The reclassification of 'poverty’ was a con-trick by the Left
...From all this it is clear that the relatively poor of today are vastly richer than the poor of 120 years ago, let alone beforehand. Indeed, at least one leading figure in the Labour Party acknowledged the fact in 1959. Barbara Castle remarked, “the poverty and unemployment which we came into existence to fight have been largely conquered”. Since she spoke, of course, average incomes have risen much higher. As recently as the 1980s people looked at the figures for how many households had inside lavatories and how many had fridges. Now virtually every household has these things, so nobody bothers with the information any more.
Given all this, how is it that so many pundits and charities talk about widespread poverty in Britain?
It dates back to 1962 and the annual conference of the British Sociological Association. Two Left-wing academics, Peter Townsend and Brian Abel-Smith, developed a new way of defining “poverty” based on the income level at which people were entitled to a payment called “supplementary benefit”. One person at the conference reported “a mood of conspiratorial excitement” about the idea of redefining poverty. These are her words, not mine, and they do seem revealing. It is as if some people on the Left were longing to find a way in which poverty had not been “conquered” as Barbara Castle had said. They had found a way in which it would always be possible to use the huge emotional power of the word...
Sunday, May 31, 2015
[Nature.com] Study Predicts Decades Of Global Cooling Ahead
A new study out of the United Kingdom predicts the Earth is about to go through a major climatic shift that could mean decades of cooler temperatures and fewer hurricanes hitting the United States.
Scientists at the University of Southampton predict that a cooling of the Atlantic Ocean could cool global temperatures a half a degree Celsius and may offer a “brief respite from the persistent rise of global temperatures,” according to their study....
...“The stagnation of temperature since 1998 was caused by decreasing solar activity since 1998,” wrote Jürgen Lange Heine, a physicist with the German-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE).
“From 1900 to 1998, solar radiation increased by 1.3 W / m², but since 1998 it has diminished, and could reach values similar to those of the early 20th century. A drop in global temperature over the next few years is predicted,” Heine wrote....
A new study out of the United Kingdom predicts the Earth is about to go through a major climatic shift that could mean decades of cooler temperatures and fewer hurricanes hitting the United States.
Scientists at the University of Southampton predict that a cooling of the Atlantic Ocean could cool global temperatures a half a degree Celsius and may offer a “brief respite from the persistent rise of global temperatures,” according to their study....
...“The stagnation of temperature since 1998 was caused by decreasing solar activity since 1998,” wrote Jürgen Lange Heine, a physicist with the German-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE).
“From 1900 to 1998, solar radiation increased by 1.3 W / m², but since 1998 it has diminished, and could reach values similar to those of the early 20th century. A drop in global temperature over the next few years is predicted,” Heine wrote....
An Epidemic of False Claims
False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine. Many studies that claim some drug or treatment is beneficial have turned out not to be true. We need only look to conflicting findings about beta-carotene, vitamin E, hormone treatments, Vioxx and Avandia. Even when effects are genuine, their true magnitude is often smaller than originally claimed.
The problem begins with the public’s rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. The number of investigators—and the number of experiments, observations and analyses they produce—has also increased exponentially in many fields, but adequate safeguards against bias are lacking. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture....
I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.
...We science journalists like to think of ourselves as more clever than the average hack. After all, we have to understand arcane scientific research well enough to explain it. And for reporters who don’t have science chops, as soon as they tapped outside sources for their stories—really anyone with a science degree, let alone an actual nutrition scientist—they would discover that the study was laughably flimsy. Not to mention that a Google search yielded no trace of Johannes Bohannon or his alleged institute. Reporters on the health science beat were going to smell this a mile away. But I didn’t want to sound pessimistic. “Let’s see how far we can take this,” I said....
...With the paper out, it was time to make some noise. I called a friend of a friend who works in scientific PR. She walked me through some of the dirty tricks for grabbing headlines. It was eerie to hear the other side of something I experience every day.
The key is to exploit journalists’ incredible laziness. If you lay out the information just right, you can shape the story that emerges in the media almost like you were writing those stories yourself. In fact, that’s literally what you’re doing, since many reporters just copied and pasted our text....
False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine. Many studies that claim some drug or treatment is beneficial have turned out not to be true. We need only look to conflicting findings about beta-carotene, vitamin E, hormone treatments, Vioxx and Avandia. Even when effects are genuine, their true magnitude is often smaller than originally claimed.
The problem begins with the public’s rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. The number of investigators—and the number of experiments, observations and analyses they produce—has also increased exponentially in many fields, but adequate safeguards against bias are lacking. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture....
I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.
...We science journalists like to think of ourselves as more clever than the average hack. After all, we have to understand arcane scientific research well enough to explain it. And for reporters who don’t have science chops, as soon as they tapped outside sources for their stories—really anyone with a science degree, let alone an actual nutrition scientist—they would discover that the study was laughably flimsy. Not to mention that a Google search yielded no trace of Johannes Bohannon or his alleged institute. Reporters on the health science beat were going to smell this a mile away. But I didn’t want to sound pessimistic. “Let’s see how far we can take this,” I said....
...With the paper out, it was time to make some noise. I called a friend of a friend who works in scientific PR. She walked me through some of the dirty tricks for grabbing headlines. It was eerie to hear the other side of something I experience every day.
The key is to exploit journalists’ incredible laziness. If you lay out the information just right, you can shape the story that emerges in the media almost like you were writing those stories yourself. In fact, that’s literally what you’re doing, since many reporters just copied and pasted our text....
IRS Steals $107,000 From Convenience Store Owner, Violating Its Own 'Structuring' Policy
...As in other structuring cases, McLellan lost his money because of well-intentioned but bad advice from a bank teller. The teller told McLellan's niece, who usually handled L&M Convenience Mart's deposits, she could save the bank burdensome paperwork by keeping the deposits below $10,000, the reporting threshold. Based on the resulting pattern of deposits, the IRS cleaned out McLellan's bank account a year ago, even though there was no evidence that the money came from anything other than his perfectly legal business, which combines a store with a gas station and restaurant. The Institute for Justice, which is suing the IRS and the DOJ on McLellan's behalf, notes that "the government filed its forfeiture complaint in December 2014, two months after the IRS announced it would not forfeit money in cases like this one." ...
...As in other structuring cases, McLellan lost his money because of well-intentioned but bad advice from a bank teller. The teller told McLellan's niece, who usually handled L&M Convenience Mart's deposits, she could save the bank burdensome paperwork by keeping the deposits below $10,000, the reporting threshold. Based on the resulting pattern of deposits, the IRS cleaned out McLellan's bank account a year ago, even though there was no evidence that the money came from anything other than his perfectly legal business, which combines a store with a gas station and restaurant. The Institute for Justice, which is suing the IRS and the DOJ on McLellan's behalf, notes that "the government filed its forfeiture complaint in December 2014, two months after the IRS announced it would not forfeit money in cases like this one." ...
NYT, Boston Globe Both Report That Different Structures of the Clinton Foundation Deliberately Hid Money
...Aides to former President Bill Clinton helped start a Canadian charity that effectively shielded the identities of donors who gave more than $33 million that went to his foundation, despite a pledge of transparency when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state. The nonprofit, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada), operates in parallel to a Clinton Foundation project called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is expressly covered by an agreement Mrs. Clinton signed to make all donors public while she led the State Department. However, the foundation maintains that the Canadian partnership is not bound by that agreement and that under Canadian law contributors’ names cannot be made public.
The foundation cited that restriction last weekend in explaining why it did not disclose $2.35 million in donations from the chairman of Uranium One, the subject of an article in The New York Times last week....
"This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency," said Maura Pally, acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation, as she took new efforts to avoid transparency....
...An unprecedented ethics promise that played a pivotal role in helping Hillary Rodham Clinton win confirmation as secretary of state, soothing senators' concerns about conflicts of interests with Clinton family charities, was uniformly bypassed by the biggest of the philanthropies involved.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative never submitted information on any foreign donations to State Department lawyers for review during Clinton's tenure from 2009 to 2013, Maura Daley, the organization's spokeswoman, acknowledged to the Globe this week. She said the charity deemed it unnecessary, except in one case that she described as an "oversight."
During that time, grants from foreign governments increased by tens of millions of dollars to the Boston-based organization.
Daley’s acknowledgement was the first by the charity of the broad scope of its apparent failures to fulfill the spirit of a crucial political pledge made by the Clinton family and their charities. The health initiative has previously acknowledged failing only to disclose the identity of its contributors, another requirement under the agreement....
...Aides to former President Bill Clinton helped start a Canadian charity that effectively shielded the identities of donors who gave more than $33 million that went to his foundation, despite a pledge of transparency when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state. The nonprofit, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada), operates in parallel to a Clinton Foundation project called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is expressly covered by an agreement Mrs. Clinton signed to make all donors public while she led the State Department. However, the foundation maintains that the Canadian partnership is not bound by that agreement and that under Canadian law contributors’ names cannot be made public.
The foundation cited that restriction last weekend in explaining why it did not disclose $2.35 million in donations from the chairman of Uranium One, the subject of an article in The New York Times last week....
"This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency," said Maura Pally, acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation, as she took new efforts to avoid transparency....
...An unprecedented ethics promise that played a pivotal role in helping Hillary Rodham Clinton win confirmation as secretary of state, soothing senators' concerns about conflicts of interests with Clinton family charities, was uniformly bypassed by the biggest of the philanthropies involved.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative never submitted information on any foreign donations to State Department lawyers for review during Clinton's tenure from 2009 to 2013, Maura Daley, the organization's spokeswoman, acknowledged to the Globe this week. She said the charity deemed it unnecessary, except in one case that she described as an "oversight."
During that time, grants from foreign governments increased by tens of millions of dollars to the Boston-based organization.
Daley’s acknowledgement was the first by the charity of the broad scope of its apparent failures to fulfill the spirit of a crucial political pledge made by the Clinton family and their charities. The health initiative has previously acknowledged failing only to disclose the identity of its contributors, another requirement under the agreement....
Monday, May 25, 2015
BUSTED: Paul Krugman removed 20 years of data from a chart to show a correlation that wasn't really there
...The period in the early 1960's was removed, and so was the period from 2000 on. In other words, out of a 55-year time period, Dr. Krugman decided to remove 20 years' worth of data. For those keeping track, that's removing almost 40% of an entire data set just because the data didn't fit the narrative. And when you add those years back you get a result that shows a very weak correlation...
...The period in the early 1960's was removed, and so was the period from 2000 on. In other words, out of a 55-year time period, Dr. Krugman decided to remove 20 years' worth of data. For those keeping track, that's removing almost 40% of an entire data set just because the data didn't fit the narrative. And when you add those years back you get a result that shows a very weak correlation...
I SMELL A WISCONSIN RAT
Reporter M.D. Kittle at WisconsinWatchdog.org asks a very interesting question: What did the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel know, and when did it know it? The question relates to the Journal-Sentinel reporters’ knowledge of a pre-dawn paramilitary-style raid of the home of Cindy Archer, a fomer aide to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and one of the architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10, which reformed that State’s public sector unions.
The raid of Archer’s home occurred in the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 14, 2011. At the time of the raid, Archer saw an individual that she believed to be a reporter, standing in her lawn. But the question became: How would a reporter even know that Archer’s home was being raided? Someone had to tip the Journal-Sentinel off. But under Wisconsin law, disclosure of a search warrant’s issuance, prior to its execution, is a Class I felony and could also violate the judge’s secrecy order of the John Doe investigation itself....
Milwaukee DA John Chisholm Lets The Mask Slip. Again.
...As to defamatory remarks, I strongly suspect the Iowa criminal code, like Wisconsin's, has provisions for intentionally making false statements intended to harm the reputation of others," Chisholm said in a statement Saturday responding to Walker's comments....
GoFundMe yanks Sweet Cakes bakery campaign
...But if GoFundMe was that willing to immediately cave in on this case, what else would they bail out on? They allowed a fundraiser for Memories Pizza, but claim that the account was allowed because there weren’t charges or fines pending. By that criteria, a legal defense fund for anyone anywhere charged with any crime should not be allowed, right? Even if the defendant is somebody the Left happens to like? I’m suspicious as to how consistent they will be on this policy to say the least....
This Is Why They Hate Us
...Treating this evening as if it’s something the rest of the country should care about is, at best, tone deaf. Does anyone really care if the president tells a joke to a room filled with journalists who wish they were pretty enough to be celebrities and celebrities who wish they were smart enough to hold forth on the political issues of the day? Of course not. D.C. resembles Panem no more than it does on this weekend.
Which brings me to last night, when CNN was providing red carpet coverage (!) and interviewing president Obama’s joke writers and former body men while Baltimore—a city that’s about a half-hour away from D.C., sans traffic—burned. ...
#Ferguson Protesters Protest Not Getting Their Checks For Protesting…
There's a war on cash
...Peter Bofinger is a member of the German Council of Economic Experts – the “Five Sages on the Economy” – which in its official function advises the government and parliament on economic policy issues. These folks are taken seriously....
...And then he added the real reason for abolishing cash in such a coordinated, wide-ranging manner:
“It would be easier for central banks to impose their monetary policies. At this time, they cannot push interest rates appreciably below zero because the savers would hoard cash. If there is no cash, the zero bound is eliminated.”...
Reporter M.D. Kittle at WisconsinWatchdog.org asks a very interesting question: What did the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel know, and when did it know it? The question relates to the Journal-Sentinel reporters’ knowledge of a pre-dawn paramilitary-style raid of the home of Cindy Archer, a fomer aide to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and one of the architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10, which reformed that State’s public sector unions.
The raid of Archer’s home occurred in the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 14, 2011. At the time of the raid, Archer saw an individual that she believed to be a reporter, standing in her lawn. But the question became: How would a reporter even know that Archer’s home was being raided? Someone had to tip the Journal-Sentinel off. But under Wisconsin law, disclosure of a search warrant’s issuance, prior to its execution, is a Class I felony and could also violate the judge’s secrecy order of the John Doe investigation itself....
Milwaukee DA John Chisholm Lets The Mask Slip. Again.
...As to defamatory remarks, I strongly suspect the Iowa criminal code, like Wisconsin's, has provisions for intentionally making false statements intended to harm the reputation of others," Chisholm said in a statement Saturday responding to Walker's comments....
