Tired of Washington corruption? The Center For Freedom and Prosperity has an interesting idea:
Many Americans heard about the last minute 300-plus page amendment to the “climate-change” bill. The amendment was placed in the House “hopper” (where House members had access to it) at 3 a.m. the morning of the vote. However, few Americans know what was in the amendment, including most Representatives voting on the legislation. Now, thanks to Edward Felker of the Washington Times, we know it was packed with pork used to buy the votes of wavering Democrats. Read on, and weep for the nation.
“Rep. Kaptur gets $3.5 billion sweetener in climate bill”
By Edward Felker, published July 1, 2009 in the Washington Times
“When House Democratic leaders were rounding up votes Friday for the massive climate-change bill, they paid special attention to their colleagues from Ohio who remained stubbornly undecided.
They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted - a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, included the Kaptur project in a 310-page amendment to the legislation unveiled at 3 a.m. Friday, just hours before the bill was to be debated on the House floor. The amendment was packed with other vote-getting provisions, both large and small, that had been sought by dozens of wavering Democrats.
The wheeling and dealing proved successful. Mr. Waxman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, backed by the personal lobbying of President Obama, won over enough lawmakers to pass the bill narrowly Friday evening, 219-212.
Miss Kaptur trumpeted her handiwork on her congressional Web site. She said the new federal authority would bring new economic development to Ohio and the struggling Great Lakes region and would also ensure ‘regional equity’ with other parts of the country that already have such programs.
‘The federal government has been subsidizing infrastructure and economic development in other parts of the country since the New Deal. Now, it’s our turn,’ she said. ‘With the Midwest taking the brunt of the economic crisis, my priority was to bring our region additional tools to create jobs and promote energy independence.’
Her spokesman, Steve Fought, said Miss Kaptur modeled the fund after Mr. Obama’s economic stimulus package, which gave similar-sized pots of money to the Western Area Power Administration and the Bonneville Power Administration. Those two Department of Energy administrations serve the Far West and the Western Plains states by issuing similar kinds of loans.
The provision empowers the Energy and Commerce departments to recommend to Congress the final structure of the new federal lending authority. In the meantime, the provision authorized $25 million in startup money in 2010.
Miss Kaptur saw the struggling climate-change bill as a vehicle that was strong enough to carry the project into law.
“When she saw this coming down the pike, she saw an opportunity to attach something she’s kicked around for a long time,’ Mr. Fought said. The inclusion of the program in the legislation, he added, ‘made it possible for her to entertain voting for the bill.’
In the end, Miss Kaptur, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and the House Budget Committee, was among a minority of Midwestern and Southern Democrats to vote for the bill. ‘It was not the factor, but a factor, in her decision to vote for the bill,’ Mr. Fought said.
Although the program would benefit his home state, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, also of Ohio, criticized the provision during a more-than-hourlong speech Friday evening. He said an Ohio-based power authority was unneeded because electricity already flows well through Ohio without a new federal power authority.
‘We do it today,’ he said. ‘We are doing it already.’
Whether the plan becomes law now depends on the Senate, which has yet to adopt the provision. No companion proposal was included in the energy bill that passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently, and the full chamber has yet to begin writing climate-change legislation.
Many of the details of the authority would be determined by the Energy Department. It would be the first new federal power administration created since 1977, when the Western regional power authority began operating.”
Minnesota’s long-running Senate election battle is finally over and Democrat Al Franken is the winner. The rest of us lose, big time. Rarely has a less-qualified, more cartoonish imp gained entrance to “the world’s most prestigious deliberative body,” as Senators like to refer to their base of operations. Franken makes President Obama look experienced and dignified by comparison, no doubt the greatest service he will offer to Democrats or the country. Tomorrow’s newspaper headlines should read, “The Buffoon wins!”
One wonders what Democrat flakes would say if their candidate lost because hundreds of absentee ballots — incumbent Republican Norm Coleman’s strongest area of support — were summarily thrown out. My guess is the mainstream press will gush about Franken’s victory without so much as hinting at a stolen election. But so it goes in today’s America.
Besides being a former comic and left-wing radio host in search of listeners, Franken holds credentials similar to many Democrat legislators, to wit:
“During the 2008 election, New York state officials asserted that Al Franken Inc. had failed to carry required workers’ compensation insurance for employees who assisted him with his comedy and public speaking from 2002 to 2005. Franken paid the $25,000 fine to the state of New York upon being advised his corporation was out of compliance with the state’s workers’ compensation laws,” according to the Associated Press and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.
According to the California Franchise Tax Board, Franken owes over $4,000 in taxes and fines for failure to file returns in the state for several years, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
By his own admission, Franken paid about $70,000 in back income taxes to 17 states last year.
OK, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Democrats who love to tax other people hate to give their own money to Uncle Sam. Hypocrisy is no vice in contemporary Washington D.C. However, Franken’s policy choices are cause for real concern.
Like so many on the left, he was silent when America invaded Iraq in 2003. But, when the going got tough, Frankin turned on his President and demanded that funding for the war be curtailed if no timetable for withdrawal was attached to the spending bill. Broadcasting our exit date would have been the dumbest war strategy since Nixon’s decision to periodically stop bombing Hanoi, but armchair liberals never seem to understand how the enemy thinks.
