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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Paradigms and Demographics: Ohio Edition

Buckeye Institute News Alert
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2015
(614) 224-4422
Joe@BuckeyeInstitute.org

The Buckeye Institute Praises Legislative Study Committee Recommendation to Freeze Alternative Energy Mandates
COLUMBUS, OHIO--The Buckeye Institute's energy policy expert today praised a special legislative committee's recommendation that the General Assembly indefinitely freeze Ohio's renewable energy and energy efficiency mandates.

However, the free market think tank expressed serious concern about Gov. John Kasich's statement that he might not support the recommended freeze on the alternative energy mandates, also known as Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards.

"Ohioans would experience higher energy prices and weaker economic growth if these mandates remain," said Joe Nichols, the Institute's William & Helen Diehl Energy and Transparency Fellow. "The government should not be picking winners and losers, which hurts Ohioans who can afford it the least -- poor and middle class families, minorities, and those who live on fixed incomes. Reintroducing mandates also makes it more difficult for companies to create jobs in Ohio."

On the governor's indication that he may not support the committee's recommended indefinite freeze, Robert Alt, President and CEO of The Buckeye Institute, said: "We shouldn't return to the policy mistakes of the Strickland administration by embracing another costly government mandate."

The energy mandates force Ohio utilities to buy increasing amounts of renewable energy and implement energy efficiency programs. The bipartisan, bicameral Energy Mandates Study Committee heard testimony from The Buckeye Institute about how these mandates negatively impact the state's economy and energy production.

Taxpayers fleeing Ohio, IRS report shows

Posted by   September 30, 2015 @ Ohio Watchdog


Watchdog graphic
Watchdog graphic
EXODUS: Ohio had a net loss of over 33,000 federal taxpayers
and their families as a result of migration between states in 2011 and 2012
 
During Gov. John Kasich’s first two years in office, state-to-state migration shrank Ohio’s economy by more than $2.2 billion.
Ohio’s population dropped by a total of 33,000 in 2011 and 2012 as a result of taxpayers voting with their feet, based on the latest Internal Revenue Service data.

State-to-state migration was a net drain of $1.2 billion on Ohio’s economy in 2011 and $1.1 billion in 2012. Almost 24,000 fewer IRS returns were filed in Ohio in 2013 than in 2011 as a result of Ohioans moving to other states.

Ohio’s net population and income losses resulting from state-to-state migration were both the nation’s seventh-worst in 2012.

A net loss of taxpayers in the early years of Kasich’s first term signals a serious problem for the state, since Ohio’s private-sector job growth has slowed since 2011. A rebounding economy has produced increasing tax revenues, but it’s only a matter of time until the next downturn.

RELATED: Ohio lost interstate migration battle again in 2014

Greg Lawson, a policy analyst for the free-market Buckeye Institute, said it’s normal for some Americans to move between states in any given year. That doesn’t mean policymakers shouldn’t be concerned about losing taxpayers to other states.

“The problem is that Ohio is failing to grow jobs and opportunities at a fast enough rate to keep many in the Buckeye state,” Lawson told Ohio Watchdog. “Ohio needs further tax reforms at both the state and local level and is in desperate need of regulatory and labor reform.”

Ohio’s high local tax burden is due largely to state-level policies. The Buckeye Institute and others have called for an overhaul of Ohio’s convoluted municipal tax system and laws giving expansive power to labor unions.

“Everything any level of government does that makes it harder to start a new business is a problem and contributes to an exodus of our best talent,” Lawson said.

Losing federal taxpayers to other states means fewer potential customers and job creators in Ohio, and a smaller tax base to bear the growing costs of state government.

The IRS tracks state-to-state migration for Americans who pay federal income tax by comparing Form 1040 filings from one year to the next. The agency’s most recent migration report analyzed tax returns filed in 2012 and 2013 to see where taxpayers moved in 2012.
Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Colorado and North Carolina had the biggest net migration gains in 2012. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Illinois and New York were the biggest net losers.

With the exception of Colorado, the five biggest winners in the interstate migration battle were states where right-to-work laws protect workers from mandatory union dues.
Ohio and all five of the biggest losers were forced-unionism states, where workers can be required to pay a labor union in order to have a job.

