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A bone to pick with Charles Krauthammer

By CRAIG DELLA PENNA on December 13, 2009 at 12:30 PM in Current Affairs

I have a bone to pick with Charles Krauthammer – especially with his most recent article for the Washington Post “The Environmental Shakedown”. (See original article here )

First off I should say that I like Charles Krauthammer, I like his intelligence and his acerbic wit, I like his refusal to suffer fools, I like the way he uses language. I like him to the point where I sometimes forget that he’s an ideologue.

Fortunately, he can’t help himself and, from time to time, he reminds me of his ideological blinders. Take his latest article: “The Environmental Shakedown” where he attempts to cast the Copenhagen climate “summit” as an attempted shakedown of the rich countries by the Third World:

“One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.”

He then engages in classic conspiracy theory to conflate the BO(zo) administration’s EPA announcement into a vast hippie conspiracy to, well… reduce global carbon emissions

“On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an “endangerment” to human health.”

And he goes on further to cast the entire collections of events as a left wing power grab of unprecedented proportions.

“Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.”

Aside from its unintended humor, his article is very revealing both by what it does not say and by its very wording. What Mr. Krauthammer desperately wants to avoid dealing with is what he finally mentions in as a boogeyman negative:

“Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.”

Well, yes, that’s exactly where we must go: “all cap, no trade”. Trade is just that – pushing carbon around from one place to another, what we need to do is stop pushing carbon out at all.

The other aspect of his article that apparently got through proofreading is the inherent assumption that those grubby little “Third World kleptocracies” are robbing the “hard-working citizens” of their rightful rewards.

”In the name of equality — wealth redistribution via global socialism — with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.
The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early ’80s).”

This is filled with unintended humor but the glaring omission is that Mr. Krauthammer doesn’t seem to know where or how the “democracies” got hold of all this wealth. Think of it: the entire history of the plundering of the third world by the industrialized West (ongoing today even as we speak)… disappeared and the concept of compensatory relief reduced to a “heist” perpetrated by the “Third World kleptocracies” on the poor rich countries.

Shame on you Mr. Krauthammer, not because you dislike the third world, nor because you defend capitalism. Shame on you for the mendacity and disingenuousness of this article. I’m used to better intellectual honesty from you but I guess that’s what happens when ideology trumps intelligence.

  • Tricia

    I enjoyed this, Craig. Intersting analysis for sure.

  • http://www.althing.com/governuts West Virginia

    Craig. I do not entirely agree with you, especially on reparations. I don’t care if my father did it or my country did it generations ago, I do not feel obligated to pay anyone – including poor nations – for plundering in the past. If I thought that way I would be demanding that Germany and Japan pay us back, with interest, every penny we spent on WWII.

    • kgirl1028

      Truthfully if I were to want Reperations from you, then i also need it from the arab muslims that started the slave trade and the africans who sold us. AA were screwed by every one so why make whites pay up when no one else is? Plus didn’t alot of whites die in the Civil War? And if I’m not correct it was one of bloodiest battles of American history when a gigantic death toll so it’s not like you didn’t pay the ultimate pice for freedom.

    • NomNomNom

      except it’s not in the past, we’re doing it today: US mining companies are presently looting SA (Canada is worse): this and out militarization there to protect our resource taking is the source of much leftwing populism and anti-American sentiment.

      • NomNomNom

        oops, “our militarization”
        I am not suggesting reparations as a solution btw, I am making note that it is not in the past.

  • Anne Mushroomsky

    Where is the evidence that Krauthammer dislikes the third world? Is it the phrase “Third World kleptocracies?” Perhaps what Mr. Krauthammer dislikes is the idea of funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to corrupt and undemocratic leaders of Third World countries, money that will almost certainly not be used to mitigate the effects of global warming.

    What are the lies you accuse Mr. Krauthammer of telling? The EPA’s intent and actions seem to be exactly as Mr. Krauthammer describes.

    The primary complaint you seem to have with Mr. Krauthammer is that he refuses to believe, as you do, that what we need is “all cap and no trade.” Perhaps Mr. Krauthammer is agnostic when it comes to global warming; you are clearly a believer. Interestingly enough, more and more people are moving out of the believer category when it comes to global warming, and regardless of what the “warmers” say, “climategate” will likely increase that trend.

    It is unfortunate that for the past few years, the rhetoric surrounding climate change has become so hyperbolic, and the remedies demanded by believers so drastic. Sensible people always knew that while it was unlikely that manmade CO2 emissions would have no impact, is was equally unlikely that scientists would be able to predict what the impact would be with any accuracy. Consider how often your local weather forecast is wrong, for example.

