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From the monthly archives:
November 2009
Eric Holder Won’t Investigate His Radical Friends at ACORN
Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18. He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.
But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder, whom I’ve long argued is unfit to serve as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer, supports ACORN’s goals.
ACORN wants to use the power of government to bring about a radical transformation of American society.
So does Holder.
He is unapologetic about his desire to force Big Government down the throats of Americans. Holder rarely misses an opportunity to advocate expanding the size and scope of the federal government. He told a 2004 gathering of the left-wing American Constitution Society, “Government has been the primary force for positive social change in our country’s history. It can be again.”
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Revealed:ACORN, NBC Worked Together in “Undercover Video Sting”
Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.
Below is a page from ACORN’s 2005 Annual Report. In it, they tell the story of how one of their employees teamed up with NBC Dateline to do a ‘video sting’ on tax-preparer Jackson Hewitt.
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Pages from 2005-ACORN-Annual-Report-web –
For the best ACORN coverage on the web, please visit http://biggovernment.com
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Summary of Findings
The effects of the proposal on premiums would differ across insurance markets (see Table 1). The largest effects would be seen in the nongroup market, which would grow in size under the proposal but would still account for only 17 percent of the overall insurance market in 2016. The effects on premiums would be much smaller in the small group and large group markets, which would make up 13 percent and 70 percent of the total insurance market, respectively.
Nongroup Policies
CBO and JCT estimate that the average premium per person covered (including dependents) for new nongroup policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law. About half of those enrollees would receive government subsidies that would reduce their costs well below the premiums that would be charged for such policies under current law.
Source:
An Analysis of Health Insurance Premiums Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
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ObamaCare’s Cost Could Top $6 Trillion
Posted by Michael F. Cannon
Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years. Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.
One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019). Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”
Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance. When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax. When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending. But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending. That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan. And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs. When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4).
Here’s where things get really ugly. TPMDC’s Brian Beutler calls “the” $2.5-trillion cost estimate a “doozy” of a “hysterical Republican whopper.” Not only is he incorrect, he doesn’t seem to realize that Gregg and I are correcting for different budget gimmicks; it’s just a coincidence that we happened to reach the same number.
When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion. That’s not a precise estimate. It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.
Beutler and other supporters of ObamaCare can react to this news in two ways. They can continue to deny the enormous cost of the legislation they support. Or they can question how President Obama’s health plan came to be so blessedly expensive, and how (and by whom) they were duped into thinking it wasn’t.
The House health-care reform plan unveiled last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would do more than regulate insurance companies – it would even regulate vending machines.
The bill, which is posted online, would require that vending machine operators either create new machines that allow the customer to view nutrition facts or post nutritional information for each product near “each article of food or the selection button.”
The regulation could wind up costing vendors millions of dollars to make the changes, according to industry estimates.
Section 2572 of the bill (H.R. 3962) says, “In the case of an article of food sold from a vending machine that – (I) does not permit a prospective purchaser to examine the Nutritional Facts Panel before purchasing the article or does not otherwise provide visible nutrition information at the point of purchase; and (II) is operated by a person who is engaged in the business of owning or operating 20 or more vending machines, “the vending machine operator shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button that includes a clear and conspicuous statement disclosing the number of calories contained in the article.” (See page 1,515 of H.R. 3962 Section 2572 (H) (viii).
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Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama’s explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit.
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The Las Vegas Review Journal reports on another example of health care rationing.
George Anter knows he has a lot to be thankful for during the holidays.
The heart he received during a transplant procedure 12 years ago, for which he gives thanks every day, continues to do its job.
He has won bouts with prostate and skin cancer, and his non-Hodgkins lymphoma remains under control with chemotherapy.
His four children and four grandchildren are thriving in their careers and in school.
And in December, Anter and his wife, Madeline, will celebrate their 53rd wedding anniversary.
But as grateful as he is, the 74-year-old Anter admits one thing will be bugging him during the holidays.