Ohio’s losses were big gains for the economies of several other states. The five states with the largest net income gains from Ohio in 2012 are listed in the following table.
StateNet gain in Adjusted Gross Income from Ohio, 2012
Florida$382 million
South Carolina$117 million
North Carolina$105 million
Texas$90 million
Arizona$62 million
The IRS report noted southern states benefited the most from state-to-state migration in 2012, but Ohio was a net loser of residents and income to Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky, too.

The Republican For People Who Hate Republicans - “Tax hikers, social liberals, and failures — those three groups make up the core support of Kasich’s base.” ……John Kasich worked very hard to steal Jeb Bush’s donors. The only donors he could possible steal after his performance are the suckers looking to be taken advantage of by swindlers. Kasich is running a Jon Huntsman campaign, complete with Jon Huntsman’s team. It is a race that tries to portray him as the grown up, sophisticated person in the room…… In the Huntsman campaign, he was a source of division who was accused of attacking his own candidates after their campaigns fell apart. Now he is running Kasich’s campaign and he’s running the same playbook as before. He and Kasich will run to the left, drip with condescension over the rest of the Republican field, play “dad” to the arguing children, and win heaping spoonfuls of praise from the media. Along the way, they will sucker donors out of dollars, lose the race, and get a great TV deal……

Ohio economy falling behind right-to-work neighbor Michigan - Ohio's ability to outperform Michigan's long-term job growth has been a silver lining around a cloudy Ohio economic recovery for years. No longer. Since December, Ohio's private-sector job growth rate is 0.2 percent, Indiana's is 1.5 percent, and Michigan's is 1.8 percent. Michigan and Indiana are both on track to create more jobs than Ohio does this year, despite having far fewer residents. [continue reading]

YMCA seeks exemption from Ohio sales tax - Two Ohio legislators don't think the YMCA should have to charge sales tax on its memberships. (Read more)

Are Ohio's food stamp work requirements racist? - Welfare spending advocates are up in arms over Ohio's use of food stamp work requirement waivers, calling the waivers unfair and even racist. (Read more)

Ohio unemployment rate doesn't tell real story - Not everyone is thrilled with Ohio's 4.7 percent August unemployment rate - and a look at the numbers that make up the rate explains why. (Read more)

Ohio Medicaid spending is skyrocketing under Gov. Kasich
Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential poll numbers may not be climbing much, but Ohio's Medicaid costs certainly have. (Read more)


Ohio Supreme Court orders re-write of marijuana amendment
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that language for a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing marijuana is misleading and must be re-written. (Read more)
 
By John Hyman of Myers, Roman, Friedman and Lewis
 
The ADA protects employees with disabilities? But what about its anti-retaliation provision? Does an employee have to be “disabled” under the ADA for the statute to protect that employee from retaliation? According to Hurtt v. International Services, Inc. (6th Cir. 9/14/15), the answer is no.
 
Hurtt worked at ISI as a senior business analyst, earning a yearly draw plus a percentage commission on sales. The day after he requested FMLA-leave for (job-related) anxiety and depression, ISI terminated his draw and switched him a commission-only comp plan. He sued, claiming, among other things retaliation for requesting various accommodations for his disability, including requests for a leave of absence and for a reduced work schedule.
 
The 6th Circuit reversed the trial court’s dismissal of Hurtt’s retaliation claim, holding that the mere act of requesting an accommodation is sufficient to raise the specter of retaliation, regardless of whether the employee is actually “disabled”:


We have held that requests for accommodation are protected acts…. Hurtt argues that he engaged in protected activity when he requested a reasonable accommodation and when he took FMLA leave…. But, the pertinent inquiry here is not whether Hurtt proved he had a disability under the ADA, or whether ISI had specific knowledge of Hurtt’s alleged disability, but rather, whether Hurtt showed a good-faith request for reasonable accommodations.
 

The takeaway here is more common sense than law. If Title VII can protect a white guy from retaliation when he complains that his black co-worker is being mistreated, the ADA certainly should protect an employee requesting a reasonable accommodation, whether or not a court determines after the fact that he is, or is not, legally “disabled”. Employees who request accommodations should always be treated with care; otherwise you risk stepping on a retaliation landmine.
 
Is Digital Shunning Illegal Retaliation?
 
Wired tells the story of an Australian tribunal, which ruled that an employee was illegally bullied at work, in part because a co-worker had unfriended her on Facebook.

Transfer this case to America, and assume that the employee is claiming retaliation based on the unfriending. Supposed Employee-A complains to HR that Employee-B is sexually harassing her, and, as soon as Employee-B finds out about the complaint, he unfriends Employee-A on Facebook. Does Employee-A have a claim for retaliation based on the unfriending?
 
The answer is likely no.
 
As a matter of law, an adverse action sufficient to support a claim for retaliation merely must be an action that would dissuade a reasonable worker from complaining about discrimination. Yet, the Supreme Court has stated that the adversity to support a claim for retaliation must be “material”, and that petty slights, minor annoyances, or a simple lack of good manners normally will not count:
 
We speak of material adversity because we believe it is important to separate significant from trivial harms. Title VII, we have said, does not set forth “a general civility code for the American workplace.” … An employee’s decision to report discriminatory behavior cannot immunize that employee from those petty slights or minor annoyances that often take place at work and that all employees experience…. It does so by prohibiting employer actions that are likely “to deter victims of discrimination from complaining to the EEOC,” the courts, and their employers…. And normally petty slights, minor annoyances, and simple lack of good manners will not create such deterrence….

A supervisor’s refusal to invite an employee to lunch is normally trivial, a nonactionable petty slight. But to retaliate by excluding an employee from a weekly training lunch that contributes significantly to the employee’s professional advancement might well deter a reasonable employee from complaining about discrimination.

Thus, an ostracism or shunning from a social network—one that serves no work-related purpose other than fostering congeniality among co-workers—likely should not support a claim for retaliation.





Alarmists want skeptics prosecuted under RICO

Losing the climate science battle, climate alarmists want government to silence skeptics
Paul Driessen
They haven’t employed the thumb screws, rack or auto-da-fe that churches and states once used to interrogate, silence and eliminate heretics and witches. However, global warming alarmists are well practiced in the modern equivalents, to protect their $1.5-trillion Climate Crisis Industry.
They see only what they want to see, and publicize only what they want us to see. They refuse to debate anyone who questions the nature, severity or reality of “manmade climate change dangers” that are the foundation of their demands that we slash fossil fuel use, lower our living standards, and accept global government planning of economies and massive climate “adaptation and reparation” payments.
They collude to hide and manipulate data, and employ computer models that that make the Little Ice Age disappear and global temperatures climb rapidly after 1950. They pressure editors to keep contrarian papers out of scientific journals, and present false claims that 97% of scientists agree that humans are causing dangerous climate change. They take billions from government agencies whose policies and regulations they promote. They blindly ignore the serious adverse effects that their policies have on blue-collar families and the world’s poor. Imbued with religious zeal, now they’re really ramping it up.
Led by Jagadish Shukla and four associates at his George Mason University-based Institute of Global Environment and Society, NCAR researcher Kevin Trenberth and 14 little-known “climate scientists” joined in signing an astounding letter that shows how far they will go to defend their turf and cause.
It asks President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Obama science advisor John Holdren to investigate “organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change,” under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
The letter claims the organizations’ actions “have been extensively documented,” and their “misdeeds” must be “stopped as soon as possible,” so that the world can “restabilize the Earth’s climate, before even more lasting damage is done” to human health, agriculture, biodiversity and the world’s poorest people.
The letter’s ironies, fallacies and falsehoods are almost too numerous to recount.
First, the attack on skeptic scientists was launched from a university named for George Mason, the patriot who wrote the original Virginia version of our Bill of Rights. They include freedom of speech, association, assembly, petitioning our government, and not having livelihoods and other property unreasonably seized. Sadly, it reflects the appalling state of “academic freedom” on too many campuses, which today celebrate every kind of diversity except diversity of opinion.
Second, this action is a blatant effort to (a) coerce, intimidate, slander and silence scientists and organizations that question human-caused climate dangers; (b) forcibly shut down skeptic research, funding, speech and publication; (c) destroy skeptics’ funding, businesses and livelihoods; (d) protect alarmist funding, standing and influence; and (e) bankrupt skeptics, who would have to spend personal fortunes responding to RICO charges and a Justice Department that has limitless resources at its disposal.
Third, the RICO-20 signed their names as members of university faculties and government agencies – suggesting that they represent their organizations and/or these organizations endorse their efforts. If that is the case, it represents another blatant double standard – and a tacit endorsement of the RICO agenda.
Will those institutions now demand that the RICO-20 remove any mention of their affiliations? Will they step forward to vigorously defend academic freedom, constitutional rights, and a scientific method that is severely undermined by this letter and other toxic battles over manmade climate cataclysm claims?
Fourth, RICO is used to prosecute underlying patterns or practices of criminal behavior. This letter may constitute just “acting out.” But whether it represents a pattern of alarmist parties illegally engaging in items (a) through (e) above by calling for criminal prosecution of climate skeptics – or whether opposing the ideological and political campaign for the anti-fossil fuel climate agenda constitutes the required “criminal enterprise” – remains unanswered.
In any event, the “misdeeds” alluded to in the RICO-20 letter are studies, reports and discussions that contradict alarmist allegations and what skeptics charge are exaggerations, fabrications and computer model failures that underlie those claims. This extensive library of challenges to the climate chaos thesis includes peer-reviewed NIPCC Climate Change Reconsidered reports, international climate skeptic conferences, and numerous articles, op-eds, interviews and briefings. They clearly undermine climate chaos theory, but they are protected free speech and reflect honest, replicable science.
This raises the fifth point, that “racketeering” means conducting a “racket.” The term is commonly understood to mean fraudulently offering to solve a problem, because the problem does not actually exist and/or the proffered “solution” would do nothing to solve the problem. Many would say this definition accurately describes the Climate Crisis Industry.
Climate change has been “real” throughout Earth and human history. Driven by powerful natural forces that we do not yet understand and certainly cannot control, it has ranged from gradual to sudden, from beneficial to harmful or even devastating. Contrary to alarmist assertions and computer models, there is still no observational evidence that what we are experiencing today: is different from what our ancestors confronted; is now driven by plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide instead of by the natural forces of yore; or could be prevented or controlled by ending fossil fuel use and dramatically lowering our living standards.
In fact, the notion that we can “restabilize” an unstable and frequently fluctuating planetary climate is ludicrous. So is any claim that carbon-based fuels are superfluous or readily dispensable – or that they are more damaging to human health, agriculture, biodiversity and the world’s poorest people than eliminating those fuels and relying on expensive, land-intensive, unreliable wind, solar and biofuel “substitutes.”
Equally doubtful is any suggestion that the IGES/COLA (Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies) can understand or predict Earth’s ongoing climate variations by focusing on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and ignoring the solar, cosmic, oceanic and other natural forces that govern climate.
However, IGES/COLA derived 99.6% of its 2014 funding ($3.8 million in taxpayer money) from NASA, NOAA and the National Science Foundation, according to IRS Form 990 and other documents. Under the Obama Administration, those agencies have been almost completely co-opted by the alarmist climate agenda – and would likely terminate funding for any organization that expressed doubts about CO2, reduced its focus on greenhouse gases, or reengineered its climate models to reflect the full panoply of natural forces and thereby better assure accurate monsoon and climate forecasting.
Indeed, the latest Form 990 reveals, Dr. Shukla and his wife received salaries and other compensation totaling $499,145 in 2014 from their tax-exempt research organization. Dr. Shukla worked there only part-time, and his $333,048 compensation package “was presumably on top of his $250,866-per-year [George Mason] academic salary.” That totals $750,000 a year to the RICO-20 leader and his family “from public money for climate work & going after skeptics,” Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. wrote.
The ultimate irony would be an evenhanded investigation that exonerates the skeptic organizations that the RICO-20 want investigated – and results in charges against multiple corporations and organizations (and government agencies?) that engaged in collusion, data manipulation, junk modeling and other deceitful climate research practices that have been highlighted over the years.
The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups could well be what inspired the now fashionable idea of using the Justice Department to prosecute political opponents. The failure of the IRS and DOJ to penalize any of the perpetrators in those cases suggests that prosecution of alarmist fraud or racketeering is highly unlikely under the current administration.
However, the new 2017 administration could take a very different position. At the very least, a new Congress and Executive Branch could derail the climate alarm money train, initiate robust (and long overdue) debate on climate science and models, provide equal funding to skeptics, and end the alarmism. Potential sauce for the gander should make Dr. Shukla and fellow alarmists think twice about their tactic.
This RICO travesty shows how desperate alarmists have become. They are losing the climate science fight. Their models are increasingly contradicted by reality. Their ad hominem attacks will ultimately fail.
They also face major odds in Paris, where they may get a toothless treaty that makes empty promises to redistribute hundreds of billions of dollars from Formerly Rich Countries whose energy use and economic growth are hobbled – but places no binding emission targets on poor countries that will keep developing, burning coal and sending atmospheric carbon dioxide levels ever higher … with no effect on the climate.
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

My Gazette

Editor's Note:  Let's start with a radio interview on the Scott Adams radio program with Mary Grabar, the Dissentent Prof discussing Common Core.  You can listen here:

Atlas Shrugs

Angela Merkel caught on HOT MIC confronting Facebook’s CEO to CENSOR anti-migrant posts- Attending a luncheon on the sidelines of a United Nations development summit in New York on Saturday, Merkel and Zuckerberg were overheard on a live transmission broadcast on the UN website as participants took their seats. After Merkel confronted Zuckerberg about anti-migrant posts, the Facebook CEO is heard responding that “we need to do some work” on the issue. Ha! This is so typical of the elites. They control policy, they control the media, they control the culture —but they can’t control the people. And this make them crazy. If they could, they would change the people. Hitler tried to do that. The truth is that almost all of my readers connect on Facebook. it is the individual’s media arm—

Obama Proselytizes for Islam at UN Summit for “Countering Violent Extremism”- Platitudes, self-righteousness, distortions, tortured reasoning, self-promotion — that’s right, it’s another major speech by Barack Obama. Mind you, while the sharia-compliant president was bloviating at the UN, another major city in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and the House Committee on Homeland Security released a blockbuster report that called the thousands of foreign fighters who have joined to fight ISIS the “largest global convergence of jihadists in history.” “Remember that violent extremism is not unique to any one faith,” Obama told a U.N. meeting Sept. 29. “No-one should be profiled or targeted simply because of their faith… [and] we have to commit ourselves to build diverse,...

Another MAJOR Afghan city falls to the Taliban but this one is a big deal - Back in December 2014, President Obama vowed that Afghanistan would not be a source of terrorist attacks in the future, in an address just a week before the U.S. combat mission in the country ended. The Obama administration assured us we would not see Afghan cities fall. They are falling. Like dominoes. The loss of the major city of Kunduz to the Taliban is a stunning reversal for the Afghan government, deepening worries about the ability of its security forces to take the fight to the jihadis. But this is an extraordinary development. The Taliban stronghold has long been in the south. Kunduz fell this week, a large, major Afghan city in the north. TheNorth where our allies (ie Northern Alliance) were strongly anti-Taliban.

BLOCKBUSTER Report: “The danger to the homeland has never been greater,” “The largest global convergence of jihadists in history” - “The danger to the homeland has never been greater,” Michael McCaul,Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said today on a new report on the global jihad. For years I warned that this was coming. This has been the bane of my existence. My reporting on the rise of jihad across the world was met with attacks, smears and defamation. Even still, even now with the body count in the millions, my colleagues and I are blacklisted. Ironically, the report on Obama’s gravest failure was released as he was hosting a UN summit on “countering violent extremism” (no mention of jihad, of course.) He said: We have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with...

Pamela Geller, Breitbart: Muslim ‘Foreign Policy Analyst’ Frames Carson, Trump, and Cruz for Murder Before the Fact - Check out my latest piece at Breitbart — just posted:On CNN Monday, “foreign policy analyst” Rula Jebreal said that Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz would have “blood on their hands” if someone shot people at a mosque. “Foreign policy analyst” – this is a media-speak euphemism for Muslim bullies and Islamic supremacist thugs who mean to impose the sharia (do not criticize Islam) by wrecking ball. In Muslim countries, if you say anything that violates sharia blasphemy law, you are assassinated. In the West, the running dogs in the media assassinate your good name, your good character. This pre-emptive charge that these three candidates will have blood on their hands is a perfect case in point. This...

AMERICAN MUSLIM is ‘top ISIS commander’ - American Muslim Abu Abdullah al-Amriki is a top Islamic State commander. Should he be President of the United States? Dr. Ben Carson thinks not, but the media and cultural elites disagree. Hundreds of American Muslims had fled to the Middle East to fight alongside the Islamic State. Most disturbingly, “they travelled back and forth from the US with ease.” Obama calls us ignorant for linking the Islamic State with Islam. What does he call these devout Muslims? If the Islamic State is not Islamic, what is it? How did this misunderstanding of Islam become so widespread? Why are so many American Muslims joining the Islamic State? There is a very real need for Muslims in the US not just to denounce ISIS, but to teach...

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Should Not Be President - Seriously. This is what Dr. Ben Carson is talking about, and he is right. “Sharia law is for Muslims. So if there is a Muslim majority state then it has to be run by Sharia,” stated basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with surprisingly little public controversy in a September 23 interview. This statement and other elements from Abdul-Jabbar’s biography only accentuated reservations concerning a Muslim president recently raised by Ben Carson, even as Jabbar in another interviewdismissed Carson as “bigoted and irrational.”

“Ahmed Day” in NYC: Mayor de Blasio, City Council Honors Clockmed, Issues Proclamation- Here’s the message, boys and girls: devise a hoax that looks like a bomb, scare the hell out of everyone in school, and you too will become lauded and saluted the world over. Just one thing: you better be a Muslim, because if you aren’t, you’ll be expelled and ruined. Yesterday Mayor De Blasio, the city council and every other NYC political jackass honored Clockmed with “Ahmed Day.” Despite all that has come out in the wake of the time-bomb hoax, the city of New York issued a proclamation.

Green Beret discharged for beating alleged Afghan child rapist: “Kicking me out of the army is morally wrong and the entire country knows it” - But last week the Army rejected his appeal. This is the what the military, and the nation, have come to in the age of Obama. Sergeant Martland ought to be reinstated, given an official apology, and promoted. “ Sergeant 1st Class Charles Martland, the Green Beret being separated involuntarily from the U.S. Army for kicking and body slamming an Afghan police commander he describes as a “brutal child rapist,” began telling his side of the story Monday. Martland is under a gag order imposed by the Pentagon, but at the request of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif, he wrote a statement...

The Islamic State CRUCIFIES thousands of Christians *WARNING* - This is slaughter on an industrial scale. For years, media, political and cultural elites gave been ignoring this unimaginable savagery on a scale not seen since Hitler. Hand-wringing over islamophobia (opposition to this barbarity) is the mantra of the fascists on the left. For years, the handful of us reporting on the persecution, oppression and slaughter of religious minorities under Islam have been smeared, demonized, and marginalized. In areas controlled by the Islamic State, Christians have been crucified, beheaded, raped and subjected to forced conversion. Christian children are also being sold as slaves. Time for action is long past, and what do we get? Obama addressing the world from the US yesterday blasting anyone who...

American Council on Science and Health

Coca-Cola, Transparency and Science Outreach - Coke does not think that doling out 1/1,000,000th of their annual revenue is causing any group to go from hating soda to promoting it. Yet simplistic conspiracy theorists often insist it must be so. Read more.

Groundbreaking Drug Has Huge Potential for MS Sufferers - Roche released Phase III trial data on its new multiple sclerosis drug, ocrelizumab, which appears to have an advantage over other MS drugs. It's been shown to treat primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) — the more severe, and previously untreatable, form of the disease. No other drug does this. Read more.

A Call for More Expansive Breast Cancer Testing - A recent New York Times op-ed called for universal testing for the BRCA genes among women of Jewish descent, whose ancestry is from eastern Europe. The frighteningly high rate of BRCA positivity and the dire prognosis of such carriers are cited as the primary reasons. Read more.

'Fall Cleaning' Challenges the Spring-Cleaning Myth - Someone, somewhere, sometime ago came up with the feel-good idea which has been widely accepted that spring was the perfect time to give the house a good, comprehensive cleaning. But when you stop to think about it, and challenge that notion with a bit of logic, don't we have it backwards? Read more.

CVS Selling Overdose-Reversing Drug in 12 More States - CVS recently announced that its stores are expanding over-the-counter access to Naloxone in 12 states, widening its availability to 14 states overall. The life-saving drug reverses opiate overdose. Read more.


Elizabeth Warren Goes Crazy for Black Lives Matte - Elizabeth Warren’s claim of relentless black victimization now stands as the greatest lie of our generation. More

Iran's Cynical Cooperation - If America will not acknowledge Islam's philosophical moorings, and its sources of financial support, then we cannot find our way in dealing with this existential threat. More

Free Trade Illusions - Free trade should not be a sacred doctrine among conservatives. More

Nuke the Iranian Nuke-Pact - Litigation is the only way to prevent this from happening. More


Ted Cruz delivers scathing indictment of the establishment GOP – Cruz stood on the Senate floor and delivered an absolutely brilliant speech exposing the establishment GOP. He nailed it. More

Free speech loses to Islamists at UK universities – Two events last week crystallized the grave danger facing freedom of speech in the United Kingdom. More

Why isn't this a bribe? – All the elements of Democrat establishment corruption: an entrepreneur seeking affirmative action preferences, a Congressman who is also a preacher, and a nonprofit organization receiving the money. More


Clinton Foundation was given classified information by Hillary aide Cheryl Mills - Information that the State Department says "has the potential to damage and inject friction into our bilateral relationship with African countries whose cooperation is important to U.S. national security.” More

Reintroducing Kevin McCarthy, conservative superhero – This is supposed to be our new House speaker? More


Four Cases of Human Plague Confirmed in New Mexico - The New Mexico Department of Health recently announced a laboratory-confirmed case of plague in a 73-year-old woman from Santa Fe County. The case was confirmed at the Department of Health’s Scientific Laboratory Division. This is the fourth human case of plague in New Mexico this year and the second in Santa Fe County. […]Read more of this post

Gelspan Files

Welcome!  - Skeptic climate scientists and their associated organizations are accused of receiving fossil fuel industry money in exchange for lying about the issue. But is there any truth to the accusation? Continue reading

“The RICO Letter’s Sole-Source Problem” - Continuing a new feature at GelbspanFiles: Small space posts like this one will be teases about the upcoming full content. Next up, a letter signed by 20 scientists to President Obama imploring him to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to punish immoral “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change” inadvertently torpedoes its entire cause with one poorly thought-out paragraph.  Posted in Uncategorized

Anti-intellectual Claims about Anti-intellectualism - Besides revealing at this blog how the ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists’ accusation implodes from any angle it’s viewed, I also show how people willingly accept and spread the accusation while never questioning a single element of it. Today, I feature a perfect case in point where an article writer attempted to call out the ‘problem’ of stupid rationale in the global warming issue, but his efforts only result in an undesirable appearance hugely undermining the overall point of his article. Continue reading
 
Green Corps, part 3: Flipping Senator John McCain  - So, in part one of this series, I detailed just how valued Ross Gelbspan was and arguably still is to Green Corps. In part two, I detailed the blur of influential people across Ozone Action, Greenpeace and Green Corps. Now, let’s see what that combination is actually capable of influencing, by revisiting that pair of key sentences from the National Journal article I started parts 1 and 2 with: Continue reading
 
Green Corps, part 2: Ozone Action / Green Corps / Greenpeace blur - In my blog post last week, I used a bit of likely inadvertent misinformation from a National Journal article on outgoing Greenpeace USA Executive Director Phil Radford as an item to segue into an examination of how the Green Corps organization seems to place Ross Gelbspan in high regard despite easily found problems with his narratives about ‘industry-corrupted’ skeptic climate scientists. Now, let’s re-examine that same two-sentence bit from the NJ article to illustrate how just the most basic of looks into any aspect of the corrupt skeptics accusation runs headlong into inconsistent details. Continue reading
 
Is this the Face of Environmentalism Today? [8/10/15 Update] I swear, I can’t make this stuff up. [8/10/15 Update at bottom] Continue reading
 
Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part VII: To Green Corps… and Beyond - If the public saw scientists from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) engaged in heated debate with skeptic climate scientists, it would be deadly to the notion of catastrophic man-caused global warming. They’d shrug their shoulders at complicated science terms, dismissing both sides with, come back and tell us what you know when you really know what you’re talking about.” Do ordinary environmentalists with no climate science expertise kill that situation with carefully memorized citations of superior IPCC arguments? No, they say there are multi-thousands of scientists comprising a scientific consensus against a handful of skeptics who are ‘paid industry money to manufacture doubt’. But how exactly do you get that idea out to everybody? Continue reading
 
 
Forensic Analysis: Planned Parenthood Videos Are ‘Authentic’  - A forensic analysis of undercover videos about Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices are “authentic and show no evidence of manipulation or editing,” according to a report released… Read More
 
What She Saw Changed Her Mind About Getting an Abortion - As a debate over Planned Parenthood brews on Capitol Hill, one mother shares her story about why she turned her back on abortion. Watch the Video
 
What We Need in Our Next Speaker of the House - Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, writes that the American people are looking to those they elect to actually use the tools at their disposal to restore constitutional checks and balances. Read More

John Boehner's Wish List Before He Leaves Congress - House Speaker John Boehner is set to leave the House on Oct. 30, and before departing at the end of a 24-year career, he could leave his Republican colleagues with a number of parting gifts.
 
Inside the US Air War Against ISIS - The air war against ISIS is a tricky one for U.S. pilots. Without American troops on the ground, it’s hard to tell friend from foe, Daily Signal foreign correspondent Nolan Peterson reports from Iraq.  Read More
 
Obama Puts Positive Spin on Disastrous Foreign Policy in UN Speech - After almost seven years of foreign policy mismanagement, abdication of leadership, and deflection of responsibility, this disappointing speech is par for the course. Read More
 
Senate Advances Spending Bill With Funding for Planned Parenthood - The Senate’s continuing resolution leaves intact taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, shelving a fight that conservatives wanted Republican leadership to wage with President Barack Obama.  Read More

Freedom Force
 
Obama Makes Clear that Some People have More Equal Rights than Others - The thought that some people are granted a status that allows them to supersede the rights of others should be appalling. And though the founding documents make clear that our forefathers were not egalitarians, the thought that all men were not equal under the law would have shocked and angered them. But when we get to certain topics and situations, we find that our legal system has failed to prove adequate. And Obama’s recent speech will help us to illustrate what I mean.
 
FFRF Once Again Threatens But the Citizens of Hawkins TX Refuse to Concede - At least once a month the Wisconsin-based atheist group, Freedom From Religion Federation, finds and threatens some school or civic organization. Most of these municipal targets are found in states other than Wisconsin, and have nothing to do with the organization or its members. They breathe threats at these people and wait to see them scurry to comply. But this reign of terror might be coming to an end.Christian News reports A Texas man is fighting back against efforts to remove a “Jesus”……
 
Hillary Clinton Continues to Make Light of Her Email Scandal - Hillary Clinton made a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd where she continued to make light of the email scandal that is currently consuming her campaign for President.Over the last couple of days more damning evidence has come out implicating Hillary Clinton (and her subordinates) in a devious crime against our nation.With the evidence mounting and the excuses proving to be… weak… it’s simply amazing that Clinton would continue to pretend that her self-created….
 
Clinton Excuses Bad Behavior by Saying People Didn’t Care About it Before - Hillary Clinton is a piece of work.Seriously.The Democrat presidential frontrunner was a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday when she was forced to talk about a few things she probably would prefer to never hear about again. Specifically, Todd wanted to focus in on the email scandal that the Clinton campaign has been embroiled in, but to a larger point they discussed the many (MANY) scandals that Hillary and her husband former President Bill Clinton have been connected.....
 

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Ludwig von Mises: Scholar of Free Markets and Prophet of Liberty

By Robert P. Murphy

September 29 marks the 134th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, the tallest giant of the “Austrian School” of economics. Although Mises is not a household name, Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek once referred to him as “the master of us all.” To this day, professional economists and laypeople alike learn from the writings of a man I consider to be the most important economist of the twentieth century.

One of Mises’s earliest achievements was to bridge the two fields we now call microeconomics and macroeconomics. Originally, the classical economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had embraced variants of a labor theory of value in their teachings. Then, during the so-called Marginal Revolution of the 1870s, economists replaced the labor theory with the modern subjective theory of value, which sees all market prices as determined ultimately by the underlying preferences of consumers. It doesn’t matter how many labor-hours it takes to manufacture a product, according to subjectivism; if nobody really wants it, it will fetch a low price……To Read More……

Speaker Boehner's Final Opportunity for Redemption

By Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison

We did not join in the cheers and whistles that greeted the announcement in Washington that House Speaker John Boehner had decided to resign from Congress at the end of October. And we did not agree with the conservative firebrand who sarcastically said that Pope Francis had gone to the Speaker’s office to perform his first exorcism!  Still, we share the sense of deepest disappointment felt by so many grassroots activists. We have the largest Republican Majority since the days of Calvin Coolidge. Many of us worked so hard to achieve the victory in the 2014 elections. We have felt betrayed by the slim achievement of this Congress. Pollsters are telling us that 62% of all Republicans feel betrayed as well. A lot of us are remembering Peggy Lee’s plaintive song:  “Is that all there is?”.......To Read More....