No CO2 Greenhouse Effect?

A very interesting article questioning the very existence of the CO2 Greenhouse Gas Effect has been published in the International Journal of Modern Physics:

Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects
Within The Frame Of Physics

Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)
replaces Version 1.0 (July 7, 2007) and later

Gerhard Gerlich
Institut fur Mathematische Physik
Technische Universitat Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig
Mendelssohnstrae 3
D-38106 Braunschweig
Federal Republic of Germany
g.gerlich@tu-bs.de

Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Postfach 60 27 62
D-22237 Hamburg
Federal Republic of Germany
ralfd@na-net.ornl.gov

I have long been dissatisfied with the explanations I have read about how the greenhouse gases are supposed to cause warming of the atmosphere and the earth's surface. I have now read about half of this long article and will comment on it when I have finished reading it. It appears that my doubts were justified.

One thing that strikes me as wrong about the usual approach to justifying a greenhouse gas effect based on a black body model (which the above paper also says is wrong, but has not yet in my reading suggested in quite what way), is that it is assumed that the radiative cooling of the earth through re-emission of infrared radiation occurs from the earth's surface. If the greenhouse gas theories were correct, this would not be the case. The primary radiation loss would have to be from a layer which was at a considerable altitude over which there was little remaining water vapor and CO2. Yet these calculations like to say that the radiative black body cooling would be at about 15C or 288K if there were no greenhouse gas effect. But this would not be in balance with what they calculate the sun's radiation to be. The temperature in black body radiation balance with the sun's radiation is calculated to be lower and the difference in temperature is attributed to the greenhouse gas effect.

But, one can just as easily argue that of course the surface temperature is not the radiative black body cooling temperature. It is air convection that acts to cool the surface air temperature as the warmed surface air rises up to higher altitudes. As it does so, air molecules collide and pass energy from the molecules recently warmed at the surface to those which had dwelled longer in the upper atmosphere. Finally as molecules reach a high enough altitude, convection loses its cooling ability due to the low density of molecules and radiative cooling becomes the means by which further energy is lost. Much of the black body radiation at this altitude is emitted into space and the earth cools on net balance. But, this black body radiative cooling of course happens at the much cooler temperatures found at higher altitudes. At a mid-latitude location, the atmospheric temperature is already about 10C lower than at the surface at an altitude of about 2 km.

In other words, with no net greenhouse gas effect, if radiative cooling mostly occurs at altitudes a few kilometers up, then the calculated black body temperature will be significantly lower than the surface temperature. The lower calculated black body temperature for the earth cannot be used as proof of a greenhouse gas effect!

Renewable Power in Scientific American

The March 2009 issue of Scientific American has a brief article called "A Concise Guide to Renewable Power" by Matthew L. Wald, a reporter at the New York Times. His article starts:

Renewable energy, such as from photovoltaic electricity and ethanol, today supplies less than 7 percent of U.S. consumption. If we leave aside hydroelectric power, it is under 4.5 percent. Globally, renewables provide only about 3.5 percent of electricity and even less of transportation fuels.

It sure is strange to see someone published in Scientific American claiming that ethanol is a renewable fuel, given that it does not result in a net gain of energy. In addition, it brings the added baggage of making our food costs substantially greater and of using up many other resources to no advantage except one of more income for some farmers and for ADM and other subsidized ethanol refiners.

I should not forget that many politicians love the votes they are buying from the special interest groups benefiting from ethanol mandates. Despite the fact that these mandates clearly hurt most Americans and do not serve the purposes used to justify them, Congress still has not revoked the foolish ethanol mandates and subsidies.

Newest Senate Environment Report Available

The newest Minority Report of the Senate Committee for the Environment and Public Works is now available. Some of my evaluations of the catastrophic man-made global warming claims are given on page 77. The comments of many of the 700 scientists who dispute the idea that science says that man is causing a global climate change catastrophe make for very interesting reading. We should take note that the much hyped Summary of the last IPCC report was written by only 52 scientists and many present and past contributors to the UN IPCC reports have claimed that the Summaries do not at all accurately represent the views of the remainder of the reports.

U. S. Senate Minority Report:
More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over
Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Scientists Continue to Debunk “Consensus” in 2008 &
2009

While I just joined the Senate Minority Report now, I have been speaking out against the idea of catastrophic man-made global warming since a post on 25 January 2008 on this blog. A couple of years prior to that at least, I was speaking out against AGW and extreme environmentalism on Objectivist forums. The exaggerated nature of the environmentalists causes has long been clearly motivated by an anti-mankind bias. I say this while believing that the environment of man is very important. Indeed, it is so important that it deserves to be observed carefully, analytically studied for the development of understanding, and treated with respect because it supports life, ours most especially, but also that of other animals and plants.

Reducing Air Pollution Increases Temperatures

According to a study performed at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, clearer skies due to lowered man-made pollution cause the temperature to rise. This would be a case in which man's activities affect the climate of at least densely populated areas or those generating much pollution. As Europe and the United States and Canada have generally cleaned their skies of much of the air pollution common a few decades ago, countries such as Russia, China, and India have increased their air pollution. I do not know the net effect upon the global climate, but there is probably some effect caused by man. In the longer view, the cooling effect of air pollution in the earlier stages of the industrialization of Europe and the United States was a man-made effect which has now been largely undone. Later developing industrial nations such as Russia, China, and India are now the main polluters and coolers, but will likely do more to clean up their air pollution as they develop further.

The Dutch study collected data from 342 weather stations at airports across Europe measuring the fog, mist, and haze back to 1976. The report in the journal Nature Geoscience says that the number of days with visibility of less than 2 kilometers have fallen from 20 days per year to 10 days per year in the last 30 years. As a result, less sunlight is reflected back into space from the top of such fog, mist, and haze layers and more reaches the ground, to provide more warming at the surface of the earth.

The heat island effect of major cities is very well-known and is in fact a problem for accurate earth surface land temperature histories, which many say is not adequately corrected for in the measurements of the general warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age and the advent of industrialization with the burgeoning growth of population centers that resulted. Man clearly does have some effect on at least the local climate in these high population centers. Indeed, even small towns appear to have small local effects.

It is also clear that such activities as plowing fields for farming and cutting down forests have an effect upon the climate. Of course, man has been doing these things for a very long time, so they have little effect on the climate any more in terms of changing it, except when the level of such activities changes greatly in a given locale. But compared to an earth with no human activity, the climate has been somewhat changed by the presence of man. I have no yearning to remove man and his effects in order to return the planet to its natural, no-human climate condition. There is no reason to value this at all and every reason to value an earth which supports the flourishing of man, thanks to man's use of his ability to reason for the purpose of improving his environment for his benefit.

