November, 2016, Part 2, Political Class Insanity: The Fiscal PLight of Social Security, A Lawless Presidency, and Another Housing Market Crisis

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

The current monthly record for the number of posts that were needed to cover one month's worth of insanity is ten. We equaled that record last month when we needed ten days to cover one month’s worth of political class insanity. There is a very good chance that the ten day record could fall this month since as we get closer and closer to the election, the volume of ineptness grows almost exponentially. 

But today and for all of the insanity posts this month, let’s start off with a welcome piece of honest political dialog. It comes from a State Department spokesperson. Mark Toner, who is about to start the daily State Department press briefing. In a joking matter, he makes the following quote: "Welcome to the State Department. I think we have some interns in the back. Welcome. Good to see you in this exercise in transparency and democracy." 

He then burst out laughing at his own quote, indicating he also knew what a joke the Obama administration has been, especially Mr. Toner’s State Department, when it comes to cover ups, lack of transparency, denial of Freedom of Information Act requests, the prosecution of whistleblowers, etc. But at least it was a little refreshing to finally hear some actual honesty out of Washington as we see from the actual clip of the news conference:

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/08/when-even-the-state-department-spokesperson-cant-keep-a-straight-face-about-things-anymore-video/

With that context of honesty, let’s see what other insanity has been going down:

1) Yesterday, we discussed the reality that unless the current trend of Federal government spending is sharply curtailed, by 2046 every American family will be paying an incremental $12,000 a year in Federal taxes to cover the cost of the national debt interest payments and the rest of the Federal government expenses. One of the prime drivers of these ever escalating Federal government costs is the Social Security Administration. 

How bad is the fiscal condition of the Social Security process? Consider an article by Lauren Bowman and Romina Boccia that was written for the Heritage Foundation on October 3, 2016:

• The title of the article kind of says it all: “Projections Differ, but Social Security is in Deep Trouble.”
• Social Security is on a path to be fiscal insolvency that will result in both deep payment cuts and large payroll tax increases.
• The latest Congressional Budget Office estimates project that the program’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust fund will run out in 2029.
• The Social Security Trustees are a little more optimistic but they still believe that the fund will run out of funny pretty soon also, in 2034.
• While the assumptions used in each forecast differ slightly (e.g. the Trustees’ model assumed a fertility rate of 2.0, the CBO assumed a rate of 1.9), each model predicts disaster within the next 18 years.
• While these two models illustrate how bad things are, readers of this blog know that things are already worse than this. Social Security has been in a negative cash flow situation for a number of years now, paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. 
• The trust funds are really nothing more than a Federal government Ponzi scheme since neither of them contain any real wealth. They are just a mountain of worthless IOUs that the Treasury acknowledges it took from the Social Security administration over the past five decades to help finance the wasteful spending of the Washington political class.
• So the trust funds are nothing more than an accounting gimmick that cover up the fact that general tax funds are already being used to fund the Social Security shortfall. And this shortfall will get larger and larger over time as the cash flow shortfall worsens and more and more Baby Boomers retire. 

Ways to fix the system are pretty clear: raising the retirement age for those that can afford to hold off on receiving Social Security payments (means testing), denying Social Security payments to the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, etc., folks who are wealthy beyond our dreams and who will never need a Social Security payment, cleaning the massive fraud that likely costs the Social Security process upwards of $100 billion a year, and implementing economic strategies that results in a robust and growing economy, that will increase the amount of Social Security taxes flowing into the system. Easy steps on paper, probably never to implemented by a cowardly and inept Washington political class.

2) We have often classified the Obama administration as the most unlawful, un-Constitutional Presidency of all time. We listed out our reasons in the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Apparently, we are not alone in that assessment when you total up how many times the Obama administration has had its actions and executive orders slapped back at him by the Supreme Court and lower courts, as listed out by an article by Fred Lucas, writing for the Heritage Foundation on October 7, 2016:

• According to an analysis by Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, Obama has only had a win rate of 45% for cases brought before the Supreme Court.
• His five predecessors had a win rate between 60 and 75% in front of the Supreme Court.
• In Shapiro’s opinion:“Every president ratchets up executive power, it’s what Congress and the courts have allowed to happen over the years. President Obama has pushed beyond that in pushing administratively what he failed to do legislatively. This reflects an Obama administration pattern of ignoring the rule of law and usurping the role of Congress,” 
• Alden Abbott, deputy director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation agreed with this lawless Presidency argument conclusion: “The U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts have overturned Obama administration actions that went beyond constitutional and statutory limits at an unprecedented rate, as documented by statistical studies. This reflects an Obama administration pattern of ignoring the rule of law and usurping the role of Congress—as illustrated, for example, in its unauthorized efforts to rewrite the immigration laws and the Obamacare statute without congressional authorization,” Abbott said.

More agreement with us that this has been a very lawless, arrogant, and reckless administration relative to do things it was not legally allowed to do. A partial list of the major court slap downs include the following wide ranging spectrum of where the Obama administration got out of control: 

1. Executive Amnesty
2. School Gender Identity Restrooms Mandate
3. Appointing Without Confirmation (unanimous Supreme Court slap down)
4. Delayed Carbon Regulations
5. Searching Cellphones
6. Obamacare Judicial Setback On Subsidy Funding
7. Regulating Water

Most lawless President in my lifetime, the courts back me up.

3) One last piece of depressing government fiscal irresponsibility for today. Remember how the Federal government, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, got all entangled with the housing market, so much so that when the housing market bubble popped the American taxpayer had to bail out these two government entities to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars? Remember how Obama and the Democratic Congress was going to fix all of that so that the American taxpayer never again would have to step in and bail out these two mortgage giants in the event of another housing meltdown? 

