Feb 13

Oil Output Plummets in Oil-Rich Venezuela

The Soviet government took over productive prosperous farms and replaced the skilled, hard-working farmers with loyal government supporters.

The government supporters proved to be horrible farmers, and millions of Russians died of starvation in the aftermath.

The U.S. government Postal Service has a monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail. The government operation charges more than twice what private firms would charge, and has every advantage in the marketplace. The Postal Service pays no property, income, or corporate taxes, and YET LOSES 5 BILLION DOLLARS ANNUALLY.

Now there is news that oil-rich Venezuela–the very country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves underground–cannot seem to produce much oil under socialist central planning.

The people of Venezuela are starving and in dire need of the goods and services their government promised them (such as food, shelter, medicine and clothing).

But government fails at everything it promises–with the possible exception of violence, bloodshed and property destruction. (And it is likely the private sector could deliver even those things more efficiently than government.)

Feb 07

Pro-government newspapers continue dying off

The New York Times recently published an expose on the struggles of many mid-size “mainstream” newspapers. The headline: “A West Virginia Newspaper Won Journalism’s Top Award. Now It’s Filed for Bankruptcy.”

The story details the struggles of the “Charleston Gazette-Mail,” a typical “mainstream” rag whose reporter Eric Eyre won the Pulitzer Prize last year for “his reporting on the state’s [West Virginia’s] opioid crisis.” (Mr. Eyre “exposed drug companies that had flooded West Virginia with painkillers while flouting state laws.”)

Much of the Times story repeats the myth that “mainstream” news sources are some necessary foil against “corruption.”

But the “corruption” “exposed” by such mainstream journalists invariably points in only one direction: away from the most powerful governmental offices and in the direction of poorer, less-powerful businesses or private actors.

Only occasionally do “mainstream” journalists pursue government officials; generally when those officials are anti-socialist or otherwise oppose central planning or the “progressive agenda.”

The Charleston Gazette-Mail, like so many others, is unable to attract paying readers to its stale, pro-government news and commentary.

The most dangerous occupation in the world is anti-government journalism; the safest in the world is pro-government journalism.

Feb 06

Newsweek Magazine Collapses; Editors and Writers Sent Home

“Mainstream,” or government-supporting “news” outlets are dying. Readers and viewers won’t line up to listen to pro-government drivel.

In investigation after investigation, many “mainstream” news media sources have been found to be secretly subsidized by government officials and agencies.

Now there is further sad news for “Newsweek,” the news magazine which formerly had hundreds of thousands of readers. See here.

Recently the management at Newsweek fired numerous editors and reporters. There are reports of severe financial instability.

Feb 05

Skeptical scientist CENSURED by government university for questioning the integrity of scientific institutions

The world’s government-funded colleges and universities produce and promote a steady stream of pro-government propaganda masquerading as “science” or “the humanities.”

Last August Professor Peter Ridd said the unsayable — that we can no longer trust scientific institutions.

“The basic problem is that we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – a lot of this is stuff is coming out, the science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more.”

His employer, James Cook University, the largest government university in Queensland, Australia has now CENSURED him and ordered him to be silent, effectively to stop him criticizing the current state of science or scientific institutions.

University officials accused Ridd of not acting in a “collegial” manner.

The University also ordered Ridd not to publicly mention he has been censured!

Ironically, Ridd had submitted a peer-reviewed paper on exactly this topic, which was published a few months later in November in the Marine Pollution Bulletin.

See here.

Feb 04

Tens of Thousands of Seniors Now Live as Low-Wage Nomads in RVs, Vans and Trailers

If you save anything in modern America you are an utter fool. Near-zero interest rates, high taxation, central-banking-driven inflation and other government policies have robbed an entire generation of wealth in their later years.

Social Security further robs the poor of their nest eggs, incentivising people to save less, invest less, and work fewer total hours. Studies reveal the U.S. as a whole is at least 4 percent poorer than it would have been without the diabolical program.

Marketwatch.com is out with an essay about growing numbers of seniors who now live in RVs, campers and vans in their “retirement”–traveling between work camps and low-wage jobs to survive.

