Junk Science, the EPA and the Search for Truth

Regular readers of these posts know that I have often accused the Left of not letting the facts of an issue get in the way of their story. This week we have clear evidence of this in the breaking news about an EPA report that was buried because it would have called into question the need for the President's massive climate change bill, barely passed by the house on June 26. 

That bill would saddle U.S. taxpayers with nearly $400 billion in new taxes. It works out to about $3,000 per person annually in new tax burdens. 

There is evidence now of an Environmental Protection Agency  report that shows global warming is nowhere near the threat that the President and the Democrats make it out to be. This report was buried at the instruction of high ranking agency officials. The reason: its public release would have undercut the reasoning behind the President's call for a massive new Cap-and-Tax scheme.

The primary author of the report, Alan Carlin, wrote, in part:

"My view is...there is not currently any reason to regulate carbon dioxide. Global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century."

In other words, the global warming legislation so beloved by the left is unnecessary. In fact, the only justification for the bill is based on outdated science. 

But Mr. Carlin soon received this reply from a high level EPA official, Al McCartland: 

"The (EPA) administrator & the (Obama) administration have decided to more forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for the decision."

In other words, the role of scientists in an Obama administration is not to search for truth but to conjure up spirits from the deep that will justify the President's policies and give him some legal cover to go forward.

You can't make this stuff up.

As the U.S. struggles to recover from recession we stand to lose millions and millions of more jobs because of the unintended consequence of Barack Obama's climate change bill. Companies will flee the tax burdens it creates here and ship jobs to Asian countries whose environmental consciences are not as well formed as the American Left's.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) the ranking Republican on  the Senate's Environmental and Public Works Committee, won't let go of this scandal. We posted yesterday about his diligence on the global warming scam. You should expect to hear more about this scandal as the Senate takes up consideration of the bill. 

This goes beyond a political debate. We're now talking about chavistas in the administration whose mission has morphed from protecting the public on environmental issues to protecting Barack Obama's rear end as global support for cap-and-tax dwindles. Where I come from we call that a crime.

Just thought you might like to know.

Change We Can Really Believe In

You may have missed it, but the House of Representatives late Friday night, under cover of darkness, dutifully but narrowly passed Pres. Obama's climate change bill. The 7-vote margin of victory out of 431 votes cast hardly qualifies as a mandate for the man who is rapidly trying to remake America  before anyone figures it out. 

Pres. Obama ran on a platform of "change you can believe in," and a tall pole in his tent was remediating "global warming" through social and legislative engineering. In this the President is facing one significant problem. He appears to be coming late to the climate change party. For the environmental theory accepted as Gospel truth by the left is (finally) getting called into question more and more each day, according to Kim Strassel's June 29 column in the Wall Street Journal. Examples:

• Just two months ago the Polish Academy of Sciences published a paper calling into question the idea that human beings are responsible for the perceived warming of the earth.
• A poll out shows that only 11% of those in the Czech Republic--including longtime skeptic Pres. Vaclav Klaus--believe in the theory of global warming.
• In France Pres. Nicholas Sarkozy has tabbed scientist Claude Allegre, an early global warming drum beater, as the new minister of industry, even though  Dr. Allegre has since jumped off the climate change bandwagon.
• Last year New Zealand elected a new government. One of its first moves? Suspending the week-old cap-and-tax scam jammed through by the previous government. This is the same cap-and-tax scam the Democrats are trying to jam through Congress.
• Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected last year like Mr. Obama, on a platform that included doing something about man-made warming, has had to shelve his cap-and-tax scheme due to mounting skepticism in his legislature. 
• Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe now counts 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N.'s 2007 climate change Magna Carta. That's the document that legislators the world over are using as their imprimatur to justify taxing their citizens in the name of junk science. Sen. Inhofe's 700 scientists are 13 times the number of scientists who signed on to the U.N.'s document.
• The first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, Joanne Simpson, retired last year and exhaled slowly that she would now be free to speak as a disbeliever in the global warming debate. (For a great look at how scientific academia, which should be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, are patrolled by closed-minded bigots who brook no dissent, rent a copy of Ben Stein's 2008 documentary Expelled.)
• "The Worst Scientific Scandal in History." That's what Dr. Kiminori Itoh of Japan, who once helped author a climate change document for the U.N.,  now calls the theory of man-made global warming.
• Norwegian Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever calls global warming, not science, but "a new religion." 
• A group of 54 esteemed scientists is now calling for the American Physical Society to recant its declaration that the the science of global warming is settled once and for all. Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to print the physicists' letter. (Ben Stein--are you listening?)
• Empirical evidence, not theory, shows that the Earth's temperatures have held steady over the last 8 years, despite increases in carbon dioxide.
• Heaven and Earth, by Australian geologist Ian Plimer debunks the junk science that purportedly provides the evidentiary underpinnings of man-made warming. 