“The truth is,” the retired paper sales executive said last week, “when I think about not being able to get a swine flu shot, I get real pissed off.”
Two months after H1N1 flu vaccine was first distributed to public health districts around the country, people 65 and older with serious medical conditions still can’t get vaccinated.
Anter’s doctors at Stanford University Hospital, where he received his transplant, tell him he has a compromised immune system and “the H1N1 flu could do me in.”
He takes at least nine prescription medications daily to stay alive.
“But when I try to get a shot, I’m told I’m too old ” he said as he sat in the study of his Peccole Ranch home.
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Martha Framsted, a state health division spokeswoman, has said public health officials are continually reviewing the situation to see when vaccinations can be made available to more Nevadans.“We want to give it to everybody,” she said.
But Anter doesn’t see any sense of urgency.
“When you get as old as I am, they see you as a big zero,” he said. “They don’t really care if we die.”
Please read the entire article here:
Elderly question flu shot controls. 65 and older face H1N1 vaccine limits
More Health care Coverage on Liberty’s Army
Contact Your U.S. Representative
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell
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Climate ‘czar’ says hacked e-mails don’t change anything
Obama administration climate czar Carol Browner on Wednesday rejected claims that e-mails stolen from a British university show climate scientists trumped up global warming numbers, saying she considers the science settled.
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If you’re curious to see how the mainstream Washington, D.C. press views the global warming debate, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift may have tipped off the public off.
On the Nov. 29 edition of “The McLaughlin Group,” host John McLaughlin asked about the prospects of a Copenhagen climate change treaty and its possible impact on the U.S. economy. MSNBC and “The McLaughlin Group” regular Pat Buchanan gave some spot-on analysis on global warming alarmist about former Vice President Al Gore and how it pertains to the climate change issue.
“Well, I don’t think it’s going to have any impact, John, because I don’t think it’s going to get through the United States Senate,” Buchanan said. “And there’s a reason for that John, and that’s Al Gore’s moment has come and gone. The truth is they’re changing the name to climate change rather than global warming for a reason.”
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Later in the show, Buchanan reiterated his point that global warming wasn’t going on and said there was no proof that any of the warming that has occurred in recent history was caused by man.“It was warming, John,” Buchanan said. “It’s not been warming since ‘98. Secondly, there’s no known proof it’s because of man and there’s no known proof it’s a great danger.”
However, Clift felt inclined to responded, rather emphatically. She said she believes U.S. policy should be proactive toward the issue. Her view is arguably indicative of the mainstream media’s sentiment on the debate, and she equated it to blind faith when she told Buchanan there’s no proof there’s a God either, which didn’t mean global warming wasn’t a danger.
“It’s no known proof there’s God, either. How much proof do you need, Pat?” Clift replied. “Oh, it is a danger. It’s a danger in many places.”
Document Reveals U.N.’s Goal of Becoming Rule-Maker in Global Environmental Talks
Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion “as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,” according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world’s would-be environmental watchdog.
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But UNEP’s strategic plan, as well as the IISD document that grew out of the Swiss gathering, look well beyond the horizon of Copenhagen in suggesting the outlines of the world’s environment-centered future, to what the strategic plan calls “the next phase in the evolution of UNEP.”Among other things, both documents argue for:
—a “new and central position for environmentalism in the world’s thinking,” as the Swiss paper puts it. “The current environmental challenges and opportunities will cause the environment to move from often being considered as a marginal issue at the intergovernmental and national levels to the centre of political and economic decision-making,” says the medium-term plan.
—a new position in the international power game for UNEP, reaching far beyond the member governments that currently finance its core budget and make up its normal supervisors. “It will have to make itself relevant well beyond the world of those already concerned with the environment, including very prominently its own formal constituency,” as the Swiss paper puts it.
UNEP will “actively reach out to Governments, other United Nations entities, international institutions, multilateral environmental agreement secretariats, civil society, the private sector and other relevant partners to implement the Medium-term Strategy,” says the UNEP document.
