As humanity evolves, technological advances improve our lives

Commentary by James Shott

As humans and technology evolve, new ideas, products and improving processes make our lives fuller and easier. We once listened to music on plastic platters. Even as the quality of records improved, progress brought about the reel-to-reel tape machine. That was a great development, but then someone came up with the 8-track tape player, which eventually gave way to the cassette player, and then audio on tape was surpassed by a new technological creation, the compact disc. And now that, too, is about to become old news.

As the years, decades, and centuries pass, human beings evolve in their ability to develop ideas and create devices that improve the quality of their lives.

In 1593, Galileo Galilei invented the first device to measure temperature variations, a rudimentary water thermoscope. In 1612, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio put a numerical scale on his thermoscope. While neither of these new instruments was very accurate, they represented progress.

In 1654, Ferdinand II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany invented the first enclosed liquid-in-a-glass thermometer, and replaced water with alcohol as the medium to measure temperature changes. This instrument, too, was inaccurate and used no standardized scale, but represented a step forward.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, in 1714. Thermometers continued to evolve since that time, becoming more accurate and more versatile along the way, measuring the temperatures of air and liquids. For most of those 300 years they utilized a liquid to measure temperature, but today digital technology has become the standard.

From their land-bound home, humans learned how to move through the air and into outer space, and now digital thermometers measure temperatures on Earth from satellites orbiting many miles above the planet. For 37 years satellite-based instruments have provided the world's most accurate and unbiased temperature data.

And space-based measurements are free from coverage gaps and “siting problems,” conditions that plague land-based instruments. A study authored by Anthony Watts and Evan Jones of surfacestations.org, John Nielsen-Gammon of Texas A&M, and John R. Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, show the problems inherent in land-based thermometers that do not affect space-based measurements.

Watts, the lead author of the study, explained: “The majority of weather stations used by NOAA [the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration] to detect climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts.” He added: “We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend also manifests itself in the global temperature record.”

The study notes that there are two subsets of weather stations, those that are well sited, and not affected by extraneous effects, and those that are poorly sited, and are affected by extraneous effects. The well sited stations produce readings markedly cooler than those corrupted by extraneous effects, and the study suggests that the results of the well sited stations – the truest measure of environmental temperature – are adjusted upward to more closely match the results of the poorly sited stations, resulting in temperature readings higher than true readings.

Put into plain English, many land-based measurement stations are corrupted by elements that are not a part of the Earth’s natural temperature, and they skew the results upward. Real-world temperatures measured by satellites are consistently cooler than those projected by climate computer model simulations because they are not affected by concrete, asphalt and other things that collect and produce heat that are not a part of the Earth’s natural environmental temperature.

And what the satellite-based instruments reveal is stunning. There has been no warming at or in the:
    •    South Pole for 37 years
    •    Southern hemisphere for 19 years, 10 months
    •    Tropics for 19 years, 3 months
    •    Tropical oceans for 22 years, 11 months
    •    North Pole for 13 years, 10 months
    •    Australia for 18 years, 1 month
    •    U.S.A. for 18 years (49 states)
    •    Globally for 18 years, 6 months

These readings plainly show that contrary to global warming scare stories in the media, the world has not warmed as the models projected. However, warming advocates choose to ignore these measurements, and the reason why is simple: Without a scary story of future catastrophe to promote, they lose power and they lose money, the power to control the masses being the more important.

The worldwide effort to fight climate change is not about fighting climate change; it is about control. But twenty-first century technology provides evidence that is devastating to the global warming narrative. 

The simple truth is that some years are warmer than others; and some years are cooler. Warming and cooling periods may lasts a few to several years or many decades. Our climate is not static and has never been.

Contrary to the warming advocates’ story, satellite-based measurements show that the industrial revolution that set loose the development of so many things that make our lives better has not caused the planet to heat up.

With science, the media and government conspiring to subject people to ideological control over unproven climate change, that progress will be impeded, and the entire world will suffer.

Cross-posted from Observations

Ominous omnibus: There are many problems with the spending bill

Commentary by James Shott

Last Friday Congress passed the omnibus spending bill, avoiding a government shutdown when current funding expired at 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 23. At 2,009 pages it spent a dazzling $1.149 trillion, and like most legislation it had some good features and some less-than-desirable features.

It was described as far-reaching legislation funding the government until next October, passing tax breaks for businesses and low-income families, reauthorizing programs to compensate and provide health care for first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and a cybersecurity measure that could help businesses cooperate more closely with the government and each other in fighting online threats.

The bill easily cleared both chambers, first in the House, which passed it 316-113, followed by the Senate in a 65-33 vote. President Barack Obama signed the measure.

Republicans, who hold majorities in both houses – 54 percent in the House and nearly 57 percent in the Senate – supported the bill by a significant majority in the House, but in in the Senate only about one-third voted for the bill.

Despite the Republican majority in both houses, the GOP managed only a few real victories, while the minority party won big, according to most analyses.

Republicans gained the lifting of a 40-year ban on oil exports, prohibiting funding to bail out the insurance companies in the Obamacare health insurance program, and preventing the IRS from regulating political speech.

However, they were unable to restrict the Syrian refugee program, end funding for Obama’s executive actions on immigration, defund Planned Parenthood, defund sanctuary cities, or restrain EPA over-regulation of ponds and streams, and coal-burning power plants.

