Since the late 1990s I have made a number of predictions based on what I saw coming in the business and political environments. Few people paid any attention to my predictions. Subsequent events proved my predictions amazingly accurate, at least in a general sense. Still, this seemed not to impress anyone or at least very few. This BLOG, and the little booklet I have written with the same content, recounts some of those predictions and when they were made. At the time they were made, each was documented in my HJRants blog and by providing written copies to several groups of people and emails to my contacts. I’ll wager few people paid any attention to them at the time. Most will probably ignore or reject my latest predictions like they did the earlier ones.
At least two years ago I began noticing what to me seemed to be obvious warnings of another kind, ominous warnings linked by a common denominator. These warnings came from all over the world, not just from the United States. The most obvious were:
1) The financial collapse of Greece and Iceland, and the declining financial condition of many other European nations.
2) Our government debt was suddenly accelerating to vast amounts with no end in sight.
3) Our government was printing money at an accelerating pace, far beyond our ability to back up the promises paper money represented.
4) The mortgage disaster transferred by far the largest amount of wealth away from middle class Americans in both dollars and as a percent. The actual wealth was transferred to the banking industry.
5) The skyrocketing price of gold and plunging value of the dollar.
6) China was profiting from vast amounts of exports to the US, and turning those profits into gold at an unprecedented rate.
7) Growth of our GDP had become stagnant.
8) New investment in US plants and equipment had virtually halted.
9) Many wealthy companies and individuals were switching the bulk of their investments from stocks in corporations to commodities like precious metals. Gold and silver mining companies were the main exceptions and to a lesser extent, energy and food companies.
NOTE: The total dollar loss of America’s personal wealth from 2006 to 2011 is estimated to be in excess of 29 trillion dollars. While the wealthy and those who had full equity in their homes (about 30% of homes) were able to weather the storm, most middle class Americans lost almost all of their savings and investment. (Their house represented their largest investment, usually all of their wealth) Put another way, the actual loss was substantially greater than the entire savings the 78 million baby boomers had put aside for their retirement. With 24% of home mortgages being under water (larger than equity), a huge portion of mostly middle class Americans were penniless—really.
One easily drawn conclusion was that this debacle was orchestrated by an administration and Congress obviously dedicated to the destruction of the wealth and independence of the middle class and ultimately, our economy. There is no way they could have done this by accident. No one could be that stupid. It had to be deliberate.
All of these facts were readily available to anyone looking for the information.
The most common measure of the decline in the value of a dollar is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) is a very different number from the CPI since 1994 when the Clinton Administration, backed by a liberal Democrat Congress, removed food and fuel from the calculation of the COLA. Many employment contracts, pension benefits, and government entitlements (such as Social Security) are tied to the COLA as defined by Congress, not the cost-of-living index. Apparently liberals think the poor and elderly don’t need food or fuel. That change in the COLA, put into law by liberal Democrats, brought about the only reduction in Social Security payments. They scream a warning at seniors, “Republicans are going to cut your Social Security checks.” The truth is Democrats reduced SS checks by about 30%, several hundred dollars for most on Social Security. Why don’t you hear about that from the media? Hmmmmm?
In spite of media misinformation, most consumers are no longer fooled by government saying inflation is under control. They know that even the CPI does not accurately reflects the prices they are paying in such crucial areas as energy, food or medical care. (This disbelief is particularly strong among those living on a fixed income.) Indeed, when inflation is measured using the same statistical methods of past decades, it is far above 10%. Our government regularly releases numbers supporting their contentions about the economy, numbers bearing little relation to the realities the citizens now understand. You can only hoodwink the people for a short time. They are a lot smarter than government lackeys imagine them to be.
Democrats and the media have a new mantra of misinformation. They keep saying, “Obama’s policies have turned the economy around. We are now having a growing recovery.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. It's one more scam that some people are either too ignorant to see or are so hungry for good news of a recovery they want to believe such baloney. The media are certainly being dishonest about it. There is a growing consensus among thinking individuals that the media and Democrats are touting a recovery that doesn't exist. It is all being done for political gain for the left.
They will do absolutely anything to stay in power.
They support their pronouncements with their doctored numbers, but the real truth cannot be hidden for very long. Employment numbers for example: While unemployment numbers are easily manipulated, the government regularly publishes the number of those employed in the private sector. That number. the number employed in the private sector, has gone down every month since Obama took the oath of office and through January of 2012. Are things really getting better? Are the prices for food and gasoline coming down? Are there gobs of new jobs? Is housing in a recovery? Are foreclosures down? Are wages going up? Are businesses expanding? Where are the statistics that say a recovery is underway?
My predictions for the future? They are not rosy. I have written about some of them as long as four years ago when I predicted Obama would be nominated and then elected in a Democrat landslide. At the same time I predicted a continuing depression (not recession) fueled and driven by government excesses and animosity toward business, the middle class, and any one successful in business or industry. In particular, class hatred would be used selectively against the "wealthy." Interestingly, those who gained their wealth in ways other than business or investment would be exempt from this class warfare. That included entertainers, sports figures, most of the professions, and of course, liberal politicians. Anyone who could be considered as a capitalist would be painted as an evil monster and placed in the cross hairs of leftists including the media.
Actually all this class warfare is a smoke screen to take the public's attention away from the real and present danger about to overtake our nation. Rather than try to explain it in my own words, I ran across a website that does a far better job than I could ever do. It has a video of a talk by Porter Stansberry, head of Stansberry & Associates Investment Research. It takes about ten minutes so be prepared. If you'd rather hide from a rather bad reality than learn how to prepare for it, don't bother looking. Of course, he’s trying to sell books so keep that in mind in judging his comments.
http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pro/1202CHINAPSI/LOILN228/PR
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Now, back to my predictions. To show clearly the new sections added in this update since my previous release of predictions, they are in verdana font, as is this line.
On Jan 14, 2011, at 8:39 PM, Howard Johnson wrote and sent the following email:
Dear family and friends:
In October of 2004 I emailed the following warning to most of you.
“Is a national mortgage collapse imminent? I am certainly no financial wizard and few people pay attention to my predictions, but I very accurately predicted the collapse of the PC market that led to the dot com debacle. I made some very accurate observations that were as plain as the nose on my face to me. Few people paid me any attention.
A NOTE, not in the original email: Among the few that did listen to my words was one gentleman in particular. He purchased a custom PC from me, and stopped in often to talk with me about the computer business. Some time after the dot com bust, when the economy was again on the upswing, he walked into my little PC store and handed me a check for $1,000.
“What’s this for?” I asked, wondering what he was going to buy.
“He smiled. “Because of the accurate information you gave me about the computer industry, I made several hundred thousand dollars in the stock market. That was some of the best financial advice I have ever received. That check is a small thank you for what your information did for me.”
I thanked him for his generosity. Several months later he came in and bought a laptop for his daughter who was starting college. You never know when your words might be a boon to another person or that you might receive a reward for your effort. - End of update note insert.
Well, here I am again with a new prediction that to me is just as obvious. Some time ago, liberal Democrats in our government managed to remove all reasonable controls on mortgages in order to “make home ownership easier for all people.” As a result, the government’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage banks began providing mortgage money to finance increasingly risky mortgages. In addition, they started bringing pressures to bear on other banks to engage in the same practices. This resulted in a substantial run up in the price of housing and many new mortgage gimmicks like sub-prime and adjustable rate mortgages. Many of those home buyers planned to flip these homes in a rising market and make a profit. A rather large percentage of these buyers would not be able to pay their mortgages, especially when the second tier rates go up in a year or so. It was a risky process with the absolute certainty of dire consequences in the near future.
Another NOTE, not in the original email: The banks knew this, government mortgage guarantors knew this, and those that ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac knew this. The powers behind these government entities as well as Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress and the biggest players on Wall Street all knew this, but were motivated by pure greed. With the blessings, support, and complicity of liberals in Congress, most of the media, and a deliberately misinformed public, these self-serving men—and some women I’m sure—paid themselves huge fortunes and fleeced the soon-to-flounder mortgage industry of millions of dollars while causing losses for millions of people that totaled in the hundreds of billions, that’s billions with a “b.” They did this by changing the banking laws that policed the mortgage banks and prevented for a while just what happened when the laws were changed or not enforced at all. They did not care a bit about the damage they were causing the American people, mostly middle income citizens. These politicians brought about the largest loss of real wealth ever recorded. Ironically, their actions caused the movement of more wealth out of the possession of the 99% and into the possession of those in the 1% than had ever moved in either direction in all of American history. The occupy whatever movement should be targeting liberal Democrats who are directly responsible for this debacle. Their actions were certainly more criminal than what the officers of Enron did, yet incredibly, none were even called on the carpet. Should you want to learn the truth about this monstrous swindle, backed by legal records and undeniable facts, read Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.
Here’s what Bill Moyers said of this book, “Gretchen Morgenson, my nominee for Reporter of the Decade and the equally talented Joshua Rosner, show how American taxpayers were suckered by the shenanigans, greed, egos, back-scratching, and guile of financial and political elites who swarmed like vultures around Fannie Mae, picking it clean of oversight and accountability while its executives gorged themselves on the spoils. Naming names and taking no prisoners, they drill deep into one of the most disturbing scandals of our time, perpetrated in the name of helping ‘the little guy.’ Read it and weep. Read it and vow: Never again!”
Under the mantra, “Expanding the American dream of home ownership,” these liberal thieves doled out millions to their co-conspirators while pocketing millions for themselves. Jim Johnson arranged bonuses for himself of several hundred millions while president of Fannie Mae. His successor, Bill Clinton protégé, Franklin Raines, took bonuses of $90,000,000 as Johnson’s successor even as Fannie Mae was going bankrupt. The sycophant media reported, “He graciously agreed to return the $90,000,000.” They never reported that not a red cent of that money was ever actually returned. I wonder why? Hmmmmm?
Oh yes, who were the politicians that most benefited from support and money from those arranging this grossly damaging debacle? Try Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and then Senator, Barack Obama. I wonder why the main stream media reported almost none of this huge rip off of the American tax payer? Hmmmmm? - End of update note insert.
“I believe that because of these practices, housing prices will eventually stop rising and start going down. This will begin accelerating as people begin defaulting on their high risk loans. When this happens, prices of homes will begin dropping precipitously. The mortgage market will very quickly begin to collapse as home owners suddenly find their mortgages are much larger than the new, declining value of their houses, and buyers will be few, even at lower prices..This will then cause the economy to begin shrinking as construction will almost stop. The resulting job losses will then expand, the stock market will crash, and we will be in a major recession. It could even be worse than the great depression that began with the crash of 1929. Consider yourselves forewarned.” - End of 2004 prediction.
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January 2011 comments: Few people paid attention to my warning because, who am I to have the audacity to predict such things. I have no string of letters after my name or other accomplishments to back up my predictions. (I do have a proven record of accurate predictions.) Despite this, I am now warning you of another financial disaster I see in our future—our very near future. Once more, the media, the pundits, politicians, and especially the government are not talking about it. I think this is a deliberate deception for reasons only known to those who refuse to tell the truth of the situation.
More than 100 cities in the US are now bankrupt. Six states are in even worse condition and 27 others may be bankrupt this year. The federal government cannot bail them out because the federal government is virtually bankrupt as well. The government is printing money as fast as the presses will run. All that does is dilute the value of the existing dollars and scare hell out of our creditors.
I’m certain you all notice the rapidly rising cost of food and fuel, the lifeblood of our economy. With deficits in the trillions, we will soon reach the place where if all of us were taxed at 100% of income it would not be enough to balance our budget. During the last sixty years, the US has moved from the world’s largest creditor nation to become the world’s largest debtor.
The Chinese and the Arabs are about to pull the plug. Both have slowed their buying of US treasury notes and are talking of switching to another currency. When, not if, that happens, it will yank the rug out from under our economy as the cost of imports will skyrocket. This collapse has already started as evidenced by the accelerating rises in the prices of precious metals and oil. Today (February 2012) oil passed $105 per barrel, up from $91 earlier in the month. At that rate it will reach $125 soon. The price of gasoline at the pump flew by $3 per gallon months ago and will probably reach $5 by the end of the coming summer. It was about $1.65 a few years ago so it has almost tripled in that time. Food prices are following a similar accelerating pace. Look for cereal to cost $5-$6 a box in six to eight months. (Some long past $5 are already pushing $6 a box.) Everything else will do much the same.
It is interesting to note that Bill Clinton, aided by his first liberal Democrat Congress, removed food and fuel prices from the federal COLA (cost of living allowance) used to calculate Social Security payments. Had this been left as it was, most Social Security payments would today be almost 30% more than they are now. Democrats reduced Social Security substantially, while at the same time warning the elderly that “Republicans are planning to reduce your Social Security checks.” I wonder why the MSM (Main Stream Media) never mentioned that fact? Hmmmm!
Also in recent years, unemployment has been estimated by counting those receiving unemployment checks. Real unemployment, the way it was counted before 1970 is the number who can work, but don’t have a job. Today this is about double the number the government reports. 18% would be a far more accurate number than what we get from Washington. True unemployment can be calculated by by comparing the number of employed (a number readily available) with the available workforce. (another number readily available) Incidentally, the number of private sector employees has dropped steadily all during Obama’s presidency, This means that in spite of all the claims of job creation, more private sector jobs have disappeared than new ones were created almost every month since Obama took office. To me, it verges on criminal that the main stream media does not inform the public of these facts. I wonder why? Hmmmmm!
I suggest you try to find ways to protect yourself from the mayhem that will follow the economic collapse of our federal government. There could be food riots in many major cities as merchants begin refusing food stamps and credit cards, knowing they will never be paid. As the government runs out of money and the value of the dollar plummets, it will make the “great depression” look like a cake walk. These things are already happening in Europe. Greece. Ireland, and Iceland have already collapsed and six other European nations will soon follow. All of these things are the direct result of the growth of liberal socialist policies foisted on us by the extreme left that now controls the Democrat party.
Be prepared for your government to take over your retirement account. Some members of Congress are already considering this. Then there are your bank accounts, your investments, your home. If they can take your IRA (in exchange for soon to be worthless government notes) they can also take anything else you own. Until Republicans became a majority in the House and put a stop to it, Congress was writing the laws and regulations that would have given them the right to do so. Who says might doesn’t make right? They continue to try to abrogate our “right to bear arms” while they have the guns and handcuffs to enforce their laws.
As Robert Heinlin said, “When only the police have guns it’s called a police state.”
