Crossposted from Flopping Aces

To add to Mata’s post yesterday Openmarket.com has a good description of Obama’s recipe for disaster.

Toxic Asset Rip-Off

That’s how analysts describe the trillion-dollar toxic-asset buy-up program proposed this weekend by the Obama Administration: “the president is putting forth his idea to have the Treasury become the new AIG. In order to get hedge funds to buy up toxic debt, Obama is proposing that the Treasury provide loans up front and insurance against potential losses on the back end. It’s what Paul Krugman called ‘heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.’ By the way, it may cost another $1 trillion.”

The Treasury Secretary claims taxpayers won’t lose a full trillion, because the assets aren’t as worthless as their current market prices suggest. But if that’s true, why does he continue to insist on federal accounting rules that force banks to value their assets at the current depressed market prices? Either the accounting rules are right — in which case taxpayers will end up losing a trillion dollars — or they are wrong, amplifying financial panics — in which case the rules should be repealed, so that banks, not taxpayers, will be able to take the risk of holding the assets. (If these accounting rules, known as “mark-to-market” accounting, had been in place in the late 1980s, “every major commercial bank would have collapsed,” wiping out the economy).

The above is the cost of getting the government involved in issues the private sector should handle. Of course letting the private sector handle this is how a politician who believed in Capitalism would lead.

Meanwhile Obama’s former nominee for Commerce Secretary, Sen. Judd Gregg, just admonished Obama over his budget proposal:

This translates to a debt-to-GDP ratio that we have not seen in this country since the end of World War II, when we were trying to pay off war debt,” he said. “If you take all of the presidents from George Washington to George Bush, and add up all of the debt they put on the books of the American people, President Obama’s plan adds more debt than that.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, standing with Gregg, warned Democrats against passing the budget along party lines and using budget reconciliation to pass sweeping new programs. “If you do it with no bipartisan buy-in at all, then you own the whole thing.”

Oh, they own it….all of it.

Also:

Is population control on the horizon with Obama’s global warming agenda?

On March 19th, American Thinker’s Gregory Young hand an article that I archived for future developments titled Global Warming Alarmists Propose Limiting Population … to the Point of Extinction.

In a statistical study entitled “Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals,” published in Global Environmental Change by [Paul A, Professor in Dept of Statistics, OSU] Murtaugh and [Michael G., Senior Fac. Res. Asst, OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences] Shlax of Oregon State University, and again published here, the authors propose that the potential savings from reduced reproduction rates among humans are some 20 times more effective than the savings wrought by life style changes.

It is clear that the authors follow the Liberal mantra of the ends justify the means. If we can reduce carbon emissions by reducing the number of children, then we should do it, they gloat. It appears that carbon reductions trump even “life” itself. They summarize:

Much attention has been paid to the ways that people’s home energy use, travel, food choices and other routine activities affect their emissions of carbon dioxide and, ultimately, their contributions to global warming. However, the reproductive choices of an individual are rarely incorporated into calculations of his personal impact on the environment.

Here we estimate the extra emissions of fossil carbon dioxide that an average individual causes when he or she chooses to have children. The summed emissions of a person’s descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him, may far exceed the lifetime emissions produced by the original parent. Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions.

A person’s reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-to-day activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment.

By the authors’ desires, if we would limit every couple to having only one child, we would solve the Global Warming problem for every one. Again, humanity itself is the cause of all the woe, and the best thing for us to do is just stop procreating — or just drop dead. Living human beings are bad for the planet.

Indeed, the authors purposely fail to mention that their proposal puts humanity on a fast-tack extinction curve, as reproduction rates fall below population replacement rates. Surely, as statisticians they know this well. Within a few generations, there wouldn’t be any one around to measure, least wise care, about carbon emissions. We would all be dead.

Naturally, at it’s publishing, I didn’t leap to post it, knowing full well that so many would tut tut the possibility that the Obama admin, along with Pelosi and Reid’s Congress, would actually leap to such a tryrannical cure to an issue that Pelosi’s House Democrats see as a national security threat.

Add to that, the Speaker also considers reproduction an economic problem…. which is why she added birth control to the stimulus. Pelosi is quoted saying that “children’s health, education and some of those elements” are a financial drag to the economy, and birth control and contraception would lessen some of those costs.

In another economic approach, Obama desperately needs his expensive cap and trade plan. His budget deficits depend upon this plan being implemented to defray budget costs.

Thus far, this ties both a “national security” and an economic/monetary expediency for climate change legislation. Now what remains to be seen is whether they will factor in draconian population control.

For this we may consider a few “six degrees of separation” relationships. Most specifically the Senate’s confirmation of Obama’s two leading “climate change” experts… including marine biologist specialist, Jane Lubchenco, to head the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Coincidently, Ms. Lubchenco spent 30 years at Oregon State Univeristy… including heading up the Zoology Dept at the Corvallis campus.

Is it also coincidental that her OSU years spent at the same Corvallis OSU facility where the above mentioned reproduction Nazis, Murtaugh and Schlax, happened to have originated their report on reproduction and climate change? Also note, Schlax is part of the OSU College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.

Shall we assume that Ms. Lubchenco doesn’t know of these two? Hard pressed….

So far we’ve established a financial and “national security” motive for sundry climate change legislation, and a bread crumb trail from Obama’s NOAA appointee to the reproductive Nazis from Oregon State University.

What about Obama himself? He’s never spoken out about this particular reproductive study. And while it’s hard to second guess this not-so-transparent POTUS, we do know he is dedicated to the cause of climate change.

Reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions 80 Percent by 2050

Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.

Just how far will this new administration go in their quest for making the US “a leader on climate change”? Would he would support reproductive control in the interest of climate change?

We have no “let me be clear” answers of yet. So we can only speculate. And to do that, we can look at Obama’s views on abortion and reproduction.

We do know he has a history of opposing “born alive” legislation as an IL State Senator, and a firm proponent of Roe v Wade.

We also know that in Obama’s first days and weeks as POTUS, he used the Executive Orders procedure to reverse two policies relating to population: One within 24 hours to reverse the Mexico City policy, or lifting the ban on funds for international health groups that perform abortions, promote legalizing the procedure or provide counseling about terminating pregnancies”… and the other on March 9th to reverse the ban using federal funds (as opposed to private) for embryonic stem cells for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

It might be prudent to point out that – on March 11th of this year, just two days after issuing the embryonic stem cell EO – 24 agencies of this same UN compiled a 348 page document concluding that the world’s population growth and climate change were creating a crisis in the world’s drinking water.

As Obama stated to CNN INRE embryonic stem cells research:

“In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values,” Obama said at the White House.

“In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research — and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.”

A “false choice between sound science and moral values”…. I have no doubt that Obama believes global warming is based on “sound science”. The question is, will he consider it “responsible” to mandate limitation of family size when pursuing his climate change agenda?

In Obama’s 23 minute presentation address to Planned Parenthood early in his campaign (about five months after announcing his attempt), Obama laments Supreme Court decisions that upheld a federal ban on abortion with criminal penalties for doctors that performed them. (about 3’10″ into below video) He states the presumption, without taking into consideration the woman’s health (a rare factor in the majority of abortions) is “wrong”. He states that Roe v Wade is “at stake” in the 2008 election.

Obama has proven he is never on the side of the unborn child, but on the side of the mother and her whims. Some consider this simply a “pro choice” stand. But is it?

There is increased activity of the family planning lobbyists, hot on Obama’s trail, to seek out new constituent support for population growth’s negative environmental and security impact by using the traditional humanitarian and women’s rights arguments.

Such anti-reproduction advocates – like Amy Coen at Huffpo – live among the liberals, preying on the “right to choose” emotions in order to advance their agenda.

Even if we assume Obama’s support of abortion is genuinely founded merely on a woman’s right to choose, can their pressure – combined with Obama’s dedication to acting on climate change – result in Congressional legislation to limit family sizes in the US to “save the planet”?

One thing is certain. No one will get to this control in a straight line, as it’s bound to meet with resistance. Just as the population climate control wackos hide themselves among the women’s rights groups, this is apt to be stealth legislation that appears piece by piece… perhaps culminating in a final appeal for the nation’s “sacrifice” to the global warming cause.

China has had a one child per family limit since the 1970s, which they are considering scrapping in the past year because of their ageing population.. It’s not a “new idea” in the world…

Will an America under Obama consider such measures their duty based on climate change and economic stress? A year ago, I would have confidently said now. Now… with this leadership and a cult like national following, I am no longer sure.