Do You Like to Be Nudged?

I completely agree that "nudging" is just a nice way of saying "forcing".  Now, I take some issue with Gonzalez's portrayal of the global warming debate quote.  Not all views need to receive equal time (e.g. the earth is not flat), but saying an argument is "settled" is not an argument, especially when legitimate and factual points can be made on both sides.    

Do You Like to Be Nudged?

By Mike Gonzalez

MARCH 13, 2014Share on emShare on pri

Do you want society’s so-called best and brightest “nudging” your decisions about what to consume – whether it’s for news, soft drinks or light bulbs?

If so, chances are you call yourself progressive. If you snort at the mere notion, however, you are almost certainly a conservative.

In fact, throw out all the other Rorschach tests. This is the one that separates one side from the other.

This difference is at the heart of a spat I find myself in with colleagues Darrell West and Beth Stone of the Brookings Institution. West and Stone contended in a paper in early February that our media organizations need to “nudge” Americans to consume “more thoughtful information.” I argued in a piece in The Federalist that their manuscript was a veiled attempt at putting the media revolution genie back in the bottle and returning us to the age when the likes of Walter Cronkite, NPR and The New York Times told us what was news. Not to be outdone, West and Stone returned the favor and scolded me this week for being anti-thoughtful.

Our little debate is actually a microcosm of a larger one. Progressives like a centralized state composed of luminaries making enlightened decisions for the rest of society. Conservatives fear that this state will treat the individual less like an adult and more like an infant — and, more importantly, tear his family and community apart.

In this wonk spat between West, Stone and me, the operative word is “thoughtful” — the quality I supposedly lack and a word they use no fewer than nine times in their response. To be thoughtful is indeed a fine quality, but I posit that the term here can be wielded to quash dissenting voices. Tin pot dictators don’t have laws that say “whatever Tin Pot doesn’t like is banned.” No, they ban actions, speech or even thought deemed “hateful,” “anti-social,” “against social conviviality,” and so on.

West and Stone are not totalitarians or even authoritarians. I am sure they view themselves as broad-minded, tolerant and urbane. They protest that “we are not ultra-liberals and we actually have voted for Republicans and Democrats” (though I would point out to Mr. West that a former professor at Brown University pulling the lever for Lincoln Chaffee doesn’t count).

They do, however, make clear that “thoughtful reporting” would be what Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan, Jill Abramson, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez — journalists ranging from liberal to very liberal — think is thoughtful, as these are the names they cite. One doesn’t find Brit Hume, George Will, Rich Lowry or Paul Gigot among their arbiters of thoughtfulness.

Even if they had included Charles Krauthammer, the idea of nudging consumers only toward what an elite of either side deems appropriate is frightening. Consider West’s interview on Bloomberg radio this past weekend on what he considers thoughtful.

Interviewer Bill Frezza asked West how he thought the media should deal with issues of settled science. West answered that “good scientists never resolve anything permanently because there’s always new information that comes around,” which is right. But then Frezza asked, “So would you be in favor of equal time for both global warming alarmists and climate change deniers?”

West: “I would not in that situation, just because you’re talking about a situation where, you know, 98 percent of scientists believe that the world is getting warmer and that human activities are part of the reason it is getting warmer. It is a very small number of people—many of them don’t have good credentials—who are challenging that viewpoint. So I think it’s a mistake when journalists equate those two perspectives when in reality, you know, scientists overwhelmingly believe in global warming.”

Frezza: “Fascinating.”

Indeed. I think we all get the point.

After I wrote my piece in The Federalist, it emerged that the Federal Communications Commission was launching a study on whether news outlets were covering “critical information needs.” Among these were the “environment” and “economic opportunities.”

This study would be an instance where the government uses its full might to force media outlets to cover what it wants, and the FCC’s actions led to a huge outcry. West and Stone don’t come armed with the power to take TV licenses away, and would only “nudge” us toward the “right” consumption patterns.

But caution is in order. Nudging is a term popularized in the policy context by former Obama official Cass Sunstein, by which he meant using public policy to persuade people subconsciously to make certain choices and not others. In media consumption, people click much more often on items that are higher on a search engine’s queue.

West and Stone observe approvingly that Facebook already gives priority to what it considers high-quality content. Conservatives need to be watchful of this. Facebook, Google and Twitter — all so essential to our new-found, post-Cronkite media freedom — are basically monopolies.

