Love My Country, Loathe My Government: January 2020

Friday, January 31, 2020

February, 2020, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Lying Politicians, Pompous Politicians and Inept Politicians.

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

Let’s get started:

1) Before going any further on this topic let me say that I realize how horrible it must be to lose a loved one. The pain and grief is overwhelming. And to lose a loved one suddenly is even more gut wrenching since it is unexpected.

So I do not want to come off as uncaring here but it does kind of disgust me that someone would try to leverage the sudden loss of a loved one for political gain:

In December, 1972, Joe Biden’s wife Neillia and his infant daughter were killed in a tragic car accident.
The police investigation showed that she had driven into the path of a semi tractor trailer driven by Curtis Dunn.
Dunn’s truck flipped over trying to avoid the collision.
The prosecutor in the case concluded that rumors of alcohol use by all involved was unfounded and no charges were brought against Dunn.
And yet, Biden claimed his wife and child were killed by a drunk driver in both 2001 and 2007 at University of Delaware gatherings.
Not satisfied to lie/misrepresent facts in 2001 and 2007, in 2008 slandered Dunn and blamed the truck driver’s alcohol drinking for the accident even though there was no factual basis to the claim: “A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly and killed my daughter instantly and hospitalized my two sons …”
Delaware resident, Pamela Hill, has now demanded a public apology from Biden for slandering the name of her now deceased father.
Specifically: “We need to set the record straight and clear my father’s name right now before this goes any further.”

So sad that he suffered these sudden loses and so pathetic that he would leverage those losses for political gain and slander an innocent man in the process.

2) Let’s turn to a news article from 2009 by Charles Hurt that I recently came across. Mr. Hunt was writing for the New York Post and gives another example of how politicians like to make rules and also like to ignore them at their whim:

New York Senator Chuck Schumer was on an airplane flight when a flight attendant asked him to turn off his cell phone as the plane got ready for takeoff.
Rather than respect the rules, the flight attendant, and the pilot who announced that cell phones had to be turned off, Schumer continued his cellphone discussion.
Schumer asked if he could finish his conversation but the attendant said no, they were waiting for him to finish his call so the plane could then take off.
According to the article: “The state’s senior senator ended his call, but then launched into an argument with her, claiming he was entitled to continue his chat until the cabin door was closed.”
Schumer then called the flight attendant a “bitch” to his traveling partner after the flight attendant walked away for not allowing him special consideration.

Schumer eventually apologized for the comment but only after the press got hold of the story and it spread far and wide, making one doubt whether he was truly sorry or sorry because he got caught behaving like a five year old. Just another example where a politician thinks they are more important than they really are. England has royalty, we do not, despite what the political class thinks so turn off the darn phone and follow the rules like the rest of us.

3) This story raises a troubling issue with two possible answers, neither of which is good: are California politicians and the state government processes they operate that incompetent or they that nefarious that they are involved in a massive financial cover up

The following discussion comes from the Real Politics website and highlights a legal effort they have underway to open up the state government financial books of California:

According to Real Politics, California is the only state in the union that does not open up its financials and checkbook for review.
Opening up the state accounting books would provide the ability for outside sources to review and assess how California is spending taxpayer wealth.
However, when Real Politics submitted a request to get access to the so-called state “checkbook” to see what expenses were being incurred by the state government, state Controller Betty Yee rejected the request.
While this rejection was against state law, the reason given for the rejection was that the outrageous claim “that the controller couldn’t locate a single one of the 49 million bills she paid last year.”
And yet Yee claimed that 99.7% of all state paid bills were proper and legit even though she could not provide the information to support that claim, shredding any credibility she has.
So the state government paid out hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer wealth and yet could not locate any of the bills???
Are those running the government that incompetent or are they hiding some big time corruption or both?
Left with no other choice to find out what is happening to $320 billion a year in the state budget, Real Politics has had to go to court to get the information.
Their lawsuit wants a line by line detailed accounting of state government expenditures.
Their track record is pretty in these types of cases since they have “never lost a state checkbook transparency fight. In 2012, we successfully sued Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka (R), and, in 2018, we sued Wyoming State Auditor Cynthia Cloud (R).”

If a private sector accountant said they he or she could not find the checks that the company had paid out they would likely come under immediate criminal suspicion. Auditors would be called in, the SEC and other government agencies might become involved and there would be a thorough scrubbing of the financials. But as a government employee, the California state Controller thinks she can just shrug her shoulders and say the government lost millions of bills?

Seems like the “Chuck Schumer” syndrome we just discussed, the political class passes the rules and laws for the rest of us but they seem to think they can get a pass whenever they want even if it involves shenanigans involving a whopping $320 billion.

