Coming into this election cycle, Rick Boucher was the safest of Democrats. Despite his district’s strong Republican lean, he has been re-elected comfortably in recent years. His district did not even earn a mention on Charlie Cook’s list of races to watch until September, when he first listed it as ‘Likely Democratic.’

It’s become clear recently however, that Rick Boucher is in trouble. His liberal voting record is out-of-touch with his conservative district - particularly on the key issue of Cap-and-Trade. And now he’s having trouble dodging responsibility for a vote that would kill the coal industry in his district:

The lesser of two evils is how Congressman Rick Boucher described cap and trade legislation.

Boucher said the Supreme Court’s ruled in 2007 that green house gases were pollutants and had to be regulated. He said that meant the Environmental Protection Agency would regulate the gases or congress would have to write the regulations.

He said the regulations did not originate with the current president and denied that Obama hated coal or intended to regulate coal out of business. Boucher said the regulation drafted by Congress was not perfect but did protect the coal industry.

He said voting no, as West Virginia Congressman Nick Joe Rahall, did would not have been serving his district. “I could have voted no and that would have taken me out of the picture when it came to negotiating what was in the legislation.

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The story begins in April, 2009, when the “League of Conservation Voters” began a $750K campaign to slam Rep. Roy Blunt for his vote against the “Cap and Trade” (or “Cap and Tax”) bill, who repeatedly refers to it by its euphemistic official smokescreen/name: “American Clean Energy & Security Act,” in an attempt to convince Missourians that Blunt is somehow trying to deny jobs in Missouri.  The LCV claims that this vote is somehow a sign that Blunt is beholden to “Big Oil”.   But it is actually a sign that Rep. Blunt is closely aligned with Missourians who oppose big government schemes that raise our taxes.

What is curious about the LCV campaign is that it is being shown around the entire state, rather than just in Rep. Blunt’s district, despite claims from the LCV that this is simply an effort to inform Blunt’s constituents of his position and “hold him responsible”.  If that be the case, then why show the ad in St. Louis, which is many miles from Blunt’s district?  The truth is obvious - the LCV campaign and the subsequent hit campaign from the VoteVets group are anti-Blunt Senate campaign ads bankrolled by Robin Carnahan supporters. 24thState.com documents the situation quite nicely.

And now it appears that Ms. Carnahan has decided to put it out in the open and forget about hiding her connections to the League of Conservation Voters.  Last Thursday night, Carnahan traveled to the Left Coast to attend a Seattle fundraiser sponsored by none other than the LCV.  (According to news accounts, a whopping fifty donors attended the event.)

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One and a half cheers to the NY Times for the article “Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel,” which admits to some of the scientific and ethical problems facing the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri. But the Times being the Times, while it lays out some of the damning facts, it omits key damaging details (especially regarding the egregiously amateurish nature of the IPCC’s errors regarding the Himalayan glaciers) and otherwise spends the rest of the article trying to explain away Dr. Pachauri’s problems, with hilarious results.

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If you invent a new currency, don’t be surprised when the scammers and counterfeiters show up. Especially when your currency is itself a scam.

Hackers Steal Millions in Carbon Credits

The hackers launched a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority. The workers were told that their companies needed to re-register their accounts with the Authority, where carbon credits and transactions are recorded.

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I congratulate everyone who plays a vital role in determining the health of the US economy. Preliminary indications suggest that US GDP grew at an annualized rate of 5.7% in Q409. After accounting for the Barack Obama exaggeration functional transform, 60% of this number is still a solid 3.5%. .

If a GOP President were in office, I’d be beating chest and calling out all the playa-haters. Growth like that is enough to get my TSP and my 429 plans to stop resembling emaciated victims of a famine. Three more quarters of this and Osauma Bin Ladin will have to declare jihad against us all over again because of our contributions to anthropogenic Global Warming. (HT: Vladamir@Redstate)

So how come nobody has created new jobs? In fact, lots of people are losing them. When Wal-Mart decides that their payroll needs to be cut, the economic street level reality is not matching the official statistics churned out by the maundering mediocrities of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The reason no one is hiring anybody is that they have no clue what rules they will operate under four years hence. Four factors potentially drive this uncertainty. These factors are environmental policy, healthcare regulation, stimulus plan format and corporate and business tax rates. Until the decisions that drive these potentially major economic influence factors have been made, the unemployment rate will stay unusually high, and more tellingly, the average American work hours available per week will remain pegged at 30 hours out of a possible 40.

Environmental policy remains subject to question. Senator Kerry still tells us that the planet hangs in the balance. He offered the following sentiments about the current state of America’s environment.

