Rich Kozlovich
Over the course of my life I have been in leadership roles a number of times. As I looked back over each occurrence I realized that I made a lot of mistakes. Why? Because it took a while for me to understand the most important thing a good leader needs to know; and that is if subordinates are doing their jobs, then leave them alone and let them do their jobs without interference because you probably aren't better at it than they are. However, if you find that they aren't doing their jobs then you have to either fix them or fire them and hire someone who can do the job....and then leave them alone. I also learned that if I have to do a subordinates job I can't do mine properly. In short; my prescription for good leadership is that I give everyone the freedom to fail. Generally speaking I have found that when people have to take their destiny in their own hands success becomes their only option.
Unfortunately those in leadership roles in government just don't get “that liberty might be the answer”, and that doing nothing may be better than having bureaucrats and elected officials that have never worked a real job, started or ran a real company do stupid things that ends up being activity as a substitute for accomplishment. It also never occurs to them that doing nothing, or reducing the level of what they are already doing is more along the line of ‘doing something’ that will be successful. Reducing government involvement and getting out the way by ‘doing nothing' is the most important ‘do something’ they can do.
There are two stories below that clearly outlines the problem, the ideology, reality and the real solution. I think you will find this worth the effort.
The authoritarianism, simple-mindedness and failure of America's pundits - David Brooks, Thomas L. Friedman, and the banal authoritarianism of do-something punditry
Consider for a moment the paradoxical pain of being a best-selling political pundit so successful that American presidents don’t just seek but heed your advice. You have lobbied in your columns for the commander in chief to deploy your signature catch phrases, and he has. You have, in times of both crisis and sloth, advocated robust federal action in the name of national “greatness,” and the people in power have mostly followed suit. You have been flattered by invitations to the White House and pecked at by lesser partisans, yet you’ve maintained your critical distance in the patriotic spirit of post-ideological problem solving. All this influence and success, and somehow the country still sucks…… American discourse is saddled with a large and influential do-something school of political punditry, a cadre of pragmatists from Meet the Press to your local editorial board who are forever seeking to solve the country’s problems by transcending ideology, demanding collective citizen sacrifice, and—always—empowering authority.
Deroy Murdock: Supercommittee, take notes from Puerto Rico
The gridlocked members of the congressional Supercommittee should grab President Barack Obama and decamp to a tropical island. Specifically, they should visit Puerto Rico, where a courageous leader is using free-market reforms to reinvigorate this recently moribund U.S. territory………. Fortuno was inaugurated on January 2, 2009, just 18 days before Obama. Since then, these two officials have marched in opposite directions, with opposite results.
"We were closer to the abyss than most states," Fortuno says. "When I came into office, we were facing not just the worst recession since the '30s, but the worst budget deficit in America, proportionally. We were literally broke. We did not have enough money to meet our first payroll. We had to take out a loan to do that. At that point, my wife asked me if we could ask for a recount."………… "You needed to obtain an average of 28 permits and endorsements to do anything," Fortuno says, regarding regulatory relief. "You had to go to 20-plus different agencies to do that. Today, you go to one agency, and you get your permit there, or you can go to PR.gov, and get it online."
"We have created a better business climate, and it shows," Fortuno explains.
A five-year property-tax holiday and the scrapping of capital gains and death taxes have helped push existing home sales up 35 percent this year (while they fell 7.9 percent on the Mainland) and new home sales soaring 92.2 percent (as they sagged 9.9 percent up north)
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Observations From the Back Row
By Rich Kozlovich
Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. - J.C. Watts
Who's behind '99 percenters'? Ad company for Pepsi, Ford, partner of Wall Street giants blames '1%' for hoarding the nation's wealth
A company hired to lead marketing campaigns for such corporate giants as Pepsi, Starbucks, IBM and Toyota now is promoting Occupy Wall Street while complaining about the top "1 percent" ultra-wealthy allegedly hoarding the country's wealth……A visit to GOOD's websites on any given day finds an abundance of pro-Occupy content, including articles supporting the movement. Just yesterday, the main site's rotator featured an article by GOOD's managing editor, Megan Greenwald, complaining, "No plan that included raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans had a chance of earning Republican support." The article contained a photo of protesters demanding, "Tax the rich."
The next Islamist domino in Middle East?
King fearful radicals soon may wrest control - The Israeli government is concerned instability can threaten the rule of Jordan's King Abdullah II, and is committing to work quietly with the king on security matters, according to a top Palestinian Authority official….. Jordan is worried a "big wave" of anti-regime protests will sweep the country in the future. Similar unrest is threatening the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as revolutions already toppled the rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.
Norquist's no-tax-hike pledge
There's an old saying: Politics makes strange bedfellows. I believe this axiom explains why the left has seemingly focused so much attention on Grover Norquist's no-tax-hike pledge and helped build him up into a near mythical political figure in the conservative movement – even while Norquist is pandering to the left on so many other issues……..I take a backseat to no one on the tax issue. But there's a lot more to saving America from the abyss than holding the line on taxes.
Anderson Cooper: Media snake
Last week, I wrote in my WND column about The Learning Channel's new "All-American Muslim" program, which is an attempt to guilt-trip Americans into thinking that it is "Islamophobic" to be concerned about the jihad threat. As you'd expect, the mainstream media love this show, and CNN's Anderson Cooper gave it lavish attention, even inviting me to be on a panel discussing the show with some of its cast members. But what happened then was indicative of how the leftist media stack the deck.
How Washington's destroying America
Author Martin Gross probably thinks of the supercommittee members as "those clueless congressionals who can't cut the budget even with one another's help." Gross has been "cutting America's budget" all alone for years. He's testified at congressional hearings half a dozen times, winning applause from members of both parties. And yet Congress has never acted on Gross' advice! ….They discovered 1,069 federal programs for rural areas, mostly duplicating one another…60 federal job-training programs, averaging a cost of $25,000 to train each individual. Most wound up without a job, or flipping hamburgers, for which McDonald's has a much cheaper training program. The several dozen overlapping federal programs to fight teenage pregnancy and drug abuse………early child development…… 90 different programs….28 programs spread over 15 federal agencies on telecommunications, 50 programs for the homeless, 20 different moderate- and low-income HUD programs, 75 programs across 16 federal agencies devoted to cultural and foreign affairs development, 131 programs for juvenile delinquency and 313 labs, including 175 in the Department of Agriculture alone. ……Somebody in government discovered that taxpayer money could be saved if the appropriate federal workers were just issued credit cards, to replace the old "expense account" system. So a half-million were handed out. Among the uses of those cards: a cruise to Alaska, breast enlargement for a girlfriend, home-closing fees and prostitutes. Aren't superiors held accountable for all those expenses? That was "then"! Now they get their underlings to sign off on them……20 percent of the federal workforce is unnecessary. With benefits, the federal worker comes in at around $120,000 eacH……. Martin will pull out his transcript of interviews with government workers explaining, as one example, their "flex time." "I get to work at 6 a.m. and leave at 2 in the afternoon," one told Martin. "And what do you do when you get there?" asks Martin. "Well," explains our public servant earning double what the private sector pays, "Nobody else is there at 6 a.m., so I just do crossword puzzles."
The Islamist-Environmentalist Alliance
Saudi Arabia has no better friend than the Sierra Club, and the Emirates have no better salesmen than the environmentalists who keep the country hooked on conflict oil. The administration’s sabotage of the Keystone XL project through delays aimed at killing the pipeline is a cynical act of cowardice, and it’s a shot in the arm to the very regimes that it claims to oppose........
Every time environmentalists kill a project in America, they revive it overseas with less oversight, more pollution and without the human rights. The death of Keystone XL means more pollution in China and war in the Middle East. Crusading environmentalists helped kill America’s industries and kept the regime in Beijing alive. The tanks that rolled over the democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square were as green as their environmentalist backers. Both of them painted in the resplendent color of American money.
###
Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. - J.C. Watts
Who's behind '99 percenters'? Ad company for Pepsi, Ford, partner of Wall Street giants blames '1%' for hoarding the nation's wealth
A company hired to lead marketing campaigns for such corporate giants as Pepsi, Starbucks, IBM and Toyota now is promoting Occupy Wall Street while complaining about the top "1 percent" ultra-wealthy allegedly hoarding the country's wealth……A visit to GOOD's websites on any given day finds an abundance of pro-Occupy content, including articles supporting the movement. Just yesterday, the main site's rotator featured an article by GOOD's managing editor, Megan Greenwald, complaining, "No plan that included raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans had a chance of earning Republican support." The article contained a photo of protesters demanding, "Tax the rich."
The next Islamist domino in Middle East?
King fearful radicals soon may wrest control - The Israeli government is concerned instability can threaten the rule of Jordan's King Abdullah II, and is committing to work quietly with the king on security matters, according to a top Palestinian Authority official….. Jordan is worried a "big wave" of anti-regime protests will sweep the country in the future. Similar unrest is threatening the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as revolutions already toppled the rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.
Norquist's no-tax-hike pledge
There's an old saying: Politics makes strange bedfellows. I believe this axiom explains why the left has seemingly focused so much attention on Grover Norquist's no-tax-hike pledge and helped build him up into a near mythical political figure in the conservative movement – even while Norquist is pandering to the left on so many other issues……..I take a backseat to no one on the tax issue. But there's a lot more to saving America from the abyss than holding the line on taxes.
• Norquist approved the debt-hike surrender by House Republicans. In fact, I contend he even helped orchestrate it. How meaningful is a pledge not to raise taxes if Republicans are given permission to spend money without regard to revenues? How is that going to achieve Norquist's stated goal of reducing the size of the federal government to the point that it can be "drowned in a bathtub"?……….God help us if Norquist is, indeed, one of the most powerful people inside the conservative movement – and continues to be.
• Norquist's support for GOProud's extremist pro-homosexual, anti-family and anti-conservative agenda speaks for itself.
• Norquist's support for Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups speaks for itself.
• And Norquist's recent courtship with George Soros and other left-wing globalists likewise speaks for itself.
Anderson Cooper: Media snake
Last week, I wrote in my WND column about The Learning Channel's new "All-American Muslim" program, which is an attempt to guilt-trip Americans into thinking that it is "Islamophobic" to be concerned about the jihad threat. As you'd expect, the mainstream media love this show, and CNN's Anderson Cooper gave it lavish attention, even inviting me to be on a panel discussing the show with some of its cast members. But what happened then was indicative of how the leftist media stack the deck.
How Washington's destroying America
Author Martin Gross probably thinks of the supercommittee members as "those clueless congressionals who can't cut the budget even with one another's help." Gross has been "cutting America's budget" all alone for years. He's testified at congressional hearings half a dozen times, winning applause from members of both parties. And yet Congress has never acted on Gross' advice! ….They discovered 1,069 federal programs for rural areas, mostly duplicating one another…60 federal job-training programs, averaging a cost of $25,000 to train each individual. Most wound up without a job, or flipping hamburgers, for which McDonald's has a much cheaper training program. The several dozen overlapping federal programs to fight teenage pregnancy and drug abuse………early child development…… 90 different programs….28 programs spread over 15 federal agencies on telecommunications, 50 programs for the homeless, 20 different moderate- and low-income HUD programs, 75 programs across 16 federal agencies devoted to cultural and foreign affairs development, 131 programs for juvenile delinquency and 313 labs, including 175 in the Department of Agriculture alone. ……Somebody in government discovered that taxpayer money could be saved if the appropriate federal workers were just issued credit cards, to replace the old "expense account" system. So a half-million were handed out. Among the uses of those cards: a cruise to Alaska, breast enlargement for a girlfriend, home-closing fees and prostitutes. Aren't superiors held accountable for all those expenses? That was "then"! Now they get their underlings to sign off on them……20 percent of the federal workforce is unnecessary. With benefits, the federal worker comes in at around $120,000 eacH……. Martin will pull out his transcript of interviews with government workers explaining, as one example, their "flex time." "I get to work at 6 a.m. and leave at 2 in the afternoon," one told Martin. "And what do you do when you get there?" asks Martin. "Well," explains our public servant earning double what the private sector pays, "Nobody else is there at 6 a.m., so I just do crossword puzzles."
The Islamist-Environmentalist Alliance
Saudi Arabia has no better friend than the Sierra Club, and the Emirates have no better salesmen than the environmentalists who keep the country hooked on conflict oil. The administration’s sabotage of the Keystone XL project through delays aimed at killing the pipeline is a cynical act of cowardice, and it’s a shot in the arm to the very regimes that it claims to oppose........
Every time environmentalists kill a project in America, they revive it overseas with less oversight, more pollution and without the human rights. The death of Keystone XL means more pollution in China and war in the Middle East. Crusading environmentalists helped kill America’s industries and kept the regime in Beijing alive. The tanks that rolled over the democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square were as green as their environmentalist backers. Both of them painted in the resplendent color of American money.
###
Doing Business is What Allows for Doing Good!
By Rich Kozlovich
This first appeared on May 30th, 2010. It has been hit a lot lately and with all of this hoopla about these insane OWS people in the news....with prominent people defending them.... I thought this might be worth running again with some changes. RK
Over the years I have been linking articles to Green Notes (a weekly newsletter I used to send. RK) that dealt with the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In 2006 Steve Forbes wrote an article dealing with an investment concept promoted by Steve Milloy entitled, Pressuring Business to Believe in Business which is worth reading.
Somehow we have developed a social paradigm that says we have an obligation to “give back” something to society, to the community, or to some cause or other because we have been so blessed; as a result we have been made to feel that we must be grateful to society for any successes we may have enjoyed. Apparently it wasn't all of our hard work and dedication that created that success, so therefore we should want others to receive the benefits of our success, whether they contributed to it or not.