More and more, the world is waking up to this scam called global warming. But while Europe and Asia are providing new thought leadership on this issue, Democrats in the U.S. continue to rely on the pop science of the last decade for justification to de-capitalize the U.S. economy. 

This is not unlike Pres. Obama finding solutions for our economic problems by turning back to the failed Democrat theories of the 1930s and the Depression.

Follow these links and see for yourself. Don't miss an opportunity to share these facts with others and try to turn this junk science steamroller around. For once we should be taking our cues from Europe and the rest of the awakening scientific world. 

Now that would be change we could really believe in!

Just thought you might like to know.

Executive Compensation

Back in February Pres. Obama moved to limit the pay of some Wall Street execs to $500,000. His rational was the Golden Rule: If Uncle is lending you his  gold (well, actually your gold and mine), he gets to make the rules on how it's spent. Fair enough. If you're crazy enough to borrow from a loanshark, you'll do what he says.

But what about limiting pay? Most Obama supporters think its a good idea. I'm not an Obama supporter but I did have the good fortune--or misfortune--of working for five years for investment bankers. These are the very people whose compensation is being called into question. I was stunned at the money these guys would suck out of the company for what appeared to be very little effort. But the company did well. Employees were knowledgeable and hard working, and the money men, while not as hard working, did what money men always do: they borrowed money and moved it around at no personal risk to themselves, creating wealth for the investors and jobs for employees like me. 

I personally invested a little money in the company through the money men and realized a handsome profit when the company was sold. So I guess that made me a money man, too. I did little work with the investment, but realized a return of 300%. Perhaps one of our clerks would think that I too sucked money out of the company for doing nothing. But the money I invested helped the company expand, allowed us to hire more workers, pay them decently and to sell the company for much more than we originally paid for it.

People who believe in wage caps like executive compensation look at earnings as a zero-sum game. If the CEO is making 20 million dollars there will be that much less for the drill press operators. But capital, if used properly, is expansive. Good management creates capital and distributes it in rough proportion to the value of the employee earning it. 

Let's say I'm the CEO of Consolidated Flange Corp. My executive compensation is $50 million. Exhorbitant. But Consolidated Flange is a $5 billion company. My compensation amounts to 1% of the company's value. But if I help the company raise its value a paltry 5%, that's an increase of $250 million. So while I've walked away with $50 million, I've also been responsible for netting the company $200 million that can be used for salaries, expansion, new hires and the like. And I haven't disadvantaged our drill press operators. Because of my work, there is money to raise their salaries as well. 

Tom Cruise is one of the most bankable Hollywood stars. For the second Mission Impossible movie he was paid $75 million. But who would argue that in his career, which has spanned nearly 30 movies, he hasn't returned that investment handsomely for studios, producers exhibitors and other employees? Was any key grip or best boy on one of his sets disadvantaged by his financial success? Doubtful. But you never hear griping that Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington, or Will Smith makes too much money.

For a common-sense understanding of this whole issue of compensation, pick up a copy of Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies. Dr. Sowell is a noted economist, author and columnist and his down-to-earth style breaks down economics into a language non-economists can understand. Economic Facts and Fallacies explodes a number of beliefs long held as Gospel writ, especially by those who favor government-interventionist policies. And it does so without any economic mumbo-jumbo, statistics, graphs or charts. 

When you start looking at compensation as a zero-sum game--where my gains are your losses--then you are flirting with socialism. I say that because to believe in comp limits is to believe that capital is static and limited. But capital is dynamic and expansive and in our system those who create capital are rewarded and those rewards are shared through the whole enterprise.

Just thought you might like to know.

"Go you mighty leader, go, go, go..."

The cheerleaders at state-run media are shaking their pompoms this morning at a new New York Times-CBS News poll that purports shows widespread support for Pres. Obama's planned government takeover of the healthcare sector. No matter how the Democrats spin it, that's what healthcare reform to this crowd is.

