The green mirage – and con job

Musk, Schmidt, Simons and billionaire buddies build empire based on climate and energy BS

 

Paul Driessen and Tom Tamarkin

 

Elon Musk and his fellow barons of Climate Crisis, Inc. recently got a huge boost from Pope Francis. Musk et al. say fossil fuels are causing unprecedented warming and weather disasters. The Pope agrees and says Catholics must “ask God for a positive outcome” to negotiations over another UN climate treaty.

 

It matters not that the predicted calamities are not happening. There has been no warming in 19 years, no category 3-5 hurricanes making US landfall for a record 9-1/2 years, indeed none of the over-hyped climate disasters occurring in the real world outside the alarmists’ windows. In fact, poor nations support the treaty mostly because it promises some $100 billion per year in adaptation, mitigation and compensation money from FRCs: Formerly Rich Countries that have shackled their own job creation, economic growth and living standards in the name of stabilizing Earth’s perpetually fluctuating climate.

 

Any money that is transferred will end up in the pockets of governing elites. Poor families will get little or no cash – and will be told their dreams of better lives must be limited to jobs and living standards that can be supported by solar panels on their huts and a few wind turbines near their villages.

 

Simply put, the Musk-Obama-Pope-Climate Crisis schemes will save humanity from exaggerated and fabricated climate disasters decades from now – by impoverishing billions and killing millions tomorrow.

 

For the catechism of climate cataclysm coalition, the essential thing is that we believe the hysterical assertions and computer models – and support endless renewable energy mandates and subsidies.

 

Musk and his Tesla and SolarCity companies have already pocketed $4.9 billion in taxpayer-financed subsidies, and even long-elusive profitability has not ended the handouts. Now he claims a small “blue square” on a map represents the “very little” land required to “get rid of all fossil fuel electricity generation” in the USA and prevent a non-existent climate cataclysm. We just need rooftop solar panels linked to wall-mounted battery packs – a mere 160 million Tesla Powerwalls – to eliminate the need for all coal and natural gas electricity generation in the United States, he insists.

 

Hogwash (from pork barrel political pig farms). As a careful and extensive analysis demonstrates, even without considering the monumental electricity demand required to convert America’s vehicles to electric-battery versions, providing today’s baseload and peak demand electricity would require 29.3 billion one-square-meter solar panels. Assuming adequate yearlong daily sunlight, that’s 29,333 square kilometers of active solar panel surface area: 7.2 million acres – or nearly all of Maryland and Delaware!

 

The analysis is technical, beyond the ability of most voters, journalists, politicians and regulators to comprehend fully. Read it anyway, if only to understand the enormity of financing, raw materials, mining, manufacturing and electricity required to make and ship the panels (some 40 million per year), battery packs and inverters (to convert low-voltage solar electricity to 120 or 240 Volt alternating current).

 

We are clearly dealing with an unprecedented green mirage and con job. It will drive average retail electricity prices from the 8-9 cents per kilowatt-hour in coal and gas-reliant states, to the 15-17 cents per kWh in California, Connecticut and New York – or even the 36-40 cents in Germany and Denmark, where unsubsidized rates are 70-80 cents per kWh! The impact of such prices on people’s jobs, living standards, health and welfare would be devastating. But Musk and his “clean” energy friends ignore this.

 

Musk has a BS in physics – and obviously holds advanced BS degrees in lobbying and con-artistry about climate disasters and renewable energy solutions, mandated by government decrees and financed by endless billions in subsidies. He has made numerous personal visits to legislative offices in Sacramento and Washington, to promote more such schemes, and aligns his efforts with those of Eric Schmidt, Nat Simons, Tom Steyer, Al Gore and members of the Clean Tech Syndicate: eleven secretive families with total wealth of over $60 billion, who want to get even richer off taxpayers and consumers.

 

They assume (demand) that bogus climate cataclysms will continue to bring them billions in climate cash payouts from Washington and state capitals, along with more exemptions from endangered species and environmental cleanup laws and regulations that are applied with a vengeance to fossil fuel projects.

 

Google scientists finally admitted that existing and near-term renewable energy technologies simply do not work as advertised and cannot meet their political or climate promises. The technologies are all hat, no cattle. However, the Climate Crisis and Clean Tech industries are determined to push ahead – using our money, risking little of their own, and getting reimbursed by us when their investments turn sour. 

