroleum brings the contribution of so-called "evil" energy--that is, energy that is carbon- or uranium-based--to almost 90%.

The remaining sources of U.S. electricity, the renewables, are, by comparison, tiny players:

7.1% -- Hydroelectric
2.4% -- Other Renewables
0.7% -- Other

Hydroelectric accounts for 70% of renewable energy in America. But, of course, hydro is mostly tapped out. Almost every dam that could be built has been built. Ironically enough, political opposition to building more dams comes from the same crowd of tree huggers who oppose coal, gas and uranium.

Do you see where I'm going?

The Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House on Friday by a 219-212 margin will punitively tax energy sources that contribute 90% of current U.S. electricity (or 71% if you want to leave out nuclear). The taxes will be used to subsidize the 10% renewable contributors (but really just 3% after you leave out hydro).

In other words, Waxman-Markey is betting the future of U.S. electricity production on sources that now contribute 3% . . .

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If passed, I have no doubt that cap and trade will ultimately be repealed, but not before doing untold damage to our economy that might take decades to repair. And the people who ultimately will pay the highest price for this epic boondoggle will be the poor and the lower middle class. The intelligentsia of the left speak of populism and concern for the poor, but the reality is that they value power above all, irrespective of who suffers as a result of their acts. Controlling carbon allows the left to expand their power into every aspect of our economy and our life. If you doubt Speaker Pelosi's honesty when she said that, to control carbon, the left had to examine "every aspect of our lives," then just look at what else is in the cap and trade bill. This from Doug Ross, discussing some of the ancillary provisions in the House Cap and Trade bill:

It creates hundreds of new bureaucracies that benefit Obama's contributors; for example, it creates a "Development Corporation for Renewable Power Borrowing Authority" that issues "Community Building Code Administration Grants" under a "Low Income Community Sustainable Development Capacity Grant Program". This scam serves two purposes: it rewards failed housing programs like those run by Presidential Adviser Valerie Jarrett; it also provides yet another spigot of funds -- in blocks of $1,000,000 -- for groups like ACORN.

• It creates and regulates every building code in the country and will purposefully overrule any "city, county, parish, city and county authority, or city and parish authority having local authority to enforce building codes and regulations and to collect fees for building permits."

• It reaches into every neighborhood by eradicating "any private covenant, contract provision, lease provision, homeowners' association rule or bylaw, or similar restriction" to force localities to accept "green technologies" whether it fits in the neighorhood or not.

• It touches every aspect of water and sewer systems by regulating every "residential water efficient product or service"; ensuring those offerings are rated and forcing state government, local or county government, tribal government, wastewater or sewerage utility, municipal water authority, energy utility, water utility, or nonprofit organization to comply. . . .

• It defines "energy-efficient mortgages" (with our favorite GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so what could possibly go wrong?) that artificially boosts the income of the borrower based upon how much "green technology" is employed. In other words, the Democrats are socially engineering mortgage underwriting standards again, just as they did in the nineties, which will lead to yet another financial disaster. . . .

Read the entire post. God help us if the Senate now passes this utter abortion.

(Cartoon H/T - No Oil For Pacifists)

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