We await a heavy-handed anti-capitalist measure of therapy about to be unleashed on the world from the supreme seat of power, the Oval Office, as two world leaders link their voices, trumpeting the global redistribution of wealth because of Climate Change. The redistribution of your wealth, you middle-classians. The Argentinian Pope, Pope Francis, with as much pomp and pageantry as this Administration can muster, will be revered and his presence burnished by our uninformed and un-inquisitive media.
The redistribution of your cash, borrowed cash that is, will be implemented through misrepresentation of your direct responsibility for climate change. You, middle class America are responsible for the poverty of Africa, Asia and of any of 150+ nations around the globe where people are impoverished. You polluted the air, so you affected the climate, so you made it warmer, so you will pay for climate change. Since the dots don’t line up on this sham, this Administration knows how to effectively play the middle class, . . . lavish the Pope with as big a dose of ‘pomp’ as you can spend money on, and the media will applaud, filling the Pope’s sails with air. This will imbue an added measure of credibility onto Obama’s new co-sponsor on the road to confounding the middle class — the accommodating media will do the rest.
Not be outdone by Obama, Congress has invited the Pope to a first-ever papal appearance on Capitol Hill. Boehner and McConnell know not what they do. Surprising?
Pope Francis has ventured far from his religious province, and has become a politician. The Pope has also conflated capitalism with the financial markets (Wall Street), ignoring that the two have for some time had opposing purposes. Launched from the intellectual context of a passionately presented ‘concern’ for the poor, the Pope will seek to shame and guilt the American middle class and its capitalist system into accepting responsibility for the ills of 7.2 billion people.
You, the American middle class, should be accountable for the hundreds of millions who cannot economically grow their way out of poverty because you have polluted the environment and raised temperatures to such a degree that potential wealth creating activities such as agriculture, fishing, and forestry are impossible. Ignore the fact that North American air is now cleaner and is aspiring less pollution than at any time in over a century even as the population has exploded. Forget the facts. You, middle class America are guilty. What? You didn’t know that your creation of climate change is a religious concern?
In Pope Francis, religious doctrine collides with freedom of the individual, and conflicts with the most positive ecosphere known to man for encouraging natural human self-actualization — open and free capitalism. Papal decrees are intended for spiritual impressions, not political ideology or even economics, IMHO. His communism-promoting and warm visit with Castro this week is further evidence of his peculiar incursion off the papal path. It is highly difficult to understand his hate of capitalism, in view of the fact that he lived through the destruction of a very successful and thriving Argentina under the type of government he now espouses. In becoming so overtly political and straying from being a moral compass housed in the Catholic Church, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, even as he seems well intentioned, exposes himself to being taken advantage of, by very skilful political operatives.
The fallacious sophistry of the Administration with much evidenced disdain for American capitalism and the vast American middle class is about to capitalize on selected slices of Pope Francis’ unusual (unusual for a Pope) personal political canons. Forget about his stance on pressing concerns such as abortion and life’s sanctity, the Obama political team will use the Pope’s stance on ‘climate change’ to power-up Obama’s launch of his latest legacy-monument — Cap and Trade, Obama Style.
The Obama team is ignorant of the fact that America’s spine is comprised of entrepreneurs. Always has been. From farmers, to storekeepers, to wheel manufacturers, to software designers, entrepreneurs thrived, forging through new boundaries of creativity and productivity in the creation of jobs, and in the formation of wealth. The Administration’s ignorance has advanced and infringed on the entrepreneur, degrading America’s spine. Instead of a government providing protection for the individual and the individual’s self-fulfillment through enforcement of laws and judicious oversight, this purposeful ignorance has been allowed to invade and disturb independence of action and of thought.
Energized by an ignorant and crippling Administration, the giant blob of corrupted government bureaucracy has not only smothered the middle class through centrally established directives, killed personal initiative while pretending to protect consumers, and enriched bankers while saving them from the laws of the land, it is blaming the American middle class for the world’s ills.
Open your wallets. Here they come.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.
@Bill, #50:
Perhaps we should get rid of the nation’s police departments because crimes are still being committed.
Yet another stupid comment from the worst Democratic-progressive-socialist “useful idiot” troll on the web. Bill points out valid problems with Federal government behemoth and their failures, and Greg in his twisted trollish “liberal logic” thinks it’s appropriate to call for the abolishing of local police.
