The Blog Prof links to Chris Horner’s article at Pajamas Media that details how Barack Obama, George Soros, and wind energy lobbyists colluded to hide the details of two economic studies that showed the wind energy programs in Spain and Denmark didn’t help the economy and create jobs as the president said they did. I’m only including a small portion of Chris’s article, but it’s chock full of very interesting nuggets of information about how the Obama administration tried to undermine the credibility of the two studies:

After two studies refuted President Barack Obama’s assertions regarding the success of Spain’s and Denmark’s wind energy programs, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals the Department of Energy turned to George Soros and to wind industry lobbyists to attack the studies.

Via the FOIA request, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has learned that the Department of Energy — specifically the office headed by Al Gore’s company’s former CEO, Cathy Zoi — turned to George Soros’ Center for American Progress and other wind industry lobbyists to help push Obama’s wind energy proposals.

The FOIA request was not entirely complied with, and CEI just filed an appeal over documents still being withheld. In addition to withholding many internal communications, the administration is withholding communications with these lobbyists and other related communications, claiming they constitute “inter-agency memoranda.” This implies that, according to the DoE, wind industry lobbyists and Soros’s Center for American Progress are — for legal purposes — extensions of the government.

This is a defense commonly employed against FOIA requests when seeking to withhold certain communications with, for example, paid consultants.

As candidate and president, on eight separate occasions Barack Obama instructed Americans to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany” if they wanted to know what successful “green jobs” policies look like, and if they wanted to know what we should expect here in the U.S. from his agenda.

Some European economists took a look. In March, a research team from Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University produced a detailed, substantive, heavily sourced, two-method paper: “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.” The paper concluded that Spain’s “green jobs” program was an economic failure, in fact costing Spain many jobs.

So the green jobs initiatives in Europe were deemed a failure. That didn’t deter Barack Obama from trying to foist his massive green jobs initiative on the rest of us. He launched his own effort to “hide the decline,” the economic decline that green jobs created in Europe from the American people.

Now, I am not by any means an expert on wind energy, but The Blog Prof is. He is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Oakland University and teaches a class about wind turbines and says this:

Now let me preface this post by saying that I am actually a fan of wind power. I mean – I do teach the subject after all at the university. What I am against is government pushing the technology which has led to an artificial spike in demand and has raised corresponding prices, in essence created a wind turbine bubble that will soon pop when the demand comes back down to where it was supposed to be all along. In addition, there is little if any environmental benefit to wind turbines as many, especially in the media and political classes, ignore completely the raw material, energy and manufacturing that goes into each. It’s far from ‘green.’ Europe is at least learning the former lesson as its push for wind turbines is not having the beneficial economic effect that it was purported to have… I have posted a couple of times on the Spanish ‘green’ jobs or lack thereof, including this post – The True Cost of “Green Jobs”- with the conclusion that each green job displaced 2.2 conventional jobs. Denmark found a similar disaster afoot.

Which is why Obama called on Soros and his merry band of wind energy lobbyists to do what they could to hide the reality that wind energy does not create jobs, but kills them instead. As the president’s team did their best to undermine the reports, President Obama battled forward and continued with his narrative that a green economy is a more prosperous economy even though he knew the truth. To hell with the negative economic impact his green jobs initiative will have on America’s already weak economy. To this day Obama continues to push his environmental agenda no matter how bad it will be economically for our nation because it, just like his health care reform agenda, is the vehicle that will bring the American people under the control of the federal government.

The Washington Examiner has more in an editorial here.

Mish at Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis is getting emails from readers that tell him that the FDIC is really cracking down on a number of banks’ lending habits. It seems federal auditors are combing through the books of lending institutions and requiring that they downgrade or call in loans that are not yet problematic but could be at risk of becoming problematic over time. This is not good news for small businesses or home buyers. Here’s a portion of a letter he received from someone in the home construction business (Hat tip: Instapundit) :

Banks are forcing developers/builders (especially smaller ones) to give up their properties (unsold homes and lots).

Banks say the reason is that the properties in question are no longer performing assets. I am sure there are some loans out there that are not performing and the owners are going under. I am equally sure that there are plenty of developers that are still selling homes – just not at the pace originally planned on the pro formas.

Having inside information on one of these scenarios that happened today, I cannot help but wonder what is really going on? The bank told a small developer/builder I work for that they were taking back his ongoing subdivision.

