Carolina Politics Online

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

ESPN

Of course it was a charade. Obama doesn’t give a damn about what the public thinks about anything. He’s demonstrated that pretty consistently throughout the past year.

So what is the point of this? The states have been managing the use of their waterways with little to no problem for over 200 years. Well, it turns out that this whole unconstitutional power grab is being orchestrated by the radical left environmental movement.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with “facts,” in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

The commercial and recreational fishing industries have already been taking a big hit in both North and South Carolina and the last thing we need is further encroachment by the Federal government.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has already exhibited plenty of incompetence in the way it enforces U.S. fisheries laws such to the effect that Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC-03) has called for a halt to all prosecutions of fishermen by the NOAA and a complete overhaul of how the laws are enforced.

Morlock fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water.”

In the wake of the task force’s framework document, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational Fishing & Boating Coalition against voiced their concerns to the administration.

“Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic,” said CSF President Jeff Crane.

Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, “There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.

“Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable.”

This is not the only access issue threatening the public’s right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.

“With what’s being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans,” he said. “Under the guise of ‘marine spatial planning’ entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.

“Every angler needs to be aware because if it’s not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.

This is what happens when you put an out of touch ideologue beholden to radical special interests in the highest office in the land. The fact that Obama intends to implement this with an Executive Order completely bypassing Congress gives credence to the accusation that he is becoming an elected dictator, much like Hugo Chavez.

This won’t be used to just regulate fishing either. Rest assured that the bureaucratic entities created to manage all of this will also be used to thwart any oil or natural gas exploration off our coastal waters, thus effectively reinstating the Federal drilling ban that just expired less than two years ago.

There is already talk of a ban on bottom fishing all the way down the North and South Carolina coasts to Georgia.  Thousands of jobs in these states can potentially be effected by this at a time when they are experiencing double digit unemployment rates. That aside, there is also the element of this being yet another chipping away at the block of individual freedom and liberty that Americans have enjoyed for over two centuries and that the President and this Congress spit on daily.

If this is put into place it seems like El Presidente will get to decide when and where you go fishing. With the industry being so large I am hoping this will end up in the Supreme Court with a Constitutional challenge if Obama makes good on this move.

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior’s real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to “avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.”

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a “center of climate change scientific research.”

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development.”

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states’ freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That’s why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

Read more at The Washington Times

The Antiquities Act of 1906 was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt (R) initially to stop the raping of American Indian artifacts in the southwest.  It gave the President the power by executive order to declare any government owned public land as restricted.  The problem is that it’s since been used over 100 times since its conception and one person should not be allowed to have that kind of authority.  The Office of President was purposely made weak by the Founders for a reason.

I can see instances in which the Federal government may need to restrict public land use at times, but that should be done by a vote of the full Congress so that there is input from the American people.  The proposals shouldn’t be sealed away in a secret document and then carried forth through executive order by one man.  That’s simply not the way America was designed to work.

But Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent working with Graham and Kerry, said a detailed outline of a bill could come within days and that it will have to include a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions that drops in future years.

Last June, the House narrowly passed a climate change bill with cap-and-trade as its centerpiece and a carbon-reduction target of 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.

But the initiative has stalled in the Senate, despite Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approval of a similar bill.

But, as a result of work in the past few months, Kerry said he was feeling “more confident” that a climate change bill could be presented to the Senate for passage this year.

“We’re looking at a new way of coming at this that we think can attract greater support,” Kerry said.

Environmentalists have speculated the bill the senators will produce could take a “sectoral approach” by imposing a new carbon-pricing mechanism on utilities, which account for about 40 percent of the emissions blamed for global warming.

Sources also have said there is talk of a transportation tax. Pollution controls on manufacturers could be put off for a few years to give time for more affordable alternative energy sources to come on line, they have said.

Reuters

I would really like to wonder exactly when it was that someone beat Lindsey Graham with the stupid stick because that guy has nothing but shit for brains.  A transportation tax?  It’s not clear as to what exactly that would entail, but one thing is for certain.  The result will not be good for South Carolina.  Any tax on transportation, but whether its an increase in the gas tax, a tax on transportation companies, on the airlines, etc is going to smack everyone in this state in their back pocket.  A tax on truckers transporting goods would be absolutely criminal because it would cause prices to rise in just about every sector, socking the poor and the middle class harder than anyone.

