United States Of Purple Presidency Platform - Out With The Old, In With The Solutions

 Let's do a quick review of where the country is today:

1. Unemployment is still well over 8% even though President Obama said it would never get this high unless the Federal government spent over $800 billion in a failed economic stimulus program.
2. The combined underemployment and unemployment rate is about 15%.
3. Every WEEK, about 400,000 Americans file for first time unemployment benefits and every MONTH, if we are lucky, about 200,000 jobs are created, you do the math.
4. Since declaring war on drugs about forty years ago, the drug addiction and drug cartel problem has gotten worse.
5. Since forming the Federal Energy Department over thirty years ago, we still not have a coherent, rational, and effective energy independence strategy in place.
6. Since forming the Department of Education about thirty years ago, we still grossly under educate our kids vs. the rest of the world.
7. Since Congress ordered the Defense Department to seal the U.S. border with Mexico in 1985, millions of illegal immigrants and untold tons of illegal drugs have come across that border.
8. The Federal government loses over five hundred TRILLION dollars a year via waste and fraud in its Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamp, unemployment programs, and tax collection processes and programs.
9. Despite passing Obama Care, health care costs continue to rise, possibly tens of millions of Americans will lose their employer provided health insurance coverage since Obama Care makes it less expensive to drop these programs than continue them, the Medicare and Medicaid head actuary recently published his analysis that shows Obama Care will increase the national debt by over $300 billion, and the legislation is fatally flawed when it comes to understanding and remedying the root causes of escalating health care costs.
10. According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 56% of Americans would vote to throw all 535 members of Congress out of office if they could.
11. Congressional approval ratings are at an all time low.
12. President Obama continues to wage his class warfare strategy by falsely accusing wealthier American earners of not paying their fair share of taxes, using Warren Buffet as a prop that is not representative of the true, high tax rates of most higher earning Americans.
13. The President implicitly continues to wage his divisive class warfare by remaining silent as his Democratic colleagues accuse ordinary Americans holding a difference of opinion to be racists, Ku Klux Klan members, knuckle dragging Neanderthals, a__h___s, gerbils, barbarians, and terrorists.
14. The national debt has skyrocketed to over $15 TRILLION, putting a debt burden of over $130,000 on each U.S. household.
15. Housing prices continue to decline while gas and food prices continue to rise.
16. Our cumbersome tax code is a burden to economic growth and while it is now over 70,000 pages long, companies like General Electric still get away without paying any Federal income taxes.
17. The Federal government wastes money in thousands of ways every day having recently expended taxpayer wealth on projects such as determining when dogs became man’s best friend, how to ride a bike, and studying people’s interactions with Farmville.
18. Federal elections now cost the political class billions of dollars, dollars that come from special interest groups, blood dollars which drown out the voice and rights of ordinary American citizens.
19. The Patriot Act and Presidential directives and assassinations continue to trample our liberties and freedom.

Who is responsible for this mess? When did things get so bad? Why did we allow our politicians to run the country into the ground, taking our hard earned wealth and freedom with it?  Where did we stray so that our political processes have become so dysfunctional?


All good questions. If you have any distress about the above nineteen points, please consider joining the United States of Purple campaign for Presidency to fix what ails this country. The United States of Purple philosophy is to focus on the how: how do we fix the major problems of our times and our nation, how do we bring the country together so that there are no more blue states, no more red states, just one United States of Purple, how do we install processes (e.g. term limits) so that never get into this situation again, how do we restore our freedom?


Our analyses and problem resolution approach is laid out in our website, http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/. I doubt that any of the current candidates running for office have given as much thought to addressing the issues above and others than what you will find at our website. However, this week and beyond we will take a detailed look at some of the solutions we are positive will do a better job than what Washington has come up with over the past four decades.


Waiting for the political class to solve the war on drugs forty years after they started is not likely to be rewarded. Waiting over thirty years for the political class to come up with a solution to our energy crisis is not likely to be rewarded. Waiting thirty years for the political class to fix our broken education processes is not likely to be rewarded. Waiting for the political class to streamline our 70,000 page tax code is not likely to be rewarded. Waiting for Obama Care to solve a problem that this President and Congress never took the time to understand is not likely to be rewarded.

