It looks like the CRU email hacking set off a chain of events that are proving to be cataclysmic for the Global Warming alarmists.  Two back to back reports have not only confirmed what many skeptics have been thinking, but threaten to unravel long held beliefs that have been accepted by some as gospel.  Still, even to this day many cling on to the idea that human caused Global Warming is rooted firmly in science and some politicians go far as to disparage and insult those individuals who believe that global warming is nothing more than a political ploy to garner more power and influence. 

So for those people who still insist that humans are the cause of global warming due to science, for you consideration is the following:  Phil Jones admits that there has been no global warming since 1995.  This is rather critical not only because Phil Jones played a crucial role as part of the scientific team to research GW, but because the IPCC (a political panel for climate change) raised significant hysteria a decade ago upon discovering that the 90s were hotter than any other previous decade in their data pool.  This gave rise to Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” which plotted average earth temperatures over a long course of time eventually culminating in a massive spike thereby shaping a hockey stick.   Now apparently the data used in forming this ‘hockey stick’ has mysteriously vanished and with the CRU scandal alleging data manipulation, the hockey stick incident has gained more infamy than fame.  No wonder Phil Jones stepped down, because the fragile concept of human induced global warming stems more from politicians than actual scientists and it should be no surprise that such a politically charged topic has come under significant scrutiny because the heavy hand of government is powerful enough to bend science.  There is also considerable debate as to whether our spike in global warming is as unprecedented as the politically charged scientists once alleged:

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

Another major piece of evidence from the global warming camp is the supposed harm being done by the warming in crucial areas like Africa.  Rapidly changing sea levels can have great impact on rivers, transportation and coastal life.  With that in mind, about seven years ago the IPCC raised a big alarm suggesting that global warming could have dire consequences on food production in Africa.  Apparently this claim proved to be as prescient as the suggestion that the 1990s was the hottest decade on record, baseless.  The Telegraph suggests that the prediction is completely at odds with scientific evidence and accuses the IPCC of outright propaganda. 

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since

What made this even odder, however, was that the group’s co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC’s 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by “up to 30 per cent”.

This should be extremely disconcerting for anyone who relies on science as the basis behind global warming.  Political campaigns, books and university courses are forged and run based on this evidence or evidence that comes from this organization!  While proponents continually claim that individual or isolated pieces do not disprove the entire concept it becomes increasingly difficult to take anything that comes out of the IPCC seriously.  How many lies are you willing to swallow before you sever the relationship?   Furthermore, allegations that a majority of scientists concur on the issue of human induced global warming is nothing more than propaganda as it appears that scientists with a political agenda or are backed by state run money reach a far different conclusion than scientists in the private sector.

Ultimately the lesson to take away from this extends beyond global warming, but rather as a warning that any time a government is involved in promoting a ‘crisis’ the motivation should always be questioned.  Historically the largest expansions of federal and state governments occurred during so-called times of crisis and it should not surprise you that most of the time the crisis was induced by the government itself.  Whether it is a war emergency or a Great Depression the result is always the same.  Benevolent politicians take upon themselves the reigns of central planning and attempt to accomplish the impossible.  This of course always ends in dismal failure as there is never enough intelligence in the world to outsmart the market, but tragically this failure has not prevented our politicians from even greater ambitions – outsmarting mother nature. 

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Kudos to Glenn Beck for pursuing the question as boldly as he did, because this one is a bit of a shocker.  Medina has been making noise in the polls suggesting that she could be a viable candidate in the Texas governor’s race, but I surmise that this surge in the polls will be very short lived.  Below is an interview with Glenn Beck, so listen for yourself.

The question poised by Beck should have been a softball and instead Medina flopped so badly I think she made Buckner look like a genius.   There are two major problems with this particular revelation.  First and foremost, why in the world does every single Constitutionalist carry so much tin-foil baggage with them?  Ron Paul is constantly surrounded by Truthers and now we discover that Medina has not reached a conclusion herself, which is basically a resounding YES.  Sure she is not submitting her name on petitions a la Van Jones, but with this tremendous flop of an answer, she might as well be.  Secondly, the Tea Party is already faced with a fringe stigma as many Partiers refuse to let go of the Obama citizenship question, but now pile on the Truther disease and you have a movement that is destined to be ridiculed into obscurity.  