West and Stone complain that I denigrated their paper. I didn’t. I respect their work and also that of Brookings. I believe society benefits from a collegial, Socratic dialogue in which we probe each other’s thinking in policy and moral matters, in order to stimulate critical thinking. But to do that, you need to present more than one point of view. And no nudging allowed.

War on Women

War on Women

By John Stossel - March 12, 2014

You've probably heard that Democratic Party leaders decided that a way to win votes this November is to shout loudly that Republicans wage "war on women." Politico calls this a "proven, persuasive argument."

Give me a break. The idea of a conservative "war on women" is as silly as propaganda I was taught in college: Aside from sex organs, genders are exactly equal, said my leftist professors, and any admission of differences between men and women is oppressive.

I was taught that the only reason boys and girls behave differently is because we're raised differently. If society and parents were to treat genders the same, behavior differences would vanish. I believed it.

Then I had kids, and spent more time with kids, and learned what a fool I'd been.

Back in my ABC News days, I did a TV show about the differences. A typical mom said, "We gave them each trucks.

She just wouldn't play with trucks. We wouldn't let him play with guns, so he pretended carrots were guns."

There were exceptions, of course. But it turns out that there's plenty of science documenting that men and women are just programmed differently.

Yet when I reported on that, feminist icon Gloria Steinem told me that gender differences shouldn't even be studied. She sneered, it's "anti-American, crazy thinking to do this kind of research."

At the time, fire departments had dropped strength tests to avoid being accused of sex discrimination. When I told Steinem that one of my interviewees complained that instead of being carried during a fire, now she would be dragged downstairs, with her head hitting each stair, Steinem retorted, "It's better to drag them out ... there's less smoke down there."

Such mindless egalitarianism appeals to politicians, so governments push more of it. President Barack Obama and his supporters brag that Obamacare forces health insurance companies to sell men and women health insurance for the exact same price. On my TV show this week, Democratic activist Jehmu Greene asks indignantly, "Do you want to live in a country where you charge women more than men?"

Well, yes, I do. Insurance should account for costs. Women go to doctors much more often. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say, even if you exclude pregnancy visits, women are 33 percent more likely to visit a doctor.

Insurance companies used to reflect that in prices. That isn't bigotry -- it's just math.

Insurance companies still charge men more for car and life insurance. A survey of car insurance companies found that the cheapest policy for a woman cost 39 percent less than for a man. A 60-year-old woman pays 20 percent less than a man for a 10-year life insurance policy. Seventy-year-old women pay half as much as men.

That's just math, too, because most women live longer than men and, despite the "woman-driver" stereotype, we men get into more car accidents.

I don't hear activists complaining about men  paying too much. The "victim" propaganda works only when women pay more.

The sexes are simply different. Yet government demands that colleges have gender-equal sports participation. It's fine if dance and art groups are mostly women, but if athletic teams are too male, lawsuits follow.

Obama even cynically repeats the misleading claim that women make 77 cents for every dollar men make, although his own Department of Labor says the difference evaporates once you control for experience and other choices.

Government once even claimed that Hooters discriminates against men because it hires big-breasted female waiters. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission only dropped its complaint after Hooters ran a commercial showing a hairy male server wearing Hooters' skimpy uniform. Good for Hooters for mocking the bureaucrats; most companies just cringe and pay.

Liberal social engineers may dream of a society where genders are exactly equal, but that's nonsense. Men and women are different. We should celebrate that difference instead of claiming that women are victims. 

Presidential Debate Refresher

Inequality in San Francisco

Article: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2164220,00.html

How interesting that nearly all evidence of inequality is caused by the government b/c the free market is not allowed to work:

• Not enough affordable housing, yet zoning restrictions and rent control continue to hinder new development while limiting housing flexibility and discouraging home ownership
  
• Not enough good paying non-tech jobs, yet we criticize, demonize, and seek to raise taxes on local businesses (including taxes on private buses in the name of "fairness")
• The entire article is about how stuff is too expensive, yet one of the solutions is to raise the minimum wage nearly 50%.  Do we not think that increasing the cost of low-skill labor will increase the cost of everyday items?  If we were able to make items more affordable by raising the minimum wage, then why not $50 an hour or $100?  Two reasons: first, raising the minimum wage reduces employment opportunitie, as companies hire fewer workers.  Second, increasing the minimum wage raises the cost of production, increasing the cost of items for all consumers.  There is no free lunch; at the end of the day people will (and should) be paid for the value of the work they produce.  The value of that work is determined by the supply and demand of the labor market (see previous comments regarding minimum wage).  

