Radio Commentary with Alan Butler, WAFS 1190, Atlanta

Weekly radio commentary with Alan Butler, WAFS 1190, Atlanta's Premier Station, 2-27-13. I come on at the 9:30 minute mark. Topics: Obamacare and John Kerry's speech.
http://host1.cyberears.com//18646.mp3

So Tolerant, We Are Stupid, or Vice Versa

John Kerry said to a crowded internet café in Berlin, “In America you have the right to be stupid, if you want to be... and we tolerate that.” Let me translate. Conservatives, you have the right to be wrong, and we, liberals, tolerate your right to be wrong. I would like to add that you also have the right to open your mouth and eliminate any doubt of stupidity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284792/John-Kerry-says-Americans-right-stupid-tells-lost-diplomatic-passport-age-12-sneaking-Soviet-controlled-East-Berlin-1950s.html#ixzz2M46DIy6N

How contrasting these words are to John F. Kennedy’s, in his famous speech in Berlin, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” in which he told Germans indirectly that he understood their plight of living with a country separated by the Wall of Shame, the Berlin Wall, erected by the Russians. Families living on opposite sides of the same street had found themselves separated overnight by a tall concrete wall and barbed wire, guarded by East German soldiers who shot for keeps from looming towers.

President John F. Kennedy had told the roaring crowd that he was a jelly doughnut, yet the world and the Germans applauding him knew what he meant even though the German phrase he had spoken had one too many words, “ein.” Ich bin Berliner, I am German like you.

John Kerry is no JFK. On a nine-country tour of Europe and the Middle East, the newly-minted Secretary of State is promoting religious and political tolerance by showcasing the tolerant America and its multiculturalism. Tolerance is 'something worth fighting for,' he said.

John Kerry continued, “We live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion - and political freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view.” He forgot to mention that this tolerance is one-sided, as long as conservatives agree with the liberal and Democrat points of view. If conservatives disagree with their talking points, they are racists and hate mongers.

“As a 12-year-old, I saw the difference between the east and the west. I saw people were in darker clothing and there were fewer people in the street. There were fewer cars. I didn’t feel the movement and the energy that existed elsewhere.”

Kerry had lived in Berlin in the 1950s with his American diplomat father and his family. He had snuck out one day to the other side, to East Berlin, part of the German Democratic Republic, a totalitarian state established by the Soviet Union with the communist party in power and a socialist collectivist economy.

Kerry first speech as Secretary of State promoted global warming fear mongering and population changes in a speech at the University of Virginia. “We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly super storms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate." It does not matter how many times the non-existent global warming is de-bunked. Arrogant liberals, who think they can control nature and weather-related disasters that have occurred since the beginning of time, continue to promote their manufactured global warming/climate change crisis because there is too much money to be made from carbon swaps and carbon taxes. Well-informed Americans are getting weary of misinformation and propaganda. “Americans are tired of being tired.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/kerry-gives-first-foreign-policy-speech-climate-change_703024.html#sthash.zZ9n9Np3.dpuf

Global warming and population change/manipulation are enshrined in the U.N. Agenda 21, a form of global communism control operating on the premise that the environment must be protected from faux man-made global warming and destruction.  Carbon-taxing citizens from developed nations, redistributing their property to third world countries with the help of the United Nations, and social engineering, moving people from the land into high-rise, congested living/walking/areas into the city would somehow restore the planet to its “pristine” condition. When the definition of “pristine” is evaluated carefully, a scary picture emerges in which man can no longer occupy the land it owns or desires to own, capitalism is a dirty word, and man becomes “persona-non-grata,” an unwanted person.  

That is exactly what communists did to people in East Germany and behind the Iron Curtain when they moved people off the land. Yes, we had fewer cars, wore dark, drab clothing, hid in our dirty grey concrete multi-story apartments without heat, water, or electricity for endless weeks and months, and standing in long lines to get our daily rations of food if we could get to the front of the line before they ran out. It is hard to be energetic when you are hungry and beaten down psychologically. Yet liberals promote U.N. Agenda 21, the return to the very same type of existence. To “protect” the environment that renews itself, they demand fewer cars on the road, public transportation, buses, trains, biking, and walking to work/school, dependent on government for all our needs, a government that cannot run anything right except the military.

We are so tolerant in America that we accept the killing of millions of innocent unborn who want to live as “choice,” we tolerate and reward financially millions of illegal aliens trespassing our borders as “undocumented Americans,” we accept political gridlock, we allow government intrusion into our lives, health care, we endure political correctness, we accept Sharia Law which is incompatible with our Constitution, and permit the deliberate incompetence and corruption of politicians. Yes, we have the right to be stupid in America and, unfortunately, we are fully exercising that right, to the shock and delight of the rest of the world.

The Green Growth Sustainability of Washington, D.C.

The Green Growth Sustainability of U.N. Agenda 21 has finally arrived in our nation’s capital. Mayor Vincent C. Gray announced last week his “Sustainability D.C.” plan to make the District of Columbia “the healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the United States” by 2032.  
He plans “zero-net buildings that generate at least as much energy as they produce,” reducing the amount of salt spread on the roads, and charging residents per bag of trash pickup. (Washington Post, Mike DeBonis, February 20, 2013)
The environmentalists are dancing with joy at the prospect of reducing the city’s potential impact on the manufactured global warming/climate change they’ve been pushing for decades. Reasonable minds wish that the D.C. Mayor would address instead the high crime and poverty rates, real problems in the District.
The capital will have “250,000 more residents, use 50 percent less energy, emit 50 percent fewer greenhouse gases and produce 15 percent less waste.” D.C. will plant 150,000 trees, citizens will have more rooftop greenery, and CFL bulbs will light miles of bike paths.
Regulations will be lessened to allow residents to build more high-rises in transit corridors, convert basements and over-garage space into living quarters, all with the intention of moving people together as compactly as possible.
Building codes will become more stringent in order to reduce carbon footprint, and a percentage of the city’s electricity will have to come from renewables, as well as demanding more investment in public transit. The idea is that over time, cars should become obsolete, moving everybody into public transportation or bike riding.
Mayor Gray plans to use city funds to finance a nearby wind farm and invest in orchards for local food. Even the liberal Washington Post questions why the mayor is not addressing “the true costs and trade-offs” of the ambitious plan.
The op-ed asks, what is more pressing, “quintupling the number of green jobs, or meeting low greenhouse-emissions targets cheaply and on time?” I say, there is no such thing as a green job; it is a fabrication of the Green Growth, Sustainability schemes of U.N. Agenda 21, the plan to confiscate and redistribute wealth to third world nations. (Washington Post, The Green City, February 24, 2013)
The global warming/climate change is a hoax. Environmentalist fibbers conveniently leave out the role of the sun and solar flares on our planet and of the oceanic currents. Environmentalists are nothing more than opportunists making billions and trillions over carbon swaps, taxes, EPA regulations, and carbon footprint regulations. They are using lower-wrung activists who have been brainwashed to promote the man-made global warming/climate change agenda to the low information voters.
The suspect science of human-caused global warming was highlighted on Douglas Carswell’s blog and mea culpa. “My biggest regret as an MP is that I failed to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. It was a mistake. I am sorry.” Britain’s Climate Change Act of 2008 has had serious damaging effects on the economy. (Principia Scientific International, February 25, 2013)

