New Poll From the Clinton News Network...................

(CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree. According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.

And keep this in mind:  44% of respondents  didn't see the federal government as a threat. 30% of our country works for the government, and even more receive an entitlement check from government. So basically, nearly everyone who does not depend government checks or handouts, understands the threat the Feds are to our individual rights.

Friday Night Quote.........................

This quote was recorded at the recent healthcare summit in Washignton. It's an instant classic!

"It's easy being vice president — you don't have to do anything. It's like being the grandpa and not the parent."

- Joe Biden

Too Many Apologies

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Tiger Woods doesn't owe me an apology. Nothing that he has ever done has cost me a dime nor an hour of sleep. This is not a plea to be "non-judgmental." I am very judgmental about all sorts of things, including Tiger Woods' bad behavior. But that is very different from saying that he somehow owes me an apology.

For all I know, my neighbors may be judgmental when I drive out of my driveway in a 15-year-old car. But they have never said anything to me about it, and I have never offered them an apology. This is not equating driving a 15-year-old car with what Tiger Woods did. But the point is that any apology he might make should be made to his family, who were hurt, not to the public, who might be disappointed in him, but not really hurt.

Public apologies to people who are not owed any apology have become one of the many signs of the mushy thinking of our times. So are apologies for things that somebody else did. Among the most absurd apologies have been apologies for slavery by politicians. For one thing, slavery is not something you can apologize for, any more than you can apologize for murder. If someone says to you that he murdered someone near and dear to you, what are you supposed to say? "No problem, we all make mistakes"? Not bloody likely!

Republicans and Democrats - Two Peas in a Pod

Politicians in Washington are all the same. Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, it makes very little difference. In fact, the only thing that you can count on is that they will disagree publicly about pretty much everything. It’s just plain old politics. These groups are two peas in a pod. They are the same people with different core values, but they are the same. They are vultures. They suck the life out of the American people for personal security. They are the last people on earth that should be trusted. The Story of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, is a perfect example of this.

Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts was played by the right-wing as a big win for conservatives. Brown’s name was even thrown out as a 2012 GOP presidential candidate. He ran as the anti-Obama, and won his seat on a conservative platform of less government. Unfortunately it was all for show, because whatever happens from here on out, it is clear Scott Brown is no conservative.

Two days ago, Senator Brown voted for a small jobs bill, that was scaled back from $85 billion to about $15 billion. It is not a large amount of money in the scheme of government spending. But I personally believe that this is just a sign of things to come. Not just for Brown either, but for Republican Party in general.

The chamber's newest Republican bucked his party and sided with Democrats on a $15 billion jobs package. Brown said the bill was not perfect but would help put people back to work.

"I hope my vote today is a strong step toward restoring bipartisanship in Washington," he said in a statement.

This statement says allot about Scott Brown to me. First, it says that Brown either does not understand, or does not believe in the conservative approach to free market economics. No free-market economist would ever support government spending as a way to create jobs, especially in a recession with massive public debt. Conservatives would see this approach as a way to prolong the recession. Conservatives would understand that creating short-term jobs through government spending does nothing to grow our economy. Most importantly, Conservatives wouldn’t give a rats ass about being bipartisan when doing so means growing government and increasing spending. A conservative would be able to explain why government growth is anti-growth, and would intelligently sway public opinion to the free-market perspective. The Republican Party does not do this. They are incapable of intelligently persuading people, and they are quick to jump ship to support whatever the latest public polls say.

Economic Whodunit

Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, February 23, 2010

During bad times, the blame game is the biggest game in Washington. Wall Street "greed" or "predatory" lenders seem to be favorite targets to blame for our current economic woes.

When government policy is mentioned at all in handing out blame, it is usually blamed for not imposing enough regulation on the private sector. But there is still the question whether any of these explanations can stand up under scrutiny.

Take Wall Street "greed." Is there any evidence that people in Wall Street were any less interested in making money during all the decades and generations when investments in housing were among the safest investments around? If their greed did not bring on an economic disaster before, why would it bring it on now?

As for lenders, how could they have expected to satisfy their greed by lending to people who were not likely to repay them?

The one agency of government that is widely blamed is the Federal Reserve System-- which still keeps the heat away from elected politicians. Nor is the Fed completely blameless. It kept interest rates extremely low for years. That undoubtedly contributed to an increased demand for housing, since lower interest rates mean lower monthly mortgage payments.

