(CNSNews.com) – Not only did President Barack Obama refuse to help the supercommittee as it attempted to reach an agreement on reducing the federal budget deficit — the president complicated things for the committee, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on Tuesday.

“The president actively made our jobs more difficult,” Toomey told Fox & Friends. “He issued veto threats. He said…Obamacare had to be off the table, despite the fact that over time, that’s a multi-trillion-dollar, extraordinary waste of money — a very ill-conceived program. He came in and said that we ought to — in addition to everything else we were working on — we ought to find a way to pay for his latest $500-billion stimulus bill. The president was not helpful.”

Toomey was one of 12 lawmakers on the panel that announced Monday it had failed to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction — a failure that will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts in 2013.

Supercommittee Democrats refused to consider Republican spending cuts unless Republicans agreed to a trillion-dollar tax hike, Toomey said.

But Toomey and other Republicans say a trillion-dollar tax hike would have been “devastating” to the economy. “The problem is a spending problem,” said Toomey, noting that Democrats — when they controlled all three branches of government in 2009 and 2010 — went on a spending binge.

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 Read More at cnsnews.com By Susan Jones, cnsnews.com

“The New Malthusians” sounds like the name of a new wave or punk band, but just as new wave is old school, there is never anything new about Malthusianism no matter how many times it gets punked. Only the band members change.

When the world’s population reached the estimated 7 billion mark a few weeks ago, the most famous Malthusian of modern times, Paul Ehrlich, made a few encore appearances for old time’s sake, but for the most part Ehrlich and his generation of Malthusian rock stars, such as Garrett Hardin, Lester Brown, and the Club of Rome, appear about a fresh as Keith Richards after a 7 am wake up call. The old guys really need to be retired (well, actually, Garrett Hardin is long dead anyway), to make room for the new kids. The criteria for making the list are simple: a winner’s Malthusianism has to be essentially unmodulated from the older kind, be relentlessly monotonic, be extremely lucrative, and/or a pretext for increased centralized political power.

The competition is fierce, but herewith the top five “New Malthusians” for a cover tribute band for the early 21st century:

1. James Hansen, NASA’s chief climate scientist. I’ve debated Hansen on a couple of occasions, the most memorable being at the New School in New York in 2006, when he let fly with the comment that his treatment at the hands of the Bush Administration, which monitored his many media interviews, was the kind of thing you expected from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. He’s also called trains carrying coal to power plant’s “death trains to Auschwitz.” And he wonders why people think he’s an “alarmist” about climate change. The guy is a manic depressive, which comes with Malthusian territory I suppose, but as John noted here already, it’s really really lucrative. My pal Chris Horner offers more damning details here. There’s lots here to work with, but for years Hansen has been saying time is running out. The most recent I can find is a 2009 article saying Obama only has four years left to save the planet. Since Obama clearly isn’t going to make it, can we expect Hansen to shut up at the end of next year? Of course not; too many lecture fees and prizes to be had.

2. Bill McKibben, Middlebury College. His big thing these days is climate change—what a surprise—though he did write the quintessentially Malthusian book back in the 1990s entitled Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single Child Families. Like Hansen, he wins all the best prizes and hangs out with all the best people. I am sure the prizes look nice on the mantle. Lately he’s been leading the protests outside the White House against the Keystone pipeline, declaring that if the pipeline is built, it’s “game over” for the climate. But if Canadian oil goes to China instead of us, how would it be different? Don’t ask. That would be an inconvenient question.

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Read More at powerlineblog.com By Steven Hayward, powerlineblog.com

Since losing control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections, President Obama has increasingly turned to executive orders, regulations, and federal fiats to implement his agenda in a program the White House has dubbed “We Can’t Wait.” Analysts say Obama hopes the end-run around the legislative branch will allow him to campaign against a “do-nothing Congress” in 2012. However, a new Rasmussen poll finds a whopping majority of Americans oppose his most recent executive action on health care reform. Only 27 percent of those surveyed approve of the president’s new program to distribute $1 billion in grants to organizations that promise to find new ways to increase employment in the medical industry. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 63 percent, say the president should work with Congress on implementing the bill, as the Constitution requires.
Obama unleashed the grant proposal after Congress refused to pass his “jobs” bill.

“This will open the inbox for many innovators and organizations that have an idea to bring to the table,” said Dr. Donald Berwick, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “We’re seeking innovators, organizations and leaders that have an idea to bring into further testing.”

Unfortunately, Berwick idealizes the British National Health Service, which is infamous for rationing care to the ill. In 1993, Berwick insisted: “Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault. In economic terms, it is waste.” More recently, Berwick has declared, “Excellent health care is by definition [wealth] redistribution.” He is joined in the administration by Henry J. Aaron, Obama’s nominee for the Social Security Advisory Board, who for nearly 30 years has promoted health care rationing along the British model. His 2005 book Can We Say No? argues “health care rationing in the United States is advisable, even inescapable.”

The Washington Post reports the nation will face a shortage of 63,000 doctors by 2015. However, ObamaCare’s funding formula will decrease the pool further yet by paying doctors less. Lower pay translates to fewer doctors, which in turn results in rationing by necessity. With funding changes under ObamaCare, the Office of the Medicare Actuary forecast that within nine years Medicare will pay doctors less than Medicaid. Conservative analyst John Goodman explained, “From a financial point of view, the seniors will be perceived as less desirable customers than welfare mothers.”

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Read More at Floyd Reports By Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

A barrage of news headlines on the Solyndra scandal continue to remind us that President Obama made green jobs one of his administration’s priorities. Those headlines also reveal this initiative to have been a costly mistake.

The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that has collapsed despite receiving half-a-billion dollars from the federal government, is only the tip of the iceberg. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that several other green companies that received generous federal aid are teetering on the brink.

Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel received a $118 million federal grant, lost $165 million in fiscal 2010 and has dim prospects. According to the Journal, Ener1 had “lost its bid to supply batteries to Fisker Automotive, a battery-powered car maker which received a $529 million U.S. taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantee in 2010,” when “Fisker chose to buy its batteries from a company called A123 Systems, itself the recipient of a $249 million U.S. Department of Energy grant.”

Great! First Team Obama extends taxpayer dollars to green companies, then it torpedoes them by giving larger grants to their competitors. Meanwhile, Fisker, itself a recipient of over a half-billion dollar handout from Uncle Sam, is making its cars in Finland.

Team Obama’s record on creating green jobs is no more confidence-inspiring than its record in midwifing a viable electric car industry.

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 Read More at floydreports.com By Mark W. Hendrickson, floydreports.com

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who apparently unsuccessfully demanded answers from Attorney General Eric Holder about the prosecution of a Border Patrol agent, today was joined by dozens of his colleagues in going over Holder’s head to address the questions to Barack Obama.

A copy of the letter, signed by Hunter and 36 other members of Congress, was obtained by Andy Ramirez, president of the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, which is working on the case involving the prosecution of and two-year sentence for agent Jesus Diaz.

After twice being cleared by investigators of wrongdoing, he was prosecuted by the Obama administration and ultimately sentenced to two years for violating the constitutional rights of an illegal alien drug smuggler he caught hauling 75 pounds of marijuana into the U.S.

He was accused of pulling on the juvenile smuggler’s arms after they had been handcuffed to make him comply with orders.

“We believe that prosecution of Border Patrol agents, including the case against Agent Diaz, sets a dangerous precedent for handling these issues in the future and could force agents to hesitate in the line of duty posing a risk to their own lives and the lives of others,” said the letter to Obama.

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 Read More at WorldNetDaily By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily