MADISON WISCONSIN - SUNDAY FEBRUARY 20, 2011.
Yesterday (Saturday February 19th) more than 70,000 demonstrators filled the capital city of Wisconsin, just across Lake Michigan from my perch here in Grand Rapids Michigan. Each day more and more demonstrators are showing up to voice their opinion of the Tea Party governor, Scott Walker, and his attempt to shove a bill through the Wisconsin legislature that would effectively take away the right of public employees to engage in collective bargaining. In other words, Walker wants to eliminate the unions that represent state and municipal workers in Wisconsin. Walker is insisting that he will not compromise.
This bill, called “the Budget Repair Bill", is designed to eliminate a projected deficit of $3.6 billion by 2013. A closer look at Wisconsin’s budget situation reveals some interesting details. According to NBC’s John Daily, the immediate budget shortfall is $137 million. Not really all that much, as these things go. Much of that red ink has been because of decreased incoming tax revenues due to the poor economy. But other factors contributing to the current and projected shortfall are tax cuts for individuals and corporations passed in 2003, rising health care costs, including $2.9 billion in projected Medicaid outlays because of people forced out of work in the private sector. The $2.9 billion projected Medicaid outlays by the state is a consequence of the expiration of funding from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA2009, better known as Obama’s Stimulus Plan). In other words, the expiration of ARRA2009 has left all the states and their constituent communities with budget issues stemming from the evaporation of Federal revenue sharing this year.
Meanwhile, that portion of the state budget earmarked for public employee benefits is flush with cash. The governor and his Tea Party cronies in the state legislature want to not only raid the union benefit funds, they want to destroy the unions altogether.
Now, the skinny on the consequences of the tax cuts of 2003.
Since 2003, the tax cuts have resulted in a cumulative $3.7 billion revenue deficit, and by 2013 will amount to $800 million in lost revenue per year. $2.9 billion in Medicaid expenses will fall to the state because of the expiring ARRA2009. The bottom line – Walker wants to make up for the tax cuts, the toll of the bad economy (caused by Wall Street’s fat cats), and the expiring stimulus funds from ARRA2009 (which Republicans fought furiously to block) on the backs of the middle class, particularly the public employees unions. Further, Walker pushed through three new tax cut bills earlier this year amounting to another $117 million for the current fiscal year.
It’s no secret. Tax cuts are minimally (if at all) helpful to the middle class, inconsequential for the poor, but fabulously helpful to the rich. They profit from the compounded income they receive from the tax savings they invest in the stock market (and other investments) and thus become obscenely rich. Many have become so rich that they can buy off politicians and sponsor candidates for political office that will continue and even expand the conservatives’ war on the middle class and their labor union allies. If Gov. Walker is successful in destroying Wisconsin’s public employees unions, that will amount to the first domino to fall in a continuing cascade of public union busting in other states by newly elected Tea Party governors and legislators. And since public employee unions are the only real source of campaign financing for candidates representing middle class aspirations, their destruction will allow the far-right Tea Party and their minions to run the table and permanently eliminate Democratic financial support for moderate and progressive Democratic candidates in future elections. With all campaign funding of any consequence being controlled by corporations and the far-right, we will have a one-party system on our hands – a party dominated by a large cadre of radical right-wing Tea Party zealots and their billionaire backers/controllers. The Democratic party will no longer be able to field winnable candidates because there won’t be money available to sponsor their candidates. They will effectively disappear as a united political movement representing rank and file citizens.
Adam Smith, in his treatise The Wealth of Nations, asserts that “the biggest threat to Capitalism are Capitalists, because their aversion to competition will cause them to convert a capitalist system into a monopolistic system. The only antidote is regulation.”
Regulation! That's a construct that causes the far right to wax apoplectic. They want to unleash Wall Street on the world like a pack of pit bulls to continue and accelerate the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich (thereby destroying the middle class in the process). They want to deregulate not only Wall Street but the big multinational corporations as well, so they can accelerate the transfer of great sums of wealth out of the country – not only to take advantage of cheap labor but to sock trillions away in offshore accounts and thereby avoid paying the taxes they owe. This has been an ongoing problem that could be pursued, but is deliberately not being pursued because those same plutocrats and American-based multinational corporations finance and control the (mostly Republican) politicians in Congress. For them to act to retrieve some of the wealth illegally stashed offshore is forbidden by their wealthy controllers.
When left to its own devices, that is, when totally unregulated, Capitalism devolves into Fascism. Fascism does not necessarily mean a single dictator – it describes an economic system in which large industrial interests control the government. It’s a system that compels the government to look after the interests of Big Business at the expense of the people. We have been seeing the uncontrolled monopolizing of the health care industry, high finance on Wall Street, Big Oil, pharmaceutical companies – indeed, the unrestrained speculative price fixing of commodities that affect not just the United States but the entire world. We've been seeing merger after merger promoted by Wall Street interests that amounts to the building of trusts. We need Teddy Roosevelt more than anyone - even more than Obama!
Back to Wisconsin. The Tea Party governor, Scott Walker, and the Tea Party and conservative dominated legislature in Wisconsin are trying to 1.) destroy the public employee unions, 2.) thereby destroying the Democratic party by depriving it of most of its funding, 3.) set the table for future vast majorities in the legislature and more far-right governors, 4.) all of which act as proxies for the far-right Tea Party zealots and their billionaire controllers, 5.) deregulate all business and place them in control (behind the scenes), 6. eventually (within two or three election cycles) set up a fascist state. This movement is starting in Wisconsin and is threatening to spread across the country. People taking to the streets are trying to prevent the take-over of the political system by the Tea Party and like-minded Republicans, which puts them in solidarity with the people taking to the streets in the Middle East. The middle East, in fact, may have inspired the protests, or at least contributed to the magnitude of them.
What do the public employee unions want to do? They want to work out something that will yield major concessions but retain the right to engage in collective bargaining. With inflation running rampant (I mean real inflation, not the sanitized numbers the government publishes that omit the skyrocketing costs of food and gasoline), the 5.6% pay cut and the 12.6% increase in employees health insurance that can amount to another 10% or more decrease in take-home pay means hardship for public workers. The public workers are saying – OK, we’ll endure the salary cuts, just don’t disappear our union. But Walker has said he is not going to compromise, and, for his part state senate Republican leader Scott Fitzgerald says “This bill is not negotiable”. That’s the take-no-prisoners approach the Tea Party politicians have been advocating all along. This should be no surprise – these sleazy people are merely keeping their promises to the voters who elected them. And therein lies the problem. Too many middle class and, especially, too many (in fact, most) of the poor failed to show up at the polls while the Tea Party supporters showed up at the polls in force on Nov. 2nd 2010.
One can blame Wall Street for causing the deep recession we’re still saddled with. One can blame the deregulation that started with President Reagan, continued under president Clinton, and really took off under President Bush – deregulation that allowed, even encouraged, Wall Street abuses, big companies shipping millions of jobs overseas while at the same time firing domestic workers. Never mind that American companies could easily afford to pay their domestic employees middle class wages - they got rid of them so they could make obscene profits on the backs of foreign workers that worked for slave wages. Never mind that Big Business precipitated the gutting of the Federal, state and local government revenue streams not only by firing their tax-paying workers and forcing them into the safety nets of unemployment insurance (of which the first six months were paid for out of their wages) and Medicaid, which in turn put a strain on state and Federal budgets. Never mind that Big Business further decimated the revenue streams of government by having their toadies in Congress and in the various state legislators reduce their corporate taxes, over and over again, and in some cases eliminate corporate taxes altogether. Yes, you’re going to have deficits when you decrease incoming revenue by billions and increase expenses by billions simultaneously. It’s third grade arithmetic. But because too many moderates, progressives, students, and minorities failed to vote in sufficient numbers, much of the blame for their current predicament lies with them. Here’s why.
The Tea Party, which does not necessarily represent the majority of voters, induced their zealots to venture forth en masse to vote in huge numbers. Rank and file Tea Party activists are pigeons, of course. They are acting against their own self interests by voting into power a nihilistic element that is committed to turning our system into a fascist state. And they don’t even realize it. So there’s two forms of stupidity represented in the current conflict – the Tea Party voters who elected extremist governors, state legislators, and senators and representatives into the 112th Congress, and the moderate / progressive middle class voters (and most of all, the disenfranchised poor) who stayed home on November 2nd 2010. Nobody can say they weren’t warned. The main reason the poor stand to be the biggest losers in this debacle is that most of them failed to vote, and therefore bear perhaps the brunt of the responsibility for this turn of events. The poor stand to suffer becaus they will lose low income heating credits, supplemental food benefits, Medicaid, and other low-income programs the Republicans will surely cut or eliminate. They won't be able to heat their homes or get medical care. They didn't take the midterm elections seriously, largely because Obama wasn't a candidate. Their apathy threatens to destroy our country and allow the despots now in power to turn the United States into a fascist state. Currently, the only bulwark against the far right is the (still) Democratic controlled Senate. If we're not careful, the Senate will fall in the next election and that'll just about do us in.
I know this sounds extreme, but that’s the way I see it. I see striking comparisons to the Nazi takeover of Weimar Germany in the early 1930s. Hitler and his Nazi minions were voted into power by the people who were unaware at first who they were actually giving the reins of power to. Scapegoating was employed (against the Jews) just as scapegoating is being employed by the Tea Party in that they’re blaming unions for the financial crisis. They wax apoplectic at President Obama for running up the huge budget deficits when anybody living above ground knows (or should know) it was Bush and the Republicans who ran up the national debt. They did so largely by giving massive tax cuts to the rich and to Big Business which cost the government trillions in lost revenue. The same holds true for Republican governors and Republicans in the statehouses who engineered tax cuts for the rich and for Big Business at the state level.
Another element of the Tea Party and their Republican brethren is their demonstrated antipathy toward minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics. Tea Party rallies often include posters depicting Obama in very racist and derogatory terms - even in some cases as a devil with horns. A common slogan by the Tea Party types is “we want to take our country back!” Back from whom? What they really want (whether they realize it or not) is that they aim to take it from a Black president whom they consider alien and/or inferior, and give it over to those who seek to destroy America. The poor, apathetic, and disenfranchised voters failed in 2010. Perhaps they'll wise up before the 2012 election cycle. One can only hope. It's up to them to save the America from further disintegration. I'm talking about the America that I grew up in, the America whose Armed Forces I served in, the America that put men on the moon, and the America that engages in charitable activities the world over. The America that was once the pinnacle of the civilized world. That was my America. They want to turn my America over to fascists. They want to turn it over to the Koch brothers, among others.
For further reading I have included a link to an article in the New Yorker magazine on the Koch brothers, Charles and David, the billionaire brothers who are financing the Tea Party takeover of the machinery of government. I strongly encourage the readers of this blog to read the article. It is disturbing.
