Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Tyrants and dictators, shady international arms dealers, brutal leaders of broken, basket case nations like President for Life Robert Mugabe, will be celebrating today; President Obama just transferred $500 million of US Taxpayer’s money into the new UN Climate Fund.
According to The Guardian;
Obama administration pays out $500m to climate change project
The first chunk of a $3bn commitment made at the Paris climate talks ‘shows the US stands squarely behind climate commitments’, the State Department said
The Obama administration has made a first installment on its $3bn pledge to help poor countries fight climate change – defying Republican opposition to the president’s environmental plan.
The $500m payment to the Green Climate Fund was seen as critical to shoring up international confidence in Barack Obama’s ability to deliver on the pledges made at the United Nations’ climate change conference in Paris in late 2015.
…
Administration officials said the initial $500m payment to the Green Climate Fund demonstrated that Obama would follow through on the promises of last December’s Paris climate agreement – despite February’s setback at the supreme court and threats by Republican presidential candidates to dismantle Obama’s agenda.
“Today, the United States provided a $500m grant to the Green Climate Fund,” a state department official said. “This grant is the first step toward meeting the president’s commitment of $3bn to the GCF, and shows that the United States stands squarely behind our international climate commitments.”
$500 million is only a drop in the ocean, compared to the FY 2016 $22 trillion total US public debt. However, given the severe and rapidly worsening state of US government finances, a more productive use of the President’s remaining time in office, might be to find ways to cut expenditure, instead of thinking up new ways to give federal money away to people who hate America.
UPDATE by Anthony: Uh, oh.
State Dept defiant on $500M to UN climate fund: ‘Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No.’
Asked by Senator Cory Gardner if Congress approved the US State Department to divert $500 million to the United Nation’s Green Climate Fund, Deputy Secretary Heather Higgenbottom says: “Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No. […] We’ve reviewed the authority and the process under which we can do it, and our lawyers and we have determined that we have the ability to do it, and I pledge to you and to other members we’d be happy to provide that legal analysis and the additional details.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 8, 2016
“President Obama just gave $500 million of Your Money to the UN Green Fund”
WRONG…
He just gave 500.000,000 dollars borrowed from China that will have to be paid back by your grandchildren.
So?
This is what modern government is for.
Rob the many to benefit the entitled few.
Kleptocracy Rules.
What is the point of being elected figurehead of the biggest band of thieves, fools and bandits, if you can’t fritter and waste a few megabucks?
Obama’s state department is tragically inept.
They claimed there was not enough money to protect all the embassies and is what contributed to the Benghazi tragedy. Somehow however they now have $500 million to give away with no mechanism to oversee how the money is used. That money is gone, vanished, a bunch of random people just got richer.
This is similar to when we brought truckloads of cash into Iraq and had no idea where much of it ended up.
BTW is that picture of Obama at the top of the article his “hope and change” look or is it the “I can’t believe all the favors and kickback I’ll get for this give-away” look?
The money from the economic stability fund could not legally be diverted to security details without emergency authorization from congress, however all that is needed to make this a legitimate grant is a finding by the president that climate change is a threat to economic stability in the developing world and it not be explicitly forbidden by other provisions of law.
Unfortunately, US Law is a dog’s dinner mess of badly written bull written by lazy drunks more interested in getting to the next fundraiser than actually attending to their constituents business.
The “surrender caucus” ie the establishment Republicans decided that nothing Obama could do would be an impeachable offense. Of course, the Democrats are into fuehrerpricip, and tolerate violation of the powers of congress.
Small change compared to the 150 billion we dumped into Iran’s lap recently.
We were warned on camera about this type of stuff, no?
What he said “… I have more flexibility.”
What was understood ” … as a high end useful idiot, this guy and his actions will be a hell of along term asset”.
Just watched the video.
No matter what the question from the congressman, the state departments answer was in essence, “We can do it because we can do it.” Great answer, I know 2 year old’s who use the same logic.
