American Policy Center » 2005 » February
- The New Religion is Global Warming
- House Approves Electronic ID Cards
- What Makes Us Tick?
February 16, 2005
By Tom DeWeese
The UN finally got what it wanted. The Kyoto Climate Change treaty became international law on February 16th. The treaty went into full effect with the approval by the Russian Federation, even without the support of the United States. Time will tell if and when the treaty will begin to affect the U.S. economy. What is certain is that truth and reason had no part in the process.
Global warming has become a new religion. No one is supposed to question whether it is a fact. I did in the December 2004 issue of The DeWeese Report (“There is no man-made global warming,” Volume 10, Issue 12). For my trouble I was labeled a “moron,” a “liar;” one who wants to “blow up the world,” and just plain “evil” to name a few from a mass of mail I received.
In particular, my article stated that there is no scientific evidence to support claims of man-made global warming. I pointed out that there is division among scientists and that there is no “consensus” among them.
I also reported that there are scientists who promote political agendas over truth to keep the grants coming in. And I said that the UN’s 1996 report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was edited at the last minute to remove two very important paragraphs that specifically said science showed no clear evidence of man-made climate change. Those were all facts.
Apparently I’m a moron for reporting them because as one letter said, “Everyone knows global warming is real.”
In response to these Luddites, I simply present this: A federal hurricane research scientist named Chris Landsea has resigned from the UN-sponsored climate assessment team because his group’s leader had politicized the process. Landsea said there was little evidence to justify Kevin Trenberth’s assertion in October that global warming was responsible for the strong hurricanes experienced this past year and that “the North Atlantic hurricane Season of 2004 may well be a harbinger of the future.”
Said Landsea in his resignation letter, “It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity had been due to global warming. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.”
Landsea closed his resignation letter by saying, “I personally cannot in good faith contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.”
There you have it. Two kinds of scientists. One standing for true science based on the facts. The other pushing a political agenda that says science be damned, our global religion is at stake.
Global Warming has become a religion that the faithful have vowed to follow no matter what the true facts may show. Global Warming is a theory, nothing more, and large numbers of scientists around the world are beginning to question its validity. There is no consensus of support.
The fact is the Kyoto Protocol will have absolutely no effect on climate change, but the faithful demand that it be implemented anyway, because “we have to do something.” In 1990, Timothy Wirth, who later became Bill Clinton’s Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs said, “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong we will be doing the right thing…”
Global Warming is nothing more than a euphemism for redistribution of wealth from the rich, development nations to jealous dictatorships who refuse to allow their citizens the right to gain their own wealth through free markets. It’s about political redistribution from strong, independent sovereign nations into the hands of a power-hungry global elite cowering in the United Nations. These are the same cowardly scoundrels who used to try to rule the world through global communism. Today they pretend that the same lies have something to do with protecting the environment.
The truth is there is no man-made global warming. There’s only the scam of an empty global religion designed to condemn human progress and sucker the feeble minded into worldwide human misery. I rest my case. Amen.
February 11, 2005
By Declan McCullagh
The U.S. House of Representatives approved on Thursday a sweeping set of rules aimed at forcing states to issue all adults federally approvedelectronic ID cards, including driver’s licenses. Under the rules, federal employees would reject licenses or identity cards that don’t comply, which could curb Americans’ access to airplanes, trains, national parks, federal courthouses and other areas controlled by the federal government. The bill was approved by a 261-161 vote.
The measure, called the Real ID Act, says that driver’s licenses and other ID cards must include a digital photograph, anticounterfeiting features and undefined “machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements” that could include a magnetic strip or RFID tag. The Department of Homeland Security would be charged with drafting the details of the regulation.
Republican politicians argued that the new rules were necessary to thwart terrorists, saying that four of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers possessed valid state-issued driver’s licenses. “When I get on an airplane and someone shows ID, I’d like to be sure they are who they say they are,” said Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, during a floor debate that started Wednesday.
States would be required to demand proof of the person’s Social Security number and confirm that number with the Social Security Administration. They would also have to scan in documents showing the person’s date of birth and immigration status, and create a massive store “so that the (scanned) images can be retained in electronic storage in a transferable format” permanently.
Another portion of the bill says that states would be required to link their DMV databases if they wished to receive federal funds. Among the information that must be shared: All data fields printed on drivers’ licenses and identification cards, and complete drivers’ histories, including motor vehicle violations, suspensions and points on licenses.
The Bush administration threw its weight behind the Real ID Act, which has been derided by some conservative and civil liberties groups as tantamount to a national ID card. The White House said in a statement this week that it “strongly supports House passage” of the bill.
Thursday’s vote mostly fell along party lines. About 95 percent of the House Republicans voted for the bill, which had been prepared by the judiciary committee chairman, F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. More than three-fourths of the House Democrats opposed it.
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat from Washington, D.C., charged that Republicans were becoming hypocrites by trampling on states’ rights. “I thought the other side of the aisle extols federalism at all times,” Norton said. “Yes, even in hard times, even when you’re dealing with terrorism. So what’s happening now? Why are those who speak up for states whenever it strikes their fancy doing this now?”
