How the Energy Industry Makes Christmas (and Life) Magical

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I’m writing this from John Wayne Airport in Orange County, contemplating just one small example of the wondrous, high-energy world we live in. This morning I swam in the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow I will be snowboarding at Snowbird, a resort in Utah. I hope I never lose the ability to appreciate how magical it is that human beings can roam the earth so quickly and freely.

It will take just over two hours to take me and my fellow passengers to Salt Lake City. If you ask any of them how they’re getting to Salt Lake City, they’d say “I’m flying.” But what does that mean? What it really means is that certain people are flying us–not just the pilot, co-pilot, and flight attendants, but also the airline that coordinates flights, the manufacturers that build planes, and, closest to my heart, the people who work day-in/day-out to fuel the planes–the people who work in the oil industry.

It’s important to think about energy not just in terms of fuels but in terms of people because it helps us think about things more justly. Certain individuals are taking once-useless ancient dead plants and transforming them into a state-of-the-art liquid hydrocarbon fuel (jet fuel) that we voluntarily pay for because it is the best way (by a long shot) to get us anywhere we want with almost magical speed. Yet, in popular vernacular this is an “addiction to fossil fuels” or “Big Oil selling us dirty energy.” This wildly inaccurate vernacular enables opponents of fossil fuels to perpetrate a horrendous injustice, as occurred recently in Paris. They can fly on planes, which means–choose to use the products created by the virtuous fossil fuel industry, on the implicit premise that the positives far outweigh the negatives–while condemning those who are carrying them through the sky.

This is my view: either use a product and take full moral responsibility for it–or don’t. Invent something better or wait till someone else invents something better or live like the 99% of human beings who didn’t have fossil fuels. But don’t spit on the people who make your life magical.

I’m not directing that sentiment toward subscribers to this list but rather the people and ideas you may well encounter during the Christmas season. I hope that these thoughts serve as a good reminder that the high ground belongs to those who create, with all the challenges that entails, not those who simply consume and criticize. And when you do meet creators during the Christmas season, thank them. Without what they do, we could not have the comfort and enjoyment that typifies this time of year.

On a related note, I’ll repeat a message from last week and remind you of 3 potential gifts that one of your loved ones might enjoy—or that you might enjoy for yourself. Each of these gifts is designed to be, above all, empowering.

How to Talk to Anyone About Energy

As you gather around the table this holiday season, you’re no doubt going to hear some inflammatory comments about our addiction to fossil fuels, climate change deniers, a renewable future, and fracking earthquakes. And you know that these comments can lead to long, drawn out, and ineffective discussions.

What if there were a way to make your discussions far more enjoyable and effective? In “How to Talk to Anyone About Energy” I’ve broken down the exact method I use to turn almost any conversation into a pleasant, influential, and to-the-point experience. The course includes 6 easy-to-understand video modules plus a database of powerful talking points, a flowchart of how to have an effective conversation, a checklist of rules to follow in every conversation, and real-life footage of the principles in action.

If you want to buy yourself a Christmas present, this may be the one to get. Or if you know a couple friends or students who would like to feel more confident in conversation, you can change their lives. I promise it will. In the words of one enrollee, “every time I [had] a discussion with others about fossil fuels and the environment it still always seem[ed] to end in an emotional ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’…. this course has provided me with a great framework with which to approach these conversations in a strategic way to persuade others without harming the relationship.”

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Did you know The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels is available in hardcover, ebook, MP3 CD, and Audible? However you like to read (or listen).

You can also get large bulk discounts for your group or company—but you need to order this week.

I Love Fossil Fuels T-Shirts

I’ve found this shirt to be the perfect thing to wear to dozens of occasions—from anti-fossil fuel rallies to Presidential debates to family gatherings to beach parties. Get your own—I highly recommend green—make a confident statement and provoke lots of interesting conversation.

Click here to get the shirts.

Power Hour: Dr. Richard Keen on the Truth About Temperature

On the latest episode of Power Hour, I talk to Dr. Richard Keen, Meteorologist Emeritus at the University of Colorado and an official temperature measurement collector. Ever wonder where the numbers on global temperature graphs come from–and how accurate they are? Dr. Keen gives you an insider’s view.

Listen to this Power Hour episode.

As always, if you’d like to suggest a new guest for Power Hour, or have me appear on your show, you can send me an email at support@industrialprogress.net, or just reply to this one.

For the Confused Media: A Dummy’s Guide to Immigration and Refugee Problems

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By Wallace Bruschweiler and William Palumbo — 

With the Syrian (so-called) refugee crisis ubiquitous in the headlines, the media has found itself dealing with immigration issues on a daily basis.  Unfortunately, extreme confusion abounds.  The media’s total inability to draw basic distinctions regarding immigration to the United States, both legal and illegal is harming the public’s ability to digest this important topic.  Immigration terms are being thrown around print media, radio, and television that have no relation to the real facts or existing laws.

The following is the dummy’s guide to some of the most important distinctions regarding legal and illegal immigration to the United States.  It is sincerely hoped that this will help to end the erroneous reasons and multitude of excuses offered by the media on a daily, almost hourly, basis.

Legal Immigration

Visas

  • Visa Waiver Program: For travel and business purposes, this allows visitors to the United States from other specified countries to enter the country without obtaining a visa (based upon reciprocity). There were 38 Visa Waiver countries as of January 2009.  Applicants fill out an application via us.  (Note: Israel is not one of those 38 countries, yet Americans can enter Israel without obtaining a visa.)
  • Common Visas:
    • K1: For foreign fiancés of Americans. These visas are often abused by foreigners who seek citizenship, and will bribe “fiancés” whom they have no intention of marrying.
    • K-3: For foreign spouses of Americans.
    • H-1B: For skilled foreign workers. American employers must prove that the foreigner’s qualifications are not readily available domestically.
    • F and M: Academic/student visas. See below for common abuses of student visas.

Legal Immigrants

  • Green Cards: Holders of Green Cards must not be outside the United States for more than 5 months and 29 days per year. They must also have a legal record.  After five years, they are eligible to apply for citizenship.  At that time, they must also indicate all the countries they have visited in the previous five years.

Illegal Immigration

  • Border crossings: Today, the nation’s two borders (south and north) are equivalent to Swiss cheese. The Border Patrol has been handicapped by the Obama administration.  By definition, we know nothing (no names, no photos, no fingerprints) about illegal immigrants who cross our borders unannounced and unchallenged.  In the worst case scenario, an illegal immigrant who is caught inside the country will be ordered to leave within 15 days.  Against all logic, no check is applied to make sure that he does in fact leave!
    • If a person returns to the country illegally after being deported for previously entering illegally, by law that person has committed a felony and should be arrested, sentenced, and jailed.
  • Visa overstays: Other than border crossings, many foreigners are in the country illegally because they overstay their visas. For example, student visas are routinely abused in this manner.  Why?
    • After they are issued, there is no check to ensure that the student is enrolled at the college/university. They may never show up to begin with, or drop out after one, two, or three years.
    • After their study program is over, there is no check to ensure that they leave the country as expected.

Refugees

Refugees should not be considered a part of the immigration system, legal or illegal.  The Refugee Resettlement program is administered by the federal government (U.S. Department of State) and the United Nations.  In the U.S., the program is managed by politically-connected NGO’s (including many who are connected to the Catholic Church), and who receive money per refugee they process.

  • Security screenings: The White House claims that each refugee goes through multiple levels of security screenings, including the FBI, DHS, and State Department. However, FBI Director James Comey has warned that “certain gaps” remain in the screening process.

Sanctuary Cities

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “Across the U.S., there are 340 cities, counties, and states that are considered “sanctuary cities”.  These jurisdiction[s] protect criminal aliens from deportation by refusing to comply with ICE detainers or otherwise impede open communication and information exchanges between their employees or officers and federal immigration agents.”

In other words, these are cities, counties, and states where existing federal law is intentionally ignored by local authorities.  For a map of these places, click here.

Conclusion

The entry checks for immigrants are sophisticated (ten-finger prints, pictures, and names).  But there are no checks whatsoever regarding their exit.  Therefore, it is impossible to provide accurate figures on overstays, illegal entries, etc.

The American immigration system is abused through both legal and illegal channels.  Because of the complexity of the issue, the media regularly confuses and/or conflates the problems associated with the system.  Despite the challenges and complexities, the laws already exist to enforce immigration and ensure the integrity of the system, and in turn keep Americans safe.  Special time and effort should be dedicated to develop and implement accurate and feasible exit procedures.

RELATED VIDEO: History of Immigration in the U.S. for Dummies

FLORIDA: Patients who own guns are protected — 11th Curcuit rules in their favor

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Anti-gun doctors in in the Sunshine State may be feeling a little queasy after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11thCircuit handed them a third straight loss in their ongoing challenge to a Florida law designed to protect patients from harassing and unwarranted grilling about firearm ownership. Should these symptoms persist, the physicians should note they have a simple and foolproof remedy: simply refrain from using the doctor-patient relationship to advance a non-medical ideological and political agenda.

The plaintiffs in the case, Wollschlaeger v. Gov. of Fla., assert that their First Amendment rights are being violated because the law prohibits them from documenting or inquiring into patients’ firearm ownership or harassing or discriminating against patients who own firearms. The law provides exceptions, however, for situations in which the doctors believe, in good faith, the actions are “necessary” or “relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety, or the safety of others.”

