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Some Inconvenient Truths Emerge

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:39:00 -0500

written by John Phelan

I’d planned to follow up last weeks item with some more on the economy but I couldn’t resist a few words on the leaking of emails from some of the worlds leading climate scientists. Quite simply, it doesn’t look too good for them.

The emails come from The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit which, we are told, is a “world-renowned centre” on the subject. One, from the CRU’s Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes, authors of the utterly discredited ‘Hockey Stick’ upon which Al Gore based ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, is dated November 16th 1999. It reads

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Another, dated October 12th 2009, comes from Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It reads

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Another, from Keith Briffa of the CRU and dated June 23rd 2008, concerns the requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) for the CRU to release the data it bases its conclusions on (the CRU has turned down 60 such requests). It reads

“I have been of the opinion right from the start of these FOI requests, that our private inter-collegial discussion is just that – PRIVATE. Your communication with individual colleagues was on the same basis as that for any other person and it discredits the IPCC process not one iota not to reveal the details. On the contrary, submitting to these “demands” undermines the wider scientific expectation of personal confidentiality . It is for this reason, and not because we have or have not got anything to hide, that I believe none of us should submit to these “requests”.”

Back to Professor Jones again. On May 5th 2008 a request was submitted under the FoIA for correspondence relating to AR4, an IPCC report that Keith Briffa and others at the CRU worked on together. On May 29th 2008 Prof Jones sent the following email

“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”

Under the FoIA destroying information once a request has been put in is a criminal offence.

This indicates some pretty alarming behaviour at the CRU. Even George Monibot, a leading believer in Man Made Global Warming, said '”There are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad“.

The aforementioned Professor Mann, director of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Centre, was indignant; "I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reproduction of the emails that were obtained on public websites, etc, constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping the perpetrators and their facilitators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows." Mann’s outraged sense of justice is commendable but as the worlds leaders gather in Copenhagen to commit ever greater sums of our money to fighting Climate Change, isn’t it worth noting that obtaining money (or research grants) under false pretenses is theft as well?

‘Climate change’ is the new religion of the age. Skepticism earns you the epithet of “Climate Change Denier”. We must all tithe only now it’s called Green Taxes. And non belief earns a wrath which wouldn’t be out of place in the medieval Inquisition. Environmental blogger David Roberts once thundered “When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards—some sort of climate Nuremberg."

Indeed, Climate Change even has its own Holy Trinity of boosters; the media, the scientists and the politicians.

An article on the Climate email controversy in The Guardian complained that that the “The emails show the frustration some climatologists have had at having to operate under such intense, often politically motivated, scrutiny” (1). My heart bleeds for them. But whether the scrutiny is “politically motivated” or not (the Guardian must have a mind reader on staff to be able to report that) releasing your data so that your conclusions can be checked and corroborated is a basic part of scientific research. If the scientists involved can’t even match this basic standard then why should we take them seriously?

The BBC, it was revealed, had been sent these emails back on October 12th but had decided to sit on them (2). This brought to mind the comments of BBC anchor Peter Sissons that "The Corporation's most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’" and that when it comes to skeptics “it is effectively BBC policy... that those views should not be heard". Would they have been so reluctant to report a similar set of emails suggesting fraud and deception at, say, a bank?

The reason for the media's fondness for the theory that we are all about to die is simple enough to understand. Ask yourself which newspaper front page will sell more copies; “We’re all going to die!” or “Natural Processes at Work as They Have Been Since Time Immemorial – Nothing to Worry About”?

The scientists also have a pretty obvious reason for shoveling coal into the engine of the gravy train. According to reports, Phil Jones, the man who may soon be facing a £5,000 fine for offences under the FoIA shouldn’t be unduly concerned. Since 1990 he has brought in $22.6 million worth of funding (3). Would so much money have come his way if he hadn’t been offering solutions to the end of civilization as we know it?

The politicians’ case is slightly more opaque. After all, wouldn’t a politician who told us what we’d like to hear, that everything is ok, clean up at the polls? Possibly, but this overlooks the fact that the Holy Grail of modern politics is to raise taxes without it getting you kicked out of office.

Politicians want money as it enables them to dispense patronage. We should also not forget that many of them think (and some of them are right) that they genuinely are doing good by spending money on this or that. But the desire to tax eventually outruns the public’s desire to be taxed. So Climate Change offers the perfect solution. Politicians can dig their hands ever deeper into your pocket and its all for your own good.

And the beauty for the media, the scientists and the politicians is that Climate Change is the gift that keeps on giving. Ronald Reagan once said "the best sign that our economic program is working is that they don't call it Reaganomics any more." Indeed, the best sign that we have less to worry about than we are told is that they don’t call it Global Warming anymore. Hands up if you remember Global Warming? Like Pearl Jam it was quite the rage when I was a kid. Indeed, it best year ever came in 1998 when record breaking temperatures proved we were all about to be fried.