Alright, this is a good start to this month’s political class insanity: lying politicians, pompous politicians, and incompetent politicians and government workers. Sounds about right.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

January, 2020, Part 3, Why I Am A Global Warming Doubter and a Believer In Science: Wind Power Blows Environmentally 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) Apparently folks in South Australia decided that they wanted to go all in with solar and wind energy. In fact, they got their use of renewable energy up to 50% of their electricity production and usage, helped greatly by subsidized wind and solar energy projects. This effort and accomplishment got them the love and admiration of global warming advocate around the world.

But there are a number of problems with this reality:

In South Australia the retail cost of electricity per kilowatt is 47.13 cents.
In the United States, the retail cost is per kilowatt is 15.75 cents.
In fact, the cost of electricity in South Australia is higher than every other country in the world.
Thus, the United States, which has significantly annually reduced by tens of millions of tons it’s carbon output pays one third the cost for electricity than a region that has gone hog wild for solar and wind energy.
Keep in mind that the government heavily subsidized the creation of solar and wind power in South Australia to get to 50%.

So taxpayers down under paid taxes to get solar and wind energy access which has resulted in electricity rates that are higher than anywhere else in the world and three times the cost of our electricity in this country. Not a great financial deal for anyone other than those running the subsidized solar and wind infrastructure and companies.

2) The Convention of States movement is a great effort to get the Federal government under control by leveraging Article V in the Constitution to get the Federal budget under control and impose term limits on career politicians. Politicians have destroyed our freedoms, the country’ financial viability, and continue to tax us into oblivion.

The Convention of States recently ran an article on some shenanigans that master politician Obama put forth regarding the myth of man made global warming:

Kevin Dayaratna, speaking at the 13th International Conference on Climate asserted that the real cost of carbon dioxide emissions are often “all over the map” because the data can be “rigged by politicians” to get the results and public impact they want.
Specifically: “The statistical models used by the Obama administration to set regulatory policy are flawed because they are highly prone to user manipulation, Dayaratna told conferees.”
As background: when people build statistical models, they build in assumption structures and then calculate results using a certain set of assumptions.
Notice I said “a set of assumptions,” most good statistical models allow you to vary assumptions which usually results in different forecasts and results.
The trick to being a good statistical modeler and forecaster is to make sure you have the right set of assumptions that most closely match reality.
The trick of being a bad statistical modeler and forecaster is to make sure that you have a set of assumptions that result in model calculations that give you the answer you want, not necessarily the answer that is most closely aligned with reality.
Which is the point that Dayaratna is trying to make: Obama may have had great statistical models but it is likely he used bad assumptions to get the answer he wanted, not the best answer relative to reality.
He could then tout the results he came up with, “see, this is what the model spit out,” and try to convince people that the answer has to be right because it is what the model calculated and ignore the fact that the assumptions were manipulated to get the result he wanted.
Back to Obama’s model: his EPA defined the social cost of carbon as the “economic damages per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions.”
Dayaratna played around with the Obama model assumptions to see what might happen and test the sensitivity and reasonableness of the model and different assumption sets.
His analysis and assumptions found that Obama’s carbon forecasts dropped anywhere from 40% to 200% with non-radical, logical changes to the assumptions.
In fact, he found assumption sets that said increased carbon had net positive impacts on society.
His conclusions: “The sheer fact that these models can be manipulated to get any result you want speaks volumes to their uselessness in regulatory policy and the danger of putting them into the hands of policymakers.”

There is an old saying among old statisticians like myself: “torture the data long enough and it will say anything you want.” Which is what Obama and a lot of global warming advocates have done over time: they torture the data, they torture the assumptions, and they turn out great public relations sound bites.

Remember the inane sound bite that “97% of climate scientists support man made global warming.” Totally bogus number but a number that tortured analyses and bad assumption sets finally created to suit the needs of people like Obama and Al Gore. Or to paraphrase Dayaratna, you would not give a gun to kid so why trust politicians with statistical models that they do not understand?

