The Martin Lenick Political Hour

[Martin Lenick]

Rick, I can't stop myself... it has nothing to do with karting but I'm on a roll. Maybe you should move this to "non-racing related..." or even a new topic, "Lenick Rants"

Stolen from FOXNews:
Junk Science: Looming Lightbulb Liability

Thursday, February 21, 2008

By Steven Milloy The speeding freight train carrying toxic waste liability for makers, sellers and purchasers of compact fluorescent lightbulbs, or CFLs, was only faintly audible in the distance last spring when this column first warned of it. Now we’re beginning to see that environmentalist-stoked train speed toward its victims, whom President Bush and Congress just finished tying to the tracks.
CFLs and all other fluorescent lightbulbs require special clean-up and disposal procedures because they contain small amounts of mercury, which is neurotoxic at sufficiently high exposures. For example, you’re not supposed to vacuum breakage or toss used bulbs in household trash.
Despite these clean-up and disposal hassles, environmental groups, bulb makers and retailers relentlessly have promoted CFL use as a strategy for reducing electricity consumption and the power plant emissions allegedly causing global warming.
Eco-activist groups, such as Environmental Defense, which historically have agitated to banish toxic substances from homes, workplaces and the environment, surprisingly have said that the mercury in CFLs is nothing to worry about.
But this new posturing flies in the face of the multitude of scary activist-inspired studies that hyperventilate about potential health risks from the slightest exposures to mercury, not to mention a 1987 article in Pediatrics reporting real-life mercury poisoning of a 23-month old from a broken fluorescent light bulb.
Bush and Congress joined the CFL promotion racket, too. The energy bill enacted last December mandates that traditional incandescent bulbs be phased out starting in 2012. CFLs pretty much are the only alternative.
This activist-business-government marketing juggernaut has succeeded. Wal-Mart alone sold 100 million CFLs last year.
But the partnership is about to implode. As predictable as Lucy pulling away the football from a determinedly charging Charlie Brown, the environmentalists are preparing to turn the tables on the CFL businesses and consumers.
The signal came in a Feb. 17 New York Times editorial entitled "That Newfangled Light Bulb."
The editorial read, in part, "Across the world, consumers are being urged to … switch to [CFLs]. ... Now the question is how to dispose of [CFLs] once they break or quit working … each [CFL] has a tiny bit of a dangerous toxin … almost 300 million CFLs were sold in the U.S. last year. That is already a lot of mercury to throw in the trash and the amounts will grow ever larger in coming years … the dangers are real and growing."
The Times piece continued, "Businesses and government recyclers need to start working on more efficient ways to deal with that added mercury. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is raising the cry about the moment when millions of these light bulbs start landing in landfills or incinerators all at once. The pig in the waste pipeline, she calls it."
Aside from the editorial’s implicit targeting instructions for eco-agitators and trial lawyers, I could only chuckle at the editorial’s nod to, and partial disclosure about, Silbergeld. For many years, she was a "senior scientist" with Environmental Defense who, before moving on to left-wing academia, excelled at fomenting dubious scares about "toxic" substances in the environment.
During Silbergeld’s days with Environmental Defense in the 1990s, the group’s pitch to the media was "when fluorescent bulbs are crushed, traces of mercury vaporize and enter the atmosphere. If the lamps are buried, the toxic element seeps into the soil."
Until the Times editorial, the activists and the media had been holding back their customary attacks against mercury-containing fluorescent light bulbs.
In lamenting the bulbs, Clean Water Action told the media in 1997, for example, that the mercury level in tuna is so high that a 35-pound child eating more than 2 ounces a week would exceed the EPA’s "safe" level.
But while CFL-mandating legislation was pending in Congress, the enviros did a temporary flip-flop: Environmental Defense began pooh-poohing mercury concerns stating, "In short, the exposure from breaking a CFL is in about the same range as the exposure from eating a can or two of tuna fish."
Two ounces of tuna used to be a horror, but in the name of CFLs, two cans became no problem.
The Associated Press reported in 1992 that fluorescent light bulbs were helping to "poison the Everglades with toxic mercury, threatening humans [and wildlife]."
In December 2000, a Massachusetts newspaper reported in an article entitled "Environmentalists Call for Mercury Product Ban" that the Massachusetts governor had proposed that trash-burning incinerators develop plans to separate fluorescent light bulbs and other mercury-containing consumer products from waste.
The business fantasy is for the nation’s 4 billion-plus light sockets to sport CFLs. There’s much more ka-ching in selling 4 billion $5 light bulbs as opposed to incandescent bulbs costing $0.75. But what about the mercury problem that may impose substantial liabilities on businesses and consumers faster than CFL light bulbs turn on?
Today’s business leaders apparently have forgotten the infamous Superfund program that needlessly and retroactively imposed tens of billions of dollars of costs for pre-1980 waste disposal practices regardless of whether they were legal at the time. CFL-maker GE, in particular, is involved in a senseless $500 million clean-up of industrial chemicals known as PCBs buried long ago in Hudson River sediments.
Imagine the clean-up costs from billions of CFLs disposed in landfills and burned in incinerators across the country. Superfund even imposed bankrupting liability on mom-and-pop businesses. Imagine the peril of home-based businesses that casually toss CFLs in the household trash.
First mercury was dangerous. Then, temporarily, it became no big deal. Now that the Greens have caught us in the CFL trap, they’re reverting to form on mercury — all to cause the sort of chaos resulting in increased government control of our lives.
As Johnny Cash sang, "I hear the train a-comin’, it’s rollin’ round the bend. …" The question is: Will President Bush and Congress just leave us on the tracks?