BTW looking at the video, based on what I assume is state dept. support staff sitting behind the state department rep, are men no longer allowed in the state department? Was that another executive order? If so another Obama screw-up since he must have forgot to mention to include minority women.
White men, no. Because, White Privilege, remember?
Obama sends $500 million to U.N. climate-change fund
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/03/obama-sends-500-million-to-u-n-climate-change-fund/#0OhcooR83omwgfLl.99
Impeachment requires a 2/3rds vote. Though Senators took an oath to “do impartial justice” – but 100% of the party of the Defense said Clinton was Not Guilty, and 93% of the party of the prosecution said he was guilty. Impeachment is no longer practical without the opposing party controlling ~> 60% in both houses!
Anything signed (or will be) by Obama at the Paris climate conference obligating U.S. funds for the UN’s “climate program” had to be approved by the Senate.
Obama said he didn’t need the Senate’s approval ; that he has the authority under the Clean Air Act and the United Nations Framework on Climate Change signed by former President George H.W. Bush to commit whatever he wants; that any deal/pact/agreement/treaty he signs onto isn’t a treaty because it’s not legally binding, even though it may “ . . . legally bind the U.S. to a process.”
Thirty Republican senators introduced a sense-of-the-Senate resolution in November 2015 that said, essentially, anything signed as a result of the Paris Climate Change Conference had to be submitted to the senate for advice and consent. Absent that, they would not budget money for the U.N.’s fund to “. . . fight climate change.”
Prior to that, S. Res. 98 was introduced and passed 95-0 by the Senate June 1997. It said (verbatim):
“ . . . Declares that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997 OR THEREAFTER (my emphasis) which would:
(1) Mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex 1 Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period; or
(2) Result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.
Calls for any such protocol or other agreement which would require the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification to be accompanied by:
(1) A detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement it; and
(2) An analysis of the detailed financial costs that would be incurred by, and other impacts on, the U.S. economy.
Time to lock and load.
A waste of 500 million, equal to the cost of 16.7 hours of the Iraq war.
He has absolutely no authority to transfer half a billion dollars to the UN. That should only be done through an act of Congress. He is now truly a dictator.
Congress left this door wide open. It gave State an economic stability fund to grant aid to enhance the economic stability of developing countries. The president has “determined” that climate change is a threat to that stability, so State issued a grant to the fund pursuant to its mission of enhancing economic stability in the developing world.
It is all a mess and congress is to blame.
They will spend it down for this use first knowing full well that 10x larger debt relief need is coming for those countries as a result of larger problems in commodity producing countries and unsustainable loans from the past 5-10 years. That larger need will then be treated as special funding or stimulus-style effort on top of this misuse of funds ahead of it. Its all in the political calculus of using your money, behind the curtain of course.
He treats tax payer dollars like confetti. That is how much he despises the people who put him there.
Can’t wait to see if Bill Shorten gets the nod in the Aussie election this year ,and how much he will borrow to send to the same fund after giving us back the carbon tax .
America doesn’t hold the monopoly on idiots sadly .
Any wonder you lot are in a lot of bother. A little snippet I picked up while reading the foreign blogs. I live in Australia.
The last federal budget was signed into law on September 23rd 2007 by George W Bush, that was for fiscal year 2008. There has been NO BUDGET ever since. Democrats controlled the process in ’08, ’09 for fiscal years 2009, 2010. The Republicans controlled the process in ’10, ’11, ’12, ’13, ’14, ’15, for fiscal years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
Neither party passed a budget. The UniParty was go-along-get-along through continuing resolutions, raising of the debt ceiling, Stimulus I, Stimulus II, QE1, QE2, Omnibus 1 (’08), Porkulous (Dec ’09), Omnibus II (’11), and Omnibus III (Dec ’15), leading to the eventual removal of the entire debt ceiling by Paul Ryan in December 2015.
Are you aware our Republican house and Senate no longer keep track of the national debt?
If not, why not?
Getting caught up on definitions of “torture” maybe.
