Sep 25
James Taylor of Forbes Magazine:
Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.
Sep 25
Publicly Owned universities are premised on two arguments: (1) that such schools meet the needs of the poor in ways that private schools do not, and (2) that such schools allow more free exchange of ideas in ways that private (often religious) schools do not.
Both claims have been shattered by known data. Government colleges (and government funding of colleges, through programs such as the Student Loan Program) have DECREASED THE PROPORTION OF POOR PEOPLE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. See here, here and here. In fact, the true poor must labor in fast-food restaurants and on construction sites to pay for college life for the children of the middle class.
And government (and government-funded) colleges now engage in wide-scale discrimination and repression of anti-government thought.
Dixie State College (a public college in St. George, Utah) banned students from distributing flyers which criticized former President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara—because they “disparage[d]” and “mock[ed]” individuals.
On another occasion, a Dixie State administrator decided that the Young Americans for Liberty club’s “free speech wall” event would have to take place in the university’s unconstitutional “free speech zone,” comprising roughly 0.1 percent of campus. Neither the student-plaintiffs nor other administrators knew the free speech zone’s location, and it was not specified in any published university policy.
After a lawsuit, the University has backed down. See here.
Sep 25
Government’s slave-plantation-healthcare agenda continues. The Affordable Care Act has now triggered insurance rate hikes of between 22 and 34 percent in a single year for Montanans. See here.
Sep 24
by Roger Roots
All of us know that government officials love to pad their government temples of power with gleaming marble, oak and precious metals. I remember the first time I ever argued a case at the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. Upon first seeing the government building, I almost vomited on the sidewalk. The audacity and arrogance on display turned my stomach.
Now we learn that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has (again) spent extravagantly on “office” furniture. Over 90 million dollars; roughly $6,000 per EPA employee. See here.
The EPA doesn’t buy office furniture at Office Depot or Staples. They buy the very highest-end furniture available from the catalog at Herman Miller, Inc. Here is the link to that furniture supplier for those interested in seeing what a thousand-dollar office chair looks like.
Sep 24
A new Bloomberg News Service poll finds that 31 percent of Americans view the government’s climate-change claims as a “total hoax.” See here.
These figures suggest that the government will have an uphill battle rounding up, arresting or otherwise punishing such vast numbers. The government would need to build concentration camps for 100 million Americans.
Sep 22
Government trusters seeking to further socialize America, to raise taxes even further, to abolish (private-sector) money in politics, and further empower government must conceal certain discomforting facts. Government workers are paid at least one-and-one-half-times what private workers are paid for the same work. (In fact, careful analysis which factors in vacation time and benefits shows that figure is much higher than two times as much.)
Now a report about New York City’s school custodians shows “Custodians took home an average pay of $109,467 in the 2013-14 school year — and 634 of the city’s 799 custodians earned more than $100,000 in salary and overtime during that time. See the NY Post report here.
Sep 21
The average person in the world is at least 4 times more likely to be killed by his own government than by any foreign government, any criminal, or any terrorist.
Statistically, one’s own government is always the greatest source of potential danger to one’s life. For years, Gallup has been asking the question: “Do you think the federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens?” For almost 10 years, 40 percent or more of Americans have responded “yes.” Now, in 2015, 49 percent, ALMOST A MAJORITY, wisely state that the U.S. government is an immediate threat. See here.
Gallup polling from the past month has also shown that 75 percent of Americans view their government as corrupt, see here, and half of Americans say the government regulates business too much, see here.
(Interestingly, only 21 percent say government regulates business too little. Claims by pro-government “campaign-finance reform” advocates that “the rich” are promoting deregulation against the wishes and sensibilities of the public are demonstrably untrue. The public WANT MORE DEREGULATION, as shown by consistent polling.)
Sep 19
Pictured above, the Jackson Glacier, taken at around its lowest point of the year, Sept. 13, 2015.
We at Lysander Spooner University are embarking on a continuing research project to study and photograph Montana or Wyoming glaciers each year from the same vantage points and dates of the calendar.
As many people know, various agencies of the government claim that human production of carbon dioxide is causing America’s glaciers to melt at accelerated rates. No one contends that the glaciers have not melted in the past century; but the government’s obvious motive to exaggerate the phenomenon begs for further inquiry.
The National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey each have produced web pages and imagery purporting to show glaciers much larger in previous decades (say, the 1940s or 1950s) than the same glaciers are today.
One glaring problem, however, is the fact that glaciers tend to melt continuously throughout each summer and rebuild during winter. Consequently, one can easily deceive viewers by showing a photo of a large glacier taken in the early summer of a past year juxtaposed against a photo of the same, much smaller glacier taken in the late summer of a recent year. The government’s “comparative” photo websites do not even try to match dates of the season. See here.
We picked a date that is reportedly the average date of first freeze in the town of East Glacier, Montana (bordering Glacier National Park)–September 13. As the date fell on a Sunday this year, it provided a great opportunity for Lysander Spooner University researchers to embark on a fun field trip.
We photographed the Jackson Glacier and other prominent glaciers and snowfields visible on the Going-To-The-Sun Highway inside GNP.
We hope to revisit GNP each year on or around the same week, and turn this research trip into an annual event. In the future we hope to include more glaciers, including some that require hiking into, and perhaps some outside GNP (such as those in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains or Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains).
Our long-term goal is to develop an accurate, continuing photo archive–always from the same week in September, when summertime melting has had its way with the glaciers of the northern Rockies.
Join us next year for a great time!
(Thanks to Kirsten Tynan for her wonderful photography.)
Sep 19
We previously reported that the University of California system–a government network subject to the free-speech provisions of the Constitution–was proposing a university-wide speech code that banned “intolerant” “expressions.” See here.
On Thursday, Sept. 17 (ironically, “Constitution Day”), the proposal was the subject of a large public meeting.
According to F.I.R.E. (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education):
The most worrying statements came from Regent Richard C. Blum, whose wife is United States Senator Dianne Feinstein. Blum said earlier in the meeting that “we’ve been too tolerant, too patient about all this for too long,” and continued:
I should add that over the weekend my wife, your senior Senator, and I talked about this issue at length. She wants to stay out of the conversation publicly but if we do not do the right thing she will engage publicly and is prepared to be critical of this university if we don’t have the kind of not only statement but penalties for those who commit what you can call them crimes [of speech], call them whatever you want. Students that do the things that have been cited here today probably ought to have a dismissal or a suspension from school. I don’t know how many of you feel strongly that way but my wife does and so do I.
Yes, a UC Regent flatly threatened the university with political consequences if it failed to craft a “tolerance” policy that would punish—and even expel—its violators.
See F.I.R.E.’s discussion here.
Government colleges and universities are increasingly repressive environments, dominated by socialist and pro-government ideology, where pro-market, individualist, and antigovernment sentiments are silenced.
Sep 19
Our masters in government repeatedly tell us we are to be “engaged” in politics. But when citizens “engage” in efforts to limit or rein in government–especially when such citizens become successful–they are increasingly subject to criminal prosecution and imprisonment.
In Missouri, a citizen activist named Ron Calzone, who bills himself as a “citizen lobbyist,” has been fined $1,000 by the Missouri Ethics Commission for failing to register as a lobbyist.
Calzone IS NOT A LOBBYIST in any normal sense. He does not get paid by anyone to “lobby” the legislature.
Increasingly, the act of . . . , well, activism, is becoming a crime; especially when one’s activism promotes criticism of the almighty state.
Read Reason Magazine’s description of the case (and other similar cases in other states) here.