I am sure that many of you will say, “That can’t happen here.” How many of you thought that when I accurately predicted the dot com bust? Or how about the mortgage meltdown? Did my predictions even register with you? I’d really like to hear from you regarding my predictions. Don’t say it won’t happen simply because it hasn’t happened before. If you don’t like my prediction and choose a rebuttal, please do not use platitudes, euphemisms, and emotional clap-trap. Use facts and figures—real figures. While you are at it, look at the lessons of history. You might also tell me how the Greeks are going to solve their economic problems, or the Icelanders, or Spanish, or Californians.
I have the answer, but I doubt the short-sighted among our voters will ever let it happen here.
Ho
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On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 11:40 PM, One of my very dear friends responded:
Ho,
You are so interesting. Below is not the person I have in my mind. Doom and gloom. What's your point? Does this help? Liberals versus conservatives. If there were no liberals, would it be the perfect world? If conservatives ran the world, our economy would be great and our future bright? It is greed that gets us into these sorts of problems. I wish it were so simple as being conservative or liberal. And I can't help but to get the feeling that you enjoy being right about your predictions and would take a certain amount of satisfaction watching our country's demise as you describe below. How does this letter help me? What should I do? My day was not so good. Thanks for making it worse.
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Dear friend,
I’m quite sorry I messed up your day. But why castigate me? I'm merely a messenger.
I want you to know how I treasure your responses to my rants. I read them carefully and try to digest what you have to say. You are one of those few people who question me and work to keep me on track and I appreciate it. I think you may have missed my point. Possibly because I didn't make it clear enough. Besides, I am actually an optimist.
The dichotomous and emotional positions of liberal vs conservative ignores reality and removes most rational conclusions about what is happening to our nation and what should be done about it. And yes, for a multitude of reasons I believe that application of liberal, socialist ideas, the proven destructive policies of the left, are responsible for much of the mess we are now in and for the coming, even more damaging debacle. I hear few ideas from liberal Democrats that address the real problems either. It is always my hope that the public, even all humanity, will see what's coming and take the necessary steps to either correct for it, or adapt to it. Sadly, those steps often come too late or are never taken. If I remember, I will attach a little thing I wrote about problems and how they are used. It sort if relates to this whole thing.
No, I certainly do not hope that this will happen. I will certainly take no joy in my predictions being correct. Unfortunately there are many sound reasons I make this prediction. I do not think our politicians on either side have a clue what to do. If they do, they are ignoring their own knowledge. I believe that as a people, Americans have become so luxury loving, self serving, irresponsible, and real work hating that we will not make the hard decisions necessary to stop the train wrecks such as the one we are already in the midst of. I certainly take no joy in my predictions being correct. I hope and pray that I am very mistaken.
Several people profited greatly from my earlier warnings by taking actions based on my predictions. One person sold most of his investments in computer companies when I told him of the coming PC business crash. He told me that my comments saved him from losing hundreds of thousands. Instead, he made money by changing his investment strategy. Even though he was just an acquaintance he handed me a check for a thousand dollars in appreciation saying, "That's the cheapest good financial advice I have ever received." I was amazed. I know of no other such dramatic beneficiary.
Another friend, who had just sold his house for a handsome price and huge profit, was negotiating the purchase of a larger home when he read my prediction about the mortgage market. After looking further into what was happening, he decided not to buy right away and moved into a rental house. He called me several years later to tell me he just bought a home for around $200,000 that would have cost nearly twice that amount had he bought right after selling. He thanked me for warning him. I’m sure he didn't do that on my say so alone. He probably studied the situation and sought advice of several people in the mortgage business before making his decision to wait. He saw my words not as gloom and doom, but as a positive—a valid warning. Oh, and several of those in the real estate and mortgage business laughed when he told them of my predictions. (They were probably trying to sell him a big expensive house.)
My point is to warn people of the menace that is coming their way so they can prepare. It is far better to prepare for a calamity and not have it happen than not to prepare. There are some relatively simple and inexpensive precautions one can take to minimize the damage in any calamity. I assume you have insurance of several types and that your car has seat belts and even airbags. How about considering a little insurance against this probable catastrophe. Oh, I am not selling such insurance so my motive is not to profit.
If I warned you about a train coming loudly down the tracks where you were sitting—if you then noticed the great noise it was making and heard its loud horn, would you consider my words as doom and gloom? If you lived in tornado country and someone warned you of an approaching tornado would you call that doom and gloom? I think not.
Well, the noise from the coming disaster is deafening, if you listen for it. There is a great deal a person can do to prepare. There are even books written about it. A six month supply of staple foods is a good way to start, as long as you tell no one about it. A batch of candles or a stash of flashlight batteries would not be a bad idea should the electric grid fail. There are even flashlights you can crank to charge their batteries. I would even suggest a quantity of bottled water if you don’t have a well These inexpensive preparations are minimal and will not go to waste. Necessary medicines are another thing that a six month supply would not be prohibitively expensive and wouldn’t take up much room. A cache of gold or silver might be another, just in case paper money becomes useless. Just think about it. These are preparations you would not lose as you could use them from your supply and then replenish as you go along until things go bad. Some of these things we already have as part of our preparations for a possible hurricane here in Florida..
I warn people because I care about them. I want them to be able to prepare, not wring their hands in despair after a disaster happens. Do you think it would be better if I kept silent?
Ho
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Hello, NOTE: I inserted some comments in italics.
Sorry for my delay in responding. We are in the midst of a blizzard warning and it made me realize I had not responded. Below makes me feel a little better but I still don't see the person that I met in your writings. Your predictions remind me so much of my own mother who is talking about a revolution (by black folks) etc. Plus all one has to do is listen to Fox radio and hear the same predictions so nothing new in these predictions.
1 (Actually, my predictions are quite different in detail from those on Fox. Similar in the main, but the devil is in the details.)
I am surprised that you describe the problems so simply and without nuances. You blame everything on liberals.
2 (No, I merely look at the results, the actual realities. Places where liberals have the most power and where unions are most powerful are always in the most financial difficulty. It was certainly not conservative efforts that drove textiles, then steel, then autos overseas, or bankrupted California, Michigan, New York and other states.)
A remark that changed my outlook forever was a statement made by a German man who gave tours at Dachau (sp?). A young American guy told him that he had heard that the Nazi women were even more vicious than the Nazi men and wanted to know if this was true. This tour guide looked at this young man and told him that the reason he took the 7AM train every morning and did these tours in his retirement was that he wanted people to realize that all of us are capable of the atrocities that were done by the Germans in that era. That in the right circumstances we all have the capability to behave so poorly. In that tour I learned what I never learned in the history lessons in the USA.....that Germany had never recovered after WWI and there was extreme poverty in the country.
3 (In high school history, we studied the Weimar republic and what happened to Germany after WWI along with many other parts of history that describe exactly what you say our dumbed-down schools of later years did not teach. I wonder what group was responsible for that change?)
I find it so interesting that Americans living in their fancy homes and driving their fancy cars can make so many judgments of people that live in conditions that they cannot possibly even imagine. Instead of being grateful we are judgmental.
4 (Maybe your generation, but not mine. You don’t know or forget that I grew up during the depression when our “fancy” car was a five year old Nash, we had several dirt streets in our neighborhood and I learned to eat quickly if I hoped to get any of the meager seconds Mom put on the table. Christmas was the only time we had oranges, tangerines, or candy, and I was nine the first time we could afford to have a turkey for Thanksgiving. My buddies and I regularly prowled the trash cans in the neighborhood looking for discarded things we could fix and play with. My first and only real bicycle was one I rescued from the trash. It took me at least three months to earn enough from my paper route to buy the parts to fix it up so it was useable. I rode that bike for five years, constantly fixing and repainting it until it looked really good. I sold it for $15 when I graduated from high school. Thanks to my father’s hard work and realistic appraisal of what was happening, we were far better off than most. That’s my reality and we were very grateful for what we had.)
Having digressed a bit I guess my point is this. WE are the reason for the problems. There were so many layers to the mortgage problems that had nothing to do with being liberal or conservative.
5 (I’m assuming by “WE” you mean your relatively “liberal” or “middle of the road” generation. It wasn’t conservatives that forced banks to write mortgages to folks they knew would never be able to pay for. It wasn’t conservatives that ran Fannie May and Freddie Mac into bankruptcy. It wasn’t conservatives that paid Clinton protégé and Fannie May President, Franklin Raines $90 million in bonuses even as this government entity was going bankrupt. It wasn’t conservatives who were given large amounts of cash for their campaigns by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.)
The common denominator was greed and denial. And we all benefited from the stupidity that was going on. (No, all of us didn’t, and the common denominator of greed and denial at the top was almost exclusively liberal Democrats buying votes and power with tax payer’s money.) In my case, it was the great returns that I was getting from the stock market and the low interest rates that allowed us to buy a nicer home than we would have been able to buy in the 80's. Thankfully we were experienced consumers and did not end up like a lot of folks did. But I wonder. Had I been buying my first home at the ripe age of 23 (as was the case in 1983) would I have done the right thing? We looked to the bank and the realtor to tell us what sort of home we could afford. Also in 1990 when we bought our second home we were guided by the realtor and bank as to what we could afford. When we bought homes in 2001 and 2007 we were shown homes that were valued at more than 100,000 dollars more than the value of the homes that we eventually bought. And the hint that was given by the realtors......that other people in our salary range were living in much nicer homes. Now, because we humans could not do the right thing, the government will step in with more regulations. And many of those regulations will be just plain stupid. But the people working in the industry nor the consumers were capable of guiding themselves. (They would have been capable if parents and government schools and labor unions taught responsibility and self reliance, but no, they taught greed, self service, irresponsibility, and victimhood.)
My predictions for the future are not the same as yours. I predict that health care and education will be the next "crisis". And why? (Those are both way past crisis stages already. Education has been going downhill for at least the last fifty years. Obamacare will devastate the best and most comprehensive health care system in the world and probably double the total cost of the system.) Because the so called professionals that work in those fields have let greed and denial guide them also. Take my profession. Hospitals have made money from PT's and abused situations where therapy gets involved. Many times I am just pushing an IV pole as someone walks down the hallway. This could easily be done by an aide. So instead of aides walking patients, physical therapy is ordered. This drove up the need for therapists and thus salaries and in the end more expensive for hospitals. Now the government has stepped in with regulations which limits this activity. There has also has been extensive fraud of therapy in various settings which has had to be limited also.
6. (I’ll wager the total of that fraud pales in comparison to proven Medicare fraud. Criminal Medicare fraud in Florida alone was in the billions with statewide criminal organizations taking most of the money in highly organized schemes. When the newly elected Republican Governor, backed by the legislature, clamped down on this fraud, liberals in the legislature and some media jerks did everything they could to thwart these efforts. One can’t help but wonder, were they recipients of some of this illegal money from these criminal organizations?)
Some of the regs are absolutely ridiculous and actually hurt the patient more than help. However, it was just human nature that created this whole mess and we were unable to guide ourselves. (Is human nature a new name for deliberate thievery?) And there are so many other areas of waste in healthcare especially with end of life care. People will lose a dignified death if too many doctors become involved in a case. I have a friend who is a pediatric oncologist. She told me her nickname is Dr. Death. She has the highest number of patients die on her shift. The reason........she explains exactly what is involved with a lot of care and the eventual outcome. She says that many doctors view death as failure and will go to extremes to prevent a patient from dying on their shift. Ironically, she takes her nickname as Dr. Death as a compliment. All of this talk of death panels killed the conversation that needed to be had in this area. I think we are just starting to see the beginning in Arizona where the governor stopped all transplants for it's Medicaid recipients as the state can no longer afford it. And what do most people think? Well those people are on Medicaid/State aid. It won't happen to me. Well guess what? It will happen to everyone. Health care will have to be "rationed". Our technology is too expensive and our ability to keep dying people alive is too good. And now add obesity to the problem. We simply cannot afford it. There will be an adjustment. And we will probably blame each other and it will be very political. In the end I think it may be better. I think it will make people live a healthier lifestyle. That obese patient who is denied dialysis because of her poor prognosis related to her weight will make people take note of their own weight. But there will be lots of outcry first. And people in the USA get so many unnecessary medical treatments that only make the quality of their life worse. This waste will have to stop and the patient will be better off.
7. (A lot of this would take care of itself if it wasn’t completely free! A small local hospital near my home in Indiana cut the waste and abuses of their emergency room by charging each patient a $5 cash fee for every patient who used the emergency room. Of course, some people refused to pay and were treated anyway, but the hassle helped cut useless ER visits down to almost none and the hospital made much better use of its ER. Oh yes, all that free stuff the government provides? We’ve already reached the point where those who pay for that free stuff will not be able to pay for it all even if taxed at 100%.)
As far as education goes, I can't explain it like my husband can who was in the field from the mid 80's to 2007. (You can very easily see the effect the teachers union has had on education by what’s happening in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The union bosses would rather have half their members laid off than give up a tiny part of their income to keep them all working.)
But back to your emails. I can appreciate the entertainment in provoking people. But there are some difficult issues ahead of us. And when people of your intellect only add to the problem, well, I lose my patience. Your emails mostly promote blame. (Do you call looking at the causes of a problem promoting blame? Letting those who are the direct cause of the problems continue to direct solutions is insanity, but isn’t that what you are proposing?) And yes, I can hear you say that you offer solutions but they start off with a lot of blame and putting people on the defense. Problems will not be solved with this strategy. Your emails also many times just address one side to an issue. Again, someone of your intellect should be able to see both sides and the nuances. Makes me think of an article that I read that promoted staying involved in Afghanistan. Then I read another article that discussed all the reasons to leave Afghanistan. Both had very good points. Big problems are complex. My concern now is that there is so much negative communication out there. Yours and my generation did not grow up with all the negativity and inflamed news stories that run 24/7 now. Someone with you age, experience, intellect, and most importantly, the ability to articulate should be offering encouragement to the next generation. Assuring them they have the ability to solve these problems. That we have faced many problems in the past and overcame them. It doesn't matter if there is a black, yellow. or purple president, or that Congress is liberal or conservative. (Eau contraire!) What matters is us. And talking about people taking up their guns and taking your money just does not help us. Those worries are better kept from the written word and forwarded to lots of people.
8. (The first step in finding a solution to any problem is to define the problem. Once the problem is defined, the next step is to use that definition to find a solution. If you interpret defining a problem as placing blame, you own the problem. I can’t help it if the truth puts people on the defensive. That’s life.