As we detailed earlier this year, the 11th Circuit has already issued two opinions against the plaintiffs. The original opinion characterized the regulated behavior more as conduct – i.e., medical practice – than pure speech. On its own initiative, the court later revisited that determination and revised the earlier opinion with a more detailed analysis of the law’s First Amendment implications. The second opinion held that even to the degree the law regulates speech protected by the First Amendment, the state has sufficient justification to curtail it. The court took into account the nature and context of the speech, the interests advanced by the law, and the law’s limited scope.

Following publication of the second opinion, however, the 11th Circuit asked the parties to submit further written arguments concerning how a recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, might affect the way the case should be analyzed. In its latest opinion, the 11th Circuit finds that Reed might require a more stringent standard of review on the First Amendment issue than was used in its second opinion, but it goes on to hold that the challenged regulations nevertheless survive that review.

The third opinion also represents a relatively rare example of a regulation surviving “strict scrutiny” analysis in the face of a constitutional challenge. Strict scrutiny requires the state to show that the law furthers a “compelling interest” and that “the Act is narrowly tailored to advance that interest.”

The compelling interest identified by the 11th Circuit is “the State’s interest in regulating the practice of professions for the protection of the public,” and the protection of Second Amendment rights and privacy in particular. “We do not hesitate to conclude,” the court writes, “that states have a compelling interest in protecting the fundamental right to keep and bear arms.”

Regarding the tailoring prong of the analysis, the court dismisses the plaintiffs’ suggestion that they are not actually interfering with Second Amendment rights. “It is of course an interference with Second Amendment rights for a trusted physician to tell his patient – for no medically relevant reason whatsoever – that it is unsafe to own a gun.” The court also explains that the law focuses on subjects that, once entered into a patient’s medical record, could be used to “harass or profile” that individual, an outcome the Florida legislature has determined is contrary to public policy.

The court goes on to note the narrow scope of the law’s actual prohibitions and emphasizes that they are subject to “physicians’ own good-faith judgments about whether such inquiry or record-keeping is medically appropriate in the circumstances of a particular case.” “[W]hat narrower way to advance [the state’s interests in protecting privacy and chilling of Second Amendment rights] could there be,” the court asks rhetorically, “than by requiring physicians to base any inquiry or record-keeping about firearm ownership on a genuine, subjective determination of medical need?”

The court also rejects the plaintiffs’ claim that the law is unconstitutionally vague, deciding its text is “sufficiently clear that a person of common intelligence need not guess as to what it prohibits.” It also reiterates that “so long as a physician is operating in good faith within the boundaries of good medical practice, and is providing only firearm safety advice that is relevant and necessary, he need not fear discipline” under the law. In other words, competent, ethical doctors will not be adversely affected.

Throughout the history of this case, anti-gun doctors and their media collaborators have been committing rhetorical malpractice by misrepresenting the law’s scope, effects, and burdens in the court of public opinion. Fortunately, in the court of law, the 11th Circuit soberly and carefully judged the law for what it is: a means to prevent abuse of the doctor-patient relationship and exploitation of medicine’s prestige to browbeat Florida residents into giving up constitutional rights.

Thus, while the 11th Circuit’s analysis has changed in its various opinions, its message to Florida doctors has been consistent: Physician, control thyself and stick to patient care, and you will have nothing to fear from this law.

Ben Carson: Designate Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as Terror Groups

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Dr. Ben Carson has become the second Republican presidential candidate to call for designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and the third to call for action against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

CAIR has been identified by the U.S. Justice Department as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s pro-Hamas network. CAIR has also been banned as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates (a Muslim country).

Read Clarion Project’s fully-documented profile of CAIR’s extremist background here.

Carson just announced his 7-point counter-terrorism strategy, of which the final point reads, “The Department of State should designate the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations that propagate or support Islamic terrorism as terrorist organizations and fully investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and a supporter of terrorism.”

During this week’s national security debate, Carson mentioned a secret 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood strategy memo that listed a network of its fronts inside America, including CAIR’s predecessor (the Islamic Association for Palestine). The memo defined the Brotherhood’s “work in America as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” Carson warned that the Brotherhood memo said they’d use political correctness to further their Islamist agenda.

In October, Carson called on the IRS to revoke CAIR’s tax-exempt status after its “brazenly violated” the government’s 501(c)(3) non-profit regulations by formally demanding that Carson end his presidential campaign. CAIR made the declaration after Carson said he would not support a Muslim candidate for president, which he later qualified as saying he was only referring to Muslims that follow sharia law.

Carson issued a statement that accurately pointed out:

“This is not the first time that CAIR has disrespected U.S. laws or America. It has previously lost its tax-exempt status by failing to file federal taxes three years in a row. It had also been named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal conspiracy to funnel money to Hamas, a terrorist organization.”

The IRS website says that organizations that have non-profit status can inform the public about candidates and their policies, but they are prohibited from explicitly endorsing or opposing a candidate. It states (with my emphasis):

” Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.  Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

CAIR’s National Executive Director Nihad Awad, who has previously expressed his support for Hamas, responded to Carson in TIME Magazine by describing CAIR as a democratic and diverse civil liberties organization. He pointed to CAIR’s endorsement of a letter against the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS/ISIL) but, of course, left out the fact that the letter endorses rebuilding the caliphate, jihad against perceived occupiers and sharia governance.

CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper insulted Carson as a “failing candidate grasping at straws and seeking payback for CAIR’s previous criticism of his anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Dr. Carson is currently in fourth place nationally in an average of polls (12%). He is in fourth place in Iowa (12%), seventh place in New Hampshire (7%) and 2nd place in South Carolina (17%); the first three states to vote in the presidential nominating process.

Rival Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz introduced legislation last month that, if passed, would have Congress formally request the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department. The legislation outlines CAIR’s links to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s fundraising network for Hamas. Cruz also described the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organization” during this week’s debate.

Cruz is currently in second place nationally (16%) in an average of polls. He is the frontrunner in Iowa (26%); in fourth place in New Hampshire (10%) and third place in South Carolina (15%).

The third GOP presidential candidate to state that he’d take on CAIR is George Pataki, who served as governor of New York during the Islamist terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Pataki told the Clarion Project in June that he would strip CAIR of its tax-exempt status as part of a policy of punishing non-profits who promote terrorist organizations or jihad against Americans. Pataki has not taken a position on designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. He is currently registering less than one percent in the GOP nomination campaign.

You can read the Clarion Project’s factsheets on each presidential candidate’s positions related to Islamist extremism here.

Watch Clarion Project’s Prof. Ryan Mauro debate a CAIR leader on Newsmax television below on whether or not CAIR is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood:

RELATED ARTICLES:

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NOAA: Earth’s Hottest Period was Before Man Existed

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Penny Starr in a CNSNews.com article titled “NOAA Website on Climate: Earth’s Hottest Period Occurred Before Man Existed” reports:

The global climate change agreement adopted at the United Nation’s conference in Paris is making headlines, but a federal government website dedicated to weather makes the case that the warmest time on Earth happened before mankind existed, and in fact, it was at one time so hot that crocodiles lived among palm trees in the Arctic Circle.An Aug. 12, 2014 article posted on climate.gov and titled, “What’s The Hottest The Earth’s Ever Been,” stated, “Earth’s hottest periods—the Hadean, the late Neoproterozoic, the PETM—occurred before humans existed.” It added, “Those ancient climates would have been like nothing our species has ever seen.”

The article noted that the Arctic Circle was once a tropical hot spot:

“Stretching from about 66-34 million years ago, the Paleocene and Eocene were the first geologic epochs following the end of the Mesozoic Era. (The Mesozoic—the age of dinosaurs—was itself an era punctuated by ‘hothouse’ conditions.)

Geologists and paleontologists think that during much of the Paleocene and early Eocene, the poles were free of ice caps, and palm trees and crocodiles lived above the Arctic Circle. The transition between the two epochs around 56 million years ago was marked by a rapid spike in global temperature.”

In its earliest days “when [Earth] was still colliding with other rocky debris,” the temperature was “upward of 3,600 degree Fahrenheit,” the article noted.

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, “the global temperature appears to have risen by as much as 5-8 degrees” Centigrade (9 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit), the article stated. (Note: the Paris climate change agreement is designed to stop Earth’s temperature from rising 2 degrees Fahrenheit, an increase caused by human activity, according to the U.N.)

Read more.

An Open Letter to the Miami-Dade School Board

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Dear Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and School Board Members,

The purpose of this letter is twofold.  It seeks your written acknowledgement that district employees have a legal right to use the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (hereinafter “M-DCPS”) e-mail and school mailboxes for formal school related business and/or matters.  Additionally, this letter is yet another, albeit more formal and direct attempt to bring to your attention the fact that the district’s tactics, as will be explained in greater detail below, relating to how teachers are treated after they sign-up to or speak at school board meetings must cease and desist for very legitimate and sensitive reasons.  In an interesting way, these issues are intertwined in that they both have legal ramifications.  Your prompt attention is greatly appreciated.

