'How dare you put such a complex issue to common folk?'
...I was told in no uncertain terms that this is a very strange and even inappropriate course of action that we’ve taken. And the argument that was given to me by a colleague in the Eurogroup, whose name will remain unsaid, while everybody was more or less nodding, was 'how dare you put such a complex issue to common folk?' And I was just looking at them astounded, thinking 'you have just negated the whole principle of democracy, which is that the common folk determine government; they determine very complex questions during elections.'...
US Prosecutor Now Sending Criminal DNA Testing In DC To Lab Run By His Girlfriend
The U.S. attorney who handles DNA and forensics litigation in the District of Columbia stopped sending cases to the city’s independent forensics lab in January, in favor of a private lab run by his girlfriend....
Saturday, July 04, 2015
Leland Yee, the Gun-Hating Calif. Pol. Accused of Helping Smuggle Guns, Agrees to Plea Deal
It was the craziest political scandal to hit California in a while. In March 2014, State Sen. Leland Yee, in the midst of a campaign for secretary of state, was arrested in part of a massive raid in the FBI area, accused of political corruption and helping arrange illegal firearm deals on behalf of violent group in the Philippines.
That scandal was crazy enough, but adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Yee, a Democrat, was also an open supporter of tougher gun control laws and was a proponent of legislation in California to ban the sales of violent video games to children, a law that the Supreme Court subsequently struck down as unconstitutional. Yee was a critic of games like Grand Theft Auto, even though he apparently behaved in real life like one of its characters. He took political hypocrisy to brand new heights....
The Government Wants You to Get Its Permission Before Discussing Gunmaking Information on the Internet (or Anywhere)
...Your action is urgently needed to ensure that online blogs, videos, and web forums devoted to the technical aspects of firearms and ammunition do not become subject to prior review by State Department bureaucrats before they can be published...
....the Administration has been pursuing a large-scale overhaul of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which implement the federal Arms Export Control Act (AECA)...
Also regulated under ITAR are so-called "technical data" about defense articles. These include, among other things, "detailed design, development, production or manufacturing information" about firearms or ammunition. Specific examples of technical data are blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation...
Some State Department officials now insist that anything published online in a generally-accessible location has essentially been "exported," as it would be accessible to foreign nationals both in the U.S. and overseas.
With the new proposal published on June 3, the State Department claims to be "clarifying" the rules concerning "technical data" posted online or otherwise "released" into the "public domain." To the contrary, however, the proposal would institute a massive new prior restraint on free speech. This is because all such releases would require the "authorization" of the government before they occurred. The cumbersome and time-consuming process of obtaining such authorizations, moreover, would make online communication about certain technical aspects of firearms and ammunition essentially impossible.
Penalties for violations are severe and for each violation could include up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Civil penalties can also be assessed. Each unauthorized "export," including to subsequent countries or foreign nationals, is also treated as a separate violation....
Obama’s Gun-Control Misfire: Before the 2014 election, the FBI claimed that mass shootings were up. False.
...Last September the Obama administration produced an FBI report that said mass shooting attacks and deaths were up sharply—by an average annual rate of about 16% between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, the problem was worsening. “The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents,” said the authors. “During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”
The White House could not possibly have been more pleased with the media reaction to these findings, which were prominently featured by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post and other major outlets. The FBI report landed six weeks before the midterm elections, and the administration was hoping that the gun-control issue would help drive Democratic turnout.
But late last week, J. Pete Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, two academics at Texas State University who co-authored the FBI report, acknowledged that “our data is imperfect.” They said that the news media “got it wrong” last year when they “mistakenly reported mass shootings were on the rise.”
Mind you, the authors did not issue this mea culpa in the major news outlets that supposedly misreported the original findings. Instead, the authors published it in ACJS Today, an academic journal published by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own,” wrote Messrs. Blair and Martaindale. “This required choices between various options with various strengths and weaknesses.” You don’t say....
It was the craziest political scandal to hit California in a while. In March 2014, State Sen. Leland Yee, in the midst of a campaign for secretary of state, was arrested in part of a massive raid in the FBI area, accused of political corruption and helping arrange illegal firearm deals on behalf of violent group in the Philippines.
That scandal was crazy enough, but adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Yee, a Democrat, was also an open supporter of tougher gun control laws and was a proponent of legislation in California to ban the sales of violent video games to children, a law that the Supreme Court subsequently struck down as unconstitutional. Yee was a critic of games like Grand Theft Auto, even though he apparently behaved in real life like one of its characters. He took political hypocrisy to brand new heights....
The Government Wants You to Get Its Permission Before Discussing Gunmaking Information on the Internet (or Anywhere)
...Your action is urgently needed to ensure that online blogs, videos, and web forums devoted to the technical aspects of firearms and ammunition do not become subject to prior review by State Department bureaucrats before they can be published...
....the Administration has been pursuing a large-scale overhaul of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which implement the federal Arms Export Control Act (AECA)...
Also regulated under ITAR are so-called "technical data" about defense articles. These include, among other things, "detailed design, development, production or manufacturing information" about firearms or ammunition. Specific examples of technical data are blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation...
Some State Department officials now insist that anything published online in a generally-accessible location has essentially been "exported," as it would be accessible to foreign nationals both in the U.S. and overseas.
With the new proposal published on June 3, the State Department claims to be "clarifying" the rules concerning "technical data" posted online or otherwise "released" into the "public domain." To the contrary, however, the proposal would institute a massive new prior restraint on free speech. This is because all such releases would require the "authorization" of the government before they occurred. The cumbersome and time-consuming process of obtaining such authorizations, moreover, would make online communication about certain technical aspects of firearms and ammunition essentially impossible.
Penalties for violations are severe and for each violation could include up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Civil penalties can also be assessed. Each unauthorized "export," including to subsequent countries or foreign nationals, is also treated as a separate violation....
Obama’s Gun-Control Misfire: Before the 2014 election, the FBI claimed that mass shootings were up. False.
...Last September the Obama administration produced an FBI report that said mass shooting attacks and deaths were up sharply—by an average annual rate of about 16% between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, the problem was worsening. “The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents,” said the authors. “During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”
The White House could not possibly have been more pleased with the media reaction to these findings, which were prominently featured by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post and other major outlets. The FBI report landed six weeks before the midterm elections, and the administration was hoping that the gun-control issue would help drive Democratic turnout.
But late last week, J. Pete Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, two academics at Texas State University who co-authored the FBI report, acknowledged that “our data is imperfect.” They said that the news media “got it wrong” last year when they “mistakenly reported mass shootings were on the rise.”
Mind you, the authors did not issue this mea culpa in the major news outlets that supposedly misreported the original findings. Instead, the authors published it in ACJS Today, an academic journal published by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own,” wrote Messrs. Blair and Martaindale. “This required choices between various options with various strengths and weaknesses.” You don’t say....
