This is very wrong. The emails are worth studying in full, because they raise very serious questions about the credibility of the IPCC, the journals publishing papers on climatology, the government scientific bodies commissioning research into climate and the news organizations covering them.
Moreover, the emails call into disrepute the assertion, frequently made, that the warming of the climate over the past century is known to be “unprecedented”. While it is possible that it is unprecedented, we do not know this for certain, since the proofs advanced are provably flawed. » Read more
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
Here’s a very fascinating video taken at New York’s Zuccotti Park where Peter Schiff has a dialogue with some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Schiff brought a sign that read “I Am the 1% Let’s Talk,” and talk they did.
One of the things that occurred to me watching this was how little true discussion is going on between the OWS movement and their critics. Notice how some of the protesters say things like “you rich people” or “you Republicans” etc. Just as its unfair for these protesters to lump everyone into these groups is a mistake, I think it’s also a mistake to assume that all of these protesters are clueless and don’t have some legitimate grievances.
Kudos to Peter Schiff for going out among the protesters and having this much needed conversation. There seems to be some common ground concerning these grievances; the real differences are what the solutions should be.
Is it possible that the G.O.P would nominate and/or the American people would elect for president a man who as governor more likely than not executed an innocent man?
An even more disturbing question would be: Could Gov. Rick Perry be elected president despite his efforts to keep investigators from learning the truth about the Cameron Todd Willingham case both before and after Willingham’s execution?
It seems we will have an answer to these questions in the 2012 campaign.
Apparently, these questions were not of much concern among Texans. According to a recent Politico article written by Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison who ran against Perry in the gubernatorial primary in the 2010 campaign asked focus groups what they thought about the idea that an innocent man may have been executed on Gov. Perry’s watch. For the most part, the question was a non-issue. According to several (unnamed) former Hutchison staffers, they quoted one individual as saying “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”
Gov. RICK PERRY (R), Texas: This is a guy on his- on- in the death chamber, his last breath, he spews an obscenity-laced triad [sic] against his wife. That’s the person who we’re talking about here. And getting all tied up in the process here is, frankly, a deflection of what people across this state and this country need to be looking at. This was a bad man.
No question, the words that Willingham directed at his wife are pretty rough. Willingham could have taken the high road but he didn’t. A bad man? Maybe. But to suggest that because Willingham’s last statement, which I agree is obscene and arguably low class, somehow “proves” that he killed his own children tells me that the Texas governor has a very low standard of proof.
Willingham’s spouse believed in his innocence in the beginning but as the execution date drew nearer, she changed her mind and made statements in the media that she believed he was guilty. How many men, innocent or not, in a similar situation would feel betrayed say something similar?
At Gov. Perry’s first debate appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, when challenged about his executive order that would have required girls age 12 and over to get the HPV vaccine, he said that the way he went about it was wrong but explained that he was concerned about these young girls getting a deadly cancer. He “errs on the side of life,” a statement I couldn’t believe he could actually say with a straight face given his unwillingness to err on the side of life with regard to capital punishment.
Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. [Applause] Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
Gov. Perry responds:
No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which—when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that’s required.
Never struggled with the thought that there’s even the slightest possibility that an innocent man has been executed on his watch at all? The fact that five men who were once on death row who were exonerated on his watch doesn’t give Gov. Perry even a little pause? Five men who would have been executed had Gov. Perry had his way? And even after the recent revelation via exculpatory DNA evidence that an innocent man, Claude Jones was executed just before Gov. George W. Bush handed the governorship to Perry and ascended to the presidency?
If Gov. Perry is so certain of the guilt of every single individual who has been executed on his watch, why does he continue to stymie investigations into the Willingham case? Perhaps even more importantly, why does Gov. Perry continue to block efforts to allow Hank Skinner to have DNA testing which would determine once and for all if Skinner is the murderer Gov. Perry thinks he is before executing him this coming November?
What is Gov. Perry so afraid of?
Gov. Perry would have us believe that the “very clear process” in Texas is so perfect that there is just no way that a wrongfully convicted person could be executed. He is either in denial or doesn’t care if the occasional innocent person is killed by the state (and even if Willingham wasn’t a murderer, he was still “a bad man” so who cares right?). The death penalty is just the sort of a punishment that neither Gov. Perry nor the State of Texas can live without. Judging by the thunderous applause at the very mention of Texas’ 234 executions at the Reagan Library, sadly Gov. Perry is hardly alone in a Republican Party where the majority of its members ironically and hypocritically call themselves “pro-life.”
The looming government debt ceiling crisis has cause Obama to threaten inability to pay Social Security checks. It’s renewed the debate, which I’ve hashed out many times (here, here, here and here, for posterity’s sake), whether the Social Security “Trust Fund” is a veritable asset or merely a convenient accounting fiction used to hide deficits.
I, of course, believe it to be the latter. But M.S., writing for The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, tries to make some analogies about the trust fund’s “accounting kabuki”:
I mean, look, our bank accounts are an accounting fiction. Everyone knows exactly how much money is in anyone else’s bank account: none. There is no money “in” our bank accounts; our banks have already spent it. Our so-called bank account is just an IOU, a promise from our bank to pay us up to the amount specified in our balance.
There are two things here. The first is that the bank account is merely a promise, which is true. This is clearly analogous to the Social Security Trust Fund. The second part, though, is the problem. Making good on the promise is the bank’s responsibility, NOT MINE.
If I want to withdraw money from the bank, they have a legal and moral responsibility to give it to me. It doesn’t matter to me where they get it, but it creates no obligation on me to get that money back.
If they told me that they’d give me my money, but they’d have to garnish my wages for the next year in return, however, I’d be a little pissed off. That’s what the Social Security Trust Fund is.
The key is that American taxpayers are the ones who are being “paid back” out of the Social Security Trust Fund, while American taxpayers are also the ones doing the paying. It’s not an accounting fiction because we have two different line items on the bill, it’s an accounting fiction because the revenues ultimately come from the same place, whether you’re hiring someone to do your accounting or using a virtual accounting office, your businesses’ accounting needs are covered.
From the point of view of the Social Security Administration, of course, the IOU’s are an asset. They are a claim on future government revenue that is essentially on par with the debt that China or institutional investors buy from the US. I.e. from an accounting standpoint, it is a “promise” that carries some heft. However, from the point of view of the American taxpayer, it is additional debt that must be repaid through higher taxation. They’re going to get it from our paychecks, it’ll just come from the line that says “FED INC TAX” rather than the lines that says “SOC SEC TAX” or “MEDICARE TAX”. It still comes out of the same paycheck, which means whether it’s an accounting kabuki or not, it still costs us more money. The last thing you want to do is lose money, especially if you are running your business, so looking for the best accounting firms in nyc or somewhere more local to you, maybe the more desirable option.