This of course gets us back to the original question, what the hell is going on?  Why can’t people get together and passionately argue and discuss the merits of smaller government for economic, moral and personal reasons?  Is it really that difficult to explain why an overreaching federal government is dangerous to our liberties and wallets?   Is it that hard to demonstrate why entitlement programs fail, education should be privatized and health decisions should be made between citizens and doctors?  No, apparently to make that point you need to insist Obama is a Kenyan and Bush organized 9/11 as if either can be pulled off by the gross incompentence swirling in Washington.  If Birthers and Truthers are not expunged out of this movement and laughed back into the cave from which they emerged, you can kiss the Tea Party good bye.

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publicly claim that our deficit has nothing to do with government spending?

The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.

Nothing sickens me more than an economist armed with a Nobel prize slinging around this drivel as millions of Americans impressed by his credibility scoop up this Kool-aid.  Read the comments section, Krugman can say no wrong and yet he continues to push policies and ideas that have been failing for 80 years.  Now you see the poison of Keynesian infiltration inside politics, what politician would ignore an economist that not only encourages current spending, but insists on MORE of it?

Frankly, I do not think one needs a very compelling argument as to why every single Democrat who voted to raise our debt today should be voted out of office in exactly 8 months.  This video should be enough.

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High Resolution Press Images:

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High Resolution Press Images:

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]]> http://www.nationalbroadside.com/?feed=rss2&p=5455 0 http://www.nationalbroadside.com/?p=5047 http://www.nationalbroadside.com/?p=5047#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:16:33 +0000 Arkady tag:feeds.feedburner.com://4b78222831e3dc1231e4739a21a93370

As discussed in lessons from Shays’ rebellion, this is another classic government diagnosis/cure phenomena.  Higher education costs are hurting people, so the government steps in and provides a solution, this solution oddly enough raises more costs and so it goes until all government aid is taken over by the federal government or worse yet, all private institutions become federally run institutions.  If you thought that our current educational facilities do not produce enough liberals, just you wait!

The portion discussing bank reform and regulation should make your blood boil and in case you are skeptical, the permanent bailout window to the banks is indeed real under the guise of harsh reform.   Wall St. and Washington are tied at the hip and with financial services representing 30% of the GDP, no reform will punish Wall St. 

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Certainly good news, although doubtful this will translate into anything meaningful.  Three brave Republicans are delaying man of the year’s reconfirmation as they seek out documents pertaining to the bailouts of 2008.

First of all, where is the public outrage?  Why is it that when Democrats justify their votes, they do so based on some odd perception that Democrat politicians fight for the “little guy” and against the big corporations.  Yet the biggest corporation of them all, Federal Reserve, gets a free pass and yet these same Democrats do not bat an eyelash?  Is it because the Federal Reserve’s presence and function is unclear to people or is this just another case of electorate ignorance.   Just this past election in Massachusetts I personally heard justifications for defending Coakley even though she is completely swimming in corporate money, how is it not blatantly obvious as to where the loyalties of these politicians truly lie?

So for those not following Bernanke is entirely complicit and responsible for the trillions of dollars that he personally put us on the hook for.  Not only did he illegally purchase almost a trillion dollars worth of rapidly depreciating mortgage backed securities he is refusing to disclose to Congress the details of his operations.  Yes, he did so illegally because the original Fed charter never allowed the Fed to purchase these types of instruments let alone be the sole market for them.

So I ask once again, where is the outrage?  Why is it that only Republican seem to care about this financial atrocity?  In case you are not convinced which party has our back and which party has the banking interest in mind, examine the voting on the Fed audit .  A vote taken in the House finance committee and the results are alarming at best.  21 Democrats voted against a fed audit, against transparency against showing to the American taxpayer where our FUTURE money is being directed.    Nothing could be simpler than this vote and with the exception of two individuals the Republicans seem to have understood that.

So now we have three Senators, DeMint, Vitter and Bunning who have pitted themselves against the liked of Chris Dodd to attempt at least some kind of truth extraction.  I applaud these three and you should too, because reigning in our central bank and bringing to light trillions of dollars in direct payments, bailouts and debt monetization is the FIRST and ONLY step we should be doing right now.  Nothing else matters if Congress has a mechanism by which it can freely spend on any program while burdening our future generations with the payment of it all.

If you want to stop the advance of socialization and central planning, then fight to break the centrally planned monetary monopoly in our country.   Bernanke getting denied further opportunity to damage this country is a fantastic first step.

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An important question to consider seeing that his entire campaign has now been focused on this one issue.  Although the legislative technicalities have already been discussed, I decided that a picture might convey the idea better.  For all the out-of-state supporters clamoring for a Scott Brown victory, this is for you!