First of all, volunteering for various causes or community activities is rampant in the United States, and this has always been so. Why? There are a great many emotional reasons given as to why Americans are so generous with their time and money; all true mind you; but they are only secondary reasons. Everyone seems to keep missing the primary reason. We have the time and money because we are so financially successful. And we are so financially successful because in the U.S. business is allowed to do business. It is doing business that allows for so many to profit so much that they have the money, time and freedom to spread their largesse as far as they like; and to whatever cause they wish to spread it.
But first we have to understand the difference between doing business and doing good.
When a man builds a $5,000,000 home he is giving back to the community. He doesn’t drive any nails. He doesn’t lay any cement block or cement floors. He doesn’t hang the dry wall, or run the electricity. He hires people to do that; to the tune of $5,000,000. And there are no strings attached except that these people have to perform. And there is no government middleman taking a huge chunk of that $5,000,000.
And after that do you know what this rich person did? He filled it with carpeting! Carpeting which someone had to manufacture, someone had to sell, someone had to ship, someone had to sell again and then finally someone had to lay the carpeting. Then he bought furniture to fill the house! Again, furniture someone had to manufacture, sell, transport, sell again and deliver. I don’t know how many have been to a $5,000,000 house, but the landscaping is done by professionals and there is usually a housekeeper. And I and my friends in the pest control business do the pest control at all of them; all of us collecting salaries he generates.
He not only gave back millions to the community, he gave jobs, he gave dignity and he gave prosperity to people who would in turn build houses, buy carpeting, furniture and even maybe go out to dinner and a movie once in a while. And they would be able to live where they wanted to and go to dinner where they pleased and eat what they wanted to eat. He gave freedom. Does anyone think that it would be cheaper if you had to go through the federal government? Does anyone really believe the community would benefit nearly as well from "give backs"? Does anyone at all believe that "give back" money wouldn't have strings attached to attain some goals for some philosophical flavor of the day social agenda of the federal government?
When the earthquake struck Haiti the people of the United States personally gave millions to these poor suffering people, and that didn’t include what they gave via the U.S. government. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the American public personally gave more than all the self-righteous socialist European finger wagers combined. How much did Cuba and Venezuela give? More importantly….how much did the individual Cubans and Venezuelans personally give?
The evidence of the last century clearly demonstrates this one absolute, irrevocable fact; doing good can only be done if business is done first, and that means profit….lots of it.
If everyone really desires good social policy then do good business. That is the best social policy you could ask for because all sorts of good follows the prosperity created by doing "good business". Just ask the people of Haiti.
***
This first appeared on May 30th, 2010. It has been hit a lot lately and with all of this hoopla about these insane OWS people in the news....with prominent people defending them.... I thought this might be worth running again with some changes. RK
Over the years I have been linking articles to Green Notes (a weekly newsletter I used to send. RK) that dealt with the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In 2006 Steve Forbes wrote an article dealing with an investment concept promoted by Steve Milloy entitled, Pressuring Business to Believe in Business which is worth reading.
Somehow we have developed a social paradigm that says we have an obligation to “give back” something to society, to the community, or to some cause or other because we have been so blessed; as a result we have been made to feel that we must be grateful to society for any successes we may have enjoyed. Apparently it wasn't all of our hard work and dedication that created that success, so therefore we should want others to receive the benefits of our success, whether they contributed to it or not.
First of all, volunteering for various causes or community activities is rampant in the United States, and this has always been so. Why? There are a great many emotional reasons given as to why Americans are so generous with their time and money; all true mind you; but they are only secondary reasons. Everyone seems to keep missing the primary reason. We have the time and money because we are so financially successful. And we are so financially successful because in the U.S. business is allowed to do business. It is doing business that allows for so many to profit so much that they have the money, time and freedom to spread their largesse as far as they like; and to whatever cause they wish to spread it.
But first we have to understand the difference between doing business and doing good.
Forbes makes this point. “Just think of the phrase "giving back." The implication is that entrepreneurs or companies took what wasn't rightfully theirs and that they will make up for their business sins by giving their ill-gotten gains to worthy causes. Commerce and philanthropy are seen as polar opposites. The opposite is the truth: Commerce and philanthropy are two sides of the same coin. You don't succeed in business in a free society unless you meet the needs and wants of other people. As for "self-interest," it is actually a positive thing that people pursue their ambitions lawfully and develop their innate talents to the fullest. Commerce directs these energies in positive directions. The virtue of democratic capitalism is that one person's gain is also society's gain. Economics is not a zero-sum game as was once thought, though in many intellectual and political circles today it is still regarded as such. In actuality, businesses and entrepreneurs create incomprehensible, complex webs of cooperation that are all geared toward improving our lives.”A lady at one of my accounts was thrilled with the idea that the “rich” were going to be taxed heavily under this new administration because it was time for them to “give back”. I said that they have always given back and in point of fact they give back constantly. She laughed and said, 'yeah, right"! I went on to explain. They give all the jobs, which means they pay 100% of all the taxes collected. How? Payroll taxes, sales taxes, etc. are collected from people who get their money from the rich. On a personal level they also pay almost all the income tax collected by the federal government. The top 5% pays approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes and the top 10% pays over 70% of all federal income taxes. The top 50% pays over 97% of all federal income taxes. That means that 40% of the top 50% only pays 23% of federal income taxes. As for the bottom 50%...what do they pay? They pay a whopping 2.3%, and since about 47% or more of the population actually pay no federal income tax at all. That means that 3% or less of the 50% pay that 2.3%.
When a man builds a $5,000,000 home he is giving back to the community. He doesn’t drive any nails. He doesn’t lay any cement block or cement floors. He doesn’t hang the dry wall, or run the electricity. He hires people to do that; to the tune of $5,000,000. And there are no strings attached except that these people have to perform. And there is no government middleman taking a huge chunk of that $5,000,000.
And after that do you know what this rich person did? He filled it with carpeting! Carpeting which someone had to manufacture, someone had to sell, someone had to ship, someone had to sell again and then finally someone had to lay the carpeting. Then he bought furniture to fill the house! Again, furniture someone had to manufacture, sell, transport, sell again and deliver. I don’t know how many have been to a $5,000,000 house, but the landscaping is done by professionals and there is usually a housekeeper. And I and my friends in the pest control business do the pest control at all of them; all of us collecting salaries he generates.
He not only gave back millions to the community, he gave jobs, he gave dignity and he gave prosperity to people who would in turn build houses, buy carpeting, furniture and even maybe go out to dinner and a movie once in a while. And they would be able to live where they wanted to and go to dinner where they pleased and eat what they wanted to eat. He gave freedom. Does anyone think that it would be cheaper if you had to go through the federal government? Does anyone really believe the community would benefit nearly as well from "give backs"? Does anyone at all believe that "give back" money wouldn't have strings attached to attain some goals for some philosophical flavor of the day social agenda of the federal government?
When the earthquake struck Haiti the people of the United States personally gave millions to these poor suffering people, and that didn’t include what they gave via the U.S. government. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the American public personally gave more than all the self-righteous socialist European finger wagers combined. How much did Cuba and Venezuela give? More importantly….how much did the individual Cubans and Venezuelans personally give?
The evidence of the last century clearly demonstrates this one absolute, irrevocable fact; doing good can only be done if business is done first, and that means profit….lots of it.
Forbes goes on to say; “Yet companies are increasingly assaulted by anti-business groups and social activists operating under the banners of "corporate social responsibility" and "socially responsible investing." Corporations are under pressure to adopt policies that can harm free enterprise and the companies themselves (Citigroup for example, agreed to limit lending in certain developing countries as a result of a campaign by the Rainforest Action Network). Companies are often tempted to appease these groups lest they suffer harmful publicity or hostile regulation.”The activists make nothing, they are responsible for nothing, and as far as I can tell, they have only been successful at being activist extortionists who insist that everyone owes _________(fill in the blank) to promote their latest Philosophical Flavor of the Day. And as in the case of the Rainforest Action Network, and their greenie partners, forced lending institutions to stop lending for mining, logging and a host of things that would have helped people in the third world to come out of poverty, squalor, misery and suffering. Dystopia follows socialism and environmentalism like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote.
If everyone really desires good social policy then do good business. That is the best social policy you could ask for because all sorts of good follows the prosperity created by doing "good business". Just ask the people of Haiti.
***
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Observations From the Back Row
By Rich Kozlovich
As I have stated before, I intend to follow those stories and accounts that you will not see on the news. These are some of the articles I found interesting over the last 24 hours and are my picks of the day.
Golden Oldies: Newt and the “cancer bed divorce” myth
With Newt Gingrich continuing to surge in the polls, plenty of stories are bubbling to the surface, including things from the distant past. And let’s face it… Newt has been knocking around US politics for an awfully long time, with tales of many of his exploits being told and retold until they pass into legend. Of course, you know what they say about legends.
New Occupy plot: Flash mobs
'Alternative forms of protest' put cities, cops at disadvantage' The Occupy movement is stepping up its confrontational tactics, plotting "alternative forms of protest," including flash mobs that can be deployed nationwide. Citing the success of last week's so-called Day of Action protests, Take to the Square, one of Occupy's main online planning forums, has devised an "Alternative Day of Action" to coincide with international Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.
Union Siphons Dues from Medicaid
Labor union greed and liberal Democrat corruption go hand in hand again. The notorious Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is collecting millions of dollars each year from the State of Michigan’s Medicaid program in the form of union dues. It even collects from parents caring for their own mentally-ill children in their own home so the children won’t have to be institutionalized. The SEIU now can claim and receive union dues from thousands, whether they want to be union members or not, because of a tricky arrangement to pay the union. It was put in place by the former left-wing Democratic governor of the state, Jennifer Granholm.
PETA Takes Aim at Turkey, Texas: Wants Town Renamed ‘Tofurkey’
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has approached the residents of Turkey, Texas with a request: rename your town “Tofurkey” in honor of Thanksgiving. Even if the name change to the mock meat vegan alternative is just for one day, PETA said it will draw attention to the treatment that turkeys in the U.S. suffer virtually every day of their lives. In return, PETA said it will treat the entire town — population 421, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — to a “delicious, healthy vegan holiday feast.”
Generation Mutant: Occupiers are the Natural Spawn of the Progressive Movement
Watching the “Occupy Wall Street” mutants (as I less-than-affectionately call them) riot on Thursday as part of their “Day of Action,” I couldn’t help but notice a striking resemblance to children throwing temper tantrums. And I couldn’t help but think: Why would adults act this way?.....The only thing more prevalent among the “occupiers” than body lice is their sense of entitlement. They’re entitled to forgiveness of the college loans they willingly took out. They can trespass on private property and stay as long as they like. They claim to represent the “99 percent” of the country not among the wealthiest 1 percent. But do they?...If there is any good to come from the “Occupy” movement it’s that it can serve as a reminder of how special and important liberty is. After all, if a tiny group of committed Utopian socialists can’t create a tiny socialist Utopia when it’s just them in a park, where is this notion likely to succeed?
When Manly Virtue Died
These are difficult and perilous times for boys. A distorted culture has robbed them of virtue to measure themselves against. The good once associated with masculinity in a patriarchal society has been tossed out with the bad. This, alas, is the era of feminist ascendency........"Why are there so many boys and men who are irresponsible, unmotivated, unchivalrous, selfish, lazy?" asks Bill Bennett. "Why do so many boys and men spend so much time in pointless and soulless activities inconsiderate of others, absorbed in self or mindless technology?" He doesn't answer the question, but he gives cause for reflection in one volume with examples of man at work and play, governing, soldiering, praying, demonstrating being responsible for families. The men in the stories are not merely slouching toward technology. Times have changed, he argues, but the need for virtue and character in man has not. That's a tough sell.
Four Legacies of Feminism
They have made life -- and life for women -- worse. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s feminist magnum opus, The Feminine Mystique, we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore. And that perspective doesn’t make feminism look good.
Assassinating Reality
“The Kennedy cult,” Frank Rich writes in a New York Times Magazine piece, “generally gets a waiver on reality checks.” Perhaps this cultist, who confesses to finding the thousand-day presidency “beautiful, even erotic,” counted on such a waiver when writing his delusional commemoration of the 35th president’s assassination....These memes proved less enduring, and found fewer believers, than the one surrounding the Kennedy assassination. But they relied on the same template: imagine political enemies behind horrific events. The template tells us little of the events themselves but much about the political obsessions of those relying upon it. So strong is the faith of true believers that they discount inconvenient facts when they clash with the narrative. For the Frank Rich-segment of the population that relies on mindless, a priori assessments of events, the pull of a story that is comforting is greater than the pull of the story that is true.
Bureaucracy Is About Procedure, Not Outcome
A Lawyer who fell 45ft down a mine shaft died after fire chiefs refused to mount an immediate rescue operation because of health and safety fears. Alison Hume, 44, was left lying in agony in the cold and dark for eight hours with several broken bones.......Mrs Hume was still conscious but had a collapsed lung, several broken ribs and a broken sternum........While the rescue operation was in progress, group commander Paul Stewart arrived as a media relations officer. He assumed command after realising he was the most senior officer there. His first move was to stop a paramedic who was already strapped in a harness from being lowered. And he refused to allow colleagues to rescue her using ropes because they had not received the correct training. Mr Stewart feared they could be sued if the mission failed. Incredibly, he told a fatal accident inquiry that the operation had a ‘successful outcome’ because the casualty was ultimately removed from the shaft. Mr Stewart is still in the fire service and is on the waiting list for promotion to divisional commander.
Super Committee Fails!
