3:00: “[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] was formed by people whose agendas were of question . . . it was from people who had world government in mind.”

“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.” (Read more from time.com)

See Also:
How to win the war on Global Warming

I wanted to share an excellent website a friend introduced me to: www.shadowstates.com.

“John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics is an electronic newsletter service that exposes and analyzes flaws in current U.S. government economic data and reporting, as well as in certain private-sector numbers, and provides an assessment of underlying economic and financial conditions, net of financial-market and political hype.”

Unemployment too high? No problem. Redefine people who can’t find jobs as something other than “unemployed.”

Even the consumer price index is showing inflation? No problem. Stop tracking food and energy.

GDP too low? No problem. Track GNP instead.

Still too low? No problem. Send it back to the Commerce Department until those anti-revolutionary Kulaks get it right!

· During the Kennedy administration, unemployment was redefined with the concept of “discouraged workers” so as to reduce the popularly followed unemployment rate.

· If Lyndon Johnson didn’t like the growth that was going to be reported in the GNP, he sent it back to the Commerce Department, and he kept doing so until Commerce got it right. The Johnson administration also was responsible for gimmicking the accounting that hides most of the federal deficit.

· Richard Nixon had a highly publicized war with the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the unemployment data. Nixon wanted to report the unemployment rate as the lower of the seasonally adjusted or unadjusted number, at any given time, but not specify same to the public. While that approach was unconscionable at the time and never used, basically the same methodology was introduced in 2004 as “state-of-the-art” by the current Bush administration.

· The Carter administration was caught deliberately understating inflation.

· Systemic changes were introduced during the Reagan administration to boost reported GNP/GDP growth on a regular basis. The wildest manipulations, however, happened at the time of the 1987 liquidity panic. In addition to intervention in the futures markets by the New York Fed to help prop the stock market after the October 19th crash, direct and heavy manipulation of the trade deficit data, under the direction of the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, was used in conjunction with massive currency intervention to help bottom the dollar and to contain the currency panic at year-end 1987.

· The first Bush Administration began efforts at the systematic reduction of the reported rate of CPI inflation, and worked an outside-the-system GDP manipulation aimed at helping with the failed 1992 reelection bid.

· As former Labor Secretary Bob Reich explained in his memoirs, the Clinton administration had found in its public polling that if the government inflated economic reporting, enough people would believe it to swing a close election. Accordingly, whatever integrity had survived in the economic reporting system disappeared during the Clinton years. Unemployment was redefined to eliminate five million discouraged workers and to lower the unemployment rate; methodologies were changed to reduce poverty reporting, to reduce reported CPI inflation, to inflate reported GDP growth, among others.

· The [current] Bush administration has expanded upon the Clinton era initiatives, particularly in setting the stage for the adoption of a new and lower-inflation CPI and in further redefining the GDP and the concept of seasonal adjustment.

My Austrian Economics mentor, Patrick Barron and Benjamin Harnwell from Strasbourg, France regarding the historic Austrian Economic presentation they made to Members of the European Union Parliament on July 14, 2009.

Download Mp3

Interview by Radio Free Market – from behind the lines of Socialism, from the heart of America, the voice of free people and free markets, hosted by Michael McKay.

. . . and more generally, of government spending helping the economy.

When government takes your money, then gives *some* of it back to you, it is not a stimulus.

The economist being interviewed is Robert Higgs who has devoted much of his career toward dispelling this destructive myth.

Notice his shout out to Rep. Spencer Bachus (R – AL).

See also:

I found this on californiagasprices.com. California is the highest. Alaska is the lowest.

“After crude oil costs, taxes are the second largest contributor to the price paid at the pump. Together Federal and State excise taxes on fuel account for an average cost of approximately 62 cents per gallon. Rates include Federal excise taxes 18.4 cpg for gasoline and 24.4 cpg for diesel. cpg = cents per gallon”

“If anybody needs a good reason to be skeptical of the government’s newfound commitment to efficiency when it comes to the hundreds of billions of dollars of ‘stimulus’ spending, the Chicago Main Post Office facility provides a very obvious example.

This massive, 14-story building spans several city blocks at 2.7 million square feet. Situated in an ultra-prime downtown location, the advertising potential alone is unparalleled: Tens of thousands of cars pass directly through it every day on the main highway heading into and out of town.

Yet this building has sat completely vacant since 1997 when the post office moved to a new facility across the street, meaning the USPS missed out on capitalizing on one of the biggest booms in commercial real estate in history. Worse off, it wasted a small fortune in the process — a 2006 report by the General Accountability Office found the facility costs the USPS $2 million a year simply to maintain.

