Thursday, April 30, 2015

May, 2015,Part 1,Political Class Insanity: What $4 TRILLION of Government Spending Does NOT Buy YOu

Every month we do a regular series under the theme, “political class insanity.” We look at the many, many different, and often original, ways that the American political class wastes our tax dollars, undermines our freedoms, and generally act in the most idiotic ways possible, via their quotes, actions, and laws. For past examples of hundreds of instances of political class insanity, just page through the historical listings on the right side of this page at the beginning of each month or enter “political class insanity” in the search box above.

We usually do not start a new month's insanity until the current month has ended. However, given that the political class idiocy seems to be increasing, we are starting May's insanity review a day early in order to get a little head start on what is shaping up as an epic month of insanity.

1) As most of us have just gotten through tax season, it is a good time to review how poorly the IRS is serving the American taxpayer. We have already reported in past insanity posts that upwards of 60% of the calls coming into the IRS customer service lines were going unanswered and those that do get answered are answered only after a lengthy delay. 

Well, the cause of that lousy customer service might not be the budgets cuts the IRS has recently been subjected to, according to reporting by the great website, Bankrupting America:
  • According to the Washington Post, despite a heritage of lousy service, the IRS spent $60 million on IRS employee bonuses in 2014, an amount that could have been used to answer upwards of seven million customer calls for help. 
  • The amount of time that IRS employees spent working strictly on union activity could have been redirected to answering an additional two millions customer calls for help.
  • According to the Washington Post, “In 2011, the agency spent $129 million on taxpayer services and $79 million on operations support. In 2015, taxpayer services funding was scheduled to drop to $49 million while support funds were set for $411 million.” Thus, between just these two budget line items and in just four years, total funding went up more than double, from $208 million to $460 million, but funding for customer services went down by more than 50%, from $129 million to $49 million. Bad priorities or bad management?
  • According to a recent House committee report, despite a level budget for taxpayer assistance from 2014 to 2015, the average wait time for calls went from 19.7 minutes in 2014 to 34.4 minutes in 2015 and the total number of answered calls in 2015 dropped from 6.6 million to 5.3 million.
Horrible customer service at the cost of billions of dollars a year. Maybe it is time to drop the 70,000 page Federal tax code and replace with with a simple flat tax so that the need for the calls in the first place goes away forever, as does the IRS, sparing the country the frustration of unanswered calls and long waiting times on hold, often for answers that turn out to be incorrect after all. Insanity.

2) According to a recent Associated Press report, two more Air Force nuclear missile launch officers have been charged with illegal drug use. Yes, those Air Force guys that have their fingers next to the buttons that launch nuclear missiles may be serious drug users of Ecstasy, cocaine, and other drugs. 

1st Lt. Michael Alonso and 1st Lt. Lantz Balthazar, of the 12th Missile Squadron at the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, will undergo hearings to determine whether they will be court-martialed. One of their fellow missile officers, who was a target of the same investigation, has already pleaded guilty to illegal drug use in January and was kicked out of the Air Force.

Taxpayers give the Pentagon about have a trillion dollars a year in their budget. Is it too much to ask for them to have an effective drug testing program so that a handful of Air Force people do not sit next to nuclear missiles while high on drugs?

3) Staying with the Pentagon and its half a trillion dollar annual budget, the Associated Press and other news sources reported that Defense Secretary Ash Carter publicly revealed that the Pentagon recently suffered a cybersecurity breach after Russian hackers infiltrated a defense computer network earlier this year. In a talk at Stanford University, Carter said the DOD was able to identify the intruders within 24 hours and kicked them out, but added,"I still worry about what we don't know because this was only one attack." 

I am not so sure that I would be bragging it took 24 hours to resolve the intrusion. A lot of damage and classified information could have been incurred and stolen in a few minutes, 24 hours later, one hour later would have been too late to have any preventive effect. Again, half a trillion dollars and it still took 24 hours to realize you had been hacked? Pathetic.

Oh, and this attack is not to be confused with different Russian hacking attacks that got into State Department and White House computer systems. Can’t anyone do any kind of basic firewall work for this government?

4) It used to be that the Secret Service was viewed as a highly trained, highly effective, and well respected aspect of the Federal government. It had the very difficult job of protecting the President and First Family, from loner nut cases and to enemies of the state. 

Well, that used to be the case. Unfortunately, even this once hallowed government entity seems to have degenerated into the same quagmire of incompetence that the rest of the Federal bureaucracy has become. In the past week another person jumped the security fence at the White House and had to be apprehended before he could do any serious damage. The good news is that no one and nothing was harmed. The bad news, why do these intrusions keep happening?

