Feb 25

Federal Government Making Plans For Major Takeover of Internet

A dozen sources indicate that our “masters” in government in Washington are preparing to launch a major push for so-called “net neutrality” policies to regulate the internet. This socialist model will spread the stink and stain of government over the internet in a manner similar to the way governments have long controlled utilities.

If adopted, the net neutrality legislation/executive action will turn the internet over to government regulators in Chinese style.

For years, government supremacists have chaffed under the freedom of expression and discussion that prevails on the internet. Without controlling the internet, socialists will never be able to achieve their dream of slave-plantation-level thought and property control. Government insiders have been spreading a false claim that the internet is in danger of being monopolized by a small number of private firms who will then (in this fantasy dream world) keep out small, poor websites by discriminating in favor of well-funded websites.

Of course there is UTTERLY NO EVIDENCE OF SUCH A THREAT.marx_dees

Feb 25

Beware of Government-Funded Attacks on Privately-Funded Science

climatology_dees

The government-worshipping Salon.com website is reporting that certain manmade-global-warming-skeptical scientists who have testified before committees of Congress regarding the (non)threat of manmade climate change are now under investigation by the government for being nongovernmentally funded.

As most Lysander Spooner University students know, the vast majority of what passes for scientific research in the area of climate change is government funded and promoted. Government research money floods through the channels of scientific research, scientific journals and research-grant “peer review.” This explosion of government money produces a steady stream of alleged science which supports demands for more socialism and government power.

Salon.com is reporting that U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, recently sent letters to seven universities, requesting information on professors who have testified before Congress on global warming. The letters are designed to intimidate as much as to request information. They speak of “external funding” in a near-perjorative sense, suggesting that good, government-approved scientists should never accept private research grants or support.

Under particular fire is Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. According to Salon.com, “Soon claims that variations in the sun’s energy are likely to blame for global warming.” (Shocking!) “It turns out,” says the pro-government website, “that he has been paid over $1.2 million by the fossil fuel industry to have these views. He has also failed to disclose the conflict of interest in the majority of his scientific articles, according to the New York Times.”

Such language sounds as if Professor Soon has been accepting “fossil fuel industry” research support in secret and then deceiving scientific journals regarding such support. However, anyone familiar with scholarly publications knows that most of the journals do not request acknowledgments of all sources of funding in an author’s life, but merely request sources of funding that directly supported the study or studies being submitted for publication. This concerted effort to taint Professor Soon’s research can be viewed as part of a large-scale government agenda to discredit all but government-funded scientific research.

Of course, the vast majority of important scientific discoveries and inventions have come from private funding, while government-funded science is notoriously inefficient and unproductive. During the period when the Wright Brothers were privately inventing aviation, the U.S. military was directing hundreds of thousands of tax dollars into unsuccessful research aimed at producing a steam-powered airplane.

Feb 24

Dutch City Removes All Traffic Signs; Traffic Accidents Go Down

imagesWe were recently alerted by a lewrockwell.com essay about how traffic safety actually improves when traffic controls are decreased. American car traffic is tremendously overregulated; and there are way too many traffic cops on the roadways.

Within the Lewrockwell.com link is the mention of a Dutch city of 50,000 people, Drachten, which stripped its streets of all traffic signals and signs in the past decade.

Germany’s largest-circulation magazine, Der Speigel reported in 2006 that the number of accidents in Drachten “declined dramatically” after the open traffic design was implemented – See more at: http://alerts.motorists.org/nma-email-newsletter-issue-32/#sthash.Jfkp5K8S.dpuf

Feb 24

17,000 Federal employees made more than $200,000 last year

dd3s22

Statistically, a federal worker is now more likely to die than to quit. Federal employees are so overpaid that there are multiple books on the shelves of most bookstores on the topic of how to get a federal job.

Those who work in the federal government have hit the lottery. As the American middle class is drained of its wealth and it becomes harder to start businesses or earn a good living in the private sector, America’s wealth is rapidly moving into the public sector.

Now the National Journal reports that at least 17,000 federal workers made more than $200,000 from the taxpayers last year. America is increasingly a landscape of marble and oak-paneled government palaces surrounded by shanty towns and trailer parks occupied by the private sector.

Feb 24

Savers Continue To Be Punished

worship2_dees

If you save anything in modern America, you are an absolute fool. For years, the Federal Reserve Bank has set interest rates well below “natural” levels. (In a free lending market, private banks would tend to charge substantially more interest per dollar lent, and savers could expect substantially higher rates of return for keeping their savings with banks.)

Since the economic recession of 2008, the Federal Reserve has set interest rates at near zero. (Interest rates were already well below natural rates.) This is a powerful incentive to borrow, and a very powerful incentive NOT to save. On February 24, 2015, Fed Chair Janet Yellen announced that the Central Bank would not be hiking rates for the next couple quarters.

