Tag: politics

A climate scientist demands neutrality from climate scientists.

11:43 am

Pigs fly! A climate scientist demands political neutrality from climate scientists.

I believe advocacy by climate scientists has damaged trust in the science. We risk our credibility, our reputation for objectivity, if we are not absolutely neutral. At the very least, it leaves us open to criticism. I find much climate scepticism is driven by a belief that environmental activism has influenced how scientists gather and interpret evidence. So I’ve found my hardline approach successful in taking the politics and therefore – pun intended – the heat out of climate science discussions.

They call me an “honest broker”, asking for “more Dr Edwards and fewer zealous advocates”. Crucially, they say this even though my scientific views are absolutely mainstream.

But it’s not just about improving trust. In this highly politicised arena, climate scientists have a moral obligation to strive for impartiality. We have a platform we must not abuse. For a start, we rarely have the necessary expertise. I absolutely disagree with Gavin that we likely know far more about the issues involved in making policy choices than [our] audience.

She might believe in human-caused global warming, but she also has the sense to recognize the vast uncertainties and political difficulties involved in this issue. The full title of her blog, All Models are Wrong is “All models are wrong, but some are useful. A grownup discussion about how to quantify uncertainties in modeling climate change and its impacts, past and future.”

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A teacher molests an underage student for three years and, when caught, his fellow teachers come forward to support him.

10:08 am

Modern America: A teacher molests an underage student for three years and, when caught, his fellow teachers come forward to support him, not the student.

At the sentencing hearing seven teachers plus a school board member, stood with the teacher, Neal Erickson, calling for a reduced sentence. The judge’s response?

Judge Michael Bumgartner told Erickson he was “appalled and ashamed that the community could rally around, in this case, you,” according to the Herald. “What you did was a jab in the eye with a sharp stick to every parent who trusts a teacher,” he said shortly before sentencing Erickson to 15-30 years in prison.

The parents of the student are now trying to get these teachers fired, as well as recall the school board member. The local authorities are hesitating out of fear of lawsuits, while hundreds of parents are telling them if they don’t fire these teachers they will pull their kids from these public schools.

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The Obama administration has quietly decided to arbitrarily delay implementation of another Obamacare requirement.

9:25 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration has quietly decided to arbitrarily delay implementation of another Obamacare requirement.

The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that the administration is giving some insurers and employers a one-year grace period to adhere to the limit, which otherwise would have capped individual costs at $6,350 a year. The full requirement will go into effect in 2015, rather than 2014. The change means some employers — namely, those with more than one benefit provider — could use plans with higher limits or no limit at all on out-of-pocket costs during that period. The grace period apparently was granted earlier this year, though was buried in reams of regulatory material and was not publicly reported until now. Department of Labor guidelines published in February had addressed the delay.

As Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) correctly notes, “The president doesn’t get to write legislation, and it’s illegal and unconstitutional for him to try and change legislation by himself.”

By allowing a president to do this kind of thing, we are losing our democracy.

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How Obamacare discourages people from making more money, discourages businesses from hiring, and discourages everyone from becoming better than they are.

4:42 pm

How Obamacare discourages people from making more money, discourages businesses from hiring, and discourages everyone from becoming better than they are.

But we all know that the real and only reason I mention these unfortunate facts about Obamacare is because Obama is black and that I’m a racist.

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A Christian couple that refused to use their business as a venue for a gay marriage are now receiving hate mail and threats.

2:38 pm

Jackbooted thugs: A Christian couple that refused to use their business as a venue for a gay marriage are now receiving hate mail and threats.

If gays want to get married and the law allows it, there is no reason for them to force those that disagree with them to participate, unless their real goal is to destroy those that disagree. From what I can see, their goal is to destroy.

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The IRS official who released the confidential tax information of conservative groups to a left-leaning news organization has been promoted.

10:04 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS official who illegally released the confidential tax information of conservative groups to a left-leaning news organization has been promoted.

Light will be replaced by Cindy Thomas, a 35-year IRS veteran who ran the Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati throughout the 2-year period that conservative groups were targeted. “Cindy brings a strong background in EO Determinations and the history of the organization,” Corbin told employees. “And, since she is located in Cincinnati, she will provide a voice for the process and challenges faced in determinations work.” Thomas’s promotion will not be without controversy, given that, in November of last year, she signed off on the illegal release to the left-leaning ProPublica, of nine pending, confidential applications for tax exemption filed by conservative groups. One of those organizations, the Colorad-based Citizens Awareness Project, yesterday filed a federal lawsuit against the IRS over the release of its application.

Boy, Barack Obama is really hunting down those rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati and teaching them a lesson for harassing his conservative opponents.

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In its minority small business program, supposedly designed to help minorities, the federal government has instead given millions to firms owned by fictitious people.

9:15 am

In its minority small business program, supposedly designed to help minorities, the federal government has instead given millions to firms owned by fictitious people.

This article illustrates how deep and extensive the corruption is in Washington DC. Things have gotten so bad that we hardly notice a story like this, even though it involves a level of fraud and illegality involving millions of dollars that has become almost routine within the small business and minority set-aside programs of the federal government.

The programs were designed, with noble good intentions, to encourage new businesses run by minorities or women. Instead, a minority or woman sets up a fake company and then subcontracts the work out to others (even though such subcontracting is forbidden). No one in the federal government notices or cares, and the fraud escalates, until in examples like the one at the link, it becomes so egregious that someone in government feels obligated to prosecute. And even then, it appears that the woman charged is only obligated to return some cash and a car. It does not look like she will serve any prison time.

