Falmouth Citizen

NY-09 last saw Republicans hold it in 1922. The seat, last held by Anthony Weiner, flipped back to the GOP tonight in a stunning rebuke to Barack Obama. In every special election in New York for the past few years, even in 2009/2010, the Democrats pointed their finger at each one and declare it spelled disaster for the GOP. Today, the Democrats will declare NY-09 has no bearing on anything under the sun. Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama has been touring all over the midwest these past few weeks, giving speeches to crowds of fans, anxious to hear what’s next on his agenda. One could be forgiven for believing that these are less about pushing the president’s current agenda, and more about launching the reelection campaign, however this is a charge that the administration adamantly denies. Read the rest of this entry »

Murder rates don't fall when guns are banned. Murder rates tend to climb when guns are banned. Those are the facts, people. A Sept. 13 report on crime statistics from the FBI shows that all violent crime rates dropped in 2009 – murder rates by 7.4 percent and robbery rates by 9 percent! John R. Lott, Jr., economist and author of "More Guns, Less Crime," credits President Barack Obama's election for causing gun sales to skyrocket and crime rates to plummet. This must tickle Lott a lot, since he was in college with Obama and treated frostily by him when Lott would try to convince Obama that guns weren't evil things. Read the rest of this entry »

When your beautiful town or city is an ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) city it is run by the UN! Utilizing organizations with no phone number, no business address, just a group of people joined to gather to dismantle local governments such as Conservation Trusts and Economic Development, overlay districts or comprehensive plans. Not the hard working tax payers that lives there. Vernal pools are just another way to negatively impact property, resulting in government confiscation and furthering the agenda to dismantle America furthering government control resulting in Socialism or worse. Read the rest of this entry »

What is "is"? An ICLEI city. That stands for International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, now morphed into Local Governments for Sustainability. The International part involves the United Nations' plans for global regional development, although ICLEI is now in the process of eliminating any references to the United Nations on its Web site in order to slip the true intentions of the U.N. under the radar. Read the rest of this entry »

Our nation got a look at the city of New Orleans this past weekend as the media marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s path of destruction. Most of the coverage centered on how much of the city has been rebuilt since that time, and whether or not the federal government has done enough to restore The Crescent City to its former self. I heard no discussions of a determination to avoid the corruption that led to the worst of the devastation. Read the rest of this entry »

The main characters in the story I am about to relate – bark beetles, white flies, aphids and even a gopher – could be stars of a sequel to the Pixar movie, "A Bug's Life." The only thing is: There's nothing to laugh about here, and unfortunately the tale is real and playing out in Sacramento County Superior Court instead of a Disney venue. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember when Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid promised us that a government takeover of health-care would actually lower cost and reduce the deficit? Remember when we were guaranteed that a bureaucratic overhaul would leave our own current health-care coverage untouched? Oh, and remember when critics were scolded for addressing the forms of government “rationing” that are likely to occur as a result? Well, well. As usual, reality has come back to pimp slap the democrats in the end. Read the rest of this entry »

By Stephen Power

Cap and Trade

The annual winter meeting of the nation’s biggest shareholder-owned electric utilities is normally a snooze, getting little attention from outsiders. Not this year.

On Thursday, dozens of marchers — some toting signs with slogans such as “Welcome, Carbon Crooks” — protested outside the Edison Electric Institute’s annual board of directors meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., venting their fury over the industry’s efforts to help congressional Democrats on legislation that would cap U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.

“We’ve got rent-seeking industries trying to carve out a special niche and beat their competitors with government regulations,” said Tom Jenney, director of the Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a Virginia-based group that participated in the protest. Jenney’s group, joined by the Scottsdale Tea Party and FreedomWorks, a conservative group led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, says climate legislation passed by the U.S. House in June “would do serious damage to America’s economy and standard of living.”

The protests came on a day when the CEOs were hearing presentations from Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Sen. Lindsey Graham(R., S.C.), who has riled many members of his own state party by working with Democrats on legislation to control U.S. emissions…

James Owen, a spokesman for EEI, said the group’s members are working with Democrats on climate legislation “precisely because we are concerned about managing the costs of the transition to a low-carbon economy, and we continue to believe a comprehensive bill is the best way to manage those costs” while reducing emissions. The alternative, Owen said, is EPA regulation, which is likely to be far more costly.

While EEI didn’t endorse the House legislation, its officers worked with the bill’s sponsors on much of its fine print, and publicly praised the House for voting in favor of the bill.

Jenney said his group’s members “don’t really like taxes,” but that “if there’s going to carbon legislation, it should be along the lines of” a simple tax on carbon, with offsetting payroll tax reductions.

“There’s less chance for companies to carve out competitive advantages with a carbon tax than a cap-and-trade regime where the government is giving permits to favored companies,” he said.

Jenney said the protesters weren’t allowed onto the grounds of the Fairmont Scottsdale Hotel and didn’t have an opportunity to interact with the CEOs gathered inside the hotel. Instead, the demonstrators planted themselves outside the hotel, waving signs and encouraging passing motorists to honk.