Government grants distort scientific research

During a recent conversation with one of my friends a question arose:

Why would respected academics and scientists intentionally distribute false scientific results?

The following article answers this question:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece


Theses excerpts from the above article are of interest:

• The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
• Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers. It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus. The revelation comes just a week after The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC's 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.
• The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 - an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.
• The cash was acknowledged by TERI in a press release, issued on January 15, just before the glacier scandal became public, in which Pachauri repeated the claims of imminent glacial melt. It said: ""According to predictions of scientific merit they may indeed melt away in several decades."
  The same release also quoted Dr Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist who, back in 1999, made the now discredited claim that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.
  He now heads Pachauri's glaciology unit at TERI which sought the grants and which is carrying out the glacier research.
• Critics point out that Hasnain, of all people, should have known the claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 was bogus because he was meant to be a leading glaciologist specialising in the Himalayas.
• Any suggestion that TERI has repeated an unchecked scientific claim without checking it, in order to win grants, could prove hugely embarrassing for Pachauri and the IPCC.

Grant money is the lifeblood of scientific research. The flow of government grants are controlled by politicians and bureaucrats who have political agendas. These political agendas dictate who receives the grants. If you accept grant money and then publish results that conflict with the political agenda your grant flow will cease.

Victory in the first battle to reclaim America

The elections of 2010 are the last chance for US taxpayers to reclaim their government. The special election in Massachusetts to replace Senator Edward M. Kennedy has resulted in the defeat of the big government politician and the election of the candidate who promised to limit the size and spending of the federal government. This is an epic upset for the big government politicians. Election results can be found here:

http://www.boston.com/news/special/politics/2010/senate/results.html





To all of you who support smaller government, lower taxes, and more freedom today is a day to celebrate. We face a determined adversary who has now been wounded and will grow more desperate to achieve victory.

Art therapy rehabilitation program

This news story gives us a glimpse of things to come:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/men-believed-northwest-airlines-plot-set-free/story?id=9434065&page=1

This is what we have to look forward to:

• Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.

But the part of this story that will bring a smile to your face and a warm feeling to your heart is here:

• American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

• Saudi officials concede its program has had its "failures" but insist that, overall, the effort has helped return potential terrorists to a meaningful life.

• One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen.

The best part of this story is not explained in this article but I am willing to bet that the US Taxpayer is footing the bill for this “Therapy”.

The system worked

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is confident that her department is keeping us safe. Her interview today with CNN is at the following link. I encourage you to play the video and listen to what Secretary Napolitano says as this is much more interesting than reading the CNN text of the interview:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/27/airline.terror.napolitano/index.html

I think that these quotes are most important:

• “One thing that I’d like to point out is that the system worked.”
  

The only reason that we are not picking through the remains of a burning aircraft is that the detonator on the bomb malfunctioned. How can this be considered a success for the “system”.

• “Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight.”
  

Napolitano thinks that a 90 minute lapse in notifying flights in the air is a “success”. If this was part of a larger plot it would have most likely been planned as a coordinated attack. This means that the other bombers on other flights would have been attempting to detonate their explosive devices at approximately the same time.

When asked how the bomber was able to bring the explosives through security Napolitano said:

• “We are asking the same questions..”
  

Napolitano says the following:

• “He was stopped before any damage could be done”
  

This must be repeated, it is clear that the only reason he was stopped was a malfunction in the detonator.

• “He was on a tied list that has half a million names on it.”
  

So if you have ties to terrorists it is still ok to obtain a visa and fly into the USA. Napolitano implies that because the tied list has so many names it is ignored.

When asked about the fact that the bomber’s own father reported him as a terrorist to the US Embassy Napolitano says:

• “We need to ascertain who said what to whom and when.”

Irredeemable

Charles Krauthammer’s latest column cuts through all of the disinformation in the health care reform debate with laser accuracy:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODFkNjliY2FkMGNmNDU5NmNlZjE3YmE4MjQzOTI1NmQ=

He highlights a few of the irrational regulations written into the Senate bill:

• You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.

• You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

• You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

His conclusion:

• The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

He then submits three recommendations for improving the efficiency of our existing health care system:

• First, tort reform. This is money — the low-end estimate is about half a trillion per decade — wasted in two ways. Part is simply hemorrhaged into the legal system to benefit a few jackpot lawsuit winners and an army of extravagantly rich malpractice lawyers such as John Edwards.

• Second, even more simple and simplifying, abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines.

• Third, tax employer-provided health insurance. This is an accrued inefficiency of 65 years, an accident of World War II wage controls. It creates a $250 billion annual loss of federal revenues — the largest tax break for individuals in the entire federal budget.

These three suggestions would repeal or correct inefficiencies in our health care system that exists today due to government policies. The results of these three suggestions would be as follows:

Tort reform will eliminate or reduce the use of unnecessary medical procedures undertaken to avoid future malpractice claims.

Allowing the purchase of health insurance across state lines will open a competitive marketplace for health insurance policies.

Repeal of the corporate tax loophole that allows employee health insurance to be tax deductable to corporations and also tax free to individuals will place health insurance on the same footing as all other employee benefits. Over time individuals will decide to purchase their own health care insurance just as they purchase their own auto insurance or homeowners insurance. When individuals own their health care insurance they will not fear loss of coverage due to changing jobs.