Favorite quote: "There's been this debate of people with more wealth saying, 'Well, if you don't have enough money, then you need to move to a cheaper city,'"..."That's not taking into account their roots, their community, their needs, or anything else."  Actually, it is taking "anything else" into consideration, namely the concept of individual liberty and the laws of supply and demand and the economic efficiencies that allow for growth to improve the quality of life for the vast majority of citizens.  And since when is ownership determined by "roots" or "needs"?  By that logic, the Native Americans own all this land and all of you must move.  Also not sure who speaks for "the community"... 

Admittedly, the cost of living is likely to rise as wealthier individuals move into an area with geographic limitations on expansion.  Some lower income citizens will be affected.  Now, even though the wealthier citizens did nothing wrong, illegal, or predatory, do we view it as the government's job to protect poorer citizens from experiencing any changes even through those government protections will require infringement on the freedom, economic growth, and well-being of all other citizens in San Francisco?

The 'Fairness' Fraud

Thomas Sowell | Feb 25, 2014

It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward "mobility," defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen.

That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead, and the ones that don't rise have been stopped by "barriers" created by "society."

When statistics show that sons of high school dropouts don't become doctors or scientists nearly as often as the sons of Ph.D.s, that is taken as a sign that American society is not "fair."

If equal probabilities of achieving some goal is your definition of fairness, then we should all get together -- people of every race, color, creed, national origin, political ideology and sexual preference -- and stipulate that life has never been fair, anywhere or any time in all the millennia of recorded history.

Then we can begin at last to talk sense.

I know that I never had an equal chance to become a great ballet dancer like Rudolph Nureyev. The thought of becoming a ballet dancer never once crossed my mind in all the years when I was growing up in Harlem. I suspect that the same thought never crossed the minds of most of the guys growing up on New York's lower east side.

Does that mean that there were unfair barriers keeping us from following in the footsteps of Rudolph Nureyev?

A very distinguished scholar once mentioned at a social gathering that, as a young man, he was not thinking of going to college until someone else, who recognized his ability, urged him to do so.

Another very distinguished scholar told me that, although his parents were anti-Semitic, it was the fact that he went to a school with many Jewish children that got him interested in intellectual matters and led him into an academic career.

All groups, families and cultures are not even trying to do the same things, so the fact that they do not all end up equally represented everywhere can hardly be automatically attributed to "barriers" created by "society."

Barriers are external obstacles, as distinguished from internal values and aspirations -- unless you are going to play the kind of word games that redefine achievements as "privileges" and treat an absence of evidence of discrimination as only proof of how diabolically clever and covert the discrimination is.

The front page of a local newspaper in northern California featured the headline "The Promise Denied," lamenting the under-representation of women in computer engineering. The continuation of this long article on an inside page had the headline, "Who is to blame for this?"

In other words, the fact that reality does not match the preconceptions of the intelligentsia shows that there is something wrong with reality, for which somebody must be blamed. Apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong.

Women, like so many other groups, seem not to be dedicated to fulfilling the prevailing fetish among the intelligentsia that every demographic group should be equally represented in all sorts of places.

Women have their own agendas, and if these agendas do not usually include computer engineering, what is to be done? Draft women into engineering schools to satisfy the preconceptions of our self-anointed saviors? Or will a propaganda campaign be sufficient to satisfy those who think that they should be making other people's choices for them?

That kind of thinking is how we got ObamaCare.

At least one of the recent celebrated statistical studies of social mobility leaves out Asian Americans. Immigrants from Asia are among a number of groups, including American-born Mormons, whose achievements totally undermine the notion that upward mobility can seldom be realized in America.

Those who preach this counterproductive message will probably never think that the envy, resentment and hopelessness they preach, and the welfare state they promote, are among the factors keeping people down.