But, while I deny that the effects of man's activities are more important than natural forces affecting the climate and I deny that his activities are causing a climate catastrophe, I do not deny that man has some effect upon the earth's climate. If man does cause some warming, I have no problem with that. In fact, wise men will generally acknowledge that some warming is a generally good thing. There is good reason upon examining the historical record of man to conclude that man tended to flourish better in warmer periods and to suffer more in cooler periods. More power to man if his activities are actually causing a bit of warming, which makes man a bit more comfortable.

Links to "A Catastrophic AGW Denier"

Thanks to the following weblogs which have linked to my entry of 14 March 2009 entitled "A Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Denier." The links are at:

Tom Nelson, 16 March 2009

GREENIE WATCH, 16 March 2009

Global Warming Skeptic, 16 March 2009

Update on 17 March 2009, thanks to the comment from SBVOR below:

SBVOR, 15 March 2009

Taxing Employer-Provided Health Insurance

Having just examined the $787 billion stimulus bill and its expenditures and noting that that bill clearly signals a government takeover of the health care industry, it is appropriate to wonder where the money will come from to pay for all of this. This is not all, of course, since there are the on-going bailouts, a huge omnibus "regular" government spending bill full of pig ears, and future stimulus bills to consider as well. Is it possible to pay for all this by taxing the rich more heavily? Certainly not. Everyone but a few of the most envy- and hate-ridden socialist ideologists recognize this fact.

So, Max Baucus (D.-MT), chairman of the Senate tax-writing Finance Committee, has proposed that the health care insurance benefits that employees get from their companies should be taxed. President Bush and Sen. John McCain had earlier suggested this. Thirteen other Senators have signed on to this idea. Obama has earlier rejected this idea, but he now is said to be willing to go along if someone else does the proposing. Apparently, if the House and Senate were to pass a bill to tax employee health benefits, he would sign the measure.

The health insurance benefit has never been taxed since it was first offered during WWII on a large scale. This reduces taxable earnings by about $9,000 per year for family coverage. Clearly, taxing this income will move many people into higher tax brackets and will increase government tax revenues. It will also encourage companies to drop this benefit. Indeed, this benefit will make no sense at all if individuals will have access to group insurance plans such as Obama has proposed and will not have the tax benefit.

Actually, it is only fair that this benefit should be taxed like all other income. But, if it is to be taxed, it should happen as a part of a general tax decrease from which everyone will save some money from falling into the rapacious hands of the government. Given the government's hugely wasteful spending plans and given the great damage it has done to the economy resulting in lowered tax revenues, there is no way that such a general tax reduction can be accomplished, at least not without acknowledging that lowering tax rates may soon generate more tax revenues. This happens both because the economy responds with increased growth, but also because at reasonable tax rates, people will make many more taxable transactions. The tax revenue is a function of both the tax rate and the frequency of taxable transactions. It is also a function of the frequency of reported taxable transactions.

The socialists in charge will not provide a broad-based tax cut when they start taxing employer-provided health insurance benefits.

The First Obama Stimulus Bill

There is talk about the need to have a second Obama stimulus bill, close on the heels of earlier bailouts for the financial and banking industries, the U.S.-based automakers, and money to help prevent mortgage foreclosures. Most economists and financial experts seem to be of the opinion that the first Obama stimulus bill has not been and will not be adequate to get the economy moving again. It certainly has not caused the private sector to invest and hire employees at what we have come to think of as normal levels. But, the first Obama stimulus bill and the Omnibus spending bill which followed on its heels did serve a purpose. They were designed to shift wealth and income from the private sector, especially the higher income side of the private sector, to the government sector. At this, they are clearly very successful. This is the primary desire of the socialists running the Obama administration and providing the leadership of the Democrat-controlled House and Senate.

Let us examine the first $787 billion stimulus bill to see how this was accomplished. Let us break it down as the Washington Post did on 14 February with costs in billions:

Health information technology (incentives for Medicare/Medicaid providers), $20.8

Health insurance for unemployed, $25.1

Assistance to unemployed families, $57.2

Tax Provisions, $73.8

• Making Work Pay Credit, $400/year for individual, $800/yr. for family, may exceed tax otherwise owed, offered for 2 years
• Tuition tax credit up to $2500, provided family makes less than $180,000/yr.
• Expanded child tax credit for low income families up to $1000 per child
• Families not owning a home in past 3 years get $8,000 tax credit to buy a home before the end of this year

Medicaid, $90

Health, Labor, & Education, $71.2

• National Institute of Health, $9.7
• National Coordinator for health information technology, $2
• Other health, $9.8
• Employment and training programs, $4.3
• Education for the disadvantaged, $13
• Special education, $12.2
• Student financial assistance, $16.6
• Other, $3.6

Housing, transportation, $61.1

• Highway construction, $27.5
• Other transportation, $20.6
• Housing assistance programs, $13

Grants to states to fully fund education budgets, $54

Energy and water, $50.8

• Energy efficiency, renewable energy, $16.8
• Federal loan guarantees for renewable energy & electricity transmission, $6
  
• Other energy, includes modernizing electric grid, $22.4
• Army Corps of Engineers, $4.6
• Other, $1

Nutrition, rural development, and agriculture, $26.4

• Food stamps, $20
• Broadband expansion in rural areas, $2.5
• Other, $3.9

Commerce, Justice, & Science, $15.8

• Grants to extend broadband, $4.7
• State & local law enforcement, $2.8
• National Science Foundation, $3
• Other, $5.3

Defense, Homeland Security, $11.4

• Homeland Security, $2.7
• Military construction, $4.2
• Defense facility repair & energy, $4.5

Environment, Interior, $10.5

• State grants for water infrastructure, $5.8
• Other, includes national park capital improvements, $4.7

Federal Facilities, $6.7

• Construction & repair of federal buildings, $5.4
• Other, $1.3

State Dept., technology & construction, $0.6

Overall, tax reductions for individuals are only $73.8 billion, not one penny of which will go to high income earners. Other than alternative energy, there are no private sector companies which will get any tax breaks. The total tax reduction part of the stimulus bill is only 9.4% of the "expenditure", so Congress got to fully direct 90.6% of the total monies use.

There is no incentive whatsoever for any industry to hire anyone, except in the construction, college & university, public school system, health care, computer & broadband, electric transmission line companies, law enforcement, vocational training, government, building materials, construction equipment, and alternative energy areas. Note that these encouraged areas are either government workers directly or private industry which has long been heavily dependent upon government funding and have been selected to receive subsidies from the remainder of the private sector through increased tax transfers of wealth. The money to be sucked out of the remainder of the private sector will fund these government-favored areas.