And yet Graham can’t figure out why he keeps getting booed when he speaks around his own state, oblivious to the fact he is alienating his own constituents in the name of junk science.

COLUMBIA — Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a decades-old plan for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain could cost South Carolina $1.2 billion and leave the permanent storage of thousands of tons of nuclear waste in question, and the governor is prepared to sue over it.

Sanford urged Obama to back off his Feb. 1 decision and stick to the 23-year bipartisan compact to use the Nevada facility as a resting ground for the country’s nuclear waste, including 4,000 metric tons temporarily housed at the Savannah River Site and elsewhere in South Carolina.

The two-term Republican governor said Obama was motivated to reverse course as a way to ensure U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s re-election in Nevada.

The president decided to eliminate all funding for the facility and withdraw its license application with the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Post and Courier

The Yucca Mountain nuclear storage containment site is something that I happen to know a bit about.  My father lived back in Las Vegas during the 1990s and worked on this project for a government contractor.  There is absolutely nothing unsafe about this containment facility nor does it pose any threat to the people of Nevada.  The Yucca Mountain is over an hour away from Vegas and in the middle of friggin nowhere.

I agree with Sanford that this all a political ploy by Obama.  He’s willing to cost our state over a billion dollars and throw billions more away to try and save Harry Reid’s political carcass which has already started rotting and sticking up the place.  Of course people in Nevada have protested against it.  Nobody wants to have nuclear waste in their backyard, but that isn’t happening in Nevada nor would it if the Yucca Mountain project were to commence again.  The bulk of the outcry is based on ignorance.

That move by Obama contradicts his claim that he is suddenly supportive of nuclear power.  How can he says he wants to see more nuclear power plants built while simultaneously shutting down one of the major nuclear storage projects in the country?  He can’t have it both ways.

The organizers at Freedom Works, like most of us in South Carolina, are rightly peeved with Senator Grahamnesty over his support of Cap and Trade which would not be in the best interest of our state and which he is supposed to be representing first and foremost.  This rolls right along with what I wrote about just a few days ago.  They are organizing a protest this Saturday in Greenville.

South Carolinians are tired of Senator Lindsey Graham’s support for “cap and trade.” For some reason Sen. Graham thinks that imposing a massive tax increase on our energy supply is a good idea. He has been partnering with left-wing senators to come up with a plan that would be devastating to our economy and would increase the cost of energy for all consumers. If you are like us, you have had enough of Sen. Graham’s position on cap and trade.

Please join us as we gather together this Saturday, Feb. 27th to send a message to him that we dissapprove of his stance on this important issue. We will be gathering to write letters to Sen. Graham, and then we will hand deliver them to his district office in Greenville. After that, we will protest his support of cap and trade outside his office.

Here are the details of the events:

9:00am FreedomWorks breakfast and letter-writing at Soby’s restaurant
22 East Court St, Greenville, SC 29601
Map

10:30am Protest outside Sen. Graham’s downtown office
130 South Main St., 7th Floor, Greenville, SC 29601
Map

To rsvp for this event, please contact FreedomWorks regional director Allen Page at a.page@mindspring.com or 336-213-1167. You can also click here to rsvp online. We hope you can join us this weekend on the first anniversary of the tea party protests!

Will we ever be rid of this guy?

For those concerned about warming, it’s time for a shift in emphasis. Fortunately, one has already been provided to them by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has done more than any Democrat to keep climate legislation alive this year. His solution: skip the hurricanes and Himalayan glaciers and keep the argument on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on foreign oil, some of that going to terrorists rather than to domestic job creation.

