Obama's Science is Political--As Politics Invariably Makes It

Let us never say that we have not been warned

"Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines, occupying tens of thousands of acres, to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that's if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven "smart grid."

"Or consider the "promise" of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California withsolar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly--around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with thel ife-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California's state quota requiring 20 percent "renewable" electricity by 2010.

"There is a reason why less than 2 percent of the world's energy currently comes from "renewable" sources such as wind and solar--the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies, funding decades of research, they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

"Will a green energy industry be an engine of economic growth? Many want us to think so, including our new President. Apparently a booming green economy with millions of new jobs is just around the corner. All we need is the right mix of government "incentives."

"These include a huge (de facto) tax on carbon emissions imposed through a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, as well as huge government subsidies for "renewable," carbon-free sources. The hope is that these government sticks and carrots will turn today's pitiful "green energy" industry, which produces an insignificant fraction of American energy, into a source of abundant, affordable energy that can replace today's fossil-fuel-dominated industry. This view is a fantasy--one that could devastate America's economy. The reality is that "green energy" is at best a sophisticated make-work program. [condensed from the Ayn Rand Institute]

President Obama guarantees "to inflict untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies...

"Mr Obama begins by saying that "the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear". "Sea levels," he claims, "are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we've seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

"Delegates from 190 countries met in Poznan, Poland to pave the way for this year's UN conference in Copenhagen at which the world will agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change," heard Mr. Obama speak these words.

"Mr Obama has again been taken in over hurricanes. Despite a recent press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that 2008's North Atlantic hurricane season "set records", even its own release later admits that it only tied as "the fifth most active" since 1944. NOAA's own graphs show hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of tropical cyclone activity across the world (see the Watts Up With That? website) shows a steady reduction over the past four years.

"Alarming though it may be that the next US President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a "federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax", designed to reduce America's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a large part of the US economy.

"Mr Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage "clean energy" sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing "18 gigawatts of installed capacity", only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.

"He talks blithely of allowing only "clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed. He then babbles on about "generating five million new green jobs". This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity." [condensed from Telegraph.co.uk]

Let us never say we have not been warned.

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Artificial, Public-Financed, Non-Profiteering Industry

While everyone in government is talking about "what we need" to get our economy going again, what is they are talking about?

They are talking about specific proposals to get the auto industry running again; to create alternative energy sources large enough to be of "use"; to create a mortgage system that will serve the people and not the "big pockets of the CEOs."

What they--everyone in government and everyone who supports the government's efforts and policies toward these ends--fail to remember is that under the doctrine of naturalism--that all things work to the degree they ought to work when left in their "natural state"--artificially created and managed industries are not natural to the nature of man.

As industries which would not be created naturally by profiteers, who seek that profit by offering what the public wants at prices it can afford, these artificially created and managed industries the government is talking about such as wind turbine farms and hybrid energy cars are already costing the public billions of dollars, in subsidies or other government handouts, years before any results are seen.

President-elect Obama seeks to sink as much as $100 million in ten years into "alternative" energy sources. This is our money. Are we going to make a profit? No. We are going to pay for research and development, because that has already been approved by the Fed and Congress. In the auto industry alone that is hundreds of billions of dollars. Now we are being told the Big Three auto companies will fail if they are not bailed out to the tune of hundred of billions of dollars more for simple overhead.

The American public will soon see that it has bankrolled almost (or more than) a trillion dollars--for products we will have to pay for again when we buy them. If windmill farms and compressed natural gas and clean-burning coal plants and nuclear power plants are economically feasible and profitable, then let the Boone Pickens, the Edison Lights, the Exxon Mobiles, and the others who have the industry knowledge and the financial backing do what they do naturally by seeking profits from these industries. And where there are government regulations standing in the way, make the government step aside. But if there is no profit to be made, there is certainly no economic reason for capitalist profiteers to get involved.

And it is never the government's mandate to "partner up" with industry and become its "big brother."

"According to Deumer [an early 20th century socialist banker], banks presently serve private interests. They serve public interests only inasmuch as these do not conflict with the former. Banks do not finance those enterprises that are most essential from the national point of view, but only those that promise to yield the highest return. For instance, they finance 'a whiskey distillery or any other enterprise that is superfluous for the economy.'" Daily Article by Ludwig von Mises

What is "superfluous" for the economy is anything the public must finance, because if the public must finance it, it is not worth the cost of profiteers seeking to sell a product that people want. Products that create profit are products people want; and products that people want which then create wealth for the profiteers are what build the economy.

