Current Events, Climate change
A familiar rallying cry of the Right is a call for smaller government. This is seen as self-evident and a “good thing” in and of itself.
However, if we look at the most successful advanced economies in the world, we see that most have more government spending as a fraction of GDP than the US (data from “Pocket World in Figures, 2015 Edition, The Economist). Continue reading “America Does Not Need Smaller Government!”
“Climate Change” is now synonymous with “global warming”. However, in the 1970’s, global cooling was the major topic. Wikipedia now claims that there was no consensus among climatologists about global cooling in the 70’s and that such a consensus is just an urban myth. Is this just an example of Soviet-style re-writing of history to fit current political needs?
Having lived through the 70’s, I decided to check through my sources to see if mainstream climatologists did fret about a coming ice age in the 70’s …
I found two sources:
In an article in the Globe and Mail, provocatively titled “Justin Trudeau lives in a fact-free world on taxes” (Dec 16, 2016) Mark Milke, says that Trudeau “claims taxing one cohort less and another more is a recipe for economic growth. Skip how all the tax talk ignores the spending side of the budget where Mr. Trudeau and prudence are mortal enemies.” A little reflection on the article shows that, in fact, it is Milke whose analysis is wrong. Continue reading “Can Increasing Taxes on the 1-Percent Cover the Deficit?”
In a recent article in the Financial Post, Ted Rechtshaffen, (“‘Tax the rich’ may be a rallying cry, but it’s hardly a fair system”, May 15) looked at three different tax schemes:
I will take these in reverse order.
Plenty has been written about the second US presidential debate. I want to touch on a couple of points that have not been raised:
Several notable items appeared during the first debate between the Presidential Candidates.
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has become more assertive, trying to regain its status as a superpower.
Every time Russia has made a strike, it seems that the West was caught completely by surprise. Clearly, the Western intelligence services (CIA, CSIS, MI6, Surete) have failed spectacularly.
In view of the failure of the Western intelligence services, I shall try to help them by identifying a couple of probable targets for Putin’s next strike.
Recently, the EU has ruled that Apple owes Ireland €13 billion in back taxes. The CEO of Apple reacted with the sort of indignation only an American can achieve when dealing with non-Americans. Columnists tended to side with Apple on the basis of their ideological biases.
Yet the central issue of taxing corporations is that globalisation and the rise of mega-corporations has not been mirrored by a rise in inter-governmental co-operation. Only such co-operation can deal with the problems.
The chief reason the British voted to leave the EU was the issue of immigration. Before the vote, David Cameron (Britain’s Prime Minister) “re-negotiated” the relationship of Britain with the rest of the EU. However, he was unable to get any concessions on EU immigration because it is one of the “four freedoms” which is central to the EU.
Could there be a conspiracy at work?
It is frequently quoted, that the “Science is Settled” when it comes to climate change. However, the nature of science is that it is never really settled – with good science, each question that is answered leads to three or more new questions. It is perhaps more accurate to say “the Politics is Settled”. As skeptics ruefully acknowledge, they may be winning the skirmishes, but the alarmists are winning the war.
Some examples of intellectual dishonesty from the climate change propagandists are:
With Climate Change, there are four related, but separate questions, each of which will be addressed in future blogs:
The “dishonesty” claimed in the title is clear in the climate change propagandists rather than the scientists. The propagandists include:
Continue reading “Climate Change – The Intellectual Dishonesty of the Climate Alarmists”