Perhaps the most noteworthy provision in the bill is the one that could allow more than a quarter-million temporary guest workers into the country, an increase from the previous federal cap of 66,000 on H-2B visas for low-skilled foreign workers seeking blue-collar jobs in the U.S. This is a significant change to immigration law, and it has conservatives dismayed. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told The Daily Signal, “It came out of nowhere, completely out of nowhere,” the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus said, “[and] everyone was shocked there was a change and no one had talked about it.”

Conservatives are displeased that the Republicans were unable to remove so many troublesome provisions that they should strongly oppose, and also with the very process that created the bill and brought it to a vote.

Critics of the bill and its passage complained that the rank-and-file members of the House were not included in negotiations. Congressional leaders assembled the bill in smoke-filled back rooms and did not release the text of the 2,009-page bill until 2 a.m. last Wednesday, and the separate 233-page tax-extenders bill was released just before midnight.

Prior to the vote Heritage Action for America chief executive Michael A. Needham said the package represents the most sweeping changes to tax policy since 2012. “In fewer than 48 hours, lawmakers will likely be asked to vote on two massive bills that were negotiated behind closed doors over the past several weeks,” he said.

After the vote Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky explained his “no” vote to a New York radio station: “It was over a trillion dollars, it was all lumped together, 2,242 pages, nobody read it, so frankly my biggest complaint is that I have no idea what kind of things they stuck in the bill.” “I voted against it because I won’t vote for these enormous bills that no one has a chance to read,” Paul continued. “[T]his is not a way to run government. It’s a part of the reason why government is broke." And broken, he might have added.

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who voted against the spending bill, said Republicans voted for the bill in part to support House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-WI, who had just taken that position and they were hopeful he would be more inclusive with rank and file members than his predecessor, former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t want to vote for this, but they were giving him a vote out of good faith,” he said. At the same time, many also were worried that Ryan had given Democrats too many policy concessions in the bill, a feeling now confirmed. “The Democrats unfortunately just learned that they can mistreat him like they mistreated Boehner, which is a really bad thing,” Labrador said.

What the Framers designed as an efficient and transparent system of lawmaking now operates in the gutter. These days, bills often reflect dishonorable characteristics like this bill had:
    •    Created in secrecy
    •    Hundreds or thousands of pages long
    •    Voted on without time to be properly considered
    •    Amendments not permitted
    •    Contain elements unrelated to the purpose of the bill
    •    Are approved for political expediency, rather than by broad support

Too many bills are designed not to produce needed and broadly supported laws, but to enact politically useful and narrowly focused measures that benefit some at the expense of the others.

This process is yet one more sign of the devolving nature of our country. If America is to survive, good government must be restored.



Cross-posted from Observations

America’s tendency toward over-spending leading to catastrophe

Commentary by James Shott

Many years ago Beatle John Lennon compared America to Rome. Some interpreted his statement as being complimentary, that America was like the Roman Empire in its glory days: the place to be. Others took it to mean that like Rome’s eventual fate, America was declining and headed for the dustbin of history.

As it turns out, both interpretations were correct, depending upon the time frame of the analysis. From its early days America was a bright spot in the world, becoming a leader in many areas and doing things never done before. The rise of the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s spawned the flower children that viewed the U.S. as tarnished and wicked. And since then, particularly in recent years, America has been transitioning to resemble Rome’s decline. Perhaps a more accurate comparison for 2015 is Greece, where out-of-control spending is about to kill the nation.

There is a steady record of troubling statistics that U.S. presidents and Congresses have negligently ignored. For example, in 1971 the federal debt was $348 billion, about 34 percent of GDP, but today it is about $18 trillion, and is more than 100 percent of GDP. This trend caused Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s credit rating in 2011.

Federal assistance program payments have risen from about 21 percent of GDP in the 1970s to about 70 percent today. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2008 cost $37.6 billion, but by 2012 totaled $78.4 billion.

The 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity, published by the Heritage Foundation, reports how food-stamp participation has soared from 2003 to 2013, growing by more than 26 million people. In 1970, the number receiving food stamps was well below 10 million, growing to more than 20 million by 2003, and nearing 50 million by 2013. The index also shows that total welfare spending has climbed by $246 billion between 2003 and 2013. In 2014 the federal government operated more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans.

Heritage’s Robert Rector notes that government spent $916 billion on these programs in 2012, and roughly 100 million Americans – nearly one in three – received aid from at least one of them, averaging $9,000 per recipient.

Many will see the increase in these numbers as necessary support from the government for Americans in trouble. Some do truly need help, but many are simply availing themselves of easy money.

Government policies and actions have kept the economy stagnant since the recession of 2007, preventing job creation that would allow millions to provide for themselves, or at least to contribute to their own wellbeing. More than 93 million Americans desiring work – nearly one in three – are not in the labor force. These policies and actions are championed by politicians, many of whom subscribe to the same socialist ideals that are killing Greece, and who benefit from having large numbers of individuals and organizations depending upon them for their survival.

And, the common theme of government wreaking havoc by interfering with business economics rises to the fore, yet again.

One example of a foolish policy is when Obamacare reduced the number of hours of the full-time workweek from 40 to 30 in an attempt to force employers to cover some part-time workers. This resulted in thousands of full-time workers becoming part-time workers, who lost 11 hours of pay a week, as businesses suddenly faced massive new expense and were forced to counteract that by reducing the number of full-time employees by cutting their hours.

