American Liberty

Why Occupational Licensing is Bad Policy

2012-02-20T21:49:00.020-06:00

Occupational licensing enjoys some political appeal under the guise of consumer protection, but it fails to achieve this. Instead it reduces employment, gives consumers fewer choices and higher costs, protects existing business from competition, and keeps out qualified people. Now, if a bipartisan bill (Licensing Relief and Job Creation Act) before the Minnesota legislature passes, the

Why Solar Power is Permanently Inefficient

2012-01-24T22:53:00.011-06:00

The above was produced more than 30 years ago by Petr Beckmann, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado. The intervening decades have not altered the validity of what he wrote and depicted here because it is based on immutable physical and mathematical realities. Those realities are not altered by any amount of laws, subsidies, mandates requiring green energy

A Lesson in Wealth Creation

2011-12-14T11:14:00.004-06:00

The following is by guest columnist Tim Nerenz. It is a great rebuttal to democratic Senator Harry Reid's assertion two days ago on the floor of the U.S. Senate that millionaires as job creators are "fictitious." He said that "like unicorns, they're impossible to find and don't exist." Tim shows that in Wisconsin many millionaires started out by creating small businesses that grew to large

Decline of America's Schools Isn't Just Academic

2011-11-22T08:27:00.003-06:00

The decline of American public education, documented by a plethora of objective tests for decades, is so well known it requires no documentation here. What I wish to address here goes beyond the academic failure. It is about the way school regulations now are regimenting all aspects of the children's lives, what they eat and drink—even their play during recess. Predictably, the results are

Obama Against Jobs, Economy, Middle Class, Part 2

2011-10-27T14:10:00.013-06:00

The top one percent of federal income taxpayers paid more than the bottom 95 percent, according to the Tax Foundation in 2009, based on the latest figures (2007) available from the IRS at that time. Note the trends. The share of taxes paid by the bottom 95 percent has been declining for 20 years. The share paid by the top one percent has been increasing over the same period.In 2007, the top

Obama Against Jobs, Economy, Middle Class, Part 1

2011-09-22T19:42:00.010-06:00

Of course, Obama says he is for those things, but his actions work against all of them. Ben Franklin said, “Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.” Obama has learned nothing from the Keynesian experiences of the U.S. or other nations. He hasn't even been able to learn from the already evident failure of his own Keynesian policies. For him, it is as though economic history

A Texas Lesson in Economic Growth

2011-08-31T21:18:00.014-06:00

This lesson is drawn from a recent speech by Richard W. Fisher, president and CEO of the Dallas Fed. We begin with this chart of nonagricultural employment growth by Federal Reserve Districts over the past 21½ years, using the employment levels of 1990 as a base of 100 and tracing job creation through June 2011. For clarity, we simplify the above chart to show an imperfect but reasonable proxy

Economically illiterate Obama, re: Corporate Jets

2011-07-10T22:50:00.010-06:00

Obama has called for taxing corporate jet owners to help offset government spending and balance the federal budget. It is just the latest example of the president's economic illiteracy. A business airplane is just another tool for making a company more efficient and profitable, just like computers, software, telecommunications equipment, copiers and other machines. No one would suggest that

The Left's Corrupt Idea of Justice

2011-06-03T20:35:00.003-06:00

[Our posting today is by guest Greg Cavanaugh. He discusses a type of political corruption that everyone is aware of but nobody does anything to end. At the end of his article, he writes that the remedy “will inevitably require a reboot of the system, beginning with new constitutional limitations on the government's exercise of power.” But how will such “constitutional limitations” come about?

Dangers of CFLs Even Greater Than Previously Known

2011-05-19T21:26:00.000-06:00

New evidence of CFLs causing fires—even exploding—as well as new environmental concerns have come to light since the first part of CFL Fraud LINK was published. Here are some of the additional fires: “I had one of these CFL's in my garage socket, and it blew a component (not the glass corkscrew) and caught fire. Fortunately, I was standing four feet away at the time. I turned off the power

The CFL Fraud

2011-04-21T20:57:00.006-06:00

A compact fluorescent light (CFL) on the ceiling burst and started a fire in a home in Hornell, N.Y. December 23, 2010. “Those are the lights everybody’s been telling us to use,” said Joe Gerych, Steuben County Fire Inspector. “It blew up like a bomb. It spattered all over.” Fire Chief Mike Robbins said the blaze destroyed the room where the fire started and everything in it, and the rest of