“You know if the Tea Party folks can go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God’s sake, a lot of citizens ought to get angry about the fact that they’re being killed and our planet is being injured by what’s happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and the old practices we have. That’s something worth getting angry about.” (HT: Climate Change Fraud)

However, there are also serious issues with how Senator Kerry and other backers of CO2 output regulation have arrived at their conclusions. Questions of whether this science is truly settled include doubts about IPCC reports on impacts of water vapor on temperature change, the predominance of forest fires in rain forests, and numerous others that my three constant readers wouldn’t ant to chase after links to.

While Congress has yet to pass the sweeping Cap and Trade bill that Senator Kerry would like to see adopted, other government organizations have increased executive regulation with what some see as dubious Constitutional and statutory authority. Even in the absence of scientific certainty that Global Warming is occurring, the SEC still moved to order US corporations to disclose climate risks in their SEC filings. The EPA has ruled that CO2 constitutes a toxic atmospheric pollutant. Whether this requires them to develop synchronicity with the English 80’s Pop Group The Police and monitor Every Breath You Take, remains unsettled.

The House has passed a healthcare bill, the Senate has passed a healthcare bill, the President wants some unified bill to emerge from Congress. The American people and the private sector firms that many of them work for despise all current forms of this legislation.

The manner in which the bill was rammed through the Senate was so overtly hostile to the GOP minority that even Senator Olympia Snowe doesn’t want to work with Senate Majority Leader Reid on this issue ever again. The election of Scott Brown, if the Democrats ever choose to permit his seating, makes filibustering a possibility. The impacts of this bill could double what the average worker pays for health insurance and will collect taxation for four years before the first dollar of actual benefits gets paid out.

The President invested much of his STFU Address this week on pushing Stimulus II. Questions abound on how large this bill will be, how it will be allocated and how much of the credit market will be sponged up by US Treasury Bond auctions to pay for this plan’s largesse. Each of these things impacts what will happen at businesses across America.

Because of this uncertainty, questions abound. Will they or won’t they get tax credits? How must they modify their behavior to be considered “good.”? How much will private firms have to pay in interest to borrow, if the float of Treasury Bonds at market grows even larger than it is today?

Finally, the legislatures in Washington face the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. This one really is at least partially ALL BUSH’S FAULT®. Should the rates be allowed to default under current statute, capital gains, businesses and upper middle class taxes will all appreciably increase. Investors, businesses and wealthy suburbanite consumers can be predictably expected to reduce consumption.

That can cut in two ways. They can buy it all now and make hay while the sun shines. This could work as accidental stimulus. People could eat, drink and be merry today and really not care what the IRS thinks of their hangover tomorrow. Particularly if they can write some of it off as a deduction. Or, they could keep consumption level and then drop it off the cliff when their disposable income gets dispensed with by Uncle Sam.

Thus, the GDP news is good, but the employment possibilities remain stagnant. They remain stagnant because the environment remains uncertain. This makes buying labor too risky an expenditure. Therefore, the GDP grows well, but the labor market remains uncertain until Washington, DC makes a lot of decisions. Congress must lead, follow or watch much of America’s workforce continue to sit on their cans.

X-Posted At: THE MINORITY REPORT

After riding into Washington with promises of hope and change and overwhelming public support, one year later President Obama is sitting in a much different position.  He has yet to pass one of his major agenda items, including health care and cap-and-trade, and his approval rating has dropped below 47% according to the latest Rasmussen poll.

In his first State of the Union address this evening, the president has the opportunity to change his tune a bit. 

Although the full text of the speech has not been released, the White House has stated that the president plans to focus his speech on the economy – not his stalled health care bill.  There has been mention that he will propose a three-year freeze on all discretionary, non-defense spending.  I am encouraged by president’s change of heart – during the election he stated that spending freezes sound good but don’t actually work.  However, I hope he is actually serious about this.  It has also been announced that he will request a 6.2% increase in education spending during the speech, all the while continuing to support the Senate’s $80 billion jobs bill and their $1.9 trillion debt limit increase proposal.

The election in Massachusetts last week should have served as a wake up call for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that their current agenda of dramatically expanding the size and scope of the federal government that require unprecedented levels of spending and borrowing is simply not what the American people want.  Rather, we need to get back to focusing on job creation, improving our economy, and providing tax relief for the American people.

I encourage everyone to tune in tonight at 8:00pm central and hear what the president has to say – it should be an interesting watch.

Take a moment to meet Mark Kirk, candidate for U.S. Senate in Illinois.

Mark Kirk…