Monday, June 22, 2015
Emails Show MIT’s Jonathan Gruber Had Even More To Do With Obamacare’s Passage Than Previously Thought
...Gruber, an MIT professor, was hired as a consultant to the Department of Health and Human Services on Obamacare. A number of videos and recordings emerged last year showing Gruber’s disdain for the “stupidity of the American voter,” and expounding on the “huge political advantage” the administration had because Obamacare was passed with little transparency — leading the administration to distance itself from the professor. ...
...Gruber was in contact with key advisers on the health-care law, including Peter Orszag, then-director of the Office of Management and Budget; Jason Furman, then an economic adviser to the president who is now chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers; and Ezekiel Emanuel, then a special adviser for health policy at OMB.
“Thank you for being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment,” Jeanne Lambrew, a top administration official at HHS and the White House, wrote to Gruber in September 2009. In another email several months later, she hailed Gruber as “our hero.”
Far from being an independent contractor, Gruber regularly consulted with Lambrew when answering questions about his relationship with the Obama administration. Gruber went to Lambrew for advice when a Politico reporter asked why he had not disclosed his administration contract before writing about health care policy, and asked Lambrew to review his description of his own responsibilities at HHS before responding. Gruber also spoke to top HHS officials about his interviews with other reporters, including one with Ezra Klein, then at the Washington Post....
...Gruber, an MIT professor, was hired as a consultant to the Department of Health and Human Services on Obamacare. A number of videos and recordings emerged last year showing Gruber’s disdain for the “stupidity of the American voter,” and expounding on the “huge political advantage” the administration had because Obamacare was passed with little transparency — leading the administration to distance itself from the professor. ...
...Gruber was in contact with key advisers on the health-care law, including Peter Orszag, then-director of the Office of Management and Budget; Jason Furman, then an economic adviser to the president who is now chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers; and Ezekiel Emanuel, then a special adviser for health policy at OMB.
“Thank you for being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment,” Jeanne Lambrew, a top administration official at HHS and the White House, wrote to Gruber in September 2009. In another email several months later, she hailed Gruber as “our hero.”
Far from being an independent contractor, Gruber regularly consulted with Lambrew when answering questions about his relationship with the Obama administration. Gruber went to Lambrew for advice when a Politico reporter asked why he had not disclosed his administration contract before writing about health care policy, and asked Lambrew to review his description of his own responsibilities at HHS before responding. Gruber also spoke to top HHS officials about his interviews with other reporters, including one with Ezra Klein, then at the Washington Post....
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Law student laughs as she walks free from court for hitting aspiring male model over the head with a bottle of champagne cutting his forehead to the SKULL
...Sarah McKenzie-Ayres was pictured laughing as she walked free from court after being handed a suspended sentence for striking the man in a Manchester nightclub last September.
The 19-year-old victim, who has not been named, has been left with permanent scarring that has forced him to abandon his dreams of becoming a professional model.
McKenzie-Ayres, 19, was spared jail for GBH after telling Manchester Crown Court that she believed the victim was 'making unwelcome advances'.
Neil Beckwith, prosecuting, said the victim was standing with friends in Venus nightclub in Manchester when McKenzie-Ayres accused him of bumping into her friend.
When the victim disagreed, McKenzie-Ayres ordered him to move before pushing him and grabbing the champagne bottle from his friends' table.
She then pushed him backwards and swung the champagne bottle into his face ‘like a club’.
Mr Beckwith said: 'He had a glimpse of her with the bottle of champagne in her right hand, raised overhead, and she then struck him to the forehead....
...Sarah McKenzie-Ayres was pictured laughing as she walked free from court after being handed a suspended sentence for striking the man in a Manchester nightclub last September.
The 19-year-old victim, who has not been named, has been left with permanent scarring that has forced him to abandon his dreams of becoming a professional model.
McKenzie-Ayres, 19, was spared jail for GBH after telling Manchester Crown Court that she believed the victim was 'making unwelcome advances'.
Neil Beckwith, prosecuting, said the victim was standing with friends in Venus nightclub in Manchester when McKenzie-Ayres accused him of bumping into her friend.
When the victim disagreed, McKenzie-Ayres ordered him to move before pushing him and grabbing the champagne bottle from his friends' table.
She then pushed him backwards and swung the champagne bottle into his face ‘like a club’.
Mr Beckwith said: 'He had a glimpse of her with the bottle of champagne in her right hand, raised overhead, and she then struck him to the forehead....
Obama Admin Making Billions In Obamacare Subsidy Payments Without Verifying Amounts
...Obamacare’s premium subsidies are paid each month directly to insurance companies, to ease the burden of health coverage to eligible customers in the health law’s government exchanges. The payments add up: the federal government doled out almost $2.8 billion to insurers in just the first four months of 2014, when Obamacare launched.
The agency tasked with making the payments hasn’t yet made sure the calculations behind the billions are accurate. An inspector general audit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has found that the administration did not confirm the exact amount it owed each insurer before paying up, putting the billions in federal taxpayer funds at risk.
The problem lies in HealthCare.gov’s unfinished back-end system. The portions of the website which allow insurers to communicate enrollee information with the federal government hasn’t yet been completed and was even less workable in 2014, when the outlays began....
Are Obamacare’s 22 Health Insurance Co-ops Near Financial Collapse?
Ominous signs are proliferating among 22 Obamacare health insurance co-ops of imminent financial collapses that could leave more than a million Americans without coverage, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.
All but one of the federally funded co-ops are experiencing accelerating net losses. President Obama’s signature health care reform program established the co-ops to provide non-profit competition to private sector health insurance providers.
Many of the 22 co-ops could soon follow an Obamacare co-op that defaulted earlier this year, suffering $163 million in operating losses in a single year. That collapse left 120,000 customers without coverage on Christmas Eve....
...Obamacare’s premium subsidies are paid each month directly to insurance companies, to ease the burden of health coverage to eligible customers in the health law’s government exchanges. The payments add up: the federal government doled out almost $2.8 billion to insurers in just the first four months of 2014, when Obamacare launched.
The agency tasked with making the payments hasn’t yet made sure the calculations behind the billions are accurate. An inspector general audit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has found that the administration did not confirm the exact amount it owed each insurer before paying up, putting the billions in federal taxpayer funds at risk.
The problem lies in HealthCare.gov’s unfinished back-end system. The portions of the website which allow insurers to communicate enrollee information with the federal government hasn’t yet been completed and was even less workable in 2014, when the outlays began....
Are Obamacare’s 22 Health Insurance Co-ops Near Financial Collapse?
Ominous signs are proliferating among 22 Obamacare health insurance co-ops of imminent financial collapses that could leave more than a million Americans without coverage, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.
All but one of the federally funded co-ops are experiencing accelerating net losses. President Obama’s signature health care reform program established the co-ops to provide non-profit competition to private sector health insurance providers.
Many of the 22 co-ops could soon follow an Obamacare co-op that defaulted earlier this year, suffering $163 million in operating losses in a single year. That collapse left 120,000 customers without coverage on Christmas Eve....
Someone should have warned them.