I do not buy that there are two sides to every problem. There is only one side to a person who is drowning. Get them out of the water and give them air to breathe. There is only one side to any organization, group or whatever when they are drowning in debt, stop spending more than they take in. There is much more in my full response after the end of your message.)
I will end this email as I started it. The blizzard warning. After 9-11 and the anthrax scares my husband assured me that these were not major concerns for him..... that we had an immediate danger right next to our house that he worried about. I must back up and tell you that Larry taught a Risk Assessment course at Cornell so his outlook has always been interesting. I asked him what that danger was. His reply......the railroad tracks a mile away from our house. He then noted all the containers of chemicals that passed through on a daily basis on those tracks. One derailment could cause a lot of problems. So it never hurts to be prepared. His other comment. People mostly die in bed. Given that statistic, is bed a dangerous place? Should we avoid laying in our beds? Complexity and simplicity.......Oh, and one other of my husband’s comments when, as a toxicologist, is asked about dangers......Wear your seatbelt.
Your friend
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Hi there:
This is a very long response to parts of your last email message. You took the time to say what you wanted me to hear. I appreciate that and listened carefully at what you said. I also inserted a few pointed comments where they were appropriate. I thought I would return the favor, so here it is. Incidently I don’t care much for sound bytes. They are emotional chirps that miss virtually all of the nuances, subtleties, and rational parts of any idea, proposal, or position. Sadly, the sound byte has come to constitute the majority of communications of news and many personal communications. Maybe that is because so many people now text message or use facebook or twitter. Sound bytes, text messages and postings on social networks are more like dogs barking than communications between thinking humans.
Oh, and about seat belts? I first installed seat belts in my car in 1952 when the only ones you could find to buy were surplus military seat belts. I have used them ever since then, even when I had to install them myself. Like the boy scouts, I like to be prepared.
Perhaps I have not provided you with an adequate understanding of where I get the basis for my opinions or what my political reasoning is. First of all, I am not a follower of or beholden to any ism, group belief system (religious, political or other), peer group, grant committee, dean or head of faculty, political or other boss, or corporate officer at any level, so I am free to speak my mind, mistakes and all. I consider myself a truly independent and liberal individual and a realist who knows what it means to conserve. No, that is not a contradiction.
I have written extensively about things like:
1) the decimation of our environment, and impending menace that is more likely to end humanity than anything else. See http://decimatenviro.blogspot.com.
2) legalizing drugs to remove the money from illegal drugs and stop all associated criminal activity, http://hjdrugprb.blogspot.com.
3) a completely new taxing system that will remove tax revenue from the control of politicians, http://jtax.blogspot.com.
My tax plan would include a negative income tax to replace welfare. That would take control of the money out of the hands of politicians and put it where it belongs, into the hands of those who need it. It would also make it difficult for a few people to control a large number of industries, corporations, or political patronage. It is a little bit like the Fair Tax, Does that sound like I am a right wing conservative?
I will end this email as I started it. The blizzard warning. After 9-11 and the anthrax scares my husband assured me that these were not major concerns for him..... that we had an immediate danger right next to our house that he worried about. I must back up and tell you that Larry taught a Risk Assessment course at Cornell so his outlook has always been interesting. I asked him what that danger was. His reply......the railroad tracks a mile away from our house. He then noted all the containers of chemicals that passed through on a daily basis on those tracks. One derailment could cause a lot of problems. So it never hurts to be prepared. His other comment. People mostly die in bed. Given that statistic, is bed a dangerous place? Should we avoid laying in our beds? Complexity and simplicity.......Oh, and one other of my husband’s comments when, as a toxicologist, is asked about dangers......Wear your seatbelt.
Your friend
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Hi there:
This is a very long response to parts of your last email message. You took the time to say what you wanted me to hear. I appreciate that and listened carefully at what you said. I also inserted a few pointed comments where they were appropriate. I thought I would return the favor, so here it is. Incidently I don’t care much for sound bytes. They are emotional chirps that miss virtually all of the nuances, subtleties, and rational parts of any idea, proposal, or position. Sadly, the sound byte has come to constitute the majority of communications of news and many personal communications. Maybe that is because so many people now text message or use facebook or twitter. Sound bytes, text messages and postings on social networks are more like dogs barking than communications between thinking humans.
Oh, and about seat belts? I first installed seat belts in my car in 1952 when the only ones you could find to buy were surplus military seat belts. I have used them ever since then, even when I had to install them myself. Like the boy scouts, I like to be prepared.
Perhaps I have not provided you with an adequate understanding of where I get the basis for my opinions or what my political reasoning is. First of all, I am not a follower of or beholden to any ism, group belief system (religious, political or other), peer group, grant committee, dean or head of faculty, political or other boss, or corporate officer at any level, so I am free to speak my mind, mistakes and all. I consider myself a truly independent and liberal individual and a realist who knows what it means to conserve. No, that is not a contradiction.
I have written extensively about things like:
1) the decimation of our environment, and impending menace that is more likely to end humanity than anything else. See http://decimatenviro.blogspot.com.
2) legalizing drugs to remove the money from illegal drugs and stop all associated criminal activity, http://hjdrugprb.blogspot.com.
3) a completely new taxing system that will remove tax revenue from the control of politicians, http://jtax.blogspot.com.
My tax plan would include a negative income tax to replace welfare. That would take control of the money out of the hands of politicians and put it where it belongs, into the hands of those who need it. It would also make it difficult for a few people to control a large number of industries, corporations, or political patronage. It is a little bit like the Fair Tax, Does that sound like I am a right wing conservative?
My personal social, environmental, and political beliefs are based closer to the world of science and humanity described in books like those by Eric Hoffer - The True Believer and The Temper of our Times, E. E. Wilson - several books, Jared Diamond - Collapse, The Last Chimpanzee, and Guns, Germs, and Steel, Stephen J. Gould - Bully for Brontosaurus, Nigel Calder - The Magic Universe, consumer advocate, John Stossel - Give Me a Break and Myths, Lies, and downright Stupidity, and even parts of the Bible. Included in my regular reading are Scientific American, Astronomy, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, each of which I read cover to cover. No, I don’t agree with everything they have to say, but I don’t always agree with everything I have said, either. Clinging to an idea come what may is not one of my things
In truth, I do not blame everything bad on “liberals.” The blame actually falls on the idiots who vote emotionally for politicians: the ones using class hatred and who promise ridiculous things to voters, things impossible to deliver: or that use taxpayers money to buy their seats in legislatures, be they professed Democrat, Republican, libertarian, liberal, socialist, conservative, or whatever. I am not specifically anti liberal, but I am definitely anti government, and in particular, the huge, self serving “Jaba the Hut” monster our government has become. It has doubled in size in the last thirty years and more than doubled in cost. Since liberal Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, our government has expanded from about 32% of GDP to 44%. This after holding steady at around 30% for many years. Our current government has been growing in power and wealth at the expense of primarily the American middle class, and the benefit of mega corporations, politicians, the super wealthy, and Wall Street bankers and others mad for power. (Check how many in Obama’s cabinet or among his “czars” are ex Goldman-Sachs executives, proven tax evaders, avowed communists, or even convicted criminals for instance.)
The latest crop of self serving egomaniacs (there are a majority of these in all political parties) have conspired to move great wealth and power out of the hands of the American people and into those of the elite “royals” in government. The never ending and extremely expensive vacations and golf outings of the Obamas, Nancy Pelosi’s private jet (now taken away and sold), and Hillary’s extravagant senate offices she used for such a short time, are but recent examples of the personal excesses of those elitists who are now running our government. They do these things because they have learned that the power to control great wealth is at least the equal of actual ownership, and unlike ownership, these substantial perks of power are not taxed.
Obama’s just proposed budget represents $30,500 spent for each American household or $11,290 spent for each man, woman, and child in the nation. That’s your money he and Congress propose to confiscate, control and spend. Much and possibly most of it goes for purely political pay offs to keep incumbent politicians in office. For those not aware of such things, that’s buying votes, and with taxpayers’ money no less.
In all the years I have voted in national elections, I have only voted FOR a candidate five, maybe six times. Two of those were Democrats, Harry Truman and Evan Bayh of Indiana. The others were Republicans Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Frances P. Bolton in Ohio’s 22nd congressional district. I came to regret voting for Bayh who, once he arrived in Washington, quickly changed, joined the Washington elite ruling class, and became a typical dedicated, fiscally idiotic, liberal Democrat, beholden to lobbyists.
I’ll give you my reasons for being so anti government in a few examples of the thousands available for anyone who looks. They are in concert with my idealism tempered by a logical acceptance of reality. The best example is quite simple and it consists of just one question and an answer. Do you think our country—any country—and its citizens are better off with economic freedom or a government controlled economy? Same question stated differently. Are thousands of independent entrepreneurs and corporations with the freedom to make their own choices and stand or fall in a competitive, capitalist environment where profit is necessary for survival, better able to control an economy for the benefit of the most individuals, or is a single government bureaucracy with employees that cannot be fired, managed by individuals appointed and/or chosen by politicians and unions, and not beholden to any profit or performance standards?
Here’s another example taken from my HoJo2Rants blog at http://hojo2rants.blogspot.com. Remember King Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs? Part of that was his Model Cities program which cost billions of taxpayer dollars and was a total failure. I need only repeat one of King Lyndon’s pronounced promises: “Detroit will be a shining example of the benefits of our Model Cities program.” It is quite telling how accurate Johnson’s prediction was. It certainly has become an example of the results of the policies of his “great society” programs now being greatly expanded by Obama and his cronies. Go to the following site for a more in depth description of the results of this example of liberal Democrat efforts and policies.
http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/3247/Government_Stupidity
Or better still, take a drive through the inner city of Detroit and see for yourself the results of fifty years of liberal Democrat policies and labor union efforts. By sure to do so in broad daylight because doing so at night carries a high risk of being car jacked and murdered. Actually, you can see a lot of abandoned homes and buildings just by driving through on I-75. I did that recently and saw numerous burned out homes and factories right from the Interstate. Much of the city of Detroit looks more like the bombed out center of a third world city than an American one. The media elite boneheads are now beginning to extol a growing renaissance of Detroit in direct denial of realty and in spite of the fact unemployment is nearing 50%, not improving. Also, nearly half of those working are employed by government. This shining example of liberalism in action has lost 60% of its population in the last 50 years. Those who fled the city were mostly middle class workers and included virtually all of the whites. They have been largely replaced by uneducated and poor Muslims and Hispanics with their huge birthrates.
Now those same morally deficient snake oil salesmen and tyrants are using the same process that has clearly devastated all of the most liberal states, to do the same thing to America with absolute certainty. There may in fact be enough ignoramuses at the public welfare and employment trough, in government unions, and that listen to and believe a corrupt, biased and deceptive media, to win the next election. Maybe there are enough of those who have had their fires of hate fanned by emotional blackmail to bring down America. (Thank you reverend Wright!) It is obvious to me that the left’s “spread the wealth to equalize economic conditions” means making everyone poor and dependent on government.
When I pointed this out to my Socrates discussion group, one of the many liberal members said I was wrong, that it was not liberal Democrat policies that brought about the demise of the American auto industry that caused Detroit to collapse. I then asked him what he thought was the real cause of the demise of the Detroit’s auto industry.
“Why, the failure of the auto industry to compete with cheaper and higher quality foreign cars.” He replied.
I then asked him what he thought was the reason for that. “Older factories, antiquated equipment and the failure of management to modernize and adapt new manufacturing techniques.” He answered.
“I couldn’t agree more,” was my surprising (to him) reply. “And just who or what was it that prevented the industry from doing those important things?”
He had no concrete answer and mumbled something about greedy executives and poor management, so I continued. “The UAW demanded benefit and labor cost increases that took capital that could have been used for modernization, while union work rules prevented the adoption of new manufacturing methods, especially in the use of automation and robots. These union efforts were backed and supported totally by all liberal Democrats. That’s why liberal policies, politics, and support for unions are responsible for the demise of Detroit so I will stand on my original reasoning.
These examples are undeniable realities, and there are many many more. If Detroit is not enough, think New York, California, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and all the other blue states that are virtually bankrupt. It certainly wasn’t conservatives who ran them into the ground. Now that the voters in several of those states threw out the Democrats and elected Republican governors and state legislatures, Democrats together with union goons, are using every legal and illegal tactic they can to continue the fiscal carnage they have wrought on those states. What do you think they will look like with five or ten more years of this idiocy? And how about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Amtrak and the Postal Service? Competitive private entities clearly beat the pants off these government operations. These private companies make a profit (the word liberals hate) and pay taxes (the word liberals love) to boot. Those four (and every other government operation) require huge infusions of tax payer money to keep operating.
Then there were my predictions on the mortgage melt down. These were based on some unique realities in my experience. Barb’s younger son is a mortgage banker, has been since the 1990s. During the mid nineties he told me about some of what he was seeing in the mortgage markets that made him nervous.
Many relatively small banks were told by agents of our federal government to make loans to disadvantaged (read mostly black or hispanic) home buyers that were far riskier than the bank’s rules allowed. Some government bureaucrats stepped in with some banks that refused and actually seized these banks with some technical nonsense. They then turned them over to much larger banks. The bank owners received about twenty cents on the dollar, a major rip-off. This take-over combined with the bail-out of some they said were too-big-to-fail, resulted in the disappearance of almost half of U. S. banks, mostly those that were small, independent, and privately owned.
Those banks that were ordered to make risky loans, but refused, lost their connections to federally guaranteed mortgages. Fortunately, some few were strong enough to weather the resulting storm even though they could no longer sell their mortgages to Fannnie Mae and Freddie Mac. (the federal government mortgage banks). We talked about the situation for some time and that’s when I made my prediction about the coming collapse of the mortgage market. What would eventually happen was as plain as day to anyone who looked at it rationally. Yes there were a number of greedy people who bought houses to “flip” and make a fast buck, but the billions in loans to people who would never be able to fulfill their obligations was much larger. This was a financial house of cards that had to crumble. When the Bush administration and conservative Republicans in Congress tried to check this fiscal lunacy, they were ridiculed and called “racist’ by many in the media and shouted down in Congress by the likes of Maxine Waters and Barney Frank.
Along with all the other solvent homeowners, my six children each lost a major portion of the equity in their homes. Fortunately, none of them became upside down. Each retained some equity.