3) We will finish up this post and this month’s discussion on global warming with an analysis from the Self Reliance website. It took a hard look not at what wind power does for us once in operation but also the back end and front end financial costs and environmental costs of installing and removing wind infrastructure, costs that are not pretty:

With decades worth of wind infrastructure having been installed in this country, one set of research estimates that the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of wind turbine blade material that will have to be taken care of over the next 20 years since the average life of a wind turbine is only about 20 years and there are 60,000 wind turbines already in this country, i.e. this disposal problem is not going to go away anytime soon.
Wind turbine blades are not small, they are usually about 135 feet long so taking them down and getting rid of them is not a low cost job.
A typical wind turbine contains 8,000 components of which many are made from steel, cast iron, and concrete.
Some components are made from rare earth metals, neodymium and dysprosium, which are mined almost exclusively in China.
These required components require energy intensive efforts to mine, ship, refine and manufacture wind turbines that only have a 20 year life cycle.
These “before” efforts have significant negative environmental and cost impacts.
And the “after” efforts of taking them down also have significant environmental and cost impacts.
The research paper, “Unsustainable Wind Turbine Blade Disposal Practices in the United States”, Ramirez-Tejeda et al. in 2017 analyzed the nightmare of taking wind turbines down after they had lived their useful life.
They estimate there will be 43 million tons of blades around the world that will have to be disposed of over the coming decades.
The obvious question is how and where do you get rid of these 43 million tons of metal and concrete.

So there are big financial and environmental costs getting wind turbines operational and big financial and environmental costs getting rid of them at the end of their life. The more you know about the COMPLETE life cycle of a wind turbine the more you realize that they be a solution that is worse than the problem from an environmental perspective.

The Self Reliance article also documented the massive negative wildlife impact of wind turbines:

The Audubon Society estimates that wind turbines kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year, with their high end estimate at 328,000.
Experience shows that eagles are especially in danger of wind turbines.
Scientists estimate that turbines kill anywhere from 3 to 5 million bats every year.
In fact, some bat species may face extinction in the very near future because of their migratory patterns and their always fatal encounters with wind turbines.
Given that bats eat all kinds of other creatures like mosquitoes, making human life better, this is not a good trend.

So what did learn today: wind turbines have some tremendous financial, environmental, and living creature downsides, never trust a politician with a statistical model, and renewable energy is really, really expensive at the retail level.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Sunday, January 26, 2020

January, 2020, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: The Total Story On Clean Energy and The Total Story On The Wildfires in Australia

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.

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) Global warming advocates have always been in love with solar and wind power as ways to avoid the disasters that will occur, but never do occur, with carbon based fuel sources. But they never look at the whole picture of how the mass installation of solar and wind power facilities might have a tremendous negative impact on the environment, as described in a recent American Enterprise Institute analysis by Mark J. Perry:

Jason Hickel has written a piece called, “The Limits of Clean Energy.”
It’s sub-title is, “If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels.”
He correctly points out that once solar and wind infrastructure is in place, the energy is indeed “clean.”
However, it can be extremely “dirty” getting to that point before solar and wind is generating energy.
Building clean energy infrastructure results requires the extraction of rare earth metal ores which requires a lot of energy, the shipping of those ores over tremendous distances which requires a lot of energy, the manufacturing of those solar panels and wind generators which require a lot of energy, the transportation of those panels and generators for installation which requires a lot of energy and the installation of those panels and generators which require a lot of energy, with almost all, if not all, of that extra energy being created by fossil fuels.
In 2017, the World Bank did a little known study which tried to model the entire life cycle of clean energy products.
They estimated how much mining and extraction of needed ore would be required to create a world and energy infrastructure that got half of its electricity, 7 terawatts, from solar and wind sources by the year 2050.
Their estimates show that to get just half of our electrical power from clean energy sources we would have to mine 17 million metric tons of copper, 20 million metric tons of lead, 25 million metric tons of zinc, 81 million metric tons of aluminum, and 2.4 billion tons of iron.
Thus, over 2.5 billion tons of ores wold have to be mined, transported and then turned into clean energy solar panels and wind generators.
The environmental impact would be devastating and the fossil fuels needed to mine, transport, manufacture, ship and install the clean energy infrastructure would also be staggering.
And keep in mind that while fossil fuel infrastructure and plants last for decades and decades, wind generators have a life of about only 20 years which means there would quite quickly be more energy needed to dismantle, safely recycle, and install new wind generators, all of which needs to be figured into the financial and environmental cost of wind energy.

Clean energy is not free and clean if you look at the whole life cycle of the process from mining, to transportation, to manufacturing, to installation to replacement. In other words, there is no free lunch when it comes to clean energy. Or as Thomas Sowell once said: “There are no solutions. There are only trade offs.”

