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Rent Control: A History of Failure | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on September 22, 2019

“In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,” wrote Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a Social Democrat…

https://mises.org/wire/rent-control-history-failure

Governments can and do try to fix prices, but history tells us it never works.

From the price-control dikats of the Roman Empire’s Diocletian, to the wage and price controls of President Richard Nixon, governments have tried and failed.

The historian Edward Gibbon said the Roman Empire imploded owing to economic disasters and less to barbarians at the gate. More recently, President Nixon imposed wage and price controls before the 1972 elections. He was re-elected when they seemed to be working. However, owing to the Watergate scandal, he wasn’t around when his price control scheme failed and dragged down millions of Americans in the disastrous decade-long horror show called stagflation.

New York’s Economic Madness

Yet governments continue to try various kinds of price controls, even though most people with even the barest acquaintance with economic history or basic economics understand they’re the equivalent of economic crack. However, most New York pols, for instance, are economic illiterates.

They support continued rent controls because they are politically popular, at least in the short run. In the case of rent controls, the New York political classes recently extended them. They believe, almost uniformly, that they provide better housing at decent prices. But history and many economists say otherwise.

I believe some pols are privately convinced that they are witchcraft but they are not going to say so because they might then no longer be on the public payroll.

The politics are why New York’s state and city lawmakers have consistently backed rent control laws. That’s even though most economists, both left and right, agree they lead to housing shortages; that they’re a good deal for the minority of people who get coverage while the rest of New Yorker pay excessive rents.

Why Don’t They Work?

Supply dries up. Builders spooked by controls won’t build new units. The minority of those who get cheap rents won’t leave their units no matter what. Turnover rates decline. Most New Yorkers paying free market rents pay through the nose.

If you have a rent-controlled apartment: stay forever. You have cheap rent. If not, be prepared to pay very high housing prices as the housing stock can’t keep pace with demand. The quality of life in the city declines as more and more people pay a high percentage of their income for housing.

“In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,” wrote Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a Social Democrat…

“New York City rent controls,” Samuelson wrote in his economics textbook, “do favor those lucky enough to find a cheap apartment; but they inhibit new private building of low-cost housing.”

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7 Examples of Monumental Government Hypocrisy and What We ...

 

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“Coming up with an idea”-A student climate protestor history lesson

Posted by M. C. on September 22, 2019

Submitted 22 Sep to the ET-N letters.

Student climate protesters need a history lesson.

The Club of Rome, founded in 1968 at David Rockefeller’s estate, is an organization whose concern is that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of resource depletion.

“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill”. The First Global Revolution p.75.

The club was originally founded using the then “settled science” of the coming ice age.

David Rockefeller-“The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”

David Attenborough-“We are a plague on the Earth. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us”.

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes 1927 Buck v. Bell

Eugenics def: A science that tries to improve the human race by controlling which people become parents. It’s back.

Bernie Sanders and Tim Ryan say the excess population problem lies with Africa. The US? It’s coming.

Climate change plus eugenics = total control over the minutia of your life.

Who decides how many is too many? Who decides who gets fixed?

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The Real Reason the US is Staying in Afghanistan – The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2019

The Taliban are not militant jihadists. Their only concern is their
ancient homelands. The only antagonism the Taliban have for Americans is
the fact that the U.S. military has occupied their country to various
degrees over the last 17 year as USAID and other international
organizations attempted to impose western cultural values that conflict
with their Saudi-indoctrinated fundamentalist form of Islam.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-real-reason-the-us-is-staying-in-afghanistan/

By

Ronald Enzweiler

As someone who lived and worked at the field level in Afghanistan for six years (2008-14) implementing projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development, I am bemused by the fact that the mainstream media (who should have known better or worse yet, actually did) misled the public into believing that it was — or ever will be — possible for the U.S. to reach a meaningful peace accord with the Taliban for amicably ending the Afghan war. Moreover, anyone who thinks a piece of paper a purported Taliban leadership council accepts and signs at a given point in time has any lasting value is woefully naïve and ignorant of who the Taliban are and what governs their belief system and way of life. Spoiler alert: It’s not a diplomatic legal document.

