Al Gore bails from green-energy investment

But climate-change prophet's company still touts profits of 'alternative' market

By Colin Flaherty

If you are thinking about green energy for your portfolio, Al Gore has a few words of advice: “Don’t do it.”

“Of course he does not say that in public,” says Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. “Gore’s company still talks about how alternative energy is a good investment. How companies are adopting it, governments are subsidizing it and people are using it.”  “I don’t blame Gore for getting out of alternative energy,” Gunderson said, “even if he did it too late in the case of First Solar.  “But when is he going to tell people that alternative energy is a lousy investment?”……One of Generation Investment’s larger clients is the New York public employees pension fund. It has received $30 million in fees since 2009, said the New York Post. Gore also invests for the California teachers public employee union pension fund. Neither Gore, Generation Investment or the New York public employees pension fund would discuss the details of their purchases.

“Everyone in alternative energy knows their goose is cooked because subsidies are going down, and so is the price of oil and natural gas if we are allowed to drill for it here,” Gunderson said. ‘”But if you want to have energy in your portfolio, there are plenty of American stocks producing traditional energy that are doing just fine."  To Read the Entire Article.......

Editor's Note:  I hadn't intended posting today, but the combination of this article exposing some of the financial schemes by the High Priest of the Church of the Warming Globe, Al Gore, and the next post showing how alternative energy is going down the tubes was just too good to wait until tomorrow.  I would like to point out that the two reasons for adopting all these stupid greenie ideas (Ideas they protested once it looked as if they actually might be implemented) was the world was running out of "fossil" fuels and we were turning the world into a destructive hothouse.  Both were false twenty years ago and now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt these claims are false.  We also know the perpetrators of all of this were corrupt liars.  That is the beauty of truth.  It will very patiently wait on us.  Oh, one more point.  Since historically the left and the greenies almost have a monopoly on being wrong....wouldn't you think someone would notice that and act accordingly?  It really is true.  Ideology makes smart people dumb.  RK 

McIntyre v Lewandowsky — Can we call in a statistician at UWA to help Lew?

By Jo Nova,

The Lewandowsky view is Drilling into noise. The McIntyre response: Lewandowsky’s Fake Correlation

My favourite Lewandowsky line is: “We cannot get into the details here…”

McIntyre can and does in gory depth. He posts the equations, the code, the tables, everything. He graphs the residuals, and shows the “severe non-normality” of them. He tests the correlation and finds that the two most obvious fake responses heavily affect the results:

“Lewandowsky is absolutely off-base in his assertion that the examination of outliers is inappropriate statistical analysis. In fact, exactly the opposite is the case: proper statistical analysis REQUIRES the examination of outliers.”

“One can readily see that the two super-scammers (889, 963) contribute essentially 100% (over 100%) actually of the negative correlation between CauseHIV and CYMoon in this calculation.”

Lewandowsky says: “no one who has toyed with our data has thus far exhibited any knowledge of the crucial notion of a latent construct or latent variable.”

McIntyre replies: “Principal components, a frequent topic at this blog, are a form of latent variable analysis.”

As a former graduate of UWA, this is embarrassing. Does UWA not teach and use rigorous statistical methods? Is there no one who can help him?  Read More Here….

The EPA Human Testing Saga Continues

Posted by Steve Milloy on Junkscience.com

NBC News: Lawsuit claims subjects in EPA trial enhaled dangerous fumes

Our story is currently (Friday afternoon) the lead story at the NBC affiliate, WNCN (NBC-176) in Raleigh, NC. Video on TV at 6 & 7 pm ET.

PBS NewsHour: Against scientific consensus before they were for it

Pay no attention to the contradiction behind the curtain. Continue reading →

Court Asked for Emergency Restraining Order Against EPA Human Testing

The American Tradition Institute has filed last night an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against EPA’s ongoing human testing program. Continue reading →

Washington Examiner: EPA accused of illegal human experimentation

“A federal lawsuit filed last Friday makes shocking allegations that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency engaged in human experimentation that violated its own scientific and ethical standards — not to mention federal law and the Nuremberg Code.” [Washington Examiner]

The Marriage Question, Romney’s Polling, and Bibi’s Red Sharpie

By Erick Erickson  

You know that 50% of marriages in the United States end in divorce right?  Every time gay marriage comes up, that data point comes up. Fifty percent of married couples get divorced. If heterosexual couples value marriage so little, why should they stand in the way of gay couples who really will value it as a civil right?  You know that evangelical Christians in the United States get divorced at the same rate as everyone else, right?

