Month: October 2019

The relationship between Americans and their health care delivery is about to make a dramatic change for the worse.  Consumers of health care are poised to vote for a federally managed system.  Why would they go down this predictably awful rabbit hole?  They’ll do it because they are overwhelmed and frightened in the current system.  They’ll do it because this may be the only option that a typical voter understands.  They’ll do it because our elected leaders do not have the courage to enact changes that could make things work and don’t want to give up power.  And it will happen because the media will demonize and target anyone who isn’t on the socialist bandwagon.

Currently, we have a situation in America where the insured among us are utilizing health care less than in the past.  This is because of the financial implications of high-deductible insurance policies, most people’s only affordable option.  As a result, it is arguable that the very people who bear the financial burden for our medical care — namely, the minority among us who are insured Americans — are among those getting the worst care in our country.  It is well known that Americans often live on the edge of their finances.  So when it comes to budgeting for our deductible when health issues arise, we are frequently left with hard decisions.  This often results in the insured tolerating illness rather than seeking appropriate, expensive care.

The result of this development will most assuredly result in even conservative voters being swayed toward a federally managed health delivery system.  With the elderly freely using Medicare and Medicaid participants getting treatment with seemingly no debilitating financial consequences, it would be easy to desire something similar for the rest of us.  After all, what could be more messed up than the current system, where a simple visit to the emergency room can lead to bankruptcy?

The federal option for health care delivery will undoubtedly be wretched.  Ask any veteran or doctors who trained at those hospitals about their experience with the V.A., the best example of a federally run health delivery option.  You’ll hear stories that will curl your toes.  It is not possible for government to provide quality care in a timely manner affordably, just as equality and liberty can’t coexist without one sacrificing itself to the other.  Add on the layers of bureaucracy in a federally run hospital to the inefficiencies and redundancies they mandate, and the results are predictable.

Yet the people may opt for it anyway, because it is hard to imagine relying on the current system creating a more affordable market.  We are not using the economic tools that work to bring down costs.  There is no such thing as capitalism or a free market in health care delivery.  If a group of doctors think they can provide better care at cheaper prices than your community hospital, they cannot easily do so.  Government regulations would not grant them permission, because it is more “in the community’s interest” to keep the inefficient and expensive existing hospital afloat than to allow the creative destruction that capitalism provides.  Ending local government’s control over “certificate of need” would lower costs, but politics keeps these laws going.

Additionally, hospitals are allowed to charge much more for services than private practitioners of medicine and surgery.  This is because they have convinced local governments that this is justifiable because they have to take care of the indigent.  A lot of the recent dramatic rise in health care costs is a result of the incestuous relationship between hospital corporations and the government.  Doctors are getting absorbed into hospital employment with the lure that their pay will not go down as precipitously if they are paid the higher allowable fees that they can bill through the hospital.

You can add the insurance industry to the hospital corporations and the government as the three players that keep the system unaffordable and non-competitive.  Many competitive options for insurance coverage could decrease cost.  But these are opposed by the industry and are lobbied away.  The laws that could make these legal are unlikely to be enacted because power would shift from government and insurance companies to the individual.

One such idea is insurance pooling.  Suppose that someone who would normally be almost uninsurable, like a 33-year-old waitress with Crohn’s disease, could join in with other waitresses and shop as a group for policies across state lines.  This would put market forces to work and necessarily drive down her costs.  This is because most waitresses are young and fairly healthy, and the actuaries in the insurance companies would jump to bid for this business.  For particularly difficult to insure populations, there could even be federally subsidized pools.  This could work for the uninsured and unemployed.

For this concept to work, there would have to be allowances for buying insurance across state lines.  Politicians have too many pet causes to allow this to happen.  Most insurance coverage in New York City mandates coverage for transgender operations.  Years ago in Connecticut, insurance had to cover hair plugs.  As you might suspect, insurance can run much higher in these environments when compared to similar coverage (not including these boondoggles) in the upper Midwest.  If a resident of New York or Connecticut could buy the Midwestern policy for similar coverage without the local mandates, costs would go down.

Another priority would be transferring ownership of insurance to individuals rather than through their employers.  But tax incentives encourage the opposite.  Policies that do not end when changing jobs or crossing into other states would be preferable, but business tax deductions change the game.  If individuals could deduct insurance cost, as businesses have traditionally done, it could work.

