Self-starters vs Cry Babies - Whose Happier?

Arthur C. Brooks' new book called Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters to America and How We Can Get More of It - attempts to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals.

"You find that all the way back to the early 1970s, as long as we’ve been keeping data on the subject, conservatives have consistently shown greater life satisfaction than liberals,” Brooks tells Newsmax. "

"In one study, people who identified themselves as conservative were nearly twice as likely to say they were very happy as people who said they are liberal. In contrast, Brooks says, “Liberals are less likely to be optimistic about the future, and they’re more likely to say they feel like a failure.” '

"The question is, why? "

' “What you find is that freedom, including economic freedom, religious freedom, and political freedom, push happiness up hugely,” Brooks says, “But more voluntary personal freedom about morality drives happiness down.” '

"Thus, if the government limits moral freedom, it reduces happiness because it limits political freedom. “But what you find is when people voluntarily limit their own moral freedom by saying they think premarital sex is wrong, taking drugs is wrong, or abortion is wrong, they’re much happier people,” says Brooks, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute."

' “People, as they get conservative, get happier, and as they get happier, they also get more conservative,” Brooks says. “They get happier as they get more conservative because they adopt a worldview that says that things are possible through hard work, and that mobility is not just a hollow promise.” '

"Brooks says the fact that conservatives are by nature more self-reliant is an important factor. "

' “It’s unseemly for conservatives to say, Woe is me; I’m a victim; the world’s oppressing me,” he says. “Conservatives aren’t supposed to say that. One of the fundamental tenets of the conservative character is to strike out on your own, to try to chase after your own fate. Just doing that will make you happier. You’re also more likely to become a successful person if you take that course.” '

People who are self-starters, hard-working and enjoy the challenges of life are happier than people who are dependent on government handouts and feel like victims. The question is why are there so many of victim mentality? Could it be our schools are creating a nation of cry babies and sheep? I think our government run schools have a lot to do with it especially if the parents at home are also of the victim mentality. (Read at Newsmax.com)

Billions of Years of Climate Change vs "Scientific Prostitutes"

More and more scientists are speaking out against Al Gore's and his minons of Global Warming doomsday.

"No, what is truly evil is that Al Gore and his scientific prostitutes take advantage of people's ignorance. Al Gore must have said a thousand times that we must "stop climate change" on a planet that has had billions of years of climate change. We must preserve the composition of an atmosphere that has never had a stable composition."

"...The rotation of the earth is slowing, the distance of the moon is increasing, the atmosphere of the earth and the radiation of the sun keep changing, continents drift together and break apart, volcanoes erupt unpredictably, asteroids crash intermittently, and Al Gore, the Nobel committee, three presidential candidates, and the United Nations tell us that we have to sacrifice one tenth of our economy to keep it from all happening." (Jonathan David Carson: The American Thinker)

"Plant Dignity" - Symptom of a Cultural Disease Infecting Western Civilization

Rob Tracinski (The Intellectual Activist) brought my attention to the next step in the anti-reason, anti-man world of environmentalism: rights for plants (The Weekly Standard). Yup, you read correctly. These kooks want us now to bow down to plants and recognize that they have rights as well.

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that the arbitrary
killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be
called "plant rights" is being seriously debated.

A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer's herd--the report doesn't say). But then, while walking home, he casually "decapitates" some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can't agree why...

What folly. We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality.

What folly indeed! The basic folly is the fact that we don't know what rights are and why they apply only to man. Ayn Rand once wrote:

"The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience." (A Nation's Unity in "The Ayn Rand Letter", II, 2, 3).

Rights are a necessity of human existence because man has free will and is capable of good and evil. When Individual Rights are upheld they serve as moral principals that help man live with one another on this earth in a rational and peaceful way. To give rights to animals and plants is to step toward the destruction of man because they trivialize the life of man by tying his mind and hands up in knots so that he does not know anymore how to live.

Obama, The Mirage

City Journal has a fascinating review of Barack Obama's political career and character - pointing out the reality versus the myth of this man. It is particularly important we understand who we are voting for, that is that we understand the character of this man for he is not what he appears to be. The article is entitled: The Illusion that is Barack Obama by Fred Siegel. Below are the last five paragraphs.

Obama is the internationalist opposed to free trade. He is the friend of race-baiters who thinks Don Imus deserved to be fired. He is the proponent of courage in the face of powerful interests who lacked the courage to break with Wright (until Wednesday). He is the man who would lead our efforts against terrorism yet was friendly with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant 1960s terrorist. He is the post-racialist supporter of affirmative action. He is the enemy of Big Oil who takes money from executives at Exxon-Mobil, Shell and British Petroleum.

Obama has, in a sense, represented a new version of the invisible man, a candidate whose colour obscures his failings.

But so far, the wild discrepancy between Obama's words and his deeds, and between his enormous ambitions and his minimal accomplishments, doesn't seem to have fazed his core supporters, who apparently suffer from a severe case of cognitive dissonance. Like cultists who rededicate themselves when the cult's prophecies have been falsified, his fans redouble their delusions in the face of his obvious hypocrisy.

That is because Obama, in the imagination of many of his fans in the public and the press, is both a deduction from what was - the failures of the Bush administration and the scandals of the Clintons - and an expression of what should be.

The ideal, the aspiration, is so rhetorically appealing that it has been assumed to be true. They remind one of Woodrow Wilson's answer when asked if his plan for a League of Nations was practicable: "If it won't work, it must be made to work." (Read the complete article in The Australian).

Global Warming and the "Decoupling from Science Reality"

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition website provides a wealth of information on the so called "Climate change" aka global warming (as per Al Gore - the scientist). Let us beware of the sirens of global warming before we plunge ourselves into the black waters of falsehoods, distortions and lies so that the few wiley propagandists benefit while we pay the cost.

This is an extraordinary state of affairs, unparalleled in modern history. Sovereign governments have become so enamoured of climate computer models, and decoupled from science reality, that they plan to impose environmental measures that will be financially and socially devastating, but which will have a negligible effect on what is anyway a mostly imaginary problem.

How did this come about? The answer, both in New Zealand and internationally, is that the successful conversion of citizens and governments to the cult of eco-salvationism reflects much hard and clever work by the special interest groups that benefit from the global warming scam.

Formidably, persons with a self-interest in climate alarmism now include environmental NGOs (who seek membership subscriptions and power), other politicians of all stripes (who seek to be elected), governments (who seek to be re-elected), bureaucrats (who seek to maintain their budgets), scientists (who seek to ensure their research income), churches (who are desperate for “relevance”), the media (who know that alarmism sells advertising), both conventional and alternative energy providers (rent seekers, one and all), the carbon indulgences industry (which uses guilt to prey on innocent, travelling citizens) and – perhaps most frightening of all; remember Enron - the financial markets’ and legal fraternity (members of which can recognize a gravy train when they see one). Finally, remember that we are now talking about the paper-only trading of an invisible commodity that has no useful purpose and is always difficult and sometimes impossible to measure - attributes that make it certain that fraudulent criminal activity will be induced.

The widespread conversion of public opinion to the cause of climate alarmism could not have occurred without the active connivance of both the government and the media. In New Zealand, politically correct government propaganda on climate change is now almost totalitarian in nature, as represented by the information issued by many government departments, and websites that are specially targetted at teachers and school children (e.g., ). At the same time, news and current affairs reporting on climate change has become so biased that New Zealand reporters have been singled out for criticism in front of the high powered US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

I highly recommend this site for anyone interested in truth (go here).

Does Obama Know the Pricetag for European-Style Socialism?

German writer Gabor Steingart only has to watch Barack Obama on TV to help with his homesickness. In a whimsical opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal he muses about this presidential candidate.

"The promised land of universal health care, secure pensions, a lot of green-collar jobs and stable bridges brings me back to my home country. My grandma, who has worked in a post office all her life, enjoys her pension without having ever observed the stock market. Everyone who travels through the countryside can see thousands of windmills, but never a collapsed bridge. And the best: My mom, my friends and everyone around them have access to first-class medical services."

Mr. Steingart believes that Obama wants to "trump" Germany's socialism. "He has promised not only a $160 billion program for new green-collar jobs, a higher minimum wage, affordable health care for everybody, a massive investment in infrastructure and tax-free status for pensioners who make less than $50,000. All these nice things come with no tax increase for 95% of Americans. Wow! That's Germany-plus!"

"I've been in the U.S. for a while, but if I remember my home country correctly, all the German comforts come with a price. My grandma has paid 10% of her salary to the public pension system, and her employer has matched the contribution. For our health insurance everyone has to sacrifice 7% of his or her earnings, which again is matched by the company. Fashionable windmills go along with extra taxes for fuel. A gallon of regular gas in Munich or Berlin costs – fasten your seat belt – more than $8.

"Not all of my fellow Germans are happy with this, but the overwhelming majority of my fellow countrymen made their decision a long time ago. They prefer big government. They have learned to live with growth rates far behind and an unemployment rate far above the U.S."

"...it seems to me that the agent of change was window-shopping in Germany without looking at the price tag. You should ask him for the bill."

Indeed we should. Mr. Obama, how do you plan to pay for all your socialism? Do you think that as Americans we would want to live off of the government? That we should turn over our money to basically inept politicians and bean counters and pray that all our needs are met? Do you think we are like the Europeans content to let bureaucrats care for us and do our thinking for us? We are a proud nation of can-do people who pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Keep European style socialism in Europe thank you. (Read WSJ).

Scaremongers and Doomsday Evangelists

The scaremongers and doomsday evangelists have always been with us throughout history but it's simply amazing that these types never learn from their predecessor's past totally off the mark predictions of disaster and doom that await us if we don't change our ways. Walter Williams, one of my favorite observers of the American cultural and political landscape, lists at CapMag some of the prognostications and predictions of past environmentalists: I will list some of them here but read his article.

1969 "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war ..."
"The cooling since 1940 has been large enough ...that it will not soon be reversed."

1968 "Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and
1989 and by 1999 the US population would decline to 22.6 million".
"If I were a gambler I would take even money that England will not exist in ...2000."

1972 Club of Rome report declared that the world would run out:
gold in 1981
Mercury and silver by 1985
tin by 1987
petroleum, copper, lead, natural gas by 1992

1975 the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning "The world as we know it will
likely be ruined by the year 2000.

1970 Senator Nelson warned that by 1995 between 75-85% of all species of living animals will
be extinct.

1885 US geological Survey said "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California.

1939 US Department of the interior said US oil supplies would last only another 13 years.

1949 the end of US oil supplies was in sight.

1974 the US had only a 10 year supply of natural gas (there's a 1000 to 2500 year supply)

Read the rest of this interesting column at Capitalism Magazine.

Are We Entering the World of Atlas Shrugged?

Have I just walked into Ayn Rand's blockbuster novel Atlas Shrugged or what?

Go to Gerald Prante http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23183.html to read about this idiotic bill introduced by Rep. Paul Kanjorski. The current high price of gas has led to a lot of crazy proposals from gas tax holidays to creating a tax deduction based upon energy consumption. But Rep. Paul Kanjorski's (D-PA) may top them all in terms of its stupidity. From the Times Leader, Kanjorski's plan would do the following:

• H.R. 5800 would tax industries’ windfall profits.
• The bill would set up a Reasonable Profits Board to determine when these companies’ profits are in excess, and then tax them on those windfall profits.
• As oil and gas companies’ windfall profits increase, so would the tax rate for those companies.
• Kanjorski said his legislation will encourage oil companies to lower prices to prevent them from receiving higher tax rates.

"While Hillary Clinton may have failed ECON 101 along with John McCain, it appears as if Kanjorski may been enrolled in Marxism 450 at the time. In all honesty, nationalization of the oil industry (i.e. Venezuela) may be better than Kanjorski's ridiculous proposal."

"One can make a case for taxing that portion of the return to capital that comes from economic rents, but Kanjorski has probably never even heard the term. An economist who backed such a tax would understand that such a tax is not going to lead to lower prices at the pump, just as economists are setting the record straight on the current gas tax holiday gimmick. Furthermore, the justification for taxing economic rents would apply to all sectors, not just petroleum."

So what's next? An owner of a restaurant can't make above 50,000 dollars in profit per year? Oh, I forgot that already exists with the minimum wage laws. Where are Francisco D'Anconia, Hank Reardon and John Galt when you need them?

Will Iraq be a Repetition of Vietnam?

Know your history or you will be condemned to repeat it. For those of you who are too young to remember the way the Democrats saw to it that we abandoned Vietnam to the communists in spite of the fact that we won the war on the ground are seeing nothing new with today's cries for leaving Iraq even though we are winning the war on the ground. Arthur Herman in his "Democrats and the Killing Field" in the Wall Street Journal, reminds us of those horrible events and what it meant for the people we were "saving" and other countries that were taken over by brutal dictatorships because they found out America was a paper tiger.

"Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide."

...Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.

Because we left too early, Vietnamese were slaughtered after they were "liberated and the new communist regime "ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps"...

"That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea."

In Cambodia at least 1.5 million innocent Cambodians were "butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps..."

This pullout by the United States ushered in the most atrocious take over of various countries by the Marxist-Leninist thugs.

"Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there."

"In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene."

We are winning not only the war in Iraq but the hearts and minds of most of the people. Now is not the time to quit but to get the job done and finished properly. Democrats should read the history of Vietnam and realize that because of them we lost that war and the world suffered because of that.

A Nation of Uneducated Adults

We have been talking about our lousy public schools now for some 30 years and to date nothing of much substance has been done to produce EDUCATED KIDS ready to work and think in the work force. What we are producing in many cases are young adults who have never grown up and worse cannot read, write and think properly. The following are excerpts from an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by William McGurn (WSJ READ).

"When Barack Obama's pastor was caught on tape accusing the government of inventing HIV for "genocide against people of color," it was dismissed as another crazy conspiracy theory – which of course it was. But what if the Rev. Wright had used his pulpit to direct a little fire-and-brimstone against a very real outrage: a public-school system that's depriving millions of children of the education they need to compete in the 21st century economy?"

"Scarcely half of American children in our 50 largest cities will leave their public schools with a high-school diploma in hand, according to a study released by America's Promise Alliance. These children are disproportionately African-American. Their homes are disproportionately located in our largest public school districts. And the failure is a scar on this great land of opportunity.

"...And of course, the teachers unions devote their considerable resources to fighting any measure that increases accountability or gives parents more options."

The Democrats won't fight for better schools - it's up to McCain. But is he up to the task to finally get our kids a first class K-12 education? The doctor's still out on this one. A nation filled with dummies who can't decide science from fiction as in the evolution or Creationism "debate", can't do math, or read Shakespeare, or write an essay will eventually see the twilight.

Obama/Clinton/McCain: Leave Us Free to Think and Act

Pete Dupont at WSJ has a scary scenario if we should be saddled with an Obama Presidency. Voter Beware! Do we want stagnation, increased poverty, lower trade with our friends and neighbors, less purchasing power, no growth and therefore less jobs? I would be very careful for whom you cast your ballot. This November will be the most important election in recent history: Besides Obama being the most liberal senator: "Add the announced retirement of six Republican senators and 29 Republican House members (compared with just seven House Democrats) and the Democrats are likely to control both the House and the Senate with much bigger majorities than they do today."

"Four significant public policy changes are certain: the size, scope and spending of the federal government will substantially expand; income taxes will go up; protectionism will replace free trade; and a commitment to global internationalism will saddle America with a broad Kyoto global warming agreement that, according to the U.N. Climate Treaty Secretariat, should exempt China and India.

"Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have proposed increasing annual federal spending, respectively, by $226 billion and $303 billion – the Obama total being about a 10% increase. Neither of them as president would likely limit any spending – not entitlements, not earmarks, not farm subsidies."

