TIA Daily • October 13, 2010
The resignation of physicist Hal Lewis from the American Physical Society shows how Climategate has radicalized many scientists, who now see the integrity of science itself as under attack.
Editor's Note: By popular demand, my interview with Objectivist congressional candidate Stephen Bailey is now up on the TIA website here. Please send this around to your friends.
Top News Stories
- "This Is Not Science"
- No Seat Is Safe
- "Is That the Best You Can Do?"
- "You Don't Know How Lucky You Are"
- "Regulation without Representation"
Submit articles, interesting links, letters to editor, or comments to editor@TIADaily.com.
Top News Stories
Commentary by Robert Tracinski
1. "This Is Not Science"
I haven't posted much recently on the Climategate scandal, but it has been still been bubbling quietly below the surface. A few attempts to whitewash the scandal haven't had much impact, because there was no way to invent an exculpatory context that would explain away the intimidation, the cliquishness, the attempt to silence critics and hide data that the original Climategate e-mails demonstrated.
And so the scandal contributed to a stiffening of public opinion against the global warming hysteria, which created just enough resistance to kill "cap and trade" legislation in the Senate—though dictatorial EPA action continues. (For the solution to that, see item #5 below.) And it has produced another important public protest against the global warming consensus.
A distinguished older scientist, physicist Hal Lewis, has resigned from the American Physical Society, one of the nation's most prestigious scientific associations, in protest over its support for the global warming hysteria. Lewis's open letter explaining his resignation shows how Climategate has radicalized many scientists, who now see the integrity of science itself as under attack.
Hence, Lewis denounces global warming, not just as an unproven theory, but as a "scam" and a "pseudoscientific fraud"—and as a corruption of science by enormous sums of government money.
Here is the letter, by way of Anthony Watts, who introduces it with only a little bit of hyperbole, "This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science."
"Hal Lewis: My Resignation from The American Physical Society—an Important Moment in Science History," Anthony Watts, Watts Up with That? October 8
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago)....For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety....
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all.... To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment.... The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council....
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?...
There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst.... Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation.
2. No Seat Is Safe
The Democrats' impending electoral disaster isn't getting any better. A new poll indicates that as many as 40% of Obama's voters in the 2008 election have begun to turn against him. And John Fund notes that Obama has achieved the impossible: making George Bush look good by comparison.
Now the New York Times acknowledges what I have expected ever since Scott Brown won a majority in Barney Frank's district in January: no Democratic seat in Congress can be regarded as "safe."
"For Democrats, Even 'Safe' Seats Are Shaky," Jeff Zeleny, New York Times, October 11
As Republicans made new investments in at least 10 races across the country, including two Democratic seats here in eastern Ohio, Democratic leaders took steps to pull out of some races entirely or significantly cut their financial commitment in several districts that the party won in the last two election cycles.Representatives Steve Driehaus of Ohio, Suzanne M. Kosmas of Florida and Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania were among the Democrats who learned that they would no longer receive the same infusion of television advertising that party leaders had promised. Party strategists conceded that these races and several others were slipping out of reach.
With three weeks remaining to save its majority, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has increased its spending on two New York races, along with at-risk seats in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky and Massachusetts, setting up a map of competitive districts that is starkly different from when the campaign began.
The strategic decisions unfolded at a feverish pace on Monday over an unusually wide playing field of nearly 75 Congressional districts, including here in Ohio, a main battleground in the fight for the House and the Senate. The developments resembled pieces being moved on a giant chess board, with Republicans trying to keep Democrats on the defensive in as many places as possible, while outside groups provided substantial reinforcements for Republicans.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party's election arm in the House, can afford to make the new investments because the US Chamber of Commerce and a host of newly formed political organizations have come to the aid of Republican candidates who have far less money than the Democratic incumbents.
3. "Is That the Best You Can Do?"
The article I just linked to above notes that the Republican Party is being aided by political advertising from the Chamber of Commerce and other outside groups who are newly freed, by a recent Supreme Court ruling, from McCain-Feingold's restrictions on their political speech
And so President Obama has responded, in desperation, by attacking the Chamber of Commerce in a public speech and with a scurrilous campaign ad. The Washington Post has a link to the ad, along with the following description.
The ad goes on to claim that the Chamber, which is referred to as "shills for big business," is teaming up with Rove and Gillespie to spend "millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress" and that "it appears they even take in secret foreign money to influence our elections."Pay close attention the phrasing of that last claim. The use of "it appears" is key. The ad doesn't claim outright that the US Chamber of Commerce is financing its significant ad buys nationwide with foreign cash. There's no sourcing text at the bottom of the screen, which is usually a big clue that there's little-to-no proof behind the claim. Then the ad goes a step further, using hyperbole to further cement the unsubstantiated claim: "It's incredible, Republicans benefiting from secret foreign money. Tell the Bush crowd and the Chamber of Commerce, stop stealing our Democracy."