Wisconsin Mobs: Thugs in Union Cause

2011-03-30T07:04:00.004-06:00

"Rampaging crowds invading the Capitol, overwhelming police, kicking in doors and climbing through windows. Bomb threats and rounds of ammunition discovered at the State Capitol. Is this Nazi brownshirts at work, busting up a meeting of political opponents in 1933 Germany? No, it's what has passed for democratic opposition in Wisconsin over the last six weeks,” wrote columnist Katherine

The Future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

2011-03-23T14:28:00.006-06:00

Last summer President Obama signed a sweeping financial reform law, which he said it would provide “the strongest financial protection for consumers in the nation's history.” But the 2,300-page law did not apply to Fannie or Freddie, which were at the heart of the housing/mortgage crisis and last year accounted for 90 percent of new mortgages. Now the administration has released its

Ron Paul's Subcommittee Hears Gold Testimony

2011-03-19T17:53:00.014-06:00

Three gold experts, highly critical of the Federal Reserve, testified at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, chaired by Congressman Ron Paul, on March 17, 2011. Paul is a long-time critic of the Fed and author of the 2009 best-selling book End the Fed. The three were: Lewis Lehrman, an investment banker, who served on Ronald Reagan's Presidential Gold Commission in

Scary Global Warming Report

2011-02-08T09:08:00.000-06:00

Global Warming The Washington Post The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consultants at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures

China, U.S. Economy, the Dollar and Gold

2011-01-20T11:06:00.004-06:00

This is an update to developments since my previous series, “Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You.” (See link) China has ramped up imports of gold and taken steps toward making the yuan a global currency. In December, China's state-run news agency reported that China imported 209.7 metric tons of gold in the first ten months of 2010. In all of 2009 it imported only 31 metric tons,

Global Warming: A Scheme to Redistribute Wealth

2010-12-30T14:50:00.003-06:00

As the “science” behind man-made global warming has been increasingly discredited, the story has changed. Now it's not about saving the environment but about redistributing wealth, says a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group III and a lead author of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, 2007 (its

Thanksgiving: Obama Fails to Learn the Pilgrims' Lesson

2010-11-17T20:55:00.002-06:00

President Obama has failed to learn the simple basic lesson that the Pilgrims, who established the tradition of Thanksgiving Day in 1623 (not 1621, as often claimed), learned the hard way. The bounteous harvest they were gratefully celebrating on that day was preceded by years of starvation. They arrived in mid-December 1620, and half of them died the first year. Though the Indians helped them

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part VIII (concl.)

2010-10-24T14:12:00.006-06:00

(For other parts of this series, click on the 2010 October links in the righthand column.) Gold has been known and valued since prehistoric times for its natural characteristics. People all over the world have found it appealing. The importance of gold in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago is well known from the tombs of the pharaohs. Thousands of years after the Egyptians began entombing

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part VII

2010-10-22T11:51:00.007-06:00

(For previous parts in this series, scroll down and click on the links in the righthand column.) Private investors have been seeking a store of value in the same way as the nations' central banks. Alarmed by Greece's monetary problems, Europeans have led an exodus out of the euro and into gold coins, bars and exchanged-traded gold funds (ETFs). In scarcely two weeks in May 2010, the Austrian

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part VI

2010-10-20T14:36:00.006-06:00

(For previous parts in this series, scroll down and click on the links in the righthand column.) At the end of last year, according to Robert F. Wilmers, chairman and CEO of M&T Bank Corporation, the total outstanding debt of Fannie and Freddie “either held directly on their balance sheets or as guarantees on mortgage securities they'd sold to investors, was $8.1 trillion. That compares to

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part V

2010-10-18T15:48:00.004-06:00

(For previous parts in this series, scroll down and click on the links in the righthand column.) The federal guarantee on mortgages was also a major factor in the housing bubble. Fannie and Freddie don't make loans. They are forbidden from doing so. Instead they buy mortgages from banks, bundle them into securities, and resell these to investors. This “securitizing” of mortgages doesn't

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part IV

2010-10-15T07:53:00.010-06:00

(For previous parts in this series, scroll down and click on the links in the righthand column.) Governments in the developed countries now inflate their money by expanding credit rather than by printing more paper currency. This is a far more powerful method, more complicated, and thus not so obvious to the general public. It enables politicians to disguise the cost of social and economic

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part III

2010-10-13T10:29:00.007-06:00

(For Parts I and II of this series, scroll down and click on links in righthand column) The current recession is the result of increased government spending and meddling in the economy over many years. In 1982 the U.S. was still the world's largest creditor. In 1985 it became a net debtor for the first time in 71 years, with an investment deficit of $110.7 billion. It became the worlds'

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold—and You, Part II

2010-10-11T09:51:00.011-06:00

(For Part I of this series, click here) Just like national governments and international businesses employ derivatives to protect themselves against currencies that are losing value, states and local governments have turned to derivatives for the same reason. But protective efforts that served well against inflation proved costly when the bubble burst. Anthony Luchetti writes:Hundreds of U.S.