Rajenda Pachuri, the United Nation’s chief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), acknowledged that temperatures have not risen in the last 17 years. Britain’s Met Office confirmed the data. (www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/11014-nothing-off-limits-in-climate-debate)

Dr. James Hansen, NASA’s most prominent and vocal global warming/climate change doomsayer, also acknowledged that “The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”(www.columbia.edu/-jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf)

Dr. Klaus L. E. Kaiser translated a new German study by Professor Heinz Hug. Citing peer reviewed sources, Dr. Hug states, “IPCC assertion that increased greenhouse gas water vapor causes global warming, is wrong.” (http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/hug-barrett.htm)

Dr. Kaiser said, “The reality also is that all the models used by the IPCC and their followers make untenable assumptions, contain internal inconsistencies and totally disregard the physical basis necessary.” (http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53345)

Science is exact, it does not work by “consensus” as declared by United Nations or activist environmentalists. “Consensus is a societal or judicial term which has no place in science.”
(Dr. Klaus Kaiser)

In the same article, Dr. Klaus Kaiser gives a very good explanation why the tropospheric CO2 causes a net cooling effect on our planet, not a greenhouse “blanket.”

 “Look at planet Mars. Its atmosphere contains 950,000 parts per million (ppm) CO2 versus 400 ppm on Earth. Yet, on the side of Mars facing the sun, the temperature is about 30 °C like on Earth, but on the opposite (night) side it is well below MINUS-100 °C (approximately MINUS-200 °F). The thick layer of CO2 on Mars does not at all provide a “warm blanket” on its night side – au contraire – all that CO2 in the Martian atmosphere produces a cooling effect through outward radiation of IR energy its molecules.”

Al Gore’s global warming predictions that the sea levels will rise, flood, and swallow islands and lands opening to the ocean are also wrong. Nils-Axel Mörner, sea level expert, has recently criticized main stream media alarmists, including the United Nations IPCC, for claiming that Bangladeshi floods are caused by man-made global warming. Independent scientists have proven that floods in Bangladesh are caused by rain over the Himalayas and cyclones that push water inland. “This has nothing to do with the sea,” said Mörner.

Here we are, transforming our way of life fundamentally, our cities, District of Columbia included, at great expense and pain to all, based on environmental lies, scientific misinterpretation of data, and U.N. Agenda 21’s schemes to redistribute wealth and to control every facet of life. Would it not be easier if the U.N. and its ardent supporters just came in and confiscated our “ill-gotten wealth” (as they indoctrinate our children in schools) overnight instead of stealthily stealing from us in the name of saving the planet?

 

 

 

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

The hilltop estate of Monticello is not easy to reach. The current owners allow foot traffic but most visitors prefer buses. When clouds cover the sky, access is denied for fear of lightning strikes. The lush vegetation and old majestic trees seclude the manor, making it invisible from the bottom of the mountain.

Monticello’s storied existence was advertised in 1921 as a “dignified country home” overlooking Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1923 the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased the estate from Jefferson Levy for $100,000 in cash and a note of $400,000. http://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/jefferson-monroe-levy

The winding roads and highways to Charlottesville are flanked by beautifully-manicured farms that appear to grow nothing other than luscious green grass on which riding horses graze lazily. The occasional vineyard bears witness to the rich soil soaked with the blood and sweat of thousands of Americans encamped in Virginia or crisscrossing the land during the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. Several battlefields are clearly marked but far away from the road unless a die-hard amateur historian does not mind stepping in knee-high grasses and muddy ditches.

Thomas Jefferson, the builder of Monticello, was a remarkable Renaissance man with a resume that nobody can match today. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), first Secretary of State (1790-1793) under President George Washington, second Governor of Virginia (1779-1781), third President of the United States (1801-1809), diplomat (U.S. Minister to France, 1785-1789), Continental Congress delegate representing Virginia, second Vice President (1797-1801) under President John Adams, Thomas Jefferson oversaw the purchase of Louisiana from France (1803) and sent the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-1806) to explore the new west.

Although President Jefferson signed into law a bill in 1807 that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States, he owned hundreds of slaves at Monticello, Shadwell, and Poplar Forest. None is more famous than Sally Hemmings (1773-1835) who, at the age of 14, was daughter Mary’s maid and accompanied her to Paris. Sally’s duties were to care for Jefferson’s chamber and wardrobe, his children, and to do light work such as sewing. A newspaper reported in 1802 that Jefferson had a “concubine” named Sally. Based on “documentary, scientific, statistical studies and oral history,” many historians believe that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemmings’ children, years after his wife’s death. Sally lived as a free person in Charlottesville after Jefferson’s death.

Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. (1768-1828), married Jefferson’s daughter Martha. He loved botany and agriculture as much as his father-in-law. He helped Jefferson run the plantation business and the often-mismanaged Shadwell mill.

On the Shadwell side of the Rivanna River, Jefferson had built two mills beginning in 1796, in the transition from farming tobacco to growing wheat. The project took ten years and $20,000 for a canal, a dam, and the two mills. One ground grain for home use and the other one was rented out to millers to grind wheat for the market. The commercial mill had the most modern machines in existence at the time for automated milling. The Rivanna River traversed the plantation and transported agricultural products to market and brought other necessary goods to the plantation.