" 'He is indeed a redistributionist,' said blogger and Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan after watching Mr. Obama's answer to a tax question in last week's presidential debate."

Is this what America wants? A redistributionist 'a la' Soviet Union? Vietnam? North Korea? We know what happened to the first two and the misery the North Koreans have to live under today!

Why don't our left leaning politicians ever learn the lesson that most Americans appear to have learned from history. Taking from the rich, increasing taxes, placing barriers to free trade by protectionist policies all lead to DEPRESSION as it did under Herbert Hoover (THE GREAT DEPRESSION-remember this?)

Now couple all of the above bad moves that an Obama (or Clinton) presidency would make with all the restrictions that would come about due to Global Warming regulations such as hindering our use of new coal and oil reserves and prohibiting the building of new coal and nuclear plants you have a recipe for self-inflicted poverty and backwardness.

There is only one solution to riding out the current downturn in our economy and that is to UNLEASH the power of private individuals, entrepreneurs - the thinkers and the doers - and allow them to do what they do best - create, build, solve, and bring into actuality a better world for all of us.

POLITICIANS - leave us free to think and act!

Government's Job: Do Not dictate What My Values Are - Protect Them

Over at Forbes Dr. Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute writes that "government's job is not to dictate your values but to protect them". Wow! How dare this man say that our government cannot TELL us what to value! Why the nerve of him. We're just helpless pawns of life blindly following the whim of the moment! Of course government has to hold our hands and tell us what to value-how could we manage by ourselves? How could we live without the Nanny State? (Read the whole article here).

"They awaken in their highly mortgaged house (interest deduction), make breakfast for their adopted child (tax credit and exemption), then drive their hybrid cars (more tax credits) to work. John, at his office, signs a contract for solar energy panels (tax credit), but he turns down a promotion that would launch the couple into a higher tax bracket. Meanwhile, across town, Jane signs an application to get historic preservation status (tax credits) for her office building."

"...Tax policy works by attaching financial incentives to a long list of values deemed morally worthy. If you want to maximize your wealth come tax time--and who doesn't?--you must look at the world through tax-colored glasses, "voluntarily" adjusting your behavior to suit social norms and thereby qualifying for tax breaks. In this way, the social engineers of tax policy preserve the impression that you're exercising free choice, while they're actually dispensing with your reason and your judgment...

"Here's the point: Government's job is not to dictate your values but to protect them. In a free country, you choose values and then use your own money as a tool to achieve them. But a value-rigged tax policy reverses this cause and effect--it uses your money against you, bribing you with tax breaks that let you keep some of your earnings in exchange for abandoning your preferred values.

"Clearly, we have slid a long way downhill from this nation's founding, when political leaders respected individuals' ability to make rational decisions for themselves about how to pursue their own health, wealth and happiness. Today, it is commonly accepted that Uncle Sam has a right to reach not only into your wallet but into your soul, through tax policies that substitute some version of the "public interest" for your own rational desires."

The Democrats, Lead by Pelosi, Reject Colombia At Our and the Region's Peril

By all accounts Colombia has made a remarkable transformation primarily by being tough on Narco traffiquers which are the local terrorists. Kidnappings, drug traffiquing and murder is down all due to the remarkable leader in that country, Alvaro Uribe. So how is it that the US congress is incapable of passing the Free Trade Agreement with this country so that tariffs will be lowered on our goods going into Colombia? Craven corruption.

Over at WSJ John Fund has a good column about how important this trade deal is to Colombia, to us and the region as far as a barrier to Chavez' designs on the rest of Latin America.

President Uribe made clear how disappointed he was that the Democratic front-runner had chosen domestic politics over geopolitical stability: "I deplore the fact that Sen. Obama . . . should be unaware of Colombia's efforts," he said in a statement. "I think it is for political calculations that he is making a statement that does not correspond to Colombia's reality."

The simple truth is that the opposition to the trade agreement--from the Democratic presidential contenders to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--has nothing to do with reality. Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, admitted as much recently: "It's not the substance on the ground--it's the politics in the air."

There was another period when raw politics was allowed to trump what many in Congress privately admitted was common sense. In the spring of 1930, as the economic downturn set off by the previous year's stock market crash set in, Congress was debating the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill that sought to raise U.S. import barriers to record levels.

Most of the leading economists of the day opposed Smoot-Hawley. A front-page New York Times headline on May 5, 1930, read: "1,028 Economists Ask Hoover to Veto Pending Tariff Bill." But for entirely selfish and shortsighted reasons, both Congress and President Hoover went along with the protectionist hysteria. As a result, the Great Depression was probably deepened and extended for years.

Today, another no-brainer trade vote is before Congress. The foreign-policy benefits of the agreement are immense and the economic costs are minimal. "This is a test of whether the Democratic Congress is ready to accept the responsibilities of the majority," says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Everyone plays politics with trade. But there are times when the stakes are too important. The Colombia agreement is another example of when politics must take a back seat for a larger good. We certainly know how Hugo Chavez is rooting for the congressional vote to turn out.

The Leftist and Their Hipocritical Bemoaning of Taxes

Isn't it funny to hear liberals in Hollywood like Streisand and Senators like Clinton decry that rich people should pay more taxes? It's not enough that 5 % of the top earners pay 60% of the taxes and the bottom 50 % pay 3% of the taxes (2005 figures) - the rich themselves cry out in anguish that "the rich should pay more taxes still. Well the left need not cry any longer - there is a solution in the making in Washington. Read this from the WSJ:

California Republican John Campbell yesterday introduced in the House his "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Act," which would amend the tax code to allow individuals to make voluntary donations to the federal government above their normal tax liability. The bill would place a new line on IRS tax forms to make this easy.

Mr. Campbell says he has heard the "cries" of those wealthy Americans – Mrs. Clinton, Warren Buffett, Barbra Streisand – who reject the lower tax rates passed in 2001 and 2003 and complain that they and their fellow rich don't pay enough. "It's a great injustice that citizens wishing to fulfill their dream of paying more taxes cannot simply check a box on their 1040 form to make a donation," he says. His bill would give liberals a chance to salve their consciences without having to raise taxes on millions of Americans who already feel overtaxed as it is. (read letter to Mr. Campbell in support of the "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Act". This is at www.Nationaltaxpayersunion.org)

So why don't the rich pay more taxes? Who is stopping them? Is there a law against paying more than your "fair" share? Hypocrisy pure and simple since the rich ARE paying most of the taxes in America.

Senator Tom Coburn Demands Honesty From Fellow Senators

So that one does not get depressed and frustrated it helps to watch one of the good guys telling it like it is to these rascals in Washington who think nothing of spending our money as well as the money of future generations. Tom Coburn is a hero in my book. Go to www.Freedomtalks.org.

WATCH VIDEO

Obama Sells America to the Highest Bidder: The UN

We already know that Senator Obama is the most liberal senator in the US senate so are we surprised that this man has introduced the Global Poverty Act. Read Edward Cline's article at Capitalism Magazine if you want to get sick but also please write your reps and senators to oppose this piece of disgusting legislation which would hand us over to the likes of the United Nations. Also of note they are not putting this to a roll call vote but to anonymous voice vote and it's a bipartisan-sponsored bill!!!!! Why don't we just have a one party system like the Soviet Union was!! Please read Mr. Cline's article.

"Congress is proposing, in Barack Obama's Global Poverty Act (S.2433, based on H.R. 1302, passed by the House September 25, 2007), that Americans be delivered into a state of indentured servitude as laborers for the United Nations. Perhaps "indentured servitude" is too kind a term, for as horrendous a condition as it is, there is usually a time limit to such servitude.

