Thursday, January 23, 2020
Quote of the Day
"Americans are a stubborn and independent people. They are not a passive citizenry; they will never be French. They will never surrender their rights when demanded to by an unholy alliance of politicians, media, and an unelected elite." - William L. Gensert
Polar bears: The end of a climate delusion icon
By | January 22nd, 2020 | Climate | 104 Comments @CFACT
One of the climate delusion’s greatest frauds was issued by the Center for Biological Diversity which said “Climate change is drowning and starving polar bears. If greenhouse gas fueled climate change keeps melting their sea ice habitat, an arctic apocalypse will wipe them out in a century – and they will disappear from the United States by 2050.”
This was echoed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which stated in 2013 “Our analyses highlight the potential for large reductions in the global polar bear populations if sea ice loss continues which is forecast by climate models and other studies.”
In May of 2008 the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Specie Act, predicting that polar bear populations would decline by two thirds as the sea ice they rely on for hunting continued to shrink. This conclusion was not based on numbers observed but were put on the list by mathematical models woven from thin air. The actual numbers observed during these years showed the opposite to be true.
Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute, disputed the flawed models and perverted science saying that “this was the first time an animal was ever placed on the threatened or endangered list based on a mathematical model”. The reader should understand that such models guess at the controlling variables and are actually only of value when attempting to learn what variables if any might be of importance.
But it must be understood that the real measured data would be inconvenient for the environmental groups trying to raise money on their claims of harm coming to these cute and cuddly creatures.
Creatures which in fact are as dangerous as any of the grizzly bear, brown or black bear species.
The real facts of the matter are that polar bear populations are increasing and that the regions with the greatest ice loss are thriving. Susan Crockford, considered to be among the world’s leading experts on this species, reports from a recent study, that the current population of between 22,000 and 31,000 is the highest it has been in the past 50 years.
A recent study of Canadian polar bears found stable or increasing numbers in 12 of 13 colonies in their country. The evidence is really overwhelming.
The chart below shows Crockford’s estimates since 1960 based on actual surveys in Canada and the Arctic region.
Even more interesting and telling are the results of recent polar bear research. It has been learned that the belief that declining sea ice is detrimental to these white furry animals is untrue. They actually are healthier and heavier in the areas of greater ice loss. Below is a map showing two areas of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. The Chukchi Sea has lost twice as much ice as the Beaufort Sea in recent decades of slight warming. While researchers supported by the global warming alarmists had expected to find that the polar bears in the Chukchi Sea would have suffered as a result, they found the opposite to be true. The females in the Chukchi Sea were on average 70 pounds heavier and the males 110 pounds heavier than those in the Beaufort Sea.
Furthermore the females gave birth to larger litters with the yearlings weighing as much as 50 pounds more than their counterparts on the Beaufort Sea where the ice loss was double that of the Chukchi Sea.
The saddest part of the story was the confusion voiced in the researchers reports trying to justify the unanticipated outcome for their funders who were certain they would be gaining more evidence of the negative impact of man-caused Climate change. A joint report by the US Geological Survey, a once great government science agency, and the University of Wyoming, a once fine academic institution developed a negative reason for the outcome of their study claiming that with less sea ice they needed to devour more seals to keep their strength up.
So it appears now that the “simple bear necessities” may not actually include ice. Indeed it will be a lot harder to raise money for The World Wildlife Fund once it gets out that warmer temperatures mean more polar bears. The bears after all originated on land and migrated to the ice about 150,000 years ago. Like us they are warm blooded creatures and like us they prefer warmer than colder weather.
As time goes by you will see less and less of the polar bear as an icon of the climate change delusion.
Note: Portions of this essay have been excerpted from the outstanding book INCONVENIENT FACTS: The Science That Al Gore Does Not Want You To Know, with permission of the author Gregory Wrightstone. For detailed discussion of the many frauds in the climate change delusion, his book is among the very best sources.
One of the climate delusion’s greatest frauds was issued by the Center for Biological Diversity which said “Climate change is drowning and starving polar bears. If greenhouse gas fueled climate change keeps melting their sea ice habitat, an arctic apocalypse will wipe them out in a century – and they will disappear from the United States by 2050.”
This was echoed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which stated in 2013 “Our analyses highlight the potential for large reductions in the global polar bear populations if sea ice loss continues which is forecast by climate models and other studies.”
In May of 2008 the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Specie Act, predicting that polar bear populations would decline by two thirds as the sea ice they rely on for hunting continued to shrink. This conclusion was not based on numbers observed but were put on the list by mathematical models woven from thin air. The actual numbers observed during these years showed the opposite to be true.
Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute, disputed the flawed models and perverted science saying that “this was the first time an animal was ever placed on the threatened or endangered list based on a mathematical model”. The reader should understand that such models guess at the controlling variables and are actually only of value when attempting to learn what variables if any might be of importance.
But it must be understood that the real measured data would be inconvenient for the environmental groups trying to raise money on their claims of harm coming to these cute and cuddly creatures.
Creatures which in fact are as dangerous as any of the grizzly bear, brown or black bear species.
The real facts of the matter are that polar bear populations are increasing and that the regions with the greatest ice loss are thriving. Susan Crockford, considered to be among the world’s leading experts on this species, reports from a recent study, that the current population of between 22,000 and 31,000 is the highest it has been in the past 50 years.
A recent study of Canadian polar bears found stable or increasing numbers in 12 of 13 colonies in their country. The evidence is really overwhelming.
The chart below shows Crockford’s estimates since 1960 based on actual surveys in Canada and the Arctic region.
Even more interesting and telling are the results of recent polar bear research. It has been learned that the belief that declining sea ice is detrimental to these white furry animals is untrue. They actually are healthier and heavier in the areas of greater ice loss. Below is a map showing two areas of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. The Chukchi Sea has lost twice as much ice as the Beaufort Sea in recent decades of slight warming. While researchers supported by the global warming alarmists had expected to find that the polar bears in the Chukchi Sea would have suffered as a result, they found the opposite to be true. The females in the Chukchi Sea were on average 70 pounds heavier and the males 110 pounds heavier than those in the Beaufort Sea.
The saddest part of the story was the confusion voiced in the researchers reports trying to justify the unanticipated outcome for their funders who were certain they would be gaining more evidence of the negative impact of man-caused Climate change. A joint report by the US Geological Survey, a once great government science agency, and the University of Wyoming, a once fine academic institution developed a negative reason for the outcome of their study claiming that with less sea ice they needed to devour more seals to keep their strength up.
So it appears now that the “simple bear necessities” may not actually include ice. Indeed it will be a lot harder to raise money for The World Wildlife Fund once it gets out that warmer temperatures mean more polar bears. The bears after all originated on land and migrated to the ice about 150,000 years ago. Like us they are warm blooded creatures and like us they prefer warmer than colder weather.
As time goes by you will see less and less of the polar bear as an icon of the climate change delusion.
Note: Portions of this essay have been excerpted from the outstanding book INCONVENIENT FACTS: The Science That Al Gore Does Not Want You To Know, with permission of the author Gregory Wrightstone. For detailed discussion of the many frauds in the climate change delusion, his book is among the very best sources.
Author
The Women's March Fails Miserably
Daniel Greenfield 8 Comments Wednesday, January 22, 2020 @ Sultan Knish Blog
Three years ago, the Women’s March brought a million anti-Trump protesters to Washington D.C.
This year, 25,000 people signed up online. That was unrealistically optimistic because organizers had only obtained a permit for up to 10,000 protesters. And they only ended up with thousands.
Impeachment should have encouraged a bigger turnout, but the snowflakes couldn’t handle the snow.
The first person quoted in D.C.’s WUSA9 report explained that she couldn’t come because, "it’s supposed to be really cold and snowy and that is definitely a factor for me."
There were few pink hats among those who did show up and a lot of black and brown winter gear. Among the few march attendees to wear pink was a bedraggled dog in a pink halter, pinks slacks, white socks and Mary Janes, while her owner waved a sign reading, “Public Cervix Announcement.”
Another dog, missing two legs, looking utterly miserable, was draped in a coat and a pink wreath while trying to move forward over the slick street on wheels while wearing a, “I’m With Her” sign.
A third dog’s sign read, “Fight like a dog for equality.” If the dog were equal, it wouldn’t be here.
At times it seemed as if there were more dogs than people burdened with trite feminist signs. And more vendors selling march paraphernalia than there were march attendees to actually wear it.
The Women’s March had not lost its capacity for its feminist bookstore brand of embarrassing stunts, but the people weren’t showing up, and the participants were being reduced to animal cruelty.
And then a blindfolded Chilean feminist collective in red jumpsuits disharmoniously performed a song in Spanish to remind everyone that the Women’s March was also capable of human cruelty.
There were the expected feminists wearing red Handmaid’s Tale costumes and the drag queens because nothing says fighting for women’s rights like a man in a wig dressed up to look like Marilyn Monroe.
The Women’s March was there to attack President Trump. But he wasn’t in D.C. No one really was.
And the weather wasn’t kind to the marchers who had come out to protest against not only President Trump, but global warming. The sleet turned their paper and cardboard signs into brightly colored mush. Only the truly dedicated hard-core Communists could keep going in the snow and sleet.
A Washington Post reporter tweeted a video of a group of Revolutionary Communist Party marchers singing their song and carrying a banner praising Chairman Bob Avakian while incorrectly identifying them as "Virginia residents" who were "celebrating the ERA vote."
That’s like describing a Nazi rally as local Munich residents protesting against the outcome of WW1.
But the media has always deliberately mischaracterized the political extremism of lefty protests, calculatedly refusing to report on the Trotskyists and assorted professional cranks who fuel them. Coverage of the decline in attendance at the Women’s March due to revelations about anti-Semitism and support for Farrakhan among its former and current leaders has been sparse.
USA Today quoted Carmen Perez, a Farrakhan supporter who serves as co-chair, without mentioning anti-Semitism. It is inconceivable that a conservative organization whose leaders had pledged allegiance to David Duke, Richard Spencer, and the Groypers would have gotten that kind of pass from the media.
But it was hard to cover up the fact that the Women’s March in D.C. had gone to the Commies and the dogs, and could barely manage to turn out a fraction of the million activists it had once unleashed.
With Jews and blacks both boycotting the Women’s March (Black Lives Matter is feuding with its fellow hate group), all that was left were the angry WASP Communists descended from the Mayflower who had to listen to a Chilean feminist collective while cold sleet ran down their pink hats and black signs.
The weather wasn’t on the side of the Women’s March in New York City either.
The New York’s Women’s March was such a disaster that it made the D.C. march look like a success.
In 2017, the Women’s March in New York City had boasted of 400,000 attendees. This year, 400. Media accounts described “hundreds” of attendees. That surely wasn’t what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had been expecting when he arrived at the event to shake hands while wearing black gloves.
Schumer might have been afraid of the cooties of the pink hat brigade. But, more likely, the snow.
Once again, the winter weather defeated the Gaia worshipers who believe that everything from Australian wildfires to the election of President Trump is the expression of Mother Earth’s wrath.