Had the leftists that threw together Obamacare in the dark, smoke-filled rooms of the Capital actually thought about what they were doing, they could have avoided some of the punishment they caused these workers. No doubt that thousands of those workers now qualify for government support as a result.

Ignoring the wisdom of not raising the minimum wage, Seattle, Washington raised its minimum wage to $11 an hour in April. And guess what? Some of the workers who benefitted from the increase are now complaining that since they are making more money they will lose their housing subsidy, and are asking to have their hours reduced so that they can keep the free money flowing. Seattle’s minimum wage is scheduled to rise to $15 an hour by 2017.

The American tradition of self-reliance, of working to improve one’s plight, has been replaced by the opportunity to benefit from “free money” from government.

“If we keep on this way, we’ll reach a tipping point where there are too many people receiving government benefits and not enough people to pay for those benefits,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wrote in The Wall Street Journal. Currently, about half of Americans pay no income taxes. “That’s an untenable problem. The receivers cannot receive more than the givers can give.”

The politics of government largesse and the sensible policy of holding individuals and institutions responsible for their actions, the tradition of self-reliance upon which America became the wondrous nation it used to be, are inalterably opposed. The question is, how much more of this dependency can the country survive before it becomes a Greek tragedy?

Cross-posted from Observations

Dangerous words: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Our federal government, originally designed as small and limited, has grown to be humongous and infinite. That process began a long time ago, but within the memory of most Americans was the following example of what most often happens when our government tries to help.

Back in the 70s while Jimmy Carter was president, our government decided to help us. Well, actually it wanted to only help some of us, and decided that “every American should be a home owner,” and then began creating laws and programs to enable people who were previously not financially qualified for a home loan to get a home loan. First was the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that “encouraged” banks to make loans they normally would not make, and a few years later the Clinton administration applied more pressure to “further encourage” banks to make those loans.

Then, the government removed the barrier separating commercial banks from investment banks, which opened the door for the bundling of bad home loans produced by the CRA and other government meddling as investment instruments in the mid-to-late 90s, and a few years later the problems caused by utilizing the resources the government had provided drove the nation into recession. It was a significant recession, but not bad enough to produce the recovery the nation suffered thereafter, which was made much longer and much more painful by … guess what? Government policies.

Another good story that illustrates what happens with these helpful government initiatives was highlighted by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) discussing a Heritage Foundation report showing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has become 4 times as “helpful” today as it was during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. At first blush, this may sound like a good thing.

Back in the 80s FEMA declared an average of 28 disasters a year, or one about every two weeks. At that time states and localities had primary responsibility for handling disasters, and the feds got involved in the more serious events. But thanks to your helpful federal government during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, FEMA has declared 130 disasters annually, or a disaster every 2.8 days, on average.

Heritage’s David Inserra said this growth in the involvement of the federal government results from the Stafford Act, passed in 1998. Two provisions of the law are at the root of the problem, one that makes the federal government responsible for three-fourths of disaster response costs, which is a strong incentive for states to ask for federal aid at every opportunity. That has the added negative incentive for the states to use funds they would have set aside for disasters for other purposes, leaving themselves underprepared when disaster strikes.

The vague language of the bill sets a low bar for federal assistance, requiring damages totaling only $1.40 or more per person to qualify, and he notes that for some states the total damages needed are less than $1 million.

This easy money for the states has not been so easy for Americans who really need federal disaster assistance, because FEMA has been stretched too thin in terms of both money and readiness to respond to serious emergencies. As a result, FEMA really does not handle big disasters very well. Think back to hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

Stephen Horwitz of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University explains that “[d}uring the Katrina relief efforts, the more successful organizations were those that had the right incentives to respond well and could tap into the local information necessary to know what that response should be. The private sector had the right incentives and, along with the Coast Guard, was able to access the local knowledge necessary to provide the relief that was needed. FEMA lacked both of these advantages.”

He notes that “[b]ig-box retailers such as Wal-Mart were extraordinarily successful in providing help to damaged communities in the days, weeks, and months after the storm.”

Now we find millions being dumped into the effort to make it possible for everyone to get a college education, whether they really need one or not, including President Obama wanting to give everyone free tuition to community colleges. What horrors await the nation when this bubble, like the mortgage industry’s bubble, bursts? Will we see college campuses shuttered, young people waving their newly earned college diplomas in the unemployment line?

If government meddling in the mortgage industry was not the proximate cause of the financial crash, it certainly made a substantial contribution. And if the government’s takeover of disaster responses comes up so short when it is most needed, and private sector components actually are more effective, what do we have to do to get the government to honor the Founders’ concepts of limited government and maximum individual freedom?

In addition to ineffective programs that sometimes cause great harm, these encroachments by government eat away at the individual liberty that our ancestors fought and died for, because every one of these “helpful” ideas has components that increase dependency on the federal government. How much longer before America will be able to join with the nations of Europe as strongholds of socialism?

Taking a look at how green energy is working in Europe and America

As the United States grapples with conflicting ideas about whether and to what extent man causes global climate change, the zealous movement to do away with using fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to produce electricity and switch to “green” sources like wind and solar energy goes forward, full speed ahead.

Far ahead of the U.S. in this campaign are some nations in Europe that some policymakers tout as having adopted smart energy policy. They think the U.S. should follow the lead of countries like Germany and Spain and more heavily subsidize renewable energies like wind, solar, biomass, etc. and tax fossil fuel users more heavily.