*Early in the article there is material describing the Koch brothers’ opposition to climate change legislation. Anyone who has read my thirteen part series on climate change which I posted on this blog in November 2010 might think of this writer as a hypocrite, since I am so violently opposed to the Koch brothers’ agenda while at the same time I am in favor of their support for opposing research on the matter of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Please allow me to explain.
While the Koch brothers are “deniers”, I do not consider myself as such. I consider myself a skeptic, whereas my skepticism is predicated not on a refusal to believe there’s been an uptick of the earth’s temperature over the past 100 years – I accept that we’re getting warmer – but that any warming we see is caused entirely by human activity. My skepticism is fueled by AGW proponents’ demonstrated proclivity to manipulate data in order to bolster their case. When one has to manipulate or distort data to prove their hypothesis, one has a weak argument. As someone who opposes forced policy directives by governments and other policymaking bodies in response to what I believe is an unproven hypothetical construct, I agree with the Koch brothers on that particular issue and I support their approach to resisting harmful and destructive policies intended to punish CO2 “polluters”. Of course the Koch brothers' motivation is that they believe it will cost them money. Of course, being the greedy #$!#t©€&£#¢&* they are, they will simply pass along any cost increases to their business resulting from punitive assessments by policymakers on behalf of their AGW agenda. In the long run, then, the consumer, being at the end of the pipe, will have to bear the added cost of AGW inspired regulations - not Koch Industries.
In the eventuality that humans are (or are not) found to have contributed to the warming, I will accept it, but I don’t expect to be alive in two or three hundred years when the matter is resolved one way or another, because climate is the aggregate weather over a time span of many decades at the least, and, more accurately, over time spans of centuries and millennia and beyond.
Having said that, I would point out that the world is not made up of absolutes. Purely black / white approaches to problems usually result in vastly imperfect solutions. Therefore, my agreement with the Koch brothers' financial support to foundations and other bodies supporting parallel research into other causes of climate change besides or instead of human cause is only a small part of a much larger whole. If one looks at the world as shades of gray between extremes of black / white, then my view of the Koch brothers agenda occupies a place in the spectrum between black (0 bytes) and white (255 bytes) at about 10 bytes, i.e. 96% black. I would certainly wish they would disappear somehow, as the harm they represent is far, far greater than any good they are capable of with respect to their sponsored research on climate change.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, December 18, 2010
THE LADDER OF SUCCESS (PART 1)
The names and occupations of the people described in this post are fictitious, but the character traits described herein are those of real people in the real world based on my own knowledge and experience.
Weasel S. A. (Wease) Weasel Jr. is doing pretty well for himself. He’s making a killing as an oil futures trader on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). His father, Weasel S. A. (Pop) Weasel Sr. got Weasel Jr. his job after he finally graduated from Yale with an MBA. The elder Weasel once traded oil futures back in the 1980s on that very same floor. So Wease Weasel is following right in his father’s footsteps. These days Pop Weasel is an executive vice president at Goldigger-Sack, one of Wall Street’s largest investment houses. Wease has a very bright future ahead of him so long as he hangs on tight to his father’s coat-tails.
It’s a family affair. Uncle Scam U. Weasel III manages one of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds, Fyck Investments, LP., which his grandfather, Scam U. Weasel I, started in 1952. His father was Scam U. Weasel II, who built the fund into one of Wall Street’s most lucrative investment instruments. Tragically, Scam III inherited the fund when his (and Pop Weasel’s) father drowned after falling off the family’s 123 foot yacht in 2000 because he was falling-down drunk. Pop Weasel moonlights as Scam Weasel’s junior partner in the fund, where Pop takes advantage of his position at Goldigger-Sack to orchestrate lucrative insider trading scenarios with impunity. As a multi billionaire, Scam can afford to pay off agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the tune of millions to look the other way. It’s quite a racket they have there.
The Weasel brothers have adjacent mansions in Connecticut on the Sound, and adjacent summer homes in the Hamptons, from where they frequently venture out into the Atlantic for afternoon forays on their 123 foot yacht, or to Martha’s Vineyard or Cape Cod to hang out at the upscale marinas and dance the night away with their wives or mistresses (or occasionally with strangers if one or the other happens to “get lucky”). This lifestyle is especially appealing to Wease Weasel, who fancies himself as a playboy of sorts. He likes to squire trophy blondes about town – he has a stable of about twenty or thirty women he can choose from. Although he's too dense to realize it, the women only like him for his money.
One of Wease’s favorite forms of entertainment is spending hours on Internet forums taunting the many people complaining about oil speculators (like him) on Wall Street running up the price of oil. These forums light right up each time there’s another spike in oil prices, and Wease is right there to rub it in. He likes to tell others posting comments on various threads that if they were successful like him, it wouldn’t matter what oil, or food, or hammers, or anything else costs – they would simply pay whatever it cost to fill their SUVs, or Jaguars, or Mercedes, or for that matter, their yachts. Money’s no object.
Wease Weasel has a penchant for boasting of his wealth on forums that typically follow articles on the widening income gap or the skyrocketing price of oil. They shouldn’t complain, he likes to write, they should work at getting rich like him. Wease Weasel is a classic class warfare specialist. He relishes in taunting the less fortunate – those who have to decide on whether to have a necessary operation or lose their house to the bank in foreclosure proceedings, or those who lost their jobs because they were outsourced to another country and are now losing their homes on which they’ve been paying for over twenty years. He especially relishes getting on forums associated with articles on the extension of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. He loves to chortle at those who complain about the tax cuts President Obama was forced into granting by a cabal of rogue Republicans in the Senate. Collectively, the Weasels stand to save over $3 billion in tax monies they now won’t have to pay because the Republicans on Capitol Hill had their backs.
So there you have it - the saga of the Weasel family. An American success story. Each of them has all the money they’ll ever need, and then some. They invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Scam’s hedge fund, Fyck Investments LP, and in other stocks and bonds, and watch their money grow and accumulate.
As for Wease Weasel, he has decided to not follow his father up the high finance ladder. That’s too much like work. He's planning to retire before he reaches the ripe old age of thirty. He hasn’t told his father yet - hopefully, he might get drunk like his great uncle and fall off the yacht, or drop dead of a heart attack, or get cancer or something – save him the trouble. Then he'd get his father's $400 million. What would really be the cat's ass is if his uncle Scam met an unfortunate demise, then he'd stand to inherit billions. If or when any of that comes down Wease can lay back and while the days away and enjoy the lifestyle of the idle rich. After all, he deserves it, doesn’t he?
Weasel S. A. (Wease) Weasel Jr. is doing pretty well for himself. He’s making a killing as an oil futures trader on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). His father, Weasel S. A. (Pop) Weasel Sr. got Weasel Jr. his job after he finally graduated from Yale with an MBA. The elder Weasel once traded oil futures back in the 1980s on that very same floor. So Wease Weasel is following right in his father’s footsteps. These days Pop Weasel is an executive vice president at Goldigger-Sack, one of Wall Street’s largest investment houses. Wease has a very bright future ahead of him so long as he hangs on tight to his father’s coat-tails.
It’s a family affair. Uncle Scam U. Weasel III manages one of Wall Street’s largest hedge funds, Fyck Investments, LP., which his grandfather, Scam U. Weasel I, started in 1952. His father was Scam U. Weasel II, who built the fund into one of Wall Street’s most lucrative investment instruments. Tragically, Scam III inherited the fund when his (and Pop Weasel’s) father drowned after falling off the family’s 123 foot yacht in 2000 because he was falling-down drunk. Pop Weasel moonlights as Scam Weasel’s junior partner in the fund, where Pop takes advantage of his position at Goldigger-Sack to orchestrate lucrative insider trading scenarios with impunity. As a multi billionaire, Scam can afford to pay off agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the tune of millions to look the other way. It’s quite a racket they have there.
The Weasel brothers have adjacent mansions in Connecticut on the Sound, and adjacent summer homes in the Hamptons, from where they frequently venture out into the Atlantic for afternoon forays on their 123 foot yacht, or to Martha’s Vineyard or Cape Cod to hang out at the upscale marinas and dance the night away with their wives or mistresses (or occasionally with strangers if one or the other happens to “get lucky”). This lifestyle is especially appealing to Wease Weasel, who fancies himself as a playboy of sorts. He likes to squire trophy blondes about town – he has a stable of about twenty or thirty women he can choose from. Although he's too dense to realize it, the women only like him for his money.
One of Wease’s favorite forms of entertainment is spending hours on Internet forums taunting the many people complaining about oil speculators (like him) on Wall Street running up the price of oil. These forums light right up each time there’s another spike in oil prices, and Wease is right there to rub it in. He likes to tell others posting comments on various threads that if they were successful like him, it wouldn’t matter what oil, or food, or hammers, or anything else costs – they would simply pay whatever it cost to fill their SUVs, or Jaguars, or Mercedes, or for that matter, their yachts. Money’s no object.
Wease Weasel has a penchant for boasting of his wealth on forums that typically follow articles on the widening income gap or the skyrocketing price of oil. They shouldn’t complain, he likes to write, they should work at getting rich like him. Wease Weasel is a classic class warfare specialist. He relishes in taunting the less fortunate – those who have to decide on whether to have a necessary operation or lose their house to the bank in foreclosure proceedings, or those who lost their jobs because they were outsourced to another country and are now losing their homes on which they’ve been paying for over twenty years. He especially relishes getting on forums associated with articles on the extension of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. He loves to chortle at those who complain about the tax cuts President Obama was forced into granting by a cabal of rogue Republicans in the Senate. Collectively, the Weasels stand to save over $3 billion in tax monies they now won’t have to pay because the Republicans on Capitol Hill had their backs.
So there you have it - the saga of the Weasel family. An American success story. Each of them has all the money they’ll ever need, and then some. They invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Scam’s hedge fund, Fyck Investments LP, and in other stocks and bonds, and watch their money grow and accumulate.
As for Wease Weasel, he has decided to not follow his father up the high finance ladder. That’s too much like work. He's planning to retire before he reaches the ripe old age of thirty. He hasn’t told his father yet - hopefully, he might get drunk like his great uncle and fall off the yacht, or drop dead of a heart attack, or get cancer or something – save him the trouble. Then he'd get his father's $400 million. What would really be the cat's ass is if his uncle Scam met an unfortunate demise, then he'd stand to inherit billions. If or when any of that comes down Wease can lay back and while the days away and enjoy the lifestyle of the idle rich. After all, he deserves it, doesn’t he?
Thursday, December 9, 2010
MISERY IN THE USA
On December 4th I posted a piece on how the United States has devolved into a 3rd World country. I talked about how the least of us are neglected while the rich are coddled. Our government is running up huge deficits and overall debt, and that's OK, as long as the rich get even more tax cuts. It's generally understood that the money the rich save will not be re-invested in job-producing activities, it will get invested in money-making investments that will allow their wealth accumulation to accelerate. Since there are so few jobs, and even fewer jobs that pay well enough to provide a decent standard of living, there will not be sufficient demand to justify hiring new workers. So, why would rich people who own businesses hire new workers when they can't sell enough of what they make anyway? They won't! They will simply invest in the stock market, which, by the way, fattens the bottom lines of companies that farm their work out to foreign countries.