It was cold. It was wet. And there were two competing Women’s Marches in Manhattan.
This year, the two competing marches, one against the organization’s racist leadership and the other for it, were supposed to come together and unite. The weather however had other plans and it began to snow. Just like in D.C., snowflakes began to pepper the snowflakes who wanted to fight global warming.
And the reunion of the two marches at Times Square, where the dueling feminists and racists of the two Women’s Marches could have competed for attention with the El Salvadoran illegal aliens dressed as Disney characters who mug tourists for photos and spare changes, never did take place.
Since there were only a few hundred of them, the illegal aliens dressed as Elsa would have won.
Instead hundreds of marchers had to settle for Senator Schumer waving a red Planned Parenthood sign as the wind tried to tear it out of his hands before he made his way out of the small crowd of white lefties while his African-American bodyguard looked skeptically at them.
Other Women’s Marches didn’t even try.
In Denver, the Women’s March was cancelled. In Akron, the snow forced it indoors. In Eugene, Oregon, the old march of 7,000 had been pared down to 40 people who didn’t have a permit. The Chicago march was noted mainly for its celebration of Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist who participated in the Dawson’s Field hijackings of four airplanes that were seen as an inspiration for the attacks of September 11.
It could have been worse. But it’s hard to see how.
The Women’s March ought to be having its moment as the impeachment that the hate group had long demanded is underway. But instead, like so much of the anti-Trump activism, it’s fading away. The Women’s March gained its power from raging suburbanites, as they pull back, the crazies remain.
And, whether they’re waving Communist banners in D.C. or terrorist banners in Chicago, they’re harder to ignore without the protective camouflage that the useful idiots at previous marches offered.
Once the cover was pulled back from the Women’s March leadership, the end was not long in coming.
The weather, the snow, rain, and sleet, didn’t help attendance at this year’s events. Neither did the bigotry of the Women’s March leadership. But the larger story may be the onset of TSD fatigue.
The media and activist groups have spent four years whipping up Democrats into a frenzy of Trump Derangement Syndrome. After a week in which the media was promising the onset of WWIII, without actually delivering, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for the fourth iteration of the march.
All the marchers know that impeachment is doomed. The Impeachment rallies failed. Now the Women’s March, the grandma of all the anti-Trump rallies, failed along with them. And the activist groups and funders behind these hate rallies face a terrifying prospect. What if TDS burnout has set in?
Imagine a political and media landscape in which selling hatred of Trump no longer works?
There’s a reason this year’s big Women’s March drama involved old photos of them in the National Archives, not Trump. The marches are winding down and the participants are worrying about how history will remember them.
Their TDS world is ending and they know they’re history.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Three years ago, the Women’s March brought a million anti-Trump protesters to Washington D.C.
This year, 25,000 people signed up online. That was unrealistically optimistic because organizers had only obtained a permit for up to 10,000 protesters. And they only ended up with thousands.
Impeachment should have encouraged a bigger turnout, but the snowflakes couldn’t handle the snow.The first person quoted in D.C.’s WUSA9 report explained that she couldn’t come because, "it’s supposed to be really cold and snowy and that is definitely a factor for me."
There were few pink hats among those who did show up and a lot of black and brown winter gear. Among the few march attendees to wear pink was a bedraggled dog in a pink halter, pinks slacks, white socks and Mary Janes, while her owner waved a sign reading, “Public Cervix Announcement.”
Another dog, missing two legs, looking utterly miserable, was draped in a coat and a pink wreath while trying to move forward over the slick street on wheels while wearing a, “I’m With Her” sign.
A third dog’s sign read, “Fight like a dog for equality.” If the dog were equal, it wouldn’t be here.
At times it seemed as if there were more dogs than people burdened with trite feminist signs. And more vendors selling march paraphernalia than there were march attendees to actually wear it.
The Women’s March had not lost its capacity for its feminist bookstore brand of embarrassing stunts, but the people weren’t showing up, and the participants were being reduced to animal cruelty.
And then a blindfolded Chilean feminist collective in red jumpsuits disharmoniously performed a song in Spanish to remind everyone that the Women’s March was also capable of human cruelty.
There were the expected feminists wearing red Handmaid’s Tale costumes and the drag queens because nothing says fighting for women’s rights like a man in a wig dressed up to look like Marilyn Monroe.
The Women’s March was there to attack President Trump. But he wasn’t in D.C. No one really was.
And the weather wasn’t kind to the marchers who had come out to protest against not only President Trump, but global warming. The sleet turned their paper and cardboard signs into brightly colored mush. Only the truly dedicated hard-core Communists could keep going in the snow and sleet.
A Washington Post reporter tweeted a video of a group of Revolutionary Communist Party marchers singing their song and carrying a banner praising Chairman Bob Avakian while incorrectly identifying them as "Virginia residents" who were "celebrating the ERA vote."
That’s like describing a Nazi rally as local Munich residents protesting against the outcome of WW1.
But the media has always deliberately mischaracterized the political extremism of lefty protests, calculatedly refusing to report on the Trotskyists and assorted professional cranks who fuel them. Coverage of the decline in attendance at the Women’s March due to revelations about anti-Semitism and support for Farrakhan among its former and current leaders has been sparse.
USA Today quoted Carmen Perez, a Farrakhan supporter who serves as co-chair, without mentioning anti-Semitism. It is inconceivable that a conservative organization whose leaders had pledged allegiance to David Duke, Richard Spencer, and the Groypers would have gotten that kind of pass from the media.
But it was hard to cover up the fact that the Women’s March in D.C. had gone to the Commies and the dogs, and could barely manage to turn out a fraction of the million activists it had once unleashed.
With Jews and blacks both boycotting the Women’s March (Black Lives Matter is feuding with its fellow hate group), all that was left were the angry WASP Communists descended from the Mayflower who had to listen to a Chilean feminist collective while cold sleet ran down their pink hats and black signs.
The weather wasn’t on the side of the Women’s March in New York City either.
The New York’s Women’s March was such a disaster that it made the D.C. march look like a success.
In 2017, the Women’s March in New York City had boasted of 400,000 attendees. This year, 400. Media accounts described “hundreds” of attendees. That surely wasn’t what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had been expecting when he arrived at the event to shake hands while wearing black gloves.
Schumer might have been afraid of the cooties of the pink hat brigade. But, more likely, the snow.
Once again, the winter weather defeated the Gaia worshipers who believe that everything from Australian wildfires to the election of President Trump is the expression of Mother Earth’s wrath.
It was cold. It was wet. And there were two competing Women’s Marches in Manhattan.
This year, the two competing marches, one against the organization’s racist leadership and the other for it, were supposed to come together and unite. The weather however had other plans and it began to snow. Just like in D.C., snowflakes began to pepper the snowflakes who wanted to fight global warming.
And the reunion of the two marches at Times Square, where the dueling feminists and racists of the two Women’s Marches could have competed for attention with the El Salvadoran illegal aliens dressed as Disney characters who mug tourists for photos and spare changes, never did take place.
Since there were only a few hundred of them, the illegal aliens dressed as Elsa would have won.
Instead hundreds of marchers had to settle for Senator Schumer waving a red Planned Parenthood sign as the wind tried to tear it out of his hands before he made his way out of the small crowd of white lefties while his African-American bodyguard looked skeptically at them.
Other Women’s Marches didn’t even try.
In Denver, the Women’s March was cancelled. In Akron, the snow forced it indoors. In Eugene, Oregon, the old march of 7,000 had been pared down to 40 people who didn’t have a permit. The Chicago march was noted mainly for its celebration of Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist who participated in the Dawson’s Field hijackings of four airplanes that were seen as an inspiration for the attacks of September 11.
It could have been worse. But it’s hard to see how.
The Women’s March ought to be having its moment as the impeachment that the hate group had long demanded is underway. But instead, like so much of the anti-Trump activism, it’s fading away. The Women’s March gained its power from raging suburbanites, as they pull back, the crazies remain.
And, whether they’re waving Communist banners in D.C. or terrorist banners in Chicago, they’re harder to ignore without the protective camouflage that the useful idiots at previous marches offered.
Once the cover was pulled back from the Women’s March leadership, the end was not long in coming.
The weather, the snow, rain, and sleet, didn’t help attendance at this year’s events. Neither did the bigotry of the Women’s March leadership. But the larger story may be the onset of TSD fatigue.
The media and activist groups have spent four years whipping up Democrats into a frenzy of Trump Derangement Syndrome. After a week in which the media was promising the onset of WWIII, without actually delivering, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for the fourth iteration of the march.
All the marchers know that impeachment is doomed. The Impeachment rallies failed. Now the Women’s March, the grandma of all the anti-Trump rallies, failed along with them. And the activist groups and funders behind these hate rallies face a terrifying prospect. What if TDS burnout has set in?
Imagine a political and media landscape in which selling hatred of Trump no longer works?
There’s a reason this year’s big Women’s March drama involved old photos of them in the National Archives, not Trump. The marches are winding down and the participants are worrying about how history will remember them.
Their TDS world is ending and they know they’re history.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading.
Joe Biden: Worse than Barack Obama, Worse than Hillary Clinton
January 22, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
Given their overt statism, I’ve mostly focused on the misguided policies being advocated by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
But that doesn’t mean Joe Biden’s platform is reasonable or moderate.
Ezra Klein of Vox unabashedly states that the former Vice President’s policies are “far to Obama’s left.”
This is an issue where folks on both ends of the spectrum agree.
In a column for the right-leaning American Spectator, George Neumayr also says Biden is not a moderate.
He also likes nanny-state policies.
Here are some excerpts from a Peter Schweizer column in the New York Post.
And even the left-leaning U.K.-based Guardian has the same perspective on Biden’s oleaginous behavior.
According to the National Taxpayers Union, he finished his time on Capitol Hill with eleven-consecutive “F” scores (hey, at least he was consistent!).
And he also was the only Senator who got a lifetime rating of zero from the Club for Growth.
Though if you want to be generous, his lifetime rating was actually 0.025 percent.
Regardless, that was still worse than Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
So if Biden become President, it’s safe to assume that America will accelerate on the already-baked-in-the-cake road to Greece.
P.S. Of course, we’ll be on that path even if Biden doesn’t become President, so perhaps the moral of the story is to buy land in Australia.
But that doesn’t mean Joe Biden’s platform is reasonable or moderate.
Ezra Klein of Vox unabashedly states that the former Vice President’s policies are “far to Obama’s left.”
This is an issue where folks on both ends of the spectrum agree.
In a column for the right-leaning American Spectator, George Neumayr also says Biden is not a moderate.
Biden likes to feed the mythology that he is still a moderate. …This is, after all, a pol who giddily whispered in Barack Obama’s ear that a massive government takeover of health care “was a big f—ing deal,”…and now pronouncing Obamacare only a baby step toward a more progressive future. It can’t be repeated enough that “Climate Change” Joe doesn’t give a damn about the ruinous consequences of extreme environmentalism for Rust Belt industries. His Climate Change plans read like something Al Gore might have scribbled to him in a note. …On issue after issue, Biden is taking hardline liberal stances. …“I have the most progressive record of anybody running.” …He is far more comfortable on the Ellen show than on the streets of Scranton. He has given up Amtrak for private jets, and, like his lobbyist brother and grifter son, has cashed in on his last name.If you want policy details, the Wall Street Journal opined on his fiscal plan.