Now that Europe’s green energy policies have been in place for several years, a look to see how they have worked might help us decide whether this is a good plan for the U.S. to follow.

From Canadafreepress,com comes information about Germany’s energy policies. The news here is not so good; green energy policies are driving up energy prices and forcing hundreds of thousands of people into energy poverty. Specifically, a study of Germany’s experiences found:

• Residential German electricity prices are nearly three times higher than electricity prices in the U.S. 
• As many as 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because of an inability to pay for rising energy costs. 
• Germany’s feed-in tariff scheme provides lavish subsidies to renewable energy producers. 
• On-shore wind has required feed-in tariffs that are in excess of 300 percent higher than market prices. 
• Germany’s Renewable Energy Levy, which subsidizes renewable energy production, cost German households $9.6 billion in 2013. 
• The cost to expand transmission networks to integrate renewables stands at $33.6 billion, which grid operators say accounts “for only a fraction of the cost of the energy transition.”

Information from the Institute for Energy Research produced some data on the effects of Spain’s push for green energy that began in 1994. The program involved tariffs, quotas and subsidies, and has earned kudos from international leaders, including President Barack Obama.

The Spaniards have seen increases in electricity rates from 2005 to 2011 of 92 percent for domestic users and 78 percent for industrial users, while during that same period the U.S. saw rate increases of 24 percent for domestic users and19 percent for industrial users from fossil fuel produced electricity.

Here is a comparison of Spanish and American rates per kilowatt-hour:

• Spain – Domestic $29.46 and Industrial $14.84 
• U.S. - Domestic $11.69 and Industrial $6.81.

While prices were increasing in Spain the level of carbon dioxide actually rose, rather than declining, increasing 34.5 percent from 1994 to 2011. As a result of this the Spanish government confessed in 2012 that it can’t afford to continue subsidizing green energy.

Meanwhile, the French energy and environment minister, Segolene Royal, who was appointed to the position last spring, plans to create 100,000 jobs by 2017 with her green energy growth initiative. She wants to reduce France’s 75 percent reliance on nuclear energy for electricity production to 50 percent by 2025 by investing in wind, solar, biomass and marine energy sources. She also plans to help 500,000 low-income families add insulation to their homes.

Writing on HotAir.com Erika Johnsen points out that to accomplish these high-minded goals France will have to throw “gobs and gobs of money” into the mix through subsidies, tax credits and/or consumer quotas, which inevitably end up being paid by consumers through higher prices, higher taxes, or increasing France’s national debt, which is already a serious problem. The French economy is weak, much weaker than Germany’s, and we have already seen what happened in that grand green experiment.

In apparent ignorance of these horrid experiences from our European brothers and sisters, the ideologically blinded Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is driving the U.S. toward green energy use. The EPA does this not through the natural evolution of increased efficiency and value of green energies that gradually supplant older and dirtier fuels, but by punishing the existing producers of the major fuel sources of coal and natural gas that account for 66 percent of our electricity production.

This approach is responsible for killing jobs and harming local economies, and producing higher prices for consumers as the EPA goes merrily along, oblivious to the destruction in its wake, and to the misery the thoughtless drive for green energy has produced for Spain and Germany.

The administration’s “feel-good” emotional support for three risky green companies cost three-quarters of a billion taxpayer dollars. Solar energy companies Solyndra and Abound Solar wasted $529 million and $70 million respectively, and last December hybrid carmaker Fisker Automotive filed for bankruptcy adding another $139 million to the tab.

And now climatologist John L. Casey warns of a shift in global climate, a cold spell to last 30 years, and it has absolutely nothing to do with carbon dioxide emissions. It’s due to the sun. “All you have to do is trust natural cycles, and follow the facts; and that leads you to the inevitable conclusion that the sun controls the climate, and that a new cold era has begun," he said.

Perhaps the EPA will forsake the “green fantasy” in favor of reality.

The election of 2014 is over. What did we learn? Where do we go?

Last week’s mid-term election results surprised almost everyone in some way. Republicans won control of the US Senate, increased their majority in the House of Representatives by 13 seats, and won a number of other victories, as summarized here by The Washington Post:

• Net gain of 8 legislative chambers, increasing from 59 to 67 out of a total of 98 (Nebraska is technically unicameral, but it is dominated by Republicans as well).
• This sets a record for the modern era, breaking the one in 2012.
• Republicans now have total control of 24 states, controlling legislative chambers as well as the governor’s office.
• Republicans have supermajority status in 8 states.
• Control is split in 17 states (3 of whose governors flipped from Democrat to Republican).
• Republicans now have four lieutenant governorships due to defeating Democrat incumbents.
• Democrats have total control in 6 states.

Given the broad and deep defeat of Democrats across the nation it is apparent that the country disapproves of what liberal Democrats have been doing. Those who voted elected Republicans in big numbers, and those that didn’t vote made a strong statement of non-support for the radical policies of liberal Democrats.

A day after the election, President Barack Obama was defiant, showing no inkling that he understood that his policies and the direction he and his fellow liberals had set were to blame for what happened the previous day.

“What we’ve seen now for a number of cycles is that the American people just want to see work done here in Washington,” he said. “They’re frustrated by the gridlock. They’d like to see more cooperation, and I think all of us have a responsibility, me in particular, to try to make that happen.”