In the next week or so we will provide approaches to these problems that are simple yet elegant, effective yet efficient, cost controlled vs. costs out of control. I dare the political class, based on their history, to try and match these criteria. In the meantime, please visit our website, check out our platform and solutions and please take the time to visit the page at the site that asks you to sign the petition for term limits.


I believe that a high percentage of our political problems come about as a result of politicians seeking to personally enrich themselves by staying in office as long as they can. This requires them to sacrifice integrity and the common good of ordinary Americans for the sleazy dollars needed for constant reelection. Removing reelection as an option would go a long way to fixing a lot of our political process abuses.


So even if you disagree with our plans to address and eliminate the root causes of or national problems, please take the step to support our term limits drive. Ask yourself, how much worse could it get if the current denizens of Congress were replaced?


But we are confident that you will find our approach to problem resolution will be looked on favorably as will the problems we will discuss in detail this week, which include:

• Changing our tax code from 70,000 pages to one page.
• The only way to solve our debt problem (and it does not involve raising taxes).
• Solving our energy and global warming issues with one plan.
• Fixing Social Security once and for all.
• Creating an intelligent and compassionate solution to our illegal immigration problem.
• Stopping the war on drugs, winning the challenge of addiction.
• Really solving the problem of escalating health care costs.

No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States under the banner of Purple:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein


We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at


http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/


The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.


The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.


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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Teach Your Children Well, Teach Your Parents Well

Today's blog title is based on an old Crosby, Stills, and Nash song, "Teach Your Children." I have to take a break from the insanity of politics today and get to a topic that is a little more uplifting and reassuring, namely kids. Kids generally do not care about politics, which makes them much more fun to be around. Below are two kids' stories that will surely reassure you about how great our kids can be.

The first story was written about in this blog back in the middle of 2011. From all of my research, it appears to be a legitimate news story and actually did happen (check out the reader comments at the bottom of the post). The link for the story is as follows:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/06/honorable-american-teenager.html

It contrasts the compassion and integrity of a young high school sophomore and the personal sacrifice he made for one one his close friends against the demeaning and disgraceful performance of former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Mr. Weiner was not a kid at that time of his disgraceful escapades and his behavior had nothing to do with compassion and integrity. The details should make you feel good in this area of not good political behavior and venom.

I do not know if the second story is true about kids being great human beings. It came to me in an email and there is no way to check its validity. The email is reproduced below for your review.

However, it would not surprise me if it was true. I have coached many, many seasons of youth baseball, basketball and soccer. I have seen the type of behavior supposedly demonstrated in the following email account on my teams. Most kids playing sports could care less about a game once it is over and you are at the post game ice cream stand. I have seen many examples of team work, compassion, and live-and-let-live attitudes from the kids, probably more so than from their parents. 

It is a shame that the kids I have dealt with on my teams, the high school sophomore from the above post, and the kids from the following story do not run the country. I believe that there would be a lot more team work, compassion, and a better world if they did. And, ice cream would be much more prevalent in all of our lives.

*********************************
Two Choices

What would you do?....you make the choice. Don't look for a punch line, there isn't one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

"When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"

The audience was stunned by the query.

The father continued. "I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child."

Then he told the following story:


Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, 'Do you think they'll let me play?' I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning..."

Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt.. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.

In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again.

 Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head, out of reach of all teammates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!"

Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base.

By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball . The smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head.

Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, "Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay" Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third! Shay, run to third!"

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, "Shay, run home! Run home!" Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.

"That day", said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world."

Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOT NOTE TO THIS STORY:

We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

If you're thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you're probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren't the 'appropriate' ones to receive this type of message. Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference.

We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the "natural order of things." So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice:

Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process? A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it's least fortunate amongst them.