There are two scenarios pertaining to the redistribution of wealth here in the U.S. One is the stealing of the middle class's wealth by the rich, leaving many destitute, and the other is the redistribution of that middle class wealth from the U.S. to the so-called "emerging economies". The big corporations and the billionaire tycoons, based here in the U.S., will run the factories over in China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other countries and collect immense profits because of the cheap labor in those countries. I personally believe that this shouldn't be a zero sum game, but that's exactly what the current policies are dictating that it is - a zero sum game. Rather than everyone in the global economy doing well, America is being forced to relinquish wealth to other countries and force many of it's own citizens into poverty and hardship.
The Republicans, and a few Democrats, are driving this policy of excusing the rich from paying their fair share of taxes under the guise of putting more people to work. Trickle-down doesn't work. Period. They know damn well it hasn’t worked in the past and isn’t going to work now, but they’re relying on the demonstrated ignorance of the American people to vindicate them. They know exactly what they’re doing – they know - they KNOW – that the American people will blame President Obama for the continuing hardship and vote him out of office in two years. The only hope for Obama is that the Republicans currently are fielding the weakest batch of potential presidential candidates in memory, and hopefully the voters will come to understand that elusive fact.
An article appeared today on MSNBC's web page written by JoNell Aleccia asserting that the life expectancy in the US is regressing. The U.S. is 38th or 39th in the world in life-expectancy. People aren't living as long because of lack of health care, low pay or other financial hardship. Many retirees - people who worked hard all their lives and paid into the Social Security Trust Fund, paid their taxes, and led productive lives - are hurting badly. Many simply can't afford to live. And there's talk by conservative politicians of slashing their retirement income even more, of making draconian cuts to their income and to Medicare - all to give the rich even more money. In my view, it's blood money. More money being taken from those less fortunate and handed over to the rich is exactly what it looks like. It's reverse Robin Hoodism - rob the poor and give to the rich. This is more than just my opinion based on what I see in my immediate surroundings. It's in the news and on the cable TV networks, and even congressmen and women are announcing this problem on the air. Other conservative congressmen and women and senators are trying to tell us that by giving the rich more money they'll make jobs and hire more people. As I've already stated, that's not what happens. George W. Bush tried it ten years ago and the trickle-down theory has been proven to not work. Period.
To their credit, many of the mega-rich are in favor of paying more taxes - they consider it their patriotic duty. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and many other lesser known billionaires are trying to tell the politicians that they want to pay their fair share. But the Republicans in the Senate don't want to hear it. Perhaps they want the tax cuts for themselves.
There were some eloquent comments to the Aleccia piece by other affected people from around the country, and I'm going to paste some testimonials by these people who are suffering great hardship as a result of these terrible, odious tax policies.
Marlen101917 -
The only way to improve the health of ALL Americans is to take the profit out of health care and go to a single payer system like all other industrialized counties have done. A sick population not only kills our citizens, it kills our economic competitiveness as well.
Abby1588585 says this -
With the recession people cannot afford the same quality and quantity of healthy food. I spoke with a woman in the store the other day who was stocking up on cheap food to feed her family of four. She was just trying to make her food dollars stretch so she was buying the cheapest hot dogs to provide protein, the cheapest brand of macaroni and cheese to fill them up. She said that she couldn't afford fresh fruit and vegetables. She sounded so depressed but grateful her husband and her were both working although she said they were each working two part-time jobs. They have gone through their savings. While we spoke I was reminded of how hard it is so for seniors because we didn't get a cost of living increase last year and won't get one this year. I know seniors who are cutting back on food to save money. Sad, considering how fragile older folks can be.
Wal-Mart has their giving trees up and numerous tags (more than I remember in the past) are still up. People just don't have the money to spare. This is the first year we can't afford to help either. No Christmas gifts for our grandchildren. No money for gifts at all. We told our children we just don't have it to spare.
People are foregoing medical care because they cannot afford co-pays (if they have insurance).
People work longer hours in hopes of retaining their jobs (if they are lucky enough to have one) or are pounding the pavement praying for a job.
The stress alone is detrimental to one's health.
And while all of this is happening the GOP is worried about tax breaks for the rich and refused the $250 for seniors. Thanks for nothing.
ModerationInAllThings says this -
Without a doubt it's true; physiological well being can't be maintained and psychological well being is factored in.... giving up, no hope or limited hope.
The old saying of 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' still holds, but people aren't getting jobs w/ bennies (benefits), they're underemployed, unemployed, and are sacrificing medical needs in lieu of more pressing needs.
Try to blame Dems or Repubs; truth is, NONE have legislated towards American Businesses remaining in America, hiring Americans for American wages, so that Americans can have American benefits and pay what American business(that are now mostly overseas) charge.
American business has become Corporo-government entities that will profit from 3rd world wages, the lowest bidder, and know that eventually the stack of cards will fall, and Our standard of living is going down, down, down......ALL in the name of the farce that is known as 'the global economy'.
It has nothing to do with healthcare, healthscare, insurance co's., etc.... . It has everything to do with people calling afore mentioned American legislation directed towards Americans being labeled as 'protectionisitic'.
Guess I'm a protectionist.....no, actually, I AM a protectionist, and would challenge any to try and defend current economic policies, those for the past 3 decades, and blame any one party for where we're at. Million dollar babies, our supposed Representatives.
Depression, lack of income, basic needs not being met, ..... what was expected?
Here's CJ-747786's view -
Another reason to thank the Bush folks for bringing us crushing financial difficulties in years past, the medical establishment has run rampant. When seniors have to decide between spending their money on medicine or food we are asking for trouble.
So let's applaud the millionaires in Congress, who get free health care thanks to the taxpayers, and who really don't give a damn how many seniors die. If they are too sick to go out and vote then they don't pose a threat. What a great country we live in...this is insane!
These people are representative of hundreds of responders to the article who tell their stories, or describe their situations, or situations people they know are faced with. I don't necessarily agree with every word, but then my view might not be wholly accepted by these commentators either.
I don't see any end in sight. Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but then, maybe not. I see it around me. I really hate to come out in the blogosphere with jeremiads all the time, but when I see so much hardship around me, and concurrently I see on the news that it's not just in my immediate neighborhood but this state of affairs is rampant across the country as well. Jeremiads are justified and even called for when the America I used to know has now become a fiefdom for billionaires and multinational corporations. It's what I see and what I will write about from time to time. Actually, I’ll write about it frequently.
Someone on TV recently made the claim that America's poor are better off than the poor in poor nations, but a study (I can't cite the study - I ran across it a couple of weeks ago and didn't notate it) showed that America's poor are much worse off than the poor in other so-called advanced countries and significantly worse off than poor in poor countries because the cost of living here is far higher. Moreover, the safety net here is limited and flimsy, and has lots of holes people fall through. Competent healthcare is unavailable to them. It's even worse for those within coughing distance of the poverty line - but not below it - because they have no medical care available to them at all. These are usually the working poor, and they're the ones who suffer the most hardship of any of us. They, unfortunately, are a rapidly growing demographic, and will further the increasing mortality rate in this country.
This is what the legislators are, and have been, advancing as their policy directives for thirty odd years. It's destroying America from within.
Seeing all this, and seeing all the many injustices exacted upon the least of us is what renders me a cynical cynic. I truly wish it weren't this way, but it is. It is what it is. Period! End of Story!
There are two scenarios pertaining to the redistribution of wealth here in the U.S. One is the stealing of the middle class's wealth by the rich, leaving many destitute, and the other is the redistribution of that middle class wealth from the U.S. to the so-called "emerging economies". The big corporations and the billionaire tycoons, based here in the U.S., will run the factories over in China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other countries and collect immense profits because of the cheap labor in those countries. I personally believe that this shouldn't be a zero sum game, but that's exactly what the current policies are dictating that it is - a zero sum game. Rather than everyone in the global economy doing well, America is being forced to relinquish wealth to other countries and force many of it's own citizens into poverty and hardship.
The Republicans, and a few Democrats, are driving this policy of excusing the rich from paying their fair share of taxes under the guise of putting more people to work. Trickle-down doesn't work. Period. They know damn well it hasn’t worked in the past and isn’t going to work now, but they’re relying on the demonstrated ignorance of the American people to vindicate them. They know exactly what they’re doing – they know - they KNOW – that the American people will blame President Obama for the continuing hardship and vote him out of office in two years. The only hope for Obama is that the Republicans currently are fielding the weakest batch of potential presidential candidates in memory, and hopefully the voters will come to understand that elusive fact.
An article appeared today on MSNBC's web page written by JoNell Aleccia asserting that the life expectancy in the US is regressing. The U.S. is 38th or 39th in the world in life-expectancy. People aren't living as long because of lack of health care, low pay or other financial hardship. Many retirees - people who worked hard all their lives and paid into the Social Security Trust Fund, paid their taxes, and led productive lives - are hurting badly. Many simply can't afford to live. And there's talk by conservative politicians of slashing their retirement income even more, of making draconian cuts to their income and to Medicare - all to give the rich even more money. In my view, it's blood money. More money being taken from those less fortunate and handed over to the rich is exactly what it looks like. It's reverse Robin Hoodism - rob the poor and give to the rich. This is more than just my opinion based on what I see in my immediate surroundings. It's in the news and on the cable TV networks, and even congressmen and women are announcing this problem on the air. Other conservative congressmen and women and senators are trying to tell us that by giving the rich more money they'll make jobs and hire more people. As I've already stated, that's not what happens. George W. Bush tried it ten years ago and the trickle-down theory has been proven to not work. Period.
To their credit, many of the mega-rich are in favor of paying more taxes - they consider it their patriotic duty. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and many other lesser known billionaires are trying to tell the politicians that they want to pay their fair share. But the Republicans in the Senate don't want to hear it. Perhaps they want the tax cuts for themselves.
There were some eloquent comments to the Aleccia piece by other affected people from around the country, and I'm going to paste some testimonials by these people who are suffering great hardship as a result of these terrible, odious tax policies.
Marlen101917 -
The only way to improve the health of ALL Americans is to take the profit out of health care and go to a single payer system like all other industrialized counties have done. A sick population not only kills our citizens, it kills our economic competitiveness as well.
Abby1588585 says this -
With the recession people cannot afford the same quality and quantity of healthy food. I spoke with a woman in the store the other day who was stocking up on cheap food to feed her family of four. She was just trying to make her food dollars stretch so she was buying the cheapest hot dogs to provide protein, the cheapest brand of macaroni and cheese to fill them up. She said that she couldn't afford fresh fruit and vegetables. She sounded so depressed but grateful her husband and her were both working although she said they were each working two part-time jobs. They have gone through their savings. While we spoke I was reminded of how hard it is so for seniors because we didn't get a cost of living increase last year and won't get one this year. I know seniors who are cutting back on food to save money. Sad, considering how fragile older folks can be.