According to the Associated Press: “The [Secret Service] agency has been beset by a series of security lapses, including an incident last Sept. 19 in which authorities said a man with a knife jumped a fence and ran inside the executive mansion, looking for the president. It was the sixth time someone had jumped the fence in 2014 and the 16th in the past five years, according to the Secret Service.”

This report does not include the group of German tourists who wandered off into a restricted area of the White House or the gun shots that shattered White House windows. The Federal government spends almost $4 TRILLION a year in our tax dollars, is it too much to ask to have some decent security around a single government location, the White House? The incompetence is wide and deep when it comes to just about any aspect of the $4 TRILLION a year Federal government.

So, what did we learn today?: Despite giving the Washington political class and Federal government $4 TRILLION a year, that government and the politicians who operate it are incapable of:
  1. Effectively and efficiently answering the phone calls of Americans trying to comply with an onerous and stupid tax code.
  2. Keeping drug users and abusers away from launch buttons for the nation's nuclear missile system.
  3. Protecting government diplomatic, defense, and executive computer systems from Russian hackers.
  4. Protecting a single location, the White House, from intruders and gun play.
$4 TRILLION for insanity and incompetence. And we are not even close to summarizing the latest insanity and incompetence from just the past month.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w





Wednesday, April 29, 2015

You Cannot Spell Abandonment Without O-B-A-M-A

I came across the word “abandonment” recently it struck me that you cannot spell abandonment with O-B-A-M-A. Which got me to thinking: I have always felt that this President was purely a political animal, bending and reacting only to the political winds, opportunities, and priorities that best serve his personal and political needs, abandoning any American or American institution that would interfere with those needs and desires. 

So today’s post examines the concept of abandonment as it applies to this Presidential administration. And unfortunately, the examples are plentiful. Which is distressing to me. I had always felt that the President, regardless of what party he came from, should represent all Americans. He does not represent a particular state or Congressional district, he should be the overarching leader of every state, every district, every race, every religion, etc. 

He should be where America comes together. He should be where concern for the general welfare or the welfare of an individual is color blind, religion blind, and income blind. It is a big, difficult job. But no one who became President was ever forced to be in that position. They chose that career track so they are responsible when they fail to be that beacon of fairness, compassion, and integrity.

And this administration has certainly failed many times to be that integrating beacon. Public opinion polls show that Americans are generally not happy about the direction of the country or the politicians that are responsible for that direction. There are not only specific examples of abandonment, that we will discuss below, but also a general feeling that people are being left behind and on their own.

Probably the most visible example of abandonment is the terrorist attack at Benghazi. About two dozen Americans were left to fend for themselves halfway around the world in the midst of a terror attack on the U.S. consulate at Benghazi and the follow up attack and violence at a nearby CIA annex. It is an attack that resulted in the death of four brave Americans including a U.S. ambassador. 

If some news reports are correct, the President left the ready room and those responding to the attack and turned in for the night. It is not disputed that the following morning, when the lives of those two dozen Americans were still hanging in the balance, the President left Washington and the abandoned the crisis to attend a fundraiser in Las Vegas.

When American civilian James Foley was violently beheaded by ISIS terrorists, the President held a perfunctory and short press conference and then abandoned the country and the Foley family in order to not miss a golf tee time that was previously scheduled.

When an Army deserter was returned to the U.S., Bowe Bergdahl, the President invited the deserter’s parents to the White House for a press photo op, again to serve his personal and political needs. However, he has continued to abandon the needs of those brave soldiers, and their families, who were killed, maimed, and wounded looking for the deserter in Afghanistan. 

While the President went to great extremes to recover deserter Bergdahl from terrorists, releasing five high level and dangerous terrorists being at at Guantanamo, his administration abandoned thousands of Americans behind in Yemen, telling those Americans to fend for themselves and allowing other countries, specifically India and Russia, to rescue those stranded and abandoned Americans.

The President sent three White House representatives to attend the funeral of Michael Brown, halfway across the country, who was killed while fighting and wrestling with a police officer in Missouri but abandoned the funeral of Major General Harold J. Greene, who was killed in action while serving his country in Afghanistan, by sending no representatives to his funeral in Washington.

The President made personal comments about the whole Trayvon Martin incident but has abandoned the sorrow and needs of the victims of thousands of other black on black crimes, black on white crimes, and white on white crime.

While the President appropriately attended the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, he abandoned the concept of sending anyone of importance to the funerals of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Lech Kaczynski in Poland, long standing allies of the U.S.

While the President has been a big advocate of Islam and Muslims in this country and around the world, he has often abandoned and ignored the plight of Christians who are being violently hunted down and killed around the world, often denying the reality that they were killed for simply not bending to Islamic terrorists.