But an increased demand for housing does not automatically mean higher housing prices. In places where supply is free to rise to meet demand, such as Manhattan in the 1950s or Las Vegas in the 1980s, increased demand simply led to more housing units being built, without an increase in real prices-- that is, money prices adjusted for inflation.

Obama 101-Lesson 1: “If you tell a lie long enough, maybe people will believe it”

Honestly, can we please get this administration to stop beating this extremely dead horse? According to a Rueters.com on Wednesday, President Barrack Obama (again) is claiming to have "saved" or "created" 2 million jobs with his porkulous package. He also claimed that it saved us from going into another great depression. I cannot get over how much these people must think of themselves to continue to make these kind of outlandish statements. They have no clue how many  jobs they saved or created through the stimulus, because there is no way to know what would have happened without it. A year ago, this administration was saying that the economy was not as bad as they thought. They quickly revised those statements when the stimulus not only failed its stated outcomes, but made the problems far worse then they were. Now, they go back to the old standard bearer - Blame Bush.

Excerpt from Rueters:
Obama launched a sweeping effort to convince skeptical Americans that the stimulus has been beneficial, saying it had created or saved 2 million jobs and attacking Republican critics who doubt its effectiveness.

Here’s the problem: The Congressional Budget Office says those numbers are crap. Every economist admits that calculating "Jobs Saved" is an impossible, and any concrete number is beyond  speculation. It is an empty number with absolutely no meaning.

The next Galt's Gultch?

Is there really a Galt's Gultch? To make matters more strange, is it a public location that we all know?

Thats right, a Lawmaker in South Carolina has done the first step to create Galt's Gultch. A place where paper fiat currency is no longer required, or legal.

As it turns out, this hero wants to make South Carolina into our favorite spot from Atlas Shrugged. Throwing off the tyrany of insane federal control, this guy wants to make money actually worth something.

Check out the Story Linked Here:

What would you do? Is this rational? Is this something that could really happen?

I seriously doubt it. Although I think this type of thing is a great idea, I think that this will turn out to fizzle before it goes anywhere.

Galt's Gultch will exist someday, but the American people don't have the stomach for it yet.

Quick Check: Truth’s revealed by Climate expert Phil Jones in yesterday’s Q and A:

The truth is coming to the front on all this climate change nonsense. They have been caught doing everything wrong and have no more excuses. Yesterday, Phil Jones flat out admitted to the lie, saying there had been no significant warming since 1995. Under the IPCC Climate models, that is impossible. Here are the facts exposed in yesterday’s interview. It’s funny, when you look at what he is admitting; its pretty much word for word what I and every other global warming denier has been saying for years. Makes you think……..

* Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional.
* There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade.
* The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both.
* This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone.
* The logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty.
* The science is not settled, however unsettling that might be.
* There is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers.

So let me do a quick run through: They admit to all the things above, and they: destroy data, destroy correspondence, make phony temperature data, blacklist skeptics, eliminate warm periods on temperature graphs, ignore the freedom of information act, hide their results, deliberately place sensors in the warmest possible environment, Fake scientific consensus, ignore the effect of clouds and ocean currents, and assume everything should be weighted in favor of their theories. This and more. I really don’t feel confident enough in these people to destroy the World’s Economy’s. You?

Playing Freedom Cheap

Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom. Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic.

Alarms ranging from "overpopulation" to "global warming" and crusades ranging from "affordable housing" to "universal health care" have been among the distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and, if necessary, hate other people.

The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people-- under Communism, the capitalists; under Nazis, the Jews.

Under extremist Islamic regimes today, hatred is directed at the infidels in general and the "great Satan," the United States, in particular. There some people have been induced to give up not only their freedom but even their lives, in order to strike a blow against those they have been taught to hate.

We have not yet reached these levels of hostility, but those who are taking away our freedoms, bit by bit, on the installment plan, have been incessantly supplying us with people to resent.

One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called "health care reform" bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to discover all that was in it.

For this, we were taught to resent doctors, insurance companies and even people with "Cadillac health insurance plans," who were to be singled out for special taxes. Meanwhile, our freedom to make our own medical decisions-- on which life and death can depend-- was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in Washington. Only the recent Massachusetts election results have put that on hold.

Another dangerous power toward which we are moving, bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being directed against "the rich."

The distracting phrases here include "obscene" wealth and "unconscionable" profits. But, if we stop and think about it-- which politicians don't expect us to-- what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn't we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal?

Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced--and increasing a country's productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting "the rich."

