My initial reaction was very positive: Audi is exposing the “green police” for the elitists they are.

But then at the end they boasted about their “green diesel” being exempt from the “green police” and that “green has never felt so right.”

What’s more: the news reports, presumably based on Audi’s PR press kit, say the manufacturer’s intent is to use “light-hearted” comedy to encourage everyone to “go green.”

Light hearted?? Comedy??? It sure scared the HEQQ out of me!

It’s even scarier to think we live in an Orwellian world in which Audi thinks its customers will mindlessly accept such propaganda as good for them and that resistors like me who prefer to stick with incandescent light bulbs, use plastic grocery bags, and soak our weary bones in hot tubs warm enough to kill off harmful bacteria must be carted off to jail.

Of course, it’s possible that Audi is trying to have it both ways — to appease the oppressors; even while showing the rest of us how horrible it would be to live in such a society and in one in which the regulator could also ban the vehicles they sell and that their customers want to buy.

They are a German-owned company, so it’s possible they are doing what some of their ancestors tried to do while under fascist control. I don’t know. As one of the bloggers said, “The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police.”

Well: I don’t acknowledge the moral authority of a crowd that, under the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, has caused s many tens of thousands of Americans to die prematurely in the little deathtraps our government’s “green police” have foisted on us.

And neither should Audi.

FYI, this should be THE macro-economic issue of 2010…….John Skorburg

U.S. Joins Global Parade of Countries Plagued by Debt Bomb

By Jon D. Markman, Contributing Writer, Money Morning

The most important fundamental development of the week was not any of a slew of economic reports at all but the new federal budget proposal released by the White House. And it was a doozy: The Obama Administration proposed to spend $3.8 trillion, with $1.6 trillion on the equivalent of the national credit card.

Investors did not overtly seem to mind today, but they will. It is almost mind-numbing to think we’ve gone from the surplus that President Clinton left President Bush to the trillion-dollar hole we’re in now. There is nothing good about the scenario of bone-crushing debt, as we have seen repeatedly throughout the world recently in places like Dubai, Greece, the United Kingdom and Japan. The fact that the U.S. dollar has managed to hold its own despite representing a country deeply in hock is only testament to the weakness of every other major developed-world government.

It’s ironic in fact that plenty of emerging-market countries are managing their books far better than the United States and Europe. They include Chile, Azerbaijan, Angola, Ukraine and Romania — all with debt at less than 15% of national GDP, while we are knocking on 60%!

Continue…

Obama Deficit Brings Us Closer to the Brink of National Bankruptcy

By Martin Hutchinson, Contributing Editor, Money Morning

U.S. President Barack Obama’s budget for 2011, presented on Monday, shows a deficit of $1.3 trillion for the fiscal year that ends that September. That shortfall is actually $287 billion more than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had projected less than a week earlier, when it had released a budget forecast of its own for that same fiscal year.

Granted, we’re getting used to seeing budget deficits expand at a pretty quick pace these days. But even by government standards an increase of nearly $290 billion in less than a week is almost too much to bear!

All kidding aside, $105 billion of this $287 billion increase came about mostly because of a change in “assumptions.” The CBO budget assumed that all the 2001 Bush tax cuts would be reversed, whereas the Obama budget reverses only those that applied to the rich (those with incomes above $250,000).

The CBO budget also made the ridiculous assumption that the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) would be allowed to revert to its 2001 level, forcing 25 million taxpayers to calculate their taxes twice – and to then pay the higher of the two estimates. That was never going to happen, and the Obama budget finally abandons that idiotic piece of fiction.

The disparity in deficit projections between the CBO and the Obama administration weren’t limited just to fiscal 2011. For the period from 2011 to 2020, the CBO forecasted a budget deficit of $6.047 trillion, while the Obama budget released just days later projected a shortfall of $8.532 trillion – a difference of $2.485 trillion.

The difference in assumptions between the CBO and Obama projections explains nearly half of that difference. Of course, that still leaves the other half.

And a troublesome half it is.

