Archive for July, 2008
Czech President’s “Inconvenient Challenge” to Al Gore
By Christopher Adamo
Since leaving office, former Vice-President Al Gore has gained enormous stature within certain circles on the world scene, acquiring it per the standard liberal formula. Taking up his “Earth in the Balance” cause, he produced the feature length movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is replete with fantastic prophesies of doom for the planet unless America immediately regresses to third-world squalor.
An insipid and unsubstantiated piece of propaganda, Gore’s movie would never have resonated beyond the boundaries of a few egg headed film fests, were it not for the concerted efforts of virtually every liberal and socialist special interest known to mankind. Coming to his aid, they collectively proclaimed “An Inconvenient Truth” to be at once the scientific equivalent of Einstein’s theory of relativity, packaged in cinematic genius that eclipses Ben Hur.
In the typical modus operandi of liberalism, an avalanche of recognition and awards were conferred upon Gore and his movie, from the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to an Oscar for “Best Documentary” to effusive accolades from every aspiring tinsel town movie critic. The film, along with all of his efforts to foment a global warming panic, have since been predictably declared as universal truth, a judgment based not on the availability of evidence, but on the profusion of like-minded liberal ideologues who are willing to accept and advance his hysterical claims.
Not surprising was the immediate branding of any who are dubious of Gore’s outlandish assertions as “heretics.” The liberal agenda, whether in relation to planetary catastrophe or the latest effort to confiscate and redistribute the private property of citizens, cannot tolerate honest examination. Thus, any effort to demand scientific evidence to support Gore’s frenzied allegations will result in immediate charges of being a “global warming denier,” an obvious attempt to link the honest skeptic to those anti-Semites who claim the Nazi holocaust never happened.
Obama’s Excremental Economics
By Thomas E. Brewton
As prolongation of the 1930s Depression and stagflation in the 1970s demonstrated, Senator Obama’s announced policies are a prescription for economic disaster.
Keynesian economic doctrine, not under that name, but in substance, is back in the news in a truly menacing way. Senator Obama proposes to repeat the policies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that turned an ordinary two-year recession into an eight-year disaster, with unemployment rates continuously in the high teens.
The key elements of Senator Obama’s proposed economic policies, as in the New Deal and the stagflation of the 1970s, are much higher taxes, along with a pervasive increase of business regulations and price controls in healthcare and energy (which sharply depress business activity and employment rates), full-frontal embrace of labor unions (which will push up wages and benefits to levels deterring profitable expansion of industrial production), and massive new government deficit spending (which will accelerate the already dangerously high rate of inflation and devaluation of the dollar). Carried out as he proposes, Senator Obama’s polices will lead us again into the swamp of stagflation.
The basic thrust of Keynesianism is the belief that control of the economy must be collectivized at the Federal level, because private business is incapable of providing full employment, and because the proper goal of economic policy must be thwarting greedy businessmen to attain so-called social justice: equal distribution of income and wealth, without regard to merit, capability, or hard work.
Not surprisingly the New York Times editorial board and the Times’s propagandist Paul Krugman are prominent Keynesian enthusiasts.