May your day, be a Shay Day

**********
Nice story, true or not, and it should be a beacon for all of us, and especially our politicians, to follow. In the entire story, no one callously called anyone a racist, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, a knuckle dragging Neanderthal, un-American, an a__h___, a terrorist, a barbarian, a gerbil, or any other uncalled for denigration.

Over the past three years, Americans have been singled out by American politicians and called these disturbing names simply for having a difference of opinion from these politicians. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, allowed the the mudslinging and slander to go on unabated during this time, he was obviously not having a Shay day, or a Shay year.

Unlike the President and his political allies, everyone at that kids' baseball game worked together to create something special as opposed to our political class that work only towards their own personal enrichment and their own reelection. Those at the game put aside their petty differences, i.e. trying to win a relative meaningless baseball game, to make a life changing impact on a fellow human being. In the process, all of the kids referenced above not only improved the life of someone else but in the process, made themselves better human beings.

That is the secret that politicians do not understand. By demeaning those Americans that simply have a different opinion from them, rather than engaging this diversity of opinion to find a common, optimal solution, they debase themselves and the office they hold. They are not leaders, they are just selfish, small people that contribute nothing to the greater good.

Yes, we should teach our children well. But we should also let them teach us also because they sometimes see life in much simpler, clearer, and less biased, ignorant, and hateful terms, which is often the better way to go through life. Have a Shay day today and always, it will make life a little better for someone else, for yourself, and hopefully, for the entire country. Lord knows doing it the political class way is not working.



We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

The Big Lie - Obama's Class Warfare Political Deception Regarding Taxing The Rich

Before delving into today's topic, a few disclaimers from me:

• I am not Warren Buffet wealthy or anywhere close to it.
• I drive an eight year car and my wife drives a five year old car.
• We live in a typical, middle class, 2,000 square foot house and have no luxurious secondary homes in Arizona (like Warren Buffet's secretary has), in Aspen, in Europe, in the Caribbean, or any other exotic location.
• Up until the November, 2011 elections, I had never voted for a Republican for national office in my life (I am 57 years old).
• My wife and I are semi-retired living on a semi-fixed income and last year paid Federal income taxes at the 15% income bracket.
• I have an advanced degree in statistics so I think I know my way around a spreadsheet and a set of numbers.
• I am disgusted when politicians, or anyone else, misuses facts, data, and statistics. It is an affront to my discipline and the integrity of the numbers and assumes that myself and other Americans are too stupid to understand the lies that the political class puts forth.

Thus, I really have no financial stake in President Obama's desire to raise taxes on the wealthy in this country.

A review from previous documented posts in this blog:

• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Medicare program: $60 - $90 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Medicaid program: $40 - $60 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Social Security program: $70 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in one Federal government unemployment program: $19 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in one Federal food stamp program: $2 - $3 billion
• Estimated annual uncollected Federal income taxes from U.S. citizen tax evaders that is due to the Federal government: $325 billion
• Estimated annual taxpayer wealth lost to just the above Federal programs: $517 - $567 billion

Okay, now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let's look at what I consider one of the biggest lies, hoaxes, and political class deceptions I have ever come across. President Obama and other politicians in Washington would have you believe that the vast majority of higher income American earners pay a smaller percentage of their earnings in Federal income taxes than the average middle class American.

He implied such in his state of the union speech and it has been his political stump mantra over the past few months. On a local Tampa Bay morning newscast yesterday, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, repeated the deception by stating that the President will campaign for reelection to fix this supposed tax inequity.

Which raises a question in my mind: do these people really believe this myth and are too busy or incapable of verifying it is a valid reality? Or are they being deliberately deceptive to incite more class warfare in this country for the benefit of their political goals? In either case, incapable of doing some simple research and math or deliberately lying, they are not someone I would trust for public office.

