Global warming: Scotland hit by blizzards, road closures and 8 inches of snow

The Scotsman reports:

The summer solstice is only 28 days away, but in parts of Scotland yesterday, it was like winter had never left, as people awoke to a blanket of snow.

At a time of year when thoughts should be turning to sunscreen and barbeques, a blast of wintry weather swept in from the Arctic, bringing blizzards and icy temperatures to the North-east. Drifting snow closed two roads, and many more were only passable with care.

The Express reported on the comments of the pro-global warming Met Office:

A freezing blast from the Arctic today will bring icy gusts, blizzards and temperatures plunging to -5C (23F), forecasters said.

It comes as Met Office figures reveal this spring is likely to be the coldest for 30 years.

The period from March to mid-May show average temperatures have not risen above 6.1C making it the 6th coldest on record.

Forecaster Sarah Holland said: “This year’s particularly cold spring was heavily influenced by an exceptionally cold March which had a mean temperature 3.3 °C below the long-term average. April and May (so far) have been less cold, but have also registered slightly below average mean temperatures.

[...]Leon Brown, forecaster for The Weather Channel, said parts of Scotland were expecting up to eight inches of snow today.

Heavy wintery showers in Aberdeenshire brought parts of the region to a standstill this morning and caused chaos on the roads and transport networks.

Mr Brown said the entire county is going to be colder than average for the time of year with the mercury struggling to get into double figures.

This is all the fault of global warming! We have to let government regulate the private sector and control our consumption, or we’ll all burn up in flames for our eco-sins!

Filed under: News, Blizzard, Climate, Climate Change, Cold, Communism, Global Warming, Marxism, Mythology, Politicization of Science, Regulation, Save the Planet, Scotland, Snow, UK, Weather

Why do corporations ship jobs overseas? What causes outsourcing of jobs?

World Corporate Tax Rates

Here is a news story from Yahoo News that explains the problem and the cause of the problem. (H/T Dad)

Excerpt:

Large U.S. companies boosted their offshore earnings by 15 percent last year to a record $1.9 trillion, avoiding hefty tax bills by keeping the profits abroad, according to a new report.

The overseas earnings stockpile has climbed by 70 percent over the past five years, said research firm Audit Analytics. Data in its report covers the Russell 3000 index of the largest U.S. corporations.

U.S.-based multinationals do not have to pay U.S. corporate income tax on foreign earnings as long as the earnings do not enter the United States. Accounting rules also let the companies avoid recognizing a tax expense if management intends to keep the earnings indefinitely reinvested overseas.

“It would probably be nice to have this money in our country being used in our economy, but at the moment we see it growing elsewhere,” said Don Whalen, general counsel and director of research at Audit Analytics.

Conglomerate General Electric Co (GE.N), had the most indefinitely reinvested overseas earnings, at about $108 billion, while drugmaker Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) was next with $73 billion, according to Audit Analytics.

The simple answer is that Americans believe that corporations need to pay high taxes and operate under burdensome regulations. This eats into their profits, making it harder for them to grow and expand. The plain truth is that it is easier for corporations to expand and hire in countries with lower taxes and fewer regulations. Besides, who wants to be wiped out by a nuisance lawsuit just because someone spills coffee on themselves and then refuses to take responsibility? The smart play is to just opt out completely, and that’s what many corporations do – earning higher profits in more business-friendly countries.

Filed under: News, Business, Corporate Tax, Corporate Taxes, Corporations, Economy, Job Creation, Jobs, Multinational, Private Sector, Profits, Regulation, Repatriation, Tax Holiday, Tax Rates, Taxation, Taxes, Wealth, World

New EPA report: natural gas prodution is even cleaner than previously thought

From the liberal Associated Press. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

The new EPA data is “kind of an earthquake” in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. “This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks.”

The scope of the EPA’s revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That’s about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates. The agency converts the methane emissions into their equivalent in carbon dioxide, following standard scientific practice.