"Slavery would be the more accurate term in this instance, for what Congress is considering is servitude by Americans in perpetuity, in exchange for nothing but the privilege of laboring to "save" the world without thanks or reward, of filling the alleged needs of others, of performing unlimited "community service" for the offense of merely existing.The not-so-peculiar and odd thing about H.R. 1302 was that it passed the House by voice vote. This is a stratagem adopted by legislators who fear that a bill is so outrageous that it is better that no record be kept of those who endorsed it. S.2433 was passed from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the same manner - by voice vote, without public hearings, to protect the identities of the guilty. It will probably be introduced to the Senate for a similar, anonymous voice vote -- by Harry Reid.

"There is a double irony in this behavior. First, S.2433 is a bipartisan-sponsored bill. This underscores the fact that there is no fundamental difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Second, it is a piece of legislation which, given the altruist, collectivist premises behind it, one would have thought its creators should have trumpeted boastfully. But it is being handled by corrupt, guilty, fearful sneaks who haven't the courage of their own malice."

READ HERE

For Happiness and Progress You Need Reason Not Faith

Ibn Warraq has an insightful article "Why the West is Best" (City Journal) i.e. why it is better than any other place on earth. More than anything else, it is a state of mind which allows westerners the greater freedom to live their lives to the fullest. Alas, whereas we have thrown off the shackles of faith many parts of the globe have not and we see death, destruction and mayhem as a result. For happiness the basic ingredient is reason not faith.

"The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy—are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing."

"In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. In many non-Western countries, especially Islamic ones, citizens are not free to read what they wish...

"One could characterize the difference between the West and the Rest as a difference in epistemological principles. The desire for knowledge, no matter where it leads, inherited from the Greeks, has led to an institution unequaled—or very rarely equaled—outside the West: the university. Along with research institutes and libraries, universities are, at least ideally, independent academies that enshrine these epistemological norms, where we can pursue truth in a spirit of disinterested inquiry, free from political pressures. In other words, behind the success of modern Western societies, with their science and technology and open institutions, lies a distinct way of looking at the world, interpreting it, and recognizing and rectifying problems.

"...Moreover, other parts of the world recognize Western superiority. When other societies such as South Korea and Japan have adopted Western political principles, their citizens have flourished. It is to the West, not to Saudi Arabia or Iran, that millions of refugees from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes flee, seeking tolerance and political freedom. ...

"A culture that gave the world the novel; the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; and the paintings of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt does not need lessons from societies whose idea of heaven, peopled with female virgins, resembles a cosmic brothel. Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

"As Ayatollah Khomeini once famously said, there are no jokes in Islam..." (City Journal).

My Model is Right, It's the Real World That's Wrong

As the title implies (not my title but don't know who said this) scientists can be non-rational as well as anybody else especially when there is government money to be had. The "Real World" consists of constant fluctuations of temperatures that can last hundreds or even thousands of years. Below I have included just the most recent climates that earth went through. Remember George Washington and his crossing of the Delaware - yup the frozen Delaware River? There is a famous painting of the period depicting the large ice chunks. Doesn't look like fun for our own great General Washington does it?


"The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm climate in Europe. The warmest part of the Medieval Warm Period was from about 950 until 1100 A.D. The warm climate overlaps with a time of high solar activity called the Medieval Maximum. The Medieval Warm Period occurred before the Little Ice Age, a time of cool climate in Europe and other places around the world. The graph on the left shows a reconstruction of average global temperatures over the past 1000 years with temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period similar to the first part of the 20th Century, cooler temperatures during the Little Ice Age, and dramatic warming in recent decades. The Medieval Warm Period was likely cooler than the past few decades.


According to some archaeologists, the Vikings may have been better able to explore and colonize many areas in Northern Europe while the climate was relatively warm during the Medieval Warm Period because there was less sea ice. They traveled by boats to Greenland among other places through seas that would later become blocked by sea ice during the Little Ice Age.
"(Read).

This natural warming of the planet resulted in growth and wealth. It was when the great cathedrals were built. This period was followed by "The Little Ice Age" which lasted four hundred years.


"For about five hundred years, from 1250 to 1850, most parts of the world experienced colder and harsher climates than usual. This time is called the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, average global temperatures were 1-1.5 degree Celsius (2-3 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than they are today. The cooler temperatures were caused by a combination of less solar activity and large volcanic eruptions. Cooling caused glaciers to advance and stunted tree growth. Livestock died, harvests failed, and humans suffered from famine and disease." (Read).

Here are some cool websites for further investigation to arm yourself with facts to fight the biggest attempt at controlling mankind since Communism.

Global Warming Doomsday Called off

For fun go to Song about our Universe

To see how Gore totally misconstrues climate science go to:

Snowjob on Al Gore
To see the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle: also here
Go here if you can't connect above.

Environmentalism - The New Communism and Threat to Liberty

I say that each American has the obligation to investigate this so called "Global Warming catastrophe" being pimped by the likes of Al Gore and Moore and see what the other side has to say. Something to remember that many scientists get government funding for their research especially climate research so it is to their benefit to come up with "proof" of the disaster that will follow "Global Warming". But I think Americans are smart enough to investigate this for themselves and see what the opposition has to say. The reason Mr. Klaus has such interesting comments on this topic is because he lived under Communism which was also all about controlling people and money. Let's put on our thinking caps folks and not let ourselves be hoodwinked into another form of communism or control.

Vaclav Klaus, the President of Czechoslovakia, has some inciteful answers to questions posed to him at The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. The following are some of his comments.

"My ambition is not to bring additional arguments to the scientific climatological debate about this phenomenon. I am convinced, however, that up to now this scientific debate has not been deep and serious enough and has not provided sufficient basis for the policymakers’ reaction. What I am really concerned about is the way the environmental topics have been misused by certain political pressure groups to attack fundamental principles underlying free society. It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom.

"As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism. This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning of the whole world.

"The environmentalists consider their ideas and arguments to be an indisputable truth and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation and PR campaigns to exert pressure on policymakers to achieve their goals. Their argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic by declaring the future of the world to be under serious threat. In such an atmosphere they continue pushing policymakers to adopt illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making. To use the words of Friedrich Hayek, they try to stop free, spontaneous human action and replace it by their own, very doubtful human design."(READ THE REST HERE). (Also go here). For some real cool videos go here.

Hillary Would Bring the US to a Major Slowdown and Impoverish Us All

* Free trade deals would end
* 100 billion dollars new spending on children 0-5 years of age from nutrition to prenatal to child care to food stamps.
* Raising the dividend tax, capital gains tax and increasing the highest income tax rates.

She would be a big spender on the order of LBJ or FDR and with the increases in income tax rates she will make us all poorer and unable to compete on the world stage.

We must have a leader who will free us from burdensome taxes and not impoverish our great nation. Hillary ain't that leader. She is a socialist down to her core.

What America needs is a flat tax which 22 countries now have and a lower corporate tax of which we have the second highest in the world. With Hillary's plan to spend a gazillion dollars on her 20 year old pet project "It Takes a Village" to have the government take care of our children, it will only add to our non-competitiveness in the world market place.

Colombia Seeks to Replicate the Irish Miracle – We Should Encourage That

Mary Anastasia O’Grady always has interesting reports from Latin America. She was interviewed by Kelsey Hubbard at the Wall Street Journal (Listen). Colombia has been run by a very pro growth ambitious government and they looked around the world and decided that the Irish Miracle was something they wanted to replicate. To do this they need three things to happen:

1. The Colombian politicians need to lower the corporate taxes down to 12.5%. This would attract foreign investments. This would result in less tax evasion and encourage foreign investment.

2. Colombians recognize that in order to grow they need to wipe out the guerrillas that are really nothing more than narcotraffickers/kidnappers but at the same time they realize they need to alleviate the dire poverty that a large percentage of their population live with.

3. They need to convince the US democrats who are threatening to kill the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia to instead approve the FTA. This would allow Colombia access to US markets and reduce tariffs which are always a barrier to trade.

The least the US democrats could do is to allow a good friend and neighbor of ours to grow by approving the Free Trade Agreement.

Why does the West Pay Special Attention to the Terrorists in Gaza?