Tort reform would remove a lot of dysfunction and wasteful spending.  But most lawmakers are lawyers, so the possibility of goring this cash cow is remote.  (What will happen to this sector if the federal government runs medicine?)  Allowing information technology to evolve naturally rather than instituting top-down, central control to the medical records, billing, and other information systems would result in savings, too.  But I.T. is essential to maintaining power, which makes any change non-negotiable.

Americans may have had enough, egged on by progressive media.  Plots to make medical care more affordable by re-introducing the free market and capitalism through changes in the current laws seem to have died off.  The fawning hero-worship directed toward former president Obama by the media glorified the idea of health care as a human right, with support for this wrong-headed idea achieving his goal of “fundamentally changing America.”  Medicare for all is depicted in the press as a desirable idea despite common sense suspecting the contrary.  When it is shown that the cost of administering health care through the existing system proves that insurance companies eat up around a third of the health care dollar, it does seem ridiculous to maintain the status quo.  After all, the cost of administration in the Veterans Administration is far less.  But we know intuitively that care will be worse.  And, as anyone who knows history can tell you, giving them power over our health care decision-making will be the final nail in the coffin of our freedom.

Yet, when the simple idea of a Health Savings Account, a necessary pillar of any health care reform, is above the heads of many voters, we have lost.  Because the media will shoot down any politician brave enough to try anything but a federal option (remember Tom Price, [R-GA]?), it is harder than ever to have any kind of inertia for reasonable change.  With the shortsightedness of insurance companies and hospital corporations essentially pricing themselves out of existence for access to more money today, it looks hopeless.  And when federal debt continues to be viewed as a “so what?” by politicians and citizens alike, we are done. 

The relationship between Americans and their health care delivery is about to make a dramatic change for the worse.  Consumers of health care are poised to vote for a federally managed system.  Why would they go down this predictably awful rabbit hole?  They’ll do it because they are overwhelmed and frightened in the current system.  They’ll do it because this may be the only option that a typical voter understands.  They’ll do it because our elected leaders do not have the courage to enact changes that could make things work and don’t want to give up power.  And it will happen because the media will demonize and target anyone who isn’t on the socialist bandwagon.

Currently, we have a situation in America where the insured among us are utilizing health care less than in the past.  This is because of the financial implications of high-deductible insurance policies, most people’s only affordable option.  As a result, it is arguable that the very people who bear the financial burden for our medical care — namely, the minority among us who are insured Americans — are among those getting the worst care in our country.  It is well known that Americans often live on the edge of their finances.  So when it comes to budgeting for our deductible when health issues arise, we are frequently left with hard decisions.  This often results in the insured tolerating illness rather than seeking appropriate, expensive care.

The result of this development will most assuredly result in even conservative voters being swayed toward a federally managed health delivery system.  With the elderly freely using Medicare and Medicaid participants getting treatment with seemingly no debilitating financial consequences, it would be easy to desire something similar for the rest of us.  After all, what could be more messed up than the current system, where a simple visit to the emergency room can lead to bankruptcy?

The federal option for health care delivery will undoubtedly be wretched.  Ask any veteran or doctors who trained at those hospitals about their experience with the V.A., the best example of a federally run health delivery option.  You’ll hear stories that will curl your toes.  It is not possible for government to provide quality care in a timely manner affordably, just as equality and liberty can’t coexist without one sacrificing itself to the other.  Add on the layers of bureaucracy in a federally run hospital to the inefficiencies and redundancies they mandate, and the results are predictable.

Yet the people may opt for it anyway, because it is hard to imagine relying on the current system creating a more affordable market.  We are not using the economic tools that work to bring down costs.  There is no such thing as capitalism or a free market in health care delivery.  If a group of doctors think they can provide better care at cheaper prices than your community hospital, they cannot easily do so.  Government regulations would not grant them permission, because it is more “in the community’s interest” to keep the inefficient and expensive existing hospital afloat than to allow the creative destruction that capitalism provides.  Ending local government’s control over “certificate of need” would lower costs, but politics keeps these laws going.