Well, eight years after the housing market collapse, the same collapse that took down Fannie and Freddie, nothing has apparently changed. According to an article from the Economist, that was summarized in the September 2, 2016 issue of The Week magazine, the Federal government now controls and is responsible for backing the vast majority of new mortgages being issued in the country today. Thus, if the housing market collapses again and home borrowers stop paying their mortgage payments, it is the American taxpayer who will get stiffed, not investors or mortgage issuers.

To quote the article: “We presume that the mortgage-debt monster has been tamed. In reality, U.S. taxpayers are more at risk than ever.” Nice going, Washington. You initially botch up the entire housing and mortgage market, force taxpayers to bail you out of your mistakes, and then turn around and to the exact same thing again, possibly even worse. Insanity.

Another day, another set of insanity: risking all again in the housing market, a lawless President confirmed, and Social Security still hurtling towards insolvency. More insanity and idiocy 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:


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

March, 2016, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagreesAs we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims, in our last post for this month under the theme that “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science”:1) The Cato Institute and author Patrick J. Michaels recently did a nice job of reviewing some of the myths and realities of climate over the past hundred years or so, showing that global warming is a natural occurring cyclical process, that alternates with global cooling:

• Between 1920 and World War II,global temperatures rose three quarters of a degree Fahrenheit even though there was far less carbon spewing economic activity going on.
• Temps then cooled down, despite more carbon burning going on, and then temps warmed up again from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s by about the same amount as what happened in the early 1900s.
• Most scientists, if not politicians, have concluded that temps reached their current level in the late 1990s and have stayed constant since then.
• Some global warming advocates claim that temps started climbing again, based on one year’s worth of 2015 data, when temps jumped up.
• But this jump in temps could have happened because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stopped using satellite-senses sea surface temperatures, a measurement process that had been going on since the mid-1970s, and replaced this generally accepted measurement process with taking temperatures from the “cooling-water-intake tubes of ocean going vessels.”
• Really? Cooling water intake tubes of ocean going vessels? Mr. Michaels claims that scientific literature is in agreement that this new process results in large measurement errors since a ship’s structure conducts heat, is affected by the sun’s rays, and the intake tubes of different ships measure temps at different ocean levels.
• Thus, one year’s worth of data from a new measurement process is hardly conclusive when it comes to global warming proof.
• But there is another factor in the higher 2015 temps since in 2015 a massive El Nino weather set up in the Pacific Ocean.
• Historically, El Nino periods always raise temps worldwide because of how it affects Pacific Ocean currents. 
• For example, as a result of the 1998 El Nino, global average surface temperature jumped up slightly less than a quarter of a degree while in 2015 the global average temps jumped up a bit more than a quarter of a degree, thus no big deal.
• In 1999, the year after that 1998 El Nino, global temps dropped almost three tenths of a degree, wiping out the jump in temps in 1998, a reaction that is likely to happen once the 2015 El Nino dissipates.

The article goes on to show how another temperature measurement process also debunks some global warming theories:“Instead of relying on debatable surface-temperature information, consider instead readings in the free atmosphere (technically, the lower troposphere) taken by two independent sensors: satellite sounders and weather balloons. As has been shown repeatedly by University of Alabama climate scientist John Christy, since late 1978 (when the satellite record begins), the rate of warming in the satellite-sensed data is barely a third of what it was supposed to have been, according to the large family of global climate models now in existence. Balloon data, averaged over the four extant data sets, shows the same.”One last global warming doubter set of data: Analyses from the biggest reinsurer insurance company, Munich Re, and University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. proved that weather-related losses have not grown at all over the past 25 years. In fact, if anything, weather-related losses have trended downward in a non-statistically significant speed. 2015 recorded the second lowest weather related loss of Global World Productivity the entire time it was measured.A lot of real data from real scientists again showing how rational it is to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.2) One last piece of science and reality in the global warming debate for today and this month. Yesterday, we discussed the reality that if Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan goes into effect it will have a minimal impact on the environment, according to his own EPA analysis and forecast, but will have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy and jobs. This conclusion was recently reinforced by an article on the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce website in an article written by Sean Hackbarth, “Setting Things Straight: EPA’s Carbon Regulations Will Not Save People Money.” Details of his article include the following:

• EPA head Gina McCarthy claims the EPA’s Clean Power Plan will save the country and Americans billions of dollars a year.
• Which on the surface, from a basic economics perspective, is a ridiculous claim to make since the plan will likely shut down many coal powered power plants and immediately reduce the amount of electricity available throughout the country.
• Economic theory tells us that if you reduce the supply of anything but allow demand to grow, prices HAVE to go up, no possibility of anything else happening.
• Which is exactly what is going to happen according to research and analysis done by NERA Economic Consulting.
• NERA Economic Consulting found that 40 states could see an average retail electricty price increase of 10% or more.
• Their state by state analysis found that two states, North Dakota and Utah, could see an obscene increase in electricity rates of over 40%.
• The following chart highlights the economic devastation across the most heavily impacted states:

So, if electricity is going to go up by double digit figures for just about every American, Ms. McCarthy, where is America going to save billions of dollars? Simple economic theory and NERA analysis shows that either you are not being truthful with America or you simply do not understand reality. Double digit increases in electricity prices for a global warming theory that grows weaker and weaker every day.

That will do it for this month’s discussion on how to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. Today we learned about how weather patterns have short term effects on temperatures and that short term effects on temperatures do not mean the end of the world is near or that global warming is real. And we learned that somehow Obama's Clean Air Plan was going to save us billions of dollars while simultaneously raising the cost of our electricity by over 40% in some states. Insanity.