How serious was the effort to find a bipartisan consensus on reining in the nation’s runaway debt? The last time the 12 members met was November 1st. Thus the failure to find common ground was seemingly inevitable, and beginning in 2013 “sequestration,” automatic cuts evenly divided between military and domestic spending, will kick in…….How unsustainable is the path on which the country currently finds itself? One of the more sobering assessments of where we’ve been moving for the last 48 years can be seen in this chart, which traces the explosion of government spending from 1963 to the present. What it reveals is an enormously successful nation in terms of GDP growth relative to the population: though we now have 67.6 percent more Americans than we did in 1963, GDP has expanded by 228.2 percent. Unfortunately, the chart also reveals the primary source of our fiscal troubles: annual social spending has increased by a stratospheric 739.2 percent.
The Tipping Point and the Crossroads
The United States finds itself at a crossroads, facing a stark reality it can no longer ignore or leave to future generations. We are presently on an irreversible path toward inevitable failure and second-class status. It all started forty-eight years ago, we now can see. The distance America has traveled down this road over the past forty-eight years -- a comparatively short period within the historical life of a nation -- is astounding.
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As I have stated before, I intend to follow those stories and accounts that you will not see on the news. These are some of the articles I found interesting over the last 24 hours and are my picks of the day.
Golden Oldies: Newt and the “cancer bed divorce” myth
With Newt Gingrich continuing to surge in the polls, plenty of stories are bubbling to the surface, including things from the distant past. And let’s face it… Newt has been knocking around US politics for an awfully long time, with tales of many of his exploits being told and retold until they pass into legend. Of course, you know what they say about legends.
New Occupy plot: Flash mobs
'Alternative forms of protest' put cities, cops at disadvantage' The Occupy movement is stepping up its confrontational tactics, plotting "alternative forms of protest," including flash mobs that can be deployed nationwide. Citing the success of last week's so-called Day of Action protests, Take to the Square, one of Occupy's main online planning forums, has devised an "Alternative Day of Action" to coincide with international Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.
Union Siphons Dues from Medicaid
Labor union greed and liberal Democrat corruption go hand in hand again. The notorious Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is collecting millions of dollars each year from the State of Michigan’s Medicaid program in the form of union dues. It even collects from parents caring for their own mentally-ill children in their own home so the children won’t have to be institutionalized. The SEIU now can claim and receive union dues from thousands, whether they want to be union members or not, because of a tricky arrangement to pay the union. It was put in place by the former left-wing Democratic governor of the state, Jennifer Granholm.
PETA Takes Aim at Turkey, Texas: Wants Town Renamed ‘Tofurkey’
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has approached the residents of Turkey, Texas with a request: rename your town “Tofurkey” in honor of Thanksgiving. Even if the name change to the mock meat vegan alternative is just for one day, PETA said it will draw attention to the treatment that turkeys in the U.S. suffer virtually every day of their lives. In return, PETA said it will treat the entire town — population 421, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — to a “delicious, healthy vegan holiday feast.”
Generation Mutant: Occupiers are the Natural Spawn of the Progressive Movement
Watching the “Occupy Wall Street” mutants (as I less-than-affectionately call them) riot on Thursday as part of their “Day of Action,” I couldn’t help but notice a striking resemblance to children throwing temper tantrums. And I couldn’t help but think: Why would adults act this way?.....The only thing more prevalent among the “occupiers” than body lice is their sense of entitlement. They’re entitled to forgiveness of the college loans they willingly took out. They can trespass on private property and stay as long as they like. They claim to represent the “99 percent” of the country not among the wealthiest 1 percent. But do they?...If there is any good to come from the “Occupy” movement it’s that it can serve as a reminder of how special and important liberty is. After all, if a tiny group of committed Utopian socialists can’t create a tiny socialist Utopia when it’s just them in a park, where is this notion likely to succeed?
When Manly Virtue Died
These are difficult and perilous times for boys. A distorted culture has robbed them of virtue to measure themselves against. The good once associated with masculinity in a patriarchal society has been tossed out with the bad. This, alas, is the era of feminist ascendency........"Why are there so many boys and men who are irresponsible, unmotivated, unchivalrous, selfish, lazy?" asks Bill Bennett. "Why do so many boys and men spend so much time in pointless and soulless activities inconsiderate of others, absorbed in self or mindless technology?" He doesn't answer the question, but he gives cause for reflection in one volume with examples of man at work and play, governing, soldiering, praying, demonstrating being responsible for families. The men in the stories are not merely slouching toward technology. Times have changed, he argues, but the need for virtue and character in man has not. That's a tough sell.
Four Legacies of Feminism
They have made life -- and life for women -- worse. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s feminist magnum opus, The Feminine Mystique, we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore. And that perspective doesn’t make feminism look good.
In sum, thanks to feminism, very many women slept with too many men for their own happiness; postponed marriage too long to find the right man to marry; are having hired hands do much of the raising of their children; and find they are dating boy-men because manly men are so rare. Feminism exemplifies the truth of the saying, “Be careful what you wish for — you may get it.”
- The first was the feminist message to young women to have sex just as men do.
- The second awful legacy of feminism has been the belief among women that they could and should postpone marriage until they developed their careers.
- The third sad feminist legacy is that so many women — and men — have bought the notion that women should work outside the home that for the first time in American history, and perhaps world history, vast numbers of children are not primarily raised by their mothers or even by an extended family member
- And the fourth awful legacy of feminism has been the demasculinization of men. For all of higher civilization’s recorded history, becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family. That notion — indeed the notion of masculinity itself — is regarded by feminism as the worst of sins: patriarchy.
Assassinating Reality
“The Kennedy cult,” Frank Rich writes in a New York Times Magazine piece, “generally gets a waiver on reality checks.” Perhaps this cultist, who confesses to finding the thousand-day presidency “beautiful, even erotic,” counted on such a waiver when writing his delusional commemoration of the 35th president’s assassination....These memes proved less enduring, and found fewer believers, than the one surrounding the Kennedy assassination. But they relied on the same template: imagine political enemies behind horrific events. The template tells us little of the events themselves but much about the political obsessions of those relying upon it. So strong is the faith of true believers that they discount inconvenient facts when they clash with the narrative. For the Frank Rich-segment of the population that relies on mindless, a priori assessments of events, the pull of a story that is comforting is greater than the pull of the story that is true.
Bureaucracy Is About Procedure, Not Outcome
A Lawyer who fell 45ft down a mine shaft died after fire chiefs refused to mount an immediate rescue operation because of health and safety fears. Alison Hume, 44, was left lying in agony in the cold and dark for eight hours with several broken bones.......Mrs Hume was still conscious but had a collapsed lung, several broken ribs and a broken sternum........While the rescue operation was in progress, group commander Paul Stewart arrived as a media relations officer. He assumed command after realising he was the most senior officer there. His first move was to stop a paramedic who was already strapped in a harness from being lowered. And he refused to allow colleagues to rescue her using ropes because they had not received the correct training. Mr Stewart feared they could be sued if the mission failed. Incredibly, he told a fatal accident inquiry that the operation had a ‘successful outcome’ because the casualty was ultimately removed from the shaft. Mr Stewart is still in the fire service and is on the waiting list for promotion to divisional commander.
Super Committee Fails!
How serious was the effort to find a bipartisan consensus on reining in the nation’s runaway debt? The last time the 12 members met was November 1st. Thus the failure to find common ground was seemingly inevitable, and beginning in 2013 “sequestration,” automatic cuts evenly divided between military and domestic spending, will kick in…….How unsustainable is the path on which the country currently finds itself? One of the more sobering assessments of where we’ve been moving for the last 48 years can be seen in this chart, which traces the explosion of government spending from 1963 to the present. What it reveals is an enormously successful nation in terms of GDP growth relative to the population: though we now have 67.6 percent more Americans than we did in 1963, GDP has expanded by 228.2 percent. Unfortunately, the chart also reveals the primary source of our fiscal troubles: annual social spending has increased by a stratospheric 739.2 percent.
The Tipping Point and the Crossroads
The United States finds itself at a crossroads, facing a stark reality it can no longer ignore or leave to future generations. We are presently on an irreversible path toward inevitable failure and second-class status. It all started forty-eight years ago, we now can see. The distance America has traveled down this road over the past forty-eight years -- a comparatively short period within the historical life of a nation -- is astounding.
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Monday, November 21, 2011
Obama's Green Energy Fail
By Alan Caruba
By Alan Caruba
Watching Secretary of Energy Steven Chu face nearly five hours of grilling by a congressional committee seeking answers to the multi-billion dollar loss taxpayers have taken after the department dispensed their money in pursuit of its Green energy program was a reminder that ideology is not a substitute for reality.
Dr. Chu received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 for his work at Bell Labs, shared with colleagues, on cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. At the time he was appointed to head the Department of Energy, he was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkley. He also had gained notice as an environmental enthusiast advocating a shift away from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas and oil—to combat “climate change.”
At one point Dr. Chu thought that painting roofs and other structures white would help reflect the sun’s radiation and save the nation and the world from global warming. Another nutty idea of his was a global “glucose economy” to create a “low-carbon economy” by shipping glucose from tropical plants would replace oil, the energy source that fuels transportation worldwide and serves a multitude of other uses.
Why any of this nonsense qualified him to be the chief administrator of the Department of Energy defies understanding. A footnote to this is the fact that the Department was the creation of the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter whose “windfall profits” legislation drove much of the oil industry out of America despite the fact that the U.S. sits atop some of the greatest deposits of oil in the world.
The loan guarantees of grants made by the Department of Energy are turning out to be a huge scandal for the Obama administration, rivaling the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running program to the drug cartels of Mexico. When you toss in an unemployment rate that rivals that of the Great Depression, it is hard to understand why anyone would suggest that Obama will be reelected.
As reported in The Washington Post in September, “A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.”
This works out to $5,077.574 per job created.
We are now familiar with the Solyndra scandal, one of the companies that received loan guarantees despite grave misgivings of DOE staff members. It declared a very predictable bankruptcy as a manufacturer of solar panels. Its failure was blamed on competition from China, also a major producer of wind turbines.
Between solar and wind technology, the failure of these two Green energy producers touted by the Obama administration, is beginning to be noticed at the same time the Environmental Protection Agency is hell-bent on closing down coal-fired electrical power plants and the companies that mine coal.
Another DOE beneficiary was BrightSource, another solar firm which received a $1.4 billion bailout. It turns out that the DOE officials involved was Sanjay Wagle, formerly a principal in Robert Kennedy, Jr’s firm. In 2010, BrightSource whose largest shareholder was Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, had $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million.
Just how many billions the Obama administration’s Green energy program will have lost by the time they are eventually calculated will be testimony to the general failure of solar and wind power. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club is celebrating Obama’s decision to delay approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, estimated to generate 20,000 jobs.
The Department of the Interior has just delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio “for up to six months” and an industry group estimates that drilling in the Utica shale affected by the delay would produce 204,500 jobs by 2015.
In mid-November, Lisa Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, wrote an opinion published in The Wall Street Journal, noting that the Obama administration’s proposed expansion of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are its first concession since its moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. The administration still opposes offshore drilling on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Sen. Murkowski pointed out that “Cuba, Mexico, the Bahamas, Canada and Russia are all moving ahead on offshore development adjacent to our borders,” noting that according to the Department of Interior, “our offshore areas hold more than 86 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Artic Oceans is projected to hold 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.”
Why anyone thought Dr. Chu was qualified in any fashion to run the Department of Energy defies the imagination. Why anyone still believes that solar and wind energy can replace traditional proven sources of energy is testimony to environmental propaganda and myth-making.
Green energy is simply one more way the Obama administration has set about destroying America’s capacity to generate the energy needed for everything requiring electricity. It is one more way to impoverish the nation. And he is running for reelection in 2012.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
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By Alan Caruba
Watching Secretary of Energy Steven Chu face nearly five hours of grilling by a congressional committee seeking answers to the multi-billion dollar loss taxpayers have taken after the department dispensed their money in pursuit of its Green energy program was a reminder that ideology is not a substitute for reality.
Dr. Chu received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 for his work at Bell Labs, shared with colleagues, on cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. At the time he was appointed to head the Department of Energy, he was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkley. He also had gained notice as an environmental enthusiast advocating a shift away from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas and oil—to combat “climate change.”
At one point Dr. Chu thought that painting roofs and other structures white would help reflect the sun’s radiation and save the nation and the world from global warming. Another nutty idea of his was a global “glucose economy” to create a “low-carbon economy” by shipping glucose from tropical plants would replace oil, the energy source that fuels transportation worldwide and serves a multitude of other uses.
Why any of this nonsense qualified him to be the chief administrator of the Department of Energy defies understanding. A footnote to this is the fact that the Department was the creation of the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter whose “windfall profits” legislation drove much of the oil industry out of America despite the fact that the U.S. sits atop some of the greatest deposits of oil in the world.
The loan guarantees of grants made by the Department of Energy are turning out to be a huge scandal for the Obama administration, rivaling the Department of Justice’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running program to the drug cartels of Mexico. When you toss in an unemployment rate that rivals that of the Great Depression, it is hard to understand why anyone would suggest that Obama will be reelected.
As reported in The Washington Post in September, “A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.”
This works out to $5,077.574 per job created.
We are now familiar with the Solyndra scandal, one of the companies that received loan guarantees despite grave misgivings of DOE staff members. It declared a very predictable bankruptcy as a manufacturer of solar panels. Its failure was blamed on competition from China, also a major producer of wind turbines.
Between solar and wind technology, the failure of these two Green energy producers touted by the Obama administration, is beginning to be noticed at the same time the Environmental Protection Agency is hell-bent on closing down coal-fired electrical power plants and the companies that mine coal.