For starters, probably 70% or more of the ethnic Pashtuns who have inhabited the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region (this border is a figment of 19th century British imperialism) for centuries and have adopted over the last 35 years a variation of the Saudi Arabia-spread fundamentalist form of Islam (taught at the Saudi-funded religious schools they attended in Pakistan) as their way of life are illiterate — beyond being able to read Koran verses in Arabic. Moreover, the Taliban have no written theological doctrine or scholarship. These facts should be a clue that written documents are unimportant in their lives. The society that calls itself the Taliban (Arabic for “the students”) live a mostly subsistent life without access to electricity, media, mass communications, or material goods. Most have never travel outside their homelands. They are extremely hostile to outsiders and adhere to a strict Medieval moral code (Pashtunwali) and their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law (Shari’a).

The Taliban are not militant jihadists. Their only concern is their ancient homelands. The only antagonism the Taliban have for Americans is the fact that the U.S. military has occupied their country to various degrees over the last 17 year as USAID and other international organizations attempted to impose western cultural values that conflict with their Saudi-indoctrinated fundamentalist form of Islam. (Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s official government before 9/11.) Moreover, Taliban leaders have been wary since the U.S. troop surge in 2009 that the U.S. intended to maintain permanent bases in their country. This is why the Taliban and other Afghan nationalists intensified their fight to expel latest round of foreign invaders in a civil war to oust the U.S.-backed government. (Media pundits who lament that civil war and chaos will break out if the U.S. troops withdraw have somehow missed the last 40 years of Afghan history.)

It’s always been an inaccurate pejorative for the U.S. government and media to refer to the Taliban as “terrorists.” Consider this scenario: A foreign power invades and occupies your country; it installs and pays the costs (over $5 billion in FY 2020) for keeping a friendly pro-western government in power; the Afghan officials who profit from these payments (corruption is a way of life in Afghanistan as the SIGAR has repeatedly documented) are willing to let the foreign power retain permanent military bases in your country (which are needed to keep them in power). As an Afghan nationalist, you don’t want your way of life changed at gunpoint and don’t want a foreign power to use bases in your country to project power in the region and possibly attack the neighboring (predominately Muslim) countries. Given this situation, you join a home-grown insurgency that opposes the foreign troops staying and having your traditional way of life coercively changed.

However, because you fight against the neocolonial foreign power that has taken de facto control of your country for its self-interests, you are deemed a “terrorist.” Yes, the Taliban and other anti-government elements in Afghanistan have killed over 2,400 U.S. soldiers over the 17-year, $2-trilllion-dollar war and occupation of their country. But this happened only because more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers at one point (140,000 including other NATO countries) and squadrons of F-16s were sent to their country to kill them — while subjecting the Afghan civilian population to the hardships, collateral damage, and casualties inherent in warfare.

The question our elected officials need to be asked: Why are U.S. soldiers still in Afghanistan and being killed fighting local insurgents engaged in a civil war who are not a threat to America 17 years after the al-Qaeda jihadists responsible for the 9/11 attacks were vanquished?…

The real reason for the pushback by the Washington national security establishment against getting all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan is the guiding maxim of our post-World War II “War State” (the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned about) that has grown into a $1-trillion/year enterprise with a worldwide empire of over 800 foreign military installations: never give up a military base in a strategic location. The U.S. military eventually will be pushed out of Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan (it’s also a civilian airport near a large restive city in Taliban territory). But Bagram Airfield (a prior Soviet base north of Kabul) is a military-only installation in an easily defended remote area. Bagram is the missing piece in our War State’s chessboard of worldwide bases. Retaining it will enable our military to “project power” throughout Central Asia. It’s a steal at $30 to $40 billion/year (assuming troops levels and graft payments are drawn down at some point) for our overfunded War State. Representative Max Thornberry, then chairman and now ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, visited Bagram in October 2018. He publicly acknowledged afterwards that the U.S. seeks “a sustainable presence” in Afghanistan. (The U.S. military’s new high-tech F-35 fighters — a $1.5 trillion program — are manufactured at a Lockheed plant near Rep. Thornberry’s district in north Texas.)