@Bill:
…Has the government kept property owners safe from improper use of Imminent Domain? Has the government kept the public safe from unjust asset seizure and forfeiture for the mere suspicion of a crime, when there was no crime committed? Has the government protected the citizens and states from foreign invasion?…
@Greg: I see you are unclear on federal, state and local jurisdictions and responsibilities.
For instance, the Constitution allows for no EPA, yet the EPA itself and without accountability poisoned a complete river. Correct?
@Bill, #53:
And I see you are changing the subject, from an unsupportable assertion that market forces are sufficient to assure the best outcome for the public, to the proper roles of federal government vs. state government.
There are many important areas of concern today that did not even exist in 1788, when the Constitution was finally ratified.
Nor did the EPA create the 3 million gallons of toxic crap that spilled into the Animas River. That would have been the private sector, operating in what was then the sort of unregulated environment that the right seems to greatly favor. They created a serious problem that wasn’t going to go away on its own, and then they bugged out with their profits, without giving a thought to tending to it. Local communities had refused to cooperate with the federal government’s efforts to have the place listed as a Superfund site:
I guess state and local governments didn’t do much leading. They did a lot of ignoring. Now they’re finger-pointing.
@Greg: No, you are asserting that the free market should give way to big government for all the benefits afforded by government intrusion and I countered by showing you the DAMAGE done by big government intrusion, not to mention the harm to the free markets, costs and jobs.
The “toxic crap” was contained at the mine. The EPA took it upon itself to contract to have it removed (no doubt benefiting some pals and relatives) and disaster ensued. Now, does the EPA pay for the clean up? Uh… NO… we do. Where as if a private enterprise were responsible for the clean up, THEY would bear the cost.
At any rate, here you have the EPA creating a major ecological disaster and what do THEY do? Refuse to appear. Hide. Stonewall.
The EPA is being used by the left as an unregulated, non-elected, irresponsible extra-governmental department to enact policies that cannot otherwise be Constitutionally enacted and, here, they step on their crank.
@Bill: This administration is using the EPA to actually control almost all aspects of the economy in the US. EPA “science” is developed by environmental extremist many of which have little or no knowledge of how the Earth’s environment works. This is how there ends up being so many unintended consequences. The EPA was warned about the consequences of the mining disaster they caused. There are technologies that can treat mine wastes in place if contained. This waste was contained until the EPA “uncontained” it. Greg has no knowledge of environmental issues unless the issue fits his political ideology. If he took the time to actually understand the issues instead of parroting people like Al Gore, he would have garnered at least a little respect on this site.
@Randy, #56:
Yeah, the state of Colorado was certainly hopping to it to get that problem under control. The Gold King Mine has been abandoned since 1923.
97.2% of all peer-reviewed scientific reports published between 1991 and 2011 that express any opinion about the topic support the assertion that human activity is affecting global climate.
This administration’s opinion reflects that of a majority of scientists.
@Greg: @Greg: Here is a reference of 97 articles refuting your 97% as “fraudulent” and “poorly conceived”.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html
The study was not intended to delve into “the complexities of the climate issue.” It was only intended to reveal the prevailing opinion expressed in a subset of peer-reviewed papers where any opinion had been expressed at all. Of those, 97.2% believed that human activity has some bearing on climate change.
Have those who deny that a majority of scientists believe human activity affects climate done any sort of statistical analysis of opinion that has produced contrary results? I haven’t seen anything like that. All I have seen are petitions, which by their very nature only gather opinions from those who agree with whatever statement is being circulated for a signature. A genuine survey gathering opinions both pro and con from a large random sample of scientists well informed on the issue would be far more convincing. For some reason, opponents don’t seem to be interested in doing that.
@Greg: The issue if you had read the references is that very few of the “scientists” mentioned in single paper by Cool etal have any expertise in climate change or AGW. In other words, most of the “Cook scientists” know as much about climate change and SGW as you Greg and that is none!
@Greg: Read this! Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825215300349
Finally, we compare our new composite to one of the solar variability datasets not considered by the CMIP5 climate models, i.e., Scafetta and Willson, 2014’s update to the Hoyt and Schatten, 1993 dataset. A strong correlation is found between these two datasets, implying that solar variability has been the dominant influence on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since at least 1881. We discuss the significance of this apparent correlation, and its implications for previous studies which have instead suggested that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has been the dominant influence.