Mr. Biden has previously promised to spend $1.7 trillion over 10 years on a Green New Deal, $750 billion on health care, and $750 billion on higher education. To pay for it all, he’s set out $3.4 trillion in tax increases. This is more aggressive, for the record, than Hillary Clinton’s proposed tax increases in 2016, which totaled $1.4 trillion, per an analysis at the time from the left-of-center Tax Policy Center. In 2008 Barack Obama pledged to raise taxes on the rich while cutting them on net by $2.9 trillion. Twice as many tax increases as the last presidential nominee: That’s now the “moderate” Democratic position. …raising the top rate for residents of all states. …a huge increase on today’s top capital-gains rate of 23.8%… This would put rates on long-term capital gains at their highest since the 1970s. …Raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. This would…vault the U.S. corporate rate back to near the top in the developed world. …the bottom line is big tax increases on people, capital and businesses. There’s nothing pro-growth in the mix.And the ever-rigorous Peter Suderman of Reason wrote about Biden’s statist agenda.
Biden released a proposal to raise a slew of new taxes, mostly on corporations and high earners. He would increase tax rates on capital gains, increase the tax rate for households earning more than $510,000 annually, double the minimum tax rate for multinational corporations, impose a minimum tax on large companies whose tax filings don’t show them paying a certain percentage of their earnings, and undo many of the tax cuts included in the 2017 tax law. …as The New York Times reports, Biden’s proposed tax hikes are more than double what Hillary Clinton called for during the 2016 campaign. …Hillary Clinton…pushed the party gently to the left. Four years later, before the campaign is even over, the party’s supposed moderates are proposing double or even quadruple the new taxes she proposed.The former Veep isn’t just a fan of higher taxes and more spending.
He also likes nanny-state policies.
Joe Biden says he is 100% in favor of banning plastic bags in the U.S. …let’s take a quick walk through the facts about single-use plastic bags at the retail level. …the plastic bags typically handed out by retailers make up only 0.6% of visible litter. Or put another way, for every 1,000 pieces of litter, only six are plastic bags. …They make up less than 1% of landfills by weight… 90% of the plastic bags found at sea streamed in from eight rivers in Asia and two in Africa. Only about 1% of all plastic in the ocean is from America. …Thicker plastic bags have to be used at least 11 times before they yield any environmental benefits. This is much longer than their typical lifespans. …Though it might seem almost innocuous, Biden’s support for a bag ban is symptom of a greater sickness in the Democratic Party. It craves unfettered political power.Let’s not forget, by the way, that Biden (like most politicians in Washington) is corrupt.
Here are some excerpts from a Peter Schweizer column in the New York Post.
Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. …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. …Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the family political machine… HillStone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president. James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but…the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months later, the firm announced a contract to build 100,000 homes. …A group of minority partners, including James Biden, stood to split about $735 million. …With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. …Hunter’s involvement with an entity called Burnham Financial Group…Burnham became the center of a federal investigation involving a $60 million fraud scheme against one of the poorest Indian tribes in America, the Oglala Sioux. …the firm relied on his father’s name and political status as a means of both recruiting pension money into the scheme.I only excerpted sections about Biden’s brother and son. You should read the entire article.
And even the left-leaning U.K.-based Guardian has the same perspective on Biden’s oleaginous behavior.
Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate. …I can already hear the howls: But look at Trump! Trump is 1,000 times worse! You don’t need to convince me. …But here’s the thing: nominating a candidate like Biden will make it far more difficult to defeat Trump. It will allow Trump to muddy the water, to once again pretend he is the one “draining the swamp”, running against Washington culture. …With Biden, we are basically handing Trump a whataboutism playbook. …his record represents the transactional, grossly corrupt culture in Washington that long precedes Trump.I’ll close by simply sharing some objective data about Biden’s voting behavior when he was a Senator.
According to the National Taxpayers Union, he finished his time on Capitol Hill with eleven-consecutive “F” scores (hey, at least he was consistent!).
And he also was the only Senator who got a lifetime rating of zero from the Club for Growth.
Though if you want to be generous, his lifetime rating was actually 0.025 percent.
Regardless, that was still worse than Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
So if Biden become President, it’s safe to assume that America will accelerate on the already-baked-in-the-cake road to Greece.
P.S. Of course, we’ll be on that path even if Biden doesn’t become President, so perhaps the moral of the story is to buy land in Australia.
Biden Unbound: Three idiotic statements from Malarkey Joe just this week
January 22, 2020 By Monica Showalter
With impeachment drawing headlines, and Bernie Sanders sucking all the air out of the room with socialist schemes, Joe Biden is back to making gaffes, except that in this age of fantastical impeachment charges and unreal socialist schemes, gaffes are just business as usual.
Here are three idiocies from Biden this week, and this was just Tuesday:
Which brings us to Gaffe Two, from Breitbart News:...............
But he was not done, and that brings us to Gaffe Three............To Read More......
With impeachment drawing headlines, and Bernie Sanders sucking all the air out of the room with socialist schemes, Joe Biden is back to making gaffes, except that in this age of fantastical impeachment charges and unreal socialist schemes, gaffes are just business as usual.
Here are three idiocies from Biden this week, and this was just Tuesday:
Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed on Tuesday that illegal immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are "more American than most Americans" because they had "done well in school." Biden, who recently said he believed drunk driving should not be crime that warrants deportation, made the statement during a campaign rally in Ames, Iowa.Fact-check for old Joe: DACA recipients as a whole are underachievers, ranking well below most Americans in academic achievement, including learning English, as well as adherence to rule of law...........
Which brings us to Gaffe Two, from Breitbart News:...............
But he was not done, and that brings us to Gaffe Three............To Read More......
Democrats Seek Civil War, But Will Get Revolution
January 22, 2020 By William L. Gensert
Democrats conspired with foreign agents, lied, cheated, and denied due process to Donald Trump. If they were willing to do that to a duly elected president in order to obtain power, what should Americans expect them to do to them should they refuse attempts to be disarmed?
Democrats understand that an armed America can say, “No!” And they can’t have that. If they want to radically change the America extant for more than two centuries, they need to first disarm Americans. And they realize asking nicely is not going to accomplish this.
Therefore, the ever-equable Democrats have suffered a recrudescence of their desire for the disease of civil war… a disease that has lain dormant for more than 160 years.
Democrats will do their utmost to create a situation where blood is spilled and lives are lost to engender this war. They believe that only bloodshed will finally get the people on their side, willing to cede to them the control they need to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”
And they have reached a point where they think they can win........To Read More.....
Democrats conspired with foreign agents, lied, cheated, and denied due process to Donald Trump. If they were willing to do that to a duly elected president in order to obtain power, what should Americans expect them to do to them should they refuse attempts to be disarmed?
Democrats understand that an armed America can say, “No!” And they can’t have that. If they want to radically change the America extant for more than two centuries, they need to first disarm Americans. And they realize asking nicely is not going to accomplish this.
Therefore, the ever-equable Democrats have suffered a recrudescence of their desire for the disease of civil war… a disease that has lain dormant for more than 160 years.
Democrats will do their utmost to create a situation where blood is spilled and lives are lost to engender this war. They believe that only bloodshed will finally get the people on their side, willing to cede to them the control they need to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”
And they have reached a point where they think they can win........To Read More.....
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Obama Vs. Bernie
Daniel Greenfield Tuesday, January 21, 2020 0 Comments @ Sultan Knish Blog
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Thank you for reading.
In November, Barack Obama paid a call on George Soros. After maintaining a low profile since leaving office, the former chosen one showed up at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington D.C. where the Democracy Alliance was having its annual conclave to decide how to destroy the United States.
After a long Friday afternoon of hearing from assorted minions, members of the Democracy Alliance, who had contributed at least $200,000 to be part of Soros’ real-life SPECTRE alliance, minus the white cat, trooped into the Grand Ballroom for a “fireside chat” before a private dinner with Valerie Jarrett.
And Obama had a simple message for the mandarins in the Mandarin Oriental who had spent fortunes to elect lefties and transform the country. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it,” he told his radical audience. And warned that the Democrat agenda should not be driven by “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds or the activist wing of our party.”
Soros and the Democracy Alliance’s activist wing elected Obama to implement a radical agenda. Now he was warning his old backers that they were in danger of backing agendas that were just too radical.
The outreach was striking because Obama had tried to keep his distance from George Soros. In an interview, Soros had complained about being frozen out by Obama. “He made one phone call thanking me for my support, which was meant to last for five minutes,” the leftist billionaire whined.
Obama had no interest in letting Soros set his agenda. But now he was trying to set Soros’ agenda.
His sudden call for moderation had a target.
A Politico writeup in November, ‘Waiting for Obama’, noted that, “Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him.”
“If Bernie were running away with it, I think maybe we would all have to say something. But I don't think that's likely. It's not happening,” an anonymous Obama adviser said.
Bernie supporters furiously shot back. Headlines like, "The Real Barack Obama Has Finally Revealed Himself", popped up on Jacobin: the Sandernista equivalent of Pravda, Der Sturmer, and Al Jazeera.
That same month, Deval Patrick, a favorite potential candidate of Valerie Jarrett and other Obamaworlders, suddenly and disastrously jumped into the 2020 race. With a Patrick event attracting two people, Obama switched his focus and began working behind the scenes to support Warren.
By December, Obama was urging Wall Street donors to back Elizabeth Warren. It didn’t work.
Bernie Sanders shot up to second place. And Obama was not counting on Biden to stop him. “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden," he had privately observed.
It’s January and Obamaworlders keep grousing about how to stop Bernie. And going nowhere.
“The strongest argument against Bernie will be showing that you can defeat Donald Trump,” one recently complained. “And he cannot.”
That’s certainly one problem.
Bernie Sanders has zero appeal to anyone except the white lefties who once backed Obama. Meanwhile Obama’s black voters remain solidly behind Biden. Obama’s only real way to stop Bernie would be to call on black voters to solidly support Biden creating a deep racial divide within an already divided party.
But there’s also the personal element. It’s not just Hillary who hates Bernie. The average Democrat operative views the socialist as a foreign element who undermines the party when he doesn’t need it, and is bringing in a ragged mob of radicals to take it over and fundamentally transform it. And, unlike Obama’s radicals, they have no social skills and little interest in working together with anyone else.
The Bernie base views Obama as a sellout. His signature policy trashes ObamaCare. And Obama cares.
Bernie’s rise is Obama’s nightmare. A race between Bernie and Trump leads to two bad outcomes. Either Trump wins, becomes a two-term president, and trashes Obama’s legacy. Or Bernie wins, and trashes Obama’s legacy while purging his allies and staffers from the DNC and the government.