By the way, Democrats striking a deal to exempt labor unions from the Cadillac tax means that the current version will be accepted by the House – in other words, Brown’s vote will be entirely and utterly useless.  At this rate a vote for Joe Kennedy, the only candidate promising to repeal ObamaCare is the only sensible solution. 

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There was a story I covered one year ago ago where several lawmakers met to hear a proposal of an outright 401K takeover modeled after the Argentine policy.  At the time it seemed like a far fetched notion, but BusinessWeek ran a story hinting that the threat still exists. 

Now the story itself does not outright suggest a takeover, but the following should give you pause.

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

So as of now the idea is to gently inquire as to whether people would be interested in converting their existing accounts into steady revenue streams.  For laymen this simply means investing into the treasury market and this should not be surprising given what is in store for America in 2010.  You see, we have several trillion dollars worth of debt we need to roll over not to mention several trillion more to keep up with newly implemented spending programs.  Because as of later 2009 the primary foreign buyers of our debt (China, Japan, UK) have all turned off their spigots we are facing a dilemma.  Apparently this dilemma is directing someone at the federal level to go after a gigantic pool of money – our retirement accounts. 

Once again, as of now, this appears to be an option and according to the same BusinessWeek article not a very popular one.  If our Treasury cannot convince people to buy our debt then it will do what government does best, use force.  After all, Social Security could have easily been a voluntary program – same as Medicare, for all the cheap lip service liberals pay to “competition” they seldom follow their own advice.  In fact even the income tax is “voluntary”!  It would not be completely out of the question for mandates to start appearing that a portion or the full entirety of one’s 401K retirement account goes strictly to buying US Government debt!

Now beyond being immoral and reprehensible from a purely monetary standpoint it’s just flat out theft.  America cannot guarantee it’s ability to pay just like it cannot guarantee that Social Security and Medicare will be solvent in the future.  Social Security is a massive ponzi scheme that is destined to screw over several generations in the foreseeable future and a possible 401K takeover will be an extension of this theft on a grand scale. 

Instead of drastically cutting spending and making Social Security voluntary while raising proceeds to take over those currently RELIANT on Social Security our ruling class is desperately seeking ways to stem the bleeding, bleeding they themselves caused.  So in the best case I am just paranoid although our Treasury is indeed in big trouble OR we are staring at a most daunting prospect of having our nest eggs confiscated and the first legitimate reason for a large scale revolt. 

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Despite all the disagreements I have with people who believe wealth distribution works and the free market fails, there is one common aspect we can all agree on.  A transparent government is the only government.  When Obama ran his campaign, he focused his energy on promising a transparency unlike any other vowing to air all negotiations of legislation on C-SPAN.  In fact you can find videos of these promises scattered all over the Internet.  At this point in time it has become clear that Obama’s promises were nothing more than underhanded tactics to buy votes. 

At this point you can claim that all politicians lie and this is a fact of life, as if somehow making the reality better, but these promises strike at the core of American voters.  Regardless of what stripe or persuasion you are, the idea that a public agency should operate in the shadows on the matter of domestic policy is difficult to swallow and yet this administration spearheaded by Nancy Pelsosi and Harry Reid is doing just that.  In order to cram through health care legislation they are willing to break every rule in the book regardless of how brazen.  In this particular case, they are refusing to expose negotiations between the House and Senate versions of the final health care proposals, a key and vital step for the public to be aware of as this negotiated bill is the very bill that will eventually become law. 

In fact, things are getting so out of hand that CNN has started to show signs of rational thinking.  Days of hope and change euphoria are beginning to dissipate and this is a big win for every American. Watch until the end as Jack Cafferty almost endorses the GOP in 2010!  Shocking.

My question still remains, where is the liberal outrage from the populace?  Where is it?

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Believe it or not there are two very important lessons we can learn today from a 1786 rebellion.  For those not familiar, Shays’ rebellion took place in Massachusetts and involved Daniel Shays and hundreds of other poor farmers crushed by taxes and debt to launch a full scale rebellion.  However the story is not about citizens rioting because of injustices they felt were thrust upon them, but a state and federal government printing “money” to finance a war and ultimately failing to deliver the gold and silver promised to the holders of the printed “money”. 

Massachusetts was an especially egregious offender of printing money via their state bank and routinely inflated worthless paper on top of gold/silver they could not ultimately pay out in.   This practice stemmed back for decades prior to the Continental Congress engaging in similar practices ultimately leading to the infamous “Not worth a Continental”. 

Many argue Shays’ rebellion inspired and instigated the push for ratification of our Constitution and promoted discussions over a stronger centralized government.  In fact one line in the famous Federalist papers suggest that Shays’ rebellion caught the attention of one very distinguished founding father. 