Part 1, Why There Is Hope To Better Educate Our Kids, Something That The Political Class Never Provided, Hope and Good Educations

It is no secret to anyone in the know that we are doing a terrible job of educating our kids in this country. On international achievement tests, there are usually kids from dozens of countries who score better on all different types of tests than American kids. It is truly a national disgrace.

A national disgrace especially when you consider that we have spent more and more on public education in this country over the years and have seen no improvement of positive return on that spending. This embarrassment was captured by the following graph from the Cato Institute, using California as an example:



It is not as if the American political class has not tried to fix the problem, they have just proven they do not know how to fix the problem, as witnessed by the graph above. Their solution always involves spending more money which in turn has gotten us nothing. Their latest attempt, via the so-called Common Core effort, has also proven to be a disaster. Where Common Core has been instituted, in states like Massachusetts and Maryland, the results have been a disaster. 

At one time, Massachusetts turned out the smartest kids in the country. Under Common Core, they have slipped to seventh place. Several years after Common Core was established in Maryland, test scores have plummeted:


Step 27 proposed a solution to this problem that did not include any input from the American political class. Over the past several decades they have proven themselves incapable of not injecting politics, greed, and their lack of knowledge of education principles and strategies into the education process. As a result, we have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars funding the Federal Department of Education and lord knows how many billions of dollars developing Common Core, of which both investments have failed horribly and disgracefully.

But that does not mean that we cannot heal our education processes and start turning out smart kids again. In fact, there are success stories in this field all across the country, a few of which we will discuss over the next two days. One of the common themes underlying these success stories is that the political class has been cut out of the education process, resulting in tremendous successes without tremendous costs.

1) An ABC TV News out of Los Angeles reported back in June, 2015 that an all boys high school in Watts has a 100% college acceptance rate. Yes, a school in Watts, one of the roughest and poorest sections of any American city actually has a high school where all of the graduating students got into college. I doubt there are many schools anywhere in any socio-economic class that can make that same boast.

Details of the story include the following:

• The school is called Verbum Del School and has been successfully run by the Jesuits for the past 50 years.
• This past year, every senior at the all boys school has been accepted to college.
• And I am assuming these are not only community college acceptances, given the goals of some of the students quoted in the article: "I want to be an orthopedic surgeon or an oral surgeon," said Zachary Byrge, the salutatorian for Verbum Dei's class of 2015. And, "Most immediately, I want to major in mathematics and do a program with Georgetown and Columbia, where I can become an engineer," valedictorian Nicholas Spates said.
• All of the school’s students come from low income families and are in fact academically lagging one to two years when they start at the school, making the college acceptance story even more amazing.
• Juan Perez, Jr. is the first in his family to go to college, having been accepted to St. John's University in Minnesota: "They always tell me every single day -- since I'm going to be the first person in my family to be going -- they're extremely proud of me." 

Outstanding, and nowhere in the story, which can be viewed at

http://abc7.com/education/all-boys-watts-high-school-has-100-percent-college-acceptance/777375/, 

is there a mention of Common Core, teachers unions, politicians, etc. Just dedicated teachers, families, and students proving that you can still get a good education in this country WITHOUT any “help” from Washington politicians.

2) This is a somewhat older story but it still applies to what we are talking about today. An article on the www.sfbayview.com website from June 28, 2013 talked about “10 Black Child Geniuses You Should Know.” Writer Amir Shaw started off his article with the following, pretty accurate stereotype descriptions: “If you only watched the evening news or depended on pop culture to paint a picture of young Blacks, you would probably think that the majority of Black youngsters were only ambitious about sports and music – or caught up in crime and debauchery.”

But he goes onto to describe the amazing educational accomplishments in a variety of fields of ten young black people who are achieving success “at a high level in science, math, classical music, chess and other knowledge-based areas and preparing to change society.” Mr. Shaw's profiles follow:



Stephen R. Stafford II - Stephen entered Morehouse College at the age of 11 and picked up three majors. Now 16, he is currently studying computer science and mathematics. He will likely graduate at 17.



Mabou Loiseau- By the age of 7, Mabou spoke French, Creole, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and Russian. Additionally, she plays the harp, clarinet, violin, drums, guitar and piano.




Andrew Koonce - Andrew is a master violinist based in Atlanta. He was named concertmaster, the most skilled musician, of the Georgia Music Association’s All-State Middle School Orchestra.




Autum Ashante - Raised by a single father, Autum was ridiculed by conservatives at the age of 7 for writing a poem that highlighted the travesty of slavery. Autum never wavered and mastered languages such as Arabic, Swahili and Spanish. She scored 149 on the standard IQ test. At age 13, she was accepted into the University of Connecticut.




Imafidon family - The Imafidon family is known as the smartest family in the U.K. The youngest siblings, Peter and Paula, made history by becoming the youngest students to enroll in secondary school. Their older sister, Anne-Marie, was the youngest student to pass A-level computing at the age of 13.




Rochelle Ballantyne - At 17, Rochelle is one of the top chess players in the world. She is currently on the verge of becoming the first Black American female to earn the title of chess master.




Ginger Howard - Ginger is the youngest Black American woman to become a pro golfer. Howard is competing to become the fifth Black American woman to join the LPGA Tour.




Tony Hansberry II - After Tony didn’t place in the eighth grade science fair, Tony interned at Shands Hospital and developed a method of reducing the amount of time it takes to perform hysterectomies and potentially reducing the risk of complications after the procedure. He was honored for his contributions.




Chelsea Dock - Chelsea has been an accomplished pianist since the age of 5. Now 13, Chelsea has performed at Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Steinway Hall. She’s also an artist and straight A student.




Daquan Chisholm - Daquan created a walkie-talkie, bulletproof helmet at the age of 12. He’s currently working with Johns Hopkins University to gather funding to patent the idea. 

