Archives for February 2014

Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith says Obama administration regulations will further cripple coal-fired power plants and another brutal winter in the northeast could mean a power shortages for businesses in the region.

Griffith, who represents coal-rich southwestern Virginia and sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says power grids are already stressed and regulations that will soon take effect will push the region past the breaking point if we get another winter like this one.

“In January of next year, a lot of coal plants have to close down based on regulations already passed.  We’re not even talking about new facilities.  We’re talking about older facilities that are being shut down because they can’t meet the new requirements,” said Griffith.

“A number of places had a hard time keeping the grid fully supplied with electricity.  They asked people to cut back in the northeast.  Gas prices went through the roof.  A big part of that’s going to be gone next year.  If we were to have another cold snap next year, I’m afraid we would have serious problems,” he said.

Griffith says Obama administration regulations not only endanger future coal-fired plants but also make the operation of existing plants a losing proposition.

“I believe the administration wants to eliminate coal as a fuel source.  They’re putting regulations in place on new buildings of coal facilities.  You can’t even find the technology today to really make those facilities work.  It doesn’t exist.  The best estimates are maybe seven, ten or maybe longer years before we can even come close to matching the regulations that the EPA wants,” said Griffith.

“On older facilities, it just doesn’t make sense for some companies to retrofit or retool those to meet the regulations to meet the regulations that they’ve been passing over the last several years.  Come next January, a lot of those plants are going to shut down,” said Griffith.

The congressman says this is not some doom and gloom prophecy.  He says it’s happening in his district.

“In my district alone, we have two facilities.  One is shutting down completely.  The other is converting two-thirds of their production to natural gas, but the natural gas won’t produce as much electricity as it did in the past.  So when you hit those peak periods, usually in the wintertime with cold and sometimes in the summertime with heat, we won’t have as much electricity available next year as we have this year,” said Griffith.

“There won’t be enough new power sources brought on board by next year.  If we have the same kind of conditions next year then we’re going to have serious issues.  I think we may have some situations where companies say, ‘We can’t supply your factory.  We’ve got to make sure the hospitals and the people who have homes are staying warm.  I understand that, there’s no need for it,” he said.

Even if the lights stay on for everyone, Griffith says the price of energy during times of high demand will continue to skyrocket and people are already feeling the stress.

“We heard testimony this week in committee that even this year, with the rising cost of electricity, the (Northern Arkansas Electric Cooperative) president said we’re going to have choices made.  This one lady that called him and he talked to personally said, ‘I figured out how I can pay my electric bill this winter.  I’ll take my medication every other day,'” said Griffith.

Griffith says he and other congressional Republicans have repeatedly warned the Obama administration that it’s regulations are costing jobs and threatening energy supplies.  He says he administration’s response has not been encouraging.

“What they have always said is that they don’t think that many plants will retire.  They’ve been wrong on that number.  The announcements of these retirements have been out there and it’s much higher than the administration originally estimated.  I think that they’re hoping that we won’t have that kind of a winter next year, and I’m with them,” said Griffith.

“I think some (in the administration) believe that they can get enough natural gas in there to make it happen.  The infrastructure, I don’t believe, can be built in time if in the next several winters we have a really cold winter.  I think they’re hoping that they won’t have to face it, that they won’t have to have a cold winter.  I’m worried that we will,” said Griffith.

He says the results we’ve already seen from Obama-era regulations and the projections for what will happen offer an unmistakable message to policymakers.

“The EPA needs to go in and make their regulations much more reasonable across the board.  Even though they may want another energy source, right now coal is still one of the largest energy sources in this country.  To have made the regulations so strict so quickly is going to impact business in America.  It’s already impacting the cost of providing electricity for people in their homes.  It’s going to impact business and it’s going to have other negative impacts,” said Griffith.

While the Winter Olympics showcased amazing talent, much of the games was overshadowed by the comically poor accommodations for athletes and spectators in Sochi.  From dangerous, discolored water to stray dogs, the Capitol Steps reflect on the lasting memories of the games.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan dig a deeper hole for herself by insisting you can still keep your health care plan if you like it.  They also cringe as John Boehner and President Obama get chummy on immigration reform.  And they rip the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for ruling school officials were right to force students to remove American flag shirts on Cinco de Mayo.