The reason for my view is that their false assertion can be easily checked using online, official IRS data that compiles the tax returns of every American in excruciating detail. The data is available in EXCEL spreadsheets at the following link for anyone that wants to do the math themselves:

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96981,00.html#_grp1

So let's see if Obama, Wasserman Schultz, and other Democrats are accurate in their assertion that most higher earning people in this country pay less as a percentage of their earnings than middle class earners based on real data from history and the IRS:

• As you will see at the website, the latest year that taxpayer information is available is 2009 so lets base our analysis on this most recent data:
• In the 2009 spreadsheet you will see that the IRS tells us how many American tax returns out of the 140 million filed fell into each Adjusted Gross Earnings (AGI) earnings bracket, starting at $0 and going up to over $10 million earned.
• The spreadsheets also show what the total earnings were in each bracket and how much was paid in taxes in each bracket by the earners within each bracket.
• If we do the simple math calculation of dividing the total number of tax dollars paid by the amount earned in each earnings bracket, we come up with the following chart (you can double click on the graph to get a larger, more detailed picture):

• What do we learn from this simple math calculation based on official IRS data? The more you earn in AGI, the higher percentage of those earnings you pay in Federal income taxes. This seems to be in direct conflict with Obama's assertion and mimicked by others in his party that this is not the reality.
• In fact, the vast majority of Americans earning up to $100,000 a year, on an overall average perspective, pay less than 5% a year of their earnings in Federal income taxes while the vast majority of Americans earning over $100,000 a year in total pay over 20% of their earnings in Federal income taxes, four times as much on a percentage basis.
• Hardly unfair when you now consider that the wealthier earners in this country pay far more in both absolute tax dollars and four times higher on a percentage of earnings basis.
• If you do a little more math and look at those that earned over a million dollars in 2009 vs. those that earned less than a million dollars, you find that the over $1,000,000 paid on average paid about 24.4% of their earnings in Federal income taxes while those earning under $1,000,000 paid less than 10% in Federal income taxes.
• 87.6% of the 140,000,000 million tax returns filed had income under $100,000 and all of them, on average, paid less than 10% of their income in Federal income taxes.
• Those that earned over $500,000 paid about 24% of their earnings in Federal income taxes, on average.
• Those earning over a million dollars a year in AGI comprise (about 240,000 out of 140 million 2009 tax returns) only .17% of all U.S. earners in the 2009 IRS tax tables. Theoretically, if Obama got his way and taxed these earners at a full 30%, it would only add another $40.6 billion annually to the Federal government tax stream.
• To put this $40.6 billion in perspective, if it was somehow equally distributed to every American tax filer who earned less than $1,000,000 a year, each filer would get back the equivalent of $.79 a day.
• The $40.6 billion would cover only about 2.5% of the national debt that the Obama administration rang up in 2011. It would be only about 1% of the overall Federal budget in 2011.
• The amount of taxpayer wealth lost to waste and fraud in the Federal government programs listed above is about 13 to 14 times larger than the $40.6 billion that would be generated by Obama's 30% tax the rich target. Thus, if Obama and the rest of the political class were doing their jobs, they could easily recover much more than the 30% figure for their programs vs. taxing any American more.

But that is the point. If Obama was actually doing some of the mundane parts of his job, e.g. protecting taxpayer wealth and being frugal with our tax dollars, he would have a less effective political talking point. Better to divide Americans and fire up his base even if the political position he is putting forth is bogus from a math, statistical, and reality perspective.

Remember, the above numbers are not from the Republican Party, the Tea Party, Fox News, or any other adversarial political force to Obama. They are the actual, official IRS numbers from 2009. I doubt that the 2010 and 2011 numbers are any different.

In fact, if you look at the number of Americans who earned over a $1,000,000 in AGI over the past few years you will see that the number is actually going down, from just under 400,000 in 2007 to under 240,000 in 2009. Thus, the case against the President for taxing the rich is likely more viable now than when the 2009 tax numbers were compiled since there are 40% fewer millionaire earners to tax in 2009 vs. 2007.

Hey, if you think the rich should pay more in Federal income taxes in this country, that is your right and I respect that position. But please do it for the right reasons and not the fact that you believe the deceptions and lies spewing forth from the Democrats in Washington. Warren Buffet is the exception. His secretary, who reportedly earns well over $100,000 a year, is the exception.

