January, 2016, Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter And A Believer In Science: More Climate Forecasts Fails, A Warm Christmas In 1955, and More

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 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:

1) According to Phillip Hodges, writing for the Last Resistance website on December 25, 2015, Christmas Eve, 1955, long before global warming was supposed to have been underway, was warmer than Christmas Eve 2015. I would bet that he did this research and wrote the article since this has been an unusually warm winter across much of the country, which in all likelihood was due to the El Nino weather pattern that set up in the Pacific Ocean. 

He probably wanted to preemptively react to global warming believers that will claim one warm winter spell verifies global warming as a reality. The fact that the past two winters have been uncommonly cold throughout most of the country would be two data points that many global warming advocates would ignore

Mr. Hodges cites a quote from Steven Goddard who operates the Real Science blog: “Christmas Eve 1955 was much warmer. Three fourths of the country was over 60 degrees, and Ashland Kansas, Geary Oklahoma and Encinal Texas were all over 90 degrees. Fort Lauderdale was 85 degrees. All of the stations below were over 60 degrees on Christmas Eve, 1955.”

By “stations,” he means most metro areas in a map that is included in Mr. Hodges article that shows all of the metro areas in the U.S. that were above 60 degrees on Christmas Eve, 1955. His map and full article can be seen at:

http://lastresistance.com/15416/flashback-christmas-eve-1955-was-way-warmer-than-today/#9LLdfmMd5tWHBghX.99

http://cdn1.lastresistance.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/map-temperatures-1024x605.png

His map shows that metro areas as far north as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, South Dakota, and others were all quite warm (warmer than 60 degress) on that day in 1955.

Apparently, Goddard also has a sense of humor and knowledge of old time movies. He describes how in the movie “White Christmas,” which was released shortly after the end of World War II, the characters lament that it is 70 degrees in New Hampshire in the middle of the winter and that Bing Crosby has to pine for snow in the movie via his singing of the song, “White Christmas.” The late 1940s and 1950s were not supposed to be times of global warming but it did get warm in the winter sometimes.

Bottom line is that one warm winter does not prove global warming is a reality much like two very, very cold winters does not disprove it is a reality. It is just that global warming doubters have a justified opinion by doubting the global warming hype, given Christmas Eve, 1955 and an old Hollywood movie from the 1940s. Can we now have a balanced discussion on the topic?

2) One of the fear mongering approaches that global warming advocates take is that it does not matter if global warming is a reality, our use of oil will deplete the world’s oil supplies pretty soon. Thus, it makes sense to start curtailing the use of fossil fuels such as oil and switch to cleaner fuels since oil will not be around much longer, the "experts" have predicted its demise. Who cares if electric and gasoline rates will go up, that economic growth will be stunted, job creation will be muted, the oil will be gone anyway.

Sounds logical, especially if “experts” have forecasted the demise and end of oil availability. But could the experts be wrong? Could long range predictions be wrong by “experts?” We have shown many time in this blog how the forecasting methods used to predict the warming of the earth have been grossly wrong for decades. Could these oil demise forecasts be as wrong?

Stephen Hall, writing for the Townhall website on December 29, 2015, actually looked into this question and found that the oil forecasters in the past have been just as wrong as the global warming forecasters of the past:

• The United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory predicted in a past report that "the world is fast approaching the inevitable "peaking" of global oil production. 
• Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times in 2010, boldly stated that "world commodity prices ... are telling us that we're living in a finite world."
• About a century ago, the U.S. Bureau of Mines forecasted total future production of oil at 6 billion barrels but since then the country has produced 20 times that amount. 
• In 1939 the Department of the Interior predicted U.S. oil supplies would last just 13 more years. 
• In 1980, hundreds of the top scientists in the United States issued a report called The Global 2000 Report to the President. These “experts” confidently predicted life would be far worse in just twenty years because the world would run out of oil, gas, food, and farmland.

In the face of these bold, and insanely wrong predictions, the world today is awash in excess oil. Gas prices continue to plummet to reflect this glut. And the current glut does not include the increased amount of Iranian oil that will start flowing into the market now that sanctions have been lifted and Iraqi oil fields that are under duress due to the ISIS factor. Simple economics: a glut of supply means a drop in prices, the exact things we see going today in the market.

But it is not just bad forecasts from long ago that are so funny. Consider how wrong our current President has been just in the past few years when it comes to predicting oil supplies:

• Obama, 2008 speech in Lansing, Michigan: "We cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing."
• Obama, 2010: "We're running out of places to drill." And then in his typically childish manner want on to sarcastically jeer that the oil and gas industry might want to start drilling for oil near the Washington Monument.
• Obama, 2011: Oil and gas are “yesterday’s” energy sources.
• Obama, Georgetown University: "The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource (oil) that will eventually run out."

According to research done by the Institute for Energy Research:

• Twice as many oil reserves have been identified than what were thought to exist in 1950.
• Humanity has produced almost ten times more oil than what the government thought existed back in 1950.

Technology has unlocked so much oil resources than could have ever been imagined as recently as a few years ago, if you believe Obama’s doomsday statements.

The bottom line is that please do not come at us global warming doubters with forecasts by “experts.” Experts have been so wrong in so many different areas in long term forecasts that the vast majority of those forecasts are laughable when looked back on. To think that global warming “experts” are any better at this game is fool’s gold. In fact, we have already shown multiple times in this blog that their forecasts over the years have been just as wrong as the forecasts listed above.