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russia wants war

 

 

 

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Notes From the Edge of the Narrative Matrix – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/09/no_author/notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

Most human suffering is due to believed mental stories, from the psychological suffering of the individual to the large-scale suffering caused by international power structures who advance violence and oppression via propaganda. We must evolve a new relationship with narrative.

Most people’s lives are dominated by mental story, so whoever can control those stories controls the people. The good news is that all we need to do to reclaim our world from the controllers is to reclaim our stories. The barrier between us and freedom is as thin as a fairy tale.

I talk about fighting establishment narrative control a lot, not because it’s the best way to change things, but because it’s the only way. The public will never, ever use the power of their numbers to change things so long as they’re being successfully propagandized not to.

We are bulldozing a paradise while praying we go to Heaven when we die. We are killing off giant-brained leviathans in our own oceans whose mental lives we know little about while searching the stars for intelligent life. We are burning our home in our search for a sense of home.

The most condescending sound in the known universe is Bill Maher’s voice.

Joe Biden could slip into a coma tomorrow and they’d still wheel him out to the debates with the words “NOT TRUMP” scribbled on his forehead in sharpie. And he’d continue to poll in the mid-to-high twenties.

We are about three years from watching President Biden say he’s working with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to win the Cold War, soiling himself at the podium, and then CNN pundits earnestly discussing his similarities and differences to President Obama.

It feels like we’re overdue for another media tour by Steven Pinker to tell us that things are better than ever and our discontent is just imaginary.

“Why doesn’t the left look at Israel exactly the same as every other country, hmmmmmmm???” Because it isn’t exactly the same as every other country. It plays a crucial role in the empire’s geostrategic maneuverings in the Middle East. It’s not about Jews or Judaism, it’s about imperialism.

One of the absolute stupidest things about US politics is how they made regime change in Iran vs regime change in Syria a partisan wedge issue, and partisans only question possible false flags based on which of those agendas their team cheers for.

If the political/media class wants to treat “proxy forces” and “Iran” like they mean the same thing, then they should have also been saying things like “USA fires rockets into Damascus” and “American troops sodomize Gaddafi with bayonet”.

It infuriates the empire propagandists to no end that after years of carefully crafting a very specific narrative about what’s happening in Syria, anti-imperialist journalists can just fly on over there and look around and report on the things they are seeing.

The US outsources all its ugliest aspects so that American voters don’t have to look at them. It outsources its torture, it outsources its slavery, it outsources its wars, and it outsources the the holding cells for its political prisoners.

In old-style British imperialism, they’d invade your country and replace your flag with theirs. In new-style US imperialism, your country keeps its flag, and the takeover can happen so slyly that the nation’s citizens sometimes don’t even know it’s occurred. It’s much more efficient.

All empires throughout history have had some kind of positive narrative about why it’s right that they should be conquering and dominating the world. The US-centralized empire with its bogus “freedom and democracy” schtick is no different.

If you were to combine all the very worst possible kinds of government with all the very worst possible government actions and roll them all together to create a single nation, that nation would look exactly the same as Saudi Arabia.

The maneuverings of establishment power structures are always made to protect the power they already have and/or to try and obtain more. It’s never anything more exotic or otherworldly than that: the mundane, primitive drive to try and control as many other humans as possible.

International alliances are often thought of as matters of secondary importance, as just something governments do when possible to make themselves a bit safer, wealthier, etc. Actually, uniting nations into one power structure is the goal, and it’s what alliances are really for.

I love a conspiracy enthusiast who can research with an open mind and live comfortably with the fact that there’s a lot we don’t know due to government opacity. I dislike the all-too-common other kind who pretend they know everything about everything and scoff at everyone else.