 

Google and NRG now want a $539-million federal grant to bail them out of $1.6 billion in taxpayer loans for the bird-roasting Ivanpah concentrated solar power project in California, because it does not work and needs so much natural gas to keep its water hot that it doesn’t meet state renewable energy standards. Other Obama “greenbacks” energy “investments” have also drowned in red ink, leaving taxpayers to pay the tab: Solyndra, Abound Solar, Solar Trust, Ener1, Beacon Power, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

 

Musk is nevertheless lobbying for SB-350, which would require that 50% of California’s electricity be produced via “renewable” sources, such as wind, solar, biofuels and politicians’ hot air. Meanwhile, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s family and corporate foundations give millions to alarmist climate scientists, the ultra-green Energy Foundation, and rabid anti-fracking groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC also gets millions from EPA, to promote the agency’s anti-fossil fuel agenda and place 33 of its employees on 21 EPA “advisory” committees.

 

Schmidt and Warren Buffett also support the secretive far-left Tides Foundation, which has given millions to groups opposed to coal and hydraulic fracturing, the Keystone XL and Sandpiper pipeline projects, and countless other job-creating hydrocarbon programs. Canadian researcher Cory Morningstar accurately describes Tides as a “magical, money-funneling machine of epic proportions.”

 

Billionaire Nat Simons and his Sea Change Foundation spend tens of millions annually promoting and lobbying for “renewable” energy policies, mandates and subsidies; investing in wind, solar and biofuel companies; supporting environmentalist pressure groups; and contributing to Democrat politicians who perpetuate the crony corporatist arrangements. Simons, his wife and various Vladimir Putin cronies (via Klein, Ltd. and the shadowy Bermuda Wakefield Quin law firm) are the only contributors to Sea Change.

 

We often rail against Third World corruption. Our American (and European) environmental corruption is simply more subtle and sophisticated. It is legalized deception and theft – a massive wealth transfer from poor and middle class consumers and taxpayers to billionaires who are raking in still more billions, thanks to brilliantly crafted alarmist campaigns. And let’s not forget Al Gore, Mike Mann, Tom Steyer, James Hansen and all the others who likewise profit immensely from these arrangements – and the constant vilification of scientists who question climate catastrophe mantras.

 

Pressure groups and governing elites used to argue that we are running out of oil and natural gas. That ploy no longer works. While fossil fuels may eventually prove finite, fracking has given us vast new supplies of petroleum – and huge coal, oil and gas deposits have been placed off limits by government decree. We have at least a century to develop alternative energy sources that actually work – that create real jobs, actual revenues, lower energy prices and true prosperity – without the mandates, subsidies, deception, fraud and corruption that are the hallmark of “green” energy schemes.

 

No wonder the “clean tech” crowd is financing anti-hydrocarbon and climate chaos campaigns. But despite the Pope’s belated rescue attempt, the pseudo-science of “dangerous manmade global warming” is slowly succumbing to climate reality. And any new UN climate treaty will founder once poor nations realize the promised hundreds of billions a year will not materialize.

 

Those still impoverished nations should not do what rich countries are doing now that they are rich. They should do what rich countries did to become rich.

___________

 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

Tom Tamarkin is founder and CEO of USCL Corporation and of the fusion energy advocacy groups http://www.fusion4freedom.us and http://www.fuelRfuture.com. He is widely credited with inventing the utility industry smart meter and holds granted and pending patents in the field.

Be the Best Saboteur You Can Be

By Daniel Greenfield

1. There is no conservative party

There is a Republican Party. The purpose of the party and its politicians, much like that of its Democratic counterpart, is to obtain money and privileges for its major donors.

That doesn't mean that its members don't have other ideals and agendas, but Republican politicians who rise high enough come from an urban and suburban establishment that is more liberal than its base. Expecting them to care as much about your issues as you do is unrealistic.

They will only do the right thing insofar as it helps them

A. Get control of money
B. Advance their careers
C. Become popular

And this is a good thing. It means that they're controllable. It means that the Democrats are also controllable. And this is how the left took over the Democratic Party…….. To Read More.....

Quotes of the Day

"Whether it is the IRS, SEC, EPA, FDA, FAA, FCC, DOE, DOJ, HHS, HUD or any of the many other alphabet soup agencies, we private citizens are under continuous surveillance and interference from unelected, indolent, incompetent and often corrupt Beltway bureaucrats." - Bruce Robinson

"So typical of much that is wrong with the Western intelligentsia, which confuses questions with profundity". - Mike Konrad

American Thinker

The Diversity Diversion, by Bruce Robinson

It is not racial hatred or the lack of sufficient diversity in our workplaces, schools and universities that is causing so much divisiveness in our nation….. Or maybe this whole diversity shtick is just a diversion -- at best, another clumsy attempt to make a politically correct silk purse out of a blatantly discriminatory sow’s ear. According to Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, the ugly truth is: “…the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings.” ….. It is not racial hatred or the lack of sufficient diversity in our workplaces, schools and universities that is causing so much divisiveness in our nation. It is our failure to understand what Murray calls “the quotidian culture” of our own communities…….

