The New Clarion

Well, they’ve done it. According to this Washington Times report, the US Senate passed the hate crime legislation that was attached to the DOD appropriations bill. The Senate is supposed to be the more deliberative, more cerebral, more intellectual of the two congressional bodies. HAH! What a joke! As I wrote in a letter to Senator Carl Levin; “Hate is an emotion, it is insane to try and outlaw emotions. To do so is to open wider the door to censorship.”

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Dr. Paul Hsieh wrote a great essay on how the Massachusetts experiment in Universal Health Care was wrong for Massachusetts and is still wrong for America. His essay by that title was printed in the Objective Standard and can be read on line here. On June 25th, Sandy Szwarc at JunkfoodScience reports a few more details on the disaster that is the Massachusetts plan and government provided health care in general by looking at the VA. This is the moral policy of government enforced altruism at its clearest and the epistemology of collective subjectivism.

When applied to medicine, the collectivist mentality doesn’t see real individual human beings. They only see groups and try to formulate one size fits all treatments for these groups. In my essay on mass preventive medicine I wrote:

“It is important here to understand how these collectivists think. By way of an analogy, collectivists see a barrel of 300 apples, (or 300 million people) and notice that 1 in 50 are bad. They see doctors treat each bad apple individually and return them to health. They see that the entire population has been improved. They wish to be as beneficial to mankind as those doctors are. But they seek a shortcut. Instead of treating individual apples to make them better, they look only at the whole population and dream of what it would be like to prevent those 6 apples from going bad. This would certainly be better for all of applekind wouldn’t it?

Studies are done and a ‘socially acceptable’ range of sizes and colors for healthy apples is politically established. All apples must conform to these new standards for their own good. There is only one problem with this behavior on the part of apple authorities. It ignores the nature of apples. According to this web site, there are about 7500 varieties of apples each having its own nature. It’s obvious that if any one-size-fits-all program of preventive medicine won’t work with apples, it sure as hell won’t work with humans. But this kind of thinking is what collectivists want to force or see forced on the public. Only this time the ‘public’ does mean every individual.

But the truth is they don’t care about those 6 apples, or the 294 others whose forced sacrifices are now required. The real ideal of the collectivists is sacrifice, the sacrifice of everyone to everyone all the time. And the tool that will help them achieve this goal is mass preventive medicine as permanent government policy.”

As Dr. Hsieh and Ms. Szwarc have shown, the Massachusetts experiment proves without a doubt that universal health care does not work and cannot work because it is based on false premises mainly, that someone’s good can be achieved by the forced sacrifices of others.

So if the Massachusetts failure is so obvious, why is Obama ignoring it and still insisting on implementing it nationally? Because whether it works or not is irrelevant. It does not matter to collectivists that people will not be helped in fact. It does not matter that people will be hurt. All that matters to a collectivist is that the ritual of sacrifice be performed. In his mind, good can only be achieved through sacrifice. There is no other way and no other way will be considered.

I heard that after the rule of FDR and Truman, Republicans regained power and one of their slogans was “Had enough?” We are about to get another dose of ‘enough’.

(For more info on the subject of universal health care I highly recommend the blog of FIRM, Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine.)

The National Summit on the economy held at the Renaissance Center here in Detroit has ended on a sad note, provided by Nolan Finley, editor of the slightly conservative Detroit News. In his editorial Mr. Finley laments the fact that nobody seems to care about business and industry any more:

“Since January, corporate America has been a pariah in Washington. Business executives are saddled with the blame for the nation’s collapse, and no one in charge is much interested in hearing their ideas for fixing things. Corporate chiefs are the new disenfranchised class.

“They’ve been steamrolled by the popular express,” says Lou Anna Simon, president of Michigan State University.

And that’s a tragedy. Because there were some solid, common-sense solutions for reviving America put on the table this week in Detroit. The brain power gathered in the RenCen’s silos could have moved a mountain, if anyone had been listening.
“

Well, all true. But why hasn’t Mr. Finley’s editorial pages been championing those ideas and fixes? If the auto execs have been ‘steamrolled’ by the popular press, well, isn’t his Detroit News part of that press? And if nobody is listening, well, why aren’t they? Could it be all those past editorials claiming that some taxes, some emission regulations, some fuel economy regulations, some labor regulations and other government mandates were noble and virtuous goals, but we mustn’t over do it by trying to be too noble and virtuous. Could it be that people no longer believe that it’s virtuous to take poison with their food? He laments further:

“Business doesn’t matter in the upside-down world in which we live. Government has all the answers, all the money and all the muscle. Critical decisions are being made about the future of industry without the input of industrialists.

In a heartbeat we’ve moved from a nation that worships entrepreneurship, innovation and the freedom to succeed to one that craves the false security of an economy carefully contained by the government.”

Mr. Finley is wrong. The government doesn’t have all the answers. It doesn’t have any except the one that is available to all savages-physical force. Mr. Finley has never learned that once you give the government ‘all the muscle’, it doesn’t need answers and can counterfeit as much money as it wants (and is now doing). But what about the false security of a planned society? Who advocated that? Could it be all those editorials proclaiming Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Welfare State to be noble and well-intentioned-but we mustn’t allow ourselves to be extremely noble? Is it any wonder nobody is listening to such arguments?

I don’t know about other industries but I don’t think there are any auto CEOs who even know how to defend their industries or their rights. These guys are very submissive and ineffective now:

“The CEOs acknowledged their diminished status and the danger of making the word “corporate” as pejorative as communist was 60 years ago, particularly for a nation that must encourage its youth to become engineers, entrepreneurs and executives if it hopes to avoid becoming the servant of more enlightened economies.

“We’re (sic) got to make it cool again to be in business,” Ford CEO Alan Mulally said. “Industry is the source of all wealth creation for everybody.”

While that last sentence is profoundly true, look what Mr. Mulally is appealing to, feelings ! Never mind appealing to anyone’s mind, their reason, or their own moral and constitutional right to make the cars they want to make with the kind of fuel efficiency and emissions people are willing to pay for.
No. We must figure out a way to make life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the prosperity it brings, ‘cool’. In a culture where sacrificial emotions take precedence over reason, the more consistent emotionalists will prevail. That’s why Obama, Pelosi and Reid are now in charge.

Mr. Finley also has a blog where he informs that Michigan Sen Debbie Stabenow got a lesson in free markets at the summit:

“In the most polite way possible, Thomas d’Aquino, the chief executive of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, schooled U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan on how free markets work.

In their panel at the National Summit on economics in Detroit, d’Aquino warned against allowing “Buy American” sentiments to morph into protectionist policies.

Stabenow followed by saying she supports free trade as long as the playing field is level — the anti-traders’ favorite defense. Then she ticked off the list of protectionist ideas she advocates, along with a call for massive government spending on research and development.”

Again, Mr Finley doesn’t grasp that our political leaders aren’t interested in free trade but only hanging on to power over us. Auto workers have a lot more votes than businessmen so businessmen must be sacrificed for the workers. A non-sacrificial way of life–laissez faire capitalism–is alien to all our political leaders and evidently, most editors.

None have learned that “In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.”–Ayn Rand in ‘The Anatomy of Compromise’ in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

How not to defend free markets is once again demonstrated in the 6/02/09 Detroit News in an op-ed by Oskari Juurikkala, an adjunct scholar at the Acton Institute of Grand Rapids, Mi., a think tank devoted to the ‘study of religion and liberty.’ It’s the same conservative argument calling for less controls and regulations but this time it’s because:

“Human motivation is too complex to be controlled by policymakers.”

Well, it’s true that humans are complex beings. But it is not true that this is a good reason for humans to avoid authoritarian government. It makes no sense to say that some complex beings shouldn’t dictate to other complex beings because of their complexity. Presumably, if humans were more simple, dictatorship would be practical. Mr. Juurikkala continues:

“In a recent seminar on the financial crisis in Finland, a capital markets partner argued that the tightening regulation of financial markets has fostered a mentality in which market participants only comply with rules when necessary and think that anything is acceptable as long as it is not expressly forbidden.”

This is partly true. Regulations do create a mindset to meet regulatory requirements, not a good reputation’s requirements, and no more. But it isn’t the “tightening” of regulations that does it. It’s the existence of the regulations themselves that is the cause. Here we see that the author believes regulations are ok as long as we don’t ‘tighten’ them. This is like saying that you can get better motivation from your slaves if you don’t put too many chains on them, though chains are necessary. A chainless society is evidently alien to the author. Also missing is any recognition that regulations represent initiatory force while objective laws, intended by the founders, represent retaliatory force. The theme of the article is how best to manage reward and punishment in order to keep the producers producing? The next sentence:

“In “Not Just for the Money,” economist Bruno Frey explains why. The use of monetary incentives and threats of punishment crowds out other motivations, he writes.”

What other motivations?

“For example, giving monetary compensation to a child for doing household chores is likely to result in decreasing contributions made without compensation. Similarly, given that some university professors work harder than others, imposing strict working hour regulations often will provoke better workers to reduce their efforts.

This is what Frey calls the hidden cost of reward or regulation: When people feel they are being forced to act in a certain way, they have less motivation to do the right thing by themselves.”

Notice that it’s not a matter of people actually being forced to act in a certain way, but a matter of people feeling like their being forced. So while we can force people to do what is right, we don’t want them to feel forced. We need to convince them they still have some freedom to choose to do the right thing.

The evasions and contradictions in this op-ed are many. Consider this sentence: “Human motivation is too complex to be controlled by policymakers.” with this one:

“Is lighter regulation the solution to economic crises? It depends. Some over-the-counter financial derivatives are practically unregulated, so there is nowhere to cut regulation. It might be more appropriate to cover such clear gaps in existing rules in a principled manner so as not to lead people to the temptation of recklessness.”

The author has endorsed every argument used by the statists to destroy free markets but wants a kinder, gentler destruction.

I have posted here before about how environmentalists are anti-human life. Another example of same is found in the May edition of Ward’s AutoWorld in an editorial by editor Drew Winter titled “Criticism of Tata Nano Wrong Headed.”

For the uninformed (like me) Mr. Winter writes:

“The Tata Nano, a tiny car with average fuel economy of 55 mpg (4.3 L/100 km).
Priced at $2,500, it is the world’s cheapest car and designed specifically to give South Asia’s low-income families a safer, all-weather alternative to a motorcycle or scooter, currently the only “family car” millions can afford.”

Evidently, most Indians ride motorcycles or scooters which results in over 100,000 deaths and 2 million injuries per year. This car might alleviate that. But who is attacking the development of this car? Some fringe eco-activists? Nope. One of the enviro leaders at the UN.

“And yet, many environmentalists who profess to be on a mission to save mankind are condemning this new device as an “environmental disaster” they would like to wish out of existence. Chief U.N. climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri has said “I am having nightmares” about it. Many other green groups also lament its debut.”

Mr. Pachauri is also the lead scientist at the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which has been, since 1990, selling the notion that global warming will lead to disaster for life on Earth and is all man’s fault which my own two US Senators Debbi Stabenow and Carl Levin bought.

Mr. Winter reports that demand for the Nano is expected to exceed supply and this means:

“It is exactly this popularity that critics from green groups — 100% of whom we can assume do not have to drive their children to school on a scooter — fear. They are afraid the Nano will become so popular it will spark an industrial revolution, such as Henry Ford’s Model T did in the U.S.
In other words, demand for the Nano will soar; leading to more factories being built, creating more jobs, which in turn will create more demand for cars, accelerating India’s production of greenhouse gases. The Nano will create progress. And gosh, that will be terrible.”

He properly condemns this enviro attitude:

“Unfortunately, this contemptible viewpoint, spewed from comfortable middle-class lodgings in the U.S. and Western Europe, has not received the heaping dose of ridicule it deserves. In the worst kind of cultural elitism imaginable, environmentalists argue that in their noble war on global warming, tens of thousands of traffic deaths annually in the developing world are acceptable casualties.

This is an utterly unacceptable position to take, no matter what. The birth of the Nano is an historic event that needs to be celebrated, and environmentalists need to reevaluate their rhetoric and game plan.”

There is of course, no chance they will reevaluate their game plan. Although I won’t be buying a Nano in the forseable future (I prefer something of substance between me and whatever is going to run into me), I’m happy to see such an objective, rational argument in a trade journal.

Evidently, some eco nuts ran into reality. Billy Beck at Two-Four reports that:

“An expedition team which set sail from Plymouth on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free trip to Greenland have been rescued by an oil tanker.”

They just don’t get it.

Update; corrected typo

The Monday Detroit News editorial page has an op-ed by Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, titled “Arlen Specter’s switch will haunt GOP.”

Mr Barone claims that the cry of ‘good riddance’ in many conservative circles is ‘wrong headed’ because he (Specter) voted for nomination of Supreme court Justices Thomas, Roberts and Alito, was for the Iraq ‘surge’ and opposes the union card check legislation. All this means is that Specter is a mixed bag of contradictory ideas. He voted with the liberal Dems often.

But Mr. Barone’s pet peeve seems to be his disdain for principled ideas. He laments the fact that Sen James DeMint of South Carolina last Monday told Specter:

“Specter decided to defect after Sen. James DeMint of South Carolina told him Monday that he planned to support Toomey. “I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs,” DeMint said.”

I don’t know much about Mr. Demint but if he is earnest I admire his call for consistency. Anyway, Mr. Barone responded with:

“DeMint may get his wish. A party in decline should adapt its basic philosophy to new policies and positions to win over voters, rather than stand on principle and expel heretics. “

This means that a party in decline needs to abandon principles and adopt its policies according to whatever political winds happen to be blowing at any given moment. He doesn’t understand that trying to be many things to many people is precisely why the Republicans are out of power. It can’t be done.

But conservatives like Mr. Barone make the mistake of thinking that that’s bow the Dems acquired their power, by trying to be everything to everyone. It isn’t. The Dems are in power because they have been loyal to their core principles: in politics, collectivism which holds that there are no individual rights, that the individual is the property of what ever collective he belongs to; in ethics, sacrifice, the surrender of individual values for the sake of some collective (social) need. What the conservatives don’t see is that this collectivist/altruist ideology is hidden behind a facade of pragmatism. They pretend not to be ideologues but they are.

What troubles me is that the Republicans will not be able to commit themselves to individual rights until they commit to principled thinking and abandon pragmatism and the Michael Barones of the world.

I just drove home from babysitting my one year old granddaughter and heard on the car radio that Republican Senator Arlen Specter has joined the Democrat Party. This does not shock me in any way.

According to this CBS report:

“I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate — not prepared to have that record decided by that jury, the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate,” Specter said.

In other words, to hell with those who elected him. Staying in power is more important. He also said that his political philosophy was more in line with the Dem Party than the Repubs. Certainly no surprise there. Obviously the present power and control of the Democratic Party seems irresistible to him especially if in his meeting with Obama he got a promise that there would be no Dem opposition in 2010.

The left media is giddy with reports that this is some kind of death blow to the Republican Party. I doubt it is that serious but I really don’t care if it is. The Republican Party no longer stands for anything. They only want to oppose Democrats for the sake of gaining power.

I doubt that this will be any kind of wake up call for the R-Party either. Likely, they will conclude that they haven’t been religious enough, or anti-business enough, or compassionate enough or some other such nonsense. Look for them to try and take over the upcoming tea parties and champion the anti-tax, anti-nationalization feelings therein.

I do think now would be a good time to send lots of letters to Republicans letting them know that they are out because they will not ruthlessly champion individual rights. They routinely go along with the Democrats philosophy that the needs of some trump the rights of others. IOW, they don’t know how to advance the moral argument for capitalism and as long as they don’t they can stay out of power.

This being the week of Earth Day, itself a product of junk science, I thought two more examples of same would be in order.

Junkfood Science has a remarkable post by the name ‘Rejection of science squared’. What’s amazing is that any paper or journal would be willing to publish such a speculative, assumptive, wishful thinking article. Or that somebody was willing to finance a study like this. I don’t think palm readers and clairvoyants use that many weasel words.
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Watts Up With That? (WUWT) has a guest post by Steven Goddard on the contradictory reports of the climate change alarmists which says in part:

Last weeks’ top Antarctic AGW story was :

Antarctic ice melting faster than expected

due to CO2, of course.

This week the #1 story is :

Antarctic ice spreading

but the increase in size is due to “stratospheric ozone depletion” which is of course also caused by man-made gases.

Except that’s not quite true as Mr. Goddard explains.

“Oh, and one minor problem with the ozone hole theory ”The ozone hole occurs during the Antarctic spring, from September to early December” – but the positive ice anomaly occurred during the autumn and winter (March through July) as represented by the red line below.”

The enviros will always find some reason to blame man for every problem real and imagined. How can it be otherwise since man is so evil and depraved by nature? Sigh. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Earth Day is also the birthday of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. In fact, the first earth Day was picked to be on his 100th birthday. Not much love for mankind there.

Environmentalism today is more about misanthropy and human sacrifice than it is about saving nature. Saving nature is only the rationalization behind a more insideous motive, hatred for man’s mind. Here are some quotes from the horses’ mouths.

At the website Environmentalism.com are these three quotes, (with a link to even more):

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.

—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.

—Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

I know scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line … we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth…. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. (source: “Mother Nature as a hothouse flower,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 22, 1989, p. 10.)

—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The above quotes show that the leaders of environmentalism place little or no value on human life and do not regard man as part of nature. But this is not just a small insignificant sample. There are many more at for example the conservative site Free Republic. Such as this quote which reveals the real inner motive of those who hate man:

“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion — guilt-free at last! — Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue”

Such is the power of guilt. It turns men against their own species, against themselves.

And how do you get men to accept an unearned guilt? By referring to nature not as nature but as ‘the environment.’ Get them to think they are responsible not only for their own environment but for everyone else’s as well. Don’t talk about the fact that environments are regional and local. Get them to accept the idea that their environment is global and therefore a man in Michigan is responsible for environmental damage in Peru. Make him feel guilty for that damage and he will not resist your demand that he atone for his guilt by handing over his money and freedom, or to support government policies that accomplish the same thing.

Earth Day is hear once again and so are the calls for human sacrifices. Humans, we are told, must give up their technological way of life for a more austere one in order to save the planet. But saving the planet is not the real goal of the environmentalists. Human sacrifice is the real political and moral goal. Not sacrifice to achieve any desired end, but sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, sacrifice as a way of life. The thing to be sacrificed is man’s mind.

Notice how any suggestion that modern technology be used to save nature is met with indignant hostility. Observe that the peasants of Africa are not required to make sacrifices. They are already right where the enviros want them, close to nature–starving–and are already sacrificing the only thing they have to sacrifice, their future.

Environmentalists hold that all living organisms have an absolute, unconditional right to exist, except one–man. It is only man that must sacrifice his nature, his way of life, his happiness, his survival to all the plants, bugs and creatures of the planet. Man has no right to survive according to his own unique nature–which is by means of his reasoning mind. Make no mistake about it, the assault on man is an assault on reason. The protection of nature is only the excuse, the rationalization they use to attack man’s mind.

Earth Day should be renamed ‘Man Day’ to celebrate man’s mastery and therefore control over his environment. If the enviros really were concerned about nature they would champion laissez-faire capitalism, the only system that can provide for the survival of both man and nature.

The Sunday 4/5/09 Detroit Free Press has three editorials,here, here, and here, that are chickens coming home to roost. They are titled
>”Michigan must take long view to fix growing gap between revenues, spending.”
>”How the budget soared out of reach”
>Emergency cuts are no long-term fix”
and each one calls for long-term thinking and decries all the concrete bound, range of the moment fixes of the past. For example:

Even in this time of economic crisis — especially in this time of economic crisis — lawmakers and the governor must summon the fortitude to make long-range fixes.

And:

Finally — and this is truly Step One — Lansing has to make long-term projections and honor them. Officials can visualize the tightrope walk or use another mental image, but they have to budget as if every decision will make a difference 10 years from now — because it does.

And finally:

In other words, emergency cuts, extreme as they may be, rarely represent the kind of change that would bring the budget into balance over the long haul.

I left comments in the online edition one of which said:

“This is the third editorial in the Freep today calling for long-term or long view thinking. And properly so. Long range thinking is desperately needed today nationally not just in Michigan. But thinking long-term is precisely what pragmatism discourages. The father of the economic policies that President Obama is currently deploying, John Keynes, once remarked, in response to a question on the long-term consequences of his policies, “In the long run, we’re all dead”, in other words, who cares about the long-term? It is this short term thinking that the media has adopted in its advice to politicians, and to us, on how to fix things. A principled method of thinking is sorely needed but before the press can adopt one it must realize that pragmatism is a disastrous method of thinking and abandon it.”

And:

All three editorials taken together are screaming “Pragmatism doesn’t work”, yet the authors don’t seem to to see it that way.

This is the dead end of pragmatism and what it will do to a human mind. A pragmatist, looking at its disastrous results, can only stamp his feet and insist that short-term thinking must be made to have good long-term results. How? Somehow.

The 3/27/09 Detroit News editorial section carried its usual Friday commentary by Frank Beckmann, a conservative and host of the Frank Beckmann Show on WJR Radio 9 am to noon daily. Today’s column gives a glimpse as to why I probably won’t be voting for Republicans anytime soon. It’s because they share the same values as the Dems.

The commentary is titled “What price should Hoekstra pay for Constitution-shredding vote?” Peter Hoekstra is a U.S. Representative from Holland Michigan and a Republican. Mr. Beckmann’s beef is that:

“Our U.S. Constitution is under attack from within after the U.S. House cast a resounding 328 yes vote to punish AIG executives after the fact for retention and other bonuses they received while being bailed out with federal tax dollars. Slapping a confiscatory tax on the bonuses allowed a majority of members of Congress to make populist points and feign outrage.

More seriously, the effort to reclaim the money, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appeared to be in direct contravention of our most sacred document, the Constitution, by imposing a tax retroactively and only on a tiny, specific sector of private citizens.

The first Article — Section 9 — of the Constitution prohibits Congress from passing a “Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law,” which is what Pelosi’s AIG tax punishment would have done.

It should surprise no one that Pelosi, who recently declared illegal aliens to be patriots, would strong-arm fellow Democrats for support.

More surprising is that 85 Republicans would lock arms with her in approving the bill, including noted conservative U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland.”

So why did he vote with the Dems?

“The congressman explained that a vote against taxing the AIG bonuses would have been used against him in future political races, while a vote in favor of the tax may not be constitutional but has no chance of advancing through the Senate and on to President Barack Obama.”

How’s that for a principled pragmatic stand! In other words, he wanted to join in on the lynching of the businessmen because he thought it was the pragmatic thing to do regarding his election chances.

Mr. Hoekstra is expected to announce his candidacy for Michigan governor on Monday. So that means that he has to be at his pragmatic best I suppose. But it isn’t just Mr. Hoekstra that dismays me. It’s the 85 U.S. House Republicans that fell in lockstep with the Dems. No matter how bad the Dems get, I don’t see the Republicans as a viable replacement anytime soon and see no reason to vote for any of them.

One of the reasons that government seems to be on a fast track to total power over all of us via the politicization of science is that John Q Public has little knowledge of basic science. By way of Junkscience.com of March 16th is a post which links to Softpedia and an article on the sad state of public knowledge. The site’s science editor Tudor Vieru writes:

“According to a series of recent surveys among the general population, most US citizens seem to be unable to pass even the most basic science literacy test, a trend that has got experts very concerned. Because individuals lack this ability, they may find it very difficult to interpret scientific articles, and some may even misconstrue presented pieces of evidence and turn them into something they are not, like in the case of global warming. As people miss even the most basic background in science, they cannot actually emit an informed opinion, and the trend is growing with each passing year, experts note.”

I would blame a lot of this on the anti-conceptual philosophy of education that has gripped American schools for about 50 years I would estimate.Some of these earlier students are now in the media which aids and abets the general ignorance.

A case in point is two articles that appeared in the Detroit News on Mar 13th 09. One was titled “Pollution not only fouls air, it dims skies.” There should have been some mention that the pollution of the 1950s has been reduced by about 90% today. In a 2000 edition of Reason Magazine editor Ronald Bailey writes

“In the U.S., air quality has been improving rapidly since before the first Earth Day–and before the federal Clean Air Act of 1970. In fact, ambient levels of particulates and sulfur dioxide have been declining ever since accurate records have been kept. Between 1960 and 1970, for instance, particulates declined by 25 percent; sulfur dioxide decreased by 35 percent between 1962 and 1970. More concretely, it takes 20 new cars to produce the same emissions that one car produced in the 1960s.”

According to this our skies should be getting brighter not dimmer. The threat of dimming of course is just another attempt at scarring people into sacrificing more of their money and freedom to those who are collecting such sacrifices–politicians and enviros.

The second article is a new report from WAPO “Trace carcinogen amounts found in baby care products.” It states that:

“More than half of the baby shampoo, lotions and other infant care products analyzed by a health advocacy group were found to contain trace amounts of two chemicals that are believed to cause cancer, the organization said Thursday.

Some of the biggest names on the market, including Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo and Baby Magic baby lotion, tested positive for 1,4-dioxane, or formaldehyde, or both, the nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported.”

The report did carry contrary statements by Johnson and Johnson to the effect that the EPA has found these products to be safe. But considering today’s anti-business climate, many readers will just dismiss the statements as routine business denials. Over at the website STATS, a division of George Mason University, Trevor Butterworth reveals that:

“First, the CSC is driven by a group of environmental activist groups with a long history of hyperbole. The study was self-published, it wasn’t peer- reviewed; in fact, it wasn’t even scientific – if one takes science to be formulating a hypothesis and testing it against the full range of data.”

He goes on to discuss both formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane, said to be found in the health products and concludes:

“But here we come to the fundamental methodological flaw in report – one that underscores the need for real, peer-reviewed scientific analysis of chemical exposures and health and not activist reports designed to maximize media attention through sensationalism:

The Campaign measured how much formaldehyde was in the product, but not how much a child would actually be exposed to or absorb in the course of using that product.”

On 1,4-dioxane Mr. Butterworth writes:

“The other confounding problem with 1,4-dioxane is that we are exposed to it routinely in tap water, either by drinking or when we shower (as a volatilized compound), and in seafood, cooked meat, fried chicken, deep fry oil, ripe tomatoes, tomato paste, peppers, coffee, herbs and spices (within the range of 2-15ppm). In fact, given that 1,4-dioxane is more easily absorbed by ingestion and inhalation rather than absorption (due to its propensity to evaporate), the route of exposure is much more likely from the water we wash and shower in than through skin absorption from a cosmetic lotion.”

What makes the CSC report dishonest is the fact that it presents out of context assertions. It claims that all amounts of a carcinogen are dangerous and government force should be employed to ban them. The context being ignored by such activist groups is the toxicology principle that ‘the poison is in the dose.’ The human body has been evolving on this planet for thousands of years and has developed methods for dealing with trace amounts of toxic elements. Most people today have trace amounts of lead, mercury, dioxin, arsnic, asbestos, 1,4-dioxane and probably many others. Why aren’t we all dead? “The poison is in the dose” is why.

Activist groups like the CSC deliberately use out of context assertions knowing that many people, out of fear, will jump to the wrong conclusions. This fear is how they get donations which they use to lobby for governmental control over you and I.

There are some good posts on this Tuesday 3/10/09.

First, Robb at Robbservations has a good post on the concept’To big to fail.’ He shows how the whole policy is wrong headed.
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Doug Reich at The Rational Capitalist takes a liberal writer to task for misrepresenting Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in a post titled “How can we take these people seriously?”
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Rob at The Morality War discusses your relationship to yourself and to others in a post titled “Who do you think you are?”
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Stephen Bourque at One Reality posts on the Republican’s role in the banking collapse in “Ted Kennedy’s down Payment.”
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Brian Phillips at Live Oaks laments Houston mayoral candidate Peter Brown’s desire to fashion Houston after other cities in terms of government provided services while ignoring Houston’s success at doing without them. I commented that Mr. Brown is a power luster since Houston’s freedom caused success means nothing to him.
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Ever wonder what a trillion dollars looks like? Beth at “Wealth is not the problem” links to another site that shows how awesome that number really is. And to think our new government is throwing multiples of that quantity around like it was candy.

At The Little Things, Amy Mossoff has an admirable habit of posting three good things that happen to her every day. I have decided that I will do that also but only occasionally since I’m a part time blogger. So on this dreary, rainy, overcast Sunday I have three good things to report. First, the wife and I had breakfast with our second son, his wife and our 3 1/2 yr old grand daughter. Very enjoyable.

Second, I was able to read the liberal-leftist editorial page of the Detroit Free Press without giving in to the urge to kick or hit something. I’m proud of myself. The more I realize that the battle has to be fought at the level of fundamental ideas, the more I am beginning to see that getting all emotional over all the god-awful ideas on these printed pages is a waste of time. Better to keep pumping out good ideas or at least attacking some bad ones just to let readers know they are bad.

The third good thing was when I turned to the letters page and discovered my LTE was the lead one of 8 LTEs under the headline “Big government is a bad solution.”

“Editorial page editor Stephen Henderson’s column last Sunday (“Huge numbers come with big change”) was wrong in saying that “no one is arguing credibly against government action to shore up financial markets, spur job creation or thaw credit markets.”

A majority of Americans flooded their congressional representatives urging against the bailout bill and stimulus packages. They are being ignored by Congress and the president.

And the idea that Obama will abandon an effort if it doesn’t work is utter nonsense. Doesn’t work? According to what standard? Obama is a pragmatist. He doesn’t believe in standards. He’s shooting from the hip now and will do so in the next crisis.”

Michael Neibel

While there were other things wrong with that editorial by Mr Henderson, my purpose was to counter two false notions: that there was no credible opposition to the massive spending; that the citizens are being ignored, and that Obama’s pragmatism would guarantee that any failed efforts would be abandoned. I don’t think so. What would it mean for a pragmatist to abandon something that doesn’t work?

Suppose a dear friend is seriously ill in a hospital. You go to see him and ask the nurse what is his diagnosis? “Diagnosis?” she exclaims. “Silly man. We don’t deal in such abstract theories. We have to pay attention to the real world, the here and now.” “So how do you plan to make him better?” you ask. She replies “The doctor has given him a shot of medicine A. If that doesn’t work I’m sure he’ll go to others.” But what about his medical history?” you inquire. “Sir” she says painfully, “everyone knows that what was true yesterday won’t be true today and to rely on that would be simply irresponsible.” “But” you cry, “What if he dies”? “Well” she admits, “that would be unfortunate but at least we tried. We took action! We did something!” You start to consider funeral arrangements.

Happily our hospitals haven’t deteriorated to this yet. But our universities, media and body politic has. Obama is just the latest administrator who has surrounded himself (cabinet) with just such doctors and nurses which he drew from the political hospital (congress).