Employee Use of E-Mail

At first glance, the initial above-mentioned request may appear superfluous or even oxymoronic since it seeks approval to engage in an action for which said approval should be axiomatic.  That is, district employees are legally allowed to use district e-mail and/or mailboxes for formal school related business, such as being allowed to send e-mails or place flyers requesting and encouraging the attendance and participation of colleagues in the monthly M-DCPS Board meetings.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am fully aware that sending such e-mails and/or using school mailboxes for the stated purpose would logically fall within the scope of school business and/or school related matters, prior to proceeding, I acted with an over abundance of caution by asking my principal to grant me unequivocal clearance.  When I posed my query to her, I added that I did not want any problems with the union stewards at my school, as my actions are constantly being closely scrutinized by them in their attempts to shut me down.  Being that my principal, understandably so, also wishes to avoid having any issues with the union stewards over issues of policy, she determined that it would be most prudent for her to run the issue by Labor Relations, such that should there be an issue, it would rest with them rather than with either one of us.  I concurred.

Much to my chagrin, Labor Relations told my principal that I was precluded from using M-DCPS e-mail or mailboxes to solicit teacher attendance at school board meetings.  Further, they cited the Contract Article XXIII, Section 14. Exclusivity Rights to justify their position.

Section 14, B. Work Location Mailboxes provides:

Pursuant to Article XXIII, Section 15 of the contract, UTD representatives (i.e., UTD building stewards and Union-designated Representatives) shall be afforded access to work location mailboxes.

Section 15. Reasonable Access provides that:

Representatives of the exclusive bargaining agent shall be afforded reasonable access to information during the bargaining process and in the administration of this Contract, such as, but not limited to, access to work locations, work location mail boxes, school system mail delivery service (if legal by U.S. Postal regulations), and work location unit meetings.

But, Labor Relations either intentionally or inadvertently failed to make reference to the following two (2) Articles:

Article XXI. Section K. Freedom of Speech stating:

The Parties agree that since the Constitution of the United States guarantees every citizen the right to free speech, all UTD bargaining [and non bargaining] unit members may speak with the media without fear of reprisal.  This right of Freedom of Speech shall extend to any forum in which the employee expresses his/her opinion.  Any dispute arising under this provision will not be arbitrable [sic].

Article II. Section 1. Labor Contract Supremacy which states:

All of this Contract shall be subject to Florida Statutes, Chapter 447, including its prohibitions against strikes.  The Board further agrees that this Contract shall supersede any Board Policies in conflict with the provisions of this Contract.

Further, and with that said, we would be remiss if we failed to turn to Florida Statute 447 which trumps the Contract between the M-DCPS Board and the United Teachers of Dade.

Florida Statute 447.01(1) provides:

Because of the activities of labor unions affecting the economic conditions of the country and the state, entering as they do into practically every business and industrial practice, it is the sense of the Legislature that such organizations affect the public interests and are charged with a public use.  The working person, unionist or nonunionist, must be protected.  The right to work is the right to live.

Florida Statute 447.03 further provides:

Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor unions or labor organizations or to refrain from such activity, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

As if the foregoing would not suffice to make the point, it would be worth your while to read the attached articles.

The first article was published by Baker Hostetler is titled “National Labor Relations Board Permits Employees to Use Workplace Email System for Union Activity.” I highly recommend it for the edification of the Labor Relations employee who has inaccurately advised my principal, and is therefore, placing her, not to mention him or herself, in a position whereby my rights as an employee are being violated vis-á-vis the National Labor Relations Act (hereinafter “NLRA”).  I will highlight the following as is stated in the article:

The National Labor Relations Board previously held in Register Guard, 351 NLRB 1110 (2007) that an employer may prohibit nonwork-related use of its email system, so long as the employer does not discriminate against concerted activity.  [T]he Board overruled Register Guard and found that the employer’s policy was illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.  In doing so, [in the ruling of Purple Communications, Inc. 361 NLRB No. 126 (Dec. 11. 2014)], the Board primarily relied on an almost 70-year-old Supreme Court case, Republic Aviation, 324 U.S. 793 (1945), which found that employees had a right to solicit one another for Section 7 purposes (including union organizing) on nonworking time, absent special circumstances.  The Board found that this same rule applied to employer email systems, so that employees can presumptively use email for Section 7 purposes on noworking time, “absent a particularized showing of special circumstances regarding the employer’s need to maintain production and discipline.”

The Board emphasized that the “special circumstances” exception to justify a complete ban on nonwork email use “will be the rare case.”

Further, please note that the article goes on to advise employers as follows:

Employers should immediately review their employee handbooks and policies for rules that are inconsistent with the NLRB’s decision.  The NLRB has long held that the mere promulgation of an unlawful work rule violated the NLRA, even if the rule is never enforced against an employee.

Please note that in the instant case, as it relates to my specific query, it is not simply a matter of what is written in the Contract, but is in fact more egregious than that since a M-DCPS employee in Labor Relations claims that I do not have a legal right to use the M-DCPS’s e-mail system pursuant to the holding in  Purple Communications, Inc.  Stated more clearly, Labor Relations is actually in direct violation of the NLRA by way of precluding me from using the M-DCPS’s e-mail system to solicit employee attendance at school board meetings.

The other article was published by the Associated Press and is titled, “NLRB rules workers can use company email to organize unions.”  This brief article makes several noteworthy points as follows:

 NLRB once again elevated employee-protected activity over employer property rights.  Not only will employees now have the ability to use their work emails in their efforts to unionize or discuss terms and conditions of employment with co-workers, an employer’s communication system may also become an incredibly effective tool used to recruit members to form or join class-action cases.

Given the dire legal implications of this issue, I respectfully request that you proceed with haste and inform Labor Relations to modify their response to my principal such that it adheres with and falls within the parameters of the Act.

Workplace Coercion, Intimidation and/or Harassment

It is well documented both in video and in the written form that more than one teacher has expressed feeling coerced, intimidated and/or harassed after he or she either: (1) signed up to speak for a school board meeting; (2) after he or she actually spoke at a school board meeting; and (3) in some cases, both before and after speaking at a school board meeting.  Moreover, there is a common theme that resonates in that teachers are told by their administrators that their school is now “on the radar,” and that they (the administration) do not want to be on the School Board’s or Superintendent’s radar.  Consequently, many teachers have made, are making and will make the decision to: (1) not even contemplate signing up to attend a school board meeting; or (2) change their minds and decide not to attend and/or speak their minds at the school board meetings out of fear of retaliation or to avoid making bad blood with their administration.

Teachers know all too well of how bad it can be for them when he or she has an administrator who has it in for him or her. Yes, teachers willing and voluntarily forgo their civil liberties, which should be inalienable, and give way to being censored in exchange for being able to live in peace on a day-to-day basis at the workplace.  But, no one should directly or indirectly nor overtly or covertly infringe on anyone’s First Amendment rights – period.  This is not the price we should pay to live in peace; in fact, there is no price on that, at least not in America. Freedom is free.

Pre-Meeting Misconduct

More specifically, as it relates to teachers feeling harassed prior to speaking at school board meetings, teachers have vocalized, whether on public airwaves, through journalists or amongst each other, that after they have signed up for a school board meeting they have been subjected to one or more of the following tactics as follows:

(1) The teacher is called to the principal’s office at which point the principal explains that he or she has been called by a higher level administrator and/or the Superintendent wanting him or her to ask the teacher why he or she is going to speak at the school board meeting.  This meeting usually takes place during the school day and it is not unheard of that the teacher is actually pulled out of his or her class unexpectedly during instructional time to attend this meeting.  In case the obvious is not obvious to you, please know that most teachers do not appreciate being “called down” to the principal’s office in such an abrupt and unexpected manner.  This practice has a tendency to create high levels of anxiety in the teacher because teachers do not generally get called down to the principal’s office, and if they do, it is usually for admonishment.

(2) The teacher is paid a visit to his or her classroom while he or she is teaching and the visit is not for the purpose of a routine observation, but instead, to be grilled, in front of students, as to why he or she has signed up to speak at the upcoming school board meeting.  As with scenario (1) above, teachers feel very uncomfortable with this practice not only because it disrupts instructional time, but because it takes place in front of students.  Moreover, it creates an unreasonable sense of urgency and the teacher is psychological made to feel that he or she is the cause for the ambush-style and inappropriate communication; yet, the only “crime” committed was that the teacher merely signed up to speak at a public hearing.

(3) The teacher receives a phone call to his or her classroom during the school day and while instruction is taking place from a higher level administrator wanting to know why and for what reason he or she has signed up to speak.  Likewise, the teacher may also receive duplicate phone calls to his or her personal cell phone, as well as e-mails not by just one level administrator but often from multiple level administrators (e.g., regional superintendents and/or from other administrators) all inquiring the same.

(4) The most dreaded and intimidating of all these tactics, from a teacher’s perspective, is when a regional superintendent or the Superintendent, himself, pays a visit to the school.  It is no secret that when “downtown administrators” or the Superintendent show(s) up unexpectedly at a school site everyone, especially administration, quickly enters “on the edge” mode for the simple reason that the school is, clearly, being observed.  That means that all of the t’s need to be crossed and all the i’s dotted – but without having been afforded advanced notice to cure any irregularities with ample time since there was no warning that the visit would be forthcoming.  As a teacher, you do not want to be responsible for being the impetus for such a visit, at least not if you want your administrators to regard you fondly.

(5) It is not uncommon that the same teacher will be subjected to more than one of these practices within a period of a week.

At this juncture and as I write this, I get chills.  This resonates with the form of governance typical of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes and is reminiscent of true and personal accounts I have been told and what I have read in history books.  I digress.