In actual fact, that debacle was by far the largest financial loss the American middle class had ever suffered. It resulted in the transfer of more than half of the equity of all American homes from individuals to banks. (I’m sure you can understand that math.) Then the government forced hundreds of small and medium sized banks to close their doors or be taken over by larger banks. The total assets of the nearly 400 banks that were closed between 2008 and the present was in excess of $633 billion. Who ended up with those assets? Remember those few huge “too big to fail” banks that were given billions by the government? So much for liberal Democrats taking care of the small business owner. “Let’s give those megabanks a few hundred billion in taxpayer money and let all those small banks go under.” No wonder Goldman Sachs is now in bed with the Obama administration. Talk about interlocking directorates. How about interlocking ownership between the megabanks and federal government. It's amazing what can be done when a group has guns, handcuffs and jail to force their edicts on people.
Wall street bankers and the Whitehouse are definitely sharing the same bed. The media screams about corporate executive bonuses, but never mentions the huge bonuses paid to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives—$90 million to Clinton buddy Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae alone—even as those two were going bankrupt. That’s reality, an undeniable fact. It sure as hell does not have “another side.”
Why the dichotomous “two sides to everything” stance anyway? If the truth be known, there are usually more sides to any question of opinion than there are people interested in it. Sometimes, there is only one side. For example: statements of truth (not opinions) have but one side, the factual. One plus two equals three does not have another “side.” That the sun rises every day does not have another “side.” The reality of the mortgage debacle does not have another “side.” The deliberately engineered mortgage collapse does not have another “side.” These are undeniable realities and realities have but one side, the actual. I quote one of my favorite authors, Talbot Munday. “There is no denying a defeat. No argument annuls a victory.”
On the other hand, opinions almost never have two opposite sides. In spite of most people’s almost pathological attraction to taking dichotomous positions of opposition on every difference of opinion, there are rarely just two sides. Some opinions are very close to the same while others can be quite different. Different does not mean opposite and visa versa. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. He or she could be an even worse enemy. The truth is, most objects of opinion have an almost infinite number of “sides.”
While all this mortgage business was going on, my neighbor in Indiana (he ran for Congress a couple of years ago and lost) told me about a little problem the Fort Wayne banks were having. It seems there was a group of six men who cooked up an interesting real estate scheme. All were south side politicians, three were lawyers, two were real estate agents, and one was a professional appraiser. They would buy a run down southside (the slum neighborhood) house for between $5,000 and $15,000 and fix it up cosmetically for as little as they had to spend, usually between $5,000 and $10,000. Then they would find a buyer or someone to pose as a buyer. They would sell them the house for say, $100,000 and, using the appraiser and with government aid and guarantees, obtain a loan for still more than the appraisal. They would cut a check for the home buyer for $20,000 or a bit more, and pocket the difference, usually between $50,000 and $90,000. (Talk about greed) Neither this nor even the whole mortgage collapse would have happened if it were not for housing and mortgage policies put in place by liberal politicians under Carter and then Clinton. These policies were opposed by Republicans and by the Bush administration as I mentioned earlier.
What happened next was quite predictable. The owners would finally default on their mortgage, walk away from the place and leave it empty. Within a week or so, strippers would remove everything useable from the house including pulling the wiring and copper pipe. (copper sold as scrap) sometimes they even took the doors. When they foreclosed, the bank got a property with a house that would cost far more to fix than it would ever be worth. Many of them were set afire before they could be bulldozed down. Others became crack houses or shelters for transients and drug dealers. The city received no taxes and the resulting blighted neighborhood rapidly went down hill. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’ll bet the same thing happened on a much larger scale in Detroit. Drive through parts of the south side of Fort Wayne and you’ll see what I mean. It’s Detroit on a much smaller scale.
The six men were sued by the banks. The city was working up a criminal suit as well. My neighbor knew all the about this while it was happening. (and he told me plenty —then) He knew because he was one of the lawyers involved in the suit for the city. The six men were guess what, black liberal Democrats. They were also higher ups in the local ACORN group. Surprise, surprise! After making news in all the local media for about a week, things suddenly became very quiet. Remember, this was the spring of 2009 and ACORN’s benefactor and strong advocate was in the Whitehouse. To make a long story short, the whole thing quickly and quietly was swept under the rug. No more mention in any of the media—ever. The criminal suit was gone and so was the bank suit. I could find no longer find any records of either in a search of Fort Wayne public legal records on the Internet. Those records disappeared or at least public Internet access to them disappeared. They were there one time and gone a few weeks later. My friend now claims he knows nothing about it and no longer will talk about it, even in private. Hmmmmmm? You can make your own assumptions about what happened here.
The things described in these paragraphs are all hard realities, not opinions. You can see them, photograph them, even buy them. Both Detroit and Ft Wayne would love some new owners who would buy land and pay taxes. Wherever government controls anything, you will find huge waste, crippling graft, crime, corruption, gross inefficiency and almost total financial irresponsibility.
You mentioned health care, your field, and the unconscionable waste and poor use of resources. Isn’t most of this paid for by medicare, medicaid and health insurance? Do you think government alone would do any better? And about rationing of healthcare I have had two experiences with government agencies that reflect the realities of government running anything.
When Barb became ill with PPS in 2000 and had to step down from the pulpit, her healthcare was covered for one entire year by the Methodist church. During that year we tried obtaining a new healthcare policy with little success. We then applied for SSI which would have helped us quite a bit. She was denied coverage many times (at least ten times) over the next few years. In 2003, After her surgeries and heart attack cost us half a million dollars (really), a friend of ours put us in touch with a Republican Congressman, not from our district, but whose wife also had PPS. He was wonderful. Within a month or so, Barb was approved for SSI and we started receiving Barb’s SSI checks. Incidently, our own Republican Congressman did nothing for us.
Several years ago I applied for a federal grant from the Department of Energy to help with the publication and promotion of my book on energy, Energy, Convenient Solutions. I jumped through all of the hoops, filled out all of the forms and made certain that I was income qualified. After dozens of phone calls, I was given an appointment for an interview with a federal grant officer. It was fifteen months after my application was sent in. When I walked into the office and saw the grant officer I was certain I was in trouble. The officer who had just called me in was a black woman about fifty weighing at least 350 pounds. I walked over to her desk and handed her my papers. She took them, compared them with some papers she had on her desk, picked up a large rubber stamp, stamped and signed my papers and hers. Then without a word she handed them back to me and called out the name of her next victim. The big “Denied” in red told me everything I would ever learn about why the grant request was denied. (and there was no appeal) If I wanted to try for another grant I would have to go through the entire process again. She must have felt a great sense of satisfaction in turning down my application without a word of explanation or help. I wondered what would have happened if I had been black or had slipped a few $100 bills inside those papers. Those are my two latest experiences with the federal bureaucracy. I can only imagine what a chaotic mess our government will make of our health care system if Obamacare is not repealed.
Incidentally, have you ever spent any time in or visited a VA hospital? When I was in the dental business we did maintenance work on dental equipment in the VA hospital near Cleveland. We actually had to jump our bid prices about a third higher than what we charged private dentists because of all the costs associated with dealing with their red tape and special requirements, few of which made any sense at all. It finally became so expensive to deal with them we quit bidding. The first time we didn’t bid, their purchasing agent called and begged me to bid, admitting no one else had either. Then he said the following, “I don’t care if you double the regular price, we need that service.” I bid on two more small jobs and then quit for good. I have no idea how or from whom they purchased their service and supplies after that.
I was going to list the similarities between the Carter and Obama effects on our country and compare them to those of the Reagan years, but everyone knows the difference in the budgets, the deficit, the unemployment rates, and inflation. Remember Carter’s 20% interest rates, 12% inflation, and double digit unemployment? They say inflation is under control, but is it? Have you noticed the price of gasoline, diesel, and heating oil has doubled in the last few years? (It recently went from $3.14 a gallon to $3.65 a gallon in a few weeks here.)
And how about food prices? Have you noticed that many items have increased by 50% or more in price during the same period? Ever wonder why those increases don’t seem to affect the government’s inflation index, or bring about an increase in COLA, the cost of living allowance used for Social Security and military pay? That’s because liberal Democrats under Bill Clinton, removed food and fuel from those calculations. This has seriously affected the poor who can least afford it because food and fuel consume a major portion of their income. Apparently Democrats believe the poor and elderly don't need food or fuel, even in the winter up north. The unemployment rate that was 4.2 % when Reagan left office is only 9.4% under the way it is calculated using Obama’s new method. The current way to figure the unemployment rate does not include those who have stopped actively seeking work or are no longer receiving unemployment checks. If figured the same way it was during previous administrations including Reagan’s, the current rate would probably be double what the government is telling us. And these deliberate deceptive manipulations of statistics by our government go on and on.
Is it any wonder that our federal government is mired in debt along with virtually every blue state in the nation? I ask you again, who is responsible, liberals or conservatives? Few people will pay any attention, and certainly few politicians are willing to address these serious problems. Could we correct these problems and once again become the dynamic leader of the free world? Yes, with the right leadership. Will we? I seriously doubt it. I am going to use two very telling quotes and related information that will explain why we will probably end up on the ash heap of history, and soon.
A prediction of where we seem to be headed may have come from far back in history, when the 13 colonies were still part of England. This quote is often attributed to a Scottish Historian, Alexander Tytler or Tyler. The true origin of the quote is obscure and might actually have originated in the early 20th century from an unknown politician or writer. Nevertheless, this does not detract from its accuracy.”
One version of this quote on why democracies always fail and a near exact description of what is happening in our country right now, is:
“A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the citizens discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, to be followed by a dictatorship.”
The other part of many versions of the quote follows:
“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.
“At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three millenniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.”
The person who is the actual author of the last two paragraphs that frequently are included as a part of the entire quote is Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company. It is from a speech entitled, Industrial Management in a Republic, delivered in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria at New York during the 250th meeting of the National Conference Board on March 18, 1943, and recorded on page 22 of Industrial Management in a Republic. Even then socialist idiots and demagogs were trying to take over the country. They haven't changed much.
Those words of Prentis clearly echo your comments about the health industry, indeed, it probably holds true for any industry or functioning body deeply dependent on insurance, government, or any other source of money not controlled by the rules of economics. It is so very clear that laziness, fraud, and being wasteful, ignorant, and destructive are easily accomplished by a growing section of our populace while hard work, honesty, thrift, and being creative and constructive may now be limited to a shrinking number.
In stark contrast, look at China. After decades of oppressive economic conditions and a tightly controlled economy, the government permitted an expanding number of economic freedoms including private ownership of farms, businesses, and even industries. Recently they have been urging their citizens to buy gold after years of it being illegal to own gold. The results of this complete reversal of policy has been the amazing growth of their economy and the creation of a rapidly expanding middle class of consumers. I believe that this economic growth and freedom will lead to more personal freedoms for the Chinese. They have let the capitalist free enterprise genie out of the bottle. It is hard to predict just where it will take them, but it is obvious that their direction is the opposite from where we in America along with most of the “Western” world are heading. The road up is a lot happier then the road down. Quite obviously, they are between courage to liberty; and liberty to abundance, while we are between apathy to dependency; and dependency back to bondage.
Yes, these last two paragraphs are personal opinions, but just look at the present realities of America compared to China. The factual realities are so obvious I think you would find it impossible to come to any very different conclusions. The lessons of history are pretty damned hard to deny. They have repeated over and over again.
Oh yes, wasn’t it Pogo who said, “I have met the enemy, and he is us?”
Back to the socialist wars: It is easy to see that two opposing groups ar squaring off for battle in Wisconsin and elsewhere over mostly government unions who are married to the liberal Democrats. This battle is over whether the SEIU and their buddies run things or the voters of Wisconsin do. Voters who have finally awakened to see the ruthless self-service of the SEIU and other government unions. Incidently, guess which one of our esteemed US Presidents said,
“Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. Such an action is unthinkable and intolerable.” —Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Here’s another quote, “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd. My how times and politics have changed. Unions now routinely extort money and gain power by threatening to shut down critical government services. And who do the unions, Democrats, and the government biased media blame for the shut downs?
Here’s another link you might want to check out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsH8xvjTAlo Tells how Obama and Eric Holder are joining in supporting a foreign nation and a criminal drug cartel against the state of Arizona. This is an evil unprecedented in our entire history.
Incidentally, I have the perfect answer to the illegal drug problem. It would remove all of the incentives for criminal activity and put the drug cartels out of business permanently. Check out http://hjdrugprb.blogspot.com. The only problem is all the drug cartel’s money that is paid to American politicians to keep drugs illegal and keep the Mexican border porous for the drug cartels. Why do you think Obama and Eric Holder are suing Arizona for enforcing federal law when they won’t? Hell, it’s pretty plain to see they want the drug cartels to keep on making money and killing Americans. I wonder how much of that Mexican drug cartel money flows into their coffers? Hmmmmm?
Remember prohibition? Of course you don’t. You are too young. Prohibition created many huge and powerful criminal gangs, the remnants of which still operate in many America cities. Just think Al Capone, Big Bill Thompson, and the current Democrat political machine in Chicago as one example. (Thompson was a Republican and one of the most corrupt politicians in American history) These criminal gangs pour billions into keeping drugs, prostitution, guns, and who knows what else illegal. They love those laws because they know it secures their illegal businesses. Just as prohibition created thousands of criminal organizations to supply alcohol, drug laws create thousands of criminal organizations to supply illegal drugs. The same thing applies to prostitution and guns wherever they are illegal.
Good old Rom Emanuel, remember him as Obama’s right hand man? Anyway, as a member of the current version of the Capone gang structure, was there any doubt he would be able to run for mayor even when his candidacy was illegal according to Chicago law? We all knew a way would be found to circumvent that law. As with any law they want to break, they simply get one of their judges to rule in favor of what they want, regardless of any law. If they can’t get a court to change the law, they simply ignore it knowing they will not be prosecuted. On the larger scale, it looks as though that same criminal organization, (that evolved from the old Capone mob) is now running the country, and running it into the ground.
Now tell me where I’ve been wrong and have sweet dreams!