As we stated above in the first point of today’s discussion, can we now have a balanced discussion on the topic of global warming AND include the reality that all global warming forecasts have been wrong even though they were done by the “experts?” Can we stop with the name calling and condescending attitudes of the believers and get down to an adult conversation, looking at ALL of the data and information available?

3) Although you would not know it if you listen to Al Gore and Barack Obama, given their insistence that the “science is settled” and that “97% of scientists believe that manmade global warming is real,” there are many scientists that disagree with the Al Gore types. Dr. John Christy, director of the University of Alabama’s Earth System Science Center, has compiled new data and research that show the earth has warmed by just three quarters of a Fahrenheit degree in the past 37 years. This is considerably lower than what global warming advocates claim has happened and is happening.

Dr. Christy explained the implications of his findings to the Watts Up With That, a blog run by certified meteorologist Anthony Watts: “That would put the average global temperature change over 100 years well under the 2.0 C (3.6 degrees F) goal set recently at the climate change summit in Paris.”

So which scientists are right, Al Gore scientists or scientists like Dr. Christy? Most people on both sides of the debate probably know very, very little about credibility of either side’s scientists. Maybe now we can now have a balanced discussion on the topic, given that each side has their own set of scientists and that nowhere close to 97% of scientists are on one side.

That will do it for today. More evidence that being a global warming doubter is a sane, logical, and rational position to hold, given that past global warming forecasts by so-called "experts" have been grossly wrong, warm winter weather has been going on for decades before global warming became fashionable, and there are scientists that are global warming doubters also.

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

January, 2016, Part 3, By The Numbers: Gun Control Is Not A Priority, Raising Tax Rates Reduces Tax Collections and More

This is the first post this month in our continuing theme of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

And there will be a lot of smoke to cut through in these posts. Always believe the numbers before you believe our politicians, numbers do not lie but politicians do.

1) We have often shown that when politicians raise taxes in order to get more tax revenue, the overall level of tax revenue received usually drops. For instance, we once reported how the state government of Maryland raised the state income tax level on millionaires residing in Maryland. Within a short amount of time, the total amount of tax revenue collected from state millionaires actually dropped even though the tax rate was higher. The details of this insanity can be seen at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/12/day-7-eight-days-of-logic-and-sanity.html

The reason for this apparently wrong reality is that people are not stupid. They want to keep as much of their wealth as possible. Thus, when the state of Maryland raised taxes on rich people those rich people simply moved away, resulting in fewer Maryland millionaires and less tax revenue from state millionaires. It is that simple.

And cigarette smokers are not stupid either. Put too much tax on their cigarette purchases and overall tax revenue goes down rather than up, as a recent Daily Caller article by Guy Bentley shows. According to Bentley:

• New York lost $400 million in taxes from cigarettes after imposing the highest cigarette tax in the nation on sales of packs in the state.
• The tax resulted in an average cost of $10.66 per pack of cigarettes in the state.
• Cigarette taxes in the state are up 190% in the past decade or so.
• Despite the 190% increase in taxes, the New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli estimates that the state government has lost $400 million in cigarette revenue over the past five years.
• A separate study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine estimates that the state lost far more in tax revenue, namely $1.3 billion each YEAR, because smokers switched to less expensive alternatives.
• These cheaper alternatives included turning to black market and organized crime criminal enterprises to buy cigarettes, crossing state lines to buy them, or buying less expensive brands of cigarettes from Native American outlets.
• The number of cigarette packs bought paying the full tax has also dropped by 62%.
• And as always, increased taxation always hits the poorest in our society the hardest with smoker households earning less than $30,000 a year spending a whopping 23.6% of their annual household income on cigarettes in 2010-2011, up from only 11.6% in 2003-2004, according to the New York State Department of Health. 
• Smoker households earning over $60,000 spend on average 2.2% of their annual income on cigarettes. 

As with most government actions, the numbers prove again that their action never resolves the original problem (in this case stopping people from smoking since they just go to other sources for their nicotine), raising taxes results in LESS government revenue, and criminal enterprises are given an opportunity to make obscene profits.

2) According to a January 5, 2016 article on the Political Outcast website, a recent Gallup poll shows that only 2% of Americans think that gun control is the major issue in their lives despite the fact that Obama and his administration are fixated on imposing illegal and un-Constitutional gun controls on the nation. The most important problems facing the country today according to the Gallup study is:

1. Politics/Congress/Government - 16%
2. Economy in general - 13%
3. Jobs/employment - 8%
4. Immigration - 8%
5. Healthcare - 6%
6. Ethics/Moral decline - 5%
7. Race Relations/Racism - 5%
8. Terrorism - 5%
9. Federal budget deficit/national debt - 5%
10. Education - 3%
11. Poverty/homelessness/hunger - 3%
12. National Security - 3%
13. Gap between rich and poor - 3%
14. Crime/violence - 3%
15. Foreign aid/focus on overseas - 3%
16. Situation on Iraq/ISIS - 3%
17. Seven other issues tied with 2% including gun control

Thus, there are at least sixteen issues that Americans rank as more important than gun control. And yet, Obama continues to fixate on an issue that is so minor in most Americans lives. Probably because he has no clue on how to fix the sixteen issues ranked more important than gun control.

