NAM senior tax policy director Monica M. McGuire recently sat down for an interview to explain efforts to strengthen and seamlessly extend the research and development tax credit. This interview lasts 4 minutes. Click here to listen. Enjoy!

Oh, and if you like stuff like this, be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed where you can be updated automatically with future interviews.

Comes now lefty columnist Harold Meyerson with an op-ed entitled, “Estate Tax Lunacy” in today’s Washington Post, opining on the death tax. It is a veritable cocktail of class warfare and conspiracy theory, at one point invoking, “A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists” aimed at repealing the tax. Do our small manufacturers look like right-wing activists to you? They’re busy making stuff, like prosperity, and driving the economy. He refers also to the “super rich” who pay this tax. Our small manufacturers are hardly that.

No matter — his piece is rife with wild near-facts. We have some real facts of our own to set him straight:

– As we noted here a little while ago, according to the non-partisan Joint Economic Committee the estate tax has cost the economy more than it has brought in, costing $847 billion in capital and raising only $761 billion in the process.

– Manufacturing is a capital-intensive industry. While a person with $10 million in cash may be considered rich to most, the fact is that a manufacturing company worth $10 million is a very small company. It is not uncommon for one piece of machinery to cost many millions of dollars.

– In order for a small manufacturer to pay the estate tax, they need to either sell the company or take on enormous debt. Why on earth would we do that to small manufacturers, who are already up against the stiffest global competition we’ve ever seen? If the company stays in the family, why would it be a taxable event?

In any event, here’s a link to the full article. Click on this link if you want to drop a note to the Post, telling them what it’s really like out there in the real world, and setting the record straight. If you want to drop a note to Meyerson, you can do so by clicking here.

And, while you’re at it, click here to weigh in with your Senators and tell them to make the death tax repeal permanent. Let’s bury the death tax for good.

Here’s a link to a Detroit News op-ed by the boss, former Michigan Governor (and now NAM President) John Engler, touting the need for more nuclear energy. It’s safe, it’s clean and it’s inexpensive. It’s why France gets 80% of its energy from nuclear.

In any event, check it out. It’s getting a lot of buzz today.

A good Holman Jenkins piece by that title in today’s Wall Street Journal about Al Gore and his movie. Says Jenkins, “Mr. Gore’s narrative isn’t science, but science fiction.” We agree.

By the way, while “X-Men” earned some $102 million at the box office this past 4-day Memorial Day weekend, topping the charts, Al’s movie came in at a cool $281,000 — edging out “Art School Confidential”, but narrowly.

You’ve probably seen this by now as it’s making the rounds in the mainstream media (MSM): A new study has found that higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere will cause poison ivy to grow faster and bigger. Here’s a story about it from AP, noting that the study will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

We don’t make this stuff up.

OK, but here’s the rub (WARNING: Do not rub up against poison ivy): Take a look at this, the list of articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. Any of ‘em make sense to you? How on (this warming or cooling) earth does this story make it to the MSM? Think hysteria. It’s the only explanation. Next thing you know, global warming will be the cause of gators gone wild.

As for the science of all this, to be fair, if the globe is warming, wouldn’t there presumably be benefits, like fewer traffic accidents caused by ice? More lush plant — and vegetable and crop — growth? Will no one adapt? Yet all you read and hear about are stories like this, or rising sea levels or baby polar bears pitching off of ice floes. In other words, if you’ve not been paying attention to the global warming story, if you’ve not yet bought into the hysteria, how ’bout a little poison ivy in your shorts, huh? Maybe that’ll grab your attention!

In any event, thanks to Carter Wood for the title of this piece, cribbed from an old Coasters song. Somebody pass the calamine lotion, and check the thermostat.

Here’s USA Today’s biased view of global warming, a lengthy article by Elizabeth Weise from yesterday. Nary a dissenting view noted in the exhaustive piece. Maybe they should have talked to Achenbach. At least he found a couple of ‘em. Maybe Weise should have asked a few questions.

And, the story links to “resources”, including a link to the Kyoto Protocol page (doesn’t note that it’s a political document or that most countries are missing their targets by a mile) and to a story about how global warming is causing stronger hurricanes which, apparently, they are not — or so the experts say — at least enough of ‘em to cause a real debate. But what do they know, right? This is hysteria after all, no time for balance or science, apparently.

Sorry, gang, but this is just sloppy. A little balance goes a long way. Had this been a term paper, not sure they’d get a passing grade.

Great editorial entitled, “Your Congress At Work” in today’s Wall Street Journal, making all the points that both you regular blog readers have seen here many times: We pay the highest natural gas prices in the world, it’s a local, not global, market, no oil spilled during Katrina, etc., etc. They end with a nice plug for our friend Rep. Peterson and his bill, but end on a down note:

“…[O]n the evidence so far, Congress simply isn’t serious about spending America’s energy supplies.”

Sadly, they’re right. Here’s a link to the full editorial.

From the White House Press Secretary’s Office, here’s the President’s schedule for the week. A few swearing-in ceremonies and a speech on immigration.

Click here to see it.

A pretty exhaustive story on global warming in the WaPo Sunday magazine. Entitled, “The Tempest“, it fills almost 8 full pages of the magazine, a leviathan of a piece. It’s written by Joel Achenbach, who has been alternately described as a “satirist” and an “explainer of he inexplicable.” Achenbach, with his own blog, the “Achenblog“, is not exactly the guy you want writing a serious piece on a serious subject. Still, he gets his bat on the ball a time or two, but his sarcasm shows through when talking about the many skeptics of global warming, the subject of his article. Here’s a link to the full article. Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus at Colorado State, who has spent his live studying climate change, is more or less the star of the piece. His skepticism is backed by science, of course. He has a great line in the article, noting that the computer models used by the global warming adherents can’t predict the weather in two weeks, much less in 100 years. Good point. Pat Michaels, climatologist at University of Virginia — and the state climatologist for Virginia — is also mentioned. Achenbach spends a fair amount of time with the folks over at CEI as well.

The bottom line is he spelled everyone’s name right (or so we think), and at least introduced the fact that there are scientists on the other side of the hysteria.

More importantly, Achenbach will be doing an on-line chat about this article at 11 a.m. today (EDT) at washingtonpost.com/liveonline. We hope you’ll log on, ask a few questions of our favorite satirist cum global warming expert, or just to say “bravo” for letting on that there are skeptics.

[UPDATE] Here’s a link to the transcript of the on-line chat. Makes for some interesting reading.

A great piece by that title over on TCSDaily from NASA’s former senior scientist for climate studies, Dr. Roy Spencer. Here’s a link to a page with his bio and some very good articles by him on this topic. Yes, he’s an expert and yes, he disagrees with Al’s theory.

Some excerpts from his “Questions”:

” — Why did you make it look like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, droughts, and ice calving off of glaciers and falling into the ocean, are only recent phenomena associated with global warming? You surely know that hurricane experts have been warning congress for many years that the natural cycle in hurricanes would return some day, and that our built-up coastlines were ripe for a disaster (like Katrina, which you highlighted in the movie).

– Why did you make it sound like all scientists agree that climate change is manmade and not natural?

– Your presentation showing the past 650,000 years of atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide reconstructions from ice cores was very effective. But I assume you know that some scientists view the CO2 increases as the result of, rather than the cause of, past temperature increases.

– There seems to be a lot of recent concern that more polar bears are drowning these days because of disappearing sea ice. I assume you know that polar bears have always migrated to land in late summer when sea ice naturally melts back, and then return to the ice when it re-freezes. Also, if this was really happening, why did the movie have to use a computer generated animation of the poor polar bear swimming around looking for ice? Haven’t there been any actual observations of this happening?

– Why did you make it sound like simply signing on to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions would be such a big step forward, when we already know it will have no measurable effect on global temperatures anyway?”

Good questions, all. Hope Dr. Spencer isn’t waiting by his mailbox for a reply from Al anytime soon….