Or was it the confederate flag that made you stop paying attention.
“…Or was it the confederate flag that made you stop paying attention.”
——————
We stopped paying attention a long time ago.
Actually, that is almost correct. The Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the 2011 and 2012 budgets but the Democrats still ran the House of the Senate. The House of Representatives passed all of the normal budget bills for FY 2011 – 2016. The committees in the House of the Senate passed all but three of the normal budget bills to the floor of the Senate for FY 2011-2016. For the FY 2011 and 2012 (like the 2009 and 2010 bills before them) Senator Harry Reid simply refused to bring any of the bills to the floor for a vote, preferring to shield his party from having to vote for any restraints on spending whatsoever. For FY 2013-2016 Senator Reid threatened to prevent cloture votes on any of the committee passed bills and Senator Mitch McConnell simply folded rather than let Senator Reid have a Pyrrhic victory (Pyrrhic because it could definitely have been used as a campaign issue and a battering ram to use against him when the inevitable government shutdown fight would come). The problem is the Democrats don’t want to constrain spending, but don’t want it traced back to them and the Republicans are a bunch of pantywaists that don’t have enough backbone to stand up and take notice.
‘We The People’ was just the most profitable way to conquer america. Now it is no longer needed they make you slave again. You are a 1040 form slave.
A ‘Patriot’ Act slave.
An AMT tax sucker punch in the U.S., or in the EU a VAT tax sucker, and all soon to be carbon tax suckers
Impeach.
the end justifies the means
a situation in which the final aim is so important to Obama that any way of achieving it is acceptable . However the backlash i.e. Trump is just the beginning.
+ 10,000
Wouldn’t be surprised to find out that foreign money flowing into our politicians pockets is part of the reason for this.
i.e The Clinton Foundation
Typical American… $773 BILLIONS to the military and military contractors… nobody cares. $500 millions to a green fund… OMG they’re taking over our lives and wasting our money…
The ego to brain ratio is simply amazing.
Even if your numbers are correct, you understand so little of the world…
Of course I do. And you obviously are so much smarter and wise… oh great one.
Green funds are more accurately called watermelon funds, since there is only a thin veneer of green over a very communist core. Almost none of the funds going to any so called green fund has ever gone to improve the environment.
Are you one of those Europeans that are so used to an American military safety net that prevented Europe needing to learn Russian as a primary language, that you forget that American military expenditures were the reason Europe could afford those experiments in socialism? If Europe had been forced to arm themselves to prevent aggression they would have been bankrupt or conquered by the 1960s.
And will yet surrender to a theocracy if Trump is not elected. Cruz will never be president. The best he can hope for is a seat on the SCOTUS. If Cruz, Rubio, Clinton or Sanders gets elected, Europe had better hope the Vladimir concurs that a theocracy is not in Europe’s best interest…
You are Correct, IMO
http://ppjg.me/2015/12/03/global-tax-brethren-backdoor-paris-climate-conference-opinion/#more-34406
The military is both needed and useful. Greens, not so much.
Military contracts to civilian companies creates jobs, puts cash flow into the economy and serves to protect all the weenie liberals who still don’t get it. Money going to the UN is akin to just flushing it down the toilet.
Of course. Needed and not wasted, like $436 millions for tanks the army didn’t want, $1.5 TRILLIONS for an F-35 that doesn’t work, $22 billions for a V22 that barely works and keeps crashing, at $76 million a piece, $10 billions on missile defense that never worked, $10 billions on helicopters that were abandoned, the list goes on and on and on and on…
It’s nice to know we have other leftists than rscourtney.
Tom, military spending may create jobs in the defense industries, but the taxes to support it destroy at least as many jobs in the rest of the economy.
Pat: Your ignorance is astounding. Yes, congressmen often order the military to buy things that the military doesn’t want. Blame that on the congressmen, not the military. Congress also wastes money in millions of other ways.
It amazes me that if a program has problems, you immediately jump to the “it doesn’t work” mantra. It’s almost as if you are proud of your ability to not think for yourself.