The President has been busy trying to become allies with Iran, despite that country’s imprisonment of three American civilians, the spreading of Iranian terrorism around the world, the Iranian desire to destroy Israel, and their intent to get their hands on nuclear weaponry while abandoning our long term ally in the region and the only true democracy in the region, Israel.

While the President continues to plan on giving welfare benefits and tax breaks to illegal aliens, he has continued to abandon the unmet medical needs of our veterans despite his frequent claims that he supports them.

While the President continues to party, fund raise, and play golf with the wealthiest in the country at the wealthiest of country clubs, his policies continue to abandon the middle class whose household incomes have fallen and stagnated since the end of the recession.

And perhaps worst of all, his executive orders and illegal unilateral executive action have abandoned all adherence to the Constitution and rule of law when it suits his political needs.

Yes, you cannot spell abandonment without O-B-A-M-A and that is what is legacy is shaping up to be: the abandonment of Americans, American principles, and integrity to suit his short term political needs and his long term ego.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w




Monday, April 27, 2015

"Meet the New Boss, Same As The Old Boss"... or The Failed Foreign Affairs and MIlitary Strategy Of The Obama Adminstration

Back in 2013, President Obama made the following quote and claim: “A decade of war is now over.” Which is good since given the following warlike actions the U.S. is involved in, I would hate to see what it would be like if the “decade of war” was NOT over:
  • The Obama administration recently sent 300 troops into the Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops.
  • The Obama administration is debating whether to give the Ukrainians actual weapons as opposed to only the non-lethal aid it has been providing.
  • The Obama administration recently sent 3,000 troops back into Iraq to support the fight against the ISIS forces.
  • The Obama administration is flying air attacks against ISIS forces throughout the Middle East.
  • The Obama administration sent many, many tanks and jet planes to Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge.
  • The Obama administration spent well over a billion dollars in inserting U.S.military resources into the Libyan civil war.
  • The Obama administration is still launching drone attacks into Pakistan to combat the Taliban with a recent attack killing two civilian hostages including an American.
  • The Obama administration is still launching drone attacks into Yemen to fight any number of different enemies after having abandoned the country and leaving about half a billion dollars worth of military equipment behind for those enemies to put to their own use.
  • The Obama administration has a fleet of warships assembled in the Middle East to prevent Iran from shipping weapons to its allies in Yemen with a potential armed and physical confrontation narrowly avoided in the past week when an Iranian convoy of ships headed for Yemen turned back.
  • The Obama administration has doubled the number of U.S. troops it is keeping in Afghanistan this year, to 10,000 troops, and is now allowing the Pentagon to directly support Afghanistan forces in battles against the Taliban, a significant change in strategy from previously saying that U.S. military forces would only conduct counter terrorism operations, whatever that is. 
  • The Obama administration still has tens of thousands of troops stationed in Japan.
  • The Obama administration still has tens of thousands of troops stationed in South Korea.
  • The Obama administration tens still has tens of thousands of troops stationed around the world in dozens of countries.
Obviously, we were being sarcastic. Like most of Obama’s other campaign and Presidential promises (e.g. most transparent administration ever, will reduce the annual Federal spending deficit in half, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor under Obama Care, etc.), the “decade of war is over” is either an outright lie or incompetence on the administration. You cannot claim the decade of war is over when you are involved in at least a dozen different war situations around the world.

The Obama administration thus has degenerated into nothing more than an old Who song, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Despite his promises, we are still sticking our noses, and our military, into other countries’ affairs at great expense to the American taxpayer, just like just about every other President has done. Step 30 and its military strategy from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” would have prevented us from getting involved in these dozen war zones and others: "Bring back all nonessential deployed military personnel to the United States.This will save money and help our reputation as a freedom loving, non-imperialistic nation.”

But now we have no strategy, no exit plan, this administration has got us so entangled into so many war situations that it is difficult now to tell who our allies are and who are friends are. We are heading off Iranian arms shipments to Yemen with our Navy but allowing Iran to help in the fight against ISIS. We are working with the Saudis in the Yemen mess but the Saudis do have sympathies and relationships with ISIS since both are Sunni based religious entities. We said we were limiting our military exposure in Afghanistan but then turned right around and expanded it. The list of conflicts and confusion goes on and on which is not unexpected when you do not have a strategy and seem incapable of formulating a coherent one.

