The man who has no imagination has no wings.
Muhammad Ali
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
American Idol 2014 Final: My Choice: Caleb Johnson
Sunday Talk Soup
Okay, I haven't done one of these in a while. Let's start with three-time, three-time, three-time governor of the People's Republic of California on ABC This Week:
BROWN: It is true that there's virtually no Republican who accepts the science that virtually is unanimous. I mean there is no scientific question. There's just political denial for various reasons, best known to those people who are in denial.First of all, Brown is engaging in rather pathetic, discredited climate alarmism. He is attributing, with zero evidence, any and all weather-related challenges to alleged human activities. What we do know is that weather changes have occurred throughout the history of the earth, and our use of fossil fuel is a relatively new phenomenon in history. To what extent natural factors, sun events, and/or alleged human contributions is not clear; to the best of my knowledge, weather models have fairly short prediction ranges. "Science that virtually is unanimous?" "No scientific question?" Apparently Jerry Brown doesn't understand the difference between correlation and causation... But let's take a recent peer-reviewed survey content analysis:
But whatever the thoughts of the Republicans, we here in California are on the front lines. We've got to deal with it. We've already appropriated $600 million. We have 5,000 firefighters. We're going to need thousands more. And in the years to come, we're going to have to make very expensive investments and adjust. And the people are going to have to be careful of how they live, how they build their homes and what kind of vegetation is allowed to grow around them.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So what else can you do right now to prevent the worst?
I know you've signed an executive order creating new regulations and local governments.
What more can your government do?
Do you need more from Washington?
BROWN: Well, if Washington could change the drought, I'd ask them. But, you know, we live in a world that is not just government or not just business, it's natural, the natural systems. And as we send billions and billions of tons of heat-trapping gases, we get heat and we get fires and we get what we're seeing.
So we've got to gear up. We're going to deal with nature as best we can, but humanity is on a collision course with nature and we're just going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can.
In California, we're not only adapting, but we're taking steps to reduce our greenhouse gases in a way that I think exceeds any other state in the country. And we'll do more.
In the meantime, all we can do is fight all these damn fires.
Indeed, while there is a broad consensus among climate scientists (IPCC, 2007a, 2007b), scepticism regarding anthropogenic climate change remains. The proportion of papers found in the ISI Web of Science database that explicitly endorsed anthropogenic climate change has fallen from 75% (for the period between 1993 and 2003) as of 2004 to 45% from 2004 to 2008...Going on to the survey itself:
According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model...The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model...Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the “Economic Responsibility” model. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy.” The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the “Regulation Activists” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.”However dubious Brown is for confusing political correctness with "science", he simply misjudges Republicans. In fact, 8 GOP Congressmen voted with the majority (219-212) in the 2009 ACES (climate change bill) while 44 Dems voted against. (It failed to clear the Senate.) A number of Republicans trace their roots to Teddy Roosevelt conservation, including the 2008 team of McCain and Palin. It is/was a well-known political soundbite about an "all-of-the-above" solution (fossil and alternative fuels); for example, Palin proudly pointed out her state's green subsidies, and Sen. Grassley recently expressed support for green subsidies. (Note: I personally disagree with subsidies of ANY industry, but I'm discussing the GOP allegation.) Politifact fact-checked Brown's allegation and called it "mostly true", even though they reproduced a list of 8 Republicans, not listed above. I think the analysis is flawed--I think most Republicans are skeptical of climate alarmism and do not agree with the "comply with Kyoto" crowd: they may agree that CO2 emissions exacerbate any natural effect but are worried about cost-benefit of Draconian policy restrictions.
In particular, the US has been declining its share of emissions, while the rest of the world continues to increase (particularly the developing economies with middle classes wanting cars, for example, China accounts for just over 25% of global emissions, nearly double the US share). Mark Perry has observed we already at our lowest production in decades--not not because of Dem policies or EPA edicts but because of shale gas explorartion and production (which many, if not most environmentalists fight tooth and nail) Perry quotes the IEA:
"US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector … and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector."In fact, compressed natural gas exports from the US could facilitate conversion from coal internationally, but the Administration has only approved a couple of facilities. The point is that there are high costs to decreasing our CO2 emissions even further, and to quote President Zipper's wife, "What difference does it make?" if we cut our emissions just to see China and/or other countries more than offset our unmatched decrease...