This is the metaphysically naturalist state of existence observed by capitalists as a veridical perception, which "is a direct relation of awareness between a conscious subject and an object of empirical or abstract content."
http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/08/academys-strong-definition-of_03.html

The relationship of the "conscious subject" to the "object" is subjective; in other words, it depends on the metaphysics of the conscious subject to determine: the ontological relationship between him and a product; the market for the product; the profit margin that is necessary; and the means of production. But in this case we are talking about whether or not the means should be financed by all the people in an effort to nationalize one industry or another; or whether the means of production should be left to those who can finance the economy with their profiteering methods.

It all depends on the relationship of the conscious motives of the subject, you, me, our neighbors, and Congress, the President-elect, and court justices who hear the cases against such public means of production as will certainly be heard in those courts. We know the way that Congress and Obama wish to go; we do not know which way all the involved courts will render: for sovereignty of the individual to decide which markets to support, or for the government's right to absolve we individuals of our right to support a market or withdraw our support of that market. In other words, whether or not we become the subject-citizens of a socialist state.

The means of production owned by the people in this country has already become a trillion dollar "industry," which is a bailout but which is being hailed as a "necessary evil" to save the economy. Yet, we already know the direction we are headed. You could say that we are like the deer in the headlights of an on-coming car.

Unless we prevent Congress and Obama from continuing with this nationalization of the means of production, that car is going to hit us, and one industry after another will collapse from an economy artifically supported, artificially because the industries supported by the government bailouts no longer have a purpose in profiteering. Now they have a purpose in spending our money to build us cars and to finance our homes which we must then pay for again with our purchases and our mortgages.

And when we no longer have any money left because we have been artificially supporting markets that ought to be profiteering from us, we are twice poorer for it--once financially, once morally.

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Single Sex Education; T.Boon Pickens--Is He for Big Government?

Single-Sex Classrooms are Anti-Discriminatory,

Anti-Stereotypical, Science-Based

If scientific naturalism means accepting the conclusions of science, ala heliocentricity, then it means accepting those conclusions when they are of the science of human anatomy and psychology.

"Galileo, Darwin and Pasteur, the standard examples of the persecution to which innovators are subjected..." http://www.varchive.org/ce/accept.htm

When it was discovered irrefutably that men and women of the same weight handled alcohol differently, that women got drunk as fast as those weight-equal men on half the amount of alcohol, women's-issues advocates cried foul.

Those women's-issues advocates are the "new conservatives" if by conservativism we mean conserving that which is accepted as conventional wisdom because it is socially accepted as true by a majority of people, or at least by people with power. Women's-rights advocates were often morally correct in their time, as it was was usually obvious by direct observation how women were treated differently; consigning all girls to take home economics; preventing them from playing certain sports on the organized school level; comparing the "feminine" to the "masculine" woman and using the "feminine" as the standard to which all women should seek to attain; etc. Many differences in the treatment of females, treatement that held them back or stereotyped them, were obvious.

But it was social-based logic and was devoid of science. It had it merits because discrimination against girls and women was obvious to reason. The science of the brain, when it comes to dividing the genders, is not obvious. But we don't put bras on boys; why do we force them to learn like girls, who do better in groups in classrooms, according to evidence? We dont put the same physical demands on girls, so why should they be forced to act in an academic setting like boys? Boys think better on their feet at certain ages, moving, using their muscles, getting the adreneline flowing. It keeps their attention on the subject.

"The Supreme Court had upheld a series of laws that treated women differently from men--for example, by preventing women from working as bartenders or lawyers under the rationale that women, as members of 'the gentler sex,' were in need of special protection from life's hardships. [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg believed that such sex stereotyping, although ostensibly benign, demeaned women and unfairly limited their opportunities. In her view, the equal protection principle stated in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits discrimination based on race, should bar gender-based discrimination as well. But in the 1960s and early 1970s, Ginsburg found that promoting this viewpoint was an uphill battle. As she recalled at her confirmation hearings: 'Race discrimination was immediately perceived as evil, odious, and intolerable. But the response I got when I talked about sex-based discrimination was "What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men." I was talking to an audience that thought . . . I was somehow critical about the way they treated their wives ... [and] their daughters.'"

http://www.supremecourthistory.org/myweb/justice/ginsburg.htm

But this is not what gender schooling is about. "What is right for the brain of a 6-year old girl is not necessarily right for the brain of a 6-year old boy," said the author of "Why Gender Matters," Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, and this applies to genders older than 6. Sax was using just one age group as an example. What is now called "gender discrimination" by the critics of gender-based education is not the same as what Justice Ginsburg was fighting.