Spending $2 million a year on an empty building? That sort of waste would never been tolerated in a profit-seeking firm. To believe somehow the new governmental bureaucracies being created will avoid such misuse is both hilarious and frightening.” (Read more from smartmoney.com)

See also:
Hidden History: Post Office sues Cub Scouts to maintain monopoly

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Max Keiser has it right. Pay attention in particular to his attack on global financial institutions. World governance, world finance, etc., would only give the same banksters even more power.

Hopefully medical marijuana prescriptions will some day look as ridiculous as this prohibition-era prescription for medical alcohol.

I beat the first three levels. They never show what happens when you catch up to the “energy wasting criminal” in the SUV, whose crimes apparently include using old fashioned light bulbs instead of the energy saving sort. I had hoped to see to billy-clubbing meted out by these perfectly multi-cultural and absurdly righteous defenders of our planet.

I am not questioning the good intentions of the Pope, but I’d like to offer a very brief criticism of his recent encyclical.

From section 65: “Both the regulation of the financial sector, so as to safeguard weaker parties and discourage scandalous speculation, and experimentation with new forms of finance, designed to support development projects, are positive experiences that should be further explored and encouraged, highlighting the responsibility of the investor.”

The end of this statement is rock solid – “highlighting the responsibility of the investor” – but is it government regulation which did away with this responsibility. It is more liberty, not more government which would “highlight the responsibility of the investor.”

Missing from most narratives of our financial crisis is the fact that our government subsidized irresponsible behavior and allowed our financial kings to invest without responsibility. It allowed the reckless experimentation which the Pope criticizes and, like many others, seems to blame on the free market.

Example 1: The 1998 bailout of the Long Term Capital Management. Had the Federal Reserve not supervised a bailout of this irresponsible hedge fund in 1998, we would not have begun as severe a financial crisis in 2008. Instead, the message from our government was clear: Gamble away. We have your back.

Example 2: Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae. These were government sponsored enterprises. Government created a demand for loans, even bad ones. Had the government not subsidized the purchase of bad loans, many fewer would have been made.

Example 3: Community Reinvest Act. This politically expedient legislation required banks to hold a certain portion of bad loans, or else they couldn’t expand. Once again, government subsidized irresponsibility. Do you remember how both Presidents W. Bush and Clinton bragged about how more Americans than ever before owned homes?

From section 67: “In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. . . . To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority. . . . such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties. . .”

Though I believe his intentions are good, this section is very troubling. It is a call for the creation of an unelected institution subject to no nation’s constitution with massive control and massive authority. The Road to Serfdom is paved with good intention (and a mistrust of freedom).

Though I would choose liberty over prosperity, the best economies happen to also be the freest. This is true almost without exception. Look at West Germany vs East Germany, South Korea vs North Korea, Botswana vs the rest of Africa, Chile vs the rest of S. America, Estonia vs Latvia or Lithuania, Hong Kong in the 80s vs China in the 80s, Cuba before communism vs after. The call for a global authority is an invitation for further economic fascism, and there are many arguments against it. I’ll make two:

1: The IMF and World Bank are completely corrupt and ineffective. Here I posted a Jim Rogers interview in which he says “abolish the World Bank and the IMF. . . they do little more than take care of themselves, their own pensions, their own perks, their own salaries, if you work for the World Bank or the IMF you have a great life, but they’ve not done much for the rest of the world.”

2: As Ron Paul said (here): “We do not abdicate American sovereignty to global institutions. The purpose of the United States is to protect the liberty of the American people. We should never allow the WTO, NAFTA, the U.N. or the Law of the Sea Treaty to transfer power from America to an international body.”

“The business site Bloomberg is running a story today titled Yuan Deposes Dollar on China’s Border in Sign of Trade’s Future. [Interestingly, after being up for over an hour, this story suddenly went away between 1 and 2 am. Before coming back in what seemed like a slightly less hard hitting form.]

When Treasury Secretary Geithner spoke on June 1st to students at Peking University and claimed that America was in good shape and China’s dollar investments were safe. His assurances were greeted with loud hoots of laughter from the assembled students, many of them the sons and daughters of China’s elite. Geithner humiliation was barely reported in America, but it seemed to resonate much more strongly elsewhere around the globe. Spawning many stories similar to the story running today at Bloomberg.com about how people are digging up that jar full of dollars and replacing them with gold or border traders switch from dollars to other currencies. The disbelieving laughter of China’s students may well mark a sea change. The begin of the end for the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. With America’s politicos planning to spend approximately double what they expect to collect in taxes this year, it is easy to see why the students were amused by Geithner posturing. But the chaos that will ensue if a dollar crisis were to suddenly force America’s politicos to start living within America’s means won’t be funny.” (from humods.com)