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In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Nile Gardiner says that Obama has another opportunity to stand up for the Iranian revolutionaries.
This week may prove another defining moment for Barack Obama on the world stage, and a major test of his failing leadership. As tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators prepare to take to the streets of Tehran on February 11 in defiance of the security forces on the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution, the president will have to make it clear whose side he is on – the brutal Islamist dictatorship or dissidents fighting for their freedom. He can no longer sit on the fence as a dispassionate neutral observer. As the leader of the free world President Obama has a responsibility to speak out in support of those who are bravely laying down their lives in opposition to a dictatorship that has emerged as America’s most dangerous state-based threat. …
…The Obama administration’s shameful appeasement of the Iranian regime has been a spectacular failure, which has significantly undermined Obama’s standing on the world stage and demonstrated the bankruptcy of his strategy of engagement. It is not too late however for the president to change course and show some backbone, both in confronting the mounting Iranian nuclear threat as well as by backing those bravely fighting for freedom against the Mullahs.
American leadership is not about currying favour with Washington’s enemies. It is forged in the defence of freedom and through standing up to the forces of tyranny. This week Barack Obama has a major opportunity to take a clear stand against a sadistic Islamist theocracy, by sending a clear message that the American people are united with the protesters, and will support their drive for freedom. He should follow the example and courage of Ronald Reagan when he aggressively confronted and defeated the Soviet Empire, and actively advance the cause of liberty in Iran and across the Middle East.
The Economist has more numbers on the jobless recovery.
A week ago, Americans were told that their economy had expanded for a second consecutive quarter, and rapidly at that: output grew at an annual rate of 5.7%. This week, they are reminded that a return to growth has yet to benefit the jobless. The economy lost 20,000 jobs in January, a decline driven by the loss of 75,000 jobs in the construction sector. Economists had forecast an increase in employment of around 15,000. The unemployment rate, based on household rather than establishment data, showed a slight improvement, dropping from 10% to 9.7%, but nearly 15m Americans remain unemployed. As Larry Summers put it in Davos last week, the American economy is experiencing “a statistical recovery and a human recession”.
Several positive trends continued in January. Firms added 52,000 temporary workers and increased hours, just as they did in December, hinting at growing if cautious optimism. Employment rose in health, education and professional services, and retail employment grew by 42,000 in January, on a seasonally adjusted basis, after declining in December. Manufacturing employment also grew, by 11,000, the first increase since the beginning of recession. Analysts point out that the adjustment of the data is tricky around the holiday season, and actual underlying employment may have grown in January. …
…Most troubling of all is the continued failure of economic growth to benefit the labour market. Employment fell by over 300,000 jobs during the last three months of 2009, despite strong expansion in GDP. The first quarter of 2010 is unlikely to show as big an output gain, suggesting that the pace of improvement in employment may be slowing, even as regular job growth has yet to return. And the situation may be more dire still; initial jobless claims have grown in recent weeks, indicating that what momentum there was in labour markets has been lost. …
Thomas Sowell provides some clear thinking on the idea of fairness.
…Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and “unfair” to many individuals or groups. Fortunately there was one voice of sanity — David Riesman, I believe — who said: “The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results.”
If by “fair” you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense. …
…Many people fail to see the fundamental difference between saying that a particular thing — whether a mental test or an institution — is conveying a difference that already exists or is creating a difference that would not exist otherwise.
Creating a difference that would not exist otherwise is discrimination, and something can be done about that. But, in recent times, virtually any disparity in outcomes is almost automatically blamed on discrimination, despite the incredible range of other reasons for disparities between individuals and groups. …
Michael Barone discusses how unions in government workplaces force excess financial burdens on taxpayers. But Barone ends on an optimist note of sorts.
…Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits — and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.
The results are plain to see. States such as New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower. …
…Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400,000,000 to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic party.
But it may not turn out to be a perpetual motion machine. Public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who depend on the private sector for their livelihoods. The next Congress may not be as willing as this one has been to bail out state governments dominated by public-sector unions. Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for $100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s. Or they may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas. …
In the WaPo, Fred Hiatt discusses an example, well-known to our regular readers, of public-sector unions destroying the D.C. voucher program out of “fairness” to those that aren’t given vouchers. A more jaded opinion is that they are protecting their jobs to the detriment of children’s futures.
…The second objection is that if children or families with get-up-and-go actually get up and go, things will be even worse for those left behind. There are a lot of problems with this argument, but the main one is that the people who make it usually aren’t willing to condemn their own children to attend terrible high schools in order to improve things for the other kids there. Why should we demand that of families who have high aspirations but can’t afford to move?
