October, 2018, Part 3, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: The Big Ethanol Fail,Kindergarten Antics and Al Gore Hokum

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 disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made 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.

1) Okay, we mentioned Al Gore’s name above so let’s kick off today’s discussion focused on him. The following highlights come from a Washington Times article written by Valerie Richardson on September 16, 2018:

• Gore was recently speaking at a climate conference when he made the assertion that two major hurricanes had never had never hit landfall at the same time, presumably in the history of the world since he said “never.”
• He was referring to Hurricane Florence which struck the U.S. east coast and typhoon Manghut which the Philippines halfway around the world.
• According to Gore: “This is the first time in history that two major storms are making landfall from the Atlantic and the Pacific simultaneously.”
• His point obviously was to continue to try and scare us that man made global warming and climate change were teaming up to give us more devastating and frequent hurricane like storms, something he has been doing for decades and something that has never happened over those same decades.
• Fortunately, a real scientist/meteorologist, Ryan Maue, was quick to squash this assertion: "Al Gore just (fraudulently) claimed without any evidence that we’ve never had hurricanes in both the Atlantic and Pacific making landfall at the same time.”
• Another scientist/meteorologist, Roger A. Pielke, Sr. from the University of Colorado, joined into to debunk Gore’s assertion: “Such statements show that he is not familiar with the history of tropical cyclone landfalls.” 
• Apparently, rather than basis his observation on real science, he was referring to an NBC news report that mentioned the two storms happening at the same time and Gore ran with it as scientific fact without checking the truth, since according to Dr. Maue, NBC “completely missed the mark on ongoing hurricanes and their rarity.”
• The conference featured other “famous scientists” including California governor Jerry Brown (not a scientist), Michael Bloomberg (not a scientist), Harrison For (not a scientist), Alec Baldwin Baldwin (not a scientist), and businessman Tom Steyers (not a scientist). 

Again, global warming advocates trying to convince that their celebrity is reason enough to believe their myths about climate, real scientists be damned. Now, Al Gore is trying to pass off a coincidence as science.

2) When arguments arose back on the playgrounds of our youth, out of frustration someone would often just take their ball and go home, ending the game. That is about the level of immaturity we have gotten to with some man made global warming advocates in England:

• According to an article on the Fix This Nation website, written by Shawn on September 18, 2018, about 60 “writers, academics, and politicians” signed an open letter that was published by England’s Guardian newspaper.
• In the letter they promised “ they would no longer participate in any media stories that gave so much as a single line of coverage to those who deny the “truth” about climate change. In a remarkable retreat from the debate, these people – non-scientists, for the most part – declared the debate over and insisted that giving deniers any coverage only gives undeserved credence to their claims.”
• Specifically: “We are no longer willing to lend our credibility to debates over whether or not climate change is real. It is real. We need to act now or the consequences will be catastrophic. In the interests of ‘balance,’ the media often feels the need to include those who outright deny the reality of human-triggered climate change.Balance implies equal weight. But this then creates a false equivalence between an overwhelming scientific consensus and a lobby, heavily funded by vested interests, that exists simply to sow doubt to serve those interests. Yes, of course scientific consensus should be open to challenge – but with better science, not with spin and nonsense. We urgently need to move the debate on to how we address the causes and effects of dangerous climate change – because that’s where common sense demands our attention and efforts should be.”

So if you are a man made global warming and and climate change doubter, basing your opinions on real data, real history, and scientific research, you are just full of “spin and nonsense.” If we do not agree with these 60 people, the vast majority of which were not scientists, we have no common sense. If we observe and point out that every single major global warming forecast over the past thirty years as been an utter failure, we have no credibility.

Look, climate changes, it has been changing for millions and millions of years. We disagree with the abuse or lack of science that proves climate change is being substantially changed by mankind. But we never seem to be able to get to that critical difference, given the knee jerk reaction of the advocates who immediately brand any discussion that questions their unproven myth that shuts down a real discussion of ALL of the facts and research.

3) Last discussion point on this topic for today and this month. In our previous post we discussed the National Wildlife Foundation’s contention, actually based on real research and science, that the lame brained idea of putting ethanol in our gasoline to combat global warming actually does more harm than good to the environment. The League Of Power website recently did an in-depth review of this topic based on credible research efforts:

• A 2011 Congressional study found that adding ethanol to gas “actually had a net negative impact on the environment.”
• Soybeans and corn, the two main sources of ethanol, have seen their production levels go way up to feed the ethanol demand but the increased production had resulted in soil degradation and increased water usage
• And worse of all, the study concluded that the whole ethanol effort had actually increased the amount of greenhouse gases given off, the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.
• This last point is quite simple: adding ethanol to gas reduces gas mileage in cars and trucks which requires cars and trucks to burn more of the gas laced with ethanol in addition to the additional greenhouse gases caused by the production and transportation of ethanol.
• An updated study in 2018 found the same results: ethanol was a net negative on the environment.

As is so often the case, when Washington politicians go about addressing a problem, their solutions often make the original problem worse. Using ethanol to combat the myth of global warming is just the latest example of this history of incompetence.

Ethanol failure, kindergarten antics, and more Al Gore hokum. More reasons to be a global warming doubter and believer in science.