GoFundMe yanks Sweet Cakes bakery campaign
...But if GoFundMe was that willing to immediately cave in on this case, what else would they bail out on? They allowed a fundraiser for Memories Pizza, but claim that the account was allowed because there weren’t charges or fines pending. By that criteria, a legal defense fund for anyone anywhere charged with any crime should not be allowed, right? Even if the defendant is somebody the Left happens to like? I’m suspicious as to how consistent they will be on this policy to say the least....
This Is Why They Hate Us
...Treating this evening as if it’s something the rest of the country should care about is, at best, tone deaf. Does anyone really care if the president tells a joke to a room filled with journalists who wish they were pretty enough to be celebrities and celebrities who wish they were smart enough to hold forth on the political issues of the day? Of course not. D.C. resembles Panem no more than it does on this weekend.
Which brings me to last night, when CNN was providing red carpet coverage (!) and interviewing president Obama’s joke writers and former body men while Baltimore—a city that’s about a half-hour away from D.C., sans traffic—burned. ...
#Ferguson Protesters Protest Not Getting Their Checks For Protesting…
There's a war on cash
...Peter Bofinger is a member of the German Council of Economic Experts – the “Five Sages on the Economy” – which in its official function advises the government and parliament on economic policy issues. These folks are taken seriously....
...And then he added the real reason for abolishing cash in such a coordinated, wide-ranging manner:
“It would be easier for central banks to impose their monetary policies. At this time, they cannot push interest rates appreciably below zero because the savers would hoard cash. If there is no cash, the zero bound is eliminated.”...
Obama Admin. Won’t Let States Ask for Proof of Citizenship … On Voter Registration Form!
Non-citizens are voting in American elections, and the federal government refuses to do anything to stop it.
Worse, the current administration seems to be doing everything they can to prevent the states from trying to stop it. First, they sued states that asked people to present ID before voting. Now, the administration will not let states even ask people to establish they are citizens when they register to vote.
That’s the underlying plot in the latest major case in election law that has just been presented to the Supreme Court. Federal law says that states must accept and use a federal form for registering voters. But the federal form doesn’t require any proof that the person submitting the form is a citizen.
The form just asks the registrant to check a box...
Military to allow undocumented immigrants to serve
A small number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. will have an opportunity to join the military for the first time in decades under a new Department of Defense policy unveiled Thursday.
The new rules will expand an existing program allowing recruiters to target foreign nationals with high-demand skills, mostly rare foreign language expertise or specialized health care training....
Non-citizens are voting in American elections, and the federal government refuses to do anything to stop it.
Worse, the current administration seems to be doing everything they can to prevent the states from trying to stop it. First, they sued states that asked people to present ID before voting. Now, the administration will not let states even ask people to establish they are citizens when they register to vote.
That’s the underlying plot in the latest major case in election law that has just been presented to the Supreme Court. Federal law says that states must accept and use a federal form for registering voters. But the federal form doesn’t require any proof that the person submitting the form is a citizen.
The form just asks the registrant to check a box...
Military to allow undocumented immigrants to serve
A small number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. will have an opportunity to join the military for the first time in decades under a new Department of Defense policy unveiled Thursday.
The new rules will expand an existing program allowing recruiters to target foreign nationals with high-demand skills, mostly rare foreign language expertise or specialized health care training....
Hillary Talks Guns In CNN Town Hall, Says Minority ‘Terrorizes’ Majority [VIDEO]
During a televised town hall, Hillary Clinton was asked about guns, and said that the viewpoint held by gun-rights advocates “terrorizes” the majority of Americans....
...“We cannot let a minority of people – and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people – hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” said Clinton....
During a televised town hall, Hillary Clinton was asked about guns, and said that the viewpoint held by gun-rights advocates “terrorizes” the majority of Americans....
...“We cannot let a minority of people – and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people – hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” said Clinton....
Airing the depth of troubles at Fannie Mae
In 2004, before Fannie Mae pushed into riskier loans, the Department of Housing and Urban Development suggested the definitions were becoming fuzzy.
"As the GSE's become more comfortable with subprime lending, the line between what today is considered a subprime loan versus a prime loan will likely deteriorate, making expansion by the GSE's look more like an increase in the prime market," the housing department said in a November 2004 report.
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae Ex-CEOs Sued for Understating Loans
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Daniel Mudd, the former chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, and Richard Syron, ex-CEO of Freddie Mac, were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for understating by hundreds of billions of dollars the subprime loans held by the firms.
The lawsuits filed today in Manhattan federal court were followed by an SEC statement that it had entered into “non-prosecution agreements” with each company. Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored enterprise which issues almost half of all mortgage-backed securities, and Freddie Mac, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage-finance company, had “agreed to accept responsibility” for their conduct, the SEC said.
The agency said in the lawsuits that Syron, Mudd and other executives understated exposure to subprime mortgage loans. From 2007 to 2008, Freddie Mac executives said the company’s exposure was from $2 billion to $6 billion when it was actually as high as $244 billion, according to one SEC complaint.
From 2006 to 2008, Washington-based Fannie Mae executives said the firm’s exposure to subprime mortgage and reduced-documentation loans was about $4.8 billion when it was almost 10 times greater, according to the regulator....
In 2004, before Fannie Mae pushed into riskier loans, the Department of Housing and Urban Development suggested the definitions were becoming fuzzy.
"As the GSE's become more comfortable with subprime lending, the line between what today is considered a subprime loan versus a prime loan will likely deteriorate, making expansion by the GSE's look more like an increase in the prime market," the housing department said in a November 2004 report.
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae Ex-CEOs Sued for Understating Loans
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Daniel Mudd, the former chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, and Richard Syron, ex-CEO of Freddie Mac, were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for understating by hundreds of billions of dollars the subprime loans held by the firms.
The lawsuits filed today in Manhattan federal court were followed by an SEC statement that it had entered into “non-prosecution agreements” with each company. Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored enterprise which issues almost half of all mortgage-backed securities, and Freddie Mac, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage-finance company, had “agreed to accept responsibility” for their conduct, the SEC said.
The agency said in the lawsuits that Syron, Mudd and other executives understated exposure to subprime mortgage loans. From 2007 to 2008, Freddie Mac executives said the company’s exposure was from $2 billion to $6 billion when it was actually as high as $244 billion, according to one SEC complaint.
From 2006 to 2008, Washington-based Fannie Mae executives said the firm’s exposure to subprime mortgage and reduced-documentation loans was about $4.8 billion when it was almost 10 times greater, according to the regulator....
49 Former NASA Scientists Send A Letter Disputing Climate Change
Select excerpts from the letter:
“The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”
Former UN Lead Author: Global Warming Caused By ‘Natural Variations’ In Climate
Global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years, according to a new paper by a former Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) lead author.
Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8,000 years to gain perspective on the magnitude of global temperature changes over the 20th Century.
What Lloyd found was that the standard deviation of the temperature over the last 8,000 years was about 0.98 degrees Celsius– higher than the 0.85 degrees climate scientists say the world has warmed over the last century....
More Countries Caught Manipulating Their Climate Data
...In his latest article, Sterling wrote that Switzerland’s weather bureau adjusted its raw temperature data so that “the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.” For example, the cities of Sion and Zurich saw “a doubling of the temperature trend” after such adjustments were made....
...The Swiss affair, however, is not the first instance of data “homogenization” catalogued by scientists and researchers who are skeptical of man-made global warming. In January, skeptic blogger Paul Homewood documented how NASA has “homogenized” temperature data across Paraguay to create a warming trend that doesn’t exist in the raw data....
...Before that, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) was forced to admit it adjusts temperatures recorded at all weather stations across the country. Aussie journalists had been critical of ABM for being secretive about its data adjustments....
...“Downward homogenizations in recent years were rare. In some areas, downward temperature trends measured over time showed a significantly increased temperature trend after homogenization,” he added. “The difference between actually measured temperatures and homogenized temperatures topped 4 degrees Celsius over certain periods at some measuring stations.”...
Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures
...But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”....
...Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified....
UN scientists warn time is running out to tackle global warming
Friday 4 May 2007 19.16 EDT
...Greater energy efficiency, renewable electricity sources and new technology to dump carbon dioxide underground can all help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the experts said. But there could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more....
Select excerpts from the letter:
“The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
“We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”
Former UN Lead Author: Global Warming Caused By ‘Natural Variations’ In Climate
Global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years, according to a new paper by a former Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) lead author.
Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8,000 years to gain perspective on the magnitude of global temperature changes over the 20th Century.
What Lloyd found was that the standard deviation of the temperature over the last 8,000 years was about 0.98 degrees Celsius– higher than the 0.85 degrees climate scientists say the world has warmed over the last century....
More Countries Caught Manipulating Their Climate Data
...In his latest article, Sterling wrote that Switzerland’s weather bureau adjusted its raw temperature data so that “the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.” For example, the cities of Sion and Zurich saw “a doubling of the temperature trend” after such adjustments were made....
...The Swiss affair, however, is not the first instance of data “homogenization” catalogued by scientists and researchers who are skeptical of man-made global warming. In January, skeptic blogger Paul Homewood documented how NASA has “homogenized” temperature data across Paraguay to create a warming trend that doesn’t exist in the raw data....
...Before that, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) was forced to admit it adjusts temperatures recorded at all weather stations across the country. Aussie journalists had been critical of ABM for being secretive about its data adjustments....
...“Downward homogenizations in recent years were rare. In some areas, downward temperature trends measured over time showed a significantly increased temperature trend after homogenization,” he added. “The difference between actually measured temperatures and homogenized temperatures topped 4 degrees Celsius over certain periods at some measuring stations.”...
Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures
...But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”....
...Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified....
UN scientists warn time is running out to tackle global warming
Friday 4 May 2007 19.16 EDT
...Greater energy efficiency, renewable electricity sources and new technology to dump carbon dioxide underground can all help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the experts said. But there could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more....
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Feds Consider Puerto Ricans Disabled Because They Speak Spanish
The Social Security Administration (SSA) approved disability benefits for hundreds of Puerto Ricans because they do not speak English, despite the fact that Puerto Rico is a predominantly Spanish-speaking territory....
The Social Security Administration (SSA) approved disability benefits for hundreds of Puerto Ricans because they do not speak English, despite the fact that Puerto Rico is a predominantly Spanish-speaking territory....
Uncle Sam may have picked the wrong cash cow
...Based on Freedom of Information Act requests, the libertarian Institute for Justice has reported that the Internal Revenue Service has seized almost a quarter-billion dollars in such cases from 2005 to 2012, about half of which was never returned. A third of those cases, like the Sowers case, did not involve allegations of criminal activity beyond the structured deposits themselves....
...Roskam said he has told the Sowers story to senior citizens in his suburban Chicago district — and watched as their jaws dropped. “This is not a meth lab,” he said. “This is not a mafia front group. There’s no drug ring. These are people who have been in the dairy business a long time.”
Roskam has hounded the IRS not just on the issue of structuring but also on denying tax-exempt status to tea party groups and its choice of HealthCare.gov contractors....
...Based on Freedom of Information Act requests, the libertarian Institute for Justice has reported that the Internal Revenue Service has seized almost a quarter-billion dollars in such cases from 2005 to 2012, about half of which was never returned. A third of those cases, like the Sowers case, did not involve allegations of criminal activity beyond the structured deposits themselves....
...Roskam said he has told the Sowers story to senior citizens in his suburban Chicago district — and watched as their jaws dropped. “This is not a meth lab,” he said. “This is not a mafia front group. There’s no drug ring. These are people who have been in the dairy business a long time.”
Roskam has hounded the IRS not just on the issue of structuring but also on denying tax-exempt status to tea party groups and its choice of HealthCare.gov contractors....
Maryland Parents Panic When Their Kids Are Once Again Confiscated By CPS
...The police picked up the kids while they were outside again sometime Saturday afternoon, and this time the cops took them without telling their parents.
The kids, ages 10 and 6, were supposed to come home at 6:00 p.m. from playing. At 6:30 p.m, Danielle says, she and her husband Sasha were pretty worried. By 8:00 p.m., they were frantic. Only then did someone from the CPS Crisis Center call the parents and tell them that the police had picked the children up.
"It was dark!" said Danielle, her voice shaking. "You know, I'd really had a nightmare about this, but I didn't realize they would do it. I didn't think they would. The kids must be terrified."
"What did CPS tell you had happened?" I asked.
"They wouldn't tell me anything about my children."
Husband Sasha Meitiv, raised in the Soviet Union under complete state control, told his wife he was less surprised. "He said, 'You don't understand how cruel bureaucracy can be,'" said Danielle....
...The police picked up the kids while they were outside again sometime Saturday afternoon, and this time the cops took them without telling their parents.
The kids, ages 10 and 6, were supposed to come home at 6:00 p.m. from playing. At 6:30 p.m, Danielle says, she and her husband Sasha were pretty worried. By 8:00 p.m., they were frantic. Only then did someone from the CPS Crisis Center call the parents and tell them that the police had picked the children up.
"It was dark!" said Danielle, her voice shaking. "You know, I'd really had a nightmare about this, but I didn't realize they would do it. I didn't think they would. The kids must be terrified."
"What did CPS tell you had happened?" I asked.
"They wouldn't tell me anything about my children."
Husband Sasha Meitiv, raised in the Soviet Union under complete state control, told his wife he was less surprised. "He said, 'You don't understand how cruel bureaucracy can be,'" said Danielle....
Is Another Financial Crisis On the Way?
...Here's the quick version. In 1992 Congress set "affordable housing" goals for Fannie Mae and its savings-and-loan counterpart, Freddie Mac (together known as the Government-Sponsored Enterprises, or GSEs). That year a manageable 30 percent of Fannie's portfolio qualified as "affordable housing." In 1997 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as authorized by Congress, increased the required fraction to 42 percent. In 2001, under President George W. Bush, HUD increased the goal to 50 percent. In 2008 it upped the goal to 56 percent.
To find enough "nontraditional mortgages" to meet these increasing requirements, Fannie and Freddie bought increasingly lower-quality mortgage paper. Mortgages with three percent down payments sufficed for a while, but by 2000 the two GSEs were buying mortgages with zero down payments, credit rating scores below 660, and debt-to-income ratios as high as 38 percent. By 2008, half of the nation's home mortgages-32 million of them-were subprime, and 76 percent of those were owned by the GSEs....
...Here's the quick version. In 1992 Congress set "affordable housing" goals for Fannie Mae and its savings-and-loan counterpart, Freddie Mac (together known as the Government-Sponsored Enterprises, or GSEs). That year a manageable 30 percent of Fannie's portfolio qualified as "affordable housing." In 1997 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as authorized by Congress, increased the required fraction to 42 percent. In 2001, under President George W. Bush, HUD increased the goal to 50 percent. In 2008 it upped the goal to 56 percent.