Cordially, Ho
* * *
In recent years, research into the power of the media was done by several responsible universities. The conclusions credit the media with a 10% to 15% move of public opinion in the direction they guide in their so called reporting. This is a very large move, usually bigger than any other single factor. If the media were truly objective and unbiased, they would have little effect on the outcome of elections. Unfortunately for Republicans, conservatives and capitalists, the main stream media (MSM): NBC, ABC, CBS, and their spin-off cable channels (The government media) are so biased to the left, they provide a massive advantage to Democrats in office, or running for office. Even when reporting Republican primaries, they promote those candidates that are either RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), very liberal, or have little chance to defeat a favored Democrat. They pile ridicule on as many Republicans as possible and are only slightly outdone by Democrat politicians. Meanwhile, Democrats, and especially the anointed one receive little but praise no matter how bad or destructive to the nation their actions happen to be.
As members of the mostly far left entertainment world, the MSM use both subtle and not-so-subtle efforts to promote Democrats and denigrate Republicans, especially conservative Republicans. The Media—the talking heads that treasure their power emanating from their ability to sway the public, the compliant public---are effective in getting many to think the way the media want them to think. The personal ridicule they piled on Sarah Palin during the last election is just one example. This was accomplished by an untrue and derogatory campaign against her person without any references to her accomplishments. When she was nominated to run with John McCain, the Democrat party and the Government supporting Main Stream Media (MSM) sent hundreds of researchers to Alaska to dig up any possible dirt they could find on Palin and her family. They did the same thing to Newt Gingrich before and are already ramping up a new hate campaign during the present primary campaign. Expect even more illegal activities of Democrats in the upcoming election, especially if Gingrich is the Republican candidate. There most vile and convoluted activities will be directed at those most favoring business, responsibility, and other rational conservative issues.
Illegal activity and the blatant pass given by the media on these criminal actions by Democrats: Think back to 1996, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. On December 21st of that year, a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, were going Christmas shopping, and "just happened " to have a scanner and tape recorder in the car with them. They claimed to have "accidentally " monitored the cell-phone conversation of Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as he spoke from his car in a conference call with several other key Republicans, including Gingrich. They "just happened" to record it "for history."
I'm sure it's common for people to accidentally intercept and tape private cell phone conversations while going Christmas shopping. Happens to me all the time.
The Martins then turned the tape over to Washington Democrat Jim McDermott, a member of the House Ethics Committee, which was about to rule on Gingrich's ethics violations. (He was finally and completely exonerated of all ethics charges.) McDermott, in turn gave the tape to the New York Times and other newspapers. The New York Times then printed a transcript of the call's participants discussing how Gingrich should respond to the Ethics Committee.
Of course, it's just a "coincidence" that the Martins are active in Florida Democratic politics, just as it was a "coincidence" that they gave the tape to a Democrat on the Ethics Committee instead of the Independent Counsel or the Republican committee chair. Perhaps it was also an "accident" that McDermott gave the information to the press, rather than discussing the tape with his fellow committee members.
Since it is illegal to eavesdrop on cellular phone calls and disseminate the contents, the Martins eventually pleaded guilty and were fined a "whopping" $500 each. However, the court ruled that McDermott's leaking of the call's contents to the press is protected by freedom of speech. Because the recordings were a matter of "important public interest," (how this conversation was a matter of "important public interest" is a bit questionable) the First Amendment trumped the privacy rights of the call's participants. Did McDermott take the tapes to the committee and discuss it with them? If he was concerned about the contents of the tape and not just playing politics, wouldn't this be the appropriate action? Instead, he gave the tapes to the press.
How interesting! So, it's acceptable to be involved in a third-party interception of someone's private cell phone conversation, tape it, and give it to a congressman whose dislike for the key call participant is rather obvious. It's also okay for that congressman to give that tape to the press.
Perhaps if it had been a Republican couple who "accidentally" taped Richard Gephardt's conversation, and then turned the tape over to a Republican politician, who in turn gave it to the press, people might pay a little more attention.
There were links to the Department of Justice complete records on this criminal activity in several places where I found this information on the Internet. Click on any of these links and one gets the following message: “We are sorry, but we are unable to locate the page you requested on the Department of Justice web site.” Is there another "side" to this story of illegal Democrat activity? Hmmmm? I wonder if it was a Republican who expunged those DOJ records? Hmmmm? I wonder why the MSM never delved into this? Hmmmm?
Speaking of the MSM, it is quite obvious they want Mitt Romney (Obama lite) to be the Republican candidate. In a recent TV broadcast, a “truth test” was provided for both Romney’s and Gingerich’s attack ads about the other. In examining Romney’s ads, they carefully enumerated Newt’s censure charges of which only one stuck and even that was overturned. Of course, the fact that he was completely exonerated of all charges was never mentioned by the media or by Romney. “Truth test?” Not likely.
The MSM are very good at acting objective and fair, but an examination of their broadcasts reveals extremely biased reporting. This is mostly accomplished by not reporting many significant happenings. These include not reporting any negatives about liberals or Democrats, and especially Obama. On the other side, they never report anything good about conservatives, business, or Republicans. Their hate and denigration campaign against Bush and Cheney, and now Gingrich clearly demonstrates their monstrous bias. It’s quite plain to see that according to the MSM, liberals, Democrats, and unions can do no wrong, while conservatives, Republicans and business people can do no right.
I reported earlier in this piece that since Democrats took over Congress in 2007, the cost of the federal government rose dramatically from around 30% of GDP where it held relatively stable for many years to 44% of GDP last year. And how about the trillions in new debt Obama’s America has created in just three years. This poses the question: how long will it be until the Chinese and Arabs own America? Paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher’s famous comment, how long will it be before our government runs out of other people’s money?
Here’s a comment in response to the question, is Obama going to be voted in for a second term: The following are almost all going to vote liberal Democrat and for Obama; All those who work for the government bureaucracy, are recipients of government welfare, receive money in government grants or largess of any kind, are avid supporters of unions, are African Americans, are socialists or Communists, are swayed by the “objective” reporting of the MSM, and those who hate wealth and capitalism for any reason. With all of these voting overwhelmingly for Obama and liberal Democrats, I don’t see the Republicans as having a chance. Because the votes of all of these people are bought and paid for with taxpayer’s money, I see a Democratic sweep of the next election and the virtual elimination of all effective opposition. This will mean the end of America as a free and prosperous nation and a catastrophic financial disaster for rich and poor alike. This calamity of unprecedented proportions will turn this once great nation into a third world ghost of its former self. All that will be left standing after the debacle will be the very poor and those of the devastated middle class, now the new poor, at least those who survive the food riots and other mayhem. The gulf between the poor, who will be the 99.9%, and the wealthy, politicians and their cronies who are the 0.1% and who will then hold all the wealth will make today’s disparity look like a wonderful dream in comparison.
This debacle will happen sooner and much faster than any of us can imagine. Once it starts it will be like a snowball and will not stop rolling until it reaches the bottom. In the process, as many as a third of those now alive will perish. The struggle for power will be sporadic, pervasive, and deadly, much like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, or the cultural revolution in China. Just think of the tragedy were our food distribution system to go down. The food production and distribution system is predicted to be the very first victim of the coming disaster. You don’t have to search far to find warnings about rising food prices, coming food shortages and possible food riots.
Could we stop this disaster from happening? - Of course. Will we? - I doubt it. To say why, I will repeat a quote made earlier in this booklet.
“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security.”
This is from a speech made in March of 1943 by Henning Webb Prentis, Jr. See earlier in this blog for the entire quote. The people will get exactly what they vote for, most likely, disaster.
How They Relate to Global Warming - Comments by Howard Johnson
I start with these definitions so the reader will better understand the basis for my conclusions.
Non profit organization: abbreviated as NPO, also known as a not-for-profit organization, is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds (that nasty word, profits) to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. It can, and usually does also own and operate property including buildings, equipment and vehicles. Employees of NPOs receive salaries and other compensation, often quite substantial.
Problem: a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution - a possibly intricate, unsettled question - a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation - a difficulty in understanding or accepting
.
Research: careful or diligent search - studious inquiry or examination; esp: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws - the collecting of information about a particular subject.
Solution: an action or process of solving a problem - an answer to a problem - a bringing or coming to an end or into a state of discontinuity.
Solver: one who solves a problem or brings it to a successful solution.
User: one who uses things, people and/or ideas, usually for their own personal benefit.
Problems, and the methods used to deal with them, are as varied as are the thoughts and ideas of individual humans. Someone once said that if you could adequately define a problem it would almost certainly lead to a conclusion and thus to a solution. The very word problem, however, implies the unknown.
Everyone deals with problems, usually on a daily basis. Problems can be divided into two types: those that have solutions and those that do not. Knowing the difference, and in which of the two categories a problem belongs is a problem in itself. For less than obvious reasons different people and different groups deal quite differently with problems. While the specific approach is not the purview of this writing, there are generally two very different classes of how to deal with any problem.
Some view a problem as something to be solved so that it is no longer a problem, while others view the same problem as something to be maintained, nurtured and kept alive without solution for their own purpose. To the latter group, any solution is to be avoided at all costs as that would end the usefulness of the problem to their purposes.
In general, engineers, contractors, business people, those in industry, and even individual entrepreneurs—all private sector people—deal with problems using the first method. They work hard at finding a viable and usually profitable solution, and move on to other things once it is solved. The result is all of the marvelous technologies and the organizations that developed and manufactured them that have so improved and extended our lives. To these people, a problem is something to be solved. Their attitudes about solutions to problems created the industrial and technological revolution that has resulted in everything from iphones to space missions to providing safe foods for billions of humans.
The other group, those who do not want solutions, want every problem to go no forever without solution. Why? Consider the politician. Every problem is viewed as a weapon with which to bludgeon political opponents, or obtain money. Should such a problem be solved it would remove a valuable tool from his or her political arsenal. That’s why politicians are problem users and not problem solvers. Politicians love unsolvable problems, especially those they can use to impose taxes. Global warming is a classic example that is trumpeted in the main stream media on a daily basis. It has become a huge financial boon for some and a ticket to power for others.
Government bureaucrats are another large group who do not want solutions to their problems Consider this situation: a government agency has a small department that is dealing with a specific problem. As manager, part of your compensation is determined by how big a budget you can get for your department. One of the workers in the department comes to you with the perfect solution to the problem—problem solved, no further need for the department to exist. You have a choice. The obvious is to implement the solution, dissolve the department, and look for another job. Is this what happens? Not on this planet. The more likely scenario is that you thank the employee and then transfer him or her to another department as far from yours as possible. You then destroy all records of the solution and go back to business as usual.
This brings us to another group that will avoid any solution at all costs. These are government and university research organizations, particularly those that vie for grants mostly provided by the US government. As long as the problem has legs it will be used to obtain grant money to fund the group’s research. Should the problem the group is dealing with be solved, there is no longer a need for the group to exist so it will be disbanded, the grant will be cancelled, and the group members will lose their jobs, right? Well . . . not always, especially if it is a government or government sponsored research organization. These groups are like the mythical Hydra, chop off one head and two more appear. An in-depth examination of government records will unearth many groups and committees whose usefulness ceased long ago, often as far back as horse and buggy days. These groups continue to have their budgets increased every year thanks to a Congress enamored of base line budgeting and pork barrel projects for their districts or states. Every once in a while someone discovers one of these dinosaurs and blows a whistle. If it would happen to be a Congressman, whatever he discloses had better not be of benefit to his district or his opponent will use it to cream him in the next election.
Even in universities it is difficult to get a research group disbanded once they have successfully run the grant committee gauntlet. Politics plays a huge part even there. I had an email exchange with a friend, a member of one of my Internet writers critique groups, who is a professor at a European university. For a short time he was a member of one research group. He left in disgust after discovering the purpose of the group had long ago ceased to exist and that their sole purpose seemed to be in writing grant requests so they would not be disbanded. Of course, it really wasn’t quite that simple.
My friend’s expertise and main pursuit was research on the effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on European plants and specifically crop plants. He kept getting refused new government grants until he changed the name of his research. He changed the title of his grant request from what previously was, The Beneficial Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide on European Crop Plants, to the infinitely more politically correct, The Deleterious Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide on European Crop Plants. He said he also changed a few of the sub headings in a similar fashion and his grant came through. His research had not changed, his conclusions had not changed and with just a few insignificant revisions to parts of his conclusions, he published his results, some of which I included in my book, Energy, Convenient Solutions.
I could list other example, but I’m sure you can see the basic differences between the two groups. The group who do not want problems solved are probably in the minority in universities, but I will wager they represent a majority in government research organizations and in many of the so called “Think Tanks” that have sprouted up all over. I have two examples of why I believe this to be true.
At least thirty years ago, I was flying to Chicago from Des Moines Iowa. I struck up a conversation with the man seated next to me who just happened to be the Postmaster of Chicago. He was a man in his mid sixties who informed me he was about to retire. Then he told my why he was glad he was retiring and getting out of the Post office.
He and several of his subordinates had developed a new training program to help low income, entry level employees, primarily minorities, get training so they could work for the Post Office. This was done at the request of the head of the post office in Washington. Their pilot program was started with twenty applicants that were not required to take any tests. In fact, some of them could not even read. The program was a four week intensive training given by Post Office employees. The trainees were paid the same as entry level jobs during their training. At the end of the program they were each given the standard Post Office test for the jobs they were to do. Eleven passed and went to work. At this time eleven new applicants were added to the nine that did not pass and the entire group went through the same complete training process.
Again they were given the standard employment test. Seven of the new people and four of the ones who went through twice passed and went to work. Once more there were nine left who would retake the training. The program called for applicants to be let go at the end of the third training period if they did not pass the tests. This time only four of the new people passed along with two of the second timers. That meant that only six new applicants could be accepted. At the end of the third training period, two of the new applicants passed along with one of the repeaters. Those who had taken the third training and still couldn’t pass were released. At the end of the next program five more were released. At this point someone, the Postal Workers Union or the NAACP, or the ACLU, I don’t remember who, but one of those filed a suit to force the post office to keep all trainees in the program until they were able to pass the test
The results were obvious. The program was soon filled with individuals who would never be able to pass the test and thus became permanent non working employees. At the time of our flight, the program had been disbanded. The Postmaster was terribly disappointed saying, “Our program really worked and was provided jobs for a few who were otherwise considered unemployable. We were about to expand it when those trouble makers got in and messed it up. Now we are again without a training program for these special entry level people. They are the ones who ultimately suffered.”
As far as I know those twenty non working employees could still be there, doing nothing and drawing a government paycheck. Remember this was more than thirty years ago so my numbers may not be on the money and I’m sure his words were different from my quotes, but the story itself is quite true. Oh yes, those twenty permanent non-working employees have probably retired by now and have a generous pension to support them.
