Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, March 2, 2010


Newsbites...!

Come and get 'em...!

Get 'em while they're hot...
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9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1254660/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-admits-sending-pretty-awful-emails.html

Scientists at the heart of the Climategate row were yesterday accused by a leading academic body of undermining science's credibility.

The Institute of Physics said 'worrying implications' had been raised after it was revealed the University of East Anglia had manipulated data on global warming.

The Climategate row, which was first revealed by the Daily Mail in November, was triggered when a hacker stole hundreds of emails sent from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

They revealed scientists plotting how to avoid responding to Freedom of Information requests from climate change sceptics.

Some even appeared to show the researchers discussing how to manipulate raw data from tree rings about historical temperatures.

In one, Professor Jones talks about using a 'trick' to massage figures and 'hide the decline'.

Giving evidence to a Science and Technology Committee inquiry, the Institute of Physics said: 'Unless the disclosed emails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research and for the credibility of the scientific method.

'The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.'

Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled the CRU had broken Freedom of Information rules by refusing to hand over raw data.

* READ THE FULL ARTICLE. PHIL JONES "DEFENDS" HIMSELF, BUT THAT'S OBVIOUSLY TO BE EXPECTED. WHAT I'VE POSTED IS THE HEART OF THE STORY, BUT AS ALWAYS, THE LINK IS PROVIDED - I URGE ANYONE INTERESTED TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE.

March 2, 2010 at 8:55 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703807904575097091911253032.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLESecondNews

On a trip to Georgia Tuesday, President Barack Obama will unveil details of a $6 billion proposal to provide cash rebates to homeowners who make energy-saving home improvements. The White House plan—which must be passed by Congress—would provide up to $3,000 for homeowners who insulate, replace windows, or install energy-saving heating, air-conditioning or ventilation systems.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... THIS IS A SPENDING PLAN; ADDITIONAL SPENDING; ADDITIONAL BORROWING; ADDITIONAL DEBT ACCUMULATION AND ADDITIONAL INTEREST DUE UPON THIS NEW DEBT.

* $6 BILLION HERE, $6 BILLION THERE... THIS IS HOW MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR DEBT IS PILED UPON OUR CHILDREN'S SHOULDERS.

* INTERGENERATIONAL DEBT LIABILITY IS THE ULTIMATE "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION" BECAUSE IT'LL INEVITABLY LEAD TO FUTURE TAXATION WHERE THERE'S NO CHOICE BUT TO PAY OR DEFAULT.

Widely hailed by environmentalists and "green" building contractor groups, the program could reduce energy bills by as much as half for homes built in the latter half of the last century.

* GOOD! THAT'S GREAT! THEN WHY IN GOD'S NAME ARE SUBSIDIES WE CAN'T AFFORD REQUIRED...?!?! THE BENEFITS PAY FOR THEMSELVES ABSENT ANY TAX "INCENTIVES." (WHICH AGAIN... WE'RE ALREADY BROKE... WE CAN'T AFFORD THIS!)

* OH... AND BTW... THOSE AMERICANS WHO CHOOSE TO LIVE IN APARTMENTS, AMERICANS WHO CHOOSE TO RENT... THESE FOLKS SUBSIDIZE THE "HOME IMPROVEMENT" SPENDING OF MCMANSION OWNERS. DOESN'T SOUND FAIR... DOES IT?

March 2, 2010 at 10:39 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522586

In the worst economy of our lifetimes and as unemployment approaches 11%, Congress went out of its way to purposely humiliate the leadership of a foreign company which is directly responsible for creating and supporting 200,000 jobs in our country?

Why would it do so? Because it could, and for the most part, because being rude and confrontational fit the narrative of getting these showboating members re-elected.

Make no mistake, members of Congress know an easy target when they see one, and some are only too happy to kick that person or corporation when it's down if such an assault will advance their careers or increase their campaign donations.

Why deal with critical issues like terrorism, the economy, health care or tort reform when you can get some cheap camera time by bashing a foreign CEO.

As Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said in part, "To some degree it seems like we're having a hanging before the trial."