Jefferson had a life-long friend, Adrienne-Catherine de Noailles, countess of Tesse (1741-1814) and aunt to marquis de Lafayette, with whom he shared his love of botany. They exchanged letters long after he left France. Packages containing magnolias, tulip poplars, mountain laurels, red cedars, sassafras, persimmons, and dogwood were sent to her estate in France. She reciprocated with a golden-rain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata) for Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson thought agriculture to be “the most useful of the occupations of man.” He said in 1787,”Agriculture… is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.”

Jefferson owned four farms, Shadwell, Lego, Tufton, and the Monticello home farm. Overseers supervised 30-40 enslaved men and women who lived near and worked in the fields, at first cultivating tobacco and then switching to wheat.

Tobacco was the staple of farming in the 18^th century Virginia. It began to shift to wheat towards the end of the century due to soil depletion and changes in European markets.

Wheat cultivation was more difficult than tobacco; it required crop rotation, machinery such as threshers, fertilizers, draft animals, mills, and plowing. The change did not deter Jefferson who was an innovator and enjoyed a challenge.

Thomas Jefferson was determined to have an American wine production and struggled over many years to plant and replant imported and native vines. He started two vineyards on the south-facing slope below the garden terrace in order to have a Monticello wine. In 1807 he planted 287 rooted vines of 24 of the European table grapes (Vitis vinifera). His incursion into viticulture is evidenced by his desire to have an American winemaking industry. “I am making a collection of vines for wine and for the table.” (1786)

To succeed, Jefferson brought Philip Mazzei (1730-1816), an Italian merchant and horticulturist, and laborers to Virginia in 1773 to help with the cultivation of grapes, olives, and other Mediterranean fruits. The venture failed and Mazzei returned to Europe after a stint in the Revolutionary War effort. They remained lifelong friends.

The daily fresh vegetables came not just from the Monticello’s experimental gardens. Jefferson, but especially the women in his household, his wife, daughter, and granddaughters, often paid cash to slaves for “garden produce, poultry, and eggs” raised by slaves on their own time. Monticello account books show that “Enslaved gardeners sold cucumbers, potatoes, melons, cabbages, simlins (patty-pan squash), apples, tomatoes, and salad greens.” Slaves used underground pits to store hardy produce which they later sold to the main house.

The longest overseer at Monticello was Edmund Bacon (1785-1866) who was responsible for leveling of the beautiful garden terrace, bursting with vegetables, delicate flowers, and aromatic spices. “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.” (Thomas Jefferson, 1811)

Through his 82^nd year, Jefferson attempted to grow plants from around the world. He stayed in touch with botanists, nurserymen, and fellow gardeners, farmers in Virginia and abroad. “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.”

Wormley Hughes (1781-1858) was the trusted gardener who planted seeds, bulbs, and trees. He cared for both the flower and vegetable gardens. Martha Jefferson Randolph freed him upon her father’s death but his wife and eight children were sold at the 1827 dispersal sale.

Even though Jefferson applied the latest knowledge and technology to all his ideas and business efforts, allowing slaves to acquire a variety of skills, to have a self-sufficient farm, the plantation was never profitable. He accumulated so much debt throughout his life that the family was forced to sell the land, the house, the household contents, and the enslaved families upon his death.

The 5,000 acres Monticello plantation, covering the big house on top of the little mountain to Mulberry Row and other outlaying farms, necessitated the labor of enslaved field workers, craftsmen, domestics, free overseers, and members of the Jefferson family who had specific daily duties.

Jefferson supplied food, clothing, blankets, and occasional cash payments to enslaved tradesmen. Enslaved people purchased other belongings from local merchants with earnings from growing and selling garden produce, craft items, cash from additional tasks, and gratuities from visitors. 

When he married Martha Wayles Skelton (1748-1782), she brought with her wealth, slaves, and possessions. She was in charge of all domestic activities at Monticello. During her marriage to Jefferson, she gave birth to six children, but only two survived to adulthood. Thomas Jefferson described their marriage as “ten years of unchequered happiness.”

One of Martha’s most valued house help was Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings (1735-1807) who came to Monticello after the death of Martha’s father, John Wayles. Wayles was thought to be the father of one of Betty’s six children. The daughter of an English sea captain and an enslaved African woman, Hemings was the head of the largest enslaved family at Monticello. Hemings’ 70 descendants lived in bondage at Monticello as servants and craftsmen.

Jefferson inherited 3,000 acres at Shadwell from his father Peter, a surveyor, county justice, and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Shadwell was located across the Rivanna River from Monticello, the mountain in the sky. Growing up at Shadwell afforded Thomas Jefferson an educated childhood surrounded by wealth, books, scientific and drafting instruments, time for curiosity and exploration, travel, and contact with the elite society of those times. His mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson was the daughter of one of Virginia’s most prominent families.

During his five year diplomatic mission to France (1784-1789), Jefferson paid careful attention to technology, commerce, agriculture, and the arts. “I am constantly roving about, to see what I have never seen before and shall never see again.” He would take a month long “botanizing excursion” in 1791 through New England with James Madison and other trips with his 12 year old daughter Martha to visit the northeastern communities that he would be representing in France.

Jefferson studied classical architecture for inspiration to build and remodel his Monticello home. Each room is an example of the five orders of symmetry as written by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Andrea Palladio published his treatise on the history of architecture, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), in 1570, with beautiful illustrations of the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite styles, including his own versions of Italian country homes and estates. Jefferson studied them and used them as inspiration for Monticello.

“…It may be said that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the Fine Arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.” (Francois-Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux, 1782)

Jefferson rented a townhouse in Paris, the Hotel de Langeac, with a main floor for entertainment and separate private spaces for his family’s bedrooms. Infatuated with the elegance of Parisian homes, he built Monticello in that style, adding Palladio’s Corinthian order. Chastelleux noted that the ground floor at Monticello was “chiefly a large and lofty salon,” decorated entirely in the antique style.

Monticello was initially a six-room home with a parlor, dining room, and chamber on the main floor and a study and two bedrooms on the second. In 1775 Jefferson changed the plan, adding “bow” rooms to the north and south and an octagonal bay to the parlor. Ever the innovator and inventor, Jefferson designed a roof that would improve “water shedding.” Benjamin Henry, an architect, credited Jefferson with the innovation called the “zigzag” roof.

Jefferson became the architect and builder of his home. He made the drawings, the detailed list of materials, the quantities needed, and hired 69 brick makers, brick masons, carpenters, joiners, painters, blacksmiths, and other skilled craftsmen. Nine months of the year he served his country and then he tended to his labor of love, his beloved Monticello.