Just imagine how much other fraud and corruption continues to go on in other federal feel-good programs that no one has bothered to stop or notice. The possibilities are numbing.

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An IRS agent admitted this week in testimony to a House committee that the IRS is still harassing conservatives, three months after the targeting was revealed.

3:04 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: An IRS agent admitted this week in testimony to a House committee that the IRS is still harassing conservatives, three months after the targeting was revealed.

I am not surprised. Obama, and his Democratic cronies, want this harassment of their opponents to continue. They want to use the vast and powerful machinery of the federal government in any way possible to hinder any opposition to their power and control.

As I’ve said earlier, they are jack-booted thugs, nothing more, nothing less.

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An inspector general report has found that the 24 health co-ops formed under Obamacare are going bankrupt, even before they have opened.

9:20 am

Our government at its best: An inspector general report has found that the 24 health co-ops formed under Obamacare are going bankrupt, even before they have opened to their first customers.

And that’s not all:

Examiner Watchdog investigative reporting project focused on the co-ops began in 2012 and has since uncovered extensive evidence of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, failure to file required tax returns, inadequate capitalization and evasion of public disclosure requirements such as the federal Freedom of Information Act. A recent Examiner survey found, for example, that all but one of the 24 co-ops failed to file required tax returns, and several may invoke a highly questionable loophole allowing them to avoid doing so in the future. Even more troubling, two of the co-op loans were awarded to organizations headed by individuals with questionable backgrounds, the Examiner has learned, including an insider trading conviction and a history of child sexual abuse.

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The Obama administration has given Congress and its staff a waiver so that they will not have to pay the full cost increase imposed by Obamacare.

4:09 pm

The law is for the little people: The Obama administration has given Congress and its staff a waiver so that they will not have to pay the full cost increase imposed by Obamacare.

No waiver for anyone else, however. You gotta pay, tough luck. You ain’t an important member of the Washington elite, the royal class, the superior smarter set that makes the laws you (and not they) have to follow.

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The government is months behind in testing the security arrangements of Obamacare.

4:33 pm

O goody: The government is months behind in testing the security arrangements of Obamacare.

“They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.” The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance.

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NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver is leaving NASA to take a job “in the private sector outside the space industry.”

9:38 am

NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver is leaving NASA to take a job “in the private sector outside the space industry.”

Garver was instrumental in accelerating during the Obama administration the new commercial space program that Mike Griffin began during the Bush administration. I fear what will happen with her gone and Charles Bolden on his own. Moreover, one wonders why she is leaving now. She has worked in the private sector in the past, but never when she had the opportunity to influence policy during a Democratic administration. It could simply be that she got an offer she couldn’t refuse. Or it could be that she doesn’t like what she sees in NASA, the Obama administration, or Congress, and wants out.

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New York’s “greenest” skyscraper turns out to be its biggest energy hog.

11:31 am

New York’s “greenest” skyscraper turns out to be its biggest energy hog.

Maybe the building’s problem is that it has Al Gore as one of its tenants.

Seriously, the article illustrates well “the law of unintended consequences.” You pass a law or regulation intended to do x, and discover that people instead manipulate the law or regulation to get y instead.

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My rant Thursday against politicians on the John Batchelor Show

10:43 pm

On my Thursday appearance last week on the John Batchelor Show John and I devoted the entire segment to talking about the sad state of NASA and how the partisan bickering in Congress is not only failing to deal with those problems, that bickering is intentionally disinterested in actually fixing them. As I say,

What both those parties in Congress and in the administration are really doing is faking a goal for the purpose of justifying pork to their districts, because none of the proposals they’re making — both the asteroids or the moon — are going to happen.

I intend to elaborate in writing on this subject in the next day or so. In the meantime, here is the audio of that appearance [mp3] for you all to download and enjoy.

Note that I specifically talked about the following stories during this appearance:

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Two graphs that show the depressing trends of the work force for the past twenty years.

12:40 pm

Two graphs that show the depressing trends of the work force for the past twenty years.

Both reveal that, since the crash in 2008-2009, there has been absolutely no uptick, despite the desperate repeated claims of the Obama administration. The American work force, and the economy that work force represents, has shrunk, and shows no signs of recovery.

There is a solution, but no one really wants to risk trying it in our Soviet-style society.

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New evidence strongly suggests that the IRS’s harassment of conservative groups is continuing, despite the on-going Congressional investigations.

9:39 am

New evidence strongly suggests that the IRS’s harassment of conservative groups is continuing, despite the on-going Congressional investigations.

The IRS’ infamous Cincinnati office, which handles applications from groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, badgered pro-life groups for information on their protesting activities as recently as late June 2013, well after IRS investigations began on the floor of the House of Representatives and elsewhere. “We’ve had three more groups come to us that have had problems with the IRS — some very recent, some current or still pending. One of them just got their determination letter,” Peter Breen, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which represents pro-life groups targeted by the IRS, told The Daily Caller. “It’s continuing, and it needs to be addressed.”

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Of the almost 1 million jobs created in 2013, 77% are part-time.

9:16 am

Thank you Obamacare! Of the almost 1 million jobs created in 2013, 77% are part-time.

Politicians can live in a ivory tower, devising fantasy plans to remake society, but employers who wish their businesses to survive have no choice but to live in the real world. Obamacare makes hiring full time employees too expensive, so to get the help they need the employers of America are converting their staffs to part-timers.

The long term problem with this is that it will be impossible for businesses to really innovate and compete under these conditions. Moreover, the employees themselves will be poorer, either earning less or working more, while actually getting less healthcare insurance coverage.

And for this we can thank Obama and the Democratic Party. Praised be their names!

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