True that nearly three-quarters of those polled (895) favored some kind of different healthcare program. But as usual, the administration's media acolytes gloss over the details, lest the facts get in the way of an inflammatory headline. So here are the details that you won't read in The Times or hear from Katie Couric:

• Support for the President's healthcare entitlement program dropped precipitously to only 47% if the respondents felt that the socialized medicine program would raise their own healthcare costs. And we know healthcare costs will rise after the government drives private ensurers and providers alike out of the market, resulting in a need for healthcare rationing . This has been demonstrated in every country that practices socialized medicine.
• Only 32% were not concerned that the Social Democrats planned entitlement would result in rationing.
• Better than half the respondents were worried that the Obama plan would force them to switch healthcare providers
• Only 43% of those touted by the media mandarins as supporters of the Obama plan for socialized medicine were willing to pay even $500 to support the system. And we know the costs would be far higher. Just look at the marginal tax rates in European countries that practice socialized medicine.
• A paltry 28% of the respondents are drinking the President's Kool-Aid about his socialized healthcare plan improving the economy.

All this means that the President's support for nationalizing our healthcare system is, as we used to say, a mile wide and an inch deep.

The New York Times-CBS News poll shows, as polls before it, that Americans are skeptical of the President's reckless claim that you can have the same or better coverage as you have now at a lower cost.

Or, as my mother used to tell me, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Just thought you might like to know.

Free by Divine Right

In the face of the mounting unrest in Iran--the pent-up frustration of thirty years of medieval feudal rule--I was struck today by the President's unequivocal words about government and men:

"The struggle in the world today for the hearts and minds of mankind is based on one simple question: Is man born to be free, or slave? In country after country, people have long known the answer to that question. We are free by divine right."

Unfortunately, those were not the words of President Barack Obama, but of Ronald Reagan, quoted by Andrew Klavan. President Reagan spoke those words 30 years ago about the Soviet Union. Within ten years the USSR had been consigned to what the President called the "ash heap of history," in a final, ironic riposte to the original author of those words, Leon Trotsky.

President Reagan believed in the moral absolutism that freedom always trumped tyranny, and that the historical role of America was as a constantly evolving model and supporter of freedom--from Bunker Hill to Gettysburg to Flanders fields to Omaha Beach and beyond. 

President Obama, enamored of the Thinking Class, believes in the moral relativism of the I'm-okay-you're okay school of Realpolitik. He believes that the historic role of America is talk your way out of problems, racking up Nobel Peace Prizes along the way like 5th grade spelling bee ribbons,  a la Jimmy Carter. We contract out our foreign policy to the feckless United Nations, while the world goes to hell in a bucket. Pres. Obama's answer to Iran has been to show no comfort to the rebels, but to apologize for what he perceives as historic American slights to Islam.

As Iran's feudal lords slowly crush that country's mounting rebellion, and North Korea continues to cross line after line in the sand, we'll see who's approach is more effective in the long run: the moral absolutism of Ronald Reagan or the equivocation of Barack Obama.

My money's on The Gipper. 

Just thought you might like to know.

How to Argue Healthcare Reform with a Liberal

Pres. Obama is once again Candidate Obama, out on the hustings to pitch his healthcare “reform” plan and promising the world to anyone who will listen. His latest whistlestop was Chicago where he tried to entice the AMA into his tent by teasing that he might be open to medical tort reform.

So your friends on the left, informed by what Rush Limbaugh calls the “state-run” media, are going to harangue you about how our healthcare system is so irretrievably broken that Uncle must step in and radically reform it into something approaching the British National Health Service.

Don’t believe it. And to help you inform the debate I’ve put together the following primer on how to debate your lefty friends on the issue of healthcare. This really isn’t too hard. The Left thinks they occupy the high moral ground on this, just as they think they occupy the high moral ground on everything else: terrorism, welfare, the tax code and the climate. And if you think you're more moral, you don't need facts. So, a few factual retorts will send them off to refill their glass of Chablis.  When they trot out the same old unproven assertions, here’s what to say: 

• “46 million people can’t get healthcare coverage.” This is the bromide you’ll hear more than any other. Here’s what to say: “This number doesn’t relate to the healthcare debate. It’s taken from a Census Bureau study several years ago. It’s not an indication of a crisis. The number equates to the number of people uninsured at the exact moment the question was asked, not the number of people who are chronically uninsured. Second, 14 of the 45 million are low-income Americans eligible for government assistance programs like Medicaid, Medicare or the SCHIP program, although most, for whatever reason, choose not to enroll. Third, 28 of the 46 million earn $50,000 and can afford to buy their own insurance but choose not to do so. Fourth, 10 million of those in that survey weren’t U.S. citizens and weren’t eligible at that time for any plan. So you’re left with about 8 million people who are chronically uninsured and need help. That’s a far cry from 46 million, and hardly merits the radical restructuring the President is pushing.”
  