2) As you probably know, Australia is in the midst of devastating wildfires that are raging across the country. Of course, like they always do without facts or analysis, global warming advocates immediately claimed that global warming/climate change is the cause of these horrible wildfires. But is that immediate, knee jerk reaction true? Consider a recent article by Mike Shedlock from January 9, 2020 that poses another theory based on some realities:

The fires are truly devastating, having burned through over 15 million acres, killing at least two dozen people, and a large, unknown number of animals.
The article proposes some alternative reasons why the fires are so bad, none of which include man made climate change.
First, the country is in the midst of a drought, something that has happened for millions of years.
Second, a wide range of useless but dangerous government regulations prevent landowners from clearing excess scrub, brush and trees.
Late last year a fire chief in Victoria took a swipe at that state’s “minimalist approach” to clearing to controlled burns to clear out excess growth.
Combine stupid government regulations on clearing excess brush with a drought and the reality that 180 people have been arrested and charged with arson relative to these wildfires and you can see that there may be other reasons besides “climate change” for these fires.
Note: while 80 people have been caught and charged with arson, it is unknown how many more arsonists haven't been caught.
One example from news reports: "A volunteer firefighter in Australia has been charged with deliberately lighting blazes during the nation’s bushfire crisis. Police arrested the man, 19, for seven counts of alleged arson in an area south of Sydney, New South Wales."
In addition, before the current and regular drought cycle set in, Australia enjoyed a very rainy stretch of weather that encouraged growth of bushes and trees, extra growth that was never kept under control.
And when the rainy season ended and drought set in, the amount of dried out plant fuel was sky high.
But this situation had been forecasted since in 2015 in an article in Age, David Packham, the former head of Australia’s National Rural Fire Research Centre, warned that excess growth had raised the potential fuel for fires to the most dangerous levels in thousands of years and that this unchecked growth was the result of “misguided green ideology.”
The article cites a piece written by ecological criminologist Paul Read several years ago: “A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we have known for some time – 40 percent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made.”
Another major contributor to wildfire in both Australia and California is the increased use of eucalyptus trees, a tree that is full of a natural oil that is highly flammable.
As the popularity of using eucalyptus trees for landscaping has grown, the fuel they carry has increased the intensity of wild fires once they start, a man made phenomena.

So did manmade global warming/climate change cause the wild fires? If so, that may have been a small factor compared to at least 180 arsonists, excess growth due to a rainy spell, and government regulations that prevent good forest and brush management. Which is why knee jerk reactions to these types of situations is never productive.

More reasons and logic why I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science: in science you look at the entire process for understanding, a trait not usually common with global warming advocates. Looking at the entire supply chain process for clean energy and the entire environmental situation on wildfires and you come up with a different set of realities vs. the typical advocate knee jerk panic.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Saturday, January 25, 2020

January, 2020, Part 1, Why I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: More Failed Global Warming Forecasts and Making Humanity Go Extinct Is the Solution

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.

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) One of the biggest fallacies we have said about global warming advocates is that they often just look at a small chunk of data or a chunk of time, ignoring the rest of the data that is available or ignoring much longer time frames to get a context for climate changes. As a result, they come to incorrect assumptions that result in incorrect forecasts which over time are always proven wrong.

This reality is discussed in the following video. The assumption of the video is that often global warming advocates do not look at long enough historic time periods. If they did, they would see that the Earth goes through cyclical periods of cooling and warming and that those cycles have nothing to do with mankind’s use of carbon fuels. Mother Nature self corrects when things get too hot or too cold, that is what the long term view of the data show, as explained in the following video:

https://freedomheadlines.com/freedom-wire/devastating-blow-to-global-warming-activists-heres-the-hard-evidence/

2) Speaking of incorrect climate forecasts:

Ten years ago, workers at Glacier National Park posted signs in the park that said climate change would cause all of the park’s glaciers to melt by the year 2020.
Whoops, as of 2020 the glaciers are still with us, another global warming forecast down the drain.
According to a park spokesman, they are not giving up on their dire prediction of glacier demise.
The park is taking down the old signs and putting up new signs that say “when the glaciers” disappear.
This is an old global warming advocate trick approach, make bold predictions but do not put a timeline on on those predictions which means the prediction can never be wrong, the prediction has just not happened yet.
This is probably a good strategy, i.e. never time bound your global warming predictions since in 1923 the news media reported that the glaciers would be nearly gone in just 25 years or 1948.
In 1936 another news story proclaimed that the glaciers would be gone in another 25 year or 1961.
Scientists back in the early 1950s said the glaciers would be gone in 50 years.
In 2009, National Geographic magazine questioned whether the glaciers would still be around by 2020.
And finally, a recent New York Times article said the glaciers would be gone by 2044

Are we seeing a trend here? Every time a global warming/glacier melting forecast is proven wrong, a new forecast just pushes the date out. This has been going on for almost 100 years and the glaciers are still here. Can you see why a global warming doubter is actually doubter? Forecasts are always wrong until we get to a point where forecasts have no dateline which means they can never be wrong, they just have not happened yet.