The public comment period ends Thursday on proposed IRS rule changes that it says provide greater clarity in what activity is allowed in non-profit organizations but critics allege it is an assault on free speech and association that would essentially codify the brutal treatment aimed at conservative organizations over the past few years.

Administration officials have remained very quiet publicly about the suggested rule changes, but over 100,000 comments have been filed in response to the plan.

Former Federal Elections Commission Chairman Bradley A. Smith is now chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, which filed comments criticizing the proposed rules.  Smith says the IRS is using the veneer of clarity to make life difficult for political activists.

“Essentially, the IRS wants to change and vastly expand the definition of what qualifies as political activity, to include things like non-partisan voter registration or talking about issues.  501 (c) 4 (status) limits groups that are engaged in candidate races.  They want it to include talk about the budget or offshore oil drilling or green energy or whatever it might be,” said Smith.

“By expanding greatly the definition of political activity, that will bring a number of groups out of (c) 4 and into political committee status, where they have much more reporting burdens and they have to publicly disclose who their donors are, which the Supreme Court has normally said groups don’t have to do,” said Smith.

If the rules are implemented, Smith says life could be much different for politically active groups from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club, but he says others will feel the pain even more.

“It also includes many, many small groups and a lot of folks in the tea party and other small groups like that fell what the IRS has done is they said, ‘What were we trying to get them for a year ago or two years ago.  Let’s just codify that and we can do it that way,'” said Smith.

Smith says he believes some at the IRS genuinely want to add clarity to the process of properly designating organizations for tax purposes, but he says there is abundant evidence that the specific proposals and timing of the changes expose a political agenda.

“For the last four years, there’s been a steady stream of letters and complaints by high-ranking Democratic officeholders in Congress.  Senator Levin, Senator Durbin, Senator Franken, Senator Bennet, we can name a whole number who have been pushing the IRS to crack down on various groups, to investigate them and to investigate their tax status.  Often they have named specific conservative groups by name.  The president himself has made some public speeches in which he’s called these groups a threat to our democracy,” said Smith.

“There’s strong evidence to believe that part of the reason the IRS proposed these rules and is acting in this way right now because of partisan pressure put on them by Democratic officeholders,” said Smith.

Smith also believes the IRS is wading into waters best policed by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).  He says Congress explicitly created the FEC in 1974 to be a bipartisan commission.  By law, there are an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on the panel so one party cannot ram through its agenda.  Smith says Democrats tried to enact these rule changes through the FEC but couldn’t get majority support.  So they turned to the IRS instead.

“That’s exactly why we shouldn’t put it to the IRS, because whether they’re doing it because of this or not , it looks that way to people.  It looks like a partisan power grab by Democrats to harm their Republican rivals,” said Smith.  “I think the IRS is going into an area where we really don’t want our tax collectors to go.  One of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon was that he was using the IRS to harass his political enemies.  It’s very important that we keep the IRS out of politics.”

So is this public comment time a mere pause in the IRS pursuit of these new rules or might the huge number of concerned comments actually achieve their goal?

“They can change minds.  That’s why the comment period is required by law.  It’s usually not so much a political popularity contest but thoughtful comments pointing out some of the problems with the rules do change minds.  The agency is required to address those, and if it doesn’t explain why it ignored those comments it’s decision could be overturned in court,” said Smith.

Smith says a final decision could some within a month or a few months.  Even if they are approved, he suspects there would not be enough time to fully implement the rule changes in time to be enforced for the 2014 campaign.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review explore a recent poll from CBS News which shows Americans deeply dissatisfied with President Obama.  They also worry about whether Russia’s current military moves imply an upcoming attack on Ukraine.  Finally, they are disgusted by Harry Reid’s comments suggesting Obamacare horror stories are false, and that the Koch brothers are  un-American.

A key member of the House Armed Services Committee says the Pentagon’s proposed defense cuts are too big, show no coherent national security strategy and will not pass the House of Representatives.