But then the world stopped getting warmer. As Paul Hudson, the BBC man who sat on the email, reported recently “For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures” (4) Indeed, in the last couple of years it’s started getting colder again. Could it have been that the scientists had been as far out with their predictions as they had been in 1973 when falling temperatures prompted the worlds leading climate scientists to put an article on the front page of Time magazine warning of ‘The Big Freeze’? Possibly. They didn’t seem to trust their ability to predict anymore having been proven wrong the last two times.

So they fixed upon Climate Change as the new bogie man. The beauty of this was that whether it started snowing or whether the sun started shining it was all evidence of Climate Change. It didn’t matter that your predictions weren’t worth the magazine covers they were printed on, now the unpredictability was the very problem!

I thought about ending this with a joke about the emission of hot air and the Copenhagen summit. But look again at the evidence and look again at what is being done. Its no laughing matter.

SOURCES:

1 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

2 - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6684281/BBC-weatherman-was-sent--climate-change-emails.html

3 - http://www.detnews.com/article/20091127/OPINION03/911270333/1031

4 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8299079.stm

We Need a Doctor over here! :: A Breakdown of the Healthcare Bills

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:23:00 -0500

written by Joseph Winberry

There is what has been called a healthcare “crisis” in this country. The left calls it the defining issue of Obama’s presidency. The Right calls it his “Waterloo”. I call it just another battlefield for the Left and Right to fight on in the war for America’s heart and soul. Feeling passionate yet?

It is true. We face a dilemma in this country. According to a 2007 census report, 47 million people living in America do not have health insurance (however this number includes those who do not seek coverage, as well as illegal aliens and some who are on faulty plans).

So what does Congress do whenever they see a need? They roll up their sleeves and get to meddling. And meddle they have. The results of nine months worth of investigations, inquiries, studies and polling? Two monstrous healthcare bills ranging from the House’s 1990 page bill to the Senate’s 2074 pages.

The House bill, passed by a meager 220-215 majority, broke many of the promises made in the president’s historic healthcare speech to Congress. The speech, made famous by South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s blurt of “You lie!” stated that there would not be any federal funding of abortion, healthcare for illegals and called for tort reform. Now that the bill has passed the House and has moved on to the Senate before being reviewed and combined in the conference committee, many of the president’s promises seem to be moot (not to mention the picture of Nancy Pelosi going at great lengths to look insulted).

The Stupak amendment stated that no federal funding for abortion would be allowed under the new healthcare bill. This amendment was the key to getting enough votes for the bill. However, on page 118 and 120 of the Senate bill, it states that Congress would enact an abortion premium as part of the new healthcare system. Additionally, several liberal Democrats in the Senate have stated that they will not support a bill that does not cover abortion. It remains to be seen what the final language will be in conference bill and what affect this will have on the final vote.

The president has stated that we need to legalize illegal immigrants in order to give them health care. According to the Census Bureau, nearly forty-four percent of illegal immigrants do not receive healthcare compared to the fifty-six percent who do. Immigration, probably the next major issue that the president will target, has been a source of anger among grassroots conservatives. Some believe that language in the bill about illegal immigrants will lead to mass amnesty. All without a por favor or gracias!

Also not only does the House healthcare bill not cover tort reform, it actually promises to take away benefits from states that allow tort reform! Section 2531 of H.R. 3962 says “To the extent and in the amounts made available in advance in appropriations Acts, the Secretary shall make an incentive payment, in an amount determined by the Secretary, to each State that has an alternative medical liability law in compliance with this section.”

The bill goes on to say, “The contents of an alternative liability law are in accordance with this paragraph if—

(A) the litigation alternatives contained in the law consist of certificate of merit, early offer, or both; and (B) the law does not limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”

Interestingly, one of the top lobbying groups on the left is the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA). I wonder which party will get a fat check from them in November.

My opposition to the anti-tort reform laws is not just about the legislation itself but about the hypocrisy of the current leadership on Capitol Hill. Watch what they do and not what they say.

If these listed provisions do end in the final bill, then Congressman Wilson will be vindicated in his claim and will probably launch a presidential campaign (hey if Mike Gravel can who can’t?).

But for me, the scariest part of this bill is its costs and its capture of a fifth of the nation’s economy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, healthcare counts for thirteen million jobs or one in ten. It also makes up a fifth of the national economy and is a major field for jobs and research in the future. What will become of this sector once it is owned by our government? What private sector organization has ever been better run under the public sector than the private sector? Mail: How fast do you get a package from the UPS of FedEx when compared to the Postal Service (which, by the way, is up for a bailout some Democrats feel)? How about this; recently, the Senate voted to privatize its own restaurant because it was failing. The federal government can’t even microwave cold pizza properly and they want to be in charge of our healthcare system?!