—a major restructuring of international institutions to merge environmental issues with economics as the central priority. “We require an Environmental Bretton Woods for the 21st Century,” Halle argues — a reference to the meeting that laid the foundations of Western international finance and economic regulation after World War II. “The linkages between environmental sustainability and the economy will emerge as a key focus for public policymaking and a determinant of future markets opportunities,” according to the UNEP strategic plan.
—new environmental rules, regulations and standards, and the linking of existing environmental agreements, in a stronger global lattice-work of environmental law, with stronger authority to command national governments. The Swiss paper calls it a series of “ambitious yet incremental adjustments” to international environmental governance. Indeed, the document says, UNEP’s “role is to ‘tee up’ the next generation of such rules.”
The UNEP four-year strategy puts it more obliquely, and only in a footnote on page 7 of the document: “UNEP will actively participate in the continuing international environmental governance discussions both within and outside the United Nations system, noting the repeated calls to strengthen UNEP, including its financial base, and the ‘evolutionary nature of strengthening international environmental governance.’”
—an extensive propagandizing role for UNEP that reaches beyond its member governments and traditional environmental institutions to “children and youth” as well as business and political groups, to support UNEP strategic objectives.
As the Swiss paper puts it, UNEP “should pioneer a new style of work. This requires going beyond a narrow interpretation of UNEP’s stakeholders as comprising its member states — or even the world’s governments — and recruiting a far wider community of support, in civil society, the academic world and the private sector.” At the same time the paper warns that these groups need to be “harnessed to the UNEP mission without appearing to make an end-run around the member governments.”
The official four-year plan uses more restrained language in declaring that “civil society, including children and youth, and the private sector will be reached through tailor-made outreach products and campaigns…. Civil society will also be engaged to assist with UNEP outreach efforts.” (The term “civil society,” as used by the U.N., usually refers to organizations and associations that have received formal recognition from one branch or another of the sprawling world organization.)
—along with increased political leverage for UNEP, bringing increased financial leverage to its cause, once again by reaching beyond the national environmental ministries that traditionally are the organization’s financial base to more powerful sectors of government as well as business and other interest groups that will see profit and advantage in the new, environment centered approach.
Says the Swiss paper: “UNEP must focus on priorities that meet two characteristics: they should appeal to the more powerful [government] ministers responsible for economic policy; and they should empower environmental ministers at the cabinet table. UNEP’s message is not for environment ministers — the already converted…. It must aim higher.”
As UNEP’s four-year strategy more circumspectly puts it: “Mobilizing sufficient finance to meet environmental challenges, including climate change, extends well beyond global mechanisms negotiated under conventions. It will require efforts at local, national and global levels to engage with Governments and the private sector to achieve the necessary additional investment and financial flows.”
As far as UNEP itself is concerned, the document says, the organization “will raise contributions from the private sector, foundations and non-environmental funding windows…Funds will also be drawn from humanitarian, crisis and peacebuilding instruments, where appropriate.”
—Perhaps the most important function both documents see for the newly enhanced UNEP is to seek influence as the world’s guiding arbiter of a new measurement of human development. “We believe the environmental argument should be recast in terms of its importance for and potential contribution to prosperity, stability and equity,” the Swiss paper argues.
Or, more discreetly, as the strategy document puts it: “Integrated environmental assessments that highlight the state of the environment and trends will be used to inform decision-makers and ensure UNEP plays its lead environmental role in the United Nations system and strengthens its capacity to respond better to the global, regional and national needs of Governments.”
According to Halle, however, in an e-mail exchange with Fox News, there are signs that the hugely ambitious role he and his fellow-thinkers sketched for UNEP as religion’s main competitor are “beginning to happen.” Halle pointed to UNEP’s espousal this year of a so-called Green Economy Initiative, a proposal to radically redesign the global economy and transfer trillions of dollars in investment to the world’s poorest developing countries, but one that is couched in terms of providing new green jobs, an end to old, unfair carbon-based energy subsidies, and greater global fairness and opportunity. Halle called the development “quite exciting.”