He is selling houses and updated pro formas would indicate that the current sales pace would exhaust all remaining lots within 33 months. Yet the bank stated they would only give him until April 15 to find alternative financing. The bank is also willing to let him buy the subdivision at a 33% discount to what is currently owed.

This letter writer also said that from what he’s learned a number of banks are doing the same thing and that they are all working on the same time frame, which is to have these potentially problematic construction loans written off or resolved by the end of the second quarter. Naturally, he was hoping Mish could shed a little light on what might be going on. After contacting a business banker he knows, Mish responded with this (emphasis mine):

Putting 1 and 1 together, I sense the FDIC has decided to take problem loans by the horns, forcing banks to address those problems. Banks with enough capital to take huge writedowns will survive, those that don’t, won’t. Many won’t.

If the above scenario applies to commercial real estate as well as housing, expect a huge wave of FDIC bank takeovers in the third and fourth quarters, spilling over into next year. In the meantime, expect to see more lending contractions as banks fearful of this regulatory crackdown respond with further cutbacks in business lending, especially small business lending.

I’m sure you can all predict the negative consequences that could happen as a result. Small businesses have always been the backbone of America’s economy, but with the already tight credit market, small business owners can’t get loans as it is now and are either laying off employees or closing altogether. Further tightening of the credit markets will force even more people out of work, reducing even further small business’s already shrinking customer base, possibly causing the economy to spiral even more out of control.

Additionally, the housing markets in some states are more brisk than others, but those states whose markets are sluggish at best, which includes my state of Michigan, already have large numbers of homes for sale that have been on the market for a very long time and a continually shrinking credit market will mean they will sit on the market longer still.

Mish then placed an email that he received as an addendum at the end of his post:

A friend of mine is a loan officer at a small regional bank here in Oregon. She told me last week that she cannot get any of her mortgage loans clients approved for loans because the bank has raised the qualifications so high that NO ONE is being approved for home loans. These are all borrowers who are more than qualified. If she does not make her quota this month for closed loans, per her boss, she will be getting her pink slip on March 31.

There is definitely something going on at banks for all types of loans. They are hunkering down. My banker friend believes also that there is going to be a massive failure of many banks in the near future.

Who knows, if normally good candidates for home loans can’t get loans under the newly tightened standards, we might see the land contract make a bit of a comeback as it did in the 1980’s when interest rates were so high no one could afford mortgages.

It is an understatement to say that this news does not inspire confidence, especially since pending home sales dropped 7.6% in January. Some say the bad weather accounts for a lot of that drop; however, if the FDIC crackdown sweeps into the residential housing market, banks will continue to tighten credit requirements and I just don’t see how the housing market can improve under those conditions. And if the housing market continues to show anemic numbers, the economy can’t recover.

Just so I am clear here, I’m not arguing that the FDIC is out of line to require banks to downgrade loans that could cause a problem or to tighten new loan qualification standards. This may be the tough medicine we simply have to accept because of the sub prime mortgage crisis that sent the entire economy into a tailspin. (As an aside, Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner published a piece yesterday that pointed the finger directly at Andrew Cuomo and the decisions he made when he was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration.)

I do find it interesting, though, that the FDIC is cracking down on the loan practices of private lending institutions, which could lead to massive bank failures, when just two months ago the federal government removed completely Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s bailout ceiling for three years, which will allow them to issue loans to their hearts’ desire putting the American taxpayers on the hook for any bad loans.

So, guess where the American people will have to go to get a mortgage if they don’t meet the private banks’ increasingly tough loan qualification standards? The the US government, which is where they may have to go for student loans as well if the Senate passes the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act.

President Obama’s health care reforms have already undermined one doctor/patient relationship. Barabara Gabriel who is expecting her first baby was a patient at The Woman’s Group, a Tampa obstetrics and gynecology office where she had been seeing Dr. Madalyn Bulter, one of the office’s founders. Dr. Butler does not like President Obama’s health care reforms, so she displays Florida Medical Association-endorsed posters that urge people to contact their representatives and tell them to not support the current health care bills in Congress.