The return of Bernie divides the party the same way he did in 2016. Either he loses and many of his voters stay home. Or he wins and more moderate Democrats become the ones to sit out the race.
And yet the man who had turned the party into his own cult can’t stop the next cult of personality.
The lightworker, the anointed one, the messiah has discovered that not only George Soros, but the earnest young lefties who once swooned for him have moved on. The arc of history is no longer his.
Obama’s comments at the Democracy Alliance’s shindig also a reflect tactical difference between his preference for remaking the system without tearing it down, and Bernie’s call for socialism now. It’s the same old division between working within the system or destroying it that divided the American Left.
The Obama era was the greatest triumph for the radicals, including the Weathermen, who ultimately decided that they could achieve more by working within the system than by setting off bombs. It was also the subject of that ancient argument between Vladimir Lenin and H.G. Wells about revolutions.
That consensus bypassed Bernie, once an obscure socialist crank, whose political life got a new lease when some ex-Obama marketers decided they need a way to cash in when Hillary wouldn’t hire them, and who was then embraced by a new generation of radicals who saw Obama as insufficiently radical.
Bernie’s political philosophy has been massaged to make it more appealing for a new era. But underneath the new embrace of identity politics and open borders, things he once opposed, he’s an unreconstructed radical with no interest in tactics, strategy, and how things work in the real world.
He just wants a revolution. That revolution threatens the hard work of Obama, Soros and many others.
And what does George think?
Earlier, Soros had been hinting that he might support Elizabeth Warren. He picked Hillary over Sanders in 2016. But Our Revolution, Bernie’s dark money organization, planned to solicit money from Soros. Due to the secrecy of both Soros and Our Revolution, it’s hard to know whether Soros ponied up.
But we do know that Our Revolution got its largest contribution of $100,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund which is partly funded by George Soros. And the activists powering Sanders, like Zack Exley, have often come through Open Society and other Soros network organizations.
Obama’s pitch to Soros and the rest of the radical donor class was that Bernie’s approach was outside the comfort zone of most Americans. Bernie, in George’s terms, was a bad investment who wouldn’t connect with voters and would hand President Trump another four years in the White House.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the squad, and the rest of the old new and new old radicals don’t actually do anything except talk. Bernie’s Medicare-for-All scam was so inept that it unintentionally brought down the campaigns of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Kamala Harris.
Our Revolution lost a quarter of a million to an email scam. So much for that investment.
The single real-world accomplishment that Cortez has to her name took place outside the House, when she helped scuttle Amazon’s New York City HQ and the tens of thousands of jobs that came with it.
George Soros likes to invest in organizations and people who get things done. Obama wants a successor who will lock in and expand on his legacy. Neither of the two men are likely to get what they want.
Soros has already suggested that he won’t be supporting a primary candidate. Obama has tried two.
Obama is testing the waters. He’s hesitant to act openly because if he comes out against Bernie, and Bernie still sweeps through New Hampshire and Iowa, his credibility will be in ruins. Ever since leaving office, Obama has secretly nurtured the idea that he is the wise man and kingmaker of the party.
But what if he’s not?
Obama’s very real fear is that he’s irrelevant. Black voters will still follow him. Few others will. An endorsement from him would not be a profound game changer, but worth a few percent at best.
Coming out against Bernie would mean testing his brand against, not only Bernie, but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and dozens of radical Bernie proxies scattered across social media. While Obama vacationed, millennials like Cortez built social media cults of radical narcissism.
And Obama, the former radical narcissist-in-chief, has been out-radicalized and out-narcissicized.
The man who had once defined a political generation of Democrats has, like Bill Clinton, grown old and tired. The routines that Barack and Bill once pulled to seem hip, are passé. The celebrities they posed with are yesterday’s news. Their attempts to revive Kennedyesque political cool have become as antiquated as Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hat and JFK’s preppy yachting outfits.
Worse still, Barry hasn’t been bypassed for a younger politician, but a formerly obscure elderly radical.
When your power is rooted not in ideas or principles, but hipness, then you live by the trend and die by it. George picked up Barry as his boy toy when he was a young crush. Now Barry’s old and only good for sonorously reciting clichés in the Mandarin Oriental while Soros uses him to collect another few million.
Obama so often spoke of the future, whom it would belong to, and whom it wouldn’t. Now he faces the fact that the future has passed him by. Whomever the future belongs to, it will not belong to him.
Daniel Greenfieldis a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
After a long Friday afternoon of hearing from assorted minions, members of the Democracy Alliance, who had contributed at least $200,000 to be part of Soros’ real-life SPECTRE alliance, minus the white cat, trooped into the Grand Ballroom for a “fireside chat” before a private dinner with Valerie Jarrett.
And Obama had a simple message for the mandarins in the Mandarin Oriental who had spent fortunes to elect lefties and transform the country. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it,” he told his radical audience. And warned that the Democrat agenda should not be driven by “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds or the activist wing of our party.”
Soros and the Democracy Alliance’s activist wing elected Obama to implement a radical agenda. Now he was warning his old backers that they were in danger of backing agendas that were just too radical.
The outreach was striking because Obama had tried to keep his distance from George Soros. In an interview, Soros had complained about being frozen out by Obama. “He made one phone call thanking me for my support, which was meant to last for five minutes,” the leftist billionaire whined.
Obama had no interest in letting Soros set his agenda. But now he was trying to set Soros’ agenda.
His sudden call for moderation had a target.
A Politico writeup in November, ‘Waiting for Obama’, noted that, “Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would speak up to stop him.”
“If Bernie were running away with it, I think maybe we would all have to say something. But I don't think that's likely. It's not happening,” an anonymous Obama adviser said.
Bernie supporters furiously shot back. Headlines like, "The Real Barack Obama Has Finally Revealed Himself", popped up on Jacobin: the Sandernista equivalent of Pravda, Der Sturmer, and Al Jazeera.
That same month, Deval Patrick, a favorite potential candidate of Valerie Jarrett and other Obamaworlders, suddenly and disastrously jumped into the 2020 race. With a Patrick event attracting two people, Obama switched his focus and began working behind the scenes to support Warren.
By December, Obama was urging Wall Street donors to back Elizabeth Warren. It didn’t work.
Bernie Sanders shot up to second place. And Obama was not counting on Biden to stop him. “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden," he had privately observed.
It’s January and Obamaworlders keep grousing about how to stop Bernie. And going nowhere.
“The strongest argument against Bernie will be showing that you can defeat Donald Trump,” one recently complained. “And he cannot.”
That’s certainly one problem.
Bernie Sanders has zero appeal to anyone except the white lefties who once backed Obama. Meanwhile Obama’s black voters remain solidly behind Biden. Obama’s only real way to stop Bernie would be to call on black voters to solidly support Biden creating a deep racial divide within an already divided party.
But there’s also the personal element. It’s not just Hillary who hates Bernie. The average Democrat operative views the socialist as a foreign element who undermines the party when he doesn’t need it, and is bringing in a ragged mob of radicals to take it over and fundamentally transform it. And, unlike Obama’s radicals, they have no social skills and little interest in working together with anyone else.
The Bernie base views Obama as a sellout. His signature policy trashes ObamaCare. And Obama cares.
Bernie’s rise is Obama’s nightmare. A race between Bernie and Trump leads to two bad outcomes. Either Trump wins, becomes a two-term president, and trashes Obama’s legacy. Or Bernie wins, and trashes Obama’s legacy while purging his allies and staffers from the DNC and the government.
The return of Bernie divides the party the same way he did in 2016. Either he loses and many of his voters stay home. Or he wins and more moderate Democrats become the ones to sit out the race.
And yet the man who had turned the party into his own cult can’t stop the next cult of personality.
The lightworker, the anointed one, the messiah has discovered that not only George Soros, but the earnest young lefties who once swooned for him have moved on. The arc of history is no longer his.
Obama’s comments at the Democracy Alliance’s shindig also a reflect tactical difference between his preference for remaking the system without tearing it down, and Bernie’s call for socialism now. It’s the same old division between working within the system or destroying it that divided the American Left.
The Obama era was the greatest triumph for the radicals, including the Weathermen, who ultimately decided that they could achieve more by working within the system than by setting off bombs. It was also the subject of that ancient argument between Vladimir Lenin and H.G. Wells about revolutions.
That consensus bypassed Bernie, once an obscure socialist crank, whose political life got a new lease when some ex-Obama marketers decided they need a way to cash in when Hillary wouldn’t hire them, and who was then embraced by a new generation of radicals who saw Obama as insufficiently radical.
Bernie’s political philosophy has been massaged to make it more appealing for a new era. But underneath the new embrace of identity politics and open borders, things he once opposed, he’s an unreconstructed radical with no interest in tactics, strategy, and how things work in the real world.
He just wants a revolution. That revolution threatens the hard work of Obama, Soros and many others.
And what does George think?
Earlier, Soros had been hinting that he might support Elizabeth Warren. He picked Hillary over Sanders in 2016. But Our Revolution, Bernie’s dark money organization, planned to solicit money from Soros. Due to the secrecy of both Soros and Our Revolution, it’s hard to know whether Soros ponied up.
But we do know that Our Revolution got its largest contribution of $100,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund which is partly funded by George Soros. And the activists powering Sanders, like Zack Exley, have often come through Open Society and other Soros network organizations.
Obama’s pitch to Soros and the rest of the radical donor class was that Bernie’s approach was outside the comfort zone of most Americans. Bernie, in George’s terms, was a bad investment who wouldn’t connect with voters and would hand President Trump another four years in the White House.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the squad, and the rest of the old new and new old radicals don’t actually do anything except talk. Bernie’s Medicare-for-All scam was so inept that it unintentionally brought down the campaigns of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Kamala Harris.
Our Revolution lost a quarter of a million to an email scam. So much for that investment.
The single real-world accomplishment that Cortez has to her name took place outside the House, when she helped scuttle Amazon’s New York City HQ and the tens of thousands of jobs that came with it.
George Soros likes to invest in organizations and people who get things done. Obama wants a successor who will lock in and expand on his legacy. Neither of the two men are likely to get what they want.
Soros has already suggested that he won’t be supporting a primary candidate. Obama has tried two.
Obama is testing the waters. He’s hesitant to act openly because if he comes out against Bernie, and Bernie still sweeps through New Hampshire and Iowa, his credibility will be in ruins. Ever since leaving office, Obama has secretly nurtured the idea that he is the wise man and kingmaker of the party.
But what if he’s not?
Obama’s very real fear is that he’s irrelevant. Black voters will still follow him. Few others will. An endorsement from him would not be a profound game changer, but worth a few percent at best.
Coming out against Bernie would mean testing his brand against, not only Bernie, but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and dozens of radical Bernie proxies scattered across social media. While Obama vacationed, millennials like Cortez built social media cults of radical narcissism.
And Obama, the former radical narcissist-in-chief, has been out-radicalized and out-narcissicized.
The man who had once defined a political generation of Democrats has, like Bill Clinton, grown old and tired. The routines that Barack and Bill once pulled to seem hip, are passé. The celebrities they posed with are yesterday’s news. Their attempts to revive Kennedyesque political cool have become as antiquated as Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hat and JFK’s preppy yachting outfits.
