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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Thursday, November 30, 2017

For the UN's cancer research agency, a chance to redeem itself?

By Richard Zuber November 30, 2017

Facing mounting criticism from multiple sides, the embattled International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a semi-independent branch of the UN’s World Health Organization, has announced that it is searching for a new leader. The search is starting at a time when the agency has hit its lowest point yet, as Congress has ramped up investigations into the way IARC carries out its assessments of the carcinogenicity of everyday substances.

To save any vestiges of the agency’s credibility, the new director needs to ensure they carry out several key reforms, using all available scientific evidence to make their evaluations, and communicating their findings clearly. At the moment, this simply isn’t the case -- and their assessments have more often left the American public confused.

Since 1971, IARC has examined nearly 1,000 agents, but it has been the subject of attacks for the way it carries out these evaluations -- not surprising, given the fact that it has only found that one substance -- caprolactam, a precursor to nylon -- probably doesn’t cause cancer.

The latest firestorm has arisen over IARC’s assessment of glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015. Their opaque review process ended up causing two Congressional committees to launch investigations into IARC over the past year. Most recently, the Republican chairmen of the House Science Committee and Subcommittee on Environment sent two letters to IARC expressing “concern” about the “scientific integrity” of IARC’s assessments.

The letters were part of a wider probe launched last year into U.S. taxpayer funding for the agency, which has received more than $48 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), nearly half of which was channeled to the assessments program........... Read more


Watchdogs Turned Up More Evidence Obama’s EPA Broke Federal Law

Chris White on November 27, 2017

Former President Barack Obama’s EPA used a social media platform to secretly promote the agency’s policies in violation of federal law, according to a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C.  Judicial Watch obtained 900 pages of documents Monday showing the EPA used social media to lobby support for the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. The agency used Thunderclap, a platform that shares messages across Facebook and Twitter, to recruit outside groups to generate support for various environmental policies.

Federal law prohibits agencies from engaging in propaganda. It also forbids agencies from using federal resources to conduct grassroots campaigns that prod U.S. citizens into browbeating lawmakers to act on pending legislation.........“EPA is planning to use a new social media application called Thunderclap to provide a way for people to show their support for clean water and the agency’s proposal to protect it,” Loop wrote at the time before explaining how the ploy works.............“The Obama EPA knowingly did an end run around federal law to push another Obama environmental power grab,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a press statement Monday. “These documents show how these Obama-era bureaucrats seem to be more like social activists than public employees.”...........To Read More.....


My Take - My question in all of these kind of things is this:  If this action was a violation of federal law that makes it a criminal action doesn't it?  If this is a criminal act shouldn't they now be considered criminal perpetrators?  Aren't criminal perpetrators prosecuted?  So....when will someone be prosecuted? 



Thought For the Day

Just one more thing on Entitlements - We should stop calling them all 'Entitlements'. Welfare, Food Stamps, WIC, ad nauseum are not entitlements. They are taxpayer-funded handouts, and shouldn't be called entitlements at all. Social Security and Veterans Benefits are Entitlements because the people receiving them are entitled to them. They were earned and paid for by the recipients.

Just one more thing on the Muslim Refugees. If Muslims want to run away from a Muslim country, does that mean they're Islamophobic?

Drive the Islamists Out Now

Bruce Abramson, Jeff Ballabon  November 28, 2017

In the wake of Friday’s massacre of Sufi Muslims in Egypt, the world must heed what President Trump said in Riyadh. The death toll from Friday’s terrorist attack on an Egyptian mosque has topped 300. Hundreds more were injured. It was the clearest demonstration of the imperative for the world’s Muslims to “Drive Them Out” since President Trump’s forceful Riyadh speech last May.

“Drive Them Out” was the President’s repeated refrain addressed to the leaders of the Arab world. It dealt with a painful reality so difficult to face that much of the world prefers to live in denial. There is a supremacist strain of popular, mainstream, Muslim thought that threatens the entire globe. Islamists believe that Islam is as much a political program as it is a faith; that the Koran is a constitution as well as scripture.

Islamists of all stripes — the Islamic State, al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and their lesser-known compatriots — see themselves as the sole possessor of Truth. In itself, that doesn’t distinguish them from many other people of faith — or even a certain strand of atheists. But in today’s world, only Islamists believe that God instructed them to enslave, convert, or kill all who question – or whose existence challenges – their Truth.......To Read More............Perhaps most importantly, these Western apologists have created an entire mythology of justified grievances that Islamists seek to address: European imperialism, colonialism, the existence of the State of Israel, American heavy-handedness, discrimination against Muslims throughout the West, even the Crusades all play critical roles. Western apologists are willing to condemn specific atrocities, but point to every cause except Islamism. When backed into a corner, they try to isolate the tiny number of Islamists bearing personal responsibility for atrocities from the sizable swathe of mainstream Muslims who share the Islamist worldview and philosophy.......To Read More....

Democrats plunge into civil war

by Laura Barrón-López Nov 28, 2017 If Democrats are going to methodically choose the candidates most likely to win, the price may be that there are loud complaints from various segments of the party. (Illustration by Nate Beeler for the Washington Examiner) If Democrats are going to methodically choose the candidates most likely to win, the price may be that there are loud complaints from various segments of the party. (Illustration by Nate Beeler for the Washington Examiner)

At first, Jean Stothert had what seemed to be an insurmountable lead over Heath Mello in the race for mayor of Omaha, Neb.  Stothert was popular, Omaha was doing well, and the state is deeply red. Not to mention, it was an off-year municipal election.

So, when Mello came within striking distance of Stothert in the primary, it surprised everyone. The state may be red, but Hillary Clinton took Omaha by 2.3 points. Mello's pitch to be a consensus candidate who would work across the aisle for working families resonated.

That was until Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, stepped in.

Mello didn’t hide his pro-life record, and he wasn’t new to public life, having served in the Nebraska Legislature for eight years. But when national groups discovered his anti-abortion voting record after the primary, there was an eruption of misinformation, confusion, and anger. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the DNC came under fire for embracing Mello when NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Daily Kos sounded the alarm over the candidate’s support of legislation that “would require women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound.” The bill didn’t actually do that. The legislation Mello backed instead required women to be informed by their doctor that they could see an ultrasound before having an abortion.......To Read More....


Why Ohio is ranked 5 in nation for human trafficking

Much of the trafficking can be traced back to online peddling
 

Much of the trafficking can be traced back to online peddling. The recent shuttering of the adult ads on the website Backpage.com is a good first step to help curb the problem, but the reality is Ohio’s vulnerability also comes from its infrastructure.........To Read More.....
 

 

Black Slavery Still Plagues Us Today

Written by   Monday, 27 November 2017

“Big strong boys for farm work,” says the auctioneer of the young black men on the block. They go for approximately $400 a piece — a bargain. This isn’t the “legacy of slavery,” but the real thing, occurring here, now, today, on the African continent in Libya.

After a video of such a slave market surfaced, CNN sent a team to the country to investigate the matter — and confirmed the video’s authenticity. According to CNN:

Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness a dozen people go “under the hammer” in the space of six or seven minutes.
 
“Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he'll dig,” the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. “What am I bid, what am I bid?”
 
Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, “500, 550, 600, 650 ...” Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new “masters.”
After the auction, we met two of the men who had been sold. They were so traumatized by what they'd been through that they could not speak, and so scared that they were suspicious of everyone they met.
 
These are just a handful of the tens of thousands of African migrants who stream across Libya’s border every year, lured by the prospect of a better life in Europe. But having “sold everything they own to finance the journey through Libya to the coast and the gateway to the Mediterranean,” as CNN informs, they sometimes find something else: bondage (video below)..........To Read More....


 

The Pelosi Rule: Our Pigs Are Better Than Their Pigs

George Neumayr November 29, 2017

Struggling to summon a defense of John Conyers over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi looked a bit like a malfunctioning robot with a depleted battery. But after warming up, she finally hit on the button “icon.” Pelosi uttered the word icon as a cue to end all discussion. She had spoken her formula of absolution over Conyers and now it was time for NBC’s Chuck Todd to let the penitent go in peace.

Pelosi’s comment completes feminism’s arc of hypocrisy: Clarence Thomas’s tormentors have become John Conyers’s defenders. The same feminists who scoffed at Thomas’s description of his hearing as a “high-tech lynching” now play the race card for Conyers as a civil rights “icon.”
The long-awaited “reckoning” looks more like the tired rationalization, as feminists, for all their advertised anguish in recent days, return to what can be called the Pelosi rule: our pigs are better than their pigs.

Shaken by the prospect of losing political power to the Republicans, the Michelle Goldbergs want the “reckoning” toned down. It is dawning on them that the reckoning could result in losing too many “icons,” both past and present, from JFK, MLK, and Teddy to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Al Franken. Or to put the problem in the anxious language of Goldberg: “It’s easy to condemn morally worthless men like Trump; it’s much harder to figure out what should happen to men who make valuable political and cultural contributions…”.........To Read More....

Pelosi's Double Standard an Example of Shameless Partisanship

Jonah Goldberg Posted: Nov 29, 201
 
 It's amazing how complicated simple principles can become when they're inconvenient to your team.
On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi created a mess for herself by insisting on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Rep. John Conyers deserves "due process" in the face of a series of accusations of improper conduct.

Politically, Pelosi's performance was a gift to her many critics. For liberals who think she's passed her sell-by date as a Democratic leader, her hapless effort will now be Exhibit A in the brief against her, despite her subsequent efforts to clean up the mess.

For populists on the left and right who think the political establishment is rigged to protect members of the club, Pelosi's effort to protect Conyers -- and Sen. Al Franken, who has also been accused of several sexual transgressions -- while at the same time insisting that we know all we need to know about President Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore is simply a naked partisan double standard.

"We are strengthened by due process," Pelosi insists when the topic is Conyers. But Moore is "a child molester."

This raises the most dismaying gift that Pelosi lobbed to the mob. By circling the wagons around Conyers and Fran
ken (and Bill Clinton to some extent), Pelosi is all but guaranteeing the election of Moore.
It is difficult to exaggerate the anger among many Republicans who believe that liberals use the rules selectively, shamelessly invoking standards of conduct to delegitimize and destroy their enemies while exempting their own. "Zero tolerance" for thee, "it's complicated" for me........To Read More...
 

Bill Clinton Won After All

Ben Shapiro Posted: Nov 29, 2017

Two weeks ago, it seemed that former President Bill Clinton was finished as a public figure. A variety of public intellectuals on the left had consigned him to the ashtray of history; they'd attested to their newfound faith in his rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick or torn him to shreds for having taken advantage of a young intern, Monica Lewinsky.

The moral goal was obvious: Set up a new intolerance for the sexual abuse of women. The political goal was even more obvious: Show that Democrats are morally superior to Republicans, and in doing so, shame Republicans into staying home rather than voting for Alabama Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault of minors.
Then it all fell apart.

On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- the first female speaker of the House -- brushed off Clinton's scandals with a simple one-liner: "Well, I think it's, obviously it is a generational change. But let me say the concern that we had then was that they were impeaching the president of the United States, and for something that had nothing to do with the performance of his duties."

Why would Pelosi defend Clinton? Because she also has to defend Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., both of whom have been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault. And why would she have to defend either of them?.............To Read More...
 

Black Self-Sabotage

Walter E. Williams  Nov 29, 2017

The educational achievement of white youngsters is nothing to write home about, but that achieved by blacks is nothing less than disgraceful. Let's look at a recent example of an educational outcome all too common. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore's 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state's mathematics exam. In six other high schools, only one percent tested proficient in math. In raw numbers, 3,804 Baltimore students took the state's math test, and 14 tested proficient.

Citywide, only 15 percent of Baltimore students passed the state's English test.

Last spring, graduation exercises were held at one Baltimore high school, 90 percent of whose students received the lowest possible math score. Just one student came even close to being proficient. Parents and family members applauded the conferring of diplomas. Some of the students won achievement awards and college scholarships.

Baltimore is by no means unique. It's a small part of the ongoing education disaster for black students across the nation. Baltimore schools are not underfunded. Of the nation's 100 largest school systems, Baltimore schools rank third in spending per pupil........... However, it's in the interest of the education establishment -- and its handmaidens at the NAACP -- to keep black youngsters in failing public schools..............To Read More....

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast?

UN climate forecasts are consistently high … consistently wrong … and used to drive policy

Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris
 
Dr. Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institutionsummarized the problem the world faces with climate change policy:  
“Would you bet your paycheck on the weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?”
Sowell is right to be skeptical. Meteorologists can’t forecast the weather much beyond 48 hours, as the degree of accuracy diminishes rapidly with every additional day. Yet the same weather agencies, often using the same computer models, since 1990 have said with almost absolute certainty that their 50- and 100-year forecasts are correct. They maintain this illusion today, even though all their long-term forecasts have been wrong.
Moreover, it’s not just your paycheck that you would be putting at risk. It’s reliable, affordable energy for everything you do, and for those you rely on for goods and services. It’s your living standards and future – and your children’s future.
It’s the health and wellbeing of every person in every modern, industrialized nation on earth – and of every person in poor developing countries who dreams of having living standards and opportunities approaching those we are blessed with.
The global warming deception worked because most people don’t know the difference between weather, climate and meteorology. This confusion arose partly because of the historical development of each.
Climate came first, with the word originating from the Greek word for inclination. The ancient Greeks realized that the climate of a region, and how it changed through the year, was primarily determined by the angle of the Sun’s rays. Beyond that, they used evidence from experience and historical patterns.
Aristotle’s student and philosophical successor Theophrastus (371–287 BC) wrote the book Meteorological Phenomena, sometimes called the Book of Signs. Theophrastus was not referring to astrological signs, but weather signs such as the red sky observation that is neatly summed up by the old, and generally correct, adage: “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight.”
The Greeks developed short-term forecasts based on observations made over hundreds of years. This use of long-term signs to try and determine short-term weather pervades and guides all communities because of its impact on their food supply. This became more important when humans switched from hunter-gatherer to sedentary agricultural subsistence.
Some simple definitions are important for the public to understand.
Weather is the total of the atmospheric conditions at any given moment. It includes thousands of inputs from cosmic radiation from deep space, heating energy from the bottom of the oceans and everything in between.
Climate is the average weather conditions, and how they change, at a given location, over an extended period of time. While one can describe “daily climate,” obtained by averaging the 24-hourly readings or averaging the minimum and maximum readings in a 24-hour period, much longer periods are normally studied by climatologists. The choice of the beginning and end point of climate studies determines the overall trend. By “cherry picking” this time interval, you can demonstrate virtually any trend you want.
For example, the general temperature trend of the last 140 years was warming, but the trend of the last 1,000 years was cooling. That is why the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tried to rewrite the historical temperature record over the past millennium to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period. It finally had to restore the Warm Period, which existed across Europe and Asia, and is recorded in multiple Chinese texts from that era. 
Similarly, you can study climates of various regions, although forecasting regional climate is fraught with uncertainties. Dr. Tim Palmer, leading climate modeler at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, summed the situation up well in a 2008 New Scientist magazine article:
“I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.”
Meteorology is the study of the physics of the atmosphere and is the term people associate most with weather forecasting. Meteorologists maintain that their physics is correct. Then why are their forecasts so often wrong? The answer is inferred in mathematician and philosopher A.N. Whitehead’s comment that,
“There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.”
The IPCC defends its long-term climate forecasts by maintaining that a weather forecast is different from a climate forecast. But climate is an average of the weather, and one cannot generate accurate results by averaging inaccurate ones.
Thus, starting in 1990, the IPCC stopped making forecasts – because they were never right. Instead they began publishing a range of “projections.” Yet, they too were hopelessly at odds with what actually happened in the real world. Worse, the news media, climate activists, politicians and regulators treat the “projections” as predictions, or forecasts, for purposes of stirring up public anxiety and trying to justify draconian anti-fossil fuel policies.
Indeed, these failed projections underlay the extreme, economically damaging, and completely unnecessary policy prescriptions that were presented earlier this month at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.
So, the answer to Sowell’s question is clear. No country – certainly not successful, developed nations like the United States or Canada – should bet a nickel of taxpayers’ money on the UN’s failed global warming predictions.
Poor, struggling, developing countries are even more strongly advised to ignore UN predictions and energy policy prescriptions – unless they want to be mired in poverty and misery for another century.
 
Dr. Tim Ball is an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.

Reducing Solyndra-Style Green Cronyism Is another Reason to Be Excited about Tax Reform

I have a fantasy of junking the entire corrupt tax system and adopting a simple and fair flat tax.
I have an even bigger fantasy of shrinking the size and scope of the federal government to what America’s Founders intended, in which case Washington wouldn’t need any broad-based tax.

Flat Tax Crisis
 
But in the real world, where I know “public choice” determines political behavior, I have much more limited hopes and dreams.

I’ve been saying for months that tax reform will be a worthwhile success if it leads to a significantly lower corporate tax rate and the elimination of the deduction for state and local income taxes.
And I recently added repeal of the death tax as a third item that would make me very happy.

Now let’s add a fourth item to my wish-list. The House version of tax reform actually does  a decent job of curtailing some of the egregious distortions that line the pocket of companies that peddle so-called green energy.

I know it must be a decent job since the GOP plan is causing angst for leftist journalists.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives…bill would slash incentives for renewable energy and the electric car industry. Environmental groups are frantic. …The House provision raising the most ire are proposed changes to the renewable electricity production tax credit, which benefits producers of wind, solar, geothermal and other types of renewable energy. …The House GOP plan would also repeal the Investment Tax Credit for big solar projects that start construction after 2027. House Republicans also propose eliminating the $7,500 credit for electric vehicle purchases. …the Senate bill may not include all of the House’s cuts to clean energy.
It is true that the Senate bill is very timid. But given that there will be a lot of pressure to find “offsets” in any final deal, I’m vaguely hopeful that some of the good provisions in the House bill will survive.

Let’s explore why that would be a very good outcome.

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center is not a fan of cronyist subsidies to solar energy.
Under President Barack Obama, green energy subsidies were given out like candy. The failure of solar panel company Solyndra is well-known, but the problem extends well beyond the shady loan deal and its half-billion-dollar cost to taxpayers. Between 2010 and 2013, federal subsidies for solar energy alone increased by about 500 percent, from $1.1 billion to $5.3 billion (according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration), and all federal renewable energy subsidies grew from $8.6 billion to $13.2 billion over the same period. …However, that didn’t stop the largest U.S. solar panel manufacturer, SolarWorld, from filing for bankruptcy earlier this year despite $115 million in federal and state grants and tax subsidies since 2012, along with $91 million in federal loan guarantees. SolarWorld and fellow bankrupt manufacturer Suniva are now begging for even more government assistance, in the form of a 40-cent-per-watt tariff on solar imports and a minimum price of 78 cents (including the 40-cent tariff) a watt on solar panels made by foreign manufacturers.
Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute explains that wind energy is reliant on taxpayer handouts.
…government data shows that offshore wind power cannot survive in a competitive environment without huge taxpayer subsidies. Today, wind power receives subsidies greater than any other form of energy per unit of actual energy produced. …public subsidies for wind on a per megawatt-hour basis are 26 times those for fossil fuels and 16 times those for nuclear power. …The tax credit gives $23 for every megawatt-hour of electricity a wind turbine generates during the first 10 years of operation. …Yet, even with these incentives, only 4.7 percent of the nation’s electricity is currently supplied by wind power and that is entirely wind power from on-land turbines. …Think about it: Four large power plants could produce as much electricity as offshore wind turbines placed side by side along the entire Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida. Moreover, power plants last longer than wind turbines. A British study found that turbines need to be replaced within 12 to 15 years, and they must be imported from Europe.
Given the disgusting nature of ethanol subsidies, I wonder whether Mark’s headline can possibly be accurate.

In any event, Senator Alexander of Tennessee agrees that wind subsidies are a bad idea.
As we look at all the wasteful and unnecessary tax breaks that are holding us back, I have a nomination: At the top of the list should be ending the quarter-century-old wind production tax credit now — not two years from now. This giveaway to wind developers was meant to end in 1999 but has been extended by Congress ten different times. While the wind production tax credit is scheduled to be phased out by the end of 2019, we should do better and end it at the end of this year, and use the $4 billion in savings to lower tax rates. …Congress needs to stop its habit of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Twenty-five years of picking wind developers over more-reliable sources of electricity hasn’t paid off. Imagine what innovation we might unleash if we used the billions wasted on wind energy to invest in research to help our free-enterprise system provide the abundance of cheap, clean, reliable energy we need to power our 21st-century economy.
A recipient of tax preferences discusses his undeserved benefits in a Wall Street Journal column.
…it’s only appropriate that I express appreciation for the generous subsidy you provided for the 28-panel, four-array, 8,540-watt photovoltaic system I installed on my metal roof last year. Thanks to the investment tax credit, I slashed my 2016 federal tax bill by $7,758. …thanks to the incentives for rooftop solar, I’ve snared three subsidies. …fewer rooftop solar projects are being installed in low-income neighborhoods. …According to a study done for the California Public Utility Commission, residents who have installed solar systems have household incomes 68% higher than the state average. Ashley Brown, executive director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group, calls the proliferation of rooftop solar systems and the returns they provide to lucky people like me, “a wealth transfer from less affluent ratepayers to more affluent ones.” It is, Mr. Brown says, “Robin Hood in reverse.” Do I feel bad about being a solar freeloader? Yes, a little. …the local barista or school janitor—people who likely can’t afford solar panels—are paying incrementally more for the grid’s maintenance and operation. And the more that people like me install panels, the more those baristas and janitors have to pay.
By the way, the United States is not the only nation with green-energy boondoggles (remember Solyndra?).

I’ve previously written about the failure of such programs in Germany.

Let’s add to that collection with an all-too-typical story from the United Kingdom.
Britain is wasting hundreds of millions of pounds subsidising power stations to burn American wood pellets that do more harm to the climate than the coal they replaced, a study has found. Chopping down trees and transporting wood across the Atlantic Ocean to feed power stations produces more greenhouse gases than much cheaper coal, according to the report. It blames the rush to meet EU renewable energy targets… Green subsidies for wood pellets and other biomass were championed by Chris Huhne when he was Liberal Democrat energy and climate change secretary in the coalition government. Mr Huhne, 62, who was jailed in 2013 for perverting the course of justice, is now European chairman of Zilkha Biomass, a US supplier of wood pellets.
In a perverse way, I admire Mr. Huhne, who didn’t follow the usual revolving-door strategy of politician-to-cronyist. He apparently went politician-to-prisoner-to-cronyist.

If you head north in Great Britain, the foolishness mostly revolves around wind power.
…the blackmailing, money-printing sausage factory is a wind farm in Scotland. There are currently about 750 wind farms north of the border, with roughly 3,000 wind turbines. …The wind farms are distributed across Scotland, sometimes in very remote regions, so there is a real problem in getting their energy down to the English border – let alone getting it across. …Why has so much been built? Partly, it is because of income-support subsidies. This top-up of nearly 100 per cent over the wholesale price – funded, of course, from consumer bills – makes wind farms very attractive… Subsidies to onshore wind in the UK now cost a little under £600 million a year, with Scottish wind taking about half, yet the Scottish government continues to ignore the protests and consent to new wind farms as if they cost almost nothing at all. Which as far as Holyrood is concerned, is in fact true. Part of the attraction for Scottish politicians is that the subsidies that pay for Scottish wind farms come from consumers all over Great Britain. Scottish consumption is about 10 per cent of the British total – so when the Scottish government grants planning permission to the wind industry, it is simply writing a cheque drawn overwhelmingly on English and Welsh accounts. …The result is that there is a perverse incentive to locate wind farms in Scotland, even though they aren’t welcome and the grid can’t take their output.
You won’t be surprised to learn, by the way, that taxpayers in the U.K. have been subsidizing green groups.


From an economic perspective, the bottom line is that green energy is more expensive and it requires subsidies that line the pockets of politically connected people and companies. That’s true in America, and it’s true in other nations.

Which is unfortunate, because it gives a bad name to energy sources that probably will be capable of producing low-cost energy in some point in the future.

Indeed, my long-run optimism about green energy is one of the reasons why I’m such a big believer in capitalism and private property. I just don’t want politicians to intervene today and make it harder to achieve future innovation.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

“Stars” Who Promised to Leave! - or - Politics is Really Strange

Rich Kozlovich

Here’s a partial list of those who promised – promised mind you – to leave the country if Trump was elected and they’re still here! And after they PROMISED too!

Here are the ones I know:
Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Al Sharpton, Jon Stewart, Chelsea Handler, Barbra Streisand, Miley Cyrus, George Lopez, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel L. Jackson,
Here are the ones I’ve read about but have no idea what why they considered “stars”.
Amber Rose, Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham
Then there’s the ones I have no idea who they are or what they do:
Raven-Symoné, Neve Campbell, Ne-Yo, Chloë Sevigny, Omari Hardwick, Eddie Griffin, Keegan-Michael Key
I guess - in some lunatic way - they thought their leaving America would make Americans panic and vote for mad power hungry criminal.

The really big disappointment is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She promised the leave and then backed down. If the rest stayed or left it would be of no consequence to most people – especially among those who know how to read, write and do arithmetic, have real jobs, marry the women with whom they have children and raise them with those conservative values that will stand the test of time, but Judge Ginsberg is different. She’s a disaster! The only time the nation is safe is when she’s fast asleep on the bench.

What has always fascinated me is why Jews in America are so staunch in their support of the Democrat Party, which is so stunningly anti-Semitic? I’ve asked Jewish customers this question - all of whom have been successful, living in beautiful homes in good neighborhoods and raising their children with the conservative values that made them successful. One of my customers told me “in my mind I’m a conservative, in my heart I’m a liberal”.

Politics is really strange. It’s turns out Alice Cooper and Caitlyn Jenner, once known as Bruce Jenner, a one-time decathlon Olympic champion who went from being the world’s greatest athlete to the world’s biggest boob – are Republicans. Go figure!

In the meanwhile – the media is so insanely anti-Trump they keep looking like complete fools over their reporting, both parties are in disarray over the slush fund payouts over infractions of conduct by members of Congress. The Democrats are in complete disarray over the sexual scandals in their party. The kind of scandal they hoped to derail Judge Moore’s election, and that’s now come back to haunt they and their “icons, including Bill Clinton, JFK, his brother Teddy, Martin Luther King, FDR, and the list goes on and on.

The big difference is the Republicans will generally turn on one of their own immediately for such indescretions. The Democrats justify these indiscretions - provided those discretions are committed by their members – but beware the righteous indignation if some fool of a Republican who should commit such folly. Because Democrats are all for protecting women.....against Republicans and conservatives.

When leftists abuse women's rights its all right because they stand for important issues. That kind of hypocricy is being noted by the media and it’s now created a finger out of the dike scenario and now the flood can’t be stopped.

There's going to be a blood bath in the mid-term elections. In the Republican party it will be in the primaries. In the Democrat party it will be in the general election. Fortunately people like Mad Maxine, Nancy Pelosi will keep being elected from these far left districts because they're the gifts that keeps on giving.

Thought For the Day

Just one more thing on the Russians hacking the election - How did the Russians get Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC to steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders? How did Russia get Donna Brazile to leak debate questions to Hillary Clinton in advance of the debates?

Cartoon of the Day


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How Obama Brought Back Muslim Enslavement of Black People

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 9 Comments Monday, November 27, 2017 @ Sultan Knish Blog

America’s first black president didn’t bring “Hope” to America, but he did bring slave auctions to Africa. After Obama “liberated” Libya for the Islamist rebels, Arab Muslims sell black slaves for a few hundred dollars at slave auctions.

While leftists tear down the statues of slave owners from centuries ago, it was the left that brought back the sale of black men as property.

Slavery was always one of Barack Obama’s favorite subjects.

It was a favorite subject because it provided him with countless opportunities for tearing down America.

When called upon to disavow the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-American rants of his mentor, he instead denounced the Constitution as “stained by this nation's original sin of slavery.” At the funeral of the Dallas police officers murdered by a member of the racist hate group he supported, he once again invoked this original sin even while he was justifying Black Lives Matter’s bigotry and violence.

At Hillary’s DNC convention, Michelle Obama claimed that the White House had been “built by slaves”.

The unifying theme was that America’s racist past made its origins, including their constitutional restraints on his power, illegitimate. A Constitution tainted by slavery should not be able to inhibit the actions of the nation’s first black president. His wife had a special moral authority over the White House because it had been built by slaves. Slavery gave the Obamas a unique moral claim on power.

But Barack Obama and his ancestors had never been slaves. They might have been slave owners and sellers. And America’s first black president unquestionably helped bring Muslim slavery back to Libya.

After Obama invaded Libya to aid the Muslim Brotherhood, black slaves are being sold there once more.

Videos show black people being put up for sale for as little as $400 by Arab Libyan Muslim slave traders. The black men being sold as slaves are described as “big strong boys for farm work.”

After years of lecturing Americans about the “original sin” of slavery, Obama brought it back.

The black men being sold as slaves are Nigerians. Islam forbids Muslims to enslave Muslims. Nigeria has a large non-Muslim population. It is likely another case of Arab Muslims selling Christians into slavery.

Unlike President Bush, Obama paid little attention to Africa. When he did pay attention to Africa, it was largely to reward Muslim violence against African Christians in Nigeria, Kenya or Côte d'Ivoire.

And, most prominently, Libya.

Obama’s Arab Spring encouraged Islamist movements in their bids for power whether they used ballots or bullets. The resulting devastation in the Middle East, with its death toll in the hundreds of thousands, and the rise of ISIS, has captured the world’s attention. But the Islamist wave spread chaos and terror through Africa. Egypt and Tunisia fell into the hands of Islamist killers who brutalized their own people even as the media cheered these “democratic revolutions”. Boko Haram allied with ISIS in Nigeria.

And Obama illegally bombed Libya to aid the Muslim Brotherhood and allied Islamist groups in their bid for power. The regime change operation in Libya had been urged on by Hillary Clinton. The former Secretary of State had been encouraged by her associates to use it as a platform for a presidential run. But the Islamist takeover in Libya made for a bad photo op. Our attempts to address the flow of Qatari weapons into the hands of terrorists (after Obama gave a pass to their weapons smuggling scheme during the civil war) led to the Benghazi massacre. And the blackest stain on Hillary’s record.

But it didn’t stop with Benghazi.

Libya tumbled into a second civil war between Islamists and the Libyan government. Despite the media blackout, the violence touched off by Obama’s regime change has never really stopped. ISIS has a significant presence in Libya. And until recently had a death grip on parts of Benghazi.

And that isn’t the worst of it.

The Islamist Arab rebels had quickly begun targeting Africans during the civil war in a racist purge. Photos and videos showed beheadings, beatings and mutilations. The false claims of genocide in Benghazi that Obama had used to justify his invasion became real when his invasion led to the actual ethnic cleansing of Africans in Libya.

The first black president, who had allied with hate groups such as Black Lives Matter that accused America of genocide, had made possible an actual genocide of black people by his Arab Muslim allies.

The rebels he had armed and backed would identify themselves as, “The Brigade for Purging Slaves, Black Skin”.

And then it got even worse.

The Tuaregs, a Berber Islamist people whose leaders claim to trace their “pure” ancestry back to Mohammed, invaded and captured a large section of Mali. Accompanying them were Al Qaeda Jihadists. The Tuaregs keep slaves and have been at war with the “blacks”. Their hostilities were motivated in large part by the conviction that “blacks” were slaves while they were the descendants of Mohammed.

Obama ignored another racist Islamist war caused by his pro-Islamist intervention. Instead it was the French that stepped up. The recent deaths of four American soldiers in Niger however can be traced back to the disaster in Mali.

Sgt. La David Johnson, the African-American soldier whose condolence call by President Trump touched off a storm of leftist outrage, was murdered after being captured and tied up. The Jihadists who murdered Johnson are believed to be from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, an ISIS affiliate empowered by the Mali invasion, whose perpetrators are from a group deeming themselves “white”.

While President Trump has been accused of racism by Rep. Frederica Wilson over the death of the African-American soldier, it was Obama who had empowered the racist Islamists that murdered him.

Meanwhile back in Libya, the slave trade has made a comeback. Videos show public slave auctions in Libya where light skinned Arab Libyans sell black Nigerians for a few hundred dollars.

The slave auction, that terrible institution, wasn’t brought back by the right. It was the left.

Slavery isn’t new to the Islamic world. And where Islam rules, slavery returns. The leftist-Islamist alliance doesn’t just mean the burning of churches and the bombing of synagogues, or that Jewish students are hounded out of college campuses while European streets flow with blood.

Muslims immigrants have brought slaves to America. When Islamists took over Egypt, one of their political projects was undoing the ban on slavery. "It's not possible to say that slavery is inherently absolutely categorically immoral in all times and places since it was allowed by the Quran and the Prophet," Professor Jonathan Brown, an Islamic Civilization professor, at Georgetown, insisted.

Brown is an Islamic convert. The Washington Post, and the rest of the left, came to his defense.

The left spends a great deal of time lecturing Americans on the evils of slavery. But it is they and their allies, from Cuba to Libya, who practice slavery today.

The slave auction is ancient history in America. But Obama’s Islamist alliance brought it back to Africa.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Energy & Environmental Newsletter:

By -- November 27, 2017

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental 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:

Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat
Wind & Solar are Less Efficient Decarbonizers than CC Gas Turbines
Maine DEP Issues Draft Wind Energy Rules (two VERY good parts)
Grid-Scale Storage of Renewable Energy: The Impossible Dream
Tesla battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving
Report by head of German Wildlife Foundation: Truly Green?
Stop Subsidizing the Big Wind Bullies
Excellent: Senate speech re killing the wind PTC
Presentation: Hidden Costs of Wind and Solar Power
Videos: America First Energy Conference
President Trump is winning the climate wars
Unambiguous Fraud In The National Climate Assessment
The Paris Agreement: A Fairytale’s Failure
Reconciling CO2 Concentrations With Emissions and Energy Consumption
NOAA Lets Politics Corrupt Its Science
Important crowd-funding request is here
Core of climate science is in the real-world data
The Climate Alarmists Definitely Don’t Believe Their Own Propaganda
NYT: The Climate Crisis? It’s Capitalism, Stupid
The Real Story Behind The Heartland Institute’s Role In The Trump Admin

Greed Energy Economics:
Stop Subsidizing the Big Wind Bullies
Excellent: Senate speech re killing the wind PTC
Presentation: Hidden Costs of Wind and Solar Power
10 Years of Wind Maintenance to Exceed $40 Billion
The Market for Electricity is Rigged
Wind Turbine Maker Siemens Gamesa will Cut 6000 Jobs
GOP Tax Plan cuts PTC and amount of expected wind
Wind Energy Feels the Force of World Markets
Unsustainable model: Carbon tax would make businesses less competitive
Tear down or leave up all the old wind turbines?
UK Bars any Green Subsidies
$11B± of Texas Wind Projects in Limbo

Turbine Health Matters:
Vermont Approves New Wind Noise Regulations
Peer-Reviewed Paper: Subjective perception of wind turbine noise
Video: Brown County (WI) meeting re wind energy health effects

Renewable Energy Destroying Ecosystems:
Report by head of German Wildlife Foundation: Truly Green?
Bird and bat species’ vulnerability to collision mortality from wind turbines
Residents continue to seek answers over damaged wells near wind project
Wind related dirty water delivered to environmental minister
Fishermen worry that offshore turbines will damage their business

Miscellaneous Energy News:
Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat
Wind & Solar are Less Efficient Decarbonizers than CC Gas Turbines
Maine DEP Issues Draft Wind Energy Rules: w two VERY good parts
Grid-Scale Storage of Renewable Energy: The Impossible Dream
Videos: America First Energy Conference
Tesla battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving
A worthwhile new energy movie: The New Fire
Very Good Book: Fueling Freedom – Exposing the Mad War on Energy
Find the cure – ignore the symptoms
How Oregon let its clean energy program enrich rule breakers
Report on wind turbines interference with the military
Debating turbines in Western NY
Indiana Officials Side Against Wind Project
Stanton County (Nebraska) bars wind energy development
A New US-China Energy Relationship May Be On The Horizon
$1 million for efforts of FORGE geothermal project in Nevada
US energy trading and implications for Asia
Tell Congress: End the Costly Renewable Fuel Standard
Please make comments in support of killing the “Clean Power Plan”
Heartland’s current “Energy Freedom Score Card
Planned wind project puts nearby airport in nosedive

Manmade Global Warming Articles:
President Trump is winning the climate wars
Unambiguous Fraud In The National Climate Assessment
The Paris Agreement: A Fairytale’s Failure
Reconciling CO2 Concentrations With Emissions and Energy Consumption
NOAA Lets Politics Corrupt Its Science
Important crowd-funding request is here
Core of climate science is in the real-world data
The Climate Alarmists Definitely Don’t Believe Their Own Propaganda
NYT: The Climate Crisis? It’s Capitalism, Stupid
The Real Story Behind The Heartland Institute’s Role In The Trump Admin
How Trump saved freedom and democracy from the Climate Industrial Complex
A Deceptive New Report on Climate
Bill Nye, The Not-So-Science Guy, Gets Slammed
Climate Champion China Leads the World … To Record CO2 Emissions
Climate Song and Dance
Utah has chance to improve science and climate education in schools
African NGOs want to kick U.S. out of UN climate conference
California Gov. to Vatican: ‘Brainwashing’ Needed to Tackle Climate Change
Impeach Tom Steyer
Open Letter to Honorable Prime Minister of Fiji and President of COP23
Australian University Enforces Warmist Groupthink by Threatening Prof
MIT Study Linking Hurricane Harvey Rainfall To Climate Change Is Bunk
Worthwhile book: The Origins of the IPCC
Who is this humble, brilliant scientist, and why is he revolutionary?
Trump’s Failing Revolution
EPA draining the swamp like no one else in DC
Mugged By Reality, Germany’s Climate Consensus is Collapsing
Archive: Dr. Happer Interview re Global Warming
Environmentalism Is Increasingly Anti-Human, Pro-Authoritarian
Insincerity, Hypocrisy, and Hype Rife in Bonn Climate Negotiations
After 30 Years, Alarmists Are Still Predicting A Global Warming ‘Apocalypse’
The Liberal Astro-turfers behind the Global Warming Scare
Don’t confuse science with modeling
Alex Epstein video: Harvard Business School Fireside Chat

See Prior AWED Newsletters
Attachments area

Preview YouTube video 11 14 2017 floor speech wind
11 14 2017 floor speech wind
Preview YouTube video Brown County Human Services Special Event – Duke Energy Shirley Wind – September 12, 2017
Brown County Human Services Special Event – Duke Energy Shirley Wind – September 12, 2017
Preview YouTube video Alex Epstein – Harvard Business School Fireside Chat
Alex Epstein – Harvard Business School Fireside Chat
 

I Got Fired For Calling Out Liberal Hypocrisy on Clintons

Blame media decision-makers who ignored or downplayed this issue.

Larry Elder November 27, 2017

It was bizarre watching KABC TalkRadio in Los Angeles – my hypocritical ex-employer – hold a televised press conference. It turns out that one of the station’s news anchors, Leeann Tweeden, claims Sen. Al Franken groped her. In 2006, Tweeden said, before Franken became a senator, he and she participated in a USO tour to entertain the troops in the Middle East.........Only a few years earlier, the same KABC radio executive who arranged the Tweeden press conference fired me for calling out the blatant left-wing hypocrisy over allegations not just of groping but of rape. I dared insist that the allegations made against President Bill Clinton by Juanita Broaddrick – who claims that she was raped by Bill Clinton and that then, two weeks after the rape, Hillary Clinton verbally intimidated the alleged rape survivor – should have been taken seriously. “No one cares about this issue,” said the very same KABC exec now allegedly incensed over the groping allegation against Franken............As for Broaddrick, the executive screamed, she is “old news,” ............To Read More....

 

Quote of the Day!

“If Donald Trump deleted all of his emails, wiped his server with Bleachbit and destroyed all of his phones with a hammer, would the Mainstream Media suddenly lose all interest in the story and declare him innocent?” - Kevin Sorbos

Trump Derangement Syndrome's little brother is on its way

Thought For the Day

Just one more thing on Trump's 'Locker Room Banter' - Why is it that Liberals and the Media are upset about the words Trump used 11 years ago but they are alright with Adult men using the Ladies Room with your Wives and Daughters?

Science Needs a New Paradigm

By Robert Arvay November 27, 2017
 
Science and politics used to be very separate institutions. Where they did overlap, science was nonpartisan. The role of scientists was to provide objective evidence -- and dispassionate, nonpolitical interpretations of that evidence. Indeed, one rarely if ever could detect the political leanings of any particular scientist. Also, science and religion used to get along, at least for the most part.

Today, that has changed, and the results include significant dangers for society. For example, the topic of climate change has produced the myth of “settled science.” Science is never settled. While we all may agree that the climate does change, there is an anti-capitalist agenda behind the claims of many scientists -- that we must radically reduce our standards of living to prevent climate catastrophe. Politics and ideology, not science, promote that so-called scientific view.............Read more
 

Global Warming Apocalypse Fear-mongering Turns 30-Years Old, Still No ‘End’ in Sight

Michael Bastasch on November 25, 2017

For at least three decades scientists and environmental activists have been warning that the world is on the verge of a global warming “apocalypse” that will flood coastal cities, tear up roads and bridges with mega-storms and bring widespread famine and misery to much of the world.  The only solution, they say, is to rid the world of fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and oil — that serve as the pillars of modern society. Only quick, decisive global action can avert the worst effects of manmade climate change, warn international bodies like the United Nations, who say we only have decades left — or even less!

Of course, human civilization has not collapsed, despite decades of predictions that we only have years left to avert disaster. Ten years ago, the U.N. predicted we only had “as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more.”  This failed prediction, however, has not stopped the U.N. and others from issuing more apocalyptic statements.  To celebrate nearly three decades of dire predictions, The Daily Caller News Foundation put together this list of some of the most severe doomsday prophecies made by scientists, activists and politicians...............To Read More....

Monday, November 27, 2017

CFPB: Trump targets a monster

By Monica Showalter November 26, 2017

President Trump has slammed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a "total disaster" and rightly objects to a second leftist taking the place of outgoing leftwing director Richard Cordray. His battle is just the tip of the iceberg surrounding this federal agency that shouldn't even be there in the first place.   What Trump is battling is an unaccountable agency run by the Democrats and for the Democrats with the aim of funding more Democrats. It's a shakedown racket targeting banks and other moneybags businesses based solely on the size of their assets to harvest from fines. It was never about protecting consumers. It was never about oversight. It just amounted to a slush fund for Democrats that as set up cannot be reformed.

A long, worthy piece by a Ronald L. Rubin, a former enforcement attorney at CFPB, in National Review, lays out the problems as only an insider's account can.  
Conceived as a government watchdog with noble aims, the CFPB was doomed by a structure that made it an inherently political agency.
is how he summed this leftist racket up............... Then its creators designed the agency so that no Republican could ever enter it.............. Rubin describes how the agency systematically discriminated against Republican hires through wink and nod hiring processes and got away with it.............And that cash they extracted goes solely to Democrat groups............their activities are more political than charitable...........With a setup like this and no possibility of reform or a change of emphasis through elections, is there any reason to keep this agency around?............Throw the whole thing out........To Read More.....
My Take - One thing the Democrats understand - and understanding the Republican elite fail to grasp or don't care - is the Deep State, or Swamp as it were, exists only because there a massive number of federal bureau, agencies and departments that keep them funded as bureaucrats. 

But, just as in the Roosevelt administration  - which created a massive federal bureaucracy filled with Soviet agents, socialists of one type or another and fellow travelers, and yes Joe McCarthy was right - all these government agencies are filled with leftists with the goal of overturning the U.S. Constitution and imposing a socialist state on the American people. 

All in collusion with those international socialists desiring to create socialist world government under the auspices of the United Nations.   The only fix to the Deep State is to eliminate most of the federal government.  Getting rid of the EPA, Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and OSHA would be a good start. 

Here's a list of all the government agencies.  If no one has an objection - After the four I mentioned - start eliminating them alphabetically. 

Thought For the Day!

“Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.”Will and Ariel Durant

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”C.S. Lewis

I think it's a good thing to remember the graduating class of every profession has a top half, and a bottom half.  Which means fifty percent of all professionals are in the bottom half of their profession.  Now if the top half all score 100 on all their tests, and the bottom half all score 99 on all their tests, then it's not big deal.  But if the top half score 100 and the bottom half score 70, then that matters.  

But now that all these professions are being scored on their DEI/ESG value, and since it appears that now outweighs any scores dealing with professional merit, does it matter what any of them score?

I often talk about the limitations of economic data. That’s not the only problem. Even if we all agree on the data, we disagree on what to do with it because we all (or at least most of us) have different desired outcomes. Furthermore, even if we agree on the validity of the data, we don't agree on what it means or what we should do with it. From there, wishful thinking takes over. Wishful thinking is benign compared to political agendas, which can be terribly destructive. Forecasts become less objective and more extreme.

Politicians tend to choose economists who tell them what they want to hear. This seems to have gotten worse this last decade. The pandemic doubled down on bad forecasting and governance.  In reality, though, extreme events are rare. That’s why they’re called “extreme.” The most likely economic outcome is that we just muddle through. No one gets everything they wanted, nor everything they feared.

 I think of myself as an optimist. In spite of all the bad decisions (I will let you decide which are the bad and/or good decisions), the free market, often referred to as Adam Smith's invisible hand, keeps moving humanity in the direction of economic growth. Yes, there are the occasional bumps that we call recessions, but we get through those.

 
Interesting piece to which I would like to make some observations.
 
First, the problem of disagreement with those who agree on the data. I was an exterminator for 40 years, and the owner of pest control company for 30 years, who was heavily involved in my industry’s affairs. The man who was the executive director of our national association was as far left as I was far right, but we always agreed on the facts. We just didn’t agree on what to do with them. 
I wanted to attack the green left and their catspaws at EPA, and he wanted to find harmony, and that was the direction the board members generally wanted to go. Now, what's the end result of all this compromise/capitulation to leftist cognitive dissonance?   Our national association is neck deep in the DEI/ESG mentality.   Those who stood against all that are now retired, there’s not one active member willing to be the rock in the current and stand against insanity.  I’ve often said heterodoxy isn’t for the faint of heart.  I've yet to see anything that disputes that.
 
Second, demographics, which will also play into by first point. I’m 77, the beginning of the Baby Boomers, and I remember the Era of Easy Hiring, and the era of manufacturing plant closings, all over the nation, many of which moved to foreign countries. I explained why that was happening, which was a direct result of two things. WWII, and unions. That post WWII period was a 25-year economic and demographic anomaly in world history.
 
After WWII the only industrial base left in the world of any size was here in the United States, so if people wanted manufactured goods, they bought them from us. But during the war something happened that clearly must have rattled manufacturers. The coal miners went on strike.  
 
The message that sent was if the unions will go on strike in the midst of the war, the unions will be out of control after the war was over. And they were! So, while I can’t prove it, they clearly must have started planning their closings even then. Why I’m I so sure of that? Because that’s what I would have done. So, they gave the unions what they wanted to just keep those plants up and running until they could shut them down and move on.
 
They didn’t upgrade or modernize the plants here in America, and that alone is telling, and started opening plants overseas, or created mergers with foreign companies. Also, the FDR administration is largely responsible for these long-term negative consequence with passage, of among the many other destructive things that heavily communist infested administration promulgated, the Wagner Act.
 
Finally, there’s one thing I think is being largely ignored about the current generation of young American workers. They’re losers. I have a young man who owns a company that comes every year and edges my flower gardens and puts down mulch. He and his crew do a wonderful job.  I told him he was fortunate because he’s part of a generation of losers, and will have no competition from his peers, assuring success. He agreed.
 
Owners of pest control companies have a substantial problem getting help, especially competent hard-working help. One owner friend of mine said he hired two last year, and after all the back ground checks and all the stuff owners do, neither of them showed up for even the first day.  Another who is the owner of a 120 year family company is looking to sell for that reason.  And I’m hearing similar stories around the industry.  And pest control companies are paying a lot more than they did five years ago.
 
There's another subtle aspect to this that might just be exclusive to pest control, I don't know.  The pest control industry has traditionally made up of a lot of companies with ten employees or less, and a handful of large regional and national companies.  The smaller company owners were the foundation for all the local, state and national trade associations. With current demographics, that's changing and the large regional and national companies are dominating everything at the national level,  ignoring, and even undermining the local and state associations, and because of the demographics they're dying.  That's leading to troubling times for the pest control industry, and for the nation's economic sanity.
 
I consider myself a pessimistic optimist. I hope for the best, but the underlying realities suggest the worst. I do believe the EU is doomed, demographically, economically, philosophically, and morally.   Europe has a moral compass that has no idea which way is north, and that’s becoming stunningly obvious for America’s leaders, and I include both Republican and Democrats.    
 
Despite the recent hype about Robert Kennedy Jr., it’s clear his moral compass doesn’t have a clue which way is north, and his hiring of Dennis Kucinich as his campaign manager is more than telling, since both of them are moral opportunists. America has done nothing to deserve another Kennedy President.