Ms. Gabriel supports the president’s health care reforms and was offended by Dr. Butler’s posters. Instead of having an adult conversation with Dr. Butler about her views on health care, Ms. Gabriel tore down the posters and threw them away. She followed up her destruction of Dr. Butler’s private property with a nasty letter in which she said this, among other things:

“The bloated salaries that specialists such as the physicians at The Woman’s Group earn are a symptom of the sickness that currently plagues our broken healthcare system… For you to suggest to your patients that healthcare reform is coming in between you and those you serve is, quite frankly, disgusting.”

Dr. Butler responded to Ms. Gabriel with a letter of her own that said she supported her right to express her opinion but that destroying her private property was unacceptable and the hostile tone of her letter undermined the trust that was necessary for a healthy doctor/patient relationship; therefore, she needed to find another doctor.

What was Ms. Gabriel’s response? She was “surprised” that defacing Dr. Butler’s office and calling her and her associates the scourge of the health care industry got her fired as a patient.  I guess she thought she could just walk into Dr. Butler’s place of business and tell her what opinions she could and could not express without getting any kind of negative reaction.

Ms. Gabriel can grouse about her obstetrician’s bloated salary all she wants, but it won’t change the fact that one of the real problems that plague our health care system are people like her who feel entitled to the life saving medical care that doctors like Dr. Butler provide, while begrudging them the income they get in return.

If Obama accepts these recommendations, it would be a sign that he is capable of acknowledging when a policy is unpopular and reversing course on it. The Washington Post has the story:

President Obama’s advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president’s advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo.

While Obama may accept his advisers’ recommendation that KSM and the other 9/11 masterminds be tried in military tribunals rather than in a civilian court, it is still unacceptable to close Guantanamo Bay because it creates the problem of bringing these terrorists to the United States, something the vast majority of the American people simply do not want.  Guantanamo Bay is the ideal location for high value detainees because it is located outside the US, is virtually impenetrable and inescapable, and has been set up to meet the needs of high value detainees. If these detainees – let’s keep in mind that these men are the most dangerous men on the face of the planet – were brought back to the US, any military base they would be housed in would be a high value target for their sympathizers, both outside and inside the military (Sadly, Major Hassan’s jihadist rampage requires that we change the way we view Muslims in the military. It’s unfortunate but a reality.). Additionally, the base would need to be modified, and since their trials alone will cost a lot of money and our country is already in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars over the next 10 years, we simply cannot afford any additional expenses right now.

Dana Perino and Bill Burck have more at The Corner:

This leak from the White House means it’s all over for Attorney General Eric Holder’s dream, fueled by ideological fervor, of trying KSM in civilian court in downtown Manhattan. Weeks ago, we gave nine reasons why this turnaround would happen, here and here. One particularly important reason was the likelihood a federal judge would throw out the charges against KSM because the attorney general’s and White House’s extraordinarily prejudicial comments guaranteeing KSM’s conviction and execution deprived him of a fair trial. Once the White House fully appreciated just how disastrous the attorney general’s decision was, they shoved him aside and took over…

Once again, some will howl that the White House has a communications problem — but its real problem is one of policy. No amount of spin could make this story look good, but the White House will try to claim victory if they get a deal to close Guantanamo. But that would be “victory” achieved by PR stunt because that’s all closing Guantanamo would amount to — an appeal to the hearts and minds of jihadists and the far Left overseas, at the expense of common sense and our national security. And we’ve got a bridge to sell anyone who believes this crowd will fall in love with America once Guantanamo is closed.

Update: Andy McCarthy says hold the phone. This military tribunal thing is a head fake:

The Washington Post article that Dan posted about last night is a head fake. President Obama is not caving on military commissions. He has already caved on them: He failed (thankfully) to abolish them, Congress enacted legislation endorsing them again in 2009, and the administration has already directed a commission trial for the Cole bombers.

The real agenda here is to close Gitmo. That’s the ball to keep your eye on. The Post is trying to soften the opposition to shuttering the detention camp by portraying beleaguered, reasonable Obama as making a great compromise that will exasperate the Left. The idea is to strengthen Sen. Lindsey Graham’s hand in seeking reciprocal compromise from our side.

This, however, is a matter of national security, not horse-trading over a highway bill. You don’t agree to do a stupid thing that endangers the country just because your opposition has magnanimously come off its insistence that you do two stupid things that endanger the country.

If a deal to grant military commissions in exchange for closing Gitmo happens, it is a major win for the Obama Left and an enormous loss for public safety.