But it should come as no surprise. This administration, and those that came before it, are generally operated by people that have no strategic planning ability or smarts:

  • Obama Care is an ill conceived and expensive insurance plan failure when it should have been a strategic, well coordinated public health campaign.
  • Giving tens of billions of dollars to failing and bankrupt alternative energy companies is not an energy strategy, it is crony capitalism. 
  • Trying to have single, centrally controlled education curriculum that serves millions of kids like Common Core is not a strategic answer to our failing public schools it but rather just another bloated Washington bureaucracy.

That is why term limits is so important. The current set of Washington politicians have failed miserably at everything they try to do, with the dozen failures of Obama’s foreign policy listed above just the latest example. That is why we urge all of our readers to go to our term limit website to learn why term limits are so very important and critical to our future:


We leave today with two depressing quotes that naturally arise as the failures of this administration mount:

- In May, 2013, President Obama stated these words at the National Defense University: “America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.” Given the foreign affairs and military mess and conflicts stated above, it is obvious that his administration has not defined the nature and scope of the problem since there is no apparent and effective strategy in place to define our place in the world. 

- Which leads us to the recent insights from historian Robert Kagan: “We’re sort of seeing the world order cracking around the edges. The only thing Obama can hope is that it doesn’t completely collapse while he’s still President.”

My, the “hope and change” theme has fallen far from its lofty perch in 2008. The only thing left for this hope and change President now is to hope current foreign affair and military crisis situation does not change for the worst until he gets out from under the mess he has created after his second term ends.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w




April, 2015, Part 2, Will The Center Hold?

On a regular basis we discuss a continuing theme in this post. “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen such a pushback against an overreaching Federal government and Washington political class at all levels of government and at the individual citizen level. From Obama Care to gun control to education to Common Core to spying on innocent civilians, across the country people are finally saying enough and have started to rebel against Washington dictates and laws.

Which brings to two very interesting questions:
  1. What if Washington passed a law and everyone the country simply ignored it?
  2. Would the center hold or would the Republic splinter apart?
Don’t believe that the center is possibly in danger? Insert the phrase “will the center hold” into the search box above or read on today and yesterday to see where the rebellion has spread to.


1) Yesterday we briefly discussed the Convention of States movement and how that movement was trying hard to get a Constitutional Convention of States together to help get the Federal government under control to protect both the country’s financial future and our freedoms. 

In late March, North Dakota became the 27th state to legally call for a meeting of the states to propose an amendment to the Constitution requiring an annual balanced Federal budget. This is a critical push back on the overspending by Washington, particularly the Obama administration, which inherited a national debt at around $10 TRILLION and which will leave with a national debt of around $20 TRILLION. At that time, the average debt burden for every American household will be close to a mind boggling $170,000.

But the states are pushing back, as the following map shows:



This map shows the 26 states in blue that have called for a convention to push for a balanced budget amendment. North Dakota, still in red, became the 27th state to make that call this week. 

Article V of the Constitution allows a Convention of States to be called, which would let states propose changes to the Constitution that three-fourths of the states would then have to ratify. As you can see, we are getting very close to the 34 states that are needed to establish a convention for a Constitutional amendment: “If we want fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., it has to come from the states. We have to be bold in our approach to them,” according to North Dakota Republican state Sen. Dick Dever.

It is my recollection that this is the first time that the center, i.e. Washington DC, has gotten so much resistance from the states, raising the question: will the center hold in the face of growing opposition to its ruinous financial and political practices?

2) But North Dakota has also been busy in other areas relative to Federal government overreach. In mid-March, 2015, the North Dakota house passed legislation that would create processes in the state constitution “restricting state and local government personnel and financial resources [only] to purposes that are consistent with the Constitution of the United States.” It would bar North Dakota “from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer, or cooperate with [a] designated federal action” that is deemed unconstitutional through “passage of an initiative or referendum pursuant to section 1 of article III [of the state constitution]; a law enacted by the legislative assembly; or pursuing any other available legal remedy.”

According to news reports, the legislation is specifically aimed at enforcement of Obama Care, Federal gun control efforts, and Obama’s executive orders. If the legislation is passed by the state senate, it will be voted on by the citizens of North Dakota next fall and become law if approved by the voters, bypassing the need for the governor’s signature.

3) Recently, the Arkansas state house of representatives passed a Convention of States resolution on its second try to reign in Federal government overreach. Do to citizen pressure, the second try passed with flying colors by a vote of 52 to 33.

4) Now while much, but not all, of the state pushback against onerous and bad Federal programs and laws has been done in Republican controlled states, it is still rare when a major Democratic organization comes out fully against a Federal dictate. Such was the case earlier this year when the Washington State Democratic Party became the first Democratic State Party in the nation to pass a resolution against Common Core.