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:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2016, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: More Bad Employment News, Water Vs.Choo Choos In California, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

So let’s get started with the latest insanity:

1) Many times we have discussed how Obama’s management of the economy coming out of the recession has been horrific: persistently high unemployment and underemployment, tens of millions of Americans still getting Federal food assistance every month, stagnant wages and household income levels, astronomical national debt, over regulation, historically low labor participation rate, 14 million Americans either unemployed or underemployed, etc.

But for American citizens, according to the latest monthly national economic data, the Obama mismanagement of the economy is worse than these top line realities. According to the government statistics, the number of native-born Americans with a job decreased by more than half a million people last month. The Bureau Of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that that 123,710,000 native-born Americans (ages 16 and over) were employed during the month of January, 567,000 Americans fewer than the month of December.

Other bad news for native born American workers included:

• The number of unemployed native-born Americans increased by 669,000 reaching 6,956,000 people in January.
• The number of native-born Americans out of the labor force increased by 69,000, hitting 80,704,000.
• Native-born Americans had an unemployment rate of 5.3%, higher than the total national unemployment level
• The labor force participation rate of native-born American workers was 61.8%.
• But you are much better off in this economy if you are a foreign-born worker.
• The unemployment rate for foreign-born workers in the U.S. was 5.1%, less than the unemployment rate for native-born Americans.
• The labor force participation rate for foreign-born workers was at 65.0% was much better than the rate for native-born Americans.
• The working-age foreign-born population has increased by 6 million since Obama’s took office, while the working-age native-born population has increased by 11.6 million people. During that same timeframe, foreign-born people in the U.S. gained 4 million jobs and native-born Americans gained 4.6 million jobs, much better economic performance for foreign-born workers.

Thus, while the economic recovery has been anemic for the entire country, the Washington political class has somehow managed economic strategies and tactics that reward foreign-born workers much better than native-born Americans. Insanity.

2) Two major things going on in California. The state is in the midst of an epic drought with severe water shortages all over the state. Second, the California political class wants to spend tens of billions of dollars to build a high speed rail line from northern California to southern California.

According to a Breitbart article by Daniel Nussbaum on January 15, 2016, these two programs are about to enter an epic political fight. On one side are regular citizens that would like to have water in their lives to drink, bathe and basically continue to live. On the other side are vain politicians that want to spend limited resources on a pipe dream high speed rail line that may not be needed and that may be impossible to build, given the ineptness of today’s politicians to get anything done on time and on budget:

• A recent Hoover Institution Golden State opinion poll found that 53% of likely California voters would approve a measure to strip funding from the high speed rail line project to fund construction of surface and groundwater water storage facilities. Only 31% would not strip funding.
• In light of this sentiment, two California politicians have introduced legislation to put that question on the ballot in November.
• The poll also found that 62% of those polled want the state to prioritize water storage construction in its spending plans and that only 39% of voters support the high speed rail line while 41% oppose it.
• Previous reporting by Breitbart found that the high speed rail line would cost upwards of $93 billion of which only $26 billion has been budgeted for.
• Given that the Big Dig in Boston cost over $20 billion to build years ago and that was a small, in town project, the $93 billion to build a long high speed rail line of which nothing currently exists is likely a very low estimate also.

Should be interesting to see what happens. Whether the state's citizens can take back control of how their tax dollars are spent in order to basically survive or if ego driven politicians continue to waste money on projects that will affect a small minority of citizens but boost their own self esteem. Everyone needs water to survive, no one needs a high speed rail line to survive. Or as a water storage advocate said in the article: “While trains are nice, water is a necessity for survival, food and our economy.” 

Given that truism, I would bet that the high speed rail line goes forward to disaster while Californians continue to struggle just to have enough drinking and bathing water.

3) Abbie Van Sickle, writing for the Washington Post on January 28, 2016, had some very distressing news. According to her writing, the Obama administration failed to protect the welfare of thousands and thousands of Central American children who showed up at the southern border in 2011. A Senate investigation found that many of those kids ended up in the hands of human traffickers and were abused by Federal government approved caretakers.

Details of this humanity failure include:

• The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a government entity within the Department of Health and Human Services, did not do proper background checks of adults who claimed the children, allowed sponsoring adults to take custody of multiple unrelated children, and often placed children in homes without vetting the locations ahead of time. 
• After placement, caseworkers were often prevented from doing follow up checking on the kids.
• A typical case of abuse involved Central American teenagers who were taken to work on an egg farm in Marion, Ohio and lived in a rundown trailer park.
• Ohio Senator Rob Portman called the situation modern day slavery: “It is intolerable that human trafficking — modern-day slavery — could occur in our own backyard. What makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.”
• The Senate report concluded that, “HHS places children with individuals about whom it knows relatively little and without verifying the limited information provided by sponsors about their alleged relationship with the child.” 
• As another example, the Senate report discussed a kid from Guatemala who ended up with a sponsor who forced the boy to work 12 hours a day to repay a smuggling debt.

It is bad enough when the Federal government does not fulfill its obligations to take care of our veterans or would rather pay billions of dollars to resettle foreigners into this country but not use those funds to help feed our hungry, shelter our homeless, or treat our addicted. But now it not only accepts waves of immigrants from other countries but it abuses the kids within those immigrant masses. Pathetic and insane. 