That sounds promising, but no more had he sounded the trumpet of cooperation than he committed to going around Congress with a plan to stop deportations and allow as many as 5 million illegal aliens to stay in the United States, at least temporarily. Given that he did nothing on immigration for the first six years of his tenure, except weaken border security, why is this so important now?

His position not only is a slap in the face of Congressional leaders, but also of the American people. Seventy-four percent of voters said in an exit poll by The Polling Company that President Obama should work with Congress rather than go around Congress on immigration.

The Polling Company results showed that "majorities of men (75 percent), women (74 percent), whites (79 percent), blacks (59 percent), and Hispanics (54 percent)," oppose an executive amnesty, and that opinion was shared by Republicans (92 percent) and Independents (80 percent), and even by a majority of Democrats (51 percent).

He is also on the wrong side of the Obamacare issue. The Real Clear Politics Average of polls conducted in October shows that nearly 52 percent of those polled are opposed to Obamacare, while only 38 percent favor it.

Nevertheless, "On healthcare, there are certainly some lines I'm going to draw," Mr. Obama said on Wednesday. "Repeal of the law I won't sign," and he will resist efforts to improve the bill, such as by getting rid of the individual mandate.

This election was certainly not a mandate for Congress and the president to work together to pass the same kinds of legislation that liberal Democrats favored before the election. The people want change.

The mission statement for the new Republican majority should be “First, do no harm.” That means no amnesty, and fix or repeal Obamacare, among other things.

The federal government is too big, too expensive, too intrusive; it is out of control and a danger to the freedom of the American people: Government must be reigned in. That is what the election meant.

Participants in a nationwide CBS News poll in late October were asked what was the most important issue that would affect their vote in the upcoming election. The stagnant economy topped the list at 38 percent.

To get the economy moving we have to cut tax rates across the board, both corporate and personal, which will put millions of dollars in the hands of people and businesses to spend as they see fit.

And then:

• Cut government spending. There’s more than enough waste in administrative agencies to “pay for” tax cuts.
• Repeal the tax on medical devices imposed by the Affordable Care Act that punishes companies developing needed technology.
• Approve the XL Pipeline, and both create jobs and help end dependence on foreign oil.
• Reign in the EPA, remove the shackles on domestic energy production. Defund it, if necessary.
• Secure the borders and stop the influx of illegals, drug cartels and other criminals from Mexico, and potential terrorists. Deport or jail the criminals among the illegals.
• Start restoring our military to its former strength, and try to reacquire those seasoned officers driven to retirement by the Obama administration.
• Restore selection of US Senators to state legislatures, as it was originally designed.

So, the Republicans decreased funding for the CDC’s Ebola research

Commentary by James Shott

An ad produced and being run by the Agenda Project Action Fund says Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding has been cut by $585 million since 2010 and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) saw its budget cut by $446 million. Interspersed along the way are brief visuals of various Republicans who at some time in their public life uttered the word “cut,” and have had that split-second of their life included in this ad: “cut,” “cut,” “cut,” “cut.”

And then the CDC director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, is shown saying that there are disease outbreaks that his agency is not able to act against “as effectively as we should be able to.” And finally disturbing images of Ebola sufferers appear, followed by the words “Republican cuts kill” just prior to advising people to “Vote.”

We can forgive Dr. Frieden for ending a sentence with a preposition, which is at worst a minor slip-up, but we cannot forgive the Agenda Project for flagrantly lying that Republicans – or anyone – cut funding for the CDC and the NIH, preventing them from developing a vaccine for Ebola.

For verification of that assertion we look to one of the most liberal of voices, The Washington Post. It gave the ad its gold seal: Four Pinocchios, which the Post categorizes as “Whoppers.”

The Post story explains “For NIH, since 2006, there has been relatively little change in the size of the budget, going from about $28.5 billion in 2006 to $30.14 billion in 2014. … (The agency also received a $10 billion windfall in 2009 from the stimulus law.)”

“As for the CDC,” the Post continues, “you will see a similar pattern. The numbers have bounced around $6.5 billion in recent years. (CDC receives both an appropriation from Congress and, since 2010, hundreds of millions of dollars from the Prevention and Public Health Fund established by the Affordable Care Act.) Before 2008, the agency received less than $6 billion a year. In fiscal year 2013, the White House proposed a cut in CDC’s funding, but Congress added about $700 million. In 2014, the administration again proposed reducing the budget, but Congress boosted it to $6.9 billion.” In case you aren’t aware, the House of Representatives is under control of Republicans, and has been since 2010.

However, even if the CDC and NIH budgets had been cut, every manager in the public sector is obligated to spend the available funds in the smartest and most beneficial way; put whatever funds you have where they are most needed, and if necessary seek authorization to do so.

How well did the managers of these agencies do with the billions of taxpayer dollars they have at their disposal? The NIH thought that studying the sex life of fruit flies at a cost of $1 million took precedence over Ebola. Likewise, spending $1.5 million studying why lesbians have a tendency to be overweight, while gay men don’t was more important than an Ebola vaccine. As was spending $688,000 to determine why people watch “Seinfeld” reruns and $355,000 on a study of how quickly husbands and wives calm down after an argument.

For its part, the CDC’s mission statement says in part, “Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.” In support of that lofty goal, the CDC used some of its billions studying seat-belt use and infant car seats, built a second finely appointed visitor center in Atlanta to the tune of $106 million, spent $10 million more on furniture for the new building, and helped Hollywood devise medical plots to the tune of $1.7 million. And of the more than $3 billion CDC received from the Affordable Care Act to research dangerous diseases, it has spent only $180 million on that project, but not on Ebola.

