Trump Has Important Reasons Not To Go With Paris Accord

EXCELLENT TRUMP: 5 Reasons Trump Is Right To Pull Out Of The Paris Accord

Win McNamee/Getty Images

BY:

 BEN SHAPIRO

JUNE 2, 2017

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On Thursday, President Trump made the first major move of his administration
 since the appointment of Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court: he withdrew
 from the Paris Accord, a non-treaty entered into by President Obama that
committed the United States to serious economic deprivation in order to
accomplish nearly nothing in terms of climate change. It’s true that Trump laid

all that out in a well-written, fact-laden speech. The Left predictably went nuts —
they’ve been lighting up buildings green (wasting energy) and quitting his
economic council (who cares) and tweeting incessantly about the end of the
world all day.

But Trump is right.

Here are five reasons why.

1. The Accord Was A Treaty, And President Obama Refused To Treat It Like One. President Obama joined the Paris Accord shortly before leaving office, but
 never sent the agreement to the Senate for ratification. There was good reason
 for that: it wouldn’t have been ratified. Instead, Obama simply assumed that
America would now be bound by requirements to tamp down carbon emissions
 in serious ways. In his statement ripping Trump for pulling out of the agreement,
for example, Obama stated, “the world came together in Paris around the first-
ever global agreement to set the world on a low-carbon course and protect the
world we leave to our children.” But none of that was true. Which meant that the
accord was essentially symbolic, but would create a bevy of headlines about
America abandoning global leadership every time we didn’t meet an arbitrary
line not approved by the American people.

2. There Were Legal Implementation Problems With The Paris Accord.
Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, spelled out that courts could
 theoretically use the Paris Accord to strike down Trump’s attempted rollback
of carbon emissions regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Left claimed that this was empty talk — no enabling legislation regarding
the Paris Accord had been signed, so it was symbolic. But these are the same
people who now say the world will burn up because we’ve pulled out of the
 accord, and the same people who think the courts should ignore law in
order to strike down executive orders they don’t like.

3. It Would Have Had No Impact. Obama himself says, “The private sector
already chose a low-carbon future.” So if that was true, what’s the need for
 governmental cram-downs, exactly? Beyond that, Trump is correct that MIT
 has estimated that even if the Paris Accord were implemented with current
commitments by the various countries, the global climate would be lowered
 by a grand total of 0.2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Meanwhile, we’d
 put crippling regulations on our economy. MIT and the Left insist that other
steps would follow the Paris Accord — but there’s no evidence of that.

4. It Let Other Countries Free-Ride. Obama said in his petulant statement, “It
 was bold American ambition that encouraged dozens of other nations to set
 their sights higher as well.” This is absolute nonsense. One of the reasons to
be skeptical of the Paris Accord is that it asked nations for non-binding
commitments on climate change. Non-binding. As Oren Cass pointed
out at Commentary:

China committed to begin reducing emissions by 2030, roughly when its economic development would have caused this to happen regardless. India made no emissions commitment, pledging only to make progress on efficiency—at half the rate it had progressed in recent years. Pakistan outdid the rest, submitting a single page that offered to “reduce its emissions after reaching peak levels to the extent possible.” This is a definition of the word “peak,” not a commitment. ... An April report by Transport Environment found only three European countries pursuing policies in line with their Paris commitments and one of those, Germany, has now seen two straight years of emissions increases. The Philippines has outright renounced its commitment. A study published by the American Geophysical Union warns that India’s planned coal-plant construction is incompatible with its own targets. All this behavior is socially acceptable amongst the climate crowd. Only Trump’s presumption that the agreement means something, and that countries should be forthright about their commitments, is beyond the pale.

5. It Put America Last. Obama and the Left have claimed for years that “green
jobs” will be produced by government. There is no evidence of that happening.
It’s a chimera. Van Jones, Obama’s “green jobs czar,” couldn’t point to any job
creation for which he was responsible. We do know that additional regulations
would cripple key industries in the United States without making up for them with
 these magical new “investments.” The private sector, as Obama recognizes, is
already moving toward more efficient energy solutions. But this agreement wasn’t
about forwarding that. It was about creating public pressure for the US government
 to intervene in its own economy, without requiring anything of those with whom
we compete.

Good for Trump. The Paris Accord was a meaningless sham, designed mainly
 to shame the United States into harming its own economy for the vicarious
 pleasure of others.