3) One of the few energy strategies the American political class concocted over the past years has been to force the American driver to put up with ethanol in their gas tanks. We were told that diverting agricultural output into ethanol production would be good for the environment, would strengthen the economy, and would hope ween us off of foreign oil. As a result, a massive amount of taxpayer wealth was diverted to farmers to grow more corn, the most common crop used to produce ethanol in this country and that ethanol was introduced into our gas supplies.

Now, I said it was a strategy but not that it was a good strategy. A recent review of this idiotic government program by Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation summarized what went wrong:

• Ethanol has only two thirds the energy of regular gasoline so drivers end up paying more to get the same amount of energy for their cars, certainly not a way to strengthen the overall economy, increasing consumer costs.
• It obviously did not reduce energy prices since any number of times over the years we have seen gas prices explode to over $4.00 a gallon. The only reason prices are so low today is because the Saudis are flooding the market with oil, not because we have a little corn syrup in our gas tanks.
• The ethanol political mandate diverted farming resources and land to making fuel rather than food which increased the price of many, many food products. By 2012, the amount of corn produced in this country just to produce ethanol was more than the entire corn consumption of the entire continent of Africa.
• But the biggest reason for ethanol, to improve the environment, never panned out either. The EPA reported that the levels of nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, ground-level ozone, and ethanol vapor emissions, among other air pollutants, all increase as a result of producing and using ethanol.
• Iowa State University researchers concluded that ethanol production causes adverse environmental impacts, resulting in increased soil erosion, sedimentation, and nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into lakes and streams.

So, the political class thought that ethanol would reduce fuel prices. It did not. It was supposed to get us off of foreign oil. It did not. It was supposed to strengthen the economy. It did not. It was supposed to be good for the environment, It was not. It did increase food prices though, an unintended consequence of a bad piece of legislation. A typical politician course of action: they came, they saw, they made the situation worse. You cannot make this stuff up.

4) One last piece of insanity for today and for this month. A number of times this week we showed how screwed up our immigration policies, strategies, and execution is. No doubt about it, our borders leak, the government is incapable of preventing illegal immigration or deporting those that are here illegally, especially criminals. What a mess and failure of government and especially the Obama administration.

But consider this aspect of our failed immigration situation that was recently reported on the Daily Wire website:

• According to a new government report, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more Pakistani and Afghan men of “military age” in just over a month in the San Diego area than they had over the previous twelve months.
• At least two of those detained have known terrorist ties.
• Quoting Border Patrol chief Richard Smith: "We have detained more Pakistanis and Afghans in the first month of this fiscal year than we did all last year."
• He went on to say that these men are of military age and were carrying U.S, cash.
• A report in the San Diego reader stated: "Between October 1, 2014, and Sept. 30, 2015, the San Diego sector of the Border Patrol detained 18 Pakistanis and 1 Afghan, according to Border Patrol statistics. Between October 1 and mid-November of last year, 2 Afghans and 22 Pakistanis reportedly surrendered to Border Patrol agents. ... In the month and a half since mid-November, 3 more Afghans and 6 more Pakistanis were detained by the Border Patrol (not including those detained at the ports of entry)."

Feeling safe yet? Makes you wonder what the Texas Congresswoman was talking about when she said Obama had been successful in securing the southern border. 

That will do it for now. Another month’s worth of political class insanity, lunacy, delusion, incompetence, and wasteful spending. As we often say you cannot make this stuff up, it is wild how out of control and inept the American political class can be. And next month I am sure we will be right back with more of the same.

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

Retro 4 - George Orwell, Doublethink and Today's Politicians

Given family engagements in town this week, we will be rerunning some of our most popular posts, posts that have garnered the most attention and which showed that we are currently enduring the worst set of politicians America has ever had.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2010

George Orwell, Doublethink and Today's Politicians

I am a big fan of George Orwell's classic Novel, "1984." I think he was a great writer and a better prognosticator since many of the predictions he made on "1984" of how democracies would die are actually unfolding today, throughout the world and throughout America. One of the concepts he talks about is "doublethink" which he defines as the ability "to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them." If a leader can establish doublethink in the minds of his followers, then the credibility of that leader will never be questioned since whatever he says is right, doublethink suppresses free thought and free will.

I was thinking of how proud Orwell would be of our current day political class. Many examples abound of how our politicians and the government they run can implement two contradictory programs and never once stop to consider the incongruity and disconnect between the two programs. Consider:

- One of the leading drivers of escalating health care costs in this country is the poor eating habits and exercise habits of many Americans, leaving them overweight and susceptible to many diseases. In fact, one of the main activities of Michele Obama since coming to Washington has been to work hard to reduce the obesity problem plaguing many, many kids in this country. One of the efforts that both Ms. Obama is pushing, along with other parts of the government, including the Agriculture Department, is to reduce the amount of saturated fat that Americans eat, encouraging us to move towards low fat milk and other low fat dairy products.