Another DOE beneficiary was BrightSource, another solar firm which received a $1.4 billion bailout. It turns out that the DOE officials involved was Sanjay Wagle, formerly a principal in Robert Kennedy, Jr’s firm. In 2010, BrightSource whose largest shareholder was Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, had $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million.
Just how many billions the Obama administration’s Green energy program will have lost by the time they are eventually calculated will be testimony to the general failure of solar and wind power. Meanwhile, the Sierra Club is celebrating Obama’s decision to delay approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, estimated to generate 20,000 jobs.
The Department of the Interior has just delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio “for up to six months” and an industry group estimates that drilling in the Utica shale affected by the delay would produce 204,500 jobs by 2015.
In mid-November, Lisa Murkowski, a Senator from Alaska, wrote an opinion published in The Wall Street Journal, noting that the Obama administration’s proposed expansion of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are its first concession since its moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. The administration still opposes offshore drilling on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Sen. Murkowski pointed out that “Cuba, Mexico, the Bahamas, Canada and Russia are all moving ahead on offshore development adjacent to our borders,” noting that according to the Department of Interior, “our offshore areas hold more than 86 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Artic Oceans is projected to hold 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.”
Why anyone thought Dr. Chu was qualified in any fashion to run the Department of Energy defies the imagination. Why anyone still believes that solar and wind energy can replace traditional proven sources of energy is testimony to environmental propaganda and myth-making.
Green energy is simply one more way the Obama administration has set about destroying America’s capacity to generate the energy needed for everything requiring electricity. It is one more way to impoverish the nation. And he is running for reelection in 2012.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Observations From the Back Row
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Italy Looks Like This Cycle’s Lehman Brothers
There has been considerable discussion as to whether the potential Greek default makes it this cycle’s Lehman Brothers, but that is surely wrong. Greece is much too small to destroy large areas of the world economy, as did the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. It is also being bailed out on exceptionally favorable, not to say squishy terms, as was Bear Stearns, where shareholders received an entirely unjustified $10 per share from J.P. Morgan Chase. To be Lehman Brothers, one must be a previously undoubted name, albeit with hidden weaknesses in management, whose bankruptcy is large enough to disrupt the entire global economic system and plunge it into depression for years thereafter. There is surely only one candidate for such an honor: it is not Greece, Portugal or Ireland (too small) or Spain (getting better management, and stronger than it looks – think Citigroup) but Italy.
Italy defaults on debt and sends lenders broke? So be it
“Contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker’s shop in London …” — David Hume, Of Public Credit (1742)
The interesting question to ask about the European debt crisis is not what sort of bailout package will work, or which Italian or Greek government should oversee it. Economic forces will overwhelm any political theatrics. The relevant question is how European countries were able to borrow so much in the first place. How did Italy end up with debts of 120% of GDP, or €1.9 trillion? How could Greece, a long-standing economic basket case, borrow as much as 150% of its GDP? The answer seems to demonstrate either the gross stupidity or masterful sophistication of financial markets. These countries, especially Greece, should not have been attractive to lenders. Greece had defaulted routinely on its debts since the early 19th century, and its finances (even the faked ones) were demonstrably shambolic right up to the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008.
Italy Looks Like This Cycle’s Lehman Brothers
There has been considerable discussion as to whether the potential Greek default makes it this cycle’s Lehman Brothers, but that is surely wrong. Greece is much too small to destroy large areas of the world economy, as did the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. It is also being bailed out on exceptionally favorable, not to say squishy terms, as was Bear Stearns, where shareholders received an entirely unjustified $10 per share from J.P. Morgan Chase. To be Lehman Brothers, one must be a previously undoubted name, albeit with hidden weaknesses in management, whose bankruptcy is large enough to disrupt the entire global economic system and plunge it into depression for years thereafter. There is surely only one candidate for such an honor: it is not Greece, Portugal or Ireland (too small) or Spain (getting better management, and stronger than it looks – think Citigroup) but Italy.
Italy defaults on debt and sends lenders broke? So be it
“Contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker’s shop in London …” — David Hume, Of Public Credit (1742)
The interesting question to ask about the European debt crisis is not what sort of bailout package will work, or which Italian or Greek government should oversee it. Economic forces will overwhelm any political theatrics. The relevant question is how European countries were able to borrow so much in the first place. How did Italy end up with debts of 120% of GDP, or €1.9 trillion? How could Greece, a long-standing economic basket case, borrow as much as 150% of its GDP? The answer seems to demonstrate either the gross stupidity or masterful sophistication of financial markets. These countries, especially Greece, should not have been attractive to lenders. Greece had defaulted routinely on its debts since the early 19th century, and its finances (even the faked ones) were demonstrably shambolic right up to the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
A Green Love Affair to Remember!
By Rich Kozlovich
The Netherlands alternative energy scheme using windmills was touted to the world as a great success story, and an example to the rest of the world. Yet time always tells the real tale. They built their first sea-based wind turbines in 2006 believing this was their great hope to cut carbon emissions and generate much needed electricity. But the Dutch have finally fallen out of love with their windmills. Why?
The article linked above goes on to say:
“36 turbines -- each one the height of a 30-storey building -- produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 100,000 households each year. But five years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour -- some 4.5 billion euros last year.”
Now the same reality that faces the Dutch that everyone else has had to face that has tried this foolish system finally comes to the fore.
“Arguments over the high cost and maintenance of sea-based turbines, as well as complaints from residents about unsightly land-based models, have brought the Dutch to an impasse. Offshore wind farms produce more electricity than onshore ones but it costs twice as much as onshore wind power due to the higher cost of materials, more expensive drilling methods, and more complex maintenance”
One person was quoted as saying:
"People don't want big wind turbines in their backyards," said Kasper Wallet, an energy consultant. "They think it will impact the value of their property."
The only reason they say this is because they know that all this alternative energy and carbon emissions claptrap isn't necessary...and expensive. If they really thought that they were going to run out of electricity without wind turbines or the world was facing disaster due to carbon emissions they wouldn't utter a word against this. They now know he truth and are acting on it.
In short, if they wish to continue down this road they will pay dearly out of their pockets. Low cost energy is the key to successful economies, and I think they are finally getting it, especially since all this claptrap about emissions is going to be thrown out the window. Alternative energy cannot survive without massive tax breaks and/or subsidies.
The driving force for alternative energy during the Carter years was the oil embargo from OPEC and fear of using up all the traditional sources such as oil, coal and natural gas. Well, that program was a big failure, but since no one tried it before they could at least claim ignorance. But now we know it was a failure and yet we continue to pursue that failed policy. As I said, at least Carter could reasonably claim ignorance…..what is everyone’s excuse now?
Now the driving force for alternative energy was the fear of lost “fossil” fuels and global warming. Two things have occurred since this stupidity was once again taken up. One, we know we have enough oil, natural gas and coal to last for another 200 years. Two, we also know that global warming stopped ten years ago and the warming that did take place was part of a natural process that ended sooner than I would have liked. During years past the warming periods made life much better for every living thing on the planet, and it was a lot warmer than it is now. Also….none of the disasters they are predicting for today occurred then, and they wouldn’t have occurred now.
So that brings us to the point. There is no need for these expensive alternative energy programs that are at best unreliable, and so unreliable that traditional power plants have to be built and maintained in order to supply power when these stupid green sources fail to work, such as the sun stops shining in the winter and the wind stops blowing in the summer. In order to have ‘alternative’ energy we have to pay for energy we aren’t using in order to pay for energy we don’t need. How stupid can we get?
So what did they base their predictions on? It certainly wasn’t science….you know…..the stuff you can observe and prove, because the years of past warming periods didn’t produce those disasters. Therefore they must have based their scaremongering predictions on philosophy; green philosophy! The religious recognize this as a definition of “faith”. And among scientists too…. amazing ….don’t you think? Of course the 'faith' exercised among these scaremongering scientists is much like the faith of the "rice Christians" of China who converted to avoid starvation, and as long as the rice kept coming they remained "Christians". Scientists are "grant chasing greenies". As long as government grant money keeps pouring in they will provide all the green faith they want.
Only, it isn’t really faith in the Biblical sense. According to the apostle Paul, faith is based on past history. In other words; there is enough evidence of past predictions coming true that one could reasonably expect future predictions to come true also. Green faith is voodoo, not to mention stupid. Because everything they predict and everything they put into place is anti-humanity. If they already haven’t done so, the green movement will end up killing more people than did all the socialist monsters of the 20th century, such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
That doesn’t even include all the little socialist monsters like Pot Pol. For clarification; communism is the left wing of socialism and fascism is the right wing. But both are central planning systems that impose the idea on people that the state is all. Just like the green movement, both green and socialism are alternative religions. And just as big a failure as alternative energy and the Dutch are finally catching on.
We need to get this also. Any successes in alternative energy are like any successes in socialism. They are temporary aberrations that time will expose and fix.
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This Week With Alan Caruba
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Alan’s work has a sense of timelessness about it, so anyone perusing these articles in the future will find them equally insightful as they were when originally written. Alan posts daily on his blog, Warning Signs. The right side of this blog is a section called Caruba's Corner: Green Myths and Other Lies where I have been posting links to Alan's articles by topic. For his past works go to The National Anxiety Center. I would also recommend reading his last book, Right Answers.
Let's start today with Alan's Cartoon Round-up
System Failure on a Global Scale
We are living in times when the structures involving the global financial system, national security, and self-governance are under attack, decaying, or just self-destructing due to all the ills to which humanity is prone.
Super Committee Suicide
By the weekend, news reports indicated that the congressional Super Committee was closing in on an agreement. The deficit-cutting panel is mandated to trim at least $1.2 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years and, failing an agreement, automatic cuts would begin in 2013, after the national elections.
Green Pillage and Plunder
To understand what is behind all the talk, the legislation, the protests in support of “global warming”, now commonly called “climate change”, you have to understand the millions, if not billions, at stake for the liars who dreamed up this greatest hoax of the modern era.
Iran's Nuclear Armageddon
During the long years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union faced off against each other, both having an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, did the prospect of a real threat to the homeland arise. After a U.S. naval blockade was imposed, the Russians took their missiles home.
Missing George W. Bush
It's not fashionable to speak well of Obama's predecessor, but it grows more difficult by the day to find anything good to say about the incumbent President who recently opined that Americans are “lazy” and have "lost our ambition." As I recall he spent his first year in office going around the world apologizing for what he deemed America’s past sins and exceptualism.
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Saturday, November 19, 2011
DDT Picks For the Day
DDT not harmful as a malaria spray- minister
The chairperson of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Committee of Health Ministers has disputed that Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is harmful to human health when used as an indoor residual spray for malaria elimination. Answering a question during a press conference following the SADC E8 Ministers Malaria Elimination meeting in Maun recently, Dr Richard Nchabi Kamwi who is also the Minister of Health and Social Service in Namibia, said that DDT was banned for agricultural usage and not for public health practice.
My Take – Even positive DDT articles just have to load it up with misinformation and speculation. DDT did not impact bird populations negatively, in fact it was just the opposite. As for all of these afflictions listed….I have serious misgivings that any pesticide has a biological mechanism to cause all of these problems. Of course with DDT they can list anything and people will accept it without question.
Call for government to stop using DDT
The government should sop using the notorious pesticide DDT because of its impact on water resources, Rand Water, the largest water board in the country, has told Parliament. ......Because the ornamental horticultural sector was such a large water user, it should be included in the white paper’s planning process for the impact of climate change on the water sector, the board said. It also recommended that, because of uncertainty in future climate trends, the government prohibit activities that compromise water quality and quantity.
My Take - We already know that his claims about DDT are wrong and his rationale regarding climate change shows he has no idea what he is talking about.
The weighty problem of POPs.
Children exposed to certain persistent chemicals in the womb have a higher risk of being overweight, according to research published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives……The findings provide new evidence of the negative health effects of exposure to contaminants known as POPs – shorthand for persistent organic pollutants. The results add to growing evidence that suggests POPs – by acting as endocrine disruptors – can influence weight gain.
My Take – It is funny, because weight gain is always about calories in and calories out. How did they find out about these people’s diet? They gave them a questionnaire. That isn’t science, especially when it is such a small number and an isolated society. And after all is said and done what of their results and conclusions?
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The chairperson of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Committee of Health Ministers has disputed that Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is harmful to human health when used as an indoor residual spray for malaria elimination. Answering a question during a press conference following the SADC E8 Ministers Malaria Elimination meeting in Maun recently, Dr Richard Nchabi Kamwi who is also the Minister of Health and Social Service in Namibia, said that DDT was banned for agricultural usage and not for public health practice.
My Take – Even positive DDT articles just have to load it up with misinformation and speculation. DDT did not impact bird populations negatively, in fact it was just the opposite. As for all of these afflictions listed….I have serious misgivings that any pesticide has a biological mechanism to cause all of these problems. Of course with DDT they can list anything and people will accept it without question.
Call for government to stop using DDT
The government should sop using the notorious pesticide DDT because of its impact on water resources, Rand Water, the largest water board in the country, has told Parliament. ......Because the ornamental horticultural sector was such a large water user, it should be included in the white paper’s planning process for the impact of climate change on the water sector, the board said. It also recommended that, because of uncertainty in future climate trends, the government prohibit activities that compromise water quality and quantity.
My Take - We already know that his claims about DDT are wrong and his rationale regarding climate change shows he has no idea what he is talking about.
The weighty problem of POPs.