But even if you’re inclined against vouchers, why not embrace a program that has a chance to shed real light on the long-running, fraught and inconclusive argument about their effectiveness? The D.C. program was established to provide such evidence. It enrolled a control group of children who applied for vouchers but didn’t get them, and it is following them along with the kids with vouchers. In a couple more years, if funded robustly, it would give us a real sense of what worked and what didn’t. That could be helpful to lots of children.
Yet the Obama administration seems to be doing everything it can to wind down the program. Why? Early research results have been positive — certainly in terms of parental satisfaction, but also for achievement. Maybe the Democratic Party, and the teachers union leaders who support it, would rather not see any more evidence. …
The WSJ editors note the irony of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo pursuing legal action against BofA. Cuomo’s share of responsibility for the mortgage crisis appears much more serious.
…Entitled, “Highlights of HUD Accomplishments 1997-1999,” the document chronicles the “accomplishments under the leadership of Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who took office in January 1997.”
HUD’s Web visitors learn that in 1999 “Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance—to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years. This will mean new affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families. The historic action raised the required percentage of mortgage loans for low- and moderate-income families that the companies must buy from the current 42 percent of their total purchases to a new high of 50 percent—a 19 percent increase—in the year 2001.” …
…We know that in the wake of Mr. Cuomo’s agitation, Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of subprime loans skyrocketed. Subprime and “liar” loans became loss leaders that eventually caused the two mortgage giants to fail—with taxpayers so far on the hook for $111 billion in losses and perhaps hundreds of billions more to come. …
…Even if one believes the allegations hurled by the New York Attorney General at Bank of America—and there is much reason to doubt them—Mr. Cuomo has arguably done far more harm to taxpayers and investors than the defendants have. Before he is handed the New York governorship by Democratic and media acclamation, voters deserve a full accounting of Mr. Cuomo’s complicity in the mortgage meltdown.
Jonathan Pearce makes a good point about the Toyota recalls. Toyota isn’t telling you that they need more of your money to fix a problem that they created. To continue the analogy, Toyota would then have to make the problem even worse and then blame Bush or Wall Street.
Toyota is recalling thousands of motor vehicles around the world to deal with certain problems, such as possible brake failures. The story was the lead item on the BBC TV news today, not surprisingly, given the large number of people who now drive Toyota cars. On one level, this issue is being billed as a terrible embarrassment for the Japanese company, but to an extent I find the comprehensive recall of the cars to be a pretty good example, in fact, of how private businesses with a huge brand-name investment have to act when their products have a problem. Can you imagine, say, a government department doing such a massive “recall” of a failed policy? With private business, the penalties for failure are bankruptcy. For government, the consequence of a mess is often more of the same, only with more lumps of taxpayers’ money. To put it more technically, there is little in the way of a negative feedback loop when governments are involved. …
David Kopel blogs about a surprising coincidence. The Obama Birther conspiracy and the Bush National Guard conspiracy appear to have the same source.
So suggests John Avalon, in a Daily Beast column “The Secret History of the Birthers.” He traces birtherism to a Texas woman named Linda Starr, who was a Hillary Clinton delegate to the 2008 Texas state Democratic Convention. Avalon writes that Starr “was also cited as a key source for CBS’ discredited election year investigation into George W. Bush’s National Guard records that led to Dan Rather’s replacement after 24 years as the evening news anchor.” Avalon links to the Thornburgh/Boccardi report, which was conducted at the request of CBS News to examine CBS’s conduct in producing the infamous 60 Minutes story about Bush supposedly evading National Guard service and then having the records scrubbed. As the report details, Starr made the claim about Bush in an article on her website, three days before the 2000 presidential election. She also played a key role in serving as an intermediary for CBS to obtain the document which purported to be National Guard memo regarding the removal of NG records about Bush. The Thornburgh/Boccardi report does not claim that Ms. Starr knew that the document was a clumsy fabrication.
At the very least, however, the fiasco of the Bush National Guard story shows that Ms. Starr did not provide her Internet readers, or CBS, with a story which could withstand factual scrutiny. Accordingly, if Avalon’s reporting is correct, he has provided yet another reason for people to disbelieve the (already-implausible) assertion that President Obama was not born in the United States. In contrast to the way the mainstream media initially handled the 2004 Bush National Guard story, the mainstream media did a better job in 2008 by not embracing a story about a presidential candidate which could not be supported by solid, verifiable facts.