This all sounds good. However, consider an organization called Dairy Management, as described in a November 8, 2010 New York Times article. Dairy Management is financed by a government mandated fee on the dairy industry and receives millions of dollars a year directly from the budget of the Agricultural Department. The Agriculture Department sits on Dairy Management's board, approves its marketing campaigns, and interfaces with Congress on its work. But Dairy Management recently worked with Domino's Pizza to develop a new line of pizza offerings. These new pies had 40% more cheese and Dairy Management helped develop and pay for the associated $12 million marketing campaign.

But wait. Each slice of these new pizzas contains as much as two thirds of a person's daily recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and other diseases. Thus, our government is telling people to eat better and reduce the amount of unsaturated fat in their diets while they are funding support for private companies to put more saturated fat back into Americans' diets. The particularly ironic part of this Domino's example is that I would assume that kids are high pizza eaters, the same type of Americans that Michele Obama is trying to get healthy. Doublethink in the Agriculture Department - eat healthier but don't eat healthier.

- There has been a lot of hype lately regarding all electric cars, some of which will be available shortly for consumer use, e.g. General Motors' Volt. The hope behind electric cars is that they will not spew out pollutants like the gasoline internal combustion engine, improving the environment, and will help wean us from dependency on foreign energy sources. Our political class is so excited about the future of electric cares that, according to an electric car article that was in the October 9, 2010 issue of The Economist magazine, you can get up to a $7,500 subsidy rebate from the U.S. government if you purchase one.

Sounds like a great deal. Get taxpayer money to buy a new car while helping the environment. But, are these vehicles really helping the environment? While the car itself is less polluting, the energy creation needed to generate the electricity to power these cars will increase. In the United States, we get a lot of our electrical power from coal electric plants, which are not the cleanest producers of electricity from an environmental perspective. Thus, we need to find a way to reduce the amount of coal created electricity if the potential of electric cars is to be fulfilled.

But, according to a Washington Post article from May 14, 2007, the government's National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, another Agriculture Department effort, plans to spend $35 billion over the next decade to help build conventional coal electricity plants. More doublethink in the Agriculture Department - the government hands out taxpayer funds for the purchase of electric cars to clean up the environment but uses other taxpayer money to dirty up the environment with coal electricity plants to power the cleaner electric cars.

- Over the past sixty years, the United States has probably spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting the security and prosperity of South Korea. We fought on South Korea's side, defending them from North Korean and Chinese troops in the Korean war, we provided aid for the recovery, and have stationed tens of thousands of troops in the country since the end of that war. As a result, the South Korean economy has grown into one of the strongest in the world. Besides providing a security cover for their economy to blossom, we are also an important trading partner and market for their companies.

Recently, our State Department has been working to generate support for economic sanctions against the Iranian government in retaliation for the Iranians supposedly developing a nuclear weapon technology. The State Department strategy is to make life so uncomfortable for the Iranian people and government that they will become less likely to develop a nuclear bomb capability.

So what do the South Korean do relative to Iran? According to an article in the October 9, 2010 issue of The Economist magazine, South Korea still wants to protect its annual $10 billion trade volumes with Iran so it recently signed a deal with Iran so that Korean and Iranian business partners could settle trade accounts via a special facility established in two Korean banks and in Korean currencies. State Department doublethink: South Korea is our ally even though they go out of their way to bypass the very sanctions the State Department wants to impose on Iran.

- For years now, the Federal government has subsidized American corn farmers, recently to the tune of $7 billion a year, enticing them to grow more corn, which is eventually turned into ethanol. The ethanol is then added to our national gasoline supply to theoretically extend our gasoline supplies, reduce our dependency on foreign oil and clean up the environment by burning more ethanol and less gasoline.

But the inconvenient truth is that none of the benefits never really materialized and additional problems were created. Since ethanol contains significantly less energy potential than gasoline, more gasoline has to be burned to make up for the energy loss when burning ethanol. According to Robert Bryce of the National Review Online, studies have shown that ethanol use as a motor vehicle fuel increases nitrogen oxides and other key pollutants by 7% over gasoline and also corrodes the fuel lines of older cars and other engines.

According to Cornell Professor David Pimentel, as covered in the energy policy section of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," corn ethanol is a terrible fuel. It diverts corn crops from the food chain to the energy chain, increasing food costs, it takes a terrible toll on the soil environment, and it is a net user of energy, i.e. it uses more energy to produce than it creates.

Sounds horrible: bad fuel economy, air pollution, soil pollution, bad economics, etc. So what is the political class about to do? According to Mr. Bryce, President Obama recently announced that his administration was going to allow the blend of gasoline to ethanol, currently 90/10, to rise to 85/15. He did this as a favor to the corn industry which has more ethanol distillery capacity than it needs. Energy Department doublethink: using ethanol in a 90/10 mixture is a bad thing to do but moving to an 85/25 mixture is a good thing.

- According to a November 8, 2010 Associated Press report, our war effort in Afghanistan faces a dire shortage of 900 trainers and not enough Afghan officers in the race to build up a viable native Afghan fighting force, which would allow NATO and the United States to get its troops out of the country as soon as possible. According to the recent report, the head of the training operation in the country said that if these trainers are not brought on board soon, the July, 2011 pulldown date of American forces is not going to happen.

Training challenges include a high illiteracy rate among Army and police forces (over 90%), high corruption among the officer ranks, and high levels of attrition (which I think is the code word for desertion.) Nine years after we entered Afghanistan, these elementary problems have not been addressed.