[A] question for those members who felt they had to browbeat Toyota President Akio Toyoda and North American President Yoshimi Inaba: What if they decide, in the end, it's just not worth it and pull their factories out of the United States?

[B]ecause of the perceived Japan-bashing and disrespect directed at the leadership of Toyota by certain members of Congress, representatives from Mexico, Canada and Kenya are already reaching out to the company with the selling points that not only would they be welcomed with open arms, but such self-serving arrogance would never be allowed or tolerated in their countries.

The American people — without their consent or approval — have already seen 60 billion of their tax dollars used to bail out bankrupt General Motors and Chrysler.

Conversely, Toyota's investment in our nation and our work force exceeds $18 billion. The American people not only understand that basic math, but when schoolyard bullies are on the prowl.

Certain members of Congress teamed together to unnecessarily throw a large boulder into the calm waters which connect Japan and the United States. We will now see how far those ripples travel and what damage they do.

March 2, 2010 at 12:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522531

Most discussions of health care are like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

What is the biggest complaint about the current medical care situation? "It costs too much." Yet one looks in vain for anything in the pending legislation that will lower those costs.

One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians' answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government.

(*SPLITTING HEADACHE*)

Back when the "single payer" was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their own money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets over-used — and bureaucratic rationing is then imposed, to replace self-rationing.

Money is just one of the costs of people seeking more medical care than they would if they were paying for it with their own money.

Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting.

In country after country, the original estimates of government medical care costs almost always turn out to be gross under-estimates of what it ultimately turns out to cost.

One of the big costs that have actually forced some hospitals to close is the federal mandate that hospitals treat everyone who comes to an emergency room, whether they pay or not. But those who talk about "bringing down the cost of medical care" are not about to repeal that mandate. Often they want to add more mandates.

The most fundamental issue is not whether treating everyone who comes to an emergency room is a good policy or a bad policy in itself. If it is a good policy, then the federal government should pay for what it wants done, not force other institutions to pay for it. Then let the voters decide at the next election whether that is what they want their tax money spent for.

* AMEN...!!!

What is called lowering the costs is simply refusing to pay all the costs, by having the government set lower prices, whether for doctors' fees, hospital reimbursements or other charges.

Surely no one believes that there will be no repercussions from refusing to pay for what we want. Some doctors are already refusing to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients because the government's reimbursement levels are so low.

Similarly, if it costs a billion dollars to create one new pharmaceutical drug, then either we are going to pay the billion dollars or we are not going to keep on getting new pharmaceutical drugs produced. There is no free lunch.

Virtually everything that is proposed by those who are talking about bringing down the costs of medical care will in fact raise those costs. Mandates on insurance companies? Why are insurance companies not already doing those things that new mandates would require? Because those things raise costs by an amount that people are unwilling to pay to get those benefits.

If not, it would be a slam dunk for the insurance companies to add those benefits to the policies and raise the premiums to cover them. What politicians want to do is look good by imposing mandates, and then let the insurance companies look bad by raising the premiums to cover the additional costs.

It is a great political game, but it does nothing to lower medical costs.

March 2, 2010 at 12:05 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522584

[The Washington Times] looks at the data and finds that Americans have become more dependent on government than at any time since the Depression. Something's gone terribly wrong in our country.

We Americans pride ourselves on our independence. Our nation's founding document even uses that in its title — the Declaration of Independence. But this spirit is fading with each new year, each new state and federal program, each new unkeepable promise made to a growing throng of citizens looking to government — not their own abilities, savvy, learning and hard work — to get by in life.

Last year, for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes. Transfer payments — unemployment, Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare and other forms of government welfare — grew $231 billion last year to just over $2.1 trillion. Meanwhile, individual taxes shrank $325 billion to $2.1 trillion, slightly less (before rounding) than transfer payments.

Let that sink in for a moment: We, as a people, are taking more in welfare than we're paying in taxes.

The Heritage Foundation tracks annual changes in the use of government services and entitlements. Its yearly report creates a "dependency index" that gauges just how much we lean on government for our well-being.

