An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton

Dear Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton,

I know you’re busy, so I will summarize my key points briefly. I do agree with you on most issues, but some of your positions are show stoppers for me. My entire focus in this presidential campaign is on jobs and the economy. I realize your website says you want to create good-paying jobs and stimulate small business growth. But most of us work for large businesses or government agencies and your policies regarding large businesses are at odds with your stated desire to create good jobs. To create and keep good jobs in America we must support businesses, both large and small, encouraging them to invest in the USA, and make the USA the best place in the world to start and grow a business. All of the money we have comes from businesses large and small, neither the government nor non-profits make any money.

Creating more jobs has multiple benefits. The employed are healthier, live longer, have more self-esteem, and commit fewer crimes. Further, their work adds to the economy as a whole.

1. You have stated that you “want to increase the threshold for foreign ownership in an inversion calculation.” Further you want to levy an “exit tax on unrepatriated foreign earnings.” Taxing US businesses on their overseas income will always drive them out of the US.  Even if they remain in the US it encourages them to invest overseas profits in the country of origin, rather than bringing the money back to the US. If they have to pay a tax penalty to invest in a US factory, a penalty they do not need to pay overseas, why invest in the US? It is cheaper to invest in America and hire Americans if a company inverts and goes overseas, thus preventing inversions creates fewer jobs in the US. The problem is taxing foreign earnings of US companies. Your plans defy common sense and puts US companies at a disadvantage to foreign companies on our own soil.
2. You have proposed limiting executive compensation. The government should not be interfering with executive compensation.  The better business managers will simply go overseas where they can make what they are worth.  You have to pay for excellence. The government has no right to dictate what a business pays its employees.
3. You state you want to “End wasteful tax subsidies for oil and gas companies.” If fossil fuel tax incentives are to be eliminated, all tax incentives should be eliminated.  Government taxes should be fair and they should not favor one industry over another. The fossil fuel industry already receives less in tax incentives than almost every other industry. This includes tax incentives to alternative energy companies, banks, and pharmaceutical companies.  Singling out a single industry for “punishment” is not only unprincipled and unfair, but will destroy an industry that is 8% of the US economy and supports over nine million jobs.
4. You have proposed to subject oil imported from the Canadian Oil Sands to a special tax. Singling out our most loyal ally for a specific excise tax is not only dishonorable and disloyal, but probably illegal under NAFTA.  What is the difference between Canadian Oil Sands heavy oil and heavy oil from Venezuela?  Why punish a friend and reward a corrupt dictatorship?  Why not regulate pollution, rather than a source of petroleum?  This defies common sense.
5. I don’t accept the assertion on your website that “climate change is an urgent threat.” More than 22 peer-reviewed papers and two IPCC reports (2^nd and 5^th) have shown clearly that “the impact of climate change is small relative to economic growth.”  This means if we sacrifice economic growth by raising the cost of energy (all forms of “alternative energy” are more expensive than fossil fuels and this differential is hurting Germany, the UK and other European countries), it could very well cost the world more than simply adapting to the climate change.  Professor Richard Tol, an IPCC lead author, notes: “A century of climate change is not worse than losing a decade of economic growth.”

   Professor Richard Tol’s summary graph below shows this clearly.  The central heavy lines shows that the net impact of climate change is positive up to a temperature rise of 2.2 degrees C, this means we benefit economically.  Even if the worst predictions of the IPCC are true, we have lots of time to research this topic and be sure that the “climate doom” is actually coming before we act.  Urgency is clearly not required.

   

   Professor Tol summarizes:

   “The welfare change caused by climate change is equivalent to the welfare change caused by an income change of a few percent. That is, a century of climate change is about as good/bad for welfare as a year of economic growth. Statements that climate change is the biggest problem of humankind are unfounded: We can readily think of bigger problems.”

6. The IPCC claims of the dangers of climate change are based only upon unvalidated climate computer models.  Recent observations of current climate trends do not support the model predictions and suggest a much slower rise of temperatures. In the words of the late Professor Bob Carter:

“The currently favoured hypothesis of dangerous global warming includes the presumption that the warming is caused mainly by human emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. This theory has failed the three main tests that it has been subjected to. Namely:

Late 20^th Century rates of temperature change and magnitude do not exceed previously known natural limits;

No close relationship exists between the 20^th Century pattern of increasing carbon dioxide and changing temperature; and

Computer models using greenhouse radiation theory have proved unable to predict the course of temperature change 1990-2005, let alone to 2100. “

His third point is well supported by Professor John Christy’s graph (see below) comparing satellite and weather balloon measured temperatures to climate computer model predictions. It should be noted that weather balloon and satellite temperature measurements are independent of one another and thus validate each other. Global surface temperature estimates (like those from NOAA or the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit) are not validated by independent measurements, neither are the climate computer models. The only computer model that matches the observations is a Russian computer model called INM-CM4 shown in gray. The Russian model has assumed a much lower climate sensitivity to CO2 than the other models and assumes a much, much higher inertia due to deep ocean heat uptake than the others. In other words, the best computer model assumes we have little to worry about.

So, as Daniel Kish, vice-president of the Institute for Energy Research told CNSNews.com:

“…they cannot explain why all their [computer model] projections are wrong. They’re putting coal miners out of work all based on a 17-year history that doesn’t exist.”

Thousands of coal miners have been laid off, coal companies have gone bankrupt and there is no evidence that man-made carbon dioxide is dangerous. The same could happen to the millions dependent upon the oil and gas industry. I think you should have certain proof before you drive entire industries out of business and cost millions their jobs. For this reason, unless you find the proof or change these positions I could never vote for you, even if it means not voting at all.

Sincerely yours,

Andy May

May 6, 2016