He also says the administration’s actions smack of political calculation.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced troop reductions to the lowest levels since the days before World War II.  The Army will drop its troop levels to between 440,000-450,000.  The U-2 surveillance planes and A-10 Warthogs would be scrapped under this plan and replaced in part by unmanned vehicles.  Eleven Navy cruisers would also be put of the shelf for modernization.

Virginia Rep. Rob Wittman represents a district in one of the most military-centered states in the country and chairs the Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.  He says the reductions are too much and don’t follow a coherent strategy.

“There are deep concerns about the nature of these reductions, the scope of these reductions and then doing this without clearly elaborating what our national strategy is,” said Wittman.  “We’ve gone from a position of a national strategy of being able to fight and win a war on two fronts to going to a strategy of fighting a war on one front and holding serve on another front, to today where the current state of readiness is being in a spot where all we can do is to fight and win a war on one front.

“To take that position and further degrade that in these different ways I think is extraordinarily problematic,” said Wittman, who adds that assuming technology alone can replace human skill, judgment and ingenuity is a major mistake.  He also says the Obama administration is making the very same mistake that other administrations pursued following major military conflicts.

“We’ve seen time after time after time, historically, where when we go into that mode in our reset after we come out of conflict, we have done one thing with 100 percent certainty in that we’ve always gotten reset wrong after coming out of conflict.  If you look at post-World War II, post-Korea and post-Vietnam, we cannot repeat those mistakes of the past,” said Wittman.

Wittman is confident the cuts will never actually pass in the House of Representatives.

“I do not think so.  I think there’s a vast amount of skepticism and constructive criticism on how we address this nation’s military needs going forward, I think this will have an almost impossible time getting through the House,” said Wittman.

Wittman also wants to see a detailed comparison on cost and functionality concerning the changes in weapons, particularly with respect to the U-2 and A-10s.  He says unmanned aircraft may be preferable but they also need to be just as beneficial.  He says the A-10s are even more critical since they provide close air support for ground forces.  Wittman says any replacement system must be proven to protect American lives on the ground just as well or even better than the A-10s.

In reaction to the proposed cuts, many conservatives ripped President Obama as being naive for thinking the U.S. would not be in a land war again anytime soon.  They also scolded Obama for allegedly not believing in a robust military  Wittman says many of those concerns are spot on.

“If you look at what’s projected by the administration, you notice that the cuts are on the side of the military but they also propose expansion of spending in other areas of government.  If this was a serious effort to really reduce spending then the spending reductions would take place elsewhere and they would also have a serious proposal about how to reduce spending in the autopilot spending programs,” said Wittman, referring to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security.

“Instead, the proposals that were there last year are absent this year so there’s not even an effort to try to contain or manage spending within Medicare and Social Security.  There’s also an increase in spending in other areas of the budget, which tells me that they’re looking at this from a political perspective.  That is, ‘How do we go to areas where there may be political bases that need to be satisfied by increasing spending there, yet we’re going to do that on the backs of the men and women that serve this nation,” Wittman said.

The congressman says the military people he speaks with are open to spending cuts in the military, but that those cuts need to be structured in a way that doesn’t hurt or capability or demand far more in spending reductions from the military than from other parts of the budget.

“I believe they are spot on.  They want to make sure that if we’re going to be reducing budgets that we reduce them top to bottom in every area of the budget.  Remember, the military is the only place where we’ve had significant cuts in the law.  All the other areas of the budget for the most part remained untouched.  So, this just shows that this is more of a political exercise than it is truly a serious effort to look at the budget top to bottom and make those tough decisions about how we manage the finances of the nation,” said Wittman.

“It also shows there is not the kind of attention necessary to look at where we need to be with military readiness and making sure the forces are properly constructed for the challenges they’ll face in the future,” said Wittman.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review explain why Florida congressional candidate Alex Sink 19s comments on immigration may sink her campaign.  They are also dismayed by the possibility of all U.S. troops coming home from Afghanistan and the chaos it will leave behind.  Finally, they touch on the current CPAC soap opera over who should be included.