Why Young Adults Won't Sign Up for Obamacare

By Napala Pratini, NerdWallet

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=22690267

Anyone who looked at the law could have predicted these problems (and, I suspect if you look back to the 2008 portion of this blog, you will find several examples of conservative writers who did just that).  Why wasn't this obvious to the legislators who voted for it?  On wait, we needed to "pass the bill so you can find out what's in it". 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released data showing that 55 percent of Americans who enrolled in plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the first three months were between the ages of 45 and 64. The report from January showed a whopping one-third of enrollees were aged 55 and older—people just shy of coverage under Medicare, and more likely to get sick or to have pre-existing health conditions. Only 24 percent of the 2.2 million who have signed up are between the ages of 18 and 34, well below the Obama administration's target of around 40 percent. A new study on the cost of insurance for young adults reveals why young adults may opt out of purchasing health insurance through the marketplace.

1. Most young adults are in the "healthy majority"

Adults aged 18 to 34 and without health problems are called "young invincibles" for a reason. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control, less than a quarter of adults ages 18 to 29 said they visited an emergency room during a one-year period, and only 7 percent stayed overnight at the hospital. Just 4.2 percent of people in this age group report their heath to be fair or poor—meaning the remaining 95.8 percent claim that their health is good, very good or excellent. An additional 30 percent will not even see a doctor once in the year. This "healthy majority" who rarely access care have good reason to think twice before purchasing insurance.

2. Being healthy doesn't entitle you to a big break on insurance costs

Prior to the ACA, older and/or unhealthy adults could be charged more than five times what young, healthy adults were for health insurance premiums. The ACA limits this "age-rating" ratio to three—that is, older or unhealthy individuals can be charged only up to three times what the young and healthy pay. This is great news for those suffering from illness, because it means they will be able to get more affordable insurance that covers all of their health problems. Young invincibles, however, get the short end of the stick. One study estimates a median rate increase of 237 percent for young invincibles (without taking premium assistance into account).

3. Emergencies don't necessarily cost less with insurance

Many young invincibles wisely worry about going uninsured and risking massive bills following a trip to the emergency room. A recent study on insurance costs for young adults, however, predicts that being insured will cost upwards of $700 more for individuals who visit the ER. This is because most insurance plans require the policyholder to meet a deductible before benefits kick in. For this reason, the study estimates an uninsured young adult who visits the ER once in 2014 will pay $2,022 in annual out-of-pocket expenses. Meanwhile, an insured young adult will see a total 2014 bill of $2,791, including premiums and out-of-pocket expenses to cover the ER visit. This estimate takes into account the penalty that the uninsured will pay, as well as the cost of physician office visits throughout the year for both the insured and the uninsured.

4. For the healthy majority, being uninsured is 5 times cheaper than being insured

Assuming no major medical issues, foregoing insurance in 2014 will on average save young invincibles more than $1,000. Not only do the uninsured who visit the doctor spend less on these visits per year than their insured peers (an estimated $253 for the uninsured, as opposed to $517 for the insured), the penalty for being uninsured in 2014 is dwarfed by premium costs for the insured. While it is impossible to rule out the onset of certain conditions or an accident, young adults with the stomach for calculated risk are likely to opt for being uninsured—and therefore potentially saving thousands of dollars.

The Original Sin of Global Warming

The Original Sin of Global Warming

By Robert Tracinski

It might seem strange to say it, but I am a global warming skeptic because of Carl Sagan.

This might seem strange because Sagan was an early promoter of the theory that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are going to fry the globe. But it’s not so strange when you consider the larger message that made Sagan famous.

As with many people my age, Sagan’s 1980 series “Cosmos,” which aired on public television when I was eleven years old, was my introduction to science, and it changed my life. “Cosmos” shared the latest developments in the sciences of evolution, astronomy, and astrophysics, but its real heart was Sagan’s overview of the history of science and the distinctive ethos behind the scientific method. Sagan returned again and again to one central theme: that the first rule of science is to follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of one’s wishes or preconceptions. He spoke eloquently about the Ancient Greek Pythagoreans and their attempt to suppress the facts about “irrational numbers” that didn’t fit their theory. And he spoke admiringly about the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler, who started out pursuing a theory in which the planets move in circular orbits reflecting the ratios of the perfect Pythagorean solids—and ended up being driven by the evidence to reject this theory and discover completely new laws of planetary motion.

