For Release: March 31, 2009
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or e-mail dalmasi@nationalcenter.org
Washington, D.C. - The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources is holding a one-sided hearing this morning on the California drought that is expected to blame climate change for a critical water shortage while glossing over the role of activist-inspired environmental policies in exacerbating the shortage, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
The hearing, entitled “The California Drought: Actions by Federal and State Agencies to Address Impacts on Lands, Fisheries, and Water Users,” will be held today, March 31, at 10:30 am in Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building.
Only representatives of government agencies will be permitted to testify at the hearing. Most of the witnesses will be from federal agencies.
To draw attention to the biased nature of the proceedings, The National Center for Public Policy Research will send a representative to the hearing best suited for a kangaroo court - a kangaroo.
“At the height of a California drought and during a serious recession with massive unemployment in California’s Central Valley, one would hope that the committee cared enough about agricultural workers and minorities to invite as witnesses actual unemployed farm workers from the scores of communities closing down,” remarked R.J. Smith, a Senior Fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research. “Let’s have an open Committee hearing and hear real people discussing the impacts on their lives from government regulations and their massive job losses - instead of more government bureaucrats who are only causing the problem.”
California - the nation’s largest producer of tomatoes, lettuce, almonds, apricots, strawberries and many other crops - risks agricultural losses of over $2 billion for the upcoming season and $3 billion in total economic losses in 2009. According to a University of California at Davis study, 80,000 jobs could be lost in the Central Valley.
Although global warming is expected to receive much of the blame for this economic disaster, government regulation is a more significant - and preventable cause - of it, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research.
For example, state and federal water officials have sharply cut agricultural water deliveries in California so that more water can go out to sea as part of an effort to protect the Delta Smelt - a three-inch long fish listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In February, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced a “zero allocation” of water from the Central Valley Project, cutting off the massive federal irrigation system that serves numerous California farms. The supply of water from California’s State Water Project is 20 percent of normal.
“By demanding that the water flow into the Pacific Ocean, government meddlers have forced farmers to abandon production, threatening both the nation’s fresh food supplies and the jobs of farm workers, many of whom are among the nation’s poorest minorities,” said Mr. Smith. “Ironically, the cut-off of agricultural water has done nothing to help the Delta Smelt. Every year less water is diverted for agriculture, yet the fish population continues to decline.”
The state of California also deserves blame for the water shortage because it has failed to build the water infrastructure necessary for the state’s growing population.
Donn Zea, President of the Northern California Water Association, wrote in the March 5th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle that although California’s population has doubled over the past 40 years, the state has not meaningfully updated its water storage capacity since 1967. “As a result, when drought hits, we have an amount of water suitable for California in 1960 - not 2009,” wrote Mr. Zea.
The Resources Committee - which has a history of promoting global warming alarmism - is expected to explore the dubious link between a modest increase in global temperatures and localized weather patterns devastating California.
“If certain members of the House Natural Resources Committee want the world to believe that a regional drought in an arid area of California is further ‘proof’ of global warming, then let’s hope that they apply the same reasoning to the floods that are ravaging eastern and central North Dakota,” remarked Dr. Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research. “By the thousands, residents of Fargo and Bismarck are trying to protect their cities from the rising waters of the Red and Missouri Rivers. The blocks of ice on the Missouri River north of Bismarck were so huge that explosives were used to blow them up. Will Chairman Rahall invite Fargo’s mayor and other North Dakota officials before his committee to testify on how ordinary citizens spent hours in sub-freezing, snowy weather protecting their homes and businesses from the effects of global cooling?”
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-profit 501(c)(3) communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. For more information, visit the National Center’s website at http://www.nationalcenter.org or call (202) 543-4110.
By Harry R. Jackson,Jr.
During the last few weeks, there has been much discussion about the future of the evangelical movement and its impact on the American culture. For years, prophets of doom have been busy telling the world that the evangelical movement is dead or dying. This year as President Obama’s administration has shifted the nation’s stance on embryonic stem cell research and abortion, many in the faith community have justifiably become concerned. Further, RNC Chairman Steele’s decision to lower his personal and his party’s vocalization of socially conservative issues, such as protecting the life of the unborn and preservation of tradition marriage, has left many evangelicals feeling abandoned by both parties.
