Give Me Liberty

Just as the great global warming hoax appears to be unraveling (and I watch the snow piling up outside on the second day of Spring), the business community decides to jump on the bandwagon. Did you read about the Wall Street Journal conference last week? From what I’ve read, it sounded like hundreds of environmentalists and big business types getting together to figure out how to use big government to milk this fraud for all it’s worth.

The mainstream business community almost certainly realizes that the facts do not justify the catastrophic economic consequences being proposed. Yet some of them are all too willing to exploit the situation, in hopes of profiting from gullible politicians and government mismanagement. I spent thirty years in corporate America, fighting government regulation and taxation. Yes, government regulations do benefit some companies some of the time, but in the big picture, all companies, with the possible exception of defense contractors, are net losers to government regulation, as are we all as individuals, and the economy as a whole. The time for business to stand up to government, instead of getting in bed with it, is long overdue.

How much does it bother you that some State Department contract employees went snooping through Barack Obama’s passport file (and apparently Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s as well)? The news media are making a big deal about the potential for political “dirty tricks”. But it doesn’t seem to bother anybody that the State Department keeps such files on every private citizen with a passport! In the ’60’s, my generation took to the streets to protest FBI files kept on private citizens. Where is that indignation now? Why is Big Brother tracking our every move? Granted, they might need to keep a list of the passports they’ve issued, but every time you cross a border?! All they need is the civilian equivalent of “name, rank and serial number”, not a detailed history of our travels. My own file must be enormous, as I’ve filled over 200 passport pages with business travel. I wouldn’t care if it were published in the New York Times, but that’s not the point. The issue is not why somebody went snooping in Obama’s passport file; it’s why that file contained information making it interesting to do so.

Generally I am encouraged by our younger generation, especially when I see some of them distributing Ron Paul brochures outside Union Station. But when an outrage like the State Department keeping files on private citizens passes without comment, I am most disappointed.

This morning the government released its monthly jobs report, a “net” loss of 63,000 jobs. But that included an increase of 38,000 government jobs. That means we lost 101,000 productive jobs and “gained” 38,000 parasitic jobs. So we really suffered a loss of 139,000 jobs - 101,000 real jobs, and 38,000 more that we taxpayers now have to pay for.

Of course, that’s just the salary cost. If those 38,000 people actually show up for work, the private sector will have to hire at least that many more to comply with the new regulations they hand down. Given the millions of businesses that must comply with regulations written by a single bureaucrat, ten times that many new overhead jobs would probably be conservative. And regulations are forever, and cumulative. Those 38,000 new bureaucrats will be piling on ever more burdensome restrictions for the next 30 years - and then collecting pensions for another 30 years! God only knows how much those 38,000 new “jobs” will cost our children and grandchildren.

The truth is, only productive labor and capital create jobs. Presidential candidates constantly promise to “create new jobs”, but it doesn’t work that way. Government hiring represents a net subtraction from the productive work force, just as government spending is a direct reduction of our personal wealth. So when you hear the politicians talk about “fiscal stimulus”, hang on to your wallet. Spend your tax rebate check as you see fit, but don’t for one moment be grateful to Washington. It’s your money, and it cost you a lot more than you got back!

“We simply cannot afford to gamble … by ignoring it. We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who say we are merely entering a period of climactic instability are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored.”

Not so fast. These frightening words are not the latest warning of a need to reduce our “carbon footprint”, adopt a “green” lifestyle, and wreak havoc on our economy in the process. No, these words were written in 1978, by Lowell Ponte, in a book called The Cooling.

The fact is, the only constant about our climate is change. When I was in third grade, “scientists” were convinced that we were heading into another Ice Age. Global temperatures had been declining for a number of years, and continued to do so for several more. Even in 1978, almost ten years after that trend had reversed itself, global cooling was still the primary concern.

Thirty years later, there is growing concern, approaching panic, about global warming. But again, not so fast. It has now been ten years with no warming trend! Due to the natural El Nino cycle, 1998 was a warm year. No year since has been as warm. Last fall, our government predicted unseasonably mild temperatures for the first three months of this year. In case you were hibernating, North America and Asia have experienced one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record.

Congress is not going to control the weather any time soon. Global warming is nothing more than an excuse for the radical environmentalists to impose their extremist views on rest of us. But the hoax is running its course. Fifty years from now we won’t be congratulating ourselves on our foresight, we’ll be wondering how we could have been so gullible.

So the next time you catch yourself reading terrifying statements like those above, stop and think for yourself. If you’re paying attention, and reading critically, you’ll soon realize that there’s a lot more hype than fact out there. And there are also a lot of contrary facts being discussed as well, they’re just pretty well hidden in the main stream media.