Consider how preposterous—and ineffective—this is. Obama is facing public dissatisfaction with runaway government spending, a failed stimulus plan, high unemployment, massive deficits, a stagnant economy, the disastrous effects of the health-care bill, and the fact that the Democrats rammed through much of this agenda over the loudly expressed disapproval of the American people.
But instead of addressing any of this, he concocts an implausible conspiracy theory that spins the Chamber of Commerce—a cautious, mainstream organization formed to represent the pro-business interests of thousands of small and mid-sized companies on America's Main Streets—into some kind of weird international cabal to "steal our democracy." And all of this is based on zero evidence.
In an amazing interview—recounted in the main link below—CBS News's Bob Schieffer challenges presidential advisor David Axelrod to prove his claims about the chamber, and Axelrod responds by demanding that the Chamber prove that they did not take foreign money.
The Washington Examiner's editorial cartoonist picked up on this "prove that you didn't" form of argument and produced a spot-on cartoon comparing this new Democratic conspiracy theory to the arguments of the "truthers" and "birthers."
But what is really causing people to raise their eyebrows is Schieffer's response: "Is that the best you can do?" And Bob Schieffer is a grey, bland establishment elite. If the Obama administration has lost him, they are in big trouble. And Schieffer is not alone. Another establishment political observer, TIME's Mark Halperin, writes that Obama is losing the support of the nation's political elites:
With the exception of core Obama administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant, and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the administration just beyond the inner circle.
The main Democratic coalition these days is an odd alliance between the uneducated and unemployable—the lowest rung of workers—and the over-educated elites. With the failure of the big union-sponsored rally in Washington two weeks ago, and now the defection of the elites, who has Obama got left?
"Epitaph for Barack Obama's Democrats: 'Is That the Best You Can Do?'" Toby Harnden, Daily Telegraph, October 12
Bob Schieffer and Mark Halperin are not exactly Tea Party activists. Within their respective generations, they are archetypes of the media elite, inside-the-Beltway, liberal-leaning purveyors of the conventional wisdom. They don't want to be wrong, of course, so at times they are also weather vanes—when the conventional wisdom has undeniably changed, they swivel.So the White House and the hapless Democrats running for re-election on November 2nd must be in near despair over David Axelrod's interview with Shieffer yesterday. In it, the host of CBS's Face the Nation was incredulous at Axelrod's focus not on the economy or jobs or health care or the Islamist threat or the wars America is engaged in but, er, the possibility that the US Chamber may be funding ads with foreign money....
Did you get that last comment from Schieffer? "I guess I would put it this way. If the only charge Democrats can make three weeks into the election is that somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign, is that the best you can do?" Ouch....
When the post-mortems are done on the mid-term campaigns, the fact that Obama himself and the rest of the Democratic Party saw fit to try to frame the election by hitting out at George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and the US Chamber of Commerce will certainly be prominent.
4. "You Don't Know How Lucky You Are"
We tend to think of the Europeans as being culturally incapable of rising up against runaway government in the same way that we do—cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and all that sort of thing—and there is a lot of truth to this. The independence of the individual is in America's DNA. It's something we feel in our bones, whereas collectivism has a much greater cultural hold in Europe.
But there are other factors at work, too. Daniel Hannan is the fiery British member of the European Parliament who has attempted to form a British wing of the Tea Party movement—ironic on several different levels. In the article below, he describes the aspect of Europe's political structure that makes such public uprisings against runaway government much more difficult.
I have noted that the first big political impact of the Tea Party movement was a bloodletting in the Republican Party primaries. Hannan shows how that is nearly impossible in European parliamentary systems, which are designed to insulate political parties from the grass roots. As Hannan tells us, we don't know how lucky we are.
"Why Europeans Can't Throw a Tea Party," Daniel Hannan, Wall Street Journal, October 11
The tea party is a uniquely American phenomenon. The United States was founded in a popular revolt against an unaccountable government, and the notion of a spontaneous antitax rising has commensurate resonance....Then again,...My constituents don't like high taxation any more than Americans do—or, far as I can tell, anyone else. The BBC World Service recently polled 22,000 people in wealthy and developing countries. In 21 out of the 22 states surveyed, respondents said they wanted lower taxes rather than higher spending.
So why are there no tea parties in Brazil or Pakistan? It won't do to put the difference down to culture. Culture is not some numinous entity that exists alongside political institutions; it is a product of those institutions.