Civil libertarians and firearm rights groups condemned the bill before the vote. The American Civil Liberties Union likened the new rules to a “de facto national ID card,” saying that the measure would force “states to deny driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants” and make DMV employees act as agents of the federal immigration service.
Because an ID is required to purchase a firearm from a dealer, Gun Owners of America said the bill amounts to a “bureaucratic back door to implementation of a national ID card.” The group warned that it would “empower the federal government to determine who can get a driver’s license–and under what conditions.”
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February 7, 2005
By Tom DeWeese
Our nation, indeed our world has become much polarized in the right/left spectrum. People now are categorized in one camp or the other based on certain ideas. We live in a world of sound bites.
For example, today, if you attack the irrationality of the actions of the United Nations, you’re a “black helicopter kook.” If you support the idea that government should stay out of your bedroom you’re anarcho-lefty. There is confusion. The sound bites and instant labeling boxes us in and keeps us apart. If the shouting were to calm down, perhaps we might all find that the left and the right have some very common ideas.
For example, recently I received an email from a reader named Stuart, a Canadian. In his message Stuart said, “I’m a lefty and often look around for what it is that makes conservatives tick. So I’m no friend of yours, but on the ID cards I agree.”
Stuart went on to describe how ID cards (already in place in Canada) may soon be used in that nation to create dossiers on each citizen for the purpose of tracking consumer purchasing in order to aid business marketing. “I mean,” Stuart asked, “how naïve could someone be to believe that it wouldn’t be a data snooper bonanza?” And then he finished his note saying, “And you are absolutely right. This would have zero effect on terrorist activities,” referring to one of my articles on the subject.
Here is my response to Stuart, picking up on his puzzlement of what actually makes conservatives “tick.” Stuart, you may find that we actually have quite a bit in common. Keep in mind that there are all kinds of conservatives just as there are all kinds of liberals. We don’t all agree even if we fall into one of those categories.
What makes conservatives tick is the desire for freedom. We believe that granting government the power to control any aspect of our lives, even a program that sounds worthwhile, surrenders freedom because the government will always strive for more control. Once the door is open there is no stopping it.
Stuart, your example of the intrusion of ID cards for marketing purposes could never be done by a private business without having the force of government behind it. In the world of free markets, business would be controlled by the consumers. If a business uses practices that are harmful to consumers or to the communities in which they operate, then people have the power to stop shopping there. The business then must either change its ways or go out of business.
In the world of big government, businesses care less about the customers and cater more to the hands that control the power and public treasury. In that way, business can buy its way into government protection and destroy its competition.
Today, through a program called Sustainable Development, which creates partnerships between government and business, certain selected companies are allowed on the inside of the power bubble, while others are forced to exist outside.
The insiders get special privileges, using the power of eminent domain, for example, to get prime land and low rates to build their stores. They can control the market, not with superior products or service, but with the money coerced from taxpayers and all of the power provided by government, backed by police forces, courts and jails.
However, as a society, we have accepted the mantra that free markets are bad and must be controlled by government. As a result, reason has been sacrificed for the drive for power. Remember, only a very few can hold such power at the expense of the rest of us. The adverse consequences of such power are wrongly blamed on capitalism. Powerful companies that are backed by the force of government, destroying competitors, are not practicing capitalism. This is why conservatives stand in support of free enterprise and in opposition to government being used in such a manner.
And such abuses of government power are not just in the immediate market place. Today we are told that we must accept the UN’s Kyoto Climate Change treaty even though most parties involved agree that it will have no effect on climate change, but will have a devastating effect on national economies, particularly ours in the US.
The Kyoto treaty is really about creating a new international economy in partnership with some selected big businesses and undeveloped nations at the expense of others. Some argue that such policy is fair and necessary for our protection. Conservatives disagree with such policy.
Some argue that government power is the only way to protect the environment. And so today we have the Endangered Species Act that is so punitive to property owners, that any who find themselves unfortunate to have an endangered species on their land are forced to “shoot, shovel and shut up” in order to survive sure destruction by the government if the species is discovered.
This does nothing to protect the species, but to even discuss fixing such bad law is shouted down by the elite who use the law to maintain their power base that has become more important to them than the stated purpose of actually protecting endangered species.
Though the sound bite kings would argue that such policies are the fault of liberals, the fact is both political parties are guilty. Both parties have accepted the premise that it is proper government conduct to loot the public treasury as long as it’s in the name of their favored program.
Conservatives argue that the only way to protect the rights of citizens in this nation is through limited local government that is held in check by the local electorate. The farther away government gets from the people, the easier it becomes for government to ignore their rights. Conservatives believe that limited, controlled government is the only effective government.
Government, through unlimited taxation, is empowered to control our private land; inject political propaganda into our schools; control our medical system—forcing costs to explode; track our every movement with national ID cards; dictate our food choices in restaurants; control the rearing of our children; and invade foreign nations without the approval of elected representatives. With eyes glassed over from drunken power, government ignores reason and it ignores liberty.
Conservative opposition to government spending programs doesn’t stem from a lack of compassion for the unfortunate as some claim. Rather, it’s because we have compassion that others may live their lives as they choose and use their wealth in the way they choose. In short, we believe in the power of free individuals and fear unbridled power in the hands of others. That, Stuart, is what makes us tick.