The Cato Institute has released alarming statistics when comparing America’s current free market-based system with the single payer healthcare systems of two socialistic countries. Eight of the ten most recent and transforming medical innovations, including MRIs and hip replacements, have been born out of the United States Healthcare system. When comparing America to a government-run healthcare country such as Canada or Britain, Americans can get three times as many CT scans than those living in Canada and four as many as citizens of Britain. British women face an eighty-eight percent greater risk of dying from breast cancer than American women and British men have a 604 (that is not a typo) percent chance of death from prostate cancer than American men.

We all agree that something must be done about our healthcare system. However, a government overhaul is not the right course of action. The Cato Institute has several different reforms and solutions to fix our current free market system. I encourage that you view and join the discussion at Healthcare.Cato.Org. The Democrats are moving quickly to cram a government run program down our throats. Let’s be ready with a viable, reliable, free market counter solution. Capiche?

Thoughts from a Traveler: 1 Year Later: Is America is Starting to Wake Up?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:10:00 -0500

written by Adam Riemer

First, let me say that is great to be back with Reagan Sauce! I have missed writing for this fantastic site, and I am very pleased to be associated with one of the best conservative web sites out there. Now let’s get down to some political talk shall we?

Recently, CNN reported that a recent poll suggested that public opinion of who is to blame for the recession is starting to shift. Now, the first thing to consider is that polls in general are controlled studies, just because a percentage of people feel a certain way about a particular topic does not mean the general public as a whole feels that way as well.

That being said, the new numbers are showing only 38% of those polled still believe Republicans are to blame, down 15% from a similar study that was done back in May. In contrast the poll shows that 27% of people questioned are blaming the Democrats, a 6 point raise from the study done in May. The most significant numbers from these polls though show that out of the 1,014 adults who took part, 28% said that the President’s programs have made things worse, and 35% say that everything Obama has done has had no effect on the economy.

I know that the last number can be interpreted as 35% think he hasn’t done anything bad, but at the same time that 35% is saying he hasn’t done anything good either. For a man who walked into the White House and promised change, blamed everything on the Bush administration and spewed enough rhetoric and philosophical quotes to fill the Grand Canyon, he sure isn’t living up to that ever so talked about “hype”.

It seems that people are starting to wake up from their dream land where they sat on clouds in the sun and watched as Barack Obama cured all their problems that they were so quick to blame on the President Bush. They are realizing that this man has done nothing he has promised to do. Spending is consistently increasing, something that goes hand in hand with our national debt. The War in Iraq and Afghanistan has claimed more and more lives. Unemployment continues to rise. Barack Obama continues to just talk.

I know liberals and Democrats will look at numbers from a poll like the one conducted by CNN and point out that the American Public still believes that Obama is helping, that the numbers that add up to 100% are still in the Democratic favor. However, the mere fact that not-so-slowly (it has only been 1 year) people are realizing that Barack Obama may not be the knight in shining armor, is promising for the Republican party. We need to take back our great country, we need to make sure that in 2012 we take back the White House and reinstall the traditional American values into our society.

My travels will always continue, however I never forget where I come from, the greatest country on God’s green Earth. For now I will continue to hold onto the hope that more and more Americans will continue to open their eyes. The wolf in sheep’s clothing that sits in the Oval Office is starting to draw criticism across the board, it’s time to wake up America and realize that this man is doing nothing to help us, in fact he is hurting us much more than anyone thought.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/20/poll.recession/index.html

Dear Obama - Week of November 29, 2009

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:24:00 -0500

written by Katherine Kuhn

Dear President Obama,

Reading the news this week was very troublesome. Seeing that we apparently still think that the use of landmines is acceptable, it really doesn’t seem far fetched that we would charge our own service members with assault of an alleged terrorist.

That’s right; Navy SEALs who were doing their duty by carrying out a mission to capture Ahmed Hashim Abed have now been charged with assault. Allegedly, they gave him a bloody lip after detaining him. If it were me, that’s not all I would have given him.

Some background information: Ahmed Hashim Abed is the supposed mastermind behind the capture and brutal mutilation of four Blackwater USA guards in 2004. So, it is interesting to hear the men who should be praised for executing their mission are now facing a court martial to determine if they did anything wrong.

Why should a man whose country is not a member of the Geneva Convention have the courtesy of being able to file assault charges on his captors? A man who did not show mercy when his victims were slaughtered should have all the rights of an American citizen? I think not.

I concede that these Navy SEALs are charged with other things than assault, like making false official statements etc., however they shouldn’t have been charged in the first place.

I think that this country has become too soft with regards to prisoners of war. We are not fighting a “gentleman’s war” here. We are fighting a war with radicals who believe that slaughtering military personnel and civilians alike is appropriate. We have forgotten than they will show no mercy—yet seemingly beg for it when they are captured.