If this testemonial from the webpage of the author of the book does not make clear what some women do not understand about males, then I don't know what testimonial would:

"I simply will never be able to express how eye-opening this book has been for me. Yes me -- even though I thought I was a boy-raising specialist. After all, I have produced four healthy and smart athletes. I must know what I'm doing. But many of my boy-raising days I thought I was going mad. I'd come home from some sports event trembling because of the way the coach yelled at my kid. I'd ask my husband and whichever son it happened to be that day how they could stand being yelled at like that. Almost every time husband and son would look at me and not have any recollection of being yelled at during the game. Now I understand!!!!!!!!!" -Janet Phillips, mother of four boys, Seneca, Maryland

Or this critique from a man:

"I think [Dr.] Sax is on to something. Mature men and women do draw on qualities that stereotypically belong to the opposite sex. But the easiest way to get them to that point is to first make them confident about being a man or a woman. . . Sax adds that children are less happy and confident nowadays because no one is teaching them how to be men and women." Stanley Kurtz, National Review Online.

Or this:

"When I was a college freshman, a male teaching assistant I sought help from told me matter-of-factly that women were not good at inorganic chemistry. Had I been armed with Why Gender Matters, about how biological differences between the sexes can influence learning and behavior, I could have managed an informed rejoinder to go along with my shocked expression. . . ."

[from Scientific American] http://www.whygendermatters.com/

It isn't equal opportunity for boys if they are forced to learn in a manner not built for the psychology of a boy's mind. It isn't equal opportunity for a girl who is forced to learn by competing with boys in ways that female brains don't work well in. Each sex is as equally capable of learning the same things as the other; it is in the methods that the differences create equality.

But in April of this year, "the ACLU of Georgia requested that the school district make public any and all plans to segregate Greene County schools by sex [adding that] 'the programs Greene County presented [are] unlawful because they deny boys and girls equal opportunity,' said Chara Jackson, Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia..."

http://www.aclu.org/womensrights/edu/34804prs20080407.html

"Americans have long since learned that separate is not equal when it comes to educating our young people," said Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the Ohio ACLU. "This is a throw-it-up-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-will-stick situation." http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2007/12/aclu_against_samesex_schools.html

But it is equal when the needs are different. Activia advertising is aimed a women; there are no men in those commercials. STOP IT! Viagra ads are aimed at men; STOP IT! If we acknowledge our bodies are different, then we must acknowledge that the brains in those bodies are different. If the brains are different, the psychological makeup of the mind will be different.

What is difficult to understand in the role of the ACLU as the opposition to gender-based education, is that it not only comprehends but defends such gender-based issues on other subjects.

From the web pages of the ACLU http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/ come these headlines: ACLU Applauds First-Ever Congressional Hearing on Gender Identity in the Workplace , ACLU Sues Old Dominion Freight Lines Over Firing Of Transgender Trucker , and Transgender Veteran Wins Sex Discrimination Lawsuit Against Library of Congress.

So on the one hand the ACLU expects American law to allow bias in favor of those who claim they are psychologically built differently; on the other hand they want to prevent that same bias when science says the two basic genders themselves are psychologically different.

"Students are celebrating today after last night’s decision by the Nashville school board to protect students and school employees from gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination."

Nashville High School Students Celebrate Comprehensive Non-Discrimination Policy

In the ACLU Letter to the Department of Education on Single-Sex Proposed Regulations Comments the organization says "proposed regulations threaten to reverse years of progress, undermine existing protections against sex discrimination, violate legal guarantees of equality, and encourage school districts to provide educational programs that are inherently unequal."

They can't have their cake and eat it too, but to be fair, the ACLU is not the only critic of single-sex education. But where is the "violation of equality" when a girl's psychology is recognized as being as different from that of a boy as her shoe size is? Where is the "sex discrimination" when boys and girls are given better opportunities to use their minds because they are separated?

Girls in TV shows produced on this subject have claimed--happily--that they were happier learning without the boys around and that it was easier to learn. Boys made similar comments.

If test scores prove that single-sex education is better, then it is blatant discrimination against the genders to force them to learn in an environment that is not made for their genders.

Don't force the boys into feminine psychological settings when it comes to learning; and don't force girls into aggressive male-oriented psychological education.

Separate-but-equal is not discrimination against; it is discrimination for, and that discrimination is based on a growing volume of science. It is not the type of discrimination that Ginsburg and others--including some men--fought against. It is not a form of stereotyping. It is undoing the stereotyping of believing that boys and girls learn the same way, in the same settings, at the same speed. CEC

Is T. Boone Pickens for Bigger Government?