The Daily Mail has a heart rending story* about some recent immigrants to the UK who ended up in prison because they didn’t fully understand the local laws and customs. New to the country and in dire need of money, the immigrants set out to use promises of love and commitment to con local Brits out of half of their stuff.
In the case detailed by the Mail the mark (Mrs. Hardman) had recently acquired nearly 400,000 pounds the old fashioned way, in a divorce. After buying a new home for 200,000 pounds, Hardman still had 190,000 pounds left. The new immigrants were able to con her out of 170,000 pounds with false promises of love and commitment, but failed to follow local law and custom when doing so. As a result, the men are now in prison....
NHS chief warns women not to wait until 30 to have baby as country faces a fertility timebomb
One of Britain’s top NHS fertility specialists last night issued a stark warning to women: Start trying for a baby before you’re 30 – or risk never having children.
In a strongly worded letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, consultant gynaecologist Professor Geeta Nargund has also demanded that teenagers are taught about the dangers of delaying parenthood, because of the spiralling cost to the taxpayer of IVF for women in their late 30s and 40s....
The Daily Mail has a heart rending story* about some recent immigrants to the UK who ended up in prison because they didn’t fully understand the local laws and customs. New to the country and in dire need of money, the immigrants set out to use promises of love and commitment to con local Brits out of half of their stuff.
In the case detailed by the Mail the mark (Mrs. Hardman) had recently acquired nearly 400,000 pounds the old fashioned way, in a divorce. After buying a new home for 200,000 pounds, Hardman still had 190,000 pounds left. The new immigrants were able to con her out of 170,000 pounds with false promises of love and commitment, but failed to follow local law and custom when doing so. As a result, the men are now in prison....
NHS chief warns women not to wait until 30 to have baby as country faces a fertility timebomb
One of Britain’s top NHS fertility specialists last night issued a stark warning to women: Start trying for a baby before you’re 30 – or risk never having children.
In a strongly worded letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, consultant gynaecologist Professor Geeta Nargund has also demanded that teenagers are taught about the dangers of delaying parenthood, because of the spiralling cost to the taxpayer of IVF for women in their late 30s and 40s....
Rachel Dolezal goes birther on…herself: “There’s no biological proof Larry and Ruthanne are my parents”
She's seen the birth certificate, but "I haven't had a DNA test"
Rachel Dolezal Wanted To Boycott A Movie Because A White Actor Played Moses [AUDIO]
Rachel Dolezal In Talks For Reality Show
Shocker: Psycho Dolezal Claimed Her Father Was Black Oakland Police Officer
Rachel Dolezal in earlier interview: My black father had three attempts on his life by whites while in the Marine Corps
Nutcase Dolezal on Today Show Claims to Have Identified as Black at Age 5: “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon”
NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims
JUNE 15--The NAACP official who today resigned in the face of evidence that she masqueraded as black once sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman, The Smoking Gun has learned....
Rachel Dolezal: There’s no proof those two white people are my biological parents
Activist: Rachel Dolezal Said White People Can't Talk About Racism
She's seen the birth certificate, but "I haven't had a DNA test"
Rachel Dolezal Wanted To Boycott A Movie Because A White Actor Played Moses [AUDIO]
Rachel Dolezal In Talks For Reality Show
Shocker: Psycho Dolezal Claimed Her Father Was Black Oakland Police Officer
Rachel Dolezal in earlier interview: My black father had three attempts on his life by whites while in the Marine Corps
Nutcase Dolezal on Today Show Claims to Have Identified as Black at Age 5: “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon”
NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims
JUNE 15--The NAACP official who today resigned in the face of evidence that she masqueraded as black once sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman, The Smoking Gun has learned....
Rachel Dolezal: There’s no proof those two white people are my biological parents
Activist: Rachel Dolezal Said White People Can't Talk About Racism
EXCLUSIVE: ‘WE’LL ALL BE DEAD BEFORE CLIMATE CHANGE ORGS ADMIT THEY’RE WRONG’ SAYS MP
...“We pinned them down on this hiatus… they were arguing that yes, there might have been a hiatus, but warming might be going into the ocean, or it could be due to volcanic activity. So we asked at what point would you begin to accept there had been no warming. If there is no warming for five years, or ten years?
“Finally they conceded they would wait fifty years.
“We asked would that be fifty years from now, or fifty years from 1997, when the hiatus started? They said they wouldn’t change their mind for fifty years from now.
“Effectively, we’re all going to be dead before the Royal Society admits they’ve got their facts wrong. There could be absolutely no warming every year for the next fifty years, and the Royal Society would still maintain that climate change is a major problem”....
Climate Wars and the Damage Done to the Credibility of Science
...The IPCC actually admits the possibility of lukewarming within its consensus, because it gives a range of possible future temperatures: it thinks the world will be between about 1.5 and four degrees warmer on average by the end of the century. That’s a huge range, from marginally beneficial to terrifyingly harmful, so it is hardly a consensus of danger, and if you look at the “probability density functions” of climate sensitivity, they always cluster towards the lower end.
What is more, in the small print describing the assumptions of the “representative concentration pathways”, it admits that the top of the range will only be reached if sensitivity to carbon dioxide is high (which is doubtful); if world population growth re-accelerates (which is unlikely); if carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans slows down (which is improbable); and if the world economy goes in a very odd direction, giving up gas but increasing coal use tenfold (which is implausible).
But the commentators ignore all these caveats and babble on about warming of “up to” four degrees (or even more), then castigate as a “denier” anybody who says, as I do, the lower end of the scale looks much more likely given the actual data. This is a deliberate tactic. Following what the psychologist Philip Tetlock called the “psychology of taboo”, there has been a systematic and thorough campaign to rule out the middle ground as heretical: not just wrong, but mistaken, immoral and beyond the pale. That’s what the word denier with its deliberate connotations of Holocaust denial is intended to do. For reasons I do not fully understand, journalists have been shamefully happy to go along with this fundamentally religious project....
...We have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis for society’s respect for scientific endeavour....
ABC News, 'Earth 2100': the Final Century of Civilization?, May 29, 2009
But will it be enough? In 2015, global demand for fossil fuels could be massive and growing, but experts say oil will be harder to find and far more expensive to consume.
"We have no new source of energy on the horizon that's currently capable of being developed on a large enough scale to replace the supply of oil in any near- term framework," says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.
If the cost of gasoline skyrockets, few may be able to afford to maintain the lifestyles to which we've grown accustomed. There may be a mass exodus from the suburbs, as driving gas-fueled cars becomes nearly impossible economically. But will that convince us to change our ways?
"Until we have a crisis of some kind, I don't think we're going to be motivated to make the really deep changes in the way we use energy, the technologies we use, the density of our cities, our travel patterns," says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political science professor and author of "The Upside of Down."
The imagined crises in Lucy's futuristic world come in the forms of earthshaking hurricanes spawned by over-reliance on climate-damaging coal and other nonrenewable resources. What if climate change in our world is actually much closer than we think? Many experts say we have to start seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, or we may pass a point of no return.