Franken blames last year’s sky-high gasoline prices on “Big Oil,” and believes we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil by ”investing in renewable energy,” according to his “Al Franken for U.S. Senate” website. Of course, punishing oil companies as Franken wants will increase foreign oil imports, eliminate Americans jobs, and increase the risk to our national security. But, regardless of the cost to country or constituents, the left loves to hate big oil.
Following the party line, Franken is a big advocate of government funded healthcare. In his own words from his campaign website: “Here’s where I stand: We need to go to universal health care.” Trillion dollar deficits now projected to last for 10 years or more will seem like frugality itself if Franken’s plan becomes reality. But hey, it’s not his money. You may read his other unenlightened ideas at www.alfranken.com.
The scariest result of Franken’s win is that the way is now clear “for President Barack Obama’s party to secure a critical 60-seat majority in the Senate,” according to Reuters. Jimmy Carter enjoyed a super-majority in the Senate, as did Lyndon Johnson. America is still reeling from Johnson’s and Carter’s boondoggle policies. If Obama is able to enact Cap and Trade, universal healthcare, a value-added tax and universal access to a college education, America’s days as the gold standard of limited government will be gone forever. Good-bye individualism, creativity, ingenuity and productivity – hello European economic stagnation.
Representative Michelle Bachmann nails it on cronyism in D.C.:
OK all you global warming, climate change enthusiasts. The far right-wing CBS News has blown the whistle on a Washington cover-up much more important than Watergate. Days before the House approved Obama’s Cap and Trade legislation, an EPA administrator’s report doubting the science used to justify wrecking America’s energy production was quashed. Read on, if you can stand the truth:
“EPA May Have Suppressed Report Skeptical Of Global Warming”, published June 26, 2009
CBS News.com
“The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.
Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty ‘decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.’
The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: ‘The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward… and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.’
The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency — and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.
Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. ‘It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else,’ Carlin said. ‘That was obviously coming from higher levels.’
E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to ‘have any direct communication’ with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.
‘I was told for probably the first time in I don’t know how many years exactly what I was to work on,’ said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. ‘And it was not to work on climate change.’ One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.
For its part, the EPA sent CBSNews.com an e-mailed statement saying: ‘Claims that this individual’s opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted.’
Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.
After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. ‘My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide),’ he said. ‘There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They’re not going up, and if anything they’re going down.’
Carlin’s report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there’s ‘little evidence’ that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth’s temperature.
If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.
The EPA’s possible suppression of Carlin’s report, which lists the EPA’s John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court.
‘The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it’s supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way,’ said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming.
Kazman’s group obtained the documents — both CEI and Carlin say he was not the source — and released the e-mails on Tuesday and the report on Friday. As a result of the disclosure, CEI has asked the EPA to re-open the comment period on the greenhouse gas regulatory proceeding, which ended on Tuesday.
The EPA also said in its statement: ‘The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding.’
That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin, the report’s primary author: ‘I decided not to forward your comments… I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.’ He also wrote to Carlin: ‘Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc.’
One reason why the process might have been highly charged politically is the unusual speed of the regulatory process. Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, had said that she wanted her agency to reach a decision about regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act by April 2 — the second anniversary of a related U.S. Supreme Court decision.
‘All this goes back to a decision at a higher level that this was very urgent to get out, if possible yesterday,’ Carlin said. ‘In the case of an ordinary regulation, these things normally take a year or two. In this case, it was a few weeks to get it out for public comment.’ (Carlin said that he and other EPA staff members asked to respond to a draft only had four and a half days to do so.)
In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, invoked Carlin’s report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. ‘The science is not there to back it up,’ Barton said. ‘An EPA report that has been suppressed… raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don’t have an endangerment finding, you don’t need this bill. We don’t need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision.’ (The endangerment finding is the EPA’s decision that carbon dioxide endangers the public health and welfare.)
‘I’m sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach,’ Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. ‘But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on EPA’s finding, and frankly, on other analysis EPA has conducted on climate issues.’
The revelations could prove embarrassing to Jackson, the EPA administrator, who said in January: ‘I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.’ Similarly, Mr. Obama claimed that “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over… To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life.’
‘All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers — you’ve got a bouquet of ironies here,’ said Kazman, the CEI attorney.”
John Boehner says “the American people expect us to know what’s in this bill before voting on it.” Not if the goal is to pass something before anyone knows what it is:
Beginning January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama has been a man in a hurry. First, Obama pushed for passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise know as the $787 billion stimulus bill. Sounding more fear-based than George W. Bush on his worst day, our 44th President declared:
“By now, it’s clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.
What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives — action that’s swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.
Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”
That was February 5th of this year. The House and Senate dutifully passed the pork-laden monstrosity despite the fact that not a single legislator read the final version of the bill before voting. The President assured a skeptical country that “shovel-ready projects abounded” and money would soon be flowing into worker’s checkbooks and then into the general economy as new employees spent their income. Yet almost 5 months later ”only 6 percent of the $787 billion in the bill has been paid out, with much of that in payments to states for social service programs,” according to the Washington Times. No wonder unemployment continues to rise. The majority of Americans having received stimulus money haven’t worked for it. Welcome to Obama’s world.