What I find particularly ironic is that the number one issue in Americans’ ranking the major issues is government and politicians. So, Obama is trying to fix a problem that is minor in Americans’ eyes even though he is part of the largest perceived issue of our times.

3) CNBC recently reported that mortgage applications have dropped a whopping 27% during the past two weeks after the Fed’s first rate hike in almost ten years, a further indication that the economy is on the verge of a slowdown. 

4) In another number indicating an economic slowdown, the cost of a barrel of oil recently hit $35, the lowest price in the past 11 years. The price dipped 6% in just one day recently because of any number of world wide factors.

5) Throughout the life of this blog we have lamented the reality that the Washington political class has no ability or intention to get the nation’s runaway national debt under control. The debt level is now over $18.3 TRILLION with an amazing and depressing $8 TRILLION of that debt coming during the Obama administration. This comes out to about $160,000 per U.S. family.

According to a recent MoneyNews article, the U.S. Federal government will have to refinance about $3.5 TRILLION in 2016 to pay off expiring debt. This is equivalent to every American family writing a check for about $30,000 just to tread water with current debt. As these numbers make it so clear, at some point the debt burden in this country will crush the economy, our democracy, and our futures.

Oh, and by the way, if you had $18.3 TRILLION single dollar bills and laid them end to end, they would circle the earth about 70,000 times. If you laid them end to end and pointed them to the moon, you would have over 7,000 strings of dollar bills hitting the moon. That is a lot of debt.

6) The Obama administration via mostly his Justice Department has said that it will vigorously investigate and prosecute real and imagined attacks, slurs, and affronts against Muslims throughout the country that are religion based. While this attitude has the potential of sending government agents out on witch hunts looking for Americans who were simply expressing an opinion, that is not the biggest problem with this “protect Muslims from religious persecution” attitude, as the numbers show.

First of all, if the President wants to protect people based on their religion, as the President of ALL Americans he should not be restricting his government agents and Justice Department to attacks solely against Muslims. Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc. should also get this same type of protection, not just Muslims. In reality, if any religion should be protected it should be Jewish Americans. According to a recent FBI investigation and report, in 2014 more than half of all hate crimes based on religion were against Jews, 56.8%, despite the fact that Jews represent less than 2% of the American population.

In 2014, 16% of religion based hate crimes were against Muslims. Since Muslims and Jews account for about the same percentage of the American population, Jews are about three and a half times more likely to be subjected to a hate crime based on religion than Muslims. And yet the President ignores these numbers to give very special protection and attention to Muslims.

That will do it for today's by the numbers. Today we learned that raising taxes actually can reduce tax revenue, that gun control is way down the list of Americans’ concerns, the economy might be tanking if we measure it by falling mortgage volumes and falling oil prices, and our debt load is still stifling. The  numbers are in and the numbers are not good, as we have shown over the past three days. Term limits anyone:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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

March, 2015, Part 3, Political Class Insanity: America For Sale To Foreigners, Kindergarten Level Political Discussion, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time once again to review the latest insanity and ineptness from the American political class. We do this review every month to prove our hypothesis that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of our country. 

They waste hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth every year, they never resolve any of the major issues facing Americans today, they continually put their foot in their mouth with their idiotic statements and positions, and they operate government functions that are bloated and ineffective in delivering quality service to taxpayers. And worse of all, they have rigged the country’s elections processes so that their election and subsequent re-elections are almost guaranteed to ensure their mediocrity continues. 

To review the past examples of political class insanity just type in “political class insanity” in the search box above.

So lets get started on what is becoming a multi-day review of their latest incompetence and insanity:

1) One would hope that those serving in Congress would be high in integrity, mature, and unifying influences in order to get some of the major issues of our time resolved. One could hope but as always that would be a false reality. Recently, House of Representatives Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer were arguing over the scheduling of votes to be taken in the House. 

After Hoyer criticized Republicans for leaving Homeland Security "twisting in the wind" McCarthy reclaimed his time on the floor from Hoyer immediately and said the voting schedule would proceed as planned: "This House has taken action to make sure the DHS is fully funded … We did our part and I yield back," McCarthy said, before walking away to continue voting.

In pure kindergarten style, Hoyer yelled at McCarthy: "You coward," which C-SPAN was able to get on its live broadcast. Oh yeah, calling a political opponent a coward over a simple scheduling disagreement is not likely to result in a civil and adult conversation on how to resolve any issue.

The Washington Post reported that Katie Grant, a Hoyer spokeswoman, said her boss apologized to McCarthy for the remark, who accepted it. McCarthy's office declined to comment. Any doubt why nothing ever gets accomplished in Congress when they go around calling each other cowards? 

2) John Podesta is a political operative that has been doing jobs for politicians for a long time, especially jobs that involved the Clintons and Barack Obama. As a result of playing in political circles, he now finds himself in the middle of a conflict of interest situation.

In 2013, Podesta was paid $87,000 by a reclusive foreign billionaire who is actively working to prevent oil and energy exploration on American land. Today, Podesta is a member of Obama’s staff and is working hard to help the White House block oil exploration on 12 million acres in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This arrangement may have caused Podesta to run afoul of Obama’s high minded but oft broken election promise to force political appointees to disqualify themselves in matters relating to the interests of a former client or employer.