America’s Most Advanced Climate Station Data Shows US In A 10-Year Cooling Trend
...Data from America’s most advanced climate monitoring system shows the U.S. has undergone a cooling trend over the last decade, despite recent claims by government scientists that warming has accelerated worldwide during that time.
The U.S. Climate Reference Network was developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide “high-quality” climate data. The network consists of 114 stations across the U.S. in areas NOAA expects no development for the next 50 to 100 years.
The climate stations use three independent measurements of temperature and precipitation to provide “continuity of record and maintenance of well-calibrated and highly accurate observations,” NOAA states on its website. “The stations are placed in pristine environments expected to be free of development for many decades.” In essence, NOAA chose locations so they don’t need to be adjusted for “biases” in the temperature record.
...“We pinned them down on this hiatus… they were arguing that yes, there might have been a hiatus, but warming might be going into the ocean, or it could be due to volcanic activity. So we asked at what point would you begin to accept there had been no warming. If there is no warming for five years, or ten years?
“Finally they conceded they would wait fifty years.
“We asked would that be fifty years from now, or fifty years from 1997, when the hiatus started? They said they wouldn’t change their mind for fifty years from now.
“Effectively, we’re all going to be dead before the Royal Society admits they’ve got their facts wrong. There could be absolutely no warming every year for the next fifty years, and the Royal Society would still maintain that climate change is a major problem”....
Climate Wars and the Damage Done to the Credibility of Science
...The IPCC actually admits the possibility of lukewarming within its consensus, because it gives a range of possible future temperatures: it thinks the world will be between about 1.5 and four degrees warmer on average by the end of the century. That’s a huge range, from marginally beneficial to terrifyingly harmful, so it is hardly a consensus of danger, and if you look at the “probability density functions” of climate sensitivity, they always cluster towards the lower end.
What is more, in the small print describing the assumptions of the “representative concentration pathways”, it admits that the top of the range will only be reached if sensitivity to carbon dioxide is high (which is doubtful); if world population growth re-accelerates (which is unlikely); if carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans slows down (which is improbable); and if the world economy goes in a very odd direction, giving up gas but increasing coal use tenfold (which is implausible).
But the commentators ignore all these caveats and babble on about warming of “up to” four degrees (or even more), then castigate as a “denier” anybody who says, as I do, the lower end of the scale looks much more likely given the actual data. This is a deliberate tactic. Following what the psychologist Philip Tetlock called the “psychology of taboo”, there has been a systematic and thorough campaign to rule out the middle ground as heretical: not just wrong, but mistaken, immoral and beyond the pale. That’s what the word denier with its deliberate connotations of Holocaust denial is intended to do. For reasons I do not fully understand, journalists have been shamefully happy to go along with this fundamentally religious project....
...We have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis for society’s respect for scientific endeavour....
ABC News, 'Earth 2100': the Final Century of Civilization?, May 29, 2009
But will it be enough? In 2015, global demand for fossil fuels could be massive and growing, but experts say oil will be harder to find and far more expensive to consume.
"We have no new source of energy on the horizon that's currently capable of being developed on a large enough scale to replace the supply of oil in any near- term framework," says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.
If the cost of gasoline skyrockets, few may be able to afford to maintain the lifestyles to which we've grown accustomed. There may be a mass exodus from the suburbs, as driving gas-fueled cars becomes nearly impossible economically. But will that convince us to change our ways?
"Until we have a crisis of some kind, I don't think we're going to be motivated to make the really deep changes in the way we use energy, the technologies we use, the density of our cities, our travel patterns," says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political science professor and author of "The Upside of Down."
The imagined crises in Lucy's futuristic world come in the forms of earthshaking hurricanes spawned by over-reliance on climate-damaging coal and other nonrenewable resources. What if climate change in our world is actually much closer than we think? Many experts say we have to start seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2015, or we may pass a point of no return.
America’s Most Advanced Climate Station Data Shows US In A 10-Year Cooling Trend
...Data from America’s most advanced climate monitoring system shows the U.S. has undergone a cooling trend over the last decade, despite recent claims by government scientists that warming has accelerated worldwide during that time.
The U.S. Climate Reference Network was developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to provide “high-quality” climate data. The network consists of 114 stations across the U.S. in areas NOAA expects no development for the next 50 to 100 years.
The climate stations use three independent measurements of temperature and precipitation to provide “continuity of record and maintenance of well-calibrated and highly accurate observations,” NOAA states on its website. “The stations are placed in pristine environments expected to be free of development for many decades.” In essence, NOAA chose locations so they don’t need to be adjusted for “biases” in the temperature record.
Sunday, June 07, 2015
The existence of these billionaires proves Thomas Piketty is wrong about wealth
... 70 percent of those who show up on Forbes’ 2014 list created their own wealth. Nearly three out of every four billionaires, then, are self-made entrepreneurs and innovators, far from being born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
What’s more, this figure is actually up from 1984, when fewer than half were self-made. If Piketty’s theory held any water, we would expect to see the same powerful families dominating the Forbes 400 decade after decade—the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts—with few new entrants....
... 70 percent of those who show up on Forbes’ 2014 list created their own wealth. Nearly three out of every four billionaires, then, are self-made entrepreneurs and innovators, far from being born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
What’s more, this figure is actually up from 1984, when fewer than half were self-made. If Piketty’s theory held any water, we would expect to see the same powerful families dominating the Forbes 400 decade after decade—the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts—with few new entrants....
Stop grovelling to civil servants: Column
...As the public sector has expanded, so has the public's dissatisfaction with it. In 1964, before Lyndon Johnson instituted his Great Society programs, 77% of Americans trusted the government. In October 2013, only 12% of Americans said they were "basically content with the federal government," which was just two points higher than the percentage of Americans who trusted Pakistan. In other words, the government that killed Osama bin Laden is only slightly more popular than the country that harbored him. No wonder government employees have low self-esteem....
...As the public sector has expanded, so has the public's dissatisfaction with it. In 1964, before Lyndon Johnson instituted his Great Society programs, 77% of Americans trusted the government. In October 2013, only 12% of Americans said they were "basically content with the federal government," which was just two points higher than the percentage of Americans who trusted Pakistan. In other words, the government that killed Osama bin Laden is only slightly more popular than the country that harbored him. No wonder government employees have low self-esteem....
Brace yourself for Obamacare sticker shock.
...Health insurers are proposing to raise Obamacare rates more than in the past — some by more than 70 percent — now that they are finally equipped with all the information they need to price those plans....
...Gosh, what happened to that $2500 per year savings we were promised? Same thing that happened to the “if you like your plan/doctor, you can keep it/him.” ...
...Health insurers are proposing to raise Obamacare rates more than in the past — some by more than 70 percent — now that they are finally equipped with all the information they need to price those plans....
...Gosh, what happened to that $2500 per year savings we were promised? Same thing that happened to the “if you like your plan/doctor, you can keep it/him.” ...