To find enough "nontraditional mortgages" to meet these increasing requirements, Fannie and Freddie bought increasingly lower-quality mortgage paper. Mortgages with three percent down payments sufficed for a while, but by 2000 the two GSEs were buying mortgages with zero down payments, credit rating scores below 660, and debt-to-income ratios as high as 38 percent. By 2008, half of the nation's home mortgages-32 million of them-were subprime, and 76 percent of those were owned by the GSEs....
VA Sends Veterans’ Medical Info To FBI To Get Their Guns Taken Away
Documents obtained by The Daily Caller and interviews with American veterans reveal a shocking government program: The Department of Veterans Affairs is disarming America’s veterans by getting them placed on the FBI’s criminal background-check list.
The VA sends veterans’ personal medical and financial information directly to the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which can seize their guns in home raids.
Veterans deemed mentally incompetent or financially incapable are finally speaking out about the errors in the system and the fearful harassment they and their families face from the federal government. And it all starts when vets go to the VA to get medical help....
VA Scandal: 'Medical records of whistleblowers have been accessed and...used to attempt to discredit the whistleblowers'
If you really need further evidence of why it's dangerous to let government officials demand sensitive information from us, look no further than the ongoing scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Once focused on the apparently lethal mistreatment of military veterans by a system created to provide them with (usually crappy) medical care, the story now also encompasses retaliation by officials against VA employees who raise concerns about such mistreatment.
Perhaps most disturbing: "In several cases, the medical records of whistleblowers have been accessed and information in those records has apparently been used to attempt to discredit the whistleblowers," commented Carolyn Lerner from the Office of Special Counsel at a congressional hearing yesterday....
Documents obtained by The Daily Caller and interviews with American veterans reveal a shocking government program: The Department of Veterans Affairs is disarming America’s veterans by getting them placed on the FBI’s criminal background-check list.
The VA sends veterans’ personal medical and financial information directly to the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which can seize their guns in home raids.
Veterans deemed mentally incompetent or financially incapable are finally speaking out about the errors in the system and the fearful harassment they and their families face from the federal government. And it all starts when vets go to the VA to get medical help....
VA Scandal: 'Medical records of whistleblowers have been accessed and...used to attempt to discredit the whistleblowers'
If you really need further evidence of why it's dangerous to let government officials demand sensitive information from us, look no further than the ongoing scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Once focused on the apparently lethal mistreatment of military veterans by a system created to provide them with (usually crappy) medical care, the story now also encompasses retaliation by officials against VA employees who raise concerns about such mistreatment.
Perhaps most disturbing: "In several cases, the medical records of whistleblowers have been accessed and information in those records has apparently been used to attempt to discredit the whistleblowers," commented Carolyn Lerner from the Office of Special Counsel at a congressional hearing yesterday....
Report: Homeland Security official used improper influence in visa cases involving prominent Democrats
The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department improperly intervened on behalf of foreign investors seeking U.S. visas in three cases involving prominent Democrats, including a company run by the youngest brother of likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the agency's inspector general said Tuesday.
Investigators said Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas helped efforts to secure the visas in ways that created the appearance of favoritism and special access and caused resentment among career government employees, managers and lawyers....
The No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department improperly intervened on behalf of foreign investors seeking U.S. visas in three cases involving prominent Democrats, including a company run by the youngest brother of likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the agency's inspector general said Tuesday.
Investigators said Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas helped efforts to secure the visas in ways that created the appearance of favoritism and special access and caused resentment among career government employees, managers and lawyers....
Why CSI: Cyber Matters
...Members of the Army Cyber Institute at West Point discuss the upside of CSI: Cyber in an article in the Cyber Defense Review. "Children all over the country have been inspired to be law enforcement agents by shows like Criminal Minds, NCIS, Bones, and CSI." ...
...Members of the Army Cyber Institute at West Point discuss the upside of CSI: Cyber in an article in the Cyber Defense Review. "Children all over the country have been inspired to be law enforcement agents by shows like Criminal Minds, NCIS, Bones, and CSI." ...
State-Sponsored SWATtings in Wisconsin, Courtesy of “John Doe” Investigations
...What was their crime? Exercising their First Amendment rights. The article describes how these raids were conducted as part of “John Doe” investigations into whether conservative groups had “coordinated” with Scott Walker in violation of campaign finance laws. I believe such “coordination” is First Amendment activity. If I want to take out full-page newspaper ads about how great Ted Cruz is, and I get ideas that convince me from Cruz’s campaign, I believe that should be covered by the First Amendment. But even if my pro-speech view is not accepted (and so far it has not been), the fact remains that a judge later ruled that there was no legal basis for the investigation that justified these raids, and quashed all the subpoenas.
The investigations were conducted at the behest of a prosecutor whose offices “were festooned with the ‘blue fist’ poster of the labor-union movement.” According to one prosecutor who spoke to journalist Stuart Taylor, the wife of the lead prosecutor, John Chisholm, was “a teachers’-union shop steward who was distraught over Act 10’s union reforms” — and Chisholm “felt it was his personal duty” to stop the reforms. Pursuant to the politically motivated subpoenas lacking in probable cause, prosecutors subpoenaed electronic data such as emails and conducted these abusive raids.
It’s the type of activity you would expect to see from the Stasi in East Germany. Conservative activists in Wisconsin literally do not feel safe. They think that police could burst into their homes at any moment to punish them for their First Amendment activity....
Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents is a crime.
...But in Wisconsin, Democratic prosecutors were raiding political opponents' homes and, in a worse-than-Putin twist, they were making sure the world didn't even find out, by requiring their targets to keep quiet. As David French notes in National Review, "As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private property, and the verbal abuse weren't enough, next came ominous warnings. Don't call your lawyer. Don't tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends. ... This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform."
Is this un-American? Yes, yes it is. And the prosecutors involved — who were attacking supporters of legislation that was intended to rein in unions' power in the state — deserve to be punished. Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents, and to discourage contributions to political enemies, is a crime, and it should also be grounds for disbarment....
The Deep State Knows How to Protect Itself
...Just as the deep state can protect itself from litigation, it can also facilitate litigation when it so desires. John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky have done outstanding work exposing the DOJ’s practice of “sue and settle,” where it conspires with outside liberal legal groups to settle “friendly” lawsuits on terms that advance their shared leftist agenda–with a healthy dose of attorneys’ fees doled out to leftist legal activists. Thus, through fixed litigation, a federal agency can implement new guidelines and policies and justify them as “required” by legal settlements....
Trey Gowdy: Hillary Clinton wiped her server clean
Hillary Clinton wiped “clean” the private server housing emails from her tenure as secretary of state, the chairman of the House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi said Friday.
“While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement....
REPORT: HILLARY CHANGED STANCE ON TRADE DEAL AFTER DONATIONS TO CLINTON FOUNDATION
...Here’s an example. The Hill reports on allegations in the International Business Times (IBT) that, as Secretary of State, Clinton turned a blind eye to substantial allegations of human rights violation in Colombia committed against workers at an oil company owned by a major Clinton Foundation donor. Notwithstanding these allegations, which were similar to ones that had led candidate Hillary Clinton to oppose a trade deal with Colombia, Clinton’s State Department touted Colombia’s human rights record and back the trade agreement, says the IBT.
The oil company in question, Pacific Rubiales, was founded by Frank Giustra, who is described as a “friend and traveling companion” of former President Clinton. Giustra has donated more than $130 million to Clinton’s philanthropies. He’s also a Clinton Foundation board member and has participated in projects and benefits for the Foundation....
Hillary's Everyday Americans: Billionaire Frank Giustra, Vladimir Putin, and Assorted Kazakh Uranium-Sheiks
...As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
...What was their crime? Exercising their First Amendment rights. The article describes how these raids were conducted as part of “John Doe” investigations into whether conservative groups had “coordinated” with Scott Walker in violation of campaign finance laws. I believe such “coordination” is First Amendment activity. If I want to take out full-page newspaper ads about how great Ted Cruz is, and I get ideas that convince me from Cruz’s campaign, I believe that should be covered by the First Amendment. But even if my pro-speech view is not accepted (and so far it has not been), the fact remains that a judge later ruled that there was no legal basis for the investigation that justified these raids, and quashed all the subpoenas.
The investigations were conducted at the behest of a prosecutor whose offices “were festooned with the ‘blue fist’ poster of the labor-union movement.” According to one prosecutor who spoke to journalist Stuart Taylor, the wife of the lead prosecutor, John Chisholm, was “a teachers’-union shop steward who was distraught over Act 10’s union reforms” — and Chisholm “felt it was his personal duty” to stop the reforms. Pursuant to the politically motivated subpoenas lacking in probable cause, prosecutors subpoenaed electronic data such as emails and conducted these abusive raids.
It’s the type of activity you would expect to see from the Stasi in East Germany. Conservative activists in Wisconsin literally do not feel safe. They think that police could burst into their homes at any moment to punish them for their First Amendment activity....
Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents is a crime.
...But in Wisconsin, Democratic prosecutors were raiding political opponents' homes and, in a worse-than-Putin twist, they were making sure the world didn't even find out, by requiring their targets to keep quiet. As David French notes in National Review, "As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private property, and the verbal abuse weren't enough, next came ominous warnings. Don't call your lawyer. Don't tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends. ... This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform."
Is this un-American? Yes, yes it is. And the prosecutors involved — who were attacking supporters of legislation that was intended to rein in unions' power in the state — deserve to be punished. Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents, and to discourage contributions to political enemies, is a crime, and it should also be grounds for disbarment....
The Deep State Knows How to Protect Itself
...Just as the deep state can protect itself from litigation, it can also facilitate litigation when it so desires. John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky have done outstanding work exposing the DOJ’s practice of “sue and settle,” where it conspires with outside liberal legal groups to settle “friendly” lawsuits on terms that advance their shared leftist agenda–with a healthy dose of attorneys’ fees doled out to leftist legal activists. Thus, through fixed litigation, a federal agency can implement new guidelines and policies and justify them as “required” by legal settlements....
Trey Gowdy: Hillary Clinton wiped her server clean
Hillary Clinton wiped “clean” the private server housing emails from her tenure as secretary of state, the chairman of the House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi said Friday.
“While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement....
REPORT: HILLARY CHANGED STANCE ON TRADE DEAL AFTER DONATIONS TO CLINTON FOUNDATION
...Here’s an example. The Hill reports on allegations in the International Business Times (IBT) that, as Secretary of State, Clinton turned a blind eye to substantial allegations of human rights violation in Colombia committed against workers at an oil company owned by a major Clinton Foundation donor. Notwithstanding these allegations, which were similar to ones that had led candidate Hillary Clinton to oppose a trade deal with Colombia, Clinton’s State Department touted Colombia’s human rights record and back the trade agreement, says the IBT.
The oil company in question, Pacific Rubiales, was founded by Frank Giustra, who is described as a “friend and traveling companion” of former President Clinton. Giustra has donated more than $130 million to Clinton’s philanthropies. He’s also a Clinton Foundation board member and has participated in projects and benefits for the Foundation....
Hillary's Everyday Americans: Billionaire Frank Giustra, Vladimir Putin, and Assorted Kazakh Uranium-Sheiks
...As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
How the IRS repeatedly rewrites Obamacare tax credit provisions
...In a series of posts at “Notice & Comment,” the blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation, Professor Andy Grewal documents two additional cases in which the IRS has rewritten the PPACA’s tax credit eligibility requirements so as to expand eligibility beyond what Congress authorized. Combined with other instances of the IRS and HHS disregarding the PPACA’s plain text, it appears the federal government has little regard for what the PPACA actually says.
In his first two posts, Professor Grewall explains how IRS regulations disregard the statutory text so as to extend tax credit eligibility to some low-income aliens not lawfully residing in the U.S. In this way, the IRS regulation “casts a wider net than the statute” by expanding the number of people eligible for tax credits. Yet the IRS never provided any rationale for this change. Indeed, if one had just read the IRS explanation for what its regulations accomplish — as opposed to the regulations themselves — one would not even be aware of what the IRS did....
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." C.S. Lewis on Tyranny “for the Good” of Its Victims
...In a series of posts at “Notice & Comment,” the blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation, Professor Andy Grewal documents two additional cases in which the IRS has rewritten the PPACA’s tax credit eligibility requirements so as to expand eligibility beyond what Congress authorized. Combined with other instances of the IRS and HHS disregarding the PPACA’s plain text, it appears the federal government has little regard for what the PPACA actually says.
In his first two posts, Professor Grewall explains how IRS regulations disregard the statutory text so as to extend tax credit eligibility to some low-income aliens not lawfully residing in the U.S. In this way, the IRS regulation “casts a wider net than the statute” by expanding the number of people eligible for tax credits. Yet the IRS never provided any rationale for this change. Indeed, if one had just read the IRS explanation for what its regulations accomplish — as opposed to the regulations themselves — one would not even be aware of what the IRS did....
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." C.S. Lewis on Tyranny “for the Good” of Its Victims
The Big Idea: California Is So Over
...But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money. ...
...But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money. ...
Why men won't get married anymore: Women complain chaps today won't settle down. Sorry, ladies, but it's all your fault, argues a wickedly provocative new book
...‘Ultimately, men know there’s a good chance they’ll lose their friends, their respect, their space, their sex life, their money and — if it all goes wrong — their family,’ says Dr Helen Smith, author of Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood And The American Dream.
‘They don’t want to enter into a legal contract with someone who could effectively take half their savings, pension and property when the honeymoon period is over.
‘Men aren’t wimping out by staying unmarried or being commitment phobes. They’re being smart.’...
...‘Ultimately, men know there’s a good chance they’ll lose their friends, their respect, their space, their sex life, their money and — if it all goes wrong — their family,’ says Dr Helen Smith, author of Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood And The American Dream.
‘They don’t want to enter into a legal contract with someone who could effectively take half their savings, pension and property when the honeymoon period is over.
‘Men aren’t wimping out by staying unmarried or being commitment phobes. They’re being smart.’...
Homeland Security Working Overtime to Add ‘New Americans’ by 2016 Election
President Obama’s amnesty by edict has always been about adding new Democrats to the voter rolls, and recent action by the Department of Homeland Security provides further proof. Sources at the Department of Homeland Security report to PJ Media that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is reallocating significant resources away from a computer system — the “Electronic Immigration System” — to sending letters to all 9,000,000 green card holders urging them to naturalize prior to the 2016 election....