There are two kinds of people in conspiracy circles: those who have an intellectually honest relationship with what they know and don’t know, and the bullshitters who fake knowing things they don’t. It’s possible to get quite popular in conspiracy circles by faking it. Many do.

There’s an implicit default assumption among the political/media class that US government agencies have earned back the trust they lost with Iraq, despite their having made no changes whatsoever to prevent another Iraq-like horror from reoccurring, or even so much as apologizing.

I talk about Iraq all the time because that’s what everyone should be doing. It’s never been addressed, never been resolved, yet the US war machine and its propaganda apparatus have marched on as though it never happened. It’s a very large elephant in a very important room.

The Trump administration’s relentless fumbling, ham-fisted attempts to manufacture consent for a war with Iran remind me of of a really awkward loser constantly asking the prettiest girl at the office for a date again and again. Give it up, dude. She ain’t into you.

Many on the left care about domestic policy a lot more than they care about foreign policy. Meanwhile, foreign policy is the foremost priority of the establishment they’re trying to take down. This arrangement works out very nicely for the powerful.

“Peace through strength” just means “We’ll take money away from the poor and the needy and use it to beef up our already bloated military so we can bully the world into obedience.” That’s not peace, that’s tyranny.

It shouldn’t be too much to ask for one of America’s two mainstream parties to put forward at least one presidential candidate who opposes all military mass murders and has no plutocratic loyalties. That is not actually an unreasonable thing to demand. Don’t lose sight of this.

You can thank Obama for normalizing the “campaign as a progressive and govern as a Reaganite” strategy which now has Americans mostly clueless as to which Democratic primary candidate will actually represent their interests.

You are infinitely more qualified to report the news than the propagandists of the mainstream media. Even a teenager making a sloppy, amateurish first-time Youtube video about current events is superior to an MSM talking head who’s paid to lie. Be the press.

The establishment doesn’t fear Trump. It doesn’t fear Bernie, and it doesn’t fear Tulsi. It fears you. It fears the people. A single politician they can deal with. The public rising up and using the power of their numbers to force change is what keeps your rulers up at night.

_____________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permissionto republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Switzerland Sick Of and Sick From 5G — Nationwide Revolt Planned for September 21

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2019

Not to mention the improved spying technology on US.  As in you and me and not just by China.

https://www.activistpost.com/2019/09/switzerland-sick-of-and-sick-from-5g-nationwide-revolt-planned-for-september-21.html

By B.N. Frank

Swiss opposition to 5G is not new and not just from residents.  In 2017, Swiss doctor Bertrand Buchs launched a petition asking for a moratorium on its installation and since then doctors and scientists worldwide have signed it.  Research has determined that exposure can cause undesirable symptoms and conditions – to say the least (see 1, 2, 3).

Earlier this year, Vaud Switzerland adopted a 5G moratorium.  Regardless, 5G was installed in Geneva where some residents immediately started suffering from exposure.  Now opponents are planning a nationwide revolt.

From Yahoo:

Switzerland was among the first countries to begin deploying 5G, but health fears over radiation from the antennas that carry the next-generation mobile technology have sparked a nationwide revolt.

Demonstrators against the technology are due to fill the streets of Bern later this month, but already a number of cantons have been pressured to put planned constructions of 5G-compatible antennae on ice.

[…]

National carrier Swisscom thus says it expects 90 percent of the population to have 5G access by the end of the year.

Opponents meanwhile warn that 5G poses unprecedented health and environmental risks compared to previous generations of mobile technology, and are urging authorities to place a full-fledged moratorium on the rollout.

They will organise a large protest on September 21 in front of the government buildings in Bern, and are also working towards putting the issue to a popular vote.

[…]

In Geneva, it is Daniel Buchs, a doctor and a regional parliamentarian with the centrist Christian Democratic Party, who is leading the battle.