3) But the pitiful forecasting of glaciers’ demises is not the only major failure on global warming forecasting:

In 2004, the Department of Defense told President Bush that by the year 2020 major cities in Europe would be under water from rising seas, which did not happen.
They also told Bush that Britain would be suffering from a Siberian climate by 2020, which did not happen.
They layered on top of these environmental predictions that by 2020 the world would be experiencing “nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine, and widespread rioting would erupt around the world,” which did not happen.
We previously discussed the failed prediction of Al Gore that the Arctic would likely be ice free by the year 2013, which did not happen.
Other failed climate predictions boldly said that there would be a new ice age by the year 2000...by the year 2020…by the year 2070 or snow would be a thing of the past by the year 2000 which is kind of against the new ice age prediction by the year 2000.

Again, the time is now right for a comprehensive, objective look at the environment and how humanity plays into the environment by looking at ALL of the science, research, and realities. Because looking just at a subset of science, research, and realities, which people like Al Gore have been doing for at least 100 years, has yielded a zero success rate at predicting what is going to happen.

4) We have often talked about the many nonsensical ideas that global warming advocates have put forth. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren wants to place a carbon tax on everything. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez want to implement a massive New Green Deal idiocy that would tax every American into oblivion and crash the economy. And they want to do this despite the failure of global warming advocates to ever get anything right from a reality and forecasting perspective.

And while these global warming advocate ideas and likely failed solutions are pretty insane, climate activist Les Knight of Portland has pushed way beyond these idiotic concepts:

Knight’s solution is to get rid of the human race to save the planet.
He claims that he has been pushing for this solution to Mother Nature’s problems long before the fad of climate change took hold.
Specifically: “Fifty years ago, I concluded that the best thing for the planet would be a peaceful phase-out of human existence. We’re causing the extinction of hundreds of thousands of other species. With us gone, I believe ecosystems will be restored and there will be enough of everything. No more fighting over resources.”
To prove his commitment to this nonsense, he went out and got himself a vasectomy and not be able to contribute to the problem of humans’ existence.
He created the Voluntary Human Extinction Project to help implement his plan to save the Earth by killing off humanity.Furthermore according to Knight: “If we go extinct, other species will have a chance to recover. I’ll never see the day when there are no humans on the planet, but I can imagine what a magnificent world it would be – provided we go soon enough.”

Wow, one of the more radical solutions to climate change. The fact that he did not make himself an example of human extinction by making himself extinct kind of destroys his credibility to some degree. The longer he exists the more natural resources he uses up which is against what he is advocating. So now we are in a hypocritical set of reasoning: we should all go extinct because I think it would be best for the planet, I just do not want the extinction to start with me. Insanity.

More failed forecasts and a touch of craziness, more reasons why I continue to be a global warming doubter and a 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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Monday, January 20, 2020

January, 2020, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: California and E. coli, Omar Under Criminal Investigation, Hurricane Ineptness In Puerto Rico, and More

This will be our ninth and final political class insanity post for this month. Believe me, we probably could have done another half dozen or so, that is how crazy American politicians are becoming. Inane comments, bad priorities, bold face lies, inept legislating, the list is endless. After today, we will pick up this insanity theme again in early February.

Let’s get started:

1) Unfortunately, California politicians and how they have screwed up a once great state continue to make headlines everyday. In a recent post we went through the calamities that state politicians have caused Californians to endure:

Homelessness continues to grow rapidly in the state while decreasing around the rest of the country, despite a strong national economy.
Many state cities tolerate public defecation, public urination and public shooting up and use of illegal drugs.
The state has hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded state government liabilities.
The state has horrible public schools, horrible infrastructure conditions, and horrible forestry management skills, resulting in massive wildfires.
The state has seen the rise of Medieval diseases such a typhus because of the growing homelessness problem.
The state failed miserably in building a high speed rail line, wasting untold millions of dollars in the process.
The state has some of the highest taxes in the country.
The state has the highest poverty rate in the country.
The state’s crazy and likely useless environmental laws results in some state residents paying over $5 for a gallon of gas, about double what the rest of the country pays.