The Washington Post

There are people that claim they are sick and tired of the bipartisanship in D.C.  I personally see nothing necessarily wrong with partisanship in government because I tend to view reaching across the aisle as a selling out of your beliefs most of the time and what your constituents elected you for.  Graham has tried to play Mr. Uniter throughout his Senate career, but unfortunately keeps choosing the most inopportune times to do so.  First there was the big blow back on his support for McCain’s illegal immigration bill, the origin from whence came the nickname Grahamnesty.  Now he’s running around the country chapping his lips on the butt of Senator John Kerry (D-MA) over this climate change bill, much to the dismay of many South Carolinians.

Graham is correct that our heavy reliance on foreign oil is a serious issue, but we don’t need to cripple our economy through the Cap and Fraud bill to resolve that problem.  We just need to start drilling our own oil which we have plenty of.  We need to start building more nuclear power plants, which the Obama administration seems to be warming to.  Green energy investments in the private sector have been steadily growing as well.  We can do all of these things now without legislation.  None of them are illegal.

Instead of barking up the Cap and Fraud tree, Graham should simply be making a public push to pressure the administration to accept these other initiatives and move faster on them.  It’s highly unlikely that that the Waxman-Markey bill will ever become law at this point, but there has been talk of the Obama administration going around Congress and instead having the fascist EPA regulate green house gases.  This would essentially produce the same economic disastrous results on our nation by an unelected body, which in my opinion is unconstitutional.

A cap-and-trade system necessarily harms the economy because it is designed to raise the cost of energy. Given the current economic crisis, an expensive energy policy is a bad idea.

Almost all acts of economic production are powered by combusting fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), a process that emits greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming. A cap-and-trade system is simply a mechanism to put a price on emissions in order to compel businesses and consumers to emit less. That is, it’s essentially an emissions tax. But greenhouse gas emissions are virtually synonymous with energy use, so it’s actually a roundabout energy tax. In fact, economists agree that the simplest, most efficient way to reduce emissions is a direct tax. Politicians, however, are terrified of the “t-word,” which is why they have embraced a cap-and-trade system.

The numbers are staggering. President Barack Obama’s recently unveiled cap-and-trade plan would raise $645 billion in revenue from the government-run emissions auctions over eight years. Everyone would feel the pinch. Businesses would compensate for higher production costs and diminished markets by slashing jobs. Consumers would have to pay more for energy and energy intensive goods.

Expensive energy is bad enough, but the real danger of a cap-and-trade policy is a global trade war. A cap-and-trade system would give a competitive advantage to industries in countries that aren’t subject to a de facto energy tax. Jobs would flow overseas, but so would emissions, a dynamic known as “carbon leakage.” To prevent this, a broad coalition of industry, labor, and environmental groups have expressed interest in a tariff that would tax the emissions content of imports from countries without stringent climate policies. Naturally, these countries would retaliate if such a tariff were enacted. Protectionism deepened the Great Depression, just as climate protectionism would worsen the current recession.

William Yeatman – Council on Foreign Relations

Why else would he support two things that would drive the enviro-wackos even more wacko?

A Davie County Republican is urging fellow state lawmakers to stop wasting time and money on the state’s climate change commission and support energy policy he says will have a tangible impact on the state. Sen. Andrew Brock says the legislature should move to tap the massive natural gas reserve experts believe is sitting off the North Carolina coast.

“This whole thing was based on a false set of principles and false data,” says Brock, referencing e-mails leaked last year from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. Climate-change activists have relied on East Anglia data to justify massive government intervention, including caps on greenhouse gas emissions and limits on fossil fuel consumption. “There’s no credible evidence that supports that all the production by mankind is affecting the global climate.”

The four-term conservative is a longtime critic of the N.C. Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, created in 2005. He’s also a longtime supporter of offshore drilling.

The Carolina Journal

Earth-hater. He probably still uses incandescent bulbs too, the jerk.

Senator Jim DeMint Twittered that across the World Wide Web this afternoon.  I was in Florida the past few days for work and as I was at the airport in Fort Myers this morning catching my flight home all of the flights to Washington D.C had been canceled due to the second brutal snow storm to hit them in a week.  D.C. already received about 30 inches a few days ago and they are expecting another 14 inches.  In fact, today’s Senate global warming (hehe) hearing has been canceled.