You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called "unconscionable" but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do.

The assumption that what A pays B is any business of C is an assumption that means a dangerous power being transferred to politicians to tell us all what incomes we can and cannot receive. It will not apply to everyone all at once. Like the income tax, which at first applied only to the truly rich, and then slowly but steadily moved down the income scale to hit the rest of us, the power to say what incomes people can be allowed to make will inevitably move down the income scale to make us all dependents and supplicants of politicians.

The phrase "public servants" is increasingly misleading. They are well on their way to becoming public masters-- like aptly named White House "czars." The more they can get us all to resent those they designate, the more they can distract us from their increasing control of our own lives-- but only if we sell our freedom cheap. We can sell our birthright and not even get the mess of pottage.

 

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organizational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’. The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data. The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analyzed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The Fallacy of "Fairness": Part IV

Thomas Sowell Friday, February 12, 2010

Mixed up with the question of fairness to individuals and groups has been the explosive question of whether individuals and groups have the innate ability to perform at the same levels, if they are all treated alike or even given the same objective opportunities.

Intellectuals have swung from one side of this question at the beginning of the 20th century to the opposite side at the end. Both those who said that achievement differences among races and classes were due to genes, in the early years of the 20th century, and those who said that these differences were due to discrimination, in the later years, ignored the old statisticians' warnings that correlation is not causation.

The idea that some people are innately superior (usually one's own group) goes back for centuries, but various new facts that came out in the 19th and early 20th centuries gave the appearance of "science" to such beliefs during the Progressive era.

Sir Francis Galton's research turned up the fact of remarkable achievements among members of the same family, which he regarded as evidence of genetic superiority. The rise of IQ testing, and especially the massive mental testing of soldiers in the U.S. Army during the First World War, showed great differences in test scores among various racial and ethnic groups.

In the public schools, there were similarly large differences in which ethnic group's children failed to get promoted. In both the Army mental tests and in the schools, Polish Jews did poorly at that time. Carl Brigham-- a leading authority on mental tests and the author of the SAT-- said that the Army tests tended to "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent."

It should be noted that all of these conclusions were based on hard data, not mere "perceptions" or "stereotypes," as so many inconvenient facts are dismissed today. What was wrong were not the data but the inferences.

Polish Jews were among the many immigrants from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe who were relatively recent arrivals in the United States. Many of these immigrants grew up in homes where English was not spoken, as Carl Brigham acknowledged in later years, when he recanted his earlier statements. In later years, Jews scored above average on mental tests.

It is also a hard fact of history that some races had far more advanced technological, economic and other achievements than others at particular times and places. But those who were ahead in some centuries were often behind in other centuries-- the Chinese and the Europeans having changed positions dramatically after Europe eventually caught up with China and then surpassed it within recent centuries. But there was no evidence of any dramatic changes in genetics among either the Chinese or the Europeans.

While striking changes in the relative positions of different races at different periods of history undermine genetic explanations, the fact that there has been no period when their achievements have been the same undermines today's presumption that different economic or other outcomes are due to discrimination.

Whatever the innate capacity of any race, class or other group, what pays off in the real world are developed capabilities, and these have never been the same-- or even close to being the same-- for individuals or groups.

All the leading brands of beer in the United States were created by people of German ancestry and so is the leading beer in China, not to mention breweries created by Germans in Australia, Argentina and elsewhere. Germans were producing beer in the days of the Roman Empire.

This does not mean that beer brewing skill is genetic but it also does not mean that this skill-- or any other skill-- is randomly distributed among peoples, so that a failure to have equal "representation" of groups in a given institutions can be presumed to be due to discrimination by that institution.

Fairness as equal treatment does not produce fairness as equal outcomes. The confusion between the two meanings of the same word has created enormous mischief, much of it at the expense of lagging groups, who have been distracted from the things that would enable them to catch up. And whole societies have been kept in a turmoil pursing a will o' the wisp in the name of "fairness."

The Fallacy of "Fairness": Part III

Thomas Sowell
Thursday, February 11, 2010

Most of us want to be fair, in the sense of treating everyone equally. We want laws to be applied the same to everyone. We want educational, economic or other criteria for rewards to be the same as well. But this concept of fairness is not only different from prevailing ideas of fairness among many of the intelligentsia, it contradicts their idea of fairness.

People like philosopher John Rawls call treating everyone alike merely "formal" fairness. Professor Rawls advocated "a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstances." He called for a society which "arranges" end-results, rather than simply treating everyone the same and letting the chips fall where they may.