Many letters record the construction process entrusted to James Dinsmore, the principal joiner, an Irishman from Philadelphia whom he hired in 1798. Dinsmore taught his trade to enslaved joiner John Hemmings who created much of Monticello’s fine woodwork. Dinsmore and John Neilson (1805-1809) worked on James Madison’s Montpelier and the University of Virginia after Monticello was completed in 1809.

John Hemmings (1776-1833), the son of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings, became such an accomplished craftsman, he replaced Dinsmore as head joiner and trained other slaves. Hemmings “could make anything that was wanted in woodwork,” fine furniture, a landau carriage, and much of the interior woodwork at Poplar Forest. John Hemmings was freed in Jefferson’s will and received all the tools of his shop but he continued to “live and work for Jefferson’s family for several more years at Monticello with his wife, Priscilla.”

Monticello was hard labor for many people, including the enslaved workers who harvested raw materials from the surrounding plantation and fashioned them into building materials. “They dug red clay for making bricks and quarried limestone to make lime for mortar and plaster. They also felled trees, oak, pine, tulip poplar, black locust, cherry, beech, and walnut, that were hewn and sawn into lumber for framing and woodwork.” The names of the workers, freed or enslaved, were found in documents, letters, and account books.

We will never know the true cost in planning, preparing, time, money, materials, hard labor, sweat and tears that built Monticello, a witness to our past. We are grateful that this important piece of history still exists today to teach valuable lessons in perseverance, dedication, love of the land, botany, agriculture, viticulture, American ingenuity and entrepreneurship, success, failure, bondage, and of human foibles.

Source: Visit to the Monticello Plantation and Museum

Economic Week in Review with Silvio Canto on Blog Talk Radio, 2-22-13

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2013/02/22/the-us-economy-in-review-with-dr-ileana-johnson-paugh

The Affordable Care Act Nobody Can Afford

I was just handed the Phreesia computer tablet by the receptionist under the guise of updating my medical and insurance information. I had seen this orange notebook in another doctor’s office and I became suspicious. Is this really meant to verify, as the website claims, my insurance eligibility automatically and help doctors collect on their insurance while easing the load of paperwork? Or is it forced electronic data compliance to Obamacare?

As soon as I started reading each screen, I realized that it was asking me to consent to third parties to obtain my medication prescription history from my pharmacy and to my entire medical history.

I had the right to request and restrict as to how my protected health information was used or disclosed. However, when I declined to sign, the computer stopped, and prompted me to talk to the receptionist. She informed me that diagnosis and/or treatment “may be conditioned upon my consent.”

The electronic screen and the paper copy the receptionist gave me said, “The [name withheld] is not required to agree to the restrictions that I may request and may refuse treatment based on my restriction as permitted by Section 164.506 of the Code of Federal Regulations.”

Suddenly, because I refused the IRS and HHS meddling in my personal health affairs, I had become persona-non-grata (unwanted person) to my doctor who had sworn a Hippocratic Oath to care for me and any patient who comes across his/her path.

In other words, I would not be treated if I did not sign yes. I had the right to say no, don’t’ give my medical information and history to anyone else but the doctor is not required to honor my request and may refuse treatment to me as permitted by Section 164.506 of the Code of Federal Regulations. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title45-vol1/pdf/CFR-2011-title45-vol1-sec164-506.pdf

What if I said no, do not release my medical history to a third unapproved party and I paid cash? The doctor would not see me. Welcome to the destruction of our stellar healthcare and patient/doctor confidentiality, compliments of Obamacare.

How affordable is this Obamacare, the unfortunately named, the Affordable Care Act? The Democrats and the President said that costs would be so much lower; it would save the typical family $2,500 per year.

The cheapest category of Obamacare is the Bronze Plan which costs $20,000 per year for a family of two adults and three children and it pays only 60% of medical costs after the deductibles for the year have been met. And the deductibles are high per person and per family. The following tiers are Silver (70%), Gold (80%), and Platinum (90%).

During my 30 year teaching career, I seldom had to pay more than $3,600 a year premium for private insurance for my family. Even a retirement private plan did not cost more than $8,000 per year with 80% reimbursement as opposed to only 60% reimbursement under the Obamacare Bronze Plan. Is Obamacare really affordable? The answer is a resounding no.

According to the IRS, the penalty for not buying insurance is capped for now at either the annual Bronze premium, 2.5% of taxable income, or $2,085 per family in 2016.

President Obama said, “If you are one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your insurance.” Heritage’s Amy Payne estimated that “more than 11 million people will no longer have their employer-sponsored health coverage once Obamacare is fully implemented.” (Businesses Cutting Hours, Bracing for Costs of Obamcare, December 6, 2012)

Obamacare employer mandate is killing jobs. An employer with 50 employees must provide coverage or pay $2,000 penalty for each employee after the first 30 workers. It is easy to see how an employer would have to cut back employees to 30, replacing full-time employees with part-time ones, in order to avoid the penalty or the skyrocketing premiums for private coverage.  These private insurance premiums rose significantly because Obamacare mandates insurance for all children up to 26 years old and for those insured with pre-existing conditions whose treatment can be costly.

Breitbart News reported that Pennsylvania Community College of Allegheny County had already cut the hours of 400 adjunct professors, staff, and part-time teachers, saving $6 million in potential Obamacare fees. (Wynton Hall, Obamacare Layoffs, Hiring Freezes Begin, January 5, 2013)

Because of the Obamacare medical device 2.3 percent excise tax, Stryker medical supply cut 1,170 employees (5%). Boston Scientific, Welch Allyn, Medtronic, Kinetic Concepts, and Smith & Nephew are also contemplating cuts in their work force. Zimmer Holdings, makers of hip replacement implants, laid off 450 workers in expectation of a $60 million tax bill in 2013. (Bob Unruh, Democrats in Congress ‘want out’ of Obamacare)

Everybody’s private insurance has been disrupted and private premiums have escalated, in addition to adding the “Cadillac tax” to plans that are judged too generous. According to Jonathan Gruber of MIT and the actuarial firm Milliman, non-group premiums rose 19-30% in some states and 55-85% in others.

The federal government has built a data hub to be used only for Obamacare without saying how it will be run. The HHS has released 13,000 pages of regulations with only 30 days for public comment while attempting to re-engineer 17% of the economy. (WSJ, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Obamacare, December 13, 2012)

On the deadline of December 14, 2012 states had to declare health insurance exchanges. At that time, only six states (Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington) received conditional approval from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to operate their own exchanges. Twenty-six states stated that they will not set up exchanges.