A great part of the money seems directed at making the medical industry still more dependent upon government. The $2 billion to set up the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the incentives to get Medicaid and Medicare providers to set up computerized medical records are especially interesting. It is perhaps quite rational to have more computerization of medical records and even to then use those records to better assess which medical procedures work best. However, we know that much more than this is afoot. It is very clear that the socialists now running the Federal government intend to use these computerized medical records to gain more control over medical treatments and to reduce the medical-decision power of the patient and doctor. This must happen as a part of the plan to have a single-provider (i.e., government) system of medical and health care.

It is very clear that the teacher's unions and the education establishment are being paid for their strong support of the Democrat Party and of ideological socialism. $79.2 billion is going to state grants for education, education for the disadvantaged, and special education. The colleges are making out big-time. The $9.7 billion to NIH, the $3 billion to NSF, the $1.6 billion for the office of science of the Energy Dept., the $16.6 billion in student financial assistance, and the tuition tax credit of $2500 will flood the universities and colleges with more money to continue to fuel their ever-escalating costs. A part of the $16.8 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy will also fund university research. The NIH, NSF, Energy Dept. Office of Science money will mostly fund an increase in university research grants and new lab facilities. The student financial aid and tax credits will decrease the pressure to control tuition rate increases. There is little reason to believe that any of this money will provide more spur to the economy than that money would have if left in the hands of the private sector. While it is true that some colleges and universities are private, most are nonetheless strong advocates of much bigger government, for which they are rewarded with research money and many financial considerations already.

The construction projects to be funded are almost entirely for more government infrastructure, to be supported by tax dollars long into the future. Most investors will find little stimulus to their plans in this stimulus bill. Few wealthy individuals will have reason to invest their money in the United States. It will make more sense for them to move more of their money abroad, where the tax rates on higher income people are lower. American multinational corporations will have ever more reason to expand their operations abroad, while contracting them in the United States. Contraction of operations will mean that they will have less expense for providing health insurance and increased sick leave mandated by Congress as well. Many companies must be very worried about this.

This stimulus bill should have consisted of a major decrease in taxes to be realized by every individual and by corporations. As I have pointed out repeatedly, it is very foolish for us to tax corporations at the highest rates in the world, with the exception of Japan, with whom we are about tied. It is equally foolish to maintain a very punitive tax rate on upper income earners. These high corporate and individual rates actually decrease government revenues, so we do not need to take the claim seriously that these high rates make life better for those with lower incomes because then government can do more to help them. Indeed, we can laugh at it derisively and proclaim with assurance that the real reason for these rates is one of envy, hatred, and the desire to take down those who have achieved great success in the private, voluntary sector. Such motivations clearly controlled many of those in the New Deal of the Franklin Roosevelt administration and they now control the thoughts of the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress in their pursuit of a New New Deal. This and only this explains their carefully orchestrated snubbing of most of the private sector and of the very idea of the sovereignty of the individual.

A Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Denier

That's me, friends and family, colleagues, Objectivists and other freedom-lovers, and, yes, you socialists who by and large see catastrophic man-made global warming as one of the best routes for the promotion of socialism and the dismantlement of capitalism.

Marc Morano of the Senate Committee for the Environment and Public Works, minority side, has just asked me if I would join the many scientists who are increasingly willing to buck the environmental hysterical and religious movement to state that we are not facing catastrophic global warming due to the ill-considered acts of man. I, being fearless, am willing and happy to do so.

Of course, I am not a climatologist, a sun-spot activity expert, an expert on the effects of ocean currents, or an expert on greenhouse gases and their effects upon the atmosphere. I am a materials physicist by training, who has long functioned as a materials scientist with broad interests across many scientific and technological fields.

I became interested in the issue of the global warming alarmism several years ago, because the reports I kept hearing about it did not present the context of our knowledge of the earth's climate history well and because it seemed that many so-called scientists were leaping to the conclusion that recent warming was largely or mostly due to man's activities without seeming to have done a thorough job of examining the natural forces effects which have long caused much more drastic changes in the earth's climate than those we have seen in recent times. I was also concerned that so much of the justification for man's role was based on complex computer models, which nonetheless did not take into account many major natural effects and which had a well-established history of being modified to produce ever-decreasing rates of temperature increases. The more I studied the issue, the more problems I found with the claims that man had suddenly become so powerful that he was dominating the natural climate forces.

I was also concerned about two other observations. One was that when people do bad science, they tend to become very angry when they are challenged. I have seen this effect time and time again. Observe which side resorts to the most vociferous name-calling and you are likely to have identified the side with the weaker argument and they know it. Of course, just because a man has written many peer-reviewed papers and is in a science department at a university does not mean that he is doing good science. Good science starts with acute and critical observations, attention to the context of one's knowledge, a rational and critical examination of factors affecting the outcome, and finally an ability to predict as-yet unobserved events or historical events about which one had no prior knowledge. Most of the scientists working on global climate issues were either working for universities or for government agencies, and these institutions have become so highly politicized, predominantly toward the left, that it is common to find scientific reasoning weaknesses whenever there is a political consequence to the scientific outcome. I saw much that was lacking in the scientific work which was backing the claim that man was causing or soon would be causing catastrophic global warming.

The other observation of concern was that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was a perfect tool to use to make the civilized and advanced societies cut back on energy use to the point that life was going to be much more miserable for human beings. This has always been something that the socialists have been willing and happy to do to their fellow human beings. They like it so much that they develop a religious fervor whenever offered the opportunity to hurt others. This may seem paradoxical because they always say they are more motivated to help others than most people. They are so motivated in fact, that they are always very eager to use brutal force to make others do what they want. It has become clear that this use of force has become in itself very exhilerating for them, like a dopamine drug for their minds. So, when you examine who believes fervently in man-made global warming, do you find that fervor cutting across the usual political spectrum with respect to commitments to personal and economic liberties or do you find the fervor in one camp only? In this case, there is pretty much that one camp of socialists.

I have developed computer models myself for the study of materials properties. When developing and using models, it is very important to keep a clear physical picture of the aspect of reality you are modeling. It is easy to mess up your boundary conditions, which is a known problem with many of the climate models; it is easy to fall into divergent conditions such as the claims of catastrophic positive warming feedback are likely to be; and it is easy to overlook some factors of importance in a complex problem, which the global climate most certainly is. The most important checks for these problems are to apply your model to a number of available simple situations if there are any and to already observed events and see if it is consistent with those events. There may be no simple climate system for such checks, but the past is available. I observed that there was anguishingly little effort to apply the climate prediction models to past climate changes. The reason for this was that the models really only contained elements of the Big Picture of factors affecting the climate of the earth. But, even granted that, some effort could have been put into comparing the model-predicted effects with those of high CO2 atmospheric concentrations from the geological record. This is an obvious check and no one was eager to do it. This is a clear warning sign.