Man made climate change is the hoax of the century and most Americans now reject the belief that man is responsible for the weather patterns.  It’s conventional wisdom that you can only keep a secret for so long and so it’s no surprise that the scam is unraveling.  For the past five years we’ve seen record setting snow and colder temperatures across the country and around the world.  Folks in the north barely saw much of a summer this past year and even down here in the south we didn’t reach the usual number of sweltering dogs days we usually suffer through.  People only need to go outside to know that Al Gore is in serious need of a body cavity search compliments of Nurse Ratched.

It sure feels like the White Witch has taken hold of the throne and in the midst of her reign the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has pretty much lost all its credibility.  What many of us have known for years is finally being revealed.  They’ve been lying.  It began in November with the hacked emails from East Anglia University in England in which climate “scientists” admitted on paper that they had cherry picked evidence that supported their beliefs and excluded that which did not.  Just two weeks ago it got even more embarrassing when the world discovered that U.N. “scientists” based their climate change claims on a student dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.  Liars and shysters and frauds, oh my! Despite these “errors” in judgment the IPCC insists its work is sound.  The universe is laughing behind their backs.

Let it be known that for the believers in man made climate change, it is their religion and Al Gore is the pope.

The Charleston County Republican Party’s executive committee took the unusual step Monday night of censuring U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. because of several positions he has taken that clash with the GOP party line.

County Chairwoman Lin Bennett said the unanimous vote “is an effort to get his attention. They’re just fed up, and they want him to know they’re fed up.”

The resolution mentions Graham’s cooperation with U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on energy legislation to his support for the $700 billion Troubled Assett Relief Program to his calling some opponents “bigots” when they opposed his immigration stance.

The Post and Courier

Personally, I wish we had a recall provision like in California where we could just recall Graham.  If Cap and Trade ends up getting through the Senate because of Graham’s support, the lives of the thousands of South Carolinians that will be destroyed will be all on his shoulders.  Cap and Trade will destroy jobs and do nothing to curb carbon emissions.  I have even read that there is a provision in the legislation that once the law goes into the effect you will have to make energy upgrades to your home if you go to sell it to the cost of several thousand dollars.

Homebuyers Beware. Trying to save up for a new home? You may have to save up a little longer for your purchase. The Democrats’ bill would dramatically increase new home costs by mandating California’s expensive new building codes for the entire nation. Immediately upon enactment, the Democrats’ bill would demand a 30 percent increase in energy efficiency for new construction. A couple of years later, the Democrats’ bill would require an additional 50 percent improvement. These numbers were chosen with no concern for cost to consumers or feasibility in implementation.

John Boehner

Is this what Lindsey Graham thinks the people of South Carolina support??  The Federal government nosing its way into our homes and telling us how to update it before we can sell it?  How about the increased costs in home building raising the price of homes putting them farther out of reach for many Americans, essentially killing the dream of home ownership?

Lindsey Graham is a an authoritarian thief of everyone’s freedom.  The man should be “hung from the Liberty Tree.”  A mere censure is being way too nice.

Longtime Congressman John Spratt will have opposition in the 2010 election as Lancaster resident Mick Mulvaney announced his bid Monday for the U.S. Congress in District 5.

Mulvaney, a Republican, currently represents Lancaster and York counties in the S.C. Senate and is president of Mulvaney Company, a diversified small business with restaurant and real estate operations.

“I am running for office because John Spratt voted for the Wall Street bailouts, for the government takeover of GM and Chrysler, for cap and trade and he supports the government health care plan now being debated,” said Mulvaney, who was in Newberry yesterday to spread his news locally. “Enough is enough. It is time for him to go.”

Mulvaney said cap and trade regulations could haunt many in Newberry, and the other counties in the district.

South Carolina News

This is outstanding news!  The political winds have changed here in the Fifth Congressional District and John Spratt has not responded to the needs of his constituents, which includes your wise and humble blog administrator.  Spratt’s out of touch, plain and simple.  He’s been entrenched in this district for too long and with the exception of Ralph Norman a few years ago, he has not faced a credible challenge.  That’s the reason why he can vote for what Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco want rather than what York County, South Carolina wants.