I didn’t end up becoming a scientist, but I absorbed Sagan’s basic lesson and have tried my best to adhere to it in my own field: follow the evidence wherever it leads.

But this can be a difficult rule to follow. It is easy to spot the unexamined assumptions of others, but harder to root out your own prejudices. A few years ago, while watching “Cosmos” again for the first time in 25 years, I was reminded that Sagan did not always practice what he preached, and his error sheds light on the global warming theory’s original sin against science. It is a sin that has only gotten worse and which explains the scandalous state of today’s debate over global warming.

In the third episode of “Cosmos,” Sagan presents our nearest planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars, as cautionary tales of what happens when a potentially Earth-like planet goes wrong and become inhospitable to life. In his telling, Venus is a warning about how a runaway greenhouse effect can turn a planet’s surface into an acidic furnace, while Mars is a cautionary tale about how an inadequate greenhouse affect can leave a planet cold, dry, and barren. He proceeds to apply these lessons to Earth, predicting two possible doomsday scenarios: one in which deforestation causes the Earth to cool, and one in which fossil fuels cause it to warm. (You can hear some of the audio here, but without Sagan’s original visuals.)

Human activities brighten our landscape and our atmosphere. Might this ultimately make an ice age here? At the same time we are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect…. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth’s climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the Cosmos, into a kind of hell.

This is a bit of a cultural time capsule, preserving the precise moment at which scientific alarmists were switching from warning about a new ice age, in the 1970s, to warning about runaway warming.

Much of the planetary science behind these claims, by the way, turned out to be speculative and premature. In the 1990s, detailed satellite maps of Venus revealed the remains of enormous volcanoes and vast rivers of lava, implying that the planet had been entirely resurfaced by a volcanic apocalypse as recently as 100 million years ago—which strikes me as a much more reasonable explanation for why Venus has a surface temperature of 900 degrees and an atmosphere full of sulfuric acid. As for Mars, its much smaller size and lack of a planetary magnetic field, which allows its atmosphere to be stripped off by the solar wind, are adequate explanations for its cold, thin air and the absence of surface water. So Venusian SUVs and overenthusiastic Martian loggers are probably off the hook.

To his credit, Sagan admits that the science on this subject is still in its early stages—but then he makes a disastrous error.

And yet we ravage the Earth at an accelerated pace, as if it belonged to this one generation, as if it were ours to do with as we please…. Our generation must choose. Which do we value more: short-term profits or the long-term habitability of our planetary home?…

The study of the global climate, the sun’s influence, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, these are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are funded poorly and grudgingly, and meanwhile we continue to load the Earth’s atmosphere with materials about whose long-term influence we are almost entirely ignorant.

Can you see the error? Sagan enters this topic with a clear animus against the profit motive and a pre-established belief that industrial civilization is “ravaging the earth.” These are the obvious cultural biases of a late-20th-century modern liberal. So he considers two alternative theories—that we are destroying the planet by cooling it down, or we are destroying the planet by heating it up—and calls for more government funding to figure out which is correct. But his bias prevents him from seriously considering the obvious third option: that our effect on the Earth’s climate is negligible, any heating or cooling is within the normal range of natural variation, and the benefits of industrial civilization far outweigh any negative effects. But if we don’t treat this as an option, much less as an equally likely option, no government funding is likely to be devoted to pursuing that theory.

This is the original sin of the global warming theory: that it was founded in a presumption of guilt against industrial civilization. All of the billions of dollars in government research funding and the entire cultural establishment that has been built up around global warming were founded on the presumption that we already knew the conclusion—we’re “ravaging the planet”—and we’re only interested in evidence that supports that conclusion.

That brings us to where we are today. The establishment’s approach to the scientific debate over global warming is to declare that no such debate exists—and to ruthlessly stamp it out if anyone tries to start one.

That’s how we get the Los Angeles Times loftily declaring that it won’t even publish letters to the editor that question global warming. That’s how we get Michael Mann’slawsuit attempting to make it a legally punishable offense to “question his intellect and reasoning.”

That’s how we get the appalling petition to spike Charles Krauthammer’s Washington Post‘s column for expressing mere agnosticism about global warming.

It’s how we get the New York Times casually suggesting that global warming “deniers”should be stabbed.