Today we add another problem affecting the well being of Californians and it is very serious:

California politicians’ inability to deal with homelessness has caused the homeless populations in their major cities to continue to grow even though we are in the middle of a strong economy and homelessness is going down outside of the state.
Also, recent law changes in places like San Francisco have no longer made it a crime to defecate urinate, or shoot up drugs in public, that type of behavior has skyrocketed, forcing cities to create poop patrols to pick up the public defecation and power wash the cities’ streets.
Unfortunately, this continual power washing of the streets of defecation and urination is having some serious environmental effects.
According to California Health Line records: “We should all work together to clean up these hazardous waste and homeless sites before the whole city rot[s] away,”
President Trump tweeted about San Francisco last fall: “Very bad and dangerous conditions, also severely impacting the Pacific Ocean and water supply.”
California’s rivers, coastlines and local streams are showing signs of high fecal matter, higher than state safety standards, as a result of the power washing and drainage of city streets because of the explosion in homeless public defecation and urination.
Consider the real life experience of David Gibson, Executive with the San Diego Water Quality Control Board regarding homeless encampments: “I’ve carried 5-gallon buckets that were unambiguously being used as toilets. They were taking it to the San Diego River, dumping it there, and rinsing it out there.”
The EPA has sent the state’s governor a letter about the problem and then told San Francisco that it was in violation of the Clean Water Act.
As a result, dangerous E. coli bacteria levels are also getting to dangerously high levels.
Some tests have come back that have exceeded the allowable level of E. coli by sevenfold.

I usually do not try to blame a specific political party, we have much disdain for ALL politicians. But in the case of California this is all on the Democrats. They have controlled most of the state government for decades, this is their problem and it is a disgusting and dangerous one.

2) Hurricane Maria did a real devastation job on Puerto Rico several years ago. Trump took a lot of heat about it being a bad recovery effort even though it was eventually found that the ineptness of the local political class on the island had a lot to do with the bad and slow recovery effort. Materials and supplies got to the island but the local government and the politicians that operate it could not get the stuff out to the places where relief supplies were needed.

Now, it appears that not only did relief materials and supplies make it to the island but those supplies are STILL sitting in a government warehouse years after the storm:

An island emergency management government official was fired after it was discovered that there was a warehouse still stocked with Hurricane Maria relief supplies.
The warehouse was filled with thousands of cases of water and other supplies from back in 2017.
The island’s governor immediately fired Carlos Aceedo, the now former director of Puerto Rico's emergency management agency.
The governor said: "There are thousands of people who have made sacrifices to bring help to the south, and it is unforgivable that resources have been kept in a warehouse."

As always, government is inefficient and often ineffective, whether it is resolving a dire homeless situation or not knowing there were thousands of cases of water sitting in a warehouse while thousands went thirsty in a time of crisis.

3) American Action News recently reported on how the FBI is now investigating possible illegal shenanigans of freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar:

The FBI and ICE are investigating possible criminal behavior by Omar regarding her so-called “marital history.”
It is alleged that Omar married her brother in 2009 in violation of the government’s refugee family reunification program.
According to the Daily Wire website: “The Blaze noted that the “FBI SAC stated that the wide range of criminal activity suggested by the evidence against Rep. Omar may lead the FBI to expand the review to other federal departments” and that in recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Education inspector general have reportedly joined the investigation….The Blaze reported that ICE’s involvement in the investigation pertains to “questions about [Rep. Omar’s 2009 marriage],” which allegedly includes “eight instances of perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, up to eight years of state and federal tax fraud, two years of federal student loan fraud, and even bigamy.”
In addition: “The Department of Education inspector general is reportedly looking into whether Omar’s 2009 marriage to a British citizen was “an attempt to facilitate federal student loan fraud, or other fraud involving higher education.”

The word karma comes to mind. Omar is a person who was an adultress according to the wife of the husband Omar had an affair with, she has numerous times expressed her hatred and contempt for Israel and the Jewish, and her tendency to call anyone with a different opinion than hers is a racist is getting old. Karma can be a bitch.

4) Given California has been such a central theme in this month’s political class insanity posts, let’s finish it up this month’s insanity with another California disaster:

The latest data from the Census Bureau on poverty shows that California still has the country’s highest poverty rate as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure or “SPM.”
California’s SPM poverty rate came in at 18.1% which edged out Louisiana at 16.5% and Florida at 16.2%.
The states with the lowest poverty rates were Iowa at 6.7%, Minnesota at 7%, and Kansas at 7.8%.
Thus, California had a poverty rate two and a half to almost three times the rate of the lowest poverty rate states.
One of the strongest drivers of poverty in California is the high cost of housing which has been driven by political idiocy when it comes to housing rules, laws, and regulations.
California is also in the dumps when it comes to homelessness, having the fourth worst homeless rate in the country at .33% (33 homeless people per 10,000 in population) and it also has the most homeless Americans than every other state.
California is the worst state when it comes to unsheltered homeless folks since 69% of the homeless in California are likely to not be in any kind of shelter compared to the best performing state Massachusetts, which has over 95% of its homeless in shelter.