Most Americans remain unaware or uncaring about the blatant lie that the nation needed an immediate infusion of cash. So, there is no reason for Obama to abandon the rush-rush approach to other components of his policy agenda. Currently on Obama’s plate are the following nation-changing ideas: Cap and Trade, government-run Healthcare, and Immigration reform. By the looks of things, all three bad ideas will be railroaded through Congress as was the stimulus bill. But what’s the rush? Shouldn’t legislation that will alter American society more than any three bills in the history of the Republic be subjected to vigorous debate, full disclose, and careful analysis? Not if you are trying to hide something.
Just what are the origins of this practice of voting on massive spending bills and momentous energy legislation without first reading the final versions of the statutes? Such governmental negligence opens a wide door of opportunity for all sorts of chicanery. For instance, Betsy McCaughey discovered that the stimulus bill contains medical provisions that will change your life. You can learn more at Watch, Read and Be Very Afraid, but here’s a sample of what legislators didn’t bother to read:
“One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, ‘Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.’ According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and ‘learn to operate less like solo practitioners.’
Hospitals and doctors that are not ‘meaningful users’ of the new system will face penalties. ‘Meaningful user’ isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose ‘more stringent measures of meaningful use over time’ (511, 518, 540-541).”
The “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” a.k.a. the cap and trade bill, was just rushed through the House of Representatives without so much as a pretense of House members having read it. Sound familiar? Too bad the lemming-like legislators didn’t take the advice of Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association. In response to yesterday’s slapdash House vote, Mr. Carey wrote:
“This legislation will have a dramatic impact on Ohio’s economy by eliminating jobs in Eastern and Southern Ohio and increasing consumer costs throughout the state. Ohio’s overall economy is under siege — dramatically rising jobless rates and a gloomy overall financial picture for the state. Clearly, there is little doubt that any bill that will negatively impact job’s or our state’s economic competitiveness should have been seriously questioned.” [Emphasis added] As reported by PRNewswire.com.
There is much more in this bill that Americans are unaware of. During the next few days I’ll be reading the hundreds of pages comprising the legislation and reporting on the more onerous discoveries. In the meantime, call your Senators and tell them to vote “No” before it’s too late.
In less than a week, President Obama went from “we shouldn’t meddle” in Iranian affairs to “outrage” over the harsh treatment of protesters. Well, which is it? Of course, focus groups and polling data put the words on Obama’s teleprompter, so watch for him to change positions faster than Anna Nicole Smith. He’s coined a new term: “Obama Speed.” As in “Light Speed,” only faster.
I’m not feeling well today, so I’m going to let Ann Coulter do the talking. She’s much better anyway. For those of you who can’t stomach Ann, she makes several good points in between the barbs. The following post is well worth the read.
“OBAMA TO IRAN: LET THEM EAT ICE CREAM”
By Ann Coulter, published June 24, 2009
“On Iran, President Obama is worse than Hamlet. He’s Colin Powell, waiting to see who wins before picking a side.
Last week, massive protests roiled Iran in response to an apparently fraudulent presidential election, in which nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner within two hours of the polls closing. (ACORN must be involved.)
Obama responded by boldly declaring that the difference between the loon Ahmadinejad and his reformist challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, ‘may not be as great as advertised.’
Maybe the thousands of dissenters risking their lives protesting on the streets of Tehran are doing so because they liked Mousavi’s answer to the ‘boxers or briefs’ question better than Ahmadinejad’s.
Then, in a manly rebuke to the cheating mullahs, Obama said: ‘You’ve seen in Iran some initial reaction from the supreme leader’ — peace be upon him — ‘that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.’
Did FDR give speeches referring to Adolf Hilter as ‘Herr Fuhrer’? What’s with Obama?
Even the French condemned the Iranian government’s ‘brutal’ reaction to the protesters — and the French have tanks with one speed in forward and five speeds in reverse.
You might be a scaredy-cat if … the president of France is talking tougher than you are.
More than a week ago, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said: ‘The ruling power claims to have won the elections … if that were true, we must ask why they find it necessary to imprison their opponents and repress them with such violence.’
But liberals rushed to assure us that Obama’s weak-kneed response to the Iranian uprising and the consequent brutal crackdown was a brilliant foreign policy move. (They also proclaimed his admission that he still smokes ‘lion-hearted’ and ’statesmanlike.’)
As our own Supreme Leader B. Hussein Obama (peace be upon him) explained, ‘It’s not productive given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling.’
You see, if the president of the United States condemned election fraud in Iran, much less put in a kind word for the presidential candidate who is not crazy, it would somehow crush the spirit of the protesters when they discovered, to their horror, that the Great Satan was on their side. (It also wouldn’t do much for Al Franken in Minnesota.)
Liberals hate America, so they assume everyone else does, too.
So when a beautiful Iranian woman, Neda Agha Soltan, was shot dead in the streets of Iran during a protest on Saturday and a video of her death ricocheted around the World Wide Web, Obama valiantly responded by … going out for an ice cream cone. (Masterful!)