In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, the index stood at 238 — compared with a starting value of 100 in 1980. That means our dependency on government has grown 138% since the year before Reagan became president.

Economist Gary Shilling has his own dependence gauge. His most recent report, in 2007, showed that 52.6% of Americans got "significant income" from government. Seven years earlier, it was "just" 49.4%. In 1950, it was 28.3%.

With $45 trillion in planned spending over the next decade, the U.S. will soon look more like one of the fiscally bloated, economically sclerotic members of the European Union than the America that has for a century been the world's economic trailblazer.

The further we move away from a market economy and toward government control, the more dependent we and our children will become.

March 2, 2010 at 12:05 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522575

Al Gore resurfaces in an op-ed to say that nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes and climate change is still real. And he has some oceanfront property in the Himalayas to sell you.

(*HUGE FRIGG'N GRIN*) COM'ON... THAT LAST LINE WAS FUNNY!

If hyperbole and chutzpah had a child, it would be the opening paragraph of Gore's op-ed in Sunday's New York Times. Gore surfaced from the global warming witness-protection program to opine that despite admissions of error and evidence of fraud by various agencies, we still face "an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it."

Perhaps he's trying to protect his investments as he knows them, for he is heavily involved in enterprises that deal with carbon offsets and green technology. If the case for climate change is shown to be demonstrably false, a lot of his green evaporates like moisture from the ocean.

(*SMIRK*) (*SHRUG*)

Interestingly, it's that moisture from the ocean that he uses to defend his failed hypothesis. The blizzards that have buried the Northeast, he writes, are proof of global warming because record evaporation due to warming is what produces record snows. Except that supporters of his theory not long ago argued exactly the opposite. [L]ast year Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., warned that lack of snow in the mountains was threatening California's water supply.

Boxer, who along with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, is trying to ram through a Senate version of the House's Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, said: "Looking at the United States of America, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) clearly warned that unchecked global warming will lead to reduced snowpack in the western mountains, critically reducing access to water, which is our lifeblood."

So global warming simultaneously causes mountain snow to vanish and Himalayan glaciers to recede while blanketing the northeastern United States with snowfalls measured in feet[???]

(*SNORT*) YEP. AMUSING YET EFFECTIVE INDICTMENT. SO MUCH FOR "SETTLED" SCIENCE.

March 2, 2010 at 12:06 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522576

The White House picks its most frequent visitor to sit on its deficit commission. He believes in big government, in big spending, and that the workers of the world should unite. What could go wrong?

Computer security firms have been known to hire the best former hackers because they know best how to stop others like them. But the appointment of Andy Stern, president of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), to a bipartisan commission to come up with ways to deal with the rapidly rising federal budget deficit is like having a serial arsonist organize Fire Prevention Week.

Government employment is the only growth sector in the economy right now, and unions that represent government workers such as the SEIU are growing apace. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than private-sector employees (7.4 million), despite there being five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.

Stern wants to see this trend continue. When the White House released its visitor logs last October, he was found to be the most frequent guest, stopping by 22 times, more than congressional leaders, Cabinet members and heads of state.

The SEIU, along with other unions, supports the nationalization of health care as long as the higher taxes required for this big government, big spending program don't apply to them. Stern and other union bosses, like the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka, helped carve out a union exemption from the taxation of "Cadillac" insurance plans.

Stern says that if those who disagree with command-and-control government do not bow to the power of persuasion, they will bow to the persuasion of power. Certainly Kenneth Gladney found out about the persuasiveness of power when thugs wearing purple SEIU shirts beat him up when he tried to sell "Don't Tread on Me" paraphernalia outside a Missouri town hall meeting on health care.

Stern is an odd choice for the deficit commission simply because he believes, as Vice President Joe Biden does, that we must keep spending to avoid going bankrupt.

(*SNORT*) COM'ON... YA GOTTA AGREE... IF THE BIDEN LINE DOESN'T BRING A SMIRK TO YOUR FACE... (*CHUCKLE*)

You don't reduce spending and deficits by appointing to a deficit commission a union boss who believes in increasing both.