The Historian, Victor Davis Hanson has a pointed article about the never-ending spectacle of the Gazan Freak Show of death and destruction. Why do we focus so much attention on these people?

The Tired Gaza Two-Step
by Victor Davis Hanson

...On the world front, we've reached a new threshold in which evoking the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews has become commonplace and almost acceptable. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, publicly brags about hoarding the body parts of captured Israelis. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly talks of Israelis in Hitlerian terms as "filthy bacteria" that should be wiped off the map.

Palestinians in Gaza can enshrine mass murderers and praise terrorist killers without much worry that the world will be appalled at their grotesque spectacles — much less cease its sympathy and subsidies.

And what a world it is that enables Gaza! The Russians have fought a dirty war against Muslim separatists in Chechnya. The Chinese have been hunting down Muslim separatist Uighurs who claim Xinjiang Province as their own. India wages bloody periodic wars against Muslim terrorists who claim Kashmir.

Imagine tomorrow that all of the above nations told the Gazans that their dispute is no more or less important to the world than similar land quarrels in Cyprus or Azerbaijan; that they are no more or less deserving of international money and sympathy than are the Chechnyans or Uighurs or the Muslims of Kashmir; or that the Israelis have as much right as the Chinese, Indians or Russians to retaliate and put down neighboring Islamist attacks. Then the crisis would shortly recede from the world's attention.

And Hamas in Gaza would either begin negotiating and building Palestinians' own civil society — or face the sort of typical Chinese, Russian or Indian retaliation that Israel is quite able to unleash. READ HERE

Can We Really Claim Victory in Iraq?

Not according to Elan Journo at the Ayn Rand Institute. With the 5th anniversary of Bush's war having come and gone we must ask ourselves what have we accomplished in the Middle East. Iran, the fountainhead of terrorism, is still there, intact and America has lost 4000 soldiers in a war that doesn't seem to have an end in sight. Isn't there another way to fight this and get it over with once and for all?

You Call this "Victory"?

March 24, 2008 by Elan Journo
Irvine, CA--In Congress, on the campaign trail, and across America, many have accepted a strangely favorable view of what President Bush's war policies have accomplished.
Conservatives regard his "surge" as a master stroke and celebrate what Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell calls the "extraordinary progress that has been made in Iraq." The popular sense that the war is going well is at least part of the story behind the comeback of McCain, whose support for Bush's policies initially dragged him down.

Democratic candidates Clinton and Obama both concede that the "surge" has worked and grudgingly quibble about the slow pace of political reconciliation among Iraqis.

"But the idea that we're nearing 'victory' in Iraq is a fantasy," said Elan Journo, resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Iraqis may now be butchering each other a bit less often, but Bush's war policy has done nothing to protect Americans."

"Cheerleaders of the President's policy focus myopically on whether insurgents have been kicked out, for the time being, from one street in one neighborhood of Baghdad. But the only rational benchmark for the war's success is whether it has made the lives of Americans safer from the threat of Islamists. Our security depends on how we're doing in the face of the global enemy, the ideological movement of the jihadists, which is widely popular and sponsored by states such as Iran.

"Far from working to defeat the enemy, Bush's war policy has been, not to defeat the jihadist forces, but to show 'compassion' to Iraqis and Afghans, to raise them out of poverty and give them elections. Bush's policy has left the enemy undefeated and empowered."

It is not Washington, but the hostile Iranian regime that can definitely claim to have scored "successes" thanks to Bush's policies, argues Mr. Journo. "As the leading sponsor of Islamist hostility and terrorism, Iran has grown stronger in the face of Washington's inaction. Iran arms insurgents in Iraq and jihadists across the region in attacking Americans. And Iran has won enormous power over Iraq. (CONTINUE READING HERE).

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

The Fairytale of Ethanol

Over at Capitalism Magazine I came across one of Walter Williams' incisive articles from March 12 "Archer Daniels Midland, Big Corn and The Ethanol Hoax". Folks I think we've been hoodwinked by big business in cahoots with government. But then I knew that environmentalists (read Al Gore) and government forcing this ethanol fairytale on Americans instead of allowing the marketplace to work things out would slap us in the face one day. And sure enough now you can stop wondering why prices are so high at the grocery store.

When you take good crop land that once was growing tomatoes, potatoes, cotton, vegetables and fruit and grow corn on it because of government induced incentives to do so, it doesn't take a degree in economices to figure out that the cost of our food would be rising. So now it's not just gasoline prices that are high because the government and environmentalists won't let us drill for new oil, but the very basic necessities of life are gobbling up more and more of our money.

"Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent."

"Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone...

"Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

"It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot...(Read the complete article here)

Using Your Grandma for Political Gain

As soon as I heard Obama's line that his white grandmother was afraid when she crossed a black man on the streets, I instinctively thought - this just did not ring true. At the time this alleged incident occurred he was living with his white grandmother and his white mother in Hawaii. Hawaii? The state with the most ethnically diverse people? Something's not right in the state of Obama's thoughts.

Thomas Sowell has called Obama's Philadelphia speech "a theatrical masterpiece" and it is surely that. The man is a word smith and a crafter of sentences. But should he be the Presidential nominee for the Democratic party? That's a very important question for the Democrats.

"...Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe. Accordingly, Obama's Philadelphia speech -- a theatrical masterpiece -- will probably reassure most Democrats and some other Obama supporters. They will undoubtedly say that we should now "move on," even though many Democrats have still not yet moved on from George W. Bush's 2000 election victory. Like the Soviet show trials during their 1930s purges, Obama's speech was not supposed to convince critics but to reassure supporters and fellow-travelers, in order to keep the "useful idiots" useful."

"Best-selling author Shelby Steele's recent book on Barack Obama ("A Bound Man") has valuable insights into both the man and the circumstances facing many other blacks -- especially those who were never part of the black ghetto culture but who feel a need to identify with it for either personal, political or financial reasons. Like religious converts who become more Catholic than the Pope, such people often become blacker-than-thou. For whatever reason, Barack Obama chose a black extremist church decades ago -- even though there was no shortage of very different churches, both black and white -- in Chicago. Some say that he was trying to earn credibility on the ghetto streets, to facilitate his work as a community activist or for his political career. We may never know why. But now that Barack Obama is running for a presidential nomination, he is doing so on a radically different basis, as a post-racial candidate uniquely prepared to bring us all together..." (READ)

Getting High on Government Bailouts - An Addiction

Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute has a clear, tough hitting article on the WHY of what is happening today to our financial institutions. The question I want an answer to is why our government has not learned it's lesson regarding meddling in the market place?

The main idea? Government meddling in our markets is always bad .

The diseases? 1. An addiction-to taxpayer money worse than crack cocaine
2. government manipulation of interest rates and money supply

The result? Inflation-the devourer of wealth.

Lesson? "Taxpayer bailouts breed market disasters".

Cure? Allow the market the freedom to correct itself by learning the hard lessons of bad decisions - in this case low interest loans to bad-credit borrowers.

"For decades our government has had a semi-official policy that large financial institutions are too big to fail — and therefore must be bailed out when they risk insolvency — a policy that creates perverse incentives for them to take on far more risk than they otherwise would. “Too big to fail” is implemented through a network of government bodies that protect financial institutions from the long-term consequences of their decisions at taxpayer expense — a phenomenon we can observe right now. Consider Bear Stearns! ...

"Consider Countrywide, a major subprime money loser just acquired by Bank of America. Private lenders have not been willing to grant Countrywide the tens of billions of dollars it sought to keep afloat, given the company’s huge and difficult-to-measure subprime exposure. In a free market, bankruptcy would loom — but in our system, Countrywide and others can turn to the government-backed Federal Home Loan Banks for cash; these banks have lent Countrywide over $70 billion so far. According to The Wall Street Journal, these banks specialize in “providing funding where other creditors won’t go” — which they can do because of “a widespread belief the government would bail them out [with taxpayer money] in a crisis.” ...