“We are waiting for a serious, independent study that shows whether, yes or no, 5G has a noxious effect for the population,” he told AFP.

Such a study, he insisted, could help avoid a health scandal similar to the one the world has seen with asbestos, which was long touted as safe but which today is known to kill at least 107,000 people around the world each year.

In February, the telecom industry gave U.S. congressional testimony that they have NO scientific evidence that 5G is safe.  People and their pets everywhere are feeling the effects where it’s been operating (see 1, 2, 3).

Opposition to 5G is happening everywhere.  Warnings have been issued by a variety of credible experts and not only about health risks (see 1, 2, 3).

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Desarrollan drones del tamaño de un insecto (+ Video ...

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Ex-Google Engineer Fears AI ‘Killer Robots’ Could Perpetrate Unintended Mass Atrocities – Collective Evolution

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2019

…after more than 3,000 of its employees signed a petition in protest against the company’s involvement.
It should be indicative to all of us that these big corporate giants do
not make ethical decisions on their own, since they are fundamentally
amoral, and continue to require concerned human beings to speak up and
take actions in order for humanity’s interests to be considered.

Killer robots. Seems like a great 5G application.

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/09/20/ex-google-engineer-fears-ai-killer-robots-could-perpetrate-unintended-mass-atrocities/

By

CE Staff Writer

In Brief

  • The Facts:An ex-Google software engineer warns of the industrial development of AI in terms of the creation of ‘killer robots,’ which would have autonomy in deciding who to kill without the safeguard of human intervention.
  • Reflect On:Can we see that events such as the potential creation of ‘killer robots’ ultimately stem from the projection of our collective consciousness, in a way that we as awakened individuals are empowered to change course?

We have entered a time in our history in which advanced technologies based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) may become increasingly prone to unintended actions that threaten the safety and autonomy of human beings. And those of us who believe in the safety and autonomy of human beings–trust me, most at the top of the current power pyramid don’t need to become increasingly aware and vigilant of this growing threat.

The arguments for and against the unfettered development of AI and its integration into military capabilities are as follows: those in favor of the development of AI simply point to the increased efficiency and accuracy bestowed by AI applications. However, their unrestrained zeal tends to be based on a rather naive (or feigned) trust in government, corporations and military intelligence to police themselves to ensure that AI is not unleashed into the world in any way that is harmful to human individuals. The other side of the argument grounds its fundamental mistrust in current AI development on the well-documented notion that in fact our current corporate, governmental and military leaders each operate based on their own narrow agenda that give little regard for the safety and autonomy of human beings.

Nobody is arguing against the development of Artificial Intelligence as such, for application in ways that will clearly and incontestably benefit humanity. However, as always, the big money seems to be made available in support of WAR, of one group of humans having dominance and supremacy over another, rather than for applications that will benefit all of humanity and actually help to foster peace on the planet….

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Superman 152 – the Robot Master | Babblings about DC Comics 3

 

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The Saudis Get a Taste of Their Own Medicine – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2019

The Saudis would have been better off buying air defenses from the Russians, at a quarter of the US selling price.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/09/eric-margolis/the-saudis-get-a-taste-of-their-own-medicine/

By

Special for LewRockwell.com

The Mideast has its own variety of crazy humor.  The Saudis have been blasting and bombing wretched Yemen, one of this world’s poorest nations, since 2015.

These US-supported attacks and a naval blockade of Yemen imposed by Saudi Arabia and its sidekick ally, the United Arab Emirates, have caused mass starvation.  No one knows how many Yemenis have died or are currently starving.  Estimates run from 250,000 to one million.

The black humor?  The Saudis just claimed they were victims of Iranian `aggression’ this past week after the kingdom’s leading oil treatment facility at Abqaiq was hit by a flight of armed drones or cruise missiles.  The usual American militarists, now led by State Secretary Mike Pompeo after the demented warmonger, John Bolton, was finally fired, are calling for military retaliation against Iran even though the attack was claimed by Yemen’s Shia Houthi movement.