* OR AT LEAST ONE WOULD THINK...

March 2, 2010 at 12:06 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/01/cut-pay-federal-employees-jobs-opinions-columnists-wesbury-stein.html?boxes=opinionschannellighttop

Imagine a company that dominates its field. It's been No. 1 in its industry as long as anyone can remember. But lately it's fallen on hard times. Revenue has dropped dramatically. The only thing keeping it afloat is record borrowing based on its stellar credit rating, earned many years ago. Meanwhile, independent analysts have shown that workers at this company earn higher than average wages. Moreover, the workers have skills that are not easily transferable.

If this were an airline or an automaker, the solution would be a no-brainer: It would be time for a big pay cut.

If the company didn't cut pay, or increased it, creditors and investors would question the seriousness of management.

But this is exactly what President Obama did in his most recent budget--request a wage increase of 2% for civilian federal workers in 2010.

It's no wonder some are questioning the financial stability of the U.S. So why don't we do something serious. How about an outright pay cut of 10% for all civilian federal workers?

* WHY INDEED...

[T]otal compensation per federal worker--cash earnings plus fringe benefits--now averages twice that of the private sector. So cutting cash earnings by 10% across the board seems not only reasonable, but justified.

(*NOD*)

[A] one-time pay cut of 10% permanently shifts future wages onto a lower path. With today's interest rates, the present value of all future outlay savings would total roughly $750 billion.

For the president's budget to propose federal worker pay hikes while unemployment is at 9.7%, after so many private-sector workers have had to suffer pay cuts or layoffs, the signal being sent is clear: The U.S. is not yet serious about the deficit.

March 2, 2010 at 1:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://article.nationalreview.com/426567/crisis-in-turkey/daniel-pipes

The arrest and indictment of top military figures in Turkey last week precipitated what is potentially the country’s most severe crisis since Ataturk founded the republic in 1923. The weeks ahead will probably indicate whether the country will continue its slide toward Islamism or revert to its traditional secularism.

Turkey’s military has long been both the state’s most trusted institution and the guarantor of Ataturk’s legacy, especially his laicism. Devotion to the founder is not some dry abstraction but a very real and central part of a Turkish officer’s life; as journalist Mehmet Ali Birand has documented, cadet-officers can hardly go an hour without hearing Ataturk’s name invoked.

On four occasions between 1960 and 1997, the military intervened to repair a political process gone awry. On the last of these occasions, it forced the Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan out of power. Chastened by this experience, some of Erbakan’s staff re-organized themselves as the more cautious Justice and Development Party (AKP). In the decisive election of 2002, they surged ahead of discredited and fragmented centrist parties with a plurality of 34 percent of the popular vote.

Parliamentary rules then transformed that plurality into a 66 percent supermajority of assembly seats and a rare case of single-party rule.

[T]he AKP increased its portion of the vote in the 2007 elections to a resounding 47 percent, with control over 62 percent of parliamentary seats.

Repeated AKP electoral successes encouraged it to drop its earlier caution and hasten moving the country toward AKP’s dream, an Islamic Republic of Turkey. The party placed partisans in the presidency and the judiciary while seizing increased control of education, business, media, and other leading institutions. It even challenged the secularists’ hold over what Turks call the “deep state” — the non-elected institutions of the intelligence agencies, security services, and judiciary.

Only the military, the ultimate arbiter of the country’s direction, remained beyond AKP control.

Ultimately the issue is whether sharia will rule Turkey or the country will return to secularism.

[Only] if the military retains its independence, Ataturk’s vision will remain alive in Turkey and offer Muslims worldwide an alternative to the Islamist juggernaut.

* DETAILS OF THE CURRENT STAND-OFF BETWEEN THE ISLAMISTS AND THE MILITARY ARE CONTAINED WITHIN THE ARTICLE ITSELF. PLEASE AVAIL YOURSELVES OF THE LINK PROVIDED UP TOP.

March 2, 2010 at 1:24 PM

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