Since this situation is critical to successfully ending our occupation and expense of Afghanistan, one would have hoped that every effort and resource would be used to fill this training need. However, a November 4, 2010 article in the St. Petersburg Times reported that the U.S. government will spend over a half a billion taxpayer dollars to expand its embassy in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul. How many trainers do you think $511 million could buy? How many Afghanistan police officers and soldiers could be made semi-literate, enough so that they became good soldiers?

Thus, we have some Obama administration doublethink going on: we want to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible, our number one priority, we need a 50% increase in military trainers, 900 additional trainers, to make that happen, but we will lavishly spend resources to expand a single building complex in the capital. This is a major disconnect in logic: if we cannot produce a viable native fighting force via training, who cares how big or how nice the U.S. embassy is? It will eventually be occupied by the Taliban. Fix the root cause of the problem, the Afghan military, don't try to convince yourselves that both the military readiness and a single building are equally important. A non-doublethink approach would devote some of that $511 million to the training issue since that would recognize the vastly different priorities and importance at play here.

I am sure that you can find government and political class doublethink examples all around you. Sometimes doublethink happens because we have allowed the a Federal government to get so large that one part of it does not know what the other parts of the government are doing. One part wants to reduce pollution by promoting electric cars while another part subsidizes coal burning electric plants that dirty up the air. One part of the government wants Americans kids and adults to get healthy by eating low fat foods while another part, in this case within the same Cabinet Department (Agriculture), helps Domino's Pizza get more fatty, cheesy pizza into Americans' diets.

Sometimes doublethink happens because no one in the political class prioritizes needs and importance, e.g. the wasting of millions of dollars dressing up an embassy when military trainers, vital to our military success, go wanting. Other times politicians do doublethink to please their election campaign donors, e.g. corn farmers who get favorable treatment from the political class, even though those in the political class know that the favorable treatment is not good economically or environmentally.

Whatever the reasons underlying the doublethink situation, you can bet that the American taxpayer is footing an unnecessary bill. That is why Step 1 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. The Step itself calls for an annual 10% reduction in the federal government budget for five years. One way to accomplish this reduction, according Step 1, is to do a bottoms up, zero based budget review. Every government program, law, department, expenditure, etc. would be on the table, stripped down to it's core function and mission in order to look for redundancies and doublethink situations, like the Dairy Management situation described above.

Only then can we rationalize what we are paying for, why we are paying for it, should we be paying for it, and not paying for it if not worthwhile. Hopefully, once our politicians had far less government to think about and to track, they could focus much more closely on a smaller set of priorities, identifying wasteful doublethink quicker and more efficiently. Think about that wonderful goal: a quicker and more efficient government run operation. A government that has retired Orwell's concept of doublethink from our world.

I Am A Global Warming Doubter And A Believer In Science Upate, Part 1: Fact Checking The Obama Administration, More Scientists Rebuttals, And The Biofuels Sham

Over the past few years or so we have been running a periodic series called, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” I started the series because I am a true believer in science and scientific principles/processes and the good they can do.

However, I resent being told, or yelled at, by people like Al Gore that I must be a science hating heathen because I do not blindly except his premise that global warming is strictly being caused by mankind and that the science is settled. In his closed mind, I must be an idiot. as are all of the other doubters in the world.

If one reviews our past postings on this subject, it is quite obvious to all but the most closed mind Al Gore supporters that the science is not settled. We have pointed out dozens of studies, research projects, realities, and other proof that the global warming science of Al Gore is not settled. Our “doubter” position has recently been fortified since the global warming mania has been “redefined,” much like a cereal rebranding marketing program, to now be called “climate change.”

Much like falling cereal sales, if you cannot fix the problem, try a redefinition of the problem. The main driver of this rebranding or redefinition is the simple fact that for the past 17 years or so global warming has stopped, contrary to Al Gore and all of the forecast models that global warming advocates tried to scare us with over the years. Their models and their theories have failed, just like the failing cereal, and rather than pull the plug on the theory they are now trying to reposition their egos and their arguments.

You can access our many posts on the “I am a global warming doubter but a believer in science” by entering that phrase in the search box above. Or, you can start with some of these posts directly:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-2013-i-am-global-warming_29.html

If you are still convinced that the science on global warming is settled, even after reading such facts as the premier physics facility in the world, the CERN Institute, proving that manmade global warming was a myth, maybe the following current rebuttals to Al Gore can change your mind:

1) The Obama administration recently released a large report on climate change or global warming or whatever, still beating the same drum that we are facing a climatic disaster and the Washington political class needs to take action to avert this disaster. However, the Heritage Foundation recently took a look at the administration claims, and using valid and current scientific data and realities, pretty much debunked the whole report and its premise:

Obama Administration Report Quote: “Precipitation patterns are changing”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: Precipitation patterns were never constant. Creating a crisis from the normal allows climate catastrophists to point to every abnormal bit of wet or dry as being “consistent with models” that predict one horrible outcome or another.

Obama Administration Report Quote: “sea level is rising”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: Yes sea level is rising, which it has done since the end of the last ice age. But the frequent claims and predictions of accelerating sea-level rise are not borne out in the data. In fact sea-level rise has slowed recently. One main-stream climatologist says this variation “makes the 21st century of sea level rise projections seem like unjustified arm waving.”