What I ask of you is to not allow a case like this go to court. It is ridiculous that instead of being hailed as heroes these soldiers are being charged with assault. They risked life and limb to make the mission a success and all we can do is spit in their faces. I truly hope this war doesn’t end up like another Vietnam where we have no respect for the soldiers when they return home.

Within the same vein, it’s also flat out wrong to be giving the 9/11 terrorists who helped plan and train the hijackers any sort of civilian trial. They don’t have money to pay restitution and I’m going to go out on a limb and say they would be the last people to do community service (not that any amount of money or community service will make up for what they’ve done).

In reality, why are we really giving these men trials? I understand due process and all of that however, these men are not random American citizens, they are radicals who are out to harm anything they believe is not in sync with what they believe. It seems like a rather radical idea, but these men are POWs and don’t deserve the luxury of having the same rights that all Americans have.

Would I execute the aforementioned people? Probably not-- that’s what they want. They want us to execute them so they appear to be martyrs. Personally, I would put them in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives with no communication to the outside world. They wouldn’t give us the courtesy of ethical treatment as POWs anyway.

I don’t think that it is fair to allow POWs the same courtesy of natural rights when they clearly have violated other people’s natural rights. When did it become standard operational procedure to forget that these men have been in battle and there will be an occasional fat lip or two.

What’s next? Are we going to allow US soldiers to file assault charges on those people the fight against? Because according to the current model, apparently we should. If Abed can file charges soldiers should be allowed to as well. This act of “justice” that we are showing Abed isn’t going to change any terrorist’s mind if that is the rationale behind this. It’s not going to make them want to kill innocent people any less. They aren’t going to stop and say, “Hey remember when the US was so nice and they allowed Abed to file assault charges? Yeah maybe we should stop using our brutal tactics.” Ha, I am sure that is exactly what they will stop and ponder.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I also hope that you see the irony in the fact that alleged terrorists will want mercy when they won’t show it to their victims.

Don’t allow the terrorists to win—on the battlefield or in our courtrooms.

Sincerely,

Kate

Meltdown

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:33:00 -0500

written by John Phelan

When economic crises hit people eventually turn to ask two questions; 1) How did it happen? 2) How do we stop it happening again? The current crisis has been no exception.

The popular reason put forward is “greed”, usually bankers lending to people unlikely to pay it back to achieve their bonuses. Such a simple minded explanation leaves many questions unanswered such as where did the bankers get all this money to lend out in the first place?

On a more scholarly level the old Keynesian theory of recessions has been dusted off which, essentially, puts everything down to a decline in business confidence. But this begs the question of what caused the decline in business confidence. It treats the symptom, the recession, without addressing underlying illness.

At times like this the search for explanations covers ground usually left alone. Marxists have been happily claiming that Marx has, after 160 years of waiting, been proved right. But another usually obscure theory offers answers to the two questions posed at the top.

Austrian Business Cycle Theory sounds like a tedious nightmare. In fact it is a school of economic thought which proudly renounces long winded, irrelevant, and often self defeating mathematical equations, relying, instead, on logical deduction. It is probably this accessibility to the general reader that accounts for its being largely ignored by mainstream economists eager to give their art the appearance of science by dressing it up in algebra.

Austrian Theory starts with the idea that the interest rate is a price like any other, matching the supply of something to the demand for it. In this case the supply is savings and the demand is funds for investment. So, if the public decide that they want to increase the amount of money they are saving they put it in a bank. A business, on the other hand, which wants to borrow cash to invest in a new factory, must go to the bank and borrow this money.

The interest rate matches the two sides of this transaction. When people save they are, essentially, postponing spending today for spending tomorrow. The banks offer interest to savers so they can encourage them to deposit their money with them and, thus, give the banks money to loan out to businesses for investment. When people decide to save the banks don’t need to offer such a high incentive to deposit so can afford to offer lower interest rates. These lower interest rates are passed on to the businesses. They see that the cost of borrowing from a bank has fallen so they borrow to fund investment projects, such as new factories, which will not produce a return in the short run but will in the future. The signal has passed, via the interest rate, from the savers who wish to postpone their spending, to businesses who will now borrow this money to cater for the future spending.

So far so good. Savings equal investment. And when people decide they want to spend rather than save they pull their money out of the banks which forces them to offer higher interest rates to attract loanable funds. These higher rates are, as before, passed onto business which sees the signal that people are spending their money now so investment spending on future projects is stopped.

But then the monetary authority steps in. In the UK it is the Bank of England, in the US the Federal Reserve, in the EU the European Central Bank, and there are as many around the world as there are currencies to be issued. Say, for example, that the Federal Reserve decides that it wants low interest rates to spur investment and economic growth, exactly, in fact, what it is doing now. It does this through what are called ‘Open Market Operations’. The Fed offers to buy securities from banks and buys them with money created out of thin air. It’s that simple.

But this intervention destroys the interest rates ability to balance saving and investment and the two things rapidly tumble out of kilter. This is where it hits the fan.

