May 13

STANFORD AND DARTMOUTH PROFESSORS ACCUSED OF VIOLATING CAMPAIGN-FINANCE LAWS FOR STUDYING MONTANA VOTER TURNOUT!

montana judge voter guide

American voters are best informed when every voice is free and the mails and airwaves are filled with divergent views, forcefully expressed. Under the First Amendment, every American has the right to write, speak, broadcast and publicize his political views without government interference or permission. Recently, however, an army of well-meaning but misguided “reformers” have sought to place all manner of government restrictions on how much campaign advertising and broadcasting we are allowed to produce. Government agents have tried to ban everything from handing out flyers in parking lots to producing videos attacking politicians.

Now we read that three professors studying voter turnout in last year’s Montana judicial elections have been accused of violating campaign-finance laws just for sending out a research postcard (shown above)! The three political-science professors, Kyle Dropp of Dartmouth and Jonathan Rodden and Adam Bonica of Stanford, were seeking to find out whether Montana voters would become more engaged in the state’s judicial elections if they were informed that judicial candidates were identified along a “conservative” or “liberal” spectrum.

In Montana, state supreme-court judges are elected and nonpartisan. Candidates for the court appear on the ballot without any party designation. The professors wanted to see if providing information regarding candidates’ “conservative” or “liberal” leanings might influence voters to become more interested in Montana’s judicial elections. To study this, the professors mailed research postcards in 2014 to a sample of Montana voters in which 4 candidates for the State Supreme Court were identified along a political spectrum as liberal- or conservative-leaning.

Now the Montana State “Commissioner of Political Practices” has formally accused the professors of violating the State’s campaign-finance laws! The research postcards—with their designations indicating the candidates’ “conservative” or “liberal” identifications—are accused of being political advertising!

But which judicial candidates were the postcards supposedly “advertising?”

The Commissioner claims: “When it was mailed into the strongly Democratic precincts it was for [liberal judge candidate Mike] Wheat, because they put Wheat right on the line graph right next to Barack Obama,” Motl said. “When it was mailed into Republican precincts it was for [conservative judge candidate Lawrence] VanDyke because they put VanDyke right next to Romney.”

The State Commissioner of Political Practices has even included a claim that the professors violated THEIR OWN colleges’ human-subjects-research policies by failing to get proper approval from the institutional review boards of Stanford and Dartmouth—a claim far outside the Commissioner’s jurisdiction and outside even the jurisdiction of the State of Montana!

The Commissioner has referred the three out-of-state professors to the local county attorney for criminal prosecution! In the (likely) event the county attorney declines to prosecute the allegations, the Commissioner will, according to news reports, try to “negotiate a settlement or file a civil complaint.”

Stay tuned!

May 12

Government has repeatedly been caught paying for pro-government journalism

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Most observers are aware that news reporters at major media outlets tend to favor the government. Many are not aware, however, that government agencies have been caught secretly paying for pro-government news coverage and commentary. In 2005, the George W. Bush Administration was caught paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to columnists to get those columnists to write favorable opinion pieces about government policies. In some cases such government payments have been concealed or channeled through public relations firms or other difficult-to-track channels. Government agencies have at times been caught creating fake news stories and even secretly paying newspapers large amounts of money to publish such stories. Almost every inquiry into such matter reveals them to be widespread.

In a string of scandals sometimes grouped together under the name ‘Operation Mockingbird,’ the CIA was found to have spent many millions of dollars to influence news coverage throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. The CIA recruited leading American journalists to present news in accordance with the government’s views on international affairs. The CIA even interfered with foreign election campaigns and funded student and cultural groups.

News leaders at the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek and CBS have been described as “owned” by this large-scale CIA operation. (The Graham family, which owned the Washington Post, were in charge of this immense network). Some 3,000 individuals were paid by this program during the 1950s alone. A 1976 U.S. Senate investigation revealed that government payments designed to control news coverage and commentary were costing taxpayers around $265 million per year at that time. Today, the true depths of the government’s control and “ownership” of major news outlets by such payments remains unknown. It is safe to say, however, that investigations into it have merely scratched the surface, and that such government payments to control “the news” is ongoing.