 

The Last Thing the Left Wants is Racial Healing, by Lloyd Marcus

While the media was all abuzz over Obama using the “n” word, I was outraged over him accusing my country of being a nation filled with racists. Folks, our president actually said racism is in our DNA and is passed on from generation to generation.  Dude, you're a black man whom white folks -- because blacks are only 12% of the population -- made leader of the free world two times. Stop it with the “blacks are victims” nonsense. Millennial blacks have never or rarely experience bona-fide racism. So why are Obama and his fellow Leftists hell-bent on instilling racial paranoia and resentment against whites in millennial blacks? 

 

The answer is simple: this is how Democrats keep their monopoly of the black vote. Instill in blacks that America is eternally racist and voting for Democrats is the only way to keep the haters which are the majority at bay….. There is also no question that the Left's continuous drumbeat that all opposition to Obama is racist, that cops routinely murder blacks and that America has racism in its DNA has effected blacks……a hate-filled black woman called for a race war. She said police are the KKK no longer hiding behind hoods. She says whites are terrorists against blacks and even referenced the Lefts' term, “white privilege”. By the way, the Left has added gasoline to their rhetoric, replacing “white privilege” with “white supremacy”. The Leftist media has under-reported the “Knockout Game, “Polar Bear Hunting” and black flash mob attacks……

 

Conceit vs. Reality, by J. Robert Smith

Conceit is busting out all over. It’s a global epidemic in dire need of an encyclical and U.N. action. Failure to take action is all but certain to do-in the human race…….Let’s start with Pope Francis. Of Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, we must say: “Father, forgive him, he knows not what he proposes.” That is, concerning “manmade climate change.” Or maybe he does. Francis’ letter is a screed.

A mélange of church teachings, junk science, and Jesuit-inspired leftism. There’s good in the letter, but it’s choked by weedy thinking. Above all – doubtlessly unintended -- it’s a conceit.   Francis presents leftish tropes on economics and society. He gives us heavy doses of Kumbaya. He hedges as needed. There’s great merit in il Papa’s defense of the unborn and his opposition to human trafficking. After all, isn’t the human race part of the natural world? Don’t innocents matter as much as carbon dioxide molecules? …….

Marriage’s debauching won’t end with homosexual unions, notwithstanding the disclaimers and eye-rolling by champs. Bigamists, polygamists, and groups are ready to queue up. Everyone not enamored of the normal and traditional are ready to make mush of a foundational institution. Wait until those swell fellers at NAMBLA weigh in…….. Said the late, great Notre Dame football coach, Frank Leahy: “Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.” There’s more than a little stupidity going around nowadays.  More than a little…..

 

Israel Not Getting Boycotted Where It Counts, by Michael Curtis

It is always a moment of amusement to read the latest fulmination of the venerable archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu. On June 17, 2015, he beguiled us again with his message to his dear sisters and brothers in the United Church of Christ, which is holding its general synod in Cleveland June 26-30, 2015. He assured the congregation of his support for its divestment resolution targeting the “Israeli occupation.” He fully endorsed the proposal to use the powerful nonviolent tools of economic leverage against the State of Israel……All these eminent scholars, who seem unaware of or silent about the war crimes, atrocities, and violations of human rights committed by Hamas in Gaza, have taken their cues from the Palestinian Campaign to Boycott Israel, the organization founded in July 2005. The supposed objective of this campaign, political, economic, academic, and cultural, by countless NGOs and pro-Palestinian activists, is to end the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, and to promote the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties. But all know that its real objective is the de-legitimization of Israel and the piecemeal and then final elimination of the Jewish State. ……. do Archbishop Tutu and Alice Water, by their enthusiasm for boycott of Israeli enterprises and products, really want the poorer people of the world to die? Do they know that Israel is preventing that from happening by its innovations, including in water supply?......

 

My Take – Over the years I’ve discovered that some people and groups have views so egregiously and stunningly stupid I automatically oppose what they’re for and support whatever it is they’re against.  Accordingly my views on any opinions spewed out by Desmond Tutu are on automatic, and that's mostly true of most things from university PhD’s.  Leftists spew out an unending line of clabber that’s been unendingly proven false, and yet they continue blubbering solutions doomed by reality and history.  I’ve gone past believing they’re stupid.  To continue down this path can only mean they must be insane! 