Being subjected to any (1) through (5), as explained above, leaves the teacher feeling as if he or she is the one who is on the radar.  Further, teachers often express feeling hounded by all of these administrators who want to know their intentions for attending the school board meeting.  Do not take my word for it, instead watch the YouTube video titled “Attempted Intimidation, Coercion? Watch School Board Meeting of May 20, 2009!,” where two M-DCPS teachers explain the negative impact which these practices impressed upon them as employees.  Further, I want to underscore that the advice given by School Board member, Marta Perez, in the video as she requests that the Superintendent  cease and desist these practices have been blatantly ignored not to mention very tenuously justified.  As an aside, it is my hope that this letter, coupled with a re-viewing of this video, will serve as the final nails in the coffin to put an end to these practices.

Without a doubt, a “reasonable person,” which is the legal measuring stick, if you will, used to gauge whether a person, in fact, feels coerced, intimidated or harassed by a given practice or treatment in the workplace, would feel very uncomfortable after being subjected to one or all of the practices described above.  Stated differently, most employees would not voluntarily welcome any or all of these tactics.  In fact, a “reasonable person” who signs up to speak at a public hearing would most likely want to be afforded the mental, emotional, physical and intellectual sense of freedom needed to speak publicly and openly without the pressure of feeling that he or she is being closely “watched” or “monitored” by his or her immediate, or even, remote superiors and possibly subject to reprisal for doing so.  At this juncture, and to further buttress this position, note that the latter is the very reason why there are whistleblower laws protecting employees who speak out and against their employers.  Additionally, and for your perusal, I am attaching an article which was published in Seattle Business, titled “When Does a Workplace Qualify as Being Hostile?” which rather comprehensively, yet succinctly, explains that “[t]he issues and potential liability related to claims of ‘hostile work environments’ are complex and should not be ignored [by employers].”

Post-Meeting Misconduct

Without meaning to be superfluous, I also want to make clear that teachers have claimed feeling coerced intimidated and/or harassed after speaking out at a school board meeting.  In fact, that was the case in March of 2015 when a group of teachers addressed the Board on the issue of class size.  That is, after the meeting, teachers reported being subjected to (1) through (5), as explained above.  Please see the attached article which was published in the Miami Herald and is titled “Some Miami-Dade teachers say speaking out comes at a price.” When a school’s administration realizes that a specific teacher or group of teachers is or are responsible for placing the school “on the radar,” it is often the case that the teacher(s) is(are) brought in for questioning, as administration wants to prevent this(these) teacher(s) from calling the School Board’s attention to the school.  I would be remiss for failing to state that if principals do not carry out the orders of the higher level administrators and participate in the hounding of teachers, they will then be the ones subjected to the scrutiny; for this reason, although often times reluctantly, principals proceed as ordered by the district.  I know this to be a fact as told to me by a personal friend who is a former and retired regional superintendent.  Yes, fact check, this is how it is.

If you are thinking that this can all be dismissed by suggesting that all these claims are a figment of my imagination, keep reading.  Teachers have, on more than one occasion, and not just at my school, reached out to me and expressed that they have been subjected to these tactics.  They express that these practices are unwelcomed and seek my advice as to how to respond.  Most disconcerting, however, is when I hear or sense the angst in their voices or emails and text messages, respectively, and see or feel the fear in their eyes or written words, respectively.  This, clearly, has to stop.  And, for the record, do not ask me to divulgate the names of these teachers because they have asked that I keep their names confidential.

Additionally, I want to be clear, even at the risk of sounding very redundant, that the reason why I state that the foregoing statements are facts and not figments of my imagination is because I have also personally witnessed how teachers have signed up to attend school board meetings, eager to speak their minds – until one or more than one of these dreaded tactics is/are practiced on them.  It is bad enough that many teachers who want to attend meetings cannot due to familial obligations, time constraints or because it would be too onerous for them to travel to the school board meeting because of its location when compared to where they live or work.  Now, the few who can go and/or are willing to make the personal sacrifice are being pressured away in droves.  Yes, they do tell me that they are scared and that they have changed their minds – or worse.  There are the teachers who will not even sign up for the meetings because they have heard of such things, and they want to avoid calling any attention to themselves.  They will openly admit to the fear of reprisals.  They do not want an unfavorable teaching assignment the following school year nor to be moved to a school that is on the other side of town far from where they live.  And, they most certainly do not want to be told at the end of the school year that their contract will not be renewed, and that as such, they are unemployed – just because they spoke out and exercised their First Amendment rights.  These are unacceptable intended consequences.  It begs the question as to whether this was a motive for doing away with teacher tenure or Professional Service Contracts?  Shall tenure be reinstated such that teachers will feel more secure in their positions, particularly when speaking out against the flaws and wrongs perpetuated in the M-DCPS system?

I also speak from personal experience.  I, for one, had my administrators inquire as to why I had signed up to speak at the April 15, 2015 M-DCPS Board meeting.  My principal was called by Sally Alayon and/or Luis Diaz to find out.  It did not matter that I answered my administrations’ questions during a visit to my classroom, their visit was still followed by multiple phone calls from Sally Alayon, North Regional Superintendent, and Luis Diaz, Operations Director.  At the time, I made it clear that I did not need any assistance from them since I did not have any issues arising at my school site nor with my administrators, and in fact, I still do not.  As of the moment, I have a very good rapport with my administrators, and I feel that they do an excellent job in overseeing operations at our school.  I feel that the feeling is mutual.  Do not tamper with this relationship.  Moreover, the issues which I do have, I explained to all who asked, are best addressed openly and publicly since they relate to matters affecting all teachers.

Because You Asked: Ability of School Board to Address Issues that Matter

Now that you have broached the subject of what issues confound me, and possibly most teachers, and if you really must know, please know that it is the fact that when teachers do speak on matters that affect them, such as: (1) the violation of class size which results in overcrowded classrooms negatively impacting student learning and impeding teachers’ performance; (2) the lack of reliability of standardized test coupled with the fact that it robs students of instructional time and further impedes teachers’ performance;  (3) how (1) and (2) contribute to the very laughable Value Added Model which will be, allegedly (because it has not happened yet) and unrealistically used to determine teachers’ performance pay, and therefore remunerate them inequitably and unethically; and last but not least, (4) teachers’ decimated salaries and benefits – all – fall on deaf ears.  M-DCPS Board acts with impunity and lack of accountability as it continuously claims that anything and everything is either the union’s doing or is attributed to the Legislature’s shortcomings.  And, if that is, in fact, the case, then there is the legitimate and timely question which I posed publicly last month in the October school board meeting.

Perhaps the moment is ripe to pose the question:  What then, is the purpose of the M-DCPS Board and has it run its course?  Should teachers respectfully demand that we receive more from the Board than merely those  electronic newsletters, provided for at taxpayers’ expense and which usually go unread, wherein the Board displays photo ops showing the accolades earned at the school level and for which the Board did not materially contribute to since the manifestation of those accomplishments result from the hard work of administrators, teachers, students and parents?  Can’t those photo ops just be placed on the schools’ newsletters and trim the Board’s budget as you do to teachers’ salaries?  Perhaps if the Board implemented austere economic measures even handedly and commensurate with the ones the Board has imposed on teachers’ salaries, claiming insufficient funding, then perhaps the Board may also find time for more political activism, which better suits the Board, as Board members are political elected officials not socialites.  More specifically, the Board could spend time addressing the shortcomings of the Legislature which are brining teachers to their knees financially – according to you.  But, who is the Board kidding?  Well-informed teachers know that funding from the State of Florida per student has been abundant and has even increased with each passing year for most of the past decade – interestingly, the same span of time during which teachers’ salaries have been decimated through the reckless and negligent salary negotiations of the United Teachers of Dade Union, which rather than refute the claims made by the Board, that there is insufficient funding, acquiesces and panders to the Board’s political and economic agenda instead of aggressively representing the financial interests of its membership and all teachers alike.  I am also alluding to the fact that the better measure of austerity would be to simply dismantle the Board such that the real stakeholders in education who are the administrators, teachers, students and parents can take center stage once and for all and not only stand to earn more financially but also better manage M-DCPS.  If we, those in the trenches, were left in charge, it would free up thousands of dollars in administrative salaries and overhead which is for not, as the Board has openly and publicly admitted itself, whether individually or collectively, many times over.

The bottom line is that even when it appears that the Board is listening to us attentively, our concerns are never addressed, much to the contrary, they fade into the airwaves after they echo the walls of the auditorium where the school board meetings take place.  And if they are addressed, when a public speaker’s  three (3) minutes are up, the Board engages in a controlled message monologue which usually supplants, as well as misrepresents and distorts the facts made by the previous public speaker while giving him or her no opportunity to rebut or further clarify the often erroneous and self-serving Board member’s misstatements.  It is very frustrating and leaves the public speaker feeling impotent to address any wrongs.  And how can I say this with such certainty, you may ask.  Simply put, from the numerous times that I have personally addressed issues at a school board meetings none of them have ever been addressed, and if they have, it has been as I described.  Which makes a “reasonable person” question the sincerity and true motives of the above-mentioned tactics, (1) through (5), and whether they are really being carried out with the intention of wanting to address teachers’ concerns?  At times, many of us even wonder whether you listen to us as we speak at school board meetings because it is not uncommon that while a public speaker attempts to engage the Board, its Board members are either on the phone, interacting with their cell phones or simply sneak out through the back doors.  The public which is listening on the radio cannot see this nor can those watching the Board meeting on television since the cameras only focus on the public speaker speaking at the podium; those in the audience who are watching the School Board meeting, in person, however, can attest to what I just said.  Going forward, I suggest that there should be a split screen view of the meeting.