Worse still, Barry hasn’t been bypassed for a younger politician, but a formerly obscure elderly radical.
When your power is rooted not in ideas or principles, but hipness, then you live by the trend and die by it. George picked up Barry as his boy toy when he was a young crush. Now Barry’s old and only good for sonorously reciting clichés in the Mandarin Oriental while Soros uses him to collect another few million.
Obama so often spoke of the future, whom it would belong to, and whom it wouldn’t. Now he faces the fact that the future has passed him by. Whomever the future belongs to, it will not belong to him.
Daniel Greenfieldis a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading.
IMF Research on the Adverse Impact of Government Bureaucracy on Private Employment
January 20, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
When I did this video about public-sector compensation almost 10 years ago, I focused on why it is unfair that bureaucrats get much higher levels of compensation than people working the private sector.
Today, let’s consider the economic consequences of excessive bureaucracy.
And what will make this column particularly interesting is that I’ll be citing some research from economists at the International Monetary Fund (a bureaucracy which is definitely not an outpost of libertarian thinking).
The two authors, Alberto Behar and Junghwan Mok, investigated whether nations lowered unemployment rates by employing more bureaucrats.
Yes, hiring someone to be a bureaucrat obviously means that person is employed,
but it also means that resources are being diverted to government.
And that imposes costs on the economy’s productive sector.
So the real question is the net impact.
In their study for the IMF, the authors cite other academic research suggesting that government employment crowds out (i.e., reduces) private employment.
And, as you can see in Figure 4, they look at data for nations in different regions.
They wisely utilize the broader measure of public employment, which includes the people employed by state-owned enterprises.
The diagram on the left is most relevant since it shows that private employment (vertical axis) declines as government jobs (horizontal axis) increase.
And when they do the statistical analysis, we get confirmation that government jobs displace employment in the economy’s productive sector.
In addition to not increasing overall employment, government jobs also increase the fiscal burden of government and undermine long-run growth.
So the long-term damage is even greater than the short-run damage.
P.S. The IMF isn’t the only international bureaucracy to conclude that government employment is bad for overall prosperity. A few years ago, I shared research from the European Central Bank which also showed negative macroeconomic consequences from costly bureaucracy.
P.P.S. While I’m usually critical of the IMF because it has a statist policy agenda, it’s not uncommon for the professional economists who work there to produce good research. In the past, I’ve highlight some very good IMF studies on topics such as spending caps, the size of government, taxes and business vitality, fiscal decentralization, the Laffer Curve, and class-warfare taxation.
Today, let’s consider the economic consequences of excessive bureaucracy.
And what will make this column particularly interesting is that I’ll be citing some research from economists at the International Monetary Fund (a bureaucracy which is definitely not an outpost of libertarian thinking).
The two authors, Alberto Behar and Junghwan Mok, investigated whether nations lowered unemployment rates by employing more bureaucrats.
The contribution of this paper is to investigate the effects of public hiring of workers on labor market outcomes, specifically unemployment and private employment. In particular, does public hiring increase (“crowd in”) private employment or decrease (“crowd out”) private employment? …It is arguably the case that a private-sector job is more desirable than a public-sector job from a public policy point of view…there is evidence that a large government share in economic activity can be negative for long-term growth because of the distortionary effects of taxation, inefficient government spending due in part to rent-seeking or lower worker productivity, and the crowding out of private investment. …Crowding out could occur through a number of channels. Derived labor demand can be affected through crowding out of the product market, possibly via higher taxes, higher interest rates, and competition from state-owned enterprises. It can occur through the labor market, where higher wages, more job security, or a higher probability of finding a public-sector job can make an individual more likely to seek or wait for public-sector employment rather than search for or accept a job in the private sector… Finally, it can occur in the education market, where individuals seek qualifications appropriate for entering the public sector rather than skills needed for productive employmentAs you can see, the authors sensibly consider both the direct and indirect effects of public employment.
Yes, hiring someone to be a bureaucrat obviously means that person is employed,
but it also means that resources are being diverted to government.And that imposes costs on the economy’s productive sector.
So the real question is the net impact.
In their study for the IMF, the authors cite other academic research suggesting that government employment crowds out (i.e., reduces) private employment.
…there is prior evidence that crowding-out effects are sufficiently large to increase unemployment in a number of advanced countries. However, there has hitherto not been a thorough investigation of how public employment affects labor market outcomes in developing countries. We fill this gap in the literature by investigating the effects of public employment on both private employment and on unemployment. An important part of our contribution lies in the assembly of the dataset to expand the number of non-OECD countries… The most related and relevant work to this paper is by Algan et al. (2002), who explore the consequences of public-sector employment for labor market performance. Using pooled cross-section and annual time-series data for 17 OECD countries from 1960 to 2000, they run regressions of the unemployment rate and/or the private-sector employment rate on the public-sector employment rate. Empirical evidence from the employment equation suggests that the creation of 100 public jobs crowds out 150 private-sector jobs.In the study, the authors look at two main measures of public sector employment.
And, as you can see in Figure 4, they look at data for nations in different regions.
They wisely utilize the broader measure of public employment, which includes the people employed by state-owned enterprises.
We have collected data for up to 194 countries over the period 1988–2011. …Our contribution to the literature includes the assembly of data on public and private employment and other indicators for a wide range of developing and advanced countries. …Definitions of “public sector” are different across countries and organizations, so we choose two definitions and generate corresponding public employment datasets, namely a “narrow” measure also referred to as “public administration” and a “broad” measure. …This dataset includes not only governmental agencies but also state-owned enterprises (SOEs). We call this the ‘broad’ measure of public employment, preserving the term ‘public sector’.In Figure 7, they use a scatter diagram to show some of the data.
The diagram on the left is most relevant since it shows that private employment (vertical axis) declines as government jobs (horizontal axis) increase.
And when they do the statistical analysis, we get confirmation that government jobs displace employment in the economy’s productive sector.
…all coefficients indicate a very strong negative relationship between public- and private-sector employment rates. For example, 100 new public jobs crowd out 98 private job… Taken together with the unemployment results, public employment just about fully crowds out private-sector employment regardless of the definition, such that a rise in government hiring would be offset by decreases in private employment… Regressions of unemployment on public employment and of private employment on public employment, each of which is based on two definitions of public employment, find robust evidence that public employment crowds out private employment. …Public-sector hiring: (i) does not reduce unemployment, (ii) increases the fiscal burden, and (iii) inhibits long-term growth through reductions in private-sector employment. Together, this would imply that public hiring is detrimental to long term fiscal sustainability.The final part of the above excerpt is critical.
In addition to not increasing overall employment, government jobs also increase the fiscal burden of government and undermine long-run growth.
So the long-term damage is even greater than the short-run damage.
P.S. The IMF isn’t the only international bureaucracy to conclude that government employment is bad for overall prosperity. A few years ago, I shared research from the European Central Bank which also showed negative macroeconomic consequences from costly bureaucracy.
P.P.S. While I’m usually critical of the IMF because it has a statist policy agenda, it’s not uncommon for the professional economists who work there to produce good research. In the past, I’ve highlight some very good IMF studies on topics such as spending caps, the size of government, taxes and business vitality, fiscal decentralization, the Laffer Curve, and class-warfare taxation.
Only Trial Witnesses Can Expose the Evil Anti-Trump Coup
January 22, 2020 By Joy Overbeck
Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their jackal pack are already howling that a Senate trial dismissal vote or a trial without witnesses amounts to a "cover-up." We don't care what they think. But we must care very seriously about what Americans think, and Americans have not heard the president's defense against the bogus charges because the House Democrats forbade this basic fairness. The Senate trial is his perfect chance to destroy the Democrats' sham impeachment.
If most Americans knew about the vicious covert war waged by anti-Trump officials at the highest levels of our revered security agencies to usurp the presidency, they would be outraged. Poll numbers would reflect their overwhelming disgust with the powerful weasels at the DOJ, CIA, FBI, maybe even the FISA court, working hard undercover to undo an election that Trump won overwhelmingly.
But most Americans have busy lives, and when they do tune in, they mostly hear the leftstream media's Trump-hating desk-pounders who deliberately ignore the Deep State conspiracy to annihilate the president. And the usurpers' tangled web is so wicked complicated that following it requires a flow chart that would cover several walls........To Read More....
Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their jackal pack are already howling that a Senate trial dismissal vote or a trial without witnesses amounts to a "cover-up." We don't care what they think. But we must care very seriously about what Americans think, and Americans have not heard the president's defense against the bogus charges because the House Democrats forbade this basic fairness. The Senate trial is his perfect chance to destroy the Democrats' sham impeachment.
If most Americans knew about the vicious covert war waged by anti-Trump officials at the highest levels of our revered security agencies to usurp the presidency, they would be outraged. Poll numbers would reflect their overwhelming disgust with the powerful weasels at the DOJ, CIA, FBI, maybe even the FISA court, working hard undercover to undo an election that Trump won overwhelmingly.
But most Americans have busy lives, and when they do tune in, they mostly hear the leftstream media's Trump-hating desk-pounders who deliberately ignore the Deep State conspiracy to annihilate the president. And the usurpers' tangled web is so wicked complicated that following it requires a flow chart that would cover several walls........To Read More....
Barack Obama should be key witness in impeachment trial, not Joe or Hunter Biden
January 22, 2020 By Neil Braithwaite
Besides the transcript of the phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Zelensky, the second most important transcript is of Joe Biden's comments at a January 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations. (See below.)
Here's why:
It's been interesting to hear Republican politicians, Trump-supporters, a few objective journalists, conservative political pundits, and even President Trump himself continue to argue that Joe Biden was the person responsible for threatening a quid pro quo to a group of Ukrainian government leaders involving a billion-dollar loan guarantee from the USA and a prosecutor investigating corruption at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. All of these people ealso argue that Joe, along with his son Hunter, should be called as witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial to expose the truth of their corruption in the Ukraine.
What has been glaringly overlooked in this whole situation is that Joe Biden was technically not the person responsible for the idea of a quid pro quo in that situation, because Biden was merely the official U.S. representative delivering the quid pro quo ultimatum to the Ukrainian leaders. In his own words, Joe Biden clearly establishes this fact.
Referencing the transcript below, Biden implies that because Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk had not yet taken "action against [fired] the state prosecutor," Ukraine was not going to get the billion dollars from the USA. At this point in his story, Biden says the Ukrainian leaders challenged him, saying, "You have no authority. You're not the president." Biden said his response to their challenge was, "Call him." That's the irrefutable statement that implicates President Obama in the quid pro quo.........Obama needs to be asked if he directed Biden to withhold the billion dollars from Ukraine if the Burisma prosecutor was not fired.............To Read More....
Besides the transcript of the phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian president Zelensky, the second most important transcript is of Joe Biden's comments at a January 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations. (See below.)