Additionally, hospitals are allowed to charge much more for services than private practitioners of medicine and surgery.  This is because they have convinced local governments that this is justifiable because they have to take care of the indigent.  A lot of the recent dramatic rise in health care costs is a result of the incestuous relationship between hospital corporations and the government.  Doctors are getting absorbed into hospital employment with the lure that their pay will not go down as precipitously if they are paid the higher allowable fees that they can bill through the hospital.

You can add the insurance industry to the hospital corporations and the government as the three players that keep the system unaffordable and non-competitive.  Many competitive options for insurance coverage could decrease cost.  But these are opposed by the industry and are lobbied away.  The laws that could make these legal are unlikely to be enacted because power would shift from government and insurance companies to the individual.

One such idea is insurance pooling.  Suppose that someone who would normally be almost uninsurable, like a 33-year-old waitress with Crohn’s disease, could join in with other waitresses and shop as a group for policies across state lines.  This would put market forces to work and necessarily drive down her costs.  This is because most waitresses are young and fairly healthy, and the actuaries in the insurance companies would jump to bid for this business.  For particularly difficult to insure populations, there could even be federally subsidized pools.  This could work for the uninsured and unemployed.

For this concept to work, there would have to be allowances for buying insurance across state lines.  Politicians have too many pet causes to allow this to happen.  Most insurance coverage in New York City mandates coverage for transgender operations.  Years ago in Connecticut, insurance had to cover hair plugs.  As you might suspect, insurance can run much higher in these environments when compared to similar coverage (not including these boondoggles) in the upper Midwest.  If a resident of New York or Connecticut could buy the Midwestern policy for similar coverage without the local mandates, costs would go down.

Another priority would be transferring ownership of insurance to individuals rather than through their employers.  But tax incentives encourage the opposite.  Policies that do not end when changing jobs or crossing into other states would be preferable, but business tax deductions change the game.  If individuals could deduct insurance cost, as businesses have traditionally done, it could work.

Tort reform would remove a lot of dysfunction and wasteful spending.  But most lawmakers are lawyers, so the possibility of goring this cash cow is remote.  (What will happen to this sector if the federal government runs medicine?)  Allowing information technology to evolve naturally rather than instituting top-down, central control to the medical records, billing, and other information systems would result in savings, too.  But I.T. is essential to maintaining power, which makes any change non-negotiable.

Americans may have had enough, egged on by progressive media.  Plots to make medical care more affordable by re-introducing the free market and capitalism through changes in the current laws seem to have died off.  The fawning hero-worship directed toward former president Obama by the media glorified the idea of health care as a human right, with support for this wrong-headed idea achieving his goal of “fundamentally changing America.”  Medicare for all is depicted in the press as a desirable idea despite common sense suspecting the contrary.  When it is shown that the cost of administering health care through the existing system proves that insurance companies eat up around a third of the health care dollar, it does seem ridiculous to maintain the status quo.  After all, the cost of administration in the Veterans Administration is far less.  But we know intuitively that care will be worse.  And, as anyone who knows history can tell you, giving them power over our health care decision-making will be the final nail in the coffin of our freedom.

Yet, when the simple idea of a Health Savings Account, a necessary pillar of any health care reform, is above the heads of many voters, we have lost.  Because the media will shoot down any politician brave enough to try anything but a federal option (remember Tom Price, [R-GA]?), it is harder than ever to have any kind of inertia for reasonable change.  With the shortsightedness of insurance companies and hospital corporations essentially pricing themselves out of existence for access to more money today, it looks hopeless.  And when federal debt continues to be viewed as a “so what?” by politicians and citizens alike, we are done. 

The Dearborn Public Schools website states it matter-of-factly: “Dearborn Public Schools ensures all meats served in our schools are certified Halal.”  Now one courageous mother is fighting back, challenging Dearborn public school officials to explain why they have done this and to provide options for students who object to halal food.

The mother wrote to Dearborn schools superintendent Glenn Maleyko, noting, “Schools have never changed lunches to fit any other religious needs.  If one needed a special diet due to religion or health, they did what all other students do, bring a lunch from home.”

Maleyko responded: “The decision was based on operational considerations only, not religion.  By implementing an all Halal meat option we have increased the number of students that we are serving[.] … It would cost a lot more to provide both Halal and non-Halal meat.”