The politically correct global warming story has such force it has gotten to the point where most of the news media and most university people treat it as a scientifically proven fact. This is nonsense. It is nothing but consensus science driven and tilted by politics and the lure of money—lots of money. The really sad part of this whole thing is the polarization it has brought about in the otherwise and usually objective scientific community. If you question any aspect of the global warming mantra you will be ridiculed (as I have been) called names (as I have been) and ostracized. (They can’t do that to me)
Witness what happened to Dr. Judith Curry, head of the School of Atmospheric Sciences of Georgia Tech. Just because she will not condemn 100% of those who question the efficacy of the IPPC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she has been the subject of many verbal attacks. To my great admiration, she has not backed down. She has accused the IPCC of, “corruption” and says, “I’m not going to spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don’t have confidence in the process.” This was before the Climategate email revelations of doctored computer simulations.
She has been jeered, insulted and otherwise badly treated, just because she doesn’t knuckle under to the pressures of the church of global warming. Incidently, she’s not a denier, just a questioning skeptic, as am I, who would like a whole lot more proof. I looked into what she is asking and her questions are virtually the same ones I have been asking. Where is the hard science, the physics and chemistry, that proves global warming from carbon-dioxide is as real as proponents of the theory say it is.
I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Peter Abelard, “By doubting we are led to inquire. By inquiring we learn the truth.” Apparently the global warming crowd will tolerate no doubting or inquiring from anyone, even highly qualified scientists. I do not believe that is even a remotely scientific attitude. Good science welcomes doubters and questioners. As a matter of fact, the entire basis of science, the scientific method, is based on repeated and thorough questioning. The idea that consensus science (the opinions of a number of scientists) is superior to hard science (math, physics, chemistry) is ludicrous. It goes against the grain of all true scientific facts, and in truth, the opposite is always true. Hard science always trumps consensus science. This does not mean that consensus science is wrong or is not a valuable tool. It merely means that it is a consensus of a group of scientists, a group that could even be a minority of scientists.
This is my interpretation from a rather pointedly unflattering and somewhat misleading article about Dr. Curry in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American. The title, Climate Heretic, is insulting. There is a full page photo of Dr. Curry opposite the title page that is also less than flattering. The only reference to her well earned title is the following on the first paragraph. “For most of her career, Curry, who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been known for her work on hurricanes, Arctic ice dynamics and other climate related topics. But over the past years or so she has become better known for something that annoys, even infuriates many of her scientific colleagues. (She refuses to go along with the crowd like a sheep.) Curry has been engaged actively with the climate change skeptic community, largely by participating on outsider blogs such as Climate Audit. The Air Vent and The Blackboard. Along the way, she has come to question the science, no matter how well established it is.”
In typical misleading fashion, Scientific American printed a version of the “hockey stick” temperature showing best guess temperatures from 1000 CE to the present. Since the “little Ice Age” began around 900 CE, well before the dates on the graph, this version, commonly used to illustrate how temperatures have risen in recent years, gives an extremely erroneous picture. If you compare it with a similar graph starting say 10,000 BC, a very different picture appears. It is quite plain from the expanded data that current global temperatures are considerably lower than those during the medieval warm period from 200 CE to 900 CE and even warmer at several times since the last ice age. Why is it that global warmers never refer to this data and will certainly not show these graphs?
The author of the article is one I consider to be a dedicated member of the fundamentalist church of global warming, a political hack writer. His name is Michael D. Lemonick and he was a long time far left science writer for Time magazine. He now writes for Climate Central, a nonprofit, nonpartisan climate change think tank. (I about choked on that oxymoronic description, nonpartisan indeed) It’s one of the hundreds of usually non profit organizations that have sprung up to feed on the leavings from the global warming fantasy promoters. The Internet is loaded with them, all soliciting donations for their noble purpose. They may be non profit, but I’ll wager their principals receive a hefty paycheck along with many perks. Many NPOs have highly paid executives who fly around in private jets. (Like Nancy Pelosi who’s NPO was Congress) NPOs can offer all the perks of any profit making corporation for their owners and employees. The only thing different is they don’t pay their owners in dividends, they simply pay them in salary and benefits.
OK, so I rambled about. I just wanted to share some realities from the wonderful world of liberalism. The following is a response to the article on Dr. Curry from one Climatologist. I did not write or edit it. 10/23/2010
This article (In Scientific American) completely neglects to mention the enormous amounts of grant money being shoveled into "climate studies." $Billions every year are handed out by the federal government, with much more payola coming from shadowy, politically oriented NGOs that are often at odds with honest science.
Big money corrupts, as can be seen throughout the Climategate emails, where journals are threatened and blackballed, and journalists and FOI officers are corrupted, and professional careers are ruined, simply for not toeing the alarmist line. The mainstream climate clique has both front feet in the public grant trough, and it brazenly shoulders aside scientific skeptics (the only honest kind of scientists, according to the scientific method).
Dr Curry has taken a brave stand, breaking ranks with the current orthodoxy. She is a finger to the wind, indicating a sea change in the public's growing awareness of the fact that there is zero credible evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has been harmful while there is solid, testable, empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has been beneficial, such as increasing agricultural production in a world that needs more food.
The IPCC has become entirely self-serving since AR-1. It is now much more interested in protecting its grant gravy train than in allowing skeptical scientists to be a part of the process. It took knowledgeable outsiders to debunk Michael Mann's hockey stick chart; the iconic poster of the IPCC.
In retrospect, the scientific establishment should have promptly sounded the alarm when it was claimed in MBH98-99 that the planet's temperature was essentially unchanging over many centuries. Instead, the Mann et al. attempt to erase the MWP and the LIA was unquestioningly accepted, at least publicly, due to the immense flow of grant money at stake. Further, the IPCC still continues to avoid the scientific method, instead protecting its catastrophic AGW hypothesis from any and all attacks by skeptical scientists. Since when is it the duty of scientists to falsify hypotheses?
But the cracks in the defenses of the climate alarmists are widening. Taxpayers are disgusted with the unaccountable hand over fist money grabbing by a completely unaccountable UN/IPCC. As the public becomes more aware of how the system is being gamed at their expense, push back is increasing. And it will continue to escalate.
End of response
You see, I’m not the only one. Increasing numbers of people are asking all kinds of probing and even embarrassing questions of climate alarmists.
Oh yes, here are some graphs you might find interesting:
It is interesting to note that the high point in both of these graphs are based on tree ring data, not actual temperature data. The cause has been well documented to be the increase in atmospheric CO2 which has been found to greatly increase plant growth including trees. This holds true almost without regard for temperature. Tree ring data is totally useless as a measure of ambient temperatures.
This is the IPCC hockey stick graph shown in an accurate scale. Compare it with the same period shown on the graph above it. Notice only one line, the black one goes up sharply at the end. This line represents tree ring growth that the IPCC uses erroneously to show temperatures. It is just one of the eight types of temperature estimates shown.
This is the IPCC temperature graph before Michael Mann published his hockey stick graph and report that completely ignored the Medieval warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the effects of increased atmospheric CO2.
This is the graph of the Vostok Ice Core Data Temperature and CO2 concentration from 400,000 years earlier to the present. It begs the question, does CO2 percentage lead the temperature variation indicating it could be the cause or is the reverse actually true? It doesn't take a genius to see that the CO2 concentration follows the temperature indicating it definitely not a cause, but is an effect. The CO2 variation obviously follows the average temperature rather than the other way around.
For more information on the hockey stick graph goto:
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
More links to related information:
Global Warming - ECS - excerpt - 12-29-07 +new http://glowarmacs.blogspot.com
Global Warming and the Gulf Stream http://hjgulfstream.blogspot.com
Global Warming and Earth Hour http://hjglobalwarming.blogspot.com
What happened next was quite predictable. The owners would finally default on their mortgage, walk away from the place and leave it empty. Within a week or so, strippers would remove everything useable from the house including pulling the wiring and copper pipe. (copper sold as scrap) sometimes they even took the doors. When they foreclosed, the bank got a property with a house that would cost far more to fix than it would ever be worth. Many of them were set afire before they could be bulldozed down. Others became crack houses or shelters for transients and drug dealers. The city received no taxes and the resulting blighted neighborhood rapidly went down hill. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’ll bet the same thing happened on a much larger scale in Detroit. Drive through parts of the south side of Fort Wayne and you’ll see what I mean. It’s Detroit on a much smaller scale.
The six men were sued by the banks. The city was working up a criminal suit as well. My neighbor knew all the about this while it was happening. (and he told me plenty —then) He knew because he was one of the lawyers involved in the suit for the city. The six men were guess what, black liberal Democrats. They were also higher ups in the local ACORN group. Surprise, surprise! After making news in all the local media for about a week, things suddenly became very quiet. Remember, this was the spring of 2009 and ACORN’s benefactor and strong advocate was in the Whitehouse. To make a long story short, the whole thing quickly and quietly was swept under the rug. No more mention in any of the media—ever. The criminal suit was gone and so was the bank suit. I could find no longer find any records of either in a search of Fort Wayne public legal records on the Internet. Those records disappeared or at least public Internet access to them disappeared. They were there one time and gone a few weeks later. My friend now claims he knows nothing about it and no longer will talk about it, even in private. Hmmmmmm? You can make your own assumptions about what happened here.
The things described in these paragraphs are all hard realities, not opinions. You can see them, photograph them, even buy them. Both Detroit and Ft Wayne would love some new owners who would buy land and pay taxes. Wherever government controls anything, you will find huge waste, crippling graft, crime, corruption, gross inefficiency and almost total financial irresponsibility.
This put me in mind of a demonstration of the immense power of those with money and influence I experienced as a senior at Purdue University. It seems a student at Harvard, one Teddy Kennedy, had been caught stealing exam papers. The news was all over the local papers, and I assumed elsewhere as well. I saved both pages with the article in a notebook among other clipping I kept. Several months later, I wanted another copy for some reason, and realized my notebook had been taken home to Cleveland and left there. No matter, I went to the library, looked up the paper for that date and looked for the article to make a copy. When I found the pages I was looking for I was greeted with a page that had been cut out. The entire article on both the front page and on the inside page was gone—cut out completely.
I thought it pretty bad that someone would cut an article out of the library’s newspaper archive. Later, during a trip to Indianapolis I checked in the library there. Same thing as in Lafayette. I went to the Indianapolis star to check their own archives and found the same thing. When I asked about the missing article, the lady at the desk in their archive section laughed and said every so often people cut articles from their old papers. She saw it as an inconsiderate action, but didn’t see it as important, merely a nuisance and of little concern. By the time I discovered the same thing in Cleveland and Chicago I knew it had been an organized effort to remove all information about the incident from public record. The Kennedy family had that kind of wealth and power. I, however, still had my copy of the article.
Many years later I related this to one of the liberal members of my family during a visit. I was called a liar. Some time later, I made a copy of the article and mailed it to that family member. I have never received an apology or an acknowledgment. Later, after the time of the Mary Jo Kopeckni’s death, someone remembered, dug up, and made public Teddy’s theft of the exam papers as part of the troubles he had been in. At the time, those who made the disclosure were lamenting the fact that those with enough wealth and power could get away with murder if they tried. Sound anything like the sealing from public view of all of the college writings of both Barack and Michelle Obama along with a great many other personal papers? Hmmmmm?
You mentioned health care, your field, and the unconscionable waste and poor use of resources. Isn’t most of this paid for by medicare, medicaid and health insurance? Do you think government alone would do any better? And about rationing of healthcare I have had two experiences with government agencies that reflect the realities of government running anything.
When Barb became ill with PPS in 2000 and had to step down from the pulpit, her healthcare was covered for one entire year by the Methodist church. During that year we tried obtaining a new healthcare policy with little success. We then applied for SSI which would have helped us quite a bit. She was denied coverage many times (at least ten times) over the next few years. In 2003, After her surgeries and heart attack cost us half a million dollars (really), a friend of ours put us in touch with a Republican Congressman, not from our district, but whose wife also had PPS. He was wonderful. Within a month or so, Barb was approved for SSI and we started receiving Barb’s SSI checks. Incidently, our own Republican Congressman did nothing for us.
Several years ago I applied for a federal grant from the Department of Energy to help with the publication and promotion of my book on energy, Energy, Convenient Solutions. I jumped through all of the hoops, filled out all of the forms and made certain that I was income qualified. After dozens of phone calls, I was given an appointment for an interview with a federal grant officer. It was fifteen months after my application was sent in. When I walked into the office and saw the grant officer I was certain I was in trouble. The officer who had just called me in was a black woman about fifty weighing at least 350 pounds. I walked over to her desk and handed her my papers. She took them, compared them with some papers she had on her desk, picked up a large rubber stamp, stamped and signed my papers and hers. Then without a word she handed them back to me and called out the name of her next victim. The big “Denied” in red told me everything I would ever learn about why the grant request was denied. (and there was no appeal) If I wanted to try for another grant I would have to go through the entire process again. She must have felt a great sense of satisfaction in turning down my application without a word of explanation or help. I wondered what would have happened if I had been black or had slipped a few $100 bills inside those papers. Those are my two latest experiences with the federal bureaucracy. I can only imagine what a chaotic mess our government will make of our health care system if Obamacare is not repealed.
Incidentally, have you ever spent any time in or visited a VA hospital? When I was in the dental business we did maintenance work on dental equipment in the VA hospital near Cleveland. We actually had to jump our bid prices about a third higher than what we charged private dentists because of all the costs associated with dealing with their red tape and special requirements, few of which made any sense at all. It finally became so expensive to deal with them we quit bidding. The first time we didn’t bid, their purchasing agent called and begged me to bid, admitting no one else had either. Then he said the following, “I don’t care if you double the regular price, we need that service.” I bid on two more small jobs and then quit for good. I have no idea how or from whom they purchased their service and supplies after that.
I was going to list the similarities between the Carter and Obama effects on our country and compare them to those of the Reagan years, but everyone knows the difference in the budgets, the deficit, the unemployment rates, and inflation. Remember Carter’s 20% interest rates, 12% inflation, and double digit unemployment? They say inflation is under control, but is it? Have you noticed the price of gasoline, diesel, and heating oil has doubled in the last few years? (It recently went from $3.14 a gallon to $3.65 a gallon in a few weeks here.)