Obama Administration Report Quote: “the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events are increasing”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: The latest report on the science from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and analysis provided by the administration’s own National Climatic Data Center conclude that there isn’t a case for extreme weather increases – no significant trends for floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes.

Obama Administration report Quote: “In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: Global warming is supposedly global. Global sea ice (Arctic and Antarctic) is above average and, for this time of year, it is at its highest level in 30 years, which is the third-highest on record.

Obama Administration Report Quote: “It is notable that as these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed.”

Heritage Foundation Reality Rebuttal: The past 15 years have seen the climate model predictions stray farther and farther from actual temperatures (here and here). Last year, prominent climatologist, Hans von Storch, said, “If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.” Maybe Professor von Storch needs four more years to be sure the models are wrong, but there are no grounds on which the models can be declared “confirmed.” Instead, the predictions are getting worse and worse.

The last claim by the administration is really the most bold faced deception. As we have shown any number of times in previous blog posts on this subject, many, many credible sources have shown that the major global warming models have severely overestimated the impacts of man on the environment and global warming. 

This is easily fact checked to prove that the last point above from the report is pure fallacy. Makes one wonder what other quotes in the report are also fallacies.

2) Although this global warming doubter story is a couple of years old, I just came across it and find nothing wrong with its content and assertions, given the scientists that support it. This story appeared in the Wall Street Journal about two years ago and was written or signed of on by sixteen scientists. 

Their view is the same as ours: there has been no further global warming for many, many years, the global warning models have all been severely deficient in prediction accuracy, and the science is not settled, not close to be settled. If anything, the science is close to be settled for the exact opposite of global warming.

The entire article and associated details can be read at:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The main conclusion from these scientists can be summed up from one of their paragraphs within the article:

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

“There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action…” Sounds like a lot is still unsettled according to these scientists.

The writers and scientific signers of this article work at or teach at the Institute for the Study of the Earth, the University of Paris, the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University, the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, MIT, Virginia Technical University, the New York Academy of Sciences, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, the Royal Dutch Meteorological Service, and the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. 

Al Gore fails to mention these types of scientists and global warming doubters, i.e. the science is NOT settled.

3) One of the proposals to combat global warming that was cooked up by the political class and its business cronies was to develop biofuels for use as an energy source, particularly with our cars. The faulty thought process was that if we could displace at least part of the gasoline with biofuels in our gas tanks, less carbon would be released into the atmosphere and thus, less global warming.

It was more a political decision than a valid scientific reason and strategy according to a recent United Nations report where they found some severe “unintended consequences” of biofuels (why do we always seem to find out about “unintended consequences” AFTER the political class gets us way down the road to failure?)”

The new United Nation’s report and analysis comes from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"

• The researchers found that that while biofuels do indeed release smaller amounts of greenhouse gases than gasoline or diesel, "for some biofuels indirect emissions — including from land use change — can lead to GREATER (my emphasis) total emissions than when using petroleum products." 
• Additionally, the negative consequences of including corn ethanol related biofuels in the fuel supply are enormous in other areas of life including serious damage to the world’s food supply. 
• For example, in 2000, more than 90% of the corn grown in the United States went to feed people and livestock, including many people in undeveloped countries, and less than 5% was used to produce ethanol. 
• By 2013, according to mandates from the Federal government and Washington politicians, 40% percent of the U.S. corn crop went to produce ethanol, 45% fed livestock, and just 15% was used for foods and beverages, according to a Forbes magazine investigation. 
• This translates into the U.S. annually using nearly 5 billion bushels of corn to produce more than 13 billion gallons of corn based ethanol biofuel. 
• By taking 5 billion bushels of corn out of the food chain, corn harvesting would lose the ability to feed 500 million people a year compared to what corn crops were doing in 2000.
• 500 million people is equivalent to the entire population of the Western Hemisphere outside the United States, according to Forbes writer James Conca. 
• By 2007, the diverting of the corn crop to biofuel uses caused the global price of corn to double, leading to increases in the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, cereals, and corn-based sweeteners, and world grain reserves dwindled to their lowest level in over 30 years. 
• Increased corn prices also impact a wide array of other products, including toothpaste, cosmetics, shampoo, and adhesives. 
• "Additional unintended effects from the increase in ethanol production include the dramatic rise in land rents," as well as an increase in the use of natural gas and fertilizer chemicals, over use of water aquifers, and clear-cutting of forests to plant corn crops, Forbes reported. 
• Other news reports, including Bloomberg, assert that vehicles' fuel systems are being damaged by the use of ethanol. 
• The International Institute for Sustainable Development has estimated that the benefits of carbon displacement by replacing petroleum fuels with biofuels like ethanol are "basically zero."

“Basically zero.” After spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to support biofuel usage via subsidies, after causing unnecessary price increases in food and other consumer products, and after causing severe environmental damage from driving up corn production, we end up with “basically zero” net positive impacts on carbon emissions, according to the most recent U.N. analyses and report.