However, because it is their bread and butter to use the models to predict future rapid temperature increases, these predictions have been made. Every time, the models predicted too much temperature increase and had to be scaled back. Every IPCC report shows scaled back computer predictions and yet every future IPCC report shows another scale-back. Clearly, the modelers do not know what they are doing. Nonetheless, on the strength of their predictions of unacceptable man-made warming, we are to make drastic cuts in our use of the inexpensive fossil fuels and have a future of expensive electric power only when the wind blows or the sun shines. Even this is provided that enough Democrats are willing to have wind generators and acres of photovoltaic panels in their backyards or in areas inhabited by animal species.

The very fact that the CO2 effect models did not contain sufficient factors affecting the global climate to make predictions about the past increases the likelihood that many of the factors affecting feedback mechanisms are not adequately handled. That there are critical feedback mechanisms is obvious. We know for instance that as the oceans warm, more water is evaporated, which is a cooling process. We also know that as the humidity of the atmosphere increases due to warming and ocean water evaporation, there are increased possibilities for cloud formation, which is usually a cooling mechanism. There is reason to believe these effects of water are not handled adequately. I have also looked at the sinks and sources for CO2 and have found that it is unlikely that they are adequately understood as yet. One problem exists with respect to the effects of the earth's crust absorbing CO2 both to form many carbonates, carbonate hydroxides, and lamellar (layered) minerals which absorb water with high CO2 concentrations between their expanding layers as water becomes available. Increases in precipitation will lead to increases in CO2 absorbtion in many minerals.

We also know that the earth's geological record shows that it has a tendency to never get warmer than an average temperature of about 22C and that the glacial periods tend never to get cooler than an average temperature of about 12C. We are now and have been for a few thousand years in a temperature regime which is between these extremes, but the earth over the last 600 million years has tended to be at one or the other of these two extremes most of the time. We do not know why we are not at one of the extremes now and we do not know how to predict when the earth may go to one or the other in the future. We do know that man did not cause any of the previous extreme temperature conditions.

Let me make it clear that I am not saying that man does not affect the weather or the climate. I am sure he does. But my evaluation is that man's affect upon the global climate is still small compared to the natural forces at work and that they are incapable of causing anything on the scale of a catastrophe. But, man can cause a catastrophe to his lifestyle and to his lifespan. An example would be the catastrophe which would be caused if Obama and the anthropogenic global warming alarmists force us to give up half of our electric generating capacity due to coal-fired power plants. This cannot be replaced by wind power and solar power by any technology yet known. It is a fool's errand to destroy half of our electricity generation capability while we have nothing to replace it with, when the reason given for doing this is to decrease the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere.

Any warming that is caused by man, is probably the cause of more good than bad. The higher CO2 concentrations in the air are certainly good for plant growth, which is good for both man and other animals. As I have pointed out before, most of the predicted warming is in the northern parts of North America, northern Europe, northern Russia, northern China, northern Japan, southern Chile, and southern Argentina, all of which would benefit from warmer temperatures in the winter and at night, which appears to be when the warming is greatest. This makes life in these areas easier for man, animals, and plants in most cases. This is not a bad outcome and it most certainly is not a catastrophe!

The Economist on American Health Care

Mining the 7 - 13 March issue of center-left or center-socialist The Economist further, it discusses the American health care system and the attempts of the Obama administration to degrade it with still more socialism. Of course, The Economist does not call it degradation. After discussing the politics of Tom Daschle's tax problems and how that kept him from becoming the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the appointment of Kathleen Sibelius to that position instead, they slam our health care system in the usual ways.

The Economist says we spend $2.2 trillion per year on health care and get "mediocre results." They say Americans die nearly two years earlier than west Europeans. They say that 46 million Americans lack health insurance. They add that ever-rising medical costs could break the budget. OK, let us examine these claims.

First, we do spend much more money on medical research, development, and care than do other countries. Some of this is wasted money due to Medicare and Medicaid and their harmful effects, which are of the nature of the added harmful effects which will come from further government intervention in the health care system. The Economist article mentions the fact that a typical hospital has a profit margin of 48% on each privately insured patient and loses 44% on each patient using Medicaid. When a hospital is losing money on a patient covered by Medicaid or Medicare, their tendency is to respond with charges for items and services which are not used or needed in order to partially compensate for the loss. This is wasteful and increases the cost of Medicare to the taxpayers and for healthcare. This also sets up habits, which are then responsible for increased costs assigned to privately insured patients also. The whole system becomes more wasteful and it starts with the central fact that the Medicare or Medicaid patient has too little incentive to care about the cost of his medical care and the medical care givers are unhappy with being forced to work without fair compensation.

Another important cost is the very high liability of American hospitals and doctors since they are not protected by a government umbrella against being sued as a nationalized medical system would be. This lack of protection does hold the medical profession to a higher degree of responsibility, but of course it comes with high costs. Among them, doctors must be overcautious in following some standard procedures even when they know they may not be best for a given patient and they must over-prescribe medical tests and some operations.

Still another factor is that we do a very disproportionate fraction of the world's medical research and development. This is very expensive. But, it is also an important factor in the growing life span of people around the world, who even in the socialized medicine environments of western Europe and elsewhere derive benefits from our commitment to medical R&D.

The nationalized medical systems of western Europe save money by rationing medical care and by making it slow rather than responsive. They make operations which are optional, but life-enhancing in the eyes of those who want them, unavailable. They also have a greater preferrence for allowing an older person to die rather than perform an expensive operation which may extend their life only a relatively short time. Finally, they are commonly also slower to make use of the latest medical procedures and to acquire new technology when it is still in its expensive stage. The costs of most sophisticated medical equipment comes down fairly rapidly in time, so you save money by waiting until it costs less. Meanwhile, some people die. A system that makes such choices can save money, but there is a very real expense in quality of life associated with this savings.

Finally, America is richer than western Europe on average. When you are richer, you are willing, able, and happy to spend more on your health and on medical care.

But The Economist's second point seems to argue against all I have said above to justify our greater medical expense. The fact that we have a nearly two year shorter life expectancy than western Europeans seems significant. It seems to suggest that the socialist health care systems of western Europe are doing a better job of giving people longer lives at less expense. Let us examine this.

The populations of western Europe are more homogeneous than is that of the U.S. There are growing numbers of Muslims from North Africa, but the European population of Native Americans and Black Africans is much lower than in the United States. There is a genetic component to life expectancy and there are also behavioral components. These are not likely in many cases to be changed by a socialized health care system. For instance, black African American males have an average lifespan which is 6.2 years shorter than that of white men and 8.3 years shorter than the national average. Native Americans average even shorter lifespans than African Americans.