The resolution, Resolution Opposing Common Core State Standards, calls for the Washington state legislature and the superintendent of public instruction to withdraw from the Common Core tenets and requirements. Specifically the resolution calls for:

Resolution Opposing Common Core State Standards

WHEREAS the copyrighted (and therefore unchangeable) Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a set of controversial top-down K-12 academic standards that were promulgated by wealthy private interests without research-based evidence of validity and are developmentally inappropriate in the lowest grades; and

WHEREAS, as a means of avoiding the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment prohibition against federal meddling in state education policy, two unaccountable private trade associations–the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)–have received millions of dollars in funding from the Gates Foundation and others to create the CCSS; and

WHEREAS the U.S. Department of Education improperly pressured state legislatures into adopting the Common Core State Standards and high-stakes standardized testing based on them as a condition of competing for federal Race to the Top (RTTT) stimulus funds that should have been based on need; and

WHEREAS as a result of Washington State Senate Bill 6669, which passed the State legislature on March 11, 2010, the Office of the Superintendent of Instruction (OSPI) adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on July 20, 2011; and

WHEREAS this adoption effectively transfers control over public school standardized testing from locally elected school boards to the unaccountable corporate interests that control the CCSS and who stand to profit substantially; and

WHEREAS the Washington State Constitution also calls for public education to be controlled by the State of Washington through our elected State legislature, our elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction and our elected local school boards; and

WHEREAS implementation of CCSS will cost local school districts hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for standardized computer-based tests, new technology, new curricula and teacher training at a time when Washington is already insufficiently funding K-12 Basic Education without proven benefit to students; and WHEREAS some states have already withdrawn from CCSS;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we call upon the Washington State legislature and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to withdraw from the CCSS and keep K-12 education student-centered and accountable to the people of Washington State.

Keeping accountability local and within their control, telling the Feds to pound sand in the process. Sounds like a call for freedom against the tyranny of Washington politicians.

5) One area that we have not talked about a lot in this series is the failure of Washington to dictate a nutritious and effective food program for school kids, a pet project of Michelle Obama. This is another centrally controlled and failing program from Washington that failed to understand the real world. Obesity and poor eating habits in this country are a public health problems, it cannot be resolved by simply dictating lunch menus to tens of thousands of school districts how to feed tens of millions of kids.

As a result of not understanding the root causes, schools all across the country have seen mountains of wasted food being tossed in the garbage on a daily basis, as kids are opting to either bring a lunch or not eat at all. This is causing severe budget problems for school districts who were relying on school lunch revenue in their budgets.

A solution to the Washington imposed problem or wasted food is being implemented in Nebraska. In school districts around Lincoln, the schools are partnering with the Nebraska Farmers union to take the school lunch refuse and use it for compost for the Union’s worm farm.

One Lincoln area school, Culler Middle School, averages about 11,600 pounds of food refuse per month and is considering joining the program: “Composting gives them more hands-on experience. They can see how their waste is going to be turned into a useful product rather than going into a landfill,” says Brittney Albin, interim recycling coordinator at Lincoln Public Schools.

This is the kind of thing that happens when the Washington political class tries to resolve problems that they have neither the authority or expertise to do: we end up feeding their mistakes and overreach to the worms.

But it is not just Nebraska where the locals are pushing back on this failed Washington program. In Rhode Island, school lunch leftovers are feeding some 3,000 pigs on a Rhode Island farm. The pigs are enjoying “half-eaten tuna sandwiches and other food scraps students discard during their lunch periods” as part of a new recycling program established by the town of Cumberland, according to WoonsocketCall.com.

Washington programs that end up feeding worms and pigs. No wonder the disgust and resistance to the Federal government is growing.

6) But it is not just state governments that are rebelling and pushing back. In Washington state earlier this year over 1,000 gun owners showed up at a rally in the Washington state capital of Olympia to protest a recently passed gun control law in that state. And not only did they show up, they showed up with their guns openly visible on their sides, in clear violation of the new law.

In addition, many in attendance exchanged guns with other attendees or sold guns to others, in direct violation of the new law. Police officers on duty made no effort to enforce the new law.

Wow, rebellions brewing across the country in state legislatures and on the streets by ordinary citizens. Washington has stirred up a hornets nest across a wide spectrum of illegal and immoral actions and those living in America outside of the Beltway are having no part of it. Which raises the central question: if the rest of America stops listening to and stops obeying Washington laws and dictates, will the center hold?



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w







Sunday, April 26, 2015

April, 2015, Part 1, Will The Center Hold?