Labour's 'secret plan' to lure migrants
The release of a previously unseen document suggested that Labour’s migration policy over the past decade had been aimed not just at meeting the country’s economic needs, but also the Government’s “social objectives”.
The paper said migration would “enhance economic growth” and made clear that trying to halt or reverse it could be “economically damaging”. But it also stated that immigration had general “benefits” and that a new policy framework was needed to “maximise” the contribution of migration to the Government’s wider social aims. ...
President Obama’s amnesty by edict has always been about adding new Democrats to the voter rolls, and recent action by the Department of Homeland Security provides further proof. Sources at the Department of Homeland Security report to PJ Media that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is reallocating significant resources away from a computer system — the “Electronic Immigration System” — to sending letters to all 9,000,000 green card holders urging them to naturalize prior to the 2016 election....
Labour's 'secret plan' to lure migrants
The release of a previously unseen document suggested that Labour’s migration policy over the past decade had been aimed not just at meeting the country’s economic needs, but also the Government’s “social objectives”.
The paper said migration would “enhance economic growth” and made clear that trying to halt or reverse it could be “economically damaging”. But it also stated that immigration had general “benefits” and that a new policy framework was needed to “maximise” the contribution of migration to the Government’s wider social aims. ...
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Simplistic arguments which are nonetheless essentially true
...Walmart critics embrace two moral standards: in the first, morality requires payment of high wages to 1.2 million people. In the second, morality can be achieved without employing anyone at all–that is, by paying zero wages. Most of us have chosen to live by the second standard, and from our lofty moral position we can criticize Walmart for not meeting the first standard. How convenient!...
...Walmart critics embrace two moral standards: in the first, morality requires payment of high wages to 1.2 million people. In the second, morality can be achieved without employing anyone at all–that is, by paying zero wages. Most of us have chosen to live by the second standard, and from our lofty moral position we can criticize Walmart for not meeting the first standard. How convenient!...
UPDATED: Elle Mallon’s additional grievance against We Are Oregon
...6:21 – Mallon files a response accusing Allison of sexual harassment because she referred to Mallon as “Ms.” when Mallon identifies with the use of “Mx.”
7:30 – Allison apologizes in an email, saying:
“In every situation I’ve been in with Elle, Elle has said Elle’s pronouns were “She, Her, Hers,” including on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T website. With that information, I used “Ms.” when addressing Elle.”
April 8:
Mallon submits a second grievance saying Allison chose to misgender her.
She cites the apology email from Allison as evidence saying that:
“Allison found a place where my pronouns were listed and then chose to misgender me anyway (My pronouns also include xe xem hyr and they them their).”...
...6:21 – Mallon files a response accusing Allison of sexual harassment because she referred to Mallon as “Ms.” when Mallon identifies with the use of “Mx.”
7:30 – Allison apologizes in an email, saying:
“In every situation I’ve been in with Elle, Elle has said Elle’s pronouns were “She, Her, Hers,” including on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T website. With that information, I used “Ms.” when addressing Elle.”
April 8:
Mallon submits a second grievance saying Allison chose to misgender her.
She cites the apology email from Allison as evidence saying that:
“Allison found a place where my pronouns were listed and then chose to misgender me anyway (My pronouns also include xe xem hyr and they them their).”...
‘Equal pay day’ this year is April 14; the next ‘equal occupational fatality day’ will be on July 29, 2027
...As in previous years, the chart above shows the significant gender disparity in workplace fatalities in the most recent year: 4,101 men died on the job (93.1% of the total) in 2013 compared to only 302 women (6.9% of the total). The “gender occupational fatality gap” in 2013 was considerable — nearly 14 men died on the job last year for every woman who died while working.
Based on the most recent BLS data, the next “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” will occur about 13 years from now – on July 29, 2027. ...
...As in previous years, the chart above shows the significant gender disparity in workplace fatalities in the most recent year: 4,101 men died on the job (93.1% of the total) in 2013 compared to only 302 women (6.9% of the total). The “gender occupational fatality gap” in 2013 was considerable — nearly 14 men died on the job last year for every woman who died while working.
Based on the most recent BLS data, the next “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” will occur about 13 years from now – on July 29, 2027. ...
Free fall: How government policies brought down the housing market
...Nevertheless, there are plentiful data on commitments by large banks to make CRA-type loans in connection with applications to the Fed for permission to merge with small and medium-sized institutions between 1997 and 2007. In a 2007 report, for example, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) reported that in this ten-year period its member organizations had induced banks that were seeking merger approvals from the Fed and other agencies to commit almost $4.5 trillion in CRA-type lending. Press releases at the time these mergers were approved (available online) backed up this claim. After this report received publicity, it was pulled from NCRC’s website, though it is now available elsewhere on the web.[13] These report loans totaling $1.3 trillion made to fulfill prior commitments,[14] but determining the delinquency rates on these loans is impossible; banks have generally refused to make these data available, and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC)—established by Congress to investigate the causes of the 2008 financial crisis—did not seriously attempt to investigate this issue....
...In a market where prices are rising quickly, homeowners who cannot meet their mortgage obligations can often refinance or sell their homes without a loss. In the midst of a housing bubble, therefore, subprime loans can look like excellent risk-adjusted investments. For this reason, by 2004, private investors had become interested in PMBS backed by subprime loans; these securities were offering high yields but not showing losses commensurate with their risk. This phenomenon was helped along by the fact that the low interest rates in the early 2000s had produced a vast number of refinanced and unseasoned mortgages, which in their early years characteristically have low rates of delinquency and default. ...
THE TRUE STORY OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS — RESPONDING TO CRITICISM
Let's consider what Min is saying here. He's arguing that Pinto's definitions of subprime and Alt-A loans are not consistent with the definitions others have used for data collection and analysis. In other words, Pinto has used his own definitions to analyze the data in a new way. What Pinto did, that no one had done before, is show that loans made to people with FICO credit scores lower than 660 (which he called "subprime") had substantially higher rates of delinquency and default than loans to people with credit scores above 660 (which he called "prime"). In addition, Pinto found that loans with various deficiencies such as interest only, no documentation, no or low downpayments, or were investment properties (not owner occupied) -- which Pinto called, collectively, "Alt-A" -- also had much higher rates of default than loans that were not subject to these deficiencies. Pinto then found that these kinds of loans began to increase substantially after 1992, when affordable housing requirements were imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and began to default in unprecedented numbers when the 1997-2007 housing bubble started to deflate. In my dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, using data from Fannie Mae (Table 5, p.61), I show that both subprime and Alt-A mortgages were necessary for meeting the affordable housing goals.
In reality, then, Min is simply complaining that Pinto discovered the sources of the huge mortgage losses that caused the financial crisis. The way the data had been looked at before -- and the way Fannie and Freddie reported that data -- obscured the fact that half of all outstanding mortgages were either subprime or Alt-A just before the bubble deflated and the financial crisis began. ...
Pinto 'Trigger' memo (warning, PDF)
...Nevertheless, there are plentiful data on commitments by large banks to make CRA-type loans in connection with applications to the Fed for permission to merge with small and medium-sized institutions between 1997 and 2007. In a 2007 report, for example, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) reported that in this ten-year period its member organizations had induced banks that were seeking merger approvals from the Fed and other agencies to commit almost $4.5 trillion in CRA-type lending. Press releases at the time these mergers were approved (available online) backed up this claim. After this report received publicity, it was pulled from NCRC’s website, though it is now available elsewhere on the web.[13] These report loans totaling $1.3 trillion made to fulfill prior commitments,[14] but determining the delinquency rates on these loans is impossible; banks have generally refused to make these data available, and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC)—established by Congress to investigate the causes of the 2008 financial crisis—did not seriously attempt to investigate this issue....
...In a market where prices are rising quickly, homeowners who cannot meet their mortgage obligations can often refinance or sell their homes without a loss. In the midst of a housing bubble, therefore, subprime loans can look like excellent risk-adjusted investments. For this reason, by 2004, private investors had become interested in PMBS backed by subprime loans; these securities were offering high yields but not showing losses commensurate with their risk. This phenomenon was helped along by the fact that the low interest rates in the early 2000s had produced a vast number of refinanced and unseasoned mortgages, which in their early years characteristically have low rates of delinquency and default. ...
THE TRUE STORY OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS — RESPONDING TO CRITICISM
Let's consider what Min is saying here. He's arguing that Pinto's definitions of subprime and Alt-A loans are not consistent with the definitions others have used for data collection and analysis. In other words, Pinto has used his own definitions to analyze the data in a new way. What Pinto did, that no one had done before, is show that loans made to people with FICO credit scores lower than 660 (which he called "subprime") had substantially higher rates of delinquency and default than loans to people with credit scores above 660 (which he called "prime"). In addition, Pinto found that loans with various deficiencies such as interest only, no documentation, no or low downpayments, or were investment properties (not owner occupied) -- which Pinto called, collectively, "Alt-A" -- also had much higher rates of default than loans that were not subject to these deficiencies. Pinto then found that these kinds of loans began to increase substantially after 1992, when affordable housing requirements were imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and began to default in unprecedented numbers when the 1997-2007 housing bubble started to deflate. In my dissent from the majority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, using data from Fannie Mae (Table 5, p.61), I show that both subprime and Alt-A mortgages were necessary for meeting the affordable housing goals.
In reality, then, Min is simply complaining that Pinto discovered the sources of the huge mortgage losses that caused the financial crisis. The way the data had been looked at before -- and the way Fannie and Freddie reported that data -- obscured the fact that half of all outstanding mortgages were either subprime or Alt-A just before the bubble deflated and the financial crisis began. ...
Pinto 'Trigger' memo (warning, PDF)
We’re Calling It Global Warming Again, But Only Because It’s ‘Scarier’
...Scientists typically prefer to talk about “climate change.” That’s because humans don’t “feel’ temperature on a global scale. For people to want to take action, they’ll have to notice and understand local changes, so the reasoning goes. For decades now, scientists and climate communicators have spent untold effort in demonstrating the link between rising greenhouse gas concentrations and the countless less well-known aspects of “climate change” that are much more personal than numbers on a global temperature chart. But “climate change” is a complex and nebulous term, with less vivid imagery than “global warming.”...
Don’t Let Science Be Settled with Political Intimidation
...Congressman Raul Grijalva has been writing universities, demanding financial records showing who is financing the research of dissenting scientists, and demanding their internal communications as well. Mr. Grijalva says that financial disclosure needs to be part of the public’s “right to know” who is financing those who express different views. He is not the only politician pushing the idea that scientists who do not march in lockstep with what is called the “consensus” on man-made global warming could be just hired guns for businesses resisting government regulations. Senator Edward Markey has been sending letters to fossil-fuel companies, asking them to hand over details of their financial ties to critics of the “consensus.” The head of the National Academy of Sciences has chimed in, saying: “Scientists must disclose their sources of financial support to continue to enjoy societal trust and the respect of fellow scientists.”...
...Scientists typically prefer to talk about “climate change.” That’s because humans don’t “feel’ temperature on a global scale. For people to want to take action, they’ll have to notice and understand local changes, so the reasoning goes. For decades now, scientists and climate communicators have spent untold effort in demonstrating the link between rising greenhouse gas concentrations and the countless less well-known aspects of “climate change” that are much more personal than numbers on a global temperature chart. But “climate change” is a complex and nebulous term, with less vivid imagery than “global warming.”...
Don’t Let Science Be Settled with Political Intimidation
...Congressman Raul Grijalva has been writing universities, demanding financial records showing who is financing the research of dissenting scientists, and demanding their internal communications as well. Mr. Grijalva says that financial disclosure needs to be part of the public’s “right to know” who is financing those who express different views. He is not the only politician pushing the idea that scientists who do not march in lockstep with what is called the “consensus” on man-made global warming could be just hired guns for businesses resisting government regulations. Senator Edward Markey has been sending letters to fossil-fuel companies, asking them to hand over details of their financial ties to critics of the “consensus.” The head of the National Academy of Sciences has chimed in, saying: “Scientists must disclose their sources of financial support to continue to enjoy societal trust and the respect of fellow scientists.”...
Kentucky judge criticized for telling parents they fostered racist behavior in daughter
...The parents argued for a tougher sentence for the man convicted of busting into their Louisville home at gunpoint while their daughter watched "Spongebob Square Pants," according to the Courier-Journal.
Judge Olu Stevens blasted Jordan and Tommy Gray's victim impact statement at a court hearing in February and again recently in a Facebook post he later deleted....
...Stevens contends the statement played no role in his decision to sentence the robber, 27-year-old Gregory Wallace, who pleaded guilty to the March 21, 2013, crime, to only five years' probation....
Chelsea Clinton buys new $10.5 million apartment across the street from her husband's $4 million 'starter pad' bought just before they married
Most young couples could only dream of buying a luxury four-bedroom apartment in the centre of Manhattan.
But Chelsea Clinton, 33, and husband Marc Mezvinsky, 35, are about to swap their $4 million pad for a huge new $10.5 million one nearby....
...According to a Douglas Ellisman listing, the couple's 'starter pad' has a powder room, an open chef's kitchen with beautiful bluestone countertops, oak floors, Italian marble bathrooms, huge windows and scores of other luxury finishes....
...The parents argued for a tougher sentence for the man convicted of busting into their Louisville home at gunpoint while their daughter watched "Spongebob Square Pants," according to the Courier-Journal.
Judge Olu Stevens blasted Jordan and Tommy Gray's victim impact statement at a court hearing in February and again recently in a Facebook post he later deleted....
...Stevens contends the statement played no role in his decision to sentence the robber, 27-year-old Gregory Wallace, who pleaded guilty to the March 21, 2013, crime, to only five years' probation....
Chelsea Clinton buys new $10.5 million apartment across the street from her husband's $4 million 'starter pad' bought just before they married
Most young couples could only dream of buying a luxury four-bedroom apartment in the centre of Manhattan.
But Chelsea Clinton, 33, and husband Marc Mezvinsky, 35, are about to swap their $4 million pad for a huge new $10.5 million one nearby....
...According to a Douglas Ellisman listing, the couple's 'starter pad' has a powder room, an open chef's kitchen with beautiful bluestone countertops, oak floors, Italian marble bathrooms, huge windows and scores of other luxury finishes....
Go for the Throat!
Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.
...This theory of political transformation rests on the weaponization (and slight bastardization) of the work by Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek. Skowronek has written extensively about what distinguishes transformational presidents from caretaker presidents. In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves. Obama's gambit in 2009 was to build a new post-partisan consensus. That didn't work, but by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing....
Who wrote this? John Dickerson, CBS News political director and new host of Face the Nation
Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.