Wal-Mart has their giving trees up and numerous tags (more than I remember in the past) are still up. People just don't have the money to spare. This is the first year we can't afford to help either. No Christmas gifts for our grandchildren. No money for gifts at all. We told our children we just don't have it to spare.
People are foregoing medical care because they cannot afford co-pays (if they have insurance).
People work longer hours in hopes of retaining their jobs (if they are lucky enough to have one) or are pounding the pavement praying for a job.
The stress alone is detrimental to one's health.
And while all of this is happening the GOP is worried about tax breaks for the rich and refused the $250 for seniors. Thanks for nothing.
ModerationInAllThings says this -
Without a doubt it's true; physiological well being can't be maintained and psychological well being is factored in.... giving up, no hope or limited hope.
The old saying of 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' still holds, but people aren't getting jobs w/ bennies (benefits), they're underemployed, unemployed, and are sacrificing medical needs in lieu of more pressing needs.
Try to blame Dems or Repubs; truth is, NONE have legislated towards American Businesses remaining in America, hiring Americans for American wages, so that Americans can have American benefits and pay what American business(that are now mostly overseas) charge.
American business has become Corporo-government entities that will profit from 3rd world wages, the lowest bidder, and know that eventually the stack of cards will fall, and Our standard of living is going down, down, down......ALL in the name of the farce that is known as 'the global economy'.
It has nothing to do with healthcare, healthscare, insurance co's., etc.... . It has everything to do with people calling afore mentioned American legislation directed towards Americans being labeled as 'protectionisitic'.
Guess I'm a protectionist.....no, actually, I AM a protectionist, and would challenge any to try and defend current economic policies, those for the past 3 decades, and blame any one party for where we're at. Million dollar babies, our supposed Representatives.
Depression, lack of income, basic needs not being met, ..... what was expected?
Here's CJ-747786's view -
Another reason to thank the Bush folks for bringing us crushing financial difficulties in years past, the medical establishment has run rampant. When seniors have to decide between spending their money on medicine or food we are asking for trouble.
So let's applaud the millionaires in Congress, who get free health care thanks to the taxpayers, and who really don't give a damn how many seniors die. If they are too sick to go out and vote then they don't pose a threat. What a great country we live in...this is insane!
These people are representative of hundreds of responders to the article who tell their stories, or describe their situations, or situations people they know are faced with. I don't necessarily agree with every word, but then my view might not be wholly accepted by these commentators either.
I don't see any end in sight. Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but then, maybe not. I see it around me. I really hate to come out in the blogosphere with jeremiads all the time, but when I see so much hardship around me, and concurrently I see on the news that it's not just in my immediate neighborhood but this state of affairs is rampant across the country as well. Jeremiads are justified and even called for when the America I used to know has now become a fiefdom for billionaires and multinational corporations. It's what I see and what I will write about from time to time. Actually, I’ll write about it frequently.
Someone on TV recently made the claim that America's poor are better off than the poor in poor nations, but a study (I can't cite the study - I ran across it a couple of weeks ago and didn't notate it) showed that America's poor are much worse off than the poor in other so-called advanced countries and significantly worse off than poor in poor countries because the cost of living here is far higher. Moreover, the safety net here is limited and flimsy, and has lots of holes people fall through. Competent healthcare is unavailable to them. It's even worse for those within coughing distance of the poverty line - but not below it - because they have no medical care available to them at all. These are usually the working poor, and they're the ones who suffer the most hardship of any of us. They, unfortunately, are a rapidly growing demographic, and will further the increasing mortality rate in this country.
This is what the legislators are, and have been, advancing as their policy directives for thirty odd years. It's destroying America from within.
Seeing all this, and seeing all the many injustices exacted upon the least of us is what renders me a cynical cynic. I truly wish it weren't this way, but it is. It is what it is. Period! End of Story!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
THE STUPID AMERICAN VOTER - REDUX
12/7/2010 - President Obama has just been backed into a corner on the issue of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by a united, monolithic Republican Senate minority led by Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Republican argument revolves around the fallacious notion that "Raising taxes on job creators will hurt the economy". The flip side of that coin is: What will this policy of slashing incoming revenue going to do to the soaring national debt?
During the run-up to the November Midterm elections we heard the Tea Party types lament the skyrocketing deficit, over and over and over again. The Republicans are counting on the people to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Obama. And they probably will.
Obama's capitulation to Senate Republicans, while odious, should be viewed in the context of the past election, when people with fully functioning mouse brains in their heads voted overwhelmingly for right-wing candidates who promised tax cuts for the rich and slashing entitlement spending, and who were against Obama's "socialist" agenda (They thought they were "taking America back" from the socialists, when what they were really doing was giving it away to billionaires and corporate oligarchs). So Obama's reasoning was that "the People" had spoken loud and clear" (to quote McConnell and Boehner), and they wanted the rich to keep getting the tax breaks they had been getting for the past ten years. The voters, after all, tuned out the fact that corporate and foriegn money paid for all the attack ads during the campaign. So why would they start believing the truth now? Had the electorate showed a modicum of intellegence, Obama might have stood his ground and allowed taxes for the rich to revert back to pre-Bush levels (when, by the way, the economy was much stronger than it ever was under Bush).
Moreover, it was obvious that the Republicans were perfectly willing to allow unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed lapse, to let the Start Treaty with Russia to remain in limbo, and, worst of all, taxes for even the poor to revert back to pre-Bush levels, which would have been devastating to the economy. The Republicans, specifically McConnell, knew the aggregate American electorate to be utterly stupid, and would blame Obama for their tax cuts and unemployment insurance expiring. They knew this was a fight they couldn't lose, and that if Obama would have held out he would have gotten the blame.
There is now internecine warfare between Obama and his own party. Democrats are livid. They, and the majority of Americans, according o polls, favored letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. One can look at this as a shrewd move by the Republicans, but then if the American people were to ever wise up (fat chance), they (the Republicans) would be utterly repudiated for years to come. Running up the national debt so rich people can get even richer faster than ever is suicicidal for our country. This stokes the fires of class warfare - fires that promise to burn ever hotter as long as things keep going the way they're going.
What the Republicans have done is virtually insure Obama's almost certain defeat in 2012 because the national debt will have increased even more, and unemployment will still be in the stratosphere. The Republicans know this. They know that the supply-side trickle-down economics has been proven to not work. And they know voters will still believe it will work. They know how stupid the voters are. They know voters are unaware that for ten years lower tax rates have not stimulated the economy, and they know the voters will confuse a policy of letting taxes revert back to what they were, as being a tax hike, not the expiration of a temporary tax cut. The voters know that because that's what the Republicans are telling them. They wouldn't lie, would they?
Here's an illustration of some voters courtesy of Cenk Uygur's TV show The Young Turks.
A reporter tries to interview people lined up at a mall in Columbus Ohio to have Sarah Palin sign copies of her book Going Rogue. I have seen this kind of idiocy first hand. Early in the interview the reporter gets this response from a big, oafish, dull-witted guy: "She's the epitomy of conservative-ness. And I'm tellin' ya, if the Republican Party doesn't back her - it doesn't matter, 'cause she's gonna get the presidency". The interview closes out with the same oaf who says - "The state that she did govern was right across the street from Russia". Sandwiched in between is an astonishing array of ignorance and simpleton commentary from Palin's fans, including one woman who thinks having czars in this country is unAmerican. Czars in America! She thinks we have the same kind of czars as Russia used to have! !!!! Makes me want to beat my head against a wall.
Rather than showing a transcript of the interviews, I think it would be instructive for you to see for yourself. Here's a link...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27QTX46XNLM&feature=related
Yes, the American voter is stupid and dangerous. And those who have given up and wish to stay home when the next election cycle rolls around - well, these are the people who are voting in your place. These are the people who think giving more money to rich people will cause them to make jobs for the unemployed. With this, I rest my case.
During the run-up to the November Midterm elections we heard the Tea Party types lament the skyrocketing deficit, over and over and over again. The Republicans are counting on the people to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Obama. And they probably will.
Obama's capitulation to Senate Republicans, while odious, should be viewed in the context of the past election, when people with fully functioning mouse brains in their heads voted overwhelmingly for right-wing candidates who promised tax cuts for the rich and slashing entitlement spending, and who were against Obama's "socialist" agenda (They thought they were "taking America back" from the socialists, when what they were really doing was giving it away to billionaires and corporate oligarchs). So Obama's reasoning was that "the People" had spoken loud and clear" (to quote McConnell and Boehner), and they wanted the rich to keep getting the tax breaks they had been getting for the past ten years. The voters, after all, tuned out the fact that corporate and foriegn money paid for all the attack ads during the campaign. So why would they start believing the truth now? Had the electorate showed a modicum of intellegence, Obama might have stood his ground and allowed taxes for the rich to revert back to pre-Bush levels (when, by the way, the economy was much stronger than it ever was under Bush).
Moreover, it was obvious that the Republicans were perfectly willing to allow unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed lapse, to let the Start Treaty with Russia to remain in limbo, and, worst of all, taxes for even the poor to revert back to pre-Bush levels, which would have been devastating to the economy. The Republicans, specifically McConnell, knew the aggregate American electorate to be utterly stupid, and would blame Obama for their tax cuts and unemployment insurance expiring. They knew this was a fight they couldn't lose, and that if Obama would have held out he would have gotten the blame.
There is now internecine warfare between Obama and his own party. Democrats are livid. They, and the majority of Americans, according o polls, favored letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. One can look at this as a shrewd move by the Republicans, but then if the American people were to ever wise up (fat chance), they (the Republicans) would be utterly repudiated for years to come. Running up the national debt so rich people can get even richer faster than ever is suicicidal for our country. This stokes the fires of class warfare - fires that promise to burn ever hotter as long as things keep going the way they're going.
What the Republicans have done is virtually insure Obama's almost certain defeat in 2012 because the national debt will have increased even more, and unemployment will still be in the stratosphere. The Republicans know this. They know that the supply-side trickle-down economics has been proven to not work. And they know voters will still believe it will work. They know how stupid the voters are. They know voters are unaware that for ten years lower tax rates have not stimulated the economy, and they know the voters will confuse a policy of letting taxes revert back to what they were, as being a tax hike, not the expiration of a temporary tax cut. The voters know that because that's what the Republicans are telling them. They wouldn't lie, would they?
Here's an illustration of some voters courtesy of Cenk Uygur's TV show The Young Turks.
A reporter tries to interview people lined up at a mall in Columbus Ohio to have Sarah Palin sign copies of her book Going Rogue. I have seen this kind of idiocy first hand. Early in the interview the reporter gets this response from a big, oafish, dull-witted guy: "She's the epitomy of conservative-ness. And I'm tellin' ya, if the Republican Party doesn't back her - it doesn't matter, 'cause she's gonna get the presidency". The interview closes out with the same oaf who says - "The state that she did govern was right across the street from Russia". Sandwiched in between is an astonishing array of ignorance and simpleton commentary from Palin's fans, including one woman who thinks having czars in this country is unAmerican. Czars in America! She thinks we have the same kind of czars as Russia used to have! !!!! Makes me want to beat my head against a wall.