Children exposed to certain persistent chemicals in the womb have a higher risk of being overweight, according to research published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives……The findings provide new evidence of the negative health effects of exposure to contaminants known as POPs – shorthand for persistent organic pollutants. The results add to growing evidence that suggests POPs – by acting as endocrine disruptors – can influence weight gain.
My Take – It is funny, because weight gain is always about calories in and calories out. How did they find out about these people’s diet? They gave them a questionnaire. That isn’t science, especially when it is such a small number and an isolated society. And after all is said and done what of their results and conclusions?
"Results: After multivariable adjustment, we found an increased relative risk of overweight in the 3rd tertile of PCB exposure (RR=1.70, 95% CI=1.09-2.64) and the 2nd tertile of DDE exposure (RR=1.67, 95% CI=1.10-2.55), but no association with DDT exposure in the population overall. Associations between overweight and PCB and DDE concentrations were strongest in girls (P-interaction between 0.01 and 0.28); DDT was associated with overweight only in boys. For DDT we observed stronger associations in children with fat intakes at or above compared to below the median but this interaction was not significant (P-interaction 0.05).
• Conclusions: This study suggests that prenatal OC exposures may be associated with overweight in children and that sex and high-fat intake may influence susceptibility."Everything is caveats, speculation and the junk science of POPs and endocrine disruption. They won't even say outright that fat intake actually influences weight gain. This isn’t science.
###
Logical Fallacy of the Week: Week 16, Negative Conclusion From Affirmative Premises
...
Negative conclusion from affirmative premises is a syllogistic fallacy committed when a categorical syllogism has a negative conclusion yet both premises are affirmative. The inability of affirmative premises to reach a negative conclusion is usually cited as one of the basic rules of constructing a valid categorical syllogism.
Statements in syllogisms can be identified as the following forms:
a: All A is B. (affirmative)
e: No A is B. (negative)
i: Some A is B. (affirmative)
o: Some A is not B. (negative)
The rule states that a syllogism in which both premises are of form a or i (affirmative) cannot reach a conclusion of form e or o (negative). Exactly one of the premises must be negative to construct a valid syllogism with a negative conclusion. (A syllogism with two negative premises commits the related fallacy of exclusive premises.)......
Follow the link for the rest of the explanation!.
Negative conclusion from affirmative premises is a syllogistic fallacy committed when a categorical syllogism has a negative conclusion yet both premises are affirmative. The inability of affirmative premises to reach a negative conclusion is usually cited as one of the basic rules of constructing a valid categorical syllogism.
Statements in syllogisms can be identified as the following forms:
a: All A is B. (affirmative)
e: No A is B. (negative)
i: Some A is B. (affirmative)
o: Some A is not B. (negative)
The rule states that a syllogism in which both premises are of form a or i (affirmative) cannot reach a conclusion of form e or o (negative). Exactly one of the premises must be negative to construct a valid syllogism with a negative conclusion. (A syllogism with two negative premises commits the related fallacy of exclusive premises.)......
Follow the link for the rest of the explanation!.
American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week 46
The presence of linked articles here are merely a way of showing what is going on, whether I agree or disagree with the positions presented. Rich Kozlovich
CANCER
Hormonal water tied to prostate cancer?
Birth control pills are one of the most effective methods of preventing unintended pregnancy - so one wonders how the pills could give men cause for concern.
My Take – I was caught between placing this under CANCER or SCARE MONGERING. But since the audience that would be most concerned about this would most likely pick up on “prostate cancer” fastest, I chose CANCER.
DIET
Weight-loss therapy: A family affair
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a psychotherapeutic approach used to modify problematic behaviors, is recognized as a viable means of encouraging weight loss in obese and overweight patients. Now, a study by Italian researchers has found that the positive behavioral changes in these patients can even extend to their family members.
Cholesterol checks in kids: Good sense or too much information?
New guidelines from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) make a surprising recommendation: There should be general one-time screening of children ages nine to 11 for high cholesterol.
A grain of prevention?
Is eating more whole grains also an effective way to lower the toll of colorectal cancer in the U.S.?
FITNESS
Run from too much advice
Given all the different advice out there about how to start running and how to most effectively train for fitness, it's hard to know which way is best. However, in an article for The New York Times, Gina Kolata writes that the best advice is probably to just listen to your own body.
GENERAL HEALTH
Virtual screening: Colonoscopy without the hassle
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.
HEART
Clean teeth, healthy heart?
A new, large study suggests that receiving regular dental cleanings may be linked to a lower heart attack risk.
[X]arelto marks the spot
The results of a double-blind, controlled clinical trial - the gold standard in medical testing - bring welcome news to patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), meaning those with acute angina or heart attack.
Can I have some more (statins), please?
Nearly one-fourth of patients with obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) are not being treated with a statin drug, despite the overwhelming evidence of benefit.
Stemming the tide of heart failure
New research shows promise for the use of the heart's own stem cells in treating heart failure.
Lipitor vs. Crestor: A Draw
The evidence supporting the benefits of using statins to reduce cardiovascular events has been well documented, especially in the prevention of subsequent events in people who have suffered a heart attack (secondary prevention).
LEGIMATE WARNINGS
Be careful: What’s in your drink might not be what you think
Intentional drugging is not often talked about, yet the results of a new Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report reminds all of us - especially women - of the dangers associated with leaving your drink unattended.
PHARMA
FDA antibiotic regulations under the microscope
The FDA has just rejected two petitions to ban a long list of antibiotics used in food animal production.
SCARE MONGERING
Attack of the Killer Cosmetics?
In an excellent refutation of junk science, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Angela Logomasini has torn down, point by point, claims made in a recent report from the Oregon Environmental Council.
TOBACCO
ACSH & ACS encourages smokers to kick the habit
Today marks the 36th annual Great American Smokeout - a yearly event sponsored by the American Cancer Society that encourages smokers to quit for at least one day in the hope that it will eventually lead to quitting for good.
Why we can’t ignore tobacco harm reduction
"More than two-thirds of American smokers want to quit, but only a fraction actually do, underscoring a need for more services, messages, and access to medications to help them kick the habit," writes Betsy McKay of The Wall Street Journal.
THIS AND THAT
E.U. fears X-ray scanners, among other things
True to form, the E.U. continues down the path of hyper-caution and decided Monday to ban the use of X-ray body scanners in all European airports "in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety," the European Commission stated.
VACCINES
TDAP vaccine: It’s not just for kids
Most grown-ups think about the TDAP vaccine (against tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis), if at all, only when they glance over childhood immunization records, and forget about it thereafter. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now advising older adults to think again.
If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more? Please Donate Now!
###
This Week With Steve Milloy
By Rich Kozlovich
There are times when Steve Milloy's blog JunkScience.com is so full of information that I couldn't begin to link all the articles. He covers every junk science issue imaginable. In the future I have in mind to do a daily up-date on his articles, but today, I am only going to cover the fracking issue, primarily because it affects my state; Ohio. Fracking is going to happen in Ohio.....get over it!
Obama delays (kills?) 200,000 shale jobs in Ohio
Obama, not coal, is the shale gas industry’s enemy.
Editor's Note: I have reproduced this next article in full because it is so rich in irony. This is how the business world actually works. Everyone is under the impression that business is all on the same page. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although there are many long term thinkers in industry, the reality is that most businesses willingly sell out competing businesses to get the profits the other businesses were getting; irrespective of the long term consequences. In this case it is coal over natural gas. This article outlines this clearly. Please go to the original for additional links. It started with the Whiskey Act of 1791 and it has continued with ever industry ever since. It is even believed that one of the real reasons Nixon was so hot to get rid of DDT was so that other chemical companies who were his supporters could sell more expensive pesticides. Industry is full of quarterly thinkers. What does that mean? They only see the first through fourth quarter profits and fail to see the long consequences of their corrupt short term thinking. I would like to thank Steve for allowing me to reproduce his articles. RK
Junk Science War: Fracking Quakes and ‘Dirty Faces’
By Steve Milloy
November 17, 2011
Though I write to defend the natural gas industry from the junk science hurled at it and the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), I do so with mixed emotions.
Two recent government reports, one from the United Kingdom and the other from Oklahoma, have tried to draw a connection between fracking and seismic activity occurring in those areas. In the UK, the seismic activity registered 3 on the Richter scale (vibrations similar to a passing truck). In Oklahoma, the activity registered between 1.0 and 2.8. Neither report could attribute with any certainty the seismic activity to the local fracking, as that would be nearly impossible to do given the multifactorial nature of seismic activity.
So: of the more than one million fracking or fracking-like operations that have occurred, unattributable seismic activity has been detected twice. Moreover, no structural damage was attributed to any of the seismic activity.
Scientifically and from a risk management perspective, fracking should be off the hook. But of course it’s not, because radical environmentalists loathe fracking — cheap natural gas means that the world won’t be giving up fossil fuels anytime soon — and so they have their long knives out for it. You can safely bet that anytime seismic activity coincides with fracking activity, they will use that coincidence to whip up fear.
And if it’s not earthquakes, it will be fracking fluids in drinking water. Or fracking’s greenhouse gas emissions. Or whatever can be dreamed up to scare people about the expanding industry of extracting natural gas from shale formations.
As we’ve learned with other environmental scaremongering, there are countless junk science-based ways to scare the public, and you can rest assured the radicals will dream them up and employ them to great effect.
What this means is that the shale gas industry will be under continual attack, and that the attacks won’t stop until fracking does.
However, while I’m more than happy to spotlight and debunk the enviros’ use of junk science, I’m also more than a little annoyed at the junk science that the shale gas industry itself is apparently quite happy to use against its brethren fossil fuels.
If you’ve followed the 21st century environmentalist war against fossil fuel, you’ve probably heard of the “Dirty Faces” anti-coal campaign: advertisements featuring coal-smudged faces, proclaiming that coal is “dirty” because its emits greenhouse gas carbon dioxide — ironically, a colorless and odorless gas.
CEO Aubrey McClendon figured that he would do his part to help drive the coal industry out of business to drive up demand for natural gas, the current glut of which was caused by the technology breakthrough of fracking. Though cap-and-trade died in the last Congress, McClendon and Chesapeake are back to their anti-coal campaign, this time waging a proxy war through the American Lung Association.
The Obama administration is waging an all-out war against the coal industry though the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and the Mine Safety Administration. The EPA has enlisted paid allies like the American Lung Association to attack the coal industry and politicians that support it.
to the American Lung Association’s 2010 report, Chesapeake Energy provided the funds that allowed the American Lung Association to create a new public service campaign (called “Fighting for Air”). It includes junk science-based fear mongering about premature deaths, asthma, and other heart and lung effects allegedly caused by ambient air quality. The Lung Association uses the campaign to help defend the EPA’s war against coal.
So while Chesapeake fights environmentalist junk science on fracking, it actually funds junk science to use against its rivals. To some people this may make business sense, but it’s shortsighted.
Helping the EPA defeat coal will win the gas industry no brownie points. That’s not how the all-powerful and unaccountable EPA needs to operate. Plus, Chesapeake is aiding and abetting enviro-radicals who, as soon as they have finished off the coal industry, will set their sights on shale gas. Divide-and-conquer is one of their bread-and-butter techniques.
Knowing that the junk science war against fracking has just begun, it’s more than frustrating to know that the frackers are willing to do the same to another innocent party.
Chesapeake’s problem is not the coal industry. Its problem is the radical environmentalists who are purposefully blocking U.S. economic recovery and growth in part through their war against fossil fuel production. A growing economy would actually require more energy, including gas, and gas prices would rise as demand increased.
We need to develop all forms of energy: coal, gas, oil, nuclear, wind, solar, whatever. Energy is not the zero-sum game — swap coal for gas — that McClendon seems to think it is. And paying the enemy to employ junk science is not the right way to gain friends and influence people.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
EPA: ‘No reason’ is reason enough to persecute fracking
“The absence of data does not prove anything,” says the self-proclaimed non-political Obama EPA appointee.
###
There are times when Steve Milloy's blog JunkScience.com is so full of information that I couldn't begin to link all the articles. He covers every junk science issue imaginable. In the future I have in mind to do a daily up-date on his articles, but today, I am only going to cover the fracking issue, primarily because it affects my state; Ohio. Fracking is going to happen in Ohio.....get over it!
Obama delays (kills?) 200,000 shale jobs in Ohio
Obama, not coal, is the shale gas industry’s enemy.
Editor's Note: I have reproduced this next article in full because it is so rich in irony. This is how the business world actually works. Everyone is under the impression that business is all on the same page. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although there are many long term thinkers in industry, the reality is that most businesses willingly sell out competing businesses to get the profits the other businesses were getting; irrespective of the long term consequences. In this case it is coal over natural gas. This article outlines this clearly. Please go to the original for additional links. It started with the Whiskey Act of 1791 and it has continued with ever industry ever since. It is even believed that one of the real reasons Nixon was so hot to get rid of DDT was so that other chemical companies who were his supporters could sell more expensive pesticides. Industry is full of quarterly thinkers. What does that mean? They only see the first through fourth quarter profits and fail to see the long consequences of their corrupt short term thinking. I would like to thank Steve for allowing me to reproduce his articles. RK
Junk Science War: Fracking Quakes and ‘Dirty Faces’
By Steve Milloy
November 17, 2011
Though I write to defend the natural gas industry from the junk science hurled at it and the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), I do so with mixed emotions.
Two recent government reports, one from the United Kingdom and the other from Oklahoma, have tried to draw a connection between fracking and seismic activity occurring in those areas. In the UK, the seismic activity registered 3 on the Richter scale (vibrations similar to a passing truck). In Oklahoma, the activity registered between 1.0 and 2.8. Neither report could attribute with any certainty the seismic activity to the local fracking, as that would be nearly impossible to do given the multifactorial nature of seismic activity.
So: of the more than one million fracking or fracking-like operations that have occurred, unattributable seismic activity has been detected twice. Moreover, no structural damage was attributed to any of the seismic activity.
Scientifically and from a risk management perspective, fracking should be off the hook. But of course it’s not, because radical environmentalists loathe fracking — cheap natural gas means that the world won’t be giving up fossil fuels anytime soon — and so they have their long knives out for it. You can safely bet that anytime seismic activity coincides with fracking activity, they will use that coincidence to whip up fear.
And if it’s not earthquakes, it will be fracking fluids in drinking water. Or fracking’s greenhouse gas emissions. Or whatever can be dreamed up to scare people about the expanding industry of extracting natural gas from shale formations.
As we’ve learned with other environmental scaremongering, there are countless junk science-based ways to scare the public, and you can rest assured the radicals will dream them up and employ them to great effect.
What this means is that the shale gas industry will be under continual attack, and that the attacks won’t stop until fracking does.
However, while I’m more than happy to spotlight and debunk the enviros’ use of junk science, I’m also more than a little annoyed at the junk science that the shale gas industry itself is apparently quite happy to use against its brethren fossil fuels.
If you’ve followed the 21st century environmentalist war against fossil fuel, you’ve probably heard of the “Dirty Faces” anti-coal campaign: advertisements featuring coal-smudged faces, proclaiming that coal is “dirty” because its emits greenhouse gas carbon dioxide — ironically, a colorless and odorless gas.
CEO Aubrey McClendon figured that he would do his part to help drive the coal industry out of business to drive up demand for natural gas, the current glut of which was caused by the technology breakthrough of fracking. Though cap-and-trade died in the last Congress, McClendon and Chesapeake are back to their anti-coal campaign, this time waging a proxy war through the American Lung Association.
The Obama administration is waging an all-out war against the coal industry though the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and the Mine Safety Administration. The EPA has enlisted paid allies like the American Lung Association to attack the coal industry and politicians that support it.
to the American Lung Association’s 2010 report, Chesapeake Energy provided the funds that allowed the American Lung Association to create a new public service campaign (called “Fighting for Air”). It includes junk science-based fear mongering about premature deaths, asthma, and other heart and lung effects allegedly caused by ambient air quality. The Lung Association uses the campaign to help defend the EPA’s war against coal.
So while Chesapeake fights environmentalist junk science on fracking, it actually funds junk science to use against its rivals. To some people this may make business sense, but it’s shortsighted.
Helping the EPA defeat coal will win the gas industry no brownie points. That’s not how the all-powerful and unaccountable EPA needs to operate. Plus, Chesapeake is aiding and abetting enviro-radicals who, as soon as they have finished off the coal industry, will set their sights on shale gas. Divide-and-conquer is one of their bread-and-butter techniques.
Knowing that the junk science war against fracking has just begun, it’s more than frustrating to know that the frackers are willing to do the same to another innocent party.
Chesapeake’s problem is not the coal industry. Its problem is the radical environmentalists who are purposefully blocking U.S. economic recovery and growth in part through their war against fossil fuel production. A growing economy would actually require more energy, including gas, and gas prices would rise as demand increased.
We need to develop all forms of energy: coal, gas, oil, nuclear, wind, solar, whatever. Energy is not the zero-sum game — swap coal for gas — that McClendon seems to think it is. And paying the enemy to employ junk science is not the right way to gain friends and influence people.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
EPA: ‘No reason’ is reason enough to persecute fracking
“The absence of data does not prove anything,” says the self-proclaimed non-political Obama EPA appointee.
###
Friday, November 18, 2011
Observations From the Back Row: 11/18/11
These are my picks for the day.
Netherlands Sliding into the Abyss
In a new interview in the Dutch magazine Panorama, Geert Wilders talks about a variety of things, including his forthcoming book about Islam, which will be published in the U.S. in April. In it, he says, he’ll document the fact that “Islam is a dangerous ideology” and that “Muhammed really is one of the big bad guys” of history, whose negative influence continues to be felt today. Yes, Wilders acknowledges, there are genuinely moderate people who call themselves Muslims, and if they want to call themselves Muslims that’s fine with him – but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.
Obama The Man Behind Occupy Crackdown
Violent, lice-ridden and foul-mouthed with high self-esteem. Ignorant spoiled brats shouting incoherent rage. The Occupiers. The perfect product of the government education machine. Obama's shock troops in the war to "utterly transform America." In the last two months, the Occupy movement has spawned hundreds of illegal camps and many reports of drug overdoses, rape, robbery and death. The American public has had enough. Obama got the message. In the last two weeks, cities across the country, led by some of the most liberal pro-Occupy, pro-Obama mayors, have used police to clear the camps. What happened? Only a month ago, the President praised Occupy, saying the protesters "express the frustrations that t he American people feel."
Penn State: The Banality of Collaborative Evil
When the Israeli government captured Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, journalist Hannah Arendt was struck by the fact that Eichmann appeared to be a nondescript accountant type. He was not highly intelligent, and he did not appear to be particularly vicious. This led Arendt to the conclusion that anyone could, under the right ideological circumstances, become evil. Evil, she said, was banal…..But there is truth to the notion that anyone, given the right amount of self-interest, can be sucked into collaborating with evil…..I thought banal was an unusual word to use here, but in reality evil really is quite common. We have to get this….there really is such a thing as good and evil and that evil exists everyday and everywhere, and as a human trait it is quite predictable. Scary isn’t it?
Union-Backed Occupiers on the March
The sudden eviction of Occupy Wall Street squatters from lower Manhattan hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of organized labor for their increasingly violent anarchist and neo-communist brethren. The occupiers now say they plan to shut down Wall Street on Nov. 17 and occupy the New York subway. One Occupy Wall Street supporter was captured on video saying radicals plan to “burn New York City to the ground.” The movement that has spread across America is what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke, a former SEIU boss, calls an “anti-banking jihad
NATO Hands Future of Libya to Islamists
On October 31, NATO’s mission in Libya officially ended. The Friends of Libya, an alliance of 13 countries led by the U.S. “ally” of Qatar, is in the driver’s seat. The sheikdom is the chief backer of the Libyan Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Libya’s secularists are warning that Qatar is using its leadership position to bring its Islamist allies to power.
Waxman: Solyndra, Green Subsidies Saving People from ‘Fires, Droughts, and Floods’
Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that Department of Energy subsidies, such as the the failed $535-million loan guarantee to solar company Sloyndra, were “saving” people from “fires, droughts and floods” that are caused by global warming.
The Accountability Charade
You can't spell "accountability" without "A," "C" and "T." But in Washington, government officials routinely get away with "taking personal responsibility" by mouthing empty words devoid of action. Heads nod in collective agreement that mistakes were made. But heads never roll. The Obama administration has raised this accountability charade to an art form…….While former Democratic chief inquisitor Henry Waxman praised Chu's "reputation for integrity" as "unimpeachable," Chu came across as more Mr. Magoo than Mr. Clean.
Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman, United States Army, dies at 80
It confuses me when I see the "top news stories" filled with names from sports and Hollywood. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching American Idol as much as the next person. I genuinely admire the talent of many actors and sports figures. I also believe that many in the spotlight are involved in great humanitarian efforts. Therefore, I would not want to take away from their acts of kindness and generosity. Most, however, who constantly grab media attention are not "heros" despite our treatment as such. They are simply people who share their talent with us as they go to work each day and do their job (as we all do). This morning in an email, I received an announcement about a man who lived... and then quietly died a true hero. Although his death was in August 2008 in Boise, ID, his memory lives on.
Here is that story-
###
Netherlands Sliding into the Abyss
In a new interview in the Dutch magazine Panorama, Geert Wilders talks about a variety of things, including his forthcoming book about Islam, which will be published in the U.S. in April. In it, he says, he’ll document the fact that “Islam is a dangerous ideology” and that “Muhammed really is one of the big bad guys” of history, whose negative influence continues to be felt today. Yes, Wilders acknowledges, there are genuinely moderate people who call themselves Muslims, and if they want to call themselves Muslims that’s fine with him – but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.
Obama The Man Behind Occupy Crackdown
Violent, lice-ridden and foul-mouthed with high self-esteem. Ignorant spoiled brats shouting incoherent rage. The Occupiers. The perfect product of the government education machine. Obama's shock troops in the war to "utterly transform America." In the last two months, the Occupy movement has spawned hundreds of illegal camps and many reports of drug overdoses, rape, robbery and death. The American public has had enough. Obama got the message. In the last two weeks, cities across the country, led by some of the most liberal pro-Occupy, pro-Obama mayors, have used police to clear the camps. What happened? Only a month ago, the President praised Occupy, saying the protesters "express the frustrations that t he American people feel."
Penn State: The Banality of Collaborative Evil
When the Israeli government captured Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, journalist Hannah Arendt was struck by the fact that Eichmann appeared to be a nondescript accountant type. He was not highly intelligent, and he did not appear to be particularly vicious. This led Arendt to the conclusion that anyone could, under the right ideological circumstances, become evil. Evil, she said, was banal…..But there is truth to the notion that anyone, given the right amount of self-interest, can be sucked into collaborating with evil…..I thought banal was an unusual word to use here, but in reality evil really is quite common. We have to get this….there really is such a thing as good and evil and that evil exists everyday and everywhere, and as a human trait it is quite predictable. Scary isn’t it?
Union-Backed Occupiers on the March
The sudden eviction of Occupy Wall Street squatters from lower Manhattan hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of organized labor for their increasingly violent anarchist and neo-communist brethren. The occupiers now say they plan to shut down Wall Street on Nov. 17 and occupy the New York subway. One Occupy Wall Street supporter was captured on video saying radicals plan to “burn New York City to the ground.” The movement that has spread across America is what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke, a former SEIU boss, calls an “anti-banking jihad
NATO Hands Future of Libya to Islamists
On October 31, NATO’s mission in Libya officially ended. The Friends of Libya, an alliance of 13 countries led by the U.S. “ally” of Qatar, is in the driver’s seat. The sheikdom is the chief backer of the Libyan Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Libya’s secularists are warning that Qatar is using its leadership position to bring its Islamist allies to power.
Waxman: Solyndra, Green Subsidies Saving People from ‘Fires, Droughts, and Floods’
Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that Department of Energy subsidies, such as the the failed $535-million loan guarantee to solar company Sloyndra, were “saving” people from “fires, droughts and floods” that are caused by global warming.
The Accountability Charade
You can't spell "accountability" without "A," "C" and "T." But in Washington, government officials routinely get away with "taking personal responsibility" by mouthing empty words devoid of action. Heads nod in collective agreement that mistakes were made. But heads never roll. The Obama administration has raised this accountability charade to an art form…….While former Democratic chief inquisitor Henry Waxman praised Chu's "reputation for integrity" as "unimpeachable," Chu came across as more Mr. Magoo than Mr. Clean.
• Chu said he was "unaware" of the Department of Energy's own staff predictions two years ago that Solyndra would face a serious cash-flow crisis today.
• Chu said he was "unaware" of administration pressure on Solyndra to suppress layoff announcements until after the November 2010 midterm elections. "I don't know. I just learned about that," he shirked.
• In fact, he used the phrase "I am aware of it now" at least a half-dozen times. If there were a Nobel Prize for Unknowing, Chu would be two-time shoo-in. GOP House Energy Committee Chairman Cliff Stearns summed up:
• "We talked about the August 2009 email predicting Solyndra would be out of cash in September 2011. You knew about that, but you didn't seem to know about that.
• The PricewaterhouseCoopers concerns about Solyndra, you didn't seem real concerned or weren't aware of it.
• The White House emailing your chief of staff regarding their concerns with the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, you didn't seem to know too much about your chief of staff's awareness of that.
• The request to hold off announcement of the DOE loan, and request by your agency to Solyndra to hold off on announcing layoffs till after the midterm election, you don't have any recollection of this.
• So what I am saying is that through all of this you seem to have an unawareness."
Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman, United States Army, dies at 80
It confuses me when I see the "top news stories" filled with names from sports and Hollywood. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching American Idol as much as the next person. I genuinely admire the talent of many actors and sports figures. I also believe that many in the spotlight are involved in great humanitarian efforts. Therefore, I would not want to take away from their acts of kindness and generosity. Most, however, who constantly grab media attention are not "heros" despite our treatment as such. They are simply people who share their talent with us as they go to work each day and do their job (as we all do). This morning in an email, I received an announcement about a man who lived... and then quietly died a true hero. Although his death was in August 2008 in Boise, ID, his memory lives on.
Here is that story-
###
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Ode to Mentoring
By Rich Kozlovich
Over the course of my life I have always believed in the importance of having a mentor. During my career in the pest control industry I made a point of talking often to those with experience in our industry. For years I had a monthly audience with my good friend Tom Evans who passed away this past April, much to the grief of his family and all of his friends.
I told a friend from the Columbus that after my ‘audience’ with him I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out what he said. He then chuckled and said that, “Oh good, I thought I was the only one who didn’t understand him". Tom had a way of challenging you at different levels to see the content of your character, and to get you to see horizons you may not have chosen to look at before; but it required your looking farther, deeper and wider than you had before.
Before Tom I used to sit in Bill Kirchner Senior's office and just talk about things. Just any old thing at the beginning because we liked each other’s company….at least, speaking for myself, I certainly enjoyed his. Eventually we would come around to issues of value. His broad experience in dealing with our industry’s issues can’t be overstated since he was one of those who had so much input in the original 1972 Ohio pesticide law. No matter what was said about what was intended by that law, I could always call Bill and ask him if it was true or not.
