What Does It Mean to Be "Poor" or "Broke?"

In the past week, this discussion has come up over and over.  Spurred on by the dueling poverty stories of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (in the last 15 years, not their childhood), many are taking a closer look at what people mean when they say "poor" or "broke."

In a related and strange statement, the former president's daughter blissfully confessed that she cared little for money.  Of course Chelsea Clinton makes $600,000 per year doing half the work of unpaid or low paid interns.  One does not need to care for money when the nest is permanently and opulently feathered.

Even the federal student loan people got in trouble for a tweet that seemed to minimize poverty. But what is it?

The federal government has a one size fits all measure of poverty.  It considers a family of four impoverished if it makes a little over $23,000 per year or less in every state outside of Alaska and Hawaii.  Cost of living, however, varies widely.  Earnings of $14,000 in West Virginia's most affluent area, Berkeley County, equals nearly $23,000 in Hartford, Connecticut, according to an online CNN Money cost of living adjuster.  Simply put, a dollar goes much farther in West Virginia than in Connecticut for a variety of reasons.

This shows that one cannot put a simple number on poverty, but doesn't explain what poverty actually is, or feels like.

Hillary Clinton described what many Americans occasionally experience regardless of income.  Her family's lifestyle ran their finances briefly into debt.  On one hand, they struggled with mortgages, tuition, and other financial commitments.  Fair enough, until you hear that these were multiple mortgages on multiple mansions.  They did not owe tuition to local state college, but to one of the most costly educational institutions in the world.

Paying bills when revenue dips causes stress and anxiety.  Having to sell a house to pay for bills could cause social embarrassment in their set.  The public, however, rightfully laughed at the Clintons' protestations of poverty.

The Census Bureau reported a few years ago that 30 million, or just under 10 percent, of Americans live in poverty.  They base this on income statistics instead of investigating actual conditions.  If being poor is defined as simply not making a lot of money, then the case gets rested.  Americans, however, assign a more stringent definition to the term poverty.

To most, poverty means real deprivation.  Does a family lack shelter?  Can they not pay for basic utilities? Do they not eat properly because of a lack of resources?  In most cases, the family may not be financially comfortable or secure, but they do eat consistently, they do have shelter, and they not only pay for utilities, but also vehicles (plural), cell phones,  and cable or satellite TV.

Submitted for your approval: if one regularly pays for satellite TV, alcohol, cigarettes, internet, and/or cell phones, one may not call oneself "poor."  If a family is starving and has all these things, it is not poor, but in sore need of re prioritizing.

Some institutions have a vested interest in inflating the poverty number.  More poverty means more money for the poor but also, more importantly, for bureaucrats and non profits that supposedly handle programs to help them. Examining true poverty does not help them expand their agencies, much less solve the real problems.

The more time spent on servicing the financially insecure as if they were poor, the more likely that the truly poor will escape notice.

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton's foray into the verbal forest (and we should not forget that Bill actually did know real poverty as a child) is great for poking fun.  It should, however, lead the country to discuss what poverty really is and examine the policies intended to address it.

Why Is the EPA Out Of Control? Because They Succeeded.

Ever since travel writer Anne Royall regaled early 19th century audiences with tales of environmental destruction in the Kanawha Valley salt works, there has been concern about pollution and destruction.  Ronald Lewis' Transforming the Appalachian Countryside chronicles the effect of the later 1800s timber industry on the landscape, eroded mountains, streams devoid of fish, and other disasters. In 1969 came the seminal environmental event, when pollution in Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire.

Modern conservatives blame Richard Nixon for the later sins of the Environmental Protection Agency that he created.  Nixon, however, knew that systematic abuse of the environment had become standard operating procedure in many industries.  This was the problem that the EPA was created to address. The Industrial Revolution brought prosperity, education, higher living standards, and longer lives.  It also set a river on fire.  Nixon created the EPA to reduce pollutants and enforce new environmental standards to encourage conservation and protect the environment. 