Every time Christian living comes up for discussion, the media uses that data point as a point of derision for those who point to Christian values.  You do know that a majority of Americans favor gay marriage right?  Every major media outlet in the nation takes it as an article of faith that gay marriage is an opinion held by a majority and you are a bigot if you think otherwise.

Did you know that none of those data points are true? You’d never know it from the media. To Read More....

Could Obama silence the free press?

By Jim Fletcher

Far-reaching initiatives often start in relative obscurity. Such is the potential effect of a bill introduced by in the New York State Senate.  Evidently, we’ve moved a long way from Ben Franklin and his Silence Dogood persona. If you are a writer of any sort online, you might not have the option much longer of remaining anonymous.  Everyone understands that the Internet can be used for good or bad. Likewise, anonymity can be good or bad: See Franklin or Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” Writers like Paine knew that going public with a name would invite a swinging rope.  Today, however, online posting presents certain pitfalls, namely, bullying. As with certain medical treatments, though, the treatment can often be worse than the disease. The New York Senate bill could end posting online!  Sen. Thomas F. O’Mara, from Big Flats, N.Y., has introduced S6779, requiring an anonymous post to be removed if the poster won’t subsequently provide legal name, IP address and a home address!...... It’s pretty obvious that someone up there in New York doesn’t fully understand the Internet, or the full implications. Posting a home address, of course, could be extremely dangerous.    To Read More…..

Manufactured Fear Drives Needless Regulations

By Julie Gunlock

As sure as the sun rises in the morning, Americans can count on their televisions and newspapers to brim with daily reports of all the dangerous products lurking in their homes. Women in particular are told commonplace items like shampoo, deodorant, plastic food containers, household disinfectants, children’s toys, baby bottles, and garden hoses threaten them and their families. Even living room furniture is now cast as a household killer.

Silicone is the latest item to come under scrutiny. Discovered in the mid-19th century by a Swedish chemist, nowadays the term silicone is most often associated with breast augmentation, but its uses go far beyond giving women the perfect décolletage. In fact, silicone is used in everything from car engines to cosmetics, prosthetic limbs and medical equipment. In other words, silicone has made life easier for modern man, so naturally the hyper-regulatory Environmental Protection Agency is on alert....It’s almost like EPA just pulls these numbers out of thin air.....EPA’s real intentions—to regulate certain industries, chemicals, and products that environmentalists and public health officials (their real constituency) view as hazardous despite their being no evidence of real danger. This is part of a larger trend, building a culture of alarmism in America. The tactic is simple: based on the idiom “better safe than sorry,” ubiquitous pseudo-scientific activist organizations promote the idea that a chemical poses a “potential risk.” They say there is a “chance of danger,” or that a “correlation” between a certain product and a dreadful disease exists.   To Read More.....

The Green-Economy Mirage

By Andrew P. Morriss

If you got an email offering you the chance to invest in a business that would create new profitable industries, employ millions of people, reduce energy consumption without reducing quality of life, and improve environmental quality, would you be skeptical? And if the email went on to claim that the technologies to do all this exist now and could save existing businesses billions of dollars in just a few years by reducing waste and energy use, would you wonder why no one was already implementing all these “common sense” ideas? If the email went on to promise that you could do this all at no risk by investing borrowed money, you’d likely be reaching for the delete key.

If we substitute “the federal government” or “the United Nations Environment Programme” or “the European Union” for “you” and change the email to a proposed law, however, we discover that politicians from Washington to Brussels are embracing measures to “green” the economy and create “green jobs” with an almost religious fervor, despite weak empirical support for these proposals. The Obama administration included billions of spending and tax incentives for green initiatives in its budget, and last spring’s “stimulus” bill poured $62 billion in transfers plus $20 billion in tax cuts into “green initiatives.”  To Read More

The End of International Environmentalism

Green ideology crashes and burns at the Rio +20 Earth Summit.