And after asking Congress for extra funding in 1999 for a syphilis project, and receiving double the amount of funding it requested, the CDC responded by hiring porn stars and strippers to speak at public events, all the while the number of reported syphilis cases had doubled by 2005. Oh, and the CDC spent $25 million of our money on bonuses for employees over recent years.

Both agencies spent millions to study that mysterious bacterial infection, “gun violence.”

If you want to know why the CDC doesn’t have a vaccine for Ebola and why it hasn’t prepared the nation’s hospitals to handle people infected with the Ebola virus, you probably ought to look to the party whose backside the Agenda Project is trying so desperately to cover, the one that was elected to run the government efficiently. Incidentally, Republicans are not in charge of the CDC or the NIH.

With an important mid-term election two weeks away, the message at the end of this sleazy ad to vote should be heeded. However, voters should remember dishonest ads like this one that attempt to cover up the gross incompetence in administrative agencies, along with the other scandals that still exist, but that the mainstream media has kept below the radar.

Cross-posted from Observations

Government is a poor mechanism for correcting societal problems

Commentary by James Shott

Most Americans think that helping truly needy people, whether they live here or in some other country, is a worthy objective. Looking at charitable contributions as a benchmark, Americans are the most generous people in the world, giving $316.23 billion to charitable organizations in 2012, about 2 percent of GDP, according to Charity Navigator, and preliminary figures for 2013 indicate a significant increase to $328 billion.

Double those numbers and it still would not be good enough for the federal government, which believes that if private sources don’t relieve every semblance of suffering for every single suffering American, the government must step in and do the job better.

Except that government can’t do it better, never has, and never will.

Government’s failure to achieve better results than normal people doing what normal people do has never been a deterrent to wasting billions of taxpayers dollars in a futile effort to try one more time to do so.

The most notorious failure was Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” which began 50 years ago in Mr. Johnson’s State of the Union message. From the beginning of the war on poverty until 2013, local, state, and federal spending on welfare programs totaled $16 trillion, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently, the United States spends nearly $1 trillion every year to fight poverty.

When the War on Poverty began, 33 million Americans were in poverty and the poverty rate was 19 percent. Today, approximately 46.5 million live in poverty and the poverty rate is 15 percent. Even though the poverty rate is lower than 50 years ago, because our population is much larger now than then, more people are poor today than in 1964. We have fought a long and expensive fight, and lost. Yet we still fight on.

President Barack Obama’s cause du jour is income inequality, and it’s significant other, the minimum wage. And now that “reforming” the best healthcare system in the world is well underway, he wants to declare war against income inequality.

In no free or relatively free economic system can there be income equality, for two reasons. First, inequality is a fundamental part of life. Some people sing better than others. Some are better athletes than others. And some people make more money than others, and that’s because some people are better at their job than others and deserve higher pay, and some jobs require more skill and training than others, and pay better.

So, like poverty, another area that will always exist, we will always have income inequality.

Far more important, however, is whether there is the opportunity to move up from the lower income levels, and that is an area that has been fairly stable, according to The New York Times, which reported last month that “the odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years….”

That means that people in the lowest quintile are not condemned to stay there, and people in the top quintile are not guaranteed to stay there, and there is substantial movement in and out of all quintiles.

It’s a favored piece of envy politics that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But the data tell a different story. From 1967 to 2009, the real mean household income increased for every quintile, which means the poor became richer, not poorer. Americans in poverty could afford more goods and services in 2009 than in 1967, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Other factors, like where people live, have an effect. Harvard University’s Raj Chetty reported “the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4 percent in Charlotte but 12.9 percent in San Jose,” and factors such as better primary schools and greater family stability also aid upward mobility, he wrote.

Larry Kaufmann, senior advisor at Pacific Economics Group, discussed findings of the Pew Charitable Trust, which showed that “Half of children born to parents with bottom-third income levels experience upward relative mobility when the parents remain continuously married; the figure falls to 26 percent when this is not the case,” he wrote.

The Pew study shows that the poverty rate among married couples is only 6 percent, and among married couples who both have full-time jobs the poverty rate is practically zero. The poverty rate among single dads and single moms, however, is much higher: 25 percent for single dads and 31percent for single moms.

Investor’s Business Daily Senior Writer John Merline notes that income inequality has increased faster since Mr. Obama took office than under any of the three previous presidents, and that inequality is now greater than at any time since the Census Bureau started recording it back in 1947.

The message from this is that to assist folks in moving up the income ladder, Mr. Obama should replace his administration’s policies that impede economic recovery, and seriously encourage the restoration of family values among Americans. That would accomplish far more than making people think they are victims, and fomenting division among Americans.



Cross-posted from Observations

Forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a national disgrace

Commentary by James Shott

An abortion-related event occurred last week, and if you were paying close attention to the news, you might have been aware of that. Hundreds of thousands of abortion opponents gathered in Washington, DC for the “March for Life,” protesting the grisly process that has terminated about 55 million future Americans in the womb since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

It wasn’t easy to find news accounts of this event. The Media Research Center reports, “the broadcast networks combined devoted a total of just 46 seconds to the March. ABC offered 24 seconds and NBC gave it 22 seconds, correctly noting the ‘huge turnout’ despite brutal weather conditions. CBS didn’t bother to cover it at all.”