President Obama is making a major mistake by concluding the United States has no strategic interest in the future of Ukraine and even if he does get tough Russian Vladimir Putin isn’t likely to take him very seriously, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

The Obama administration is publicly warning Russia not to meddle in Ukrainian affairs as a transitional phase gets underway and eventually leads to new elections in the coming weeks.  However, Obama is also signaling that the U.S. won’t be encouraging a specific course of action, noting last week that has wasn’t interested in “moving pieces around on a Cold War chessboard.”

Bolton says that makes an uphill diplomatic fight that much harder.

“Putin has the strong hand here, both in terms of Ukrainian domestic politics and in terms of the economic leverage that he can exercise.  By contrast, the United States and Europe don’t have that much to offer.  We’ve heard the president himself and his spokesman say repeatedly that we don’t see ourselves in competition with Russia here, which is a big mistake because we certainly are in competition,” said Bolton.

“I’m afraid this may be a very unequal contest, unhappily for the people in Ukraine who just want a chance to have free and fair elections elect a representative government and decide their own course,” said Bolton, who says Obama simply fails to grasp the importance of the opportunity presenting itself in Ukraine.

“I think the president believes we have no strategic interest in Ukraine.  He’s said repeatedly he thinks it’s a matter to be left to the Ukrainian people.  In fact we do have strategic interests in Ukraine.  It’s a large country.  It’s almost 50 million people.  It was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and still has enormous and untapped agricultural potential.  It could be a major player in Central European affairs, and it sits right between the eastern border of NATO and the western border of Russia,” said Bolton.

“Let’s be clear, even if Obama doesn’t see that, Putin sees the strategic interest from his perspective.  So for us to say we’re not going to play in Ukrainian affairs is just ceding the field to the Russians.  I think it’s a view on Obama’s part that very curiously ends up in exactly the same place as Ron Paul,” he said.

So what should the U.S. be advocating and working towards with respect to Ukraine?

“I think we should be making it clear that, along with the Europeans and the International Monetary Fund, we’re prepared to help out a transition on Ukraine to help free them from Soviet-era linkages that bind them to the Russian economy.  I think we also ought to be saying, as the United States, that we’re prepared to revisit the mistake NATO made in 2008, when we should have put both Ukraine and Georgia on a path to NATO membership,” said Bolton.

“Even though economic integration with Europe and the West as a whole is on the mind of Ukrainians, the fact is the European Union cannot provide security.  Only NATO can do that and I think that’s the message that Putin needs to hear, that he is not going to have a free hand in Ukraine or any of the other former republics of the Soviet Union,” said Bolton.

Obama’s “reset button” approach to Russian relations is widely panned, with many experts concluding Putin outmaneuvered Obama over nuclear weapons reduction,Syria’s weapons of mass destruction and Iran’s nuclear program.  So if Putin is perceived as having the upper hand in our relationship, how much leverage could Obama gain by adopting a more aggressive posture like the one outlined by Bolton?

Bolton says he fears it’s too late for Obama to influence an ideal outcome.

“Unfortunately, if Barack Obama said what I just said, they’d laugh at it in the Kremlin because they see that Obama has a foreign policy that is 99 percent rhetoric and one percent action.  I think that’s the problem we’re going to have for the next three years.  The idea that Obama says Russia should stay out of the internal affairs of the Ukraine , they find that laughable in Moscow.  They are going to interfere.  There’s no doubt about it,” said Bolton.

“Everybody says this is a matter for the Ukrainians, but the Russians aren’t going to leave it to the Ukrainians, and if we stand on the sideline the odds certainly favor the Russian position winning,” said Bolton.

Bolton says election corruption is certainly a danger in Ukraine, but he says the best course in the very near term is for the electoral process to play out.  He says the nation is very evenly divided geographically, politically and by faith.  Bolton does not think partition is a wise course to pursue right now, but may be needed in the near future depending upon how the next few months unfold.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged by polling in three key Senate races that Republicans need to win to have a good shot at taking the majority in 2015.  They also wince as a new government report shows twice as many small business employees will be paying higher health care costs compared to those who will see lower costs.  They rip a proposal in New York that would mandate government-run parenting classes for kids to advance in school.  And they pay tribute to legendary filmmaker and actor Harold Ramis.