 

The politics of delusion, by Thomas Lifson June 27, 2015

The left rules, with an increasingly iron hand, the commanding heights of culture, including the arts, media, and the academy. Capitalizing on the respect and power this endows the progressives with, they have been creating an alternative reality and ratifying it. In one brilliant paragraph, Peter Kirsanow of NRO summarizes the delusions that have been foisted upon the body politic and society, and which are sticking (for now): 

Exchanges established by the federal government are exchanges established by the state. Rachel Dolezal is black. Iran will honor an agreement not to develop nuclear weapons. ISIS is a JV team. There’s an epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses. Michael Brown had his hands up and pleaded “don’t shoot.” Caitlyn Jenner is a woman. Obamacare is working. 2+2 doesn’t necessarily equal 4. The polar ice caps are disappearing. The IRS is doing a decent job. The border is secure. We’ve ended two wars responsibly. Hillary Clinton turned over all work-related e-mails. An $18,200,000,000,000 debt can grow without mention. People who burn down buildings and overturn cars aren’t thugs. The OPM hack is manageable. We’ve reset relations with Russia. Entitlement reform can be kicked down the road. We’re more respected around the world.

About an hour ago, I added one more item – lower GDP is really a sign of a better economy – to this list, and you can be sure that more are coming.…..

 

Mike Flynn: a Cool Drink of Water for America, by Lloyd Marcus

Upon hearing the disheartening news that the Supreme Court twisted the law to rule in favor of Obamacare, my wife Mary said, “We need a cool drink of water.” She was referring to a scene in the movie Ben-Hur. Judah Ben-Hur was falsely accused of attempted murder. He was shackled and marched through the desert to prison. Succumbing to severe thirst and the desert sun, Judah collapsed, unable to take another step. Jesus happened to be traveling by. He knelt down and gave hopeless and exhausted Judah a drink of water. Jesus' compassion and refreshing drink energized Judah to continue his journey. 

 

Patriots, electing rock-solid conservative Mike Flynn, Republican for Illinois's 18^th District, is a desperately needed refreshing drink of water that will impact our entire nation – energizing patriots to continue fighting to restore our country.  The cultural traditions and values that have made us great are under assault like never before. Suddenly, we are demanded, first by the attack-dog liberal media and now by government, to embrace behaviors against our conscience and faith. Process that for a moment, folks: government-mandated sensitivity training to get our heads right, according to the left.  Our best offense against leftist aggressors is replacing Democrats and RINOs with courageous conservative fighters, bold defenders of our Constitution like Mike Flynn. Flynn will provide desperately needed in-your-face, we-the-people opposition to House majority betrayer John Boehner. For this reason, the GOP is pulling out all the stops, resorting to dirty tricks to stop Flynn in the special election…...

It's Time For a Twenty Eighth Amendment!

By Rich Kozlovich

Yesterday Mark J. Fitzgibbons penned this article, Sotomayor's 4th Amendment Time Bomb regarding “A painfully slim 5 – 4 ruling this week by the Supreme Court in City of Los Angeles v. Patel”. He writes, “The court struck down a Los Angeles ordinance that allowed police officers to inspect hotel guest registries for any or even no reason, and without a warrant. The ruling that the Fourth Amendment applies to businesses and that statutes may be declared unconstitutional on their face is consistent with principles as old as, and even older than, the Constitution.” But he also notes that “Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s majority opinion is also a blueprint for a major power grab for the administrative police state” because “her majority opinion even seems to suggest that police departments may be given power to approve their own searches using administrative subpoenas instead of going to judges to obtain warrants”.

Administrative subpoenas? Is she serious? This isn’t something that should even be an option!   The article goes on to explain why say it’s Constitutionally inappropriate for administrative subpoenas to be issued by federal bureaucrats saying, “Justice Frank Murphy’s short but powerful and prescient dissent from his all-Democrat appointed colleagues is spot on”:

"I am unable to approve the use of nonjudicial subpoenas issued by administrative agents. Administrative law has increased greatly in the past few years, and seems destined to be augmented even further in the future. But attending this growth should be a new and broader sense of responsibility on the part of administrative agencies and officials.

Excessive use or abuse of authority can not only destroy man's instinct for liberty, but will eventually undo the administrative processes themselves. Our history is not without a precedent of a successful revolt against a ruler who "sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people."

Perhaps we are too far removed from the experiences of the past to appreciate fully the consequences that may result from an irresponsible though well meaning use of the subpoena power.

To allow a nonjudicial officer, unarmed with judicial process, to demand the books and papers of an individual is an open invitation to abuse of that power. It is no answer that the individual may refuse to produce the material demanded. Many persons have yielded solely because of the air of authority with which the demand is made, a demand that cannot be enforced without subsequent judicial aid. Many invasions of private rights thus occur without the restraining hand of the judiciary ever intervening.

Only by confining the subpoena power exclusively to the judiciary can there be any insurance against this corrosion of liberty. Statutory enforcement would not thereby be made impossible. Indeed, it would be made easier. A people's desire to cooperate with the enforcement of a statute is in direct proportion to the respect for individual rights shown in the enforcement process.