In the long run, the superintendent will find it far, far costlier to have capitulated to Islamic supremacism and set this precedent.

Dearborn’s actions here should be a matter of concern for all free people.  This is a manifestation of the Left’s absolute march, without consideration or question, toward exclusionary, supremacist practices that any genuinely pluralistic society should reject.  Dearborn Public Schools officials are demonstrating a totalitarian assuredness in the delusional comfort of enlightenment, diversity, and inclusion.  They’re in for an unpleasant surprise: they’re accommodating a radically non-diverse, non-inclusive 

Dearborn’s policy is discriminatory against non-Muslim students of numerous perspectives, some having to do with different faith traditions.  There may be any number of reasons why people don’t want halal meat.  They may object to halal slaughter for humanitarian reasons or because they are concerned for animal rights.  Evangelical Christians may consider it meat sacrificed to idols, as discussed in the New Testament.  Jews are obliged to keep kosher, not eat halal food.  Still others may object to the fact that many halal certification organizations have links to jihad terror groups.

In light of all this, Dearborn should rescind its halal-only policy so as to make its schools truly inclusive and diverse, accepting of all students, not just Muslim students.

But that is unlikely to happen.  This initiative is already very far advanced.  If you’re in Europe, and in many areas in America as well, the meat you are eating is probably halal, unless you’re keeping kosher.  In a little-known strike against freedom, yet again, we are being forced into consuming meat slaughtered by means of a barbaric, torturous and inhuman method: Islamic slaughter.

Where were the PETA clowns and the ridiculous celebs who pose naked on giant billboards for PETA and “animal rights”?  They would rather see people die of cancer or AIDS than see animals used in drug testing, but torturous and painful Islamic slaughter is OK.

Many people have written to me saying they simply won’t eat halal meat, as they object to the methods used to slaughter the animal.  And I agree.  The sharia term for halal slaughter is dhakat.  Dhakat is to slaughter an animal by cutting the trachea, the esophagus, and the jugular vein, letting the blood drain out while saying, “Bismillah allahu akbar” — in the name of Allah the greater.

Seventy percent of New Zealand lamb imported into the United Kingdom is halal.  It is not labeled as such, so people are eating halal without even knowing it.  But people there are fighting back: when halal food was imposed on public schools in the United Kingdom in 2007, parents were in an uproar.  And in March 2010, Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), the sister organization to my group SIOA, called for the cessation of mandatory consumption of halal meat on the continent.

In the United States, a great deal of meat sold in this country is already halal but is not labeled is such.  It’s a scandal, but an established practice: meatpackers generally do not separate halal meat from non-halal meat and not do not label halal meat as such.  We attempted to right that wrong.  But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has for four years now ignored, shelved, or just plain refused to rule on our petition.

As many Americans do not, for a variety of reasons, wish to eat halal meat, back in February 2012, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), filed a citizen petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, asking that a regulation be enacted to ensure that all halal food be clearly labeled as halal.  In April 2012, we agreed not to publicize our petition in order to give the agency some space to review the document without any pressure from the public.

On May 11, 2012, we had a face-to-face meeting in the USDA offices with top FSIS officials.  We discussed this petition and the need for halal meat to be clearly labeled.  Present at this meeting was Dan Engeljohn, a longtime USDA official who is now assistant administrator for the Office of Policy and Program Development (OPPD) in the FSIS.  This position made him responsible for FSIS regulations.

Engeljohn and company had years to rule on our petition.  They never did a thing.  They just let it die on the table and stonewalled our repeated requests for an explanation.

As far back as October 2010, I reported on little noted but explosive revelations that much of the meat in Europe and the United States was being processed as halal without the knowledge of the non-Muslim consumers who bought it.

Then, in November 2011, I penned an article that caused a firestorm across the political spectrum, revealing that Butterball turkeys were all halal but were not labeled as such. Heads exploded on the Left — not over Butterball’s deception, but over my having the audacity to reveal it.  The clueless and compromised on the right were enraged as well: John Podhoretz tweeted, “I’d tell Pamela Geller to put a sock in it, but the sock might be halal.”

I was, of course, excoriated as a racist Islamophobic anti-Muslim bigot.  In reality, however, we have no objection to halal meat being sold, as long as it is clearly labeled as such, and as long as non-halal meat is available.