In the Toronto Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente, while hedging her bets, rounds up the current climate science scandals.
…Meantime, the IPCC – the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science – is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, Mr. Pachauri dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.
For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall. The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article “a mess.” …
…Until now, anyone who questioned the credibility of the IPCC was labeled as a climate skeptic, or worse. But many climate scientists now sense a sinking ship, and they’re bailing out. Among them is Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria who acknowledges that the climate body has crossed the line into advocacy. Even Britain’s Greenpeace has called for Mr. Pachauri’s resignation. India says it will establish its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the IPCC. …
In the American Interest, Walter Russell Mead reviews more of the IPCC “science”.
…Now another headline grabbing IPCC scare story is melting away. A report in Sunday’s London Times highlights new humiliations for the IPCC.
“The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.”
There is however one teensy-weensy little problem. As Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team has now told reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report. …
…But there’s more. Much, much more. Readers of the Times and the Telegraph are watching the IPCC’s credibility disappear before their eyes. The former head of IPCC has publicly said the organization risks losing all credibility if it can’t clean up its act. The head of the largest British funder of environmental research has joined the head of Greenpeace UK in criticizing the IPCC. (At Greenpeace, they want Pachauri to resign.) The Dutch government has demanded that the IPCC correct its erroneous assertion that half of the Netherlands is below sea level. Actually, it’s only about a quarter. A prediction about the impact of sea level increases on people living in the Nile Delta was taken from an unpublished student dissertation. The report contained inaccurate data about generating energy from waves and about the cost of nuclear power (this information was apparently taken without being checked directly from a website supported by the nuclear power industry). The deeply environmentalist Guardian carries a story documenting the decline in both public and Conservative Party confidence in the need to address global warming. …
Terence Corcoran, in the National Post, contrasts Toyota and the IPCC.
…In fact, Toyota’s troubles mounted when it spoke honestly of its struggles in finding a cause and solution to the acceleration problem. Maybe Toyota could learn a few things from the IPCC. The wheels are practically falling off the climate change organization, with fresh evidence of faulty science, false advertising and flawed procedures being revealed almost daily. Even worse, the records show that the IPCC has a long history of scientific crashes, data manufacturing and out-of-control spins.
Clearly the IPCC is not taking any instruction from the corporate goodness community. For example, it took the IPCC more than two months to officially acknowledge its false claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Rather than rush to come clean on the mistake, the IPCC dragged its feet for weeks, calling it “voodoo” science, before issuing a self-congratulatory statement. “It has…recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.” …
…Note that the IPPC admits to a mistake only in “a paragraph,” thus implying that the thousands of other pages of IPCC reports and science material over the years contain nothing but rock-solid science—an untenable implication given what we know about the IPCC. If the IPCC were a private-enterprise auto company, the class-action suits would have been piling up at the agency’s doors and the U.S. Congress would be parading the IPCC’s executives through a public humiliation. So far, however, most media and just about all governments seem willing to accept the IPCC’s response on its Himalayan junk science. Just a little thing. Nothing to worry about. …
Roger Simon wants your help to find who has been making money by making climate science fiction.
Since it’s clear the Internet (notably the blogosphere) exposed the dubious science of anthropogenic global warming, thankfully before we all went broke (or more broke than we already are), it’s time to turn to our next assignment – following the money.
Cui bono in this giant metastasizing scam? Yes, we already know that the IPCC’s Rajendra Pachauri may have some ill-gotten gains, not to mention a few scientists who may have flown first class to Bali and other such boondoggles, but they are indeed small potatoes. Big money was – or was intended to be – made with carbon exchanges set up in Europe and the USA. Fraud at the European exchange to the tune of one and half billion dollars is already under investigation by Scotland Yard. But that’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As far back as July 2009, the Science and Public Policy Institute published a broadside – Climate Money – alleging that 79 billion had already been spent on this unproven science. That’s an extraordinary sum, even if exaggerated by eighty or ninety percent. Who knows how much has been spent and who has benefited?
Well, we at Pajamas Media would like to know – and we imagine you would too. And speaking of the tip of that proverbial iceberg, this is not only about Al Gore. There are plenty of high rent dots to be connected here with much pertinent information to be revealed and names to be named. I am writing this post to solicit your help. Just as the blogosphere was so instrumental in dissecting the science, it can also help track the money. If you have knowledge or expertise in this area, please contact us at webmaster@pajamasmedia.com. We will forward this on to Charles Martin – our resident guru on all matters climatic – who will collate and report back. Thanks for your help.