[PeterK]

WOW!, Martin, how did i miss this thread!.
I beleive i just found a soulmate to fight ECO-TERRORIZM with. It appears to me we share common grounds on this subject and look forward to "enlighten" our friends ( if thats still possible considering the amount of damage the powerful weapon of MASS DISTRACTION called MEDIA caused to human brainin in the last 25 years).

[Martin Lenick]

390 Inupiat Eskimos are suing for $400,000,000 or more to relocate due to "global warming".
Give me a million bucks to move and I just might "agree" with them.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ikCqgq_vScOfMEp46-jD80AnZv0A

http://www.ww4report.com/node/5162

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQ_0cDc_XxJDnSvNIFYfZrC56Kig

[Martin Lenick]

Another attack on wind farms, that wonderful option to awful fossil-fuel power:
(they kill the birdies)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,333633,00.html

[Martin Lenick]

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4292Gee whiz, it's been chilly lately. How about some science instead of propaganda? Try this:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/a-look-at-temperature-anomalies-for-all-4-global-metrics/

Or, if you prefer hyperbole, try these:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7243704.stm
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-02/18/content_6464154.htm
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=68277
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,333328,00.html
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/justin-mccarthy/2008/02/28/fox-friends-reports-global-cooling

Or if you want a good chuckle (this one's satire) try this:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0802/S00344.htm
Well, I think it's satire, but my least favorite web site seems to think it's a credible news source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoop_(news_website) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoop_%28news_website%29)
The source of the article is from one of my favorite sites. I don't know if this one is for Andy, PeterK, or my own amusement:
http://www.solopassion.com/node/4292

[Martin Lenick]

Goodbye William F. Buckley, Jr.

Rick, you may miss him - he was a great libertarian (and a pretty good conservative, too).

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aFkLZtr5m_ZQ&refer=us
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=25241

[Adam Andrea]

These CFL bulbs are a joke. Almost as big of a joke as requiring people to use them by law.

The government tells people they can't have X - they can only have Y. Companies who manufactured X are now essentially forced, by the government, to manufacture Y.

Pop Quiz:
When the shit (mercury) hits the fan (ground), guess who's going to get sued?
A: the government, or
B: the manufacturers?