Unbelievable, great accomplishments in a variety of fields at such young ages. It is possible to to educate our kids to high levels of attainment, these ten kids in this article prove that reality as do the kids in Watts.  

But despite having spent trillions of dollars via the Federal government to educate our kids, the vast majority of them get their butts and brains kicked when the are tested against kids from around the world. That is why we need the politics and the politicians out of the process, they have already proven they are incapable of attaining high education results despite high levels of funding.

Let’s find out what the educators of these fine young people were doing right, and as proposed in Step 27 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” let’s apply those successful education approaches to the rest of the kids in this country. They deserve better than what the Department of Education, Common Core, and today’s politicians have been giving them.

More successful education stories 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.comIt 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:http://www.reason.com/http://www.cato.org/http://www.robertringer.com/

http://realpolichick.blogspot.com

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

October, 2014, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: A Failing Grade so Far, Kicking Spouses Out Of Their Insurance Coverage, and The Costs of This Disaster conitnue To Rise

Over the past few years, but especially over the past fourteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers or into unemployed workers.
• It has generally increased the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the negative ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate any kind of successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. The first post in this month’s updates can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/october-2014-part-1-unfolding-disaster.html

1) On about the one year anniversary of the disastrous rollout of Obama Care in 2013, Michael Tanner, writing for the Cato Institute on September 28, 2014 gave his expert opinion and grade on how the legislation has worked out in different categories. Not surprisingly, he gave it an overall grade of F based on the following analyses and realities:

• Earlier this October, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner testified in front of Congress that about 7.3 million people actually signed up and paid for insurance for insurance through the Obama Care exchanges, down about 10% from the from early estimates of 8.1 million. 
• The bigger question that we have already answered with data available to us how many of those were actually INCREMENTAL Americans who did not have health insurance prior to Obama Care. Our estimates but that real number at only about a one or two million truly pure, incrementally insured people as a result of billions of dollars spent on Obama Care.
• Mr. Tanner takes a slightly different approach to ours and says the best estimates suggest that roughly 8 million people gained insurance under Obama Care, but roughly half of those were enrolled in Medicaid (outside of the exchanges), a number we did not have data for.
• He does point out that if this is true and one of the major objectives Of Obama Care was getting uninsured Americans insured, that still leaves over 40 million Americans without health care insurance.
• Despite the President’s assurances to the contrary, roughly 6 million Americans had their current and preferred health insurance policies cancelled because those policies failed to offer a lengthy-enough maternity stay, did not provide sufficient drug and alcohol rehabilitation benefits or otherwise fell short of the insurance that government bureaucrats and Obama Care supporters thought that they should have. 
• This 6 million estimate included more than 100,000 New Yorkers who are now probably not quite as happy with their replacement insurance policies via Obama Care since a study from the National Center for Public Policy Research found that Obama Care plans were usually worse than the plans they replaced, in terms of both providers covered and cost-sharing. 
• In some states, insurers have dropped plans that they offered on the exchanges initially or even withdrawn from the market altogether, forcing many Americans to get new insurance coverage again just a year after they had their original plans cancelled. 
• Not surprisingly. if judging Obama Care against President Obama’s promise that health-care reform would save us all at least $2,500 through lower premiums a year, Obama Care deserves an F since in most states, premiums and deductibles have gone up and will continue going up, a direct opposite of $2,500 in savings.
• Cost wise, about 85% of those enrolled through Obama Care exchanges are receiving subsidies, higher than predicted. This cost overrun and other factors yield a best estimate which suggests the legislation will cost $2.63 trillion over the next 10 years, which includes a whopping incremental hit to the national debt of $1.25 TRILLION. 
• Mr. Tanner also cites the detailed Federal Reserve studies form around the country that we have already cited that indicate that business owners will be taking serious steps to cut health care costs at the expense of their employees’ coverage, options, and costs.

Mr. Tanner’s closing summation says it best: “About the best thing that can be said about Obama Care’s first year is that it wasn’t quite as bad as some critics predicted. But it isn’t even close to what we were promised — and nowhere near a passing grade.

2) Just when we thought we had flushed out all of the idiocy in the legislation, a new piece of idiocy comes to light. The latest one is known as the "family glitch” principle within the law, a glitch that could cost another 1.93 million Americans their health insurance coverage.

A little background: Obama Care has provisions within the text of the law which enable those who earn below 138 percent of the poverty line qualify for Medicaid coverage and Americans who make up to 400 percent more than the poverty line to receive Federal government subsidies to financially help support their efforts to obtain health insurance coverage.

But some idiotic writing of the law resulted in the reality that this  provision does not apply to families who are offered employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). If at least one member of the family unit gets offered employee sponsored insurance options that does not cover the spouse of that employee, then this precludes that spouse from getting subsidy help even if the family income falls within the stipulated subsidy income criteria of the law. Insane.

This situation has actually arisen with a friend of mine. His company adjusted their insurance policy to account for the increased cost of Obama Care, changing their company insurance plan to cover only him and his two kids but leaving his wife exposed with no health insurance. According to Obama Care and IRS interpretation of the law, they now have to go out and buy an entirely new piece of insurance just to cover her health insurance care needs and will be ineligible for subsidies.

Before Obama Care, his company was perfectly happy to cover all family members. With Obama Care, his policy gets less attractive financially AND his spouse loses he coverage and cannot get subsidy help even though their family income would otherwise qualify.

As Nancy Pelosi once infamously and idiotically said: “We have to pass the law to see what is in it.” Four years after passing it, the nightmares that are in it seem endless.

