Tag Archives: Obama

Commentary

Global warming advocates refuse to give their data to skeptics

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If you are a skeptic of global warming, and you ask for the raw data, then you will be denied access to it!

Story from National Review. (H/T ECM, Brian)

Excerpt:

Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist… politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

[…]In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.

Free and open debate?

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News

Bush spent $622B on Iraq, Obama spends $888B on welfare in 2010 alone

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Story from CNS News. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year–2010–more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January.

Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.

I personally know a lot of people who voted for Obama because we were spending too much on the war. The government’s job is to fight against the enemies of the United States. The government’s job is not to equalize life outcomes regardless of lifestyle choices. But I guess Obama has to buy votes somehow! How else will he be able to get re-elected unless he takes from the productive minority to pay for the votes of the irresponsible majority?

Don’t forget my previous post on the CBO’s projections about Social Security running cash deficits in starting in 2010.

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News

Obama administration threatens health insurance company for dissent

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This AP story explains how a private company sent out a mailing explaining the effects of Obamacare on seniors.

Excerpt:

“While these programs need to be made more efficient, if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,” it said.

It urged seniors to sign up with Humana for regular updates on the health care legislation, and encouraged them to contact their lawmakers in Washington.

But Obama doesn’t like it when people question his socialist plans.

In a warning letter to Humana, HHS said the government is concerned that the mailer “is misleading and confusing” partly because the company’s lobbying campaign could be mistaken for an official communication about Medicare benefits.

HHS ordered the company to immediately halt any such mailings, and remove any related materials from its Web site. In the letter, the government also said it may take other action against Humana.

A later post by Ace of Spades updates the story. (H/T ECM)

Let me explain how socialism works. Socialists tell you that you are not responsible for your life outcomes. They say that other people are to blame for your troubles. They get elected by sowing division, hate and envy among the people. Then they try to take control of the economy to reward the people who elected them, using the money from people who did not elect them.

But when you start to rob one group of people to pay off the groups who elected you, the victims of the theft start to debate with you. Maybe they stop producing as much as before, so that less is stolen from them by the government. And that’s when socialists like Obama start to crack down on dissenters – first with intimidation, then with coercion, and eventually with violence. That’s just historical fact.

Most countries realize their mistake before it’s too late. But if a country has placed an ignorant, arrogant, unqualified buffoon in charge, it may be a long time before that happens. That is the way the world actually works, and has worked, for anyone with eyes to see. And that is why even socialist countries like Sweden eventually have to pull back from the brink by cutting taxes, in order to get people working and having children again.

I recommend the book “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek, and you can read a summary here. It’s the number one most recommended book on Human Events’ list of top books every conservative should read. Fascism is the natural endpoint of socialism, if it is not checked at the ballot box.

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