Someone once said that California is now a “North Korea with a tech industry.” Take away the Silicon Valley and Hollywood millionaires and this is a very, very poor state. The state politicians have taken a wonderful place with a large and varied economy and incredible natural resources and turned it into a third world country. High taxes, high poverty rates, high homelessness rates, high gas prices, high levels of regulations, no surprise that the state’s wealthy and middle class are fleeing the state.

So California politicians have ruined an entire state, Puerto Rican politicians ruined the relief effort for their citizens and Congresswoman Omar may have ruined her life and the lives of others with her alleged criminal actions. More insanity next month.

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

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Sunday, January 19, 2020

January, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: More California Insanity and Biden Making His Entire Family Rich

Let’s get started:

1) We have often talked about how California politicians have turned a most wonderful state into a living hell along so many dimensions, including our last post where we listed out just some of the state’s problems:

Homelessness continues to grow rapidly in the state while decreasing around the rest of the country, despite a strong national economy.
Many state cities tolerate public defecation, public urination and the public shooting up and use of illegal drugs.
The state has hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded state government liabilities.
The state has horrible public schools, horrible infrastructure conditions, and horrible forestry management skills, resulting in massive wildfires.
The state has seen the rise of Medieval diseases such a typhus because of the growing homelessness problem.
The state failed miserably in building a high speed rail line, wasting untold millions of dollars in the process.
The state has some of the highest taxes in the country.
The state’s crazy and likely useless environmental laws results in some state residents paying over $5 for a gallon of gas, about double what the rest of the country pays.

As a result of this gross mismanagement of life, many tax paying, law abiding state citizens are saying goodbye to a place that used to be a wonderful place to live:

Accordingly, a recent study done by the University of California at Berkeley, more than half of the state's registered voters have considered leaving the state, given current living conditions.
Which is not surprising since we have previously reported that over a million residents have indeed left the state since 2006.
In 2017 alone, 76,000 California residents moved to Texas, a state with a much lower tax burden including no state income tax.
Those in the survey cited, not surprisingly, expensive housing, high taxes, and a liberal political culture as the most important reasons for wanting to leave the state.
One former resident who was cited in a Daily Caller Website article on the survey, said why her family had left the state: “We’re moving to redder pastures,” former California resident and conservative Judy Stark, 71. “We’re getting with people who believe in the same political agenda that we do: America first, Americans first, law and order.”
71% of those surveyed said that expensive housing was the main reason they wanted to get out.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “California’s increasing home costs, which stem from its growing home shortage, could be the result of a combination of factors, including strict state regulations, high taxes, the California Environmental Quality Act, and permanent residents who do not want to give up land space for the homeless population.”
High taxes (58%) and the political climate (46%) were the next most important reasons for wanting to leave the state.

California used to be a state where everyone dreamed of living. It had everything: mountains and beaches, large metro areas and small towns, wonderful weather that allowed just about any kind of recreational activity. And somehow, the politicians in the state have managed to ruin it with stupid housing laws, high taxes, failed programs of all types, high gas prices, and a serious degradation of living standards and culture despite the state’s natural wonders.

2) While politicians are ruining lives in places California and elsewhere, including Washington D.C., the politicians that are screwing everything up for the rest of us are making themselves and their families incredibly wealthy. From the Clintons to the Obamas to most members of Congress, self greed almost always takes precedence over serving the country and its citizens.

A recent New York Post article by Peter Schweizer on January 18, 2020, showed “How five members of Joe Biden’s family got rich through his connections:”