    The biggest problem surrounding this issue has been that climate change has been conflated with global warming. The earth may or may not be warming, and if it is warming, the amount of warming will likely be disputed. What cannot be disputed is that our climate is changing. Our climate is always changing, always has, always will.

    The question the UN ought to be asking is how should wealthier member nations help poorer nations deal with climate change? Leave global warming out of it.

    • Regina

      I agree with you anne.

  • Elizabeth

    Intellectual dishonesty and disingenuousness hits the nail back squarely where it belongs. Forget ideology. Who didn’t lose faith with Krauthammer’s posts a year ago taking issue with Republicans (not conservatives) by picking up a cheap Obama talking point of McCain the ‘erratic’ and making it a temperment issue.

    As if suspending a campaign in light of the economic collapse was an “irrational tactic” implying a history of taking one position and then changing his mind.

    Krauthamer is the one that is ERRATIC wandering and barely decipherable.

  • beachnan

    I agree with you West Virginia. I am getting tired of the idea of reparatons. I’m pretty sure Obama just approved reparations to the American Indians as a way to pave the way for Black Reparations. How far back do we go? What about all the injustices that have been incurred since the beginning of man. Will it really do anyone any good, if you take a once great nation-the US, and have them give away their wealth to the point where you have improved the lives in other countries a little, but have now taken away their ability to help anyone else in the future. Is this guilt really helpful?

    • Julia

      Reparations!!! What a joke! Women will have reparations too?? I don’t think so

      • Julia

        Third world men are going to pay reparation to women??? I would like to know

      • Doc99

        Reparations is yet another in a series of strawmen. Soon, I expect the descendants of Alexander’s Macedonians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Ottomans, and the Romans to queue up long before Western Europe.

        • Obama: Dubya 2 Electric Boogaloo

          Maybe we need to shove the entire world’s population into South Africa and on the count of 3 everyone take off and start all over again…

          /snark

  • Chris G.

    re : “Well, yes, that’s exactly where we must go: “all cap, no trade”. Trade is just that – pushing carbon around from one place to another, what we need to do is stop pushing carbon out at all.”

    It’s obvious Mr. Della Penna didn’t understand Charles Krauthammer’s piece. It never was about pollutants, nor CO2 levels for that matter. Everytime we open our mouths we put out CO2. Some more than others I’m sorry to say.

    All cap and no trade will never happen, because the real money is in the ‘trade’. Countries, organizations and individuals (e.g. Al Gore) have been positioning themselves for decades to become fabulously wealthy on the ‘trade’ scheme of “Cap and Trade”. Follow the money! One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist. Any two bit con man and hustler could figure this scheme out from the get-go.

    Like most end-time religious cults, warmists will attack deniers as heretics even when deniers have proof that their religion is a sham and a con. As opposition mounts, warmists will claim religious persecution. Then like most cults, their disillusioned followers will pull away, the flocks dwindling by the day. Once the appointed end-time comes and goes there’ll be no reason really to remain, church services no more than a stark reminder of how pathetically empty the collection coffers are. Until the cult leaders figure out another angle and begin to preach the end of the world all over again.

    Maybe next time they’ll latch onto a real greenhouse culprit… water vapor. Wow…taxing and trading water vapor! Now that’s where some really serious money can be made.

    In biblical times these false prophets would have been taken to the city gates and stoned already.

    As for the problem with third world countries, I’m sick and tired of developped nations being blamed for all of their ills. Fact is, the real trouble with third world nations was and is third world leadership.

  • Docelder

    I have about had it with apologists. This carbon scam was never about the environment to begin with. It’s not about reparations to the third world. That is just greasing third world palms to count them in. It’s the equivalent of the Louisiana Purchase for health care on a third world scale. It is graft and corruption. It has “new democrat” which is the same as “corporatist” written all over it. It’s about the Goldman Sachs types that haven’t yet acquired all of the worlds wealth… not yet. But, they are trying. If this carbon tax works, the republic is done for. If it doesn’t work, let there be a second revolution so that something so asinine never happens, or almost never happens again.

    • Peggy Sue

      Agreed, Dolceder. When a George Soros says that cap and trade will easily be gamed [and that's why financiers love it] and when we read that Blythe Masters at JP Morgan, the creator of the infamous credit default swaps for Morgan, is now the primary architect for “carbon derivatives,” we should be howling like mad and bringing out the torches and pitchforks.