There are other points I wanted to raise with the recent talk shows: more in subsequent posts.
Facebook Corner
(IPI). See Ayn Rand quote above.
I assume this means corporate welfare
Which amounts to less than 3% of the federal budget and includes this Administration's attempts to prop up Big Green cronies. Let's not forget crony unionism (including forced unionism, pension plans, tax-advantaged goldplated health "insurance"). And, of course, don't forget how protectionist policies (including de facto restricted trade, tariffs, quotas, etc.) also benefit politically connected businesses and unions at consumer expense
(Tom Woods). You guys asked for a refutation of the Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Here you go.
That in 1932, during the final year of the Hoover Administration, Republicans and Democrats agreed that immediate action needed to be taken to confront an economic crisis. Doesn't change the fact that it was this change that lead to our greatest period of growth as a country "for all." Nor does it change the facts that both of our largest economic collapses were preceded by historically low top rates, and corresponding greater disparity. Supply side economics is a myth, history does not support it, and this video does not supply any facts that change that .The top tax rates are what were at lows (of course not including times prior to federal income taxes, when we have huge disparity, poverty and robber-barons). Our country's time of greatest growth for everyone, and the real growth of our middle class, and our becoming a world power was also the time of our highest top individual tax rate, capital gains rates, and corporate tax rates (as well as strongest financial regulation). And, it is statistically more than correlation as the low rates preceding both economic crisis, and the opposite is true, the high rates coincide with our strongest times for all. In terms of probability, this is more than chance correlation. The only fallacy is the mythology of supply-side beliefs. Their being repeated over and over, doesn't male them true. We have relatively low top tax rates, very low historically corporate rates, and capital gains rates (relatively for the last 100 years). We also have record stock market, a top one percent of individuals doing better than ever, and largest corporations having record profits the last few years. And yet, it has had no trickle down effect. No one creates markets, it is demand and consumers that drives ALL business. We have a thirty year stagnation of the middle-class thanks to the blind mythology of Reaganomics, all the while the top 1% & GDP growth has continued. There is the evidence that the lower top, capital gain, & corporate tax rates have not worked as promised.
I'm amused to see that Woods gives economically illiterate "progressive" trolls enough rope to hang themselves. Still, it's interesting to see what Woods does and doesn't say. First, it is NOT true that everyone agreed on the necessity of interventionist government. If you go back to the 1932 election, you'll see that Hoover was hardly the laissez-faire President that propagandists make him out to be; FDR was preaching fiscal discipline that almost any Tea Partier could endorse. Hoover had raised top income tax rates, jawboned businesses against cutting wages and spending, instituted tariff increases factoring in a global "beggar-thy-neighbor" trade war, and threw money at infrastructure. FDR did a classic bait-and-switch.
What happened before the Depressions of 1920-21 and starting in 1929? Easy credit by the newly instituted Fed Reserve... When they took their foot off the gas and raised interest rates, it was, as one might predict, a case of bad timing. Incidentally who took advantage of easy credit to malinvest in the stock market? Hint: higher-income/net worth individuals; they were gambling with other people's money.
Don't bring up the nonsense about high tax brackets. Harding cut taxes and spending: the exact opposite of modern-day Democrats/Keynesians. Harding not only balanced the budget, but federal revenues increased. You seem to be confusing monetary policy with fiscal policy. But in all this vacuous discussion of supply-side economics, progressive taxes provide a perverse incentive against maximizing income and growth. The more you tax of something, the less you get of it: simple supply and demand.
And, as others have pointed out, real income, standard of living and economic growth rose WITHOUT a debased currency, centralized planning and an income tax during the Gilded Age. There is much more to say, but this is a start.
Still More Proposals
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Henry Payne via Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My iPod Shuffle Series
BW Stevenson, "Down To the Station"