How Podesta does not fall into this conflict is hard to justify since he was hired and paid by Hansjorg Wyss in 2013 just before he got hired by Obama. Wyss is apparently passionate about protecting American public lands from oil and gas drilling. Additionally, Wyss has been a generous donor to Podesta’s Center for American Progress (CAP), having given $4 million to the group during Podesta’s tenure, according to organization's tax documents and filings. Conversely, Podesta has returned the $4 million favor by giving Wyss a seat on CAP’s board. 

All kinds of insanity here. Possible violation of Federal ethics rules. Conflict with another empty Obama promise to clean up the influence of outside interests in government. And worse of all, a foreigner trying to manipulate and influence U.S. policy and actions via the use of money and influence peddling. Another Presidency, but the same old money buying influences of the rich and powerful at the expense of Americans.

3) Six years ago or so, Joe Biden made a fool of himself in an interview with Katie Couric. He boldly stated on video that when the Depression started, FDR went on television to reassure the country that everything would turn out alright. Problem is that 1) FDR was not President when the Depression started in 1929 and 2) television did not exist as a communications medium in 1929. This is the type of people that are serving us in Washington, people that either have no clue about our nation’s history or who are willing to manipulate facts to their advantage even if it is a lie or deception.

Well, his boss recently did the same thing, either being ignorant of American history or manipulating it to his own advantage. During a recent live interview on NBC, President Obama claimed that he is the first President to “make some booze” in the White House since George Washington. Unfortunately, George Washington never lived in the White House during his Presidency and thus,never made booze there. Another lie from this President or just plain ignorance? Neither is an attractive trait in a President or any politician.

4) Politicians do not often do the right thing but when they do, we like to acknowledge their behavior. Such is the case of legislation recently introduced in the House by Congressmen Ron DeSantis and Trey Gowdy. 

The legislation is named the “End Pensions in Congress Act” and it will do exactly what it says: end the generous pensions for those who retire from Congress. 

Given that very few Americans still get traditional pensions from their places of employment, it seems only right that members of Congress, many of whom are millionaires several times over, also share the same fate: forced to save via retirement accounts vs. getting traditional pensions benefits, especially since those pensions are funded by taxpayers who in all likelihood do not have the same option in their lives.

And these Congressional pensions are not cheap for taxpayers to fund. According to the Congressional Research Service, as an elected U.S. Senator or Representative, one can get a Congressional pension after serving only five years once you reach the age of 62. If you were elected to Congress at a young age and put in at least 20 years, you become eligible for a pension at age 50. This has resulted in 617 retired members of Congress receiving annual Federal pensions ranging from roughly $42,000 to $72,000.

So many things wrong with this situation relative to the rest of us:

• Most of us cannot even get a traditional pension, never mind one as rich as these Congressional ones.
• For the few non-politicians that do have traditional pensions, most are probably no where near as lucrative as Congressional pensions relative to the length of time needed to qualify and and receive a pension and the value of that pension.
• These people qualify for these Congressional pensions even though they earned over three times the annual median income of the average American family while in office.

High Congressional salaries while in office, rich pensions at an early age when out of office, insanity. Fortunately, some members of Congress actually recognize the unfairness of such an arrangement:

Congressman Thomas Massie: “If congressmen want to save for retirement, they should do so with 401K-type plans, rather than rely on taxpayers to take care of them even after leaving Congress. To tackle out-of-control federal spending, Congress must lead by example.”

Congressman Ron DeSantis: “The Founding Fathers envisioned elected officials as part of a servant class, yet Washington, D.C. has evolved into a ruling class culture. Pensions for members of Congress represent an inappropriate use of taxpayer money.”

This legislation was specifically mentioned in Step 9 in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” which called for the end of not only Congressional pensions but all Federal employee pensions. We would go two steps further than this legislation with the following steps, also from “Love My Country , Loathe My Government:”

1. Step 41 would not allow any member of Congress who has a net worth of over $3 million to receive a salary while in office. As Congressman Desantis points out above, those serving in Congress should be serving for love of country, not personal greed and enrichment. If you are a person like Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who is worth tens of millions of dollars, you would not receive a salary under Step 41. That money should go back into the Treasury for the betterment of the country, not pocket change for political millionaires.
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Washington politicians, one and done. Thus, under a term limits political process, no one would ever be in office long enough to qualify for a Congressional pension.

Passage of a legislation like this, and Steps 39 and 41, would go a long way to restoring lost faith in the Washington political class. We wish DeSantis and Gowdy good luck in their endeavor to force Washington politicians to once again become a serving class and not a ruling class.

That will do it for today’s insanity but we are far from done on discussing the political class insanity we have had to suffer through over the past month or so. Today we learned that:

• Washington political discussion and debate has degenerated into kindergarten level name calling.
• Despite Obama's promises, Washington is still for sale to the highest bidders including foreign billionaire bidders.
• Biden and Obama are either grossly ignorant of American history despite their advanced degrees or they manipulate facts to serve their needs.
• For a bit of good news, at least two Washington politicians are trying to go back to the past when politicians were public servants and not political royalty.

So many ways to screw up the country and our freedoms and we still have more insanity to follow in the next few 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.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.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

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 4: Nobody Knows Nothing, China Gets Our Iraqi Oil, and A Secret Court That Protects No One

This is a fourth in our political class insanity review for this month. As we have gone through time, the insanity and lunacy from the political class seems to have grown exponentially. What used to fill up one blog post a month now takes four, five, or six posts to get in all the stupidity from Washington and elsewhere.