And how about food prices? Have you noticed that many items have increased by 50% or more in price during the same period? Ever wonder why those increases don’t seem to affect the government’s inflation index, or bring about an increase in COLA, the cost of living allowance used for Social Security and military pay? That’s because liberal Democrats under Bill Clinton, removed food and fuel from those calculations. This has seriously affected the poor who can least afford it because food and fuel consume a major portion of their income. Apparently Democrats believe the poor and elderly don't need food or fuel, even in the winter up north. The unemployment rate that was 4.2 % when Reagan left office is only 9.4% under the way it is calculated using Obama’s new method. The current way to figure the unemployment rate does not include those who have stopped actively seeking work or are no longer receiving unemployment checks. If figured the same way it was during previous administrations including Reagan’s, the current rate would probably be double what the government is telling us. And these deliberate deceptive manipulations of statistics by our government go on and on.
Is it any wonder that our federal government is mired in debt along with virtually every blue state in the nation? I ask you again, who is responsible, liberals or conservatives? Few people will pay any attention, and certainly few politicians are willing to address these serious problems. Could we correct these problems and once again become the dynamic leader of the free world? Yes, with the right leadership. Will we? I seriously doubt it. I am going to use two very telling quotes and related information that will explain why we will probably end up on the ash heap of history, and soon.
A prediction of where we seem to be headed may have come from far back in history, when the 13 colonies were still part of England. This quote is often attributed to a Scottish Historian, Alexander Tytler or Tyler. The true origin of the quote is obscure and might actually have originated in the early 20th century from an unknown politician or writer. Nevertheless, this does not detract from its accuracy.”
One version of this quote on why democracies always fail and a near exact description of what is happening in our country right now, is:
“A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the citizens discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, to be followed by a dictatorship.”
The other part of many versions of the quote follows:
“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.
“At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three millenniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.”
The person who is the actual author of the last two paragraphs that frequently are included as a part of the entire quote is Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork Company. It is from a speech entitled, Industrial Management in a Republic, delivered in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria at New York during the 250th meeting of the National Conference Board on March 18, 1943, and recorded on page 22 of Industrial Management in a Republic. Even then socialist idiots and demagogs were trying to take over the country. They haven't changed much.
Those words of Prentis clearly echo your comments about the health industry, indeed, it probably holds true for any industry or functioning body deeply dependent on insurance, government, or any other source of money not controlled by the rules of economics. It is so very clear that laziness, fraud, and being wasteful, ignorant, and destructive are easily accomplished by a growing section of our populace while hard work, honesty, thrift, and being creative and constructive may now be limited to a shrinking number.
In stark contrast, look at China. After decades of oppressive economic conditions and a tightly controlled economy, the government permitted an expanding number of economic freedoms including private ownership of farms, businesses, and even industries. Recently they have been urging their citizens to buy gold after years of it being illegal to own gold. The results of this complete reversal of policy has been the amazing growth of their economy and the creation of a rapidly expanding middle class of consumers. I believe that this economic growth and freedom will lead to more personal freedoms for the Chinese. They have let the capitalist free enterprise genie out of the bottle. It is hard to predict just where it will take them, but it is obvious that their direction is the opposite from where we in America along with most of the “Western” world are heading. The road up is a lot happier then the road down. Quite obviously, they are between courage to liberty; and liberty to abundance, while we are between apathy to dependency; and dependency back to bondage.
Yes, these last two paragraphs are personal opinions, but just look at the present realities of America compared to China. The factual realities are so obvious I think you would find it impossible to come to any very different conclusions. The lessons of history are pretty damned hard to deny. They have repeated over and over again.
Oh yes, wasn’t it Pogo who said, “I have met the enemy, and he is us?”
Back to the socialist wars: It is easy to see that two opposing groups ar squaring off for battle in Wisconsin and elsewhere over mostly government unions who are married to the liberal Democrats. This battle is over whether the SEIU and their buddies run things or the voters of Wisconsin do. Voters who have finally awakened to see the ruthless self-service of the SEIU and other government unions. Incidently, guess which one of our esteemed US Presidents said,
“Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. Such an action is unthinkable and intolerable.” —Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Here’s another quote, “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd. My how times and politics have changed. Unions now routinely extort money and gain power by threatening to shut down critical government services. And who do the unions, Democrats, and the government biased media blame for the shut downs?
Here’s another link you might want to check out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsH8xvjTAlo Tells how Obama and Eric Holder are joining in supporting a foreign nation and a criminal drug cartel against the state of Arizona. This is an evil unprecedented in our entire history.
Incidentally, I have the perfect answer to the illegal drug problem. It would remove all of the incentives for criminal activity and put the drug cartels out of business permanently. Check out http://hjdrugprb.blogspot.com. The only problem is all the drug cartel’s money that is paid to American politicians to keep drugs illegal and keep the Mexican border porous for the drug cartels. Why do you think Obama and Eric Holder are suing Arizona for enforcing federal law when they won’t? Hell, it’s pretty plain to see they want the drug cartels to keep on making money and killing Americans. I wonder how much of that Mexican drug cartel money flows into their coffers? Hmmmmm?
Remember prohibition? Of course you don’t. You are too young. Prohibition created many huge and powerful criminal gangs, the remnants of which still operate in many America cities. Just think Al Capone, Big Bill Thompson, and the current Democrat political machine in Chicago as one example. (Thompson was a Republican and one of the most corrupt politicians in American history) These criminal gangs pour billions into keeping drugs, prostitution, guns, and who knows what else illegal. They love those laws because they know it secures their illegal businesses. Just as prohibition created thousands of criminal organizations to supply alcohol, drug laws create thousands of criminal organizations to supply illegal drugs. The same thing applies to prostitution and guns wherever they are illegal.
Good old Rom Emanuel, remember him as Obama’s right hand man? Anyway, as a member of the current version of the Capone gang structure, was there any doubt he would be able to run for mayor even when his candidacy was illegal according to Chicago law? We all knew a way would be found to circumvent that law. As with any law they want to break, they simply get one of their judges to rule in favor of what they want, regardless of any law. If they can’t get a court to change the law, they simply ignore it knowing they will not be prosecuted. On the larger scale, it looks as though that same criminal organization, (that evolved from the old Capone mob) is now running the country, and running it into the ground.
Now tell me where I’ve been wrong and have sweet dreams!
Cordially, Ho
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In recent years, research into the power of the media was done by several responsible universities. The conclusions credit the media with a 10% to 15% move of public opinion in the direction they guide in their so called reporting. This is a very large move, usually bigger than any other single factor. If the media were truly objective and unbiased, they would have little effect on the outcome of elections. Unfortunately for Republicans, conservatives and capitalists, the main stream media (MSM): NBC, ABC, CBS, and their spin-off cable channels (The government media) are so biased to the left, they provide a massive advantage to Democrats in office, or running for office. Even when reporting Republican primaries, they promote those candidates that are either RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), very liberal, or have little chance to defeat a favored Democrat. They pile ridicule on as many Republicans as possible and are only slightly outdone by Democrat politicians. Meanwhile, Democrats, and especially the anointed one receive little but praise no matter how bad or destructive to the nation their actions happen to be.
As members of the mostly far left entertainment world, the MSM use both subtle and not-so-subtle efforts to promote Democrats and denigrate Republicans, especially conservative Republicans. The Media—the talking heads that treasure their power emanating from their ability to sway the public, the compliant public---are effective in getting many to think the way the media want them to think. The personal ridicule they piled on Sarah Palin during the last election is just one example. This was accomplished by an untrue and derogatory campaign against her person without any references to her accomplishments. When she was nominated to run with John McCain, the Democrat party and the Government supporting Main Stream Media (MSM) sent hundreds of researchers to Alaska to dig up any possible dirt they could find on Palin and her family. They did the same thing to Newt Gingrich before and are already ramping up a new hate campaign during the present primary campaign. Expect even more illegal activities of Democrats in the upcoming election, especially if Gingrich is the Republican candidate. There most vile and convoluted activities will be directed at those most favoring business, responsibility, and other rational conservative issues.
Illegal activity and the blatant pass given by the media on these criminal actions by Democrats: Think back to 1996, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. On December 21st of that year, a Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, were going Christmas shopping, and "just happened " to have a scanner and tape recorder in the car with them. They claimed to have "accidentally " monitored the cell-phone conversation of Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as he spoke from his car in a conference call with several other key Republicans, including Gingrich. They "just happened" to record it "for history."
I'm sure it's common for people to accidentally intercept and tape private cell phone conversations while going Christmas shopping. Happens to me all the time.
The Martins then turned the tape over to Washington Democrat Jim McDermott, a member of the House Ethics Committee, which was about to rule on Gingrich's ethics violations. (He was finally and completely exonerated of all ethics charges.) McDermott, in turn gave the tape to the New York Times and other newspapers. The New York Times then printed a transcript of the call's participants discussing how Gingrich should respond to the Ethics Committee.
Of course, it's just a "coincidence" that the Martins are active in Florida Democratic politics, just as it was a "coincidence" that they gave the tape to a Democrat on the Ethics Committee instead of the Independent Counsel or the Republican committee chair. Perhaps it was also an "accident" that McDermott gave the information to the press, rather than discussing the tape with his fellow committee members.
Since it is illegal to eavesdrop on cellular phone calls and disseminate the contents, the Martins eventually pleaded guilty and were fined a "whopping" $500 each. However, the court ruled that McDermott's leaking of the call's contents to the press is protected by freedom of speech. Because the recordings were a matter of "important public interest," (how this conversation was a matter of "important public interest" is a bit questionable) the First Amendment trumped the privacy rights of the call's participants. Did McDermott take the tapes to the committee and discuss it with them? If he was concerned about the contents of the tape and not just playing politics, wouldn't this be the appropriate action? Instead, he gave the tapes to the press.
How interesting! So, it's acceptable to be involved in a third-party interception of someone's private cell phone conversation, tape it, and give it to a congressman whose dislike for the key call participant is rather obvious. It's also okay for that congressman to give that tape to the press.
Perhaps if it had been a Republican couple who "accidentally" taped Richard Gephardt's conversation, and then turned the tape over to a Republican politician, who in turn gave it to the press, people might pay a little more attention.
There were links to the Department of Justice complete records on this criminal activity in several places where I found this information on the Internet. Click on any of these links and one gets the following message: “We are sorry, but we are unable to locate the page you requested on the Department of Justice web site.” Is there another "side" to this story of illegal Democrat activity? Hmmmm? I wonder if it was a Republican who expunged those DOJ records? Hmmmm? I wonder why the MSM never delved into this? Hmmmm?
Speaking of the MSM, it is quite obvious they want Mitt Romney (Obama lite) to be the Republican candidate. In a recent TV broadcast, a “truth test” was provided for both Romney’s and Gingerich’s attack ads about the other. In examining Romney’s ads, they carefully enumerated Newt’s censure charges of which only one stuck and even that was overturned. Of course, the fact that he was completely exonerated of all charges was never mentioned by the media or by Romney. “Truth test?” Not likely.
The MSM are very good at acting objective and fair, but an examination of their broadcasts reveals extremely biased reporting. This is mostly accomplished by not reporting many significant happenings. These include not reporting any negatives about liberals or Democrats, and especially Obama. On the other side, they never report anything good about conservatives, business, or Republicans. Their hate and denigration campaign against Bush and Cheney, and now Gingrich clearly demonstrates their monstrous bias. It’s quite plain to see that according to the MSM, liberals, Democrats, and unions can do no wrong, while conservatives, Republicans and business people can do no right.
I reported earlier in this piece that since Democrats took over Congress in 2007, the cost of the federal government rose dramatically from around 30% of GDP where it held relatively stable for many years to 44% of GDP last year. And how about the trillions in new debt Obama’s America has created in just three years. This poses the question: how long will it be until the Chinese and Arabs own America? Paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher’s famous comment, how long will it be before our government runs out of other people’s money?
Here’s a comment in response to the question, is Obama going to be voted in for a second term: The following are almost all going to vote liberal Democrat and for Obama; All those who work for the government bureaucracy, are recipients of government welfare, receive money in government grants or largess of any kind, are avid supporters of unions, are African Americans, are socialists or Communists, are swayed by the “objective” reporting of the MSM, and those who hate wealth and capitalism for any reason. With all of these voting overwhelmingly for Obama and liberal Democrats, I don’t see the Republicans as having a chance. Because the votes of all of these people are bought and paid for with taxpayer’s money, I see a Democratic sweep of the next election and the virtual elimination of all effective opposition. This will mean the end of America as a free and prosperous nation and a catastrophic financial disaster for rich and poor alike. This calamity of unprecedented proportions will turn this once great nation into a third world ghost of its former self. All that will be left standing after the debacle will be the very poor and those of the devastated middle class, now the new poor, at least those who survive the food riots and other mayhem. The gulf between the poor, who will be the 99.9%, and the wealthy, politicians and their cronies who are the 0.1% and who will then hold all the wealth will make today’s disparity look like a wonderful dream in comparison.
This debacle will happen sooner and much faster than any of us can imagine. Once it starts it will be like a snowball and will not stop rolling until it reaches the bottom. In the process, as many as a third of those now alive will perish. The struggle for power will be sporadic, pervasive, and deadly, much like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, or the cultural revolution in China. Just think of the tragedy were our food distribution system to go down. The food production and distribution system is predicted to be the very first victim of the coming disaster. You don’t have to search far to find warnings about rising food prices, coming food shortages and possible food riots.
Could we stop this disaster from happening? - Of course. Will we? - I doubt it. To say why, I will repeat a quote made earlier in this booklet.
“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security.”
This is from a speech made in March of 1943 by Henning Webb Prentis, Jr. See earlier in this blog for the entire quote. The people will get exactly what they vote for, most likely, disaster.
* * *
NPOs
Problems
Research
Solutions
Solvers
Users
Problems
Research
Solutions
Solvers
Users
How They Relate to Global Warming - Comments by Howard Johnson
* * *
PROBLEMS AND THEIR FALLOUT
Dealing with the Global Warming Crowd realityor scam?
Dealing with the Global Warming Crowd realityor scam?
I start with these definitions so the reader will better understand the basis for my conclusions.
Non profit organization: abbreviated as NPO, also known as a not-for-profit organization, is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds (that nasty word, profits) to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. It can, and usually does also own and operate property including buildings, equipment and vehicles. Employees of NPOs receive salaries and other compensation, often quite substantial.
Problem: a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution - a possibly intricate, unsettled question - a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation - a difficulty in understanding or accepting
.
Research: careful or diligent search - studious inquiry or examination; esp: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws - the collecting of information about a particular subject.