Conclusion

In the interest of equity and for the sake of following the rule of law, I respectfully request the M-DCPS Board agree to the following in an open acknowledgement:

(1) M-DCPS employees shall be allowed to use district email for purposes of soliciting the attendance of colleagues at M-DCPS Board meetings and/or for any and every other work related purposes; and

(2) employees who sign-up to speak at M-DCPS board meetings will be free of any of the above-mentioned tactics which have not only been brought to your attention previously, on multiple occasions and through multiple forms of media but which are also deemed to be coercive, intimidating and/or harassing as thoroughly explained herein.

I thank you for your time and mindful attention to these issues.   I look forward to a timely and written reply in the very near future acknowledging that teachers, in time for the November school board meeting,  may use the district e-mail’s system to solicit attendance and will be left in peace to do just that, including after they sign-up and/or speak at the school board meeting.  Please, do not ignore my letter, as no one appreciates being dismissed.  Remember, “Values Matter!”

Very Respectfully,

Thais M. Alvarez

cc:        Annette H. Weissman, Principal, Sunny Isles Beach K-8
Sally Alayon, North Regional Superintendent
Luis Diaz, Director of Operations

DHS Whistleblower’s Open Letter to Congress: No Confidence in Administration’s Vetting Process

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Today,  13-year Department of Homeland Security veteran, Philip B. Haney, released an open letter to Members of Congress, writing that he, “no longer [has] the confidence this administration can adequately vet or screen refugees or immigrants from Islamic countries.” (full text below)

Since becoming a whistleblower, Haney has met repeatedly with Members of Congress and their staffs in closed-door sessions, warning them of both the inadequacies of the Obama administration’s screening processes and the shut down of his investigation into extremist groups tied to both perpetrators of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

On Fox News, Haney described an ill-advised action by DHS’ Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to terminate an investigation into groups associated to the Deobandi Movement and other Islamist groups. “This investigation could possibly have prevented the San Bernardino jihadist attack by identifying its perpetrators, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, based on their associations with these groups.”

An Open Letter to Members of Congress:

In the aftermath of the most devastating and lethal jihadist attack in the United States since 9/11, Americans are rightly angry their government will not face the problem of Islamic terrorism honestly. I know this first-hand.

During my 13 years at the Department of Homeland Security, I worked tirelessly to identify and prevent terrorism in the United States. As a recognized “founding member” of DHS, it was among my responsibilities to raise concern, not only about the individuals primed for imminent attack, but about the networks and ideological support that makes those terrorist attacks possible.

I investigated numerous groups such as the Deobandi Movement, Tablighi Jamaat, and al-Huda as their members traveled into and out of the United States in the course of my work. Many were traveling on the visa waiver program, which minimizes the checks and balances due to agreements with the countries involved. But the scrutiny we were authorized to apply was having results. This investigation could possibly have prevented the San Bernardino jihadist attack by identifying its perpetrators, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, based on their associations with these groups.

Almost a year into this investigation, it was halted by the State Department and the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. They not only stopped us from connecting more dots, the records of our targets were deleted from the shared DHS database. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. Instead, Malik was able to avoid serious vetting upon entering the United States on a fiancé visa—and more than a dozen Americans are dead as a result.

The investigation was not stopped because it was ineffective, it was stopped because the Administration told us the civil rights of the foreign nationals we were investigating could be violated. When did foreign nationals gain civil rights in the United States, especially when they are associated with groups we already know are involved in terrorist activity? Based on what I have seen in the Department of Homeland Security, I no longer have the confidence this administration can adequately vet or screen refugees or immigrants from Islamic countries.

I took my story to the American people last week. Remarkably this week, DHS’ former acting under-secretary for intelligence and analysis, John Cohen, told ABC News that under the direction of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, potential immigrants’ social media activity was off-limits to those responsible for screening.

Just as they did when they halted my investigation in 2012—which could have provided key intelligence and potentially saved over a dozen lives—DHS described a potential “civil liberties backlash” if the law enforcement officials tasked with keeping our country secure did the most basic checks on potential travelers, immigrants and refugees. Parents checking on someone their child may be dating look at social media, but our law enforcement officials can’t?

This administration has a deadly blind spot when it comes to Islamic terrorism. It is not willing to allow proper vetting and screening of refugees or immigrants from Islamic countries; Congress must take action to defend the security of the American people.

I understand the desire to welcome as many immigrants and refugees as possible, especially those fleeing dangerous conflict zones. However, this administration has handcuffed law enforcement officials tasked with vetting these individuals appropriately and that places the American people in danger.

Philip B. Haney

philip haney

Philip B. Haney

ABOUT PHILIP B. HANEY

Philip Haney served in Passenger Analysis Units at the Department of Homeland Security in Atlanta and at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center. His responsibilities included in-depth research into individuals and organizations with potential links to terrorism.

After almost a year of research and tracking the Deobandi movement, Department of Homeland Security stopped the investigation, at the request of the Department of State and its own Civil Rights Civil Liberties Division, claiming that tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travellers’ civil liberties.

Haney says, “The administration was more concerned about the civil rights and liberties of foreign Islamic groups with terrorist ties than the safety and security of Americans.”

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How Well Is US Vetting Social Media of Immigrants? San Bernardino Attack Sparks Debate

Marco Rubio: ‘We Can’t Accept Refugees That We Can’t Truly Vet’

The Chilling Progressive Response to Mark Zuckerberg’s Charity by Max Borders

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Mark Zuckerberg is starting a charitable LLC to donate 99 percent of his Facebook stock to charity, and the usual suspects are all in a tizzy.

But in the process of analyzing this curious response, I was treated to a frightening glimpse into the mind of one particular progressive:

Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That’s unacceptable.

SPIEGEL: But doesn’t the money that is donated serve the common good?

Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

The interviewee, German shipping magnate Peter Krämer, is discussing the idea of tax-deductible giving in the United States. I hadn’t seen the exchange before, but it has been dredged up in an article critical of Zuckerberg’s decision to give.

Reading Krämer’s statement, one shudders. Or one ought to. To repeat: “So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That’s unacceptable.”

Unacceptable to whom?

The man who uttered these words is himself a German billionaire, apparently, but one who seems fully committed to the idea of the deutsche Sozialstaat. One wonders if Krämer plans to give his remaining billions to the state, or if he simply plans to hoard it.

In any case, here we have wealth that the state had no hand — visible or invisible — in creating. Even Elizabeth Warren ought to be assuaged by the amount of taxes Zuckerberg has already paid so that he can drive on the roads to get to work, or be secure in his commercial activities by the military-industrial complex.

Investors, users, advertisers, and Zuckerberg grew Facebook from a Harvard side project to a multibillion dollar company. (I’ll pass over the irony that I found the original article on Facebook, which was shared at no cost to the author.) And Zuckerberg is choosing to give his money to charity or to charitable causes, rather than the state.

So it would seem he has satisfied the conditions of just acquisition and transfer, if there is anything to the idea that his wealth was both peacefully acquired and transferred. Still, if your idea of justice has to do with being forced to dole out half of your wealth on principle to people with guns and jails, then we have really found the difference in starting points between progressives and the rest of us, who see more than just a little connection between risk and reward.

Now, to recap, this successful entrepreneur (Zuckerberg) would like to use some of his net worth to give to charity. Krämer’s objection — indeed the progressive objection writ large — is that the state ought to be the only charity, a giant, perfect monolith of determining the right and the good, meted out by wise elites. All tax loopholes should be closed such that fewer resources go to the voluntary sector. Leave the entrepreneurs just enough so they don’t stop laying those golden eggs. Then tell them this: To be just, you must channel your goodness into the state apparatus, with its attendant angels (bureaucrats, regulators, and cronies). For it is a moral monopoly.

Now, if all that were the case, it would lead us to some very curious conclusions:

  1. People in government are perfect sweethearts who only have the goal of redistributing wealth from rich to poor so that everyone is equal — and such a goal is an unassailable ethic.
  2. People in government are not using “charitable” dollars to kill citizens in the streets of Chicago or Ferguson, to bomb weddings in Pakistan, to spy on our private correspondence, to jail victimless criminals, to divert public resources into the pockets of cronies, or to bail out other profligate social states like Greece.
  3. People in government already know the best way to help people — that is, they already have preexisting knowledge about how best to help the sick, the old, and the poor, all without making them permanent, dependent wards of the state. Indeed, the state knows how to make everyone healthy, happy, and well cared for.

Of course, not one of these statements is true. In fact, we’ve already dispelled the idea of unicorn governance in these pages.

So when we think about how the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world give their money, we can at least take comfort in the fact that some of their resources are going to an actual charity — not to standing armies, corrupt politicians, violent police, layabouts, or state-funded indoctrination camps.

I’m sure Zuckerberg intends to use some of those resources on political candidates (you know, those great, anointed leaders who make everything better). But recall that he has already tried treating the government as a charity. And, predictably, that effort went into Newark Bay with the rest of Jersey’s sewage.

Once bitten, twice shy.

By putting his money into an LLC, Zuckerberg should have the flexibility to invest in double-bottom-line ventures, or even for-profit ventures that, like most companies, create real value in the world. After all, an IRS tax designation is not a magic wand that automatically makes a company create social value.

