Every time the words “security” or “independence” appear in the title of a Democrat sponsored bill (and I consider Joe Lieberman a Democrat even though the Democrat party threw him under the bus), you can be sure neither security nor independence are involved. You may recall the “Energy Security and Independence Act” passed into law not long ago did not provide security or independence, just a mandate to use compact fluorescent bulbs instead of the ones like Thomas Edison invented.

The same thing will happen after the Lieberman-Warner bill becomes law, not in this administration but surely the next. Just what “climate security” is remains an unanswerable question. The bill being discussed this week is based on the hopelessly false premise that mankind actually has the ability to change the planet’s climate in one way or another. If we really had such power wouldn’t we dispense with hurricanes, tornados, droughts and other nasty weather conditions? Why stop at changing the earth’s temperature?

What these political global warming useful idiots ignore is the earth is actually in a cooling cycle that even government agencies have acknowledged. Furthermore the simple scientific truth is that the earth’s atmosphere contains 0.038% carbon dioxide and water vapor makes up most of the rest. If the earth is warming, and obviously it has not during the last decade, any role played by carbon dioxide is negligible. But of course the politicos and leftists won’t accept that because their entire agenda depends on selling it to a gullible public.

Not long ago more than 31,000 real scientists, not the political kind, signed petitions declaring global warming to be a hoax; over 9,000 of them were PhDs and all of them were ignored.

It seems the only opposition in congress, such as it is, concerns the costs of implementing the Lieberman-Warner bill rather than on questioning the basic premise of the global warming claimants. Although the economic arguments are sound, it is incredible that even opponents are fearful of challenging the idea that discussion on the merits is closed because of the political ramifications of telling the world the Emperor has no clothes.

It is of course true that the costs of combating global warming by implementing Lieberman-Warner are high. A study by the Heritage Foundation predicts the following:

“The impact on the economy would be horrendous. Heritage estimates that cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses of at least $1.7 trillion that could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).”

“Single-year GDP losses of at least $155 billion could exceed $500 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).”

“Annual job losses that would exceed 500,000 before 2030 and could exceed a million.”

“The annual cost of emission permits to energy users to cost at least $100 billion by 2020.”

“The average household will pay $467 more each year for its natural gas and electricity (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars). That means that the average household will spend an additional $8,870 to purchase energy over the period 2012 to 2030.”

It is absolutely amazing that congress thinks it is sound to destroy our economy in the name of the false premise behind the impetus for enacting some kind of law to be in lock-step with the international community and avoid their political slings and arrows. Just as we are trying to recover from the sub prime mortgage debacle and are facing huge increases in the price of gasoline (don’t tell me it’s still cheaper than in Europe, we can do better than that if left to our own devices), we will be hugely burdened by taxes placed on productive business fulfilling basic living needs.

It is common for law makers to ignore the will of the majority of voters who put them in office; the illegal immigration and border issues being just one example. But the fact is that a majority of Americans also oppose the higher energy costs that Lieberman-Warner would impose. A press release from the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) reported a poll that found 65% of Americans reject spending even a penny more for gasoline in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The number rejecting raising gas prices in an effort to combat global warming has increased by 17 percentage points — or 35% — in just over two months since the previous poll in February. An additional 13% oppose spending more than 5% more for gasoline (at $4 a gallon that’s just 20 cents) to attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Regarding electricity costs, the NCPPR found that 71% of Americans reject spending more for electricity at all, and16% opposing spending any more than 12% extra for electricity.

[The National Center is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation based in Washington, DC established in 1982. It is an independent foundation; approximately 99% of its funding comes from some 72,000 active donors. The poll referenced here was conducted by Wilson Research Strategies, which surveyed 802 people who are likely to vote in the 2008 general elections. It included 37% registered Democrats, 30% Independents and 29% Republicans. It has a margin of error of +-3.46% at 95% confidence interval.]

The Lieberman-Warner bill if enacted into law would increase petroleum prices by 5.9% by 2015, according to Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions but other studies indicate prices would increase even more.

The American Council for Capital Formation and the National Association of Manufacturers jointly conducted a study which estimated that the Lieberman-Warner bill would increase electricity prices by between 13% and 14% by 2014. Other economic studies indicate that Lieberman-Warner would push electricity costs even higher.

When gasoline and electricity price increases are taken together, 90% of Americans reject Lieberman-Warner’s costs — even the low-range of the projected costs.

As incredible as it sounds that 90% of Americans reject the Lieberman-Warner plan’s costs, according to the National Center the actual number who reject it may be even higher. Electricity and gasoline price hikes are only two of the costs of this bill.

David A. Ridenour, vice president of NCPPR said:

“The price for food and consumer goods would also be pushed higher and many Americans would lose their jobs. You can’t merely accept energy price increases and opt out of all the other costs. As amazing as it is that 90% of the public agrees on anything, is the fact that all three of the major presidential candidates — Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama — favor a proposal the public appears to be almost unanimously against. Americans oppose Warner-Lieberman”.