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #6:

“If Shays had not been a desperate debtor, it is much to be doubted whether Massachusetts would have been plunged into a civil war.”

Hamilton was a genius of his time, but we are presented here with out first lesson, one that can teach us much about how government works to this day.  As you can see here Hamilton glosses over the rebellion with simplicity and blames the uprising on Shays’ financial situation while using the event as evidence that we need stricter and broader central power.  Truth is, Shays’ rebellion was not caused by his debt, no,  it was caused by worthless paper money being cashed in for gold, gold the government never had.  In order to pay the holders of the paper money wealthy individuals in Massachusetts raised taxes on the citizenry and demanded payment gold or silver and in case of poor farmers unable to pay authorities forced foreclosures and confiscation of property!  While plenty of founding fathers understood the danger of paper money as evidenced by Article 1 Section 10 banning paper money, Hamilton chose to use this particular example to further his ultimate goal of a stronger centralized government. 

Think how often a similar tactic has been employed recently using a very similar approach. 

• The Federal Reserve was created to prevent banking panics and preserve the dollar strength, even though the state and federal government encouraged regional banks to print money,create inflation and actually honored suspension of specie payment (paying out in gold/silver).
• Social Security was created to handle people’s retirements, even though Hoover/FDR prolonged the Great Depression by destroying companies and private pensions with price fixing, crushing taxation and unprecedented federal intervention.
• Department of Energy was created to battle high oil prices, even though Nixonian price fixing lead to record oil prices.
• Department of Education was created to fix our education system, even though LBJ’s great society created permanent welfare ghettos destroying the community and turning schools into prisons.
• Congress passed the HMO Act of 1973 to handle out of control insurance costs, even though Medicare’s creation broke the free market and caused prices to explode.
• Congress wants to pass universal coverage because HMOs are too expensive and too many Americas are uninsured, even though Congress essentially created the HMOs while subsidizing their costs via federal tax credits to employers.

You can probably think of many more examples.  Whether it is Hamilton, FDR, Carter, Bush or Obama the process is the same.  Identify a “crisis”, provide the simplest explanation and provide a solution via further expansion of government.   This creates a vicious cycle whereby governments grow while the population is constantly mislead into believing that all problems are caused by the free market, speculators and greed.  Consequently the population is lead to believe that only the Federal government can offer solutions while too often the fix is worse than the disease. 

Interestingly enough the bankrupt Social Security System, broke Medicare, corrupt Federal Reserve or useless and ineffective departments like that of Energy or Education are not enough to dissuade the population that government programs do not work.  In fact most people cannot imagine life without these institutions and would prefer to strengthen and expand these very programs in hope they could ultimately work in the future.

What is the second lesson you are wondering?  This is the very lesson that Hamilton never understood as can be demonstrated by his central bank, an institution he agitated for despite the objection of Madison and Jefferson.  Government cannot be allowed to print money.  It is really that simple.  Whether it was via the individual state banks during the colonial times or the “private” Federal Reserve, the result is always the same.  Printing money systematically bankrupts and impoverishes the citizenry allowing governments to spend with impunity. 

Before 1933 expanding the monetary supply beyond the physical collection of gold (inflation) lead to panics and recessions.  After 1933 the panics vanished, but recessions remained, but the depreciation of currency took on a more systematic and sinister approach.  Every time the government prints money in the name of “elasticity” you are being taxed implicitly as your purchasing power drops.  Furthermore with our progressive tax code even as wages rise to deal with rising prices we end up paying a bigger share of our salary to the government.  Whether you are being taxed more via bracket creep or implicitly taxed via currency depreciation the government is stealing from you.  Remember, inflation always awards initial recipients while hurting the general population. In this case awarding commercial bankers while penalizing you and me.

Whether you look at the debasement of the Roman currency or the systematic destruction of the Byzantine gold coin the result is always the same.  Debasement of a civilization’s currency leads to the civilization’s demise as the population is systematically robbed while the ruling class grows richer.  This is precisely what is happening in America today!  If you are not convinced, play around with the inflation calculator. You will find just as an example a 30% inflation rate since 1999.  Similarly in 1999 the median income was 42k, while in 2009 the median income stands just north of 46k.  So while prices on average went up 30%, median incomes barely went up 10%.

Over two hundred years ago Daniel Shays and his neighbors felt the injustice and cruelty of a ruling class without truly understanding how he and others were being systematically plundered.  Not much has changed.

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