Rather than showing a transcript of the interviews, I think it would be instructive for you to see for yourself. Here's a link...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27QTX46XNLM&feature=related
Yes, the American voter is stupid and dangerous. And those who have given up and wish to stay home when the next election cycle rolls around - well, these are the people who are voting in your place. These are the people who think giving more money to rich people will cause them to make jobs for the unemployed. With this, I rest my case.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
AMERICA, WELCOME TO THE THIRD WORLD
Imagine, for a moment, that you're sitting around a table with nine other people. In the middle of the table is a large pizza that's sliced into ten pieces - enough for each person at the table to have one piece. Ten people, ten slices of pizza - seems simple enough.
But then, the biggest, baddest person at the table takes five pieces for himself. He takes half the pizza for himself, while the other nine people have to share the remaining five pieces. Now, the second biggest and baddest person at the table grabs two pieces for himself, leaving three pieces for the other eight. The third biggest, baddest person grabs one piece for himself, leaving just two pieces for the remaining seven. And so it goes, until the tenth person, the smallest and weakest of them all, gets a few crumbs - perhaps a bit of a mushroom or a thin slice of pepperoni, at the very most. Just think of how you would feel if you were that tenth person, or even the fifth person down the line, when you get maybe a third of a piece.
Here's the analogy. The pizza represents the total wealth of all Americans, and the individual people at the table represent those occupying each of the ten deciles of the American population controlling all the wealth. This is the America that we have today. The top 1% richest people in the country control a quarter of all the wealth. The next nine percentiles control the next 25%, which leaves the other ninety percent of Americans trying to share the remaining half of the wealth. The farther down the line you go, the less there is to share. Let me say this again:
1% of Americans own 24% of all the private assets.
10% of Americans own about 50% of all private assets.
That's right. Half of the total assets in the United States of America are controlled by ten percent of the people.
This is banana republic stuff. Such plutocracies as Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana have less of an asset disparity than the US. In each of these countries the top 1% owns a paltry 20% of the assets in their respective countries. So we've got those countries and their plutocrats beat by a long shot.
This accumulation of wealth by the super rich has been going on for decades - three decades to be exact. There are over 400 billionaires in the US alone, according to the Forbes 400 list. There were none in 1980. So how did we get from then to now? Massive tax breaks for the rich, wide open loopholes exploited by armies of well-paid accountants on behalf of the plutocrats - that's how we got into this mess. Republican-sponsored legislation has rewarded businesses for outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries by means of gaping tax loopholes. Such policies have fattened their bottom lines and enriched their shareholders, and has been very beneficial to the cigar-and-wine-bar business. Meanwhile, many of these companies have slashed the wages of those workers here in the U.S. they haven't yet fired, thus putting them under financial duress.
And these plutocrats want more! The elected politicians in the House of Representatives and the Senate are literally owned by these people. It's no secret. Everyone knows it - everyone who is paying any attention to the situation, that is. This is pure, unadulterated, shameless greed.
Currently the US Senate is debating giving more tax breaks for the rich, which will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt, which is already out of control. Republicans in the Senate are holding unemployment insurance for the jobless hostage - they're saying "give us the tax breaks for the rich or we'll block unemployment insurance to the people who are struggling to survive". It's part of a strategy for defeating President Obama in 2012 and sweeping in large majorities into both houses of Congress. Giving further tax cuts to the rich is guaranteed to further balloon the deficit while doing nothing to address the chronic job shortages in this country. It will certainly result in the acceleration of the income disparity President Reagan started in 1981 with the first round of tax-cutting for the rich. So when 2012 rolls around the Republicans will say "See, nothing has improved, and it's all Obama's fault". And the rather dim bulbs who make up the voting public will fall for this vomitus in 2012 just as they did this past November. And once the Republicans get full power they'll see to it that the wealth disparity accelerates. They'll decimate Social Security and limit or eliminate unemployment insurance under the false pretext that these are "welfare" programs benefiting deadbeats and slackers. And get this - the Social Security Trust Fund, which is supposed to be adequately funded for the next thirty years, has been drained by the re-direction of revenue into the pockets of the upper crust by way of massive tax cuts. These are the people who have far more than they'll ever need, and now they're dictating to their stooges in Congress to give them even more, and screw the middle class and the poor. It's a sorry state of affairs. It should be obvious to most people who are paying attention, but unfortunately, not that many people are paying attention, or else they've been brainwashed by the political boilerplate being dumped on them by Republicans and their Tea Party minions.
So, as our infrastructure crumbles all around us, and as more and more jobs get farmed out to other countries, and as people who worked all their lives and paid taxes into the Social Security Trust Fund see their benefits slashed or eliminated, and as more and more people are forced into poverty, the rich and super rich will live even larger than they do now. It's disgusting.
America is not a rich country. It is a country with a few very rich people living in it, and that's pretty much what the outside world sees. What the outside world doesn't see are the legions of poor and homeless. They don't see the millions of people who are struggling to survive. They don't see the millions of people losing their homes to foreclosure because their jobs have been outsourced to other countries, and they can't find another job because there aren't any. They don't see thousands of crumbling bridges that are in dire danger of collapsing, or roads pitted with potholes so large that cars are totaled when they hit them. Meanwhile, programs to help the poor and jobless are being cut to the bone because the funding isn't there. All that money that would ordinarily go towards infrastructure and help for the jobless, invalids, and poor, is instead lining the pockets of the rich.
America is a country in decline. Quality of life is way down. We're far down, almost to the bottom, on a list of civilized countries - largely because proper healthcare is out of reach for a large portion of the population. This decline started in the mid to late 1990s and has been gaining steam ever since. Opportunities for getting ahead are getting increasingly scarce. It's not a pretty picture.
Within a few years the biggest, baddest guy at the table will grab all the pieces of the pizza for himself while leaving, at most, a few crumbs for the other nine. This is an ongoing theft of the aggregate wealth from the many to a concentrated few privileged and politically connected plutocrats. These people litteraly own the machinery of government. They control the senators and representatives much as a puppeteer controls his puppets. They finance the politicians' campaigns with the expectation that if they are elected they will do their (the plutocrats) bidding. The plutocrats are the ruling class. They rule this country through their stooges in Congress. It's your classic quid pro quo setup. And the way it looks, it's not going to get any better. It's only going to get worse.
But then, the biggest, baddest person at the table takes five pieces for himself. He takes half the pizza for himself, while the other nine people have to share the remaining five pieces. Now, the second biggest and baddest person at the table grabs two pieces for himself, leaving three pieces for the other eight. The third biggest, baddest person grabs one piece for himself, leaving just two pieces for the remaining seven. And so it goes, until the tenth person, the smallest and weakest of them all, gets a few crumbs - perhaps a bit of a mushroom or a thin slice of pepperoni, at the very most. Just think of how you would feel if you were that tenth person, or even the fifth person down the line, when you get maybe a third of a piece.
Here's the analogy. The pizza represents the total wealth of all Americans, and the individual people at the table represent those occupying each of the ten deciles of the American population controlling all the wealth. This is the America that we have today. The top 1% richest people in the country control a quarter of all the wealth. The next nine percentiles control the next 25%, which leaves the other ninety percent of Americans trying to share the remaining half of the wealth. The farther down the line you go, the less there is to share. Let me say this again:
1% of Americans own 24% of all the private assets.
10% of Americans own about 50% of all private assets.
That's right. Half of the total assets in the United States of America are controlled by ten percent of the people.
This is banana republic stuff. Such plutocracies as Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana have less of an asset disparity than the US. In each of these countries the top 1% owns a paltry 20% of the assets in their respective countries. So we've got those countries and their plutocrats beat by a long shot.
This accumulation of wealth by the super rich has been going on for decades - three decades to be exact. There are over 400 billionaires in the US alone, according to the Forbes 400 list. There were none in 1980. So how did we get from then to now? Massive tax breaks for the rich, wide open loopholes exploited by armies of well-paid accountants on behalf of the plutocrats - that's how we got into this mess. Republican-sponsored legislation has rewarded businesses for outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries by means of gaping tax loopholes. Such policies have fattened their bottom lines and enriched their shareholders, and has been very beneficial to the cigar-and-wine-bar business. Meanwhile, many of these companies have slashed the wages of those workers here in the U.S. they haven't yet fired, thus putting them under financial duress.
And these plutocrats want more! The elected politicians in the House of Representatives and the Senate are literally owned by these people. It's no secret. Everyone knows it - everyone who is paying any attention to the situation, that is. This is pure, unadulterated, shameless greed.
Currently the US Senate is debating giving more tax breaks for the rich, which will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt, which is already out of control. Republicans in the Senate are holding unemployment insurance for the jobless hostage - they're saying "give us the tax breaks for the rich or we'll block unemployment insurance to the people who are struggling to survive". It's part of a strategy for defeating President Obama in 2012 and sweeping in large majorities into both houses of Congress. Giving further tax cuts to the rich is guaranteed to further balloon the deficit while doing nothing to address the chronic job shortages in this country. It will certainly result in the acceleration of the income disparity President Reagan started in 1981 with the first round of tax-cutting for the rich. So when 2012 rolls around the Republicans will say "See, nothing has improved, and it's all Obama's fault". And the rather dim bulbs who make up the voting public will fall for this vomitus in 2012 just as they did this past November. And once the Republicans get full power they'll see to it that the wealth disparity accelerates. They'll decimate Social Security and limit or eliminate unemployment insurance under the false pretext that these are "welfare" programs benefiting deadbeats and slackers. And get this - the Social Security Trust Fund, which is supposed to be adequately funded for the next thirty years, has been drained by the re-direction of revenue into the pockets of the upper crust by way of massive tax cuts. These are the people who have far more than they'll ever need, and now they're dictating to their stooges in Congress to give them even more, and screw the middle class and the poor. It's a sorry state of affairs. It should be obvious to most people who are paying attention, but unfortunately, not that many people are paying attention, or else they've been brainwashed by the political boilerplate being dumped on them by Republicans and their Tea Party minions.
So, as our infrastructure crumbles all around us, and as more and more jobs get farmed out to other countries, and as people who worked all their lives and paid taxes into the Social Security Trust Fund see their benefits slashed or eliminated, and as more and more people are forced into poverty, the rich and super rich will live even larger than they do now. It's disgusting.
America is not a rich country. It is a country with a few very rich people living in it, and that's pretty much what the outside world sees. What the outside world doesn't see are the legions of poor and homeless. They don't see the millions of people who are struggling to survive. They don't see the millions of people losing their homes to foreclosure because their jobs have been outsourced to other countries, and they can't find another job because there aren't any. They don't see thousands of crumbling bridges that are in dire danger of collapsing, or roads pitted with potholes so large that cars are totaled when they hit them. Meanwhile, programs to help the poor and jobless are being cut to the bone because the funding isn't there. All that money that would ordinarily go towards infrastructure and help for the jobless, invalids, and poor, is instead lining the pockets of the rich.
