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A tax on banking could be used to pay for combating climate change under plans pushed by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy today as Britain almost doubled the cash it put up for short-term funding to help developing countries to go green. In a joint statement, they declared: "To ensure predictable and additional finance in the medium term to 2020 and beyond, we should make use of innovative financing mechanisms, such as the use of revenues from a global financial transactions tax and the reduction of aviation and maritime emissions and the auctioning of national emissions permits. We will work...

WASHINGTON — US media and leading opinion makers on Friday had largely positive views of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace award speech in Oslo, with conservatives especially delighted with his choice of words. "We've said before ... that awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize after so short a time in office and so few concrete accomplishments was a mistake," wrote the Los Angeles Times in its newspaper editorial. However the acceptance speech was "a blockbuster even by Obama's lofty standards."

BRUSSELS — The European Union will contribute about $3 billion starting next year to help poorer countries deal with climate change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced on Friday. Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations climate office, has called on industrialized nations to give $30 billion fund to the fund in order to help vulnerable countries to begin planning massive engineering projects like building higher sea walls and converting their electricity systems so they rely on low-carbon sources. Poor countries also are seeking a commitment from the industrialized world to provide long-term finance totaling more than...

Last year, my column "Global Warming Rope-A-Dope" (Dec. 24, 2008) started out: "Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy the planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about man-made global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil." New evidence proves that climatologists and environmental policy advocates have not only fed us lies, engaged in scientific and academic fraud but committed criminal acts as well. [snip] Last year's column closed with my speculation that if ever "the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it's...

ORANGE - Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today – but the president failed to get a school named after him in the Orange Unified School District. The district's board voted unanimously tonight to deny a petition for a proposed charter school named after Obama. The district held a public forum on Nov. 12 to determine public interest for the proposed charter school – which no one attended. "It's unfortunate that we have to waste our time with this petition as I see it," said school board President John Ortega. "But we have to follow the Education Code and...

As Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the Dalai Lama told Sky News he believed the award was "a little early". He also cautioned the US president against relying too much on his advisers. The Dalai Lama told Sky News: "I think if you are realistic, it may have been a little early but it doesn't matter, I know Obama is a very able person. "Sometimes these individual persons rely on different advice from different people so like former President Bush junior, as a human being I really love him, really wonderful person, very honest, very truthful....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has a higher approval rating among Israelis than is widely believed, undercutting arguments he has lost Israeli public support for new peace efforts, a poll said on Thursday. The poll by the Washington-based New America Foundation found that 41 percent of Israelis had a favorable rating of Obama against 37 percent who rated him unfavorably. Despite this, 55 percent of Israelis polled said they thought Obama did not support Israel against 42 percent who said he did -- a reflection of the "complexity of views" about the U.S. leader as he presses both...

President Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term. President Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term. The new low comes as Obama enters the home stretch in his push to enact his signature initiative, an overhaul of the nation's health care system, and escalates America's involvement in the Afghanistan war. Below are comparable ratings for other presidents since Gallup began...

Alec Baldwin, the US actor, has said he has lost interest in acting and considers his film career a failure. "I consider my entire movie career a complete failure," he told the magazine. "The goal of moviemaking is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that." Baldwin has expressed interest in politics in the past but did not say in the interview what he intended to do if he quit acting.

President Obama on Monday reiterated that he will limit the across-the board pay increase for federal employees to 2 percent in 2010. Obama originally issued the 2 percent recommendation in August. Under federal law, the president has until the end of November to propose an alternative to pay levels set under procedures laid out in the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act. Under that law, employees would be due a 2.4 percent base pay raise in 2010, plus locality pay increases averaging 16.5 percent. That total pay increase would cost about $22.6 billion in fiscal 2010 alone, Obama wrote. The...

You might expect Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates to backtrack from some of the bearishness he's professed on Tech Ticker (and elsewhere) in the past year. But you'd be wrong. "The consumer is in worse shape since I was here last" in August, Davidowitz says, citing the following: Unemployment has exploded: "We've lost a ton of jobs since I was here last," Davidowitz says, noting the "real" unemployment rate is 17.5%. "That's an astounding number." Housing continues to sink: "The consumers' biggest asset is down trillions" in value while "foreclosures are exploding" and a huge percentage have negative equity...