3) One last piece of bad news for today. A Bloomberg article by Alex Wayne on September 24, 2014 spoke to the fact that the truly dysfunctional Federal government health care exchange has cost an amazing $2.1 billion so far. His estimate was based on a Bloomberg Government analysis of contracts related to the project.

What is interesting is that the Bloomberg analysis is more than twice as much as what the Obama administration will admit to, with its cost estimate being $834 million. In either case, it is pretty obvious we did not get $843 million or $2.1 billion worth of value for our taxpayer money, given the fiasco of a rollout that occurred.,

According to Peter Gosselin, a senior health-care analyst at BGov and lead author of study. "The way in which Obamacare has been rolled out has been very messy, with spending scattered across dozens of contracts, many of them predating the law and amended afterward. One of the reasons it has been implemented in the way it has been, financially, is precisely to deny opponents of the law a clear target."

One of the main management problems with the whole mess is that the construction of Federal exchange involved 60 companies, supervised by different employees of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services instead of a lead contractor, according to the inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department. The inspector general found infighting among the contractors, CMS executives and top executives at HHS, the Cabinet-level department that oversees CMS. This cat fighting was verified according to e-mails released last month by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Although a CMS spokesperson defended the work that has been done already, obviously not considering what a disaster it was, it is interesting to see the long litany of changes that have been made to the entire process, a list so long it makes you wonder how anything got done originally: "CMS takes its responsibility for spending taxpayer dollars seriously. That's why we've moved aggressively to implement extensive contracting reforms, bringing in new leadership to oversee marketplace operations, hiring a systems integrator, and ending our largest contract with CGI and moving to a new type of contract with Accenture that rewards performance."

It seems the spokesperson protests to much, to paraphase Shakespeare.

More messes, some of which even we have not run across despite reporting on this lousy piece of legislation for several years. It is the legislation that keeps n giving, unfortunately…. And it will keep on giving up the disasters at least for a few more days.

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

October, 2014 Part 2 - The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: 30 Million More Americans To Lose Coverage, Higher Costs, Lower Quality, and More

Over the past few years, but especially over the past fourteen months, we have had to devote more and more posts each month to the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This legislation, without a doubt, is the worst piece of legislation ever passed, likely passed by the most inept and useless set of Washington politicians that this country has ever had to endure. The disasters from this law include at least the following downsides:

• It has and will continue to increase the national debt.
• It will leave tens of millions of Americans still uninsured ten years from now.
• It has restricted overall economic growth.
• It raised taxes on all Americans in dozens of ways.
• It has reduced the job growth rate in this country.
• It has turned many full time workers into part time workers or into unemployed workers.
• It has generally increased the cost of health insurance, both premiums and deductibles, over what was available in the insurance market before it was passed.
• The Constitution was violated any number of times when the Obama administration unilaterally and illegally changed components of the law without the permission of Congress or the American people.
• The American people were lied to over and over, directly by the President and Democrats in Congress, on the negative ramifications of the law.
• It has caused millions of American to lose access to the current insurance policies they had.
• It has caused millions of Americans to lose access to their preferred doctors, preferred hospitals, and in many cases, current medicine treatments.
• It has likely increased the volume of people visiting hospital emergency rooms.
• It has caused thousands of doctors to retire early or change professions in order to not deal with the bureaucracy and idiocy of the law.
• It has exposed the inability of the Federal government and various state governments to develop, launch, and operate any kind of successful program.
• It has exposed millions of Americans’ personal financial information to identity thieves.
• It never addressed, and thus, never resolved, the root causes of our escalating health care costs in this country.

I am sure that I omitted some of the negative ramifications of the legislation but you get the idea. To review past discussions of past disasters from Obama Care, enter ”the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care” in the search box above. To see what disasters have popped up over just the past month or so, read on:

1) Daniel Mitchell, writing for the Townhall website on October 8, 2014, reviewed some Obama Care analyses that were done by the Cato Institute’s Mike Tanner. 

Here is what Mr. Tanner had to say about Obama Care and the promise you could keep your existing health insurance plan:

…roughly 6 million Americans were kicked off their insurance because their plans failed to offer a lengthy-enough maternity stay, didn’t provide sufficient drug and alcohol rehabilitation benefits or otherwise fell short of the insurance that federal bureaucrats thought that they should have. …on average, ObamaCare plans were worse than the plans they replaced, in terms of both providers covered and cost-sharing. A new wave of cancellations is about to begin as well. …In several states, insurers have dropped plans that they offered on the exchanges or even withdrawn from the market altogether. And if that was not bad enough, Americans with employer-based insurance may find out their insurance has to be changed starting next year.

So we pay more, get less, deal with lots of uncertainty, and still millions of Americans could not keep their original plans despite the Presidential promise and/or deception.

What about saving consumers money:

If judged against President Obama’s promise that health-care reform would save us all at least $2,500 through lower premiums, ObamaCare deserves an F. …In states where the individual market was not already dysfunctional, there were significant premium increases.

Another Presidential lie/deception.

What about the impact on taxpayers?

This summer the Congressional Budget Office announced that it had given up trying to score the cost of ObamaCare, given the frequency with which the administration was making unilateral changes to the law. …roughly 85 percent of those enrolled through exchanges are receiving subsidies, higher than predicted. Overall, the best estimates suggest the law will cost $2.63 trillion over the next 10 years. That will be paid for by $1.38 trillion in new taxes and at least $1.25 trillion in additional debt.

Over another trillion dollars in debt for the Federal government, an additional debt load of almost $11,000 for every U.S. household.

What about the impact on jobs?

…surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta confirmed that businesses are cutting employment and shifting workers to part-time positions because of ObamaCare. According to the New York Fed, 21 percent of manufacturers and 17 percent of service companies have reduced the size of their workforce because of the law. In addition, roughly 20 percent of both manufacturers and service companies said that they have shifted workers from full- to part-time jobs.The overall impact on employment could be as high as two million workers.