The following links have already listed three days of insanity for the month of July, 2013:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_2.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_3.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/07/july-2013-political-class-insanity-part_4.html

This post starts the fourth post for this month:

1) We have already reviewed this month how ignorant and out of touch with reality the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve and the FBI Director have been shown to be. They both recently testified in front of Congressional committees and could not answer even the most basic questions from Congressional members despite their high level and high paying executive positions.

But ignorance is not contained to these two political appointees. Jay Carney is the President’s press secretary. He talks to the press just about every day. He should be able to handle most of the questions the press throws out to him, that is his job, also high paying.

But current news reports are carrying stories about how Mr. Carney has avoided thousands of questions from reporters over the past few years despite the Obama promise that he would operate the most transparent administration of all time. According to the news reports, since 2011, he has failed to answer 9,846 questions. His favorite excuses include: I don’t have the answer (1905 times), I would refer you to someone else (1383 times), and you already know the answer (1125 times).

Thus, in the course of the 28 months or so that he has been the White House press secretary, his inability to answer 9,846 questions comes out to about 18 non-answers EVERY DAY. So much for the promise of transparency.

2) A New York Times article that was summarized in the June 14, 2013 issue of The Week identified some real political class insanity. According to the article, over the past few years, Iraq has again become one of the world’s biggest oil producers, shipping 1.5 million barrels of oil out of the country every day.

And here is the insanity: half of those 1.5 million barrels are going directly to China. Our politicians led us into a very cost military experience, costing the American taxpayer untold hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of U.S. military personnel. It divided our country for no apparent reason.

And we cannot even get the economic benefit of receiving a large amount of their oil drilling, it goes to China who did nothing to put the country back together, they just hung back until the U.S. and the resources of the American taxpayer did all of the heavy lifting of fixing the country’s economy and oil production industry. Despicable.

But it gets even worse. When you think about it, much of our military mistake in Iraq was financed with government debt funding, much of which came to China. Thus, not only do we not get the benefit of Iraqi oil, that benefit seems to be going to the Chinese, we are stuck with paying interest payments to the same Chinese bond holders who lent us the money to have the military experience in Iraq. Despicable and insulting.

3) One of the scary aspects of the NSA and Obama administration and the fact that they are collecting every American’s electronics communications is that this information could be abused in so many ways. Supporters of this anti-Fourth Amendment snooping are trying to assure us that the Federal government would NEVER abuse or harass Americans using this personal information.

This assurance rings hollow in light of the fact that the Obama administration was actively and viciously using a Federal government agency, the IRS, to harass Americans and political organizations that dared to have a contrary opinion to the Obama administration. It also rings hollow when the President himself claims he did not know this shredding of Americans’ First Amendment rights were being trampled by the IRS.

And now consider this information from a recent USA Today article that was summarized in the June 21, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. According to their research, an astounding 4.9 million people have access to access to classified government information. Also, 1.4 million people have access to top secret government information.

Given how easily Edward Snowden was able to access top secret government data and what he did with that access, do we really think that centrally storing every Americans' personal electronics communications is not going to be abused by someone within the 4.9 million population? No way.

4) Staying with the line of thought on government abuse of spying on Americans, consider some research from the Wall Street Journal that was also summarized in the June 21, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. Those that support the shredding of the Fourth Amendment with all-encompassing government snooping have assured us that a secret court issuing secret warrants by a secret judge will protect our rights and privacy.

That amount of secrecy should scare any American who values their freedom, liberty, and privacy. And the Wall Street Journal supports that fear since it reports that from 1979 to 2012, the secret court, approved 33,900 surveillance request through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Of the almost 34,000 requests to the court, only 11 were declined, which translates into 99.97% of all secret government request were approved.

This is obviously a rubber stamp court, you cannot convince me that all but 11 cases out of 33,900 requests were good, prime targets for terrorism surveillance probes. Doing a little math, we see that over the 34 years that these requests were made, on average only one request was blocked every THREE years. Compare this to the almost 1,000 requests that were approved EVERY YEAR.

Thus, the argument from supporters that the information the Federal government is collecting will not be abused is absolute garbage when you consider that millions of techie types have clearance to access classified government information and the court that is supposed to be protecting our rights is nothing more than a rubber stamp step in the surveillance state.

5) The wonderful website, Bankrupting America, had a short article posted on their site on June 25, 2013 that discussed more government insanity from…you guessed, the IRS. The same organization that trampled on the First Amendment rights of Americans with a contrary political position than the President, the same organization that illegally stole millions of Americans’ medical records, the organization that wastefully spent tens of millions of dollars every year on lavish conferences for themselves, and the same organization that is paying out $70 million in employee bonuses despite it being forbidden under the budget sequester.

Their latest insanity is a doozy. It appears the IRS sent $46 million to one, SINGLE address in Atlanta, Ga. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the IRS paid out $46 million to “unauthorized workers” who apparently all live at the same Atlant address. The news of the mysterious money has spurred a variety of questions like:

• Does IRS they have any idea what they are doing?
• Is this the result of a lack leadership?
• Is the brain power of this organization so tiny that they do not have a simple edit baked into their data processing procedures that says something like: once we send out more than a million dollars to one address maybe we should check it out?????

Incredible, indescribable stupidity and incompetence.