[PeterK]

great material Martin.
Clearly, fighting liberals is the warfront of 21st century.
Armed with an abundand amount of airtime available even on so called conservative networks FOX claims to be, they cause distruction to brains. Destruction difficult to reverse because unlike structures, it takes decades or rather generations to repair.

Public effort to cater to their deviant theories ( and they are just that) will only intensify because one can never satisfy a liberal. I will predict that in years to come LACK of CO2 emmision will be the main cause of global cooling or some other natural phenomenon that we, small human have no control over. Perhaps then, it will be said that the way we cut the emission was disturbing to environement .. but !... lets look at the bright side... maybe then we will be able to again race rumbling gas guzzlers!.

[Martin Lenick]

The Danger of Environmentalism
By Michael S. Berliner (http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7100)
Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.
The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.
In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power--and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.
Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.
The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment." Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheer--at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.
The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man--the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do.
They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. "The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!'" In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.
The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the "needs" of the nonhuman.
To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a "balance" between the needs of man and the "needs" of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy that makes life on earth possible.

[PeterK]

..ironically, i was knocked off my chair again this morning reading an article about wind power......
The first sentence sets the mood...".....But he's [ that bastard milionare, who obviously is out to get us again] not doing it out of generosity - he expects to turn a buck........"
You be the judge... read here (http://www.yahoo.com/s/860613)

As Martin noted in his previous posts, i can already see the EcoTerrorists rolling up their sleeves getting ready to protect the "birds rights"

.... please, any vacant land on Mars?

[Martin Lenick]

http://www.businessandmedia.org/stillshots/2008/TimeIwoJima.jpg


Iwo Jima Veterans Blast Time’s ‘Special Environmental Issue’ Cover (http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080417171532.aspx)
Time editor tells MSNBC ‘there needs to be a real effort along the lines of World War II to combat global warming and climate change.’
Jeff Poor, Business & Media Institute
For only the second time in 85 years, Time magazine abandoned the traditional red border it uses on its cover. The occasion – to push more global warming alarmism.
The cover of the April 21 issue of Time took the famous Iwo Jima photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines raising the American flag and replaced the flag with a tree. The cover story by Bryan Walsh calls green “the new red, white and blue.” (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731383_1731363,00.html)
Donald Mates, an Iwo Jima veteran, told the Business & Media Institute on April 17 that using that photograph for that cause was a “disgrace.”
“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Mates said. “Whoever did it is going to hell. That’s a mortal sin. God forbid he runs into a Marine that was an Iwo Jima survivor.”
Mates also said making the comparison of World War II to global warming was erroneous and disrespectful.
“The second world war we knew was there,” Mates said. “There’s a big discussion. Some say there is global warming, some say there isn’t. And to stick a tree in place of a flag on the Iwo Jima picture is just sacrilegious.”
According to the American Veterans Center (http://www.americanveteranscenter.com/) (AVC), Mates served in the 3rd Marine Division and fought in the battle of Iwo Jima, landing on Feb. 24, 1945.
“A few days later, Mates’ eight-man patrol came under heavy assault from Japanese forces,” Tim Holbert, a spokesman for the AVC, said. “During fierce-hand-to-hand combat, Mates watched as his friend and fellow Marine, Jimmy Trimble, was killed in front of his eyes. Mates was severely wounded, and underwent repeated operations for shrapnel removal for over 30 years.”
Lt. John Keith Wells, the leader of the platoon that raised the flags on Mt. Suribachi and co-author of “Give Me Fifty Marines Not Afraid to Die: Iwo Jima” (http://www.amazon.com/Give-Fifty-Marines-Not-Afraid/dp/096446750X) wasn’t impressed with Time’s efforts.
“That global warming is the biggest joke I’ve ever known,” Wells told the Business & Media Institute. “[W]e’ll stick a dadgum tree up somebody’s rear if they want that and think that’s going to cure something.”
Time managing editor Richard Stengel appeared on MSNBC April 17 and said the United States needed to make a major effort to fight climate change, and that the cover’s purpose was to liken global warming to World War II.
“[O]ne of the things we do in the story is we say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II to combat global warming and climate change,” Stengel said. “It seems to me that this is an issue that is very popular with the voters, makes a lot of sense to them and a candidate who can actually bundle it up in some grand way and say, ‘Look, we need a national and international Manhattan Project to solve this problem and my candidacy involves that.’ I don’t understand why they don’t do that.”
Holbert, a speaking on behalf of the American Veterans Center (http://www.americanveteranscenter.com/), said the editorial decision by Time to use the photograph for the cover trivialized the cause the veterans fought for.
“Global warming may or may not be a significant threat to the United States,” Holbert said. “The Japanese Empire in February of 1945, however, certainly was, and this photo trivializes the most recognizable moment of one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. history. War analogies should be used sparingly by political advocates of all bents.”
Stengel also appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on April 17 (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2008/04/17/time-tramples-iwo-jima-photo-push-its-war-global-warming) and had no difficulty admitting the magazine needed to have a “point of view.”
“I think since I’ve been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that’s needed in journalism is that you have to have a point of view about things,” Stengel said. “You can’t always just say ‘on the one hand, on the other’ and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We’re experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let’s just say so.”
Time has been banging the global warming drum for some time now. In April 2007, Time offered 51 ways to “save the planet,” (http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070402175642.aspx) which included more taxes and regulation.