Liberty is too priceless to be forfeited through the zeal of an administrative agent."

Does Sotomayor, who actually described herself as the “wise Latina”, really understand that?

The founding fathers created lifetime appointments for federal judges because they wanted them to be unafraid about losing their jobs for unpopular decisions. There were some differences between then and now. First of all there were few federal judges and nowhere in the Constitution does it outline exactly their duties. Originally the Supreme Court handled very common cases. Their authority developed over time and they pretty much created their own parameters of responsibility.

Secondly the federal government was amazingly small compared to today and everyone pretty much thought it would stay that way. However the passage of the 16th amendment (income tax) and 17th Amendment (popular elections of Senators) pretty much laid the foundation destroying the checks and balances between the branches of government and the vision of a limited central government, which the founding fathers believed was essential to individual liberty. They couldn't have been more right.

Although it’s true judges can be removed by impeachment. It’s also true the federal judiciary is filled with political hacks that have made decisions that can’t be construed as anything but high crimes. The high crimes of the Constitution means a “crime of high office”,which can simply mean they’ve failed to perform the duties they have sworn by oath to perform. It’s clear the federal judiciary no longer believe they have to "solemnly swear (or affirm)they will administer justice……under the Constitution and laws of the United States." They’re clearly not following the Constitution, and they clearly don’t believe they need to “preserve and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic” since they are Constitution’s greatest enemy. If that’s so – and it is – and it’s so obvious – and it is – why aren’t more judges impeached? Because getting a two thirds majority to vote for conviction from the Senate is almost impossible.

As historian Dr. Clarence Carson wrote: "Jefferson doubted that the fear of impeachment was little more than a paper tiger, or as he put it frequently in private correspondence, “not even a scarecrow.” He put the danger this way: “We already see the power, installed for life, advancing with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. [“The engine of consolidation,” he had said, “will be the federal judiciary . . . .”] The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions for the annihilation of constitutional state rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part.”

Has this occurred? It should be obvious to the most casual observer that it has and the Supreme Court’s recent decision King v. Burwell is a clear example the federal judiciary has become an out of control law unto themselves. Justice Scalia’s scathing dissent is a simple, direct and easy to understand intellectual tour-de-force demonstrating how far they’ve sunk in their efforts to overturn the balance of power created by the Constitution.

Scalia states:  “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare ……the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites…

He went on to say: “Words no longer have meaning …..Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved……

He observes: The Court tries to palm off the pertinent statutory phrase as “inartful drafting.’ This Court, however, has no free-floating power ‘to rescue Congress from its drafting errors.’”…..“The Court’s decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people’s decision to give Congress ‘[a]ll legislative Powers’ enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them.”…..

Demonstrating just how dangerous the federal judiciary has become: “More importantly, the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers. ‘If Congress enacted into law something different from what it intended, then it should amend the statute to conform to its intent.’ In the meantime, this Court ‘has no roving license … to disregard clear language simply on the view that … Congress ‘must have intended’something broader.”…

He states what should be the understanding of all federal jurists: “Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act’s limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.”

If the Constitution is going to really be the document that governs government, and is the real and legitimate law of the land, it's in serious need of reinforcements. It’s time for a 28th Amendment that would impose strict term and age limits on the federal judiciary.

There are three levels of the federal judiciary- the District level, the Appeals level and the Supreme Court. Each level should have a ten year limit with a review after five years requiring a majority approval by the Senate. At each level each nominee would have to go through the same process, even if nominated to a higher court before they finish their term in a lower court. If their term runs out and they’re not nominated to a higher court they may be nominated at some point in the future. No jurist can return to a lower court if their term runs its course at a higher level, and no jurist can ever be appointed to a court if their nomination to any court has ever been rejected by the Senate. No jurist may serve after the age of seventy.

Here’s the fix! Abolish the FED, repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments and pass a 28th amendment. Everything else will fall into place.

Oh, one more thing.

24 Constitutional Questions Every American Should be Able to Answer

The GOP, a Revolutionary Party Once Again

Posted by Daniel Greenfield on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 @ the Sultan Knish blog 9 Comments

(Editor's Note: I thought in light of the Obamatrade fiasco this blast from the past was appropriate.  RK)

Heading into the 2010 elections, the Republican party is best characterized by its schizophrenic structure with a complacent political leadership and a radicalized populist grass roots movement. If the Democracy party acts like it's out of power even when it's in power, the Republican party acts like it's in power, even when it's out of power. And that is unfortunately rooted in the character of the Republican party as a conservative party, a party of the status quo, even when it can't figure out what that status quo actually is.