If a state operates its own exchange, it must come up in 2015 with its own source of revenue to run the exchange, making a state a vendor to HHS. The state running an exchange must also expand Medicaid to “able-bodied, low-income, childless adults” in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court ruled the Medicaid expansion voluntary. The federal government was not planning on covering the full cost of such Medicaid expansion. “Half of the reduction in the number of uninsured promised under Obamacare was based on mandating that states expand Medicaid.” (Heritage’s Morning Bell, December 13, 2012)

Several states asked Sibelius, the HHS Secretary, if they could expand Medicaid less. The answer was that only full compliance with the law will garner 90% reimbursement from the federal government. Nine states have refused to expand Medicaid to cover new populations. The feds will set up their own exchanges in those states but final regulations and specifics for the federal exchanges are not made public yet. Oklahoma and Maine have sued over Medicaid expansion and over statutory language and Medicaid expansion, respectively.

Three deadline extensions of implementing health exchanges have passed. Most states will share responsibilities with the federal government or default to a federal-run exchange. Only a minority of states have agreed to run their own exchanges.

A 3.5 percent administrative fee on coverage sold through federally-run exchanges will be levied. An additional $63 fee per employee must be paid in federal fees to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

Government funds will be set aside to promote/advertise [on primetime] Obamacare. Critics of the unaffordable health care law call such advertising “political advocacy.”

Practicing medicine will become more and less a government-run monopoly instead of the current monopolistic competition where patients are free to choose what doctors they go to, based on preference, doctor qualifications, specialty, reputation, insurance types, and premiums they choose to pay.

Doctors will either merge with hospitals, insurance companies, and specialty management firms or become “concierge” doctors, serving a reduced number of patients for a set fee. Consolidation will have a negative effect on patient access, price, and competition. Mergers in the 1980s and 1990s had negative effects in terms of patients being restricted or blocked from access to specialists and procedures.

More than $719 billion will be taken from Medicare over the next ten years to pay for Obamacare. According to Rep. Wally Herger, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, the Independent Payment Advisory Board established by Obamacare is authorized to unilaterally impose price controls and de facto rationing of medical care.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/11/medicare-reform-crucial-for-economic-health/

Medicare is already in trouble. Taking $719 billion over ten years from Medicare to fund Obamcare will exacerbate financial problems. Medicare benefits are not a return on taxes paid into the system over time because Medicare is run as “pay as you go” - today’s wage earners pay taxes to fund benefits for today’s retirees. Since people live longer, “Medicare payroll taxes cover only 38 percent of current benefits.” (Rep. Wally Herger)

Obamacare depends on bringing young, healthy people into insurance markets to help offset the costs of insuring the old and the sick. If young people do not participate in the program and elect to pay the fine instead, Obamacare will not be able to make coverage affordable for the uninsured.

Most young Americans do not have insurance. Young people who do have insurance purchase less coverage. Under Obamcare, young Americans must get more coverage and pay more whether they want the added coverage or not. Private insurers have increased their premiums because the law prohibits them from rejecting the sick, and are no longer allowed to charge higher premiums to older customers. Premiums for a young, healthy male could go up as much as three times. Young adults could then opt out of private coverage, causing the market to implode. (Washington Post, Insurers Warn of Health Law ‘Rate Shock,’ N.C. Aizenman, February 16, 2013)

To make matters worse, government officials announced on February 15, 2013 that state-based “high-risk pools” under Obamacare will be closed to new applicants on February 16 through March 2, depending on the state, because funding is running low. The existing 100,000 enrollees will not be affected. If the funding is running low now, what will happen by the time Obamacare is fully in force?

There is a glitch in Obamacare that could leave more than 500,000 children uninsured. Congress defined “affordable” in the Affordable Care Act as coverage not exceeding 9.5 % of family income. If people have coverage that fall under this 9.5% affordable, they cannot get subsidies to go into new insurance markets. This restriction was put into place to prevent people from switching from employer coverage to exchanges in droves. “Affordable” was calculated based on self-only, individual worker, with an average market cost of $5,600. But the current market family coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, is $15,700 per year. IRS announced on January 30, 2013, that employers are not required to pay for dependents, leaving the employee to pay the family premium since he/she will be locked out of subsidies in the federal exchanges.

Betsey McCaughey wrote that Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prediction that Obamacare would leave only 30 million people uninsured in 2016 was predicated on the assumption that kids would be covered by employees. If a parent is covered at work, no subsidies will be provided for the child in the health exchange.

Millions of people will remain uninsured because their states are choosing [wisely] not to expand Medicaid. The states do not have the money to expand Medicaid.

By the time the uninsured will be counted, almost as many Americans (40 million plus) will be left without insurance as the number of uninsured before the Democrats passed their signature monstrosity, the Affordable Care Act. Having sat in a drawer for decades, the bill was dusted off, repackaged, and polished. Nobody took the time to publicly debate or read the bill that passed after some arm-twisting.  The Democrats, who had promised free health care for all, feverishly proceeded to spend trillions of dollars we did not have to re-engineer our health care system in the name of social justice.

The states that refuse to set up health exchanges are expected to sell the government-mandated plans and to give out taxpayer-funded subsidies to those who enroll. Betsey McCaughey identifies the glitch:

“The law says that in states that refuse, the federal government can set up an exchange. But the law empowers only state exchanges, not federal ones, to hand out subsidies. The Obama administration says it will disregard the law and offer subsidies in all 50 states anyway, but the case will likely go to the Supreme Court.” http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/wheels_coming_off_QPojjZX0Bd8BU80hDpcKZP

To safeguard from disaster, take care of your body, eat right, exercise if you can, and pray very hard that you will not get sick. There is a good chance that there will not be enough highly qualified doctors to deliver care when needed even if you do have insurance. Should you need specialists, expensive drugs or surgery, you are out of luck. Rationing will tell you, “no, you can’t have it.” The emergency rooms will be filled to capacity with confused, desperate, sick people, and new illegal alien arrivals.

 

The Irony of Green Propaganda

The supporters of global warming met in Washington, D.C. on February 17, 2013 to pressure President Obama to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. The irony was evident to the rest of us. The green environmentalists were bundled up to their eyeballs since it was the coldest day this winter, 16 degrees Fahrenheit if you factored in the wind chill.