SOURCES:

See Suzanne Goldenberg, Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid, The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/29/pressandpublishing.usnews (accessed 4/26/2015) (revealing that the “Bush administration was confronted with fresh evidence of a far-reaching clandestine campaign to influence public opinion yesterday after a third conservative commentator admitted receiving payments for championing its policies.” “Michael McManus, a newspaper columnist, was paid up to $10,000 to praise the administration’s marriage initiative,” Maggie Gallagher “received $21,500 from the department of health and human services, and $20,000 from the justice department for championing the initiative in her syndicated newspaper columns,” and “Armstrong Williams, a conservative African-American columnist, had been paid $240,000 by the education department to champion the administration’s controversial policies in his print, radio and television outlets.”).
See id Goldenberg (noting that columnist McManus’ “fees were approved by a branch of the department of health and human services, and were funnelled through the Lewin Group, a consultancy firm,” and columnist Armstrong Williams “was paid through Ketchum PR, the public relations firm also involved in producing fake “news pieces” last year that touted the administration’s prescription drug bill. Some US television stations put the clips straight on the air.” )
See, e.g., Robert Perrucci & Earl Wysong, New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream? 234 (2008) (recounting that the U.S. Department of Education paid Ketchum PR $700,000 to promote the government’s No-Child-Left-Behind policy).
See Suzanne Goldenberg, Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid, The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/29/pressandpublishing.usnews (accessed 4/26/2015) (reporting that the G.W. Bush Administration “claimed that its use of a fake reporter, Karen Ryan, to sell its programmes, was an isolated incident . . . [but that it] now appears that such covert campaigns were widespread”).
See Suzanne Goldenberg, Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid, The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/29/pressandpublishing.usnews (accessed 4/26/2015) (reporting that the G.W. Bush Administration “spent more than $88m on public relations contracts last year – more than double the $37m it spent during Mr Bush’s first year in office. That brought the administration’s first-term spending on PR to $250m”).
in 1966, Ramparts magazine published an article revealing that the National Student Association was funded by the CIA. The United States Congress investigated the allegations and published a report in 1976.
Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire 137-38 (1979).
Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire (1979).
See Alex Constantine, Mockingbird: The Subversion of the Free Press by the CIA, first chapter of Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America 42. See also Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008).
Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities. April 1976. pp. 191–201.
Writing in The Rolling Stone in 2007, Carl Bernstein wrote “[t]he CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress.” THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php (accessed 5/12/2015).

May 11

Government health care regulation driving more people to do their own dental work.

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Health care is probably the most regulated industry in the world. Much of this regulation subsidizes demand without increasing supply, causing prices to rise. Consequently, health care costs have generally risen much faster than inflation. Now, more and more people are simply avoiding government “health care” altogether and seeking to treat themselves. Here is a story about the increasing number of people who have been driven away from the overregulation and high prices of government-approved dental care and are opting to do their own dental fillings.

If people were more free to purchase their own CAT scan machines, MRI machines and other medical devices, the prices of such technology would come down quickly. If people were free to make their own medical purchases over the counter without government-approved-doctor prescriptions, medicine prices would come down quickly. If people were free to seek health care from non-government-licensed doctors, health would greatly improve for most Americans.

May 10

Scientist discovers that government temperature data for Maine has been systematically altered

climate temps maine

Study the table above. We’ve all heard that government officials have been caught “adjusting” temperature history to make past temps look colder and recent temps look warmer in comparison. Now Mike Brakey, an engineering physicist and heat transfer specialist, has carefully tabulated certain “adjustments” that have been made by NOAA scientists who clearly altered official records between 2013 and 2014 for the state of Maine. Notice that the direction of change is entirely one-directional: temps in the past have been “adjusted” lower for past years.

Even more significantly, the adjustment trends INCREASE as one goes backward in time. Temps between 1895 and 1925 have been generally adjusted lower by 3 to 5 percent; while temps for the period between 1986 and 2014 have been adjusted lower only 0 to 1.3 percent.

These government adjustments have essentially rewritten Maine climate history.

But it’s a “consensus”; Don’t look into it. Nothing to see here.

May 09

Woops! Social Security now expected to be insolvent within 5 years.

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Here’s some big news. A review by Harvard and Dartmouth researchers has found that the Social Security Administration’s actuarial forecasts have been consistently overstating the financial health of the program’s trust funds since 2000.