Americans remain inclined against the health care overhaul in Congress as debate begins on the Senate floor today. The USA Today/Gallup poll released today found 49 percent saying they would tell their representative to vote against the bill and 44 percent saying they would urge a yes vote. That's about the same split as in the survey earlier this month, but a change from 51 percent support and 41 percent disapproval in October. Gallup says: "Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed to new healthcare legislation -- 86% would advise their member of Congress to vote against it, while 12% would want their...

Wetlands from Bangladesh to Florida submerged. Drought and devastating heat in important granaries such as the Yangtze floodplain in China or Ukraine. Rains that come too often or too hard in India or the U.S. Northeast. The list of potentially devastating impacts from climate change is a long one. But with greenhouse gas emissions continuing to climb and concentrations in the atmosphere rising by roughly two parts per million (ppm) a year, climate catastrophes are looking more and more imminent. So how do we keep global average temperatures from warming more than two degrees Celsius? Scientists have begun to turn...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama entered the climate change debate on Monday, urging governments to take serious action and put global interests ahead of domestic concerns. "In my own case I never use bathtub, only shower. Whenever I leave my room I always put off my light," the Dalai Lama told a news conference. "The elected government, sometimes their number one ... priority is national interest, national economy interest, then global issues are sometimes secondary," said the Dalai Lama. "That, I think, should change. The global issue should be number one. In some cases...

Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion "as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity," according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world's would-be environmental watchdog. The purpose of the paper, put together after an unpublicized day-long session in Switzerland by some of the world's top environmental bureaucrats: to argue for a new and unprecedented effort to move environmental concerns to "the center of political and economic decision-making" around the world — and perhaps not coincidentally, expand the influence and reach of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the foreclosure crisis showing no signs of relenting, the Obama administration plans to expand a program aimed at helping people remain in their homes. The goal of the announcement, expected Monday, is to increase the rate at which troubled home loans are converted into new loans with lower monthly payments, Under a $75 billion Treasury program, companies that agree to lower payments for troubled borrowers collect $1,000 initially from the government for each loan, followed by $1,000 annually for up to three years. The program has come under heavy criticism for failing to do enough to...

Reporting from Sacramento - Recycling centers across California are closing, and scores of troubled youths are being tossed from "green" jobs onto unemployment rolls in the wake of Sacramento's raid on bottle deposit funds. California's recycling treasury, filled by consumers' nickel and dime deposits on drink containers, had hummed along successfully for two decades until state officials left it nearly bankrupt after taking $451 million out to help balance the budget. The unredeemed deposits that subsidized recycling facilities and such projects as a local conservation corps are virtually gone, leaving the programs in the lurch.

The government's projection of stimulus-funded "green" jobs in reality isn't nearly as rosy as promised -- even over the next decade, some economists say. And to suggest these jobs will reinvigorate the economy, as the nation somehow weans itself from oil and coal, is sheer fallacy. "We need to put 7.3 million people back to work, and none of these ideas can make a dent of more than a few hundred thousand at best ... ," says Rajeev Dhawan of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. For nine years Spain attempted to cultivate a green economy under a...

We are now moving into the endgame of Iran’s decade-long drive to acquire the hardware and technology to build a nuclear bomb. What happens next could determine whether Iran becomes a nuclear-armed state, whether the region is plunged into another war, or whether Iran and the Arab world embark on a nuclear arms race. Yesterday’s announcement showed that President Ahmadinejad has once again calculated that attack is the best form of defence. After being censured by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week, which referred Tehran to the UN Security Council, the Iranians have decided to call the bluff...

Lobbyists have been furiously lobbying the Obama White House to oppose restrictions on their ability to lobby. The kafuffle began on September 23 when special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform Norm Eisen wrote that "the White House has informed executive agencies and departments that it is our aspiration that federally-registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions." How many Industry Trade Advisory Committees -- ITACs -- are there? The Washington Post says the system of these committees is "so vast that federal officials don't have exact numbers for its size; the most recent...

The tide is turning. and fast. There will soon be an accounting - and the mood and the money for it. The reputation of science - and of many scientists - will be damaged severely. Until now those scientists who knew the science behind global warming theory was weak or flawed largely kept their doubts to themselves, out of fear or other forms of self-interest. I’ve had the emails from some confessing to just that. But self-interest should dictate they now make a stand. They need to show, for their own sake and for the sake of science, that they...

Hopes suddenly rose on Friday that a new global climate pact was within reach after rich nations attending a Commonwealth summit in the capital of Trinidad offered to pay poorer countries to help seal the deal. “Success in Copenhagen is in sight,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said By showing willingness to meet “the need for money on the table,” it was now “realistic” to expect Copenhagen to result in the framework for a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012, Rasmussen said. Copenhagen will not be a talk shop,” Ban said. “We will come out with a...

Till now, I have avoided more than very limited comment on the whole global-warming-carbon emissions controversy. But now that colossal spending and regulating programs impend on these issues, I must say that the Al Gore-David Suzuki conventional-wisdom hysteria is an insane scam. The basic relevant facts are that carbon emissions are not the principal factor in global warming, and despite dire contrary forecasts and ever-increasing carbon-emissions in the world — especially as the economies of China and India, representing 40% of the world’s population, expand by six to 10 percent each year — the world has not grown a millidegree...

The Obama Administration burst onto the presidency with a historic wealth of good will, hope and change. It is now marked by one failure after another. Unfortunately, these failures are not without costs. The heavy burden is born by consumers, taxpayers and to generations yet to come. Nearly one year later we have an economy heading in the wrong direction, unemployment rising, a deficit that will double, banks failing, a war command which is virtually ignored, 911 terrorists given all the rights at a civil trial and an Administration hell bent on destroying rather than "reforming" the world's best health...

Double-digit. That hyphenated adjective has been used most often recently to describe October's 10.2 percent unemployment rate. But it can also be used to describe the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product. That precise number is not yet known, but it may turn out to have a more dire effect on our national life than October's unemployment rate. In the fiscal year just ended, federal spending was nearly 25 percent of GDP, while federal revenues slipped below 15 percent because of the financial crisis and recession. We have not seen a budget deficit of this...

The first-ever night trial of India's nuclear capable Agni-II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile has failed to meet all the mission parameters, defence sources said on Tuesday. "The test-fire, conducted from the Wheeler Island off Orissa coast on Monday night, could not achieve all the desired results and pre-coordinated parameters," they said after a thorough analyses of the mission data. The two-stage indigenously developed Agni-II missile, with a range of 2000 km, which was test-fired from a mobile launcher, was intended to train the end-user, the Strategic Force Command of the Indian Army, to operate the sophisticated missile in adverse conditions....

LONDON (Reuters) - Investors welcomed new China and U.S. climate targets 10 days before a U.N. summit but an Australian carbon vote delay hinted at wider difficulties to cement a global deal. Traders in a $126 billion carbon market want tight climate targets to boost demand for emissions permits, and energy companies want to know the full future costs -- including from carbon -- of burning fossil fuels as they plan new power plants. "It increases the chances of getting a better, collaborative agreement in Copenhagen, which would in turn create a larger low-carbon marketplace," said James Cameron, vice-chairman of...

WASHINGTON — Americans' day-to-day lives won't change noticeably if President Barack Obama achieves his newly announced goal of slashing carbon dioxide pollution by one-sixth in the next decade, experts say. Experts say it will mean higher energy bills, fewer deaths from air pollution, and maybe even a dividend check at the end of the year. But mostly, they say, it'll be small, slowly evolving changes that the public won't even notice. Even a 17 percent emissions cut by 2020, as Obama outlined, would mean hundreds if not thousands of U.S. lives saved because there would be less air pollution to...

A blog entry posted at CQPolitics.com looked at a recent Rasmussen Reports poll and another by the Kaiser Family Foundation and concluded that the “new polls disagree on whether a government overhaul of the nation's health care system will leave people better off or worse off.” In fact, according to the posting, the results were dramatically different with the Rasmussen poll showing that people think the system would be worse by a 54% to 20% margin “while the Kaiser poll says the country as a whole would do better, 54 percent to 27 percent.” The post concluded that the polls...

The puzzling thing about politicians of either party who claim to be "centrist" or "moderate" is how much they sometimes sound like party-line right-wing Republicans. Distinguishing among these species of politicians can be almost impossible during the current struggle over health care reform, especially when a senator like Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas tries to explain herself. Like so many of the Republicans they try to emulate, the conservative Democrats claim to worry about spending and deficits -- except with respect to programs that benefit them, their favorite constituents or the lobbyists who pay their campaign expenses. Facing re-election and...

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island and seven other Northeast states will undertake a study of “green jobs” in the region thanks to a $4 million research grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The funding, which comes from the economic stimulus law enacted in February, was announced last week by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “If we get our act together as a nation and start addressing the major environmental problems of our time – global warming and our dependence on fossil fuels – we can create millions of good paying jobs,” Sanders, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Green Jobs...

Heavily promoted initiatives to train Massachusetts workers for jobs in the emerging green economy are running head on into an increasingly stark reality: The recession is making green jobs, like those in many other sectors, stubbornly scarce. “One of the worst things you can do is train people and not have a job for them at the end,” said Larry Martin. “You get their hopes up high, put them through all this training to find out at the end there’s no jobs,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of these grants, whether they be state or federal, came out too soon...

A yearly survey by the Department of Agriculture finds that the recession has dramatically worsened hunger in the United States. "Food insecurity" is at its highest level since the survey was started in 1995, with big increases across the board. Childhood hunger is an especially heart-rending scourge that President Obama, during his 2008 campaign, vowed to eradicate by 2015. He has yet to put forward a proposal for meeting that ambitious goal, but you can't really fault the government for not addressing the hunger problem. According to the USDA survey, 4.8 million households -- which included 4.5 million children --...

Responding to an Obama administration initiative, lenders have temporarily restructured hundreds of thousands of mortgages, with hundreds of thousands more modified under the banks' own programs. But achieving longer-term changes in the terms of mortgages has proved elusive, raising the prospect of a bigger wave of home repossessions that could cause a fresh decline in home prices only months after they appeared to hit bottom. Mortgage Bankers Assn. economist Jay Brinkmann said 4 million households were in foreclosure or were more than 90 days past due on their loans -- more than all the homes currently for sale. If most...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed while standing next to President Hugo Chavez that Iran and Venezuela would "stand together until the end" in the face of US "imperialism." The Iranian leader's three-day regional tour has been seen as a clear affront to Washington, a fact illustrated by an unusual letter sent by US President Barack Obama. After Ahmadinejad's first stop in Brazil, it emerged that Obama had sent a letter to the regional power urging it to be more critical of the Islamic republic and its suspect nuclear activities. The letter, written to Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Small Business Administration said on Tuesday that supplemental economic stimulus funds for its two most popular loan programs have run out and new loan volumes could fall if funds are not extended. The SBA said $375 million in Recovery Act funds for use in 7(a) and 504 loan programs were exhausted by Monday, leaving thousands of struggling but viable small businesses in limbo unless new resources can be found. Companies with fewer than 500 employees accounted for 64 percent -- or 14.5 million -- of the 22.5 million net new jobs between 1993 and the third...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods fell unexpectedly in October, according to government data on Wednesday that reinforced views of a gradual economic recovery from recession. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders dropped 0.6 percent after rising by an upwardly revised 2.0 percent in September. New orders in September were previously reported to have increased 1.4 percent. Durable goods orders are a leading indicator of manufacturing activity, which in turn provides a good measure for overall business health.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's December jobs forum may be better at serving his political need to show the White House cares about sky-high U.S. unemployment, than discovering new ways to cheaply boost economic growth. There is a long history of presidents hosting "economic summits" to show their concern about the economy. But economists say that by appearing to rule out significant additional spending to lift the economy, Obama will limit what the forum can achieve, and he risks making it look like an exercise in public relations. "You need more demand for goods and services in order to...