African Americans have a 70% increased likelihood for diabetes. They are about 80% likely to be salt sensitive, while about half of the world population is, and this makes them more prone to high blood pressure. The high incidence of diabetes and salt sensitivity make them more likely to die from heart disease and they do at a 30% higher rate than whites. African American men are most likely to die from homicide, followed by unintentional injuries, between the ages of 15 and 34. African Americans are more likely to be obese and they are the only group with sickle cell anemia and the health problems related to that. Black Americans also make unhealthy eating choices more frequently and make sexual choices which cause them to acquire sexually transmitted diseases in higher rates by far than other groups of the population. So, the net shorter American lifespan is substantially due to genetic and subculture differences which are not a function of the health care system.

More accurately, the number of Americans reported without health insurance was 46.9 million earlier, but it is now reported to be 45.7 million. Obama and the Democrats are still generally using the outdated number to say that the number of uninsured Americans is 47 million. More important, the number of uninsured is really an estimate of all people living in the United States and includes millions of illegal immigrants who are Americans in the sense that they mostly come from North or South America. But it also includes other illegal immigrants from other parts of the world. Furthermore many of the uninsured can afford insurance, but choose not to have it. Some because they are young and healthy. Some because they are wealthy enough to be self-insured.

Indeed, if you have enough income and fairly liquid assets, it is perfectly rational not to have health insurance, which usually has an upper limit of payments and which certainly has a profit margin built into the cost of the insurance. About 2.87% of American households have an income of $200,000 a year or more. If a household has had this level of income for a few years, it may have built up a good nest egg of investments and savings. These about 2.9 million households have an average of 3 people in the household, so there are about 8.7 million Americans who might very reasonably choose to be self-insured. In some cases, some of these households might choose to in effect insure other family members not living in the household as well. So it is very reasonable to believe that health insurance is very optional for as many as 10,000,000 Americans. Because Americans are relatively wealthy, there is a higher percentage of Americans who would choose not to have health insurance than would be the case in most of the world, including western Europe.

Finally, The Economist is worried about our rising medical costs. So am I, but I am sure that they will only continue to rise even more with more government intervention, or if they do not, it will be due to drastic, anti-individual modes of government forced rationing of health care. Our current rising costs are a function of both wasteful current government meddling through Medicare, Medicaid, and the courts and many increased options for our health care offered by new technology and procedural advances. The latter cause is a good one. Another expense increaser is the problem that the rest of the world is more and more opting out of their responsibilities for the development and the costs of new procedures and drugs. America is subsidizing the rest of the world's healthcare in a big way. The only way we can prevent this is to shoot ourselves in the foot.

The article notes that Obama has signed an expansion of the state health insurance for children. He has set aside more than $630 billion over ten years as a "down-payment" towards making health care affordable for everyone, clearly at added expense to many others. And what does it really mean to say he has set this money aside, when he has no such money, but only huge deficits? He also wants to force all parents to buy health insurance for their children. He would not allow insurers to reject covering people for new insurance who have pre-existing health problems, which will raise medical insurance for the healthy. He will allow everyone to buy into the government health plan if they wish. Obama will curb costs by cutting out waste (a precedent breaking new government ability unique to Obama government) and he will encourage healthy living. He will computerize medical records and use this to determine what procedures have the most bang for the buck, so he can ration health care according to his evaluation of what bang is enough for the buck. He will increase taxes further on liquor, cigarettes, and sugary drinks. Restaurants may be forced to serve smaller portions. Companies will be forced to provide gyms for their employees to use and presumably force them to actually use those facilities. What an American concept!

Where is the sovereignty of the individual to be perceived in these plans? Each of our lives is to be micromanaged by our all-knowing government. How delightful. We will all have to live almost 2 years longer no matter how little some of us might like the rules. If only those genetic factors and those lifestyle choices predominantly found in some ethnic groups do not prove too resistant to government rules and mandates, we should have a successful future as western European socialist mimics.

The Economist on Obama

In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, The Economist had Barack Obama's picture on the cover twice and they endorsed him for President. It is interesting that in an article in the 7 - 13 March issue called Anger Management they say:

Anger seethes about the fact that so many big-government Democrats mysteriously lose their appetite for taxes when it comes to paying them themselves. This week saw the revelation that yet another of Mr Obama's nominees, Ron Kirk, the would-be trade representative, underpaid his taxes in 2005-2007. But above all, people are angry that Mr Obama led them down the garden path. Bipartisanship? He is proposing one of the most liberal budgets in decades. Abolishing earmarks? The budget contains 8,570 of them. Honesty? The finance, property and insurance industries (all getting huge bail-outs) were the largest source of campaign contributions to Mr Obama after lawyers. Transcending racism? Eric Holder, the attorney-general, has accused Americans of being cowards when it comes to discussing race.

Perhaps not being George Bush is not enough, though it seemed that way to too many people during the election!

It is noted that almost 60% of Americans are opposed to giving money to banks and auto makers who are in danger of failing. They also mention the Tea Parties springing up around the country. Overall, this is just one more case of a somewhat left of center group or publication having second thoughts about a man who they were clearly determined to fool themselves about during the election. There was no rational reason whatever to expect that Obama was anything but a highly committed socialist. He had grown up with a radically socialist mother, taken his first jobs with radically socialist community disorganizers, associated with ex-Weathermen, associated with a church that insisted that Christ was black and upon a kind of superior black segregation out of the general American society, had long been associated with ACORN, had the most socialist voting record in the Senate, had many very dubious ties with shady real estate owners in Chicago, and had used some very dirty campaign tactics in the caucases in which he had done so well. Yet many people were determined to think that he would not act like a socialist and he would be clean when he achieved the power of the Presidency, which he and the Democrats lusted after so greatly. Duh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Anna!

My very much beloved wife, Anna, is having a birthday today.

Thank you Anna for all the wonderful years you have loved me. Thank you for giving me my three daughters. Thank you for putting up with my starting my own laboratory and all of the years of extraordinary hard work, long hours, and depressed income. I love you dearly and I am counting on celebrating all of our many birthdays to come together.

Scrubbing CO2 Out of the Atmosphere

The 7 - 13 March 2009 issue of the Economist has an article on the use of various scrubbing processes to remove CO2 from the air. There are advocates for the use of scrubbers to clean general air, not just the air emitted from coal-fired power plants, by removing CO2. [Disclosure: I have analyzed smokestack modified lime powders in a couple of projects for the purpose of solving problems or improving the absorption capacity for SO2.] Now if this can be done without subsidies from governments by selling the CO2 to greenhouses to promote plant growth, for food and soft drink processing, fire extinguishers, gas to pressurize oil fields to squeeze out more oil, and for water treatment purposes, I am fine with this. After all, the article notes that CO2 is the 19th most important chemical commodity by weight produced in America. It does have economic value, over and above the fact that plants will not grow without it.