But we are used to getting “basically zero” from the Washington political class in all aspects of our lives, from failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, escalating health care costs, etc. so getting nothing from this one large global warming initiative should not be a surprise. Thus, even if you still buy into the Al Gore global warming hype, what makes anyone think that the current members of the Washington political class can resolve this potential scenario, given their track record in biofuels and every other issue they confront? They are not the solution, their typical “unintended consequences” often make the situation worse.

More “global doubter but believers in science” discussion 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

The 18 Largest Failures Of The Washington Political Class, Part 1

We have been pretty hard on Obama Care over the past week or so. It has failed in so many ways, financially, operationally, logically, etc. It deserves the mantle of worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Federal government. To prove our point, let us refer you to the initial posts in two series of posts we did to cover the many, many failures of Obama Care, one series in August and one series in September:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-2013-obama-care-update-part-1.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html

But a recent article in the Independent Journal Review reminded us that while Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever, the Federal government also has a quite impressive (in a negative way) history of 13 failed other major pieces of legislation. All of these failures cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars without ever coming close to resolving the problems that led to the enacting of new laws. In many cases, the enacting of legislation to remedy a problem actually made the problem worse. 

The first 14 failed pieces of legislation are from the original Independent Journal Review’s analysis and research. We have added a few of our own to this ignoble list that they did not cover or got to depressed to go on after doing the first 14.

1) Prohibition: For 14 years, the United States was officially “dry.” Problem was, it wasn’t. The black market flourished, as did crime, the Mafia and rampant violence. Enacted in 1919, it was finally repealed in 1933. But not before many people needlessly died, much taxpayer wealth was wasted, a permanent organized crime underworld was established, and many government entities and police departments were corrupted by bootlegger wealth. And we ended up right back where we started in 1919.

2) No Child Left Behind: Under President George W. Bush’s education program, Federal spending for schools more than doubled …and student test scores didn’t budge. We still lag behind much of the industrialized world. In most standardized international student tests, we usually rank some where between 20th and 30th in education effectiveness despite spending far more per student than any other country in the world.

It didn’t used to be that way though, before the Feds poured all the money, regulations, and rules into local schools, we were at the top of the list as far as educating our kids. For this miserable performance, we still pay out tens of billions of dollars every year to a useless Federal Department of Education.

3) Medicare: When Medicare began in 1965, it was estimated that it  would cost $9 billion per year by 1990. However, by 1990 the annual cost was $67 billion. Missed that forecast by just a bit, say being off by more than a factor of seven!

In 2013 the annual cost of Medicare is $390 billion. And are we that much healthier than we were 50 years ago despite paying more than 40 times what we paid as a nation in 1965? On an inflation adjusted basis, the GDP of the country in 2012 was less than four times the size of the GDP in 1965. 40 fold rise in Medicare costs vs. a less than four fold rise in the size of the economy. Something has gone terribly wrong.

Needless to say, this program is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.

4) Medicaid: Same deal and disgrace as Medicare. It was estimated to cost $100 million, now it costs $211 billion or more than two thousands times as much. Needless to say, this program is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.

5) Immigration reform: The number of illegal aliens entering this country has more than tripled since Reagan was President. Whether we should increase or decrease the flow of immigration, it’s clear the Federal government has no idea what its doing when it comes to securing our borders. Israel has secured its borders, making frequent terrorists attacks within their borders a thing of the past. It can be done, it just cannot be done by the Washington political class.

6) The War on Drugs: Since Nixon, we have spent over $1 trillion and incarcerated millions of Americans over relatively minor drug charges. This is one of the most spectacular failures of our government. 

And just like the establishment of a permanent domestic organized crime underworld during Prohibition, our failed war on drugs has created massive, violent, well financed, and efficient drug cartels in Mexico and beyond, cartels that threaten legitimate governments and corrupt police, judges, and government officials worldwide.

7) Farm subsidies: Paying farmers not to grow crops? And many times we are not even paying real farmers. The August 16, 2013 issue of The Week magazine pointed out that in the past, millionaires like Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Ted Turner, Jimmy Carter, a number of Rockefellers, and other millionaire non-farmers were able to collect taxpayer wealth because of how farm subsidies work in this country. Insanity.

8) Ethanol: Over the last 30 years, the Federal government has given out almost $45 billion in taxpayer wealth to support the ethanol industry. The original purpose was to save the environment by having cars and trucks use ethanol in their vehicle gas tanks as a surrogate for oil. Problem? It’s inefficient, more polluting in several other ways,  and raises the price of corn and makes food more inaccessible for the world’s hungry. Genius.

9) “Green Jobs:” When he was elected, President Obama launched an all-out campaign to kick start the Green Economy. I think at last count the administration had handed out nearly $40 billion to dozens of “green companies,” many of which were owned by people who had made substantial financial donations to Obama’s election campaigns.

End result of this cronyism? $40 billion or so given out with virtually no societal benefit in return and a sorry trail of bankrupt or near bankrupt companies such as Solyndra, Spectra, Evergreen, A123, and probably dozens of others.

This is the first half of the 18 worst failures of the Washington political class. Pretty depressing, wouldn't you say? The bad news is that we will cover the other half of the 18 biggest failures tomorrow. The good news is that we provide a potential solution to finally turn failure into success in time for our kids and our grandkids.