...This theory of political transformation rests on the weaponization (and slight bastardization) of the work by Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek. Skowronek has written extensively about what distinguishes transformational presidents from caretaker presidents. In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves. Obama's gambit in 2009 was to build a new post-partisan consensus. That didn't work, but by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing....
Who wrote this? John Dickerson, CBS News political director and new host of Face the Nation
The DEA sex party scandal just got worse
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Colombia were taking part in alleged sex parties with prostitutes funded by drug cartels years earlier than previously known, U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday.
Several DEA agents were taking part in these parties in Bogota as early as 2001, said a summary of a DEA report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at a hearing on the misconduct....
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Colombia were taking part in alleged sex parties with prostitutes funded by drug cartels years earlier than previously known, U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday.
Several DEA agents were taking part in these parties in Bogota as early as 2001, said a summary of a DEA report released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at a hearing on the misconduct....
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Fundamental Concepts - Why the Left Hates Families
...And so on. They've been remarkably successful in all of these efforts, but the family has remained the hardest nut to crack, and any society that maintains a robust family structure will always be resistant to the siren song of a collectivist Utopia. A person who graduates high school and waits until after marriage to have children has a less that 10% chance of falling into poverty. That's a fact. A population where more than 90% of its members are living above the poverty line doesn't need a welfare state, private charity is more than capable of caring for those that fall through the cracks. A society where families can oversee their child's education on the local level resists ideological indoctrination. A society where parents can chose to work harder and expect to reap the rewards of that hard work and where effort is admired doesn't need unions to prop up the lazy and the corrupt. A society where strong families are able to accumulate resources over their lifetime doesn't need Social Security. In short, a society of strong families doesn't need much government at all, and Progressives know this, which is why the nuclear family must be destroyed as a cohesive social unit.
I could write about a zillion words here outlining how Progressive policies have attacked the family in the last 50 years, but I'm going to assume that most of you reading this are well aware of the statistics, how the welfare state has led to an explosion of single parent families, many of who are utterly dependent on government largess to survive. If not, there are voluminous works available online, just Bing them. I would close with one simple observation: The Progressive elite, the white upper and upper middle class, they don't practice what they preach. By and large, their lives are still structured around the traditional family. They raise their children together (even if divorced), and see that they finish school before marrying, and they make sure that all of the tradition benefits of familiar wealth accumulation, power and connection are bestowed upon their children. Abortion takes care of any nasty premarital "accidents", ensuring that their children aren't "cursed with a baby". They know that the family is the key to prosperity, they just want to ensure that these benefits are reserved for those of their class and breeding. Who cares if the hoi polloi are being condemned to a lifetime of toil and misery by excessive government, Progressives have to have someone to rule, don't they?...
...And so on. They've been remarkably successful in all of these efforts, but the family has remained the hardest nut to crack, and any society that maintains a robust family structure will always be resistant to the siren song of a collectivist Utopia. A person who graduates high school and waits until after marriage to have children has a less that 10% chance of falling into poverty. That's a fact. A population where more than 90% of its members are living above the poverty line doesn't need a welfare state, private charity is more than capable of caring for those that fall through the cracks. A society where families can oversee their child's education on the local level resists ideological indoctrination. A society where parents can chose to work harder and expect to reap the rewards of that hard work and where effort is admired doesn't need unions to prop up the lazy and the corrupt. A society where strong families are able to accumulate resources over their lifetime doesn't need Social Security. In short, a society of strong families doesn't need much government at all, and Progressives know this, which is why the nuclear family must be destroyed as a cohesive social unit.
I could write about a zillion words here outlining how Progressive policies have attacked the family in the last 50 years, but I'm going to assume that most of you reading this are well aware of the statistics, how the welfare state has led to an explosion of single parent families, many of who are utterly dependent on government largess to survive. If not, there are voluminous works available online, just Bing them. I would close with one simple observation: The Progressive elite, the white upper and upper middle class, they don't practice what they preach. By and large, their lives are still structured around the traditional family. They raise their children together (even if divorced), and see that they finish school before marrying, and they make sure that all of the tradition benefits of familiar wealth accumulation, power and connection are bestowed upon their children. Abortion takes care of any nasty premarital "accidents", ensuring that their children aren't "cursed with a baby". They know that the family is the key to prosperity, they just want to ensure that these benefits are reserved for those of their class and breeding. Who cares if the hoi polloi are being condemned to a lifetime of toil and misery by excessive government, Progressives have to have someone to rule, don't they?...
Race, class issues starting to split Silicon Valley alliance of tech, progressives
The rise of today’s progressive-dominated Democratic Party stemmed from a brilliant melding of minorities, the poor, the intelligentsia and, quite surprising, the new ultrarich of Silicon Valley. For the past decade, this alliance has worked for both sides, giving the tech titans politically correct cover while suggesting their support for the progressives’ message can work with business.
Not only did tech overwhelmingly favor President Obama with campaign contributions but Obama also overwhelming won the Silicon Valley electorate, taking the once GOP-leaning Santa Clara County with 70 percent of the vote. After the 2012 election, a host of former top Obama aides – including former campaign manager David Plouffe (Uber) and press spokesman Jay Carney (Amazon) – have signed up to work for tech giants. Perhaps even more revealing was the politically inspired firing last year of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for contributing to California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage....
...The immediate response from the oligarchs, and their swelling ranks of highly paid public-relations consultants, will likely be symbolic, mouthing the politically correct stance on climate change, even as they take off in their private jets. Also expect them to put more money into charitable activities, which could turn displaced cab drivers or factory assemblers into future wards of the tech elite. In the end, it seems little different from a glossy form of the Gilded Age – or feudalism.
In the long run, rising inequality poses an existential threat to the tech industry, across California and the nation. Tech firms ultimately will not be able to address this merely with noblesse oblige, political cover or PR stunts. And the stakes are large: If the negative impacts of tech are not addressed, the population will seek to tax more of the oligarchs’ holdings and restrict their freedom of operation....
The rise of today’s progressive-dominated Democratic Party stemmed from a brilliant melding of minorities, the poor, the intelligentsia and, quite surprising, the new ultrarich of Silicon Valley. For the past decade, this alliance has worked for both sides, giving the tech titans politically correct cover while suggesting their support for the progressives’ message can work with business.
Not only did tech overwhelmingly favor President Obama with campaign contributions but Obama also overwhelming won the Silicon Valley electorate, taking the once GOP-leaning Santa Clara County with 70 percent of the vote. After the 2012 election, a host of former top Obama aides – including former campaign manager David Plouffe (Uber) and press spokesman Jay Carney (Amazon) – have signed up to work for tech giants. Perhaps even more revealing was the politically inspired firing last year of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for contributing to California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage....
...The immediate response from the oligarchs, and their swelling ranks of highly paid public-relations consultants, will likely be symbolic, mouthing the politically correct stance on climate change, even as they take off in their private jets. Also expect them to put more money into charitable activities, which could turn displaced cab drivers or factory assemblers into future wards of the tech elite. In the end, it seems little different from a glossy form of the Gilded Age – or feudalism.
In the long run, rising inequality poses an existential threat to the tech industry, across California and the nation. Tech firms ultimately will not be able to address this merely with noblesse oblige, political cover or PR stunts. And the stakes are large: If the negative impacts of tech are not addressed, the population will seek to tax more of the oligarchs’ holdings and restrict their freedom of operation....
Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network
Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.
The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.
Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators....
Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.
The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.
Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators....
1.5°C or 2°C: a conduit’s view from the science-policy interface at COP20 in Lima, Peru
...Less well known perhaps is a critique from feminist social scientists who interrogate what may be deemed ‘acceptable’ and what may be ‘dangerous’, and for whom, and who contest the global community as a homogeneous entity. Joni Seager, for instance, demonstrates how notions of acceptability always mirror ‘a prism of privilege, power, and geography’ [14]. She argues that those for whom a 2°C target appears to be a relatively safe bet are the richer countries in temperate latitudes, as well as politicians and economists from the global North deeply entrenched in a masculinized rationality that nature can be controlled and that in the imminent climate race with inevitable winners and losers they will be among the former....
Scientists Say New Study Is A ‘Death Blow’ To Global Warming Hysteria
...A study by scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that man-made aerosols had a much smaller cooling effect on the atmosphere during the 20th Century than was previously thought. Why is this big news? It means increases in carbon dioxide emissions likely cause less warming than most climate models suggest....
...The Max Planck study suggests “that aerosol radiative forcing is less negative and more certain than is commonly believed.” In layman’s terms, aerosols are offsetting less global warming than was previously thought. And if aerosols aren’t causing as much cooling, it must mean carbon dioxide must be causing less warming than climate models predict.
“Going forward we should expect less warming from future greenhouse gas emissions than climate models are projecting,” write climate scientists Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger with the libertarian Cato Institute, adding that this study could be a “death blow” to global warming hysteria....
...The IPCC’s latest assessment put climate sensitivity between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius. The IPCC says that despite “the large uncertainty range, there is a high confidence that aerosols have offset a substantial portion of [greenhouse gas] global mean forcing.”
Basically, the IPCC says aerosols deflect a lot of warming — the opposite of the Max Planck study’s finding....
...Less well known perhaps is a critique from feminist social scientists who interrogate what may be deemed ‘acceptable’ and what may be ‘dangerous’, and for whom, and who contest the global community as a homogeneous entity. Joni Seager, for instance, demonstrates how notions of acceptability always mirror ‘a prism of privilege, power, and geography’ [14]. She argues that those for whom a 2°C target appears to be a relatively safe bet are the richer countries in temperate latitudes, as well as politicians and economists from the global North deeply entrenched in a masculinized rationality that nature can be controlled and that in the imminent climate race with inevitable winners and losers they will be among the former....
Scientists Say New Study Is A ‘Death Blow’ To Global Warming Hysteria
...A study by scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that man-made aerosols had a much smaller cooling effect on the atmosphere during the 20th Century than was previously thought. Why is this big news? It means increases in carbon dioxide emissions likely cause less warming than most climate models suggest....
...The Max Planck study suggests “that aerosol radiative forcing is less negative and more certain than is commonly believed.” In layman’s terms, aerosols are offsetting less global warming than was previously thought. And if aerosols aren’t causing as much cooling, it must mean carbon dioxide must be causing less warming than climate models predict.
“Going forward we should expect less warming from future greenhouse gas emissions than climate models are projecting,” write climate scientists Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger with the libertarian Cato Institute, adding that this study could be a “death blow” to global warming hysteria....
...The IPCC’s latest assessment put climate sensitivity between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius. The IPCC says that despite “the large uncertainty range, there is a high confidence that aerosols have offset a substantial portion of [greenhouse gas] global mean forcing.”
Basically, the IPCC says aerosols deflect a lot of warming — the opposite of the Max Planck study’s finding....
The Left’s new love of corporate speech
Big corporations like Walmart, Apple, Salesforce.com and General Electric and their executives have done the right thing by calling on officials in Indiana and Arkansas to reject “religious freedom” laws designed to give businesses and religious groups legal cover should they deny service to gay couples. But the business response to these laws raises a larger issue about the role companies play in the political process. If corporate leaders are serious in opposing discrimination, they should refuse to finance the campaigns of lawmakers who want to deny civil rights to gays and other minority groups....
...Another thing businesses can do is to make clear that they want lawmakers in all states to pass anti-discrimination protections for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people. More than three dozen chief executives of technology companies did just that in a statement released on Wednesday....
Google controls what we buy, the news we read — and Obama’s policies
...A former Google officer is the president’s chief technology adviser. Google employees contributed more to President Obama’s re-election than did employees of any other company except Microsoft. Google lobbyists met with Obama White House officials 230 times. By comparison, lobbyists from rival Comcast have been admitted to the inner sanctum a mere 20 or so times in the same period.
Oh, and on Election Night 2012, guess where Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was? Working for the president. In the president’s campaign office. On a voter-turnout system designed to help the president get re-elected....
...Still, all of this is easily forgiven compared to what’s coming next: politically filtered information.
Google says that in the future, its determinations about what is true and what is untrue will play a role in how search-engine rankings are configured. Google has the power to bump an article it doesn’t like off the table and under the rug. Even moving information off the first page of search results would effectively neutralize it: According to a 2013 study, 91.5 percent of Google search users click through on a first-page result....
Big corporations like Walmart, Apple, Salesforce.com and General Electric and their executives have done the right thing by calling on officials in Indiana and Arkansas to reject “religious freedom” laws designed to give businesses and religious groups legal cover should they deny service to gay couples. But the business response to these laws raises a larger issue about the role companies play in the political process. If corporate leaders are serious in opposing discrimination, they should refuse to finance the campaigns of lawmakers who want to deny civil rights to gays and other minority groups....
...Another thing businesses can do is to make clear that they want lawmakers in all states to pass anti-discrimination protections for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people. More than three dozen chief executives of technology companies did just that in a statement released on Wednesday....
Google controls what we buy, the news we read — and Obama’s policies
...A former Google officer is the president’s chief technology adviser. Google employees contributed more to President Obama’s re-election than did employees of any other company except Microsoft. Google lobbyists met with Obama White House officials 230 times. By comparison, lobbyists from rival Comcast have been admitted to the inner sanctum a mere 20 or so times in the same period.
Oh, and on Election Night 2012, guess where Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was? Working for the president. In the president’s campaign office. On a voter-turnout system designed to help the president get re-elected....
...Still, all of this is easily forgiven compared to what’s coming next: politically filtered information.
Google says that in the future, its determinations about what is true and what is untrue will play a role in how search-engine rankings are configured. Google has the power to bump an article it doesn’t like off the table and under the rug. Even moving information off the first page of search results would effectively neutralize it: According to a 2013 study, 91.5 percent of Google search users click through on a first-page result....
‘Gun Letter’ Informs Pawn And Gun Shop Owner His Bank Accounts Are Being Closed
...“Oh, you got one of the gun letters,” the employee said, explaining to Champion that gun stores across the country are receiving the same correspondence.
SunTrust was in the news last year for a similar crackdown on a South Carolina pawn and gun shop owner....
...Last year, Mark Cohen, the owner of Powderhorn Outfitters, a gun retailer in Hyannis, Mass., said that an executive at his bank, TD Bank, told him directly that it would not extend a line of credit “because you sell guns.”
And in November, Mike Shuetz, the owner of Hawkins Guns in Wisconsin, recorded a conversation he had with an executive at Heritage Credit Union after he was told that his bank accounts would be closed. The executive explained that federal regulators had recently inspected the credit union and targeted Shuetz’s business because he sells guns. ...