Commenting on a woman’s cold-blooded murder in the streets of Tehran, like the murder of babies, is evidently above Obama’s ‘pay grade.’
If it were true that a U.S. president should stay neutral between freedom-loving Iranian students and their oppressors, then why is Obama speaking in support of the protesters now? Are liberals no longer worried about the parade of horribles they claimed would ensue if the U.S. president condemned the mullahs?
Obama’s tough talk this week proves that his gentle words last week about Ahmadinejad and Iran’s ’supreme leader’ (peace be upon him) constituted, at best, spinelessness and, at worst, an endorsement of the fraud.
Moreover, if the better part of valor is for America to stand neutral between freedom and Islamic oppression, why are liberals trying to credit Obama’s ridiculous Cairo speech for emboldening the Iranian protesters?
The only reason that bald contradiction doesn’t smack you in the face is that it is utterly preposterous that Obama’s Cairo speech accomplished anything — anything worthwhile, that is. Not even the people who say that believe it.
The only reaction to Obama’s Cairo speech in the Middle East is that the mullahs probably sighed in relief upon discovering that the U.S. president is a coward and an imbecile.
Two weeks ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was exulting over the ‘free and fair’ national election in Lebanon, in which the voters threw out Hezbollah and voted in the ‘U.S.-supported coalition.’ (Apparently support from America is not deemed the vote-killer in Lebanon that it allegedly is in Iran.)
To justify his Times-expensed airfare to Beirut, Friedman added some local color, noting that ‘more than one Lebanese whispered to me: Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 … this free election would not have happened.’
That’s what Lebanese voters said.
But Friedman also placed a phone call to a guy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — which he didn’t have to go to Lebanon for — to get a quote supporting the ludicrous proposition that Obama’s Cairo speech was responsible for the favorable election results in Lebanon.
‘And then here came this man (Obama),’ Mr. Carnegie Fund said, ‘who came to them with respect, speaking these deep values about their identity and dignity and economic progress and education, and this person indicated that this little prison that people are living in here was not the whole world. That change was possible.’
I think the fact that their Muslim brethren are now living in freedom in a democratic Iraq might have made the point that ‘change was possible’ and ‘this little prison’ is ‘not the whole world’ somewhat more forcefully than a speech apologizing for Westerners who dislike the hijab.
Obama — and America — are still living off President Bush’s successes in the war on terrorism. For the country’s sake, may those successes outlast Obama’s attempt to dismantle them.”
The Pentagon has released the findings of “an internal military investigation into a U.S. airstrike in western Afghanistan” that killed a bunch of friendlies, according to McClatchy Newspapers. It seems that when Afghan and U.S. Marines, aided by four F-18s, couldn’t dislodge several hundred Taliban fighters, someone called in “Big Mo,” a B1-B bomber capable of wreaking havoc over large areas. After three passes, a whole bunch of people were dead. ”Big Mo” carried the day.
Estimates of civilian deaths range from 26 to as many as 140. The large discrepancy is due to the fact that many of the dead were buried before investigators could get to the scene. Here’s why. Afghan locals, following the lead of unscrupulous hospital administrators bilking Medicare, have found that America pays-off big when stuff like this happens. So the game is, dig and refill as many holes as you can before the American sleuths show up, claim all the dead were elderly women or children and ka-ching, the village elders see more money than exists in the entire region. Your tax dollars at work.
Incredibly, no one has an accurate count on the number of Taliban killed, probably because they dress like non-combatants and occupy the same digs. This proven formula kills civilians every time, yet the hand-wringing in Washington seems genuine. The report “suggests (I’m not making this up) that troops need a refresher on how best to use airpower…” How about a 10-week stint in one of Mao’s reeducation camps? I mean, B1-B bombers aren’t good for anything but killing large numbers of human beings. They can’t dust crops, transport troops, or take the President and First Lady on dates. What the brainiacs at the Pentagon are hinting at, of course, is that we should learn to drop bombs only when no civilians are within 10 miles of the bad guys. When pigs fly.
The report is actually critical of our troops for not confirming “whether civilians were inside the structure before the attack was launched,” reported McClatchy. The lack of confirmation may have occurred — this is just a guess — because as many as 300 heavily-armed Taliban fighters had just taken cover in the building. What are our guys supposed to do, knock? “Hello, we’re from the local chapter of the United States Marine Corps and we’re about to level this building. But first we need to know if any kids, women, old men, or otherwise upstanding citizens are here. Just a yes or no will do.” This is no way to fight a war.
Rules of engagement like those suggested in the report guarantee America’s inability to prevail in contemporary warfare. If we are going to demand that our troops tippy-toe around while the other side uses every dirty trick to kill Americans, then I say get our troops out now. Fight to win or don’t put one soldier or Marine in harms way. Use “Big Mo” and every other weapon in our arsenal, or pack it in. We need a refresher course all right. It’s titled, “How To Win Wars In A Hurry.” Clearly, we’ve forgotten how.