According to Mr. Schweizer, “One particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars.”
James Biden is Joe Biden’s younger brother who has been an important part of Joe’s political campaigns.
As a result, James accompanied Joe on foreign Congressional trips and has been invited to any number of White House functions.
According to the article, “Sometimes, James’ White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president.”
In 2010, the president of a large construction company, Hillstone International, Kevin Justice, met with Joe Biden and a senior aide.
Less than three weeks later, James Biden joined the company as an executive vice president despite having zero experience in construction.
By the way, shortly after James Biden joined the company, Hillstone was trying to win a large government contract for work in Iraq, a contract that they won and which was worth over $1.5 billion over three years, a contract that was much larger than anything the company had ever worked on before.
They then followed up with a $22 million State Department contract.
And to add insult to injury, the son of the parent company’s founder, David Richter, made it no secret why they had been so successful in getting taxpayer funded projects from the Feds: “It really helps, he told investors at a private meeting, to have “the brother of the vice president as a partner,” according to someone who was there.”
The company went onto get dozens of other Federal construction contacts with Jame Biden being there for all of them.
Joe’s son, Hunter Biden, also lived off of his father's powerful position as Vice President.
Hunter often rode on Air Force Two with his father to foreign countries at taxpayer expense, where he would cultivate business contacts and jobs.
According to the article, the deals almost always involved entities that were looking for favors from the U.S. government and/or Joe Biden.
One of Hunter Biden’s efforts involved working with a college pal, Devon Archer.
They were business partners in something called the Burnham Financial Group, an entity that had done deals around the world including deals with Kazakhstan and government run business in China, a country that Hunter had visited with his father aboard Air Force Two.
Domestically, Burnham came under Federal investigation that involved a fraud scheme worth $60 million against one of the poorest Native American tribes, the Oglala Sioux.
As a result, Archer was arrested in May 2016 and “charged with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars.”
The fraud extended to several public and union pension plans.
Somehow Hunter Biden was not charged although he was a director of the company and long time friend of Archer.
Transcripts from Archer’s trial made it clear that Hunter Biden and Burnham leveraged Hunter’s connections to his father.
Several employees of Burnham were convicted of fraud in this case but somehow Hunter Biden was not.
Dr. Howard Krein is Joe Biden’s son-in-law.
Krein started up an investment consulting business called StartUp Health with two of his siblings.
The Company was barely started when two of its executives got a meeting with Obama and Biden in the White House.
The VERY next day, this new company got featured at a large healthcare tech conference being run by the Federal government which obviously was a big boost to a company that barely existed.
Joe Biden took an active role in promoting the company that was headed up by his son-in-law including a StartUP Health event in San Francisco where Biden showed up to glad hand people attending the event.
While Vice President, Joe Biden went to Costa Rica to meet with its President.
Not surprisingly, several months later, Biden’s brother, Frank Biden, got a big real estate deal done in the country.
Frank Biden got access to the Costa Rican ministry of education, energy and the environment, and the country’s president about this real estate development despite the fact he had virtually no experience in real estate development.
Frank Biden also got into solar energy development in Latin American and, “After Joe Biden brought together leaders for CESI, brother Frank’s firm Sun Fund Americas announced that it was “engaged in projects and is in negotiations with governments of other countries in the [Caribbean] region for both its Solar and Waste to Energy development services.” As if to push the idea along, the Obama administration’s OPIC provided a $47.5 million loan to support the construction of a 20-megawatt solar facility in Clarendon, Jamaica.”
Shortly thereafter, Frank Biden’s company got a job to build a 20 megawatt solar facility in Jamaica, the same country that Obama gave a $47.5 U.S. taxpayer back loan to.
Joe Biden has a sister,Valerie, who ran all of his Senate campaigns.
But she was also one of only two executives in a PR firm called Joe Slade White and Company.
This company received millions of dollars in “consulting fees” during Joe Biden’s Presidential campaigns.

Thus, the country has funded a lot of the Biden family wealth, the country’s politicians, including Joe Biden and Obama opened doors to Biden family financial opportunities, opportunities that were not and are not available to ordinary tax paying Americans, and Joe Biden and others leveraged and sacrificed American wealth and influence to the financial benefit of the Biden family. In return, we got a career politician who has done basically nothing of consequence of the country over the decades he has been in office.

Much more detail about the Biden family shenanigans can be found in the following article:

https://nypost.com/2020/01/18/how-five-members-of-joe-bidens-family-got-rich-through-his-connections/?fbclid=IwAR1hHyHcP5vN3PwKsGcnZX7DCv5nlVd8vFwIMdHdl4S7k9VmBf7aEyYiVhU

Thus, not too many surprises today from the political class. Greed, influence and power peddling, and incompetence at both the state and national political level.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Friday, January 31, 2020

February, 2020, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Lying Politicians, Pompous Politicians and Inept Politicians.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

January, 2020, Part 3, Why I Am A Global Warming Doubter and a Believer In Science: Wind Power Blows Environmentally And More

Sunday, January 26, 2020

January, 2020, Part 2, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: The Total Story On Clean Energy and The Total Story On The Wildfires in Australia

Saturday, January 25, 2020

January, 2020, Part 1, Why I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: More Failed Global Warming Forecasts and Making Humanity Go Extinct Is the Solution

Monday, January 20, 2020

January, 2020, Part 9, Political Class Insanity: California and E. coli, Omar Under Criminal Investigation, Hurricane Ineptness In Puerto Rico, and More

Sunday, January 19, 2020

January, 2020, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: More California Insanity and Biden Making His Entire Family Rich

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