Read all of his post over at The Corner.

With Barack Obama’s declaration, “Damn the American people! Full speed ahead!” the US Congress is perverting a parliamentary process that was designed only for budgetary issues that could reduce the deficit. Instead, he and Nancy Pelosi are using it to pass their massive new health care entitlement program because they can’t pass it any other way. As the The Wall Street Journal writes in its must read editorial out today it is a shocking abuse of power:

A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can’t stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny–ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it’s good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.

***

The vehicle is “reconciliation,” a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.

Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because their plan is in so much political trouble–within their own party, and even more among the general public–and because they’ve failed to make their case through persuasion.

“They know that this will take courage,” Nancy Pelosi said in an interview over the weekend, speaking of the Members she’ll try to strong-arm. “It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare,” the Speaker continued. “But the American people need it, why are we here? We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress.”

Leave aside the irony of invoking “the American people” on behalf of a bill that consistently has been 10 to 15 points underwater in every poll since the fall, and is getting more unpopular by the day, particularly among independents. As Maine Republican Olympia Snowe pointed out in a speech last December, Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965. Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.

There’s a lot more at the article, which I highly recommend you read.

I’m not sure which is more outrageous, that Obama and Pelosi are brazenly abusing this procedure in order to satisfy their engorged and pulsing egos, or that Pelosi is still insisting that passing ObamaCare is what the American people really want – they just don’t know it. Either way, what Obama and Pelosi are engaging in is a shocking violation of their roles as elected representatives and the American people’s trust. All the polls have shown that the American people’s hostility to Obama and Pelosi’s health care reforms is growing stronger by the day. But they won’t listen. They are so confident that the American people will love their health care reforms that they are forcing their bill through, even though the American people for months on end have screamed “NO!”

Sarah Palin was on the Tonight Show last night and spent quite a bit of time on the couch talking with Jay Leno about everything from politics to the Olympics to her family. She even took a stab at stand up comedy. My favorite line of the night was her response to Jay asking if she’s interested in being a talk show host: “I hear this is open from time to time…” Take a look and let us know how you think she did:

We’ve heard a lot over the past few weeks about California being on the precipice of fiscal disaster, but did you know that Illinois is in a similarly catastrophic situation? Illinois is in such financial trouble that its deficit is $13 billion, nearly half of its $28 billion budget. Tom Elia of The New Editor links to an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who writes this:

Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois is near the point of fiscal disintegration. “The state is in utter crisis,” said Representative Suzie Bassi. “We are next to bankruptcy. We have a $13bn hole in a $28bn budget.”

The state has been paying bills with unfunded vouchers since October. A fifth of buses have stopped. Libraries, owed $400m (£263m), are closing one day a week. Schools are owed $725m. Unable to pay teachers, they are preparing mass lay-offs. “It’s a catastrophe”, said the Schools Superintendent.

In Alexander County, the sheriff’s patrol cars have been repossessed; three-quarters of his officers are laid off; the local prison has refused to take county inmates until debts are paid.

Oh my. When Sheriff’s patrol cars get repossessed, the public is in serious trouble.

The Chicago Tribune has more on the potentially devastating impact of the state’s deficit:

Rather than confront the imbalance head-on, standard practice in Springfield has been to resort to a combination of fiscal tricks. Revenue projections are unrealistically rosy, money is borrowed with full repayment pushed off years into the future, and multibillion-dollar backlogs of unpaid bills are allowed to fester.

The system was already primed for calamity when the steep recession that began in 2008 knocked it over the edge.

Perhaps the most chronic headache involves pensions. For decades, elected officials have shorted promised contributions to the state’s public employee retirement funds. As a result, Illinois by far has the worst-funded pension systems in the nation.

It would be a tall order for the state to totally dig its way out of the hole in one year’s budget. But playing catch-up is extremely expensive, and it grows more expensive the longer it takes. Because the state was so short of cash, it borrowed $3.5 billion to meet this year’s pension obligations. Next year, debt service on that loan will cost $800 million. And that’s in addition to more than $4 billion in pension obligations that the state will be on the hook for in fiscal 2011.

As [president of the watchdog Civic Federation Laurence] Msall sees it, Illinois is in such poor financial shape that it risks getting to the point where it can no longer make loan payments or meet state aid commitments to schools.