But an errant thought, which niggles in the minds of progressives, remains: “It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. “

The assumptions, of course, are:

  1. The state has the foundational “power” to give, but somehow nefarious entrepreneurs figure out how to get that power in the form of assets, even though such is the moral province of the state.
  2. The rich, after people voluntarily made them rich, should never deign to attempt helping others in opposition to the means and ends of the state.
  3. The state is and ought to be what determines what is good for the people — not the people themselves, nor those who would give to the people, nor those willing to experiment in order to find out how best to improve the lot of humanity.

This, folks, is a window into the progressive mind. And it leads us to a final question, which, happily, Kramer provides:

“What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?”

The answer to this question divides us utterly.

Max BordersMax Borders

Max Borders is Director of Idea Accounts and Creative Development for Emergent Order. He was the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit.

Technology, Not Politics, Is the Future of Progress by Nima Sanandaji

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A branch of Google has recently partnered with medical devices manufacturer Ethicon to form Verb Surgical Inc. The new company aims to develop robotic technology for operating rooms. Robot-assisted surgery is at the cutting edge of technical development, an idea from science fiction that is coming to life.

This is one of several examples of how Google is betting on ideas that have little to do with browsing the Internet. The firm is applying the same bold approach that gave rise to its web browser to new fields such as longevity and automated cars.

But will regulators allow these radical innovations? Information technology is the market which comes closest to the ideal of economic freedom, with little government intervention and limited regulation. When the same approach to innovation is taken to other fields, red tape becomes a much greater concern.

It has only been 20 years since the two PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin began a research project about understanding the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. Most researchers would have been content with publishing their results in academic journals, letting others reap the fruit of their ideas. Page and Brin chose to realize their vision of a better search engine. Soon the Google search engine reached a global audience, and became quite valuable.

Rather than sticking to the development of search engines, or for that matter related technologies such as browsers, the firm decided to use its funds and pool of talents to push for other innovations. Sergey Brin today not only runs Alphabet — Google’s parent company — together with Larry Page, he also oversees Google[x], a semi-secret research and development facility.

Google[x] aims to find major challenges facing humanity, identify radical proposed solutions to those problems, and attempt to realize them. One example of its ventures is the Google driverless car project. Currently a number of different cars — including the Toyota Prius, Audi TT, and Lexus RX450h —have been fitted with self-driving equipment and the Google Chauffeur program. Google has also developed their own custom vehicle.

However, regulations hinder automated cars. A lot of energy has been spent lobbying legislators to allow this new innovation. Gradually, progress is being made in the US, as well as a number of other countries, including the UK. But much of the global market still remains closed to automated cars, and will likely remain so for years to come.

A more humble innovation launched by Google was to offer coach services to its own workers in San Francisco. Alongside other tech-firms such as Facebook, Genentech and Apple, Google decided to deploy private buses to transport its employees to and from their places of work. This alleviated the traffic problem, by reducing the number of cars on the streets, reduced the strain on public buses, and made it possible to introduce coaches which function as mobile offices.

Critics however accused the private coaches of insulating a privileged class from the plight of the average commuters, which led to the city of San Francisco deciding to tax and regulate Google’s vehicles. Challenging the dominance of public buses proved more policially risky than challenging search engines such as Altavista and Yahoo.

Perhaps the most interesting venture created by Google is Calico, a biotech firm focused on health, wellbeing and longevity. The core idea is to use modern biotechnology to prolong a healthy life span. This, Calico hopes, can be accomplished by enhancing the ability of human cells to regenerate themselves. If successful, such technologies can have a profound impact on how healthy and how long lives we live.

However, the unique freedom under which the Google search engine and other forms of information technology developed under have little to do with pharmaceutical development. In the US it takes an average of 12 years for an experimental drug to travel from the laboratory to the consumer market. Many pharmaceuticals are banned, sometimes arbitrarily. The regulatory issues surrounding robotic surgery have likewise been discussed for many years, and are still awaiting a resolution.

There are, of course, good reasons to regulate new pharmaceuticals, automated cars, and robot surgeries. Indeed, robotics is probably one of the fields where we should be most concerned with the possible future risks of new technologies.

At the same time, it is important that a slow pace of regulatory change, outright bans, and government meddling in markets are not allowed to hinder innovations such as pharmaceuticals that can prolong our healthy life span. There is good reason to draw inspiration from information technology.

Funding of basic and military research have historically played a key role in promoting computer technology and the Internet. In the long run however, computers, computer games and online ventures have become the most innovative markets in the world precisely since regulations and government involvement have been kept at minimal levels.

It is no surprise that a successful Internet firm is aiming to revolutionize also other fields. Hopefully, regulations will not prove too steep from hindering Googles promising moonshot projects.

This piece first appeared at CapX.

Nima SanandajiNima Sanandaji

Nima Sanandaji is a research fellow at CPS,  and the author of Scandinavian Unexceptionalism available from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Every Student Succeeds Act: Common Core by a New Name and on Steriods

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A bill over a thousand pages long is drafted behind closed doors and given a nice-sounding name.  The chair of the Senate committee, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, announces on November 18 that the conference report, which is finished, will not be available for reading until November 30.  The House vote will be two, at most three, days later.

The vote takes place two days later, on December 2.  The 247 House Republicans are divided, but most (all but 64) side with 100 percent of the 188 Democrats who vote for it.

On December 8, the Senate votes to advance the bill and it is passed the following day. Again, zero opposition from Democrats.  Only 12 of the 54 Senate Republicans oppose the measure.

This is the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA) that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), an arm of the War on Poverty that sends federal funds to low-income area schools.

ESSA is supported by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and 37 liberal and far-left civil rights and education groups.  It is supported by “the owners of the Common Core Standards” (National Governors Association and the Council of Chief School Officers), as Donna Garner notes.  Lamar Alexander, a Common Core booster, joins with Democrat Patty Murray, expressing hope for more such “bipartisan” legislation.

The over 200 grassroots groups and experts who sent a detailed, open letter on October 13 to Congress opposing the Act valiantly continued the battle in the two days between the release of the conference report and the vote in the House.  Volunteers divvy up the bill in an attempt to digest it in 48 hours.  They continued to rally the troops after it went before the Senate, to no effect.  It passed on December 9.  The next morning Obama signed it.  According to one activist, the hurry was manufactured to prod members to “vote blindly.”  ESSA had been on “ice” for six months.

The American Principles Project announces their “disappointment” over passage. Emmet McGroarty chastises Republicans for failing to listen to “the more than 200 pro-Constitution, anti-Common Core grassroots groups that laid out in detail their objections . . . and practically begged their ‘conservative’ elected officials to pay attention.”

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch, calls ESSA “a huge lump of educational coal.”  Effrem, a pediatrician, sees in ESSA a solidification of the harmful age-inappropriate methods of Common Core.  She thanks presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for their “steadfast opposition.”

Left-wing sites claim, “Christmas miracle sees end of Common Core.”

The Department of Education had prepared the groundwork for the hurried holiday-time vote with Obama’s own announcement in October, when he inveighed against “excessive testing”–as opt-outs spread like wildfire. He subtly blamed the unpopular testing on [George W. Bush’s] No Child Left Behind.  New tests, we are told, will be “state driven and based on multiple measures.”  Multiple measures include “non-cognitive skills,” attitudes and emotions.

The Department of Education announces that “The bipartisan bill to fix No Child Left Behind…incorporates many of the priorities the Obama administration put forward.”

It does.  These are the same priorities undergirding Common Core.  According to Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow at the American Principles Project, the rub is in the mandates, as she explained to Dr. Susan Berry at Breitbart.  States must coordinate with eleven different federal statutes and submit their plans for approval by the feds.

Statutes include “the Soviet-style Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that’s designed to connect the K-12 education system to government-controlled workforce-development, the Head Start act that centralizes preschool standards, the Education Sciences Reform Act (which seeks to boost data-collection on students)….”  Standards must focus on “minimal workforce-development rather than academic knowledge” – just like Common Core!  States will comply or lose their federal money.

The federal government will determine “college-and career-readiness,” thus continuing its power grab on campuses.

At the other end of the “cradle to career” spectrum is “mission creep” into preschool, as states participate in Race-to-the-Top-like competitive grants.  The Act expands ESEA power by making Head Start pre-school a statute (instead of an appropriation), Dr. Susan Berry reports.

Promoters ignored the research that shows the ineffectiveness of Head Start.  They ignored studies that indicate that pre-school programs often have a negative impact on students’ ability to concentrate in school.

Additional concerns listed at the Truth in American Education blog include the weakening of parental rights to opt children out of tests, removing checks on federal control, increasing overall federal spending through ESEA, and transferring federal dollars from the classroom to for-profit companies.

As consumers face skyrocketing health insurance premiums they realize that the “Affordable Care Act” is not what its name implies.  Similarly, many supporters of the Every Student Succeeds Act will learn that rather than eliminating Common Core, ESSA implements Common Core on steroids.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research website.

Treachery! Intrigue! Common Core Skullduggery Exposed

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common core dilemma book coverAre you curious about how the crazy new convoluted Common Core math problems came about?  Ever wonder why high school students are reading EPA standards in English class?

Want to read a book full of suspense about backroom deals, MOU’s (Memorandums of Understanding), CCSSO licensing agreements, NGA funding, and secret handshakes?  That reveals who and what CCSSO, EASA, and AYP are?  That gets down to the statistical trickery of surveys showing that teachers just love Common Core?

Then read Mercedes Schneider’s fascinating Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?