This drama came at roughly the same time that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of US president Donald Trump, vowed to annex Palestine’s entire Jordan Valley if elected. Not a peep of protest came from the US, which recently blessed Netanyahu’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights while scourging Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, for annexing Crimea – a Russian possession for over 300 years.

I studied US photos of the damaged Saudi oil installations. Its oil tanks appear to be precisely hit at the same place. After the attack, the Saudis claimed half of their oil production was knocked out; but a day later, they vowed production would be resumed within a week. Parts of so-called drones were shown that appeared way beyond the technological capabilities of Yemen or even Iran. The missiles may have been supplied by Ukraine.

The Saudis, like their patron in Washington, have a poor record for truthfulness. Remember the Saudi denials about the murder of journalist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi? More important, we have been waiting for more false flag attacks in the Gulf designed to justify a US attack on Iran.

The pattern of so-called drone attacks against the Saudi oil installations is just too neat and symmetrical. The Israelis have a strong interest in promoting a US-Saudi War. The attacks in Saudi came ironically right after the anniversary of 9/11 that plunged the US into war against large parts of the Muslim world.

As a long-time military observer, I find it very hard to believe that drones could be guided over such long distances and so accurately without aircraft or satellites to guide them.  In Yemen, which is just creeping into the 12th century, changing a flat tire is a major technological achievement.  To date, Iran’s missile arsenal has poor reliability and major guidance problems.

Adding to the questions, the Saudis have spent billions on US-made air defense systems.  They failed to protect the oil installations.  The Saudis would have been better off buying air defenses from the Russians, at a quarter of the US selling price.

Trump at least showed some wisdom by so far rejecting demands from the neocons that surround him to launch major attacks on Iran.  Blasting Iran would not serve much purpose and would expose US forces in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Somalia, and Syria to Iranian guerilla attacks.  Saudi oil installations – after what we saw last week – are vulnerable.

Attacking Iran, even if just from the air, risks a much wider Mideast war just as the Trump administration – which originally campaigned against ‘stupid’ Mideast wars – faces next year’s elections.  But the administration is under intense pressure from its pro-Israel base to go after Iran.

Bombing Iran’s oil infrastructure would be relatively easy and has been intensively planned since early 2002.  But what next?  So-called ‘regime change’ (Washington’s favorite euphemism for overthrowing disobedient foreign governments) rarely works as planned and can get the US into horribly messy situations.  The CIA overthrew Iran’s democratic government in 1953 and look where we are today.

Perhaps the attacks on Abqaiq may cause the reckless Saudi leaders to stop devastating Yemen and throttle back on their proxy war against Iran which has gone on since 1979.  But don’t count on it.

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4ec7b-iu

 

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The UN’s Climate Change Agenda is So Extreme Its Own Analysts Can’t Defend It | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on September 20, 2019

https://mises.org/wire/uns-climate-change-agenda-so-extreme-its-own-analysts-cant-defend-it

Advocates of aggressive government intervention in the name of fighting climate change have posed as the defenders of “consensus science,” labeling any who dissent from their agenda as “deniers” with all of the baggage that term entails. And yet, as I’ve been pointing out for years, the peer-reviewed economics literature does not support the popular United Nations’ policy goals, of limiting global warming to either 2.0°C or the even more stringent ceiling of 1.5°C. Back in 2014, I used the latest issue of the UN’s own authoritative report—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—to make my case, and last fall I explained that the new Nobel laureate, William Nordhaus, had a career in climate modeling that did not come anywhere close to supporting the aggressive UN goals.

In the present post I’ll make my point with yet another striking example. I will show that one of the lead authors from the UN’s “Special Report” on the 1.5°C target is a co-author of a 2018 paper that admits the goal is difficult to justify. This should be shocking to naïve citizens and those who assumed that “the science” must all support the UN’s temperature goals. Yet as this example demonstrates, the UN’s new goal is so extreme that it’s difficult for even sympathizers to come up with a way to try justifying it using conventional economic analysis.