I’ve written many times here in the past few months that the Wall Street bailout, Cap and Trade, and the biggest theft of freedom in American history coming out of the House which they call a health care bill, can end Spratt’s political career next year if someone strong and credible takes him on.  Mick Mulvaney definitely fits the bill.  In the South Carolina State House and Senate he has been one of the few legislators who has defended limited government and supported the responsible fiscal policies of our governor.  These are values we desperately need to return to in Washington D.C. and we won’t get there with Jack.  I hope the RNCC doesn’t write Mick off.

Someone might want to point this out to Lindsey Graham.

Temperatures are rebounding after what was record-breaking cold morning in Charlotte.

Temperatures fell below the freezing mark for the first time since last winter in Charlotte, and frost was reported across the metro region. A number of National Weather Service official reporting stations had sub-freezing lows.

One more night of frosty weather is expected, and a frost advisory has been issued for the entire Charlotte metro region from 4 a.m. until 9 a.m. Tuesday, with morning lows forecast to be in the low to middle 30s.

Charlotte Observer

Record breaking cold in Charlotte today.  Record breaking cold in Idaho and Montana last week.  The Colorado Rockies game got snowed out last week.  Despite, that, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has alerted the entire world that we have only 50 days to save our planet from the effects of global warming.

The UK faces a “catastrophe” of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change, the prime minister has warned.

Gordon Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the “impasse”.

He told the Major Economies Forum in London, which brings together 17 of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was “no plan B”.

World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty.

BBC

Yep, just 50 days, exactly.  55?  Forget it, it’s Armageddon.  45 days? A flourishing Utopia.

The Graham-Kerry alliance is a potent force for climate change bill supporters, who can push a cap-and-trade plan through the Senate only if they win over enough Republicans to make up for the handful of Democrats expected to vote against the legislation.

“There’s a way to grow Republican support, but it is a give and take,” Graham told reporters. “Republicans have to give in the area of recognizing that climate change is real, and a cap-and-trade system is part of the solution.”

Democrats, meanwhile, must “give on the idea that you can’t be serious about climate change solutions if you include nuclear power and energy independence,” Graham said.

But Graham’s Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill aren’t sold on his bipartisan pitch.

Houston Chronicle

This guy is really lucky that he was up for reelection last year and not next year because the faux climate change legislation is incredibly unpopular around South Carolina.  This is yet another example of Graham supporting D.C. interests instead of the people he is supposed to be representing.  Graham got quite a bit of heckling last week at a town hall in Greenville and I imagine there is going to be a lot more of that in the future.  He has ceased to recognize that he is a representative of the people rather than an authoritative aristocrat who seems to think he knows better how to manage our lives than we do.

I’ve had this discussion on here before.  Cap and Trade will obliterate the American economy and have a crippling effect on South Carolina.  The CBO has shown so as well as several other think tanks and organizations and yet jack asses like Graham think they are some kind of savior of the people.  He is saving us from absolutely nothing, but I guess it makes him feel good about himself to run around the state like Don Quixote engaging in asshattery.  There is no man made climate change and only 38 percent of Americans even believe in global warming anymore.  These people in D.C. need a swift kick in the ass.  They’ve done enough damage to our country already.

South Carolina is spending about $1.6 million over four years, mostly in federal money, to minimize harmful emissions from its aging school bus fleet of 5,000 that could affect the lungs of an estimated 300,000 students who ride them.

Are you shitting me?

Part of the state Department of Education’s strategy includes 605 anti-idling devices, of which Greenville and Spartanburg county districts each received 100. The devices blare the horn if the bus idles for more than an allotted time.

Asthma and bronchitis were the leading cause of hospitalization in children under 18 in South Carolina in 2007, according to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. DHEC estimated 90,005 of the state’s children and 250,000 adults suffered from asthma.

The Greenville News

Ah yes, it’s for the children.  It’s always for the children.  I mean, who can say no to the children??