Today’s guest author is Nathan Fletcher, “State Assemblyman representing California’s 75th District. He is the first combat veteran of the Global War on Terror to serve in the California State Legislature. Assemblyman Fletcher serves as the Vice Chair of the Assembly Health Committee, the Select Committee on Biotechnology, and the Select Committee on Rail Transportation. He is a member of the Accountability & Administrative Review, Water, Parks, & Wildlife, and Housing & Community Development Committees. Additionally, he sits on the Select Committees on Foster Care, Child/Adolescent Health and Safety, Healthcare Workforce Access, and Safety and Protection of At-Risk California Communities.
In each of these legislative facets, the Assemblyman is committed to demanding transparency and accountability from government, creating new jobs in California, expanding the access and affordability of health care and working to solve the water crisis affecting the Golden State.
In his first few months in office Assemblyman Fletcher was instrumental in passing a major tax code revision that will help create jobs and was a joint author of Assembly Bill 23 which will help employees laid off from small businesses retain their private health insurance.
Fletcher was elected in 2008 and represents the city of San Diego communities of La Jolla, University City, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Peñasquitos, and Fairbanks Ranch, along with the City of Poway, portions of the City of Escondido, the community of Fairbanks Ranch and portions of Rancho Santa Fe.” [From the Assemblyman's website]
The following article was written by Assemblyman Fletcher for publication by the San Diego Union-Tribune on June 18, 2009:
“The Worst Option Is To Raise Taxes”
“California is facing a $24 billion budget deficit. While there is no shortage of ideas for how to deal with it, I suggest we learn a lesson from Clyde Jennings, the CEO of Escondido-based J&W Lumber. When I visited his facility recently, Clyde told me about the difficult cuts he has been forced to make in our declining economy, the efficiencies he has found, and how everyone at his 50-year-old, family-run small business has been working longer and harder for less money. This story is not unique - it is shared by millions of California families and small businesses.
In dealing with our $24 billion deficit, California needs to follow Clyde Jennings’ example - make tough reductions, find efficiencies and work harder.
We didn’t have to end up in this situation. If the Legislature had constrained government growth over the past decade to the rate of inflation and population growth, we would have a balanced budget today. There would be no deficit and we could have returned billions to taxpayers, paid off debt or invested in desperately needed roads and water infrastructure.
Instead, as the economy contracted, government expanded. From January 2001 to February of this year, California experienced a net loss of 235,000 private-sector jobs. Over the same time, the state added 163,700 government jobs. It gets worse. From the middle of last year through January - the peak of our fiscal crisis - 66 state agencies added employees. It’s no wonder the public is angry and losing faith.
Facing such a deep crisis, we are left with few options. We have to make cuts to state government. But just as important, we must change the way our state does business by setting priorities and finding more effective and efficient ways to operate.
We have a responsibility to eliminate agencies, boards and commissions that are redundant or aren’t critically important. In education, we should require that 70 percent of all funding go directly to local schools, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy. We also have an opportunity to save hundreds of millions of dollars each year by letting local school boards use competitive bidding for landscaping, maintenance and other services, and by beginning the transition to electronic textbooks. These types of reform need to take place across the board in state government.
However, these reforms alone won’t be enough to solve the problem. Unfortunately, services that people rely on will be reduced. This is not a situation I wish on anyone, but it’s the situation we are in. To mitigate the impact, we need to prioritize our programs and make tough decisions. California can only spend the money it has, so the task now is to do the least harm in balancing our budget. Attempting to deal with this budget crisis without addressing job creation is shortsighted. The best way to increase revenue is through job growth. We have to put Californians back to work to generate economic recovery.
California is consistently ranked around the bottom of the 50 states in competitiveness. CEO magazine lists us 48th in job creation and Forbes magazine said we have the single-highest cost of doing business. Clyde Jennings showed me exactly what that means for California business owners. When he sells a $10,000 redwood deck, he makes just over $150 in profit. The government’s share of the total: almost $1,000. This is wrong.
Despite these facts, some in Sacramento are proposing further tax increases. Raising taxes is the worst thing the Legislature can do - it will reduce consumer spending and cost us more jobs. We cannot tax our way out of this problem.
Other states recognize California’s harmful policies and are attempting to capitalize on them. Colorado recently sent notices to thousands of California companies touting its low tax rates, low regulatory burden and helpful state government. Texas, Nevada, Florida and others have launched efforts to lure California employers and their jobs. All too often they are successful.
We can’t afford to let them succeed anymore. It is time to take immediate action to keep and create jobs here. Let’s bring back Gov. Pete Wilson’s Council on California Competitiveness. Let’s take a hard look at the regulations on California’s books to see if they are necessary, and make sure they carry automatic sunset dates.
As we take action to protect the jobs we have, let’s also find creative ways to encourage job growth. Right away, we can establish innovation zones that provide incentives for private-sector investment. These would help expand existing epicenters of innovation and commerce like the biotechnology cluster we cherish in San Diego. Bottom line - if you can generate jobs, California should welcome you.
From the Gold Rush to today - the hardest working, most innovative and most entrepreneurial have sought to make California their home, their place to start the American dream. One of them, Charley Jennings started a lumber business 50 years ago with $20, grew it into the company it is today and passed it on to his son Clyde.
We have some challenges, but if state government will learn a lesson from our hard working people, we can come out of this crisis stronger.”