Protesters claim that tar sands, fracking, fossil fuels, and especially “dirty” coal are the enemy of ordinary Americans while the same Americans are fed up with paying unnecessary high prices for gasoline and electricity when our country has such vast resources of oil and natural gas that are not being tapped.

I wonder if Europeans knew in 1300-1850 that their Little Ice Age was caused by human activity since global warming alarmists were not around to inform them and force them to change their planet-altering life-style.

In the Blitzkrieg of constant manufactured crises, the media machine is deflecting people’s attention from the real issues affecting our country. Everyone is overwhelmed by a never-ending string of real and imagined catastrophic occurrences. Citizens seem to have lost the ability to judge for themselves and discern truth from fiction.

Bombarded by a deluge of MSM propaganda, low information Americans believed that the passengers suffering inconveniences caused by a disabled cruise ship that had lost its power for five days was akin to hurricane Katrina suffering. Can we have a reality check?

If power outage disabled such a large ship, have irrational lefties asked themselves what would happen to a major city if a massive electricity shortage caused the power to go out for days, weeks, and months? Would solar panels and wind mills restore electricity, clean water, sanitation, sewage disposal, heat, A/C, and normalcy to the city? How many people would die from pestilence alone?

The environmentalists demand that the “evil” coal-powered plants be shut down, and many have been shut down, because coal destroys the planet. A large portion of our electricity does come from “dirty” coal. Beloved hybrids and electric cars need fossil fuels and electricity generated by coal, hydro, and nuclear power plants, another industry that progressives want shut down.

Then there is the filthy little secret of solar-generated energy. It may be cleaner than coal-generated energy, however, in the production process, solar panel manufacturers create millions of pounds of contaminated water and toxic sludge which must be transported and disposed of hundreds of miles away.

The hazardous waste disposal costs (transportation via rail or trucks which burn fossil fuels) is not included or calculated in the solar panels carbon footprint. The polluted sludge is shipped because new solar panel manufacturers have not built facilities to recycle part of the sludge and to dispose of the carcinogenic cadmium properly.

Dustin Mulvaney, an “environmental studies professor who conducts carbon footprint analyses of solar, biofuel and natural gas production,” calculated that shipping 6.2 million pounds of waste by eighteen wheelers from California to a site 1,800 miles away would add 5 percent in carbon footprint.

Jason Dearen of the Associated Press compiled a list of 41 California manufacturers of solar panels and reported that no such data exists at the federal level.

“The state records show the 17 companies, which had 44 manufacturing facilities in California, produced 46.5 million pounds of sludge and contaminated water from 2007 through the first half of 2011. Roughly 97 percent of it was taken to hazardous waste facilities throughout the state, but more than 1.4 million pounds were transported to nine other states: Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.” (Jason Dearen)

Does creating 100 Megawatt of energy to power 100,000 homes (as the now bankrupt Solyndra did) balance out the 12.5 million pounds of hazardous waste that could seep into our drinking water? Yet Mulvaney said that coal-fired plants and natural gas plants create more than ten times the hazardous waste created by a solar panel. (http://news.yahoo.com/solar-industry-grapples-hazardous-wastes-184714679.html)

One problem not addressed in calculations is the fact that solar panels need thousands of acres of land to display them, land that cannot be used for agriculture. Wind energy generation is problematic because huge wind mills kill a lot of birds and the noise pollution created is unbearable and unacceptable in populated areas when the wind exceeds 30 mph. Wind mills do not create electricity when idle and need back up from conventional power just like solar panels.

This brings me back to the war on coal waged by environmentalists and their powerful lobby. In 2012, the electricity generated from coal was 36% compared to the previous year of 44.6%, a considerable drop caused by the unprecedented regulatory assault on coal.

PJM Interconnection, which operates power for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia), held its 2015 capacity auction.

President Obama’s promise that “electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket” is coming to fruition. According to A.J. Cameron, “The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt,” eight times higher than the 2012 price of $16 per megawatt. New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and D.C. price is $167 per megawatt. First Energy’s price in northern Ohio is $357 per megawatt. Ohio has more forced coal-fired plants shutdowns thus the higher price.

Why are prices so much higher? Andy Ott of PJM explains, “Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015.”

The Environmental Protection Agency regulators are winning the war on coal and most Americans are going to suffer, including the clueless greens.

“The PJM auction forecasts a dim future where Americans will be paying more to keep the lights on. We are seeing more and more coal plants fall victim to EPA’s destructive regulatory agenda, and as a result, we are seeing more job losses and higher electricity prices.” (Ed Whitfield, House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman)

British Petroleum published a report with projection of long-term energy trends, “Energy Outlook 2030,” in which it predicted that United States will be 99 percent energy self-sufficient by 2030 due to shale gas and oil produced by hydraulic fracturing. “It could result in a re-industrialization of the U.S.” Being more skeptical, I believe that it could happen if the EPA would lessen its onerous regulatory stronghold on economic development. http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9048887&contentId=7082549

“The natural gas boom in America will also lead to a significant reduction in greenhouse gases, since natural gas-fired power plants produce around half as much carbon emissions as coal-fired plants, and just 1 percent as much sulfur oxide.” (Newsmax, February 3, 2013)

As long as the President is in brilliant campaign mode, he can divorce himself from reality and pretend he is trying to solve the very problems he has created by blaming President Bush and the rich and greedy people. He has not solved any problems but has been quite successful in convincing a majority of Americans that he has. In the meantime, progressives push renewables and the misery and costly war on coal continues.

The Starving Goose

My friend sent me a story that explains quite succinctly what happens to people who are so eager to become enslaved to more government and to communist utopia.

A famous communist leader, having been aided by western powers to amass a sizable portion of a continent, gave his underlings a valuable lesson in power and control. He asked them to convene at his palace. His lecture was going to be taught just once – his time was too valuable to waste. The apparatchiks were directed to bring a goose to the seminar.

Each acquired a bird, built a sizable cage to house it, and proceeded to feed it well. On a given day, all gathered in the grand ballroom of the palace, carrying various cages.

Arriving fifteen minutes late for good measure, the leader entered the grand ballroom followed by a very thin goose. With each step he took, the goose reached in his pocket, begging for grain. Magnanimously, and with studied aplomb, he fed it one single grain from time to time.