• “But health insurance is so complicated. If the government ran it, it would be much simpler and efficient for all American because it would cut out the middleman—the insurance companies.” Okay. Ask this question: “What does the government do that’s simple and efficient? How simple is it to deal with the IRS?” How efficient is the INS? Then you follow it up with this: “The government’s own Medicare system wastes 30% of every dollar it spends. Medicaid fraud in some states like New York can run 40%. Is this record of government-run healthcare worth expanding? And, oh, by the way, the fact that healthcare coverage is expensive is partly due to the fact that the government caps Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements to providers, who then shift the cost of that care to those of us with private coverage.” Touché.
  
• “Yeah, but if you let the government provide insurance, the private companies would have a low cost competitor that would drive down rates.” Interesting theory, my quiche-eating leftist friend…Here’s what you say: “First of all, one cost driver (you might have to explain cost driver and other free market terms) is the fact that the government’s own inefficient insurance plans—Medicare and Medicaid—cap what Uncle will pay to providers. That means the providers charge us more to make up the difference. With Uncle now instituting a third plan—the euphemistically disguised “public option—we’ll have more inefficiency in the system, which will increase private rates even more. What happens then? Everyday Joes and Janes will be forced out of the private plans and into GovCare. That's because with the private insurers gone, you'll have one option: the public option. And I think if you have one choice it’s not really called an option. It’s called a monopoly. Or, in this case, socialized medicine. Oh, by the way, monopolies can charge whatever they want.
  
• “OK, Mr. Factoid, but the government has already said that it will pay for preventive care programs which we all know keep the cost of healthcare down.” At this point, you shake your head slowly back and forth, tracing little circles in the condensation on the outside of your beer bottle. Then you say: “Let me help you with this. Actually, they don’t. It’s been 15 years since the government ordered that manufacturers place nutrition information on packaged foods, so that Americans could choose healthier foods. Since then Americans have become fatter than ever. It’s been more than 40 years—two generations—since the government connected smoking and bad health, and started spending billions of your tax dollars on smoking cessation programs, yet people still smoke. And by the way, some of the healthcare crises that the government declares, as a way to use your tax dollars for “prevention,” are based on junk science. The government’s own metrics for determining obesity are flawed. What do professional quarterback Tom Brady, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and actors Brad Pitt and Matt Damon have in common? If you use the government’s own calculations, they’re all obese. So there are no real facts to show that government prevention programs really work, because their science is often shoddy—using research to justify a conclusion they started with. They should really stay out of the prevention business.”
  
• “But healthcare costs so much….” Ignore the plaintive whining as the case for socialized medicine becomes undone. Place your hand gently on the shoulder of your leftist friend, and say quietly, “But Muffy, what doesn’t cost more these days? You’re right; 50 years ago your great-grandfather spent about $500 on healthcare. Today we all spend a lot more. Back then great-grandpa bought what was called major medical. It was catastrophic insurance, basically. Now we expect insurers to provide preventive care: dental cleanings, eye exams, colonoscopies, and mammographies. Compare that to your car insurance. You’re insured if you drive into someone else’s car or cause an accident or injure someone. Imagine what it would cost if the insurance company had to cover oil changes, front end alignments or tune-ups. I'll cop to healthcare costing more, but think what you get for it. Over the last 50 years the death rate from heart disease has gone down 50%. In fact in the last ten years or so, it’s gone down 22 percent. So it’s not an issue of cost; it’s an issue of cost benefit.”
  

 The good news is that you might even change some minds, although that’s doubtful. It’s more likely that you’re lefty friends will begin to fear what’s happened to you. Right wing thought control. Kiss off that invitation to the country club soiree. The neighborhood barbeque? Forget it. But when you have to wait six months for a throat culture, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you were right. 

Just thought you might like to know.