By Ronald Bailey

Twenty years ago, the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro marked the arrival of environmentalism as a potent force in international affairs. That 1992 conference produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which aims to set limits on global emissions of greenhouse gases, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which promotes ecosystem conservation. At the time, Chris Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute crowed, “You cannot go to any corner of the globe and not find some degree of environmental awareness and some amount of environmental politics.” With socialism in disrepute, Flavin said, environmentalism had become the “most powerful political ideal today.”

Two decades later, that ideal is in disarray. A 20th anniversary conference in Brazil last June, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development—nicknamed Rio +20—was an undisguised flop. Greenpeace spokesperson Kumi Naidoo judged Rio +20 a “failure,” while Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking called it a “hoax.” More than 1,000 environmentalist and leftist groups signed a post-conference petition entitled “The Future We Don’t Want,” a play on The Future We Want, the platitudinous document that diplomats from 188 nations agreed on there. Naidoo lamely vowed that disappointed environmentalists would engage in acts of civil disobedience.  Should the people of the world share the greens’ despair over the “failure” of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development? No.  To Read More…

25 Years of the Media Research Center

By:Erick Erickson
 
In 1992, Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times wrote a story about President George H. W. Bush expressing surprise at a common supermarket checkout scanner. The story was picked up by major publications and editorialists across the country as a common narrative that George H. W. Bush, a World War II veteran, Ambassador to China, CIA Chief, Vice President, and President had grown out of touch with America during his time in Washington. ................

25 years ago, the Media Research Center started shedding the spotlight on the media’s bias. Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with them. But the work is not over. The media continues to prop itself and its so called fact checkers up as objective arbiters of truth when they often rarely relate to the truth, let alone Americans.................  To Read More….

An attack on free speech

By  George Will

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina is giving Steve Cooksey some choices. He can stop speaking. Or he can get a Ph.D. in nutrition, or a medical degree, or a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and then pass an examination after completing a 900-hour clinical internship. Or he can skip this onerous credentialing, keep speaking, and risk prosecution.

He has chosen instead to get a lawyer. His case, argued by the libertarians at the Institute for Justice (IJ), will clarify the First Amendment’s relevance to an ancient human behavior and a modern technology.

Four years ago, Cooksey was a walking — actually, barely walking — collection of health risks. He was obese, lethargic, asthmatic, chronically ill and pre-diabetic. The diet advice he was getting from medical and other sources was, he decided, radically wrong. Rather than eat a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet, he adopted what he and other enthusiasts call a Paleolithic diet, eating as primitive humans did — e.g., beef, pork, chicken, leafy green vegetables. Cooksey lost 75 pounds and the need for drugs and insulin. And, being a modern Paleo, he became a blogger, communicating his dietary opinions.

When a busybody notified North Carolina’s Board of Dietetics/Nutrition that Cooksey was opining about which foods were and were not beneficial, the board launched a three-month investigation of his Internet writings and his dialogues with people who read and responded to them. The board sent him copies of his writings, with red pen markings of such disapproved postings as: “I do suggest that your friend eat as I do and exercise the best they can.”…............To Read More…..

Editor's Note:  This is a must read article.

From The Climate Policy Network

Silent Spring at 50

The False Alarm of Rachel Carson 

 

 This week Silent Spring will turn 50. Rachel Carson’s jeremiad against pesticides is credited by many as launching the modern environmentalist movement, and the author, who died in 1964, is being widely lauded for her efforts. In Silent Spring, Carson crafted a passionate denunciation of modern technology that drives environmentalist ideology today. At its heart is this belief: Nature is beneficent, stable, and even a source of moral good; humanity is arrogant, heedless, and often the source of moral evil. --Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, October 2012

Did cancer doom ever arrive? No. In Silent Spring Carson cites data showing that American farmers were then applying about 637 million pounds of pesticides to their crops. The most recent Environmental Protection Agency estimate is that farmers used 1.1 billion pounds in 2007. What happened to cancer incidence rates? According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, age-adjusted incidence rates have been dropping for nearly two decades. Why? Largely because fewer Americans are smoking and lots of women stopped using hormone replacement therapy, which researchers have now concluded significantly increased the risk of breast cancer. --Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, October 2012