Here's why:
It's been interesting to hear Republican politicians, Trump-supporters, a few objective journalists, conservative political pundits, and even President Trump himself continue to argue that Joe Biden was the person responsible for threatening a quid pro quo to a group of Ukrainian government leaders involving a billion-dollar loan guarantee from the USA and a prosecutor investigating corruption at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. All of these people ealso argue that Joe, along with his son Hunter, should be called as witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial to expose the truth of their corruption in the Ukraine.
What has been glaringly overlooked in this whole situation is that Joe Biden was technically not the person responsible for the idea of a quid pro quo in that situation, because Biden was merely the official U.S. representative delivering the quid pro quo ultimatum to the Ukrainian leaders. In his own words, Joe Biden clearly establishes this fact.
Referencing the transcript below, Biden implies that because Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk had not yet taken "action against [fired] the state prosecutor," Ukraine was not going to get the billion dollars from the USA. At this point in his story, Biden says the Ukrainian leaders challenged him, saying, "You have no authority. You're not the president." Biden said his response to their challenge was, "Call him." That's the irrefutable statement that implicates President Obama in the quid pro quo.........Obama needs to be asked if he directed Biden to withhold the billion dollars from Ukraine if the Burisma prosecutor was not fired.............To Read More....
Another Bernie supporter is outed as a Marxist with a lust for blood
January 22, 2020 By Andrea Widburg
Last week, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, doing the investigative reporting the media refuses to do when Democrats (or “socialist democrats,” aka Marxists) are involved, uploaded two videos introducing people to Kyle Jurek, a Bernie field organizer in Iowa. Jurek openly supports a communist takeover, dismisses Soviet gulags as mere “re-education camps,” and thinks it would be a fine thing to have similar camps in America for Trump supporters. Jurek also assured the undercover journalist that he was not alone; there are others, he said, who shared his goals.
Bernie never commented on the video nor did his campaign dismiss Jurek.
Today, Project Veritas released a third video proving that Jurek was right when he said he was not an anomaly within the Bernie campaign. Project Veritas’s latest video looks at Martin Weissgerber, a South Carolina Field Organizer for the Sanders Campaign. Weissgerber is a red diaper baby, who boasts about his Belgian father’s participation in the 1968 French civil unrest and bemoans the fact that his mother has to tone down her politics a bit for her work at an NPR affiliate.........To Read More....
My Take - Communists never saw a burden so great they couldn't put it on the backs of others. Communists never saw a problem they couldn't fix with confiscation of other people money, imprisoning millions, starving millions, and murdering millions. And we wonder why there's never been a successful communist government? Even the Chicom have abandoned economic Marxism.
Last week, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, doing the investigative reporting the media refuses to do when Democrats (or “socialist democrats,” aka Marxists) are involved, uploaded two videos introducing people to Kyle Jurek, a Bernie field organizer in Iowa. Jurek openly supports a communist takeover, dismisses Soviet gulags as mere “re-education camps,” and thinks it would be a fine thing to have similar camps in America for Trump supporters. Jurek also assured the undercover journalist that he was not alone; there are others, he said, who shared his goals.
Bernie never commented on the video nor did his campaign dismiss Jurek.
Today, Project Veritas released a third video proving that Jurek was right when he said he was not an anomaly within the Bernie campaign. Project Veritas’s latest video looks at Martin Weissgerber, a South Carolina Field Organizer for the Sanders Campaign. Weissgerber is a red diaper baby, who boasts about his Belgian father’s participation in the 1968 French civil unrest and bemoans the fact that his mother has to tone down her politics a bit for her work at an NPR affiliate.........To Read More....
My Take - Communists never saw a burden so great they couldn't put it on the backs of others. Communists never saw a problem they couldn't fix with confiscation of other people money, imprisoning millions, starving millions, and murdering millions. And we wonder why there's never been a successful communist government? Even the Chicom have abandoned economic Marxism.
Jerry Nadler’s fatal mistake on impeachment
January 22, 2020
By John Leonard
Congressman (and impeachment manager) Jerry Nadler made a fatal mistake by running his mouth only two days before President Trump’s absurd trial was scheduled to begin. He just couldn’t keep quiet for two more days. Now the entire country can be very confident that this impeachment trial is nothing but a sham and a political hatchet job.
How so? While arguing against calling Hunter Biden as a witness by the president’s defense team during a Sunday appearance on Face the Nation, Nadler foolishly said: “Did the president…as the evidence shows that he did, betray his country by conspiring with a foreign country to try to rig the election?”
See the problem? Congressman Nadler just claimed on national television in front of millions of viewers that evidence shows President Trump committed the worst possible crime against our nation, which is treason. However, the two articles of impeachment are only about obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, neither of which are criminal acts as codified by law..........Nadler also accused Trump of extortion. If the evidence really shows that President Trump betrayed the United States and conspired with a foreign country (when he wasn’t busy extorting political favors from them,) why isn’t that listed as the very first article of impeachment?..........To Read More....
Congressman (and impeachment manager) Jerry Nadler made a fatal mistake by running his mouth only two days before President Trump’s absurd trial was scheduled to begin. He just couldn’t keep quiet for two more days. Now the entire country can be very confident that this impeachment trial is nothing but a sham and a political hatchet job.
How so? While arguing against calling Hunter Biden as a witness by the president’s defense team during a Sunday appearance on Face the Nation, Nadler foolishly said: “Did the president…as the evidence shows that he did, betray his country by conspiring with a foreign country to try to rig the election?”
See the problem? Congressman Nadler just claimed on national television in front of millions of viewers that evidence shows President Trump committed the worst possible crime against our nation, which is treason. However, the two articles of impeachment are only about obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, neither of which are criminal acts as codified by law..........Nadler also accused Trump of extortion. If the evidence really shows that President Trump betrayed the United States and conspired with a foreign country (when he wasn’t busy extorting political favors from them,) why isn’t that listed as the very first article of impeachment?..........To Read More....
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Energy & Environmental Newsletter: January 20, 2020
By John Droz, Jr. -- January 20, 2020
The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy, environmental and education policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.
Some of the more important articles in this issue are:Special interest groups vow to continue push for energy credits
Wind Energy Lobbyists Still Beating Solar Lobbyists in DC
NY Energy Bill from Cuomo to Consumers Could Top $47 Billion!
50,000 Tons Of Non-Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades Dumped In The Landfill
US Congress approves Historic Funding for Nuclear
Federal setbacks to nuclear energy will harm climate
Europe’s Green Energy Policy Is A Complete & Utter Mess
How The US Shale Revolution Changed The Face Of Geopolitics
The Fracking Decade
How fracking changed America forever
NEPA climate overhaul could unleash energy projects
Progressive Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax
In 2018 Minnesota Had More Wind and Solar than Ever, But CO2 Emissions Went Up
Report: The Commoditization of Electricity
New NY Town Board replaced existing weak wind law with a more protective one
Climate Expert Shreds AOC& Greta Claims In Congressional Testimony
Excellent video debunking the 97% scientists AGW claims
What 50 Years Of Global Hurricane Landfall Data Teaches Us About Climate Change
Archive: The Assault on Science
Climate alarmists have abandoned scientific method
Mark Mathis Is 100% Correct: Too Much of Climate Science Isn’t
2020 is the year we storm the green barricades
Short video: NASA Confirms Their Own Climate “Conspiracy Theory”
Short video: NASA NOAA 2019 Global Data shows US Temps Fall Dramatically
What the global warming advocates really have in mind
Thank God for tide gauges
Greed Energy Economics:Special interest groups vow to continue push for energy credits
Wind Energy Lobbyists Still Beating Solar Lobbyists in DC
NY Energy Bill from Cuomo to Consumers Could Top $47 Billion!
A Decade of Wind Energy Subsidies
In UK ~$900 Million (US) spent to shut off wind turbines
Reform USAID energy aid policies now!
A reflection on the cost of reducing emissions in Ontario’s electricity system
Another Expensive Solar Scheme Bites the Dust
This $1 Billion Solar Plant Is an Obsolete, Expensive Flop
The feds bet $737 million on a salt tower for solar power. Guess what happened?
Renewable Energy—Health and Ecosystem Consequences:50,000 Tons Of Non-Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades Dumped In The Landfill
Government official: Germans who live near wind turbines be compensated
Wind Turbines could be final nail in coffin for seabirds
Essex Solar (VA) agrees to pay a $245,000 fine for water violations
Nuclear Energy:US Congress approves Historic Funding for Nuclear
Federal setbacks to nuclear energy will harm climate
Nuclear in 2020: a global look ahead
I Simply Want Much More Nuclear Power
Natural Gas Energy:Europe’s Green Energy Policy Is A Complete & Utter Mess
How The US Shale Revolution Changed The Face Of Geopolitics
The Fracking Decade
How fracking changed America forever
Natural Gas Does A Lot More Than Just Reduce CO2; It Saves Lives!
Changes in US Natural Gas Reserves
The World’s Next Energy Bonanza
Miscellaneous Energy News:NEPA climate overhaul could unleash energy projects
Progressive Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax
In 2018 Minnesota Had More Wind and Solar than Ever, But CO2 Emissions Went Up
Report: The Commoditization of Electricity
New NY Town Board replaced existing weak wind law with a more protective one
Short Good Video: Energy 101 — Energy Density
‘Completely unsustainable’: How data demands take a toll on the environment
Foreign Agents Funded by the Rockefellers Attack Our Energy Security
The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment
Hot Air on Energy
Short Video: Riot Fuel
Taking a cue from plants, new chemical approach converts CO2 to valuable fuel
Smart Grids to Manage Two Thirds of Global Power Networks by 2050
Six ND wind projects miss deadline for new lighting systems
NJ Governor Signs Foolish Offshore Wind Order
Discussion of Residential Ground Source Heat Pumps
Last planned Vermont wind project: cancelled
Manmade Global Warming:Climate Expert Shreds AOC& Greta Claims In Congressional Testimony
Excellent video debunking the 97% scientists AGW claims
What 50 Years Of Global Hurricane Landfall Data Teaches Us About Climate Change
Archive: The Assault on Science
Climate alarmists have abandoned scientific method
Mark Mathis Is 100% Correct: Too Much of Climate Science Isn’t
2020 is the year we storm the green barricades
Short video: NASA Confirms Their Own Climate “Conspiracy Theory”
Short video: NASA NOAA 2019 Global Data shows US Temps Fall Dramatically
What the global warming advocates really have in mind
Global Warming Theology Is the Enemy of Climate Science and Reason
Thank God for tide gauges
US Pentagon predicted climate-change catastrophe by 2020
Green New Dealers Can Agree: No Climate Armageddon
Eye-popping video exposes brazen junk science by federal climate assessment program
Study: Cogent and irrefutable reasons why CO2 cannot warm the Earth
Russia announces plans to adapt due to climate change
Stratospheric polar vortex reaches coldest temperature in 40 years
Greta Thunberg Is a Joke
Short video: CO2 Emissions, Fossil Fuel Use and Human Longevity
German Greens: Use Climate Emergency Declarations to Jail Deniers
Archive: The New Politics Of Climate Change: No Space For Deniers
Study: Sun, not CO2, controls global temperature
The Ocean Warms By A Whole Little
Education Related:In the global classroom, ‘American’ is for average
Loosening Social Justice’s Iron Grip on Academia
Global climate may improve, but academic gloom seems here to stay
Teachers Union wants climate based social revolution taught in English classes
Russell Kirk on Higher Education
How Technology Companies Control Minds Through Smart Phone Addiction
US Politics and Related:How Do Civil Wars Happen?