On a regular basis we discuss a continuing theme in this post. “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen such a push back against an overreaching Federal government and Washington political class at all levels of government and at the individual citizen level. From Obama Care to gun control to education to Common Core to spying on innocent civilians, across the country people are finally saying enough and have started to rebel against Washington dictates and laws.

Which brings to two very interesting questions:
  1. What if Washington passed a law and everyone the country simply ignored it?
  2. Would the center hold or would the Republic splinter apart?
Don’t believe that the center is possibly in danger? Insert the phrase “will the center hold” into the search box above or read on today and for the next few days to see where the rebellion has spread to.

1) A major source of irritation and push back against Washington has been with Common Core, the Washington based overhaul of education in the country which attempts to dictate a top down approach to education. We have often discussed how badly this program educates are kids based on actually testing results and how states, schools and parents are rebelling against education dictates from a far away and out of touch Washington.

How deep is the push back? Well, on Long Island in New York, twice as many parents have taken their kids out of the the Common Core testing exams this year vs. the previous year. In one school district, over 80% of the parents decided their kids should not be subjected to the Common Core tests. Other school districts on the island have had opt rates over 50%. Thus, we are not talking about a small minority of rebellious parents, we are talking about the majority of parents in certain school districts.

Which gets us to the question: what happens if everyone takes their kids out of Common Core testing, does the Common Core program die a well deserved death? We shall see. For a look at the opt out rate for Common Core in every Long Island school district go to:


2) One movement that we have not talked a lot about in this theme but which is certainly related is the Convention Of States movement. This effort aims to put together a coalition of states that will press for Constitutional changes that include the annual balancing of the Federal budget and term limits for Federal politicians. Two thirds of the state need to pass legislation calling for a Convention of States and that movement is progressing nicely towards that number across the country.

A week ago, the Tennessee Senate formally passed legislation calling for a Convention of States by a vote of 23 to 5. The vote was this strong despite out of state efforts and money to derail it.

3) The Personal Liberty website posted some state by state efforts to rebel against the Feds in a March 24, 2015 article by Michael Boldin:
  • In Arizona, legislation was recently passed in the state senate, by a vote of 17 to 12, that would ignore any restrictions that would inhibit the right to keep and bear arms in the state.
  • A similar bill to protect Second Amendment rights in Montana was recently passed by both houses of the state legislature and is headed for the governor’s office for approval and enactment.
  • Similar efforts are are underway in the Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state legislatures.
  • Idaho was the first state in the country in 2014 to pass state level legislation designed to prevent any new Federal gun control efforts.
  • In 2014, Arizona voters approved Proposition 303 which allow Arizonans to try experimental medical treatments that have not yet been approved by the Federal government.
  • In 2015, Wyoming and Arkansas enacted so-called “right-to-try” laws and similar legislation is pending in Virginia, Montana, Indiana, Utah, and Mississippi, all intended to go around the FDA’s glacier drug approval process: “These laws are a no-brainer,” said Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. “When someone is on their deathbed, the fact that FDA regulations would let them die rather than try, has got to be one of the most inhumane policies of the federal government. Every state should nullify the FDA like this.”
  • The Federal government allow hemp to be grown for medical research purposes only but it is currently being actively farmed in Colorado and Vermont in defiance of that Federal law.
  • In addition, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Washington, Connecticut, Missouri, Texas, Florida and North Dakota are in various legislative stages of allowing widespread hemp farming in their states.
  • Last year Utah and New Hampshire passed laws that ban each state from participating in any warrantless eavesdropping activity on its citizens by the Federal government.
  • Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina and other states have introduced legislation to ban all “material support or resources” to all Federal bulk warrantless spying programs.
  • Legislation is under way , Montana, New York, Missouri,Vermont, Massachusetts, and Oregon to block a nationwide car license plate tracking program.
  • Legislation in Arizona and Texas is moving ahead to ban enforcement of an Obama Care tenet.
Many states and many issues, much rebellion and push back, will the center hold? 

4) Arizona has been one of the most active states in telling the Feds to pound sand. It is working on two new pieces of legislation in that vein:
  • The first piece of legislation, Arizona House Bill 2368, prevents the state of Arizona from funding any executive orders issued by President Obama, or policy directives issued by the Department of Justice. The bill would prohibit “this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.” It also “prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with a policy directive issued by the U.S. DOJ to law enforcement agencies in this state that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.”
  • The second bill, House Bill 2643, stops state and local governments from using state funds to enforce and implement the Obama Care. 
Both bills passed the Arizona House and will now move to the Senate. 

Wow, a state insisting that the Federal government and current Presidential administration follow the Constitution. Amazing and unfortunately, very rare. 