Bye Bye Obama. Your Ruinous Reign Is Done

The Obama Era is Over

November 9, 2016 

Daniel Greenfield

Obama and his supporters loved talking about history. His victory was historic. They were on the right side of history. History was an inevitable arc that bent their way.  The tidal force of demographics had made the old America irrelevant. Any progressive policy agenda was now possible because we were no longer America. We Were Obamerica. A hip, happening place full of smiling gay couples, Muslim women in hijabs and transgender actors. We were all going to live in a New York City coffee house and work at Green Jobs and live in the post-national future.

The past was gone. We were falling into the gorgeous wonderful future of dot com instant deliveries and outsourced everything. We would become more tolerant and guilty. The future was Amazon and Disney. It was hot and cold running social justice. The Bill of Rights was done. Ending the First and Second Amendments was just a clever campaign away. Narratives on news sites drove everything.

Presidents were elected by Saturday Night Live skits. John Oliver, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee were our journalists. Safe spaces were everywhere and you better watch your microaggressions, buddy. No more coal would be mined. No more anything would be made. The end of men was here. The end of the dead white men of the literary canon. The end of white people. The end of binary gender and marriage. The end of reason. The end of art. The end of 2 + 2 equaling 4. This was Common Core time. It was time to pardon an endless line of drug dealers. To kill cops and praise criminals. To be forced to buy worthless health insurance for wealth redistribution to those who voted their way to wealth.

This was Obama's America. And there was no going back. We were rushing through endless goal posts of social transformation. The military fell. Then the police. Now it looks as quaint as anything from the 50s, the 70s or the 80s. A brief moment of foolishness that already appears odd and awkward. And then one day nostalgic. It wasn't the future. It's already the past. It's history.  Scalia died. Hillary Clinton was bound to win. And she would define the Supreme Court. Down ticket races would give her a friendly Senate. And then perhaps the House.

But there is no right side of history. There is only the side we choose.

The Obama era was permanent. It was history. Now it is history. 

Its shocking ascendancy has been paired with an equally shocking descent. The Obama era is done. It's gone. It's over. It was wiped from the pages of history in one night that left Congress and the White House in Republican hands.  It would have been bad enough if Jeb Bush had succeeded Obama. That would have been inconvenient, but not a repudiation. Instead Obama's legacy was dashed to pieces. His frantic efforts to campaign for Hillary did no good. The public did not vocally reject him. What they did was in its own way even worse. They brushed past him. They sidelined him. They gave him passable approval ratings while dismissing his biggest accomplishments. They forgot him. They made it clear that he did not matter.  And that is in its own way far more brutal and wounding. They didn't just destroy the Obama era. Instead they dismissed it as if it never existed. 

Obama didn't make history after all. He wasn't a teleprompter demi-god standing athwart of history. He was Carter and Ford. He was there to be forgotten. He didn't change the world. He wasn't the messiah. He was merely mortal. Just another politician who will sag and age. Who will, in the end, be photographed like Bill Clinton, lonely and lost in a world that has passed him by.  The Obama era ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. With a national consensus that maybe he didn't really matter so much after all. And those to whom he mattered the most were his enemies determined to undo everything he did.   Obama once thought that he belonged to the ages. Now he belongs in the rubbish bin.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Instead Of Becoming Energy Independent, Obama Wants Green (Expensive) Energy And More Saudi Oil

Obama and Clinton reject a future with American oil

Posted on March 2, 2016 by John Myers

Saudi Arabia’s drifting dunes flow and ebb over 268 million acres of crude-filled desert, making it the oil-richest nation in the world.

America, once the richest nation in the world partly because of its own gigantic domestic oil reserves that flowed like our own rivers and lakes, is on its way to second-class status as a world power because the powers that be are choking off our new oil reserves, and letting the dollar-denominated debt flow instead.

At the core of this entire shift in power is a major change in players and ideologies leading up to our 21st century. And whether or not you think oil is the perfect fuel until a replacement can be found, or you want to see its obsolesce because of climate change, one thing is clear – An America that was once an oil leader has gone blind on oil.

Not to go all 7th grade history lesson on you, but remember that following World War II and under the tutelage of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Saudi Arabia clearly fell under influences of the United States. We exchanged state-of-the-art military technology and protection for oil security.

However, in a very few short years the smooth political relationship between Riyadh and Washington was beginning to frazzle. In 1965 OPEC – which was founded in Iraq, by the way, and whose headquarters since 1965 has been tucked safely away from the Middle East in Vienna (what does that tell you about what they knew was coming?) – believed it was giving away its non-renewable resource for pennies on the dollar.

