Iranian Protests

Of all the world's people, the ones that I find hardest to understand are the Iranians. I knew many in the 1980's. They had a fervor about something but I couldn't tell what. I would have asked, but many seemed angry. I also knew some who disagreed with the fervent ones. They acted as if they were in danger. I had to be careful what I said to them with other Iranians present. I am not discreet and intrigues confuse me, so I held my tongue.

Intrigues and secrecy seemed to surround the Iranian students whom I met at the University of Washington. Many were also gifted at an oriental sort of diplomatic circumlocution. Only a few who were mostly science and engineer students seemed untroubled by the changes in their country. Probably those few were from wealthy families or had established ties in this country and did not have to return if things got bad at home.

Anyway, there is again fighting in the streets. I hope that we are aiding the dissidents, in very discreet ways of course. Our government should make statements of support for their cause. They are fighting for freedom, which we can understand and which all people deserve. Perhaps the Iranian students that I knew in the past were troubled by the fact that they were being torn between an anti-American faction and a pro-American faction. The anti-American faction was radically socialist and Islamic, an unattractive alternative. The pro-American faction represented the pre-revolutionary status under the Shah, was also unatractive. They had just successfully ousted The Shah because they wanted change. Trouble was, they didn't seem to like the change they were getting.

Update of goings on in Iran:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091226/D9CR03OG0.html

Senate Health Bill: Dead or Alive?

The current bill and the current Democrat conception of government healthcare policy does not have the support of most Americans according to most polls. There is so much wrong, undemocratic, and un-American with both that not a single Republican Senator will vote for it. What is good about the bill is chiefly its measures to try to reform Medicare, to put it on a financially sound footing. These may be sound measures and probably not what Republicans would propose but they may help. Why weren't they part of a separate Medicare reform bill? What, if anything else, is good about the bill could have been proposed separately to help reform the current state of government healthcare entitlements.

There is much in the bill that is an affront to the tradition of economic freedom of this nation. There is much in the bill that will degrade medical innovation that has made our healthcare the best in the world. There is much that takes away our choice and costs us more through taxes and various fees and penalties. The bill essentially forces more insurance on many Americans than they want. Of course they will use it by demanding more services since they will be paying for them. This will tend to strain the system and raise costs. It will require a massive, tightly controlled bureaucratic rationing. This is where things usually break down, as with price controls. By rationing, I mean the usual economic definition of forced allocation of a service that does not have a free market to control it by the mechanism of price. This will mean less care provided and more people going without. Isn't it ironic that a supposedly free government provided service will result in less care for more people. That's what happens with all goods and services in a socialist system.

Most conservatives commentators think that the bills is more about a vast increase in government power over the lives of all Americans, making us more dependant upon government. Since Democrats have become the party of big government, it is chiefly a grab for more political power. Votes for the bill have been secured by huge taxpayer funded gifts to the states of Democrat Senators who claim to be undecided.

There is never any improvement with socialism. It is and has always been true that American greatness has been the direct result of our liberty. I predict that the bill will not pass. There has to be among the Democrats at lease one person of integrity who will look to the wishes of their constituents if for no other reason and vote no. There may even be one or two or a few who realise that government provided control does not improve our lot. Eventually, it makes any problem greater and creates more and more difficulties in all areas of society. Eventually, it fails. It may be our fate to learn the lesson that hard way, but I certainly hope not.

Obama Wall Street Prescription: Virtual Ownership

The current economic recession/depression was clearly the result of multifaceted government intervention in and regulation of business. However, BHO is blaming Wall Street, which is always an acceptable scapegoat. Hitler used it, only he called them the Jew bankers. Wall Street of course doesn't seem to have a clue either that they are in a public relations propaganda fight. The bottom line is that BHO will use the concept of 'Wall Street' as an excuse for his next big government coup. Any proposal from the current administration and congress will not be 'consumer protection' as they claim. It will be government control of what is currently private finance. But the country and congress is dumb and numb. We have lost or are on the verge of losing the auto industry, healthcare, mortgage lending, energy, and pretty much all unionized trades (which were mostly gone already) to the control of the all-powerful state. The rest should be easy for the totalitarians.

We are witnessing the fall of capitalism. From there, our rights as a free people will dissolve with hardly a murmur from the serfs. After the first death, there is no other.

More Global Warming, Emperor still Naked

For radio talk show junkies, there has been plenty of Global Warming discussion lately. There is not much to add to the incessant questioning of what seems like the mass-insanity of the Man Made Global Warming movement (MMGW). However, tonight on Coast To Coast, there was a discussion of the data. Trouble was, without knowing how the data is used in the theory, there is no way of knowing if the fudged data is significant. Of course, as aforesaid ad infinitum at this site, the warmies have not given us a definitive mathematical statement of their theory, so how can we judge? The Coast to Coast guest also calls into question the validity of computer 'models' to arrive at valid conclusions. He also mentions that the same financial brokers who made a mess with the mortgage derivatives, will be in charge of trading carbon credits. Since this would involve billions of dollars, don't we have the right to question and to know? He might also have mentioned that is was computer models that concluded the mortgage derivatives had extremely little risk of default problems. It's been said before: garbage in, garbage out. With global warming it appears that there was garbage in, so don't they need to show us explicitly why it isn't garbage out?

One of the famous studies of CO2 in the atmosphere were the measurements made in Hawaii that gave rise to the MMGW theory. For no reason that they could explain, the CO2 concentrations were rising so they kept up the measurements through the present. The increase was from approximately 325 parts per million to approximately 385 parts per million from 1960 through 2009. My first naive question would be, is that really enough to make any difference? After all, the Green House Effect hypothesis was born to explain warming of the early earth, when CO2 concentrations were .6 to .7 million parts per million. That's about 2,170 times as much as at present. That's a big difference to extrapolate any conclusions of the original hypothesis to the present day.

Albert Einstein was concerned that he was asking the world to believe the theory of relativity without his being able to proof it. This bothered him because he was a real scientist who realised that without proof science would become useless speculation. He offered three experiments that could be performed to prove that his theory was wrong. At the time we did have the technology to perform the experiments. Since then, Relativity's predictions were found to be essentially correct. Einstein acted as the devil's advocate for his own theory. On the contrary, the so-called scientists of global warming censor any dissenting views and are very defensive of their theory. If truth was their goal, they should be happy to listen to dissenters. They should insist upon having a devil's advocate. (A term that originated with the Catholic Church's practice of appointing someone to research a candidate for sainthood and to argue why he or she is not worthy of canonization.)

Why would supposedly intelligent world leaders expend trillions of their people's resources based upon the word of these disreputable so-called scientists? Instead of listening to the politicians in Copenhagen, they should listen to a different Dane, Hans Christian Anderson, who said the emperor has no clothes.

To mention one last questionable claim: Man is causing melting of Arctic ice. I read in 1421, The Year that China Discovered America, that 580 years ago, the Chinese sailed around the north coast of Greenland. It must have been melting then and there was little human-generated greenhouse gasses then. Also, while reading about my ancestors, the northern Indian
tribes, I found that at the time of early European exploration, the past warming was known to the indigenous people. It was their belief that melting of the ice disrupted the Eskimo whaling. As a result the Eskimos moved south where they ran into my relatives who engaged in warfare with the Eskimos ever since. (My apologies to J. D. Salinger)

My conclusion has long been that Al Gore and his compadres are fools and/or thieves, at any rate their proposals are very dangerous. /See the first post of this blog which consists of the whole story of The Emperor's New Clothes. /

A Few Photos from Western Washington State

Dubai Leads the Way

Dubai, which is essentially an independent city state in the United Arab Emirates is experiencing severe economic troubles. Why would that be? It is a beautiful place, in part because of the vast government and government related investment in infrastructure and other public building, including the creation of a whole new island. It's apparently hard to walk down the wide new sidewalks without bumping into a fabulous palace-like structure. Dubai is, after all, one of the fabulously rich oil nations on the Arabian Sea (or Persian Gulf if you prefer).

Maybe the vast 'investment' in infrastructure is part of the problem. Those fabulous palaces are apparently for the most part vacant. This situation is similar to the financial panic of 1837 in this country. Free market economists have blamed that on over investment in infrastructure. This had been spurred on by the inflation of the central bank before Andy Jackson was able to close it down. (He was the first one to abolish the Fed.) Like FDR, Barack Hussein Obama's economic theorizing says that 'investment' by the government in infrastructure and related projects is just what we need. Actually it is not what we need but I do not blame the president for not knowing the unknowable. That is why the market, without government intervention, is the only mechanism for deciding what needs to be produced to satisfy society's most urgent needs. If you do not understand that, I have a bridge to nowhere that you might be interested in.

Krugman Speaks (in His Native Tongue)

In his column appearing in the Seattle Times today, Paul Krugman says that the usual suspects (i.e. conservatives) will go wild if there is progress at the Copenhagen global warming conclave. He also thinks there will be cries that this is a vast scientific conspiracy which will destroy jobs and economic growth. In fact conservatives have been a little wild and more that a little angry. They have lately been wild with enthusiasm that the recent "climate-gate" revelations show that there is indeed a vast conspiracy that is finally being exposed. They have also been angry that such a hoax continues to be perpetrated against the citizens of this country and of the world. For myself, I am somewhat numb. I have seen too much of the ignorance of those who are the willing victims of this hoax to feel much outrage anymore. I still believe that global warming ranks in the top ten in all the history of tyranny against the mind of man. Satan in the Garden being number one and Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, and a few like minded others vying for the other top spots. Unfortunately, for the same reasons that Mr. Krugman is optimistic, I am growing pessimistic.

Of course, Mr. Krugman is guilty of advancing and perpetuating egregious violence against reason, but I do not blame him. He is locked into a mind set that has hopelessly befuddled his thinking (related to "Keyneseism"). He advances several arguments in favor of the economic benefits that would accrue to us if we adopted a policy of cap-and-trade to fight global warming. To be generous to him, his thesis is probably better stated as something like, "cap-and-trade would cause far less decline than has been claimed by its detractors." It is a little difficult to say if maybe he does think there could be a net gain when he states that businesses will, "be able to increase their profits if they can burn less carbon." Actually, he means that they will mitigate their losses under cap-and-trade by "burning" less carbon. The only ones to profit will be those in the marketing of the carbon credits, i.e. the tax collectors

In any event, in his reasoning he falls prey to one of the most pervasive economic fallacies, the fallacy of the broken window. This was named by Bastiat and referenced by Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson. The Nobel Laureate, Mr. Krugman claims that there can be economic gains by investment in development of various ways to emit less greenhouse gas. This is like the investment that Bastiat talks about to repair the broken window. The manufactures and the installer will all benefit by the "investments" made in repairing the broken window. They will spend their new gains, thus stimulation the economy. Therefore would it not be beneficial to break more, of even all windows? Especially, as claimed by Mr. K, at a time of economic downturn? The answer is: No.


The reason for this is not difficult to discern. The resources that go into the repair of the window would have been used for something else if the window had not been broken. If for some reason, no windows were broken for a year, we would experience an upsurge in the production of other economic goods. Perhaps the capitol, labor, and natural resources used in the production and installation of windows would go to the building of new houses. (The exact composition of the new goods would depend upon the what purchasers in the market demanded, for the consumer is king in the unimpeded market.) If more windows are broken, we cannot say what would be lost for we can never know what might have been. That so few can see this simple fact is what causes my pessimism.

With the case of global warming, the atmosphere is what is broken, according to Al Gore and the warmies. Much of the scarce recources of planet earth have to go to stopping the damage to the atmosphere, according to them. In the opinion of the conservative wing, we do not even get a new window, since the atmosphere is not really broken and our efforts will not fix anything.

Now Mr. K also says that to believe that Man Made Global Warming is a hoax, one would have to believe in a vast scientific conspiracy. That may be so. Yet to believe as Mr. K does, one would have to believe in a conspiracy of all the fossil fuel users around the globe. He says that we can reduce emissions at relatively low cost by, "improved insulation, more efficient appliances, more fuel efficient cars and trucks, greater use of solar, wind, and nuclear power and much, much more." All we need is the economic incentive of cap-and-trade to find and develop all these new ways. However I would point out that we already have the incentive of $70 to $100 per gallon oil. I would think that, unless there is some vast conspiracy among oil users to keep using oil, we would already be expending vast amounts of resources to use less. Yet petroleum, coal, natural gas, and firewood sill provide maybe 70% of the world energy needs. If significant use of alternatives and conservation had "a relatively low cost" why aren't they here now?

According to economists, which I now perceive Mr. K is not, the answer to that question is a little more subtle and involves the concept of economic decisions being made at the margin, and diminishing returns. Suffice it to say, that even common sense allows us to say that all decisions involve a trade-off between alternative actions. Whatever those trade-offs are, they cannot be as cost-free as the cap-and-traders want us to believe. I really don't know how much solar energy development would costs, but if there would be a great return to low cost efforts in that direction, it seems that we would have a lot more of it now.

If the schemes of the warmies come to fruition, those of us not among the elite architects of the conspiracy, will not like the result. However, if we are so ignorant as to be deceived by the likes to Al Gore and Paul Krugman, then we were literally made to be sold.

Global Warming Non-Debate Continues

There is so much to find fault with in the stance of man-made-global-warming [MMGW] advocates (warmies) that it is astounding that so little notice is taken of those faults. Let me reiterate a few:

1) The proponent of a policy has the burden of establishing a case for the adoption of their policy. This is particularly true of a major policy change like cap-and-trade, which would significantly increase the cost of our most important fuel sources. Instead of making the case, they ask that we accept on authority alone, the conclusions of scientists. They have never simply and clearly explained either their MMGW theory or their Cap-and-trade proposal, much less made their prime fascia case.

2) Unlike the claim made by proponents, there is not a consensus among scientist that MMGW is a concern. Unfortunately, the government bodies that wield the most political weight in matters of science seem to have been co-opted by the warmies. They will not let the dissenters be heard. They discredit them and the publications in which dissenting views have been published.

3) The internet, being thus far free of government control, does give dissenters a voice. An interesting website that I linked to in an earlier post (and which I will check on) offers several scientific arguments against MMGW. One argument states that whereas it it true that CO2 absorbs and reradiates heat radiation, thus returning to earth heat that would be lost, it absorbs only heat radiated in specific wavelengths. (What wave lengths and under what conditions co2 absorbs radiation and what it does with the heat thus absorbed would be part of the theory that the proponents should be more fully explaining, but which they do not.) The website in question calculates the heat lost due to this process and concludes that even if there was enough CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all of the radiation within the given wavelengths, it would not have a significant affect on climate. (Perhaps the proponents have ways of explaining their way around this but they will not say, except that their computer model says that the result will be warming, a LOT of warming, we better really be scared-- and that they say is their scientific opinion.)

4) Eventhough he theory of the proponents is never fully stated (even to a first approximation), they do (or at least did initially) offer empirical evidence of recent warming in support of their theory. This breaks dwon in two ways. a) their methods of measurement have been called into question. Measurements made near cities, for example, are usually higher, as cities grow then the temperatures will increase. Therefore, many of their results taken near cities were merely confirmations of urban growth. (There are other problems with their measurements too.); b) Most temperature measurements , even those of proponents, show that in the very recent past, 15 to 20 years, temperature have gone down. This was while atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased. (This is one of the things they tried to lie about)

5) The Theory of MMGW via CO2 production, (which is the most important part of the theory for public policy) does not explain how the relatively small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could have a significant affect. (This could be considered a part of objection #2) Even with the increases of CO2 in the atmosphere (which measurements they project by questionable, indirect means to times before measurements were taken), the concentrations are far below 1% of the total atmospheric gasses. This is in comparison to the atmosphere of the early days of planet earth, which other scientist have long told us was about 60% CO2. Connected to this, is the argument that it is the warmer earth that causes the CO2 increases, not the other way around. Dissenters have graphed the changes and they claim that the CO2 increases followed the warming, not the other way around. Again, many details of the theory could be more rationally discussed if they would tell us just what is in their computer model (and what is left out). As it is their model is a black box: we aren't told what goes on inside. This is because, no doubt we are mostly just not as smart as Al Gore and the rest of them. (Prince Charles of Great Britain is apparently another of the hyper intelligent warmies.)

6) An objection to the Cap-and-Trade scheme is that it would not bring about much reduction in the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere anyway. If CO2 really is causing global warming or if something else is causing warming (such as cyclical changes in the sun's output), there may be nothing we can do to reverse it. Therefore, instead of imposing trillions of dollars of burdens on the world economy, which would leave us with virtually no resources for other remedies, we should be spending our money and time on something that would help. The Maldive Islands is understandably concerned about possible rising sea levels, since most of the country is three feet above sea level. Besides lobbying for cap-and-trade (because A. Grore says to), they also created a new island and built a six foot wall around it. Building dikes would be a more efficient use of resources that capping and trading. (I must say that cap-and-trade should win an award as the most astoundingly stupid idea ever. It is obviously a thinly disguised method of obtaining the results that environmentalists have wanted all along, which is a word with much diminished industry. They do not say how we will support ourselves without fossil fuel, the most efficient form of energy discovered to date, with the possible exception of nuclear, which they don't want either.)

7) One of my favorite objections (as I sit here with 10 degree weather outside.) The warmies do not address the advantages to some, if not most areas of the world, that would result from warming. This could easily outweigh the unwanted consequences, and at any rate, should be calculated into the cost-benefit analysis.

8) contiued

The Only Good Health Bill Is a Dead Health Bill

The major media continues to the report that some Democrats have problems with the Health Care Bill before the Senate and they are working hard to resolve their differences. I also heard media blurbs that the Republicans are "concerned about cuts to medicare," or "think the bill will be a job killer." The major media also keeps playing Democrat Senator Harry Ried's comment that he has not yet heard of a single statement from Republicans indicating that they are willing to help with the bill. (This is because Republicans want sick people to die, don't you know.) Actually, Republicans have had many health care proposals, some of which were even adopted in the current House and Senate bills. The current bill however is unacceptable for many reasons, mostly because it affords the government too much control. Since government control is the essence of Democrat's long-held aspirations for health care 'reform,' it is obviously impossible for conscientious Republicans to support it.

I have heard even Fox Radio report the story this way in their top of the hour news segments. The press should report that the health bill is a creation of the Democrat Party, embodying many aspects of government control and totally devoid of free market mechanisms. As such, they need not pretend that there are just a few differences that need to be ironed.