"Still another item on the bailout menu is provided by the Federal Reserve. Today and throughout history, when major financial institutions are losing money, the Fed uses its power to manipulate interest rates and the money supply so that banks can borrow cheaply — giving them easy money with which to paper over their old mistakes. Again, it is other taxpayers who pay — in this case, through inflation. Inflation depletes Americans’ hard-earned savings; the trend of skyrocketing housing and commodity prices we have witnessed during the last five years is just the latest and most obvious harm done by our government’s inflationary actions. ...

"The combined effect of these and other bailout policies is to make risk-taking less risky for large financial institutions — because true failure is not an option. ... (Read)

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on business issues.

North-West Passage was Open in the 1940's - Oops The Global Warming Crowd Forgot to Tell us That

Roy Spencer has an interesting article regarding the fact that ...

"Contrary to what you have been led to believe, there is no solid published evidence that has ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth – not one peer-reviewed paper. The reason: our measurements of global weather on decadal time scales are insufficient to reject such a possibility. For instance, the last 30 years of the strongest warming could have been caused by a very slight change in cloudiness. What might have caused such a change? Well, one possibility is the sudden shift to more frequent El Niño events (and fewer La Niña events) since the 1970s."

"That shift also coincided with a change in another climate index, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The associated warming in Alaska was sudden, and at the same time we just happened to start satellite monitoring of Arctic sea ice. Coincidences do happen, you know…that’s why we have a word for them.

"We make a big deal out of the “unprecedented” 2007 opening of the Northwest Passage as summertime sea ice in the Arctic Ocean gradually receded, yet the very warm 1930s in the Arctic also led to the Passage opening in the 1940s. Of course, we had no satellites to measure the sea ice back then." Read here and here.

Obama Can't Hide What He Truly is Regardless of a well written Speech

Wright showed the world what he is - a racist and worse a person unwilling to give up America's racist past. He never acknowledged that in earlier times half the world was enslaved to the other half and this included blacks enslaving whites and other blacks! If black America wants to focus on slavery it should not be American slavery, we're past that. They should focus on black on black slavery in Africa and Asian slavery.

The fact that Mr. Obama stayed in Wright's church and considers him his mentor and spiritual leader says a lot about Obama - and it ain't positive. It says that he harbors grudges and thoughts that a President of the United States should not have.

McCain's Gotta Get a Philosophy

Peggy Noonan while always an interesting writer can be a bit verbose. But she poses a very important question...Just what does McCain stand for? And she appropriately asks what is his underlying philosophy that guides his actions. Does he have a philosophy?

...You know what he has in his favor. He's gentleman Johnny McCain, hero, maverick. He has more knowledge on national defense in his pinky than the others will have, after four years in the White House, in their entire bodies. He's the one who should be answering the phone at 3 a.m. ...

...He has positions, but a series of separate, discrete and seemingly unconnected stands do not coherence make. Mr. McCain, in public, does not dig down to the meaning of things, to why he stands where he stands, to what understanding of life drives his political decisions. But voters hunger for coherence, for a philosophical thread that holds all the positions together. (Read)

A MAVERICK is defined as an independent individual who does not go along with the group or party. The etymology of this word is super interesting: Samuel A. Maverick (died 1870) was an American pioneer who did not brand his calves. Well, does McCain have a brand unifying all his actions, just as a rancher has a brand unifying and identifying his property. We'll have to see if he can make a coherent umbrella of thought under which we can predict his actions. I am still hoping to see the leader on the conservative side who stands up for Capitalism, freedom and individual rights on a moral and consistent basis: freedom of speech, freedom from onerous taxation, freedom from government mandates and regulations.

Americans hunger for a man of principle - consistent principles- not the fly by the seat of your pants kind of "principles". Ayn Rand explained the crucial role that principles play in the life of a man or of a nation when she wrote:

"A principle is 'a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.' Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one's long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it.

"The present state of our culture may be gauged by the extent to which principles have vanished from public discussion, reducing our cultural atmosphere to the sordid, petty senselessness of a bickering family that haggles over trivial concretes, while betraying all its major values, selling out its future for some spurious advantage of the moment.

"To make it more grotesque, that haggling is accompanied by an aura of hysterical self-righteousness, in the form of belligerent assertions that one must compromise with anybody on anything (except on the tenet that one must compromise) and by panicky appeals to "practicality". "

Ms Rand wrote this in 1966 in her essay The Anatomy of Compromise in "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Not much has changed has it...

The Case for Terrestrial (a.k.a. Nuclear) Energy

by William Tucker (published in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College)

There have been a host of debates this year between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. Many of these candidates believe that among our top priorities is to address global warming by reducing carbon emissions. All or most seem to agree that decreasing America’s energy dependence is another. Yet few if any of the candidates have mentioned that nuclear energy—or, as I prefer, terrestrial energy—could serve both these ends.

Right now there are 103 operating nuclear reactors in America, but most are owned by utilities (which also own coal plants). The few spin-offs that concentrate mainly on nuclear—Entergy, of Jackson, Mississippi, and Exelon, of Chicago—are relatively small players. As for a nuclear infrastructure, it hardly exists. There is only one steel company in the world today that can cast the reactor vessels (the 42-foot, egg-shaped containers at the core of a reactor): Japan Steel Works. As countries around the world begin to build new reactors, the company is now back-ordered for four years. Unless some enterprising American steel company takes an interest, any new reactor built in America will be cast in Japan.

This is an extraordinary fate for what was once regarded as an American technology. France, China, Russia, Finland, and Japan all perceive the enormous opportunity that nuclear energy promises for reducing carbon emissions and relieving the world’s energy problems as reflected in recent soaring oil prices. Yet in America, we remain trapped in a Three Mile Island mentality, without even a public discussion of the issue. As folk singer Ani Di-Franco puts it, the structure of the atom is so perfect that it is “blasphemy / To use it to make bombs / Or electricity.”
It is time to step back and question whether this prejudice makes sense.

Fossil Fuels
All living things exist by drawing energy from their environment and discarding part of it as “waste,” so there is nothing inherently shameful about energy consumption. Almost all our energy derives ultimately from the sun. Plants store solar energy by transforming it into large carbon-chain molecules (the process we call photosynthesis). The entire animal kingdom draws its energy from this process by “eating” this stored solar energy. About 750,000 years ago, early humans discovered that they could also draw solar energy from a chain reaction we call “fire.” When heated, the stored energy in carbon chains is released. This heat energy can break down other carbon chains, which causes combustion. Fire has been the principle source of energy throughout most of human history. When historian William Manchester wrote a book about the Middle Ages called A World Lit Only By Fire, he was describing the world of only 700 years ago.
All this began to change about 400 years ago when human beings discovered an older source of stored solar energy—coal. Our most common fossil fuel, coal is the compressed remains of vegetable matter that covered the earth 300-400 million years ago. Coal is superabundant and we will probably never run out of it. It was the fuel of the Industrial Revolution, and it is still the world’s largest source of energy. It is also the most environmentally destructive substance ever utilized. The EPA estimates that it kills 30,000 Americans each year through lung diseases (and in China it is doing far worse). It is also the world’s principal source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Oil, another fossil fuel, is rarer and is believed to be the remains of organisms that lived in shallow seas during the age of the dinosaurs. It was first drilled in 1859, but was used only for lighting and lubrication until the invention of the automobile. Now it constitutes 40 percent of our energy consumption and is perhaps the most difficult fuel to replace. American oil production peaked in 1970 and is now declining rapidly—a fact that explains much of our subsequent foreign policy. The Arab oil embargo occurred three years following the peak, when the producing states realized we were vulnerable. The question now is whether world production will reach a similar peak and decline. As Matthew Simmons has written: “We won’t know until we see it in the rearview mirror.” If it does come, it may not look much different from the quadrupling of oil prices we have witnessed in the last three years.