Also OPEC, as well as the Pentagon, believed that the Middle East was becoming the most strategic region in the world. Proxy wars were repeatedly begun in the region with the real goal being influence in a region that had a trillion barrels or more of the most important energy source in the world.

However after years of these wars not raising the price of oil significantly, and because the U.S. staunchly supported Israel —  especially in the 1973 war — Egypt (to whom we now give billions of our treasure in foreign aid) Saudi Arabia, Iran and the OPEC nations decided to launch an oil embargo on the West. Arab oil producers cut off exports to the U.S.

“The oil crisis set off an upheaval in global politics and the world economy. It also challenged America’s position in the world, polarized its politics at home and shook the country’s confidence,” author and oil analyst Daniel Yergin wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

With rising oil prices, America’s ingenuity and technological know-how swung into effect. New drilling and extraction techniques allow producers to grab millions of barrels of oil from huge shale deposits. America was on the verge of becoming a net exporter of oil.

Saudi Arabia couldn’t have that. It was bad enough when Russia started pumping millions of barrels, and then the tar sands of Canada began to produce, and then huge reserves were found in South America…

And now the United States has made a deal with Saudi’s biggest rival in the Middle East? This last straw provided a green light for Saudi Arabia to keep pumping oil and create a perceived glut, so that oil now trades around $30 a barrel, putting shale extractors and tar sands producers out of business.

The U.S. oil rig count went from less than 200 in 2009, to more than 1600 last year. It has since cratered to only 400. At this rate, the oil rig count will be zero by August, according to Morgan Stanley’s Ole Slorer. He says there are only a very small number of rigs in the U.S. that can operate with oil prices below $30 per barrel.

Do you think the Saudis didn’t know this?

The original appreciation in oil price stabilized and brought profits to the domestic oil companies, providing boon years for North American oil and gas that had not been seen since the days of Standard Oil.

But Washington – especially the Democrats – traded oil security for Green Dreams. They wrung their hands over green energy, and pumped funny green money into the economy while the Saudis pumped oil, and all the while, U.S. oil became cheaper while the Middle East sold more.

Worse, under the pretense of preventing climate change allegedly caused by burning North American petroleum, President Barack Obama has twisted the screws tighter and tighter on America’s oil industry, disregarding profits or American strength in the world. The last thing on Obama’s mind is oil security.

Far more interesting to him is his legacy which rightly or wrongly he believes will be inflated by his stark discrimination against oil and gas. The degrees to which Obama went to hurt American oil and gas and production have been made painfully clear.

This last month Obama set his sites on members of Congress who want to resist his squeezing the oil industry.

It hasn’t made much news, but Obama is going to ask lawmakers — when he releases his final budget proposal — to approve a $10 tax on every barrel of oil to pay for a long-term infusion of spending on infrastructure. Coming from a lame-duck Democratic president, the proposal is, plainly, a non-starter in the Republican-led Congress.

House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in his address heard on ABC Radio that the tax is “dead on arrival” in Congress. He said, “The president will try anything he can … to keep American-made energy trapped in the ground.”

But the idea is sure to jumpstart the debate over energy and infrastructure in this year’s presidential campaign; a campaign loaded with Middle East money which has already found its way to the Clinton Foundation, pro-Green lobby groups, and towards electing Hillary Clinton president later this year.

The country that produced some of the biggest oil companies in the world and won two World Wars is now losing to Islamic oil and Green politicians.

Yours in good times and bad,

Failure Is How Obama's Presidency Will Be Reported By Historians.

President Obama’s Report Card Released to Public

Published Fri, Apr 4, 2014  |  Floyd Brown, Chief Political Analyst

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As Barack Obama moves toward the end of his career, expect to hear lots of talk about his legacy.

I believe the first African-American president will be remembered kindly by the academic establishment, writing from their ivory towers, because of the historic nature of his election.

But for average Americans, it’ll be a different story. Most Americans judge a president based on what he promises versus what he delivers, and they judge him using the question Ronald Reagan asked voters in 1980: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

At this point in the Obama presidency, the answer is a resounding “No.” Obama promised big results, but he’s failed to deliver.

For example, look at these four promises and the eventual results. They cover what are arguably his biggest accomplishments.