And what came of it?  The EPA succeeded.  According to their own statistics, carbon monoxide levels in the air dropped 83 percent from 1980 levels, from 178 million tons to 51 million. Much of the drop in carbon monoxide emissions came between 2001 and 2009, the years of the George W. Bush presidency.  Airborne lead dropped 91 percent. Aggregate emissions of six common pollutants dropped 67 percent.

Percentages and raw numbers dropped even though the US has more people, producing more goods and services, and driving more vehicles than ever. 

So the EPA actually succeeded in its most important primary task.  It brought reasonable standards into being and provided an enforcement mechanism to ensure that the air and water did not harm us.  In any group of people, accidents and even disasters will happen.  But they do not have a serious long term impact because industries generally abide by EPA standards.  

If the story ended here, we'd call it a government success story.  Most people understand, however, that it did not, that the EPA now uses flimsy evidence and bad science to justify destroying industries.  Worse, they work at the behest, as Heritage's Stephen Moore describes, of green energy moguls who have a vested interest in its work.  So-called green energy cannot replace coal, gas, or oil.  It also requires enormous amounts of resources to build and ship which limit their benefit to the environment. 

A lot of politics and money have energized the EPA to attack the cleanest coal mining and power production that has ever been seen anywhere in history.  But why do they also go after farms?  Why, for example, as Delegate Kelli Sobonya said last week, has the EPA gotten so obsessed with limiting "bovine emissions" (that's cow farts to the rest of us.)

Another aspect fuels EPA lunacy.  They succeeded and now the agency has little real justification for crusading.  Going after bogeymen, real or false, gives bureaucrats a sense of purpose.  Secular Saint Georges slaying the mean and nasty pollution dragon, saving the world from global warming, err climate change.  This all sounds like much more fun than a scaled down agency administering reasonable regulations that maintain a successful status quo.  

The EPA achieved its original goal beyond what was likely expected in 1972. It eventually hit a balance between the needs of a dynamic economy and the needs of a protected environment.  Now, to justify itself, it goes out looking for new empires to battle and conquer.

It's human nature to want to matter and have a strong sense of purpose.  But this agency level self-fulfillment should not come at the cost of real jobs, real standards of living, and real lives.

 

Calling Out the Mob

Last winter, as biting winds whipped snow around the federal capital, chilling news on energy was released.  The moratorium on coal fired power plants, combined with a number of forced closures, would force energy prices to rise 70 to 80 percent.  The Obama Administration last week tried to cushion the blow of higher prices with an apocalyptic prediction of climate destruction.

Ignoring Congress, the EPA manufactured a regulatory interpretation that allowed them to force plants to use sequestration technology to capture carbon.  This technology does not even exist.  Enforcing this rule will start shutting down plants whose output was necessary to maintaining power levels in the Northeast during the record cold winter.

This is, of course, done to prevent global warming.

The Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore and Joel Griffith researched all of the climate claims used as "proof" of climate catastrophe.  Every single weather phenomenon was debunked by the article. Temperatures have neither increased, nor dropped on average in ten years.  Tornadoes do not happen with any increasing frequency.  Hurricanes have actually happened less often.

Moore and Griffith also examined Jimmy Carter's own apocalyptic climate report, predicting oil shortages and starvation in 2000.  None of the fearsome claims made by the scientists of the 1970s ever came to pass.

And they wonder why Americans view politicized science with more skepticism now.

How "Space Weather" Could Knock Out Services Here On Earth and What Can Be Done to Prevent It

"There is no dispute that electric grids worldwide are vulnerable to potentially catastrophic damage from solar-generated EMP."

So said former Maryland Republican congressman and Howard University professor Roscoe Bartlett in 2011.  According to Britain's Daily Mail, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) expelled from the Sun nearly slammed into Earth.  Humanity missed calamity by a narrow two weeks.

EMPs are accelerated and highly charged streams of particles.  They can come naturally from the Sun, or artificially from nuclear weapons blasts.  Such an explosion in the atmosphere could create an electromagnetic field that could fry unprotected electronics and electrical systems. 