...“Oh, you got one of the gun letters,” the employee said, explaining to Champion that gun stores across the country are receiving the same correspondence.
SunTrust was in the news last year for a similar crackdown on a South Carolina pawn and gun shop owner....
...Last year, Mark Cohen, the owner of Powderhorn Outfitters, a gun retailer in Hyannis, Mass., said that an executive at his bank, TD Bank, told him directly that it would not extend a line of credit “because you sell guns.”
And in November, Mike Shuetz, the owner of Hawkins Guns in Wisconsin, recorded a conversation he had with an executive at Heritage Credit Union after he was told that his bank accounts would be closed. The executive explained that federal regulators had recently inspected the credit union and targeted Shuetz’s business because he sells guns. ...
How Deep Is This Education Official’s Involvement In The Rolling Stone Hoax?
A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”...
...Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely....
A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”...
...Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely....
Dave Weigel, The Self-Appointed Poster Child Of ‘Integrity,’ Urges Rolling Stone Writer To Resign
...For one thing, he was secretly conspiring with fellow liberal journalists to organize news coverage in the nation’s major publications. Ding! Ding! That’s not so kosher in the world of journalism. He wanted Matt Drudge to die in a fire. He referred to “Ron Paul fanatics” as “Paultards” and he encouraged his fellow liberal journalists not to follow up on “hot hot” scoops by Washington Examiner’s Byron York.”
This one’s not so much offensive as it was laugh until your stomach hurts. He scolded the Washington Examiner for covering his dancing at a wedding. The headline: “Weigel Likes To Waggle, Sweat.” He called for everyone in the world to block then-gossip writer Tara Palmeri for writing it.
What Weigel fails to disclose outright in his call for Erdely to quit is that after his valiant resignation, it’s not like he went off to a mountainside in Tibet to reflect on what he’d done wrong or began tirelessly volunteering at soup kitchens. He quickly went to work for Slate, which, at the time, was owned by WaPo. So his whole resignation was kind of meaningless all around.
He went on to lie about who actually broke the story of those emails, which was yours truly, followed up by more extensive coverage by my current employer....
...For one thing, he was secretly conspiring with fellow liberal journalists to organize news coverage in the nation’s major publications. Ding! Ding! That’s not so kosher in the world of journalism. He wanted Matt Drudge to die in a fire. He referred to “Ron Paul fanatics” as “Paultards” and he encouraged his fellow liberal journalists not to follow up on “hot hot” scoops by Washington Examiner’s Byron York.”
This one’s not so much offensive as it was laugh until your stomach hurts. He scolded the Washington Examiner for covering his dancing at a wedding. The headline: “Weigel Likes To Waggle, Sweat.” He called for everyone in the world to block then-gossip writer Tara Palmeri for writing it.
What Weigel fails to disclose outright in his call for Erdely to quit is that after his valiant resignation, it’s not like he went off to a mountainside in Tibet to reflect on what he’d done wrong or began tirelessly volunteering at soup kitchens. He quickly went to work for Slate, which, at the time, was owned by WaPo. So his whole resignation was kind of meaningless all around.
He went on to lie about who actually broke the story of those emails, which was yours truly, followed up by more extensive coverage by my current employer....
A gun lover sees the evils of gun culture: White supremacists, Obama haters, and me
...Here before me in earnest conversation for the last two hours was the personification of gun culture: The attitude of white supremacy, the Obama hatred and all the attendant side issues. I felt strangely privileged to have seen this man in the flesh, as if I were a cub reporter who had scooped the old timers.
But I was also aghast. This guy doesn’t even have centuries of oppression to blame for his radical, oppressive views. What the hell went wrong?...
...Here before me in earnest conversation for the last two hours was the personification of gun culture: The attitude of white supremacy, the Obama hatred and all the attendant side issues. I felt strangely privileged to have seen this man in the flesh, as if I were a cub reporter who had scooped the old timers.
But I was also aghast. This guy doesn’t even have centuries of oppression to blame for his radical, oppressive views. What the hell went wrong?...
Feds Investigate Whether Union Misused ObamaCare Funds
...“Anthony alleges he was initially employed by SUN as an ACA federal navigator, visiting community events and enrolling individuals in healthcare,” the letter continued. “In addition to these duties at SUN, Anthony alleges that he was directed to recruit members for the ULU by visiting schools to register cafeteria workers for the union.”...
...“Anthony alleges he was initially employed by SUN as an ACA federal navigator, visiting community events and enrolling individuals in healthcare,” the letter continued. “In addition to these duties at SUN, Anthony alleges that he was directed to recruit members for the ULU by visiting schools to register cafeteria workers for the union.”...
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Greece struggles to get citizens to pay their taxes
ATHENS—Of all the challenges Greece has faced in recent years, prodding its citizens to pay their taxes has been one of the most difficult.
At the end of 2014, Greeks owed their government about €76 billion ($86 billion) in unpaid taxes accrued over decades; the government says only €9 billion of that can be recovered, with most of the rest lost to insolvency.
Billions more in taxes are owed on never-reported revenue from Greece’s vast underground economy, which was estimated before the crisis to equal more than a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product....
...Tax rates in Greece are broadly in line with those elsewhere in Europe. But Greeks have a widespread aversion to paying what they owe the state, an attitude often blamed on a combination of cultural and historical forces. During the country’s centuries-long occupation by the Ottomans, avoiding taxes was a sign of patriotism. Today, that distrust is focused on the government, which many Greeks see as corrupt, inefficient and unreliable.
“Greeks consider taxes as theft,” said Aristides Hatzis, an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “Normally taxes are considered the price you have to pay for a just state, but this is not accepted by the Greek mentality.”
ATHENS—Of all the challenges Greece has faced in recent years, prodding its citizens to pay their taxes has been one of the most difficult.
At the end of 2014, Greeks owed their government about €76 billion ($86 billion) in unpaid taxes accrued over decades; the government says only €9 billion of that can be recovered, with most of the rest lost to insolvency.
Billions more in taxes are owed on never-reported revenue from Greece’s vast underground economy, which was estimated before the crisis to equal more than a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product....
...Tax rates in Greece are broadly in line with those elsewhere in Europe. But Greeks have a widespread aversion to paying what they owe the state, an attitude often blamed on a combination of cultural and historical forces. During the country’s centuries-long occupation by the Ottomans, avoiding taxes was a sign of patriotism. Today, that distrust is focused on the government, which many Greeks see as corrupt, inefficient and unreliable.
“Greeks consider taxes as theft,” said Aristides Hatzis, an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “Normally taxes are considered the price you have to pay for a just state, but this is not accepted by the Greek mentality.”
'Net neutrality' rules discard bipartisan light-touch regulatory framework.
...The ultimate result of more government encroachment will be something akin to the sagging European Internet market, where investment in broadband infrastructure is only one-fourth of America's due to heavy-handed regulations. Even worse, this new power grab could trigger expanded intergovernmental powers over the Web through existing telecom treaties, jeopardizing Internet freedom.
What many in Silicon Valley don't understand is that, according to the Supreme Court's 2005 Brand X decision, nearly any "tech" company that builds a telecom-style network to deliver its content and apps has the potential to be captured by the FCC's new rules. If the agency tries to exempt some companies but not others, it will be choosing the politically favored over everyone else....
...The ultimate result of more government encroachment will be something akin to the sagging European Internet market, where investment in broadband infrastructure is only one-fourth of America's due to heavy-handed regulations. Even worse, this new power grab could trigger expanded intergovernmental powers over the Web through existing telecom treaties, jeopardizing Internet freedom.
What many in Silicon Valley don't understand is that, according to the Supreme Court's 2005 Brand X decision, nearly any "tech" company that builds a telecom-style network to deliver its content and apps has the potential to be captured by the FCC's new rules. If the agency tries to exempt some companies but not others, it will be choosing the politically favored over everyone else....
Foreign governments gave millions to foundation while Clinton was at State Dept.
...The agreement, reached before Clinton’s nomination amid concerns that countries could use foundation donations to gain favor with a Clinton-led State Department, allowed governments that had previously donated money to continue making contributions at similar levels.
The new disclosures, provided in response to questions from The Washington Post, make clear that the 2008 agreement did not prohibit foreign countries with interests before the U.S. government from giving money to the charity closely linked to the secretary of state.
In one instance, foundation officials acknowledged they should have sought approval in 2010 from the State Department ethics office, as required by the agreement for new government donors, before accepting a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government.
The money was given to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti, the foundation said. At the time, Algeria, which has sought a closer relationship with Washington, was spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues....
...The agreement, reached before Clinton’s nomination amid concerns that countries could use foundation donations to gain favor with a Clinton-led State Department, allowed governments that had previously donated money to continue making contributions at similar levels.
The new disclosures, provided in response to questions from The Washington Post, make clear that the 2008 agreement did not prohibit foreign countries with interests before the U.S. government from giving money to the charity closely linked to the secretary of state.
In one instance, foundation officials acknowledged they should have sought approval in 2010 from the State Department ethics office, as required by the agreement for new government donors, before accepting a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government.
The money was given to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti, the foundation said. At the time, Algeria, which has sought a closer relationship with Washington, was spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues....
"Chilling comment on Adam Liptak's NYT piece on the South Carolina employment benefits lawyer who focused attention the statutory text that might wreck Obamacare."
...There's only that one pushback comment from NYHuguenot — which itself goes too far — and it only arrived 11 hours after Cold's chilling remark, which has 11 thumbs up. I read Cold's comment in the middle of the night and hit the "flag" icon but I couldn't bring myself to check any of the options. "Inflammatory" and "Personal Attack" seemed closest but not precisely apt. I decided to blog about it here instead. It's evil to waft the suggestion of a violent attack. It might influence someone, though it's certainly not an imminent enough incitement to support arresting Cold. It's evil, but it's also ludicrous for Cold to project her political will — her desire to preserve the legislation — onto the seriously ill, as if they'll use their waning hours on earth to go out on an attack — they've got nothing to lose — and they'll fixate on some lawyer who noticed something in a 900-page statute that was so terribly important and yet so miserably unread.
Lawless: Treasury throws unauthorized $3 billion to insurers under Obamacare, won’t say why
It’s right there in the Constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
Which is why this latest episode of lawlessness from the administration is so particularly galling. “The U.S. Treasury Department has rebuffed a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., to explain $3 billion in payments that were made to health insurers even though Congress never authorized the spending through annual appropriations,” The Washington Examiner’s Philp Klein reported on Thursday.
That’s right. The payments insurers receive, dubbed “cost –sharing subsidies,” are designed to offset the costs incurred when they pick up the out-of-pocket expenses for low-income individuals covered by Affordable Care Act plans. If insurers had to cover these costs themselves, Obamacare would be infeasible. So, the federal government picks up the tab for the newly insured as they go about receiving “free” health care.
There’s just one tiny, unconstitutional problem: Congress never authorized the distribution of those funds. “[B]ut the Department of Health and Human Services, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury, made them anyway,” Klein reported....
...There's only that one pushback comment from NYHuguenot — which itself goes too far — and it only arrived 11 hours after Cold's chilling remark, which has 11 thumbs up. I read Cold's comment in the middle of the night and hit the "flag" icon but I couldn't bring myself to check any of the options. "Inflammatory" and "Personal Attack" seemed closest but not precisely apt. I decided to blog about it here instead. It's evil to waft the suggestion of a violent attack. It might influence someone, though it's certainly not an imminent enough incitement to support arresting Cold. It's evil, but it's also ludicrous for Cold to project her political will — her desire to preserve the legislation — onto the seriously ill, as if they'll use their waning hours on earth to go out on an attack — they've got nothing to lose — and they'll fixate on some lawyer who noticed something in a 900-page statute that was so terribly important and yet so miserably unread.
Lawless: Treasury throws unauthorized $3 billion to insurers under Obamacare, won’t say why
It’s right there in the Constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
Which is why this latest episode of lawlessness from the administration is so particularly galling. “The U.S. Treasury Department has rebuffed a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., to explain $3 billion in payments that were made to health insurers even though Congress never authorized the spending through annual appropriations,” The Washington Examiner’s Philp Klein reported on Thursday.
That’s right. The payments insurers receive, dubbed “cost –sharing subsidies,” are designed to offset the costs incurred when they pick up the out-of-pocket expenses for low-income individuals covered by Affordable Care Act plans. If insurers had to cover these costs themselves, Obamacare would be infeasible. So, the federal government picks up the tab for the newly insured as they go about receiving “free” health care.
There’s just one tiny, unconstitutional problem: Congress never authorized the distribution of those funds. “[B]ut the Department of Health and Human Services, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury, made them anyway,” Klein reported....
New Zealander: Amnesty Is Obama’s Trump Card To Transform America
...Citing a speech in 2010 by White House consultant and radical leftist, Eliseo Medina, Loudon implores Americans to wake up before it is too late in this video interview. He says, with Mitt Romney losing to Obama in 2012 by 2 and ½ million votes, if Obama can succeed in legalizing “10, 15 or 20 million more votes, almost all of whom will vote Democrat,” Obama can lock in progressive electoral victories for the foreseeable future and “make it practically impossible for the Republicans to ever elect another president.”...
...Citing a speech in 2010 by White House consultant and radical leftist, Eliseo Medina, Loudon implores Americans to wake up before it is too late in this video interview. He says, with Mitt Romney losing to Obama in 2012 by 2 and ½ million votes, if Obama can succeed in legalizing “10, 15 or 20 million more votes, almost all of whom will vote Democrat,” Obama can lock in progressive electoral victories for the foreseeable future and “make it practically impossible for the Republicans to ever elect another president.”...
Feminist Reporter: Take Away White Men’s Guns
...“Suggestion: we don’t have to vaporize all the guns. Let’s just vaporize white men’s guns,” Grimes tweeted, linking to an article about Arizona shooter Ryan Giroux.
“White guys cannot be trusted to use guns responsibly. It is time to stop giving guns to white guys,” Grimes added. ”I mean, it’s time to stop giving guns to everybody, but we can start with the white guys.”...
AUDIO: Obama Admin Is ‘Going After’ Gun Dealers [VIDEO]
...Audio obtained by the US Consumer Coalition and provided to The Daily Caller presents the latest disturbing example of Choke Point’s overreach. The audio, presented above, captures a conversation between Alex Bacon, president of the ETF Network payment processor, and Brennan Appel, owner of the Global Hookah Distributors tobacco-products company.