Specifically, the agency has been ignoring evidence that Americans’ life expectancy has risen more than the agency has projected. A more realistic assessment–conducted with more accurate data from the private insurance industry–reveals that Social Security will have insufficient funds to pay out all its claims as soon as 2020–not 2031 as previously predicted.

May 09

The Tragedy in Baltimore: Too Much Government

police state ii

Baltimore has recently been in the news for riots, systemic police brutality and entrenched poverty. Trusters of state interference have sought to blame these tragedies on the private sector, or even on the “1 percent.” Economist John C. Goodman asks:
“Did Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, cause the breakdown of civil order in Baltimore? How about JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels and the world’s richest woman? Is she the cause of all the mayhem?”
Goodman points out:
1) Among the top 100 school districts in the country, Baltimore spending per student ranks number two – trailing only New York.
2) Baltimore spends $17,196 per student – an amount that would pay the tuition at some of the nation’s most exclusive private schools.
3) the Baltimore school system has about 1 teacher or staff person for every 8.3 students.
4) “Baltimore has the highest income and real estate taxes in the state of Maryland.”
5) As a result of this government intrusion and overregulation, “$125 million in taxable annual income in Baltimore vanished between 2009 and 2010,” “as people who create jobs leave the city.”

May 05

April 2015: Antarctic Sea Ice is at an ALL-TIME HIGH

antarctic sea ice

We are alerted to breaking news (May 2015) that a new record high for antarctic sea ice has been set for the month of April. (Beating last year’s record high.) Ice is now ABOVE AVERAGE VIRTUALLY ALL AROUND THE CONTINENT. The data comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

May 04

Central Planners Now Dominate Election Spending, While Claiming Elections Are Bought by Free-Market Capitalists

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There was a time, generations ago, when self-described “liberals” were the biggest proponents of free speech. This was probably because the speech and publications of “liberals” were historically singled out for censorship and persecution more than the speech of any other sector of the American population.

Today, the First Amendment’s protections of free speech and press are under seige by these same so-called liberals. In fact, they have built an immense war chest of money to be used to repeal the First Amendment. Frequently these central planners and socialists condemn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in CITIZENS UNITED V. F.E.C. and proclaim that the decision unleashed “floodgates” of “unlimited” political spending by business corporations.

The truth is exactly the opposite. Democrats outspent Republicans in the elections of 2014 (yet were generally trounced by Republicans). The website Opensecrets.org has released the latest (March 2015) data of the biggest-spending 100 organizations (combining unions, businesses, PACs and corporations). As you can see, the top 100 campaign spenders are overwhelmingly “liberal” and Democratic.

Apr 25

“Adjusted” temperature record to be examined by a team of distinguished scientists

climate change magazines

It has previously been reported in these pages that government agencies have been caught “adjusting” global temperatures upward in recent years and downward for past years to give a greater impression of recent global warming. Some “adjusting” may be warranted: thermometers and temperature measuring equipment have been moved, altered and improved in some cases. But a pattern has emerged suggesting that temps seem to have been altered to show drastic global warming.

According to THE TELEGRAPH, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.

At this time it appears that the five distinguished scientists include solid names of great respectability, including Terence Kealey, until recently vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham and Professor Roger Pielke Sr, a noted climatologist from the University of Colorado.

Professor Kealey is a brave academic who has harshly criticized government funding of scientific research. Pielke has been occasionally mentioned as a “skeptic” by global-warming alarmists.

Apr 24

Montana Legislature–dominated by “tea party” Republicans for a decade–passes budget MORE THAN DOUBLING State spending since 2011

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The state of Montana is often identified as a “red” western state dominated by libertarian-conservative voters. Its legislature meets only once every two years and legislative candidates tend to get elected upon promises to limit government. The past 3 legislative sessions have seen the most Republican-dominated chambers in Montana history.

Yesterday, April 23, 2015, the Montana House voted 86-14 to approve the state’s $10 billion, two-year budget.

By comparison, the 2011 legislature (also dominated by Republicans who claimed to want to “limit” government) passed a 2-year budget of 3.7 billion dollars ($1.747 billion in 2012 and $1.846 billion in 2013, according to Ballotpedia).