Greta Thunberg: A Living Explanation Of The Left
No Bureaucratic Drainage in the Washington Swamp
NY Times Continues Campaign Against Trump Administration
US Presidential Election: for the first time, climate is a top priority
The High Cost of Good Intentions (US Federal Entitlement Programs)
How the predictions of a defector KGB agent in the ’80’s have taken root in the US
How To Stem the Tide of Socialism
Why CNN Settlement in Libel Case Is a Big Deal
Quotations from Thomas Sowell – one of the greatest living economists
Video: Margaret Thatcher — The Woman Who Saved Great Britain
The World’s a Better Place with Soleimani Gone
Information about the Drone that took out the Iranian General
Impeachment: Dems are Crazy — Like a Fox…
FISA Court Judge May Have Falsified His Senate Ethics Disclosures
The Economic Benefits of Improved Infrastructure Permitting
Presidential Executive Order on Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review Process for Infrastructure
Obama Officials Advising Iran?
Video: Special Middle East Update
Five States Face Federal Lawsuit Over Inaccurate Voter Registrations
9th Circuit Court Deals Brutal Blow To Teens Who Sued Trump Over Climate Change
Science and Miscellaneous Matters:Short Video: What is “Fair”?
EPA’s Science Blowout
EPA at 50: Progress for a Stronger Future
Pessimism isn’t warranted. If you take the long view, the world is getting better
Scientific Misconduct At James Cook University Confirms My Worst Fears
Jo Nova analyzes Australian fires
The Greens: cashing in on death and destruction
Ted Talk: Wireless Data from Every Lightbulb?
When public business is done behind closed doors
How NYS authorities keep costs off-budget
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.
Some of the more important articles in this issue are:Special interest groups vow to continue push for energy credits
Wind Energy Lobbyists Still Beating Solar Lobbyists in DC
NY Energy Bill from Cuomo to Consumers Could Top $47 Billion!
50,000 Tons Of Non-Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades Dumped In The Landfill
US Congress approves Historic Funding for Nuclear
Federal setbacks to nuclear energy will harm climate
Europe’s Green Energy Policy Is A Complete & Utter Mess
How The US Shale Revolution Changed The Face Of Geopolitics
The Fracking Decade
How fracking changed America forever
NEPA climate overhaul could unleash energy projects
Progressive Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax
In 2018 Minnesota Had More Wind and Solar than Ever, But CO2 Emissions Went Up
Report: The Commoditization of Electricity
New NY Town Board replaced existing weak wind law with a more protective one
Climate Expert Shreds AOC& Greta Claims In Congressional Testimony
Excellent video debunking the 97% scientists AGW claims
What 50 Years Of Global Hurricane Landfall Data Teaches Us About Climate Change
Archive: The Assault on Science
Climate alarmists have abandoned scientific method
Mark Mathis Is 100% Correct: Too Much of Climate Science Isn’t
2020 is the year we storm the green barricades
Short video: NASA Confirms Their Own Climate “Conspiracy Theory”
Short video: NASA NOAA 2019 Global Data shows US Temps Fall Dramatically
What the global warming advocates really have in mind
Thank God for tide gauges
Greed Energy Economics:Special interest groups vow to continue push for energy credits
Wind Energy Lobbyists Still Beating Solar Lobbyists in DC
NY Energy Bill from Cuomo to Consumers Could Top $47 Billion!
A Decade of Wind Energy Subsidies
In UK ~$900 Million (US) spent to shut off wind turbines
Reform USAID energy aid policies now!
A reflection on the cost of reducing emissions in Ontario’s electricity system
Another Expensive Solar Scheme Bites the Dust
This $1 Billion Solar Plant Is an Obsolete, Expensive Flop
The feds bet $737 million on a salt tower for solar power. Guess what happened?
Renewable Energy—Health and Ecosystem Consequences:50,000 Tons Of Non-Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades Dumped In The Landfill
Government official: Germans who live near wind turbines be compensated
Wind Turbines could be final nail in coffin for seabirds
Essex Solar (VA) agrees to pay a $245,000 fine for water violations
Nuclear Energy:US Congress approves Historic Funding for Nuclear
Federal setbacks to nuclear energy will harm climate
Nuclear in 2020: a global look ahead
I Simply Want Much More Nuclear Power
Natural Gas Energy:Europe’s Green Energy Policy Is A Complete & Utter Mess
How The US Shale Revolution Changed The Face Of Geopolitics
The Fracking Decade
How fracking changed America forever
Natural Gas Does A Lot More Than Just Reduce CO2; It Saves Lives!
Changes in US Natural Gas Reserves
The World’s Next Energy Bonanza
Miscellaneous Energy News:NEPA climate overhaul could unleash energy projects
Progressive Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax
In 2018 Minnesota Had More Wind and Solar than Ever, But CO2 Emissions Went Up
Report: The Commoditization of Electricity
New NY Town Board replaced existing weak wind law with a more protective one
Short Good Video: Energy 101 — Energy Density
‘Completely unsustainable’: How data demands take a toll on the environment
Foreign Agents Funded by the Rockefellers Attack Our Energy Security
The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment
Hot Air on Energy
Short Video: Riot Fuel
Taking a cue from plants, new chemical approach converts CO2 to valuable fuel
Smart Grids to Manage Two Thirds of Global Power Networks by 2050
Six ND wind projects miss deadline for new lighting systems
NJ Governor Signs Foolish Offshore Wind Order
Discussion of Residential Ground Source Heat Pumps
Last planned Vermont wind project: cancelled
Manmade Global Warming:Climate Expert Shreds AOC& Greta Claims In Congressional Testimony
Excellent video debunking the 97% scientists AGW claims
What 50 Years Of Global Hurricane Landfall Data Teaches Us About Climate Change
Archive: The Assault on Science
Climate alarmists have abandoned scientific method
Mark Mathis Is 100% Correct: Too Much of Climate Science Isn’t
2020 is the year we storm the green barricades
Short video: NASA Confirms Their Own Climate “Conspiracy Theory”
Short video: NASA NOAA 2019 Global Data shows US Temps Fall Dramatically
What the global warming advocates really have in mind
Global Warming Theology Is the Enemy of Climate Science and Reason
Thank God for tide gauges
US Pentagon predicted climate-change catastrophe by 2020
Green New Dealers Can Agree: No Climate Armageddon
Eye-popping video exposes brazen junk science by federal climate assessment program
Study: Cogent and irrefutable reasons why CO2 cannot warm the Earth
Russia announces plans to adapt due to climate change
Stratospheric polar vortex reaches coldest temperature in 40 years
Greta Thunberg Is a Joke
Short video: CO2 Emissions, Fossil Fuel Use and Human Longevity
German Greens: Use Climate Emergency Declarations to Jail Deniers
Archive: The New Politics Of Climate Change: No Space For Deniers
Study: Sun, not CO2, controls global temperature
The Ocean Warms By A Whole Little
Education Related:In the global classroom, ‘American’ is for average
Loosening Social Justice’s Iron Grip on Academia
Global climate may improve, but academic gloom seems here to stay
Teachers Union wants climate based social revolution taught in English classes
Russell Kirk on Higher Education
How Technology Companies Control Minds Through Smart Phone Addiction
US Politics and Related:How Do Civil Wars Happen?
Greta Thunberg: A Living Explanation Of The Left
No Bureaucratic Drainage in the Washington Swamp
NY Times Continues Campaign Against Trump Administration
US Presidential Election: for the first time, climate is a top priority
The High Cost of Good Intentions (US Federal Entitlement Programs)
How the predictions of a defector KGB agent in the ’80’s have taken root in the US
How To Stem the Tide of Socialism
Why CNN Settlement in Libel Case Is a Big Deal
Quotations from Thomas Sowell – one of the greatest living economists
Video: Margaret Thatcher — The Woman Who Saved Great Britain
The World’s a Better Place with Soleimani Gone
Information about the Drone that took out the Iranian General
Impeachment: Dems are Crazy — Like a Fox…
FISA Court Judge May Have Falsified His Senate Ethics Disclosures
The Economic Benefits of Improved Infrastructure Permitting
Presidential Executive Order on Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review Process for Infrastructure
Obama Officials Advising Iran?
Video: Special Middle East Update
Five States Face Federal Lawsuit Over Inaccurate Voter Registrations
9th Circuit Court Deals Brutal Blow To Teens Who Sued Trump Over Climate Change
Science and Miscellaneous Matters:Short Video: What is “Fair”?
EPA’s Science Blowout
EPA at 50: Progress for a Stronger Future
Pessimism isn’t warranted. If you take the long view, the world is getting better
Scientific Misconduct At James Cook University Confirms My Worst Fears
Jo Nova analyzes Australian fires
The Greens: cashing in on death and destruction
Ted Talk: Wireless Data from Every Lightbulb?
When public business is done behind closed doors
How NYS authorities keep costs off-budget
Years after Supreme Court win, Sacketts lose fight with EPA
Ariel Wittenberg, E&E News reporter
After winning the right to challenge EPA enforcement orders in a major 2011 Supreme Court ruling, Michael and Chantell Sackett have lost their case.
A U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho judge ruled that the wetlands the couple are accused of illegally filling were indeed protected by the Clean Water Act.
"The Court finds the EPA's determination was not arbitrary or capricious and is supported by the record," Reagan appointee Judge Edward Lodge wrote in a ruling on summary judgment last week.
Tony Francois, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation representing the Sacketts, indicated his clients would appeal the case.
"The Sacketts are disappointed in the ruling, but relieved that this phase of the case, involving a more than three-year wait for a decision from the court, is finally complete," Francois said in a statement. "We think there are several legal errors in the district court's decision, and will be filing an appeal."
At issue was an administrative compliance order issued in 2007 against the Priest Lake, Idaho, couple for filling in wetlands on their land without a permit. ........To Read More.....
After winning the right to challenge EPA enforcement orders in a major 2011 Supreme Court ruling, Michael and Chantell Sackett have lost their case.
A U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho judge ruled that the wetlands the couple are accused of illegally filling were indeed protected by the Clean Water Act.
"The Court finds the EPA's determination was not arbitrary or capricious and is supported by the record," Reagan appointee Judge Edward Lodge wrote in a ruling on summary judgment last week.
Tony Francois, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation representing the Sacketts, indicated his clients would appeal the case.
"The Sacketts are disappointed in the ruling, but relieved that this phase of the case, involving a more than three-year wait for a decision from the court, is finally complete," Francois said in a statement. "We think there are several legal errors in the district court's decision, and will be filing an appeal."