But, of course, this is not the main thrust of the European viewpoint given in the article. No, the very first sentence is "Preventing catastrophic climate change, most people agree, will mean reducing the level of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere." Well now, isn't that sweet?

Here is a poll of Americans taken among adults from 5 - 8 March 2009 by Gallup. The main news is that the percent of Americans thinking that global warming is exaggerated by the media is now up to 41%, but 57% still think the media has it right or underestimates the seriousness of global warming. I am disappointed in Americans here, but it is clearly hard for them to see through the smokescreen put up by much of the media. Nonetheless, some of the 57% who think the media has it about right are watching Fox News, which is generally not very alarmist. The biggest change in the last year toward increased skepticism of the media reports on global warming is Independents whose skeptics jumped from 33% to 44%, while Republican skeptics increased from 59% to 66%, and Democrat skeptics from 18 to 22%. So, an Independent is twice as likely as a Democrat to be skeptic and a Republican is 3 times as likely to be a skeptic. The age group most skeptical and with the biggest change in skepticism is those 65 and older. The immutable group is those 18 to 29, who have been stuck at 31% skeptics. Of course, these are the most indoctrinated Americans of all.

60% worry about global warming either a great deal or a fair amount. First, not all of the 60% who worry about it are likely to be convinced that it is predominantly caused by man's CO2 emissions. Second, worrying a fair amount is not what you do when faced with a catastrophe. A catastrophe causes a great deal of worry and only 34% worried a great deal about global warming. When the question was put another way, only 38% thought global warming will pose a serious threat to themselves and their own way of life.

Well, maybe the Economist being based in the U.K. is thinking that most Britons believe that global warming is occurring, is caused by man emitting CO2, and that it is a catastrophe. Yet, the level of skepticism in Great Britain is now even higher than in the U.S.! They went through a period when they were more convinced than were Americans, but now they have examined the issue more carefully and the majority do not believe that man-made global warming is occurring and is a catastrophe. Here is a report on the Ipsos MORI poll of 1,039 Britons in June 2008. Six out of 10 people agreed that "many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change." 20% were undecided. Four out of 10 "sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say." Again 20% were undecided.

It is unlikely that most Chinese and most Indians agree that man-made global warming is occurring and it is a catastrophe. It does not appear that most Eastern Europeans are convinced that man-made global warming is a catastrophe. I have serious doubts that most Africans and South Americans are very worried about catastrophic global warming either. So, who do you think the people are who the Economist is talking about? I expect it is the university faculties and the media professionals they are talking about as 'most people.' Or is this just another instance of the Big Lie? Still another being the reference in the British article I linked to above that 2,500 scientists concluded in the last IPCC report that global warming was 90% certainly due primarily to human activity and that drastic action was needed to prevent it. Well, very many of the 2,500 were not scientists at all and only a small fraction were really climate scientists, and many of them did not agree with the summary conclusions.

Let us return to the Economist article. The exhaust from a coal-fired power station is around 10% carbon dioxide. The atmosphere is about 0.04% CO2. So, recapturing CO2 from the air is much less economical than recovering it from a coal-powered power plant. If it were economical to recover it from the air, then it should be more economical to recover from coal-fired power plants. In fact, this could then be a way for a coal-fired power plant to make more money. But, they do not do this because it is too expensive. While there is a fairly big market for CO2, apparently it does not pay very much and it is not big enough. But, our socialist friends at the Economist are not deterred. No, they appeal for subsidies and carbon off-sets to fund scrubbers which will operate on ordinary air.

Dr. Lackner, professor of geophysics at Columbia University and a member of the company Global Research Technologies, says they have a scrubbing technology that can remove CO2 from the air for industrial purposes at $200 per ton. To support this with carbon offsets now valued at only $10 per ton is not going to be feasible. But, environmentalists hope that carbon offsets will soon be valued at over $50 per ton and Dr. Lackner hopes to bring his costs down to $30 per ton. If so, the general air scrubbing can be accomplished with carbon offsets as the primary income. [In 1999, according to DOE, the average weight of carbon dioxide emitted per kW - hr of electric power from a coal-fired power plant was 2.095 pounds. At $30 per ton of CO2, this would increase the cost of 1 KW - hr of electricity by $0.0314.]

Then one still has to find a way to use this CO2. The Economist suggests that it might be converted into fuel for cars, but the conversion will cost about $4-5 per gallon according to a Dr. Eisaman. But, the primary cost is the energy needed to strip hydrogen electrolytically from water to combine the hydrogen with the carbon in the CO2 to make the hydrocarbon fuel for cars. So, Dr. Lackner suggests that wind farms sometimes generate too much electricity for the electric grid to handle, especially at night, so their output could be used to supply the power that produces the hydrogen from water and otherwise power the proces to make fuel from CO2. The idea is that then the air capture systems for removing CO2 from the air would have cheap enough power to allow the scrubbing of air using carbon offsets.

There is a flaw here, folks. Long before you can make this make sense, it would be more sensible to recognize that coal-fired power plants are dependable and cheap, while wind farms are expensive, undependable, and inclined to produce more power at night than during the day, when more power is needed. Clearly, the thing that must make much more sense is to put the scrubber on the output of the coal-fired power plant where the CO2 concentration is 10%, rather than feeding it regular air where the CO2 concentration is only 0.04%. Operating a scrubber on the CO2 enriched air should be much less expensive.

So, what is the motive in suggesting that we dump the coal-fired power plants and oil-based fuel for cars and replace them with wind farms, general air scrubbers, and synthetic fuel for cars that costs more than twice what gasoline costs? Why would you want to continue with the plan to bankrupt the coal-fired power plants as Obama has pledged to do? But, even more so, if CO2 makes plants grow better in greenhouses, should we not want more CO2 in the air anyway to make our crops throughout the world grow better? And to the degree that we need CO2 for industrial purposes, would it not make sense to encourage the producers of CO2 to work more closely with coal-fired power plants to make them a primary source of the enriched air with higher concentrations of CO2? And, perhaps it would make sense to build a lot of greenhouses right next to coal-fired power plants so the plant output air can be piped directly through them before we add on lots of carbon offsets and carbon taxes. I also wonder if the carbon dioxide output of gasoline and diesel is ever offset by the amount of CO2 pumped into oil fields in anyone's calculations.