In the wake of FDR's radical and extended administration, the GOP embraced the three piece suit moderate conservatism of Eisenhower, fusing conservative national defense policies with a fairly liberal domestic agenda. As a result the things that conservatives complain about, are just as likely to have been the work of a Republican President as a Democratic one. That is why despite the fact that since then America has been governed more by Republican Presidents than Democratic ones, the second half of the 20th century has been one long string of cultural and legal victories for liberalism... with setbacks happening only when those policies led to complete and unacceptable social disasters, notably excessive softness on crime and the welfare state.

As the party of the status quo, the Republican party has not failed to roll back liberal cultural and political victories, but has repeatedly been complicit in legalizing them and perpetuating them. Which means that if history is any predictor of the future, even if Obama is forced out of office in 2012, his Republican successor will accept his policies and incorporate them into a bipartisan consensus, as has happened so many times. And that complacency is the secret behind the liberal takeover of America, it could not have taken place and cannot continue taking place without Republican collaboration.

But the problem is not RINO's or Liberal Republicans-- rather it is the conservative worldview of the Republican party itself. Conservatism is naturally focused on conserving and preserving, it fights in defense of tradition and the way things are. The problem is that the situation in America has degraded too far and too quickly for the status quo to be worth defending. Instead the status quo being conserved is one that has already been crafted by generations of a liberal culture war against America. To actually make a difference, the Republican party needs to leave behind the armchairs of the status quo and become a revolutionary party once again.

The birth of the Republican party took place against the background of a corrupt Democratic party that bound together international businessmen, immigrants and plantation owners into an oligarchy meant to crush individual freedom. In contrast to the urban sweatshops and rural plantations, the corrupt political machines and their gangs of thugs, and the whole Democratic ideology of Divide and Conquer by race and class so that the oligarchy and the political machines could profit-- the Republican party embraced an ideology that was both conservative, in that led back to the roots of the American revolution, and was at the same time revolutionary... Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.

 

The Party of Lincoln did not only oppose slavery because slavery was wrong... it opposed slavery because only a nation of free people could rule a Republic, not slaves, serfs or servants. When Lincoln stated that the United States could not endure as a government half-slave and half-free, it was not simply a denunciation of the current state of affairs, but a statement that America could not survive if it becomes a nation of slaves, and thus a nation ruled over by despots. And yet that is the nation we are living in today.

A slave does not have be property of a plantation owner toiling away in the cotton fields. He can just as easily be a college educated professional who nevertheless has as little practical freedom and property as the slave. There are many different kinds of cages and many different kinds of slavery, but they all have one thing in common, they are not free. Their labor, their rights and their land has been taken away from them. They are ruled over by masters and tyrants, supposedly for their own good, in reality to harvest the fruits of their labor for themselves.

That was the political situation in the United States that the Republican party rose to confront, fighting a Democratic party rooted in slavery, whether on the plantation or the factory floor. And when the fighting was done and Lincoln was dead, his successors cut their cynical deals, and the United States continued drifting closer and closer toward slavery. The Republican party ceased to be a revolutionary party, instead in the 20th century it became a foil for the race and class warfare agitation of a reborn Democratic party that embraced socialism and turned its back on its own Jeffersonian traditions.

Obama is not the first warning sign that the end is near, but he may be one of the last. There is still a window of opportunity for the Republican party to be reborn as a revolutionary party again, challenging the despotic status quo, the oligarchy of power and politics that the Democratic party has imposed on America.

The Tea Parties and the Town Hall protests both signal that it is not the politics of the status quo that the people want, but a party that will stand up and fight for a free America. It is not enough to try and hang on to the legacy of FDR, LBJ, Carter and Clinton... against Obama. The idea of that is patently ridiculous and hypocritical, as if we are not for freedom, but only against change, and when enough time has gone by, then we grunt and accept the extra load. But that is exactly what the Republican party has been doing for some time now, bucking and kicking against every new piece of the socialist puzzle, while earnestly protecting and defending the pieces that have already been put into place.

We have had enough of responsible Republican leaders carefully maintaining the prison walls that the Democrats have erected and continue to erect around us. What we need are leaders who will tear them down. We do not need new curators of every piece of legislative bric a brac, every byzantine construction of bureaucracy and every watchtower agency that the Democrats and their Republican collaborators have filled the country with. We need men and women willing to clean them away, to give away the power that they can wield through them over the American people in the name of American freedom, so that a nation with a government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Asthma and Atopic March Syndrome caused by GMOs? Science says ‘No’

Andrew Porterfield & Jon Entine | June 24, 2015 | Genetic Literacy Project

Asthma is a worldwide problem, afflicting more than 230 million people around the globe. It’s particularly a problem with children, sending 775,000 of them to the emergency room every year in the United States. It’s also more prevalent in industrialized countries than in developing or rural ones. Proponents of natural cures and organic products will tell you that the rates of asthma and other allergies is increasing, and the culprits are GMOs.  “‘Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation,’ including increases in cytokines, which are ‘associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation’—all on the rise in the U.S.,” writes Jeffrey Smith, who runs his vanity anti-GMO site Institute for Responsible Technology. His source? The Academy of Environmental Medicine, a fringe group that promotes anti-vaccine hysteria, natural healing and other pseudo-science views. A number of anti-GMO activists have bunched together asthma with other disorders as a “food related allergy,” and then concluded that the diseases altogether show an increase in allergies…… To Read More.....