This iconic book, hardly scrutinized over the decades, substituted sensationalism for fact and apocalyptic pronouncements for genuine knowledge. Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work. Despite her reputation as a careful science- and fact-based writer, Carson produced a best-seller full of significant errors and sins of omission.  Carson vilified the use of DDT and other pest controls in agriculture but ignored their role in saving millions of lives worldwide from malaria, typhus, dysentery, among other diseases. Millions of deaths, and much greater human suffering, ultimately resulted from pesticide bans as part of disease-eradication campaigns. -- Roger Meiners, Master Resource, 21 September 2012

 Carson produced a best-seller full of significant errors and sins of omission. Far from being on the verge of collapse, American bird populations were, by and large, increasing at the time of Silent Spring’s publication. Although Carson was active in the Audubon Society, she ignored Audubon’s annual bird count, which had long been the best single source on bird population. Instead she relied on anecdotes claiming bird population was collapsing. It is inconceivable that Carson did not know about the annual bird count–some of which occurred in the locations she asserted were in collapse. -- Roger Meiners, Master Resource, 21 September 2012

Rachel Carson's mentor and the source for much of her case that synthetic pesticides, and DDT in particular, were devastating bird life and causing widespread cancer in people, was a fervent denier of the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. His name was Wilhelm Hueper. An immigrant to the United States from Germany (who shook off an embarrassing but brief enthusiasm for Nazism that led him to seek a job back in Hitler's Germany) he became the first director of the environmental cancer section of the US National Cancer Institute. There he single-mindedly pursued the idea that cancer was on the increase and that the cause was largely synthetic chemicals in the environment. He encountered resistance, however, and not just from the chemical industry. Medical scientists were growing convinced that the rise of lung cancer was being caused by a rise in smoking. Hueper would have none of it. –-Matt Ridley, The Spectator, 20 September 2012 

 Dr. Baldwin led a committee at the National Academy of Sciences studying the impact of pesticides on wildlife. In his review, he praised Ms. Carsons’s literary skills and her desire to protect nature. But, he wrote, “Mankind has been engaged in the process of upsetting the balance of nature since the dawn of civilization.” While Ms. Carson imagined life in harmony before DDT, Dr. Baldwin saw that civilization depended on farmers and doctors fighting “an unrelenting war” against insects, parasites and disease. He complained that “Silent Spring” was not a scientific balancing of costs and benefits but rather a “prosecuting attorney’s impassioned plea for action.” But scientists like him were no match for Ms. Carson’s rhetoric. DDT became taboo even though there wasn’t evidence that it was carcinogenic (and subsequent studies repeatedly failed to prove harm to humans). -- John Tierney, The New York Times, 5 June 2007

A half-century ago this summer, Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring began to appear in serialized form in The New Yorker, instilling an awareness of environmental impacts in the very fabric of our culture. Silent Spring now affects everything we do, buy, eat and wear. It has also shaped how we think about technology in general and pesticides in particular, seeing them at best as necessary evils. This legacy has yielded both good and bad results. The good is that Silent Spring inspired the creation of federal regulation that subjects pesticides and new technologies to strict scientific scrutiny before they can be commercialized and used. The bad is that the demonization of agricultural technology obscures the overwhelming environmental fact of our times, that such technology — even pesticides — has been an overwhelming good for the environment and human health. --Charlie Stenholm and John Block, USA Today, 27 September 2012
 

Whitman: Anti-EPA message scares off independents

By Steve Milloy

This from a woman who, when she became EPA administrator in 2001, didn’t know the difference between global warming and ozone depletion.  As I reported in my FOXNews.com column of January 5, 2001 (see below):  Continue reading →

Click for the Politico story about the independent-terrifying anti-EPA message.

My Take – She wasn’t the brightest pebble in the brook then and hasn’t improved since.  She resigned after 2 ½ years when she found herself on the side of greenie nutcases and in opposition to the Bush administration.  But….they picked her….I not sure who was dumber. 

It is Saturday now and this is an update for My Take.  I came across this when I was looking for something else amongst my old posts and I thought it was really appropriate.  This originally appeared on March 27, 2011. 

 Mass murderer, nitwit defend EPA

Former Republican EPA administrators William Ruckelshaus and Christine Todd Whitman authored the op-ed below that appeared in today’s Washington Post. Ruckelshaus’ unjustified ban of DDT in 1972 has led to the deaths of tens of millions of Africans. Whitman is an airhead — at the time she was appointed as EPA administrator, she actually didn’t know the difference between global warming and ozone depletion. When an interviewer asked for her views on the state of global warming science in December 2000, Whitman replied, “Clearly, there’s a hole in the ozone, but I saw a study the other day that showed that that was closing.”