The underlings stood up and congratulated each other for being there, applauding the presence of the great one. The dear leader asked them to open the cages and to release the geese. As soon as the geese sensed that the cage had been unbolted and they were free to go, the birds took off, ignoring their masters.

The only bird left was the dear leader’s starving goose. Ever so attentive, she looked up to him with a sad face, waiting for her master to dispense one single grain of food.

“Do you see what happened if you fed them too much? They forgot who you were and no longer recognized you as their master. My faithful goose, fed just a few grains a day, enough to keep her from starving to death, is the most loyal bird.”

The abject lesson of near starvation and meager dependency was the dear leader’s recipe to lead a nation of blind followers.

 

National Blog Talk Radio 2-15-13

Radio dialog with Silvio Canto Jr. of Dallas on economy, Obamacare, and eurozone.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2013/02/15/the-us-economy-in-review-with-dr-ileana-johnson-paugh

An Army of One and Fiscal Uncertainty

In a January 24, 2013 breakfast speech, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno warned his audience that “Today, the greatest threat of our national security is fiscal uncertainty.” (www.army.mil/article/95007/Jan242013CSAremarkstoAUSAILWBreakfast/)

Our volunteer army has over 88,000 soldiers deployed, 56,000 in Afghanistan alone, thousands in Kuwait, Qatar, Kosovo, Sinai, Horn of Africa and 91,000 soldiers stationed in 150 countries. In the last twelve years, 1.5 million men and women have deployed overseas and half a million of these soldiers served on multiple tours, some 2-5 times. My friend’s daughter Bonnie served four tours. It is a strong, well-trained, remarkable, and honorable army. But no army and exceptional training in the world can protect and serve our country’s needs without proper funding.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote a letter on January 14, 2013 to Congress leaders expressing angst over the future readiness of our Armed Forces in light of the current budget conditions.

The Senate has not passed a budget in four years. Operating on continuing resolutions and the specter of more continuing resolutions for 2013 has already cost the Army a deficit of more than $6 billion in operation and maintenance accounts because money cannot be moved from one budget that is “overprescribed” to another budget that is “undersubscribed.”

The sequestration threat of 9 percent across the board cuts and the Department of Defense cuts will cause an additional shortfall of $6 billion in operations and maintenance for the FY 2013 for a total of $12 billion.

The funding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Overseas Contingency Operations) is also uncertain, potentially experiencing a $5-7 billion gap in financial needs for operations and maintenance. By March 1, when the debt ceiling is reached again, the Army will face a drastic total shortfall of $17-19 billion.

According to Gen. Odierno, prioritizing will guarantee that soldiers in Afghanistan or going to Afghanistan will be prepared, soldiers going to Korea will be properly equipped, but the readiness of the Division-Ready Brigade at Fort Bragg may suffer, as well as the training and maintenance across the Army.

Immediate effects in the next six months will include “extremely low levels of readiness,” cancellation of rotations, delay in equipment coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and maintenance on current fleets. Afghanistan is a land-locked country and moving equipment out is very expensive. Delays due to lack of funding in 2013 will definitely snowball into FY 2014 and FY 2015.

To mitigate the fiscal uncertainty, the Secretary of the Army and Gen. Odierno have prepared to:

-          Freeze immediately all civilian hiring

-          Terminate temporary employees

-          Furlough the civilian workforce

-          Curtail temporary duties and missions that are not critical

-          Reduce thirty percent in installation operation costs

-          Cancel and reset of orders for 2013 of units that have not deployed or were set to deploy

Decisions have not been made yet for contracts, studies, facilities management, community services, and research and development programs.

Gen. Odierno described the situation as serious in the “highly uncertain global security environment.” He surmised, “This is a time that I would say is not a time of peace and stability around the world.” There is great instability around the globe, in Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and the Middle East. “The Arab Spring has not sprung yet.” The Sinai is the biggest concern [we’ve had] in the last 30 years in terms of stability, particularly at a time of fiscal problems.

In the next five years, the Active Duty force will be reduced to 490,000 in an environment where the Budget Control Act has already cut $500 billion. Plans were made before sequestration for the removal of soldiers from 21 installations in the United States. Modernization efforts were reduced; this begs the question, how ready and strong are we? And what will happen to veterans’ services, medical care, military families, Wounded Warrior program, and transitioning back to civilian life program?

Can we afford to become too weak militarily? Can we really ensure that we don’t have to go to war, that we can prevent conflict when the world is a basket case of uncertainty and renewed aggression from many directions? Are we so naïve to believe that we can hit a reset button that will make everything peaceful, new, and friendly? We should always remember that “The strength of our Nation is our Army” and the ability to defend ourselves in the face of evil.

 

 

 

The Insidious Globalist Control

The State of the Union address, however disingenuous, contained two interesting seeds of truth. I had mentioned them in my book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” The two seeds of truth are universal child care and equal pay for women, contained in Section III, Chapter 24:3.

(d) Programmes to promote the reduction of the heavy workload of women and girl
children at home and outside through the establishment of more and affordable
nurseries and kindergartens by Governments, local authorities, employers and
other relevant organizations and the sharing of household tasks by men and women
on an equal basis, and to promote the provision of environmentally sound
technologies which have been designed, developed and improved in consultation
with women, accessible and clean water, an efficient fuel supply and adequate
sanitation facilities;
(f) Programmes to support and strengthen equal employment opportunities and
equitable remuneration for women in the formal and informal sectors with
adequate economic, political and social support systems and services, including
child care, particularly day-care facilities and parental leave, and equal
access to credit, land and other natural resources;

The excerpt is found in Agenda 21, signed in 1992 by 178 countries; the document describes in 40 chapters the eventual regulation of every aspect of human behavior and economic activity once Agenda 21 is completely implemented around the globe, making the United Nations and its global governance cabal the ultimate authority.

The two directives may be necessary in third world countries and nations ruled by totalitarian regimes that discriminate and abuse women, but are definitely not necessary in developed countries where women and children are protected by laws and the government’s welfare system.

It is not necessary to have further government intrusion in child care and equal pay for women. The government already controls Head Start, k-12 education, with not so stellar results in many states, while liberal professors complete the socialist indoctrination at the university level. We already have laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on gender.

Just how much control do we need or want, and how much are the global governors willing to inject into the various societies around the planet?