It seems I was wrong about T. Boone Pickins being all for capitalism and keeping government out of the market. "WE Demand", Bad Science, and Socialism Disguised as "Political Will"

The T. Boone Pickens' Energy Independence Plan has nothing behind it yet but empty words. In is called "An economic revival for rural America," and in total it reads:

"The Pickens Plan is a bridge to the future — a blueprint to reduce foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives, and buy us time to develop even greater new technologies.
"Building new wind generation facilities and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years. But it will take leadership.
On January 20th, 2009, a new President will take office.
We're organizing behind the Pickens Plan now to ensure our voices will be heard by the next administration.
"Together we can raise a call for change and set a new course for America's energy future in the first hundred days of the new presidency — breaking the hammerlock of foreign oil and building a new domestic energy future for America with a focus on sustainability.
You can start changing America's future today by supporting the Pickens Plan."

http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

In effect, this makes it sound as if Pickens, perhaps America's best known "oil man," is calling for government interference in the working of the energy market. And the "Pickens' Pledge" saying, "Today we can announce 17 Members of Congress have signed on!" "http://www.pickensplan.com/news/2008/09/23/pickens-pledge-avalanche/?tr=y&auid=4047163 only makes those 17 look like big-government interference-spenders in the private sector. The "Pledge" is not even in a cut-and-paste format, so you have to go see for yourself how devoid of any real "planning" it is. http://www.pickensplan.com/thepledge/

While I do not disagree that America must lower its deep dependence on imported oil, and probably must use wind and natural gas as Pickens says it does (he's the expert, not me,) this call for independence does not require "leadership" if that "leadership" means giving billions of taxpayer dollars--as Obama is calling for--to "investors."

Pickens himself has proved it is not necessary, that capitalistic enterprise alone can do it. Pickens' own website says it best:

"Developing wind power is an investment in rural America.
To witness the economic promise of wind energy, look no further than Sweetwater, Texas.
Sweetwater was typical of many small towns in middle-America. With a shortage of good jobs, the youth of Sweetwater were leaving in search of greater opportunities. And the town's population dropped from 12,000 to under 10,000.
When a large wind power facility was built outside of town, Sweetwater experienced a revival. New economic opportunity brought the town back to life and the population has grown back up to 12,000.
In the Texas panhandle, just north of Sweetwater, is the town of Pampa, where T. Boone Pickens' Mesa Power is currently building the largest wind farm in the world.
In addition to creating new construction and maintenance jobs, thousands of Americans will be employed to manufacture the turbines and blades. These are high skill jobs that pay on a scale comparable to aerospace jobs."

If Pickens can do this on his own, if Warren Buffet can invest $5 billion into one bank, if other rich capitalists can put their money here and there, then why are they not doing what Pickens is doing in energy?

The "leadership" needed in Washington is the leadership to get out of the way by reducing government interference where it exists, where it prevents greater investment by either capitalists or by people like you and I.

Do you know you can put up a wind turbine--expensive yes, but you can do it--and the energy companies are required by law to buy back whatever energy you don't use within your own household? That is a strikingly good law, since the power companies are government-allowed monopolies in the first place.

How about leadership that makes it easy for neighborhood cooperatives to put up a few turbines and run the neighborhood at lower costs than buying from the big company, while selling back the surplus?

Why does every plan for "leadership" require making government bigger and spending the taxpayer dollar for the plans they "guarantee" will make energy cheaper for us in the long run? Who cares about the long run if we have to pay upfront for plans put into operation by the government-allowed monopolies that are set up for the purpose of using our tax dollars?

If the Pickens' Plan does not require using government money, but only requires getting goverment out of the way where it may be in the way, why doesn't Pickens tell us this? "Leadership" without definition always means tax-and-spend. "Leadership" properly defined in a free market nation means letting the free market work.

Pickens is making it work. He's putting thousands of people to work. He reducing his own community's dependence on energy generated by natural gas.

Why can't other rich people be convinced to do that same? That, Mr. Pickens, is real leadership, and it is what you yourself ought to be doing since you are proving to be the expert.

Mr. Pickens, your plan and your pledge have meat on them, and it seems to be the meat off the backs of the already bankrupted American taxpayer.

But if the new law President Bush and the Fed and the Treasury department want is passed, none of this will matter, because the Fed and the Treasury dept. will absolute power to rule your pocketbook and no court in the land and not even Congress will be able to stop it. [See The Last Nail in the American Fascist Takeover.]

And if the Fed and Treasury come to have this absolute power, then Atlas might as well shrug right now, wave goodbye, and leave us all to the moral darkness that no amount of natural gas or wind power can alleviate. CEC

Publishing Note Re: Reader Comments

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