What’s next for evangelicals? It seems to me that evangelicals are on the verge of finding their collective voice in a very new way. In the future evangelicals will seek to be more of a swing vote, placing pressure on both parties to advance a theologically conservative and fiscally conservative agenda. They will base these stances on a combination of biblical orthodoxy and common sense. The conservative movement would do well to attempt to re-build bridges behind the scenes with mature and developing evangelical leadership - especially in minority communities.
Several groups are attempting to give their answers to this question. One man, Michael Spencer, who calls himself “the internet monk,” went so far as to say that a major collapse of evangelical Christianity is coming within ten years. He predicts that evangelicals will do the following:
While I disagree with Mr. Spencer for reasons I will outline at the end of this essay, I believe that his negativism is based on his personal disappointment with the last generation’s evangelical leadership. He has judged the so called religious right as being part of a massive attempt to drag the Church off its mission. The truth is that the evangelical church must desperately embrace both the biblical evangelical and biblical prophetic role of the Church. We cannot afford to think that there is an either/or choice in terms of cultural engagement and evangelism.
Interestingly, as the nation has been asking itself questions about how faith fits into the culture, Trinity University completed a survey of over 54,000 persons. The study shows that entire religious landscape in the nation is changing - not just the evangelical corner. Our national commitment to faith in general is waning. The study shows that approximately 15 percent of our fellow citizens claim no religion at all. This is almost double the 8 percent level recorded in 1990 by the American Religious Identification Survey. These numbers imply that one of the reasons the debate around religious issues is changing has to do with the fact that fewer people are religiously observant. Currently only 76 percent of the nation claims Christianity vs. 86 percent in 1990.
The surprising study shows that Catholics remains the largest church; 57 million people claim membership. Mainline Protestants including Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians, have experienced the greatest overall loss. Evangelicals would argue that these numbers show that church groups which do not preach the scriptures faithfully will fail. Further, denominations like these and the United Church of Christ (the famed home of Dr. Jeremiah Wright) may be in danger of preaching such a watered down version of the gospel that they cannot reproduce themselves. In other words, strong biblical messages produce a depth of faith in congregational members that cannot be shaken.
Mainline denominations and those with liberal theological stances often choose today’s temporary “blessing” of cultural relevance, while losing the stability that biblical faithfulness brings. To give this point clarity, the churches that have chosen to embrace same sex marriage, abortion, and other unscriptural, public policy positions are dying.
The Trinity study had several additional surprises in it. The first fact that caught many cultural students off guard was the shift from the Pacific Northwest to New England as the most un-churched region of the nation. This regional shift may reflect the Northeast to the Southwest population shift among Roman Catholics. Importantly, Catholics grew to approximately one-third of the adult population in California and Texas. Some believe that this geographic change is due to Latino immigration.
Next, the number of observant Jews dropped to 1.2 percent; while Muslims grew to 0.6 percent of our population. The growth in Islam is surprising given the bad press fundamental Islam has received along with the proven rise of religiously based terrorism around the world.
Finally, Christians who aren’t Catholic seem to be a declining segment of the population. Let me explain. Evangelical church attendance is dropping at a very slow rate. Evangelicals have to do some major house cleaning in order to remain a thriving force in the world today. Currently, however, the evangelical brand remains strong. Unfortunately, non-evangelical, non-Catholics seem to be facing congregational extinction.
In conclusion, let me remind every evangelical that there is a need for the 21st century church to preach the word. The apostle Paul said it this way in 2 Timothy 4:2-3 “…be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (NIV).
If we are faithful to the Word of God, God will be faithful to the nation! Let’s take on the mental posture of spiritual marines. Let’s shout we our loudest voice, “Semper Fi!” – “Always Faithful!”
By Herman Cain
Get off the sidelines and fight!
Just to be clear, my definition of a conservative is someone who believes in less government, less taxes and more individual responsibility. This happens to be 100 percent consistent with the Constitution of the United States of America.
More government, more taxes and less individual responsibility is called liberal. And this is 100 percent inconsistent with the Constitution.
Federal agencies have been created over time by Congress with the intent of protecting the public from such things as fraud, scams, harmful products and dishonest business practices. But their regulatory powers cannot conflict with the Constitution. Putting the issue of too much regulation aside for the moment, as well as the inefficiency with which some agencies do their jobs, as well as the issue of some agencies abusing their powers, the public does receive some protective value.
The Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a good example. They protect our money in banks up to an account value of $250,000. If a bank’s operating metrics become unstable and unsustainable, then the FDIC can take over the assets of the bank, pay off the depositors where possible and sell off the remaining assets to another healthier bank.
Unlike the FDIC, the Treasury is not a good example. They have mishandled the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) funds by insisting that some banks take the money even if they did not need it, overextended funds to some banks and then attempted to place restrictions on executive compensation and bank lending practices after the fact.
Next, after whipping the media and the public into a mob frenzy over the AIG melodrama with the help of President Obama and Democrats in Congress, who failed in their foresight and oversight, the House passed a “Bully Bill” to help Secretary Tim Geithner undo the embarrassing mistake.
Most recently, Secretary Geithner has asked Congress to grant him broad new powers to seize non-bank financial institutions even if they have not received any government assistance. I suspect it would not take much for some political scribe of the new powers to drop the word “non-bank”, just as some scribe conveniently dropped the restrictions on bonuses in the bailout bill.
Geithner is the same guy who did not pay some taxes, which President Obama called an honest mistake, and was confirmed by the Senate anyway. This is the same guy who, when asked about dumping the dollar in favor of a “world currency,” answered “no” in the morning and “maybe” in the afternoon of the same day.
This is the same Treasury Secretary who does not see his request as radical or unconstitutional, which is the opinion of most honest legal professionals.
Wake up people! The Obama Administration and the Democrats have already mortgaged the future of our grandchildren by nearly doubling the national debt if Obama’s budget proposal is approved, which I hope it will not be.
This is the most serious government power grab since Congress authorized stealing from the Social Security funds to spend our money on everything from bridges to nowhere to mule museums. I am not making this up!
Just say no to granting unconstitutional powers to the Treasury or any other agency of the federal government! It’s called separation of power.
Write, e-mail, call, fax, join something or attend one of the tax day tea parties around the country on April 15, 2009!
Conservatives, don’t just sit there!
© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
By Star Parker
The National Urban League has just issued its annual State of Black America report. It provides a troubling statistical snapshot of where blacks stand today in our country.
Like Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, I’m concerned. But after concern, we part company. We have very different ideas of what it is we should be concerned about.
Morial, I am sure, sees his organization as part of the solution. From what I see, it is a well-funded symptom of the problem.
Shouldn’t it embarrass black Americans that one the nation’s largest and most prestigious civil rights organizations offers a long list of proposals to improve black life in our country, and every single proposal is a government program?
Government-funded jobs as the answer to unemployment, more government money in public schools, government health care, government business loans, government money for retirement accounts, government programs for counseling homebuyers, government worker-training programs, government money for building construction, and on and on.
There’s not a single proposal that I could find in a several-hundred-page report about improving black life that does not start with government. The civil rights movement once was about freedom and liberation. Now it’s about government dependency. We should be ashamed.
The report is crafted to disabuse any notion that since we now have a black president, our discrimination woes are “relics of the past.” The proof: Blacks are “twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be incarcerated.”
But with all the statistics reported, methodically ignored is that blacks are little more than 12 percent of the population, yet we account for 50 percent of new AIDS cases, almost 40 percent of abortions, and 70 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers and grow up in single-parent homes.
Please, hold the hate mail telling me that I only want to show the ugly side of black America. No, I want to show the side of black America for which we ourselves are responsible and which really point to where our problems lie.
The National Urban League report talks about black poverty, but it does not bother to point out that hand in hand with poverty are single-parent homes. That black households with two married parents are not living in poverty, and their household incomes are on par with those of white households.
Breakdown in family and values is at the root of poor education, unemployment and crime as well.
Blacks have the highest church attendance in the country. If we paid attention to the Gospel heard on Sunday, we wouldn’t think that extorting welfare from taxpayers was the answer to our problems the other six days of the week.
Regarding discrimination, you have to wonder what it will take to get off this convenient excuse. Forty million white Americans voted for Barack Obama for president. That is 2 million more white Americans than voted for John Kerry in 2004.
As the civil rights movement transformed into a government dependency movement, the original focus on law and the U.S. Constitution as the vehicles to protect all citizens has been lost.
My friend Pastor Walter Hoye sits in jail in Oakland, Calif., for violating a clearly unconstitutional city ordinance prohibiting him from peacefully standing in front of an abortion clinic offering life literature to the mostly black clientele.