Everyone Hates Harvard
...Hedge fund manager John Paulson personally took home nearly $4 billion in 2007 after convincing banks to create securities of sub-prime mortgages he could bet against. Now Harvard, which originally passed on an opportunity to join alum Paulson in his big bet, is also reaping the rewards of the nation's financial crisis as it renames its engineering school the "Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences" after receiving a staggering $400 million donation from Paulson, the largest gift in the university's history. Quartz argues that Paulson's $400 million Harvard donation just reinforces inequality. Author Malcolm Gladwell took to Twitter to voice his distaste (sampling: 1. "It came down to helping the poor or giving the world's richest university $400 mil it doesn't need. Wise choice John!" 2. "If billionaires don't step up, Harvard will soon be down to its last $30 billion." 3. "It's going to be named the John Paulson School of Financial Engineering.") And, in Everyone Hates Harvard, Philip Greenspun notes that even WSJ readers reacted with vitriol to the news. "I would have thought that Paulson would be a hero to market-following WSJ readers," remarks Greenspun, "not a villain."...
...Hedge fund manager John Paulson personally took home nearly $4 billion in 2007 after convincing banks to create securities of sub-prime mortgages he could bet against. Now Harvard, which originally passed on an opportunity to join alum Paulson in his big bet, is also reaping the rewards of the nation's financial crisis as it renames its engineering school the "Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences" after receiving a staggering $400 million donation from Paulson, the largest gift in the university's history. Quartz argues that Paulson's $400 million Harvard donation just reinforces inequality. Author Malcolm Gladwell took to Twitter to voice his distaste (sampling: 1. "It came down to helping the poor or giving the world's richest university $400 mil it doesn't need. Wise choice John!" 2. "If billionaires don't step up, Harvard will soon be down to its last $30 billion." 3. "It's going to be named the John Paulson School of Financial Engineering.") And, in Everyone Hates Harvard, Philip Greenspun notes that even WSJ readers reacted with vitriol to the news. "I would have thought that Paulson would be a hero to market-following WSJ readers," remarks Greenspun, "not a villain."...
Meanwhile in the UK… be sure not to injure your rapist
...“You must not get a product which is made or adapted to cause a person injury. Possession of such a product in public (and in private in specific circumstances) is against the law.” So even in the sanctity of one’s home, the statement seems to suggest that care for violent offenders outweighs the rights of potential victims to be safe and secure against attack....
...“You must not get a product which is made or adapted to cause a person injury. Possession of such a product in public (and in private in specific circumstances) is against the law.” So even in the sanctity of one’s home, the statement seems to suggest that care for violent offenders outweighs the rights of potential victims to be safe and secure against attack....
Scientists May Have Lied To Promote EPA’s Global Warming Agenda
Scientists may have lied about the EPA’s involvement in a recent study put out earlier this year claiming Obama administration regulations on carbon dioxide emissions will save thousands of lives every year.
Emails obtained by the blog JunkScience.com’s Steve Milloy show Harvard University and Syracuse University researchers involved in the study consulted with the EPA while conducting their study, contradicting their previous statements the study was done independently of the agency....
The 97% Cook Consensus – when will Environ Res Letters retract it?
...As Tol explains, the Cook et al paper used an unrepresentative sample, can’t be replicated, and leaves out many useful papers. The study was done by biased observers who disagreed with each other a third of the time, and disagree with the authors of those papers nearly two-thirds of the time. About 75% of the papers in the study were irrelevant in the first place, with nothing to say about the subject matter. Technically, we could call them “padding”. Cook himself has admitted data quality is low. He refused to release all his data, and even threatened legal action to hide it. (The university claimed it would breach a confidentiality agreement. But in reality, there was no agreement to breach.) As it happens, the data ended up being public anyhow. ...
...The hidden timestamps of raters revealed one person rated 675 abstracts in 72 hours, with much care and lots of rigor, I’m sure. It also showed that the same people collected data, analyzed results, collected more data, changed their classification system, and went on to collect even more data. This is a hopelessly unscientific process prone to subjective bias and breaches the most basic rules of experimental design. Tol found the observations changed with each round, so the changes were affecting the experiment. Normal scientists put forward a hypothesis, design an experiment, run it, and then analyze. When scientists juggle these steps, the results influence the testing. It’s a process someone might use if they wanted to tweak the experiment to get a specific outcome. We can’t know the motivations of researchers, but there is a reason good scientists don’t use this process....
@NOAA ‘s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?
...The significance level they report on their findings (.10) is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.
In addition, the authors’ treatment of buoy sea-surface temperature (SST) data was guaranteed to create a warming trend. The data were adjusted upward by 0.12°C to make them “homogeneous” with the longer-running temperature records taken from engine intake channels in marine vessels.
As has been acknowledged by numerous scientists, the engine intake data are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the structure, and as such, never intended for scientific use....
Scientists may have lied about the EPA’s involvement in a recent study put out earlier this year claiming Obama administration regulations on carbon dioxide emissions will save thousands of lives every year.
Emails obtained by the blog JunkScience.com’s Steve Milloy show Harvard University and Syracuse University researchers involved in the study consulted with the EPA while conducting their study, contradicting their previous statements the study was done independently of the agency....
The 97% Cook Consensus – when will Environ Res Letters retract it?
...As Tol explains, the Cook et al paper used an unrepresentative sample, can’t be replicated, and leaves out many useful papers. The study was done by biased observers who disagreed with each other a third of the time, and disagree with the authors of those papers nearly two-thirds of the time. About 75% of the papers in the study were irrelevant in the first place, with nothing to say about the subject matter. Technically, we could call them “padding”. Cook himself has admitted data quality is low. He refused to release all his data, and even threatened legal action to hide it. (The university claimed it would breach a confidentiality agreement. But in reality, there was no agreement to breach.) As it happens, the data ended up being public anyhow. ...
...The hidden timestamps of raters revealed one person rated 675 abstracts in 72 hours, with much care and lots of rigor, I’m sure. It also showed that the same people collected data, analyzed results, collected more data, changed their classification system, and went on to collect even more data. This is a hopelessly unscientific process prone to subjective bias and breaches the most basic rules of experimental design. Tol found the observations changed with each round, so the changes were affecting the experiment. Normal scientists put forward a hypothesis, design an experiment, run it, and then analyze. When scientists juggle these steps, the results influence the testing. It’s a process someone might use if they wanted to tweak the experiment to get a specific outcome. We can’t know the motivations of researchers, but there is a reason good scientists don’t use this process....
@NOAA ‘s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?
...The significance level they report on their findings (.10) is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.
In addition, the authors’ treatment of buoy sea-surface temperature (SST) data was guaranteed to create a warming trend. The data were adjusted upward by 0.12°C to make them “homogeneous” with the longer-running temperature records taken from engine intake channels in marine vessels.
As has been acknowledged by numerous scientists, the engine intake data are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the structure, and as such, never intended for scientific use....
"Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman."
-- Hillary, 2000
EXCLUSIVE: Clinton charity took up to $10 MILLION donation from African church which called homosexuals 'devils' - despite Hillary's support for gay marriage
Hillary Clinton's charity accepted a substantial donation from an anti-gay African church which has likened homosexuals to the Devil, Daily Mail Online can reveal.