The banks are now awash with cash and can go merrily lending out to anyone they like whether they can pay it back or not (especially if, as in the US, they are under Congressional pressure to lend to poor families). Indeed, interest rates are so low that to make a profit they may be forced to lend to just the sorts of marginal borrowers least likely to be able to pay it back.

Business, meanwhile, sees these low interest rates and begins borrowing to invest assuming that people are saving to spend in future. They may decide to build units in places like Michigan assuming that they will be bought in a few years when people have decided to start spending again.

But people are already spending. The lower interest rates mean there is no incentive for them to save as they will see no reward for it. So they go out and spend and, encouraged by the low interest rates, they borrow and run up massive credit card bills and take out mortgages at 6 times their salary.

The economy is, by now, being constantly pumped up by continuing injections of new money. But eventually the penny drops. The central bank raises interest rates. Business can no longer borrow to fund investment. People begin saving thanks to these higher interest rates and, coupled with a fall in consumer borrowing, another source of income for business dries up. We now have a recession.

That, in a nutshell, is the theory. How does it stack up in practice?

A recent book by Thomas E Woods, ‘Meltdown’, applies the theory to the US and shows how the property bubble (like the dot com bubble before it) was inflated then popped by the loose monetary policy of Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve.

But the theory doesn’t just hold for the US. In Britain too we’ve had a long period of historically low interest rates. Between 1993 and 2001, interest rates averaged 6%. From 2002 to 2008 they averaged 4.5%. This prompted corporate borrowing in the UK to balloon from £99 billion in 2003 to £269 billion in 2008. Consumer debt also rocketed to more than £1.4 trillion. Then interest rates rose from 4.5% in July 2006 to 5.75% in July 2007; right when the crisis began.

Much has been left out here, notably the role of the inevitable inflation which follows the credit expansion in prompting central banks to raise interest rates (the RPI index rose from 2.6% in April 2006 to 4.8% in March 2007 prompting the Bank of England’s rise). We’ve also not looked at how the credit expansion especially effects the capital goods industries, such as manufacturing (think of LDV Vans which collapsed in June) or building (the housing construction market declined by 13% in 2008) which thrive on cheap borrowing but suffer disproportionately in the credit contraction.

So we have, perhaps, an answer to our first question. We can also answer another question of why Austrian Theory is paid little attention by monetary managers; Shifting the blame from greedy bankers, mysterious declines in business confidence or inherent flaws in capitalism and placing responsibility squarely with the mangers of the national currency is a sure way to earn the opposition of those very same managers. For an answer to the second question, how stop this happening again, Ill return next week.

To check out the book 'Meltdown' please refer to: http://blog.mises.org/archives/009387.asp

My Big Fat, Big Tent Republican Family

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:29:00 -0500

written by Joseph Winberry

I am a Republican. I have always been a Republican. I was probably born with an Elephant bumper sticker on my bum.

I have a library of Republican and conservative literature. My dream date is a stroll through Central Park with Ann Coulter. I think I would look good in a pair of Goldwater glasses.

Having said this, one could probably deduce that I have Republican parents. I do. I have two strong, Reagan Republican parents. They believe in a strong military, less taxes and an effective and efficient government. Yes my parents are conservatives but that doesn’t mean that they agree on everything.

My parents have different interests, goals and values. Why would their ideology be any more identical?

My father is a part time evangelist. He is strongly pro-life, opposed to gay marriage and civil unions and owns more than a couple of Bibles.

My mother is a full time student and former retail store manager. She believes a woman has the right to choose, supports civil unions for gay Americans and enjoys a glass of wine every now and then. I live with very different Republicans. My father is a member of the Religious Right. He believes in the Bible and thinks that America should retain its values; through legislation if necessary. My mother is a practicing Catholic who believe in social choice for those who believe differently than herself. She wants her leaders to be tough on crime and criminals; terror and terrorists; and thieves and thievery.

Its as if my house is a petri dish or a social experiment. Am I being punked, Ashton?

My parents’ views form the big tent that the GOP has been harping about lately. However the party needs to ensure that its words are backing its actions.

A recent CNN opinion poll brought back grave news for big tent Republicans. Purists, those who want hard core conservatives running everywhere, have an eight point lead over those who want to win the election with a center-right coalition.

Recent news should prove to you why this is disastrous for moderate and conservative Republicans alike. New York’s twenty-third congressional district spreads across a third of Upstate New York. It borders Canada and has been in Republican hands since the mid nineteenth century. The result of November election changed all that.

The Republican Party nominated a liberal named State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava to replace longtime incumbent and centrist John McHugh after he was brilliantly plucked from the ranks of Congress to be a part of Obama’s cabinet.

The Democratic Party nominated Bill Owens, a moderate liberal businessman. While Owens was a good candidate, Scozzafava was expected to win without much drama. However, that was until the emergence of Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman.