This coverage totaled about 18 percent of the coverage the birth of a panda cub at National Zoo received a few days earlier. In the eyes of our dedicated network news people, one new panda is six times more important than 55 million aborted potential children, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who braved the cold to make their position known.

This helps confirm the long-held idea that we do not have a news media that furnishes the public with what it needs, but instead provides what it wants the public to know.

A fact sheet published by the Guttmacher Institute tells us that at least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45. Given that the cause of pregnancy is not a medical mystery, that is a shocking statistic.

Web4Health explains that sex without contraceptives carries an 85 percent likelihood of pregnancy, and if the most effective contraceptive methods are used properly, the chance of pregnancy drops to eight percent or less, but abstaining from sexual intercourse has a zero percent pregnancy rate, except for in vitro fertilization.

According to Guttmacher, fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76 percent of pill users and 49 percent of condom users report having used their method inconsistently. Forty-six percent of women who had abortions used no contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.

Other factors contribute to unwanted pregnancy. Some men and women are uneducated about how to have responsible sex, and contraceptives can be expensive for some.

Abortion was, in fact, the solution for more than a million women who got pregnant unintentionally last year. But as long as abortions are an easy corrective for bad luck, carelessness or bad judgment, it seems unlikely that more responsible use of contraceptives will occur.

The problem with abortion is that at some point in the pregnancy the fetus will have developed enough to be justifiably considered a human being. That point may or may not be the same point as when the fetus can survive outside the womb, but whenever that point occurs and afterward, abortion is murder. The debate goes on over just when the fetus reaches that point.

It is commonly accepted that at 20 weeks the fetus can feel pain during an abortion, and at least one researcher believes that as early as eight weeks after conception the neural structures needed to detect certain stimuli are in place. As science progresses more and more becomes known about fetal development, pushing backward toward conception the point at which the fetus is a person.

Be that as it may, it is absolutely scandalous that in America in the 21st century so many women get pregnant who don’t want to, and that so many of them choose to abort the developing life inside them.

It ought to be a point of humiliation that the great majority of unwanted pregnancies result from carelessness or negligence in the use of contraceptives, or not using contraceptives at all.

A major provider of abortions is Planned Parenthood for America, and it receives more than $500 million each year in taxpayer funds to deliver “vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide,” according to its Website, “the key program [of which] provides essential health care to women, the Title X Family Planning Program.”

Planned Parenthood provided 360,000 abortions in 2013. Providing abortions to women who are pregnant and don’t want to be is not planning for parenthood.

There are couples all across this nation who cannot conceive a child and would gladly adopt an unwanted child given up for adoption. Perhaps Planned Parenthood could shift its focus from abortion to adoption, and nurture women through their unwanted pregnancy to an end that both honors life and helps those who want children, but can’t have their own.

How many great writers, scientists, artists, inventers, athletes, etc., have been summarily snuffed out before they got started?

A young pregnant wife was hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis and had ice applied tfso her stomach. Afterward, doctors suggested that she abort the child, because the baby would be born with disabilities. The young wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was the mother of Andrea Bocelli.

Cross-posted from Observations

As the New Year begins, government’s policies are still failing us

Commentary by James Shott

As the economic non-recovery crawls into 2014, the “good news” on the jobs front – that the unemployment rate dropped .3 percent in December to 6.7 percent – is far less impressive when you look beneath the surface.

The reason the unemployment rate dropped was not that a strengthening economy produced a sharply higher number of new jobs, as should be expected in a true recovery. December showed only a puny 74,000 new payroll jobs were added. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that the drop resulted because five times that many people – 374,000 – became discouraged that they couldn’t find work and dropped out of the labor force.

Adding even a small number like 74,000 to a smaller labor force misleads us into thinking things have improved.

The BLS identifies June of 2009 as the official end of the recession, at which time the labor force participation rate was 65.7 percent (162 million workers). At the end of December, the rate stood at a pitiful 62.8 percent (155 million workers).

Using the size of the labor force in 2009 and the adding back into the equation the 7 million who have dropped out, the unemployment rate is just under 11 percent.

We should not celebrate a drop in the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent when 7 million Americans have given up looking for work because the economy still has not produced jobs for them.

Hopefully, the New Year will bring an infection of fiscal responsibility to our national leaders. It is interesting how liberals see global warming/climate change – a widely popular but unproven theory – as a true crisis, but don’t see years of budget deficits near and above a trillion dollars, and a national debt of nearly $17 trillion, as a problem.

President Barack Obama’s first year in office, 2009, saw a deficit of $1.4 trillion, which gets credited to George W. Bush, but contained the contribution of nearly $200 billion from the Obama stimulus. But over the next four years Mr. Obama racked up more than $4.2 trillion in deficits – FY 2010: $1,294 billion; FY 2011: $1,300 billion; FY 2012: $1,087 billion; FY 2013: $680 billion. This fiscal year the projection is a deficit of $744 billion, and the FY2015 deficit is projected at $577 billion.

To help put this in perspective, The Weekly Standard noted back in November of 2012 that, “According to the White House OMB, we ran up $1.8 trillion in real (inflation-adjusted) deficit spending during fiscal years 1942-45,” and that “we’ve now run up $3.4 trillion in real (inflation-adjusted) deficit spending under Obama — in less time than it took us to fight World War II.”