My Take - I remember Whitman as EPA administrator, and how she whined when she found out this wasn’t a very nice job if you bucked the greenies. That’s why her term is only for 2001-2003….she couldn’t wait to get out. What was she thinking; how brain dead could she have been? So now they trot out these two to defend the EPA. They meow all the right warm and cuddly sounds, but here is a bit of reality from a real scientist….who actually helped create the EPA and helped in their foundational legislation. See what his views are on the EPA today.  Please read, An Interview with Dr. Jay Lehr, Defender of Our Industry.

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Continuing Saga: EPA and Unlawful Human Testing

EPA comments on human testing lawsuit; Claims UNC is ‘independent’; Records show otherwise

In response to yesterday’s Washington Times report by Kerry Picket (“Lawsuit filed against EPA over pollution experiments on humans“), the EPA e-mailed Picket: Continue reading →

Russia bans all GM corn imports; EU may also ban Monsanto GMO in wake of shocking cancer findings

By Mike Adams,

Russia has now officially banned all imports of genetically modified corn, citing concerns from a recent study by French researchers showing rats grew massive cancer tumors when fed a lifetime of Monsanto's genetically modified corn.  Russia's consumer protection group, Rospotrebnadzor, said it was halting all imports of GM corn while the country's Institute of Nutrition will be evaluating the results of the study.

The Russian ban is the latest blow to Monsanto, a company desperately clinging to the myth that its genetically modified crops are "no different" than traditional crops and therefore long-term safety testing is completely unnecessary. Monsanto has assaulted the French study, claiming it did not use enough rats and that the duration of the study was too short -- an absurd claim, given that Monsanto's own studies on animals are only 90 days in duration, while the French study looked at the effects of rats eating GM corn (and drinking trace levels of Roundup herbicide) for two years.  To Read More…..  

My Take:  I have not published anything about the French study before this because I was hoping there would be further articles dealing with this study.  I haven't seen anything as yet.  I however do believe that it is important to publish both sides of an issue otherwise the validity of the claims can never be established.   

I don’t believe this study is going to stand the test of time.  I would not be surprised to find that this study is going to fall into the same category as the fraudulent endocrine studies that came out of  Tulane University many years ago.  A study that heavily influenced federal regulations we are stuck with in spite of now knowing the truth.  Then again…. when did truth ever have an influence on the EPA in their quest to impose insane greenie philosophies via regulations and court decisions.  The EPA is to the green movement as Sinn Fein is to the IRA. 

Raw milk victory: Farmer found innocent in raw milk trial

By Jonathan Benson

A Minnesota farmer who has been repeatedly targeted by his state's agriculture department for facilitating the transport and delivery of raw milk to private cooperative members has been ruled innocent of the ridiculous charges filed against him in Hennepin County. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Alvin Schlangen has been found not guilty of three misdemeanor charges filed against him, which include selling unpasteurized milk, operating without a food license, and handling adulterated or mis-branded food. Private food cooperatives are not businesses. To Read More…..

My Take: While I disagree with this whole nonsense about that people should be allowed to choose ‘raw milk’ because it is so much healthier than pasteurized milk, and therefore an absolute imperative to good health, I do agree that when people join such groups as these food cooperatives it isn’t the same as conducting ordinary business. 

In short….they become a club of choice, although courts have destroyed the sanctity of private clubs for many reasons in the past, including forced racial integration and forced gender integration. 

So why is this different?

There is so much information showing how many people have been sickened and died as a result of consuming raw milk products that there is no rational excuse for promoting raw milk.  Especially since the alleged health benefits are unproven and unprovable.   Furthermore, as this gains traction there will be even more people suffer.

That is no victory for humanity.

Whole Foods knowingly engages in massive GMO deception, says undercover video by 'Organic Spies'

By Mike Adams,

A shocking new hidden camera video filmed at Whole Food stores is blowing the lid on what's being called a massive "bait and switch" deception.  Whole Foods employees are caught blatantly LYING about the GMOs sold by Whole Foods, a company whose products are 20% - 30% GMO, says the video.  Here's the stunning news and a link to the undercover "hidden camera" video:  To Read More…..