I rode the school bus for a few years when I was a kid, back in the mid 80s.  I don’t have breathing problems today because of it.  As a matter of fact, I ran cross country and track and field.  Many of my friends rode the bus and they don’t have breathing pr0blems because of it today either.  So who are we kidding here?  The radical enviro-nuts seriously want us to believe that children riding a school bus an hour or less a day are going to be asthmatically crippled when they’re 25?

This is even more ridiculous than the over hyped second hand smoke nonsense.  You know, we have to ban smoking in restaurants because if a family goes dining in a smoking friendly restaurant for that one hour it’s going to give them lung cancer in 30 years.

We don’t have money for jails, but we have money to placate the enviro-wacko crusade.  If they really want to make these buses safe for the kids, how about adding some seat belts?  No, that would make far too much sense.

The leader of the state Senate said Friday that he won’t fight wind farms proposed offshore from an area he represents, although he’s aware that residents are concerned about the possible effects on tourism.

“Change does not come easy to me or to the people of this island,” Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare, told a public meeting on Hatteras Island.

WRAL-TV reported on its Web site that Basnight said he wouldn’t want turbines to disturb the coastal views and potentially affect tourism, but said alternative energy sources must be considered to thwart global warming.

News & Record

Isn’t this just typical.  These people want these wind mill farms to “fight” global “warming” just don’t put it in their backyard.  Windmills are not sufficient alternative power sources anyway.  You need tons of them just to power a small town.  As far as putting them on the coastline, what happens when the next hurricane rolls through?

Personally, Basnight out to fight the wind farms and instead push for a nuclear power plant.

Natural gas and oil exploration off the coast will get a go-ahead nod from a state committee this week, and federal regulators in September are expected to put some protections on thousands of square miles of the potential drilling area where valuable deep sea coral is found.

A feasibility study committee set up by the state legislature will recommend asking a federal agency to include South Carolina as one of the states in a five-year plan that would open up exploratory natural gas drilling off the coast, said Sen. Paul Campbell Jr. , R-Goose Creek, the committee chairman.

The Post and Courier

Busy day for energy news.  At least this one is moving in the right direction.  All the crap we have had to put up with fighting with politicians and radical environmentalist groups in order to drill for our own resources in our own waters and President Obama turns around and hands over $2 Billion of our tax dollars to Brazil to do exactly that.

PINOPOLIS – Santee Cooper will not pursue construction of a controversial coal-fired power plant that has drawn intense opposition from environmentalists over the amount of mercury and greenhouse gas pollution the facility would release.

The board of directors of the state-owned utility voted unanimously today to suspend an effort to secure state permits for the $2.2 billion plant in Florence County along the Great Pee Dee River. The board’s vote followed a similar vote this morning during a board committee meeting.

The agency’s action makes it unlikely the plant will ever be built, said Santee Cooper board chairman O.L. Thompson.

The State

First, I don’t understand why a power company would cave to the demands of environmental groups.  The people that run power companies are not elected by the American public.  All the environmental groups can do is scream about it and try to get legal injunctions passed to block it, but they are going to try and do that no matter what, so why give a crap about them?

Second, it’s unfortunate for the people in that area who may have been looking forward to lower energy costs in the future.  Perhaps as their power bills rise in the next several years they’ll remember to thank the politicians who are in the pockets of the environmental groups.  As South Carolina grows, so does our power needs.

Third, I’m now going to do a 180 and say I’m not overly upset that this has happened.  While I don’t care about the greenhouse gas emissions, I do have some concern over the mercury that would contaminate the water supply.  Hence, this is another reason why nuclear is the road to go and someone needs to put the word out.

Lastly, it sounds as if Santee Cooper became one of the first victims of the future Cap and Trade initiative.

Committee members and Santee Cooper staff said the down economy, looming federal regulation of carbon and a potential agreement with another power company made it possible to forgo building the power plant.

Thirty years after it last broke ground on a nuclear power plant, Duke Energy has a site picked out for a new one, 50 miles southwest of Charlotte near Gaffney, S.C.

It also has a name, William States Lee III, to honor a late CEO, and federal support for a nuclear revival.

What Duke might lack is a convincing argument that the plant would be worth risking billions of dollars. Construction costs are soaring and Wall Street investors are nervous. Demand for electricity is flattening, calls for renewable energy growing.