Failing to educate yourself and blindly jumping on the Obama class warfare bandwagon contributes to the divisions within this country. Taxing the rich in this way will not solve your personal financial situation and challenges, it will not resolve our dire national debt crisis (as we see from the above analysis, we have a national debt crisis that can only be solved by drastically reducing Federal spending and not raising taxes on the rich), and it will divert attention from solving the disgrace of the Federal government wasting over half a TRILLION dollars a year.

Do not have money envy, it is an ugly trait. Most of the high earners in this country earned their money legally and ethically. They deserve to be treated fairly according to the reality of the situation and the numbers above, especially since taxing them more will not solve any crisis or issue facing the nation today. They do not deserve to be demeaned and slandered by pandering, class warfare politicians.



We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

 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.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

I Am A Global Warming Doubter And A Believer In Science

One of the favorite slurs of those that ardently believe in global warming is to demean and slander those of us that have our doubts by declaring that heathens like myself must not believe in science. No discussion, no debate, just a gross lumping of us into one uneducated grouping. We must be uneducated slugs if we do not believe what they believe, namely that man made activities are warming the earth's surface which will eventually result in cataclysmic weather and environment disasters.

But are all doubters non-believers in science? I for one am a great believer in science and scientific approaches and integrity and I still consider myself a doubter. In fact, it often appears to me that those that so emotionally believe in global warming are the most anti-science of all of us. Let me explain.

Scientific methods and procedures can take several approaches but they all involve the integrity of the information and data collected and the objectivity of the analysis.  As a believer in science, I generally classify the search for information and knowledge into two categories. The first category is the classic test/control approach to scientific research. In this approach, the scientist sets up a baseline situation as the control segment of the scientific experiment. All of the attributes of the baseline segment are measured and quantified in order to accurately describe the baseline/control reality.

The scientist then changes one of the factors in the baseline view, observes what happens to the situation, quantifies what happened as a result of the change, and then reaches a logical conclusion of cause and effect. In other words, one factor is changed, that results in a change in the baseline situation, and the assumption is that the change to one of the factors resulted in a changed baseline environment.

In this scientific approach, the scientist has direct control over much of the environment and can manipulate pertinent factors to see the resultant effects. This process is repeated often with different factors changed by different levels to try and understand the true cause and effect. Results are documented and reviewed by peers, in journals and at conferences, to have others check the validity of the scientist's logical, scientific approach.

The second approach is more difficult to control since the factors the scientists are dealing with cannot be easily replicated in a test and control manner. In this case, the scientists are likely to make a lot more assumptions about impacting factors and build mathematical models to explain and forecast results based on observations rather than experiments.

There is nothing wrong with this approach since it may be the best, or the only, approach available. The problem is that the scientist does not control the environment, he or she is at the mercy of how things unfold and then tries to explain them indirectly with assumptions and models.

The drawback is that the scientist is never quite sure if the relationships they are looking at are correlated or causative. What's the difference? An example.

I recently went on a weight reduction program and in the midst of the program, my golf game improved. If one just looked just at the data, it would appear that my golf game improved as a result of my losing weight, the two events are highly correlated. However, the fact that I took some golf lessons, bought new equipment and changed my swing probably had much more to do with my better golf scores than my losing weight. But I did not do a test/control experiment here, I changed many factors at the same time.

While the dropping of weight was highly correlated to an improvement in my golf score, the two events are highly correlated but not causative. A good scientist would understand that much more work had to be done to fully understand what caused the drop in my golf scores and ensure it was not a spurious correlation.

This second approach is the challenge that has faced climate scientists in their study of potential global warming. They cannot do a true test and control scientific experiment. They have to observe changes in the environment, changes that could be caused by a number of factors or interactions of factors, and try to decide what are only correlated and what are only causative. They then try to predict what will happen using the mathematical models they develop.