My Take: I have long suspected that these "all natural" and "organic" farmers and distributors have been playing fast and loose with reality.  I also believe the same situation exists within the pest control industry, where many unendingly toot the "green" pest control tune.  Yet those companies that produced these so-called "green" pest control products don't seem to be able to stay in business.  Why?  If everyone is "going green" shouldn't they be thriving?  The reality of green is coming home to roost.  Green energy, green cars, green buildings, green agriculture, green pest control......I even get "going green" printed on my bills.  Going green - Going insane! 

Is Bill Ayers Influencing ‘Race to the Top’?

By  Mary Grabar

I would like to thank Mary for allowing me to post her work. RK

What happened to Bill Ayers since his time in the spotlight during the last Obama campaign? We know that Ayers, along with wife Bernardine Dohrn and Code Pink leader Jodie Evans, supported the Gaza Flotilla, incited protests in Egypt with the Free Gaza Movement in 2010, and advised Occupy Wall Street protesters on strategy. After all, he’s had a lot of experience, having spent his youth bombing such places as the New York City police headquarters and the Pentagon, and trying to bomb a dance hall for U.S. servicemen and their dates.

In 2008, only a few dared raise questions about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s association with Bill Ayers. Most questions focused on Bill Ayers’ past as co-founder of the domestic terrorist group Weatherman. But by 1995, Ayers was an established professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and living in the tony Hyde Park neighborhood. That year, he threw a political launch party for Obama’s run as a state senator. From that year until at least 2002, both men worked closely on “education” issues.

Through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the “brainchild” of Ayers, they pumped millions of dollars to radical groups to bring their programs to inner-city schools. They looked to expand the radical educational goals Ayers was promoting by training “urban teachers.”

I know from reading Ayers’ incoherent articles, syllabi, and books on education that his ultimate goal is to prepare foot soldiers for the coming revolution. And what better place to start than in the poorest and poorest-performing schools in inner-city Chicago? After all, in a well-off suburb you might get a parent looking over assignments and noticing the embedded Marxism and historical errors. Not likely, though, with the poor, single mother overburdened with child care. Not likely with an “undocumented” immigrant father who cannot speak English or read in his own language.

So what has Bill Ayers been doing on the education front since then? Ayers makes frequent appearances on college campuses. He was named vice president for curriculum studies at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2009. In 2011, he was the keynote speaker at the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).

It seems that he has also been visiting the White House.

At least we thought so in 2009, when initial White House visitor logs were released. Then we were told to rest assured that it was a different Ayers there. The White House has since been very selective in releasing visitor rolls. Indeed, they are appealing a judge’s order to release them as a result of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch. Will we know before Election Day how many times Bill Ayers visited the White House? Probably not.

Ayers’ influence on the administration matters because there is a federal education initiative coming from which there will be no escape through school districts, private schools, or home schools. Furthermore, the rigorous, uniform standards promised by the Department of Education through a contest called Race to the Top are anything but — unless you use the standards of social justice indoctrination.

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California Still Refuses to Face Fiscal Reality

By Steven Greenhut

During recent travels to Madison and Milwaukee for some research about reform-minded Gov. Scott Walker’s survival of a union-backed recall, I found little residual anger among the friendly folks there, despite seemingly endless pitched political battles that divided families and led to angry water-cooler discussions.  Perhaps the central issue—Walker’s Act 10 plan that rolled back collective-bargaining excesses—has been resolved, or perhaps Wisconsinites simply got tired of two historic recall elections, legislators who bolted the state to avoid voting on legislation, endless national media attention, and union protesters swarming the Capitol and screaming into their bullhorns.

Midwestern culture values community and “nice,” and the ongoing events in Wisconsin strained the social fabric. Californian residents, typically oblivious to events east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, owe a debt of gratitude to the folks in Packer country. Had Wisconsin voters replaced their governor and other Republican officials, the message would have been heard nationwide: Pension reform, and efforts to rein in the public-sector union power at the root of the problem, would be dead for years.  To Read More....

Other articles you may be interested in perusing.