Of course, I do not think it is bad in the air. First, it is known that after a certain concentration of CO2 is reached, it has less and less effect as a greenhouse gas. Its present concentration is already such that additions are doing little to add to warming. Second, there is reason to believe that increased CO2 causes increased water evaporation and cloud cover, which produces cooling. Third, the earth has often been warmer and man has flourished when it was, largely because plants and other animals tend to flourish when it is warmer. Fourth, the areas of the earth which are warming most are those where warming is the most welcome, such as northern North America, northern Europe, and northern Russia. Finally, while I think that man does cause some degree of global warming, I believe that warming has been dominated by natural forces.

Union Card Check Bill Will Increase Unemployment

The infamous Employee Free Choice Act, known widely as card check, has now been re-introduced in both houses of Congress. This dastardly coercion of investors, employers, and employees via a process designed to eliminate secret ballot elections to determine whether employees want to be represented by a labor union in contract negotiations, will reduce the number of employed Americans. Anne Layne-Farrar has issued a study that claims that for every 3% increase in private sector union jobs brought on by card check, the next year's unemployed rate will rise by 1%. This is a decrease of about 1.5 million jobs.

Importing Japan's 1990s Miseries

Those who have not learned from history are doomed to relive the past, especially if they believe in some mythology about the past which imprints all the wrong lessons upon their minds.

One of the great examples of a mythology leading men astray is that of the Great Depression in which the demi-god Franklin D. Roosevelt gave Americans the confidence they lacked to rebuild the economy with his fireside chats and his determined pragmatic experimentation with social welfare programs. In fact, FDR greatly prolonged a recession and turned it into a deep depression and then when the economy began to improve, turned it into a second depression. The back to back depressions became the Great Depression and were not brought to an end until after the war, though wartime activity in some respects made it seem as though the depression ended when war production got well underway. FDR had an uncanny knack for creating maximal investment uncertainty and this kept private investors on the sidelines until after the war. The story is well told in The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes and in Jim Powell's FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression.

There is a more recent case of history from which we could learn. In the entire decade of the 1990s, Japan suffered an economic meltdown due to a boom in stock prices and real estate prices brought on by a flood of easy money supplied by the Japanese government in the 1980s through 1990. Benjamin Powell has written an excellent commentary on this called Avoid Japan's Mistakes in the 8 March 2009 Washington Times. Powell points out that the Nikkei stock market index fell about 70% and real-estate prices fell by 80%. This was a significantly more severe downturn than our present travails are.

Between 1992 and 1995, the Japanese had six stimulus bills providing an average yearly stimulus equal to 3% of the Japanese GDP. In 1998, the Japanese stimulus programs were 8.5% of the GDP. Even this huge stimulus had little effect upon Japan's plight. Our present $787 billion stimulus bill is 6% of the American GDP. By the mid-1990s, Japan had a very low central bank interest rate like ours now. Japan turned to big bank bailouts and to nationalization of the banks in 1998 and 1999, only to make matters still worse. Japan also provided huge sums of government funds for construction projects to no effect.

The real-estate booms in both Japan and the U.S. caused too much money, too many capital goods, and too many people to enter the construction industry. Powell says, "Bank bailouts and fiscal stimulus bills don't work because they strive to maintain the status quo. But the status quo is the problem and exactly what needs to be corrected. ..... "Stimulus" bills that emphasize public works and infrastructure merely prop up the over-expanded construction industries."

Returning to my own viewpoint: This is true, but it is also the case that the financial industry itself was on a bubble and had too many people in it. The masses of people refinancing mortgages and dealing in the financial derivatives markets were excessive and now need to be pared back substantially. The market will take care of this and also of the bankruptcy of General Motors and perhaps Chrysler as well, if only the government will get out of the way. The huge sums of bailout monies are saddling our children and grandchildren with pointless debt. The derivatives financial institutions, many real estate firms, GM, some banks, and some construction companies are way beyond saving. Let them fail and let wiser heads take over their physical assets and hire and manage the people who used to work for these loser companies. There is surely no point in wasting more money on foolish bailout schemes.

Not only is the money being wasted, but the very uncertain and surprising ways in which the government is spending it is causing private investors to take their money out of the market and wait on the sidelines. Every time Obama sneers at the "investor class" he makes them more uneasy and more passive. Obama has frozen the energy of the most dynamic and creative economic forces. The ineffectiveness of the whole effort is causing people who had signed on as part of Obama's economic team to back away from government jobs in the Treasury Department so they will not be stained by association with such a losing effort. The banks and financial institutions who took the Federal money nearly forced upon them, marked themselves as losers. GM and Chrysler also put on targets as losers when they took bailout money. Interestingly, so did the United Auto Workers Union. The image of what they did to the American automotive companies in the competition with the Japanese, Korean, and European auto makers, may be enough to defeat the union card check bill killing secret ballots to decide the issue of union representation.

The concerted efforts of the Obama - Pelosi - Reid Axis Powers to do all of the following in a massive and rapid push designed to cripple the private sector and to build the socialist government-dominated society of their choice:

• the takeover of medical services with tighter controls and rationing of medical services by means of the newly created computer record system
• the move to control medical insurance
• the elimination of a doctor's right to refuse all Medicare funding, thereby making him completely subservient to the government
  
• the threat to force increased unionization upon small businesses
• the creation of massive government debt with crippling future interest payments
  
• the coming high inflation
• the meddling with the management of banking and other financial institutions, including forcing them to continue making risky, yet low interest rate loans
  
• the transfer of money from the private sector to the ever-obstructive and meddling government sector
• the promised higher taxes on investment profits
• the vendetta against the "investor class"
  
• the higher income and Social Security taxes on higher income families
• the ban against drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and still more restrictions against drilling for oil and gas on the excessively extensive Federal lands
• the killing of funds to relocate spent nuclear fuel rods to Yucca Mountain thereby killing nuclear power in the near future
• the promised Federally orchestrated bankruptcy of the coal-fired electric power plants, which produce 50% of all U.S. electricity
• the punishing taxes or fees to be leveled on the oil and gas industries
• the restrictions of energy use and the greatly increased costs of energy use to fall on every American
• the huge stock market losses which will make many Baby Boomers more dependent upon government for retirement and health care
• the funding of more civil service organizations to remove workers from productive work in the private sector and make them cheap labor for the politicians
• the flooding of still more money into universities where most professors will use it to advocate more socialism in America and an ever-diminished role for the individual while college education costs continue to skyrocket
  
• masses of more government-chosen winners, who will be rewarded at the expense of hardworking and responsible taxpayers
• increased restrictions on trade with other countries
• increased submission to the so-called international law of the dictator and socialist government-dominated United Nations
• increased expenses for business mandated by governments as a way to keep bribes to voters off Federal and state expense accounts
  

All of which ought to cause a massive and sustained Second Great Depression. The Obama Axis Powers will be happy to use the continuing crisis as a means to push for still more government power as a means to solve the problems they have themselves caused. Of course, they will continue to blame everything on George Bush and perhaps Rush Limbaugh. Meanwhile, bewildered Americans will more and more frequently read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in order to really understand the root of all the evil which has overtaken them. Will the sign of the dollar and decals asking "Who is John Galt?" become commonplace on Depression era cars?