1. Obama’s $825-billion stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8% as he promised. After the stimulus passed, Americastill lost over one million jobs. If you count people who have become discouraged and are no longer seeking jobs, some economists believe that the real unemployment rate is still above 20%.
2. Obama called his healthcare package one of his major accomplishments. He told CBS News’ Steve Kroft that he was “putting in place a system in which we’re going to start lowering healthcare costs.” Yet Obamacare has failed to make health insurance more affordable. According to FactCheck.org, Obamacare is actually making healthcare “less affordable.” Workers paid an average of $132 more for family coverage this year.
3. Obama predicted that his investments in green energy would create five million jobs, but The Wall Street Journal reports: “The green jobs subsidy story gets more embarrassing by the day. Three years ago President Obama promised that by the end of the decade, America would have five million green jobs, but so far, some $90 billion in government spending has delivered very few.”
4. Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half, saying: “And that’s why today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.”  Obama then enacted his deficit reduction plan, which was comprised of a series of massive tax increases. Yet the deficit is still more than twice what he promised.

Based on these results, I’d give the president a solid “F”!

Don’t expect much reporting on the president’s record, though. Instead, watch as the media continues to focus on polls. They like to judge politicians this way because they can control the outcome. Just ask any honest pollster – it’s easy to game the outcome of a poll by manipulating the questions.

In fact, the news media is almost desperate to ignore Obama’s record… and so is the president himself. He’s constantly changing the subject when it comes to his record, focusing instead on topics like “income inequality.”

Lucky for Obama, the mainstream media will always help him out. Just wait… I fully expect them to work hard building the president a legacy he doesn’t deserve, as well.

Your eyes on the Hill,

Floyd Brown

Nixon's Heritage--The EPA, Another Job Killing Government Agency

Inhofe Wants The EPA To Reveal How Many Jobs It Is Killing

April 3, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has introduced legislation that would force the Environmental Protection Agency to comply with laws that require reporting on the potential economic costs of new regulations. Under the Barack Obama Administration, the EPA has repeatedly flouted reporting requirements included in the Clean Air Act in creating new environmental rules.

Inhofe’s bill would not allow the EPA to create any new environmental mandates until it conducts real economic cost analysis, including information about how each regulation would affect jobs across the entire economy, as required by Section 321(a) of the 1977 Clean Air Act.

“Under this law, the EPA is required to report how its air regulations are affecting job creation across the entire economy,” Inhofe said. “The EPA has not once abided by this provision and failed to complete a single analysis on its air rules to date.”

The legislation would also prohibit the EPA from finalizing any major regulation under the Clean Air Act until the agency completes the mandated analysis for air rules that are already being enforced.

“Americans are not as aware of the costs that have come from the regulations of this Administration,” Inhofe said. “[They're] essentially putting people out of business.”

“This would put teeth in Section 321(a),” he continued.

Inhofe’s bill contains many examples of the EPA claiming that proposed regulation would create jobs, while the National Economic Research Associates (NERA) estimated simultaneously that the regulations would kill thousands of American jobs.

Here are three examples:

Utility MACT rule (77 Fed. Reg. 9301): EPA’s analysis of the Utility MACT rule estimated that implementation of the final rule would result in the creation of 46,000 temporary construction jobs and 8,000 net new permanent jobs. NERA’s whole economy analysis found that the rule would have a negative impact on the income of workers in an amount equivalent to 180,000 to 215,00 lost jobs in 2014, and 50,000 to 85,000 lost jobs each year thereafter.

Cross State Air Pollution rule (76 Fed. Reg. 48208): The EPA’s analysis of the Cross State Air Pollution rule estimated that implementation of the final rule would result in the creation of 700 jobs per year. NERA ‘s whole economy analysis found that the rule would result in the elimination of a total of 34,000 jobs from 2013 to 2037.

Boiler MACT rule (76 Fed. Reg. 15608): EPA’s analysis of the Boiler MACT rule estimated that implementation of the final rule would result in the creation of 2,200 jobs per year. NERA’s whole economy analysis found that the rule would result in the elimination of 28,000 jobs per year from 2013 to 2037.

Last month, the Heritage Foundation conducted an analysis of EPA regulations that “essentially prohibit the construction of new coal-fired power plants and force existing ones into early retirement” in an effort to phase out coal by 2038.

Heritage found that the total economic cost of the effort will be great:  By the end of 2023, nearly 600,000 jobs will be lost, a family of four’s income will drop by $1,200 per year, and aggregate gross domestic product decreases by $2.23 trillion.

The EPA has downplayed the economic cost of the regulations, saying that new “green” jobs will make up for those lost due to the harsh regulations.