The head of the FBI, the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve, the head Presidential Press Secretary, and just about any IRS employee who know nothing or who are totally incompetent. A disastrous foreign policy that results in the American taxpayer funding the oil supplies for China, a court that is supposed to protect Americans’ rights that do nothing of the sort, and almost 5 million people that can potentially access and abuse just about everyone’s private electronic communications.

This is America today and this is the Federal government today, all courtesy of the American political class. And tomorrow will bring more of the same lunacy.

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

April, 2013 Global Warming Update Part 2: Cap and Fail, China's Appetitie For Coal and More

Yesterday was part one of our updated global warming discussion. During that discussion, we learned that a number of global warming advocates were having second thoughts on the subject since the forecasted results of global warming were not matching up to what their models predicted.

We also learned that China is making its large presence known in Ecuador where it is doing extensive work to develop oil fields which, according to global warming theorists, would increase the global warming threat. This effort underlined our assertion that unless China, and other developing economies, get their global warming acts together, anything the U.S. does, e.g. cap and trade, would be meaningless.

Let’s continue our discussion today, where I continue to be a believer in science but a global warming doubter:

1) On February 18, 2013, the Space and Science Research Center (SSCR), located in Orlando, Florida, issued is annual Global Climate Status Report for 2013. According to this organization’s website, the Mission of the SSRC is “to provide an independent un-biased resource for governments, media, corporations, and the people on important areas of scientific research, in particular the cause and effects of climate change, and to serve as an objective resource for the planning and analysis of the next climate change - predicted to be one of decades of record cold weather.”

What? A climate research group of scientists is predicting a coming a global COOLING period ahead, not global warming???? How can that be, Al Gore said that ALL climate scientists agreed that global warming was an oncoming issue? How dare the SSCR differ from Al!

I do not know anything about the SSRC. For all I know, they could be a front for the oil and coal industries and their research is pure propaganda. However, they apparently do deserve a hearing, a peer review of their findings to either verify or refute their findings and conclusions. That is what science is all about.

Because, if they are right, and a global cooling/ice age is about to hit us, that is a whole different set of problems and agendas vs. global warming. Remember, just two generations ago, in the mid-1970s, the mainstream media and climate scientists were predicting a new ice age, a prediction that never came about. In light of that missed forecast, who is to say whether cooling or warming is in our future, especially in light of this research and the suppressed EPA report that the Obama administration never let get published.

The SSRC website and scientific credentials can be found at:

http://www.spaceandscience.net/index.html

2) The International Herald Tribune reported on March 2, 2013, that citizen level concerns about global warming and major environmental issues are at all time lows and trending downward. These are the results from a huge international study involving thousands of people across almost two dozen nations:

“Scientists report that evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever — but our data shows that economic crisis and a lack of political leadership mean that the public are starting to tune out,” said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan, the company that carried out the study.

The study shows that survey respondents clearly still had serious environmental concerns but fewer people were “very concerned” about various environmental issues than at any point in the last 20 years. The sharpest decrease in global concern occurred over the last two years. Thus, maybe the citizens of the world are also becoming skeptical about global warming claims that never come true.

3) A February 20, 2013 article in Forbes magazine:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/20/as-the-consensus-among-scientists-crumbles-global-warming-alarmists-attack-their-integrity/

reported on a recent survey of over 1,000 geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. The survey was done by peer-reviewed Organization Studies.

The bottom line results found that only 36% of those surveyed agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claim that human activity is causing a serious global warming problem. A majority of scientists in the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The article goes into detail defending the results and comparing the findings to assertions of global warming advocates who, rather debunking these findings with science, seem more content to attack the integrity of the survey and those who participated in it.

Again, I do not have the answers but at least in this group of scientists, far from 100%, sorry Al Gore, disagree with the theory of man made global warming.

4) One of the supposed ways to save the climate and mankind from the dangers of global warming is through massive, and massively complex, so-called cap and trade programs. As I understand cap and trade, these programs set up a process where companies pay extra when they create certain types of global warming gases using credits as payment.

Companies that are energy efficient and do things that allow them to not use their allotted cap and trade credits, can then sell those credits to companies that need them because of their climate impacting activities. I assume that the basis of this system is to have the cost causer, those companies that contribute to global warming, to be the cost payer for those activities.

The value of those credits, once they are issued, is to be determined by the free market so that the prices charged between credit buyers and credit sellers can vary over time. The trick of such a convoluted process, is to have the exact right amount of credits in the market. If there are too few credits, economic activity is stifled since companies cannot expand.

If there are too many credits available, the economic laws of supply and demand take over, driving down the cost of the credits. Low credit costs results in low costs to doing activities that theoretically contribute to global warming, defeating the whole purpose of the credits to begin with. I am sure there are more elegant, more correct ways of describing the process but you get the idea.

According to an article from the April 1, 2013 issue of Business Week, the cap and trade effort in Europe is about to collapse. Highlights of the article, “Europe’s Carbon Market Is Crashing,” include:

• Slower economic growth in Europe is stifling business growth, resulting in less expansions and need for the credits, reducing the value of the credits.
• The lower prices is not spurring industries to make the necessary investments in clean energy to offset global warming.
• Earlier this year in Europe, it was possible to offset 581 TONS of emissions, about what one average European citizen generates during an 80 year lifetime, for about $30.
• At such a cheap cost, it does not pay for an industry or company to do the “right” thing for global warming since the cost to do so is much higher than the cost of the credits to offset their behavior.
• When the program started, central planners expected the final price of credits to settle between 25 and 30 euros per ton. However, in January, the cost to offset the aforementioned 581 tons was just over 23 Euros, total.
• Thus, according to the director of ClimateCare in Oxford, England: “It’s (cap and trade) is not spurring large emitters to make investments in reducing emissions.”
• The European Union is scheduled to take up the issue by considering a number of remedies but many members are opposed to these remedies, making a solution doubtful.