The F-22 works very well and is one of the best fighters in the world. It is unfortunately way too expensive.
The problems with the V-22 were solved well over a decade ago. I’m really not surprised that in your ignorance, you failed to keep up with that.
Strategic missile defense is progressing on schedule. Has it been deployed yet? Of course not, it’s still in development. Most of the technical problems have been solved in the 20+ years since Reagan first proposed it. Tactical missile defense not only is deployed and proving it’s worth, the US isn’t the only country with working systems.
I’m sure your list goes on and on forever, however the odds of there being an actual example is close enough to zero that I’m not interested in reading your list.
Dear Mark. Your thoughts on the size of my ignorance are feeble compared to my thoughts on the size of your arrogance.
But… typical American that you are… I’m sure it matters very little to you.
Have a nice day anyways.
Hey, you’re welcome to share in the fun of nuclear threats from NK, threats from ISIS, Al Qaeda, threats from Iran, and warnings from China and Russia as they seize and militarize the east Pacific islands and Crimea, respectively.
I have no doubt that Pat is amongst the crowd that actually believes that if we are weak enough, nobody would ever bother us.
Pat, whadya’ make? 20K/year? 50K/year? 100K/year? Do you contribute to your 401K? Do you have an apartment or a home? Whadya’ pay in mortgage or rent?
I think we can all agree that $100.00 is a pittance compared to any of the foregoing figures. So, Pat, what would you say if someone just yanked $100 out of your hand: your employer; the landlord or mortgage holder; or a total stranger? What would you say: that’s ok it’s only a small sum of money? Is that what you’d say? I think we can all agree you wouldn’t.
Acquire some ethics. That 500 mil wasn’t authorized, Pat, anymore than the $100 you would’ve complained about if it was taken from you. And, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if the jerk heisting the 100 from you justified it by saying it’s a heckuvalot less than the outrageous sums you were paying for your housing or retirement. If it’s not authorized, Pat, it’s theft. That’s not a difficult concept to understand; inconvenient though it may be at times.
Well according to the US Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause one, after paying for the National Debt, the only thing the US Congress is authorized to tax the people to pay for is in fact the military; usually called National Defence. Well they can also tax to provide for the wellbeing of Washington DC (AKA “The United States” one of the three parties to the US Constitutional contract).
But the socialists noticed that although that was all they could tax for, it didn’t say what they could spend money on, and if they spend money they and we, don’t have, then it becomes a aprt of the National debt, and then Voilla !! suddenly they ARE authorized to tax to pay the National Debt.
But they don’t eve pay down the National Debt, although they do tax us for that purpose.
If the F-35 doesn’t work, blame Lockheed Martin or their subcontractors, who don’t take their job seriously. Same goes for the F-22. Dunno anything about any V-22, unless its that ridiculous propeller rotator piece of junk the marines have.
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george,
The F35 is having the same growing pains any new technology goes through. The airframe is constructed in an entirely different fashion from previous generation aircraft. As a result, it flexes in ways that the engineers did not account for in their models. (We all know what happens when models aren’t validated against the real world…) This led to a failure in one of the high pressure fuel regulator assemblies that caused a major fire and loss of an airframe. This caused them to put a scale model into the wind tunnel and get the real world data to fix the model (it’s amazing how engineers do this when the model doesn’t meet real world conditions, but I digress). They then had to use standard engine flight certification processes before they could fly them (USAF gets a little touchy about untested tech on single engine fighters). This put them about 3 years behind schedule, but it had to be. I still think the plane might be a little too expensive, but its low observable capabilities will put many more targets in the safety envelope near SAM sites.
The F-22 had its growing pains, but seems to be maturing into a good first-line fighter.
The V22 is the tilt-rotor plane the Marines and SOF forces use. It had problems with the early production aircraft that have been fixed. As with all radical departures from traditional design, it had its development issues but is maturing into a good tool for landing insertion of forward troops.