And now, all these years later, halal meat is being imposed on non-Muslims.  The Dearborn mother responded to Maleyko’s bland rejection of her concerns but at press time had not heard back from the superintendent.  Will he respond?  Will he take her concerns seriously?  And even more importantly, is this diversity?  Is this inclusion?  This is Islamic supremacism and totalitarianism.

Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI); publisher of The Geller Report; and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

The Dearborn Public Schools website states it matter-of-factly: “Dearborn Public Schools ensures all meats served in our schools are certified Halal.”  Now one courageous mother is fighting back, challenging Dearborn public school officials to explain why they have done this and to provide options for students who object to halal food.

The mother wrote to Dearborn schools superintendent Glenn Maleyko, noting, “Schools have never changed lunches to fit any other religious needs.  If one needed a special diet due to religion or health, they did what all other students do, bring a lunch from home.”

Maleyko responded: “The decision was based on operational considerations only, not religion.  By implementing an all Halal meat option we have increased the number of students that we are serving[.] … It would cost a lot more to provide both Halal and non-Halal meat.”

In the long run, the superintendent will find it far, far costlier to have capitulated to Islamic supremacism and set this precedent.

Dearborn’s actions here should be a matter of concern for all free people.  This is a manifestation of the Left’s absolute march, without consideration or question, toward exclusionary, supremacist practices that any genuinely pluralistic society should reject.  Dearborn Public Schools officials are demonstrating a totalitarian assuredness in the delusional comfort of enlightenment, diversity, and inclusion.  They’re in for an unpleasant surprise: they’re accommodating a radically non-diverse, non-inclusive 

Dearborn’s policy is discriminatory against non-Muslim students of numerous perspectives, some having to do with different faith traditions.  There may be any number of reasons why people don’t want halal meat.  They may object to halal slaughter for humanitarian reasons or because they are concerned for animal rights.  Evangelical Christians may consider it meat sacrificed to idols, as discussed in the New Testament.  Jews are obliged to keep kosher, not eat halal food.  Still others may object to the fact that many halal certification organizations have links to jihad terror groups.

In light of all this, Dearborn should rescind its halal-only policy so as to make its schools truly inclusive and diverse, accepting of all students, not just Muslim students.

But that is unlikely to happen.  This initiative is already very far advanced.  If you’re in Europe, and in many areas in America as well, the meat you are eating is probably halal, unless you’re keeping kosher.  In a little-known strike against freedom, yet again, we are being forced into consuming meat slaughtered by means of a barbaric, torturous and inhuman method: Islamic slaughter.

Where were the PETA clowns and the ridiculous celebs who pose naked on giant billboards for PETA and “animal rights”?  They would rather see people die of cancer or AIDS than see animals used in drug testing, but torturous and painful Islamic slaughter is OK.

Many people have written to me saying they simply won’t eat halal meat, as they object to the methods used to slaughter the animal.  And I agree.  The sharia term for halal slaughter is dhakat.  Dhakat is to slaughter an animal by cutting the trachea, the esophagus, and the jugular vein, letting the blood drain out while saying, “Bismillah allahu akbar” — in the name of Allah the greater.

Seventy percent of New Zealand lamb imported into the United Kingdom is halal.  It is not labeled as such, so people are eating halal without even knowing it.  But people there are fighting back: when halal food was imposed on public schools in the United Kingdom in 2007, parents were in an uproar.  And in March 2010, Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE), the sister organization to my group SIOA, called for the cessation of mandatory consumption of halal meat on the continent.

In the United States, a great deal of meat sold in this country is already halal but is not labeled is such.  It’s a scandal, but an established practice: meatpackers generally do not separate halal meat from non-halal meat and not do not label halal meat as such.  We attempted to right that wrong.  But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has for four years now ignored, shelved, or just plain refused to rule on our petition.

As many Americans do not, for a variety of reasons, wish to eat halal meat, back in February 2012, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), filed a citizen petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, asking that a regulation be enacted to ensure that all halal food be clearly labeled as halal.  In April 2012, we agreed not to publicize our petition in order to give the agency some space to review the document without any pressure from the public.