 

My Take - There are some things we need to explore in dealing with this.  First, it becomes important to explore in what socio-economic group these increases took place - populations that may have had serious cockroach problems!  We know that serious cockroach infestations are a trigger for increased asthma. This I believe is where most of these statistics originate.  During the time frame talked about her the world of pest control went through a transformation of tools and techniques.

Although the organophosphates and carbamates we lost after 1996 as a result of the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act were great at killing bed bugs, they were no longer as effective at killing cockroaches, and had not been for some years.   In the middle to late 80’s the chemical companies developed synthetic pyrethroids which were more stable and more effective.  All of a sudden poor quality technicians became cockroach control geniuses.  Resistance developed within a few years and then cockroach baits appeared and they have been the backbone of cockroach control ever since.  The point I’m trying to make is there is – at least in my mind – a direct correlation between much better cockroach control and this flattening described in the article.

Ohio Employer's Law Blog

Yes, GINA covers cheek swabs, even

ones to uncover employee misconduct

I’ve always said that employment law is a dirty job, and this case more than proves my point.

Atlas Logistics Group, a Georgia food-storage company, had a big problem. One of its employees began habitually defecating in its warehouse. (In case you’re curious, the scientific name for this disorder is voluntary encopresis, one who has control over when and where bowel movements occur and chooses to have them in inappropriate places.)

To solve its mystery, Atlas required its employees to submit to a cheek swab, after which a lab compared DNA samples from the employees’ swabs to DNA from the offending fecal matter. Two employees, Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds, whose DNA did not match, filed suit under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

Last month, a federal court granted summary judgment in favor of the employees, concluding that 1) GINA unequivocally covers the DNA tests conducted on their cheek-swab samples, and 2) the employer violated the statute by requesting and collecting the employees’ genetic information.

With liability already established, earlier this month, the parties tried the employees’ damages claims. And, the jury came back with a big number — $2,225,000 — including $225,000 and $250,000 in compensatory damages for the two plaintiffs, and $1,750,000 in punitive damages.

To me, this employer’s actions are not all that outrageous or inappropriate. It asked employees who were in the area of the found feces to submit to swabs of their cheeks. It neither asked for stool samples or for them to bend over and cough. Could the employer have taken a less intrusive measure, like installing hidden cameras? Sure. But, it did what it thought was reasonable under the circumstances to catch its predator. Unfortunately, however, a DNA test is still a DNA test, which runs afoul of GINA.

While I’m not offended by these tests, the jury clearly was. Over $200,000 per employee in compensatory damages? For a q-tip in the mouth? And $1.75 million in punitive damages? Why was this jury so outraged? Because their sense of privacy was offended. While social media seems to be eroding the innate nature of what “privacy” means, this verdict tells us that medical and genetic information are different.

So, employers, tread lightly when dealing with your employees’ genetic information. One case does not make a trend, but $2,225,000 (albeit one that should be reduced to $600,000 per the civil-rights law’s damage caps) in enough to make any employer stand up and take notice that genetic information discrimination is here to stay.

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Twin peaks – twin lies

Supposedly record-high temperature and carbon dioxide levels supposedly bring record chaos

Paul Driessen and Tom Tamarkin

A recent NOAA article is just what Doctor Doom ordered. It claims the 18-year “hiatus” in rising planetary temperatures isn’t really happening. (The “pause” followed a 20-year modest temperature increase, which followed a prolonged cooling period.) The article states:

“Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.”

Published in Science magazine to ensure extensive news coverage before critics could expose its flaws, the report was indeed featured prominently in the national print, television and electronic media.

It’s part of the twin peaks thesis: Peaking carbon dioxide levels will cause peaking temperatures, which will lead to catastrophic climate and weather. Unfortunately for alarmists, the chaos isn’t happening.

No category 3-5 hurricane has hit the United States for a record 9-1/2 years. Tornadoes, droughts, polar bears, polar ice, sea levels and wildfires are all in line with (or improvements on) historic patterns and trends. The Sahel is green again, thanks to that extra CO2. And the newly invented disasters they want to attribute to fossil fuel-driven climate change – allergies, asthma, ISIS and Boko Haram – don’t even pass the laugh test.

