Apr 25

Was the Civil Rights Movement a Struggle for More Government?

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Trusters of expansive, intrusive government have spread the notion that the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s were struggles for more government.

In fact, the Civil Rights movement was a guerilla, libertarian victory over socialism and government supremacy.

When Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white bus passenger in December 1955, she was defying the state.

The Montgomery, Alabama bus line was operated according to Alabama State laws which required commuter buses to be segregated by race.

The famed Montgomery bus boycott could not have been successful without the courage of black cab owners in the private sector. Montgomery taxis, like buses, were subject to segregation laws, meaning there were white cab companies and black cab companies. The 18 black cab companies in Montgomery stepped up to pick up and transport blacks for only a dime apiece (the same as bus fare).

Ironically it was the arrogance of the state that made the bus boycott truly successful. Immediately after Rosa’s arrest, the Montgomery police commissioner announced that 2 motorcycle cops would follow each bus the following Monday, “to protect anyone who wished to ride” from “goon squads.” Ironically, this announcement had the effect of convincing some waverers to join the bus boycott.

That Monday, virtually every black commuter in Montgomery found other transportation to and from work. Many car-pooled; others walked great distances; others took the discounted cab rides.

Government leaders were outraged at the defiance. City officials demanded that the black cab companies comply with the city code, which set a minimum cab fare of 45 cents per passenger. In response, the black churches organized a network of volunteer carpools.

The Montgomery bus boycott lasted a year, during which there were bombings and harassment on a grand scale by police. Cops followed black carpoolers and ticketed drivers for trivial offenses. Some black car owners were cited for petty nonmoving infractions such as weak brakes or maladjusted headlights. City wreckers towed the cars away at owners’ expense, to city-approved shops for repairs billed to the drivers.

On October 30, 1956, almost a year after Rosa’s arrest, the City of Montgomery went to local court seeking wide-ranging injunction “to stop the operation of the car pools or transportation systems growing out of the bus boycott,” and to collect damages of $15,000 for loss of tax revenues. A local Montgomery judge (the same judge who convicted Rosa Parks of a crime for refusing to comply with the government’s segregation program) was preparing to issue a decree declaring the boycott an illegal conspiracy.

However the court proceedings were interrupted by phone calls from Washington reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court had invalidated Rosa Park’s arrest and struck down Alabama’s bus segregation laws as unconstitutional.

Source: Jane Stevenson, “Rosa Parks Wouldn’t Budge,” 23 American Heritage 2 (Feb. 1972).

Apr 25

NASA again caught faking climate data: this time the Agency has altered sea level figures

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Again, the tireless data analyst Tony Heller (Steven Goddard) has found that NASA is altering climate figures to help the government promote its global-warming-hysteria agenda. See here.

In 1983, the pro-government climate hysteric James Hansen (considered one of the founding fathers of the manmade-global-warming-hysteria movement) published data showing the seas were rising.

But NASA must have thought the data wasn’t startling enough. The Agency has altered the data to make it seem that the seas are rising even faster!

Apr 24

The reality of socialism: Hugo Chavez’ daughter is worth $4 billion in a nation of starving slaves

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Socialists promise equality but deliver slavery, impoverishment, poverty and heartbreak. Gavin McInnes writes about attending a recent rally for socialist Bernie Sanders. The brain-dead attendants all expect the impossible.

McInnes writes about Venezuela, where the late Hugo Chavez imposed a vast socialist remake for his impoverished and long-suffering subjects.

After 20 years of socialism, Venezuelans are suffering, starving and struggling for food, energy, medicine and basic goods.

Meanwhile Hugo Chavez’s daughter is reported to be worth $4 billion. See here.

Apr 22

Government ice measurement agency caught altering measurements to make 5-year-old ice appear to be at “its smallest level” ever recorded

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Tony Heller, the dogged data analyst who blogs as Steven Goddard, has previously caught the NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) cheating, just as Arctic sea ice extent was about to cross above the 1979-2000 average.

The NSIDC changed their measurement system to hide the fact that Arctic ice was growing to above-average levels.