On May 11, 2012, we had a face-to-face meeting in the USDA offices with top FSIS officials.  We discussed this petition and the need for halal meat to be clearly labeled.  Present at this meeting was Dan Engeljohn, a longtime USDA official who is now assistant administrator for the Office of Policy and Program Development (OPPD) in the FSIS.  This position made him responsible for FSIS regulations.

Engeljohn and company had years to rule on our petition.  They never did a thing.  They just let it die on the table and stonewalled our repeated requests for an explanation.

As far back as October 2010, I reported on little noted but explosive revelations that much of the meat in Europe and the United States was being processed as halal without the knowledge of the non-Muslim consumers who bought it.

Then, in November 2011, I penned an article that caused a firestorm across the political spectrum, revealing that Butterball turkeys were all halal but were not labeled as such. Heads exploded on the Left — not over Butterball’s deception, but over my having the audacity to reveal it.  The clueless and compromised on the right were enraged as well: John Podhoretz tweeted, “I’d tell Pamela Geller to put a sock in it, but the sock might be halal.”

I was, of course, excoriated as a racist Islamophobic anti-Muslim bigot.  In reality, however, we have no objection to halal meat being sold, as long as it is clearly labeled as such, and as long as non-halal meat is available.

And now, all these years later, halal meat is being imposed on non-Muslims.  The Dearborn mother responded to Maleyko’s bland rejection of her concerns but at press time had not heard back from the superintendent.  Will he respond?  Will he take her concerns seriously?  And even more importantly, is this diversity?  Is this inclusion?  This is Islamic supremacism and totalitarianism.

Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI); publisher of The Geller Report; and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

The title of this new book is a play on aristocracy.  The science aristocracy is living off its former reputation as honest investigators of the natural world.  But now they are largely mean-spirited bureaucrats who don’t hesitate to fake science when it serves their bureaucratic and financial goals.  The public, politicians, and the media are mostly scientific ignoramuses easily fooled into believing that fake science is rock-solid science.  There is an alliance driven by the money-greed of the science mandarins and the socialist dreams of the political Left.  It is not an accident that the many ecological catastrophes predicted by rogue science get political support from the Left.

The book consists of 11 essays by prominent whistleblowers that have waged mostly losing battles with the scientocracy.  The editors are Patrick Michaels, a distinguished skeptical climate scientist, and Terence Kealey, a biochemist and former university administrator in Great Britain.

The science establishment has been corrupted by money, specifically federal research grants.  A wise President Eisenhower warned about the corrupting effect of money on science in this 1961 farewell address.  Money is now more important than science.  A big bite of every research grant goes to the university as “overhead.”  So the university bureaucracy is intensely focused on bringing in more research grants.  For the researcher, money means promotion, status, and the means to engage in expensive research projects.

In order to keep the money flowing, the research has to achieve positive and important results.  Sometimes, the original hypothesis that is tested turns out to have been wrong.  That a hypothesis is wrong is theoretically a scientific contribution, but not one that is likely to impress the funding committees.  One answer is to search the data for a new hypothesis — a statistically flawed procedure, since, if one searches for enough different hypotheses, one is likely to find something “proven” by the data, even if the data consist of random numbers.  Outright fakery is not usually necessary since there are many ways to process and adjust data to make them better.  The researcher may believe that his adjustments are shown to be necessary because he believes that his hypothesis is correct, so there must be something wrong with the data.

The most lucrative research is to predict an ecological catastrophe.  Thus, we have overpopulation, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming.  The scary prediction generates government appropriations for science.  When the predictions turn out to have been false, the scientocracy can declare victory or quietly move on to something else.

The foundation of many pollution scares is the Linear, No Threshold (LNT) theory of damage from various type of poisons.  This holds that if a dose x causes damage y, then a dose of one thousandth x will cause one thousandth the damage y.  The alternative theories are that there is a threshold below which the poison is harmless, or that for low doses, the poison will actually be beneficial, known as hormesis.  The beauty of the LNT theory is that there is always a problem waiting to be solved because most poisons cannot be reduced to zero.  An example of hormesis is selenium, a deadly poison but a necessary micro-nutrient.

Edward Calabrese, a professor of toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, wrote chapter 7 of Scientocracy.  He recounts that he spent two years searching for a study that validated the LNT theory for carcinogens.  He concluded that there was no such study, and LNT was simply assumed as an article of faith.  Calabrese details the scientific history behind the adaptation of LNT as well as the practical advantages that make the scientific community comfortable with the LNT approach, even if it is scientifically erroneous.

Government acceptance of bad research resulted in diet fads, where the nation was browbeaten at various times not to eat eggs, salt, or meat for various reasons that turned out to be wrong.  The self-interested lobbying of various segment of the food industry probably saved us from the worst of this.  Now carbon dioxide is considered worse than eggs, and the research proving this is bad computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere.  The politics of “carbon dioxide bad” is that it provides a convenient club to beat big corporations and capitalism in general.  The pathetic big corporations, including even oil companies, loudly proclaim that they are limiting their carbon emissions, not realizing that they and not carbon are the real problem.  In the meantime, the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is greening the Earth as plants thirsty for carbon dioxide can at last breathe easy.

The phenomenal ten-year development of new oil and gas, thanks to fracking, could happen only because, almost unique to the United States, mineral rights belong to the landowner.  The economic and geopolitical benefit of energy independence is overwhelming.

Scientocracy discusses two valuable mineral deposits that so far cannot be developed due to the opposition of the left and bad science.  A $7-billion uranium deposit in Virginia is doomed to remain underground due to a political campaign against it.  The Alaska Pebble Mine, “the largest known copper, gold and molybdenum deposit on Earth,” is suffering a similar fate.  The general hysteria surrounding anything considered remotely polluting creates vast economic damage.

PM 2.5, or particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, floating in the air has become a powerful tool for the scientocracy and the political Left.  These things are everywhere, and the damage to human health is strictly hypothetical.  Studies purporting to show damage suffer from bad statistics and confounding variables.  The concentration is often so small that one would be hard pressed to inhale a teaspoon of this during an 85-year life.  But since nothing can be proved and everything is hypothetical, PM 2.5 provides a wonderful subject for scientific studies and government regulation.  The scientists that advise the EPA concerning PM 2.5 are the recipients of huge research grants that are justified only by the danger of PM 2.5.

If there is a solution for the present corruption, it can’t involve committees of establishment scientists or government bureaucrats telling us what the solution is.  The solution may be pointed to by the army of amateur scientists that sprang up to fight the global warming hoax.  These amateurs are disconnected from the financial rewards of corruption.  The downside is that they may not understand the science as well as the professionals do.  I suggest independent advisory committees that cannot include professional scientists or professional regulators.  The members of such committees would be required to be scientifically literate and be financially independent of the science-government establishment.

Norman Rogers writes often about science and energy.  He has websites: NevadaSolarScam.com and climateviews.com.

The title of this new book is a play on aristocracy.  The science aristocracy is living off its former reputation as honest investigators of the natural world.  But now they are largely mean-spirited bureaucrats who don’t hesitate to fake science when it serves their bureaucratic and financial goals.  The public, politicians, and the media are mostly scientific ignoramuses easily fooled into believing that fake science is rock-solid science.  There is an alliance driven by the money-greed of the science mandarins and the socialist dreams of the political Left.  It is not an accident that the many ecological catastrophes predicted by rogue science get political support from the Left.

The book consists of 11 essays by prominent whistleblowers that have waged mostly losing battles with the scientocracy.  The editors are Patrick Michaels, a distinguished skeptical climate scientist, and Terence Kealey, a biochemist and former university administrator in Great Britain.

The science establishment has been corrupted by money, specifically federal research grants.  A wise President Eisenhower warned about the corrupting effect of money on science in this 1961 farewell address.  Money is now more important than science.  A big bite of every research grant goes to the university as “overhead.”  So the university bureaucracy is intensely focused on bringing in more research grants.  For the researcher, money means promotion, status, and the means to engage in expensive research projects.

In order to keep the money flowing, the research has to achieve positive and important results.  Sometimes, the original hypothesis that is tested turns out to have been wrong.  That a hypothesis is wrong is theoretically a scientific contribution, but not one that is likely to impress the funding committees.  One answer is to search the data for a new hypothesis — a statistically flawed procedure, since, if one searches for enough different hypotheses, one is likely to find something “proven” by the data, even if the data consist of random numbers.  Outright fakery is not usually necessary since there are many ways to process and adjust data to make them better.  The researcher may believe that his adjustments are shown to be necessary because he believes that his hypothesis is correct, so there must be something wrong with the data.