If there is good news in Obama deficit numbers it is that the deficits are coming down, but real good news would be Congress and the president taking concrete steps to get spending under control.

That seems unlikely, given Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) opinion that “The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make,” a position gleefully adopted by most, if not all, Congressional Democrats.

In her view there is no waste, fraud or abuse, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary, and there’s no unnecessary spending, either.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) issues an annual report on government waste, and in “Wastebook 2013,” he lists 100 examples totaling $30 billion. Heaven only knows the total of all the wasteful spending of the federal government.

* The military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds of useable vehicles and other military equipment, approximately 20 percent of the total U.S. war material in Afghanistan, totaling $7 billion, rather than sell it or ship it home.

* The SuperStop is a $1 million bus stop complete with heated benches and sidewalks, and wireless zones for personal computers. Yet its roof doesn’t protect from the rain, snow, wind or blazing sun.

* One of NASA’s next research missions won’t be exploring an alien planet or distant galaxy. Instead, it is spending $3 million to go to Washington, D.C. and study one of the greatest mysteries in the universe — how Congress works.

* When officials at the Manchester Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire installed new solar panels costing $3.5 million, they did not anticipate one quarter of them would not be used 18 months later because the reflection from the panels blinds pilots and controllers.

* The Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration discovered the IRS paid up to $13.6 billion in false Earned Income Tax Credits in 2012.

* While millions of Americans continue to pay taxes on their hard earned wages, many federal employees are tax cheats, to the tune of $3.6 billion.

* The feds keep the lights on in empty and little used federal buildings, costing $1.5 billion.

* Out of the $33.5 billion in Pell Grants the federal government doled out last year, individuals posing as students took off with $1.2 billion.

When an elected public servant believes there can be no spending cuts in the face of such wanton waste, it speaks volumes about the integrity and motivation of that individual.

Federal spending is a giant problem that we had better address soon.

Cross-posted from Observations

How many of America’s “poor” are like this lady and her husband?

The way that many welfare recipients think was revealed in a call to a radio talk show on KLBJ-AM in Austin, Texas. Lucy, a 32 year-old married mother of three, whose parents also had been on welfare, said this about her situation:

“I just wanted to say while workers out there and people like you that are preaching morality at people like me that are living on welfare, can you really blame us?  I mean, I get to sit home, I get to go visit my friends all day, I even get to smoke weed, and people that I know that are illegal immigrants, that don’t contribute to society, we still going to get paid. Our check’s going to come in the mail every month and it’s going to be on time. And we get subsidized housing, we even get presents delivered for our kids at Christmas. Why should I work?”

“So you know what? You all get the benefit of saying, ‘Oh, look at me. I’m a better person,’ because you all are going to work. We’re the ones getting paid. So can you really blame us?”

Asked if her husband works, she said he does sometimes, but “he doesn’t really see the need for it.” Has she ever worked? “A couple of times.” Does she ever feel guilty about gaming the system and taking money other people have earned? “But you know, if someone offers you a million dollars, would you walk away from it? It’s easy to preach morality, and that’s the only reason why I called. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, yeah, you know, you’re making your living off of other people’s backs.’ But, you know, if somebody gave you a million dollars, and said that, here, you don’t got to work for it, no strings attached. Here, just take it, you can do whatever you want to do with it. You would take it, too.”

The host asked if she was calling in on an “Obamaphone” (a cell phone provided by the federal government) and she answered that she was. Then, when asked how much she received each month, she said she only pays $50 a month for rent that should be $600, so that’s $550, $425 in food stamps, $150 for her electric bill, and $100 on her water bill from the City of Austin. That comes to $1,225 a month, $14,700 a year, just less than the current federal minimum wage. Plus the cell phone.

She also said that when you are in government programs, “they are always coming to you and offering more programs,” and will even pay you to go to find out about where you can get more money. “They encourage you to stay on the programs.”

Asked if her money was cut off, would she get up every day and go to work, she said, “yes, I’d have to.”

This situation makes perfect sense to people like Lucy and her husband, who never learned the lesson that mature, responsible human beings make their own way in life, and who now live a relatively comfortable life without having to do anything to help themselves. They are a product of the failed War on Poverty for which we can thank President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), the namesake of the radio station Lucy called. They are among a large and growing number of Americans being taught that the government will take care of them, and they don’t have to do well in school, or learn a trade, or look for a job, or do much more than draw breath.

Last year the Census Bureau reported that 46 million Americans were in “poverty.”  But how many of those are really poor and need some help, and how many are like Lucy and her hubby; playing a system that allows those eager for a free ride to get one?

Census Bureau data reveals the following about people classified as “poor”: eighty percent of poor households enjoy air conditioning; nearly three-fourths own a car or truck, and 31 percent own two or more cars or trucks, nearly two-thirds subscribe to cable or satellite television, 50 percent own a personal computer, and one in seven owns two or more computers; 43 percent subscribe to Internet access; one-third own a wide-screen plasma or LCD television; one-fourth own a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo; more than half of poor families with children own a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.

Poverty ain’t what it used to be.

It isn’t government’s job to help individuals who are down on their luck, and as the War on Poverty has demonstrated, it does a lousy job of it. And it surely isn’t government’s job to give taxpayer’s money to people who don’t really need it, or to actively recruit people who don’t need welfare onto welfare roles. That is the epitome of government disservice, and elected official’s self-service.

George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote has been used a lot recently, but it has never been truer than today: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”