Appel’s hookah company had its bank account shut down by Bank of America. Bacon, Appel’s payment processor, explained that Operation Choke Point unilaterally targets certain kinds of businesses and makes business owners’ lives “miserable.”
“Have you heard of a little thing called Choke Point? You know, and the CFPB?” Bacon asked Appel. ”They’re taking aim at industries like you and others to eliminate you from business by choking off your payment processing.”
“Well, they’re doing it by fiat. They’re doing it without a legislative process. They’re just doing it on a rather, you know, directed basis of their own free will,” Bacon said.
“They’re going after clinics, they’re going after collection agencies, they’re going after guns dealers, ammunition dealers, payment processors,” Bacon continued....
...“Suggestion: we don’t have to vaporize all the guns. Let’s just vaporize white men’s guns,” Grimes tweeted, linking to an article about Arizona shooter Ryan Giroux.
“White guys cannot be trusted to use guns responsibly. It is time to stop giving guns to white guys,” Grimes added. ”I mean, it’s time to stop giving guns to everybody, but we can start with the white guys.”...
AUDIO: Obama Admin Is ‘Going After’ Gun Dealers [VIDEO]
...Audio obtained by the US Consumer Coalition and provided to The Daily Caller presents the latest disturbing example of Choke Point’s overreach. The audio, presented above, captures a conversation between Alex Bacon, president of the ETF Network payment processor, and Brennan Appel, owner of the Global Hookah Distributors tobacco-products company.
Appel’s hookah company had its bank account shut down by Bank of America. Bacon, Appel’s payment processor, explained that Operation Choke Point unilaterally targets certain kinds of businesses and makes business owners’ lives “miserable.”
“Have you heard of a little thing called Choke Point? You know, and the CFPB?” Bacon asked Appel. ”They’re taking aim at industries like you and others to eliminate you from business by choking off your payment processing.”
“Well, they’re doing it by fiat. They’re doing it without a legislative process. They’re just doing it on a rather, you know, directed basis of their own free will,” Bacon said.
“They’re going after clinics, they’re going after collection agencies, they’re going after guns dealers, ammunition dealers, payment processors,” Bacon continued....
The Federal Housing Administration, the next housing crisis?
...When queried by members of the committee about the January 2015 premium reduction as well as the FHA's precarious financial status, Castro was at pains to provide even basic information about the current value of the FHA portfolio. He also refused to admit that the FHA was operating outside of the law, could not say when it would achieve the 2 percent capital reserve benchmark and repeatedly delivered a series of meaningless platitudes about the benefits of homeownership. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) pointed out that the FHA has offered "pricing gimmicks" while lowering its credit standards, down payment requirements and premiums, which are tactics that have been criticized elsewhere as "predatory lending."
Ironically, on the same day that Castro testified, the FHA was once again included on the Government Accountability Office's High Risk List due to the agency's "substantial growth in its insurance portfolio and significant financial difficulties." The FHA has been on the list since 2009.
Historically, the FHA has controlled about 10 to 20 percent of the mortgage market. But after Congress increased the size of mortgages the agency could insure from $360,000 to $625,000, the FHA controlled about 60 percent of the low down-payment mortgage market from 2008 to 2010. That means the income eligible for FHA mortgage insurance went from the national average of about $64,000 to $110,000. Put another way, more than twice as many people can get FHA insurance than they could before the limit was raised.
At the same time that eligibility has exploded, FHA has faced serious solvency problems, culminating in a $1.7 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury at the end of 2013. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that FHA insurance cost taxpayers $15 billion from 2009 to 2012. Nonetheless, the agency's website falsely claims it "is the only government agency that operates entirely from its self-generated income and costs the taxpayers nothing."
Even with all of the taxpayer money that has been thrown at the agency, the FHA is seriously undercapitalized. The law says FHA needs to keep 2 percent cash on hand, which would be about $18 to $20 billion, but as of the beginning of 2015, it had only less than half of 1 percent, or $4.7 billion....
...When queried by members of the committee about the January 2015 premium reduction as well as the FHA's precarious financial status, Castro was at pains to provide even basic information about the current value of the FHA portfolio. He also refused to admit that the FHA was operating outside of the law, could not say when it would achieve the 2 percent capital reserve benchmark and repeatedly delivered a series of meaningless platitudes about the benefits of homeownership. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) pointed out that the FHA has offered "pricing gimmicks" while lowering its credit standards, down payment requirements and premiums, which are tactics that have been criticized elsewhere as "predatory lending."
Ironically, on the same day that Castro testified, the FHA was once again included on the Government Accountability Office's High Risk List due to the agency's "substantial growth in its insurance portfolio and significant financial difficulties." The FHA has been on the list since 2009.
Historically, the FHA has controlled about 10 to 20 percent of the mortgage market. But after Congress increased the size of mortgages the agency could insure from $360,000 to $625,000, the FHA controlled about 60 percent of the low down-payment mortgage market from 2008 to 2010. That means the income eligible for FHA mortgage insurance went from the national average of about $64,000 to $110,000. Put another way, more than twice as many people can get FHA insurance than they could before the limit was raised.
At the same time that eligibility has exploded, FHA has faced serious solvency problems, culminating in a $1.7 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury at the end of 2013. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that FHA insurance cost taxpayers $15 billion from 2009 to 2012. Nonetheless, the agency's website falsely claims it "is the only government agency that operates entirely from its self-generated income and costs the taxpayers nothing."
Even with all of the taxpayer money that has been thrown at the agency, the FHA is seriously undercapitalized. The law says FHA needs to keep 2 percent cash on hand, which would be about $18 to $20 billion, but as of the beginning of 2015, it had only less than half of 1 percent, or $4.7 billion....
Sunday, March 15, 2015
His Royal Glibness
...Every society has some people who don’t respect the law. But, when it is the people in charge of the law — like the President of the United States and his attorney general — who don’t respect it, that is when we are in big trouble.
Has anyone asked the question, “How could so many people across the country spend so much time at night marching, rioting, and looting, if they had to get up and go to work the next morning?”...
...Every society has some people who don’t respect the law. But, when it is the people in charge of the law — like the President of the United States and his attorney general — who don’t respect it, that is when we are in big trouble.
Has anyone asked the question, “How could so many people across the country spend so much time at night marching, rioting, and looting, if they had to get up and go to work the next morning?”...
OPERATION CHOKE POINT UPDATE
...Related: Operation Choke Point closes another gun store’s bank account, except this time the owner recorded the credit union telling him why.
More: “Recordings of Shuetz’s conversations with the manager and a bank teller, which were published online by the U.S. Consumer Coalition, make it clear that the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) examined the credit union’s books and forced it to close Shuetz’s account — a move he blames on a Department of Justice initiative called Operation Choke Point.”...
...Related: Operation Choke Point closes another gun store’s bank account, except this time the owner recorded the credit union telling him why.
More: “Recordings of Shuetz’s conversations with the manager and a bank teller, which were published online by the U.S. Consumer Coalition, make it clear that the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) examined the credit union’s books and forced it to close Shuetz’s account — a move he blames on a Department of Justice initiative called Operation Choke Point.”...
Flashback 1989: UN Predicted Global Warming Would Destroy Entire Nations By 2000
...The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
Brown, who was the director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, warned that “[c]oastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.” Brown added that “governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human” ability to stop it....
Climate change’s instructive past
...In the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), from the end of the ninth century to the beginning of the 14th, the Northern Hemisphere was warmer than at any time in the past 8,000 years — for reasons concerning which there is no consensus. Warming increased the amount of arable land — there were vineyards in northern England — leading, Rosen says, to Europe’s “first sustained population increase since the fall of the Roman Empire.” The need for land on which to grow cereals drove deforestation. The MWP population explosion gave rise to towns, textile manufacturing and new wealthy classes.
Then, near the end of the MWP, came the severe winters of 1309-1312, when polar bears could walk from Greenland to Iceland on pack ice. In 1315 there was rain for perhaps 155 consecutive days, washing away topsoil. Upwards of half the arable land in much of Europe was gone; cannibalism arrived as parents ate children. Corpses hanging from gallows were devoured.
Human behavior did not cause this climate change. Instead, climate warming caused behavioral change (10 million mouths to feed became 30 million). Then climate cooling caused social changes (rebelliousness and bellicosity) that amplified the consequences of climate, a pattern repeated four centuries later.
In “Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century,” Geoffrey Parker, a history professor at Ohio State University, explains how a “fatal synergy” between climatological and political factors produced turmoil from Europe to China. What he calls “the placenta of the crisis” of that century included the Little Ice Age (LIA), between the 1640s and the 1690s. Unusual weather, protracted enough to qualify as a change in climate, correlated so strongly with political upheavals as to constitute causation....
More Evidence Of Climate Data Tampering By NOAA?
When Dr. Roy Spencer looked up summer temperature data for the U.S. Corn Belt, it showed no warming trend for over a century. But that was before temperatures were “adjusted” by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists. Now the same data shows a significant warming trend.
Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the National Climatic Data Center made large adjustments to past summer temperatures for the U.S. Corn Belt, lowering past temperatures to make them cooler. Adjusting past temperatures downward creates a significant warming trend in the data that didn’t exist before.
“I was updating a U.S. Corn Belt summer temperature and precipitation dataset from the NCDC website, and all of a sudden the no-warming-trend-since-1900 turned into a significant warming trend,” Spencer wrote on his blog, adding that NCDC’s “adjustments” made the warming trend for the region increase from just 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century to 0.6 degrees per century....
...“But a variety of errors in data measurement and collection would typically have both positive and negative signs,” Spencer noted, adding that he corrects for such errors when calculating satellite temperature data even if they tend to cancel each other out.
“In contrast, the thermometer data apparently need to be adjusted in such a way that almost always leads to greater and greater warming trends,” he added....
Ooops. NASA now “38% sure” 2014 was warmest year on record
...The Nasa climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true…
The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS’s analysis – based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide – is subject to a margin of error. Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.
Yet the Nasa press release failed to mention this, as well as the fact that the alleged ‘record’ amounted to an increase over 2010, the previous ‘warmest year’, of just two-hundredths of a degree – or 0.02C. The margin of error is said by scientists to be approximately 0.1C – several times as much....
...The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
Brown, who was the director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, warned that “[c]oastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.” Brown added that “governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human” ability to stop it....
Climate change’s instructive past
...In the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), from the end of the ninth century to the beginning of the 14th, the Northern Hemisphere was warmer than at any time in the past 8,000 years — for reasons concerning which there is no consensus. Warming increased the amount of arable land — there were vineyards in northern England — leading, Rosen says, to Europe’s “first sustained population increase since the fall of the Roman Empire.” The need for land on which to grow cereals drove deforestation. The MWP population explosion gave rise to towns, textile manufacturing and new wealthy classes.
Then, near the end of the MWP, came the severe winters of 1309-1312, when polar bears could walk from Greenland to Iceland on pack ice. In 1315 there was rain for perhaps 155 consecutive days, washing away topsoil. Upwards of half the arable land in much of Europe was gone; cannibalism arrived as parents ate children. Corpses hanging from gallows were devoured.
Human behavior did not cause this climate change. Instead, climate warming caused behavioral change (10 million mouths to feed became 30 million). Then climate cooling caused social changes (rebelliousness and bellicosity) that amplified the consequences of climate, a pattern repeated four centuries later.
In “Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century,” Geoffrey Parker, a history professor at Ohio State University, explains how a “fatal synergy” between climatological and political factors produced turmoil from Europe to China. What he calls “the placenta of the crisis” of that century included the Little Ice Age (LIA), between the 1640s and the 1690s. Unusual weather, protracted enough to qualify as a change in climate, correlated so strongly with political upheavals as to constitute causation....
More Evidence Of Climate Data Tampering By NOAA?
When Dr. Roy Spencer looked up summer temperature data for the U.S. Corn Belt, it showed no warming trend for over a century. But that was before temperatures were “adjusted” by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists. Now the same data shows a significant warming trend.
Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the National Climatic Data Center made large adjustments to past summer temperatures for the U.S. Corn Belt, lowering past temperatures to make them cooler. Adjusting past temperatures downward creates a significant warming trend in the data that didn’t exist before.
“I was updating a U.S. Corn Belt summer temperature and precipitation dataset from the NCDC website, and all of a sudden the no-warming-trend-since-1900 turned into a significant warming trend,” Spencer wrote on his blog, adding that NCDC’s “adjustments” made the warming trend for the region increase from just 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century to 0.6 degrees per century....
...“But a variety of errors in data measurement and collection would typically have both positive and negative signs,” Spencer noted, adding that he corrects for such errors when calculating satellite temperature data even if they tend to cancel each other out.
“In contrast, the thermometer data apparently need to be adjusted in such a way that almost always leads to greater and greater warming trends,” he added....
Ooops. NASA now “38% sure” 2014 was warmest year on record
...The Nasa climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true…
The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS’s analysis – based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide – is subject to a margin of error. Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.
Yet the Nasa press release failed to mention this, as well as the fact that the alleged ‘record’ amounted to an increase over 2010, the previous ‘warmest year’, of just two-hundredths of a degree – or 0.02C. The margin of error is said by scientists to be approximately 0.1C – several times as much....
Can we finally—finally!—be done with the Clintons?
...It’s easy to enforce the law on people who are inclined to be law-abiding, which means those of us in the middle, mainly: We have enough to lose that there’s a real cost to breaking the rules, but we don’t have so much that we can conduct our personal and professional lives as though we had sovereign immunity. The people in the middle cannot go about their ordinary business — working at a job, driving a car, renting or owning a home, traveling — without preemptively complying with all manner of government mandates. But millions of illegals can flout the law with impunity — and their well-off enablers in Washington can flout the law with impunity, too. When the law does not apply to the lawmakers and law-enforcers, you are not being governed: You are being ruled. And we are ruled by criminals.
If you treat IRS rules the way the IRS treats IRS rules, you go to prison; if you treat federal law the way the secretary of state does, you go to prison. If you treat immigration controls the way our immigration authorities do, you go to prison. If you’re as careless in your handling of firearms as the ATF is, you go to prison. You cook your business’s books the way the federal government cooks its books, you go to prison.
Hillary Clinton is not going to prison. She’s going to release whatever emails she feels like releasing and dare any of you peons or your elected representatives to try to make her do otherwise. You’ll take what she offers, and you’ll like it....
Bribes Disguised As Charitable Gifts: Hillary Clinton’s Possible Legal Trouble
...Other anti-corruption practitioners note that it’s a major red flag when you see a single, isolated charitable donation of the size that Algeria gave to the Clinton Foundation. Such investigators say the first thing you look for is whether the giver had any business before the government official, which clearly was the case with Algeria, which was lobbying at the time for more favorable foreign policy treatment.