[Adam Andrea]

..ironically, i was knocked off my chair again this morning reading an article about wind power......
The first sentence sets the mood...".....But he's [ that bastard milionare, who obviously is out to get us again] not doing it out of generosity - he expects to turn a buck........"
The bastard who wrote this article isn't doing it out of a sense of need to inform the public, he's doing it to turn a buck.

[PeterK]

Global Warming Tax Hikes Headed Your Way
By Paul Driessen (http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulDriessen)
Saturday, April 19, 2008

America is in the throes of a major housing and financial downturn, soaring food and energy costs, rising unemployment and near recession. But many legislators and bureaucrats are falling all over themselves to restrict fossil fuel use, advance climate change legislation – and thereby increase oil imports, energy prices, and impacts on families and businesses.

Even President Bush has called for action on climate change. “Reasonable and responsible” legislation is needed, the White House asserts, to avert a “regulatory nightmare” that from overlapping state and federal rules. One shudders to think the “preferred solution” could be a costly federal regulatory nightmare of emission mandates and hidden taxes in the form of cap-and-trade schemes.

Earth did warm slightly over the last quarter century, as it emerged further from the Little Ice Age, and humans likely played a role. However, literally hundreds of climate scientists say catastrophic climate change and dominant human influence are over-hyped myths.

Our planet has experienced numerous climate shifts, they point out, including prolonged ice ages, a 400-year Medieval Warm Period and a 500-year Little Ice Age. Climate scientists still don’t understand what caused these events – or the temperature roller coaster of the last century, as carbon dioxide levels rose steadily: temperatures climbed from 1910 to 1945, fell between 1945 and 1975, and increased again from 1975 to 1998, notes Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founding director of the International Arctic Research Center.

Five of the ten hottest years in US history were in the 1920s and 1930s. Average global temperatures stabilized in 1998, and then fell 1.1 degrees F the past twelve months, satellite measurements show. Ice core data demonstrate that, over thousands of years, rising temperatures preceded higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, by hundreds of years – the exact opposite of climate chaos hypotheses. Interior Greenland and Antarctica appear to be gaining ice mass; they’re certainly not melting.

These inconvenient facts have forced alarmists to rely on computer models that generate Frankenclime monsters realistic enough to scare people into believing climate Armageddon is nigh.

Climate models do help scientists evaluate possible consequences of changing economic growth, emission, cloud cover and other variables. But they can’t reproduce the actual climate of the past century. They cannot make accurate predictions, even one year in the future, much less fifty. They do not represent reality, and should not be relied on to guide public policy.