America is a country in decline. Quality of life is way down. We're far down, almost to the bottom, on a list of civilized countries - largely because proper healthcare is out of reach for a large portion of the population. This decline started in the mid to late 1990s and has been gaining steam ever since. Opportunities for getting ahead are getting increasingly scarce. It's not a pretty picture.
Within a few years the biggest, baddest guy at the table will grab all the pieces of the pizza for himself while leaving, at most, a few crumbs for the other nine. This is an ongoing theft of the aggregate wealth from the many to a concentrated few privileged and politically connected plutocrats. These people litteraly own the machinery of government. They control the senators and representatives much as a puppeteer controls his puppets. They finance the politicians' campaigns with the expectation that if they are elected they will do their (the plutocrats) bidding. The plutocrats are the ruling class. They rule this country through their stooges in Congress. It's your classic quid pro quo setup. And the way it looks, it's not going to get any better. It's only going to get worse.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
A CLOSER LOOK AT CLIMATE CHANGE (PART 13)
The issue of human-induced climate change is a contentious one.
There are a lot of reasonable scientists and informed lay people who cannot completely rule the human factor out. But neither can they rule it in. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is an hypothesis. Period. It is not a proven fact, nor, in the true sense of the word, is it even a theory. It is an hypothesis that is currently being tested by thousands of scientists of different stripes throughout the world - from the South Pole to the North Pole, on the seven continents and the seven seas. The results gleaned from the testing of the AGW hypothesis are all over the map. Models disagree with one another - eminent scientists disagree with one another. The biggest problem pertaining to the credibility of the AGW proponents is that they are trying to prove their hypothesis rather than objectively testing it. That's bad science. There is a lot of cherry-picking of data by many scientists who are desperately trying to prove that AGW is a reality. Their reputations as scientists are on the line, so it's a reasonable assumption that there will never be even a wisp of an acknowledgement by AGW proponents that maybe humans aren't entirely to blame after all.
This also holds true for the other side. AGW "deniers" have been accused of cherry-picking data as well. There is a spectrum of thought ranging from the overzealous true believers of the James E. Hansen mold to the far right-wing deniers and global-warming-is-a-hoax crowd. That AGW is a hoax is just as unproven as those who argue the AGW science is settled. The fact of the matter is that we just don't know yet. You see, the climate is a chaotic system, or series of systems, and even supercomputers have trouble with computing chaotic systems. Then, when one considers the quality of the code being used for predictive models, and the point of view of the programmers, further complications are introduced.
Then there are the cyclic systems in the world's oceans - the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and the AMDO (Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation). And the El Niño and La Niña phenomena, which are not necessarily cyclic. The extreme drought conditions in the US Southwestern states, the extreme heat over much of North America, and the unusually severe tornadic out brakes earlier this year are attributable to an unusually strong La Niña, one of the two or three strongest La Niñas in the last 100 years. One can argue that climate change is the cause of the current extreme La Niña, and unless somebody proves this not to be true, it deserves consideration.
I am a skeptic. I was formerly agnostic on the issue, but after reading various articles and blogs, and seeing interviews with scientists on both sides, I am convinced that the so-called skeptic camp is standing on firmer ground. Another thing that influenced my thinking was the childish way some of the AGW researchers behaved. There was a lot of naked vitriol directed at climatologists who questioned the veracity of the AGW research as it was being conducted, who didn't necessarily agree with their conclusions, and who didn't sign on to their political agenda. I am very, very suspicious when I see that kind of hysteria being displayed. It tells me their position might not be credible, that they're trying to run cover for a flimsy case. That is my opinion, anyway, for whatever it's worth.
One thing that really sticks in my mind is the statements by Professor David Deming concerning Dr. Jonathan Overpeck's appeal to re-write historical climate records to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". Moreover, Dr. Deming cited an article in Discover Magazine in 1989 where a prominent climate researcher discusses the need to amplify the evidence for and ignore the evidence against AGW. (CLCC 5 - Quack Science). While I believe Dr. Deming's categorizing AGW as a "hoax" is too strong (we don't know yet that it is a hoax) his revelations do raise legitimate questions.
We hear from the mass media, over and over, that human-caused climate change is already settled. We hear there is "overwhelming scientific evidence", there is overwhelming scientific consensus among geoscientists of every stripe. Actually, there are roughly 2500 scientists who hold that humans are at least partly responsible for climate change, and a significant sub-group of scientists who hold that humans are entirely responsible for the warming climate. Conversely, there are roughly 900 scientists who signed a petition disputing the role of humans in the changing climate. Again, there is a distribution curve, with some opinions being that humans may play a minor role, while others hold that none of the climate change is due to humans.
Most of the clamor by geoscientists of the climate change phenomenon focuses on carbon emissions without regard to the destruction of carbon sinks such as tropical rainforests.
One of the foundations of scientific research is to probe and poke around in someone else's previously accepted theory, to seek out and find areas of weakness, and either disprove the theory or improve on it. People like Galileo Galilei, Nicholas Copernicus, and Albert Einstein fought the conventional dogma of their respective times and prevailed.
Today's conventional wisdom, as it's being communicated to us by an eager media, is this: The earth is getting warmer because of human activity, and that's THAT! It's settled. End of story.
I believe that the story is still unfolding. Only time will tell - probably a lot of time.
Following is a list of links to the articles, videos, web pages and other reference material which I've availed myself to while writing these blog articles over the past 17 days or so. If you wish to dig deeper into the AGW question, these references would be helpful and informative. I would encourage you to do so. And you can be assured - these references barely scratch the surface of the AGW debate.
CHARTS
Charts of logarithmic CO2 effect
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Charts I wanted to upload upload for CLCC - 8 but was blocked from doing so
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_vs_measured_co2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/natural-vs-agw_warming.png
More very illuminative charts
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img1.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_of_co2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/perth_temp_annual.png
Side by side comparison of the 1990 IPCC First Assessment millennial temperature record and the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment featuring the hockey stick graph
Note that these radically different charts ostensibly describing the exact same thing were published by the same organization just eleven years apart
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Comparison-charts.jpg
James E. Hansen's data
GISS temperature charts
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.B.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif
Global greenhouse gas pie charts
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/globalghg.html
Link to sunspot charts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Activity_Proxies.png
Excel charts of CO2 emissions 1980 - 2006 - Itemized
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/carbondioxide.html
YouTube video of interviews with climate experts
Interview with Lord Monckton of the UK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKrw6ih8Gto&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Alex Jones discusses Climategate - a must-see video
(Jones is a little over the top but he does make a few good points)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2153PnMzSw&NR=1
Dr. Tim Ball on Climategate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac
Pro-AGW journalists confront a non-AGW journalist & shut off his microphone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbj78civS-4&NR=1
A reporter confronted by armed guards after asking a UN scientist about Climategate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtzMBfDrpI&feature=related
Tim Ball Interview W/ Red Ice. Parts 1 through 7 of 7 part series. Just click on the top line and it will take you into YouTube from where you can simply navigate to each successive part within the YouTube site.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qj5jf_7eMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxShcstKrY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LqJnomvls&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Tl3gLRbWQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcuBKe5DFjA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXehhlyNUes&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKD1ZniB5Dc&feature=related
John Coleman interview with Glenn Beck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft8LfE7AI2w&feature=related
IPCC 's Jonathan Overpeck giving us his pro-AGW viewpoint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCVfQ-_MQXc
Jonathan Overpeck video
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/
ARTICLES AND REPORTS
Article explaining how the quantum mechanical structure of
CO2 yields a saturation effect - also explained by Lindzen & Choi
in their paper LC2009
http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
Discussion of how degrees of freedom for the vibration of linear molecules such as CO2 are calculated
http://www.analyticalspectroscopy.net/ap3-4.htm
This page demonstrates the three ways an excited CO2 can
vibrate. These three modes happen when CO2 absorbs longwave radiation
http://science.widener.edu/svb/ftir/ir_co2.html
Article by David Deming - the climatologist who received the
email from Jonathan Overpeck proposing the necessity of
getting rid of the Mediaval Warm Period
http://lewrockwell.com/orig9/deming3.html
Ineractive exercise where the three absorption bands of CO2
reach a saturation point at around 804 ppmv and reach a point of
inconsequencial effect under 100 ppmv
http://chemlinks.beloit.edu/warming/pdf/IRConc.pdf
Science & Public Policy –
Very Good Expose
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
Theory that Tunguska Event contributed to a layer of
microscopic dust particles that contribute to surface warming
http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html
35 inconvenient truths – debunks Al Gore's movie
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Letter about Al Gore
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
IPCC Summary for Policy Makers
http://www.gcrio.org/OnLnDoc/pdf/wg1spm.pdf
IPCC - A library of assessment reports and other material
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm#1
IPCC First assessment http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/IPCC_1990_and_1992_Assessments/English/ipcc-90-92-assessments-overview.pdf
IPCC – Third assessment
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/221.htm
UNFCCC
http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/other_methodological_issues/items/1077.php
UNFCCC – UN plan to finance climate change policy
http://unfccc.int/files/press/backgrounders/application/pdf/fact_sheet_financing_climate_change.pdf
1934 hottest year on record
http://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-hottest-year-on-record.htm
Dr. Robert Balling article in GCMPOI
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/170.pdf
Pittsburgh Times-Review article on Dr. Tim Ball
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_492572.html
Article on funding for research of climate change
http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=289
Funding of AGW reseaerch
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/289.pdf
Note that anti-AGW funding comes from special interests as well, such as petroleum and coal lobbies
Article about the discredited hockey stick graph
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-stick
Hockey Stick article
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/mann's-hockey-stick-climate-graph.htm
About hockey stick graph being debunked
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/13830/
About Wegman’s investigation of hockey stick chart
http://www.desmogblog.com/wegmans-report-highly-politicized-and-fatally-flawed
Critical of exoneration of Mann
http://greenhellblog.com/2010/07/14/penn-states-integrity-crisis/
The Civil Heretic - Article in NYT Magazine with Freeman Dyson
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html
Transcript of Bob Garfield interview with Joe Romm
and Romm's acerbic response to the Dyson piece
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/04/10/03
An MIT article about lambda, the climate sensitivity factor
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/explained-climate-sensitivity.html
Article on climate sensitivity
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
Satellite re: climate science climate sensitivity from space