Solution: an action or process of solving a problem - an answer to a problem - a bringing or coming to an end or into a state of discontinuity.
Solver: one who solves a problem or brings it to a successful solution.
User: one who uses things, people and/or ideas, usually for their own personal benefit.
Problems, and the methods used to deal with them, are as varied as are the thoughts and ideas of individual humans. Someone once said that if you could adequately define a problem it would almost certainly lead to a conclusion and thus to a solution. The very word problem, however, implies the unknown.
Everyone deals with problems, usually on a daily basis. Problems can be divided into two types: those that have solutions and those that do not. Knowing the difference, and in which of the two categories a problem belongs is a problem in itself. For less than obvious reasons different people and different groups deal quite differently with problems. While the specific approach is not the purview of this writing, there are generally two very different classes of how to deal with any problem.
Some view a problem as something to be solved so that it is no longer a problem, while others view the same problem as something to be maintained, nurtured and kept alive without solution for their own purpose. To the latter group, any solution is to be avoided at all costs as that would end the usefulness of the problem to their purposes.
In general, engineers, contractors, business people, those in industry, and even individual entrepreneurs—all private sector people—deal with problems using the first method. They work hard at finding a viable and usually profitable solution, and move on to other things once it is solved. The result is all of the marvelous technologies and the organizations that developed and manufactured them that have so improved and extended our lives. To these people, a problem is something to be solved. Their attitudes about solutions to problems created the industrial and technological revolution that has resulted in everything from iphones to space missions to providing safe foods for billions of humans.
The other group, those who do not want solutions, want every problem to go no forever without solution. Why? Consider the politician. Every problem is viewed as a weapon with which to bludgeon political opponents, or obtain money. Should such a problem be solved it would remove a valuable tool from his or her political arsenal. That’s why politicians are problem users and not problem solvers. Politicians love unsolvable problems, especially those they can use to impose taxes. Global warming is a classic example that is trumpeted in the main stream media on a daily basis. It has become a huge financial boon for some and a ticket to power for others.
Government bureaucrats are another large group who do not want solutions to their problems Consider this situation: a government agency has a small department that is dealing with a specific problem. As manager, part of your compensation is determined by how big a budget you can get for your department. One of the workers in the department comes to you with the perfect solution to the problem—problem solved, no further need for the department to exist. You have a choice. The obvious is to implement the solution, dissolve the department, and look for another job. Is this what happens? Not on this planet. The more likely scenario is that you thank the employee and then transfer him or her to another department as far from yours as possible. You then destroy all records of the solution and go back to business as usual.
This brings us to another group that will avoid any solution at all costs. These are government and university research organizations, particularly those that vie for grants mostly provided by the US government. As long as the problem has legs it will be used to obtain grant money to fund the group’s research. Should the problem the group is dealing with be solved, there is no longer a need for the group to exist so it will be disbanded, the grant will be cancelled, and the group members will lose their jobs, right? Well . . . not always, especially if it is a government or government sponsored research organization. These groups are like the mythical Hydra, chop off one head and two more appear. An in-depth examination of government records will unearth many groups and committees whose usefulness ceased long ago, often as far back as horse and buggy days. These groups continue to have their budgets increased every year thanks to a Congress enamored of base line budgeting and pork barrel projects for their districts or states. Every once in a while someone discovers one of these dinosaurs and blows a whistle. If it would happen to be a Congressman, whatever he discloses had better not be of benefit to his district or his opponent will use it to cream him in the next election.
Even in universities it is difficult to get a research group disbanded once they have successfully run the grant committee gauntlet. Politics plays a huge part even there. I had an email exchange with a friend, a member of one of my Internet writers critique groups, who is a professor at a European university. For a short time he was a member of one research group. He left in disgust after discovering the purpose of the group had long ago ceased to exist and that their sole purpose seemed to be in writing grant requests so they would not be disbanded. Of course, it really wasn’t quite that simple.
My friend’s expertise and main pursuit was research on the effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on European plants and specifically crop plants. He kept getting refused new government grants until he changed the name of his research. He changed the title of his grant request from what previously was, The Beneficial Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide on European Crop Plants, to the infinitely more politically correct, The Deleterious Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon-dioxide on European Crop Plants. He said he also changed a few of the sub headings in a similar fashion and his grant came through. His research had not changed, his conclusions had not changed and with just a few insignificant revisions to parts of his conclusions, he published his results, some of which I included in my book, Energy, Convenient Solutions.
I could list other example, but I’m sure you can see the basic differences between the two groups. The group who do not want problems solved are probably in the minority in universities, but I will wager they represent a majority in government research organizations and in many of the so called “Think Tanks” that have sprouted up all over. I have two examples of why I believe this to be true.
At least thirty years ago, I was flying to Chicago from Des Moines Iowa. I struck up a conversation with the man seated next to me who just happened to be the Postmaster of Chicago. He was a man in his mid sixties who informed me he was about to retire. Then he told my why he was glad he was retiring and getting out of the Post office.
He and several of his subordinates had developed a new training program to help low income, entry level employees, primarily minorities, get training so they could work for the Post Office. This was done at the request of the head of the post office in Washington. Their pilot program was started with twenty applicants that were not required to take any tests. In fact, some of them could not even read. The program was a four week intensive training given by Post Office employees. The trainees were paid the same as entry level jobs during their training. At the end of the program they were each given the standard Post Office test for the jobs they were to do. Eleven passed and went to work. At this time eleven new applicants were added to the nine that did not pass and the entire group went through the same complete training process.
Again they were given the standard employment test. Seven of the new people and four of the ones who went through twice passed and went to work. Once more there were nine left who would retake the training. The program called for applicants to be let go at the end of the third training period if they did not pass the tests. This time only four of the new people passed along with two of the second timers. That meant that only six new applicants could be accepted. At the end of the third training period, two of the new applicants passed along with one of the repeaters. Those who had taken the third training and still couldn’t pass were released. At the end of the next program five more were released. At this point someone, the Postal Workers Union or the NAACP, or the ACLU, I don’t remember who, but one of those filed a suit to force the post office to keep all trainees in the program until they were able to pass the test
The results were obvious. The program was soon filled with individuals who would never be able to pass the test and thus became permanent non working employees. At the time of our flight, the program had been disbanded. The Postmaster was terribly disappointed saying, “Our program really worked and was provided jobs for a few who were otherwise considered unemployable. We were about to expand it when those trouble makers got in and messed it up. Now we are again without a training program for these special entry level people. They are the ones who ultimately suffered.”
As far as I know those twenty non working employees could still be there, doing nothing and drawing a government paycheck. Remember this was more than thirty years ago so my numbers may not be on the money and I’m sure his words were different from my quotes, but the story itself is quite true. Oh yes, those twenty permanent non-working employees have probably retired by now and have a generous pension to support them.
The politically correct global warming story has such force it has gotten to the point where most of the news media and most university people treat it as a scientifically proven fact. This is nonsense. It is nothing but consensus science driven and tilted by politics and the lure of money—lots of money. The really sad part of this whole thing is the polarization it has brought about in the otherwise and usually objective scientific community. If you question any aspect of the global warming mantra you will be ridiculed (as I have been) called names (as I have been) and ostracized. (They can’t do that to me)
Witness what happened to Dr. Judith Curry, head of the School of Atmospheric Sciences of Georgia Tech. Just because she will not condemn 100% of those who question the efficacy of the IPPC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she has been the subject of many verbal attacks. To my great admiration, she has not backed down. She has accused the IPCC of, “corruption” and says, “I’m not going to spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don’t have confidence in the process.” This was before the Climategate email revelations of doctored computer simulations.
She has been jeered, insulted and otherwise badly treated, just because she doesn’t knuckle under to the pressures of the church of global warming. Incidently, she’s not a denier, just a questioning skeptic, as am I, who would like a whole lot more proof. I looked into what she is asking and her questions are virtually the same ones I have been asking. Where is the hard science, the physics and chemistry, that proves global warming from carbon-dioxide is as real as proponents of the theory say it is.
I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Peter Abelard, “By doubting we are led to inquire. By inquiring we learn the truth.” Apparently the global warming crowd will tolerate no doubting or inquiring from anyone, even highly qualified scientists. I do not believe that is even a remotely scientific attitude. Good science welcomes doubters and questioners. As a matter of fact, the entire basis of science, the scientific method, is based on repeated and thorough questioning. The idea that consensus science (the opinions of a number of scientists) is superior to hard science (math, physics, chemistry) is ludicrous. It goes against the grain of all true scientific facts, and in truth, the opposite is always true. Hard science always trumps consensus science. This does not mean that consensus science is wrong or is not a valuable tool. It merely means that it is a consensus of a group of scientists, a group that could even be a minority of scientists.
This is my interpretation from a rather pointedly unflattering and somewhat misleading article about Dr. Curry in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American. The title, Climate Heretic, is insulting. There is a full page photo of Dr. Curry opposite the title page that is also less than flattering. The only reference to her well earned title is the following on the first paragraph. “For most of her career, Curry, who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been known for her work on hurricanes, Arctic ice dynamics and other climate related topics. But over the past years or so she has become better known for something that annoys, even infuriates many of her scientific colleagues. (She refuses to go along with the crowd like a sheep.) Curry has been engaged actively with the climate change skeptic community, largely by participating on outsider blogs such as Climate Audit. The Air Vent and The Blackboard. Along the way, she has come to question the science, no matter how well established it is.”
In typical misleading fashion, Scientific American printed a version of the “hockey stick” temperature showing best guess temperatures from 1000 CE to the present. Since the “little Ice Age” began around 900 CE, well before the dates on the graph, this version, commonly used to illustrate how temperatures have risen in recent years, gives an extremely erroneous picture. If you compare it with a similar graph starting say 10,000 BC, a very different picture appears. It is quite plain from the expanded data that current global temperatures are considerably lower than those during the medieval warm period from 200 CE to 900 CE and even warmer at several times since the last ice age. Why is it that global warmers never refer to this data and will certainly not show these graphs?
The author of the article is one I consider to be a dedicated member of the fundamentalist church of global warming, a political hack writer. His name is Michael D. Lemonick and he was a long time far left science writer for Time magazine. He now writes for Climate Central, a nonprofit, nonpartisan climate change think tank. (I about choked on that oxymoronic description, nonpartisan indeed) It’s one of the hundreds of usually non profit organizations that have sprung up to feed on the leavings from the global warming fantasy promoters. The Internet is loaded with them, all soliciting donations for their noble purpose. They may be non profit, but I’ll wager their principals receive a hefty paycheck along with many perks. Many NPOs have highly paid executives who fly around in private jets. (Like Nancy Pelosi who’s NPO was Congress) NPOs can offer all the perks of any profit making corporation for their owners and employees. The only thing different is they don’t pay their owners in dividends, they simply pay them in salary and benefits.
OK, so I rambled about. I just wanted to share some realities from the wonderful world of liberalism. The following is a response to the article on Dr. Curry from one Climatologist. I did not write or edit it. 10/23/2010
This article (In Scientific American) completely neglects to mention the enormous amounts of grant money being shoveled into "climate studies." $Billions every year are handed out by the federal government, with much more payola coming from shadowy, politically oriented NGOs that are often at odds with honest science.
Big money corrupts, as can be seen throughout the Climategate emails, where journals are threatened and blackballed, and journalists and FOI officers are corrupted, and professional careers are ruined, simply for not toeing the alarmist line. The mainstream climate clique has both front feet in the public grant trough, and it brazenly shoulders aside scientific skeptics (the only honest kind of scientists, according to the scientific method).
Dr Curry has taken a brave stand, breaking ranks with the current orthodoxy. She is a finger to the wind, indicating a sea change in the public's growing awareness of the fact that there is zero credible evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has been harmful while there is solid, testable, empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 has been beneficial, such as increasing agricultural production in a world that needs more food.
The IPCC has become entirely self-serving since AR-1. It is now much more interested in protecting its grant gravy train than in allowing skeptical scientists to be a part of the process. It took knowledgeable outsiders to debunk Michael Mann's hockey stick chart; the iconic poster of the IPCC.
In retrospect, the scientific establishment should have promptly sounded the alarm when it was claimed in MBH98-99 that the planet's temperature was essentially unchanging over many centuries. Instead, the Mann et al. attempt to erase the MWP and the LIA was unquestioningly accepted, at least publicly, due to the immense flow of grant money at stake. Further, the IPCC still continues to avoid the scientific method, instead protecting its catastrophic AGW hypothesis from any and all attacks by skeptical scientists. Since when is it the duty of scientists to falsify hypotheses?
But the cracks in the defenses of the climate alarmists are widening. Taxpayers are disgusted with the unaccountable hand over fist money grabbing by a completely unaccountable UN/IPCC. As the public becomes more aware of how the system is being gamed at their expense, push back is increasing. And it will continue to escalate.
End of response
You see, I’m not the only one. Increasing numbers of people are asking all kinds of probing and even embarrassing questions of climate alarmists.
Oh yes, here are some graphs you might find interesting:
It is interesting to note that the high point in both of these graphs are based on tree ring data, not actual temperature data. The cause has been well documented to be the increase in atmospheric CO2 which has been found to greatly increase plant growth including trees. This holds true almost without regard for temperature. Tree ring data is totally useless as a measure of ambient temperatures.
This is the IPCC hockey stick graph shown in an accurate scale. Compare it with the same period shown on the graph above it. Notice only one line, the black one goes up sharply at the end. This line represents tree ring growth that the IPCC uses erroneously to show temperatures. It is just one of the eight types of temperature estimates shown.
This is the IPCC temperature graph before Michael Mann published his hockey stick graph and report that completely ignored the Medieval warm period, the Little Ice Age, and the effects of increased atmospheric CO2.
This is the graph of the Vostok Ice Core Data Temperature and CO2 concentration from 400,000 years earlier to the present. It begs the question, does CO2 percentage lead the temperature variation indicating it could be the cause or is the reverse actually true? It doesn't take a genius to see that the CO2 concentration follows the temperature indicating it definitely not a cause, but is an effect. The CO2 variation obviously follows the average temperature rather than the other way around.
For more information on the hockey stick graph goto:
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
More links to related information:
Global Warming - ECS - excerpt - 12-29-07 +new http://glowarmacs.blogspot.com
Global Warming and the Gulf Stream http://hjgulfstream.blogspot.com
Global Warming and Earth Hour http://hjglobalwarming.blogspot.com