The Green Economy Initiative, also called the Global Green New Deal, is a major counterpart to the new treaty on greenhouse gas suppression that all branches of the United Nations, and a horde of environmental organizations, are lobbying loudly to bring to agreement at the environmental summit in Copenhagen.
It is certain to remain a UNEP rallying cry long after the Copenhagen meeting is over — and while the other brainstorming ideas that went into the new four-year strategy, not to mention the strategy itself, go into effect.
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Taking the private jet to Copenhagen
Hypocrisy is the vice we find hardest to forgive, but it’s also the one we most enjoy discovering in others. And nothing piques our interest more than eco-hypocrisy as practised by the “green” celebrities who have been spouting green virtue but spewing out hundreds of tons of carbon from their private jets or multiple holiday homes around the globe.
There was Sheryl Crow, who had called upon the public to refrain from using more than one square of toilet paper per visit (“except on those pesky occasions when two or three are required”) and who was leading a Stop Global Warming concert tour across America. It was revealed that while Crow travelled in a biodiesel tour bus, her 30-person entourage followed in a fleet of 13 gas-guzzling vehicles.
John Travolta notoriously encouraged the British public to do its bit to fight global warming — after flying into London on one of his five, yes, five private jets (one of which is a Boeing 707). In 2006 his piloting hobby produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions, more than a hundred times the output of the average Briton, according to the Carbon Trust.
It is less well known that Tom Cruise — who has campaigned for the LA-based environmental group Earth Communications Office — also has an air fleet and a licence to pilot his five planes, including a top-of-the-line customised Gulfstream jet he bought for his wife, Katie Holmes.
Harrison Ford, who is vice-chairman on the board of Conservation International, voices public-service messages for an environmental federation called EarthShare, and once shaved his chest hair to illustrate the effects of deforestation, is another hobby pilot. He once owned a Gulfstream but now makes do with a smaller Cessna Citation Sovereign eight-seater jet, four propeller planes and a helicopter.
Oprah Winfrey, who preaches eco-virtue from her TV pulpit, travelled in a 13-seat Gulfstream IV private jet for years — the preferred model for celebrities and the super-rich. (She has replaced it with a faster Bombardier Global Express.) The public first became aware of her private-jet habit when her plane had to make a forced landing in California in 2005; it was reminded of it this year after one of her stewardesses was fired for allegedly having sex with the pilot while Oprah and other passengers were asleep.
Jennifer Aniston told reporters that to save the Earth’s precious water resources she brushes her teeth while in the shower. But she also flew a hairdresser to Europe to accompany her on a recent publicity tour for the film Marley & Me.
Perhaps more egregious, because she is a much more in-your-face global-warming campaigner, is Dame Trudie Styler, film financier and wife of Sting. Not only do she and her husband run seven homes and travel between them in private jets and a fleet of cars, but in 2007 an employment tribunal revealed Styler was furious when her pregnant chef refused to travel 100 miles to prepare some soup and salad. (The chef had regularly made the trip in the past, travelling by train and taxi.) And Sting recently had to contend with accusations that the Police were “the dirtiest band in the world” because of the scale of their last tour and the carbon footprint of the fans who went to see them.
This spring Styler was accused of hiring a private jet to take her and an eight-person entourage from New York to Washington, DC, for the White House correspondents’ dinner, even though there are dozens of scheduled shuttle flights she could have taken, not to mention fast trains. Strangely, Sting flew commercial to the same dinner. When challenged, Styler reportedly defended herself by saying: “Yes, I do take planes. My life is to travel and to speak out about the horrors of an environment that is being abused at the hands of oil companies.”
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Leaked emails won’t harm UN climate body, says chairman
There is “virtually no possibility” of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN’s top global warming body, its chair said today.