The 2016 Presidential candidate took money for her sprawling health nonprofit from the Cameroon Baptist Convention whose official policy is that being gay 'contradicts God's purpose for human sexuality'.
The devout Christian organization has in the past compared being gay to committing incest and human trafficking. Its leaders have also railed against US attempts to promote gay rights in Cameroon.
Despite this, the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board gave between $1million and $10million between 2010 and this year, according to the latest list of donors from the Clinton Health Access Initiative....
Charity watchdog: Clinton Foundation a ‘slush fund’
...The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends....
...On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fundraising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons is on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the foundation....
The cash donations Hillary simply has no answer for
...While Clinton was secretary of state, her department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors. That figure from Clinton’s three full fiscal years in office is almost double the value of arms sales to those countries during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.
The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation. That was a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period....
...As just one of many examples, in its 2011 Human Rights Report, Clinton’s State Department slammed Algeria’s government for imposing “restrictions on freedom of assembly and association,” tolerating “arbitrary killing,” “widespread corruption” and a “lack of judicial independence.”
That year, the Algerian government donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation and the next year Clinton’s State Department approved a one-year 70 percent increase in military export authorizations to the country. The jump included authorizations for almost 50,000 items classified as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment.” The State Department had not authorized the export of any of such items to Algeria the year before....
-- Hillary, 2000
EXCLUSIVE: Clinton charity took up to $10 MILLION donation from African church which called homosexuals 'devils' - despite Hillary's support for gay marriage
Hillary Clinton's charity accepted a substantial donation from an anti-gay African church which has likened homosexuals to the Devil, Daily Mail Online can reveal.
The 2016 Presidential candidate took money for her sprawling health nonprofit from the Cameroon Baptist Convention whose official policy is that being gay 'contradicts God's purpose for human sexuality'.
The devout Christian organization has in the past compared being gay to committing incest and human trafficking. Its leaders have also railed against US attempts to promote gay rights in Cameroon.
Despite this, the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Board gave between $1million and $10million between 2010 and this year, according to the latest list of donors from the Clinton Health Access Initiative....
Charity watchdog: Clinton Foundation a ‘slush fund’
...The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends....
...On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fundraising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons is on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the foundation....
The cash donations Hillary simply has no answer for
...While Clinton was secretary of state, her department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors. That figure from Clinton’s three full fiscal years in office is almost double the value of arms sales to those countries during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.
The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that gave to the Clinton Foundation. That was a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. The 143 percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an 80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period....
...As just one of many examples, in its 2011 Human Rights Report, Clinton’s State Department slammed Algeria’s government for imposing “restrictions on freedom of assembly and association,” tolerating “arbitrary killing,” “widespread corruption” and a “lack of judicial independence.”
That year, the Algerian government donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation and the next year Clinton’s State Department approved a one-year 70 percent increase in military export authorizations to the country. The jump included authorizations for almost 50,000 items classified as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment.” The State Department had not authorized the export of any of such items to Algeria the year before....
Sunday, May 31, 2015
The Female Economy
Women now drive the world economy.
Globally, they control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. Their $13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same period.
...Women make the decision in the purchases of 94% of home furnishings…92% of vacations…91% of homes… 60% of automobiles…51% of consumer electronics...
‘Equal Pay Day’ this year falls on April 8; the next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ will occur on December 20, 2023
...Using annual Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on workplace fatalities by gender for 2012 (and assuming those fatality data will be similar in 2013 – the actual data won’t be available until August) an “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” can be calculated. As in previous years, the chart above shows the significant gender disparity in workplace fatalities in 2012: 4,045 men died on the job (92.3% of the total) compared to only 338 women (7.7% of the total). The “gender occupational fatality gap” in 2012 was considerable — almost 12 men died on the job for every woman who died while working.
Based on the BLS data on occupational deaths by gender, the next “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” will occur almost ten years from now – on December 20, 2023. ...
No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men
...What is wrong and embarrassing is the President of the United States reciting a massively discredited factoid. The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to about five cents. And no one knows if the five cents is a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers. In its fact-checking column on the State of the Union, the Washington Post included the president’s mention of the wage gap in its list of dubious claims. “There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women… make it difficult to make simple comparisons.”...
...Much of the wage gap can be explained away by simply taking account of college majors. Early childhood educators and social workers can expect to earn around $36,000 and $39,000, respectively. By contrast, petroleum engineering and metallurgy degrees promise median earnings of $120,000 and $80,000. Not many aspiring early childhood educators would change course once they learn they can earn more in metallurgy or mining. The sexes, taken as a group, are somewhat different. Women, far more than men, appear to be drawn to jobs in the caring professions; and men are more likely to turn up in people-free zones. In the pursuit of happiness, men and women appear to take different paths. But here is the mystery. These and other differences in employment preferences and work-family choices have been widely studied in recent years and are now documented in a mountain of solid empirical research. By now the President and his staff must be aware that the wage gap statistic has been demolished. This is not the first time the Washington Post has alerted the White House to the error. Why continue to use it? ...
INFOGRAPHIC: Women Control The Money In America ...More women are taking the reins on their finances, holding 60 percent of all personal wealth and 51 percent of all stocks in the U.S., according to Virginia Tech. ...
...At home, the majority of women (90 percent) still control the family's purse strings, from stocking up on household items to having the final say on home and car purchases and health care. ...
Women now drive the world economy.
Globally, they control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. Their $13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same period.
...Women make the decision in the purchases of 94% of home furnishings…92% of vacations…91% of homes… 60% of automobiles…51% of consumer electronics...
‘Equal Pay Day’ this year falls on April 8; the next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ will occur on December 20, 2023
...Using annual Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on workplace fatalities by gender for 2012 (and assuming those fatality data will be similar in 2013 – the actual data won’t be available until August) an “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” can be calculated. As in previous years, the chart above shows the significant gender disparity in workplace fatalities in 2012: 4,045 men died on the job (92.3% of the total) compared to only 338 women (7.7% of the total). The “gender occupational fatality gap” in 2012 was considerable — almost 12 men died on the job for every woman who died while working.
Based on the BLS data on occupational deaths by gender, the next “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” will occur almost ten years from now – on December 20, 2023. ...
No, Women Don’t Make Less Money Than Men
...What is wrong and embarrassing is the President of the United States reciting a massively discredited factoid. The 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to about five cents. And no one knows if the five cents is a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers. In its fact-checking column on the State of the Union, the Washington Post included the president’s mention of the wage gap in its list of dubious claims. “There is clearly a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women… make it difficult to make simple comparisons.”...