But maybe the tide is turning. Dozens of instances where states across the country are making a stand for the rule of law, common sense, and the protection of its citizens and their rights. The center is getting shaken on the edges, will it hold? More shaking tomorrow.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w




Friday, April 24, 2015

April, 2015, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: Earth Day Forecast Fails

Every month we revisit the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” The theme started when I got tired of people like Al Gore and others yelling and slandering anyone who dared to disagree with their view of global warming, since then rebranded as “climate change.” Yelling and demeaning people is no way to win them over to your view, which is what the Al Gores of the world are still doing.

Thus, we set off to explore ALL science, research, and realities relative to global warming, not just the handpicked science that global warming advocates cherry pick. What we have found through the years is that it is very realistic and in tune with the real world to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Much science and research has been shown to debunk Al Gore’s way of thinking and slandering. And we have brought counter evidence to his view of the world every month for years. To access those previous posts, just enter the search term "I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above. 

Our intention is to start an adult, mature, science based conversation based on all available information. That has certainly not been the intention of Al Gore types. They have wanted to browbeat their views into disbelievers heads. And even if they are right about global warming, which we have proven they are quite possibly wrong about, they come up with no plans that would reunite the world around a solution. 

They only want the United States to curtail their carbon footprint, a reduction that would be dwarfed by the increasing carbon footprint of the rest of the world, especially China and India. All they would end up doing is briefly forestalling their end result while crippling the economic growth and vitality of the United States.

The first post on this theme was published earlier this week and can be accessed at:


Today we will focus on Earth Day news and themes as it relates to forecasting climate conditions.

1) Mark Perry writing for the American Enterprise Institute on April 21, 2015 talked about “18 Spectacularly Wrong Apocalyptic Predictions Made Around The Time of the First Earth Day in 1970.” Back in 1970, many climate scientists were making dire predictions of what was definitely, probably, or possibly could happen to the climate and quality of nature if immediate steps were not taken. 

Sound familiar? Change the date and emphasis on pollution to an emphasis on climate change in 2015, We must make drastic changes NOW, we must lessen our carbon footprint NOW, etc. to avoid dire consequences. 45 years after the first Earth Day and the climate predictions it spawned, ask yourself how accurate those climate scientists were in predicting the future of Mother Nature, predictions that were originally compiled in a Reason magazine article in 2000, thirty years after the first Earth Day: 

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Comment: 45 years later, civilization has not ended.

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. Comment: we have survived 45 years later.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” Comment: we are far from extinct from a nature perspective.

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” Comment: while there are still food shortage problems in Third World countries, nowhere close to 100 million people are dying each year from lack of food. 

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” Comment: 45 years later we are still waiting for “unbelievable consequences.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” Comment: 45 years later and no such “die off” has occurred.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” Comment: while there have been famines since 1970, they have been nowhere close to the devastation that was predicted.

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” Comment: contemporary scientists’ predictions back then were grossly wrong.

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” Comment: another miss, plenty of light just about everyday all around the world.

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate. Comment: domestic fishing industry still alive and vibrant.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in his 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles. Comment: still no fatal smog disasters.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. Comment: life expectancy is about twice what was predicted in 1970.

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'” Comment: crude oil supplies have never been higher given technology advances in drilling.

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990. Comments: mining has never been more robust in order to feed the industrial needs of China and the rest of the world.

16. Senator Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Comment: wrong.

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” Comment: an Ice Age prediction, quite the polar opposite of global warming.

Quite the horrendous track record of incorrect predictions and forecasts from “scientists.” Now, one could make the case that drastic action was taken to clean up pollution that avoided what would have been correct predictions from these folks. However, consider:
  • Most of the doomsday forecasters did not say these disasters could be avoided by taking action, they were framed in the context that they would happen regardless of human actions. 
  • While a lot of America’s pollution was reduced since then, it was not because it was eliminated, it was because it was exported to the rest of the world along with our manufacturing needs. Thus, the avoidance of the above predictions was not because of drastic reductions in pollution, that pollution was just moved elsewhere where we cannot see it in this country. 
  • These doomsday predictions were said with the same confidence and conviction that today’s global warming/climate advocates make their claims even those these 18 claims above all turned out to be false. 
  • Regardless of what actions humans took and what improvements have happened to the climate in light of pollution controls, many of these predictions independent of pollution control actions still did not occur, e.g. Ice Age onset, running out of oil, running out of metals and ores, etc. 
Now, just because these scientists were grossly wrong thirty years ago, that does not mean that today’s global warming scientists are wrong. However, given the atrociously poor track record of climate scientists’ forecasting models, shouldn’t today’s global warming/climate change debate be done so that ALL scientific research and data is considered, not just the cherry picked science of people like Al Gore and others? 