And then there is this doozy, from my own backyard: at the University of Virginia, Thomas Forman II declares in the student newspaper that global warming skeptics shouldn’t even be allowed to speak on campus, because “we should keep our debates out of our science classes.”

This, at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson, who said, “here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” He also said, “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”

Forman is the president of the UVA Environmental Sciences Organization, which “provides a link between the Environmental Sciences Department and the students of the University,” “mainly geared toward undergraduate majors and minors in the department.” So the guy who believes in keeping debate out of our science classes has appointed himself as a guide for every undergraduate who wants to enter the field of climate science.

This puts a whole new light on the claim that a “consensus” of climate scientists backs global warming. It’s easy to manufacture such a consensus when you decree ahead of time that no contrary opinion may be heard. When I saw the recent claim that 97% of climate scientists endorse the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming, it struck me that this is the same margin by which dictators typically claim they have won re-election—and for the same reason. These are both systems in which voting for the “wrong” result is not tolerated.

To see how fanatical this atmosphere of intolerance has become, consider the case of Bjorn Lomborg, who does not even question whether man-made global warming is occurring, but merely argues that it would cost the world far more to stop carbon dioxide emissions than it would to ameliorate the effects of global warming. For this heresy, he had his funding specifically cut off by the Danish government and has had to move into a kind of voluntary exile in Prague. A long profile of Lomborg describes how he has been ostracized merely for questioning the economic and political policies for dealing with global warming. Which is revealing in itself, because it implies that it is the political end result, the campaign to impose massive taxes and restrictions on fossil fuels, that is the fixed assumption to which science must bend.

This is why I treat scientific claims about global warming with such skepticism: I would give them a lot more credence if I thought anyone was allowed to come up with a different answer. As I observed in the Mann vs. Steyn case, if it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science.

That’s a lesson I learned from Carl Sagan, and while he had some role in launching the current global warming orthodoxy, I suspect he would be appalled at the unscientific fanaticism with which it is now enforced. Consider Sagan’s treatment of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose crackpot theories about the development of the solar system enjoyed a brief vogue in the middle of the 20th century. After dissecting the various absurdities of Velikovsky’s theory, Sagan offered this conclusion:

The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his idea were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts. Rather, the worst aspect is that some scientistsattempted to suppress Velikovsky’s ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science.

Let this serve as an answer—and a rebuke—to today’s global warming establishment.

George Will - The Liberal Agenda

George F. Will

Opinion Writer

The liberal agenda: Being good to liberals

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By George F. Will, Published: February 26 

The many jaundiced assessments of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on the fifth anniversary of its enactment were understandable, given that the sluggish recovery, now drowsing through the second half of its fifth year, is historically anemic. Still, bleak judgments about the stimulus spending miss the main point of it, which was to funnel a substantial share of its money to unionized, dues-paying, Democratic-voting government employees. Hence the stimulus succeeded. So there.

This illustrates why it is so sublime to be a liberal nowadays. Viewed through the proper prism, most liberal policies succeed because they can hardly fail. Each achieves one or both of two objectives — making liberals feel good about themselves and being good to liberal candidates.

Consider Barack Obama's renewed anxiety about Global Warming, increasingly called "Climate Change" during the approximately 15 years warming has become annoyingly difficult to detect.  Secretary of State John Kerry, our Knight of Mournful Countenance, was especially apocalyptic recently when warning that climate change is a "weapon of mass destruction" Like Iraq's?

Blogger Steven Hayward noted that Kerry, he of the multiple mansions and luxury yacht, issued this warning in Indonesia, where the average annual income ($3,420)suggests little latitude for people to reduce their carbon footprints. Never mind. Obama says “the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”

When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side. Obama is, howeverhttp://, quite right that climate change is a fact. The climate is alwayschanging: It is not what it was during theMedieval Warm Period (ninth to 13th centuries) or the Little Ice Age (about 1500-1850).

In Indonesia, Kerry embraced Obama’s “Shut up, he explained” approach to climate discussion: “The science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3-D movie.” Leaping scenes? The “absolutely certain” science is “something that we understand with absolute assurance of the veracity of that science.” And “kids at the earliest age can understand.” No wonder “97 percent” — who did the poll? — of climate scientists agree. When a Nazi publishing company produced “100 Authors Against Einstein,” the target of this argument-by-cumulation replied: “Were I wrong, one professor would have been quite enough.”