Read the Full Story Here

Posted by John W. Skorburg

In her final State of the State (yes, it should have been a real S.O.S.) address on Wednesday night, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm told her constituents — suffering under 14.7 percent unemployment — to just keep on keepin’-on (hat-tip to Mike LaFaive at Mackinac Center):

Everything we do in these next 11 months should be linked to the economic plan we have followed these seven years: diversifying the economy; educating our people; and protecting citizens in a time of transition.

Detroit News editorialist Henry Payne spells out that stellar record today at National Review Online:

Granholm entered office on the tired heels of a three-term Republican with a wave of good tidings as the state’s first female governor. Beautiful, silver-tongued, and Harvard Law–educated, Granholm was a young pol with little executive seasoning. Supremely self-confident despite her inexperience, Granholm raised income taxes (as the state’s economy literally and figuratively headed south), “invested” billions of stimulus dollars in infrastructure that she predicted would create tens of thousands of jobs, mandated renewable-power standards, and backed them up with millions ingovernment subsidies to transform Michigan from “the Rust Belt to the Green Belt.” In her 2006 State of the State address, she promised that “in five years, you’ll be blown away.”

Four years in and it’s blowing hard, all right. Michigan’s unemployment rate has more than doubled, to over 14 percent. Yes, the state’s per capita income drop from 20th in the nation to 40th has tracked a historic restructuring of the state’s auto industry, but Granholm’s Obamaesque policy prescriptions have been anti-growth while fueling budget deficits to record highs.

Fast-forward to about 2:28 for the appropriate analogy:

Stock prices continued their swoon Friday, despite some good news on the job front .

Economist Brian Wesbury, policy advisor to The Heartland Institute and chief economist for First Trust Advisors in suburban Chicago, offers this insight into investor psychology:

“The labor market has clearly turned the corner, and we believe it will improve substantially in the year ahead. Although payrolls fell slightly in January, civilian employment – an alternative measure of jobs that includes self-employment – soared 785,000, and is up twice in the past three months.

“One reason payrolls seem to be lagging a little is that companies are aggressively expanding hours. Total hours have increased at 1.8% annual rate in the past three months, the equivalent of about 200,000 jobs per month.

“In other words, the demand for labor is there, it’s just that firms are meeting it by increasing hours. But they can’t do this forever, so we are likely on the cusp of large payroll gains.

“Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has dropped to 9.7% from a peak of 10.1% in October and even the more comprehensive measure of unemployment (that includes “discouraged workers” and those working part-time but who say they want full-time hours) has dropped to 16.5% from 17.4%. Payroll gains have gone from being isolated in education/health and then temps to now encompassing manufacturing and retail. The share of industries increasing payrolls is 47% versus 17% at the low in March 2009.

“Given the rapid economic growth we’ve had since the Fall, job gains will get much more widespread in the months ahead.”

A sampling of stories (thanks to Climate Depot), since the Climategate story broke in November, that discredit “consensus” global warming science and the UN IPCC — many from British media:

Greenpeace cited as ’sole source’ for ‘coral reef degradation’ claims

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

‘Researchers are still grappling to understand the balance of feedback loops’

UN IPCC’s Global Warming Report Under Fresh Attack for Rainforest Claims

Analysis: NASA GISS Rural US Sites Show No Temperature Increase Since 1900

BBC: Temperature and CO2 feedback loop ‘weaker than thought’

UN’s Amazongate’: ‘Made false predictions’ on Amazon rainforest, referenced non-peer-reviewed paper produced by WWF

Study: ‘Carbon dioxide appears to play a very limited role in setting interglacial temperature’

IPCC cited multiple Master’s Students in AR4, some unpublished

Chinese Scientist Qian Weihong of Beijing University: ‘Expects global temperatures will decrease continuously until 2030′

And that just scratches the surface, as they say. But what do the intrepid Society of Environmentalist Journalist template-followers at USA Today report about today? Butterflies, in another one of those “scientists say” articles:

A study of beleaguered butterflies in California provides some of the best clues yet as to how other animals may react to climate change, scientists say.

The unprecedented, 35-year analysis of butterfly populations in the Sierra Nevada details how several species are fleeing to higher elevations to escape warming temperatures.

Formerly mainstream American enviro-media sure know how to sniff out a scandal, don’t they?

Man, I go away for a month and all hell breaks loose.