What makes the US truly unique is not some undefined cultural singularity, but the way it selects its candidates for public office. In most European democracies, "party-list" systems mean, in effect, that the leader and his clique get to choose every candidate.
European legislatures thus exclude entire currents of popular opinion. European voters are habituated to being taken for granted. "It doesn't matter how I vote, nothing ever changes" was the response I heard on doorstep after doorstep before the recent UK election. Why bother with a tea party when you know in your bones that your leaders will ignore you?
Lurking behind the Euro-sophism is an uneasy sense that, if there were open primaries on this side of the Atlantic, voters might start demanding all sorts of unreasonable things—might, in other words, start behaving like tea partiers. Open primaries ensure that legislatures remain diverse, independent of the executive, and responsive to public opinion. They make a spontaneous antitax campaign possible.
You don't know how lucky you are to have them, my friends.
5. "Regulation without Representation"
In item #1 above, I note the continuing collapse of the global warming dogma and the fact that cap-and-trade legislation has stalled in Congress—and will not come back in a Republican Congress, not after Climategate. But I also note that the EPA is continuing with its attempt to impose an even more draconian version of cap-and-trade, under the virtually unlimited powers "delegated" to it by Congress.
This is how outright dictatorship would come to America, if it ever came. Indeed, this is how we are already succumbing to a quasi-dictatorship in which the executive branch can simply impose its preferred policies unilaterally, without the need for congressional approval—something we are likely to see a lot more of in President Obama's second term.
How did we get here? For decades, Congress has sought to impose massive controls on the economy, but without wanting to claim responsibility for the actual practical implementation and consequences of those controls. So their technique has been to pass legislation calling for a vague and positive-sounding goal—such as "clean air"—and then to delegate to Congress the dirty work of translating that goal into specific rules imposing actual costs on individuals and businesses.
This delegation of power is unconstitutional. In granting executive-branch agencies the power to write "rules" that can be enforced by government on its citizens, they have violated the very first sentence of the very first article of the Constitution, which reads—let me check my Constitution app on my iPhone—"All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States."
The Constitution does not grant Congress the authority to re-vest those powers with the EPA. And of course, vesting both legislative and enforcement powers in the same branch of government is a crucial step toward dictatorship, making the executive branch less subject to checks and balances and less accountable to the people.
Below, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews describes an attempt to partially and substantially reverse this attack on the Constitution. The wonderfully named "REINS Act" would require that all major new regulations must be approved by and debated in Congress. It would go a long way toward restoring the checks on government power mandated by the Constitution.
Jack Wakeland sent me the link below with the following note:
"GOP congressmen unveil the REINS Act to begin to rein in the regulatory powers unconstitutionally 'delegated' to the executive branch.
"There will be no problem passing this reform in 2011; no problem because everyone in the Republican Party knows that President Obama will veto it.
"Back in 1995, after the 'Republican Revolution,' Newt Gingrich put a law that prohibited regulatory takings on the back burner. After campaigning on it in 1994, he didn't actually want to see it enacted into law.
"In 2013, after Obama is lawfully removed from office, comes the real test of whether or not the GOP has reformed itself since its first partial failure to reform in 1995. If party leaders—including a Republican president—were to substantially rein in the executive branch's unconstitutional regulatory power, that would be a victory for the Tea Party movement that would make all of their efforts worth it."
"Tyranny of the Unelected," Wayne Crews, Washington Times, October 11
Congress passed and the president signed 125 bills into law in 2009. Your tireless federal regulatory agencies were even busier: They issued 3,503 rules and regulations.Regulations considered in recent years have included energy-efficiency standards for clothes washers and pool heaters, SUV emission rules, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission's designs to regulate escalators (safer than unregulated stair steps, by the way) as a "consumer product."
The year's Federal Register—the daily depository of federal regulations—already tops 61,000 pages.... So much for the constitutional injunction, "All legislative Powers ... shall be vested in a Congress of the United States."
The unelected rule America; welcome to "regulation without representation."
Congress—while itself no model of restraint—is the only entity accountable to us that can cut off agencies' water.
In response to this fire hose of regulation, Rep. Geoff Davis, Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, unveiled the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny) to require congressional approval of major agency rules and regulations before they are binding. Major rules are the ones costing $100 million annually....
By tolerating the delegation of sweeping lawmaking power to unelected agencies, Congress has severed the power to establish regulatory programs from the responsibility for the results of those programs. If I'm a congressman, I can take credit for the Clean Air Act amendments I voted for, but blame EPA—against whom voters have no recourse—for costs, lost jobs, and poor performance.
One-Year Subscription — $74
Six-Month Subscription — $38
Copyright © 2010 by Tracinski Publishing Company
PO Box 8086, Charlottesville, VA 22906
| ||||||
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment