Obama cries foul to WTO over China rare earth mineral exports showing his hypocrisy

The Keystone XL pipeline controversy has had the effect of clearly illustrating to the American people that the Obama ideology concerning green energy trumps economic fundamentals. This is not to say that the President doesn’t understand such basic principles of supply and demand, because he clearly does. It’s simply a matter of priorities. For example, just last June he reversed course on a policy decision and released 30 million barrels of oil from the nation’s 700+ million barrel reserve supply in an effort to lower gas prices due to a tightening of market supply from the Libyan uprising. With Obama, ideology always trumps economic reality. He conducted the now infamous interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC News in which he acknowledged the fact that lowering the capital gains tax rate results in increased overall revenue, yet his reason for supporting the increase anyway was out of a “sense of fairness”.

October of 2011 gave us another classic example of the hypocrisy concerning his publicized reason for not approving the Keystone XL pipeline project. His stated reason is inadequate time for the E.P.A. to conduct an environmental impact study. Apparently three years was inadequate. Yet last October, California based Molycorp received a drilling permit just two months after locating a new heavy rare earth deposit. From the story in the Atlantic.

In October 2011, Molycorp announced that they discovered a heavy rare earth deposit near their Mountain Pass facility and received permission to drill two months later. The heavy rare earths terbium, yttrium, and dysprosium are necessary for manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells, so the government has a particular interest in finding sources of those elements within the US.

Aha! The key phrase ”necessary for manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells”. It fits the ideology. Wait, you say, this is only a single mine and not an international pipeline crossing thousands of miles with the potential for environmental disaster all along the way. But we find out in the article that the reason the Molycorp mine was shut down in 1998 was exactly one of those environmental disasters. So this mine already has a proven track record and not just the potential of a spill. Yet the Obama Administration still fast tracked the permit. Again, ideology trumps.

As I said earlier, Obama perfectly understands supply and demand theory. This is why he just filed a complaint, along with the EU and Japan, with the World Trade Organization to protest China’s actions concerning export policy on rare earth minerals. The Congressional Research Study released a report last September covering the rare earth elements global supply chain. Here is a quote on the U.S. policy.

U.S. mineral policy emphasizes developing domestic supplies of critical materials

and encourages the domestic private sector to produce and process those materials

There is no global shortage of rare earth mineral reserves. Far from it. The problem is extraction. In fact, rare earth minerals are a very misleading name. They should be called widely dispersed minerals as they are easily found in the earth’s crust, just not in concentrated deposits. In a somewhat ironic twist, they also play a role in petroleum fracking as Lanthanum is used in fluid catalytic cracking. The Dept. of Energy has released its updated report on Critical Materials Strategy, and the general tone is supply issues.

I bring all this up just to highlight more blatant Obama hypocrisy. Rare earth minerals are considered a national security objective just as oil is publicly stated to be. Yet actions speak louder than words. Obama won’t pursue domestic oil and gas production expansion on a scale that matches the proven reserve availability. Environmental issues are the excuse for slowdowns. However, rare earth mineral mining is extremely dirty and that’s OK because it’s required for his green agenda. It’s funny that China has stated the reason it is slowing rare earth mineral exports is for environmental safety issues, something Obama should certainly be able to get behind. But not if it stands in the way of his windmills, electric cars and solar power here at home. Pathetic.

Stunning revelation from Def. Sec. Panetta states that Congress is absolutely irrelevant in military actions of the U.S.

OK, I lied. It’s not stunning at all, it’s expected. But it did knock Sen. Jeff Sessions-AL off his feet. Panetta specifically stated that the President has any authority necessary under the Constitution to defend this country, no Congressional involvement necessary. He also made clear that in situations requiring a coalition of nations, the administration will seek approval of an international entity, be it the U.N. or NATO for example, before they MAY seek Congressional approval. Congress, you’ve been punk’d! What are you going to do about your standing as a mere bystander in the defense of our country as defined in the Constitution? Every member of Congress should be calling for an emergency session immediately to address this flagrant violation of the Constitution and the separation of powers.

Federal Reserve adding another nail to the coffin

The Federal Reserve is adamant about meeting its mandates so much so that it will utilize whatever statistics make it appear their policies are working. Ask anyone who exists in the real world and they will tell you that the ‘official’ inflation rate as reported each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) through the consumer price index (CPI) is out of whack with what they are paying. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.

Not to worry. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke agrees with you that the core CPI numbers are too unstable and unreliable. Forget the fact that core CPI excludes food and energy prices already, the result was still too high to justify the Fed’s actions. So Bernanke has switched to personal consumption expenditures (PCE) as a baseline for setting monetary policy. PCE is supposed to better reflect changes in people’s buying habits. Historically it runs about 1/3 lower than CPI.

I won’t bore you with all the technicalities involved with the methodology utilized in measuring inflation as you can find it all over the web. Suffice it to say that employing a statistical measure (PCE) that consistently runs 1/3 lower than the previously utilized measure (CPI) which is only a fifth of the real inflation rate as measured by the real feel pain in consumer’s wallets can not lead to anything good. The Fed has a dual mandate of price stability and full employment. Anyone following the unemployment numbers is aware of the fallacy of their measure as well. It only stands to reason that the Fed use artificially low measures of inflation to go along with the massive block of unemployed or underemployed Americans. It’s not at all unrealistic to take the ‘official’ unemployment and inflation numbers and multiply them by a factor of two or three, possibly even more, to get a true picture of our economy.

So why would the Fed engage in such destructive practices? The incessant flooding of the market with liquidity hasn’t seen the corresponding increase in velocity the Fed desires. Simply put, the money isn’t circulating throughout the economy, it’s sitting dormant. The Fed sees this as a problem. They respond to low velocity with further stimuli in a vicious circle of chasing increased economic activity. Economic activity is what fuels the measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Here we go with another misleading measure of the economy. High volumes of economic activity (money changing hands) drives a high GDP number. Along with the artificially manufactured low inflation and unemployment numbers, the Fed wants an artificially high GDP number. This is the broken window fallacy of Keynesians. Economic activity just for the sake of appearing productive doesn’t grow the economy. Only economic activity that increases wealth is productive.

Undecided on this election? Not sure which direction the country should follow? Here’s the way NOT to go!

There are no better examples to educate people than something close to home everyone can relate to. I say that because we are constantly being reminded that we are headed toward Greece everyday. They are collapsing under their debt burden and in many respects, the U.S. is already in a worse position than they are. But I don’t believe the majority of Americans take the threat seriously because Greece is such a small island nation and we are a superpower. Apples and oranges. So perhaps a better example is one right here in America. It’s the city of Detroit.

Detroit has been a textbook testbed for progressives for over half a century and has illustrated in the clearest possible terms the guaranteed failure of socialism. It’s fitting that a major plank of the progressives is equality of outcome as opposed to equal opportunity. Detroit has delivered. The following is an article from Jarrett Skorup written for the Michigan Capitol Confidential. He does an excellent job laying out the phenomenal decline of a once great city. With our oh-so-important election coming up, it’s another reminder that we need to change course in America asap.

Detroit: The Triumph of Progressive Public Policy

How did this great city fall so far?

By Jarrett Skorup | Feb. 14, 2012

(Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on July 6, 2009.)

Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or “progressive” platform have been enacted:

• A “living wage” ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors.
• A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average.
• A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members.
• Other government employee unions that do the same for their members.
• A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.

Would this be a shining city on a hill, exciting the admiration of all? We don’t have to guess, because there is such a city right here in our state: Detroit

GM sets all-time record profit of $7.6 billion. Is it proof the Bush/Obama auto bailouts worked?

GM has announced an all-time record profit for 2011 of $7.6 billion dollars. You will hear that endlessly this year as Obama takes credit for saving the auto companies. So once again we need to take a look back and do some fact checking.

The auto bailouts, as they are known, were bridge loans extended to GM, Chrysler and their financing arms. What was their purpose?  To prevent the auto companies from going into bankruptcy. As you’ll recall, they did anyway. So on its face, the claim of any bailout success is false. Bankruptcy, or restructuring, means a company has failed and needs protection from its creditors under bankruptcy law. GM and Chrysler clearly failed by going bankrupt so any claim of success due to the bailouts is a lie pure and simple.

The claim that is often made is that by extending the bailout funds, the Treasury rescued the companies from completely failing and thus saved over 1 million jobs. Some industry reports claimed 3 million potential job losses throughout the entire supply chain.  What happens when a company files for bankruptcy protection? They are allowed to reorganize under the protection of law which is exactly what they did. Going bankrupt doesn’t mean all the factories close, the dealerships, the suppliers and other vendors, etc. That’s called going out of business, liquidation,  a completely different scenario than bankruptcy. GM and Chrysler weren’t planning on going out of business, they were trying to avoid bankruptcy, so the claim of saving over a million jobs is unsubstantiated.

Now, what is the administration and the bailout defenders claim? That due to the credit crisis brought on by the recession, there would be no credit lifeline for the auto companies and they would just be allowed to fail. Accordingly, we had to tap the TARP funds to provide that lifeline no one else was capable of providing. They were needed to provide operating cash and loan funds for consumers. The claim is always made that total liquidation would occur without allowing for the likelihood of reorganization under bankruptcy protection. Scaremongering is certainly nothing new with government when it needs to put forth an agenda item and repayment of union support in the Obama election was on that agenda.

Army Lt. Colonel report contradicts U.S. progress in Afghanistan

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis is a 17 year Army veteran. He just returned from his 2nd Afghanistan tour. He has published a report that is his personal assessment of the Afghanistan war. It’s not classified, however, he has also published a second classified report which he has submitted to members of Congress. These reports are very damning to the federal governments assertions about the progress of the war. He claims we have been purposely misled in overstating our success. This paragraph sums it up quite well in questioning how is it even feasible we haven’t defeated such an inferior enemy.

The United States, along with over 40 NATO and other allied nations, possess the most sophisticated, powerful, and technologically advanced military force that has ever hit the field of combat. We have the finest and most well trained Soldiers that exist anywhere; we have armored vehicles of every type, to include MIA2 Main Battle Tanks; artillery, mortars, advanced rockets, precision guided missiles, and hand-held rocket launchers; we have a wholly uncontested air force composed of NATO’s most advanced ground attack fighter jets, bombers, AWACS controllers, spy planes, signals-interception aircraft, B 1 bombers, attack helicopters, and massive transport jets to ferry our troops and critical supplies where they are needed; we have thousands of unmanned aerial drones both for intelligence collection and missile-launching; we have a helicopter fleet for personnel transport and attack support; we have an enormous constellation of spy satellites; logistics that are as limitless as the combined weight of the industrial world; we have every technological device known to the profession of arms; we are able to intercept virtually every form of insurgent communication to include cell phones, walkie-talkies, satellite phones, email, and even some ability to eves-drop on otherwise private conversations; a remarkably capable cohort of intelligence analysts that arc as educated, well trained and equipped to a degree that used to exist only in science fiction; and our various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops.

Read the entire report here – http://www1.rollingstone.com/extras/RS_REPORT.pdf

You can read the report and draw your own conclusions as to its validity. I reference it in this post merely to point out my continued assertion that we have never been fighting in Afghanistan in order to win a war. Go here, here, here, here, here, here and here if you wish to read any of my previous posts on this issue.

Lt. Col. Davis has been there. Does he have some agenda? I have no idea. He is in no way promoting what I am. His concern is clearly for the wasted lives of the soldiers in a war we have no intention of winning. That’s certainly a worthwhile reason all by itself. His claim is that the Taliban have been steadily gaining strength since 2005 and will surely take over control upon our exit. I contend we were there all along for strategic purposes to promote our national energy policies in the interest of our national defense and his report is just more reinforcement of that.

President Obama – where have the 6,851,000 jobs gone?

Have to throw my two cents in on the latest unemployment numbers. It’s becoming quite clear that Obama is going to have his high 7/low 8 unemployment number for the November election. That allows him to sell his stimulus as a success if the number is below 8% as he promised taking away one of the GOP’s biggest talking points of the last couple of years. They had better start selling the numbers that really matter which is the number of employed people in this country, rather than the skewed numbers of the unemployed.

Directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table A, Household Data. The number not in the labor force. January 2012 – 87,874 (in thousands). The number from January 2009 when Obama took office – 81,023 (in thousands). Subtract the difference and we get 6,851 (in thousands).

It means we have 6,851,000 less people working today than we had when Obama took responsibility. Nearly 7 million less Americans working (and paying taxes) today than just 3 short years ago. Obama can’t dispute those numbers because they’re from his own agency, the same one he uses to promote the unemployment rate number. He can claim his stimulus created millions of new jobs but the numbers don’t support it.

The GOP better get it together quick and start harping on the relevant numbers everyday so the squishy middle gets it before election day.

Disclaimer – all of these numbers are BLS numbers which are highly suspect based upon their methodology. However, it helps to use the same source Obama is citing when refuting his claims.

Source – http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm

Source – http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_02062009.htm

Did Panetta gaffe? Did we win the Afghanistan war? Is the leaked NATO report wrong?

Did U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commit a gaffe this week when he let slip early the plan to accelerate the pullout from Afghanistan? After all, the move comes as a surprise to Kabul which was still operating under the end of 2014 timeline. What does this mean? Has stability in the region exceeded expectations thus justifying an earlier than planned exit? In fact, the opposite is likely true. A NATO report entitled ‘State of the Taliban 2012′ has leaked and purports that the Taliban are winning the war with the Afghan people and are prepared to re-establish control as soon as the U.S. steps aside. The U.S. and NATO dispute this claim.

Of course, nothing is ever as it seems when Afghanistan is involved. We claimed to enter the conflict (because it’s another undeclared war) in response to the 9/11 attack in order to eradicate the Taliban and subsequently Al-Qaeda and Usama Bin Laden. That’s the narrative for public consumption at any rate. The truth is far from it and the U.S. pullout without completing the stated mission vindicates it. Let’s review.

In 1995, Turkmenistan and Pakistan were negotiating a proposed pipeline with an Argentinian company called Bridas Corp. in order to secure a pipeline from the Caspian Sea (which is landlocked) to an open sea port. The logical path was through Afghanistan, however, a civil war was still underway in the wake of the Russian pullout when they lost their war there. This pipeline is called the Trans-Afghan pipeline (TAPI) and has been dead or alive in varying degrees for decades now. It could not be built without stability in Afghanistan. UNOCAL was the primary U.S. corporation in line to benefit from this pipeline. UNOCAL had strong ties to the Bush administration. In 1998, a UNOCAL executive named John Maresca testified in front of Congress as to the need for pipeline expansion in this region. Here is a good primer on the entire history of the pipeline – http://www.pm-pipeliner.safan.com/mag/ppl0411/r06.pdf.

Here is an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune article from March 18, 2002. Read it here.

If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean

Did you know that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, is a former UNOCAL employee? The situation has evolved immensely since the early 90′s when it started as UNOCAL is now completely out of the project. Karzai is considered a U.S. puppet installed by Bush and will likely be replaced once the Taliban retake control of the country.

Fast forward to 2001 and we had the 9/11 attacks. The perfect opportunity to enter Afghanistan and secure the region for our strategic energy policies. I know what your thinking. Another 9/11 conspirator. Not at all. My position has always been one that our government is an opportunistic one. They take advantage of geo-political events in order to execute policy goals. Creating a false flag event such as a government planned and executed disaster such as 9/11 would take too many people involved to ever keep it quiet. Do they ‘allow’ events to happen that they have knowledge of if it will benefit them? Do they actively engage as with the negotiations prior to 9/11 with Bin Laden and the Taliban over pipeline access in exchange for Taliban recognition? Both Clinton and Bush played ball here so it’s not at all a partisan issue. You decide.

Who is killing more Americans, Iran or Mexico?

Question – how many deaths have resulted from the Iranian nuclear weapons program? That would be zero unless you include the Iranian nuclear scientists that have been assassinated due to the covert war being waged by the CIA and Mossaud.

Zero. As in none. Both our defense department and Israeli intelligence are on record stating that they cannot even substantiate the claim that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Yet it’s a major plank in our national defense strategy and we, as well as the EU, continue to ramp up sanctions against Iran.

Another question – which Middle East state has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Is it Iran ? No, they are a member. It’s Israel, which does possess nuclear weapons, yet doesn’t acknowledge it.

So Israel has them and Iran does not and we cannot even confirm that they are even pursuing them. Our national posture is that Israel is a friend and ally as well as a strategic asset so we will continue to conduct a policy to help protect the State of Israel and its people.

We have a long history of coming to the aid of friends and allies across the globe. Which leads me to the next question.

Which friend and ally of the U.S. has seen over 50,000 people killed or otherwise unaccounted for in the past five years in an internal war? Of course, that would be Mexico. Yes, like Israel, our friend and ally and a strategic asset. What is the difference? As a result of the Mexican drug war, we have seen the number of Americans killed steadily rising each year as a result of the border spillover violence. In fact, we have a government which has actively exploited this violence for its political gain by employing the Fast and Furious gun running operation.

U.S. seeks to expand its role as global cop

The White House has laid out our nations strategic defense plans going forward and they reflect the largest change in focus in decades. No longer will we expect, or have the ability, to fight two major wars on different fronts simultaneously. Nor will we plan to engage in nation building, long-term occupations that require unsustainable investments of troops and supporting infrastructure. Primarily, this is budget-driven. In fact, many will argue that our nations debt is the biggest threat we face as a nation. For the record, our Commander-in-Chief has identified radical extremists and rogue nations seeking WMD’s as our biggest threats.

While we have been focused on Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, the Middle East will no longer be our sole focal point. Obama sees us as expanding the war theatre essentially across the globe. That includes the U.S. homeland. The recently passed NDAA highlights that America itself is now considered a battlefield and that the rules have changed. To combat the threat of homegrown terrorists, American citizens can now be indefinitely detained without charge if they are suspected of terrorist activities. No trial. No civil rights. The need for GITMO has now been eliminated completely as we don’t need an offshore holding area anymore. The entire globe has been identified as a war zone and no one is immune from these procedures.

The report outlines that our challenges will become much broader in nature. It specifically mentions the entire Asia-Pacific region. Cyber threats are expected to become more commonplace. The idea is to not leave any potential front unidentified so as to leave all options open. In fact, it can be said that Obama has assumed the role of CEO for global security. He’s actively pursuing a sales pitch.

Across the globe we will seek to be the

security partner of choice, pursuing new partnerships with a growing number of nations .–

including those in Africa and Latin America

The Constitution mandates that the Commander-in-Chief will direct the national defense of the United States. Don’t remember reading anywhere that we should be moonlighting as  a ‘security partner of choice’. Choice meaning these foreign countries can pick anyone out of the Yellow Pages for security purposes, but Obama would like it to be us.