...Much of the wage gap can be explained away by simply taking account of college majors. Early childhood educators and social workers can expect to earn around $36,000 and $39,000, respectively. By contrast, petroleum engineering and metallurgy degrees promise median earnings of $120,000 and $80,000. Not many aspiring early childhood educators would change course once they learn they can earn more in metallurgy or mining. The sexes, taken as a group, are somewhat different. Women, far more than men, appear to be drawn to jobs in the caring professions; and men are more likely to turn up in people-free zones. In the pursuit of happiness, men and women appear to take different paths. But here is the mystery. These and other differences in employment preferences and work-family choices have been widely studied in recent years and are now documented in a mountain of solid empirical research. By now the President and his staff must be aware that the wage gap statistic has been demolished. This is not the first time the Washington Post has alerted the White House to the error. Why continue to use it? ...
INFOGRAPHIC: Women Control The Money In America ...More women are taking the reins on their finances, holding 60 percent of all personal wealth and 51 percent of all stocks in the U.S., according to Virginia Tech. ...
...At home, the majority of women (90 percent) still control the family's purse strings, from stocking up on household items to having the final say on home and car purchases and health care. ...
Mrs. Clinton and the 1 Percenters
To be a member of the hated, reviled, filthy, wicked “1 percent,” one needs a household income of about $400,000 a year....
...Sometime National Review contributor Peter Schweizer has a book out this week bearing the straightforward title Clinton Cash, in which he documents the coincidence between the financial contributions of foreign interests to Clan Clinton and favorable treatment by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department. Mrs. Clinton has been doing a fair Elizabeth Warren impersonation of late on the issue of executive compensation, which has led a few critics to point out that at approximately $300,000 an hour, Mrs. Clinton as a maker of speeches out-earns all of the highest-earning American executives on an hourly basis or a daily basis. And we’re talking about Fortune 500 guys, there.
In reality, the average American CEO — the average chief executive — makes a little less than $200,000 a year. Paul Krugman makes more than that for a part-time gig thinking deep thoughts about . . . economic inequality. Which is to say, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton could each work an hour every year and still have an income that would place them well into the “1 percent,” while Mrs. Clinton by herself could work an hour a year and out-earn, by half-again as much, the typical American CEO....
...The city manager of my hometown — the sprawling and urbane metropolis of Lubbock, Texas — makes $235,000 a year, which seems to me much more significant than what the boss makes at IBM or Goldman Sachs. For one thing, there are only 500 Fortune 500 CEOs, but there are a hell of a lot of small-fry city managers, six-figure high-school principals and million-dollar superintendents, $300,000-a-year Philadelphia police detectives, etc. Running parks and recreation in Pawnee, Ind., doesn’t seem like all that high-paying a gig for the fictional Leslie Knope and her gang — but in the real world, it’s a pretty good jump on a 1 percenter’s income....
On the other hand, if you thought that Bell, Calif. — population 35,000 — was overpaying its city manager (at $800,000 a year!) you couldn’t sell your Bell shares or short the hell out of Bell. You had to keep paying, or the sheriff and burly men with guns would eventually come and seize your property. Say what you like about Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t have the power to withhold money from your paycheck or order you to pay up at gunpoint....
Hillary Clinton: Just an Everyday American with a $25 Million Income
Recent news of the Clintons’ $25 million jackpot in 2014 makes it tough for Hillary to push her core campaign theme with a straight face. Indeed, widespread laughter will greet her efforts to champion “everyday Americans” against those who allegedly make too much money. “The deck is stacked for those at the top,” Hillary Clinton said Tuesday, not mentioning that her household income puts her in not just the top 1 percent of tax filers but the top 0.1 percent. “There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker,” Clinton told Iowa voters last month. However, as Sean Davis noted Tuesday at TheFederalist.com, “she did not elaborate on whether there’s something wrong when non-CEOs who run tax-exempt organizations make 380 times more than the typical worker.”...
...Still, as Hillary runs around denouncing rich people, she would be less unintentionally comedic if she did not make 58 times the $434,682 scored by the lowliest 1 percenter....
...The Clintons last year made more than double the earnings of a typical CEO. Even halving their joint income to $12.5 million puts each $800,000 ahead of the AFL-CIO’s average corporate villain....
...USA Today also noted that “the Clintons appear to have put their homes in ‘residence trusts,’ a move that could reduce their estate taxes.” Here again, the Clintons seem to be cutting their tax exposure — this time for when they enter that great real-estate scheme in the sky. That is perfectly legal. However, death-tax avoidance muffles the battle cries of someone who rails against the rich. ...
Report: Big Morocco donation to Clinton foundation
A phosphate export firm owned by the Moroccan government will give the Clinton Foundation a donation of at least $1 million in advance of a May meeting the charity is to host in Morocco, Politico reported Thursday. The gift adds to the Clinton family charity's reliance on contributions from foreign nations as Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to enter the 2016 presidential race....
How foreign donations to Clinton Foundation add up to baggage for Hillary (+video) ...The other major point of contention is the foundation’s longtime practice of accepting contributions from foreign countries. Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to suspend most of those donations while Hillary was secretary of state, but at least one – a $500,000 check from Algeria for Haitian earthquake relief – slipped through the cracks. And the Clintons resumed taking money from foreign governments after Hillary resigned from the Obama administration in early 2013. Saudi Arabia and Norway have each given between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation since its inception, according to the organization’s records....
Foreign governments gave millions to foundation while Clinton was at State Dept
...A review of foundation disclosures shows that at least two foreign governments — Germany and the United Arab Emirates — began giving in 2013 after the funding restrictions lapsed when Clinton left the Obama administration. Some foreign governments that had been supporting the foundation before Clinton was appointed, such as Saudi Arabia, did not give while she was in office and have since resumed donating.
Foundation officials said last week that if Clinton runs, they will consider taking steps to address concerns over the role of foreign donors.
“We will continue to ensure the Foundation’s policies and practices regarding support from international partners are appropriate, just as we did when she served as Secretary of State,” the foundation said in a statement.
Foreign governments had been major donors to the foundation before President Obama nominated Clinton to become secretary of state in 2009. When the foundation released a list of its donors for the first time in 2008, as a result of the agreement with the Obama administration, it disclosed, for instance, that Saudi Arabia had given between $10 million and $25 million....
...In Algeria and Tunisia, rapists can avoid prosecution for raping minors if they marry their victims thanks to Article 326 of the Algerian Penal Code and Article 227 of the Tunisian Penal Code. And thanks to the penal code in Morocco, the severity of punishment for rape depends on whether the woman was a virgin or not. In all three countries, marital rape is not recognized as an offense, and both same-sex sexual relations and consensual extramarital relations are illegal, which can discourage survivors from reporting assaults, for fear they will be in legal trouble themselves.
These legal provisions impede justice for survivors and continue to facilitate incidents of sexual violence, leaving survivors of rape and sexual assault without justice or hope. In March 2012 in Morocco, 16 year-old Amina Filali swallowed rat poison and killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist. No one should face a lifetime with her rapist, just as no one’s virginity “status” should determine justice.
For these reasons, Amnesty has selected the Maghreb region as a focus area in its My Body, My Rights campaign, a global campaign to help ensure everyone has access to their sexual and reproductive rights and enjoys the full spectrum of rights over their bodies.