This more hands-on concept of fairness gives third parties a much bigger role to play. But whether any human being has ever had the omniscience to determine and undo the many differences among people born into different families and cultures-- with different priorities, attitudes and behavior-- is a very big question. And to concentrate the vast amount of power needed to carry out that sweeping agenda is a dangerous gamble, whose actual consequences have too often been written on the pages of history in blood.

There is no question that the accident of birth is a huge factor in the fate of people. What is a very serious question is how much anyone can do about that without creating other, and often worse, problems. Providing free public education, scholarships to colleges and other opportunities for achievement are fine as far as they go, but there should be no illusion that they can undo all the differences in priorities, attitudes and efforts among different individuals and groups.

Trying to change whole cultures and subcultures in which different individuals are raised would be a staggering task. But the ideology of multiculturalism, which pronounces all cultures to be equally valid, puts that task off limits. This paints people into whatever corner the accident of birth has put them.

Under these severe constraints, all that is left is to blame others when the outcomes are different for different individuals and groups. Apparently those who are lagging are to continue to think and act as they have in the past-- and yet somehow have better outcomes in the future. And, if they don't get the same outcomes as others, then according to this way of seeing the world, it is society's fault!

Society may lavish thousands of dollars per year on schooling for a youngster who does not bother to study, and yet when he or she emerges as a semi-literate adult, it is considered to be society's fault if such youngsters cannot get the same kinds of jobs and incomes as other youngsters who studied conscientiously during their years in school.

It is certainly a great misfortune to be born into families or communities whose values make educational or economic success less likely. But to have intellectuals and others come along and misstate the problem does not help to produce better results, even if it produces a better image.

Political correctness may make it hard for anyone to challenge the image of helpless victims of an evil society. But those who are lagging do not need a better public relations image. They need the ability to produce better results for themselves-- and a romantic image is an obstacle to directing their efforts toward developing that ability.

Tests and other criteria which convey the realities of their existing capabilities, compared to that of others, can have what is called a "disparate impact," and are condemned not only in editorial offices but also in courts of law. But criteria exist precisely to have a disparate impact on those who do not have what these criteria exist to measure. Track meets discriminate against those who are slow afoot. Tests in school discriminate against students who did not study.

Disregarding criteria in the interest of "fairness"-- in the sense of outcomes independent of inputs-- adds to the handicaps of those who already have other handicaps, by lying to them about the reasons for their situation and the things they need to do to make their situation better.

The Fallacy of "Fairness": Part II

by Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A recent flap in a Berkeley high school reveals what a farce "fairness" can be. Because this is ultra-liberal Berkeley, perhaps we should not be surprised that a proposal has been made to eliminate four jobs as science teachers and use the money saved for programs to help low achievers.

In Berkeley, as in many other communities across the country, black and Latino students are not performing as well as Asian and white students. In fact, the racial gap in academic achievement at Berkeley High School is the highest in California-- no doubt a special source of embarrassment in politically correct Berkeley.

According to the principal, "Our community at Berkeley High School has failed the African-Americans." Therefore "We need to bring everybody up-- that's what this plan is about."

Surely no one, not even in Berkeley, seriously believes that you will "bring everybody up" by eliminating science teachers. This is a proposal to redistribute money from science to social work, by providing every student with advisors on note-taking, time management and other learning skills.

The point is to close educational gaps among groups, or at least go on record as trying. As with most equalization crusades, whether in education or in the economy, it is about equalizing downward, by lowering those at the top. "Fairness" strikes again!

This is not just a crazy idea by one principal in Berkeley. It is a crazy idea taught in schools of education across the country. A professor of education at the University of San Francisco has weighed in on the controversy at Berkeley, supporting the idea of "projects designed to narrow the achievement gap."

In keeping with the rhetoric of the prevailing ideology, our education professor refers to "privileged" parents and "privileged" children who want to "forestall any progress toward equity."

In the language of the politically correct, achievement is equated with privilege. Such verbal sleight of hand evades the question whether individuals' own priorities and efforts affect outcomes, whether in education or in other endeavors. No need to look at empirical evidence when a clever phrase can take that whole question off the table

This verbal sleight of hand is not confined to education. A study of incomes of various groups in Toronto concluded that Canadians of Japanese ancestry were the most "privileged" group in that city. That is, people of Japanese ancestry there had higher incomes than members of other minorities and higher than that of the white majority in Toronto.