So, according to reputable and often government sources, Obama Care will stifle job growth, add over a trillion dollars to the national debt, generally raise insurance premiums while reducing the quality of care, and cause millions of Americans to lose access to insurance policies that they were perfectly happy to have for their specific needs.

Oh, by the way, none of these analyses include the fact that the Obama administration is likely to offer billions and billions of dollars in bailout money, really bribes, to insurance companies that partake in the Obama Care program. How can anyone argue this is not the worse piece of Federal legislation ever passed?

2) Although the Obama administration promised, and failed miserably, at being the most transparent administration ever, that has not stopped it from taking its love of secrecy, lack of transparency, and stealth over to the Obama Care website exchanges. According to an October 7, 2014 New York Times piece written by Margot Sanger-Katz, the new head of the www.healthcare.gov effort, Kevin Counihan is promising that the next round of Obama Care signups will be a tremendous improvement over the fiasco that occurred last fall.

In an interview with Alex Wayne of Bloomberg News, Mr. Counihan said his objective was to create a consumer experience so satisfying that it would result in “raving fans” for the insurance shopping site. Compared to last year’s botched rollout, he has a pretty low bar to get over for this kind of experience.

But will it really be so satisfying given the reality that the so-called improved experience and website won’t have any tools to allow consumers to see which doctors and hospitals are covered by individual insurance plans? Mr. Counihan explicitly told Bloomberg that HealthCare.gov would not change to allow consumers to comparison shop on insurance plan networks.

How is that major shortfall going to get people “raving” about the experience? Are we just supposed to blindly choose a plan and hope that it has good doctors and hospitals and that there is a broad enough selection to satisfy our family’s needs? 

When you buy a new car, you get to test the engine, sit in the seats, choose your color, see what the maintenance plans are ahead of buying, and compare that information to other dealers, that is a good consumer experience. If the government was running a car showroom, you would see the price and the options but nothing else, a totally unsatisfactory buying experience. But to expect anything more out of Obama Care would be folly.

3) While an estimated 5-6 million Americans lost access to their preferred individual health insurance policies as a result of the first wave of Obama care tenets, you might not have seen the whole carnage yet. According to an October 4, 2014 NewsMax article that interviewed health policy expert Betsy McCaughey:

• 30 million more Americans could lose their current health care coverage due to the next wave of Obama Care rules and regulations.
• These 30 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored healthcare at the end of the year because those plans will not meet the requirements of Obamacare: "Most people still get their health insurance through an employer. Thirty million people could lose their on-the-job coverage this year and be forced onto one of those exchanges."
• The reasons these policies are being killed is: "The plans that the employers bought in the small-group market are suddenly no longer eligible — and employers are going to be stuck with going to the very expensive Obama Care one-size-fits-all requirement or saying to their employees, 'I am sorry, you will have to get it somewhere else.'
• Under the Obama Care legislation, many small companies with fewer than 50 employees have insurance plans that are set to expire this year. However, as the plans expire, businesses will either be required to provide plans that meet Obama Care's long list of requirements, making them more expensive, or they can drop coverage, forcing employees to obtain coverage on their own.
• But because those companies with fewer than 50 workers are most likely to drop coverage rather than pay the higher costs due to the Obama Care requirements, millions of Americans will most likely get "a very raw deal" when those policies expire at the end of the year, according to McCaughey: "Rates will go up for quite a few people." 

Great, so if you thought six million Americans losing their preferred health care insurance plans was a tragedy, what would you call 30 million more Americans who work for small businesses losing their health insurance? All this grief, aggravation and stress for a piece of legislation that has no chance of ever being successful along any dimension of measurement. Pitiful.

That will do it for today’s disasters. Higher costs, worst quality, massive disruption of peoples’ lives, the song carries on but never changes, And worst yet, we still have more Obama Care disasters to cover 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.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

August, 2014 I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science, Part 2: More Science That Makes Being a Skeptic Worthwile

A number of years ago we wrote a series of posts under the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” We wanted to find out for ourselves, by examining every available piece of science, research, data, expert opinions, etc. to see if global warming was real or a myth. 

As a believer in science and the scientific method, we wanted to see if the rantings and ravings of people like Al Gore had any validity. And if not, finally be able to show them that you can believe in science AND figure out that global warming was a self perpetuating myth by those that had a lot to gain, either financially, personally, or from a recognition perspective.

Well, years later, and dozens of posts later that examined dozens and dozens of science and realities, I am proud to say that I am still a global warming doubter skeptic (or its marketing rebranded name of “climate change”) more than ever and have the scientific evidence to support my view, people like Al Gore be damned. You can review our exhaustive research and discussions on the matter by entering “global warming doubter” in the search box above.

Additionally, you can read our last updates to the series by starting with:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/july-2014-why-i-am-global-warming.html

We started this latest review and update yesterday and continue it today, starting below:

1) Consider a new research study that found that climate forecasting models used by global warming advocates, scientists, and government officials have been significant overestimators of global warming impacts that has occurred since the late 1950s when compared to what actually happened to the Earth’s climate. The research findings were published in the journal Environmetrics.

According to the published results, a simple comparison between observed temperatures and the forecasted temperatures from the global warming forecast models differed greatly in the tropical lower troposphere and mid-troposphere: “Over the 55-years from 1958 to 2012, climate models not only significantly over-predict observed warming in the tropical troposphere, but they represent it in a fundamentally different way than is observed.” These are the words and conclusions of Ross McKitrick, an economist with the University of Guelph in Canada and co-author of the study.