Jack Doyle revealed that a new health service program in the U.K. called Everyone Counts will force general practitioners to disclose confidential records to NHS (National Health Service) involving weight, cholesterol, BMI (body mass index), family health history, pulse rate, alcohol consumption, and smoking status. The biggest data grab so far, the invasion of privacy will become permanent even though officials have insisted that it will be deleted after analysis. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272166/Big-brother-log-drinking-habits-waist-size.html)

Once Obamacare is fully implemented in the U.S., previous confidential data between patient and doctor will become part of the government’s data base to be used as they see fit.

But the control does not stop here. When we shop in grocery stores, our buying habits have been compiled and sold to the Department of Agriculture and other third parties. The data can be stored and synchronized with the new health care cards issued by the health care exchanges of Obamacare.

How far of a stretch will it be to have special food purchase cards that must be used anytime groceries are purchased? Could such cards prevent you from buying alcohol or certain fattening foods, based on your specific health care information? If you don’t comply, you may have to consult a doctor in order to change your eating, drinking, smoking, or whatever unhealthy habits you may have.

The New York City government is already meddling in the people’s sodium intake and the size of beverages purchased. Portion size and food offerings have already been changed in schools across the country and in some restaurants. That is not to say that we should not be eating healthy food and drinking in moderation, however, why should the government be the nanny that dictates what we eat or drink?

If you think the idea far-fetched, consider this. The World Economic Forum 2013 in Davos, Switzerland, recognized obesity as a danger to human health and discussed how to deal with or tax those who are obese.

Fifty global risks were assessed by 1,000 omniscient experts from industry, government and academia, who were “polled on how they expect 50 global risks to play out over the next ten years. The results were compiled into an analysis of three major risk areas, Testing Economic and Environmental Resilience, Digital Wildfires in a Hyperconnected World, and the Dangers of Hubris on Human Health.” The Davos report also included a chapter on “X Factors,” concerns identified by experts with unknown consequences. Although these consequences are not known, it did not stop experts from speculating and scaring low information humans into preventive compliance. (http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-risks)

Our consumption of meds may be affected as international efforts are underway to curtail use of antibiotics through government regulatory control. Global monitoring of antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread is recommended. “Significant reduction in antibiotic use can be achieved in human medicine.”

Davos experts recommended the use of public-private partnerships, partnerships promoted by U.N. Agenda 21, to incentivize the development of new antibiotics. Knowledge must be shared freely between academia, private companies, and government regulators.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation developed the “open-lab” research concept in which patented monopolies and secrecy would no longer exist if innovation is to be achieved. This flies in the face of capitalist beliefs that ideas, entrepreneurship, and individual hard work are rewarded. Instead, the Foundation advocates that ideas and research should be given away from inception for the public good. It is easier to promote such generosity when you already have amassed so many billions, you cannot possibly spend them in a lifetime. 

Davos conference also reported that humans do not understand the risks from satellites. Disruptions can be catastrophic in telephone service, financial markets, Internet, banking, data centers, energy delivery via Smart Grid, TV industry, weather predictions, emergency rescue, peacekeeping, and military operations. The risks are identified as the three main “black swan” events:

-          Satellites targeted in a conflict between states

-          Strong geomagnetic storms

-          Collisions with space debris

The solution offered by the experts is more control – the “critical space-based infrastructure” (satellites et al) must be managed sustainably – sustainability is bedrock mantra of U.N. Agenda 21 control.

The top five global risks by likelihood identified by Davos experts were:

-          Severe income disparity

-          Chronic fiscal imbalances

-          Rising greenhouse gas emissions

-          Water supply crises

-          Mismanagement of population ageing

The top five global risks by impact identified by Davos experts were:

-          Major systemic financial failure

-          Water supply crises

-          Chronic fiscal imbalances

-          Food shortage crises

-          Diffusion of weapons of mass destruction (p. 10)

The most interesting part of the Davos report is the chapter on “X Factors” developed with the editors of Nature, the leading science journal, which analyzes five “emerging game-changers:”

(p. 12)

-          Runaway climate change (postulating that we have possibly passed the point of no return, causing the planet’s atmosphere to go into the “inhospitable state” (I know global warming/climate change has been debunked voluminously by science, it appears that it does not matter to these people’s agenda)

-          Significant cognitive enhancement (if athletes take drugs to enhance their abilities, why not in daily life and particularly in “neural enhancement of combat troops”)

-          Rogue deployment of geo-engineering (technology that manipulates the climate is acceptable as long as a state or private individuals do not use it unilaterally)

-          Costs of living longer (prolonging life through palliative care is expensive and “could be a struggle;” the report does not propose the alternative but it is easy to read between the lines)

-          Discovery of alien life (proof of life in the universe might profoundly affect the human belief system psychologically)

Another interesting section of the Davos report deals with Digital Wildfire in a Hyperconnected World - Benefits and Risks of the Social Media as part of the Internet. Three examples illustrated a response from a disgruntled customer incident, a defamation of character incident, and “an affront to religious sensitivities” story.

“The existence on YouTube of a video entitled “Innocence of Muslims”, uploaded by a private individual in the United States, sparked riots across the Middle East. These riots are estimated to have claimed more than 50 lives.” (http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/risk-case-1/digital-wildfires-in-a-hyperconnected-world/#/view/fn-12)

Although it has been documented that the riots in the Middle East were not sparked by a video, the Davos report included this fallacy.

The experts seem to have misgivings about the fact that millions of individuals have the freedom to broadcast widely across the globe when prior to the Internet age only a handful of elite organizations had the capacity to broadcast extensively, and this “reality has challenging implications.”

The Davos report also mentions the concepts of “Astroturfing”, Satire, “Trolling,” and Attribution Difficulties. Nancy Pelosi did use the term “astroturfing” when referring to the Tea Party rallies.

Because the report considers social media as one of the greatest risks, a “global digital ethos” is recommended in light of the fact that governments are debating how “existing laws which limit freedom of speech, for reasons such as incitement of violence or panic, might also be applied to online activities.” The globalist experts are not worried that the freedom of speech would be curtailed, they are worried how it would be enforced and who would be trusted to enforce it. Additionally, low education users are “much less knowledgeable than editors of traditional media outlets about laws relating to issues such as libel and defamation,” posing further problems.

It will be a very sad day when the Internet will be controlled to the point that all information will come from the alphabet soup networks that are now a self-appointed propaganda arm of the perennial presidential campaign. In a hyper connected world, the globalists want to shape the information culture to their desired designs, and to govern the digital media.