Tag Archives: Socialism

Government-funded research unit destroyed original climate data

Story from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (H/T American Thinker via ECM)

Excerpt:

In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding.

In mid-August the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space.  The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis.  CRU’s destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.

In a declaration filed with CEI’s petition, Cato Institute scholar and climate scientist Patrick Michaels calls CRU’s revelation “a totally new element” that “violates basic scientific principles, and “throws even more doubt” on the claims of global warming alarmists.

CEI’s petition, filed late Monday with EPA, argues that CRU’s disclosure casts a new cloud of doubt on the science behind EPA’s proposal to regulate carbon dioxide.  EPA stopped accepting public comments in late June but has not yet issued its final decision.  As CEI’s petition argues, court rulings make it clear that agencies must consider new facts when those facts change the underlying issues.

CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, “EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data.  But CRU’s suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable.  If EPA doesn’t reexamine the implications of this, it’s stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face.”

Among CRU’s funders are the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy – U.S. taxpayers.

Fraudulent government-funded research designed to support a socialist takeover of private industry by government? Hard to believe isn’t it?

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NHS delays treatment for broken arm for four months and counting

Story here from the Sun. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

This crippled plumber horribly broke his arm TEN months ago and is still waiting for surgery to repair it.

Torron Eeles busted his left humerus bone leaving it grotesquely out of shape when he fell down stairs.

Today he slammed the NHS for “unacceptable” delays – claiming they have cancelled FOUR separate operations.

His arm hangs limply by his side meaning Torron cannot work for a living and now faces the prospect of losing his home.

The NHS is Britain’s “public option” plan. But you can be sure that the political elites in Britain don’t wait a moment for treatment, just like you can be sure that Obama’s children go to the best private schools. He leaves the failing public schools for your children.

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How public sector unions destroy economic growth

Consider this article from the Weekly Standard. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Private sector unions have a natural adversary in the owners of the companies with whom they negotiate. But public sector unions have no such natural counterweight. They are a classic case of “client politics,” where an interest group’s concentrated efforts to secure rewards impose diffused costs on the mass of unorganized taxpayers. Also unlike private sector unions, those in the public sector can achieve influence on both sides of the bargaining table by making campaign contributions and organizing get-out-the-vote drives to elect politicians who then control the negotiations over their pay, benefits, and work rules. The result is a nefarious cycle: Politicians agree to generous government worker contracts; those workers then pay higher union dues a portion of which are funneled back into those same politicians’ campaign war chests. It is a cycle that has driven California and New York to the edge of bankruptcy.

[…]Consider what happened in Washington State. After helping Democrats win full control of the legislature in 2002, the state affiliate of the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions persuaded lawmakers to lift the collective bargaining restrictions. Within three years the number of union members had doubled. With more state employees paying dues, the amount of union dollars flowing into the coffers of Democrats running in state elections also doubled. A prime beneficiary of such union generosity was Christine Gregoire, who became governor in 2004 after one of the closest elections in the state’s history. (AFSCME gave $250,000 to the state Democratic party to help pay for the recount that handed her the election by 129 votes). Once in office, Gregoire negotiated contracts with the unions that resulted in double-digit salary increases, some exceeding 25 percent, for thousands of state employees. In 2007, J. Vander Stoep, an adviser to Republican Dino Rossi, Gregoire’s 2004 opponent, prophetically remarked that the unions’ arrangement with the Democrats was “a perfect machine to generate millions of dollars for her reelection. . . . They are building something that conceivably can never be undone—at taxpayer expense.” In their 2008 rematch, Rossi lost again to Gregoire, this time by 194,614 votes.

This is a long article, but it’s probably the only one you’ll need to read to understand how unions completely destroy economies, as in New York and California. Print and read!

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