In practice, zero-percent interest rates mean that it COSTS BANKS MONEY TO HOLD PEOPLES’ SAVINGS. On the same day the Fed announced it would not raise interest rates, J.P. Morgan bank announced it will start charging its big clients to keep their money in savings.

Savers who keep their money in banks will increasingly find that those banks will CHARGE them fees rather than PAY any interest.

Feb 20

CLIMATOLOGIST RICHARD LINDZEN: GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SCIENCE ALWAYS TENDS TO BE BIASED IN FAVOR OF GOVERNMENT

mhikerDr. Richard Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist and retired Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In an important interview, Lindzen states (beginning around 7:20) that:

The trouble is all of us scientists are government employees—even if we’re working for private universities. All research is supported by the government. As such we’re very sensitive to what politicians say and believe. That’s a shortcoming.

You have to figure out how to fund science in a way that there are no incentives to artificially promoting things.
When you hear for instance a scientist saying ‘the science is settled,’ you know the person has stepped out of the science.
Whenever you see someone say—instead of answering arguments—‘how could so many people agree if it weren’t true?’ That should be a red flag.

Feb 20

Great Lakes “likely to have the most ice since records began,” says meteorologist

B7lVj98CcAEdXET

Meteorologist Joe d’Aleo has studied the weather of the Great Lakes for years. On February 20, 2015, d’Aleo stated that the current state of ice on the Great Lakes is likely greater than at any time since records began.

Feb 20

Medicare Has Cost Ten Times More Than Government Predicted

change4th_deesMedicare was pitched in 1965 as being economically responsible. Its promoters in Congress estimated that the Medicare bill would cost $1.1 billion for the following two years. The day after the bill was signed into law, its costs were widely estimated to be $6.5 billion over a decade. The House Ways and Means Committee said Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990.

But actual costs of Medicare in its first decade were double the estimates: $13.2 billion. And by 1990, Medicare had cost $98 billion, not $12 billion.

Today Medicare costs at least $457 billion PER YEAR–more than ten times the original estimates–even when inflation is factored in. These figures are from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s “President’s Budget: Historical Tables” (2010).

Feb 18

New report says sea level will likely rise by 11 to 21 inches around New York City by the 2050s

worship2_dees

Just as New York City and the U.S. eastern seaboard are experiencing record snow and cold, a panel of heavily-promoted (and undoubtedly massively government-funded) academics have released a report making typically hysterical predictions about the climate in the Big Apple. The report, authored by the professors at the “New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC),” finds that the air temperatures around NYC have risen faster and the sea levels around NYC have risen faster than the observed global rates. In fact, the report claims that sea levels are rising 1.2 inches per decade around the city and temps have increased 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit between 1900 and 2013.

The Panel predicts sea levels around the City may likely rise by at least 11 to 21 inches more by the 2050s. The Panel report displays maps indicating vast losses of acreage around Manhattan, Brooklyn and elsewhere.

As shown by a number of experts, climate-change hysteria is largely driven by socialist ideology and massive research-grant funding by the U.S. (and other) governments. It is used to call for political action such as demands that governments become even more powerful and all-controlling. In 2003 a number of scientists launched the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) to demonstrate that much of what passes for climate-change science by widely-lauded climate “panels” is false, misleading, based on inaccurate models and in some cases fraudulent.

The Nongovernmental International Panel is independently funded and accepts no funding from the oil industry or any other industry.

Academics promoting the socialist manmade-global-warming theology use decidedly ANTI-SCIENCE methods to overcome scholarly criticism. They claim the “science is settled” in THEIR favor (despite the existence of hundreds of countervailing peer-reviewed scientific studies) and call for critics to be silenced and disregarded. In some cases, promoters of climate-change socialism call for the arrests of those who disagree with them.

Feb 16

Lysander Spooner on Democratic Elections and Claims of “Sovereign Immunity” By Government Officials

10336714_1420705914860419_9127419724620227090_n

In Lysander Spooner’s great essay, “No Treason,” Spooner wrote:

No body of men can be said to authorize a man to act as their agent, to the injury of a third person, unless they do it in so open and authentic a manner as to make themselves personally responsible for his acts. None of the voters in this country appoint their political agents in any open, authentic manner, or in any manner to make themselves responsible for their acts. Therefore these pretended agents cannot legitimately claim to be really agents. Somebody must be responsible for the acts of these pretended agents; and if they cannot show any open and authentic credentials from their principals, they cannot, in law or reason, be said to have any principals. The maxim applies here, that what does not appear, does not exist. If they can show no principals, they have none.