 

Obama's "Public Option"

The healthcare reform debate is heating up and we’re going to start hearing a lot about how we lag behind other countries in the access quality and cost of our healthcare. One country that is pointed out to us from time to time as a shining example is Canada. Maybe it’s because it’s closer to us than France, the U.K. or Germany. But the America-is-always-wrong crowd likes to point to Canadian healthcare as one model we should imitate. 

As I write this an outbound call center recording is laying down a message on my voice mail telling me that my Republican congressman is in the tank for the big drug companies and is trying to water down Pres. Obama’s plan for “public option” healthcare. You’ll be hearing a lot about “public option” healthcare in the next few weeks. “Public option” is a phrase conjured up by the slickie boys in the White House that the tested well with focus groups.  It sounds more benign than its real name: socialized medicine. 

Well, Canada’s had the “public option” for many years. So before we rush to judgment on healthcare reform, let’s take a look at how that “public option” is working out with our northern neighbors: 

1. According to a 2008 study in Lancet Oncology  five-year cancer survival rates are actually higher in the U.S. than in Canada. An American man has a 20% better chance of surviving cancer than his counterpart in Europe, for example. And if you’re a 50-year old man diagnosed with prostate cancer in the U.K., it’s a death sentence.
   
2. A joint American-Canadian study shows that Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses than Canadians.
   
3. This “embrace” of government-run health care is motivated in part by a perception that poorer people in the U.S. are denied access to quality care. But today 14 million Americans already have access to quality care through Medicaid, Medicare, and the S-CHIP programs. In fact, a 2007 article in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy concluded that the healthcare gap between rich and poor is greater in countries like Canada that practice socialized medicine than in the U.S.

 These are facts that the President's Beltway brownshirts don't want you to know, but which even governments who run healthcare are starting to realize. In 2005 Canada’s Supreme Court invalidated the public healthcare monopoly in the Province of Quebec. Between 2006 and 2008 the Province of Ontario outsourced 160 emergency neurosurgeries, according to Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute.  Where did the Ontario Health System send these patients for treatment? To The United States of America.

 In addition, to exporting patients, the Canadian system exports doctors to the U.S. My own mother received excellent care in her later years from a Canadian émigré doctor who became fed up with the problems with Canadian socialized medicine. But if you’re Canadian this means fewer doctors. And fewer doctors mean longer waits for treatment and bureaucratic rationing of healthcare.

 Healthcare reform will be the most contentious issue we face over the next year. If you are a Democrat enacting Pres. Obama’s healthcare proposal will be the Holy Grail—the final step in the creation of an American Social Democracy on the order of France or Germany. If you are a Republican it will be the most expensive entitlement in the history of the country—and the one that everyone admits will never be undone.

  

So let’s make this an informed debate. Whether you're liberal or conservative, this is too important an issue to be decided by focus groups, lobbyists or slick Beltway consultants. If we’re going to play follow the leader and mimic the failing healthcare systems of other countries all Americans should be aware of the consequences. Know the facts before you line up behind a “public option” that isn’t an option at all.

 Just thought you might like to know.

Welcome to American Leyland Motor Car Co.

If you're a car guy old enough to have voted for or against Jimmy Carter you know the name British Leyland. British Leyland was a car company created in the 1960s and essentially run by the British government during its dalliance with socialism.

The Labour government created British Leyland in 1968 though the shotgun marriage of two British car companies--one profitable and one not so much. By forcing Leyland Motor Co. to marry its ugly cousin, British Motor Holdings, Prime Minister Harold Wilson assured the destruction of both along with the British automotive gene pool. Government intervention in the auto industry resulted in poor build quality, poor management and poor cars, to which I can personally attest.

As a young owner of a British Leyland product I remember the night my engine inexplicably burst into flames. I also remember trying to downshift over some railroad tracks and watching the shifter disappear into the gearbox, stranding me on the tracks.

By 1973 the resulting mutant, British Leyland, was nationalized by the government in a last ditch effort to save it. Didn't work. Britain once produced a stable of marques known the world over. Today, thanks to the heavy hand of government Britain is no longer a significant producer of cars.

Jaguar? Sold to Ford, then to Tata Motors, an Indian manufacturer, in the final blow to colonialism.

Triumph? Gone.

Mini? Made by BMW today.

Rover? Austin Healy? Along with MG now made by Nanjing Motors in China.

I think of this when I think of the U.S. government's ill-advised nationalization two thirds of the domestic American automobile industry--Chrysler and General Motors. The parallels are stark.

A cautionary tale.

Just thought you might like to know.