If you have any hope of thinking for yourself, choosing your own values, and managing your own life in accordance with those values, you are under a massive and brutal attack. It is way past time for every American who has any understanding of his right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness to stand sure in his insistence upon preserving this essence of his individual life. Without it, there is no joy in living. We must stand united and individually in rebellion against this statist takeover of our lives.

This is much, much worse than anything King George III ever conceived of. In comparison to Obama, the king was a hero of freedom. Let us hope Americans can recover some measure of the concern they once had for individual freedoms before they lose everything.

Union Representation Card Check Legislation

Labor unions are doing very well in the public sector, where they have been very successful in organizing government workers. In the private sector, they are in deep trouble. In the 1950s they had 35% of private sector workers organized, but now they have only 7% in the private sector. Consequently, they have become desperate to find a way to improve their numbers in the private sector. The card check legislation, which was passed by the House in 2007, but defeated in the Senate, is once again Labor's number one lobbying priority.

Presently, if a labor union persuades 30% of the non-management employees of a company to check a card saying they are interested in labor union representation, the company must either accept the union as the sole bargaining agent of all of its non-management employees or call for a secret ballot election managed by the National Labor Relations Board of the Labor Department. Currently, labor unions win more than 50% of such secret ballot elections. This system is one full of injustice. First, it is wrong to require a company to negotiate labor contracts against its will with anyone or any organization. Company owners are not obliged to provide a job to anyone, except by their choice. When they are forced to do so, they have become slaves to their employees. Second, it is wrong to force those employees who do not wish to join a labor union to do so, unless the management freely chooses to make that a condition of employment, which they do have the right to do.

But this already union-skewed system is not enough for the labor unions. Clearly, workers have seen that unions are often very effective in destroying companies, which makes their continued employment very dubious. A very good illustration of this presently is the need for General Motors to go bankrupt, so an organization can emerge from its ruins which is not chained to many extremely uncompetitive concessions made to the labor unions. Many employees in the private sector have clearly understood the risks of joining a labor union and have chosen not to do so.

The union answer was to have Rep. George Miller (D of CA) introduce the so-called Employee Free Choice Act once again, which in the best tradition of Congress is anything but what its title suggests. This is more commonly called the card check legislation. It will require a company to recognize a union as the sole bargaining representation of all of its employees if 50% of them check off a card saying they want union representation. A union may be forced upon a company and those employees who do not want union representation even before they know that an attempt is being made to organize the workers of the company. There may never be an opportunity for the company and uninterested workers to make any counter arguments. It is also very clear that union organizers can put very great pressure on the last few employees they need to reach the 50% critical number for unionization. The secret ballot need no longer stand in their way.

This process of unionization is so easy that it can be readily applied to very small companies, which will be especially vulnerable to being taken over before they even know they are under attack. There is nothing to prevent the unionization of even very small Mom and Pop businesses. These businesses do not have the legal resources to contend with the unions. These small-time entrepreneurs have often suffered through years of personal privation to build a stable company and to get to the point where they could hire a few employees. In many cases, the lowest paid employee in such a company may be the founder of the company, who is still foregoing salary income in order to build his business. Yet, this struggling owner/manager is now forced to employ employees backed by hordes of lawyers from the union and to pay them still greater multiples of pay and benefits relative to his own pay. He may be providing them with health benefits already, which law does not allow him to provide for himself.

This proposed legislation further imposes the requirement that the company must enter into negotiations with the union within 10 days of the union getting the 50% check-offs needed. Then if no agreement is reached between the company and the union within 120 days, the government provides an arbitrator who will dictate the wages and benefits the company will provide the workers for a two-year contract. Given that the Labor Department will designate the arbitrator and given its generally pro-labor union stance, you can see why labor unions have written these provisions into the bill.

Meanwhile, a February 2007 McLaughlin Associates poll of 1000 respondents found that 79% opposed this bill and only 14% were in for it. Among just Democrats, 78% opposed the bill and 16% were for it. A 2004 Zogby poll found that 78% of union workers oppose any measure that denies them a secret ballot vote on union representation. Despite this opposition by voters, the Democrat Party obligation to the labor unions is so great that the Employee Free Choice Act, or abomination, may well pass Congress when it is considered soon. President Obama voted for it when it failed to pass the Senate last time and swore during the election that he would sign it into law as President.

Soon not only GM and U.S. Steel will be having difficulties being competitive, but your corner independently owned gas station and the local diner will be struggling even harder than normally to stay in business. Small business owners who relished doing it their way instead of opting for the safety and easier life of working for a large company, will find themselves slaves to a labor union. What a life!

Democrats Imprison 1,700 Students

The Democrat Congress just threw 1,700 District of Columbia students back into penal holding pens pretending to be public schools. To be especially cruel, these students had been given a brief experience with a real education in private schools under a voucher program.

The D.C. public school system is a total failure. It is clear that it makes no serious effort at providing D.C. students with an education. It does provide many very poor teachers with cushy union jobs and does not make half of them even enter a classroom. It is also a generous source of money for many suppliers of goods and services. The one thing it is unbelievably good at is spending money. The D.C. school system spends about $24,600 per student (see my post of 20 Apr 08). This is not what they say they spend. They claim amounts in the range of $7,000 to $12,000 per student, usually claiming $8,322 per student. The best private schools in D.C., where Obama's children go for instance, charge about $25,000 per year. Anyone would be offended given the quality of a D.C. public school education if they understood how much D.C. spends on its schools. Especially when the school system is always claiming that if it only had a reasonable amount of money, it would educate the students. They always want more.

Given this fact alone, the voucher program which provides $7500 per year to a D.C. student from a poor family to attend a private school is a huge money-saver for the D.C. taxpayer and the Federal government which gives the D.C. school system so much aid. It also allows a poor D.C. student to actually get an education and to have the options in life that come with an education. But, our Democrat Congress, which so poses as the champion of the poor, has most cruelly sent the formerly lucky 1,700 students back to jail. Let them see the light briefly, then throw them back into the blackest pit.

Why do they do such horrible things? Because the public school teacher's union wants them to and the Democrats owe them hugely for their election support. The students are unimportant. Being elected and put in power is all that is important. These are the Democrat champions of the underdog. Well, in order to be that, they must turn human beings into dogs and they must bury them six feet under in ignorance. The Democrats want to sustain the union teachers who do not teach and to create the underdogs they can pretend to champion!