I’ve decided that some future LTEs will try to focus on how pragmatism doesn’t work. So, with that and despite the rain, it wasn’t a bad day after all.

President Barack Obama delivered a speech before both houses of Congress last Tuesday and Lousiana governor Bobby Jindal gave the Republican response shortly afterwards.

Given the gravity of the moment, we at TNC decided to collect our thoughts on the speeches as a panel discussion.

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The Feb 24th Detroit News caries an Associated Press article by Randolph E. Schmid titled “Panel: Climate threat worse than thought”. It says that:

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the risk of increased severe weather would rise with a global average temperature increase of between 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 3.6 degrees above 1990 levels. The National Climatic Data Center reports that global temperatures have risen 0.22 degree since 1990.”

This 2 tenths of a degree since 1990 is part of a 7 tenths of one degree Celsius rise since 1900. Nothing to get excited about since climate always warms during an interglacial. But this article is pure scare mongering.
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At the blog We Stand Firm, Diana and Paul Hsieh, Lin Zinser and Ari Armstrong are doing a great job of fighting against socialized medicine. Friday’s Feb 6th post is about an article by Greg Scandlen of the Heartland Institute on the subject of mandatory health insurance and how it’s wrong in theory and practice.

In the same vein, JunkfoodScience looks at the disaster that is socialized medicine in Japan and how people are being rejected by hospitals who can’t handle them because they’re understaffed and have no beds. As you read this keep in mind that our leaders want this for you and me. It’s titled “A Tragic Casualty” and here’s a short quote:

“A troubling comment was made by Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe, who “told a parliamentary committee last year that the rising number of elderly patients hospitalized for months was taking up space that could be used to treat emergency cases.”

What the world is watching is a form of supply rationing.”

All forms of socialized medicine will result in rationing.

Still regarding health care, Stella at Reason Pharm correctly takes the Associated Press to task for its misplaced praise of government regulators. More evidence that the press worships government.

The Monday Jan 2nd Detroit Free Press’s Nation and World section has an article by AP writer Martin Crutsinger titled “Frugal living bad for the economy.” Frugal means managing one’s money wisely. That headline then suggests that profligate spending would be good for the economy. But isn’t that just what our media pundits and politicos said was the cause of the crises? Irresponsible citizens and bankers and lenders spending foolishly? Foolish spending was bad for the economy before and now that people are wiser well, that’s bad for the economy also? They want to have their cake and eat it too.

If you think that logic was bad, how about this total disconnect from reality:

“Economists call it the “paradox of thrift.” What’s good for individuals — spending less, saving more — is bad for the economy if everyone does it.”

You may have to read that again. What’s good for individuals–all of them–is bad for the economy. In other words, the economy is something apart from and superior to all the individuals who comprise it. The economists are reifying the concept economy, treating it as an entity, a particular concrete to which the good of individuals must be sacrificed.

This I submit is how the mind of a cargo cultist (Keynesian) works: there are all these people doing all kinds of things and somehow wealth/jobs is produced; when the wealth/jobs stops coming we see people doing different things and this is bad; one of those things is spending less money so we must get those people to spend more money again and the wealth/jobs will return. That this is the mindset of our leaders is truly frightening.

But in fact, this isn’t even about the economy. Consider the sub-title of the article: “Americans start saving just as U.S. needs them to spend.” Substitute the words ‘the government’ for ‘U.S.’ and you will have the truth. It’s about saving their own hides over which our government panics. As supporting evidence consider the original $700 billion that congress couldn’t wait to give to Hank Paulson. It was pure hush money for the mortgage and lending companies. There is no way the banks and other lenders were going to be hauled before a House or Senate hearing and raked over the coals like the auto execs were. The American public would have learned that the lenders were just doing Congress’s bidding. This could not be permitted and wasn’t. This was a bailout of government and Keynesian economics.

Contrary to Keynesian economics, it is not consumption that spurs production. It is production that creates wealth, which money represents, and must come first. Man must produce the things he needs to survive and to do so he needs to be free from the coercion of other men, thus the need for rights respecting governments. Having produced these things he can trade them with others thereby spreading wealth. But he must produce them first. He cannot wave a fist full of money in the air hoping that food, clothing and shelter will plop down on him from above. Nor can he throw money on the ground expecting a factory with jobs will sprout up. Life doesn’t work that way.

If President Obama doesn’t want to go down in history as the overseer of America’s second Great Depression, he needs to discover that man’s mind–not money–is the creator of wealth and to function it needs freedom, not controls, and the only system that can provide it is not socialism but capitalism.