Like most new presidents, Barack Obama promised to be transparent and honest with the American people. To my continuing amazement, most Americans believed him. Until he actually began implementing policy decisions, my guess is that 60% of voters would have purchased Florida swamp land from our smooth talking leader. Now, two days short of five months into Obama’s presidency, thinking Americans are beginning to notice the yawning gap between the man’s speech and actions. Better late than never.
For instance, take the case of Gerald Walpin, an Inspector General at the Corporation for National and Community Service, a “public/private” organization created by President Bill Clinton. The purpose of the CNCS is “to engage Americans of all ages and backgrounds in service to meet community needs. Each year, more than 1.5 million individuals of all ages and backgrounds help meet local needs through a wide array of service opportunities. These include projects in education, the environment, public safety, homeland security and other critical areas through the Corporation’s three major programs: Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America,” according to its website. In other words, hundreds of millions of dollars are handed out each year by the CNCS to approved non-profit groups. Obama’s new budget requests $1.149 billion for CNCS this year.
Of course, spreading that kind of green around presents the opportunity for fraudulent use of public money. Thus the need for Inspectors General like Gerald Walpin. Further, IGs are supposed to be insulated from the political process. Legislation strengthening that ideal was passed and signed into law just last year, requiring that Congress receive 30-days notice “before an Inspector General could be terminated,” according to ABC News. Alas, Obama canned Walpin on this June 10th without so much as a Twitter notification. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, who authored the legislation protecting IGs from exactly this kind of abuse, was not amused.
”The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said. “The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal,” reported ABC. Of course, Obama had provided a reason for firing Walpin, as The Huffington Post had it: “It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general,” Obama said in the letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Vice President Joe Biden, who also serves as president of the Senate. “That is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general.”
In the minds of many, the President’s lack of “the fullest confidence” fell short of a reason to fire Walpin, and for several days a bi-partisan chorus of criticism bombarded the White House. Obama finally caved and on June 16th Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President, delivered the goods on Walpin. According to ABC, “Eisen charged that at a May 20, 2009 board meeting Walpin ‘was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.’” Wow, no doubt about it, Walpin needed firing.
To the delight of many, Gerald Walpin is not going away quietly. Characterizing the reasons for his dismissal as “baseless” and “absolutely wild,” Walpin told Fox News, “I would never say President Obama doesn’t have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states,” Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his “many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media.” Obama mistakenly said once on the campaign trail that he had traveled to 57 states. Yee-haw, the gloves are off.
More to the point, Walpin also said, “I am now the target of the most powerful man in this country, with an army of aides whose major responsibility today seems to be to attack me and get rid of me,” according to Fox. Clearly, Walpin has raised the ire of Obama. What, pray tell, was the man’s sin?
Walpin was foolish enough to uncover misuse of public funds by an organization headed by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. Now the mayor of Sacramento, Johnson’s St. Hope project was on the receiving end of $847,000 courtesy of Uncle Sam. The ever-vigilant Walpin discovered that ”federally-funded AmeriCorps staff” had been used to drive Johnson to personal appointments, wash his car, and run personal errands, “among other things,” according to the Washington Examiner. Johnson has agreed to repay the feds over $400,000, adding validity to Walpin’s findings.
Walpin recommended that Johnson “be suspended from receiving federal funds under any current arrangement and might ultimately be barred from receiving any such funds in the future,” reported the Washington Examiner. Because Johnson is the mayor of Sacramento, that city’s share of stimulus money may be in jeopardy because of Walpin’s report. Yikes.
The two remaining pieces of the puzzle will bring all this into focus. One, Walpin’s reports were not complete and therefore have not been formally submitted. Terminating Walpin will also likely kill the reports. Two, Johnson is a prominent supporter of President Obama. By firing Walpin now, Obama protects one of his own and sends a message to all remaining Inspectors General: “leave my guys alone.”
The only question left to ask is, does anyone care about abuse of power? I mean, when a Democrat does it?
Americans are among the world’s best educated citizens. Our long and proud history of freedom of the press means we well-educated people have wide-ranging access to news at home and abroad. The Internet has increased the flow of information by leaps and bounds. So riddle me this: Why are so many Americans in the dark about the Global Warming hoax? When it comes to the truth about climate change, Americans truly are the last to know the facts.
No doubt about it, advocates of Global Warming got off to a big head start. The Earth Day crowd has been preaching man-made climate disaster since at least 1970. Of course, in the 1970s we were told the threat was from Global Cooling. Other than that, everything about the message is identical to today’s baloney. The harm to the planet is caused by human industrial activity. The damage being done is massive, and unless immediate countermeasures are taken, catastrophe awaits the entire human race. Extinction is possible and mass starvation is likely. Unless the proscribed steps are instituted within ten years it will be too late. Sound familiar?
The good news is, Global Cooling never really caught on. The bad science, outragious predictions (America’s population would dwindle down to 20 million by 2000), and dire warnings were seen for the falderal they were. Now, however, Global Warming is taken as gospel by tens of millions of Americans. The difference is primarily due to power and publicity.