A massive bureaucracy that is failing massively. Elsewhere, Japan has already killed its cap and trade program, in 2010, and Canada and Russia have refused to take part in the second round of global warming restrictions, quotas, and rules as outlined in the second Kyoto agreement. As a result, industries and companies in these three major industrial nations are not bound to offset their behavior with the expense of credits.

In light of all this cap and trade failure, President Obama wants the U.S. to implement a cap and trade process. Europe is proving such a process cannot be managed to the desired results but Obama still wants it.

Three international economic competitors will not hamstring their industries and economies but Obama will hamstring ours.

China is doing nothing in this area, especially considering the following point, but Obama wants only the U.S. to do something.

And while there is now so much doubt about global warming, Obama is willing to ignore that side of the argument to screw the American economy with little to no effect on the environment, given what the rest of the world is doing. This is not leadership, this is economic suicide.

5) Speaking of China, consider an article from the March 25, 2013 issue of Business Week. According to the article, China has a bunch of large, energy hungry cities in the eastern part of the country and a western region where most of the natural resources, particularly coal, are located. The challenge has been how to best get the energy and value locked up these western natural resources to the benefit of the large eastern metro areas.

Their approach will be as follows to solve this energy problem:

• The government plans to build 14 massive energy bases in the western part of the country by 2015.
• These hubs will combine coal mining operations with energy power plants.
• Note: the article points out that China generates about 80% of its energy needs via burning coal, a no-no when it comes to global warming advocates.
• These hubs will create energy onsite that will then be sent over a series of transmission wires and facilities to the east for use in the metro areas.
• The Chinese view this as a better approach to energy management then shipping coal a long ways over land despite the fact that some electric energy will be lost along the transmission grids.

In other words, China could not really care less about global warming. They are making massive investments in their coal based energy economy with new coal power plants, coal generated electricity transmission lines, and expanding their coal mining.

If Obama really wanted to make a dent in global warming, he should be in the Chinese leaders faces before they expend so much wealth into this plan. Because once they do, one has to assume they would not abandon their investment for an iffy global warming theory. For Obama to insist that U.S. industry get hamstrung with a cap and trade program while China continues to build out its coal infrastructure would be a disaster for our economy and our country.

6) One last set of stats on why a cap and trade program for us is a silly, unmanageable, and economic disaster along every dimension:

• According to the previously cited Business Week article, the world’s use of coal, outside of China, has stayed about the same since the mid-1980s, around four billion tons a year. In that same time frame, China’s use of coal has about quadrupled, from less than one billion tons a year to close to four billion tons a year, with a strong upward trend. This makes China the consumer of almost the same amount of coal as the rest of the world combined. They must be severely changed out of their coal mentality for any cap and trade program anywhere in the world to have any impact at all.
• According to an article in Salon.com that was summarized in the September 28, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, carbon dioxide global warming gases in the U.S. are at their lowest point in 20 years, down 14% from their peak in 2007 as a result of fracking and the expanded use of natural gas, which is less damaging to the environment than coal and oil. This reduction is resulting in 500 megatons worth of emissions not going into the air, which is twice the amount of positive impact than what the original Kyoto agreement had on every other country in the world.
• An article from the Washington Post that was summarized in the March 1, 2013 issue of The Week reported similar numbers when it claimed that U.S. carbon emissions had fallen 13% relative to 2005 levels with a large part of that due to the increase use of natural gas and wind power.
• A Reason magazine article that was summarized in the January 18, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported that U.S. power plant emissions were down 12% from their peak in 2007 even though the economy is larger than it was six years ago, mainly due to the wider use of natural gas.
• And finally, a Business Week graph in the January 7, 2013 issue of Business Week claimed that the demand and use of coal is up in every region of the world except the United States, with coal energy production almost catching up to oil energy production, not a good thing if you believe in global warming.

Thus, apparently we have not been doing to badly when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint. That is the reality that Obama should be taking to the rest of the world, not trying to further inhibit our country and its economy with a nonsensical cap and trade program.

So, that’s the update from a believer in science but a global warming doubter. What have we learned over the past two days:

• There is a lot of doubt, which seems to be growing, that global warming actually exists or is caused by mankind. In fact, we are now seeing some scientists predicting a global cooling threat.
• Forcing the U.S. to hamstring its industries and companies with taxes and cap and trade programs that are unlikely to work without getting the rest of the world on board to do the same is economic suicide.
• If Obama was truly a world leader, he would be in China’s face about their severe global warming activities.
• The U.S. has been doing pretty good getting its carbon emissions under control, without cumbersome and ineffective government intervention, over the past few years with substantial declines in its carbon emissions.

And this last point is the key, without government intervention. The best advice out of all of these news sources comes from the Salon article: “To combat climate change, our best bet is energy innovation that will create new sources of energy - not artificial caps on emissions that haven’t worked anyway.”