Now Heller has caught the NSIDC cheating again. The agency has been promoting a claim that 5-year-old-plus ice is disappearing in the Arctic.

Heller had been carefully monitoring the agency’s weekly data reports, and noticed that just before the agency’s charts for ‘4-year-old’ ice was about to turn 5 years old (and show that 5-year-old ice is growing, not declining), the agency altered their measurement system! See here.

Apr 21

Nearly 900 Superfund sites are abandoned military facilities

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Think capitalism harms the environment and more government would cure the problem?

Karen De Coster of Lewrockwell.com writes that most of the worst environmental disasters in America are attributable to the government. See here.

According to a 2010 federal report, nearly 900 Superfund sites in the U.S. are abandoned military facilities or facilities that provided materials to or otherwise supported the military. The potential liability from connecting people’s health disorders to the toxic pollution they were exposed to at those hundreds of facilities could mean a staggering cost.

Apr 21

‘Peer Review’ has Collapsed as a Tool for Ensuring the Validity of Science

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With so much government money flowing into ‘top-tier’ research universities, the peer-review process has virtually collapsed.

More observers are wakening to the fact that the ‘science’ which appears in high-level scholarly journals tends to favor government positions.

William A. Wilson, in an article entitled “Scientific Redress” in the current issue of First Things (see here) notes that:

If peer review is good at anything, it appears to be keeping unpopular ideas from being published.

What they do not mention is that once an entire field has been created—with careers, funding, appointments, and prestige all premised upon an experimental result which was utterly false due either to fraud or to plain bad luck—pointing this fact out is not likely to be very popular. Peer review switches from merely useless to actively harmful.

Wilson points to replicability studies from a group of cancer researchers. Only a dismal 11 percent of the preclinical cancer research they examined could be validated after the fact. And the “bad” papers that failed to replicate were, on average, cited far more often than the papers that did!

“The problem with ­science,” writes Wilson, “is that so much of it simply isn’t.”

Apr 21

91 % of Florida Atlantic University students vote for resolution expanding ‘free speech zone’ to the entire campus

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Socialists, elitists and government supremacists have turned America’s colleges into dens of pro-government sentiment and ideological discrimination. Throughout the past 25 years, hundreds of colleges have imposed ‘free speech zones’ to limit anti-government speech and thought.

Now the student body at Florida Atlantic University (with 91 % student support) has voted to restore freedom of speech to the entire campus. See here.

Apr 21

American businesses are in decline due to overregulation

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Trusters of government have been pouring on regulations since the 1990s. Here is a Washington Post story about the decline of American entrepreneurship.

Fewer business are launching. More are leaving, liquidating or dying. The average age of businesses is getting older (as young people stop starting businesses due to onerous licensing requirements).

Thus, the efforts of many government trusters to ‘fight the rich and powerful’ through business regulation have backfired. Small businesses are slowly fading, while long-established businesses are taking up a larger share of the economy.

Apr 21

More sad news for Venezuela: Government to ration electrical power

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Venezuela, a South American country with dynamic people and the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has suffered under the curse of socialism for two decades.

After the Venezuelan government took a hard-line turn toward socialism in the 1990s, the government took over most industries.

Now the government of the oil-rich nation can’t provide enough electricity to serve its long-suffering slaves . . ., er, ‘citizens.’ See here.

Apr 20

Federal employees get 8 paid weeks off per year

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Federal “workers” are generally paid 1-1/2 to 2 times what workers in the private sector are paid for the same type of work. Yet this fact greatly understates the luxury, power and security of federal employment.

Private employees are lucky to have 2 weeks of paid vacation per year. Federal workers with seniority get more than 5 weeks paid vacation plus almost 3 weeks sick leave (which many manage to take as vacation time, illegally).

It is a common practice for federal workers to take countless 3-day weekends each year.

The government also gives its workers 10 PAID holidays each year.

This gives federal employees some 8 weeks off per year, paid.

Source: Marin L. Gross, “National Suicide” (2009) page 80-81.