What makes the "privileged" label a particularly bad joke in this case is a history of blatant discrimination against the Japanese in Canada in years past, including a longer internment during World War II than that of Japanese Americans. But, to some on the left, the very concept of achievement must be banished by all means necessary, regardless of the facts. Achievement by overcoming obstacles is a special threat to the left's vision of the world, and so must be magically transformed into privilege through rhetoric.

Those with that vision do not want to even discuss evidence that students from different groups spend different amounts of time on homework and different amounts of time on social activities. To admit that inputs affect outputs, whether in education, in the economy or in other areas, would be to undermine the vision and agenda of the left, and deprive those who believe in that vision of a moral melodrama, starring themselves as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.

Redistribution of material resources has a very poor track record when it comes to actually helping those who are lagging, whether in education, in the economy or elsewhere. What they need are the attitudes, priorities and behavior which produce the outcomes desired. But changing anyone's attitudes, priorities and behavior is a lot harder than taking a stance as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.

To the extent that doing the latter misdiagnoses the problem, it makes solving the problem even harder. That does no good for those who are lagging, however much it exalts those who pose as their defenders. "Fairness" indeed!

Dems seeking $80 billion for new jobs bill..................

The Democrats in Washington have done it again! They saved the economy, again! It’s pretty amazing how they keep coming up with these amazing bills that create so many jobs. According to Reuters, an $80 billion dollar jobs bill will be introduced in the Senate in the coming weeks. To average person walking down the streets, this may seem very reasonable. Heck, we need new jobs, and we need to start up this economy. Why not spend that money on creating jobs? 

Well, mostly because the government doesn't create jobs.....mostly.  People who don’t follow politics often say things to me like: “ Both parties get up and seem to make fairly good points. One of them is clearly wrong or misleading, but how can you know who is right?”

My answer to that is in the Reuters story below covering the multi-billion dollar jobs bill. I will hold my criticism of the bill until after, although its pretty clear how I feel. This is another emergency spending measure that (we will be told) must be passed. Another move that we need to make RIGHT NOW,  to prevent further unemployment and turbo-start this economy! Here’s the entire article

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A jobs-creation bill that could pass the Senate this week would delay a scheduled 20 percent reduction in doctor payments under Medicare. The bill also extends soon-to-expire jobless payments, healthcare subsidies for the unemployed and highway-funding programs, according to the text of the bill.

There you have it! In order to create new jobs the government will: expand a bankrupt government-run medical  program, expand unemployment payments, and expand health care subsidies for the unemployed. That way, the people who aren’t working are as comfortable in their lack of gainful employment as possible.

So, what do you think of the big jobs bill? Is it cost efficient, like Obama says he demands? Is it going to create new jobs and help revamp the economy? Is it going to decrease the deficit? Will employment go down because of this spending? Do you think that money would be spent more efficiently, or less efficiently in that hands of the private sector?.... $80 billion......................................
Finally, who do you think is going to pay for this?

But hey, at least they left the highway funding in there.

The Fallacy of "Fairness”

by Thomas Sowell

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

If there is ever a contest to pick which word has done the most damage to people's thinking, and to actions to carry out that thinking, my nomination would be the word "fair." It is a word thrown around by far more people than have ever bothered to even try to define it. This mushy vagueness may be a big handicap in logic but it is a big advantage in politics. All sorts of people, with very different notions about what is or is not fair, can be mobilized behind this nice-sounding word, in utter disregard of the fact that they mean very different things when they use that word.

Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and "unfair" to many individuals or groups. Fortunately there was one voice of sanity-- David Riesman, I believe-- who said: "The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results."  If by "fair" you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.

Even within the same family, among children born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, the first-borns on average have higher IQs than their brothers and sisters, and usually achieve more in life. Unfairness is often blamed on somebody, even if only on "society." But whose fault is it if you were not the first born? Since some groups have more children than others, a higher percentage of the next generation will be first-borns in groups that have smaller families, so such groups have an advantage over other groups.

Despite all the sound and fury generated in controversies over whether different groups have different genetic potential, even if they all have identical genetic potential the outcomes can still differ if they have different birth rates. Twins have average IQs several points lower than children born singly. Whether that is due to having to share resources in the womb or having to share parents' attention after birth, the fact is what it is-- and it certainly is not fair.