Natural gas is generally considered the most environmentally benign of the fossil fuels. It gives off little pollution and only about half the greenhouse gas of coal. Natural gas was put under federal regulation in the 1950s, so that by the 1970s we were experiencing a supply shortage. Deregulation in the ,80s led to almost unlimited supplies in the ,90s. Then we began the fateful practice of using gas to produce electricity, resulting in a price crunch and the loss of many gas-dependent industries, such as fertilizer and plastics factories, which have since moved to Mexico and Saudi Arabia to be near supplies. Now American gas production seems to have peaked and we are importing 15 percent of our consumption from Canada. Huge gas supplies have been discovered in Russia and the Middle East, but will not do us much good since gas cannot be easily transported over water. Thus China, India and Europe will be able to buy pipeline gas much more cheaply and are already out-competing us on the world market.

Alternative Fuels
Given the precarious state of these fossil fuels, people have begun talking of “alternative” and “renewable” fuels—water, sun and wind. The term “renewable” is somewhat misleading: no energy is “renewable” insofar as energy cannot be recycled (this is the Second Law of Thermodynamics). The term “renewable” usually describes tapping flows of solar energy that are supposedly “free.” But coal and oil in the ground are also free. It just takes work—and energy—to recover them. So, too, solar “renewables” can only be gathered at a cost. They are often limited and may require extravagant use of other resources—mainly land.
What about water? Hydroelectricity is a form of solar energy. The sun evaporates water, which falls as rain and then flows back to the sea, creating kinetic energy. Rivers have been tapped since Roman times and, beginning in the 19th century, dams were built to store this solar energy. Hydroelectric dams provided 30 percent of our electricity in the 1930s, but the figure has declined to ten percent. And all the good dam sites are now taken.

What about wind? Wind energy has captured the imagination of the public and is touted by many as the fastest growing energy source in the world. All of this is driven by government mandates—tax credits and “renewable portfolio” laws that require utilities to buy non-fossil sources of power. The problem with wind is that it is completely unpredictable. Our electrical grid is one giant machine interconnected across the country, in which voltage balances must be carefully maintained in order to avoid damaging electrical equipment or losing data on computer circuits. Wind irregularities can be masked up to around 20 percent, but after that they become too disruptive. At best, therefore, wind will only be able to provide the 20 percent “spinning reserve” carried by all utilities. In addition, windmills are large and require lots of land. The biggest now stand 65 stories tall—roughly the height of New York’s Trump Tower—and produce only six megawatts, or about 1/200th the output of a conventional power plant. In the East, most are sited on mountaintops, since that is where the wind blows strongest.

What about the sun? Solar energy is very diffuse. A square-meter card table receives enough sunlight to run only four 100-watt electric bulbs. At best, solar could provide our indoor lighting, which consumes about ten percent of our electricity. But keep in mind: gathering and storing solar energy requires vast land areas.

Sunshine can be harnessed directly in two ways—as thermal heat or through photovoltaics, the direct production of electricity. In the 1980s, California built a Power Tower that focused hundreds of mirrors on a single point to boil water to drive a turbine. The facility covered one-fifth of a square mile and produced ten megawatts. It was eventually closed down as uneconomical. Last year, when Spain opened an identical Power Tower in Seville, U.S. News & World Report ran a cover story hailing it as a “Power Revolution.” That facility, of course, is completely subsidized by the government.

Photovoltaic cells have more promise. They are thin wafers where solar radiation knocks the electrons off silicon atoms, producing an electric current. At present, an installation about half the size of a football field could power one suburban home—when the sun shines, of course. The problem is that photovoltaics are enormously expensive; using them to provide one-quarter of an average home’s electricity requires investing around $35,000. Their greatest benefit is that they are able to provide electricity precisely when it is most needed—on hot summer afternoons when air conditioning produces peak loads.

Nuclear or Terrestrial Energy
There is one other form of alternative energy often mistakenly grouped with solar: geothermal energy. Geothermal is produced when the natural heat of the earth comes in contact with groundwater. This can produce geysers and “fumaroles”—steam leaks that are now being harnessed to produce electricity.

Where does this heat come from? Temperatures at the earth’s core reach 7,000 degrees Centigrade, hotter than the surface of the sun. Some of this heat comes from gravitational pressures and the leftover heat from the collisions of astral particles that led to the formation of the earth. But at least half of it (we don’t know the precise percentage) comes from the radioactive breakdown of thorium and uranium within the earth’s mantle. This is “terrestrial energy,” and a nuclear reactor is simply the same process carried out in a controlled environment. In order to harness terrestrial energy in the form of uranium isotopes, we mine it, bring it to the surface, concentrate it, and initiate a chain reaction that releases stored energy in the form of heat—the very same process as that used to harness solar energy from coal.

When Albert Einstein signed the letter to President Roosevelt informing him of the discovery of nuclear energy, he turned to some fellow scientists and said: “For the first time mankind will be using energy not derived from the sun.” This possibility emerged in 1905, when Einstein posited that energy and matter are different forms of the same thing and that energy could be converted to matter and matter to energy (as reflected in the famous equation E = mc2). The co-efficient, c2, is the speed of light squared, which is a very, very large number. What it signifies is that a very, very small amount of matter can be converted into a very, very large amount of energy. This is good news in terms of our energy needs and the environment. It means that the amount of fuel required to produce an equivalent amount of energy is now approximately two million times smaller.

Consider: At an average 1,000 megawatt coal plant, a train with 110 railroad cars, each loaded with 20 tons of coal, arrives every five days. Each carload will provide 20 minutes of electricity. When burned, one ton of coal will throw three tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We now burn 1 billion tons of coal a year—up from 500 million tons in 1976. This coal produces 40 percent of our greenhouse gases and 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

By contrast, consider a 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor. Every two years a fleet of flatbed trucks pulls up to the reactor to deliver a load of fuel rods. These rods are only mildly radio-active and can be handled with gloves. They will be loaded into the reactor, where they will remain for six years (only one-third of the rods are replaced at each refueling). The replaced rods will be removed and transferred to a storage pool inside the containment structure, where they can remain indefinitely (three feet of water blocks the radiation). There is no exhaust, no carbon emissions, no sulfur sludge to be carted away hourly and heaped into vast dumps. There is no release into the environment. The fuel rods come out looking exactly as they did going in, except that they are now more highly radioactive. There is no air pollution, no water pollution, and no ground pollution.

Objections to Nuclear Energy
What are the potential problems with nuclear power?
First, some fear that a nuclear reactor might explode. But this is impossible. Natural uranium is made of two isotopes—U-235 and U-238 (the latter having three more neutrons). Both are radioactive—meaning they are constantly breaking down into slightly smaller atoms—but only U-235 is fissile, meaning it will split almost in half with a much larger release of energy. Because U-235 is more highly radioactive, it has almost all broken down already, so that it now makes up only seven-tenths of a percent of the world’s natural uranium. In order to set off a chain reaction, natural uranium must be “enriched” so that U-235 makes up a larger percentage.

Reactor grade uranium—which will simmer enough to produce a little heat—is three percent U-235. In order to get to bomb grade uranium—the kind that will explode—uranium must be enriched to 90 percent U-235. Given this fact, there is simply no way that a reactor can explode.
On the other hand, a reactor can “melt down.” This is what happened at Three Mile Island. A valve stuck open and a series of mistakes led the operators to think the core was overflowing when it was actually short of cooling water. They further drained the core and about a third of the core melted from the excess heat. But did this result in a nuclear catastrophe? Hardly. The public was disconcerted because no one was sure what was happening. But in the end the melted fuel stayed within the reactor vessel. Critics had predicted a “China syndrome” where the molten core would melt through the steel vessel, then through the concrete containment structure, then down into the earth where it would hit groundwater, causing a steam explosion that would spray radioactive material across a huge area. In fact, the only radioactive debris was a puff of steam that emitted the same radiation as a single chest x-ray. Three Mile Island was an industrial accident. It bankrupted the utility, but no one was injured.