If these facts were in the private sector, the Department of Justice would be all over the matter. The Clintons have had previous problems with raising funds from foreign entities seeking to influence domestic policy....
The World Fails to Follow Hillary’s Careful Script
...The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation unveiled a big foofaraw over Hillary’s “No Ceilings” campaign. What a wonderfully convenient theme for Mrs. Clinton’s massive and mysterious foundation, given that smashing the “highest glass ceiling” — i.e., the presidency — is the central rationale of her planned presidential bid. It was just a coincidence that the tax-exempt foundation with her name on it happened to be rolling out a big light show on that very subject during the rollout of her presidential campaign....
...It’s easy to enforce the law on people who are inclined to be law-abiding, which means those of us in the middle, mainly: We have enough to lose that there’s a real cost to breaking the rules, but we don’t have so much that we can conduct our personal and professional lives as though we had sovereign immunity. The people in the middle cannot go about their ordinary business — working at a job, driving a car, renting or owning a home, traveling — without preemptively complying with all manner of government mandates. But millions of illegals can flout the law with impunity — and their well-off enablers in Washington can flout the law with impunity, too. When the law does not apply to the lawmakers and law-enforcers, you are not being governed: You are being ruled. And we are ruled by criminals.
If you treat IRS rules the way the IRS treats IRS rules, you go to prison; if you treat federal law the way the secretary of state does, you go to prison. If you treat immigration controls the way our immigration authorities do, you go to prison. If you’re as careless in your handling of firearms as the ATF is, you go to prison. You cook your business’s books the way the federal government cooks its books, you go to prison.
Hillary Clinton is not going to prison. She’s going to release whatever emails she feels like releasing and dare any of you peons or your elected representatives to try to make her do otherwise. You’ll take what she offers, and you’ll like it....
Bribes Disguised As Charitable Gifts: Hillary Clinton’s Possible Legal Trouble
...Other anti-corruption practitioners note that it’s a major red flag when you see a single, isolated charitable donation of the size that Algeria gave to the Clinton Foundation. Such investigators say the first thing you look for is whether the giver had any business before the government official, which clearly was the case with Algeria, which was lobbying at the time for more favorable foreign policy treatment.
If these facts were in the private sector, the Department of Justice would be all over the matter. The Clintons have had previous problems with raising funds from foreign entities seeking to influence domestic policy....
The World Fails to Follow Hillary’s Careful Script
...The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation unveiled a big foofaraw over Hillary’s “No Ceilings” campaign. What a wonderfully convenient theme for Mrs. Clinton’s massive and mysterious foundation, given that smashing the “highest glass ceiling” — i.e., the presidency — is the central rationale of her planned presidential bid. It was just a coincidence that the tax-exempt foundation with her name on it happened to be rolling out a big light show on that very subject during the rollout of her presidential campaign....
Climate Change Is "My Religion and My Dharma."
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, has stepped down amidst a sexual harassment scandal. In his letter of resignation to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pachauri declared:
"For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma."
In Hinduism dharma is the path of righteousness....
What Would a Bad Job Look Like?
...Let us travel back to 2009. The individuals who would write the upcoming climate report hadn’t yet been selected (that didn’t happen until the following year). They hadn’t yet attended any IPCC meetings. Much of the research it would be their duty to evaluate hadn’t yet been published.
Nevertheless, the IPCC chairman knew – all those years in advance – what their conclusions would be. In September 2009, he told religious leaders in New York:
When the IPCC’s fifth assessment comes out in 2013 or 2014, there will be a major revival of interest in action that has to be taken. People are going to say, ‘My God, we are going to have to take action much faster than we had planned.’
Not only did Pachauri know the nature and direction of the IPCC report’s conclusions, he knew these conclusions would be alarming and dramatic.
This is not how a scientific body operates. This is the mark of a political organization, established to serve political ends....
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, has stepped down amidst a sexual harassment scandal. In his letter of resignation to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pachauri declared:
"For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma."
In Hinduism dharma is the path of righteousness....
What Would a Bad Job Look Like?
...Let us travel back to 2009. The individuals who would write the upcoming climate report hadn’t yet been selected (that didn’t happen until the following year). They hadn’t yet attended any IPCC meetings. Much of the research it would be their duty to evaluate hadn’t yet been published.
Nevertheless, the IPCC chairman knew – all those years in advance – what their conclusions would be. In September 2009, he told religious leaders in New York:
When the IPCC’s fifth assessment comes out in 2013 or 2014, there will be a major revival of interest in action that has to be taken. People are going to say, ‘My God, we are going to have to take action much faster than we had planned.’
Not only did Pachauri know the nature and direction of the IPCC report’s conclusions, he knew these conclusions would be alarming and dramatic.
This is not how a scientific body operates. This is the mark of a political organization, established to serve political ends....
Delayed divorce battle: Ecotricity founder Dale Vince's New Age traveller ex-wife wins cash fight
During the subsequent years they met up at Stonehenge, Glastonbury and elsewhere but eventually divorced in 1992. He was not required to pay maintenance because it was agreed he had no money.
But his experience of rigging up an old pylon into a wind-powered telephone at the Glastonbury Festival shortly afterwards paved the way for founding, in 1996 of his wind energy firm. It is now worth an estimated £57 million.
It was not until 2011 that Ms Wyatt lodged a claim for financial support, arguing that he had failed to provide for their son, and her daughter, whom he had effectively accepted into the family....
..."The case underlines how there is no limit on when someone can make a claim,” he said.
"It doesn't matter whether you divorce in your twenties and return with a claim when you're 80."...
Judge ‘Outraged’ At Man Ordered To Pay $30,000 For A Kid That’s Not His
...But Alexander says he was only first made aware of the false paternity claim during a 1991 traffic stop when the arresting officer told Alexander he was a “deadbeat dad.”
That came as a shock to Alexander, who knew he was not the father of anyone’s child.
Alexander’s case was bungled even further when a court document process server falsified a document showing that he refused to sign a court summons pertaining to the child support case. But Alexander was in jail at the time the document was served. (RELATED: Man Ordered To Pay Back $30,000 For Kid That Isn’t His, Or Else)
Since then, Alexander’s ex-girlfriend has admitted she lied on the welfare form in order to get benefits. And besides the DNA test, the actual father of the boy is in his life....
During the subsequent years they met up at Stonehenge, Glastonbury and elsewhere but eventually divorced in 1992. He was not required to pay maintenance because it was agreed he had no money.
But his experience of rigging up an old pylon into a wind-powered telephone at the Glastonbury Festival shortly afterwards paved the way for founding, in 1996 of his wind energy firm. It is now worth an estimated £57 million.
It was not until 2011 that Ms Wyatt lodged a claim for financial support, arguing that he had failed to provide for their son, and her daughter, whom he had effectively accepted into the family....
..."The case underlines how there is no limit on when someone can make a claim,” he said.
"It doesn't matter whether you divorce in your twenties and return with a claim when you're 80."...
Judge ‘Outraged’ At Man Ordered To Pay $30,000 For A Kid That’s Not His
...But Alexander says he was only first made aware of the false paternity claim during a 1991 traffic stop when the arresting officer told Alexander he was a “deadbeat dad.”
That came as a shock to Alexander, who knew he was not the father of anyone’s child.
Alexander’s case was bungled even further when a court document process server falsified a document showing that he refused to sign a court summons pertaining to the child support case. But Alexander was in jail at the time the document was served. (RELATED: Man Ordered To Pay Back $30,000 For Kid That Isn’t His, Or Else)
Since then, Alexander’s ex-girlfriend has admitted she lied on the welfare form in order to get benefits. And besides the DNA test, the actual father of the boy is in his life....
Sunday, March 01, 2015
Whistleblower: Pelosi Covered Up Role In Crisis
...In 2009, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed her California pal Phil Angelides, a long-time Democrat operative, to lead the commission. The fix seemed to be in, and Wallison's account of the inner workings of the 10-member body confirms it. Here's what took place during the FCIC's 18-month, $10 million probe:
• Angelides provided no staff to help Wallison and other Republicans interview witnesses, conduct research or draft the report. But commission Democrats were assigned almost 80 staffers to help formulate their single theory that bank risk-taking and greed unleashed by deregulation caused the crisis.
• Angelides never notified Wallison or other commissioners about the hundreds of witnesses he called to testify in closed-door interviews with his staff, denying them the chance to cross-examine the witnesses.
• Staffers failed to put these private witnesses under oath, even though the final report was based almost exclusively on their testimony with little or no documents or data to back up their statements, which simply validated the Democrat narrative.
• Angelides buried evidence revealing that by 2008, three in four high-risk mortgages wound up on the books of HUD-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration. A data-rich memo by former Fannie Mae chief credit officer Ed Pinto proved that government, not the private sector, drove risky lending. But Pinto's research "was never formally made available by the chair or staff to the other members of the FCIC," Wallison writes.
• Angelides withheld the final draft of the report from Wallison and other commissioners until eight days before sending it to the printer, never giving them the time they needed to go over the wording or content of the almost 900-page draft.
...In 2009, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed her California pal Phil Angelides, a long-time Democrat operative, to lead the commission. The fix seemed to be in, and Wallison's account of the inner workings of the 10-member body confirms it. Here's what took place during the FCIC's 18-month, $10 million probe:
• Angelides provided no staff to help Wallison and other Republicans interview witnesses, conduct research or draft the report. But commission Democrats were assigned almost 80 staffers to help formulate their single theory that bank risk-taking and greed unleashed by deregulation caused the crisis.
• Angelides never notified Wallison or other commissioners about the hundreds of witnesses he called to testify in closed-door interviews with his staff, denying them the chance to cross-examine the witnesses.
• Staffers failed to put these private witnesses under oath, even though the final report was based almost exclusively on their testimony with little or no documents or data to back up their statements, which simply validated the Democrat narrative.
• Angelides buried evidence revealing that by 2008, three in four high-risk mortgages wound up on the books of HUD-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration. A data-rich memo by former Fannie Mae chief credit officer Ed Pinto proved that government, not the private sector, drove risky lending. But Pinto's research "was never formally made available by the chair or staff to the other members of the FCIC," Wallison writes.
• Angelides withheld the final draft of the report from Wallison and other commissioners until eight days before sending it to the printer, never giving them the time they needed to go over the wording or content of the almost 900-page draft.
George Will: The harm incurred by a mushrooming welfare state
...Transfers of benefits to individuals through social welfare programs have increased from less than 1 federal dollar in 4 (24 percent) in 1963 to almost 3 out of 5 (59 percent) in 2013. In that half-century, entitlement payments were, Eberstadt says, America’s “fastest growing source of personal income,” growing twice as fast as all other real per capita personal income. It is probable that this year a majority of Americans will seek and receive payments.
This is not primarily because of Social Security and Medicare transfers to an aging population. Rather, the growth is overwhelmingly in means-tested entitlements. More than twice as many households receive “anti-poverty” benefits than receive Social Security or Medicare....
...What has changed? Not the portion of the estimated population below the poverty line (15.2 percent in 1983; 15 percent in 2012). Rather, poverty programs have become untethered from the official designation of poverty: In 2012, more than half the recipients were not classified as poor but accepted being treated as needy. Expanding dependency requires erasing Americans’ traditional distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. This distinction was rooted in this nation’s exceptional sense that poverty is not the unalterable accident of birth and is related to traditions of generosity arising from immigrant and settler experiences....
...Causation works both ways between the rapid increase in family disintegration (from 1964 to 2012, the percentage of children born to unmarried women increased from 7 to 41) and the fact that, Eberstadt says, for many women, children and even working-age men, “the entitlement state is now the breadwinner of the household.” In the past 50 years, the fraction of civilian men ages 25 to 34 who were neither working nor looking for work approximately quadrupled....
Mother and daughter weigh a total of 43 stone and get £34k a year handouts, but refuse to diet
...A mother and daughter who get £34,000 a year in handouts because they are too fat to work say they'd rather be happy and on benefits than depressed and thin Janice and Amber Manzur weigh a total of 43 stone and are so overweight they have to use mobility scooters to get around.
But both women refuse to diet and mother-of-two Ms Manzur, 44, insists: "I'd rather my daughter live life on benefits being fat and happy than depressed and thin."
Ms Manzur lives in a three-bedroom house that has been customised by the council to accommodate her disability and drives a Fiat Quibo disability car worth around £15,000....
...Transfers of benefits to individuals through social welfare programs have increased from less than 1 federal dollar in 4 (24 percent) in 1963 to almost 3 out of 5 (59 percent) in 2013. In that half-century, entitlement payments were, Eberstadt says, America’s “fastest growing source of personal income,” growing twice as fast as all other real per capita personal income. It is probable that this year a majority of Americans will seek and receive payments.
This is not primarily because of Social Security and Medicare transfers to an aging population. Rather, the growth is overwhelmingly in means-tested entitlements. More than twice as many households receive “anti-poverty” benefits than receive Social Security or Medicare....
...What has changed? Not the portion of the estimated population below the poverty line (15.2 percent in 1983; 15 percent in 2012). Rather, poverty programs have become untethered from the official designation of poverty: In 2012, more than half the recipients were not classified as poor but accepted being treated as needy. Expanding dependency requires erasing Americans’ traditional distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. This distinction was rooted in this nation’s exceptional sense that poverty is not the unalterable accident of birth and is related to traditions of generosity arising from immigrant and settler experiences....
...Causation works both ways between the rapid increase in family disintegration (from 1964 to 2012, the percentage of children born to unmarried women increased from 7 to 41) and the fact that, Eberstadt says, for many women, children and even working-age men, “the entitlement state is now the breadwinner of the household.” In the past 50 years, the fraction of civilian men ages 25 to 34 who were neither working nor looking for work approximately quadrupled....
Mother and daughter weigh a total of 43 stone and get £34k a year handouts, but refuse to diet
...A mother and daughter who get £34,000 a year in handouts because they are too fat to work say they'd rather be happy and on benefits than depressed and thin Janice and Amber Manzur weigh a total of 43 stone and are so overweight they have to use mobility scooters to get around.
But both women refuse to diet and mother-of-two Ms Manzur, 44, insists: "I'd rather my daughter live life on benefits being fat and happy than depressed and thin."
Ms Manzur lives in a three-bedroom house that has been customised by the council to accommodate her disability and drives a Fiat Quibo disability car worth around £15,000....
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
-- Theodore Dalrymple
-- Theodore Dalrymple
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