Rajendra Pachauri defended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel’s fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007
Climate-cult con is hard to ‘bear’
When did global warming turn into a forced reli gion?
My daughter came home from school re cently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing — or time to call an exorcist — out came this chilling refrain:
” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . ”
By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that:
A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called “The Warming Song,” at a concert for parents.
B) Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees.
C) There was no deprogramming session on the menu. And no arguing allowed.
The international “Climategate” scandal is now moving into its third week. And reaction from folks on the scientific and political left — or is that redundant? — who treat global warming as a cult in which naysayers must be crushed has been depressing:
Total denial.
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Black Friday Verdict: As Expected, Number of Shoppers Up, Average Spending Down
For Immediate Release
Kathy Grannis (202) 783-7971 or grannisk@nrf.com
www.nrf.com/holidaysBlack Friday Verdict: As Expected, Number of Shoppers Up, Average Spending Down
-Americans Spent $41.2 Billion Over Holiday Weekend-Washington, November 29, 2009 –As the closely-watched Black Friday weekend winds down, a National Retail Federation survey conducted over the weekend confirms the expected: more people spent less. According to NRF’s Black Friday shopping survey, conducted by BIGresearch, 195 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend*, up from 172 million last year. However, the average spending over the weekend dropped to $343.31 per person from $372.57 a year ago. Total spending reached an estimated $41.2 billion.
“Shoppers proved this weekend that they were willing to open their wallets for a bargain, heading out to take advantage of great deals on less expensive items like toys, small appliances and winter clothes,” said Tracy Mullin, NRF President and CEO. “While retailers are encouraged by the number of Americans who shopped over Black Friday weekend, they know they have their work cut out for them to keep people coming back through Christmas. Shoppers can continue to expect retailers to focus on low prices and bargains through the end of December.”
Shoppers’ destination of choice over the past weekend seemed to be department stores, with nearly half (49.4%) of holiday shoppers visiting at least one, a 12.9 percent increase from last year. Discount retailers took an uncharacteristic back seat, with 43.2 percent of holiday shoppers heading to discount stores over the weekend and another 7.8 percent heading to outlet stores.** Shoppers also visited electronics stores (29.0%), clothing stores (22.9%), and grocery stores (19.6%). As millions of shoppers gear up for Cyber Monday, one-fourth of Americans shopping over the weekend (28.5%) were shopping online.
“In an economy like this one, every retailer wants to be a discounter,” said Tracy Mullin, NRF President and CEO. “Department stores have done an admirable job touting both low prices and good quality, which are important requirements for holiday shoppers on a budget.”
According to the survey, nearly one-third (32.2%) of shoppers purchased toys, an increase of 12.9 percent from last year. Additionally, more people purchased sporting goods (12.6% vs. 11.4% last year), personal care or beauty items (22.4% vs. 19.0%) and gift cards (21.2% vs. 18.7%). The most popular purchases were of clothing (0.9%) and books (40.3%), which remained nearly unchanged over last year.
In order to nab the best holiday items, more shoppers headed out for bargains while it was still dark outside. According to the survey, nearly one-third of shoppers (31.2%) were at the stores by 5 a.m., compared with 23.3 percent who were at stores by that time last year.
“During a more robust economy, people may be inclined to hit the “snooze” button on Black Friday, but high unemployment and a focus on price caused shoppers to visit stores early in anticipation of the best deals,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch.
About the Survey
The survey, conducted Nov. 26-28, 2009 by BIGresearch for NRF, polled 4,985 consumers and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4%. BIGresearch is a consumer market intelligence firm that provides unique consumer insights that are gathered online utilizing very large sample sizes.
BIGresearch’s syndicated Consumer Intentions and Actions survey monitors the pulse of more than 8,000 consumers each month to empower its clients with unique insights for identifying opportunities in a fragmented and changing marketplace.