That's nothing new

The following article is from the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-aldermen-payroll19nov19,0,280697.story?page=1

For those of you unfamiliar with the history of Chicago’s hiring practices here is a brief summary:
In 1969 a lawsuit was filed against the Democratic Party of Cook County alleging that government hiring was unduly influenced by political operatives. A 1979 ruling led to a court order in 1983 that made it unlawful to take any political factor into account in hiring public employees. Those decisions along with companion consent judgments—collectively called the Shakman decrees—are binding on more than 40 city and statewide offices. Circumventing these decrees has become a routine way of life for politicians and government employees.

What we have learned from the Tribune article is that the City of Chicago has a payroll account that is used by City Alderman to hire friends and family. This payroll account is not listed in the City budget and until now was not know about by those who oversee the Shakman decrees.

Here are some of the highlights from the Tribune article:

• "All of us (aldermen) have family members on the payroll," said Ald. Isaac Carothers, 29th, who has paid a relative more than $30,000 since January 2008. "That's nothing new."

• Carothers refused to say if the William Carothers on his payroll was his father or brother, who have the same name. Carothers faces federal bribery charges, and his father, a former alderman, went to prison for public corruption.

• City officials said the employees paid through the fund are contract workers because they do not receive a city pension or other city benefits.

• But Shakman questioned that statement, because the city withholds the employees' taxes and sends each one a yearly W-2 tax form. "W-2s are a pretty good indication they are common-law employees," Shakman said.

• On paper, the only oversight of the obscure payroll appears to come from the veteran chairman of the Council's Finance Committee, Ald. Edward Burke, 14th. According to the city budget, payments must be approved in writing by Burke.

• Burke spent the largest chunk of the payroll -- $70,164 -- in 2008, according to city records. That total was higher than any other ward by more than $26,000.

• Nevertheless, Daley and city attorneys said last week the city is in "substantial compliance" with the federal court consent decree. They plan to ask a judge early next year to end the court's supervision of city hiring.

The public transportation money pit

Today’s Chicago Tribune contains the following article:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-getting-around-16nov16,0,3657428.column

The following data tell the story:

• The average fare collected by the CTA is 98 cents, according to the transit agency. It takes into account full-priced fares, reduced fares, passes and free rides.
• The cost for the CTA to provide service averages $7 per ride, including some capital costs such as maintenance and some system improvements.
• The cost per ride jumps to $9.90 if major projects such as the ongoing Brown Line capacity-expansion project or the planned extensions of the Red, Orange and Yellow/Skokie Swift Lines are factored in, CTA officials said.

How is that for a business plan? Your cost is $9.90 but you only collect $0.98. Brilliant! The CTA is constantly in financial crisis and this explains why.

Note that the published full fare for a CTA ride is $2.25. So in addition to having a cost structure that is totally unjustified by revenues we find that the CTA is offering so many discounts that they are actually collecting less than 50% of the full fare for each ride provided.

This is an appropriate case study to be presented to local governments that are currently considering additional public transportation expansion. Public transit is always and everywhere a money losing proposition.

GM stands for Government Mendacity

In the following Reuters article GM describes its current financial performance:

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE5AF0SO20091116?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FbusinessNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Business+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Note the following paragraphs in this article:

• General Motors Co posted a quarterly loss on Monday but said stabilizing sales since its bankruptcy would allow it to begin paying down $8.1 billion in debt to the United States and Canada next month.
  
• Bolstered by its bailout, GM ended September with almost $43 billion in cash compared with $14 billion a year earlier.
  
• That included $17.4 billion in a special account created with bankruptcy financing provided by the U.S. government. GM said it had allocated $8.1 billion from that taxpayer-funded account to pay down its government debt.

Yes, you read that correctly. GM is bragging about its ability to pay back Federal Government loans using “debtor in possession” funds obtained from the Federal Government during its bankruptcy. Take the Federal Government’s money from your right pocket to pay off the Federal Government debt in your left pocket. This is truly hilarious; unfortunately America the joke is on us.

Kill off “too big to fail”

Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig understands the root cause of our financial crisis. Read the following Reuters article:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5AF17U20091116?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

The following quotese from Hoenig cuts directly to the heart of the problem:

• "As we look at reform and the way forward I think the most important think we need to do is to make first of all an accurate assessment of fundamental weaknesses in our financial system and then begin to create better foundations," he said.
  
• "Our institutions must be allowed to fail no matter what their size or political influence," he said.
  
• "Our reluctance to deal with 'too big too fail' provides these largest institutions with important advantages over any competitors who are not seen as important," Hoenig said.

Blatantly contradictory objectives

In the following Washington Post article Robert J. Samuelson examines the contradictions in the health care reform bill:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/15/AR2009111502212.html

The following paragraph leads us to one of my favorite topics:

• The disconnect between what President Obama says and what he's doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president, his advisers and allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.
  

What Robert Samuelson is trying to tell us is that the health care debate and the Obama administration’s proposals are a classic example of George Orwell’s concept of doublethink from his novel 1984. Doublethink is defined as Reality Control. The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them.