Models reflect the assumptions and hypotheses that go into them – and our still limited understanding of complex, turbulent climate processes that involve the sun, oceans, land masses and atmosphere. They do a poor job of dealing with the effects of water vapor, precipitation and high cirrus clouds on temperatures and climate, because the underlying physics aren’t well understood, notes MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen.

Like the UN’s politicized climate control panel, the IPCC, models also place too much emphasis on carbon dioxide. They pay insufficient attention to extraterrestrial factors like changes in the Earth’s irregular orbit around the sun, solar energy levels, and solar winds that appear to influence the level of cosmic rays reaching Earth, and thus the formation of cloud cover and penetration of infrared radiation from the sun. They likewise fail to incorporate the profound effects that periodic shifts in Pacific Ocean currents have on temperatures and sea ice in the Arctic.

When the US National Assessment compared the results of two top-tier computer models for various regions of the United States, the models frequently generated precisely opposite rainfall scenarios, University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist John Christy points out. Depending on which model was used, the Dakotas and Rio Grande valley would supposedly become complete deserts or huge swamps; the Southeastern US would become a jungle or semi-arid grassland.

Activists, journalists, politicians, AlGoreans, and even scientists and corporate executives then select the scariest scenarios, call them evidence, trumpet them with hysterical headlines – and insist on drastic cutbacks in CO2 emissions and energy use. They’ll likely make millions, while other families and businesses suffer. Many are big on wind and ethanol, but not thrilled about nuclear power.

Fully 85 percent of all the energy Americans use comes from fossil fuels. Less than 0.5% is wind power, which generates electricity only eight hours a day, on average. Over half of our electricity is produced by coal, because it is plentiful and affordable, and modern power plants emit few pollutants, but do generate abundant plant food (the same carbon dioxide we exhale every time we breathe).

Any climate change regime would impose new restrictions on coal-fired power plants, oil and gas drilling, air and ground transportation, and heating, air conditioning and manufacturing. In fact, any facility or activity that generates more than 250 tons of carbon dioxide per year could be heavily regulated: bakeries, breweries, soft drink makers, factories, apartment and office buildings, dairy farms and countless others. Permit, regulatory, oversight, anti-fraud monitoring and polar bear endangerment rules would cost billions in still more highly regressive, hidden taxes.

The ultimate goal of energy-killer activists is to slash US carbon dioxide emissions some 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, to stabilize global CO2 levels, even as China, India and other developing countries continue their economic and emissions boom. The last time the United States emitted such low amounts of CO2 was 1905! Where and how will your family and business achieve 80% emission reductions?

Welcome to the good old days – to Eco-Camelot, where “the climate must be perfect all year.” Poor minority and blue-collar families will be in for some serious belt-tightening, millions of jobs will head overseas, and demand for unemployment benefits, mortgage bailouts and energy welfare will soar, as state and federal coffers run dry.

Worst, in the end, all the cutbacks and sacrifices won’t make any difference, because our climate is not driven by carbon dioxide – but by the same natural forces that have caused major and minor climate changes since the dawn of time, say scientists like Roy Spencer, Robert Balling and Fred Singer.

Climate change is no longer science. It’s politics – and Democrats would be thrilled if a Republican president took the lead – and Republicans take the blame when the bills start rolling in.

Climate change is also about power. Power to control – and curtail – the power we rely on: to build, heat and cool our homes … produce raw materials, food and consumer products … transport people and products … and support modern living standards.

It’s about the selection, production, conservation, taxation – and prevention – of energy. It’s about access to real energy, versus mandates to use futuristic, mostly illusory, and certainly insufficient alternative energy. It’s about who gets to decide: how much energy we will have … where that energy will come from … what it will cost … and whether there will be enough energy to lift more families out of poverty.

It’s about simulations, scenarios and monsters conjured up by computer models that should never be used to chart government policy – especially on matters that will profoundly affect our livelihoods, living standards, life spans and dreams of a better future.

So hold onto your wallets, and hope you can hold onto your homes, cars and jobs. You’re about to be put on a wild political roller coaster. And don’t expect much honesty, transparency or accountability from climate Armageddonites.

Paul Driessen is the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0939571234/ref=nosim/townhallcom)

[PeterK]

The bastard who wrote this article isn't doing it out of a sense of need to inform the public, he's doing it to turn a buck.


Precisely Adam, altho IMHO that bastard is doing it primarely to foul the public, then to turn a buck.

[Martin Lenick]

Al Gore's planning a sequel?

I have no idea of the validity of this; its origin is a source only slightly more reputable than the New York Times: Do 4 out of 5 of you agree on this? (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/special_events/green_week/article1065876.ece) Am I that out of touch?

From the Sun:
“When politicians walk down the pavement, four or five of every ten people they meet ask, ‘What are you doing to solve the climate crisis?’ he said. “If you ask people their opinion, more than two thirds will say, ‘It’s a very serious issue, we’re responsible for it. We need to take action’.

More than two thirds of four or five of every ten. No wonder the election officials in Florida went cockeyed.

Rounded up, my math puts that at 27% - all of whom are named Chad and are walking down the pavements of South Beach.

edit: my math puts that at somewhere from 27% to 33%. They're still all named Chad.

[PeterK]

... one can only hope that this time, Mr. Gore will not use computer generated scenes from science fiction movies as part of his "scientific proof" of Antarctica melting....:bugeye:

[PeterK]

but really, as if we weren't forwarned enough....

pelase watch HERE - Evidence of Global Warming in Alaska (http://ap-machine.com/globalwarming_1.wm)

[PeterK]

and then "The Test".....lets see who scores the higest!,

I did poorly - only 5 out of 10

Click Here (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html) to take the TEST

[Martin Lenick]

I got 10 out of 10 correct.
I didn't find any one of them to be misleading or questionable as to their basis in fact.

Thanks for finding and posting that, Peter; it presents a lot of information (after each question is answered an explanation of the answer is given) that is valuable for rational debate.

[Martin Lenick]

How Government Makes Disasters More Disastrous


By Thomas A. Bowden


In a speech from New Orleans last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain lashed out at the Bush administration for its response to Hurricane Katrina. McCain's remarks, which appeared calculated to make disaster relief a key campaign issue, revived harsh memories of the savage storm that inundated the Mississippi Delta in late August 2005, leaving more than 1,800 people dead and causing widespread property damage.


Although the floodwaters long ago receded, government officials are still counting the disaster's costs. Earlier this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers disclosed that 489,000 claimants are seeking damages caused by poorly designed levees. Of those claimants, 247 want more than $1 billion each, including one whopper for $3 quadrillion (a stack of a quadrillion dollar coins would reach beyond Saturn).


The tax dollars spent resolving those claims will augment the tens of billions already paid to restore and repopulate New Orleans, a below-sea-level bowl situated precariously amidst a lake, a major river, and a gulf, in a known path for hurricanes.


Disasters can sometimes shock a nation into questioning entrenched practices. But Hurricane Katrina, perhaps the worst natural disaster ever to befall America, has failed to spark serious challenge to long-standing government policies that actively promote building and living in disaster-prone areas.


The Katrina tragedy should have called into question the so-called safety net composed of government policies that actually encourage people to embrace risks they would otherwise shun--to build in defiance of historically obvious dangers, secure in the knowledge that innocent others will be forced to share the costs when the worst happens.


Without blaming the victims for having followed their own government's lead, it is time to question whether those policies should continue.
The first strands of today's safety net were spun in the nineteenth century, as the Army Corps of Engineers shouldered the burden of constructing and maintaining levees and other flood controls along the Mississippi River. From then to now, Congress and the states have responded to each new flood by installing newer, higher, and stronger barriers at public expense, as if the preservation of a city like New Orleans in its historical location were a self-evident necessity.


Throughout the twentieth century, new strands were woven into the safety net, first in the form of loans to disaster victims, then by direct grants, infrastructure repairs, loan guarantees, job training, subsidized investments, health care, debris removal, and a host of similar rehabilitative measures.


In 1968, the National Flood Insurance Program began supplying subsidized coverage for structures and their contents in flood-prone areas. Similar state-subsidized insurance programs arose for hurricanes in Florida and earthquakes in California. In 1978, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was created to coordinate the increasingly complex job of government disaster response.


At each juncture, more aid was funneled to disaster victims without serious challenge to the wisdom of encouraging people to occupy vulnerable locations.


In response to Mississippi floods, Florida hurricanes, and California earthquakes, the number of major disaster declarations almost doubled from the 1980s to the 1990s, from an annual average of 24 up to 46. At century's end, Congress was paying an average of $3.7 billion a year in supplemental disaster aid, with state taxpayers contributing many millions more. As of August 2007, Katrina relief alone had cost federal taxpayers $114 billion.


By gradual steps, this disaster safety net became part of the legal landscape, taken for granted by private investors and owners deciding to undertake new projects or rebuild storm-damaged areas. Relief programs--by minimizing, disguising, and shifting the real risks of defying natural hazards--became an active force distorting private decision-making and inviting even worse future tragedies.


Thus if a pre-Katrina Mississippian asked himself, "Should I build my house 10 feet above sea level, a quarter-mile from the Gulf Coast?" the answer came back: "Sure, why not? The government will look after me if disaster strikes."


This entitlement mentality ensured that each new tragedy would generate fresh demands to expand the safety net. In Katrina's aftermath, those demands centered on State Farm, which dared to deny certain claims under homeowners policies that covered wind damage but expressly excluded floods. Mississippi's attorney general immediately sued to void flood exclusion clauses as "unconscionable" and "contrary to public policy" and even launched a criminal investigation of State Farm's claims adjusting practices.


Last year, a jury inflamed by adverse public opinion awarded $1 million in punitive damages against State Farm for having stood on its contract rights in a dispute involving a single house. That case was recently reversed on appeal, but the victory is cold comfort for State Farm, which in the meantime elected prudently to calm the litigation storm by paying tens of millions of dollars to settle claims for unproven wind damage. Voila! The safety net had a brand new strand, woven at the insurance company's expense.


Disgusted, State Farm announced last year that it would cease writing new homeowners policies in Mississippi.


As more private insurers withdraw from high-hazard areas--or raise their rates to reflect the staggering legal and public relations costs of offering disaster insurance--a predictable lament arises: the free market has failed, and government must fill the vacuum so that the statist safety net remains strong. Thus it surprises no one to hear Florida Gov. Charlie Crist challenging this year's presidential candidates to support creation of a federal catastrophic fund that would keep insurance premiums artificially low in disaster-prone areas across the country.


But the solution is not more of the market distortions and perverse incentives that have lured so many people into harm's way. The solution is to replace the prevailing entitlement mentality with a free market in disaster prevention, insurance, and recovery.


In a free market--without tax-paid levees, government disaster relief, or subsidized insurance--anyone who contemplates building or buying property in a high-hazard area will need to face hard facts about the local history of natural disasters, the efficacy and cost of preventive measures, and the availability of insurance.


For example, the high price--or total unavailability--of private insurance will resound like a clanging alarm bell, signaling the market's objective view that a particular building plan is abnormally risky compared to less dangerous locales.


With their own lives and wealth at stake, people will have every incentive to evaluate risks objectively. And if hardy souls still choose to occupy and fortify New Orleans, or build on an earthquake fault, or live in a tornado alley, the risk and reward will be theirs alone. No longer will government make disasters more disastrous by pretending that citizens have a right to defy the forces of nature at others' expense.

[Rick]

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1955.asp

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2007/il-rockfordnoise.pdf

Illinois: Cars with Loud Stereos to be Seized
A new Rockford, Illinois ordinance allows police to seize any car based on the accusation that it played loud music.

This month the city of Rockford, Illinois will begin allowing residents to call the police and have any vehicle seized on the mere accusation that the car used a loud stereo system. Under an ordinance adopted August 20, police can impound any vehicle if police believe it is likely that it played loud music. Cars taken will be held until fines of $150 to $750 are paid -- in addition to a $75 towing fee, a $15 to $20 per day storage fee and a $60 per hour charge if the police officer has to wait more than an hour for the tow truck.

"No person shall operate... any device used to... reproduce any recorded sound if the device is located... in any motor vehicle on the public way and the sound can be heard from 75 feet or more from the device," Ordinance 2007-158-0 states in defining the new crime.

There is no requirement that a police officer responding to a complaint objectively measure sound levels with electronic equipment or even personally witness an alleged offense. Instead, the ordinance states that "hearsay evidence shall be admissible" and that property will be seized upon the assertion of probable cause.

If a motorist believes his car has been unlawfully towed on a Friday after 5pm, he may challenge the taking by "depositing a written request for a hearing in the silver drop box located behind city hall," according to the ordinance. The city must then respond by the following Wednesday. If the registered owner was not driving at the time the car was taken, he will be mailed a letter within ten days. After this time he is given less than fifteen days to request a hearing. The city may then wait another 45 days to schedule a hearing while storage fees accumulate up to $1100.

A hearing officer designated by Rockford will decide under a preponderance of evidence standard whether it is likely the motorist is guilty, in which case the hearing officer's employers will collect the fine and fee revenue from the motorist. If the vehicle's owner does not receive the mailed notice or cannot pay the fees within 30 days, the city will confiscate the vehicle permanently.

A complete copy of the ordinance is available in a 265k PDF file at the source link below. If you like our articles, be sure to sign up for free email updates or our RSS feed.

Source: Ordinance Number 2007-158-0 (City of Rockford, Illinois, 8/20/2007)


What is going on?! What happen to freedom? Due process? Common sense? This is even more ridiculous and scary than the speed limit laws.

[j oyen]

Wait a minute Rick. I think I like this idea. I do however think the law
needs to be fine tuned.

1) This law should only pertain to rap music.

2) A first offense of this law shall result in the "on the spot" crushing of the guilty vehicle.

3) A second offense of this law shall result in ......aaah never mind.

[PeterK]

in regards to PT#3 - A second offense of this law should force the offender to listen to Polish or Mexican Folk Music loud, three times a day for 1 hour.


Wait a minute Rick. I think I like this idea. I do however think the law
needs to be fine tuned.

1) This law should only pertain to rap music.

2) A first offense of this law shall result in the "on the spot" crushing of the guilty vehicle.

3) A second offense of this law shall result in ......aaah never mind.

[PeterK]

Unfortunately the current generation of Americans - despite of living in a "free country" - learned ( or was trained rather) to utilize the socialistic model of living. What is more discouraging is the fact that if one tries to argue with most about its proven and by design faulty blueprint, he/she is being called inhumane, insensitive, and a vicious capitalist.

Great story Martin. I hope those who are affraid to UNDERESTAND the issue at least had the guts to read your comments. I really don't believe ( or i should hope) they would disagree with the faulty EXECUTION of social programs.







How Government Makes Disasters More Disastrous
With their own lives and wealth at stake, people will have every incentive to evaluate risks objectively. And if hardy souls still choose to occupy and fortify New Orleans, or build on an earthquake fault, or live in a tornado alley, the risk and reward will be theirs alone. No longer will government make disasters more disastrous by pretending that citizens have a right to defy the forces of nature at others' expense.

[PeterK]

i suppose it is true that the world is watching LOL... this is REPORTEDLY from a parade in Germany,

http://ap-machine.com/obama-hillary.bmp

[Rick]

http://thephoenix.com/OutsideTheFrame/content/binary/hillary_clinton.jpg

http://www.starland.com/news/2003/images/030724joker.jpg