Given the atrociously poor track record of forecasting models, shouldn’t people like Al Gore have a little humility in presenting their case rather that wildly accusing doubters that they are racists, homophobes, and idiots for not believing him? How about a little bit of calm, adult conversation, considering that most climate forecasts have been flat out wrong over time.

According to the article, there was prediction that actually did come true long ago, a prediction not from a climate scientists of the time but by journalist Ronald Bailey who wrote in 2000 in his article, “What will Earth look like when Earth Day 60 rolls around in 2030?” Bailey predicted: “There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak.” 

In other words, the hype, hysteria and spectacularly wrong apocalyptic climate predictions will continue, promoted by the “environmental grievance hustlers.” Sound familiar and correct?

2) The leading scientists from that first Earth Day era made some pretty dramatic and draconian predictions: by 2015, we should have used up just about all of the earth’s natural resources, overpopulation should have already lead to widespread famine and deaths, pollution should have already blotted out the sun, and possibly civilization should have ended.

But according to a recent accounting of the world’s situation by the Heritage Foundation, we could not be much further away from these wrong forecasts from 1970:

1) Natural resources are more abundant and affordable today than ever before in history. Short-term (sometimes decades-long) volatility aside, the price of most natural resources—from cocoa to cotton to coal—is cheaper today in real terms than 50, 100, or 500 years ago. This has happened even as the world’s population has nearly tripled. Technology has far outpaced depletion of the Earth’s resources.

2) Energy—the master resource—is super abundant. Remember when people like Paul Ehrlich nearly 50 years ago and Barack Obama just three years ago—warned the we were running out of oil and gas. Today, thanks to the new age of oil and gas thanks to fracking, the United States has hundreds of years of petroleum and an estimated 290 years of coal. Keep in mind, this may be a low-ball estimate; since 2000, the Energy Information Administration’s estimates of recoverable reserves have actually increased by more than 7 percent.

We’re not running out of energy, we are running into it.

3) Air and water. Since the late 1970s, pollutants in the air have plunged. Lead pollution plunged by more than 90 percent, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide by more than 50 percent, with ozone and nitrogen dioxide declining as well. This means that emissions per capita have declined even as the economy in terms of real GDP nearly tripled. By nearly every standard measure it is much, much, much cleaner today in the United States than 50 and 100 years ago. The air is so clean now that the EPA worries about carbon dioxide which isn’t even a pollutant. (And, by the way, carbon emissions are falling too, thanks to fracking). One hundred years ago, about one in four deaths in the U.S. was due to contaminants in drinking water. But from 1971-2002, fewer than three people per year in the U.S. were documented to have died from water contamination.

4) There is no Malthusian nightmare of overpopulation. Birth rates have fallen by about one-half around the world over the last 50 years. Developed countries are having too few kids, not too many. Even with a population of 7.3 billion people, average incomes, especially in poor countries, have surged over the last 40 years. The number of people in abject poverty fell by 1 billion from 1981 to 2011, even as global population increased by more than 1.5 billion.

5) Global per capita food production is 40 percent higher today than as recently as 1950. In most nations the nutrition problem today is obesity—too many calories consumed—not hunger. The number of famines and related deaths over the last 100 years has fallen in half. More than 12 million lives on average were lost each decade from the 1920s-1960s to famine. Since then, fewer than 4 million lives on average per decade were lost. Tragically, these famines are often caused by political corruption—not nature. Furthermore, the price of food has fallen steadily in the U.S.—and most other nations steadily for 200 years.

6) The rate of death and physical destruction from natural disasters or severe weather changes has plummeted over the last 50 to 100 years. Loss of life from hurricanes, floods, heat, droughts, and so on is at or near record lows. This is because we have much better advance warning systems, our infrastructure is much more durable, and we have things like air conditioning, to adapt to weather changes. We are constantly discovering new ways to harness and even tame nature.

What really happened since 1970? Mankind used its brains and technical know how to fix what was wrong or potentially wrong in life. That is what we should be doing today relative to carbon. Find a way to make coal usage good, its usage is not going away. Find a way to make a car that gets 100 miles a gallon, cars and the freedom they create are not going away. Find a way to to better insulate homes and offices, that prevents carbon from ever being used or needed in the first place.

I would prefer to use science and technology to make life better vs. the Al Gore types that want to selectively use some science to scare the life out of us without providing solutions. Science has given us cheap energy and abundant food supplies. Global warming advocates want to take rather than give. Based the track record of climate forecasts, I would much rather believe in science to solve problems as they occur than to chase problems that may not even exist.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org

http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w