Schneider cuts through the eye-glazing jargon and reveals the players, their connections, and credentials (or more accurately lack thereof).  She uses her advanced degrees in education and statistics to explicate the legalese and interpret the misleading numbers, and then put them into a gripping narrative. There is a plot line that goes from when Common Core was a twinkle in the eye to the monster we have today.

This dedicated high school English teacher also maintains an excellent blog in which she cuts through all the arcana.  Her work is clearly a labor of love.  I don’t know how she does it all.

In Common Core Dilemma, Schneider has done a superb job in telling the back story.

But I wish that she had left it at that because the introductory chapters present a distorted view of the history of education and might put off some readers.

In the first chapter Schneider challenges the 1966 Coleman Report’s recommendation that standardized tests be used as measurements of progress (full name, Equality of Educational Opportunity Study).  She takes issue with the fact that “the researchers believed that ‘culture bound’ testing was justified because, in their view, particular attributes were necessary for students of color to have success.”  E.D. Hirsch, in his 1987 bestseller,Cultural Literacy, argued the same point: historical and cultural knowledge (e.g., important dates, scientific facts, familiarity with literary classics) are essential to reading comprehension and academic achievement. For that he was vilified by progressives.  Common Core (in spite of the similarity in name) deemphasizes cultural knowledge by dictating that short “texts” (or excerpts) be read “cold,” with no context provided by the teacher.

Schneider maintains that it was naïve “to believe that people of color in 1960s America would ‘get a good job and move up to a better one’” by demonstrating academic achievement.

No, it was not.

Schneider repeats the myth that has been accepted as holy writ in education schools: that racism and lack of cultural sensitivity are responsible for the achievement gap. This myth is promulgated by anti-American radicals who took over schools in the 1960s.   Perpetuating such myths serves their larger revolutionary goals.  Thomas Sowell, however, has aptly demonstrated that in the days of segregation, all-black schools sometimes outperformed their white socioeconomic counterparts.

That is because they used the tried-and-true methods of directed teaching, which the late Jeanne Chall demonstrated were especially helpful to students from low- and middle-income families.  This is old-fashioned teaching, with the teacher as the authority and students required to demonstrate knowledge of a body of material.

Progressive teachers, however, have taken it upon themselves to indoctrinate students in social justice, while pretending students are “discovering” such lessons through project and group work.

The Obama administration’s policies in academic standards and school discipline, modeled on the theories of Obama education transition team leader and Common Core test developer, Linda Darling-Hammond, go counter to the methods that have worked.  Clearly, there is a larger agenda.  The fall-out includes loss of local control and teacher autonomy.

Schneider, unfortunately, seems to have accepted certain progressive premises.  She questions the validity of committees on the basis of racial and gender make-up (if they are overwhelmingly white and male), but cites anti-testing activist William Schaefer of FAIR Test as an authority.  This is surprising because Schaefer has no qualifications in the education field.  His public relations company promotes a number of far-left causes, with the anti-testing campaign being just one.

Unfortunately, Schneider repeats what could be a line from Schaeffer’s anti-testing propaganda.  She maintains that test administrators can be blind to “the manner in which their own perceptions of the world interfere with both test selection and the utility of test results.”  Furthermore, “The ‘skills most important’ for Whites to be successful in a predominantly White society that is often openly hostile to the ‘success’ of its members of color differ from those that may be deemed ‘most important’ by the oppressed members.”  Cringe.

Schneider relates how she learned from “students of color” that “academic achievement is frowned on as an attempt to ‘be White’ or is viewed as an affront to subgroup acceptance.”   That is true, as Jason Riley points out, but it is a harmful attitude that is encouraged by lessons about endless oppression and cultural difference.

Unfortunately, education schools and teachers unions have made reform efforts necessary.  At conferences I’ve heard teachers share strategies on avoiding state standards (pre-Common Core), so they could use the class to promote such lessons in grievance instead. Teachers unions have notoriously protected incompetent or negligent teachers.

There was an educational “crisis,” as well as a financial one, in 2008.  The Obama administration, of course, did not let either “crisis go to waste,” dangling stimulus funds before governors as carrots for adopting Common Core.

Now let me get back to the other nine chapters—the vast bulk—that make it worth your while to read this book.  Once Schneider dispenses with the bleeding heart excuses in the first two chapters, she exposes education exploiters who lie (Bill Gates), who violate their federal roles (Arne Duncan), and who negotiate deals to make U.S. education dependent on their demonstrably incompetent companies (Pearson chief financial officer Robin Freestone).

Teachers, rightfully, should be appalled at the imposition of standards that have not been piloted and that were written by unqualified “experts” from non-profits tied to companies standing to profit from Common Core.  They should be outraged over having their job evaluations tied to how well students perform on ridiculous tests.

But they should also be putting their own house in order.  Teachers should be asking themselves whether their union dues should be going overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party, which supports big government/progressive education programs like Common Core.

I hope Mercedes Schneider takes her passion, and her great analytical and writing skills, to tackle the more deep-rooted problems plaguing education.

But first, we have a task: to kill the Common Core beast.  The big government/big money interests are banking on the fact that the “little people” can’t understand the contracts, the jargon, the backroom deals.

Mercedes Schneider demonstrates, to the contrary, that with her book, oh, yes, we can.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research website.

King Canute vs. the Climate Planners by Jeffrey A. Tucker

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“With a small hammer you can achieve great things.”

Oh really?

This claim comes from French foreign minister Laurent Fabius as he banged his gavel at the close of the Paris climate summit. To the cheers of bureaucrats and cronies the world over, Fabius announced the deal that the press has been crowing about for days, the one in which “humanity” has united to stop increases in global temperature through the transfer of trillions of dollars from the rich to the poor, combined with the eventual (coercive) elimination of fossil fuels.

And thus did he bang his gavel. To his way of thinking, and that of the thousands gathered, that’s all you have to do to control the global climate, cause the world to stop relying on fossil fuels, and dramatically change the structure of all global industry, and do so with absolute conviction that benefits will outweigh the costs.

One bang of a gavel to dismantle industrial civilization by force, replace it with a vague and imagined new way of doing things, and have taxpayers pay for it.

Markets Yawn

Interestingly, the news on the Paris agreement had no notable impact on global markets at all. No prices rose or fell, no stocks soared or collapsed, and no futures responded with confidence that governments would win this one. The climate deal didn’t even make the business pages.

Investors and speculators are perhaps acculturated to ignoring such grand pronouncements. “The Paris climate conference delivered more of the same — lots of promises and lots of issues still left unresolved,” the US Chamber of Commerce said in a statement. And maybe that’s the right way to think, given that the world is ever less controlled by pieces of paper issued by government.

Still, breathless journalists wrote about the “historic agreement” and government officials paraded around as planet savers. Meanwhile, the oil price continues to fall even as demand rises, and the Energy Information Administration announced the discovery of more reserves than anyone believed possible. As for alternatives to fossil fuels, they are coming about through private sector innovation, not through government programs, and successful only when adopted voluntarily by consumers.

It’s a heck of a time to announce a new global central plan affecting the way 7 billion people use energy for the next century. Anyone schooled in the liberal tradition, or even slightly familiar with Hayek’s warning against the pretensions of the “scientific” government elites, shakes his or her head in knowing despair.

The entire scene looks like the apotheosis of the planning mentally — complete with five-year plans to monitor how well governments are doing in controlling the climate for the whole world and do so in a way that affects temperature 10-100 years from now.

King Canute?

The scene prompted many commentators to compare these people celebrating in Paris to King Canute, who ruled Denmark, England, and Norway a millennium ago. According to popular legend, as a way of demonstrating his awesome power, he rolled his throne up to the sea and commanded it to stop rising.

It didn’t work. Still, the image appears in many works of art. Even Lego offers a King Canute scene from its historical set.

Historians have challenged the point of the story. The only account with have of this incident, if it occurred at all, is from Henry of Huntingdon. He reports that after the sea rose despite his command, the King declared: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

He did and said this, say modern experts, to demonstrate to his courtiers and flatterers that he is not as wonderful and powerful as they were proclaiming him to be. Instead of subservience to his own person, he was urging all citizens to save their adoration for God.

His point was that power — even the absolute power of kings — has limits. During his rule, King Canute was enormously popular and evidently benefitted from the common tendency of people to credit authority for the achievements of the spontaneous evolution of the social order itself. His sea trick, if it happened at all, was designed to show people that he is not the man they thought he was.

The Pretensions of the Planners

Lacking a Canute to give us a wake-up call, we might revisit the extraordinary speech F.A. Hayek gave when he received his Nobel Prize. He was speaking before scientists of the world, having been awarded one of the most prestigious awards on the planet.

Rather than flattering the scientific establishment, particularly as it existed in economics, he went to the heart of what he considered the greatest intellectual danger that was arising at the time. He blew apart the planning mindset, the presumption that humankind can do anything if only the right people are given enough power and resources.

If the planning elite possessed omniscience of all facts, flawless understanding of cause and effect, perfect foresight to know all relevant changes that could affect the future, and the ability to control all variables, perhaps their pretensions would be justified.

But this is not the case. Hayek called the assumption the harshest possible word: “charlatanism.”

In the climate case, consider that we can’t know with certainty whether, to what extent, and how climate change (especially not 50-100 years from now) will affect life on earth. We don’t know the precise causal factors and their weight relative to the noise in our models, much less the kinds of coercive solutions to apply and whether they have been applied correctly and with what outcomes, much less the costs and benefits of attempting such a far-flung policy.