All people have the right to live in safety. All people have the right to make their own decisions about their bodies, including whether to have children, when to marry, and when and with whom to engage in sexual relations, and the governments of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia must amend discriminatory legislation that gives offenders impunity....
To be a member of the hated, reviled, filthy, wicked “1 percent,” one needs a household income of about $400,000 a year....
...Sometime National Review contributor Peter Schweizer has a book out this week bearing the straightforward title Clinton Cash, in which he documents the coincidence between the financial contributions of foreign interests to Clan Clinton and favorable treatment by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department. Mrs. Clinton has been doing a fair Elizabeth Warren impersonation of late on the issue of executive compensation, which has led a few critics to point out that at approximately $300,000 an hour, Mrs. Clinton as a maker of speeches out-earns all of the highest-earning American executives on an hourly basis or a daily basis. And we’re talking about Fortune 500 guys, there.
In reality, the average American CEO — the average chief executive — makes a little less than $200,000 a year. Paul Krugman makes more than that for a part-time gig thinking deep thoughts about . . . economic inequality. Which is to say, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton could each work an hour every year and still have an income that would place them well into the “1 percent,” while Mrs. Clinton by herself could work an hour a year and out-earn, by half-again as much, the typical American CEO....
...The city manager of my hometown — the sprawling and urbane metropolis of Lubbock, Texas — makes $235,000 a year, which seems to me much more significant than what the boss makes at IBM or Goldman Sachs. For one thing, there are only 500 Fortune 500 CEOs, but there are a hell of a lot of small-fry city managers, six-figure high-school principals and million-dollar superintendents, $300,000-a-year Philadelphia police detectives, etc. Running parks and recreation in Pawnee, Ind., doesn’t seem like all that high-paying a gig for the fictional Leslie Knope and her gang — but in the real world, it’s a pretty good jump on a 1 percenter’s income....
On the other hand, if you thought that Bell, Calif. — population 35,000 — was overpaying its city manager (at $800,000 a year!) you couldn’t sell your Bell shares or short the hell out of Bell. You had to keep paying, or the sheriff and burly men with guns would eventually come and seize your property. Say what you like about Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t have the power to withhold money from your paycheck or order you to pay up at gunpoint....
Hillary Clinton: Just an Everyday American with a $25 Million Income
Recent news of the Clintons’ $25 million jackpot in 2014 makes it tough for Hillary to push her core campaign theme with a straight face. Indeed, widespread laughter will greet her efforts to champion “everyday Americans” against those who allegedly make too much money. “The deck is stacked for those at the top,” Hillary Clinton said Tuesday, not mentioning that her household income puts her in not just the top 1 percent of tax filers but the top 0.1 percent. “There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker,” Clinton told Iowa voters last month. However, as Sean Davis noted Tuesday at TheFederalist.com, “she did not elaborate on whether there’s something wrong when non-CEOs who run tax-exempt organizations make 380 times more than the typical worker.”...
...Still, as Hillary runs around denouncing rich people, she would be less unintentionally comedic if she did not make 58 times the $434,682 scored by the lowliest 1 percenter....
...The Clintons last year made more than double the earnings of a typical CEO. Even halving their joint income to $12.5 million puts each $800,000 ahead of the AFL-CIO’s average corporate villain....
...USA Today also noted that “the Clintons appear to have put their homes in ‘residence trusts,’ a move that could reduce their estate taxes.” Here again, the Clintons seem to be cutting their tax exposure — this time for when they enter that great real-estate scheme in the sky. That is perfectly legal. However, death-tax avoidance muffles the battle cries of someone who rails against the rich. ...
Report: Big Morocco donation to Clinton foundation
A phosphate export firm owned by the Moroccan government will give the Clinton Foundation a donation of at least $1 million in advance of a May meeting the charity is to host in Morocco, Politico reported Thursday. The gift adds to the Clinton family charity's reliance on contributions from foreign nations as Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to enter the 2016 presidential race....
How foreign donations to Clinton Foundation add up to baggage for Hillary (+video) ...The other major point of contention is the foundation’s longtime practice of accepting contributions from foreign countries. Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to suspend most of those donations while Hillary was secretary of state, but at least one – a $500,000 check from Algeria for Haitian earthquake relief – slipped through the cracks. And the Clintons resumed taking money from foreign governments after Hillary resigned from the Obama administration in early 2013. Saudi Arabia and Norway have each given between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation since its inception, according to the organization’s records....
Foreign governments gave millions to foundation while Clinton was at State Dept
...A review of foundation disclosures shows that at least two foreign governments — Germany and the United Arab Emirates — began giving in 2013 after the funding restrictions lapsed when Clinton left the Obama administration. Some foreign governments that had been supporting the foundation before Clinton was appointed, such as Saudi Arabia, did not give while she was in office and have since resumed donating.
Foundation officials said last week that if Clinton runs, they will consider taking steps to address concerns over the role of foreign donors.
“We will continue to ensure the Foundation’s policies and practices regarding support from international partners are appropriate, just as we did when she served as Secretary of State,” the foundation said in a statement.
Foreign governments had been major donors to the foundation before President Obama nominated Clinton to become secretary of state in 2009. When the foundation released a list of its donors for the first time in 2008, as a result of the agreement with the Obama administration, it disclosed, for instance, that Saudi Arabia had given between $10 million and $25 million....
...In Algeria and Tunisia, rapists can avoid prosecution for raping minors if they marry their victims thanks to Article 326 of the Algerian Penal Code and Article 227 of the Tunisian Penal Code. And thanks to the penal code in Morocco, the severity of punishment for rape depends on whether the woman was a virgin or not. In all three countries, marital rape is not recognized as an offense, and both same-sex sexual relations and consensual extramarital relations are illegal, which can discourage survivors from reporting assaults, for fear they will be in legal trouble themselves.
These legal provisions impede justice for survivors and continue to facilitate incidents of sexual violence, leaving survivors of rape and sexual assault without justice or hope. In March 2012 in Morocco, 16 year-old Amina Filali swallowed rat poison and killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist. No one should face a lifetime with her rapist, just as no one’s virginity “status” should determine justice.
For these reasons, Amnesty has selected the Maghreb region as a focus area in its My Body, My Rights campaign, a global campaign to help ensure everyone has access to their sexual and reproductive rights and enjoys the full spectrum of rights over their bodies.
All people have the right to live in safety. All people have the right to make their own decisions about their bodies, including whether to have children, when to marry, and when and with whom to engage in sexual relations, and the governments of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia must amend discriminatory legislation that gives offenders impunity....
Why doctors quit
...As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doctor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies, and lawyers . . . progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.
I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors’ group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”
You may have zero sympathy for doctors, but think about the extraordinary loss to society — and maybe to you, one day — of driving away 40 years of irreplaceable clinical experience....
...As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doctor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies, and lawyers . . . progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.
I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors’ group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”
You may have zero sympathy for doctors, but think about the extraordinary loss to society — and maybe to you, one day — of driving away 40 years of irreplaceable clinical experience....
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...
...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...
[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....
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