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Lindzen-Choi-2009-low-climate-sensitivity.htm
Satellite re: climate science climate sensitivity from space
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Lindzen-Choi-2009-low-climate-sensitivity.htm
Web site re: solar involvement in global warming
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Radiative forcing
http://www.springerlink.com/content/np556415834h8862
Vertical eddies
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h4440726140826j5
Heliogenic climate change
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/05/03/lindzen-and-chois-new-paper-out-confirms-negative-feedback-unlike-agw-climate-models/
Solar dynamo – sunspot activity
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1801/2741.full.pdf
Sunspots and climate change
http://www.suite101.com/content/sunspots-and-climate-change-a133866
Greenhouse warming reduced
http://www.john-daly.com/bull-121.htm
Temperature records provide clue why Americans are skeptical (Page 1)http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2691449/temperature_records_provide_clue_why.html?cat=37
Page 2
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2691449/temperature_records_provide_clue_why_pg2.html?cat=37
Dire global warming messages backfire
http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/News-dire-global-warming-messages-backfire-112210.aspx?xmlmenuid=51 01
Scripps Institute of Oceanography - http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mauna_loa_record.html
Climate Audit – Steve McIntyre
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/18/curry-reviews-lindzen-and-choi/
Dr. Roy Spencer
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles
Anthony Watts PhD
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Article describing CO2 levels following temperature changes
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/CO2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
Reasoned critique of Lindzen and Choi paper by Dr. Roy Spencer
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/03/spencer-on-lindzen-and-choi-climate-feedback-paper/
Article offering a rebuttal of the claim that temperature
changes predate CO2 changes - discussion both pro and con
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Examples of pro-AGW people railing against skeptics
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-hide-the-decline.html
Reasoned pro AGW
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/contributors/
Lindzen & Choi; A rebuttal article
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lindzen-and-choi-unraveled/
Joe Romm's pro-AGW blog
http://climateprogress.org/
Skeptic article
http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/
Skeptic article
http://fgservices1947.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/co2-is-a-greenhouse-gas-%e2%80%93-note-from-norm-kalmanovitch-via-ccnet/
Technical Info site
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=172161
Earth blackbody
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Earth/earthtemp.html
Spörer paper
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1895ApJ.....2..239V
Excel chart misrepresents CO2 – temp relationship
http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/excel-chart-misrepresents-co2-temperature-relationship/
AGW critical of Lindzen - Choi
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/08/quick-comment-on-lindzen-and-choi.html
Joe Romm expressing himself on his blog http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/joseph-romm-on-nicholas-dawidoff.html
Subj. Lindzen - Choi
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/ipcc-types-read-lindzen-choi-2009.html
Paleoclimate http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/climate_models/index.html
Paleoclimate of recent past
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/paleoclimate.html
Paleoclimate article http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/climatechange/visualizations/paleoclimate.html
Paleoclimate
http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=11333682
Paleotemperature
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png
Paleo CO2
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/755/paleoco2all.png3
Bio of Heidi Cullen
http://www.zimbio.com/Heidi+Cullen
About Heidi Cullen and her view that skeptics should be decertified
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming011807.htm
Greenhouse gas
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
Article on CO2
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Carbon_dioxide
Rebuttal to idea that human greenhouse gas is miniscule
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
How much is anthropogenic
http://www.strom.clemson.edu/becker/prtm320/commons/carbon3.html
Note from Craig James re: Hansen, RealClimate,
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/politica-lclimate/hansens_ideology_makes_him_no_longer_qualified_to_be_the_keeper_of_the_glob/
Capital Climate: Interesting tidbit about Hansen’s award by AMS from contrarian perspective
http://capitalclimate.blogspot.com/2009_01_25_archive.html
Rebuttal to Craig James speech on climate skepticism – Ed Cutlip
http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2008/04/craig-james-lec.php
Critical assessment of Bill Steffen by Ed Cutlip
http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2009/04/bill-steffen-global-warming-wood-tv-8.php
Litany of skeptical commentary by credentialed scientists
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=672bfd77-802a-23ad-4264-12316616363c
Pravda article skeptical of CC Gregory F. Fegel
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/11-01-2009/106922-earth_ice_age-1/
Pravda article skeptical about AGW – Gregory F. Fegel
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/11-01-2009/106922-earth_ice_age-2/
Article about coming ice age - Pravda
http://www.iceagenow.com/Pravda-Earth_on_the_Brink_of_an_Ice_Age.htm
Article about Pravda article
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/12/pravda-the-coming-ice-age/
Article about Pravda article
http://scaredmonkeys.com/2009/01/12/hey-al-gore-what-about-global-warming-pravda-says-earth-on-the-brink-of-an-ice-age/
Excellent article re: Pravda article
http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/2578
Articles on Venus - Universe Today
http://www.universetoday.com/14140/history-of-planet-venus/
http://www.universetoday.com/23651/venus-possibly-had-continents-oceans/
Venus info
http://www.solstation.com/stars/venus.htm
How Venus lost its oceans
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/venus_oceans_020516.html
About rain forests
http://www.hipark.austinisd.org/projects/fourth/rainforests/environment.html
About Indonesia rain forest destruction
http://www.indonesiamatters.com/1252/rainforest-deforestation/
Rain forest destruction
http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/rain_forest_destruction.htmlhttp://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/rain_forest_destruction.html
Goodbye to West Africa’s rain forests
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0122-forests.html
Christian Science Monitor article about how recession caused emissions to decline
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/1122/Global-warming-carbon-dioxide-emissions-worldwide-fell-in-2009
HARD COVER REFERENCES
Black Holes & Time Warps
Kip S. Thorne
1994
ISBN: 0-393-31276-3
The Whole Shebang
Timothy Ferris
1998
ISBN: 0-684-81020-4TF
Physical Chemistry - A Molecular Approach
Donald A. McQuarrie & John D. Simon
1997
ISBN: 0-9357032-99-7
ERRATA:
1. In CLCC-10
I cited the figure $70 billion the U.S. government had awarded pro AGW scientists in grant money. I've been unable to verify that figure. I've replaced that figure with $3 billion which is verifiable.
2. In CLCC - 5
I identified Dr. Phil Jones as being a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Jones is the Director of Research at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK. I cannot verify he actually sits on the panel. Dr. Jones, however, has been and continues to be closely associated with that body.
3. In CLCC - 9 I referenced China's population as outnumbering that of the U.S. by 10 to 1. With a population of 1.3 billion (not 3 billion), China's population exceeds that of the U.S. by 4.33 to 1.
There are a lot of reasonable scientists and informed lay people who cannot completely rule the human factor out. But neither can they rule it in. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is an hypothesis. Period. It is not a proven fact, nor, in the true sense of the word, is it even a theory. It is an hypothesis that is currently being tested by thousands of scientists of different stripes throughout the world - from the South Pole to the North Pole, on the seven continents and the seven seas. The results gleaned from the testing of the AGW hypothesis are all over the map. Models disagree with one another - eminent scientists disagree with one another. The biggest problem pertaining to the credibility of the AGW proponents is that they are trying to prove their hypothesis rather than objectively testing it. That's bad science. There is a lot of cherry-picking of data by many scientists who are desperately trying to prove that AGW is a reality. Their reputations as scientists are on the line, so it's a reasonable assumption that there will never be even a wisp of an acknowledgement by AGW proponents that maybe humans aren't entirely to blame after all.
This also holds true for the other side. AGW "deniers" have been accused of cherry-picking data as well. There is a spectrum of thought ranging from the overzealous true believers of the James E. Hansen mold to the far right-wing deniers and global-warming-is-a-hoax crowd. That AGW is a hoax is just as unproven as those who argue the AGW science is settled. The fact of the matter is that we just don't know yet. You see, the climate is a chaotic system, or series of systems, and even supercomputers have trouble with computing chaotic systems. Then, when one considers the quality of the code being used for predictive models, and the point of view of the programmers, further complications are introduced.
Then there are the cyclic systems in the world's oceans - the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and the AMDO (Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation). And the El Niño and La Niña phenomena, which are not necessarily cyclic. The extreme drought conditions in the US Southwestern states, the extreme heat over much of North America, and the unusually severe tornadic out brakes earlier this year are attributable to an unusually strong La Niña, one of the two or three strongest La Niñas in the last 100 years. One can argue that climate change is the cause of the current extreme La Niña, and unless somebody proves this not to be true, it deserves consideration.
I am a skeptic. I was formerly agnostic on the issue, but after reading various articles and blogs, and seeing interviews with scientists on both sides, I am convinced that the so-called skeptic camp is standing on firmer ground. Another thing that influenced my thinking was the childish way some of the AGW researchers behaved. There was a lot of naked vitriol directed at climatologists who questioned the veracity of the AGW research as it was being conducted, who didn't necessarily agree with their conclusions, and who didn't sign on to their political agenda. I am very, very suspicious when I see that kind of hysteria being displayed. It tells me their position might not be credible, that they're trying to run cover for a flimsy case. That is my opinion, anyway, for whatever it's worth.
One thing that really sticks in my mind is the statements by Professor David Deming concerning Dr. Jonathan Overpeck's appeal to re-write historical climate records to "get rid of the Medieval Warm Period". Moreover, Dr. Deming cited an article in Discover Magazine in 1989 where a prominent climate researcher discusses the need to amplify the evidence for and ignore the evidence against AGW. (CLCC 5 - Quack Science). While I believe Dr. Deming's categorizing AGW as a "hoax" is too strong (we don't know yet that it is a hoax) his revelations do raise legitimate questions.
We hear from the mass media, over and over, that human-caused climate change is already settled. We hear there is "overwhelming scientific evidence", there is overwhelming scientific consensus among geoscientists of every stripe. Actually, there are roughly 2500 scientists who hold that humans are at least partly responsible for climate change, and a significant sub-group of scientists who hold that humans are entirely responsible for the warming climate. Conversely, there are roughly 900 scientists who signed a petition disputing the role of humans in the changing climate. Again, there is a distribution curve, with some opinions being that humans may play a minor role, while others hold that none of the climate change is due to humans.
Most of the clamor by geoscientists of the climate change phenomenon focuses on carbon emissions without regard to the destruction of carbon sinks such as tropical rainforests.
One of the foundations of scientific research is to probe and poke around in someone else's previously accepted theory, to seek out and find areas of weakness, and either disprove the theory or improve on it. People like Galileo Galilei, Nicholas Copernicus, and Albert Einstein fought the conventional dogma of their respective times and prevailed.
Today's conventional wisdom, as it's being communicated to us by an eager media, is this: The earth is getting warmer because of human activity, and that's THAT! It's settled. End of story.
I believe that the story is still unfolding. Only time will tell - probably a lot of time.
Following is a list of links to the articles, videos, web pages and other reference material which I've availed myself to while writing these blog articles over the past 17 days or so. If you wish to dig deeper into the AGW question, these references would be helpful and informative. I would encourage you to do so. And you can be assured - these references barely scratch the surface of the AGW debate.