Unhappy Californians Still Embrace the Failed Status Quo

Chicago Strike Shows How Unions Stifle Reform

California Lawmakers Refuse to Accept Any Limits on Their Power

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California to Build High Speed Rail Line

By Judy Lin

California lawmakers approved billions of dollars Friday in construction financing for the initial segment of the nation’s first dedicated high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco.  The move marked a major political victory for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration. Both have promoted bullet trains as job generators and clean transportation alternatives.  “No economy can grow faster than its transportation network allows,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement applauding the legislative vote. “With highways between California cities congested and airspace at a premium, Californians desperately need an alternative.”  The bill authorizes the state to begin selling $4.5 billion in voter-approved bonds that includes $2.6 billion to build an initial 130-mile stretch of the high-speed rail line in the Central Valley. That will allow the state to collect another $3.2 billion in federal funding that could have been rescinded if lawmakers failed to act Friday.  To Read More …

My Take:  Another Jerry "The Moonbeam" Brown future disaster in the making.  This is going to be interesting to watch.  They can’t pay their bills, they are running massive deficits, they have uncontrollable public service unions with massive salaries and pension obligations that in no way can be met; a problem which Jerry Moonbeam is largely responsible for from when he was governor in 1976 by approving the collective bargaining for California government workers. “For unions, Jerry Brown has been the governor who always kept on giving”.   So now they want to build a railway that won’t make money.  A railway that will eventually be abandoned because the cost of paying for it and the maintenance costs will be greater than the revenue.  This isn’t Europe.  This is America, and Americans want cars.  Just in case no one in California noticed…..that is why there is a super highway system.  There is one more point that I would like to make.  We should thank California.  Their stupidity is an inspiration for the rest of the nation.  We simply watch what they do and then just do the opposite. 

Success will then be guaranteed!

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France bans 'father' and 'mother' from documents

By The Guardian

France is set to ban the words "mother" and "father" from all official documents under controversial plans to legalise gay marriage.  The move, which has outraged Catholics, means only the word "parents" would be used in identical marriage ceremonies for all heterosexual and same-sex couples. The draft law states that "marriage is a union of two people, of different or the same gender".  It says all references to "mothers and fathers" in the civil code – which enshrines French law – will be swapped for simply "parents".  See Original Here…..

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The Future Doesn't Belong to Those Who Slander Mohammed

By Erick Erickson

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly today the President of the United States declared that the future does not belong to practicing Christians. Already, the media and the left are in full denial, probably based on their general lack of understanding of theology. This would have been a gaffe had Mitt Romney said it. But with Barack Obama, he’s just speaking bold truths. His bold truth declares that the future does not belong to practicing Christians.  So that no one can claim we're taking him out of context, I've got all the details and context right here.

Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com

Work ‘til You Drop: Is This The Next European “Welfare?”

By Emilio Rocca

As Europe’s population ages, its widespread entitlement commitments will generate huge burdens on governments’ budgets.   The economic consequences are easy to foresee: just think of how pension and health expenditure, whom almost everybody is entitled to, could be financed. But what about the political consequences of an aging population?

As the population ages in a democratic system, it will become increasingly difficult to reform entitlements of which an increasing number of people are taking advantage.  Forget about economic efficiency: the path of reforming the welfare state would be blazed by political constraints, leading somewhere rather unappealing, especially for future generations. Should we call this majority dictatorship — or rather, elderly dictatorship?  Take the case of pensions. In most European countries, pensions systems are unfunded: revenue collected annually for social security is what is being shared by those who are entitled to receive pension. An aging population implies that, ceteris paribus, more pensioners should be sustained by fewer workers.

How can we defuse this ticking bomb?  To Read More.....

The New Racial Justice System

By Daniel Greenfield

This summer, Obama issued an executive order calling for equal outcomes in school discipline policies. A racial quota system for school bullies requires that disciplinary action be handed out on the basis of race which terminates any behavior-based school discipline system. But the movement for racially equivalent outcomes is going to bigger places than just your local elementary school.

Our criminal justice system punishes crimes based on the harm inflicted on the individual and on society. The redistributive racial justice approach adds another component whose goal is neither the punishment of individual or communal harm, but the balancing out of disparities in racial crime statistics. This can be achieved in one of two ways; either as with bullying, by racially selective punishments linked to a statistical quota or by criminalizing and prosecuting entire categories of offenses based on race.  To Read More……

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How ‘Religious Defamation’ Laws Would Ban Islam

By Raymond Ibrahim

As the Islamic world, in the guise of the 57-member state Organization of Islamic Cooperation, continues to push for the enforcement of “religious defamation” laws in the international arena—theoretically developed to protect all religions from insult, but in reality made for Islam—one great irony is lost, especially on Muslims: if such laws would ban movies and cartoons that defame Islam, they would also, by logical extension, have to ban the religion of Islam itself—the only religion whose core texts actively defame other religions.  To Read the Entire Article.....