Climate alarmism validates the progressive impulse to micromanage others’ lives — their light bulbs, shower heads, toilets, appliances, automobiles, etc. Although this is a nuisance, it distracts liberals from more serious mischief. And conservatives incensed about Obama’s proposed $1 billion “climate resilience fund” — enough for nearly two Solyndra-scale crony-capitalism debacles — should welcome an Obama brainstorm that costs only a single billion.

Besides, the “resilience” fund will succeed. It will enhance liberals’ self-esteem — planet-saving heroism is not chopped liver — and will energize the climate-alarmist portion of the Democratic base for November’s elections.

Concerning that portion, there will now be a somewhat awkward pause in the chorus of liberal lamentations about there being “too much money” in politics because of wealthy conservatives. During this intermission, the chorus will segue into hosannas of praise for liberal billionaire Tom Steyer. The New York Times says he plans to solicit $50 million from similarly situated liberals, and to match this with $50 million of his own, and to spend the pile to “pressure federal and state officials to enact climate change measures through a hard-edge campaign of attack ads against governors and lawmakers.” The Times says Steyer’s organization, NextGen Climate Action, is “among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch.”

Conservatives should be serene about people exercising their constitutional right to spend their own money to disseminate political speech, including the speech of people who associate in corporate forms for political advocacy. The Supreme Court’s excellent 2010Citizens United ruling, the mention of which sends liberals to their fainting couches, affirmed this right.

Still, there is a semantic puzzle: What are such “outside groups” outside of? Not the political process — unless the process is the private preserve of the political parties. Liberal campaign finance scolds seem to think so. Applying their mantra that “money is not speech,” they have written laws restricting contributions to parties, with the predicted effect of driving money into “outside groups.” This is redundant evidence of why the Law of Unintended Consequences might better be called the Law of Unending Liberal Regrets.

Afghanistan Testimony

Not a huge fan of Ann Coulter, but she makes some good points here.  One miss on her part, though.  She makes the claim that Obamacare is unfair because it taxes middle class and rich people at the same level.  That's actually a good thing - we shouldn't be taking from one group to pay for another group (see previous post on the rich paying their "fair share").  The real problem is that Obamacare charges sick people the same price as healthy people - that's as illogical as it is unsustainable, unless you expect a whole bunch of healthy people to essentially pay a lot of money for nothing (which is exactly what the law tries to do, except they are likely to find the required price under such a system is unacceptably high).  Insurance by definition should price discriminate (expensive, high-risk people should pay more than inexpensive, lower-risk people).  Without that key pricing mechanism (and with mandated enrollment), "insurance" essentially becomes a transfer system in which one group of citizens pays the bills for another group.  In this case, I suspect Coulter's desire to criticize the president (she can't pass up the chance to call him a hypocrite) skews her analysis of the policy - the lack of regressivity is not her problem with the law, but it is a convenient tool with which to attack President Obama.  

NEW OBAMA PROMISE: IF YOU LIKE YOUR LIFE, YOU CAN KEEP IT

 

By Ann Coulter

Liberals are winning wild praise for their candor in admitting problems with Obamacare. It shows you the level of honesty people have come to expect of our liberal friends. Now, liberals are applauded for not lying through their teeth about something.

What are they supposed to say? This Obamacare website is fantastic! And really, haven't you already read all the magazines in your current doctor's office anyway?

The New York Times has described Obama's repeated claim that you could keep your insurance plan and keep your doctor under Obamacare as a mere slip of the tongue: "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that."

Misspoke? How exactly does one misspeak, word for word, dozens of times, over and over again?

That wasn't misspeaking -- it was a deliberate, necessary lie. Even Democrats couldn't have voted for Obamacare if Americans had known the truth. It was absolutely vital for Obama to lie about people being able to keep their insurance and their doctors.

Of course, it was difficult for voters to know the truth because every time Republicans would try to tell them, the White House and the media would rush in and call the critics liars.

The White House posted a specific refutation of the "disinformation" about not being able to keep your doctor or insurance plan. That claim, the website said, was being disseminated by Republicans "to scare people."

Their proof consisted of a video of Obama clearly stating, "If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor."