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

Government: If You Think The Problems We Create Are Bad, Wait Until You See Our Solutions, Part 2

Last Thursday was the first of three posts where we will discussing the premier failure of 14 Federal government programs. This discussion is in light of the “Hunger Games” scenario we had previously proposed, a scenario that illustrates how a small, elitist set of people, the political class, get all of the benefits of a hard working society without doing a lot of work or resolving any major issue of our times. The first five issues we discussed included:

1. Prohibition and the related lost war on drugs.
2. The continuing saga of our failing public schools.
3. The financial and medical disaster that is Medicare.
4. The financial and medical disaster that is Medicaid.
5. Our lack of a compassionate and security minded illegal immigration policies.

The next five Federal government failures are listed below:

6) Since Nixon launched the “war on drugs” over forty years ago, the U.S. has spent over a trillion dollars in executing that failed strategy. The Independent Journal Review article, on which much of these posts are based on, pointed out how drug use has probably been unaffected by this “war,” given the exponential growth in Americans locked up behind bars for some sort of drug offense (double click on the chart for a larger view):

Thus, over a trillion dollars spent/wasted without reducing illegal drug usage, if we use incarceration has a surrogate for usage. All the Federal government ended up doing was to enrich Mexican drug cartels with no benefit back to American society in improved drug treatment policies, reduced drug abuse, or reduced prison expenditures.

7) The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 did two bad things: it allowed the Federal government to get deeply involved in private enterprise, in this case the farming industry and more insanely, used taxpayer dollars to pay farmers NOT to farm. This is like paying doctors not to doctor, accountants not to do taxes, restaurants not to serve food, etc. It pretends that Washington bureaucrats, living in a far off land known as Washington D.C., have a better feel for the market, the laws of supply and demand, and the challenges of farming than those actually doing the deed of farming.

As a result, we get a complete distortion of the free market, wasting of taxpayer dollars, and an obese nation since these policies have resulted in an abundance of foods and sweeteners that are bad for us and an under supply of food that is good and healthy for us.

We end up spending trillions of dollars to restrict and misdirect food supplies while millions of Americans go hungry or get fat.

8) Staying down on the farm, according to a Daily Finance report on AOL: “Over the past 30 years, the Federal government has given an estimated $45 billion to the corn industry to help support ethanol production. In 2011 alone, those subsidies totaled about $6 billion, or about 45 cents for every gallon of ethanol.

Those in Washington who administer this program obviously had a very limited understanding of supply and demand. If you reduce the supply of farmland that is used to raise edible crops, diverting that farm land’s use to producing inedible crops that are used to power cars, if demand stays the same or rises, the need to eat, the price of food has to go up.

And this is exactly what happened, screwing the American taxpayer in two ways. Politicians took taxpayer wealth, gave it to farmers to make ethanol, and which resulted in Americans paying more for food since their taxpayer dollars had been spent to reduce the supply of food. Circular, idiotic government logic at its best.

9) One of the Obama administration’s big drives was in the alternative energy fields. We have covered the many failures of this effort many times as it relates to the companies that Obama gave American tax dollars to, all of which are already out of business or are in some stage of bankruptcy proceedings. These ill-fated but crony-important investments include, but are not limited to, Solyndra, A123, Evergreen, Spectra, Ecotality, and others.

But bad investments in companies is not the only way the Federal government wasted money. Number 9 out of our 14 epic Federal government disasters include the following data from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General from January, 2012:

• A major component of the Obama green/alternative energy program included a goal that was to train 124,893 people in green technology jobs.
• After training, the related goal was to place 79,854 (64%) of these newly trained workers in actual new green jobs.
• 17 months into the program, program results indicate that only 52,762 were trained, and only 8,035 got green jobs.
• Each job cost taxpayers about $62,000.

So the program only attained 42% of its planned training objective and a measly 10% of its placement objective. These results are failures in whatever human endeavor you are talking about.

10) In the realm of unintended consequences, consider the knee jerk reaction of Washington politicians to one book, a book whose assertions, conclusions, and science has pretty much been debunked over time. Shortly after Rachel Carson published her book, “Silent Spring,” in 1962 which cited the use of the insecticide DDT as a major menace to humans and the environment, Washington and other Western nations banned production and use of it.

However, while the misuse of DDT was a real problem, proper use of DDT was not. DDT had proven to be a very effective deterent against the spread of malaria. However, because the political class never took the time to understand the deeper cause and effects of DDT, their knee jerk reaction to an unneeded outright ban has probably led to the premature death of millions of people according to two experts in the field, Michael Arnold Glueck and Robert J. Cihak, both M.D.s: “That DDT prevented 500 million deaths by 1970 and that the banning of its use in poor countries has resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths holds no sway with true believers in this doctrine [of banning DDT].

Thus, in this disaster, taxpayer money was not wasted and a major domestic issue did not go unresolved for decades. The political class just condemned millions of people to premature deaths because they never took the time to properly analyze the situation.

Mishandling the drug abuse problem, ignorantly intervening in the farm industry market, wasting money on failing or failed alternative nergy intiatives, and causing people to die for not understanding a problem. Yes, I would say these were five major disasters, courtesy fo the American political class. We will finish up with the final four of 14 disasters 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:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w