Which is where by doubts start to come into play when discussing the validity of those models, the underlying use of the data to build those models and the underlying integrity in those numbers:

1) Several years ago the Environment Protection Agency suppressed a report from one of its own employees that called into question and raised doubts about the validity of the global warming theory. The author, Alan Carlin, an EPA employee, was told not to release his findings and was also told to discontinue working on climate change issues entirely.

Carlin and his co-authors accused the EPA and other government agencies of ignoring scientific analysis that is casting doubt on global warming and for relying too much on the work of outside organizations that "have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation." Their report also went into some degree of detail which contests the global warming claims of these organizations.

Very serious charges. If the Obama administration and global warming supporters were really serious about science, wouldn't they have welcomed the publication of this report so that its accusations could be rebutted directly? If the Obama administration and global warming supporters were really serious about science, wouldn't they recognize that peer review and comment is the best way to move their argument forth? If the Bush administration had suppressed an EPA's report proving that global warming is a legitimate concern, wouldn't the global warming advocates, in the name of science, be clamoring for the release of the report?

I have no idea if Carlin's accusations and report are accurate and valid. But as someone who believes in the scientific process, the report should have been released and rebutted on a factual, peer reviewed, scientific basis. Instead, he was told by his boss at the EPA, Al McGartland, "Please do not have any direct communications with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc." Not very scientific, and very suspicious, when you suppress data, research, and analyses just because it conflicts with your view. That is not science, that is politics.

2) An article in the December 9, 2012 issue of The Week magazine reviewed how a recently released set of illegally hacked emails, taken from the leading global warming science establishments, cast doubt on whether those scientists believe man made activities are causing global warming and whether those scientists are actually being unbiased in their work. According to the article, the emails reveal:

• Phil Jones, who is the director of the influential Climate Research Unit, is quoted in the emails as saying that the "basic problem is that all of the (climate prediction) models are wrong."
• He urges his peers, via his emails, that "inconvenient date are 'well hidden' through various 'tricks.'"
• An email from another British scientist warns Mr. Jones that "the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it."
• Christopher Caldwell writing in the Financial Times, after reviewing at least some of the emails, found that the scientists "openly discuss how to make the threat of climate change seem as urgent as possible and how best to wage a political and PR campaign against their perceived enemies."

It gets very scary, and very suspicious, when scientists admit that their models do not work, their science is being manipulated, and they are just as involved in PR campaigns and politics as they are in research. Hardly a scientific approach or mindset.

Although I will not go into details, a similar scandal arose a few years ago in New Zealand. Apparently, the New Zealand Government’s chief climate organization, NIWA, came under fire for allegedly manipulating raw climate data to show a global warming trend that did not exist in the raw data. Details of this unscientific use of scientific data can be found in various Web reports.

3) According to a recent article in the Boston Globe by Jeff Jacoby, Ivar Giaever, a Nobel laureate, recently quit as a fellow of the American Physical Society over the Society's unequivocal position that man made global warming is "incontrovertible" and his personal position that no "scientific assertion is so sacred that it cannot be contested."

As a Nobel laureate, I am assuming that Mr. Giaever is well aware of unbiased scientific research protocols and procedures in order to find the truth. I am also assuming that that the accusations he puts forth against the  American Physical Society are based on data, reports, or actions he witnessed and were not made up. If they were, I am also assuming that a reputable paper like the Boston Globe would not have published them.

Are we seeing a pattern here? Scientists that are so wound up in their theories, research, careers, and reputations, are they the ones that may have lost sight of how science is supposed to be used?

4) All of the global warming work and model building so far has been based on observing multiple factors at work and trying to determine what are correlated and what are causative. But what if you could do a real test/control experiment that examined the global warming issue? Wouldn't that be the best way to finally determine if man made activity is causing global warming? Wouldn't that be the truly, classic approach to solving a scientific problem?

Well, that exact same scenario has already occurred. This past summer, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) conducted just such an experiment. Before going into their findings, let's talk a little about CERN. 