Ridenour noted three separate studies were conducted with some predicting somewhat lower cost increases but he added “Just 6% would be willing to accept the gasoline and electricity price increase ranges forecast by any of the three studies.”

The Lieberman-Warner plan would increase petroleum prices by 5.9% by 2015, according to Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Other studies indicate the plan would drive prices even higher. The survey also found that 71% of Americans reject spending more for electricity, with 16% opposing spending any more than 12% extra for electricity to “cure” global warming.

These estimated, but realistic, costs form the basis of the current opposition to Lieberman-Warner. However, Lieberman-Warner should fail not only because of the outrageous impact on our country’s economy, but because it is a product of one of the greatest frauds in the history of the world; it ranks right up there with communism and other schemes in the socialist Pandora’s Box.

Vincent Gioia is a retired patent attorney living in Palm Desert, California. His articles may be read at www.vincentgioia.com and he may be contacted at gioia@gte.net.

Beyond the Iraqi Constitution and the elections, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has emerged as the true leader of the governing coalition. He has battled and won against fellow Shiite and problem child Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia. The Sunni, Shiite and Kurd people work together in a national Iraqi Army. Together, they are taking their county back from the foreign insurgents that have invaded their homeland. Iraqi troops took the lead in clearing Basra and Sadr City, and are now finishing off the insurgent remnants.

No one likes to go to war, but even an elective war is sometimes necessary. With all the consternation these past years, President Bush may finally be able to say “Mission Accomplished” to what he originally set out to do.

This we know, Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction. He even gassed his own Kurd and Shiite populations in the 1980s. What happened to those chemical weapons? Who knows? Whether they buried them in the ground somewhere or trucked off to Syria, we had every reason to believe he had them.

In the months leading up to the war, Saddam acted as if he were hiding a nuclear program by obstructing UN inspectors visiting his installations. We have since concluded that his nuclear program was still in its infancy, but we could not have known that then. Saddam’s power was in his bluff, but his bluff was called.

Following 9/11, we had to show we meant business in the fight on terror. Afghanistan fell quickly, but it was a sideshow. Look at any map of the Middle East and smack in the middle of it is Iraq. Think about it, if we could flip Iraq form a dictatorial state that sponsored terrorism to a democratic republic, there would be profound implications throughout the region. When most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, we needed to show Saudi Arabia, as much as anyone, our resolve. Regime change in Iraq was militarily and politically feasible, so Iraq was where Bush chose to make his move.

Saddam fell quickly too, but the subsequent insurgency dragged on for another five years. Though our casualties have been mercifully low, the political angst against Bush has grown virulent. Maybe Bush could have handled the occupation better, and the war should have been over more quickly, but our reason to go there was strategically sound. Bush made the proper decision with the urgency of 9/11 still fresh, and with the information available to him at that time.

In the early years of the Civil War, Lincoln lost battle after battle with a revolving door of generals who could not or would not fight Robert E. Lee. Lincoln finally found his general with Ulysses S. Grant who took after Lee’s army and ground it down.

Bush had a similar problem with Don Rumsfeld and generals who would not adapt to insurgents who did not wear uniforms and hid among the people. Bush finally replaced Rumsfeld and found his Generals in David Petraeus and Ray Odierno. The counterinsurgency strategy they employed made quick work of our enemies in Iraq.

Back in the U.S., however, liberal opposition to the war has at times reached hysterical levels and threatened to unravel all that we sought to achieve. Some things do not change. They have been acting this way since our days in Vietnam. And like our experience there, instead of finding ways to win they sought the worst possible outcome by unilateral surrender.

Liberals have never considered Bush a legitimate president. They have never gotten over the myth that the 2000 election was stolen. For them, Bush’s decision to enter into an elective war that took longer than expected was just too much. His presidency is too emotional a subject for them, and reasoning with them about any aspect of it has become nearly impossible. But for anyone who still cares and is willing to listen, what we are seeing in Iraq today is exactly what we set out to accomplish from the beginning — establish a beachhead for democracy in the Middle East.

Before the war, state sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East were Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Today, only Iran and Syria remain — with a democratic Iraq located between them. And in the information age, don’t believe for a moment that the infectious seeds of freedom are not being sown in those countries and throughout the region. The promise of freedom for the oppressed is America’s greatest strategic weapon in this war. In due time, tyrants in those countries may come to fear their own people more than any army that may threaten them.

We must remember that the struggle in Iraq is only one campaign in the larger global war on terror. History will intimately judge, but yes, early indications are that President Bush’s victory was a worthy step in that overall goal.

Radical Islam is at war with the civilized world because of our tolerant values toward women, different lifestyles and different religions. For Americans, understanding the threat posed by this enemy, finding ways to triumph over them, and mobilizing public opinion to support that effort remain as challenges for the years ahead.

Jeff Lukens writes engaging opinion columns from a fresh, conservative point of view. He is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc., a non-profit (501c3) coalition of writers and grass-roots media outlets. He can be contacted at www.jefflukens.com