Bill knew I had a Admiral Farragut “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” mentality about things. He told me once when I was President of the Greater Cleveland Pest Control Association that I had to always remember that "when you are a president of a professional association you represent all the members, whether you agree with them or not". It was a lesson I never forgot and it has stood me well over these many years as I have involved myself in our local and state association’s affairs. I'm not always successful but I keep working on it because my friend Bill knew how things got done.
I can say this definitively; there is nothing like association work to bring out a person’s true character. As I was ending my term as a trustee on the Ohio Pest Management Association’s board of directors I stated that there were two things that will surprise those who are just becoming involved.
The people you think you will be friends with; and the people you actually become friends with. And the ones you become friends with will be lifelong friends.
We need the insights of the institutional memory of those who sat in the chairs before us in order to make good decisions. We also need the moderating influence of their wisdom to be good people. Good decision making is so much easier then. When you make decisions because it is the right thing to do, you don't have to feel regret for those decisions in the future.
Recently we lost another industry giant by the name of Bettie Portwood; she was 93. Bettie was such a good person that her influence will leave a warm feeling in the Summit County Pest Control Association for many years. At 65 I am at an age where so many people I respected, admired, cared about, and turned to for advice are passing away. I find that I am touched and saddened far more than I expected. My generation is sitting in their chairs of responsibility now. I think it is so much more complicated now than it was in their day; and I think we are doing a good job; but it's a funny thing.....they seemed to do it all so much better.
Harry Katz is around 95 and a living legend of American pest control. His articles in Pest Control Technology will never be forgotten by all of us older ones, but the younger pest controllers really do need to see his work. So at some point I intend to dig them out of PCT’s files and reprint them for posterity. I get a lot of e-mails from my friend Harry, and he sent one to me today. One that I wish to share with everyone. I don’t know if any of this is true or not, but it is a great and inspirational account about life; and a wonderful ode to mentoring.
Please enjoy;
###
Over the course of my life I have always believed in the importance of having a mentor. During my career in the pest control industry I made a point of talking often to those with experience in our industry. For years I had a monthly audience with my good friend Tom Evans who passed away this past April, much to the grief of his family and all of his friends.
I told a friend from the Columbus that after my ‘audience’ with him I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out what he said. He then chuckled and said that, “Oh good, I thought I was the only one who didn’t understand him". Tom had a way of challenging you at different levels to see the content of your character, and to get you to see horizons you may not have chosen to look at before; but it required your looking farther, deeper and wider than you had before.
Before Tom I used to sit in Bill Kirchner Senior's office and just talk about things. Just any old thing at the beginning because we liked each other’s company….at least, speaking for myself, I certainly enjoyed his. Eventually we would come around to issues of value. His broad experience in dealing with our industry’s issues can’t be overstated since he was one of those who had so much input in the original 1972 Ohio pesticide law. No matter what was said about what was intended by that law, I could always call Bill and ask him if it was true or not.
Bill knew I had a Admiral Farragut “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” mentality about things. He told me once when I was President of the Greater Cleveland Pest Control Association that I had to always remember that "when you are a president of a professional association you represent all the members, whether you agree with them or not". It was a lesson I never forgot and it has stood me well over these many years as I have involved myself in our local and state association’s affairs. I'm not always successful but I keep working on it because my friend Bill knew how things got done.
I can say this definitively; there is nothing like association work to bring out a person’s true character. As I was ending my term as a trustee on the Ohio Pest Management Association’s board of directors I stated that there were two things that will surprise those who are just becoming involved.
The people you think you will be friends with; and the people you actually become friends with. And the ones you become friends with will be lifelong friends.
We need the insights of the institutional memory of those who sat in the chairs before us in order to make good decisions. We also need the moderating influence of their wisdom to be good people. Good decision making is so much easier then. When you make decisions because it is the right thing to do, you don't have to feel regret for those decisions in the future.
Recently we lost another industry giant by the name of Bettie Portwood; she was 93. Bettie was such a good person that her influence will leave a warm feeling in the Summit County Pest Control Association for many years. At 65 I am at an age where so many people I respected, admired, cared about, and turned to for advice are passing away. I find that I am touched and saddened far more than I expected. My generation is sitting in their chairs of responsibility now. I think it is so much more complicated now than it was in their day; and I think we are doing a good job; but it's a funny thing.....they seemed to do it all so much better.
Harry Katz is around 95 and a living legend of American pest control. His articles in Pest Control Technology will never be forgotten by all of us older ones, but the younger pest controllers really do need to see his work. So at some point I intend to dig them out of PCT’s files and reprint them for posterity. I get a lot of e-mails from my friend Harry, and he sent one to me today. One that I wish to share with everyone. I don’t know if any of this is true or not, but it is a great and inspirational account about life; and a wonderful ode to mentoring.
Please enjoy;
“Hello Handsome my name is Rose”.
The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder.
I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being.. She said, 'Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?' I laughed and enthusiastically responded, 'Of course you may!' and she gave me a giant squeeze..
'Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?' I asked. She jokingly replied, 'I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids....' 'No seriously,' I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age. 'I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!' she told me.
After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake.
We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this 'time machine' as she shared her wisdom and experience with me. Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.
At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor.
Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, 'I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know.' As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, ' We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.
There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it! There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up.
If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.
Anybody! Can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets..'
She concluded her speech by courageously singing 'The Rose.'
She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives. At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those months ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.
Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.
When you finish reading this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they'll really enjoy it! These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.
REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL..
We make a Living by what we get. We make a Life by what we give. God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage. If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.
Pass this message on to 7 people. You will receive a miracle tomorrow (if you don't think so ... look out your window when you wake in the morning and think about it) If you choose not, then you refuse to bless someone else.
'Good friends are like stars. You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.'Best wishes to all!
###
The Deep Bench
By Rich Kozlovich
I had an uncle, who during the 1950’s and 60’s, absolutely loved the New York Yankees. No big deal except that he lived south of Pittsburgh. He would argue unendingly about how great they were, and quite frankly based on their record, he was right. However, this was around 1960 when the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Yankees in the World Series. When the Pirates won a game it would be by the skin of their teeth. When the Yankees won it would be by multiple runs. The smart money was on the Yankees as a result. It was down to the seventh game, and the excitement was electric. The entire country was watching and listening about every pitch, every hit, every ball and strike. Kids took off from school to follow the game even though they had been warned that some form of punishment would follow when they returned the next day. Then in the ninth inning Bill Mazeroski hit the greatest home run in baseball history! It was the first home run in baseball history to win a world series; the score was 10 to 9. It wouldn’t happen again for thirty three years.
None of that mattered to my Uncle J.P. He loved the Yankees winning ways, and he loved their bench! He used to claim they had such a deep bench that backups on the Yankees squad would be starters in almost any other team in baseball. Truthfully, he was probably right. In that 1960 World Series there were seven past, present or future league Most Valuable Players. The Pirates had two, Dick Groat in 1960 and Roberto Clemente, 1966. The Yankees had five, and look who they were; Yogi Berra in 1951, 1954, 1955; Mickey Mantle in 1956, 1957, 1962; Roger Maris in 1960 and 1961; Elston Howard in 1963 and Bobby Shantz in 1952. In combination those five players were the league’s Most Valuable Player ten times. No wonder this World Series was talked about for so many years. You normally just don’t expect to beat that kind of bench; and that‘s the point! No matter how well prepared you might be you won’t always win, but with preparation your win versus loss percentage will be much higher than if you aren’t prepared at all; because then you will never win.
Every professional association has long range issues they seem to share. One of them is trying to find those willing to serve as leaders in their industry’s associations. Then the problem can be that those who are willing to serve may not really be capable of serving. Whether it is bad leadership skills or no leadership skills the end result is the same. When the leaders of any industry fail to grasp the complexity of issues and deal with them properly the end result is failure! How can any organization overcome something like that? The answer is that we need a deep bench. One that is deep enough to deal with anything that may come up. The question is of course; how can that be developed?
Every organization must have long range goals that must be planned for; and that requires vision! There are two reasons for a professional association to exist. One, to deal with legislative and regulatory issues, and, two, to inform and train the membership. In neither of these categories can we afford a do nothing agenda or incapable personnel. To have proper training classes requires trainers who have the background and understanding of the subject and the ability to convey that information. Can any less be expected of those who have to deal with regulatory and legislative issues?
About five years or so the Ohio Pest Management Association (OPMA) created Future Pest Managers of Ohio (FPMO) in hopes of molding future leaders. As in any new implementation of a long range goal it is difficult in the beginning to know exactly how this will develop over time. What will their duties and responsibilities be and how it will be funded? This has been flexible and I think successfully so. FPMO has been a work in progress from the beginning, and should always be a work in progress. This allows for a necessary degree of flexibility as things change. These are people who are talented but have limited experience in association activities, but wish to grow as individuals and future owners or managers. The fact that they are devoting so much time and effort to OPMA activities speaks well of their character.
There are times when those with little experience may feel overwhelmed by all of what the elder statesmen of the association has been dealing with, and this is completely understandable. It is also commendable because it shows that they realize the importance of what our leaders are doing and place value on it. In our early years we can be intimidated by things such as this because of our lack of experience. We are entering zones of discomfort because we are afraid of failing; and not just fear of failing for ourselves, but a fear of failing those who have placed their trust in us. In order to encourage the growth and experience necessary to fulfill the association’s future needs, we intend to help anyone who is interested to gain that experience through observation of those currently in leadership positions. This will give them time to absorb and digest the information and insights these leaders have acquired over time.
We will be encouraging those who have sat in leadership chairs in the past to continue their involvement to act as mentors on various committees as chairmen, co-chairs or committee members to be there to advise. We would like to see the younger or inexperienced members become committee members on more than one committee and rotate committees so that they can be a part of the information exchange. This cross training will lend valuable background experience. They will see what the issues are, what decisions are made, why they are made and how the exchange of information creates final decisions. Association work is far different that being the CEO of a company. There will be different perspectives presented that will have to be dealt with. This can be valuable because of the balancing effect of other personalities.
The ultimate goal should be wisdom. Wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding. Their job now will be to gather as much information from as many levels about what we do as possible. They will automatically begin to develop understanding. which will be followed by application; hopefully wise application. They will not be placed in situations that are beyond them. Eventually each will find the niche where they will excel, but by then they should have a broad understanding of the whole process. They will have time to observe, absorb and digest; this is a gradual process that will allow for depth. Being smart and well read is a plus but that will not overcome the lack of experience and institutional memory because the learning curve is too great for anyone to jump in without the historical background necessary to deal with the serious issues that confront our industry. Not only will they eventually be able to assume the work, they will learn why to accept the philosophy. This must become an industry paradigm.
####
I had an uncle, who during the 1950’s and 60’s, absolutely loved the New York Yankees. No big deal except that he lived south of Pittsburgh. He would argue unendingly about how great they were, and quite frankly based on their record, he was right. However, this was around 1960 when the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Yankees in the World Series. When the Pirates won a game it would be by the skin of their teeth. When the Yankees won it would be by multiple runs. The smart money was on the Yankees as a result. It was down to the seventh game, and the excitement was electric. The entire country was watching and listening about every pitch, every hit, every ball and strike. Kids took off from school to follow the game even though they had been warned that some form of punishment would follow when they returned the next day. Then in the ninth inning Bill Mazeroski hit the greatest home run in baseball history! It was the first home run in baseball history to win a world series; the score was 10 to 9. It wouldn’t happen again for thirty three years.
None of that mattered to my Uncle J.P. He loved the Yankees winning ways, and he loved their bench! He used to claim they had such a deep bench that backups on the Yankees squad would be starters in almost any other team in baseball. Truthfully, he was probably right. In that 1960 World Series there were seven past, present or future league Most Valuable Players. The Pirates had two, Dick Groat in 1960 and Roberto Clemente, 1966. The Yankees had five, and look who they were; Yogi Berra in 1951, 1954, 1955; Mickey Mantle in 1956, 1957, 1962; Roger Maris in 1960 and 1961; Elston Howard in 1963 and Bobby Shantz in 1952. In combination those five players were the league’s Most Valuable Player ten times. No wonder this World Series was talked about for so many years. You normally just don’t expect to beat that kind of bench; and that‘s the point! No matter how well prepared you might be you won’t always win, but with preparation your win versus loss percentage will be much higher than if you aren’t prepared at all; because then you will never win.
Every professional association has long range issues they seem to share. One of them is trying to find those willing to serve as leaders in their industry’s associations. Then the problem can be that those who are willing to serve may not really be capable of serving. Whether it is bad leadership skills or no leadership skills the end result is the same. When the leaders of any industry fail to grasp the complexity of issues and deal with them properly the end result is failure! How can any organization overcome something like that? The answer is that we need a deep bench. One that is deep enough to deal with anything that may come up. The question is of course; how can that be developed?
Every organization must have long range goals that must be planned for; and that requires vision! There are two reasons for a professional association to exist. One, to deal with legislative and regulatory issues, and, two, to inform and train the membership. In neither of these categories can we afford a do nothing agenda or incapable personnel. To have proper training classes requires trainers who have the background and understanding of the subject and the ability to convey that information. Can any less be expected of those who have to deal with regulatory and legislative issues?
About five years or so the Ohio Pest Management Association (OPMA) created Future Pest Managers of Ohio (FPMO) in hopes of molding future leaders. As in any new implementation of a long range goal it is difficult in the beginning to know exactly how this will develop over time. What will their duties and responsibilities be and how it will be funded? This has been flexible and I think successfully so. FPMO has been a work in progress from the beginning, and should always be a work in progress. This allows for a necessary degree of flexibility as things change. These are people who are talented but have limited experience in association activities, but wish to grow as individuals and future owners or managers. The fact that they are devoting so much time and effort to OPMA activities speaks well of their character.