According to the Heritage Foundation, "effectively, the U.S. would be thrown back to the pre-industrial age following a widespread EMP attack."  Presumably a natural EMP blast could produce similar effects.  A one in eight chance exists that Earth may suffer such an event by 2020.

Heritage in 2010 laid out suggested preparations to protect against EMPs

Step No. 1: Require the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to Produce a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Describing Which Countries Are Capable of Launching an EMP Strike. The NIE should review not only the weapons systems themselves but the delivery systems and platforms capable of carrying the weapons. Additionally, Congress should obtain from the NIE the intelligence community’s assessment of how EMP-capable countries are incorporating those weapons into their broader military strategies.
The latter assessment would permit the President and his advisors to determine how the U.S. could respond to EMP threats as they arise. Such planning is an essential part of providing an effective defense against these threats.
Step No. 2: Press the Obama Administration to Prepare to Protect the Nation’s Cyber Infrastructure Against the Effects of EMP. Congress should direct the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to manage this effort, which should incorporate the recommendations of the commissions. For instance, the commission has determined that preparedness measures must account for the fact that the cyber infrastructure is quite dependent on the power grid. Thus, contingency planning must explore ways to keep the cyber system functioning without primary power.
Further, it recommends identifying the most critical elements of the cyber system that must survive an EMP attack. Finally, the commission recommends that preparedness planning account for the interdependency between the nation’s cyber infrastructure and other elements of the broader infrastructure. Overall, the key to preparing to counter the effects of EMP is to put barriers in place to prevent cascading failures in the nation’s infrastructure.
Step No. 3: Require the Navy to Develop a Test Program for Sea-Based Interceptors with the Capability to Intercept and Destroy Ballistic Missiles Carrying EMP Weapons Prior to Detonation. It is clear that ballistic missiles offer an ideal delivery system for an EMP weapon. For instance, an enemy of America could launch a short-range missile carrying an EMP weapon from a cargo ship off the U.S. coast. Clearly, the terminal-phase ballistic missile defense systems currently in the field or entering the field, such as the Patriot system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, will not reliably intercept such ballistic missiles prior to the detonation of an EMP warhead. The Standard Missile-3 Block IA (SM-3 Block IA), as a midcourse defense system, may be able to do so.
What the U.S. really needs to address this threat, however, is a version of the SM-3 that will intercept these kinds of missiles in the boost or ascent phase of flight. The Independent Working Group has recommended developing and fielding what it calls an “East Coast Missile Defense” to address this emerging threat.[3]
Accordingly, Congress should require the Navy to demonstrate the capability to produce new versions of the SM-3 interceptor that are capable of destroying a short-range missile in the boost or ascent phase of flight, prior to its reaching the preferred detonation points for an EMP warhead. This will require that Congress also provide the Navy with the funds necessary to undertake this test program.
If it chooses to do so, Congress could also direct the Air Force to undertake a companion program that would permit operational use of the Airborne Laser system to defend against an attack from a short-range missile.

EMPs have caused disruption before.  In 1989 they knocked out parts of Quebec's telephone infrastructure.  130 years prior, they interfered with telegraph operations not long after the invention of the device.

Byrd and Reid's Fairy Tales

Stimulus packages are not in themselves bad. Sometimes they can jump start faltering economies. When we consider them, we need to base the decision of whether or not to use them on hard facts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Byrd issued a joint statement defending their $13.5 billion stimulus package. It claims that the package will produce 635,000 new jobs.

That is pretty astounding but according to the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Examiner, these numbers do not add up. The numbers are based upon a Department of Transportation study that itself claims that such numbers are likely false. The story is linked below.

http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/TapscottsCopyDesk/Byrd_11-12.html

Stimulus is fine and sometimes necessary, but let us have the facts first before we spend.

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Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito was asking the same hard questions of auto executives this week. She asked them to prove the necessity of a bailout package when they had just received a $25 billion loan from the Department of Energy. Capito also pondered why some sectors of the economy received help and others did not, citing the fact that a number of West Virginia firms had gone out of business with no offer of help whatsoever. Her point was that we need our automakers, but we also need assurances that they will make the changes necessary to compete in the long term.