Whoddathunk that when Consumer Power Reports resumed publishing in February that health reform would be dead in Washington? Yes, dead. As in “as a door nail.”

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Lawrence O’Donnell on Chris Matthew’s Hard Ball (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#34948173) on the very night of the Massachusetts election. O’Donnell was staff director of the Senate Finance Committee during the last big fight over health care, so he knows what he is talking about.

But the special interests we discussed in the last issue continued their lemming-like march to the sea. Just one week before the election they held a fundraiser for General Coakley, trying to save her election prospects. Not only did they fail to save her, but they actually helped her lose by illustrating how beholden she was to Washington.

Good. They all lost a bundle backing the wrong pony. But what’s new about that? They’ve been doing it all year long.

Now maybe we can get back to the original topic of this newsletter–chronicling the real changes that are happening in the real world of health care.

–Greg

Heartland Institute Experts Respond to Illinois Medical Malpractice RulingSPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Feb. 4, 2010) — The Illinois Supreme Court today ruled caps limiting non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases are unconstitutional.

The court held a 2006 state law capping non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering, at $500,000 in cases against doctors and $1 million in cases against hospitals violated the Separation of Powers clause of the Illinois Constitution.

On two previous occasions—in 1976 and 1997—the court also has held such caps are unconstitutional. The Illinois legislature tried again, in 2006. A Cook County Circuit Court judge found that law unconstitutional, and a direct appeal to the state supreme court followed.

Proponents of the cap say soaring jury verdicts for non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases have jeopardized the health care available to Illinois residents. Until the 2006 reforms, doctors were being driven out of high-risk practices and even out of state due to skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance premiums resulting from high awards for non-economic damages. Their patients, particularly pregnant women facing high-risk deliveries and victims of emergency head trauma, faced the prospect of limited availability of medical care—and sometimes no care at all—as doctors fled Illinois.

In your coverage, you may quote from the comments of the experts below or contact them directly for more information. A copy of the decision in Abigale Lebron, et al., Appellees, v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital et al., Appellants is available online at http://www.heartland.org/article/26949/.

Read the rest of this entry »

This just in from the Times of London: Greenpeace, which supplied the amen chorus to all global warming alarms from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says Pachauri must go.

Greenpeace discovered Pachauri’s judgment was flawed and it called for a new leader to restore confidence in climatic science.

We welcome Greenpeace’s newly formed attitude toward climate change.

You can read the Times’ full report here.

PHOENIX (Feb. 3, 2010) — Climate scientist William Sprigg delivered a bold challenge to his fellow climate scientists in a blockbuster address to EUEC 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona on February 2.

Sprigg, an adjunct research professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, led the technical review of the first global warming report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990.

In his address to the Thirteenth Annual Energy and Environment Expo, Sprigg took on the ClimateGate scandal and called for “serious reforms” of the global scientific community. He warned of a growing perception that “the IPCC is biased, conflicted, [and] pushing political agendas.”

Sprigg called for a new climate research agency supported not entirely by the government, but in conjunction with the private sector.

“We need to stick to our scientific principles,” Sprigg said, referring at least in part to the critical importance of sharing data with other scientists so that hypotheses and methodologies can be checked and double-checked. “We need to improve our peer preview process, and expand the stakeholders’ role to keep us all honest.”

Sprigg’s remarks were videotaped by Heartland Institute Research Fellow James G. Lakely, attending the conference not generally friendly to skeptics of predictions of catastrophic, man-made global warming.

Heartland Senior Fellow James M. Taylor, managing editor of Environment & Climate News, also attended the event, and during the Q&A following Sprigg’s presentation asked the scientist what he thinks the future holds for the IPCC.

Sprigg nodded as Taylor referred to “mounting scandals” at the IPCC and then responded, “There will be some reform. I think there’s going to be big changes in the peer review process for the IPCC. There will be–there are–calls for the head of [IPCC Chairman Raj] Pachauri. Some of my colleagues have written letters saying that he needs to be taken off the job …”

The video is available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeEIl0-0EOA and also on the Web sites of Environment & Climate News, The Heartland Institute, and Global Warming Facts.