The Obama administration is proposing the biggest cuts to the military in generations, citing an end to the war in Afghanistan and the impact of sequestration, but critics allege the president and Pentagon officials are engaging in a deliberate and dangerous hollowing out of the armed forces.

Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney also says these cuts will further erode already poor military readiness and signal the world that we will be in no position to defend national security threats on the scale we have in years past.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans for a $522 billion budget, which is still exponentially higher than than the defense budget for any other nation.  But the plan also calls for bringing troop levels to the lowest level since before World War II.  The plan would bring Army troops down to between 440,000 and 450,000.  It also calls for the elimination of longstanding programs like A-10 Warthogs and U-2 surveillance planes, although plans are in place to replace them with different aircraft, including unmanned vehicles.

The Navy will keep buying two destroyers and two attack submarines per year while shelving 11 cruisers for modernization.

But the shuffling of weaponry and shrinking of personnel in response to changing needs and budget demands are not impressing McInerney, who is also furious that the plan calls for service members paying more for housing, seeing fewer benefits and losing a billion dollars in spending on military commissaries.

“There’s no question that this administration has us on a path of unilateral disarmament.  Don’t confuse ourselves.  He’s got us on a path of disarmament.  What surprised me even more is that he is making such deep personnel cuts in the services as far as the commissaries, pay, these type of things that are going to have a very negative impact on our morale,” said McInerney.

The Obama administration asserts that with troops already out of Iraq and those in Afghanistan coming home this year, our ground troop numbers are safe to recede a bit.  Officials also point out that sequestration is still in effect, and half of those cuts must come from the military.

McInerney says Congress deserves some of the blame for that but the lion’s share belongs with Obama.

“This was the administration’s plan all along.  They’re the ones that came up with sequestrationEverybody on the Hill thought people are reasonable and won’t let this happen.  The fact is it was (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid’s intent to let it happen.  It was clear the Democratic Party was not going to negotiate with the Republicans.  So they drove it into sequestration, and they are very happy about sequestration.  That’s why the Defense budget is taking the bulk of the cuts,” said McInerney.

The Obama administration further asserts that troop numbers are safe to drop to levels not seen since before World War II because high technology weapons can handle virtually any threat and a major ground campaign is unlikely to be needed again.  McInerney says the threats facing us right now should make it clear that’s a bad idea.

“The fact is this administration still does not have a strategy for how to defeat radical Islam.  They don’t even talk about it.  They took us out of Iraq and what do we find?  We find now that the Iraqis are buying weapons from the Iranians.  That is a very disturbing thing.  We fundamentally turned Iraq over to the Iranian sphere of influence.  I’m afraid we’re going to do the same thing in Afghanistan, and still no strategy for defeating radical Islam,” said McInerney.

“They are going to let Iran, in the next two or three years, let Iran become a nuclear power.  I’m very disturbed with depleting not only our Army but also our Air Force and Navy and the Marine Corps.  As I’ve said, we are fundamentally, unilaterally disarming,” he said.

McInerney’s comments ring close to concerns over manpower and readiness voiced Monday by retired U.S. Army Gen Jack Keane on the FOX News Channel.

“The fact of the matter is today, the Army has very few units that are ready to fight today.  And that’s the truth of it,” said Keane.

McInerney says that analysis is spot on and that much deeper cuts would only make things worse.

“The Army couldn’t put a division in the field and fight as a division.  All they can do is fight as platoons and maybe at the company level.  They haven’t done the battalion or brigade level, let alone division and corps level attacks.  So their readiness is very low,” said McInerney.

So how are friend and foe alike viewing the combination of America’s diminished readiness and significant budget cuts in the near future?

“I think they’re going to read it as this administration is not going to be a superpower or a global leader and they are going to start taking advantage of us.  There are a lot of things that are going to be happening over the next two or three years that none of us will have foreseen.  We’re going to have to react to them, otherwise it’s going to be a very negative world that we live in,” said McInerney.