CHARTS
Charts of logarithmic CO2 effect
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Charts I wanted to upload upload for CLCC - 8 but was blocked from doing so
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_vs_measured_co2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/natural-vs-agw_warming.png
More very illuminative charts
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/co2_modtrans_img1.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_of_co2.png
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/perth_temp_annual.png
Side by side comparison of the 1990 IPCC First Assessment millennial temperature record and the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment featuring the hockey stick graph
Note that these radically different charts ostensibly describing the exact same thing were published by the same organization just eleven years apart
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Comparison-charts.jpg
James E. Hansen's data
GISS temperature charts
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.B.lrg.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif
Global greenhouse gas pie charts
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/globalghg.html
Link to sunspot charts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Activity_Proxies.png
Excel charts of CO2 emissions 1980 - 2006 - Itemized
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/carbondioxide.html
YouTube video of interviews with climate experts
Interview with Lord Monckton of the UK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKrw6ih8Gto&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Alex Jones discusses Climategate - a must-see video
(Jones is a little over the top but he does make a few good points)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2153PnMzSw&NR=1
Dr. Tim Ball on Climategate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac
Pro-AGW journalists confront a non-AGW journalist & shut off his microphone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbj78civS-4&NR=1
A reporter confronted by armed guards after asking a UN scientist about Climategate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtzMBfDrpI&feature=related
Tim Ball Interview W/ Red Ice. Parts 1 through 7 of 7 part series. Just click on the top line and it will take you into YouTube from where you can simply navigate to each successive part within the YouTube site.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qj5jf_7eMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxShcstKrY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LqJnomvls&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Tl3gLRbWQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcuBKe5DFjA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXehhlyNUes&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKD1ZniB5Dc&feature=related
John Coleman interview with Glenn Beck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft8LfE7AI2w&feature=related
IPCC 's Jonathan Overpeck giving us his pro-AGW viewpoint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCVfQ-_MQXc
Jonathan Overpeck video
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/
ARTICLES AND REPORTS
Article explaining how the quantum mechanical structure of
CO2 yields a saturation effect - also explained by Lindzen & Choi
in their paper LC2009
http://brneurosci.org/co2.html
Discussion of how degrees of freedom for the vibration of linear molecules such as CO2 are calculated
http://www.analyticalspectroscopy.net/ap3-4.htm
This page demonstrates the three ways an excited CO2 can
vibrate. These three modes happen when CO2 absorbs longwave radiation
http://science.widener.edu/svb/ftir/ir_co2.html
Article by David Deming - the climatologist who received the
email from Jonathan Overpeck proposing the necessity of
getting rid of the Mediaval Warm Period
http://lewrockwell.com/orig9/deming3.html
Ineractive exercise where the three absorption bands of CO2
reach a saturation point at around 804 ppmv and reach a point of
inconsequencial effect under 100 ppmv
http://chemlinks.beloit.edu/warming/pdf/IRConc.pdf
Science & Public Policy –
Very Good Expose
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
Theory that Tunguska Event contributed to a layer of
microscopic dust particles that contribute to surface warming
http://www.physorg.com/news11710.html
35 inconvenient truths – debunks Al Gore's movie
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html
Letter about Al Gore
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/markey_barton_letter.html
IPCC Summary for Policy Makers
http://www.gcrio.org/OnLnDoc/pdf/wg1spm.pdf
IPCC - A library of assessment reports and other material
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm#1
IPCC First assessment http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/IPCC_1990_and_1992_Assessments/English/ipcc-90-92-assessments-overview.pdf
IPCC – Third assessment
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/221.htm
UNFCCC
http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/other_methodological_issues/items/1077.php
UNFCCC – UN plan to finance climate change policy
http://unfccc.int/files/press/backgrounders/application/pdf/fact_sheet_financing_climate_change.pdf
1934 hottest year on record
http://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-hottest-year-on-record.htm
Dr. Robert Balling article in GCMPOI
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/170.pdf
Pittsburgh Times-Review article on Dr. Tim Ball
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_492572.html
Article on funding for research of climate change
http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=289
Funding of AGW reseaerch
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/289.pdf
Note that anti-AGW funding comes from special interests as well, such as petroleum and coal lobbies
Article about the discredited hockey stick graph
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-hockey-stick
Hockey Stick article
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/mann's-hockey-stick-climate-graph.htm
About hockey stick graph being debunked
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/13830/
About Wegman’s investigation of hockey stick chart
http://www.desmogblog.com/wegmans-report-highly-politicized-and-fatally-flawed
Critical of exoneration of Mann
http://greenhellblog.com/2010/07/14/penn-states-integrity-crisis/
The Civil Heretic - Article in NYT Magazine with Freeman Dyson
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html
Transcript of Bob Garfield interview with Joe Romm
and Romm's acerbic response to the Dyson piece
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/04/10/03
An MIT article about lambda, the climate sensitivity factor
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/explained-climate-sensitivity.html
Article on climate sensitivity
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
Satellite re: climate science climate sensitivity from space
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Lindzen-Choi-2009-low-climate-sensitivity.htm
Satellite re: climate science climate sensitivity from space
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Lindzen-Choi-2009-low-climate-sensitivity.htm
Web site re: solar involvement in global warming
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
Radiative forcing
http://www.springerlink.com/content/np556415834h8862
Vertical eddies
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h4440726140826j5
Heliogenic climate change
http://www.heliogenic.net/2010/05/03/lindzen-and-chois-new-paper-out-confirms-negative-feedback-unlike-agw-climate-models/
Solar dynamo – sunspot activity
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1801/2741.full.pdf
Sunspots and climate change
http://www.suite101.com/content/sunspots-and-climate-change-a133866
Greenhouse warming reduced
http://www.john-daly.com/bull-121.htm
Temperature records provide clue why Americans are skeptical (Page 1)http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2691449/temperature_records_provide_clue_why.html?cat=37
Page 2
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2691449/temperature_records_provide_clue_why_pg2.html?cat=37
Dire global warming messages backfire
http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/News-dire-global-warming-messages-backfire-112210.aspx?xmlmenuid=51 01
Scripps Institute of Oceanography - http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mauna_loa_record.html
Climate Audit – Steve McIntyre
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/18/curry-reviews-lindzen-and-choi/
Dr. Roy Spencer
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-background-articles
Anthony Watts PhD
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Article describing CO2 levels following temperature changes
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/CO2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
Reasoned critique of Lindzen and Choi paper by Dr. Roy Spencer
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/03/spencer-on-lindzen-and-choi-climate-feedback-paper/
Article offering a rebuttal of the claim that temperature
changes predate CO2 changes - discussion both pro and con
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Examples of pro-AGW people railing against skeptics
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-hide-the-decline.html
Reasoned pro AGW
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/contributors/
Lindzen & Choi; A rebuttal article
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/lindzen-and-choi-unraveled/
Joe Romm's pro-AGW blog
http://climateprogress.org/
Skeptic article
http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/
Skeptic article
http://fgservices1947.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/co2-is-a-greenhouse-gas-%e2%80%93-note-from-norm-kalmanovitch-via-ccnet/
Technical Info site
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=172161
Earth blackbody
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Earth/earthtemp.html
Spörer paper
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1895ApJ.....2..239V
Excel chart misrepresents CO2 – temp relationship
http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/excel-chart-misrepresents-co2-temperature-relationship/
AGW critical of Lindzen - Choi
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/08/quick-comment-on-lindzen-and-choi.html
Joe Romm expressing himself on his blog http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/04/joseph-romm-on-nicholas-dawidoff.html
Subj. Lindzen - Choi
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/ipcc-types-read-lindzen-choi-2009.html
Paleoclimate http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/climate_models/index.html
Paleoclimate of recent past
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/paleoclimate.html
Paleoclimate article http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/climatechange/visualizations/paleoclimate.html
Paleoclimate
http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=11333682
Paleotemperature
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png
Paleo CO2
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/755/paleoco2all.png3
Bio of Heidi Cullen
http://www.zimbio.com/Heidi+Cullen
About Heidi Cullen and her view that skeptics should be decertified
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming011807.htm
Greenhouse gas
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
Article on CO2
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Carbon_dioxide
Rebuttal to idea that human greenhouse gas is miniscule
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
How much is anthropogenic
http://www.strom.clemson.edu/becker/prtm320/commons/carbon3.html
Note from Craig James re: Hansen, RealClimate,
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/politica-lclimate/hansens_ideology_makes_him_no_longer_qualified_to_be_the_keeper_of_the_glob/
Capital Climate: Interesting tidbit about Hansen’s award by AMS from contrarian perspective
http://capitalclimate.blogspot.com/2009_01_25_archive.html
Rebuttal to Craig James speech on climate skepticism – Ed Cutlip
http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2008/04/craig-james-lec.php
Critical assessment of Bill Steffen by Ed Cutlip
http://www.mediamouse.org/news/2009/04/bill-steffen-global-warming-wood-tv-8.php
Litany of skeptical commentary by credentialed scientists
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=672bfd77-802a-23ad-4264-12316616363c
Pravda article skeptical of CC Gregory F. Fegel
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/11-01-2009/106922-earth_ice_age-1/
Pravda article skeptical about AGW – Gregory F. Fegel
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/11-01-2009/106922-earth_ice_age-2/
Article about coming ice age - Pravda
http://www.iceagenow.com/Pravda-Earth_on_the_Brink_of_an_Ice_Age.htm
Article about Pravda article
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/12/pravda-the-coming-ice-age/
Article about Pravda article
http://scaredmonkeys.com/2009/01/12/hey-al-gore-what-about-global-warming-pravda-says-earth-on-the-brink-of-an-ice-age/
Excellent article re: Pravda article
http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/2578
Articles on Venus - Universe Today
http://www.universetoday.com/14140/history-of-planet-venus/
http://www.universetoday.com/23651/venus-possibly-had-continents-oceans/
Venus info
http://www.solstation.com/stars/venus.htm
How Venus lost its oceans
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/venus_oceans_020516.html
About rain forests
http://www.hipark.austinisd.org/projects/fourth/rainforests/environment.html
About Indonesia rain forest destruction
http://www.indonesiamatters.com/1252/rainforest-deforestation/
Rain forest destruction
http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/rain_forest_destruction.htmlhttp://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/rain_forest_destruction.html
Goodbye to West Africa’s rain forests
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0122-forests.html
Christian Science Monitor article about how recession caused emissions to decline
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/1122/Global-warming-carbon-dioxide-emissions-worldwide-fell-in-2009
HARD COVER REFERENCES
Black Holes & Time Warps
Kip S. Thorne
1994
ISBN: 0-393-31276-3
The Whole Shebang
Timothy Ferris
1998
ISBN: 0-684-81020-4TF
Physical Chemistry - A Molecular Approach
Donald A. McQuarrie & John D. Simon
1997
ISBN: 0-9357032-99-7
ERRATA:
1. In CLCC-10
I cited the figure $70 billion the U.S. government had awarded pro AGW scientists in grant money. I've been unable to verify that figure. I've replaced that figure with $3 billion which is verifiable.
2. In CLCC - 5
I identified Dr. Phil Jones as being a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Jones is the Director of Research at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK. I cannot verify he actually sits on the panel. Dr. Jones, however, has been and continues to be closely associated with that body.
3. In CLCC - 9 I referenced China's population as outnumbering that of the U.S. by 10 to 1. With a population of 1.3 billion (not 3 billion), China's population exceeds that of the U.S. by 4.33 to 1.
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