Rachel Warren’s Credentials

To set the context: Last fall, the United Nation’s IPCC released a Special Report telling policymakers various ways to (attempt to) hit the goal of limiting cumulative global warming to 1.5°C. The third chapter of the report summarized the recent economic research that had been published since the previous IPCC report (the Fifth Assessment Report or AR5). Rachel Warren of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (located at the University of East Anglia in the UK) is one of the lead authors of the chapter. Furthermore, Warren was author or co-author on at least four of the publications cited in the chapter. Here is an excerpt from her bio:

Rachel Warren is Professor of Global Change and Environmental Biology at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, UK.  Her research focuses on the production of policy relevant science related to climate change and sustainability.  A particular recent focus has been the quantification of the climate change impacts that can be avoided by timely mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, in particular in relation to risks to biodiversity. She was a coordinating lead author of the 5th (2014) assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and lead author of the 4th assessment which was awarded the Nobel Peace prize on 2007.   Presently she is a lead author of the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5°C warming.  She has produced over 70 peer reviewed publications and over 40 scientific reports to government departments.

…

Her academic background and training is in physics and the natural sciences at Cambridge University.  After completion of her PhD she pursued an interest in atmospheric sciences and rapidly became involved in policy relevant research, a purpose to which she remains committed today.  She has assisted in national, European and international policy development relating to combating stratospheric ozone depletion, acid deposition, eutrophication, and (since 2002) climate change. In particular, her former work at the NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories provided evidence on the environmental acceptability of CFC substitutes, leading to inclusion of fluorocarbons in the Kyoto Protocol, winning the NOAA Aeronomy Laboratories Outstanding Scientific Paper Award.

As the above description makes clear, we are not dealing with a “denier” or a “stooge for Big Oil” here. Warren is a leader among scientists who are advising governments on various policies through which they can intervene in the market to reduce emissions from businesses.

Rachel Warren’s (Co-Authored) Paper on the Economics of the UN Climate Goal

Given her background, it is extremely revealing to see that Warren (and co-authors) have a 2018 paper entitled, “The Economics of 1.5°C Climate Change.” Now because I know just how ludicrous (given standard modeling assumptions) this latest UN target is, I was curious to see how Warren and her co-authors could possibly try to justify it.

The reader can hopefully appreciate my shock when I read the first two sentences from the Abstract of their paper: “The economic case for limiting warming to 1.5°C is unclear, due to manifold uncertainties. However, it cannot be ruled out that the 1.5°C target passes a cost-benefit test.”

The skeptical reader should go ahead and click through to read the quote in context; I’m being completely fair. Believe it or not, the authors—including a Lead Author on the UN Special Report which advises governments on how to hit the 1.5°C limit—are arguing that because we understand this area so poorly, for all we know the UN target makes economic sense.

Is that the slam-dunk “consensus science” that citizens have been assured undergirds the suggested power grabs? Hardly. As I have been warning readers for years, the case for a carbon tax is far weaker than they’ve been led to believe.

Conclusion

One of the standard talking points among progressives is that the right-wing obfuscation machine will hide behind “uncertainty” in order to stall necessary action on climate change. And yet in this latest episode, the tables have turned. As Rachel Warren—a Lead Author on several important IPCC reports—and her co-authors argued in a 2018 paper, the uncertainty in our understanding keeps alive the possibility that the latest UN climate goal might pass a cost/benefit test after all.

Originally published at the Institute for Energy Research

 

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Tim Ryan Calls for U.N., State Dept. to Help Fight Climate Change with Population Control

Posted by M. C. on September 20, 2019

How many is too many and who decides? Who decides who?

Sterilization of undesirables, deplorables if you will, is not far behind. US history is repeating itself.

Don’t worry, this will directed toward Africa…then Asia…then Latin America…then…

Eugenics…It baaaaack!