We can’t know any of that before or after such possible solutions have been applied. Science requires a process and unrelenting trial and error, learning and experimentation, the humility to admit error and the driving passion to discover truth.

In other words, science requires freedom, not central planning. The idea that any panel of global experts, working with appointed diplomats and bureaucrats, can have the requisite knowledge to make such grand and final decisions for the globe is outlandish and contrary to pretty much everything we know.

Throw the reality of politics into the mix and matters get worse. Fear over climate change (the ultimate market failure “problem”) is the last best hope for those who long to control the world by force. The entire nightmare scenario of rising tides and flooded cities — one that posits that our high standard of living is causing the world to heat up and burn — is just the latest excuse. That fact remains whether or not everything they claim is all true or all nonsense.

Pretensions Everywhere

Hayek explains further: “To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.”

Why? Because planning overrides the spontaneous discovery process that is an inherent part of the market structures.

We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based — a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.

He went further. The planning fallacy doesn’t just affect economics. It is a tendency we see in all intellectual realms, including climatology and its use by governments to justify the desire to manage the world from on high.

Hayek’s conclusion is so epic that it deserves to be quoted in full.

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success”, to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Or we could just quote King Canute after the tides failed to respect his edict: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name.”

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

An Economist’s 10 Objections to the Minimum Wage by Mark J. Perry

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One of the biggest political issues right now nationwide, and one that will likely be an important issue in next year’s presidential election is the minimum wage.

Economists are generally in agreement that increases in the minimum wage, especially large increases to $15 an hour like in Seattle, will reduce employment opportunities for unskilled workers.

Despite the inevitable negative outcomes that will surely result from a $15 minimum wage — we’ve already seen negative effects in Seattle’s restaurant industry — politicians and unions seem intent on engaging in an activity that could be described as an “economic death wish.”

Proponents of a higher minimum wage point to the obvious and visible benefits to some workers — those who may find a job at the higher wage or keep their existing job and get a higher wage.

But that is only part of the story — there are many less obvious downsides to an artificially high minimum wages that take longer to recognize, and it’s those inevitable negative effects that lead economists to generally oppose minimum wage laws.

What are the specific objections of economists to the minimum wage and why do they generally favor market wages instead? Here are ten reasons in favor of market wages over a government-mandated minimum wage:

  1. Proposed minimum wages are almost always arbitrary and never based on sound economic analysis. Why $10.10 an hour and not $9.10? Why $15 an hour and not $16 an hour?
  1. A uniform federal minimum wage may be sub-optimal for many states, and uniform state minimum wages may be sub-optimal for many cities. A one-size-fits-all approach to the minimum wage is really a “one-size-fits-none.”
  1. Minimum wage laws require costly taxpayer-funded monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, whereas market wages don’t.
  1. Minimum wage laws discriminate against unskilled workers in favor of skilled workers, and the greatest amount of discrimination takes place against minority groups, like blacks.
  1. Adjustments to total compensation following minimum wage laws will disadvantage workers in the form of reduced hours, reduced fringe benefits, and reduced on-the-job training.
  1. Many unskilled workers will be unable to find work and will be denied valuable on-the-job training and the opportunity to acquire experience and skills.
  1. Minimum wage laws prevent mutually advantageous, voluntary labor agreements between employers and employees from taking place.
  1. To the extent that higher minimum wages result in lower firm profits and higher retail prices, that’s a form of legal plunder by workers from employers and consumers that is objectionable.
  1. Market-determined wages are efficient, whereas government-mandated wages create distortions in the labor markets that prevent labor markets from clearing.
  1. Like all government price controls, minimum wage laws are distortionary. If you trust government officials and politicians to legislate and enforce a minimum wage for unskilled workers, you should logically trust those same bureaucrats to set all prices, wages and interest rates in the economy. Realistically, if you agree that those economy-wide price controls would be undesirable, then you should also agree that the minimum wage law is also undesirable.

In summary, economists are not unconcerned about unskilled workers, we are actually very concerned about those workers. And it is because of that concern to maximize employment opportunities that economists oppose the minimum wage.

Simply put, we would rather see unskilled workers employed at a market wage — even if that wage is only $5, $6 an hour — that allows them to gain valuable work experience and on-the-job training, than to be unemployed at $0.00 an hour. And unfortunately, a $15 minimum wage maximizes the probability that an unskilled worker will be unemployed at $0.00 an hour instead of being gainfully employed.

This post first appeared at InsideSources. Reprinted with permission.

Mark J. PerryMark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

Some Recent Energy and Environmental News

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The latest Energy and Environmental Newsletter, is now online.

Special Note 1: All U.S. citizens should take 1 minute to formally object to a proposed extension of the wind PTC. (Please pass this request onto your lists.)

[FYI, the “PTC Elimination Act” now has 50 cosponsors, 7 U.S. Senators Opposed to Extension of PTC, and Horse Trading in Congress: Lifting Oil Ban for Extending Wind PTC.]

Special Note 2: Since the dust is still settling, we’ll have a specialNewsletter edition just about the Paris talks later this week.

Some of the more interesting energy articles in this issue are:

UK’s energy ‘policy’ is an act of national suicide (similar for US, Canada, Australia, etc.)

New Video: Real World Experiences Living with Wind Turbines

Movie: Blue Beats Green

National Association of Scholars study about Fossil Fuel Divestment (esp note “recommendations” on page 3)

Learn what our opponents are saying:

Some Wind Energy Tactics to Win Over Local Community

The Puzzle of Energy Policy

Study: Waterfowl and Industrial Wind Turbines (p 115+)

Some of the more informative Global Warming articles in this issue are:

Nobel Laureate, PhD Physicist: video on Climate Change (exc)

What they Haven’t Told You About Climate Change: short video

Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming

The Ugly Face of Climate Cultists

U.S. Senate Hearings on Climate Change: Data or Dogma?

Archive: Global Warming is a Myth

Archive: 100 reasons why climate change is natural

#1 Cause of Illness, Disability and Death Is Prescription Drugs

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Most quotes on this topic are based on data 20 years old when 106,000 deaths were reported in hospitals from Adverse Drug Reactions defined as “properly prescribed and administered,” which means it was not from MD or RN error. It’s shocking to consider, but it happens every day, says Dr. Richard Ruhling who was board-certified in internal medicine before teaching Health Science at Loma Linda University.

The Dean of LLU’s School of Public Health was Mervyn Hardinge. He had a Ph.D. degree in pharmacology and previously chaired the pharmacology department. He shared with Ruhling a statement from Drill’s Pharmacology in Medicine which said, “Every drug is by definition a poison. Pharmacology and toxicology are one, and the art of medicine is to use these poisons beneficially.”

Pharmacology evolved from toxicology that studied how much of a chemical would kill half the animals. The science has been refined, but the direction has not changed, says Ruhling. He admits we may die pain-free, but says the more medicine we take, the sooner we will probably die. He cites the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates, who said, Nature cures…let your food be your medicine.

But it’s cumbersome to see dozens of patients a day and try to find out what they eat or don’t eat and MD’s really aren’t trained in that area. So medicine offers the ability to see people quickly with symptomatic help that they are looking for and the whole “healthcare” system (falsely so-called) profits from the way it’s done.

I moved to Maryland and was visiting U.S. Senate offices with medical literature to support the above headline when a senator said, You are wasting your time—they own us! (speaking of pharmaceutical donations to their re-election campaigns). I believe Congress is sold out and the system is broken.

This brings him to a biblical message that Babylon is fallen. The word derives from Babel which means confusion. The message in the 18th chapter of Revelation says, Be not partakers of her sins that you receive not of her plagues and it ends reminding us that “all nations” are deceived by her sorcery (pharmakeia is the Greek word). All nations admire western medicine, but nations that use it are on the bring of bankruptcy, says Ruhling who shares this message as a warning that we should beg out of Obamacare that was largely written by the pharmaceutical people for their profits. Carson’s right—“it’s the worst thing since slavery.”

We might ask, How can we get out? We should “tune in to our bodies.” When he was doing Executive Health, he had an executive tell him the sugar bothered his joints. Another man said cheese made his joints ache. A third said that meat gave him arthritis. These were smart men who had figured it out.

It’s not easy. I couldn’t figure out the cause of his headaches and asked a neurologist who taught medicine students at LLU and said that food would be “a very rare cause” of his headaches. I later learned otherwise from an allergist that he later practiced with.

If we become allergic to a food, maybe because we like and abuse it, it can act like nicotine in the sense that people don’t get sick when they smoke—they get sick when they don’t smoke—on withdrawal. That’s how my headaches were. I loved whole wheat sandwiches and took two to work Monday-Friday, but on the weekend I ate other things and Monday mornings meant a headache due to a withdrawal from wheat!

I clarify to say that most allergists do skin testing which works for inhalant allergens but is 80% unreliable for foods. People with problems might find the cause by a week’s trial of brown rice and foods they rarely eat. They may get worse for 2-3 days but should have less symptoms in 5-7 days and then they can put their favorite foods back into their diet (one a day) to see when their symptoms return.

If we were born normal (97% are) and 40 or 60 years later have a problem, Ruhling says we did it by what went into our mouths. The good news is that we can reverse it. Taking responsibility for our own problem is not easy, but in the long run, it’s better than trusting a prescription. My previous wife died of an antibiotic taken briefly for a urinary infection, when, if she had drunk more water and tried an herbal remedy, she would still be living.

Sooner than if we can find a natural remedy online to cope with our symptoms.