Vice President Joe Biden did everything short of shaking a pair of pompoms yesterday as he cheered on an economic recovery while criticizing those he hears booing from the sidelines. "Ladies and gentlemen, things aren't good but they're getting a lot better," Biden told 500 people gathered at a fundraiser for the Committee of Seventy. "We're no longer debating whether we're going to slide into a great depression. We're debating what the shape of the recovery is. Is it robust enough from my perspective? No. Do we need to do more? Yes." "We may be wrong," Biden said. "But the...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15. This is the lowest Approval Index rating yet measured for President Obama (see trends).

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew more slowly than initially thought in the third quarter, held back by strong imports and weak investment in nonresidential structures, according to data on Tuesday that hinted at a lackluster recovery. In its second reading of third-quarter gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said the economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate, rather than the 3.5 percent pace it estimated last month.

...The Government Accountability Office this week found "significant" errors on the recovery.gov Website, including claims that more than 58,000 jobs were "saved or created" by projects that had spent no government funds, and that no jobs were reported by some projects that had spent nearly $1 billion. That did not go down well with voters or with their representatives, who are beginning to show anger at the slow pace of the recovery. On Wednesday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey, D-Wis., himself a major architect of the stimulus bill, ripped the White House, saying, "The inaccuracies on...

Errors and poor estimates pepper the stimulus data that Oklahoma contractors recently submitted to the federal government. Big Five Community Services, a community action program in Durant, received $383,000 for its Head Start program. It used the money to fill three new positions and provide 39 Head Start staff members with professional training and a 1.84 percent pay increase for cost-of-living adjustments. Program representatives said the stimulus award created 42 jobs, data show. Carol Ammons, Big Five's executive director, said the pay increase would help prevent turnover and the training would help workers stay employed. "The sad thing about it...

Sitting here in Singapore as President Obama went through China and flew home from his 8-day trip to Asia, it is perhaps easier to see the true truth of his trip—it’s deep failure....

"I'm not scared of what (self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) would say at trial," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee as he defended his decision to prosecute Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 planners in a federal criminal court. I'm not scared of what KSM has to say in court either. I'm scared of what a federal judge might say and do. Mohammed already has said, "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z." By handing the 9/11 Five over to the federal court system, the Obama administration has opened the door for...

CARSON CITY — No sooner were the latest unemployment numbers released Friday morning than politicians offered their takes, illustrating that no fact will go un-spun this campaign season. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a statement declared the drop in statewide unemployment from 13.3 percent to 13 percent a “positive development and further evidence that Nevada is starting down the economic road to recovery.” Jeremy Aguero, principal of the financial firm Applied Analysis, said the “condition is effectively unchanged between September and October.” A muted response was appropriate, he said. “The unemployment drop isn’t because we’ve created jobs,” he said....

What was expected to be a boring congressional hearing erupted into high drama yesterday as an unnerved Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sparred with frustrated lawmakers calling for his head over his handling of the economy. Clearly rattled by a fusillade of attacks from Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, the usually reserved Geithner lashed out, laying blame for the current economic mess at the feet of the GOP and rejecting suggestions that he resign. Republicans "gave this president an economy falling off the cliff," Geithner fired back at Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), one of the Treasury secretary's harshest critics...

This will show how weak our president is ..COMPARE THE QUOTES

Original article from Thursday (19), links to the Japanese "Sankei Shimbun" website. FReepranslation is provided as a summary; the original Japanese version directly by the author governs and takes precedence over the unofficial English.Troubling developments.

The one highly visible success of the stimulus bill has been the cash-for-clunkers program. It induced a boom in vehicle sales this summer that clearly would not have happened otherwise. The rest of the stimulus bill has created a lot of jobs — 700,000 to 1.5 million, according to economists’ estimates. But it has done so in thousands of little ways: scattered construction projects, plugged-up school budgets and the like. Politically, these measures are not popular enough to create a groundswell for more of them. And the economy still needs help. So White House officials are now looking at creating...