If that happens, he says, “Illinois’ ability to borrow will be eliminated and the state will come to a screeching halt.”

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Illinois, particularly the big cities like Chicago, when the everything comes crashing down. Then again, we can expect the federal government to ride the rescue at the eleventh hour to save the Illinois state government from itself.

Knowing this information as we do now, it’s hard to believe that government officials thought it would be a good idea for Chicago to bid for the Olympics. If it had actually been selected, the state and city would have been required to spend millions of dollars in preparation when its deficits were already overwhelming the state budget. Illinois is sinking so far into insanity and chaos that it’s like we’re watching Lord of the Flies come to life.

I don’t think I’ve heard of the UK Independence Party before. Drew M. at Ace of Spades thinks they are the libertarian/conservative party in the UK. While these folks have seats in the EU Parliament, they don’t have any in the British Parliament. That’s really too bad because Britain has descended into the deepest depths of nanny-state hell and that country needs a lot more voices like this one:

Michael Barone has a piece in which he offers one reason why most Americans today to reject a nanny-state and demand their independence while Europeans are accept that a nanny-state has significant control over many aspects of their lives:

Why do Americans reject such policies while Europeans seem content with them? One reason is history. Twentieth-century history — and 19th- and 18th-century history too — showed Europeans that they were often the helpless victims of tyrants and total war. That made them content to rely on government for security.

Americans have had a different experience. As scholars like Seymour Martin Lipset have documented, Americans are more likely than Europeans to believe that there is a connection between effort and reward. And to believe that they can improve their situation by their own hard work and ingenuity.

As a result, Americans cherish their independence. One interesting aspect of the spontaneous Tea Party movement is the constant invocation of the Founders and the prominence of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. Eighteenth-century Americans declared their independence, 19th-century Americans fought so that blacks could be independent too, and 20th-century Americans sacrificed to extend the blessings of independence to the wider world.

Americans tend to see themselves as independent doers, not dependent victims. They don’t like to be told, especially by those with fancy academic pedigrees, that they are helpless and in need of government aid. That’s why the politically popular American big-government programs — Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, student loans — all make a connection between effort and reward. You get a benefit because you’ve worked for it.

Europe has a long history of being ruled by tyrannical monarchs that oppressed and taxed the living daylights out of their subjects in order to fund his or her pleasure du jour. Add to that Europe’s severe caste society that kept virtually all wealth and property within aristocratic families and prevented exceptionally skilled and hard working peasants from advancing to higher socio-economic levels. These conditions made life almost unlivable for the vast majority of Europeans, so I can kind of understand how the victim mentality can become almost inseparable from the culture that has been handed down through the generations.

America’s history, on the other hand, is much different. America was not marked by arrogant, selfish, and entitled monarchs (until now, some might say). Instead, America was forged through the blood, sweat and fortunes of independent-minded rebels who waged war to separate themselves from the British monarch and set up a Representative Republic that is accountable to the governed. As a result, independence and self-governance flows through our veins.

Many citizens have an American lineage that only goes back two or three generations. Their parents or grandparents risked life and limb to come to America from countries that offered little in order to find a better life.  A lot of them arrived with only their shirts on their backs and unable to speak a syllable of English, yet they established roots, built businesses and careers, and received the blessings and benefits that came as a result of their hard work.  Taking that kind of risk required an innately strong independent streak that they then passed down to their children and grandchildren.

America is unlike any other country this world has ever known because she is made up of the most autonomous, hard working, and productive people on the face of the planet. It really is a disgrace that President Obama and the Democrats don’t appreciate what makes her and her citizens so different from other countries. They want to transform America into a country that resembles the countries found in Europe, not because the quality of life of the average European is so much better than that of the average American, because it isn’t. Instead, they see it as the key to attaining more power. What they are finding out, though, is that the independent streak that has woven its way through the fabric of our nation is very stubborn and resistant to alterations, in spite how hard they try to rip open the seams.

If you didn’t get the chance to see today’s health care summit and want a flavor of what it was like, I recommend this video of Paul Ryan dismantling Obama’s and the Democrats’ health care bill. Rep. Paul Ryan probably knows more about the Democrats’ health care bill than anyone, and his knowledge is on display as he describes with specifics the various gimmicks and smoke and mirror tactics Harry Reid and the Democrats employed in order to get a “it reduces the deficit” stamp from the CBO.