Hoffman, a failed Republican candidate, ran as the third party nominee and positioned himself as the conservative alternative to the liberal GOP nominee. National conservatives quickly jumped on the Hoffman band wagon and the fiscally conservative Club for Growth (called the “Club for Democratic Growth” by former Republican Congressman Tom Davis) endorsed his candidacy.

Scozzafava was forced out of the race after many of her supports joined Hoffman. She then turned around and endorsed and campaigned for the Democrat nominee.

The result? Bill Owens has become the first Democrat to represent the twenty-third since Lincoln lived in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue.

While I agree that Scozzafava had socially liberal views and was an ally of local labor, her views were far closer to that of the Twenty-third than Hoffman’s ideology. This split in the GOP put a damper on an election that had been a boon for other Republicans across the country. Now instead of having a congressman who supports the GOP eighty percent of the time, sixty or fifty percent of the time, New York 23rd has a congressman who will vote with the GOP twenty or thirty percent of the time.

Ronald Reagan once said, “if we agree on 80% of the issues you're 80% my friend, not 20% my enemy." This is the policy that the Republican Party must deploy today.

A Republican candidate running in New York City will not have a one hundred percent rating from the American Conservative Union. Neither will a Republican candidate in Florida, California, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The GOP must admit, accept and run moderates where they can elect moderates and conservatives where they can elect conservatives.

I am encouraged by strong moderate Republicans running in state wide races in California, Illinois, Delaware and Connecticut as well as other states. The GOP has a long way to go to rebuilding the party but as long as conservatives make room for their moderate brethren, Republicans can be the national party again.

Moderates and Conservatives get along in my family. It should work in the national party as well.

Now get out there and build that tent.

Maeghen Hates Guns :: A personal opinion shouldn't be a law

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:45:00 -0500

written by MLM

"How do you like these bear arms?"

My dictating personal belief is that personal opinions should never be laws. Some people refer to me as a liberal in this sense but I view it as a true conservative statute. This world is too politically sensitive and incredibly selfish especially in this new Obama era. Citizens are demanding bailouts for just about anything, discounts for their torn up old cars that they chose not to maintain, free healthcare, and to top it all off lower taxes (oh the irony!). When one person views something is bad they seem to automatically drive to the notion that it should be illegal. Abortion, Gay Marriage, and Political Activism as a proposed hate crime are just a few of the current and ongoing popular topics. I wrote a piece in early of 2009 on the election of Barack Obama and the sale of guns titled “Daddy’s got a gun”. Now, my father was the inspiration for this piece as my parent’s gun collection grew from antiques to actual working guns. These purchases were driven by the thought that Obama would repeal the second amendment right. Now, I know you’re thinking Maeghen you are all over the place right now, what point are you getting at? But don’t worry it will all be tied together shortly.

Last week, I took a stress vacation from my life in New York City back to my comfy and beautiful DC suburb and found myself at a gun range. I have always stated that guns terrify me and I wish not to have one in my home. A lot of people have given me grief over this view and fear so when my father asked my brother to go to the gun range with him last Friday night, I decided why not I give it try? My brother was hesitant in my tagging along saying that a) I do not like guns and b) I am often too silly in situations where I feel uncomfortable and worried about me in that type of serious environment. I laughed it off and said “giggles and a silly outlook on life should not be prohibited from a gun range.”

When I arrived at the gun range and started to walk back, the shots were firing off like fireworks and it was not an enjoyable light show. For the next 15 minutes I jumped at every shot, I was laughing uncontrollably with slight tears all the while trying build up the courage to maybe touch a gun. I kept saying “give me a minute” and was hoping that I would overcome my fear and hate of guns. Thirty minutes later it was time to leave. The entire time I stood in one spot with my jacket still on, if you were on the outside looking in you would have thought I was in a freezer; I was a total ice statute.

Later that night my brother said to me “Maeghen, well how did it feel to be the nerd at the dance for the first time in your life? You locked up the moment we walked in there. (Begin high pitched mocking tone) But I don’t know how to dance!” From that comment, you can tell it is completely out of character for me to not try new things especially things that I see as challenges. This fear of guns that I have I do not know where it comes from, maybe too much Law and Order, but I view it as a challenge. So where is the point of this whole story? I hate guns. I hate guns so much that I was a totally different person around them. I hate guns so much that I will not even touch an unloaded one. But you know who is a supporter of the NRA and an even bigger supporter of the Second Amendment? I am. I believe in the people’s rights and I believe that guns are a necessary part of our society (well, when they are in the right hands). Just because I do not like something does not mean everyone should be stripped of it. I ask you to evaluate your views and how they affect you personally. Then look at how they affect society. You might find some of your opinions may just be personal, fears that you might have, but to others they aren’t fears they are necessities, they are their life.