There are times when those with little experience may feel overwhelmed by all of what the elder statesmen of the association has been dealing with, and this is completely understandable. It is also commendable because it shows that they realize the importance of what our leaders are doing and place value on it. In our early years we can be intimidated by things such as this because of our lack of experience. We are entering zones of discomfort because we are afraid of failing; and not just fear of failing for ourselves, but a fear of failing those who have placed their trust in us. In order to encourage the growth and experience necessary to fulfill the association’s future needs, we intend to help anyone who is interested to gain that experience through observation of those currently in leadership positions. This will give them time to absorb and digest the information and insights these leaders have acquired over time.
We will be encouraging those who have sat in leadership chairs in the past to continue their involvement to act as mentors on various committees as chairmen, co-chairs or committee members to be there to advise. We would like to see the younger or inexperienced members become committee members on more than one committee and rotate committees so that they can be a part of the information exchange. This cross training will lend valuable background experience. They will see what the issues are, what decisions are made, why they are made and how the exchange of information creates final decisions. Association work is far different that being the CEO of a company. There will be different perspectives presented that will have to be dealt with. This can be valuable because of the balancing effect of other personalities.
The ultimate goal should be wisdom. Wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding. Their job now will be to gather as much information from as many levels about what we do as possible. They will automatically begin to develop understanding. which will be followed by application; hopefully wise application. They will not be placed in situations that are beyond them. Eventually each will find the niche where they will excel, but by then they should have a broad understanding of the whole process. They will have time to observe, absorb and digest; this is a gradual process that will allow for depth. Being smart and well read is a plus but that will not overcome the lack of experience and institutional memory because the learning curve is too great for anyone to jump in without the historical background necessary to deal with the serious issues that confront our industry. Not only will they eventually be able to assume the work, they will learn why to accept the philosophy. This must become an industry paradigm.
####
So Many Opinions; So Little Time
By Rich Kozlovich
Blogging kind of came natural to me because I got tired of waiting for the pollsters to call me and ask for my opinion. They did call one time when I was forty five. I said to the woman who called; “Well it’s about time! I’ve been waiting for 45 years for you people to call me.” She said; “I’m sorry we are only polling teenagers today”.
So, about twelve years or so later when I started blogging I “really” had a lot of opinions! I first started by sending out links to people in the pest control and related industries and those in my trade associations. Then I created a blog that I intended to maintain for only one year called Green Notes; which I did and then later dismantled. Truthfully, I found it to be too much work and was glad to discard it. It wasn’t all that well done anyway, and besides, by friend Carl Hinderer said that he felt I was “venting”. I said I didn’t think that was true….until I went back some months later and reread some of my work and realized….he was right. Although intellectually that wasn’t my intention, emotionally I have to conclude that having so many “unvented” opinions is what causes "venting".
After that I went back to sending out links, but only once a week, and with a structured format called Green Notes. My good friend Frank Gasperini was the first to call it a newsletter. As I was doing this I realized that I still had a lot of opinions (and of course these opinions were far too precious to keep to myself you understand) so I restarted blogging with Paradigms and Demographics. The first one was a lot of work, but it was a great learning experience. This one has taken time to create and I am finding new ways of making it better, although I kind of stumble my way through changes in the site. I have a lot of plans for the future, which will include an archive of some of my favorite anti-green writers.
I started this with Alan Caruba in Caruba’s Corner: Green Myths and Other Lies. I would like to add Steve Milloy, Paul Driessen, Mike Fumento, John Ray and a number of others who have allowed me to republish their works. I wish to organize their thoughts by topic in order to make those topics easy to research for my readers, and I will probably restructure the site to accomplish this. I wish to make Paradigms and Demographics the number one “source” for our industry…..and easy for anyone else who wishes to look.
These people have written so many great articles that I hate not to see them in print once again. The works of these people need to be archived in as many places as possible. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I go to their archives to get the answers I need. I also intend to continue to link the American Council on Science and Health articles, hopefully this will help to generate more members for this fine organization.
When I started all of this I intended for this to be a “green issues only” publication. As time went by I found that the links between “green” and “left” were so inextricably intertwined it was becoming more and more difficult to extricate the “philosophies” from each other. In point of fact, they share the same dark irrational and misanthropic philosophy. Both the leftists and the greenies hate humanity, and the body count over this last hundred years should be sufficient testimony for everyone to “get that”.
As a result of all of this I have done some soul searching on this matter. This blog is now and will always be an anti-green blog. I came to realize that an anti-green blog is in reality a pro-humanity blog. To be pro-humanity is to be anti-green and anti-left. I intend to link and publish articles that will outline what I think is wrong with the world and where the thinking of “intellectuals” and the “experts” is flawed.
As for me….well, it is still all about the basics. When we abandon traditional human values we abandon centuries of what works for the latest philosophical flavor of the day. Eventually society ends up with no values. I find that (if what is written about them is even partially true) the “original thinkers” who created these trends had some serious emotional problems and many of them would have been considered sexually deviant in their day by everyone except their fellow deviants, such as Alfred Kinsey. I also intend to create archives on these people.
We need to get this. Everything we see on the news and everything we read in the newspapers is a lie. Not necessarily lies of commission, although they are clearly guilty of that, but mostly lies of omission. I intend to make things clear. I intend to do my best to expose hypocrisy, lies and folly as much as I can, without regard to position. I intend for my views and presentations to have strong historical foundations. It is my view that if I can get the entire historical background of an issue I can give you the answer.
So let us begin this process with this with an issue that I find most disturbing and has been beaten to death lately, but the news keeps missing the important links. Please read both of these articles in their entirely. It is enlightening.
The lavender revolution stumbles
By David A. Noebel
As the Penn State University child sex-abuse scandal grows, the Wall Street Journal addressed the ethical implications, albeit in a somewhat backhanded way: "It's also something of a relief that in a culture as libertine as ours at least some behavior – sexual exploitation of children – is still considered deviant" (Nov. 10, 2011, A-20). …..And we must not forget that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, via Arne Duncan, appointed Kevin "queering elementary education" Jennings on May 19, 2009, as assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, praising him as being "uniquely qualified for his job."…….Only morally deficient individuals would allow Kevin Jennings within a million miles of children! …..So the president of the United States and the secretary of education may decry the scandal at Penn State, but they themselves are as guilty as Jerry Sandusky! Sandusky may have violated a dozen or two or even hundreds of young boys, but the Obama/Duncan/Jennings trio will violate millions of innocent children for decades to come.
Corruption in America
By Burt Prelutsky
By now I'm sure that even people who have less interest in college football than I, if such a thing is possible, are aware of the sex scandal that tore Penn State apart. It does not surprise me that Jerry Sandusky got away with his vile activity for so many years or that Joe Paterno and the college administrators basically turned a blind eye to it. College football, after all, is a cash cow that is far more sacred in America than the cattle that wander blithely through India's countryside. ….what I found most disgusting in the aftermath of the Penn State scandal was the fact that hundreds of students rioted on behalf of Mr. Paterno……. I'm sure that in their defense, the young louts would say that Paterno wasn't the pervert. But would they say the same if the coach had been employed not at Penn State, but at LSU or Alabama, Oregon or UCLA? Would they say the same about the many priests and cardinals who had never engaged in pedophilia, but who maintained their silence about the small number who did? …….Finally, you have all these various women accusing Herman Cain of acting inappropriately. Not having been there at the time, I don't know what he did or didn't do. What I do know is that whenever a woman shows up in public joined at the hip with Gloria Allred, it is safe to assume that she either belongs in jail, a brothel or a psycho ward. At this point, I suppose we should all be grateful that Anita Hill hasn't yet come forward to claim that Mr. Cain once gave her a funny look.
###
Blogging kind of came natural to me because I got tired of waiting for the pollsters to call me and ask for my opinion. They did call one time when I was forty five. I said to the woman who called; “Well it’s about time! I’ve been waiting for 45 years for you people to call me.” She said; “I’m sorry we are only polling teenagers today”.
So, about twelve years or so later when I started blogging I “really” had a lot of opinions! I first started by sending out links to people in the pest control and related industries and those in my trade associations. Then I created a blog that I intended to maintain for only one year called Green Notes; which I did and then later dismantled. Truthfully, I found it to be too much work and was glad to discard it. It wasn’t all that well done anyway, and besides, by friend Carl Hinderer said that he felt I was “venting”. I said I didn’t think that was true….until I went back some months later and reread some of my work and realized….he was right. Although intellectually that wasn’t my intention, emotionally I have to conclude that having so many “unvented” opinions is what causes "venting".
After that I went back to sending out links, but only once a week, and with a structured format called Green Notes. My good friend Frank Gasperini was the first to call it a newsletter. As I was doing this I realized that I still had a lot of opinions (and of course these opinions were far too precious to keep to myself you understand) so I restarted blogging with Paradigms and Demographics. The first one was a lot of work, but it was a great learning experience. This one has taken time to create and I am finding new ways of making it better, although I kind of stumble my way through changes in the site. I have a lot of plans for the future, which will include an archive of some of my favorite anti-green writers.
I started this with Alan Caruba in Caruba’s Corner: Green Myths and Other Lies. I would like to add Steve Milloy, Paul Driessen, Mike Fumento, John Ray and a number of others who have allowed me to republish their works. I wish to organize their thoughts by topic in order to make those topics easy to research for my readers, and I will probably restructure the site to accomplish this. I wish to make Paradigms and Demographics the number one “source” for our industry…..and easy for anyone else who wishes to look.
These people have written so many great articles that I hate not to see them in print once again. The works of these people need to be archived in as many places as possible. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I go to their archives to get the answers I need. I also intend to continue to link the American Council on Science and Health articles, hopefully this will help to generate more members for this fine organization.
When I started all of this I intended for this to be a “green issues only” publication. As time went by I found that the links between “green” and “left” were so inextricably intertwined it was becoming more and more difficult to extricate the “philosophies” from each other. In point of fact, they share the same dark irrational and misanthropic philosophy. Both the leftists and the greenies hate humanity, and the body count over this last hundred years should be sufficient testimony for everyone to “get that”.
As a result of all of this I have done some soul searching on this matter. This blog is now and will always be an anti-green blog. I came to realize that an anti-green blog is in reality a pro-humanity blog. To be pro-humanity is to be anti-green and anti-left. I intend to link and publish articles that will outline what I think is wrong with the world and where the thinking of “intellectuals” and the “experts” is flawed.
As for me….well, it is still all about the basics. When we abandon traditional human values we abandon centuries of what works for the latest philosophical flavor of the day. Eventually society ends up with no values. I find that (if what is written about them is even partially true) the “original thinkers” who created these trends had some serious emotional problems and many of them would have been considered sexually deviant in their day by everyone except their fellow deviants, such as Alfred Kinsey. I also intend to create archives on these people.
We need to get this. Everything we see on the news and everything we read in the newspapers is a lie. Not necessarily lies of commission, although they are clearly guilty of that, but mostly lies of omission. I intend to make things clear. I intend to do my best to expose hypocrisy, lies and folly as much as I can, without regard to position. I intend for my views and presentations to have strong historical foundations. It is my view that if I can get the entire historical background of an issue I can give you the answer.
So let us begin this process with this with an issue that I find most disturbing and has been beaten to death lately, but the news keeps missing the important links. Please read both of these articles in their entirely. It is enlightening.
The lavender revolution stumbles
By David A. Noebel
As the Penn State University child sex-abuse scandal grows, the Wall Street Journal addressed the ethical implications, albeit in a somewhat backhanded way: "It's also something of a relief that in a culture as libertine as ours at least some behavior – sexual exploitation of children – is still considered deviant" (Nov. 10, 2011, A-20). …..And we must not forget that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, via Arne Duncan, appointed Kevin "queering elementary education" Jennings on May 19, 2009, as assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, praising him as being "uniquely qualified for his job."…….Only morally deficient individuals would allow Kevin Jennings within a million miles of children! …..So the president of the United States and the secretary of education may decry the scandal at Penn State, but they themselves are as guilty as Jerry Sandusky! Sandusky may have violated a dozen or two or even hundreds of young boys, but the Obama/Duncan/Jennings trio will violate millions of innocent children for decades to come.
Corruption in America
By Burt Prelutsky
By now I'm sure that even people who have less interest in college football than I, if such a thing is possible, are aware of the sex scandal that tore Penn State apart. It does not surprise me that Jerry Sandusky got away with his vile activity for so many years or that Joe Paterno and the college administrators basically turned a blind eye to it. College football, after all, is a cash cow that is far more sacred in America than the cattle that wander blithely through India's countryside. ….what I found most disgusting in the aftermath of the Penn State scandal was the fact that hundreds of students rioted on behalf of Mr. Paterno……. I'm sure that in their defense, the young louts would say that Paterno wasn't the pervert. But would they say the same if the coach had been employed not at Penn State, but at LSU or Alabama, Oregon or UCLA? Would they say the same about the many priests and cardinals who had never engaged in pedophilia, but who maintained their silence about the small number who did? …….Finally, you have all these various women accusing Herman Cain of acting inappropriately. Not having been there at the time, I don't know what he did or didn't do. What I do know is that whenever a woman shows up in public joined at the hip with Gloria Allred, it is safe to assume that she either belongs in jail, a brothel or a psycho ward. At this point, I suppose we should all be grateful that Anita Hill hasn't yet come forward to claim that Mr. Cain once gave her a funny look.
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