Many people fail to see the fundamental difference between saying that a particular thing-- whether a mental test or an institution-- is conveying a difference that already exists or is creating a difference that would not exist otherwise. Creating a difference that would not exist otherwise is discrimination, and something can be done about that. But, in recent times, virtually any disparity in outcomes is almost automatically blamed on discrimination, despite the incredible range of other reasons for disparities between individuals and groups.

Nature's discrimination completely dwarfs man's discrimination. Geography alone makes equal chances virtually impossible. The geographic advantages of Western Europe over Eastern Europe-- in climate and navigable waterways, among other things-- have led to centuries of differences in income levels that were greater than income differences between blacks and whites in America today.

Just the fact that the lay of the land is different in different parts of Europe meant that it was easier for the Roman legions to invade Western Europe. This meant that Western Europeans had the advantages of the most advanced civilization in Europe at that time. Moreover, because Roman letters were used in Western Europe, the languages of that region had written versions centuries before the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe did.

The difference between literacy and illiteracy is a huge difference, and it remained huge for centuries. Was it the Slavs' fault that the Romans did not want to climb over so many mountains to get to them? To those living in Western Europe in the days of the Roman Empire, the idea of being conquered, and many slaughtered, by the Romans probably had no great appeal. But their descendants would benefit from their bad luck. And that doesn't seem fair either.

Recession chugs on, except in government
Examiner Editorial
February 8, 2010

White House apologists were quick to point to the unemployment rate decline from 10 percent to 9.7 percent as evidence that the recovery is gathering momentum and that President Obama's policies -- especially his $787 billion economic stimulus bill Congress approved last February -- are "working." But the back story behind the figures provides cold comfort.

First, the drop to 9.7 percent unemployment does not reflect the creation of new jobs that normally accompanies an economic recovery. The number of new jobs is actually declining. Total nonfarm payroll employment, for example, dipped by an additional 20,000 positions after a December decline of 150,000 positions. The unemployment rate the day Obama took office last year stood at 7.6 percent and 134.6 million people had jobs. When he signed the economic stimulus, Obama promised the bill would bolster the economy sufficiently to keep unemployment below 8.0 percent. But the unemployment rate has exceeded 10 percent, and total employment stands at only 129.5 million. The stimulus has been a bust.

Second, anybody who thinks the job situation is going to improve dramatically in coming months is not paying attention to what's going on behind the unemployment rate.The Hudson Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth notes that “This is a better employment report than last month’s report, yet the economy is still not creating jobs. The percent of the unemployed who are out of work for 27 weeks or more exceeded 41%, an all-time high. This is unacceptable and shows that Congress and the President need to focus on job creation, rather than on expanding government, because the tax increases and borrowing used to expand government reduce overall job creation and create uncertainty." Furchtgott-Roth further notes that "the labor force participation rate is the lowest since mid-1985." This means that fewer Americans are in the labor force.

Third, among the few sectors of the economy showing net employment growth over the past year is the federal government. The federal civil service is rapidly expanding as Obama increases the size of government, with 33,000 new positions being added in January alone. Only 9,000 of those new slots were for temporary census jobs. In other words, what we are seeing is good times for the public sector and the growing prospect of a continuing and perhaps even deepening recession for everybody else.

A Letter from Ron Paul

Got this through Townhall. The message is clear and correct. It's time to Audti the Fed.................




Dear Friend of Liberty,

I hope you join me in my firm conviction that now is the time to fight back against the out of control Federal Reserve and continued Wall Street plundering of our tax dollars.

The threat isn’t hard to see -- just look all around us. Our constitutional principles and freedoms are being assaulted at every turn. More bailouts, trillion dollar “stimulus” plans, huge new debt burdens for our children, simply printing money to cover our failed policies -- I could go on and on. You and I both know that President Obama is going to keep going and going unless someone puts a stop to the madness.

But the good news is there is a way to fight back. And that fight starts today -- by “Auditing the Fed” and showing the American people just how the Fed has abused its power, debauched the dollar, and helped strangle our economy.

Because I know you are a friend in Liberty, I wanted you to be among the first people contacted by Campaign for Liberty for the vital fight against the out of control Federal Reserve.

Please read the enclosed letter from my friend and Campaign for Liberty’s President, John Tate. John isn’t just a friend of mine. He’s also a patriot with years of experience getting things done in politics. Now he’s agreed to take up the fight in a way I cannot -- by leading the fight for Liberty on the outside, while I do battle in the halls of Congress.

I trust you’ll find this battle to expose the out of control Fed worth your support.

For Liberty,

Congressman Ron Paul

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article


The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change. In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them. The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC's report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Skeptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.