It is my understanding that CERN is comprised of some of the top physics scientists in the world. I could find no source that disparaged any work that CERN scientists had previously done. CERN is the organizations that is primarily responsible for the development of the World Wide Web and it built the multi billion dollar Large Hadron Collider in Europe. It is affiliated with 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities in 60 countries. I do not think there is any doubt that CERN is the epitome of scientific research.

Back in the summer, CERN scientists conducted experiments where they actually modeled global warming conditions in a lab environment where they "built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the earth's atmosphere."(Source: European Union Times, September 3, 2011).

The experiments they conducted were carried out by 17 European and American institutes and 63 CERN scientists. Their findings were then written up and published int he highly acclaimed scientific publication/journal, Nature.

Their findings and conclusions: the sun's cosmic rays and their role in cloud formation, rather than man made emissions, are responsible for the earth's warming temperatures. Wow, real scientists working at a prestigious research facility using scientific means concludes that global warming is not caused by anything man is doing.

All of those people who believe that science is a great way to learn, even if it upsets their belief that man is causing global warming, should have been hungry to learn about this new, scientifically derived knowledge. However, I could not find mention of these findings in any main stream media. Al Gore has not embraced this new scientific information. The EPA has not announced it is reconsidering its position its position on global warming, given this new scientific information and data.

In fact, the follow up controversy to these findings is the belief of some of the scientists involved that the Director General of CERN, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, was trying to suppress the findings, wanting "the results to be presented clearly, but not to interpret them."

But isn't that what trained scientists do, develop experiments and interpret results? Is this another case of suppressing information and findings that are not coherent with man made global warming side? If so, isn't this a misuse of science, scientific principles, and scientific integrity?

Comments blasting this attempt at suppression of results came from many CERN scientists:

• Nigel Calder: "CERN has joined a long line of lesser institutions obliged to remain political correct about the man-made global warming hypothesis. The once illustrious CERN laboratory ceases to be a truly scientific institute when its Director General forbids its physicists and visiting experimenters to draw the obvious scientific conclusions form their results."
• Lobos Motl: "However, the main problem is that many people who are trying to work on different phenomena in the climate are not prevented form interpreting - and, indeed, over interpreting and misinterpreting - their results that are often less serious, less reliable, and less rigorous, perhaps by orders of magnitude than the observations by the European Organization For Nuclear Research."
• Lawrence Solomon: "The hypothesis that comic rays and sun hold the key to the global warming debate has been Public Enemy No. 1 to the global warming establishment ever since it was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute at a 1996 scientific conference."

Seems like there is a lot of science that backs us global warming doubters. To disrespectfully call global warming doubters ignorant of science is a despicable and obviously gross mistake.

CERN proves there is great validity to the fact that man made global warming is potentially a myth. Global warming advocates misuse scientific principles and fail to admit when their models are wrong. The U.S. Federal government represses the scientific principle of peer review when it suppresses taxpayer funded work from its own employees.

So please, believers of global warming, a little sensitivity to those of us that feel, based on scientific processes and violation of scientific processes, that there is a valid scientific reason to doubt global warming. Yelling at us and calling us ignorant is no way to arrive at a conclusive consensus of what is going on in the environment and what to do about it.

Oh, and one last thing. I am not an expert on global warming, I need to be able to trust people in the climate field that are far smarter than me. But please do us all a favor. Please tell Al Gore to be quiet. When he tells us, in quite unscientific terms, to all stop eating meat in order to combat global warming, he makes all of you look like you are ignorant of science.

If we all stopped eating meat, more plants and crops would have to be grown, more forests destroyed to make room for more plants and crops, more water would have to be used to grow the plants and crops, more gas powered machines would have to be employed to sow and plow those plants and crops, and more dangerous pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides would be employed in order to grow more plants and  crops. How that would scientifically reduce global warming is certainly beyond me.

Please note:  next week we will be proposing solutions to many of the problems plaguing our country under the United States Of Purple Presidential effort. One of those solutions will be how to elegantly address and resolve the issue of global warming even if you do not believe in global warming. Stay tuned.



We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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http://www.repealamendment/