Other findings and conclusions from the research include the following:

• While all climate models forecasted that rising carbon dioxide levels in the air would cause rapid warming in the troposphere over the tropics, over time that never happened.
• Both satellites and weather balloons have not detected much warming in the tropical troposphere, which destroys the predictive integrity of the climate models. 
• According to McKitrick, not only do the climate forecast models overestimate the amount of warming in the troposphere, the models misrepresent the warming by making it look like a “smooth upward trend” over time. 
• But this research paper portends to show that in reality, temperature show that all observations the warming occurred in a “single step-change in the late 1970s coinciding with a known event (the Pacific Climate Shift), and identify no significant trend before or after.” 
• In other words, tropical tropospheric temperatures were relatively flat/not trending warmer before the late 1970s, they abruptly jumped up slightly in 1977 due to the so-called Pacific Climate Shift, and after the climate shift, temperatures flattened out once again, showing little to no warming trend.

These findings are consistent findings from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program which found in 2006 that there was a “potentially serious inconsistency” in the modeling of tropospheric warming. When reality differs from opinions, in this case forecast models, than reality always wins despite what Al Gore and Barack Obama have to say.

2) For a little comedic diversion, consider the poor chap in this video. I do not believe he agrees that global warming is a big factor, at least on this winter day:

http://theblacksphere.net/2014/2/global-warming-farce

3) A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a U.S. government agency, found that the first six-month period of 2014 marked the coldest first half of any year since 1993. Others realities from the NOAA included the following facts:

• Average maximum daytime temperatures for the first six months of 2014 was slightly higher than the 20th century average.
• However, the average minimum nighttime temperature was three-tenths of a degree below the century average.
• Below-average temperatures were widespread east of the Rocky Mountains, and "two regions, the western Great Lakes and the southern Mississippi River Valley, had much-below-average temperatures during the six-month period." 
• Seven states, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, and Wisconsin, each had a six-month period that ranked in the state's top 10 for coldest temperatures.
• The NOAA also found that the national precipitation total for the six-month period was a tiny 0.02 inches below average, while above-average precipitation was recorded across the Northern tier and parts of the Southeast.

In other words, things are pretty steady and consistent with long term trends and climate behavior. Nothing to see here, move along.

4) Consider some scientific findings from a recent CATO Institute paper regarding climate change, global warming, and what is really going on:

• Global warming and climate change advocates claim that the Earth’s weather will get more violent and destructive as mankind continues to dump carbon into the atmosphere. 
• However, every day we set a new record for the longest time between major (Category 3 or greater) hurricane landfalls anywhere in the U.S. (almost 3,200 days, approaching nine years). 
• According to CATO, a new scientific paper developed by a team led by Leon Hermanson recently appeared in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters.
• The paper talks about their a decadal (decade related) forecasting model developed by the U.K. Met Office and called the Decadal Prediction System (DePreSys).
• The researchers identified the “North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre” (SPG) as a key influencer in a variety of weather patterns from North America to Europe. 
• Changes in the SPG have been correlated with weather, precipitation, and temperature patterns across the in the U.S., Europe, and North Africa, as well as hurricane frequency in the Atlantic Ocean.
• These findings are consistent with the conclusions from research back in 2001 that was published in Science magazine.
• This team, consisting of leading hurricane experts of the time, went against the global warming hysteria that global warming, not long established weather patterns like the SPG, were the reason for increased hurricane activity during that timeframe.
• They found that patterns of hurricane frequency were driven by naturally occurring variability in the patterns of sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic that correlated to the SPG. 
• They also established that these patterns and cycles usually last a decade or so and have been occurring naturally forever.
• Thus, by just looking at a short time period of increased hurricane activity and claiming global warming was the cause, global warming advocates were not looking at long enough timeframes to see that short term behavior was not driven by global warming but by a different point in the long term cycle.

The following graph shows how this theory has accurately played out over a long period of time, indicating that these forecasters and scientists are much more accurate in their forecasting ability than global warming forecasts. This indicates that their theories and positions on weather and climate are also much more accurate than those of the global warming faction. Their forecast models of global warming and climate change have been extensively shown to be just plain wrong and inaccurate: 

This Cato graph  shows the 5-year running average of tropical cyclone numbers in the Atlantic Ocean since 1960 along with the DePreSys model hindcasts and forecasts. The model projects that the elevated hurricane numbers characteristic of the past two decades will fall back towards normal over the next few years.

More science that proves it is perfectly logical and sound to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science. It is time that the nation and the world have an adult conversation about global warming and climate change, based on ALL of the science. However, given who is in charge of the global warming side of the argument, politicians, not scientists, like Al Gore and Barack Obama, the chance of an adult conversation about his subject is not likely to happen anytime soon.

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

November, 2013, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and a Believer In Science, Part 3: Ice Packs Expanding, Temperatures Not Expanding, Climate Models Implding

We have spent the past few days going over scientific reports, studies, and findings that hotly dispute the global warming hysteria of people like Al Gore, or as the rebranded effort is called, “climate change.” We laid out a series of 18 scientific efforts that disprove Al Gore’s reckless accusations that those of us that fail to believe what he believes must be scientific idiots. 

Of course, he goes much beyond that stance of calling those with opposing views as scientific ignoramuses. He has also compared us to racists, homophobes, and a whole lot of other equally disgusting and incorrect slurs. It becomes very difficult to have an adult conversation with people like Gore who would rather get up in your face with insults than to have a mature discussion of science from all angles, not just the angle that proves his points. 

Those 18 points of review have already been discussed numerous times in this blog under the them of “I believe in science and I am a global warming doubter.” These past two days of review were used to set up the next two days of reviews where we will lay out the most recent climate findings from a variety of solid, scientific sources that prove that one can believe in science and scientific methods and still come out as a global warming doubter, Al Gore not withstanding.