I have space in my garage for an F-22, when they become available on the war surplus market.
The V-22 I could turn into a wind turbine for some occasional supplemental electricity; accompanied by a lot of noise to keep the birds away.
I think F-35, is way cool, when they iron the kinks out; specially the Marine version. Boeing really choked on that contract with their crummy design. Had some problems in landing, in that a horse doesn’t run for too long on hay that has already been once through the horse !
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A similar thought had occurred to me Pat. It’s as if no other President has ever spent money in this way on various projects, or as if all other US spending is morally justified and effectively used. I must admit that if this $500 million is all US citizens have to worry about, Obama is a financial wizard of a President. Does anyone have a good link to the size of the US national debt at the point the last 10 presidents have left office?
It’s not about the money.
While I am not happy he is giving away $500 million, some of which came from my pocket. At least it went to the sink hole of the UN. Everyone knows $500 million will only line pockets and nothing will ever come of it. No program, no policy no enforcement. What a waste of money.
The $500M is below the weekly average of $1B for this maniacal money waster. But in this case it also shows just how off target he is with aid. The ongoing commodity market great depression is wrecking havoc on African economies while the state secrets of China’s boom bust economy is setting up most of the emerging market countries for financial doom and debt default. So it is the context of global financial distress that best exemplifies just how far off he is from reality. As to Pat’s comment above, the $500M is just the latest installment on green money fraud and by the way, debt relief for all of Africa and most of the emerging market countries will exceed $1T. That of course will follow the other 2 or 3 rounds of debt relief for many of the same inept countries with no incentive to stop new borrowing.
Well he could have used that for a couple of ambassadorial trips to his ancestral homeland for his kids.
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Yes, that same legal refrain sounds a lot like that used to defend Lois Lerner at IRS, executive over reach, and end around or dismissal of Supreme Court setbacks.
Maybe he should have just piled it all on the front lawn and put a match to it, would have been equally productive. But then 500 million is couch cushion change.
The United States produces 16% of the globe’s anthropogenic CO2 burden. That’s the biggest share except for China which is bigger with 28% and others at 30% and Japan, FSU, India and EU at 26%. But other than all these bigger sources the US is the biggest.
Power generation produces 31% of US anthropogenic CO2 which makes it the biggest source of CO2 except for transportation at 27% plus industry at 21% plus commercial & residential at 12% plus agricultural at 9%. So power generation is the biggest source of CO2 if you just sort of, like, ignore the other 69% of which we hear little and do less.
BTW, fossil fuel & cement production accounts for about 2/3rds of the total global anthropogenic CO2 burden, land use changes account for the other 1/3rd of which we hear little and do less.
The goal of the CPP is to reduce power generation’s CO2 output by 32%.
16% * 31% * 32% = 1.59%. Woooheee, we be makin’ some big difference now, you betcha!
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/usinventoryreport.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change
Instead of wasting everybody’s money on a trivial solution to a non-problem perhaps that money could be better spent elsewhere, say on aging infrastructure.
The United States is actually a net carbon sink, a good deal of that due to anthropogenic activities (tree farming and intensive agriculture). In fact we are the ONLY large land based net carbon sink on the planet.
So no we are not 16% of any pestilence.
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The Shaky Isles are also a net carbon sink (small one) also due to intensive tree farming).
There’s also those wood pellets we ship to Britain for power generation.
So what’s the problem? King Obama just needed his UN pals to see that his claim to the throne is legitimate. That’s what taxes are for, after all.
It’s so shocking that the law appears to provide inadequate means for Congress to control the public purse. In other common law countries, the person who authorized a wrongful payment would either have to recover that payment or reimburse the Treasury out of his or her own pocket. An outrage. I await her legal analysis.
Congress see’s it’s job as getting re-elected. Everything else is just a distraction from that.
His nose stuck up in the air. This is how he regards the US citizenry and the Constitution.
Well what about his boot soles up on top of the oval office desk, a gift of the British; pointed at the camera in the standard mohammedan insult salute
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