Monetary Mess, the Dollar, Gold--and You, Part I

2010-10-09T22:30:00.003-06:00

For years the Greek government has been spending beyond its means and borrowing to make up the difference. Just like the U.S. government. There is, however, an important difference. The U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency, meaning the U.S. is the only country in the world that can pay back its borrowings by simply printing more of its own money. Greece does not have that option. It

Obama Against Jobs, Economy, Middle Class

2010-09-29T22:43:00.012-06:00

Is Obama the new Wevoka?

2010-08-30T20:53:00.006-06:00

Shortly before dawn on New Year's day 1889, Wevoka, a Paiute Indian, delirious with fever, had a vision in which God spoke to him. God told him the earth would be reborn. It would be covered with a new layer of soil five times the height of a man, the buffalo would return, there would be an

Defending Climate Science Against the Star Tribune

2010-07-20T13:40:00.003-06:00

To: Editorial Department, The Star Tribune Climate: Inconvenient truths Truth is an inconvenient stranger to James Lenfestey's editorial (7/19). His claim of a “dramatic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide” is contrary to abundant scientific data. The latest IPCC report says current atmospheric carbon dioxide (375 ppm) “exceeds the 'natural range' over the last 650,000 years(180 to 300

The IPPC-led Global Warming Hoax Implodes

2010-06-10T20:28:00.008-06:00

In recent months a tsunami of evidence has been washing away the last remnants of credibility surrounding global warming alarmism, exposing it as the greatest hoax of all time. Since the climategate scandal broke in November 2009, the standard defense has been that it involves only a handful of climatologists, primarily connected with one major research center, and that the underlying science is

Shoplifting, ObamaCare and Property Rights

2010-05-23T21:42:00.001-06:00

“For a priest in northern England, the commandment 'thou shalt not steal' isn't exactly written in stone,” according to Gregory Katz of the Associated Press. The Rev. Tim Jones told his congregation it is sometimes acceptable for desperate people to shoplift as long as they do it at large national chain stores, rather than small, family businesses. He said it is justified if a person in real

Fluorescent Foolishness

2010-05-04T10:32:00.004-06:00

The familiar incandescent light bulb is on its way out, to be replaced by compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. The federal requirement for the changeover will be phased-in starting in 2012 and completed in 2014. Some states have set earlier deadlines. Does snuffing out usage of Thomas Edison's invention really demonstrate the politicians have a brighter idea than what consumers choose in

Should Breastfeeding be Required by Law?

2010-04-30T11:37:00.002-06:00

The Los Angeles Times recently carried the following: “If all U.S. women followed medical recommendations to breastfeed their infants exclusively for six months, the nation could save $13 billion a year in medical costs and prevent 911 deaths, according to an analysis published in the new issue of the journal Pediatrics. “The study authors compared the costs of 10 childhood diseases at

“There is none so blind as....”: Pat Buchanan

2010-04-18T21:44:00.027-06:00

A plane crash killed the president of Poland and 94 other high ranking officials of the Polish government who were on their way to a memorial service at the site of the Katyn Massacre 70 years ago. During WWII, 22,000 Polish officers and other leaders were murdered there by the Soviets. Pat Buchanan took the occasion to blame Poland for the massacre: “For it was Polish defiance of Adolf

This blog has moved

2010-04-07T07:05:00.001-06:00

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Another Way to Kill Obama Health Care

2010-03-31T17:24:00.023-06:00

Obama's health care law is a tragedy. He campaigned on “change” and spoke of “fundamentally restructuring the United States of America.” And on signing the health care bill into law, he said, “This is what change looks like.” That law represents a rejection of the historic American system, the Constitution, arithmetic, and simple honesty. All those were considered expendable by the liars and

Cash for Clunkers: Immoral, Wasteful, Failure

2010-02-07T22:34:00.000-06:00

The government program that gave people up to $4,500 for trading in an old car for a new energy efficient model has been widely proclaimed a huge success, as measured by the popularity of the program. That certainly made it successful for the politicians who, in effect, were buying futures votes for themselves. Of course, they didn't say so; instead they claimed they were pursuing the noble

Government Destroyed U.S. Auto Companies

2010-01-20T00:14:00.003-06:00

"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." —Ayn Rand The Detroit automakers were “perfectly viable businesses that have been slowly murdered over 30 years,“ according to Wall Street Journal

Most Depraved U.S. Congress Ever

2010-01-11T16:05:00.002-06:00

The Senate passage of the president's Health care reform bill is a landmark of depravity. Sure, there have been many instances of corruption before; but nothing, to my knowledge, compares to the complicity of the entire majority of the Senate in a scheme of such proportions in bribery, protection money, and dishonesty in a bill itself. Add to this the acceptance of this immorality—even a

Copenhagen Climate Summit: Hidden Agenda

2009-12-18T22:34:00.004-06:00

Actually, the agenda wasn't hidden. It was right out in the open, proclaimed by banners and protesters. But it was hidden from the American people by the news media which refused to report it. E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is a scientist who attended the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. He witnessed a very different

Corporate Jets: Extravagance or Efficiency?

2009-11-30T21:24:00.001-06:00

The Obama administration and its allies in Congress—not to mention their political supporters in the news media—lose no opportunity to demonize business leaders, doctors, others with high incomes, and big companies themselves as “enemies of the people.” The business executives' salaries are said to be too high, their bonuses too generous, the corporate life style too extravagant; doctors charge

Taxing to Reduce Obesity and its Costs?

2009-11-13T22:38:00.000-06:00

Of the more than ninety columns on this blog, I have written all but one. Now I have found one more by another author that I would like to share with you. It was written by Gregg Cavanagh in response to a proposal by two professors for a national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The professors claim a tax on soft drinks would provide about $150 billion in tax revenue over ten years and about

Obama's Economic Vandalism: Trade Protectionism

2009-10-14T13:23:00.004-06:00

It hard to know whether Obama's policies of trade protectionism result from his ignorance of both economics and history or simply putting politics ahead of both. Take your pick. Either way, he has become the first protectionist president since Herbert Hoover. The Smoot-Hawley tariff, passed in 1930 by Hoover, was a catastrophe. It ignited retaliation from other countries, resulting in a

U.S. Dollar in Trouble—Worse Ahead!

2009-09-15T13:45:00.005-06:00

Even amid widespread talk that the recession is ending, ominous developments have been taking place on the monetary front, which are rarely reported. I explained the background for this in my 3-part series “Mortgage Crisis, the Dollar and its Future”, which I recommend you read if you have not already done so. It covers: 1) how inflation, recessions and depressions are caused by the government

Pat Buchanan's Apologia for Hitler

2009-09-14T20:41:00.006-06:00

This month marked the 70 anniversary of the beginning of World War II. On September 1, 1939, the Nazi army crossed into Poland, and the first shots of the war were fired at point blank range at a Polish shore installation by the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, which was moored in the Polish harbor of Danzig on a friendship visit. Scarcely two weeks later, on September 17, the Soviet army

Global Warming: Tropical Storm Effects

2009-08-30T21:21:00.002-06:00

The claim that global warming will cause more violent weather, including more violent ocean storms, has been used repeatedly to scare the public into supporting political action to stop global warming. The lack of substance to this claim has not deterred to prophets of global doom from trying to prove the opposite. And Michael Mann is one of them.You may remember him as the scientist who was

Thermometers Create “Global Warming”

2009-08-21T17:40:00.002-06:00

Actually, it's not the thermometers but their placement, which produces a false warming trend.The official temperature record of continental United States comes from 1,221 stations of the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). During the past few years, Anthony Watts, a 25-year veteran meteorologist, assisted by 650 volunteers

Obama and Racism

2009-08-10T12:13:00.006-06:00

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates by a white police office would not have been a national issue but for President Obama's assertion that the police “acted stupidly.” The officer, responding to a call that a burglary was in progress, arrested Gates when he was uncooperative, refused to show ID and harangued the

Global Warming: More Phony Numbers from IPCC

2009-07-26T20:43:00.008-06:00

First of all, it should be noted that scientific truth is determined by a rational relationship to physical reality, not by the number of people believing an idea is true. The ideas of Copernicus, Issac Newton and Einstein were true even when no one else thought so. That is the way science has always been, always will be. “Consensus,” which we hear so much about, has nothing to do with

U.S. House Takes Big Step in Foolish Direction

2009-06-29T22:11:00.005-06:00

On Friday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to limit carbon dioxide emissions in the name of curbing global warming. This bill is totally senseless from any perspective other than as an excuse to give the government power over every aspect of people's lives. First of all, there is no global warming. There hasn't been any for more than ten years—despite the fact that atmospheric

New Study: Big Blow to Smoking-Ban Claims, More

2009-05-26T22:06:00.018-06:00

A major argument in promoting smoking bans is that they can reduce the occurrence of the heart attacks or heart disease that are allegedly caused by secondhand smoke. The new study is the most extensive ever done on this issue and utterly demolishes this claim. The study analyzes heart attack hospital admissions and mortality before and after implementation of all state and local workplace

EPA's CO2 policy: Zero Integrity, Anti-Science

2009-03-25T21:04:00.007-06:00

At her confirmation hearing to be the new director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson said her first task would be to restore scientific and legal integrity to the office. Then she did the opposite. She quickly directed EPA staff to prepare the paperwork for a finding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and safety and therefore must be regulated under the

Nuclear Waste: A Government-created Problem

2009-03-13T22:02:00.004-06:00

Last week the Obama administration emphatically eliminated the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste. This decision was not based on science but on politics: Obama in his presidential campaign told Nevadans that if elected, he wouldn't allow nuclear wastes to be stored there. The storage site was not popular with the state's voters or with Senate majority

Madoff—Another Failure of Government Regulation

2009-02-26T21:35:00.006-06:00

The politicians have been blaming the nation's huge economic problems on the private sector and claiming the solution is more government, meaning more regulation. The media have been quite effective in parroting this line and convincing the public this must be so. The problems of housing foreclosures, the banking crisis, the insurance giant AIG, Wall Street, the auto industry, and even the $50

NASA Rigs Data, Reports False Global Warming

2009-01-30T14:28:00.005-06:00

James Hansen is the NASA climatologist who started the global warming hysteria in 1988 when he told a Senate committee he was 99 percent sure global warming was already underway. The news media seized upon his unsupported testimony and parlayed it into an impending planetary crisis. A new industry was born. Billions of dollars were spent, and tens of thousands of jobs were created, giving rise to

Global Warming, Global Myth, Part 3 (conclusion)

2008-11-14T12:30:00.006-06:00

Some scientists skillfully utilize the news media to promote a view of carbon dioxide and global warming that ignores contrary evidence or pretends it doesn't even exist. The media suck this up, puke it all over the airwaves and the newspapers, and the public, not knowing any better and awed by these scientists with Ph.D.s, believes it must be true. Here are a couple of examples. On June 25, 2007

Global Warming, Global Myth, Part 2

2008-10-24T18:48:00.003-06:00

The global warming advocates make all sorts of false claims about dire consequences of global warming. They claim it will result in the spread of malaria, food shortages, more human deaths, more violent weather, and a loss of biological diversity through the extinction of species. All untrue. The largest number of species — the greatest biological diversity — is in the tropics. As you move away

Global Warming, Global Myth, Part 1

2008-10-17T21:15:00.003-06:00

“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.”—Sir John Houghton, first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and lead editor of its first three reports.”During the 20th century, the earth warmed 0.6 degree Celsius (1 degree Farhenheit), but that warming was wiped out in a single year when January 2008 showed an annual drop of 0.63 degree C. (1.13 F.). A single year does

Mortgage Crisis, the Dollar and its Future, Part 4

2008-08-27T19:49:00.003-06:00

Various other countries, even those not hostile to the U.S., also seek to reduce their their risks by reducing their dollars. Over a year ago Italy, Russia, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates announced they would reduce their dollar holdings slightly. Sweden's 90 % dollar foreign reserve went to 85 %. The UAE said it would convert 8% of its dollar holdings to euros. Friendly Japan, the largest

Mortgage Crisis, the Dollar and its Future, Part 3

2008-08-23T15:21:00.006-06:00

The Fed, of course, hopes to pick the optimum rate for increasing the money supply, but it will always prefer to err on the side of being a little too loose rather than a little too tight. Everyone on the Fed board is aware of the role of tight money during the Great Depression and wants to avoid a similar outcome at all costs. The danger of just a little more inflation will always seem

Mortgage Crisis, the Dollar and its Future, Part 2

2008-08-16T16:39:00.002-06:00

John Berlau, a scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says, “The collapse of whole segments of the housing market can be traced to FHA-subsidized mortgage products. Despite its decreasing market share, the FHA appears to have played a significant role in the current mortgage 'meltdown' attributed to subprime loans. For the past three years, [FHA] delinquency rates have consistently been

Mortgage Crisis, the Dollar and its Future, Part 1

2008-08-09T14:49:00.004-06:00

The popular definition of “inflation” is a general increase in the level of prices. But what causes the price level to rise? It is an increase in the money supply without a corresponding increase in goods and services; there is more money with which to bid up the prices of available goods and services. Inflation used to mean an increase in the money supply without an increase in physical assets,

An American Lesson in Money—Inflation

2008-05-30T21:35:00.004-06:00

America's first experience with inflation occurred during our Revolutionary period. Lawrence W. Reed has written an excellent article on this in the March 2008 issue of The Freeman. An abridged version follows, reprinted with permission.For six years—from 1775 until 1781—representatives from the 13 colonies (states after July 4, 1776) met and legislated as the Second Continental Congress. They

Death by Smoking Ban

2008-04-20T16:18:00.006-06:00

In order to get smoking bans passed, it was necessary to create an atmosphere of hatred toward the “enemy,” to work people into a frenzy over a threat to their health, whether the threat was real or not. What mattered was not truth or science but whether the desired result—smoking bans—could be achieved. So truth and science were quickly sacrificed to the-end-justifies-the-means policy of

Public Officials' Character is Important

2008-03-31T16:11:00.003-06:00

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men,” said Samuel Adams, one of the most important figures in the founding of our country.“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate—look to his character...” --Noah Webster.Recently the public has had another chance to evaluate the character of

Global Warming: Science versus Fraud

2008-03-13T15:43:00.007-06:00

We keep hearing that the threat of global warming is supported by an overwhelming consensus of scientists. Who are these scientists? The media never tells us. They talk about 2,500 scientists endorsing the warming claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but never mention the fraud in those claims (See http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2007/02/

Bush Thwarts His Own Energy Policy

2008-02-13T23:48:00.004-06:00

President Bush has talked a lot about making the U.S. energy independent. But on Dec. 26, 2007, he signed into law a bill that would prevent development of a U.S. oil resource more than seven times larger than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. This is the U.S.'s 2 trillion barrels of shale oil. The U.S. has the world's largest known reserves of this oil, which is so abundant worldwide it could

Secondhand Smoke: the “no threshold” Scare

2008-01-24T08:43:00.000-06:00

A major argument for smoking bans is the claim “there is no safe level”—no threshold—below which tobacco smoke is not dangerous. The ban advocates/activists invoke the well-known link of smoking and lung cancer and assert that, therefore, even secondhand smoke must also be carcinogenic. They claim the air from smoking can never be made clean enough to eliminate the health risk and thus smoking

Evidence Piles up Against Ethanol

2007-12-03T23:09:00.000-06:00

Ever since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, ethanol has been touted as a substitute for gasoline that would reduce our dependence on imports of foreign oil. But ethanol was found to be a net energy loser. It requires more energy to produce than you can get from burning the ethanol. Two studies by panels of the U.S. Dept. of Energy in 1980 and 1981 came to this conclusion. Those studies were

Studies Show Global Warming Not due to Man

2007-11-07T07:55:00.000-06:00

Siberia's Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake. It contains more water than all five of North America's Great Lakes combined. Fed by over 300 rivers and far from the moderating effects of any ocean, it offers a pristine, uninterrupted sedimentary record that permits a highly accurate reconstruction of temperatures over a broad area. Based on this sedimentary record for the last 800,000

The U.N.'s First Climate Summit

2007-10-02T13:45:00.000-06:00

You would think, with all the media hype about global warming, that the U.N.'s first climate summit of world leaders would have been of great importance to the public and to the news media. To my knowledge, none of the TV news networks even mentioned the two-day summit last week or an important speech there. The speaker was not only a president of a nation but the recipient of nearly 50

Global Warming Hype: CBS

2007-09-25T20:25:00.005-06:00

CBS featured an alarmist message about global warming on its popular “60 Minutes” television program. Reporter Scott Pelley claimed Antarctica shows large climate change, that it's caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, and is a portent of worldwide environmental and human disasters. He said “glaciers are setting speed records for melting” in Antarctica. Incidentally, all of the computer

Politicians Seize Chance to Repeat Mistakes!

2007-09-19T21:08:00.000-06:00

You might think politicians would have learned something from the catastrophic collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis. You'd be wrong. The bridge disaster focused a lot of public attention on how government transportation funds have been earmarked for pet projects of the politicians, such as nature trails, museums, lighthouses, and flowers for California freeways instead of

Surprising Global Warming News!

2007-08-15T13:57:00.000-06:00

NASA has just admitted a whopping mistake in its temperature data! 1998 is no longer the warmest year of the past century in the U.S. It falls to #2 with 1934 now being the warmest year. And #3 is now 1921, not 2006. It had been claimed that six of the ten hottest years in U.S. history had occurred since 1995, but now only three of the top ten are from the last ten years (1998, 2006, 1999).

Bridge Collapse, Political Failure

2007-08-07T21:23:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday the Interstate Highway 35W bridge across the Mississippi River collapsed, dumping 88 cars and their occupants into the river. The accident, which occurred just 2 miles from my home in Minneapolis, was one of the greatest structural failures in U.S. history. Naturally, then, it has been the focus of national news media for several days now, and politicians have been rushing to the

Ethanol: Poor Test Results, Other Negatives

2007-07-18T16:08:00.000-06:00

Last month the automobile website www.edmunds.com ran a comparison of costs, performance, and efficiency of regular gasoline and E85, the fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. (The common ethanol product is 10 % ethanol and 90 % gasoline.) The test drive consisted of a 667-mile roundtrip from San Diego to Las Vegas, which is a popular trip for residents of southern California

Global Warming and Solar Cycles

2007-06-24T06:59:00.000-06:00

A reader asks if the earth is getting closer to the sun. The earth's orbit is always changing, in accordance with several cycles, but these are of very long duration. They cause very long term climate changes but are not the basis of the very slight warming of the earth over the short time spans involved in the current climate change controversy. The large planets Jupiter and Saturn exert a

Smoking Bans are Killing People

2007-06-18T23:59:00.000-06:00

Eagle Problem Update

2007-06-10T14:34:00.000-06:00

Recently there have been a number of comments to our December 29, 2006 posting “My Problem with Eagles.” Since many of these raise the same issues, I decided to answer them here collectively rather than publish all the individual comments and my replies in the Comments section of the original posting. Also, while some readers have raised valid questions in their comments, they have also

Price Gouging: Oil Industry or Government?

2007-05-30T14:58:00.000-06:00

With oil prices near record highs, politicians are accusing the oil industry of “price gouging” and are calling for an investigation. Of course, there is no such crime as “price gouging,” but that hasn't deterred politicians and the haters of capitalism from trying to portray oil companies as villains. Nor has the fact that numerous previous investigations of the oil industry over the years

Global Warming, Flat Beer and Soda

2007-05-08T21:09:00.000-06:00

“It is curious that the Coca Cola Company and all other producers of carbonated beverages, from beer to champagne, have not become targets of political action,” say Christopher Essex and Ross McKittrick in their excellent book TAKEN BY STORM: The troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming. “A bottle of soda pop has about two grams of carbon dioxide in it, and that amount will

New Study: Ethanol Bad for Health and Environ...

2007-04-21T14:12:00.000-06:00

A new study appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology April 18 finds ethanol a health hazard that would likely increase the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations. Ethanol is touted as a “green” alternative to gasoline, but the author of the study, Mark Jacobson, says, “It's not green in terms of air pollution.” Jacobson is a civil and

Global Warming: Kerry and Gingrich

2007-04-13T23:18:00.001-06:00

This week Senator John Kerry and Newt Gingrich engaged in a debate on global warming. It's hard to believe they would both agree to debate a subject about which they are so uninformed and thus broadcast their ignorance to the nation. They showed a lack of not only scientific knowledge but of basic economic principles, as well as an inability to think analytically and make sound judgments. They

Unfounded Scares about Secondhand Smoke

2007-03-22T16:01:00.000-06:00

Everyday I swallow a pill with rat poison. Millions of other people have been doing the same thing. It is a common drug prescribed as a blood thinner for people with a heart condition. Tuesday I made a routine visit to a cardiology clinic; periodic tests are needed to determine if the level of the drug in my blood is appropriate or needs to be adjusted up or down. While waiting my turn for

Surprise! Prius is Now Anti-Environment!

2007-03-15T21:38:00.000-06:00

The Toyota Prius has become the darling of the environmentally conscious because of its hybrid technology. It has two engines instead of one. It overcomes the limitations of electric vehicles by having a gasoline engine as well. The gasoline engine powers the vehicle up to 30 mph and when additional thrust is needed at higher speeds. The electric engine powers the car at cruising speeds above

Al Gore's Conservation for Thee, not Me

2007-03-01T17:38:00.000-06:00

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued the following press release:Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy

IPCC Global Warming Report

2007-02-13T14:36:00.006-06:00

Last week the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was issued. It was widely trumpeted as the “smoking gun” that proves global warming is occurring and is driven by human activities. But this is smoke without a gun. It is a 14 page “Summary for Policymakers” written by political appointees of the 150 countries in the IPCC; the 1,600

Ethanol is a Net Energy Loser

2007-01-24T00:25:00.000-06:00

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush called for increasing ethanol as a way of reducing petroleum consumption and dependence on foreign oil. It will do just the opposite. Many studies over the years have concluded that it takes more energy for growing the corn (for farm machinery, pesticides, fertilizers) and distilling the alcohol than you can get from burning the ethanol that is

Slanting the News on Global Warming

2007-01-19T19:28:00.000-06:00

Last night the NBC Evening News was a good example of how the media falsely reports stories about global warming, turning them into propaganda hype instead of factual reporting. The story featured temperature measurements showing alarming warming on the Antarctic peninsula. Most viewers are unfamiliar with the geography of Antarctica and would therefore assume what they were told was

Which is it: Global Warming or Cooling—or Neither?

2007-01-15T00:40:00.000-06:00

The earth warmed about 1 degree F. in the past century. But even this small total is not a steady trend but rather the sum of several short-term warming and cooling cycles of 20 to 30 years or so. These cycles are simply too small to indicate global climate change, despite the hype attached to them. Pronouncements of climate cooling 20 or 30 years ago sound very much like the arguments made

Tell Us Your Story

2007-01-12T15:02:00.000-06:00

A reader recently responded to our blog entry “More Fraud, Misconduct at EPA” with a personal experience. He described how his family's electro-plating business was destroyed by EPA, which claimed it was polluting the groundwater. His parents lost everything, and 50 employees were thrown out of work. But then the groundwater tests failed to show there was any pollution after all. (See the

More on Polar Bears and Global Warming

2007-01-01T15:36:00.000-06:00

This week the Bush administration proposed that polar bears be placed on the endangered species list as a “threatened” species because of global warming. But as Investor's Business Daily (Dec. 28, '06) put it, “The only thing endangered about polar bears is the truth.”Three environmental groups—the Center for Biological Diversity, National Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace—had sued to

My Problem with Eagles

2006-12-29T14:53:00.000-06:00

Actually, my problem is not with the eagles but with the government. I own a piece of property, about 7 acres, in northern Minnesota, which has been in my family—and on which we have paid taxes—since the 1930s. Roughly half of the property is wetland and so cannot be developed because of government regulations to preserve wetlands. The remainder of the land is physically suitable for

Future Problems from Ethanol?

2006-12-24T00:46:00.000-06:00

A previous posting (see Sept. 4, 2006) noted that ethanol has caused shocking, costly damage to boat motors. The ethanol blend common throughout the country can leach the resin out of the fiberglass gas tanks of as many as 15,000 boats. This results in a black goo that coats the engine's innards and hardens as the motor cools.Remember MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether)? This was one of the two

Is Oil a Fossil Fuel?

2006-12-01T08:03:00.000-06:00

The forthcoming issue (Dec. 8) of the scientific journal Nature will contain an article that abundant quantities of methane have been conclusively shown to exist on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. “We have determined that Titan's methane is not of biologic origin," reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator. Methane, a key hydrocarbon and the

New Links

2006-11-26T01:01:00.000-06:00

We have added several new links to our homepage that we think our readers may find of interest. The Friends of Science website is excellent on global warming. It contains a marvelous, very professionally done five-part video that you can download, from which you can see and hear a half-dozen real experts in various aspects of climate science debunk the global warming nonsense. It also has a

Ultimate Stupidity on Global Warming

2006-10-30T14:51:00.000-06:00

On Sept. 28, after being introduced by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Al Gore told hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff that cigarette smoking is a “significant contributor to global warming”(!) This is truly laughable. It is mind-boggling that someone who claims to be knowledgeable on this issue is so abysmally ignorant not merely of atmospheric science but of the truly insignificant

More Fraud, Misconduct at EPA

2006-10-14T12:58:00.000-06:00

A recent report issued by the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) found “hundreds of weaknesses—missing data, no log books, falsified measurements—not noted by EPA. The office had found many of the same problems in 1999, and they were identified again by EPA in 2002,” according to Kate Raiford of Raw Story. But EPA did nothing about them and now tries to downplay the issue.“Fraud in even just

Government Creates Oil Shortages, Raises Prices

2006-09-21T21:40:00.000-06:00

The politicians lament about how we are dependent on foreign oil and clamor that the government should do something about it. Consumers complain about the high price of gasoline, and demand the government should do something about it. But government has already done too much—and that's the main problem.As noted in previous postings on this blog, our government has prevented oil drilling in