1) The Washington Post reported on September 23, 2013 that the Antarctic Ice expanse has hit a 35 year high in coverage. Since records of such expanse measure began 35 years ago in 1978, the ice expanse at the south pole is now larger than it has ever been in the history of the measurement. 

In fact, the expanse is now so large that the article shows how it is now above two standard deviations above the average, indicating that from a statistical point of view it is now significantly beyond what should be expected based on historical measures. In other words, this is not a random event from a statistical forecasting perspective. 

Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, stumping scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a possibly warming world. On the third Saturday in September, the ice expanse reached 19.5 million square kilometers, according to data posted on the National Snow and Ice Data website. That number bested record high levels set earlier this month and in 2012 (of 19.48 million square kilometers). Wow, does not seem Al Gore told the south pole that global warming was supposed to melt that ice expanse.

The article goes on to quote a number of climate experts and their confusion of what is actually going on:

• “The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming. Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists,” said Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington scientist, studying Antarctic ice. 
• “This modeled Antarctic sea ice decrease in the last three decades is at odds with observations, which show a small yet statistically significant increase in sea ice extent,” says the study, led by Colorado State University atmospheric scientist Elizabeth Barnes. 
• “Some point to stratospheric ozone depletion, but a new study published in the Journal of Climate notes that computer models simulate declining – not increasing – Antarctic sea ice in recent decades due to this phenomenon (aka the ozone “hole”).” Quote from the Post article. 
• But some climate scientists cling to the belief that they are still right in the face of an increasing ice expanse: “If the warming continues, at some point the trend will reverse,” according to Jinlun Zhang. In other words, trust us and not your eyes, our models will eventually be right. 

Look, I do not know what the right answer is. Maybe there is global warming, but I am tired of people like Al Gore yelling at me and calling me and others idiots for not seeing his biased viewpoint and for his assertion that ALL climate scientists and ALL the data confirm global warming. 

That is just a false and self serving deception. There is a lot of doubt. And that is where we should start having an adult, intelligent conversation and not a typical Al Gore shouting match.

2) We have previously reported on how official government climate and temperature tracking results have shown that since 1997, the earth’s average temperature has not changed. Now, a new scientific study forecasts we will could have 17 more years of similar stable temperatures and weather:

• Research published in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics was recently completed by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt. 
• Their findings and conclusions are in direct odds with people like Al Gore and other global warming supporters. 
• They concluded that the 17 year pause in global warming is likely to continue into the 2030s. 
• Their findings correctly forecast the recent expansion of the Arctic Sea ice expanse. 
• In addition, their findings suggest that those whose support the global warming theory and organizations such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have severely underestimated the role of natural cycles and overestimated the impact of greenhouse gases. 

• This graph (click on graph for a larger view), based on a version published by Dr Ed Hawkins of Reading University, shows that actual earth temperatures are now below the predictions made by almost all the 138 models on which the IPCC relies. 
• The lack of temperature rise means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ forecast of temps trending upwards dramatically. 
• According to Dr Hawkins, the divergence is now so great that the world’s climate is cooler than what the models collectively predicted with ‘five to 95 percent certainty.’ 
• Curry and Wyatt say they have identified what they call a climatic ‘stadium wave’ – the phenomenon known in Britain as a Mexican wave, in which the crowd at a stadium stand and sit so that a wave seems to circle the audience. 
• They concluded that earth’s climate acts in a similar way, a number of cycles in the temperature of air and oceans, and the level of Arctic ice, take place across the Northern hemisphere over decades, a warming wave followed by a cooling wave and the cycle then repeats itself. 
• Global warming advocates starting measuring temperatures during a climaxing warming phase, leading them and their models to conclude that the warming was trending upwards when, according to this latest theory, it was just naturally cycling upwards, to be followed by a cycling downwards, as measure by the 17 years of steady temperatures. 

Curry and Wyatt say there is evidence of this going back at least 300 years. Again, I do not know if their theory is right. But it makes sense from a scientific perspective which allows me to be a believer in science and a global warming doubter, with scientific theories, findings, and results to back up my view, a view that should not be belittled by Al Gore or anyone else.

3) Enough with Al Gore. Let’s move on to some more science. The absence of global warming was also found in the work done by the Cato Institute. They looked at the forecasts done by 108 different climate forecasting models under the auspices of the United Nations global warming syndicate. Their detailed analysis can be found and digested at the following link:

http://www.cato.org/blog/current-wisdom-observations-now-inconsistent-climate-model-predictions-25-going-35-years?utm_content=buffer748ea&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

Rather than try to explain their very detailed analysis, suffice it to say that:

• In general, just about every single climate forecasting model vastly overestimated the global warming temperatures of reality. 
• The further out in time the models went, the worst they became in predicting how warm the earth would be. 
• The actual temperatures observed often fall below the lowest statistical band of standard deviation, indicating that the models are REALLY off in predicting what will happen. 

So while the Cato research is not pure new science, it is an effective way to check on scientific assumptions: did what the global warming scientists predict years ago, actually come true? And Cato emphatically found that they were not correct in their predictions, casting doubt on their whole theory. There’s that word again, doubt.

That’s enough for today. Three scientific approaches to the same problem, all consist with themselves and totally inconsistent with global warming theorists and global warming models. More love of science tomorrow and more doubt of global warming also tomorrow.

Again, a quick note. I do not know the right answer but through these serious of posts, it is obvious that nobody else really knows either. We need to start with doubters and believers and come to a strategic plan of action that makes sense from a science, economic, and reality perspective, not a shouting match and belittlement perspective. 

Before we are done with this series, we will provide a framework to resolve the global warming issue, whatever it is.

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