Atlanta Tax Day Tea Party: Glad we could amuse you, Mr. President!

At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami today (prior to a $30,400 per person or couple-depending on which source is correct-cocktail reception at the home of famed Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan), President Obama said he was "amused" by the Tax Day Tea Party rallies.  Glad we could amuse you, Mr. President.  Florida's Republican-leaning Cuban-American community was not amused with Ms. Estefan, and the thousands that showed up at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta today are clearly not amused with you.

  

White House urges cuts to oil and gas tax incentives

The Democratic leadership in Congress was indignant when corporations started restating earnings projections based on changes to the tax code contained in Obamacare.  Let's see if they are equally surprised when oil and gas companies are forced to do the same:

The administration's request that Congress eliminate more than $36 billion in oil and gas industry tax incentives is similar to a proposal the White House advanced in 2009. But this year, the request has extra political weight because the U.S. last September joined 19 other nations in the “group of 20” to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels that produce heat-trapping carbon dioxide when they are burned.

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., the top Republican on the panel, argued that repealing the tax incentives for oil and natural gas would only make the U.S. more dependent on foreign energy sources and curb domestic natural gas production from shale across the U.S. He noted that in 2007, 85 percent of the nation's energy demand was supplied by gas, coal and oil, with nuclear energy supplying 8 percent and the remaining 7 percent coming from hydropower, solar and other renewable sources.

“You cannot increase the cost of producing 85 percent of the energy being used today and expect consumers or employers to benefit from tax incentives that are going to less than 10 percent of the energy being used today,” Camp said.

Mundaca said the targeted tax incentives represent less than 1 percent of the annual revenues generated by the oil and gas industry. As a result, he said, “we don't think it will have a significant effect on prices,” and “we don't expect the job effects to be significant.”

This from the administration who projected that the stimulus bill would keep the unemployment rate below 8%.  (It is now 9.7%)  If this was the only hit the oil and gas industries were going to take, perhaps the effects on prices and jobs would be insignificant.  Unfortunately for these industries and consumers, this is only the beginning.  According to The Los Angeles Times, leading voices in the Senate are considering a 15 cent per gallon tax on gasoline as part of the climate bill:

The tax, which according to early estimates would be in the range of 15 cents a gallon, was conceived with the input of several oil companies, including Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips, and is being championed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It is shaping up as a critical but controversial piece in the efforts by Graham, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to write a climate bill that moderate Republicans could support. Along those lines, the bill will also include an expansion of offshore oil drilling and major new incentives for nuclear power plant construction.

Environmental groups have long advocated gasoline taxes to reduce fossil fuel consumption; the oil industry has spent heavily in recent years to fight taxes, which it says would harm consumers.

In this case, though, several oil companies like the tax because it figures to cost them far less than other proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including provisions in the climate bill the House passed last year.

The Senate bill's sponsors appear to want the revenue raised from the tax to fund a variety of programs that would lower industrial emissions, including helping manufacturers reduce energy use or boosting wind and solar power installations by electric utilities.

But the tax has encountered stiff behind-the-scenes resistance from some Democrats, who fear the political specter of increasing gasoline prices as the national average cost of gasoline is expected to crest $3 a gallon this summer.

And no other Republicans have publicly announced support for the framework legislation that Graham and the others are circulating on Capitol Hill. Attracting significant Republican support for a bill featuring a tax increase would run counter to historical political trends and to the anti-tax outrage percolating among the "tea party" activists in the GOP base.

They just don't get it.

Waxman backs down on Obamacare inquisition

It appears that Henry Waxman has backed down from his plans to interrogate corporate executives who have dared to restate their companies' earnings projections downward to acccount for Obamacare.  From David Freddoso at The Washington Examiner:

A House Energy and Commerce Committee spokeswoman tells me that Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has indeed cancelled the April 21 subcommittee hearing in which CEOs were to testify about Obamacare. So far, the only indication of this change appears on the committee's website is on the Republican minority ranking member's site. In fact, the hearing still appears on Waxman's committee calendar for that day.

Waxman had called the hearing in reaction to public statements by several companies -- including Verizon, AT&T, and John Deere, among others -- that Obamacare would cost them hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars because it laid a new tax on their retiree health benefit payments.

Ever since the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit, the payments had been subsidized, tax-free, as a way of preventing these companies from dropping enrollees onto the Medicare rolls, where they would cost the government far more. When Obamacare changed the tax rules, it was quite clear that this would result in huge losses, but President Obama and Democrats had failed to heed warnings to this effect in the run up to Obamacare's passage last month.

The CEOs, required by law to be honest about earnings projections, re-stated their bottom lines in reaction to Obamacare's passage, earning the ire of Waxman and other Democrats.

Hearings on this matter would likely have proved an embarrassment to the Democrats and helped drag out discussion of Obamacare's unexpected ill effects.

Could it be that the upcoming Tax Day Tea Party protests have actually shaken Chairman Waxman to his senses?

Nah. He's just moved on to another issue that he can really sink his teeth into.  Business Week headline today:  Waxman Calls For Major League Baseball Ban on Chewing Tobacco. (h/t Michelle Malkin)

First moonwalker Neil Armstrong blasts Obama's space plan

Two days ahead of President Obama's space policy summit at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong released an open letter condemning the administration's plan to scrap the back-to-the-moon Constellation program:

When President Obama recently released his budget for Nasa, he proposed a slight increase in total funding, substantial research and technology development, an extension of the International Space Station operation until 2020, long range planning for a new but undefined heavy lift rocket and significant funding for the development of commercial access to low earth orbit

Although some of these proposals have merit, the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.

America’s only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz – at a price of over 50 million dollars per seat with significant increases expected in the near future – until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves.

The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.

It appears that we will have wasted our current $10-plus billion investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.

For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature.

Under the President's space plan, resources will be shifted to private-sector rockets and a scaled-down version of Constellation's Orion crew capsule for emergency use to reduce NASA's reliance on the Russians for transport to and from the International Space Station (ISS).  Accordng to CBS News, the President's long range plans will focus on the development of a heavy-lift rocket for eventual manned space flight to a variety of deep space targets, including, ultimately, Mars.

NASA icon Chris Kraft, who directed mission control from Mercury through Apollo is not impressed:

"They're concentrating on the wrong thing," Kraft said Tuesday evening. "The problem is not safety on space station and escape; the problem is getting to and from the space station."

And Kraft said he sees no reason to speed up work on a new larger rocket, saying, "We need a heavy-lift vehicle like we need a hole in the head."

With the retirement of the space shuttle at the end of this year, the U.S. will be entirely dependent on Russia for transportation to and from the International Space Station (which has cost the U.S. $96 billion).  The Russians aren't stupid.  They recently doubled the price for Soyuz spacecraft passage to and from the ISS to $55.8 million per astronaut.  I'm sure more price increases will follow.

WaPo Milbank compares Obama Nuclear Summit to Soviet-era Moscow

President Obama played host to an international Nuclear Security Summit in Washington this week.  Obama sycophant, Dana Milbank at The Washington Post is not impressed with the President's attendant treatment of the international press:

World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.

They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.

In the middle of it all was Obama -- occupant of an office once informally known as "leader of the free world" -- putting on a clinic for some of the world's greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.

The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama's eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: "I'm going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session."

Reporters for foreign outlets, admitted for the first time to the White House press pool, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they're cracked up to be.

Yasmeen Alamiri from the Saudi Press Agency got this lesson in press freedom when trying to cover Obama's opening remarks as part of a limited press "pool": "The foreign reporters/cameramen were escorted out in under two minutes, just as the leaders were about to begin, and Obama was going to make remarks. . . . Sorry, it is what it is."

Alamiri's counterparts from around the world had similar experiences. Arabic-language MBC TV's Nadia Bilbassy had this to say of Obama's meeting with the Jordanian king: "We were there for around 30 seconds, not enough even to notice the color of tie of both presidents. I think blue for the king."

The Press Trust of India, at Obama's meeting with the Pakistani prime minister, reported, "In less than a minute, the pool was asked to leave." The Yomiuri Shimbun correspondent found that she was "ushered out about 30 seconds" after arriving for Obama's meeting with the Malaysian prime minister. A reporter with Turkey's TRT-Turk went to Obama's meeting with the president of Armenia, but "we had to leave the room again after less than 40 seconds."

Even the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was more talkative with the press than Obama. Michelle Jamrisko, with Japan's Kyodo News, noted that Hu, at his session with Obama, spoke to the Chinese media in Chinese, while Obama limited himself to "say hello to the cameras" and "thank you everybody."

Obama's official schedule for Tuesday would have pleased China's Central Committee. Excerpts: "The President will attend the Heads of Delegation working lunch. This lunch is closed press. . . . The President will meet with Prime Minster Erdogan of Turkey. This meeting is closed press. . . . The President will attend Plenary Session II of the Nuclear Security Summit. This session is closed press."

Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said it was the most restricted set of meetings they had ever seen in Washington. They complained to both the administration and White House Correspondents' Association, which will discuss the matter Thursday with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

This critical assessment by Milbank is extremely unusual on its own, but when considered in conjunction with recent news of the President's ditching of the White House Press Corps to attend a non-existent soccer game, and serious questions about his mental health, it seems particularly unsettling.

But news from the summit is not all bad.  I'm sure we will all sleep better now that President Obama has secured nuclear concessions from Ukraine, Mexico and Canada.

Maybe Switzerland and Belgium will be next.

Ed Morrissey's interview of Herman Cain

On Sunday I shared a video of Herman Cain's speech at the SRLC in New Orleans and mentioned that Ed Morrissey would be publishing his post-speech interview with Mr. Cain at HotAir.com.  Here it is  (Ed apologizes for the bad lighting, but it really doesn't subtract from the excellent content):





At the end of Part 2, Cain delivers a scathing rebuke to President Obama's laughable lip service to cutting spending (around the 4:30 mark on the video):

"Like when the President said, 'I've ordered all my cabinet positions..departments to cut 100 million dollars out of the budget.'  100 million dollars?  That's a rounding error.  That's not serious about cutting spending."

I expect we'll be hearing a lot more from Herman Cain.

Obama State Department and University of Illinois fete Ecuador's Chavez

In case you still doubt that big government universities have become indoctrination centers for a statist ideology, take a look at this jaw-dropping expose from John Bambenek at Big Government:

The University of Illinois Alumni Association recently awarded it’s “International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement” to the current President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado. Since the University of Illinois is the premier university for the state of Illinois, let’s see the list of accomplishments President Correa can boast of while claiming this prestigious award:

•Transparency International listed Ecuador as one of the world’s most corrupt countries under Correa.

•He has seized numerous TV and Radio outlets in his country.

•He has jailed reporters critical of his government.

•Organzied [sic] crime has had a magnificient [sic] rise during his reign.

•He has rammed through constitutional changes to increase his power and extend his term of office.

•He was found to have FARC terrorists fund his campaigns.

•Documents found by Colombia show that he has actively worked with FARC terrorists. FARC has also been involved with kindnapping Americans.

•Ecuador has provided a safe haven for FARC terrorists to launch attacks on Columbia, an ally of the United States.

•Ecuador has ties to both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and has increased ties to Iran.

You could see awarding an individual responsible for the above antics (and more) at, say, Berkeley, but in the midwest? Then again, this is the same university system that employs and granted tenure to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

An interesting connection is that Loren Tayler, the President of the University of Illinois Alumni Association is the son-in-law of Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MA), the Democratic House Majority Leader.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that there is liberal bias in academia. However, to award the leader of one of the world’s most corrupt countries, one that is waging an open war on the free press in his country, who is allied with Iran and openly aiding attacks against an American ally, who is sponsoring a terrorist group that has kidnapped Americans, defies logic.

At a time when the University of Illinois is facing severe budget cutbacks, perhaps its time Illinois taxpayers consider whether or not they wish to fund a University that honors people who are involved in attacking Americans. This award is the kind of mind-boggling lunacy only possible at a big government university.

The Rafael Correa Delgado story actually gets worse....much worse.  From The Wall Street Journal:

After taking office in 2007, Mr. Correa decided that his popularity put him above Congress and the law. A solid majority of Ecuadorians wanted a new constitution. But he decreed that the constituent assembly, which would write the new document, should also have broad powers, including the power to dissolve Congress. That set off a constitutional crisis that was resolved in Mr. Correa's favor when he used the power of the state and his supporters used mob violence. Had the Ecuadorian military responded with the courage and patriotism displayed by its Honduran counterpart, the nation might still have a fighting chance for democracy.

Now that Mr. Correa has consolidated his power, he is employing state intimidation to destroy his opponents. The press is under constant threat, critics are being driven into exile, the economy is in shambles, and it has come out that Colombia's FARC rebels consider Mr. Correa's government an ally. Iran is a good friend.

Consider how things got to this point. When the Ecuadorian Congress told Mr. Correa it would not grant the constituent assembly the powers he wanted it to have, the electoral court, which he controls, fired the opposition congressmen. They were replaced with more compliant members.

The constitutional court then stepped in to say that the fired congressmen had to be reinstated. In response, according to Gabriela Calderón de Burgos, a columnist for the Guayaquil daily El Universo, "Mr. Correa went on radio and TV to say that despite the court's decision, the fired congressmen would not come back."

Oh, did I mention that President Obama sent the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo A. Valenzuela to Ecuador last week to meet with President Correa?  You can learn all about his visit on his Twitter account here.  It will help if you can read Spanish.