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EPA Hails Rachel Carson: 'How One Person Can Make a Difference'

By Elizabeth Harrington

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used its annual “pollution prevention” week to praise the late environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose book “Silent Spring” served as the impetus for banning DDT, a pesticide that virtually eradicated malaria in Europe.  To Read More….

Editor’s Note:  I recommend reading the comments in this article, which is somewhat flattering to Carson....mores the pity.  Those of us who have been pointing out for many years that Rachel Carson became the driving force for the modern environmental movement have also pointed out that she did so with lies, speculation and imagination, but little science; forever earning her the epithet she so richly deserves; The Mother of Junk Science.   

For fifty years those who took that position was a correctly informed small circle.  As the years went by that circle became larger, but even twenty years ago it still wasn't that large.  

 Today..... the internet has changed all of that, and the comments reflect it.  That circle is expanding exponentially because people know. 

Now they know!

Stossel: Strangulation by union

By: John Stossel

The Chicago teachers strike is over, but the public didn't win, and nor did the students. Only free enterprise can truly improve the lives of all Americans……. At a union rally, I asked union workers if it bothered them that slackers are paid as much as good workers. The activists actually said, “There is no slacker,” and that union rules mean less productive colleagues are helped, “brought up to speed.”  C’mon, I asked, aren’t there some workers who are just lazy, who drag the enterprise down?

“No!” they told me.   The union activists were also quick to say that unions built the middle class, that without unions, greedy bosses would lead a “race to the bottom” and pay workers next to nothing. “There would be no weekend, or eight-hour day!” they told me. “All that came from unions!”

Nonsense………30 years later …. the UAW appeared and unionized the workers. Union membership gave them good benefits for a while, but then growth slowed and stopped. That sure didn’t help workers. Consider what happened at GM. Over the past 20 years, much-less-unionized Toyota created 15,000 jobs — in America, not in Japan. Over that same period, GM lost 400,000 American jobs. One reason GM shrank was union rules. How’s that good for workers.  To Read The Entire Article…..

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Celebrities and Politics

By Alan Caruba

America seems to produce more celebrities than anywhere other than Great Britain with its royal family and its musical and theatrical performers. Here, movies and televisions produce celebrities by the bushel and it comes as no surprise that some fancy themselves political pundits as well……….The recent Emmy award show opened with a comedy sketch that included a naked actress (naughty parts blurred out) on the potty. The awards were so politically correct millions of viewers were constipated the following morning.   We can expect to hear from more celebrities opining why we should vote for Obama over the next few weeks. Remember, these are people who get paid to pretend to be someone else or musicians who just might be enabled by dubious medications or booze.  The attention they get and the obscene amounts of money they’re paid tends to warp whatever common sense their parents tried to impart.  …To Read The Entire Article…..

Continuing Saga: EPA and Unlawful Human Testing

North Carolina Medical Board Opens Investigation of Another EPA Doc

We were notified yesterday by the North Carolina Medical Board that it has opened an investigation (at our request) into another North Carolina-licensed physician involved in EPA’s illegal human testing.

EPA comments on human testing lawsuit; Claims UNC is ‘independent’; Records show otherwise

In response to yesterday’s Washington Times report by Kerry Picket (“Lawsuit filed against EPA over pollution experiments on humans“), the EPA e-mailed Picket:

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With Our Own Values They Destroy Us: Part XVI

Although I started this series first, these posts should be considered part and parcel of my Green Foundations discussions dealing with the Endangered Species Act, DDT, the Clear Air and Clean Water Acts, Sustainable Development and Agenda 21.  The first fifteen "With Our Own Values They Destroy Us" posts are listed here.  This will be the last in this series.  This will all be continued in "Green Foundations", which I intend to pursue more this winter. RK

What Are Conservation Easements?

What Are Roadless Areas?

Impact of Endangered Species

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