The EPA revisions came even though natural gas production has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1990. The industry has boomed in recent years, thanks to a stunning expansion of drilling in previously untapped areas because of the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects sand, water and chemicals to break apart rock and free the gas inside.

Wow, when you have the EPA on board with responsible energy development, then you know it’s solid.

See my previous post in which I talked about how the EPA had exonerated fracking in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Filed under: News, Arsenic, Conservation, Contaminant, Energy, Energy Policy, Environment, Environmental Protection Agency, Environmentalism, EPA, Fracking, Gas, Global Warming, Natural Gas, Oil, Pollution, Regulation, Research, Science, Socialism, Study, Water, Water Supply

Wayne Grudem explains what the Bible says about parents and schools

This is a must-listen, especially for any single Christian woman who would like to get married and have children. If you want to marry a Christian man, you should listen to this lecture and also the Dr. Morse lecture on marriage Every Day. Christian men expect Christian women to know a lot about marriage. About why children need mothers, and why they need fathers, and how the state is always taxing families and then using that money to poke their noses in and teach the children all kinds of bad things.

With that introduction, here is the MP3 file on education policy.

Note: public schools = government-run schools.

Topics:

• Does God care whether we people marry and have children?
• Does God care whether Christian parents raise their children to know him?
• Should government promote bearing children?
• What are some effects of declining birth rates in other countries?
• What are the economic effects of declining birth rates?
• Who has the right to decide how children are trained: government or parents?
• What does the Bible say about parents having to raise children to know him?
• Does the government have the responsibility for training children?
• What do educational bureaucrats think of parents training children?
• What do school boards think of parents training children?
• Should school boards be elected by local, state or federal government?
• Should Christians be opposed to government-run education? (public schools)
• How should schools be viewed by parents? As a replacement or as a helper?
• How are schools viewed by those on the left and in communist countries?
• How can you measure how supporting a government is of parental rights?
• How is parental authority viewed in left-wing EU countries like Germany?
• How is parental authority respected in the United States?
• Should parents have a choice of where their children go to school?
• What is a voucher program? How is it related to parental autonomy?
• How does competition (school choice) in education serve parental needs?
• Why do public school teachers, unions and educrats oppose competitition?
• How well do public schools do in educating children to achieve?
• Does the government-run monopoly of public schools produce results?
• Does paying more and more money to public schools make them perform?
• How do teacher unions feel about having to compete in a voucher system?
• Does the public school monopoly penalize the poorest students?
• Does the public school monopoly penalize children of certain races?
• Does the public school monopoly cause racial predujice?
• What else should parents demand on education policy?
• Is it good for parents when schools refuse to fire underperforming teachers?

This podcast is just amazing! This is what we need to be teaching in church. Church should be the place where you go to learn and reflect about how to tailor your life plan based on what the Bible says. And I think that this whole notion of free market – of choice and competition benefiting the consumer (parents) – applies to everything that government does, especially education and health care.

Related posts

• Wayne Grudem explains what the Bible says about parents and schools
• Wayne Grudem explains what the Bible says about self-defense
• Wayne Grudem explains what the Bible says about capital punishment
• Christian professor of economics discusses capitalism, socialism and the Bible
• How I got interested in the relationship between Christianity and economics
• First Things reviews Jay Richards’ Money, Greed and God
• Ron Nash explains what should Christians believe about social justice

Filed under: Podcasts, AFT, Barack Obama, Charter School, Choice, Competition, Conservatism, Education, Education Policy, Education Reform, Europe, Government, Government Control, National Education Association, NEA, Policy, Politics, Private School, Public Education, Public School, Race, Race to the Top, Racism, Regulation, Teacher, Teacher Union, Voucher

Americans finding out the true costs of Obamacare

The Daily Caller has a sobering article about the true costs of Obamacare.

Excerpt:

Millions of Americans are receiving double-digit premium hikes. For many people under 30, their health insurance premiums are going up much more — by as much as 189 percent. What happened to candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 promise that every family’s health care costs would go down by $2,500 by the end of his first term? (Costs actually went up by $3,000.)

The Congressional Budget Office projects Obamacare will cost tens of billions more over the next decade than the agency projected just three years ago. Those increases were not budgeted for, and will add to massive deficits.

So much for the promise that the law “will not add one dime to the deficit.”

Millions of workers at places like Wendy’s and Olive Garden are now being preemptively reclassified as part-time, and an estimated 7 million to 20 million employees face the loss of workplace health benefits altogether.

So much for the oft-heard promise that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

[...]Seniors were assured that the new system wouldn’t affect their benefits, despite Obamacare’s $716 billion in ten-year cuts to Medicare (to help pay for the new entitlement).

That promise was broken recently, when the Medicare agency issued surprise regulations cutting Medicare even more deeply than Congress had directed — cuts that target a popular and very successful part of Medicare, one that actually features consumer choice and competition, namely, Medicare Advantage (MA).

Seniors who opt into MA enjoy greater care coordination, disease management for chronic conditions, and on-call nurses available by phone. Those extra services — which in some cases mean the difference between life and death — are now slated for the chopping-block.

Rosemarie Battaglia will be among the millions of victims of these new regulations, which beginning April 1 will effectively shave MA plan payments by about 2 percentage points. On top of prior cuts enacted in Obamacare, that spells an 8 percent cut next year — a level higher than the profit margins for these plans.

Actuarial experts at the American Action Forum predict the cuts will cause between 2 and 5 million seniors to lose their MA benefits, and that MA recipients face health care cost increases averaging $2,235 a year.

When a President makes promises about economic policy, we shouldn’t believe him unless we have reasons to believe that he understands business and economics. We had no reason to believe that Obama understood economics. And, when given the reins of the economy, he’s proven that. Instead of electing people who sound nice in speeches, we should be electing people who have shown that they know how to solve the problems we’re facing in the economy. A track record of success at creating jobs, reducing the costs of health care, improving health care quality and choice, etc. should have counted for more than rhetoric. We chose the rhetoric and now we’re getting the screws.

Related posts

• New study: Obamacare will raise cost of medical claims by 32%
• Five Guys franchise owner says Obamacare will force him to raise prices
• How the new Obamacare mandates are reducing full-time employment
• How does Obamacare cause medical premiums to rise?
• Obamacare’s new tax on medical devices trickles down to hospitals and patients
• Medical premiums will continue to rise as Obamacare is implemented
• Christian business Hobby Lobby defies Obamacare abortion mandate
• When health insurance is forced to cover more, insurance premiums go up
• Obamacare in action: Denny’s to charge 5% surcharge and cut employee hours
• Papa John pizza CEO: cuts to employee hours likely, because of Obamacare
• A primer on the fiscal cliff facing us in January 2013: tax hikes and Obamacare
• Companies announce layoffs in the wake of Obama’s re-election
• Sally Pipes: how Obamacare causes doctors to quit practicing medicine
• Why do some people oppose Obamacare? What does Obamacare do?
• The full list of Obamacare tax hikes in order from largest to smallest
• California: Obamacare exchanges will raise health insurance premiums up to 25%
• Health insurance premiums up $3,000 since Obama was elected
• Report: Obamacare regulations will cost taxpayers and businesses $1.8 trillion
• CBO: Unemployment rises to 9.1% in 2013, health care spending doubles by 2022
• Obamacare subsidizes the risky behaviors of sexually active women
• Obamacare begins forcing states to cap and cut prescription drug benefits
• CBO: 20 million Americans could lose employer-provided health coverage under Obamacare

Filed under: News, Economics, Government, Health-care, Barack Obama, Socialism, Socialized Medicine, Government Spending, Deficit, Nationalization, Waste, Unemployment, Debt, Big Government, Regulation, Business, Spending, Medicine, Economy, Costs, Subsidies, Obamacare, Coverage, Premium, Rationing, Healthcare, Democrat Party, Death Panels, Health Insurance, Recklessness