Free Republic

You may have noticed the recent hype about global warming, a hot summer, looming devastation from freakish weather and all the same old stuff recycled again. You may also have noticed one of the reasons: Gov. Jerry Brown wants to justify shaking down corporate California, again. Well, not only does Brown get the temperature wrong, he also hypes the threat of extreme weather events. Which is to say he gets that wrong too. So, are we amidst horrific extreme weather events? Normally we’d just say, “not exactly.” In this case, we have to say, ”You’ve gotta be kidding.”...

It's probably no coincidence that Gov. Jerry Brown recently launched a website to scare Californians into embracing his global-warming hype. The state is about to launch a cap-and-trade scheme that potentially will raise billions of dollars for the government, ostensibly to fight global warming. In reality, the money is likely to be diverted to more mundane political uses – like backfilling the huge budget hole perpetuated by Mr. Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature...

Brown wants you to believe global warming "poses an immediate and growing threat to California's economy, environment and to public health," and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions, "which are warming the planet," is necessary "to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change, including the increased likelihood of both flooding and drought." That's the same phony scare story repeated until many people finally tuned it out. It failed to persuade Congress to intervene with a law to limit greenhouse gas emissions, even though Congress almost never has seen a trumped-up crisis that didn't justify overreaching intervention... But, as the Sacramento...

Monday more than 825,000 people throughout California will begin receiving bills of $150 or more from the state government, in this case to pay some of the costs of preventing wildfires. . . Opponents, such as we, say it’s a tax and that it’s imposed in violation of the state Constitution. Apparently that argument hasn’t dissuaded the tax man, er, fee man from his appointed rounds. . .

Orange Punch readers know how we feel about most laws passed by politicians. They should be few and legitimate, but instead are too many and tools for rewarding friends and punishing enemies. In short, they should protect rights, not invent new ones. Laws generally seek to take from someone something of value, often not merely cash, and bestow on someone else a benefit, oh say, like health care insurance. We’re pleased to see – but not surprised to see – that the majority of Americans believe there are too many unnecessary laws. ..

“…[W]hat we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more…” So said President Barack Obama. Nothing wrong with that. We agree wholeheartedly. Ask the wealthy if they will pay a little bit more, or even a lot more. Please do. Ask. But government doesn’t ask. It demands. It coerces. It enforces at gunpoint. Taxes, you see, aren’t voluntary...

The state government is in dire straits, we are told. We must pay higher taxes, we are told. The cupboard is bare and they are running out of money, we are told. Then there’s this: “More than $2 billion in California taxpayer money has apparently been stashed in hundreds of special funds unaccounted for by the state Department of Finance, a newspaper reported on Friday..."

The unintended, convoluted and costly consequences of President Barack Obama's signature health care law are about to be realized. Obamacare was rushed through Congress in 2010 despite almost no one knowing what the 2,700-page law provided, apart from a vague promise to make health care more affordable and accessible. This week...

Eleven Southern California business owners met this week with Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, at a Costa Mesa manufacturing plant. On the wall behind Mr. Romney's chair hung a large banner that read, "We did build it!" – with "did" underlined for emphasis. The banner underscored how out of touch President Barack Obama seems with what makes the American economy work. The business owners echoed the ire of those nationwide who do understand what makes the American economy work. Their words Monday in Costa Mesa directly refuted the president's now-infamous campaign utterance of last week: "If you've got...

What happens in the real world when those who are fiscally responsible for managing other people’s money hide it and engage in other deceptions? Yeah, they go to jail or at least get sued and have to pay up. What happens in Sacramento? We have a couple of examples of such shenanigans...

The mainstream media met our level of expectation last week by immediately – and wrongly – identifying the shooter in Aurora, Colo., as a member of the Tea Party. Congratulations to ABC for living down to what we have come to expect of the MSM – bash first, ask questions later. But wasn’t the presumed shooter more right than left? Wasn’t he one of those religious fanatics? After all, his parents attend church...

President Barack Obama, who promised to transform America, told a campaign gathering this week, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that." Whether you take his words at face value or prefer to infer he simply meant government can help businesses by building bridges and roads, the president's speech was troubling. Implicit in the president's message is that private individuals and privately held companies are not sufficient. Big Government is the engine that pulls the train, in his view. . .

How far would a politician get if he spoke plainly and you didn’t have to decipher or read between the lines to understand him? Yeah, not far. Here’s today’s example. ...

Two recent studies have confirmed what the Register's Editorial Board has warned since 2006 – California's Global Warming Solutions Act will have devastating effects on the state's economy, and even be counterproductive in its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was a big red flag when the California Air Resources Board, which enforces the law, estimated in 2010 that it would reduce the state's economic output by 0.2 percent. It should have raised more eyebrows than it did when bureaucrats and regulators tasked with putting the best face on its consequences admitted it will have a negative economic effect...

The latest spin is that when President Barack Obama put his foot in his mouth saying :“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he didn’t really mean it. Yeah, and if you believe that, you probably think he was talking about voluntary charitable donations when he said, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” ...

When Barack Obama put his foot in his mouth the other day, he provided a glimpse into what he really is all about – government. . . . What the president should have said was this: “”If you’ve got a business — you did build that. Somebody in the government just made it more difficult for you to do it.”

Some of the most onerous obligations of the illogically named Affordable Care Act, aka, Obamacare, may yet be defeated. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's constitutionality by curiously deciding its penalty for not buying health insurance is really a tax, justices also said something that made more sense: States may opt out of the law's costly expansion of Medicaid – the government health insurance system for the poor – without losing existing Medicaid funding, as the law threatened. States can save tens of billions of dollars by not expanding Medicaid coverage (known as Medi-Cal in California) to people who...

We got a phone call this morning from an Orange County businessman who had attended a conference this week in which a university professor lauded the benefits of cap and trade. Obviously, this prof doesn’t work in an industry that will have to directly assume the burden of this added tax, disguised as a fee. But our caller does. Our caller and the prof do share this in common – their cost of living as consumers will go up as California state government ratchets up its taxes through cap and trade auctions, ostensible to rid us of horrid CO2 emissions,...

More to the point, for those who think things are unusually hot this year, particularly this summer, and that somehow is supposed to be proof of disastrous man-made global warming, we beg to differ. Let’s go to a non-weakly source for a more authoritative take. . . .

We have received some emails from readers who think government health care is the solution to what ails the U.S. of A. Well, some people think Elvis is alive too. Any way, despite our best and most courteous efforts, these readers for the most part remain unpersuaded by our reasoned arguments. Maybe this tidbit will nudge them...