This of course was not the case in Chernobyl, where the Soviet designers didn’t even bother building a concrete containment structure around the reactor vessel. Then in 1986, two teams of operators became involved in a tussle over use of the reactor and ended up overheating the core, which set fire to the carbon moderator that facilitates the chain reaction. (American reactors don’t use carbon moderators.) The result was a four-day fire that spewed radioactive debris around the world. More fallout fell on Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, from Chernobyl than from Three Mile Island. With proper construction such a thing could never happen.

Another objection to nuclear power is the supposed waste it produces. But this is a mischaracterization. A spent fuel rod is 95 percent U-238. This is the same material we can find in a shovel full of dirt from our back yards. Of the remaining five percent, most is useful, but small amounts should probably be placed in a repository such as Yucca Mountain. The useful parts—uranium-235 and plutonium (a manmade element produced from U-238)—can be recycled as fuel. In fact, we are currently recycling plutonium from Russian nuclear missiles. Of the 20 percent of our power that comes from nuclear sources, half is produced from recycled Russian bombs. Many of the remaining isotopes are useful in industry or radiological medicine—now used in 40 percent of all medical procedures. It is only cesium-137 and strontium-90, which have half-lives of 28 and 30 years, respectively, that need to be stored in protective areas.
Unfortunately, federal regulations require all radioactive byproducts of nuclear power plants to be disposed of in a nuclear waste repository. As a result, more than 98 percent of what will go into Yucca Mountain is either natural uranium or useful material. Why are we wasting so much effort on such a needless task? Because in 1977, President Carter decided to outlaw nuclear recycling. The fear then was that other countries would steal our plutonium to make nuclear bombs. (India had just purloined plutonium from a Canadian-built reactor to make its bomb.)

This has turned out to be a false alarm. Countries that have built bombs have either drawn plutonium from their own reactors or—as Iran is trying to do now—enriched their own uranium. Canada, Britain, France and Russia are all recycling their nuclear fuel. France has produced 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power for the last 25 years. It stores all its high-level “nuclear waste” in a single room at Le Havre.

Conclusion
The U.S. currently gets 50 percent of its electricity from coal and 20 percent from nuclear reactors. Reversing these percentages should become a goal of both global warming advocates and anyone who wants to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil (the latter since a clean, expanded electrical grid could anchor a fleet of hydrogen or electric cars). Contrary to what some critics charge, this would not require massive subsidies or direct intervention by the government. Indeed, the nuclear industry has gone through an astounding revival over the past decade. The entire fleet of 103 reactors is up and running 90 percent of the time. Reactors are making money hand-over-fist—so much so that the attorney general of Connecticut recently proposed a windfall profits tax on them! The industry is poised for new construction, with proposals for four new reactors submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and almost 30 waiting in the wings.

The rest of the world is rapidly moving toward nuclear power. France, Russia and Japan are not only going ahead with their own nuclear programs, but selling their technology in the developing world. America, which once dominated this technology, is being left behind. The main culprit is public fear. Nuclear technology is regarded as an illegitimate child of the atomic bomb, a Faustian bargain, a blasphemous tinkering with nature. It is none of these. It is simply a natural outgrowth of our evolving understanding of the universe. The sun has been our prime source of energy throughout human history, but energy is also generated in the earth itself. It is time to avail ourselves of this clean, safe terrestrial energy.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Watch What You Ask For - You might Just Get It: Universal Health Care

It seems to me that too many Americans think that Universal Health Care would be a good thing: but is it? What with the Democratic candidates Obama and Clinton calling for Universal health care let's be sure that we understand what it is they are calling for. An excellent article "Moral Health Care vs Universal Healthcare", by Lin Zinser and Paul Hsieh at The Objective Standard is a great place to start.

"Government-run health care systems do not and cannot work, because they improperly treat health care as a “right.” Health care, like food and clothing, is a need, but not a right. It is a commodity that is created by the intelligent thought, creativity, and hard work of producers, such as doctors, nurses, allied medical professionals, and hospital administrators. When the government treats health care as a right, it necessarily violates the genuine rights of the providers who produce those goods and should be free to offer them for exchange on whatever terms they see fit, not forced to serve people against their own judgment. And it necessarily violates the rights of consumers, who should be free to trade with providers by mutual consent to mutual benefit. As we have seen repeatedly, good doctors cannot and will not continue working under a system that enslaves them.

"A final (and often unacknowledged) consequence of government interference in medicine is that it leads to violations of individual rights in other areas of life, such as violations of the right to free speech and mandates regarding what people may and may not eat. When the government pays our health care bills, in order to save money, it inevitably demands greater control in how we lead our daily lives. Some of the “universal health care” proposals in Colorado, for instance, include “sin taxes” on foods and products deemed unhealthy. And in Great Britain, the government Advertising Standards Authority recently banned television reruns of some 1950s-era commercials featuring the slogan “Go to work on an egg” on the grounds that they were promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. Eggs are, of course, legal in Great Britain, but, says the government: “Eating eggs every day goes against what is now the generally accepted advice of a varied diet. We therefore could not approve the ads for broadcast.”...

"The solution to America’s health care problems is not more government intervention. Government violations of individual rights through government interference in the marketplace are the source of the problems. Government meddling in health insurance has all but eliminated choice, competition, and innovation, and has driven up the cost of health insurance. Government interference in medicine has caused incalculable harm to both patients and doctors, and driven up the cost of health care. Government controls have bred more controls, as politicians and bureaucrats have tried to “solve” the problems created by one set of regulations by imposing another set, and so forth, in a vicious spiral of increased costs, rationing, suffering, and death. Just as a doctor would not attempt to treat a burn victim by exposing him to more heat, so we should not attempt to solve our health care problems through more government intervention.

"The only moral and practical solution to this now-behemoth problem is to acknowledge that government intervention in health care and in health insurance is wrong, and to start in earnest to eliminate all such interference. This is the moral approach to solving the problem because it recognizes that the producers of health care goods and services have an inalienable right to dispose of the fruits of their thought and labor as they see fit, seeking their best interests through free trade in the marketplace. And it is the practical approach to solving the problem because it will lead to high-quality medical care at the prices that make such care possible—the prices on which providers and patients voluntarily agree." (Read the whole article here.)

What's good for the Goose is Good for the Gander

We should hold all people of the world to the same standards the West holds its citizens. We should rush to judge the words coming out of the mouth of any leader no matter from where he spouts them: Free or unfree nations.

The pseudonymous Ibn Warraq writing in City Journal: (Wall Street Journal)

The great ideas of the West -- rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy -- are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.
In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. . . .

[O]ther parts of the world recognize Western superiority. When other societies such as South Korea and Japan have adopted Western political principles, their citizens have flourished. It is to the West, not to Saudi Arabia or Iran, that millions of refugees from theocratic or other totalitarian regimes flee, seeking tolerance and political freedom. Nor would any Western politician be able to get away with the anti-Semitic remarks that former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad made in 2003. Our excusing Mahathir's diatribe indicates not only a double standard but also a tacit acknowledgment that we apply higher ethical standards to Western leaders.

Hey McCain! The Business of America is BUSINESS....and PROFITS

I watched the McCain/Romney debates last night and I know who I'm voting for: Mitt Romney. McCain attacked Mitt Romney for being a businessman, sneeringly implying that Romney's business success came from laying off workers. Apparently, McCain is superior and claims that his leadership was "for patriotism, not for profit." With a Republican like that who needs Democrats? We can just place McCain on the left and Romney on the right and hold elections.

Notice to Clinton and Obama: America does not need your candidacy!!!
Here are some of McCain's anti-conservative issues:

1.McCain-Feingold - an attack on freedom of speech.

2.Amnesty for illegal aliens - an attack on the rule of law.

3.His embrace of no-growth environmentalism and the global warming scam - an attack on our wealth and prosperity and our childrens future.

4.His opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - an attack on our independence from foreign oil sheiks.

5.His opposition to President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts - an attack on our right to our property.

There's only one thing we conservatives can do and that is to VOTE FOR ROMNEY because McCain is no conservative - he's in the wrong party.