Monday, January 20, 2020
California’s Environmentalist Democrats Force Children to Swim in Diluted Sewage
By Daniel Greenfield Saturday, January 18, 2020 4 Comments
California’s gold rush began when gold was discovered on a fork of the American River. Its end can also be found on the American River which no longer contains gold, but instead high levels of E. coli bacteria.
The cause of the contamination is only a mystery to the political establishment in the nearby capital.
"A grocery sack containing what appeared to be human feces hung from a branch over the American River," a recent Sacramento Bee story began.
The American River had been named by John Sutter. The Swiss immigrant went bankrupt when his land was overrun by gold prospectors. The new invaders aren’t trying to get rich. They already are. The benevolence of the state’s government in Sacramento means that they get everything for free.
Sutter’s son had founded Sacramento. And Sacramento’s Democrat majority is ‘unfounding’ California. Now the filth of its social welfare policies is fouling the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers, where explorers once marveled at an expansive landscape, vagrants have set up tent cities.
E. coli levels at beaches are supposed to be at 88 or below, and anything over 1,000 is supposed to lead to a beach closure. At 500, there’s a 10% chance of gastroenteritis and a 4% risk of febrile respiratory disease. But at Discovery Park, the numbers went as high as 2419.6 in December 2019.
The E.coli levels had climbed so high that labs could no longer even properly measure them.
Discovery Park is a convenient getaway for Sacramentans. More recently however, visitors describe mountains of trash, waste, and needles. “Don't walk, wade or swim without shoes, used needles have been strewn throughout the park,” one Californian wrote. “I found crack heads, hookers, and crazy people screaming obscenities and throwing punches at anyone who came too close,” another described.
"I have been threatened by homeless trying to hit me, bitten by a homeless person’s dog," one intrepid visitor reported. "I have seen cleanup crews load as many as 4 bins the size of railroad cars with trash and it still isn't enough."
Sacramento County has put up signs warning people to wash their hands after touching the water and not to drink the water or even swim if they have open cuts, while blaming the E. coli contamination on bacteria from the “intestines of mammals – from wildlife to humans”. While that’s scientifically true, it isn’t the bears or the beavers that turned the river into a foul stew of bacteria. It’s the people.
Californians are swimming and tubing in water that Democrat politicians have made hazardous.
The environmental movement was built on claims of pollution, real or false, before leaving behind the field of actual health risks to people for science fiction fantasies about planetary destruction, ice ages and global warming. Meanwhile at Tiscornia Beach, at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, the EPA’s threshold, a level of contamination that would make 32 out of 1,000 people sick, had been repeatedly exceeded. A professor referred to samples of the river water as “diluted sewage”.
That’s a problem considering that the American River is used to provide drinking water to Sacramento.
But officials will spend the next three to four years gathering samples to understand the problem.
What can happen to the swimmers, campers, and boaters while the officials spend years gathering samples and shifting blame for the problem?
This summer, a Shigella outbreak infected multiple people on the Santa Ana River. Shigella is potentially fatal. The Downey Park area was shut down for a week over the summer. After a week, the authorities insisted that there was probably nothing wrong with the river, but warned everyone to wash their hands after touching the river. Just not in the river which has homeless encampments nearby.
One obvious concern is that the Santa Ana River is used for drinking water across Orange County. While that water supply in Orange County is unlikely to be affected by the water pollution near Downey Park, the contamination is a warning that the homeless problem is not just a threat to campers and swimmers. Rivers like these are vast and have natural cleansing mechanisms, but everything has a limit.
The Sacramento River provides 31 percent of California’s water supply. The American River is a crucial elements of Sacramento’s water supply. The Santa Ana River is vital to Orange County’s water resources.
No part of any body of water from which drinking water is drawn should consist of “diluted sewage”.
The San Diego River is the largest local source of drinking water for San Diego County. Homeless encampments began to pop up alongside the San Diego River leading to piles of garbage and waste.
Earlier this year, the San Diego Water Board asked local agencies to, in the words of the local FOX affiliate, “curtail the flow of human fecal matter into the San Diego River.”
"It was surprising to find out there was actually a lot of human waste present in the San Diego River water shed," David Gibson, the Executive Officer of the Water Board, said. "There are organisms like noroviruses that cause massive illnesses on cruise ships that we're finding in our own water.”
Tracking the spread of infections caused by homeless waste is difficult. Most people don’t even associate bouts of stomach problems with a recent weekend swimming or boating on the water.
Or surfing.
In one study of 654 surfers, researchers noted a 3-fold increase in ear infections and a 5-fold increase in infected open wounds. Exposure to seawater had come to mean exposure to human fecal matter.
Surfing, the quintessential Californian sport, has been endangered by the state’s homeless policies.
The California lifestyle of beaches, swimming and surfing, hiking and camping, increasingly means risky contact with human waste. And the illnesses, from the merely gastrointestinal, to even more serious disease outbreaks, reflect the transformation of a prosperous state into a Third World country.
Environmentalists once obsessed over Love Canal. Today they ignore the contamination of California and the environmental hazards for families, especially children, because it’s politically incorrect.
While movies like Dark Waters depict corporate villains who cover up environmental catastrophes that harm families, in California, it’s the party of the environmentalists that has overseen an unprecedented environmental catastrophe that has affected some of the state’s major rivers and drinking supply.
And it’s the Democrats and their leftist organizations who have been covering up the threat.
No state is more obsessed with environmental virtue signaling than California. From windmills to solar panels, from plastic bag bans to straw bans, from a refusal to construct dams to putting fish ahead of farmers, Sacramento has imposed an environmentalist dystopia on its progressive populace.
Meanwhile Democrat social policies have left local children swimming in water that is diluted sewage.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading.
California’s gold rush began when gold was discovered on a fork of the American River. Its end can also be found on the American River which no longer contains gold, but instead high levels of E. coli bacteria.
The cause of the contamination is only a mystery to the political establishment in the nearby capital.
"A grocery sack containing what appeared to be human feces hung from a branch over the American River," a recent Sacramento Bee story began.
The American River had been named by John Sutter. The Swiss immigrant went bankrupt when his land was overrun by gold prospectors. The new invaders aren’t trying to get rich. They already are. The benevolence of the state’s government in Sacramento means that they get everything for free.
Sutter’s son had founded Sacramento. And Sacramento’s Democrat majority is ‘unfounding’ California. Now the filth of its social welfare policies is fouling the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers, where explorers once marveled at an expansive landscape, vagrants have set up tent cities.
E. coli levels at beaches are supposed to be at 88 or below, and anything over 1,000 is supposed to lead to a beach closure. At 500, there’s a 10% chance of gastroenteritis and a 4% risk of febrile respiratory disease. But at Discovery Park, the numbers went as high as 2419.6 in December 2019.
The E.coli levels had climbed so high that labs could no longer even properly measure them.
Discovery Park is a convenient getaway for Sacramentans. More recently however, visitors describe mountains of trash, waste, and needles. “Don't walk, wade or swim without shoes, used needles have been strewn throughout the park,” one Californian wrote. “I found crack heads, hookers, and crazy people screaming obscenities and throwing punches at anyone who came too close,” another described.
"I have been threatened by homeless trying to hit me, bitten by a homeless person’s dog," one intrepid visitor reported. "I have seen cleanup crews load as many as 4 bins the size of railroad cars with trash and it still isn't enough."
Sacramento County has put up signs warning people to wash their hands after touching the water and not to drink the water or even swim if they have open cuts, while blaming the E. coli contamination on bacteria from the “intestines of mammals – from wildlife to humans”. While that’s scientifically true, it isn’t the bears or the beavers that turned the river into a foul stew of bacteria. It’s the people.
Californians are swimming and tubing in water that Democrat politicians have made hazardous.
The environmental movement was built on claims of pollution, real or false, before leaving behind the field of actual health risks to people for science fiction fantasies about planetary destruction, ice ages and global warming. Meanwhile at Tiscornia Beach, at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers, the EPA’s threshold, a level of contamination that would make 32 out of 1,000 people sick, had been repeatedly exceeded. A professor referred to samples of the river water as “diluted sewage”.
That’s a problem considering that the American River is used to provide drinking water to Sacramento.
But officials will spend the next three to four years gathering samples to understand the problem.
What can happen to the swimmers, campers, and boaters while the officials spend years gathering samples and shifting blame for the problem?
This summer, a Shigella outbreak infected multiple people on the Santa Ana River. Shigella is potentially fatal. The Downey Park area was shut down for a week over the summer. After a week, the authorities insisted that there was probably nothing wrong with the river, but warned everyone to wash their hands after touching the river. Just not in the river which has homeless encampments nearby.
One obvious concern is that the Santa Ana River is used for drinking water across Orange County. While that water supply in Orange County is unlikely to be affected by the water pollution near Downey Park, the contamination is a warning that the homeless problem is not just a threat to campers and swimmers. Rivers like these are vast and have natural cleansing mechanisms, but everything has a limit.
The Sacramento River provides 31 percent of California’s water supply. The American River is a crucial elements of Sacramento’s water supply. The Santa Ana River is vital to Orange County’s water resources.
No part of any body of water from which drinking water is drawn should consist of “diluted sewage”.
The San Diego River is the largest local source of drinking water for San Diego County. Homeless encampments began to pop up alongside the San Diego River leading to piles of garbage and waste.
Earlier this year, the San Diego Water Board asked local agencies to, in the words of the local FOX affiliate, “curtail the flow of human fecal matter into the San Diego River.”
"It was surprising to find out there was actually a lot of human waste present in the San Diego River water shed," David Gibson, the Executive Officer of the Water Board, said. "There are organisms like noroviruses that cause massive illnesses on cruise ships that we're finding in our own water.”
Tracking the spread of infections caused by homeless waste is difficult. Most people don’t even associate bouts of stomach problems with a recent weekend swimming or boating on the water.
Or surfing.
In one study of 654 surfers, researchers noted a 3-fold increase in ear infections and a 5-fold increase in infected open wounds. Exposure to seawater had come to mean exposure to human fecal matter.
Surfing, the quintessential Californian sport, has been endangered by the state’s homeless policies.
The California lifestyle of beaches, swimming and surfing, hiking and camping, increasingly means risky contact with human waste. And the illnesses, from the merely gastrointestinal, to even more serious disease outbreaks, reflect the transformation of a prosperous state into a Third World country.
Environmentalists once obsessed over Love Canal. Today they ignore the contamination of California and the environmental hazards for families, especially children, because it’s politically incorrect.
While movies like Dark Waters depict corporate villains who cover up environmental catastrophes that harm families, in California, it’s the party of the environmentalists that has overseen an unprecedented environmental catastrophe that has affected some of the state’s major rivers and drinking supply.
And it’s the Democrats and their leftist organizations who have been covering up the threat.
No state is more obsessed with environmental virtue signaling than California. From windmills to solar panels, from plastic bag bans to straw bans, from a refusal to construct dams to putting fish ahead of farmers, Sacramento has imposed an environmentalist dystopia on its progressive populace.
Meanwhile Democrat social policies have left local children swimming in water that is diluted sewage.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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