      This is just another scheme to make the usual subjects filthy rich, while using the environment as an attractive and seductive backdrop. The pigs just can’t stop slopping at the trough.

      Unless, enough people say: Enough already!

    • Doc99

      Thanks to CRU and East Anglia, it apparently isn’t about science anymore. Science is the biggest loser in all of these shenanigans. Let’s see Phil Jones “Hide the Decline” in his reputation and grant money.

      • Docelder

        Yes, science is the biggest loser. Science had itself positioned in our culture as an absolute. Something known to be based in fact. Science has always used that position as a sort of club to beat up religion, that religion necessitated a “leap of faith” and that religion couldn’t be proven scientifically. Turns out science isn’t so absolute either anymore and it also now necessitates a leap of faith to believe in some science. Science is the biggest loser, it has lost it’s positioning and it’s club. Science now is just another religion.

        • goldengrahme

          You go, Nomnom! Your anger is couched in sound logic and I love how you unmasked
          the science/religion dichotomy.

          I am inclined toward Agnosticism; however, I am open to other views on any issue. Provable facts cannot be spun; these climategate heretics, who twisted themselves into pretzels to push their corrupt warming agenda, are finally named. Some savvy lawyers are looking into RICO charges. The East Anglia mob and foot soldiers need a taste of true sea change…

          a warm spot in hades would be even better.

          Too bad the conservative faithful find themselves picking up the pieces of a flawed project, playing the blame game and hitting out at the usual suspects–the poor and disadvantaged. Krauthammer, for all his
          talent and erudition is mired in his own
          narrow intellectual bog.

          Anyone familiar with the John Perkins book, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”? Make of point of accessing the history of the financial destruction of Third World countries across the globe. It will put this new carbon tax scam into perspective. Just the next phase of an ongoing scheme.

          Clever these elite moneymongers. They link global warming and humane instincts (which is a ruse) in a neat package even the most hard-nosed conservative can’t ignore. The warm-hearted liberals have always been on board.

  • NomNomNom

    I don’t support cap and trade and I don’t support reparations except from the corporate looters, but the most egregious part of the whole Copenhagen thing is that it will allow developed nations over twice the emissions per capita that it will allow less developed nations yet will not subsidize their transfer to less polluting technologies adequately. Also, as per usual, indigenous people get to suffer the most of the climate change as their economies as the most strongly resource based and are often located in the most affected environments and they have the least representation and aid.

  • elaine

    Kiplinger has a hopeful article up today. Apparantly they don’t think Cap & Trade will pass, ditto comprehensive immigration reform. I hope they’re right. ObamaCare will cost me more than enough.

  • http://www.lesstalkmoreactivism.blogspot.com whoframedrudy

    I too think reparations is a non-starter. But Craig’s point is that equating Copenhagen with “post-colonial reparations” and equating reparations with theft is dishonest spin. The Third World is no more “klepto” than Europe:

    “The idea of enslaving hard-working citizens of Africa in order to fill the treasuries of First World kleptocracies”

    But I don’t see how this post refutes Kraut’s point about the EPA power grab, Jim Webb’s letter and checks and balances. Declaring carbon an “endangerment” is the left wing version of claiming “national security”, i.e., we can do whatever we want. I don’t like the EPA dictating to Congress or unilaterally declaring polluters as “enemy combatants.”

  • graywolf

    Craig della Penna:
    Is there global warming on the planet you live on?

    Do you expect us (on earth) to pay YOU reparations?

    Did you pay for your tinfoil hat?

  • Regina

    Among other accomplishments, Obama is aiming at becoming the reparation president. He plans to accomplish his goal the chicago way. We must stop him! Call your representatives….rally….put pressure on those who matter….blogging is not enough.

  • andrew

    Any plan that would allow the poor to acquire more tends to make the rich nervous.

    • Docelder

      The rich own the carbon exchanges. The poor are for anything that promises something for nothing. The middle class are the ones afraid… afraid of being made the poor for no reason other than it’s easier to nanny us if we all wear the same brand of plastic pants and all suckle the same brand of formula.

  • andrew

    I think the manipulation works more like this: The middle classes are instilled with fears to provide the political means to protect the extraordinary advantages of the very wealthy–the “very wealthy” being the 5% of the population who own 95% of the nation’s total wealth.

    Rational tax increases on the upper end could provide the needed basic social services and educational opportunities on the lower end, leaving the middle classes largely out of the equation.

    I don’t believe wanting something for nothing is necessarily the defining characteristic of the poor.