The information is largely taken from the work of journalist Jessica Bruder, whose book “Nomadland,” “reveals the dark, depressing and sometimes physically painful life of a tribe of men and women in their 50s and 60s who are — as the subtitle says — “surviving America in the twenty-first century.” Not quite homeless, they are “houseless,” living in secondhand RVs, trailers and vans and driving from one location to another to pick up seasonal low-wage jobs, if they can get them, with little or no benefits.

Feb 02

Study shows sea levels increased faster in the first half of the 20th century than in the second half

It is an article of faith among hardline believers in apocalyptic-manmade-global-warming-by-CO2 that sea levels are increasing–and that this increase is ACCELERATING as the planet’s glaciers and polar ice caps melt.

And it seems there is widespread agreement that sea levels have risen moderately over the past several centuries.

But now there is a major study by scientists in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany which indicates that sea level rise has been SLOWING DOWN over the past century even as CO2 levels have increased in the atmosphere.

Specifically, sea levels appear to have risen by 2.03 mm/year between 1904-1953 but rose only about 1.45 mm/year from 1954 to 2003.

If true the findings cast great doubt on the apocalyptic predictions and claims of many government-funded scientists. See here.

Government-funded scientists have generally claimed that the world’s oceans have warmed and risen unnaturally since the dawn of the human industrial revolution.

Jan 27

Socialism has cost Venezuela half of its wealth and half of its economy in just 5 years

For those who think socialist ideologues are not dangerous, there is sobering news from Venezuela.

Just 20 years ago Venezuelans were the wealthiest and healthiest people in Latin America. The country had a total wealth that was greater than that of China.

Today, after 15 years of socialist central planning, the people spend most of their time begging in food lines.

Grown men die in knife fights over 5-dollar bills. Women and young girls walk the streets as prostitutes for as little as a tube of toothpaste or a box of diapers.

Here is a CNN report indicating that socialism has cost Venezuela as much as half of the country’s total wealth since 2013.

Jan 27

Climate Skeptics Predicted Government would start “adjusting” Satellite Data to Prove Global Warming. A Year Later, the Predictions have come True!

Dr. Roy Spencer and John Christie pioneered the use of satellites to measure global temperatures. For 30 years, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christie have led the satellite data program at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

Spencer and Christie are known skeptics of manmade-global-warming theory, and have frequently pointed out that their satellite data does not show the massive warming that is allegedly shown by other, government-controlled data sets based on surface thermometers.

(Of course, we now know that government agencies such as NASA and NOAA have been “adjusting” the surface temp record to make the past colder than it was actually measured and the present seem warmer in comparison.)

The government climate-change establishment could not allow Spencer’s and Christie’s skepticism to continue unchallenged. And 3 years ago, Carl Mears of “Remote Sensing Systems” in California began publishing reports about rival satellite temp data being consistent with the government surface data sets.

The new RSS data sets have been widely heralded by government-supporting media sources like the Washington Post. See here.

(RSS is ostensibly private but receives almost all of its funding from NASA.)

Now it has become clear that RSS has been altering their own data to make the data more closely match government surface temp records. See here.

Stay tuned!

Jan 23

U.S. government secretly poisoned hundreds of pregnant women with radiation

Many Americans are familiar with the Tuskegee experiments in which the U.S. government secretly injected hundreds of African Americans with diseases and then let them die without treatment.

It was all done under the auspices of government health care.

It is less well known that other similar experiments were conducted by the U.S. government elsewhere.

Federal officials knowingly spread poisoned gas in subways, poisoned alcohol, and conducted other experiments which left thousands dead.

Here is a story about federal experiments conducted at Vanderbilt University during the 1940s, in which hundreds of women who went to government-subsidized health clinics for treatment were unknowingly injected with radioactive poison.

Jan 23

Another bookseller snatched by Chinese authorities

Chinese writer and bookseller Gui Minhai, whose books often criticize the Chinese government and provide details of the lives of government officials, was snatched from a public train last week. See here.
Witnesses reported seeing a dozen plainclothesed men approach him and whisk him away.

Chinese dissidents and government critics are often ‘disappeared’ without further explanation.