The National Retail Federation is the world’s largest retail trade association, with membership that comprises all retail formats and channels of distribution including department, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet, independent stores, chain restaurants, drug stores and grocery stores as well as the industry’s key trading partners of retail goods and services. NRF represents an industry with more than 1.6 million U.S. retail establishments, more than 24 million employees – about one in five American workers – and 2007 sales of $4.5 trillion. As the industry umbrella group, NRF also represents more than 100 state, national and international retail associations. www.nrf.com
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* NRF’s definition of “Black Friday weekend” includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projected spending for Sunday.
** NRF broke out “discount stores” and “outlet stores” this year for the first time; historical information is not available.
Black Friday Verdict: As Expected, Number of Shoppers Up, Average Spending Down
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In a recent http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Op Ed piece entitled “Kill the bills. Do health reform right”, Dr. Charles Krauthammer makes simple points of irrefutable logic regarding health reform and the current legislation under consideration.
He begins his remarks with this important premise:
The United States has the best health care in the world — but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive.
Regarding the Senate bill he says:
The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.
Then do health care the right way — one reform at a time, each simple and simplifying, aimed at reducing complexity, arbitrariness and inefficiency.
He concludes with the following regarding health reform generally:
Insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative. The problem is that the Democrats have chosen the worst possible method — a $1 trillion new entitlement of stupefying arbitrariness and inefficiency.
The better choice is targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one ~~~~~ It would take 20 pages to write such a bill, not 2,000 — and provide the funds to cover the uninsured without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury.
You can read all of Dr. Krauthammer’s remarks at: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer112009.php3
You can also read the Liberty’s Army specific recommendations regarding health care reform which you will find agrees in principle with Dr Krauthammer’s approach, while providing more detail:
I find myself using the word “lunacy” a lot lately, but i think it fits this situation perfectly.
We have a health system that in addition to being the best in the world, has some fundamental flaws that make it the most inefficient. It is as if it is on fire, blazing out of control, consuming our country’s financial resources at an alarming rate.
Instead of depriving the fire of its fuel which seems to be the scientific way fires are fought, we propose to throw $TRILLIONS in additional fuel at it without attempting to fix any of the root causes of the problem. This is what we have come to expect of “government” in general and liberal government specifically.
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SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
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Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.
A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite, including not just the “Hockey Team”, such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC’s 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore’s ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre’s blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt’s blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.
This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones’s refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got “lost”. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.
But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to “adjust” recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.
What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.
The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics’ work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.
Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre’s demolition of the “hockey stick”, he excoriated the way in which this same “tightly knit group” of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to “peer review” each other’s papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.
The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.
Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row
Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full.
The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, “stolen” by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.
In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.
The publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre. The full data, when disclosed, is certain to be scrutinised by both sides in the fierce debate.
A grandfather with a training in electrical engineering dating back more than 40 years emerged from the leaked emails as a leading climate sceptic trying to bring down the scientific establishment on global warming.
David Holland, who describes himself as a David taking on the Goliath that is the prevailing scientific consensus, is seeking prosecutions against some of Britain’s most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws.
Mr Holland, of Northampton, complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) last week after the leaked emails included several Freedom of Information requests he had submitted to the CRU, and scientists’ private responses to them.
Within hours, a senior complaints officer in the ICO wrote back by email: “I have started to examine the issues that you have raised in your letter and I am currently liaising with colleagues in our Enforcement and Data Protection teams as to what steps to take next.”
The official also promised to investigate other universities linked to the CRU, which is one of the world’s leading authorities on temperature levels and has helped to prove that man-made global warming not only exists but will have catastrophic consequences if not tackled urgently. Mr Holland is convinced the threat has been greatly exaggerated.
In one email dated May 28, 2008, one academic writes to a colleague having received Mr Holland’s request: “Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??”
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Climategate: five Aussie MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax
Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.
ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.
The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.
Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.
Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.
The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.
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Perversion of justice? Navy SEALs capture one of Iraq’s most wanted terrorists and find themselves in court.
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