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

April; 2013 Global warming Skeptic Update, Part 1: Global Warming Excperts Start To Doubt Themselves, China Invades Ecuador Oil Fields

Today we will catch up on a topic we have not discussed in a while, global warming, or its new marketing term, “climate change.” We have discussed our skepticism about this concept any number of times in the past. Those discussions were really caused by the fact that many advocates and believers of global warming were the most obnoxious and condescending types around. If you did not believe what they believed, you were an idiot, a fool, an ecological Nazi, and plain stupid, both from a science perspective and a common sense perspective. Just ask a ranting and raving Al Gore.

This is obviously no way to make a point, win an argument, or resolve a problem. Insults do not produce cooperation and understanding, it just makes the other side more entrenched in what they believe.

This is especially true when we pointed out a number of “facts” and realities that global warming advocates seem to ignore since it does not fit into their preconceived, close-minded views:

• Many scientific, well researched studies actually debunk the notion of global warming.
• The government’s own measures of global warming indicate that the globe has not gotten any warmer over the past fifteen years.
• The Obama administration refused to publish a report from its own EPA scientists that brought into doubt many of the standard global warming arguments and premises.
• The scientific leaders in supporting global warming theories actually conspired via hacked emails to change their findings since the reality of non-global warming did not match up to their theories of global warming.
• The premier physics institute in the world, the CERN Institute, reported findings in the summer of 2011, findings that were published in a leading scientific journal but were ignored by the mainstream press, that proved in a lab environment that if there was global warming, it was caused by excessive sun activity, not man made activity, which made mankind’s attempt to reduce the warming inconsequential.
• And finally, even if man made global warming exists, any solo U.S. attempt to fix it is a vain attempt unless the big global warming gas producers, India, China, etc., also curtail their current energy activities since any changes the U.S. makes would not overcome the increased, opposite activity of these countries.

Our past discussions of global warming’s myths can be found at the following posts:

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

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/wishing-al-gore-would-shut-up-why-i-am_10.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/01/global-warming-some-rtandom-but-major.html

Given these previous discussions, let’s check in and see what has happened since:

1) A Newsmax article from March 30, 2013 reviewed the conclusions in an editorial in the recent issue of the Economist magazine, a highly regarded publication, and a publication that has long been a strong advocate and believer of global warming:

• Global warming predictions haven’t panned out as predicted in the past decade and the reasons for the discrepancies are unknown.
• The editorial notes that even though greenhouse gas emissions have soared during the past 15 years, with 100 billion tons of carbon having been added to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, both air and ground temperatures during that time have remained unchanged.
• Surface temperatures have been at the lower end of the projected range of various global warming models since 2005.
• If the temps remain flat, they may shortly actually begin to fall below projections.
• “The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now,” The Economist said.
• The magazine proposes several reasons that might explain why temperatures have leveled off including a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and rising temperatures between 2000 and 2010, the rising temperatures in the 1990s might have been a fluke and there is no global warming going on, or the climate is responding to higher CO2 levels in ways that scientists haven’t understood.

The Newsmax article notes that buried deep in the Economist’s highly technical editorial is the admission “natural variations in the earth’s climate likely play a bigger role than scientific models have said.” Sounds a lot like what the smart people at CERN have found out.

Yes, global warming may exist. But as the Economist points out, something is not right, something in the models and assumptions are not tight, so calling a skeptic anything other than a skeptic is foolish and disrespectful to those that actually look at all pieces of information available about a problem or possible problem.

2) On March 28, 2013, a Business Insider article that appeared on the Yahoo Finance website reported that the government of Ecuador was planning to auction off three million of the country' 8.1 hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies for exploration and drilling. A probable reason for this deal, beyond China’s need for more and more energy sources, is explained in the article:

• As of last summer, Ecuador owed China more than $7 billion.
• This debt is more than a tenth of its GDP.
• In 2009 China began loaning Ecuador billions of dollars in exchange for oil shipments.
• China also helped fund two of the country's biggest hydroelectric infrastructure projects.
• China National Petroleum Corp may soon have a 30% stake in a $10  billion oil refinery in Ecuador.

The debt issue may have been the main reason why China is now so deeply entrenched in the country from an oil perspective and why the local government was willing to overlook its rules, laws, and regulations regarding the exploitation of the area and the native tribes that live there.

The bottom line from a global warming perspective, as we discussed above, is that China is moving full steam ahead on fossil fuels on a number of fronts, with the Ecuador situation just being one area. Any U.S. global warming curtailment activity has to be met with a tamping down of these kinds of fossil fuel activities from China or our activity will be fruitless.

3) Consider another observation from an industry expert and global warming advocate. Despite the fact that we’ve added 100 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere in the last decade, temperatures haven’t jumped, as explained above by the Economist editorial.

As David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation notes, this runs completely counter to how things should be playing out if global warming is occurring: “The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations. If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change.”

This is just the first part of our global warming update, the second half will follow tomorrow. But today we learned that even some of global warming’s long time advocates (the Economist and an official of the Global Warming Policy Foundation) are taking the brave stands to point out that they may have been wrong and that the global warming models are not panning out.

We learned China is moving full steam ahead to expand its use of fossil fuels, a main culprit of global warming advocates, making any solo, unilateral global warming by the U.S. on carbon taxes, cap and trade, or other such initiatives ineffective to global warming theory and damaging to the U.S. economy.

More of the same tomorrow from a believer in science but a global warming skeptic along with a solution to make everyone on both sides of this issue happy.

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