Tag Archives: Elite

News

Climate-profiteer Al Gore could become the world’s first carbon billionaire

2 Comments

Story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

This is taxpayer money, folks. Your money and my money.

I note that Watts Up With That links to a UK Telegraph story up on how climate change beliefs are now given the same status and protections as religious beliefs. Well, that’s what global warming is, only it’s less supported by science than some religions I know.

Al Gore knows less about science than my keyboard

Here’s a Washington Times article about Al Gore’s academic performance.

Excerpt:

Despite Mr. Gore’s image as star pupil, the kid most likely to be the first to raise his hand in class, it seems that Mr. Gore barely applied himself during his years as an undergraduate and graduate student. Indeed, his sophomore year at Harvard, The Post notes, was “the year Gore’s classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana.” Please, take a moment to appreciate the scene painted in that one sentence.

In introductory economics, the only economics course Mr. Gore ever took, he received a C-, which goes a long way toward explaining his December remark that he would consider raising taxes should the economy fall into recession.

If the rudiments of fiscal policy proved to be too taxing for young Al, it should hardly be surprising that the self-appointed protector of the world’s ecosystems had almost as much trouble understanding the basic concept of biology. After all, Mr. Gore’s high school performance on the college board achievement tests in physics (488 out of 800 “terrible,” St. Albans retired teacher and assistant headmaster John Davis told The Post) and chemistry (519 out of 800 “He didn’t do too well in chemistry,” Mr. Davis observed) suggests that Mr. Gore would have trouble with science for the rest of his life. At Harvard and Vanderbilt, Mr. Gore continued bumbling along.

As a Harvard sophomore, scholar Al “earned” a D in Natural Sciences 6 in a course presciently named “Man’s Place in Nature.” That was the year he evidently spent more time smoking cannabis than studying its place among other plants within the ecosystem. His senior year, Mr. Gore received a C+ in Natural Sciences 118.

At Vanderbilt divinity school, Mr. Gore took a course in theology and natural science. The assigned readings included the apocalyptic, and widely discredited “Limits to Growth,” which formed much of the foundation for “Earth in the Balance.” It is said that Mr. Gore failed to hand in his book report on time. Thus, his incomplete grade turned into an F, one of five Fs Mr. Gore received at divinity school, which may well be a worldwide record.

He also dropped out of law school at Vanderbilt, not just divinity school. But his father was a liberal U.S. Senator, so things worked out OK for the pot-smoking silver-spoon leftist. As long as he avoids debates on global warming with actual scientists, he can keep laughing all the way to the bank. Recall the recent post about the Finnish car company backed by Al Gore getting a 529M US government loan. He needs your money to pay for the massive electricity bills he runs up while living in his huge mansion.

Global warming alarmism has nothing to do with science

Global warming is a myth sold to us by greedy, power-hungry socialists like Al Gore.

Global warming is about enriching leftist elites while controlling the lives of productive private citizens.

Commentary

Does the Bible teach communism like Michael Moore seems to think?

10 Comments

Neil Simpson has a wonderful post up analyzing whether Michael Moore is correct to think that Jesus’ teachings in the Bible are opposed to capitalism. My opinion is that Michael Moore is no more a Christian than Barack Obama or Richard Dawkins. In order to be a Christian, you need to accept the teachings of Jesus, and Moore doesn’t. And Neil explains why by referring to Moore’s own blog post.

Neil does a good job of analyzing Moore’s errors, and his incredible hypocrisy, so check it out. But I wanted to highlight a comment from Shalini from the comments to that post.

Shalini wrote:

Socialism discards the concept of ownership… by individuals and I see no passage or verse in NT where Jesus seems so against the concept of individual ownership.

Socialism gradually leads to communism and the very intention of communism is to separate people from God. Heck! If you have a government which says “I will feed you” and promises other pleasures of the world, but it never addresses the spiritual needs of a person, I don’t see God approving of it. The other problem about socialism is that one person works hard and the government/organization takes/steals from him and gives it to someone who works less harder. That results in laziness! So does God approve of laziness? I think God said we will have to work harder all our lives. He didn’t say ‘Some of you will have to work harder and the rest will just have to steal from you.”.

I think the passage she is thinking of might be 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12.

6In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. 7For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, 8nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. 9We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. 10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”  11We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

About 50% of Americans do not pay any income tax, whereas a tiny minority of the most productive people pay the vast majority of all income taxes collected. And yet still the poor clamor for more and more of their neighbors’ wealth! What they should be clamoring for is knowledge of how their neighbor acts in order to be productive and frugal. Or even better, they should be clamoring for a relationship with God through Christ, and not being so focused on acquiring worldly goods at all!

Moore and others on the left think that all religion is about making people happy in this life. So naturally, they are not going to read the Bible to incorporate it as an authority over their decisions – they are functional atheists. They will only use the Bible to trick people into adopting government-controlled wealth redistribution. They just want to feel good about themselves in this life by redistributing other people’s money.

Thomas Sowell calls this “the vision of the anointed”. The elites think they are smarter than you are – that they should decide how much money you earn and how you spend it, so that they can prove how morally superior they are to you by “helping” the “poor” with what they take from you.

Shalini continues:

In the Acts of apostles, there was collection and re-distribution of wealth. But under who’s guidance? The apostles who were God inspired and who did things God would approve of. So there was no problem there. But can we trust the government to do what the apostles did or to do what Jesus would do? A government which approves of all things God loathes? And given the power, who is to say the government wont act as greedy as the CEOs and wall street bankers? At least with a company I have the choice to quit. With the government I will be stuck for life or at least till the next elections. If one is so bent upon making atrocious stereotypes of all rich men why don’t they look at the atrocities done by socialist states? My CEO only had the authority over my intellectual skills. The socialist government would claim authority even over my moral rights.

What Christianity supports is the concept of private individual charity. What Moore supports is government-managed redistribution of wealth from those who produce to those who don’t produce. History has shown in places like Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Venezuela that this results of trying the communism that Moore seems to advocate results in more poverty, not less. A rising tide lifts all boats – and that is why the poor in capitalist America are richer than the rich in any communist nation.

Further study

To learn more about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, check out this post (the second half is on capitalism).

Excerpt:

To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2.

[…]If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here)

And don’t forget about the course on economics from a Christian perspective taught by Dr. Ron Nash, or Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s lecture on basic economics that I wrote about before.

Share

News

Round-up of recent fascistic activity by Democrats at town hall meetings

2 Comments

First, a Democrat disrupts a town hall meeting and then elbows a town hall attendee in the face. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Here’s a better look at it courtesy of KGUN9 news.

Next, a radical anti-war Democrat Congresswoman has a questioner removed from the town hall by police. (H/T Hot Air)

Last, a policeman threatens to arrest a sign-carrying protester at a Democrat Congressman’s town hall. (H/T Hot Air)

Why don’t voters understand that socialism leads to fascism?

Corporations have no power over you – they just try to sell you things that you are free not to buy. But government needs to be limited because only they have the power to repress the exercise of your freedom, including freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. They think they are right because they are nice. And you are wrong because you are evil. The anointed elites believe that they do not need to respect the rights of the benighted masses.