Duke’s 2.4 million Carolinas customers will pay, through higher rates, for what the company builds. Duke serves the western half of North Carolina and northwestern South Carolina.

Charlotte Observer

Nuclear energy is the past and needs to be the future.  It is the cleanest energy we can make and is more efficient than windmills and solar and other so called green technology.  The opposition to it is based on myth and misinformation.  If environmental groups are really serious about saving the planet they will educate themselves on nuclear energy and not demagogue it.

As you may remember, the Waxman-Markey bill, otherwise known as Cap and Trade or Tax and Trade or Cap and Fraud or one of its many aliases, passed the House by a narrow margin just  a few weeks ago.  It still has to make it through the Senate and the Senate leadership has signaled that it will more than likely be dead on arrival.  However, don’t fall a sleep just yet.  It could still become reality and you ought to know how it will affect you.

This Web site has some interesting projections and breaks them down state by state.  Some points of consideration are that if you live in either of the Carolinas you can expect gas prices to inflate to $4.00 per gallon, spend an extra $1200 a year on your energy bills, and roughly 2.7 million net jobs lost annually.

That is just a brief overview.  I recommend you take a look at both analyses:

North Carolina

South Carolina

And don’t forget who in Congress voted to support their radical party leadership rather than your best interests as their constituent.

• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
• Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
• David Price (D-NC-04)
• Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
• Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
• Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
• Jack Spratt (D-SC-05)
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)

According to a July 12th poll taken by Public Policy Polling, Senator Richard Burr had better get his game on if he wants to see another term in the U.S. Senate.  While Burr is ahead of his potential Democrat challengers, his approval rating is hovering in the lower forties to mid thirties and he doesn’t poll any higher than 42% of the vote at this point in time.

Burr currently has an approval rating of 36% with 29% of state voters holding an unfavorable view of him.  A 36% approval rating for an incumbent is pretty piss poor, but Burr’s one saving grace is that the disapproval is even lower meaning that about a third of North Carolina voters aren’t sure what they think of him.  That still isn’t good, but it would be a lot more damning if his disapproval was in the fifties or sixties.

Against Democrat Cal Cunningham Burr wins 40% to 31% and against Kenneth Lewis he wins 42% to 31%.  Both of these fairly unknown candidates hold Burr well under the 50% mark which is considered safe territory for an incumbent politician.

There are so many factors going on right now that it’s really impossible to make any kind of prediction as to what Burr could face in next year’s election.  Governor Beverly Perdue (D) has an abysmal approval rating of 25% just after six months in office.  Former Governor Mike Easley (D) and his wife are under several corruption related investigations.  The Democrat State Legislature in North Carolina is ready to pass an astronomical tax increase.  Furthermore, throw in the quagmire going on at the Federal level with Cap and Tax, the failing stimulus legislation, the growing opposition to ObamaCare, and President Obama’s sinking popularity and Burr could end up sailing to reelection despite these numbers.

On the other hand, if the economy does pick up and employment begins a steady increase between now and November of next year and Obama begins to rebound back to higher approval ratings Burr could just as easily be retired.  I think Burr’s reelection will be more about the Democrats at both the state and Federal level than it will be about Richard Burr.

South Carolina needs to quit mourning the loss of Big Tobacco and King Cotton and harness the possibility of switchgrass, soybeans and sugarcane as the future, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told the 2009 South Carolina Energy Summit Monday.

South Carolina should carve out a niche and develop native plants that other states, such as Minnesota and South Dakota, use to produce bio-fuels, Clyburn said. But bio-fuels won’t carry future energy needs alone: nuclear needs to be part of the solution, he said.

“We need visionary leadership,” Clyburn said in a nod to the entrepreneurs in the room.

The Post and Courier

Clyburn has a point.  At some juncture you need to let go of the past and become forward thinking.  Bio-fuels are the way of the future, even though that future may be quite distant at the moment.  It’s also nice to see he supports nuclear power.  That is just common sense.  Nuclear energy is the cleanest there is.  It’s time to get over Three Mile Island already and start building more nuke plants.