The NOAA report appears to have been another salvo in the White House’s attempt to regain the offensive, ahead of the Heartland Institute’s Tenth International Climate Conference. However, a growing number of prominent analysts have uncovered serious biases, errors and questions in the report.

Climatologists Pat Michaels, Dick Lindzen, and Chip Knappenberger point out that the NOAA team adjusted sea-surface temperature (SST) data from buoys upward by 0.12 degrees Celsius, to make them “homogenous” with lengthier records from engine intake systems in ships. However, engine intake data are “clearly contaminated by heat conduction” from the ships, and the data were never intended for scientific use – whereas the global buoy network was designed for environmental monitoring.

So why not adjust the ship data downward, to “homogenize” them with buoy data, and account for the contamination? Perhaps because, as Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry observed, this latest NOAA analysis “will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration.” However, it will not be “particularly useful” for improving our understanding of what is happening in Earth’s climate system.

Dr. Curry and the previously mentioned scientists also note that the buoy network has covered an increasingly wide area over the past couple decades, collecting high quality data. So again, why did NOAA resort to shipboard data? The ARGO buoys and satellite network (both omitted in this new analysis) do not show a warming trend – whereas the NOAA methodology injects a clear warming trend.

Canadian economist and statistical expert Ross McKitrick also analyzed the NOAA approach. He concluded that it wipes out the global warming hiatus that eight other studies have found. Its adjustments to SST records for 1998-2000 had an especially large effect, he says. Dr. McKitrick also recaps the problems scientists have with trying to create consistent temperature records from the multiple measurement methods employed over the centuries.

Theologian, ethicist and climate analyst Calvin Beisner provides an excellent summary of all these and other critiques of the deceptive NOAA paper.

It is also important to note that, in reality, NOAA is quibbling about hundredths of a degree – essentially the margin of error. On that basis it rejects multiple studies that found planetary warming has stopped.

Britain’s Global Warming Policy Forum succinctly concludes: “This is a highly speculative and slight paper that produces a statistically marginal result by cherry-picking time intervals, resulting in a global temperature graph that is at odds with those produced by the UK Met Office and NASA,” as well as by other exhaustive data monitoring reports over the past four decades.

The vitally important bottom line is simple.

The central issue in this ongoing debate is not whether Planet Earth is warming. The issue is: How much is it warming? How much of the warming and other climate changes are due to mankind’s use of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases – and how much are due to the same powerful natural forces that have driven climate and weather fluctuations throughout Earth and human history? And will any changes be short-term or long-term … and good, bad, neutral or catastrophic?

At this time, there is no scientific evidence – based on actual observations and measurements of temperatures and weather events – that humans are altering the climate to a significant or dangerous degree. Computer models, political statements and hypothetical cataclysms cannot and must not substitute for that absence of actual evidence, especially when the consequences would be so dire for so many. In fact, even the “record high” global average temperature of 2014 was concocted and a margin of error.

Simply put, the danger is not climate change – which will always be with us. The danger is energy restrictions imposed in the name of controlling Earth’s perpetually fickle climate.

Moreover, the IPCC’s top climate official says the UN’s unelected bureaucrats are undertaking “probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the [global capitalist] economic development model.” Another IPCC director says, “Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. The next world climate summit is actually an economy summit, during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

That summit could also give government officials and environmental activists the power to eliminate fossil fuels, control businesses and entire economies, and tell families what living standards they will be permitted to enjoy – with no accountability for the damage that will result from their actions.

For developed nations, surrendering to the climate crisis industry would result in fossil fuel restrictions that kill jobs, reduce living standards, health, welfare and life spans – and put ideologically driven government bureaucrats in control of everything people make, grow, ship, eat and do.

For poor countries, implementing policies to protect energy-deprived masses from computer-generated manmade climate disasters decades from now would perpetuate poverty and diseases that kill them tomorrow. Denying people their basic rights to have affordable, reliable energy, rise up out of poverty, and enjoy modern technologies and living standards would be immoral – a crime against humanity.

Countries, communities, companies and citizens need to challenge and resist these immoral, harmful, tyrannical, lethal and racist EPA, IPCC, UN and EU decrees. Otherwise, the steady technological, economic, health and human progress of the past 150 years will come to a painful, grinding halt – sacrificed in the name of an illusory and fabricated climate crisis.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death, and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: Saving the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

Tom Tamarkin is founder and CEO of USCL Corporation and of the fusion energy advocacy groups http://www.fusion4freedom.us and http://www.fuelRfuture.com. He is widely credited with inventing the utility industry smart meter and holds granted and pending patents in the field.