The most lucrative research is to predict an ecological catastrophe.  Thus, we have overpopulation, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming.  The scary prediction generates government appropriations for science.  When the predictions turn out to have been false, the scientocracy can declare victory or quietly move on to something else.

The foundation of many pollution scares is the Linear, No Threshold (LNT) theory of damage from various type of poisons.  This holds that if a dose x causes damage y, then a dose of one thousandth x will cause one thousandth the damage y.  The alternative theories are that there is a threshold below which the poison is harmless, or that for low doses, the poison will actually be beneficial, known as hormesis.  The beauty of the LNT theory is that there is always a problem waiting to be solved because most poisons cannot be reduced to zero.  An example of hormesis is selenium, a deadly poison but a necessary micro-nutrient.

Edward Calabrese, a professor of toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, wrote chapter 7 of Scientocracy.  He recounts that he spent two years searching for a study that validated the LNT theory for carcinogens.  He concluded that there was no such study, and LNT was simply assumed as an article of faith.  Calabrese details the scientific history behind the adaptation of LNT as well as the practical advantages that make the scientific community comfortable with the LNT approach, even if it is scientifically erroneous.

Government acceptance of bad research resulted in diet fads, where the nation was browbeaten at various times not to eat eggs, salt, or meat for various reasons that turned out to be wrong.  The self-interested lobbying of various segment of the food industry probably saved us from the worst of this.  Now carbon dioxide is considered worse than eggs, and the research proving this is bad computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere.  The politics of “carbon dioxide bad” is that it provides a convenient club to beat big corporations and capitalism in general.  The pathetic big corporations, including even oil companies, loudly proclaim that they are limiting their carbon emissions, not realizing that they and not carbon are the real problem.  In the meantime, the increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is greening the Earth as plants thirsty for carbon dioxide can at last breathe easy.

The phenomenal ten-year development of new oil and gas, thanks to fracking, could happen only because, almost unique to the United States, mineral rights belong to the landowner.  The economic and geopolitical benefit of energy independence is overwhelming.

Scientocracy discusses two valuable mineral deposits that so far cannot be developed due to the opposition of the left and bad science.  A $7-billion uranium deposit in Virginia is doomed to remain underground due to a political campaign against it.  The Alaska Pebble Mine, “the largest known copper, gold and molybdenum deposit on Earth,” is suffering a similar fate.  The general hysteria surrounding anything considered remotely polluting creates vast economic damage.

PM 2.5, or particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, floating in the air has become a powerful tool for the scientocracy and the political Left.  These things are everywhere, and the damage to human health is strictly hypothetical.  Studies purporting to show damage suffer from bad statistics and confounding variables.  The concentration is often so small that one would be hard pressed to inhale a teaspoon of this during an 85-year life.  But since nothing can be proved and everything is hypothetical, PM 2.5 provides a wonderful subject for scientific studies and government regulation.  The scientists that advise the EPA concerning PM 2.5 are the recipients of huge research grants that are justified only by the danger of PM 2.5.

If there is a solution for the present corruption, it can’t involve committees of establishment scientists or government bureaucrats telling us what the solution is.  The solution may be pointed to by the army of amateur scientists that sprang up to fight the global warming hoax.  These amateurs are disconnected from the financial rewards of corruption.  The downside is that they may not understand the science as well as the professionals do.  I suggest independent advisory committees that cannot include professional scientists or professional regulators.  The members of such committees would be required to be scientifically literate and be financially independent of the science-government establishment.

Norman Rogers writes often about science and energy.  He has websites: NevadaSolarScam.com and climateviews.com.

A new poll released Monday by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation shows that while support for “socialism” is dropping in the U.S., the Millennial generation (23-38) remains the most supportive of the idea.

The poll, conducted by YouGov for the foundation, included 2100 respondents over the age of 16. No margin of error was provided as of the time of publication.

The survey reports that overall, 58% of Americans held favorable opinions of capitalism in 2019, down 3% from 2018’s figure of 61%. However, only 49% of members of Generation Z (16-22) and 50% of the Millennial generation see capitalism favorably.