A black pastor’s civil rights have been violated as he tried to save black babies. It happened in the district of Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Yet, she could care less and has done nothing. The National Urban League could care less. The NAACP could care less.
What’s wrong in black America? You won’t find the answer in the National Urban League’s report.
For Release: March 27, 2009
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or e-mail dalmasi@nationalcenter.org
“Harmful Recommendations,” “Dreary” Tone Among Criticisms
Washington, D.C. - This year’s edition of the liberal National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report fails to effectively challenge the Obama Administration, is unnecessarily dreary and makes recommendations that would be harmful, say members of the conservative Project 21 black leadership group.
“It is long past time that groups such the National Urban League should be given a pass as they blame poor personal decisions, lack of personal preparation and the realities of life on a phantom bogeyman of conspiratorial dictates designed to impede black progress,” said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. “If they are going to point fingers, they should not exclude pointing fingers at themselves. They cannot claim 100 years of making a difference in the lives of blacks while simultaneously claiming that blacks aren’t succeeding as quickly as every other group of Americans.”
This year’s National Urban League report, like past reports, dwells on negatives. National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial, for instance, says, “The election of the first black president does not mean we can all now close up shop and go home.” This echoes Morial’s predecessor, John E. Jacobs, who wrote in the 1993 edition that black Americans were faced with “bleak despair countered by fresh hope” upon the change of presidential administrations.
Among essays by entrepreneur and publisher Earl Graves, Jr. and scandal-plagued U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), the report makes specific recommendations on policies pertaining to education, health care, homeownership and employment, among others. Some of these recommendations, as categorized in the National Urban League report’s executive summary, are constructively challenged by Project 21 members.
In the area of health care, the National Urban League recommends government-run universal coverage. As Project 21’s Massie points out, this sort of health care has failed abroad and would fail in America as well.
“Do we need the people who run the DMV in charge of the emergency room? That’s what you get with government-run health care,” said Massie. “Creating a new health care bureaucracy would stifle innovation and limit choice.”
“If you want an example of what may happen, look no further than the ‘Urban Health Initiative’ created by now-First Lady Michelle Obama and Obama political guru David Alexrod at the University of Chicago,” noted Massie. “Their plan seeks to divert residents away for the university’s elite hospital to county hospitals and clinics. This shocking plan is now being reconsidered after the Chicago Tribune reported that Dontae Adams, a 12-year-old dog bite victim, was given only a shot and some painkillers at the university hospital. He was told to seek follow-up treatment the next week at a county hospital. His mother immediately took him to another hospital on a bus for reconstructive facial surgery that same day.”
Massie added: “What happened to Dontae might be a common occurrence for all under government-run health care. What Americans need are more choices and the ability to make their own decisions when it comes to their medical needs. That’s what the NUL should be asking for.”
Regarding homeownership, the NUL report suggests funding educational initiatives and credit counseling, something that might find them at odds with some activist groups of which they are usually allied that have opposed such programs in the past as akin to “redlining” because they might target certain areas and populations.
But NUL also supports an expanded Community Reinvestment Act - the regulation that mandates risky mortgage lending situations and is blamed by many as the catalyst for the subprime mortgage crisis.
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli said: “Government aid and intervention should not replace an individual’s responsibility to exercise good judgment. Achieving the American Dream of homeownership begins with understanding the terms of the contract and meeting those obligations. Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act risks inflating another housing bubble that would further hinder our country’s economic recovery. For the National Urban League to encourage more risky loans at this point is reckless.”
On education, the NUL suggests retaining the Bush Administration’s “No Child Left Behind” standards policy, but does not adequately speak out in favor of popular school choice and charter school programs that explicitly spotlight and seek to remedy failing government-run schools by denying them a captive student body. NUL suggestions still look to government as the best administrator of education despite its poor track record.
“The status quo on education has not worked and it never will work,” said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. “While the National Urban League is focused on what the government can do, they are not speaking out enough about what parents can do. Education is the civil rights issue of our time, and vouchers, charter schools and similar alternatives to the failed government approach need to be encouraged.”
Overall, Project 21’s Martin noted: “The black community does not need to be protected from capitalism, as the National Urban League’s report seems to imply. The black community needs to embrace capitalism. The free market is where true opportunity lies.”
Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21’s website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html.