The mainstream press in America has a stake in promoting the Global Warming agenda. Print, broadcast, and cable newsrooms, with some exceptions, are dominated by left-leaning journalists, an unhealthy situation that survey after survey has confirmed. Nearly 85% of the White House press corps, for instance, are registered Democrats. And, the Democratic Party has latched onto Global Warming as a primary ticket to power and the control that goes with it. Naturally, most American media outlets toe the party line, reporting only on the positive aspects of the battle to save the planet.
Scientists and educators who depend on government grants learned years ago that Global Warming heresy would not be tolerated. Want that money? Then repeat what we say. Thousands did. Conversely, those who spoke the truth about Global Warming were ridiculed and ostracized. Being a Global Warming denier was akin to denying the Holocaust. Al Gore declared that the debate about Global Warming was over, his side was right, and everyone should just shut up and do what he said. Fortunately, not everyone did.
Since mid-2007 I’ve catalogued 54 articles debunking Global Warming. It’s a small sample out of the tidal wave of evidence proving that Global Warming is just as bogus as was Global Cooling. That’s not to say the earth’s temperature doesn’t change; it most certainly does. However, atmospheric conditions have been changing since the beginning of time. Warming and cooling periods occurred long before the Industrial Age began. Mankind’s activity is a tiny and insignificant factor in climate change. Currently, we are in a cooling period, something any fool can confirm by walking outdoors. Mankind has always faired better during the warmer periods.
Here’s just a smattering of the more shocking condemnations of the Global Warming Hoax:
“At December’s [2008] U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world’s top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis.” (The Flint Journal, January 29, 2009)
Also from the Flint Journal article: “Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, ‘For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?’”…”Meanwhile, the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What’s more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up by 5 percent since 1980.”…”Dr. Kunihiko, Chancellor of Japan’s Institute of Science and Technology said this: ‘CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other…every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so.’”…”A massive study, just released by the Russian Government, contains overwhelming evidence that earth is on the verge of another Ice Age.”
“Are the world’s ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory? Scare mongering appears to be the case…a Feb.18 [2008] report in the London Daily Express showed that there is a third more ice in Antarctica than usual…” (Newsmax.com, February 19, 2008)
The London Daily Express story also contained these tidbits: “Scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades…Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents.”
“The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principle reason — solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.” (Russian News and Information Agency, March 1, 2008)
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: “Gore’s circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention.”
Gore tells us in the film, “Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap.” This is misleading, according to Ball: “The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology.”
“Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson said global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the planet. Patterson said much of the up-to-date research indicates that ‘changes in the brightness of the sun’ are almost certainly the primary cause of the warming trend since the end of the ‘Little Ice Age’ in the late 19th century. Human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas of concern in most plans to curb climate change, appear to have little effect on global climate, he said.
‘I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we’re about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere,’ said Patterson. ‘The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it’s not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles.’ Patterson explained CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential plant food. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars are spent to control the emissions of this benign gas, in the mistaken belief that they can stop climate change, he said.” (Published by Standard-Freeholder on April 26, 2007)
We could go on, but I trust you get the point. We now have a President who is pushing to trash America’s energy producing industries, raising energy costs by a multiple of 2 or 3, based on the faulty science and political machinations of the Global Warming alarmists. Speak up before it’s too late.
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In case you are not yet convinced, here’s more food for thought. The following was compiled and posted by Marc Morano (Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov) on May 15, 2007. It’s a goldmine of the personal testimonies of scientists who’ve had their eyes opened about the Global Warming Hoax.
“Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is ‘unknown’ and accused the ‘prophets of doom of global warming’ of being motivated by money, noting that ‘the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!’ ‘Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L’EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting ‘Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.’ Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster ‘simplistic and obscuring the true dangers’ mocks ‘the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man’s role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters.’ Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. ‘By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century,’ Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity’ in which the scientists warned that global warming’s ‘potential risks are very great.’
Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a ‘Kyoto house’ in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled ‘The Emperor’s New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.’ A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his ‘Kyoto house’: ‘Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and “red flags,” and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.’ Wiskel now says ‘the truth has to start somewhere.’ Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, ‘If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years.’ Wiskel also said that global warming has gone ‘from a science to a religion’ and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. ‘If you funnel money into things that can’t be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,’ he said.
Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ‘Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,’ Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only ‘incriminating circumstantial evidence.’ ‘Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming’ and ‘it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,’ Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 ‘will not dramatically increase the global temperature.’ ‘Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,’ Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that ‘CO2 should have a large effect on climate’ so ‘he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.’ Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. ‘I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don’t add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,’ he wrote.
Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. ‘I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,’ Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. ‘But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker — better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,’ Evans wrote. ‘As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”‘ he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. ‘And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990’s, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn’t believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,’ Evans wrote. ‘The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,’ he added. ‘Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded. (Evans bio link)
Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. ‘I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,’ Murty explained on August 17, 2006. ‘I switched to the other side in the early 1990’s when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,’ Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, ‘If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.’
Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears ‘poppycock.’ According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said ‘global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.’ ‘The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,’ Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy ‘won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.’
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. ‘At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous “global warming,” But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.’ de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. ‘I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,’ he added. ‘One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,’ de Freitas concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, ‘Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.’
Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s (See Time Magazine’s 1974 article ‘Another Ice Age’ citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article ‘The Cooling World’ citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms ‘sky is falling’ man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. ‘Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?’ Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. ‘All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,’ Bryson said. ‘You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,’ he added. ‘We cannot say what part of that warming was due to mankind’s addition of “greenhouse gases” until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question — too important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,’ Bryson explained in 2005.
Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, ‘I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN's IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.’ ‘After that, I changed my mind,’ Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book ‘Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,’ with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, ‘”Climate change is rea”‘ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural “noise.”‘
Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. ‘I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,’ Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his ‘conversion’ happened following his research on ‘the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.’ ‘[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),’ Patterson explained. ‘Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,’ he wrote. ‘As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,’ Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion ‘probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.’ Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. ‘When I go to a scientific meeting, there’s lots of opinion out there, there’s lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,’ Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. ‘But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it’s like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn’t — come out to a scientific meeting sometime,’ Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. ‘I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we’re about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere,’ he said. ‘The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it’s not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles.’
Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. ‘At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,’ Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. ‘With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,’ Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled ‘CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.’ ‘We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming-with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy-is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,’ Jaworowski wrote. ‘For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologists-and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,’ Jaworowski wrote. ‘The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,’ he added. Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: ‘It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth’s climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.’
Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. ‘I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,’ Clark said in a 2005 documentary ‘Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You’re Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.’ ‘However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,’ Clark explained. ‘Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,’ he added.
Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. ‘I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,’ Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. ‘The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,’ Veizer wrote. ‘It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the assumptions and uncertainties involved,’ Veizer explained. ‘The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,’ he added. Veizer acknowledges the Earth has been warming and he believes in the scientific value of climate modeling. ‘The major point where I diverge from the IPCC scenario is my belief that it underestimates the role of natural variability by proclaiming CO2 to be the only reasonable source of additional energy in the planetary balance. Such additional energy is needed to drive the climate. The point is that most of the temperature, in both nature and models, arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model language “positive water vapor feedback”,)’ Veizer wrote. ‘Thus to get more temperature, more water vapor is needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting more energy into the system,’ he continued. ‘Note that it is not CO2 that is in the models but its presumed energy equivalent (model language “prescribed CO2″). Yet, the models (and climate) would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless where this additional energy is coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic connection is so strongly opposed, because it can influence the global energy budget which, in turn, diminishes the need for an energy input from the CO2 greenhouse,’ he wrote.”
Just when I thought Barack Obama had set an enduring record for stupid statements, just yesterday he raised the bar yet again. Within a fortnight of declaring America one of the world’s “largest Muslim countries,” an easily disproved assertion, our Commander-In-Blunder was at it again. Referring to Iran’s presidential election, Obama said, “We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran,” according to Reuters. If Iran’s phony presidential political campaign excites Obama, he needs to get out more.
Of course, nothing close to a robust political debate — as Americans understand that phrase – has ever occurred in Iran, with the possible exception of a brief period in the early 1950s. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, absolute power has resided in one man. The omnipotent Ayatollah Khomeini was Iran’s Pooh Bah until his death in 1989. Since then, Iran has been ruled by Ali Khamenei “who is not elected [and] holds ultimate political authority in Iran and controls all major policy decisions,” according to the Associated Press. As with all dictatorships, political debate is used as a ruse to pacify an unhappy citizenry. Post-election rioting shows not all Iranians were taken in, unlike our President.
Having said all that, there is at least one similarity evident between politics in America and Iran. Take the behavior of the losing side. Iran’s defeated presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, claimed “the vote was tainted by widespread fraud,” according to the AP. Reuters reported that “Mousavi protested against what he called violations and vote-rigging during the election…He said many people had been unable to vote and ballot papers were lacking.” Is it just me, or does that sound like Florida in 2000? Of course, “vote-rigging” also has a definite Chicago ring to it. Maybe Obama simply confused “hopeful” with “familiar.”
Americans heard the same charges of voter intimidation and vote-tampering after Kerry was defeated in 2004, despite Bush’s clear victory margin. However, Republicans didn’t respond in kind following the 2006 and 2008 elections. Does this mean that election-rigging only occurs when Democrats lose, or Democrats only protest when they lose? In any case, the vanquished Iranians must have read the Democratic Party playbook.
Far more serious is the damage done when President Obama legitimized Iran’s clearly illegitimate political process. This is the danger of a man who is afraid to call a spade a spade for fear of offending someone in the Muslim community. Iran’s defeated minority, desiring a less bellicose Iran more open to peaceful interaction with even “the Great Satan,” must realize their champion — that would be Obama — has just put his stamp of approval on their defeat. The “robust political debate” resulted in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection. Instead of branding Iran’s political process as bogus from the get-go, Obama is now in the untenable position of having to deal with a certifiable nutcase who was elected, according to Obama, by legitimate means. At least Bush’s Axis of Evil speech was honest.
Flattery always comes with a price. Obama’s unwarranted praise of Iran’s election puts America in a weaker bargaining position, cripples Iran’s pro-liberty party, and further threatens the uneasy peace between Israel and Iran. It’s high-time Obama stopped trying to butter-up those who despise freedom. Honesty may sting Iran in the short-run, but baseless praise of tyranny smacks of cowardice and will cause much greater pain in the long-run. So Mr. President, it’s time to man-up. If you can’t say it like it is, find someone who can.