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/20/tim-ryan-calls-government-involvement-controlling-population-fight-climate-change/

by Hannah Bleau

Democrat 2020 candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) suggested that the government needs to play a role in addressing overpopulation in the form of “family planning” during MSNBC’s climate change forum at Georgetown University on Thursday.

Ryan participated in the forum Thursday, where he was asked about “overpopulation” and its role in climate change.

“What effect do you feel that overpopulation has with global warming and should we be doing anything to combat this?” a student asked.

Ryan was perceptive to the premise of the question – that population control needs to be part of the climate change conversation.

“It’s about resources, so yeah,” Ryan said. “I mean, I think we should be active again with international agencies within the State Department.”

“Now the president wants once to cut the State Department budget dramatically,” he continued, adding that the U.S. needs to “be involved in the United Nations family planning efforts around the world.”

“I think we need to continue to do that. It’s an important approach that we need to continue to make,” he added.

…“The answer is yes,” Sanders said, articulating his support of population control in the form of contraceptives and worldwide abortions.

Be seeing you

eugenics

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Secret F.B.I. Subpoenas Scoop Up Personal Data From Scores of Companies

Posted by M. C. on September 20, 2019

Your FIB

I suppose some would consider this a surprise.

https://www.enmnews.com/2019/09/20/secret-f-b-i-subpoenas-scoop-up-personal-data-from-scores-of-companies/

ENM NEWS

The F.B.I. has used secret subpoenas to obtain personal data from far more companies than previously disclosed, newly released documents show.

The requests, which the F.B.I. says are critical to its counterterrorism efforts, have raised privacy concerns for years but have been associated mainly with tech companies. Now, records show how far beyond Silicon Valley the practice extends — encompassing scores of banks, credit agencies, cellphone carriers and even universities.

The demands can scoop up a variety of information, including usernames, locations, IP addresses and records of purchases. They don’t require a judge’s approval and usually come with a gag order, leaving them shrouded in secrecy. Fewer than 20 entities, most of them tech companies, have ever revealed that they’ve received the subpoenas, known as national security letters.

The documents, obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and shared with The New York Times, shed light on the scope of the demands — more than 120 companies and other entities were included in the filing — and raise questions about the effectiveness of a 2015 law that was intended to increase transparency around them.

“This is a pretty potent authority for the government,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who specializes in national security. “The question is: Do we have a right to know when the government is collecting information on us?”

The documents provide information on about 750 of the subpoenas — representing a small but telling fraction of the half-million issued since 2001, when the Patriot Act expanded their powers.

The credit agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion received a large number of the letters in the filing. So did financial institutions like Bank of America, Western Union and even the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. All declined to explain how they handle the letters. An array of other entities received smaller numbers of requests — including Kansas State University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, probably because of their role in providing internet service.

Other companies included major cellular providers such as AT&T and Verizon, as well as tech giants like Google and Facebook, which have acknowledged receiving the letters in the past.

Albert Gidari, a lawyer who long represented tech and telecommunications companies and is now the privacy director at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, said Silicon Valley had been associated with the subpoenas because it was more willing than other industries to fight the gag orders. “Telecoms and financial institutions get little attention,” he said, even though the law specifically says they are fair game.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that information on the roughly 750 letters could be disclosed under a 2015 law, the USA Freedom Act, that requires the government to review the secrecy orders “at appropriate intervals.”

The Justice Department’s interpretation of those instructions has left many letters secret indefinitely. Department guidelines say the gag orders must be evaluated three years after an investigation starts and also when an investigation is closed. But a federal judge noted “several large loopholes,” suggesting that “a large swath” of gag orders might never be reviewed.

According to the new documents, the F.B.I. evaluated 11,874 orders between early 2016, when the rules went into effect, and September 2017, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, requested the information.

“We are not sure the F.B.I. is taking its obligations under USA Freedom seriously,” said Andrew Crocker, a lawyer with the foundation. “There still is a huge problem with permanent gag orders.”…

Be seeing you

1984, The Musical | PERRIN LOVETT

 

 

 

 

 

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