You can read her previous related article 'Daddy's Got a Gun' here: http://www.reagansauce.com/apps/blog/show/976224-daddy-s-got-a-gun

Bill Maher - American Idiot

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:25:00 -0500

written by John Phelan

The Constitution of the United States opens with the words “We the People”. It doesn’t say ‘We the Government’ or ‘We the Politicians” or ‘We the Experts From Ivy League Universities’. From its very inception the government of the US was based on Locke’s idea of the consent of the governed.

Clearly someone needs to explain this to TV comic Bill Maher. A few weeks ago he described the US as a “stupid country”. In response to the flood of opposition he got to this he responded on the Huffington Post blog.

Maher rattled off a list of facts proving the stupidity of the average American that would do the smuggest European proud. Ignorance of American constitutional arrangements, basic science and elementary history were just some of the nuggets trotted out to prove it. Maher asked “And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy?”

Well if you believe in We the People then yes, that’s exactly the sort of people you want weighing in. It is We the People, after all, who will end up footing the bill for whatever healthcare measure is eventually churned out by Congress. These idiots that Maher has such contempt for are hard working taxpayers. Before the elites can do a single solitary thing they must first confiscate the resources to do it from the earnings of these idiots hard work. To simply take their money and then deny them any say in how it is spent is nothing less than legalized robbery. The cry of the American Revolution was “No taxation without representation”. We can only conclude that Maher would have fought with the redcoats at Lexington.

A famous Republican, Abraham Lincoln, once described "government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Maher unashamedly believes in only two of these; government of the people for the people as he views the average American (though, one guesses, not himself) as too dumb to participate in government by the people.

Maher concluded his tirade by saying “And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about.”

But Ronald Reagan nailed this, discussing the American tradition of democracy, in his 1964 speech to the Republican convention; “This idea? that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-smart-president_b_253996.html

Dear Obama :: November 16, 2009

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:51:00 -0500

written by KLK

Dear President Obama,

On Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 9:00 pm EST, the D.C. Beltway Sniper of Fall 2002 fame was put to death by lethal injection. Good riddance. I must commend you for not thinking that you needed to voice your opinion on this matter.

I remember the insanity and the fear that gripped the region when John Allen Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo went on their shooting rampage. High school activities were cancelled (including my senior year Homecoming football game!) and elementary children had to run from their drop off vehicle to get into school safely—it was an all around scary story.

As the execution loomed near, I begin to wonder whether Muhammad really deserved the death penalty, or if he was as mentally incapacitated as his lawyers alleged. As I pondered it, I suddenly flashed to the new “hate crime” bill that the Senate approved that would expand the current hate crimes law. I thought, “What makes anyone shooting someone else more “wrong” than another?”

I understand why everyone thinks that stiffer hate crime legislation is necessary—however I would argue that to say it is “more wrong” to beat up someone because of their religion, sexual orientation, color of their skin, or gender (etc.) is discrimination. In the hypothetical, if I was walking down the street and was beat up by someone (anyone, it doesn’t matter) why should the punishment for that be different than if a homosexual woman was beat up? The crimes are the same.

I think that the failure of the justice system now is that we have judges like Sonya Sotomayor who believes in “sympathizing” with the defendant. If the defendant had just grown up in a poor neighborhood and didn’t know better, somehow that crime is far less heinous than someone whose crime was hate motivated.

In reality, anyone who commits a violent crime has some sort of hatred in their heart—why else would they think it acceptable to violently assault another human being?

With the passing of this legislation, we have opened our selves up to further stratification in the justice system. All violent crimes should be treated equally. Instead of the “temporary insanity” plea, it should be “guilty by insanity”. Just because some people don’t have the self control to contain their emotions doesn’t mean they get to say they are “insane” and have a lesser punishment.

Does this mean that a murderer of a homosexual can say they are “more of a murderer” than someone who just committed murder? Does this mean that someone who rapes a Black woman is “more of a rapist” that if they raped a White woman (if the rapist held some contempt for the specific race they committed the crime against)?

No one is considered “more of a _insert violent crime conviction here_” than someone else. A felon is a felon all the same.

If you commit a violent crime, the punishment should be the same if you came from a white collar family or a blue collar family. The punishment should be the same if your Black, White, Hispanic; it should be the same if your homosexual or heterosexual; it should be the same if you’re a man or a woman; it should just be the same.

The fact that a victim was of a certain race or sexual orientation is immaterial when looking at the crime that took place. Yes, it is extremely unfortunate that someone would be singled out because of their race, religion, etc, but the fact is that all victims suffer the same. Homicide victims suffer the same fate, so what does it matter what their characteristics were in life? What does it matter why the perpetrator committed the crime? The perpetrator committed the violent crime that resulted in death.

The reason behind why someone commits a violent crime, in my opinion, is obsolete. The fact of the matter, and what they should be judged on, is that they committed the crime. They decided, for whatever reason, to attack someone. An attack is an attack.