A video of someone asserting the very fact in dispute does not rise to the level of "evidence," but it was more than enough for MSNBC.

Even when pretending to be critical of Obamacare, liberals lie about the real problems. They tell us they're worried about the percentage of young people signing up for Obamacare. The mix of young and old people in Obamacare is completely irrelevant. It won't help if a lot of young people sign up because their premiums are negligible.

To keep the system afloat, what Obamacare really needs is lots of healthy people, preferably healthy older people. Their premiums are astronomical -- and they won't need much medical treatment.

Premiums are set by your age, not your health. It doesn't matter if you never go to the doctor. Obamacare punishes you for having a healthy lifestyle. The Obamacare tax is a massively regressive poll tax on the middle-aged and the middle class.

Apart from those who are subsidized, everyone pays the exact same amount in penalties or insurance premiums for his age group. It doesn't matter if you don't make as much money as Bill Gates. Any 58-year-old male who doesn't qualify for a subsidy will pay the same Obamacare tax as Gates.

When Margaret Thatcher tried to impose the same tax per person, as a "community charge," there were riots in the street.

Our extremely progressive tax system, where nearly half the country pays no income tax at all, and the other half pays about 40 percent of their income, may not be fair. But most people also don't think it's fair to tax a guy making $80,000 a year the identical amount as one making $80 million a year. That's exactly what Obamacare does.

With Obamacare, the Democratic Party has foisted the most regressive tax possible on America. This ruthless assault on the middle class is all so we can have a health care system more like every other country has.

Until now, the United States has had the highest survival rates in the world for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Cancer comparisons are the most useful because all Western countries keep careful records for this disease.

For all types of cancers, European men have only a 47.3 percent five-year survival rate, compared to a 66.3 percent survival rate for American men.

European women have only a 55.8 percent chance of being alive five years after being diagnosed with any type of cancer, compared to 62.9 percent of American women.

American survival rates for breast, prostate, thyroid and skin cancer are higher than 90 percent. Europeans do not have a 90 percent survival rate for one of those cancers.

The European rates are even worse than they sound because many cancers are not discovered until the victim's death -- twice as many as in the U.S. All those cancers were excluded from the study.

Canadian cancer survival rates aren't much better than the European rates -- and they've been able to sneak into to the U.S. for treatment! Women in the U.S. have a 61 percent survival rate for all cancers, compared to a 58 percent survival rate in Canada. Men in the U.S. have a 57 percent survival rate compared to 53 percent in Canada.

That's why your insurance premiums have to go through the roof and your Obamacare tax is the same as Bill Gates'. So across the world, we'll all be equal, dying of cancer, heart disease and diabetes as often as everyone else.

It's not that Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism; it's that he wants to end it.

The Rich & Their "Fair Share"

So, the rich aren't paying their "fair share", you say?  Consider the following:

Percentage of 2010 total income received by top 1%: 15%

Percentage of 2010 total income tax paid by the top 1%: 39%

But the rich are pay much less than they use to, right?  In 1980, the tax rate was 70% - now its under 40%.  They're getting off easy now...

Percentage of total income tax paid by 1% in 1980: 17%

Percentage of total income tax paid by 1% in 2010: 39%

Yes, but you must be cherry picking dates to match the story you want to tell - this can't be true over the last 30 years...

Source: AEI

So what if their taxes have been increasing - we need that money to keep us from spending more than we take in. 

  

Total amount in income tax collected from 1% in 2010: $350 Billion

Total budget deficit in 2010: $1.3 Trillion

So we'd have to take nearly 3x more in taxes from the rich just to cover the deficit?  Whatever, they can afford it to pay more.  What if we took all their money...

Total income of top 1% in 2010: $1.69 Trillion

Total income of top 5% in 2010: $2.9 Trillion

Total income of top 10% in 2010: $3.86 Trillion

Total Federal Government Spending in 2010: $3.46 Trillion

Source: Link

So we'd need to confiscate the entire earnings of the top 10% of people (everyone who makes more than $113K/year) just to pay for our federal government spending?

Maybe I was looking at this wrong - is it possible we spend too much?  (Admittedly, this is an idealized final response, but one that is nearly unavoidable when confronted with the facts)

Defend the Fourth: Sen. Paul Sues Administration Over Fourth Ammendment