All punishment for violent crimes should be equal. At the end of the day, the victims are all equal in their suffering. A Catholic victim of a violent rape suffers just as much as a Muslim victim. A Black man beaten for his wallet suffers just as much as a Hispanic man beaten for his wallet. A homosexual man murdered just because he is gay is just as dead as a pretty heterosexual woman who was murdered because she was pretty. And all of their attackers should suffer the same fate.

I urge you to realize that this type of legislation doesn’t deter anything—it just makes the criminal justice system even more problematic.

All victims should be equal as they have suffered immensely and equally. All perpetrators who commit violent crimes should be treated equally because violence is just plain wrong.

I hope you can understand that all crimes are equal and that this legislation doesn’t make the suffering of the victims any better.

Respectfully,

Kate

Mea Culpa

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:53:00 -0500

written by John Phelan

I find it very difficult to say anything bad about the Republican party. After all, this is the party which was founded to eliminate the original sin of the United States; slavery. It is the party which fought the racist Jim Crow laws of the southern Democrats and pushed, against opposition from Democrats in Congress, for an anti lynching bill. It is the party which, through Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, stopped the onward march of collectivism, proved Marx’s ‘laws of motion’ to be the fantasies they were and defended the liberal freedoms of the enlightenment.

But the GOP is going to have to offer up a few mea culpa’s. The mid terms of 2010 and the Presidential election in 2012 are likely to be focused on the dire state of the American economy. If the GOP are to fight the spendaholic suicide of the Democrats in the White House and Congress they need to make a confession; they are partly responsible.

In 2001 the American economy was reeling from the twin shocks of the bursting of the dot com bubble in stocks and the 9/11 attacks. As a new book by Charles K Rowley and Nathanael Smith* shows, during the 1980’s the tight monetary policy of Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve offset the loose fiscal policy of the Reagan deficits. In the 1990s, by contrast, the loose monetary policy of the Greenspan Fed was offset by the tight fiscal policy of the Congressional Republicans. “So, in the two decades before 2000”, Rowley and Smith write, “fiscal and monetary policies tended to offset each other, and were never both expansionary at the same time.”

In reaction to the shocks of 2001 this was changed. Bush Jnr embarked on a massive program of Keynesian stimulus spending. From a budget surplus of $236 billion in Clinton’s last year in office the Federal budget plunged into deficit to the tune of $413 billion in 2004. As is commonly held, this was not the result of tax cuts. As Rowley and Smith point out “Tax revenues and social insurance contributions in 2007, at $13,866 per capita, were higher than their 2000 levels”. From 1992 Federal spending per capita held steady at $12,500 per annum. From 2001 it began climbing by 2.45% per annum climbing to nearly $15,000 in 2008....Dick Cheney defended the ballooning deficit with the ludicrous assertion that “Reagan proved deficits don't matter”. But, as we’ve seen, Reagan’s deficits were offset by the monetary tightness of the Federal Reserve. No such restraint was offered by Alan Greenspan. Over the course of 2001 the Fed Funds Rate was repeatedly slashed from 6.25% to 1.75%.

These Keynesian mistakes led directly to the current mess. From mid 2004 Greenspan began trying to mop up some of the money he had sprayed around to soften the landing of 2001. By mid 2006 the Fed Funds Rate was back up over 5% and many Americans, who had taken on the adjustable rate mortgages Greenspan himself had recommended in early 2004, found themselves unable to keep up repayments. The rest, as they say, is history.

Out of simple honesty the GOP needs to acknowledge the disastrous economic policies of the Bush administration. But aside from offering up a dose of humility which could be a welcome tonic to the hubris and arrogance of Obama, Pelosi and Co, this would offer an opportunity for the Republicans. When looked at more closely we see an object lesson in the downside of crude Keynesianism and a warning of a grim future stemming directly from this administrations woefully misguided policies.

Bush’s expansionary fiscal stance was mild compared to Obama’s eye watering $1.6 trillion deficit forecast this year. The Fed Funds Rate, at a range of between 0% and 0.25%, is lower than even Greenspan dared go. And we saw where that got us. The recession of 2001 – 2002 was one of the shallowest on record but this was bought with Keynesian policies at the price of the greater meltdown we face now. But then Keynes himself, the intellectual giant so much back in vogue, simply shrugged his shoulders when faced with this and famously declared “In the long run we are all dead”.

Well Keynes might be but we are stuck with the fallout of such glib, short termist thinking. The philosopher George Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Remembering the doomed Keynesian policies of the Bush administration might be difficult for Republicans going into elections. But if the American economy is going to return to the growth and job creation which is the source of real, long term prosperity, the failure of these policies needs to be highlighted. And if they can prove they have learned from their mistakes, the GOP might be best placed to make the case.

* ‘Economic Contractions in the United States – A Failure of Government’ by Charles K Rowley and Nathanael Smith